The Unnaturalists (25 page)

We watch as the first Tinker enters the boiler. Stooping door wardens slam the boiler shut. There’s a screeching exhalation of both steam and pressure; my eardrums nearly burst from it. I tremble with the force of so much magic used at once. A door on the other side of the boiler opens then, and something airy and light is plucked out with a tool that looks much like a pitchfork.

The airy thing turns and flutters in panic like a trapped butterfly. A Refiner approaches in goggles and hood and touches it
with a black device. It stills and then I can see it clearly enough to understand.

“A wight!”

“They make wights from Tinkers,” Hal says, his voice thick with disgust and remorse. He closes his eyes, leaning forward as if he might be sick.

I am again at a loss, this time from the sheer devastation of such knowledge. One more punch to the gut will leave me utterly hollow. But this is bigger than anything that has happened to me. Whatever anyone else might think, the Tinkers are people. To warp and enslave them in such a hideous way . . . I can’t even begin to comprehend the cruelty. And the poor Unnaturals . . . Their mourning songs tear me wide with grief. A little voice within reminds me that it wasn’t so long ago I was quite happily mounting sylphids on boards, little dreaming of their sentience. Now I’m taking magic lessons from one and carrying him about in my reticule. I feel him shuddering against my hip in terror.

But I still just don’t want to believe it could be true. “How can it be?” I ask. “How are they doing this? The Empress is the Head of the Church of Science and Technology. Magic is forbidden. . . .” I spout every doctrine I can think of, but none of it changes what’s beneath us.

“Because, as I told you before, it’s all a lie!” Hal shouts above the grinding blast. “The Empress and her Scientists and Refiners want to keep all the wealth and power for themselves. And this is the effect of their madness. Do you finally believe me?”

I nod. I already believed him, even though I had only the proof of the magic itself as evidence. This . . . this is something else entirely. Something incontrovertible. As ineffable as the Watchmaker is
rumored to be, though I do not know if I believe in him anymore.

“This is not what magic was meant for,” Hal says, passion trembling in his voice. His knuckles are white on the metal railing.

“What are you going to do?”

He bows his head; frustration sets the muscles in his jaw twitching. “What can I do? I am the only Architect left. I—”

“What do you mean—the only one left?”

“Charles killed them all.”

“Charles?” I cover my mouth with my hands, feeling the truth sink in like a splinter. Charles has always nurtured a core of hatred, a core I’d brushed against and made fun of and mostly ignored, even though Hal warned me to be careful of him back in the Museum. But I’ve seen the burns on Hal’s hands and the scar on his cheek. I feel all the things he must have felt at seeing his fellow Architects fallen. “You narrowly escaped being killed yourself, didn’t you?”

He nods. “He is filled with a fell magic I do not understand. He was once one of us, but he left the Architects months before I came here. We were wrong to let him go, and it was nearly impossible to be sure that he was the one I sought once I did find him, so powerful is his magic. And now he knows about you.”

I think about the day I met Hal, the day someone pushed me through the field. “Do you think he pushed me through the field that day?”

Hal looks down again into the glimmering mist, as if it holds the answer. “It’s highly possible, if he was either trying to test or get rid of you. I am certain he will now make it his special mission to kill us both, especially since we know what he wants.”

“The Heart of All Matter,” I whisper.

“Yes. The Heart of All Matter. Which is why, when you’re at
Virulen, you must let Syrus take you to the Manticore. Only she can stop Charles and this fell magic he possesses. I’ve never seen anything like it. Except for this,” he says, gesturing at the glimmering steam and darkness below us. “Charles and the Empress are somehow of the same magical ilk, I think. And they will destroy everything, if we do not stop them.”

I’m deep in shock at how the web has closed around me. I feel as constricted as Princess Olivia, with her mouth stitched shut by spells.

“Vespa,” he says. He grips my upper arms, shaking me a little to make me look at him. “Please say whatever happens, you will do this thing. You will go to the Manticore and help her. You are the only living witch. You have the power to save us.”

I swallow. I want to say so many things, but what comes out is a squeak.

Figures loom behind Hal, Refiners with leashed werehounds and soot-grimed boiler wardens with thunderbusses, their boots rattling the catwalk.

“Hal!”

He looks back. “Hold fast to me,” he says in my ear.

I have approximately one second to clutch his dark sleeves before his magic utterly dissolves me.

We become ourselves again in the strange Cabinet of Curiosities. Hal is pale and sweating.

“Go,” he says. “We mustn’t be seen together.”

I release him reluctantly, wishing he would say more though I know he won’t.

So I nod, slipping my abandoned shoes on at the polar bear’s
feet. I pass as silently as I can back out into the hall. The clocks mock me, ticking away the precious time left to those imprisoned below. Tears feather my cheeks behind the Strix mask. But I am not crying for just myself now. I am crying for the beautiful things of this world, so perishable and fragile, and the Tinkers who have cleaved to them selflessly. I am crying for their loss and my loss and the loss that most people here cannot fathom. I am crying for what I have only brushed against but never fully known.

I take several deep breaths in the atrium before proceeding back into the ballroom.

Lucy finds me almost as soon as I step into the press of the onlookers and dancers.

“Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” she says, locking her arm firmly in mine. I’d very nearly forgotten the rose petal hidden in her glove, and the reason for my being here at all. It’s time to set the love charm into motion.

I start to apologize but she interrupts before I can do much more than stammer.

“Never mind. You’re here now.” She leans closer. “I’ve not yet seen my future fiancé, but I hear he’ll be wearing midnight blue. Are you ready?”

I swallow. I try to inhale, but either my lacings or the crowd won’t allow it. All I can do is nod.

The crowd parts at one end of the hall, halfway between us and the dais, halfway between a waltz and the musicians tuning their instruments for the next. A young man in a sumptuous midnight velvet frock coat enters, wearing a horned Wyvern mask and trailing an entourage of admirers. The room seems to sigh in his presence. The Heir of Grimgorn. It must be him.

I grit my teeth when I think about what I must do. I have never, so far as I know, bewitched anyone, and the
Guide
didn’t make me feel very hopeful about performing a love spell as my first magical act. But a promise is a promise. And Lucy has me fair caught. I have no doubt that if I’d refused my new mistress, sweet as her smile is, she would not hesitate to send me to the Waste. And that would, in turn, ruin what little hope is left to us. Somehow I must get to the Manticore. The one thing I cannot risk above all others is failure. Especially with all I know now.

I pat Lucy gently on the shoulder. “Go on,” I whisper. “I’ll be watching.”
And working the charm
. Though I don’t say it aloud.

Somehow she must get his attention. I schooled her in the three levels of connections with people according to
The Guide
—eye, physical, and heart.
Above all, one should strive to make connections of the heart, which are in turn the engines of affection
. She threads her way toward him.

It is not difficult for Lucy to take a cup of punch and edge close to him as he looks on from behind his mask at those trying to court or entertain him. The Wyvern crest of Grimgorn glimmers in the intricate brocade of his waistcoat, and there’s a tiny Wyvern embroidered in the folds of his lace cuffs.

Closer and yet closer. She waits for a moment when everyone is laughing at some young gentleman’s expense. She glides close enough that he sees her out of the corner of his eye.
The glance
. It’s not hard when someone throws her head back, arms akimbo, to give her a gentle push and . . . her glass of punch spills down his arm, down his side, bleeding the blue velvet purple. The cup breaks like bells at Lucy’s feet.

A single shocked gasp ripples across the room; the sea of dancers
grows still. All eyes are upon her as she apologizes, and the tremble in her voice is real.

“My lord, I am so very, very sorry.”

She reaches for his arm with her handkerchief, trying to soak up as much of the stain as she can.
The touch
.

If he reacts with anger, I won’t feel too badly about what I’m doing. But if he’s kind. . .

He crushes her hand under his. A servant rushes up with linen napkins from the buffet.

The magic is so potent I can hear him almost as if I’m standing right next to him. “I’ll forgive you,” he says to Lucy, his voice muffled by the mask, “if you’ll give me the next dance.”

His eyes are shadowed by his mask, but they’re oddly familiar, warm and fathomless as the sea as he looks upon her. Perhaps this will go better than either Lucy or I have imagined.

She bows her head and assents.
The heart.

He removes his stained coat and hands it to a nearby servant. The edge of his cuff is stained, too, but he ignores it. He leads her out to the floor, and the musicians begin as if he is their cue. As he whirls her into the waltz, Lucy’s eyes glitter at me from her Phoenix mask. The young Princess with her stitched mouth stares emptily from her mother’s dais.

Then it all falls away, and it’s just Lucy, Master Grimgorn, and my spell.

He’s a very good dancer. It’s easy to be distracted by this, because I’ve never seen anyone dance the way the two of them do. I want so badly to forget the awfulness of what I’ve just seen, how shattered I am by Hal’s rejection. I lose myself in the magic, in making the two of them hopelessly attracted to each other. Lucy’s glove glows
where the rose petal is hidden. I push the delicate, prickling magic from her hand to his heart. Their joined palms will surely catch fire soon so strong is the charm I weave.

At last, the waltz winds down and he bows. She curtsies.

Apparently inspired by their magical perfection, the dance master calls across the crowd, “Lord Bayne Grimgorn and Lady Lucy Virulen!”

I send this last arrow of thought into his heart as he leans to kiss her charmed glove to uproarious applause:
If you are well and truly bewitched, you will send the marriage proposal tomorrow.

Master Grimgorn straightens and tears the mask off as Lucy turns toward me. Hal—no,
Bayne
—stares at me in shock, betrayal in every line of his face. He may have changed his wardrobe since I left him in the Cabinet, but there is no denying the look in his eyes.

The clocks all throughout the Tower begin to chime, but his thoughts are louder even than their tolling.
What have you done? Oh, you foolish girl, what have you done?

C
HAPTER
18