The Unnaturalists (11 page)

His expression darkens. “You shouldn’t go alone there, Miss Nyx. It could be quite dangerous for one such as you.”

“One such as me?”

Pedant Lumin nods. “I can protect you as no one else can. Did I not do so the other day?”

I glance toward the Grand Exhibit Hall. The edge of the field that holds the Sphinx captive pulses a vivid blue. I remember the ticking of her claws, how he stood boldly between her and me. If events had transpired in a logical way, I should be dead now. I look back at Pedant Lumin, unsure. His gaze holds mine and, for just a moment, it feels as if the atrium inhales around us, as if some secret breeze stirs the still wings of the sylphids into life. I can imagine them, floating around us in a shimmering column. . . .

A patron tries to squeeze between me and the display case, jolting me back to the now. “Very well,” I say. “I’ll trust you just this once, Pedant Lumin. Let us hope you show yourself equal to the task.”

Pedant Lumin bows again, his expression carefully neutral. “Thank you, miss. You will not have cause to regret it, I assure you.” He looks up at me and grins. For just one moment, I consider running away to my laboratory and locking myself inside, but the nevered letter pulses its slim warning in my pocket.

“Shall we, then?” he asks.

I nod and together we pass through the doors out into New London’s glimmering gloom.

The hansom we hire is cramped, its cushions dusty and threadbare. I find myself picking at the seams, trying to ignore the fact that Pedant Lumin’s knees are nearly touching mine, so close is our confinement.

The curtains are drawn and so his face is mercifully hidden from me. That is, until a tiny, glowing head pops up from his waistcoat pocket.

Piskel floats toward me, lighting the entire hansom cab like a little sun.

“Don’t make any sudden movements,” Pedant Lumin says. “Just let him have a look at you.”

“He won’t bite me again, will he?” I ask, barely breathing.

The sylphid makes a face at me. Then he darts back into Pedant Lumin’s pocket, where he shakes a shining fist before crossing his arms and glaring at me.

“Did he understand what I just said?”

Pedant Lumin laughs. He fishes around in another pocket for more bits of cake, which he feeds to Piskel with soft words. Then he looks up at me. “What do you think?”

In the fey light, his eyes are again so brilliant I’m almost blinded.

“Why do you keep changing?” I ask.

He frowns and I realize it’s the first time I’ve really seen him do so. “I suppose I should have expected that you would see through my attempts at disguise.”

“Why?”

“Because of what you are,” he says. His gaze is mesmerizing, but
I can’t tell if that’s because he’s using forbidden magic on me or if it’s something else entirely.

“A witch?” I raise my chin.

“Not so loudly,” he says. “You can still be heard, even in here.” Piskel shakes a finger at me. “But yes. You see through illusion, among other things.”

This time when Pedant Lumin smiles, I see it fully for the first time. It burns me so completely my face reddens. “Other things? What else can witches do?”

He leans forward. “Anything they desire,” he says. The low pulse of his voice makes me clutch the cushion.

He’s close enough to kiss. I’m trying to figure out if I should, if he will, trying not to think about the wrongness of this, when a squeak of protest startles us both. Pedant Lumin sits back so as not to crush Piskel. “Sorry, little man.”

Piskel grumbles and burrows down into his pocket, taking his light with him.

The darkness is a relief. When I speak, I try my best to maintain an even, businesslike tone. “Pedant Lumin, I could have you reported. I should. You are a heretic Architect. The Church and the Empress would reward my family handsomely for one such as you.”

He’s entirely nonplussed by my threats. “But you won’t,” he says.

“What do you mean I won’t?”

“You won’t report me because I’m the only one who can help you.”

“Help me do what?”

“Survive.”

I’m so angry I can feel sparks flying off my fingertips even if I can’t see them. I clench my fists over my knees. “Pedant Lumin, if you’re suggesting—”

He reaches forward, slipping his fingers close enough to touch my fists. Close enough but not quite. Without touching me, somehow he draws off the anger, shapes it, lights it with a single breath. “Hal,” he says softly, holding the energy he’s transformed from me as though it’s a paper lantern. “The name is Hal.”

The rush of emotions is too much. I can’t speak.

“Tell me this,” he says. “How long have you known you were different? Has anyone else ever noticed?”

I’m about to answer but his gaze encourages me to examine his questions. It’s there at the root of me—the inner wisdom he’s seeking. I always knew I wasn’t meant for the Seminary. I thought it was just because I wanted knowledge they didn’t possess. It was that, but . . . there’s more.

A dim memory surfaces of looking with Father at a display of sylphids. Remarkably, they’d been kept alive. We walked through a tunnel engineered to allow us into their enclosure, my small hand clasped in Father’s. But something happened when we reached the middle of the tunnel. The protective field dropped. Suddenly, the sylphids were all around me and I laughed and let them play in my hair and sing to me, even though I couldn’t understand their words. Father didn’t laugh. Refiners came and turned the sylphids into glittering dust. And I wept because I knew they would never have harmed me. And then there was the kobold who bowed to me before he left Miss Marmalade’s . . .

Could it really be true? Everything I’ve been taught, everything I’ve hoped for goes against it. If anyone finds out . . .

“It can’t be,” I whisper. My words are harsh with rising tears. “It just can’t.”

“Why not?” he says gently.

“Because . . .” My voice cracks.
Because if I am, there is no future. If I am, then even the dream I dare not speak is lost to me. If I am, then I am a heretic and damned to an eternity of sand
. . . .
It is all I can do not to break down sobbing.

“Miss Nyx . . .” His hand brushes mine. “It is not so horrible as you might imagine. Your fate is still your own if you have the courage to see beyond your fear.”

That straightens my spine a bit. I find voice enough to ask: “But how did it happen? And what do I do?”

“You act as if being a witch is completely unnatural. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wielding magic is normal. What is not normal is how the Empress hoards all of the magic herself, turning it to her own evil designs and persecuting anyone who tries to use it for good. What you do about it is up to you. You can try to hide or you can fight, as we Architects have chosen to do.”

I digest this in silence. Then I freeze.

He senses the change in my demeanor. “What?”

“I think someone pushed me through the field the other day. I think they wanted to see what would happen to me.” I think again of Charles’s horrid smirk and shudder.

“Someone was trying to test you.”

“But why would it matter? What could they gain? And how could they have done it when no one but a fussy woman was standing next to me?”

“The answer to all those questions is simply this: magic. And if you are still unschooled, as I’m quite sure you are, you’re vulnerable. Your power is therefore accessible to any warlock or witch unscrupulous enough to seize it.”

I shrink against the seat. Accessible? Unscrupulous? “But I thought—”

“What? That we are all dead or exiled beyond the walls of this fair City? That only Architects are heretics, as you call us?” A bitter smile thins his lips. “I think you can see that is not the case. Forbidden as it may be, there are still some few of us who practice. And even fewer still who practice for the greater good.”

There’s an edge to his voice, a hidden dagger behind his words. Something wounds him. I can’t help it. “Who are you, really?” I ask.

There’s a breath, a tightening of his expression. How many glamours can one warlock possess?

“Who you see before you,” he says carefully.

“Pedant Lumin.”

He scowls. “Who I am does not matter. What you are, though—that is everything.”

“Why?” I whisper. Why should I matter so much? I am no one. My father is important, perhaps, to Men of Science. I think about my desire to be the first successful female Pedant and nearly laugh out loud. That especially will now be denied me.

“Because you are the catalyst. With your power, all kinds of things are possible. That frightens people, makes them greedy, all sorts of things.”

“But I don’t know how to use it. I don’t know what it
means
.”

He smiles. “We shall have to remedy that, Miss Nyx.”

I chew my lip, looking at the fading magenta lantern in his hand. I make my decision. “Vespa,” I say.

“Vespa.” He says my name as if it’s a spell or a holy charm, something blessed. The lantern dissolves into magenta butterflies which
float lazily around the carriage until they disappear.

Saint Darwin and all his apes! What am I doing? I must not let this happen!

Just then, the carriage lurches to a halt and the driver cries out that we’ve arrived.

Hal opens the door onto the choking stench of Lowtown. It stinks of sewage and tanneries and the ever-present odor of burning bone from the nearby Refinery. He climbs out first, making sure the stairs are stable. Then he gives me his hand. “Miss,” he bows, and that rakish grin tricks a smile from me, no matter how much I’d just sworn myself against it.

Arthur Rackham’s is just along the alley, thank the Ineffable Watchmaker. Bells announce us when I open the door. A thin, bewhiskered man sits at the counter, a jeweler’s monocle over one eye. His mouth is pursed like a prune as he wipes blue grease over the guts of a tarnished, compasslike object.

“Whassis?” he says. He swings to look at us, his eye hideously magnified by his monocle. Next to him on the counter squats a small jar with a lid that looks a bit like a grinning mouth. I suppress a shiver of disgust.

“A missive for you, from Pedant Malcolm Nyx, Head of the Museum of Unnatural History and my father,” I say. I’m pleased at how steadily I manage to say it. Hal wanders over to a wall of shelves.

Arthur Rackham nods, grumbling. He puts down the thing he’s working on and fingers a greasy rag before taking the letter. The neverseal sighs as he breaks it open. He unrolls the letter and reads it so slowly that I join Hal.

“Do you see?” he whispers.

I notice that the wall is blurry, rather like his glamour has been at times.

“Look beyond,” he says.

The usual sorts of permissible antiquities are here—soap dishes, soup tureens, tarnished spoons, chamber pots, and moldering portraits. I look beyond them,
behind
them. The wall of shelves shimmers like silk. Through it, I see vials of things with labels so dusty I can barely read them. I glance at Rackham, but he’s still poring over the letter, sounding out every word in hisses and whispers through his broken teeth.

I reach through the illusion (for so it must be) and smudge one vial with a fingertip.
Philtre d’Amour
. Thick tomes murmur to themselves.
Hexogony. Curses and Charms of the First Order
. I touch the spine of the last one, about to pull it off the shelf. A little dark spark jumps from the cover, colder even than the nevered strongbox.

“Careful.” Hal looks as though he wants to grab my hand, but he doesn’t.

“This is a hexshop, isn’t it?”

He nods slightly.

I’ve heard rumors of such places, shops where heretics and the desperate go to obtain forbidden magics. Naturally, I’ve never been to such a place before and I can’t imagine why my father would send me here now. What does my father, a Rational Man of Science, want in a place like this?

Rackham clears his throat and we return to the counter. The strange silver object near Rackham’s hand trembles. One of its delicate arms sweeps toward me, pointing like a compass finding its true north.