The Unnaturalists (24 page)

“The young baron would like to dance with me.” A powdered boy simpers behind Lucy’s shoulder. “Hold my things, will you?”

“Yes, my lady.” I take her fan and reticule.

She takes her companion’s arm delicately, though he’s a head shorter than she is, and lets him lead her to the dance floor.

I take a seat with the other servants and Companions. None of them speak to me. Lucy whirls from one partner to another, while I search for some sign of Grimgorn, and the Empress and her spell-stitched heir look on.

Then I spot him—a man dressed in inconspicuous black, which
makes him stand out to me like a dark sun. Hal. He’s wearing a wig and carries a horned mask listlessly in one hand. He doesn’t see me. I’m not sure what he’s doing here. Why would the Empress invite a lowly Pedant to her ball? Has he somehow magicked his way into the ball? I wonder.

It’s all I can do not to cry out his name. I bite my lip as he slips out into the hall. What is he up to? The Primer echoes in my head:
A Companion may, under severe compulsion, leave her post. But only if it will cause no harm to her mistress or lasting social repercussions for the family.

“Saint Darwin and all his apes,” I mutter to myself. If I don’t go after Hal now, I don’t know when I might see him again.

As a new quadrille starts, I slide off my chair and weave through the crowd to one of the many arched doors. I look back. Lucy laughs and spins on the dance floor. I don’t want her to see me leaving, so I hold my breath and glide as quickly through the door as I can.

Raven Guards flank the entrances. One stares at me with that empty, clicking gaze. He and his fellows wear the Empress’s red and white livery over their armor, but they still smell like rusty guano.

“I must find the water closet, please.”

“That way,” the bird-headed guard says, pointing his pike down the hall. No matter how often I hear them speak, I can’t get used to the human voice emitted by that clacking bird-beak.

The dark magic that made him is palpable. I hope he can’t feel my magic, even though I’m not using it just yet. What will happen when I speak the love charm? I suppress a shiver.

I hurry down the corridor, my heeled shoes clattering on the marble, dulled only by the sounds of yet more clocks. They’re everywhere here, as well—clocks with ornate, gilded frames, with
skeletal faces, or bodies like rearing horses. Portraits and tapestries nestle between them as if incidental to the décor.

Floating everlights beckon me down the corridor toward an ornate arch. The edge of a dark coat whispers round the corner. I want to shout at Hal to wait, but I know that would be foolhardy for us both.

I look back down the hall toward the Guard. The arches and columns block all but the tip of his beak and pike. If I keep to this side of the hall and move quietly, he won’t hear me. I slip off my clacking heels and creep past the door to the water closet. I just pray no one comes at me. I’ll have to throw a shoe at them before I can get my hands free. And even if I can get my hands free, I’m not sure what I could do. The
Novice’s Guide
didn’t say much about defensive magic, unfortunately.

The marble freezes my toes before I finally slip into the alcove. The heavy mahogany door is open, and I stop to read the words carved over the lintel.
CHAMBER OF CURIOSITIES
.
Around the winged clock face of the Ineffable Watchmaker are carved these words:
“Glory to Him, who endureth forever, and in whose hands are the keys of unlimited Pardon and unending Punishment.”

Unending punishment. That doesn’t sound nice at all. The image of the Creeping Waste sifts into my mind, but I banish it firmly. A Chamber of Curiosities. How can I help but be curious?

Besides, Hal disappeared in here just a moment ago. I must talk to him privately, no matter the cost.

I listen at the crack of the door for just a moment, shifting my shoes into one hand. I slide in and try to shut the door without letting it latch completely. I pride myself on being quieter than a mouse.

Then I turn. And nearly scream.

Shoes clatter to the floor as I cringe from the giant white beast looming above me. It’s nearly three times my height and with paws easily large enough to crush my head with one blow. Huge, yellowed teeth protrude from its black gums. I brace for the killing blow. Then I notice the dust on its muzzle, the cobwebs strung from head to shoulders. A plate reads
Ursus maritimus
in the Old Scientific tongue.

Light flares above my head, threatening me with brilliant pain. Instinctively, I raise my palms against it and hold it in abeyance. And then I see how to dissolve it. So, I do. Perhaps I’m better at this than I thought.

“Vespa?” Hal whispers, stalking toward me out of the shadows.

“Who else?” I ask. I can’t look into his eyes as they scan me from head to toe, so I look aside at the room instead. The light reveals things I’ve never imagined. Nearest me is a globe of a world I’ve never seen, maps of countries—Africa? China?—I’ve never heard of before. I scan city names until a familiar one jars me. London. On the river . . . Thames?

And then I understand. This is a chamber of wonders from Old London, the place we’re never to speak of in polite company, the place we all came from but know so little about. There’s a handbill for a lecture given by Charles Darwin at the Royal Academy of Sciences. A portrait shows him with a white beard in a plain dark suit. Not at all like the paintings I’ve seen of him in green robes and halo, surrounded by mythical apes. The sacrilege astounds me.

Hal glares at me. The circulating everlight in the room makes the powder on his hair and face glitter. He looks like an angry sugarplum, but I’m too hurt to laugh.

“Vespa, why in Athena’s name are you following me? Do you realize how much trouble you could get us both into if we’re discovered?”

I feel small and stupid, but I won’t let him see that. I lift my chin. “I needed to speak to you.”

“Well, what do you want?” He turns away and I follow him past skeletons and revolvers, lockets and tea cozies, past a case with a book inside it with
Holy Bible
embossed on its cover in gold letters. Why it’s not properly named the
Holy Scientific Bible
as all of ours are, I don’t know. This place gives me the chills.

“You promised you would come to me. Where have you been?” I know I sound like a peevish child, and it makes me even more cross and agitated than I already am.

The edges of his mouth fall into a frown as he inspects one of the cases nearest us. “There have been many matters that begged my attention. Not the least of which is staying alive to protect you.”

“What do you mean?”

I can’t see him perfectly in this light, but his hands are burned and there’s a scrape on his cheek that didn’t come from a valet wight with an unwieldy razor. “What happened?” I reach for him without thinking. I touch his face for only a moment, before he turns his cheek and leans away from me. My fingers slide down into his collar.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he says. His voice is flat and dangerous, a tone I’ve never heard from him before.

Before he can protest, I step into him and drag his head down to mine. “Can I do this?” I whisper, brushing my lips against his. I am startled at my own audacity, but I long to enter that golden
country we knew before. Magic sparks along my skin.

“No!” he cries. He seizes my shoulders and sets me aside, hard, against a wall. A giant painting looms over me, a portly, sashed queen frowning at me as the frame cuts into my lower back. Then, the painting and the wall on which it hangs vanish. I fall backward.

“Hal!” I clutch at him, my feet sliding over the edge.

His fingers catch in the folds of my skirt, just as my feet find solid ground. I look behind me. The wall has dissolved and I’m in some kind of lift. Elegant mirrors reflect Hal slowly releasing me. There’s a gear box with controls; steam hisses and machinery clinks outside the compartment.

Hal steps inside with me.

“What is this?” I ask.

He looks at the controls, touching the polished levers. He ignores what went on just before and I don’t know what to say, how to tell him all the words bubbling up inside my chest. The scent of burned bone nearly gags me.

“It smells of the Refinery in here,” he says. “I wonder . . .”

He works the levers. The wall slides closed again and we are falling, humming down toward the saints only know what.

“What are you doing?”

“Finding answers, I hope.” He stands with his back to me.

I put my hand on his arm. I must make him look at me. I must make him see me.

“Hal, what is happening between us? I thought . . .”

He looks down at me and I realize just how much taller he is than me.

“Is it because of the gown?” I ask. “I know I look different, but I’m still me. . . .”

His eyes are so cold, so distant. I remember thinking I had never seen blue eyes so warm when first we met, and now I can only think how cold they are. He will freeze me to the floor if I look at him much longer.

Behind the glacial chill lurks a shadow, a whisper, something he’s not saying. He turns, though, before I can apprehend the unspoken.

“I . . .” He swallows, staring at the wall. “I made a mistake I should not have made. I must do my duty and only train you as a colleague, not. . .” He pauses, weighing words. “It is unfair to you to treat you otherwise.”

All my dreams—all the secret wishes I can’t even admit to myself—go up in smoke. Perhaps that’s why the smell of burning is almost choking. It’s my heart smoldering in my chest like burning paper. “Did I misapprehend your intentions?” I don’t know how he hears me above the whistling gears.

Hal turns, his face so tight it could shatter, his eyes cavernous with those unspoken things. “I can’t be with you in that way. Don’t you see that I can’t?”

I close my eyes before he can say more and I feel him turn away. I can’t tell if the punch to my gut is from the desolation that sweeps me or the lift settling and stopping. Something rises up in me—a stubbornness. I will not let him have the satisfaction of seeing my pain. I square my shoulders and lift the mask to my face, hoping it’ll shade the tears glimmering in my eyes.

“Now,” he says, staring at the door, “I don’t know what will be on the other side. I may need you to help me, if we are to return to the Empress’s ballroom in one piece.”

I swallow the ugly words I want to say and simply nod. I don’t
know if he sees me, but it takes all my energy to keep what little composure is left to me.

The door rattles open, and anything I might say is drowned in the howl of machinery and a chilling blast that numbs my fingers. We walk out carefully, and I repress a hiss at the cold on my stockinged feet. I regret dropping my shoes in the Cabinet. The doors slide closed behind us, the lift rumbling down out of sight. I follow Hal to an observation deck. Despite the chill, greenish steam drifts upward like the exhalation of some vast Greater Unnatural.

We stare down at the floor far below us, waiting for a break in the shifting green fog. The smell is so terrible that I cover my masked face with my handkerchief as best I can. Hal looks askance at me.

I remove my handkerchief only long enough to ask, “Where are we?”

“Deep in the bowels of the Imperial Refinery, I believe. The most secret and guarded place in all the Empire. Funny that I rescued Syrus from the roof of the Lowtown Refinery not long ago and now I’m inside an even more dangerous one.”

“Syrus? The Tinker thief?”

“You really should trust him, you know. I think his intentions are ultimately good. When you go to Virulen, do what he asks and visit the Manticore with him.”

I don’t mention the fact that the boy stole my toad and refuses to give it back. That seems trifling now. “Won’t the Manticore eat us both for breakfast?”

Hal half-smiles. “I doubt anyone could have the power to eat you against your will. Especially not for breakfast.”

He’s joking with me now. As if he didn’t just say a few moments ago that he simply cannot have feelings for me. I stare down through the mists. The nevered bars of cages glow through the mist, row upon row of cages that disappear under the eaves of the catwalk. And in them are Unnaturals, scads of them, hordes of them. I glimpse the glitter of a Firebird’s wings, the curled horns of a morose Minotaur.

I tug Hal’s sleeve. “Look!”

Their voices rise up to me now through the scream of machinery—dirges of werehounds, the plaintive songs of mermaids. A cluster of dryads touches the bars with their leafy fingers, wincing and sobbing at the pain. I’ve never seen a living dryad before, only a single mounted one in the Museum basement. That one looked like little more than a pile of leaves and twigs, but these are beautiful and proud and sad. Somewhere, I know, an entire forest must be dead without its tree women.

And all because of us.

Then I see a line of people being led to a rusting boiler. I can’t see them very well, but the checkered headband gives one of them away—Tinkers.

Hal points at the same time I reach to tug his sleeve again.