A Study in Ashes (45 page)

And then her power flexed, a visceral twist of anger, and the cloak squeezed. The other magic users, their power linked to hers by the web, moved with her like the fingers of a giant fist.

The building split with a huge cracking noise, as if a giant egg had smashed. Whatever spells had been guarding it—the magic wrung out of those practitioners too frightened to fight—gave way like wet paper. And then the devas rushed into the breach. In the space between one breath and the next, flames erupted from the roof.

A frantic lowing of cows rose up, but the barn was too far away to catch fire. The living humans—those who could run—fled. Or tried to. The devas of the moors, working by a code only they understood, only let every third man free of the flames. The pitiable creatures in the cells perished, their lives no more than sparks in an updraft, too spent to even stir Evelina’s hunger.

Except one. Evelina gasped as something bounded from the flames. It ran on all fours and was larger than a calf, but it moved with the easy glide of a hunter.
Was that the creature behind the door?
Its eyes flashed red in the firelight, throwing sparks into the blackness. It was only visible for an instant, an outline against the flames, and then the magic twisted again. The creature disappeared from view, as if
somehow the dark spirits of the moor had swallowed it whole. Evelina shook her head, trying to clear it. Whether the devas had caught the creature or it had escaped was impossible to tell, and Evelina was too exhausted to pursue it right then.

Lying atop the cairn, Holmes watched it all without twitching a muscle. Evelina studied his face. There was much in the spirit realm that he couldn’t see, but the resulting destruction was plain. And apparently fascinating. He was watching, cataloguing, and filing away every detail, barely taking time out to breathe.

He dealt in fact, not magic. He’d done his job protecting her, and no doubt he’d helped destroy the laboratories because they contravened his sense of justice. For him, the adventure was—if not simple—at least plain in its objectives and result.

Not so for her. She shifted her gaze from her uncle to the wreckage below. She’d felt the wrench that had cracked the building. Her power still rang with it like a vibrating bell, thrilling her with victory and whispering of what chaos might come next.
More. This is only a taste
.

The thought appalled her, and she couldn’t watch another moment. Evelina got to her feet in silence, not wanting to disturb the mesmerized Holmes. She needed to turn away, to put some distance between herself and the destruction she had wrought. She needed control.

“We must locate Madam Thalassa,” Holmes said.

Evelina could feel the woman’s magic, as bright as her own was dark. “I know exactly where she is.”

“She will take you to a safe place. It’s been arranged. When the search for you has died down, I will come fetch you.” He started to rise.

“In a minute,” she said quickly. “Let me rest.”

He subsided, returning his attention to the scene below.
She will take me to a safe place?
Evelina wasn’t sure there was such a thing. Not until it was possible to run away from herself.

I shot a man. And then I ate him
. The notion made her insides swirl dangerously, and she desperately wanted the
solace of darkness and open air. She walked a little distance across the stony top of the hill, and then a little more—away from every other presence. It was too dark to go far, but the moon above and the glow of the fire reduced the chances of breaking her neck. She could still see Holmes, the white of his shirt a smudge where he lay. Then she began reeling in her senses, shutting off the connection between herself and the magic, herself and the earth, herself and anything beyond the privacy of her own mind. Evelina wiped her brow on her sleeve, the solitude making her feel a tiny bit better.

I am in control
. She repeated it to herself a dozen times, blocking even the rustle of the nighttime insects from her perception. It felt good, like pulling the covers over her head and falling into a deep sleep. The vibrating inside her stopped, the excitement unwinding like a spring slowly robbed of tension. She loosened her bracelets, dusting away the remains of the salt. It was spent now, though her skin was raw where it had touched her.

But then something stirred behind her, just loud enough that it broke through her shield. A sour-smelling hand clamped over her mouth and a knife pricked against her throat, tickling her just below the ear. “Well done, kitten.”

She knew the voice all too well. Rage seared white hot, making her struggle until the knife dug in, pricking through skin.

“Oh no, you don’t,” whispered Magnus. “If you ever had any doubt that you were mine, just think about this night’s work. I felt you leave your hiding place like a ripple on a pond, but I would have had to be deaf and blind to miss you here.”

Evelina growled from behind his stifling fingers.

“Oh, come now. You’d never have put on such a show unless you wanted me to catch you. Surely you didn’t think I would leave you forever?”

He pressed his lips close to her ear. “I’m sure by now you’ve learned I cannot die.”

Southwest Coast, October 5, 1889
SIABARTHA CASTLE
7:25 a.m. Saturday

WIND WHIPPED THROUGH EVELINA’S HAIR AS SHE RAISED
her head above the rim of the basket of Magnus’s balloon. Above, the black silk globe rose like a storm cloud, captured in a net of silver rope. Below, the southern coast spread in jagged beauty, the green fingers of land lost among mists of salt and spray. They’d flown through the night and now morning spread with grim purpose beneath a steel-gray sky.

Fear slammed her, making her knuckles white on the wicker rim. It wasn’t the height, but the fact that she had no idea where they were going—or how she would ever get back. “Where are we?”

“Tintagel is that way,” Magnus remarked with a wave of one gloved hand. “All crashing waves and Arthurian claptrap. The property values on places like that are astronomical and for what? Useless unless you want to attract day trippers.”

He raised his voice to be heard over the wind, the quartet of steam-driven propellers, and the rush of the pumps converting aether distillate into the lifting gas that kept the balloon afloat. And somewhere in all that machinery was a navigation system that had kept the craft on course despite the dark. The black balloon was clearly designed for nocturnal journeys—and with Magnus that meant nothing good.

Evelina fell back into a slump at the bottom of the basket
and buried her face in her hands. A new chain rattled where Magnus had strung her bracelets together, turning them into handcuffs. She’d had to turn the key in the bracelets a few hours ago when she’d felt the first tingles of pain that signaled their reactivation. It hadn’t been a dignified operation with her hands bound together and the key on a chain around her neck, and in the end Magnus had been obliged to help her—one captor assisting with the bonds of her other.

Vertigo assaulted Evelina, a mix of fatigue and the pure insanity of her predicament. It was too much after what she’d seen the night before. It was too much ever, because it was Magnus.

“Oh, come now, kitten. Surely this is better than returning to the Gold King’s thrall. I heard what you did for your pirate, sacrificing your freedom for the
Red Jack
. Very touching, if somewhat pointless.”

That made her lift her head to glare. She was about to protest that Nick had lived, despite everything, but stopped herself just in time. Magnus had baited a trap for Nick once; she wasn’t going to help him do it again. The longer he believed Nick dead, the better. “I made my choice and you weren’t it.”

“No,” Magnus said with a flash of irritation. “And that poses a logistical problem for me. I was prepared to wait for you to come to your senses, but things became a little more urgent now that Serafina is gone.”

Serafina, the insane, murderous star of his automaton ballet. Anna’s vessel. Even the memory of her reawakened the pain of her knife sliding through Evelina’s body. “Gone? Truly gone? Or is she as hard to kill as you are?”

“Alas, she was completely destroyed, as were all of my creations. Otherwise,” Magnus said with a twist of a smile, “I would have far less need of you.”

What does that mean?
she wondered.
And what does he know about Anna?
But Magnus had busied himself with the pumps, adjusting the dial on the silver canisters lashed upright in the middle of the basket. That was the difficulty of being spirited away by air. Killing one’s abductor wasn’t a
good response, unless one knew how to fly the wretched contraption—which she didn’t.

“I see from the burns beneath your bracelets that you were playing with dangerous chemicals. What was it?” he asked in that professorial voice he had used so often as her teacher.

Instinctively, she cradled her hands against her chest and wondered how to respond. Was it better to pretend to be his student again? Or was it time now to make it plain that she was done listening to him? She compromised. “I overbalanced the dampening fields in the laboratories.”

“Using an elemental salt, no doubt? Clever, but very dangerous. Most of the available substances are utterly toxic. Next time, use a few drops of your blood to activate it, and don’t touch the stuff with your bare skin.” He flashed a derisive smile. “And if it’s salt of sorrows, don’t even breathe near it. If that was what you used, be glad you didn’t have more than a pinch.”

Somehow, he knew exactly what she’d done. Evelina crouched against the wicker of the basket, misery welling up inside her. Magnus was worse than the bracelets. They only reacted to what she did. The sorcerer detected where she’d been and half the time what she was thinking.

The balloon began to dip, drifting downward. Gripping the woven wicker rim above her, Evelina ventured another peek at the ground. The cold sea wind raked her face, blurring her vision with tears. Magnus was wearing goggles, she was not.

But she could see well enough to feel a swell of panic. Spears of dark rock thrust out of the water, their bases disappearing into a churn of waves. A scatter of whitewashed houses clung to the base of the cliffs, seeming to huddle for shelter from the open water beyond. There was no sheltering cove here, no harbor or breakwater to spare the shore. There was only a finger of barren land thrusting into the sea and at its crest, a castle of bare black stone.

“Was it going for a song?” Evelina asked dryly. “Not many day trippers here, I suspect.”

Magnus laughed. Whatever his legion of other faults—
including a gruesome sort of insanity—he did have a sense of humor. “Ah, no, this is an old pied-à-terre from former days. I had been living in the Black Kingdom, but grew tired of endless caves. At least this place has windows. It may be inconvenient and drafty as anything, but it’s wonderfully private. We’ll be quite cozy here until this nonsense with the Steam Council blows over. We can catch up on your lessons.”

Evelina cursed under her breath, yanking in futile frustration at the chain that bound her hands. Magnus’s instruction had proven a double-edged sword. He was the only creature she knew who could teach her about her own power, but at the same time he had used her curiosity against her, cursing her with a sorcerer’s hunger. The more time she spent around Magnus, the less she could count on remaining Evelina Cooper. That, more than anything else, spurred an overwhelming motivation to get away.

Magnus deftly adjusted a lever that angled the propellers a degree. The balloon shifted slightly west, rotating lazily until it caught the wind. They were close to the castle now. The style of it was ancient—a misshapen tower of dull black stone surrounded by a high wall on three sides. But the most striking feature was the front edge of the tower, for it thrust out over the cliff, leaving a sheer drop to the thrashing ocean below.

The basket cleared the edge of the wall, and Evelina could see the details of a bailey—an enclosed yard where once there might have been stables, blacksmiths, chicken coops, and all the other necessaries that made up a community. Now the auxiliary buildings were deserted, the wood crumbling and bleached gray by the chill salt air. There were a handful of servants standing by to assist with the balloon, but they looked like they wanted to bolt at the first opportunity.
This is the absolute end of the earth
. And from what she could see, it hadn’t ended well.

Magnus turned the pumps down another notch, and opened a vent to let the aether escape. The balloon began to subside onto the ground with a graceful sigh. Then he tossed a series of ropes over the edge of the basket and the waiting
men caught them, hauling the craft down until Evelina felt the bottom bump the ground.

“There you are, kitten, welcome to Siabartha.”

She schooled her face, pretending not to recognize the name. It was a word in the old tongue, and something to do with the netherworld.
Trust Magnus to go for the traditionally sinister
. There was no way she was giving him the satisfaction of seeing her spooked any more than he already had.