Chantress (11 page)

I touched my hand to his.

The connection was instantaneous and shocking, far stronger than anything I had experienced with Penebrygg. Yet the pictures I saw confused me.

At first, they didn’t even seem like pictures at all, merely a darkness that glistened here and there, like the bits of jet that sometimes washed up on the island shore. And then I felt myself moving—something that had not happened when I’d practiced with Penebrygg. I was inching upward, my raw-scraped elbows
and knees digging into the black walls that surrounded me. A smoky breeze stung my throat, and my neck burned like fire.

Crackle!
A blast of bright, searing heat scorched my feet. Suddenly I was shaking with fear, shaking so hard that I felt my knees begin to give way. But I could not fall, I must not fall, for beneath me lay a fiery pit—

“Stop!” Nat roared.

I blinked, and the images vanished as if they had never been. Instead, I saw Nat before me, on his feet and blazing with rage. Penebrygg was at his side.

“How dare you?” Nat shouted.

Still disoriented by what I’d seen, I stared at him blankly.

Penebrygg laid a placatory hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

Nat shrugged him off and looked at me with loathing. “Chantress you may be,” he said. “But for my money, you’re no better than Scargrave and his ravens.”

He slammed the attic door shut behind him.

† † †

“He didn’t mean it,” Penebrygg said after Nat had gone. “He was merely speaking in the heat of the moment. He’ll come to his senses once he cools down.”

Badly shaken, I pulled the necklace back over my head and touched my hand to its stone. “He said I was no better than the Shadowgrims!”

“Well, there you are. A silly thing to say, and he knows it. But he’d had a shock.” As I started to speak, Penebrygg held up his hand. “I’m not trying to excuse him, my dear. But perhaps it would be best if you explained to me how you came to read his mind.”

I wondered how Penebrygg knew I’d been mind-reading.

“You were speaking out loud, my dear,” he told me when I asked. “I only heard the end of it, but it was very clear. Tell me: What made you do it?”

My suspicions, which had carried so much weight at the time, seemed less substantial when I explained them to Penebrygg.

“Betray us to Scargrave? Nat?” Penebrygg’s shaggy white eyebrows shot up. “The very idea beggars belief.”

I heard disapproval in his voice and tried to defend myself. “But he’s hiding something. I know he is. Something to do with flames and fire. And the Shadowgrims.”

Penebrygg steepled his fingers together and frowned at me. “Nat has his secrets, as every person does. But they are not what you suppose.” He shook his head. “I hate to intrude on Nat’s privacy, especially after such a violation. But you have so gravely misunderstood him that I think I must explain matters further.”

Violate Nat’s privacy—was that what I’d done?

I’d only been trying to make myself safe, an inner voice protested. To make everyone safe. Still, Penebrygg had sown enough doubt in me that I was prepared to hear him out.

“Nat has lived through terrors that most of us are spared,” Penebrygg began.

A new and dreadful possibility occurred to me. “Was he captured by Scargrave?”

Penebrygg shook his head impatiently. “Do you think Scargrave the only source of evil in this world? He is not. Not by any measure. Others do grievous harm too—like the magician who bought Nat when he was six.”

“Magician?”

“Not a real one,” said Penebrygg. “A false conjurer who traveled from town to town, fleecing victims as he went along. He needed a boy to help him, and Nat’s uncle wanted his nephew off his hands. So Nat was sold for a few shillings to an unscrupulous scoundrel who beat him and taught him to pick pockets and forced him to climb a tunnel of fire to entertain the crowds. An abominable business, however you look at it.”

The grime, the smoke, the flames. I felt sick as I remembered the pictures I’d seen in Nat’s mind. Even the few moments I’d experienced secondhand had been suffocating. What must it have been like for him to live through them?

“When he tried to run away,” Penebrygg said, “his master put a brass collar on him, one with a ring so that a chain could be attached to it. Two years later, when he tried to run away again, it was still locked around his neck.”

Two years, I thought. In a brass shackle for two years. And he was only a small boy.

It explained a lot about Nat, from the scar on his neck to his fierceness.

“The second time he was luckier,” said Penebrygg. “He got
away at night, when the collar was harder to see, and he broke into the storeroom behind my shop. Thin as a whippet and starving hungry, he was. Yet it wasn’t food he was after, but tools—tools to break the collar. I helped him, and he’s been my apprentice ever since.”

I tried to take this in.

“He can be prickly, I know,” Penebrygg said, “but he has a good head on his shoulders and a stout heart. And a true gift for science. There’s many a man in the Invisible College who envies me my apprentice, and that was even before we discovered his talents as a spy and thief. Secret tunnels, hidden staircases, dark passages—nothing daunts him.”

“No?” I remembered the fear I had felt when I was in Nat’s mind, and I wasn’t so sure.

It seemed Penebrygg had his doubts too. “At least he’s never given any sign that it has. But it’s worried me that he’s never spoken of his old life, not since that first night. And he won’t let me speak of it either. He’s put it behind him, he says. Having you see the truth must have been a terrible shock for him.”

“Yes.” I couldn’t help adding, “For me too.”

“Of course, my dear. I’m sorry it happened that way. Sorry for both of you. But in truth, it’s Nat I’m most concerned about; I wish he’d talk to me about it, but I suspect he won’t.”

“I expect he’ll never want to see me again,” I said.

“Oh, he’ll come round, sooner or later. And probably sooner. He’s a practical soul, our Nat, and he knows that if we are ever to win this battle, we need every ally we can get.” Penebrygg gave
me an encouraging smile. “And considered in that light, your attempt to read his mind was a great success. When deployed against our enemies, such a gift will wreak havoc.”

I thought this over. “Scargrave has the ravens, and you have me. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” He peered at me over his glasses. “This troubles you?”

I was as bad as Scargrave, Nat had said. As bad as the ravens. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the words out of my mind.

“What the song does”—I struggled for the right words—“what
I
do—it’s a little like the Shadowgrims, isn’t it?”

It would have comforted me if Penebrygg had rejected the notion completely. Instead, he said, “Perhaps a little. But only as the sun resembles the moon. Celestial bodies both, but entirely different in their mechanics and effects.”

I shuddered. I didn’t want to be like the Shadowgrims at all.

Penebrygg reached out and put a hand on mine. “My dear, you are doing this for the right reasons. It is thanks to you that we have our first real hope of defeating Scargrave. Nat knows that. And when he has had time to think it over, he will surely find it within himself to hope, as I do, that your power continues to grow.”

I wasn’t so certain. “But—”

Around us, the clocks clattered to life, chiming the hour.

“Noon already?” Penebrygg rose from his bench. “It’s time we made ready to meet with the College.” He beckoned to me. “Come along, my dear—I must show you your disguise.”

Penebrygg ushered me down to the room where I had woken that morning.

“By rights, you ought to be clothed as a lady of quality. But rich apparel might be remarked upon, so Sir Barnaby and I thought to disguise you as a serving maid instead.” He pointed to the bed, where skirts and bodice lay waiting. “I hope that is acceptable to you.”

“Of course,” I assured him. The plain gray clothing looked warm, and it was considerably less shabby than what I was wearing. “Where does the College meet?”

“At Gadding House.” Penebrygg opened the cupboard in the corner of the room and handed me a cap, apron, and cloak. “I’m afraid we’re in rather a hurry, my dear. If you could dress right away, and then meet us downstairs?”

The gray skirts were a tad short, but the full-sleeved bodice hid both the ruby and my Chantress mark, and the loose cap
covered my unruly hair. Wrapping myself in the cloak, I went down the stairs. As I approached the last landing, voices floated up to me.

“She only did it because she was frightened,” Penebrygg was saying. “When you think about it, Nat, she knows very little about either of us.”

“She knows we’ve kept her safe. But that wasn’t enough for her. No, instead, she walks into my mind, without so much as a by-your-leave, as if she owned me body and soul. I could feel her there—”

“You could?” Penebrygg spoke with quickened interest. “You surprise me, Nat. I can’t feel her, not in the least.”

“Well, I could. It was like having my grave walked on.”

“Let us hope our enemies are less perceptive.”

“As far as I’m concerned, she
is
the enemy.”

I stopped short. I had intended to apologize to Nat, but if he felt like that, what was the point?

Penebrygg spoke calmly. “We need her, Nat. That is an immutable fact. You must find a way to work with her.”

A long silence. “Very well, then. I will do what is necessary. But if she tries to read my mind again, I—”

The stairs creaked under my feet. They looked up and saw me.

Nat’s shadowed face was angry. “You were eavesdropping?”

“I couldn’t help it,” I said, stung. “Nobody could, coming down those stairs.”

“Then you’ll know I’m only working with you because I have to. And if you read my mind again, I won’t answer for
the consequences. If you can remember that, then we can work together.”

“I have no wish to be in your mind ever again, believe me,” I said.

As peacemaking, it left a lot to be desired. But Penebrygg seemed cheered by it. “We are allies, yes?”

“Indeed,” I said coldly.

Nat matched my tone. “Indeed.”

From that point on, his manner was polite enough. But as we walked to the door, I noticed that he was careful to keep well away from me. Whenever I stepped forward, he stepped back—and whenever I glanced at him, he glanced away.

Whatever flash of connection we’d shared that morning was utterly gone. That is, if it had ever existed in the first place.

I told myself I didn’t care.

† † †

“Quickly,” Penebrygg murmured to me as we went out into the street. “Nat will watch our backs while we go on ahead.”

As we hurried along, I wondered if Nat really was watching out for us, or if he was so busy keeping his distance from me that he had lost us. But I knew better than to look behind to check. Much better to appear as if I were out for a stroll with my aged grandsire, Penebrygg had told me. Though nothing about Penebrygg’s pace was particularly indicative of age. He was so quick on his feet that keeping up with him was a challenge—not
least because it was difficult to draw breath when so many putrid smells assaulted me. The city’s drains brimmed with dung, sewage, and filth, and a sick-sweet swelter of rancid meat and rotten apples tainted the air.

If London reeked, I soon discovered that most of it made noise as well. My ears rang as dogs howled, pigs squealed, and carts groaned on every side. And the people! They called and screamed and chattered and scolded, for all the world like a vast flock of gulls fighting for scraps.

What struck me most, however, was not the sheer volume of their cries, but the fear I saw in their faces. Even in full daylight, Scargrave and his Shadowgrims held sway.

Soon I, too, was weighed down with a sense of unease. Though I knew my workaday clothes made me inconspicuous, it unnerved me to be walking out in the open. What if someone laid hands on me? What if they found the ruby—or my Chantress mark?

It was then that I saw the woman watching me.

Silver-haired, she stood in an alleyway, her face still as death, except for her eyes, which gleamed as they fixed on me. As I hastened after Penebrygg, she pulled back into the shadows.

Should I mention her to Penebrygg? No, that would be making too much of what was really only a moment’s glance. Besides, she was out of sight now.

“Nearly there, my dear,” Penebrygg said softly.

A few minutes later—well out of sight of the alley, I was glad to see—he turned down a narrow lane that was darker and
quieter than the other streets we had traveled. It felt safer, somehow, though I had no way of telling if it really was.

When we had walked past half a dozen houses, Penebrygg led us down an even narrower alley and nodded at a shop on our left, where a weathered sign depicting a mortar and pestle hung over a blue-black window. “Here we are.”

I stared at the shop in puzzlement. Penebrygg had said we were meeting in Gadding House, but this did not look in the least like a great man’s mansion. It was not the time or place to ask questions, however, so I followed him silently over the threshold.

The room I entered was almost as crowded as Penebrygg’s own attic of curiosities. Boxes and bottles were everywhere, lining the wooden counter and standing on clever little chests with dozens of drawers. The shelves held long rows of blue-and-white china jars, mortars and pestles, and an assortment of beakers and clay pots. Packets of herbs perfumed the air.

As Nat slipped in the door—he’d been right behind us, after all—Penebrygg nodded at the sharp-nosed man minding the counter. “Good afternoon, Master Apothecary.”

“A very good afternoon indeed, I hear.” The apothecary glanced at me with frank curiosity.

Penebrygg said quickly, “You’ll not have met my brother’s granddaughter, here from the country?”

“Roger Harbottle, at your service,” the man said to me.

“And of course you know my apprentice,” Penebrygg added, motioning Nat forward.