A Study in Ashes (63 page)

Magnus finally summoned up a reply. “I think the truth should be obvious. I am a sorcerer and, willing or not, you are my student.”

“And you’re a master of illusion,” she said sharply. “And you’re a mesmerist. I’ve seen you hypnotize an entire theater into believing a lie.”

“Just so,” he replied, putting down his spoon. “You’re growing closer to the answer, kitten.”

“What are you hiding?” Evelina jumped up and began a circuit of the room, looking at everything.

“Nothing. I’m attempting to teach you to see through deception.”

She stopped dead in front of the sherry decanter. Rather than the clear amber she’d seen before, now it looked like liquefied decay. She snatched the crystal stopper away and reeled back from the smell. “Bloody hell, what’s in there?”

“You read the recipe earlier today,” Magnus replied, blotting his lips with his napkin.

She dropped the stopper from nerveless fingers. “That potion in the appendix. The one that enables a person to feed from the living.” She rapidly calculated the number of days, the number of doses. She’d had more than enough to do the job. “You tricked me into drinking it! You left my bracelets on just to set the stage to give me the first dose!”

Magnus gave a short laugh. “Trust me, this was kinder. I wish I’d thought it was a top-drawer liquor when I was a student. The taste is indescribably bad.”

Evelina rounded on him, rage making her feel eight feet tall. “This is the way you confess to what you’ve done? By turning it into a practical demonstration?”

“What I’ve done?” He rose from his chair in a single swift move. His dark eyes were bright with anger of his own. “You simper and you snap and I let you. I bestow my knowledge
freely, all the while putting up with your puling conscience. I endure you, Evelina, but make no mistake. You will do as I say.”

“You’ve made a monster of me!”

“Then that is who you are. There is nothing I can make you into that does not already dwell in your soul.” He raised a finger, pointing it into her face. “This is your lesson in truth, kitten.
You are my thrall
.”

Evelina drew up short. It had been a long time since she’d felt his wrath, but it made her own feel stronger. She narrowed her eyes, no longer caring what he did. He’d already destroyed her. “Be careful what you make of me, Doctor.”

She turned and walked back to her bedroom, then sat un-moving at the edge of the bed. It was still strewn with the contents of her trunks, but she ignored that entirely. A minute or two later, she heard the key fasten the lock.

The sound made her feel better. If Magnus was turning her into an implement of his will, there was no way she could ever let herself go home.

Over Somerset, October 12, 1889
ABOARD THE
ATHENA
3:12 p.m. Saturday

“DARK MOTHER OF BASILISKS, WHAT IS THAT?” NICK GROWLED
. He shoved the tankard back toward his helmsman, rising from the scrubbed wooden table in the mess area of the ship.

“Scrumpy,” Digby replied, his wide smile showing crooked teeth. He was tall, red-haired, and perpetually good-natured, even toward vile substances masquerading as drinkable liquids. “Striker brought a fair supply on board.”

“As an incendiary weapon?”

“No, he said it was a right proper drink for pirates. And I rather like it.”

“You can have my share.” Nick gave up and started toward the fore of the steamspinner.

“Right you are, sir,” Digby said cheerfully, draining Nick’s mug in a single draft.

As he walked away, Nick waited for the sound of his body falling in a toxic heap, but apparently airmen were manly men well able to survive the rigors of scrumpy.

From the mess, he walked forward to the bridge, still amazed by the view from the arc of huge windows. With deep satisfaction, Nick regarded the brilliant greens and golds of Somerset unrolling below. He had survived the Scarlet King’s hell. Now Scarlet was dead, and Nick had
this amazing ship, his crew, and Athena. The only other thing he wanted for himself was Evelina.

He had been on the
Athena
when Her Majesty’s Laboratories had been destroyed, or he would have whisked her away then. As it was, she had escaped with Madam Thalassa’s crew. Holmes was learning her exact location now, then Nick would pick her up, and all would be right in his world. If His Princeliness the Schoolmaster came out on top, there was even a chance of a pardon.

You are whistling, Niccolo
, said Athena.

“I’m happy.”

But you are not musical. And there is a rook awaiting you below
.

The mention of the birds sobered him. Gwilliam had reported disappearances from his flock—scouts who went out and did not return. Then they had found the savaged body of a rook dropped in pieces against the starboard portholes. The birds had little idea what was stalking them, but it always seemed to happen when there were enemy airships nearby. Evidently, the steam barons had a new weapon.

Nick retraced his steps through the mess, the crew quarters, and out the door that took him from the gondola to the main workings of the ship. This was Striker’s kingdom. He could hear the crash-banging of crates being moved in the storerooms as his second in command tidied away the bolts, grease, and other parts necessary to keep the ship running in top form. It was a bit like witnessing a clockwork badger stocking his burrow for the winter.

Nick’s destination was a small doorway on the port side of the ship. It led into a small, narrow chamber with no furnishings other than roosts. There were three round portholes as well as a narrow hatch that opened straight into the clouds. Here was where the ash rooks could come and go at will.

He put his head inside the roosting area. “Do you have a message for me?”

A young rook with a simple chain around his neck flew down from his perch and dropped a note at Nick’s feet.
Fair winds, Captain, I come from the place of brick and water below
.

“Greetings, Talfryn.” As they had nearly reached Bath, Nick assumed the message must be from the Schoolmaster’s headquarters just outside the city. He bent to retrieve the message.

Will there be battle soon?

Without answering, Nick unfolded the paper, which had been somewhat mashed by its trip in the rook’s strong beak.

Captain
,

I beg your indulgence, but I trust you will understand the contents of this message better than most. I received a telegram from the younger Miss Roth this morning with a very strange piece of information. She woke up with a firm conviction that her elder sister, who has been ill and insensible for months, visited her in a dream and gave her instructions to advise me that Evelina Cooper is being held captive by the sorcerer Magnus at Castle Siabartha. As you can well imagine, this is not within my usual area of expertise
.

However, I extend these three facts for your consideration. First, it has come to my attention that there were indeed several sightings of an unmarked black air vessel between Dartmoor and the coast north of Tintagel immediately following the destruction of Her Majesty’s Laboratories
.

Second, there is indeed a Castle Siabartha on that coast
.

Third, my initial assumption was that Evelina left the moor on the night of the laboratories’ destruction with Madam Thalassa. There was another set of footprints near the location where I last saw her, but it had rained so heavily before dawn that any information they might have provided was badly obscured. And, to be frank, I thought I knew the reason for her silent departure. She was visibly upset at the time, and until now I believed she left quietly in an effort to keep her troubled state of mind to herself. This delicacy of feeling is, as I’m sure you know, part of her nature. Nevertheless, I have since confirmed to my great consternation that I was in error, and there is a strong probability that she was coerced and kidnapped
.

In brief, I believe Miss Roth’s information should not be discounted, however irregularly she has obtained it
.

Captain, I am well aware that in this time of conflict, you and your ship will be pushed to the limit. However, I beg you to investigate. The coordinates for the castle are listed below
.

—S. Holmes

Nick read the message, and then read it again.
Evelina is gone
. It was like being thrown in Manufactory Three all over again, with the rage and helplessness that dragged with it.

A remote castle on the coast? Magnus?
Nick’s mind veered sharply away.
I saw Magnus fall. He has to be dead
. But he’d thought that before and been wrong.

He looked down at Talfryn. “Tell Gwilliam to prepare for a siege.”

Southwest Coast, October 12, 1889
SIABARTHA CASTLE
4:10 p.m. Saturday

THRALL? IN YOUR
fantasies, you moth-eaten charlatan
.

When she’d left Whitechapel, Evelina had been horrified by the price Magnus’s lessons had made her pay. And yet, there’d been a lingering corner of regret for all she would never learn.

After last night, any lingering disappointment had just gone up in a ball of flame. She wanted out before he did something else to her.
Where am I going to go?

Part of her wanted to be locked away somewhere, back at the college or maybe in a dungeon where she couldn’t hurt a soul—at least until she knew she could control this new
curse. And part of her was terrified of confinement. In a way she didn’t quite understand, she wasn’t entirely civilized anymore.

And Magnus’s behavior wasn’t helping. He’d left her locked in her room all day. There had been no hot water to wash, and no food. She’d ended up drinking the last of the wash water left in the pitcher from yesterday. If he’d meant this treatment to tame her mood, it had produced the opposite effect.

The dark power shifted inside. It was restless and watchful, waiting for her least command. It felt eager for an opportunity to stretch, perhaps to hunt—but that was the one thing she wouldn’t allow. She knew from that slim little volume that first taste of fresh life was the beginning of a whole new darkness.

Even the notion of it made her power twitch with anticipation. Evelina gave it a mental smack on the nose.
If you want to be useful, find me a way out of here
.

But the only option continued to be that loose board. She stepped back from the bed to get a better angle, and peered up to the high, shadowy ceiling. The problem was going to be getting up there with the bed in the way. The bedframe was massive, a four-poster affair far too heavy for her to drag aside. Then again, she’d been raised in the circus, hadn’t she?

Evelina hadn’t bothered to put her clothes back into her trunks. She’d simply shoved them aside to lie down for last night’s fit of brooding. That made the empty trunks easy to lift now, so she piled them up in a tower next to her bed. Grabbing the poker again, she climbed the makeshift ladder, going slowly to keep the tottering stack from a sudden shift. From there, she tested the strength of the oak rails holding up the canopy. Carefully, she swung a leg over the closest rail, leaning forward to avoid knocking her head on the beams above. She scooted forward, one arm wrapped around the finial of the bedpost. Even padded by the bed curtains, the position was desperately uncomfortable, and the fact that her right leg was hampered by the canopy didn’t help. But the only way to improve matters was to get the job
over with, so she prodded the loose board with the fireplace poker and got to work as quietly as she could.

It quickly became apparent that there was no one upstairs, because it was a splintering, puffing, grunting sort of job guaranteed to attract attention. The boards were wide but it took time to get the first one detached all the way, and then more to figure out how to use that to her advantage. The old square spikes holding the boards down were sturdy. It took using the poker like a pry bar, plus a trickle of earth magic, to work enough boards free so she could push her shoulders through the gap. From there, she braced her elbows on the attic floor, got her feet on the canopy rail, and pushed.

Evelina landed on the attic floor, gasping like a landed fish. One palm was bleeding from catching it on a splinter, but she welcomed the pain. It was proof she was doing something instead of waiting like a lamb for Sunday dinner.

When she’d caught her breath, she rolled away from the loose boards and stood up, then tamped them back into place with her foot. If Magnus came looking for her, she’d need every moment. Picking up the poker, she glanced around the attic, wondering where to go next. Magnus had said the balloon and the stables would be guarded with spells, so she would simply have to walk. Maybe it would take her a week to reach the next village. If that was her only option, so be it.