Chantress (9 page)

I touched a fold of the scarlet fabric inside the coracle. “And this silk? What kind of experiments do you do on that?”

He didn’t look up from his work this time. “Do you always ask this many questions?”

“Wouldn’t you, in my shoes?”

To my surprise, Nat considered the point fairly. “I suppose I would.” He set down his pen, evidently striving for more patience than he had shown me last night. “All right, then. Ask away.”

“What do you use this silk for?” I asked.

“Well, we dissolved some in acid when we were studying color. But mostly it’s there as a background for the engravings.”

“The engravings?”

“We’re engravers by trade. Engravers and clockmakers, to be exact. But clockmaking is frowned upon, so we keep that part quiet.”

“Is that because of the Devastation?”

“Yes.” Nat spun his pen. “After the Shadowgrims ferreted out the conspiracy, clockmakers were ordered to close their shops, for fear they might be nests of rebellion. Anyone believed to have been a close associate of the rogue clockmaker was hauled in for questioning. We escaped that, thankfully, since we’d never had dealings with him. But even if you had no connection with him, you had to apply to Scargrave himself for a permit to reopen your business. Dr. Penebrygg didn’t much care for that, so he shut up shop for good and moved here.”

“But he kept his clocks,” I said, listening to the ticking of their mechanisms.

“He did. And he’s taught me how to work with them. But it’s mostly engraving that earns our bread these days.” He jotted something down with his pen. “And now I really need to get back to work.”

Was he working on an engraving? I stepped forward and peeked over the top of the tilted desk. But he was only writing on an ordinary sheet of paper, carefully aligned against the margin of a book. The book’s binding, just visible, was a deep moss green.

“The book from the library,” I guessed.

Nat’s pen stopped. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

“What does it say?” I scrutinized the upside-down text. “I can’t read it.”

“It’s in Latin.”

“Why did you take it?” I asked.

“It’s too complicated to explain right now.” Nat looked up from his work and pointed to the far side of the room. “Did I tell you there’s food on the table over there? I’ve had my share, and so has Dr. Penebrygg, so eat as much as you want.”

It was a diversion, and I recognized it as such. But I was hungry enough to abandon my questioning, at least for the moment. On the table, alongside chisels, spikes, and sheets of metal, I found a basket of rolls and a wedge of waxy cheese. They made a fine meal, and by the time I had polished them off, I was reconciled to taking a more roundabout approach to getting answers from Nat.

On my way back to his desk, I stopped by a complicated device made up of brass tubes and bits of glass. “What’s this?”

Nat barely took the time to look up. “A microscope.”

The word meant nothing to me. I leaned in for a closer look.

Now I had his attention. “Careful!” he warned. “It took ages to put it together.”

“You made it?” I looked at the tubes with new interest. “What does it do?”

“It lets you look at tiny things. If you get everything lined up properly, a flea looks as big as a lamb.”

I boggled at this. “But that’s impossible.”

“No more impossible than your own magic,” Nat flared. “But it takes hard work and patience, not just a few random snatches of song.”

He shot me a look so full of resentment that I stepped back from the force of it. My resolve to put him at his ease evaporated.

“You don’t like magic, do you?” I said. No point in beating around the bush.

“No.”

“Not even good magic?”

Nat shrugged. “Scargrave would tell you the Shadowgrims are good magic. And they are—for him. That’s the way magic is, as far as I can tell. It lets a few people run roughshod over the rest of us.”

“You wish I’d never come, then.”

He balked. “I didn’t say that.”

“You hate magic, you as good as said so.”

“Doesn’t matter if I do, does it? We need your magic. I wish we didn’t, but we do.”

“So you’ll pinch your nose and put up with me, so long as I’m useful to you?” I grimaced. “How very noble of you.”

“Well, you’re getting something out of the bargain too.” He crossed his arms. “You need us to keep you safe.”

“Safe?”
I looked back at him indignantly. “That’s a fine thing, coming from you. You’d have strung me up for a spy if it hadn’t been for Dr. Penebrygg.”

“Nonsense.” Nat was unrepentant. “I was being careful, that’s all. If you had been a spy, and Scargrave found out what we were up to—”

He broke off and took up his pen again.

I stepped toward his desk, skirting the coracle and the pile of bones. “What
are
you up to?”

“I can’t say.” He wouldn’t look at me. “Not yet. When Dr. Penebrygg comes back—”

“And when will that be?” I asked. “I thought he was supposed to be here already.”

“He was.” Nat glanced at the nearest clock. “He’s late. I don’t know why.”

“Where did he go?”

“I can’t say,” he said again.

A sudden fear gripped me. Had Dr. Penebrygg been arrested? Or worse still, was he not the friend he had seemed? “You mean, you don’t know?”

Nat shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t say.”

I clenched my fists. First Norrie, now this. No matter where I went, it seemed people were determined to keep secrets from me. “I
hate
being kept in the dark.”

“So do I,” Nat said unexpectedly. “I hate it more than anything.”

Our eyes met, and I felt a spark like the kick of magic or the start of a song.

Or was that only my imagination? Even as the spark shot down my spine, Nat looked away, and his voice, when he spoke, was as cool as ever. “I’d tell you more if I could, but I can’t. You’ll have to wait until Dr. Penebrygg gets back.”

“But—”

“I’ve said all I have to say.” Nat bent back over his work. But something was bothering him. His face was flushed, and I saw his hand go up to loosen his collar.

I started to speak, then stopped, shocked by what I glimpsed as the collar fell away: a scar across his throat, as white as my own Chantress mark.

“Hello, hello!” The door burst open, and Penebrygg rushed in, his cheeks pink with exertion and excitement.

“There you are!” He smiled at me. “We’re to bring you with us when the Invisible College meets today. What do you think of that?”

“What’s the Invisible College?” I asked.

“It’s not so much a what, my dear, as a who.” Penebrygg sat down by the hearth, his floppy velvet cap askew. “We are a band of mathematicians, engineers, philosophers, and alchemists who are dedicated to overthrowing Scargrave. Not that we’ve had much success yet. But that is our aim.”

“And you become invisible?” I asked cautiously, sitting beside him.

“Alas, no. The power of invisibility is beyond us. Although I will say that young Rooke has hopes—”

“Should we be using names?” Nat interrupted, sitting down across from us. His collar was fastened shut again, and I could not see his scar.

“Sir Barnaby thought we should, as long as we did so with care and discretion, never writing anything down—the usual precautions.” Penebrygg glanced behind him. “I bolted every
door on the way up. And those windows are latched shut, yes?”

“Yes,” Nat said, “but—”

“Lucy is part of our circle now. That is the Council’s decision. And since she is in our circle, we must be open with her.” Penebrygg turned to me again. “It is our rule, you see. We were known to each other before Scargrave’s rise, so there was no disguising things afterward. And there is a certain measure of safety in continuing this way. If we were to cloak ourselves in hoods and masks, an imposter might easily slip in among us. But without them, we know exactly where we stand. Our faces are no secret to each other, and neither are our characters.”

“I promise I won’t betray you,” I said.

“But what if she’s caught?” Nat asked Penebrygg.

Trust Nat to assume the worst, I thought. Especially where I was concerned.

“If Lucy is caught, we have nothing left to hope for,” Penebrygg said. “And that is precisely why we must tell her whatever we can. She is less likely to make mistakes that way. And should she find herself in trouble, she will know who to turn to. Her safety, not ours, must be our utmost priority.”

Nat nodded slowly. “Agreed.”

I no longer felt like scoffing. It was sobering to realize how desperately they were counting on me—to the point that they were willing to hazard their own lives to keep me safe.

“The Council agrees we must do everything we can to find your guardian, too,” Penebrygg said to me. “We cannot afford to have any of Scargrave’s spies find her—not for her sake, and not for
ours. This very morning we have begun to circulate her description among our allies, and we will be on the lookout for her.”

“Thank you,” I said, the words a poor reflection of the deep gratitude I felt.

“Now, you were asking why we call ourselves the Invisible College.” Penebrygg nodded at me. “It was Sir Barnaby Gadding, the founder of our group, who coined the term, back in King Charles’s time. We had no buildings, he said, no faculty, none of the trappings of a regular school. We merely wrote and corresponded and talked. But we shared an invisible link: a deep and abiding interest in investigating the world around us, and in communicating what we learned. For all intents and purposes, Sir Barnaby joked, we were members of an Invisible College.” He added, “I think he took pleasure in the abbreviation, too.”

I did not quite follow him.

“IC,” Penebrygg said, pointing to his eyes. “ ‘I see.’ ”

“Sir Barnaby loves puns,” Nat said drily.

“Pun or not, it is a good motto for men who believe in witnessing events with their own eyes, and not relying on hearsay and superstition,” said Penebrygg. “But that is by the by. The point is that ever since Scargrave came to power, the Invisible College has found it rough going.”

“Scargrave doesn’t like truth,” Nat said. “Or doubts or questions. And those are the lifeblood of what we do.”

Penebrygg nodded. “That’s why he has closed the universities. The breeding ground of rabble-rousers and traitors, he called them. A sad development in a man who once endowed
a Cambridge library, I might add. But be that as it may, our Invisible College continues to meet on the quiet.”

“And Scargrave has never captured any of you?” I asked.

“Not a one,” Penebrygg said. “And for that we have Sir Barnaby to thank. His family is related by blood to both Scargrave and the King, and he is very friendly with them both; he is the last person anyone would suspect of treason. It is his unassailable position that allows us to meet and plot Scargrave’s destruction.” He pulled his spectacles down and looked at me. “And you come to us, my dear, when our plans are at a critical juncture. Our investigations have revealed that Scargrave is attempting to breed his ravens.”

I frowned. “You mean, he’s trying to make more Shadowgrims?”

“Exactly,” Penebrygg said. “Hundreds, even thousands, if he has his way. The more of them there are, the more fear he can spread. Right now they’re sometimes spread rather thin, especially in the far reaches of the kingdom, which is a help to us. But if Scargrave finds a way to fill the skies with them, every street of this country will be under their watch.”

It was a dreadful prospect.

“Luckily for us, it’s not easy to breed them,” Nat said. “The phase of the moon has to be right, and they have to be taken off patrolling duty for weeks at a time to fatten up.”

“And then there’s the question of diet,” Penebrygg said. “They must be fed leaves from the moonbriar tree—
Selenanthus selenei
—or else none of the eggs will hatch. And that is why the Invisible College has destroyed the only three moonbriar trees known to exist.”

“So he can’t make more Shadowgrims, after all,” I said with relief.

“Not at the moment,” Nat said. “But there’s always the possibility that another moonbriar tree will be located. Or that Scargrave will locate some seeds and be able to grow a tree of his own.”

“Can’t you do anything to stop him?” I said. “Find the trees, or destroy the seed, or . . . or something?”

“We are doing those things, my dear,” Penebrygg assured me. “Insofar as it is in our power. And it’s largely due to young Nat here that we have stayed a step ahead of Scargrave. I’ve lost count of how many missions he’s undertaken for the IC.”

“Is that why you took the book from the library?” I asked Nat, hoping this time he would answer me.

He looked at Penebrygg. “The Council gave us permission to tell her?”

Penebrygg nodded.

“Yes,” Nat said to me. “One of our spies told me it was worth a closer look.”

“Spies?” The IC’s network was more extensive than I had expected.

“Yes, my dear. We have our spies, just as Scargrave has his,” Penebrygg said. “This particular agent was only able to glance at the book, and he was afraid that if he paid any more attention to it, Scargrave would take notice. Stealing it seemed to be the best option.”

“Luckily we know the house better than Scargrave himself does,” Nat said.

This puzzled me. “But it’s his house.”

“Only since the Devastation,” Penebrygg said. “For centuries before that, it belonged to another family, who endowed it with many hidden stairways and passages. Some of which have been long since forgotten.”

“But you know about them?”

“Sir Barnaby does,” Penebrygg said. “He knew the house well as a boy. But he’s a man of goutish tendencies, and it’s impossible for him to do the actual stealing. For that, we needed Nat here.”

“I only hope the book was worth the trouble,” Nat said. “It’s a palimpsest, and they’re tricky.”

“A pal—what?”

“A palimpsest,” Penebrygg said. “That is, parchment from an old book that has been scraped blank and overwritten to make a new book. If you want to read the remnants of the old writing, you need sharp eyes.”