Magic Under Glass (19 page)

31

Karstor invited us in and showed us into a parlor cluttered with classical statues, heavy furniture, and musical instruments. His home smelled of mildly burned baked goods. I led Annalie forward.

“Have you received a summons for a meeting of council?” Hollin asked Karstor.

“The council meets tomorrow, in fact,” Karstor replied. “Why?”

“Good. I don’t think Smollings knows we’re here.” He glanced back at us. “Dr. Greinfern, do you mind if we turn off the lights? They bother my wife.”

“Your wife?” Karstor furrowed his dark brows. “You don’t mean . . . little Anni?”

“Yes, Dr. Greinfern.” Annalie extended a hand toward him. “It’s me. If you don’t mind, I can remove my veil if you turn off your lights. The moon doesn’t bother me so very much.”

He took her hand and briefly placed his other hand atop it in greeting, then switched off the lamp. The moon still left the room bright enough to see.

“You do look just like your father, only pretty, I think,” Karstor said as she lifted the veil from her face. She smiled, but Hollin looked impatient.

“Sit down,” he said. “I have a lot to say and the hour is already late.”

Karstor nodded and
hmm
ed as we explained how Annalie still lived and why Smollings had wanted to keep her secret as much as Hollin did, about my summoning of the Lady, and Smollings taking Erris. It was not until the end, when Hollin told Karstor that Smollings had killed Garvin, that he gripped the arms of his chair and lost his composure.

“How do you know?”

“I know, Dr. Greinfern,” Annalie said, “because Garvin’s spirit has visited me and told me so.”

“Is his spirit here now?”

“Yes.” Annalie looked at the orbs floating around her and put out a silencing hand to us. “Yes,” she repeated.

Hollin was fidgeting in his chair, unnerved as ever by Annalie’s ability to speak to spirits.

“Oh—Oh, God.” Karstor took a deep breath. “It was Garvin’s dream to restore the throne of the lost fairy prince. When I opened the letter telling me he had found an automaton with Erris’s spirit inside, I thought my heart would stop. But it sounds as if Smollings was plotting his death before he even knew about Erris.” He shook his head. “Doomed before he started.”

“It’s not too late to fulfill his dream,” I said, burying the thought that placing Erris on the fairy throne might take him away from me.

“We all have business with Smollings now.” Hollin laced his fingers. “He killed Garvin, he’s taken Nimira’s fairy prince, and he’s forced me to keep my wife a captive in her own home. God willing, I don’t think it’s too late to save us all. But we’ll need your help, Dr. Greinfern.”

For a moment, Karstor’s eyes followed the orbs dancing around Annalie’s head. “Anything I can do,” he said, “for an old friend.”

After a poor sleep and a rich breakfast, choked down under the eye of Karstor’s enthusiastic cook, we rode through New Sweeling’s finest district to Sorcerer’s Hall, where the council held their meetings. Government buildings lined the entire street, with the clock tower of the capitol standing sentry over them all. The hall was compact but elegant, made of tawny bricks, and gilt adornments on the roof gleamed in the sun. Two men in sharp government uniforms holding sorcerer’s staffs guarded the doors.

I wondered if Smollings was already here. Was Erris in the building now?

“Half an hour?” Karstor asked Annalie.

We planned to stay in the carriage while Karstor entered the council meeting. While Karstor questioned Smollings, trying to set up for our entrance, Annalie would make contact with Garvin’s spirit.

“If you can’t get past the guards, just make as much commotion as possible to draw our attention,” Karstor said. He looked out the carriage window. “There he is.”

Smollings was walking up to the doors, speaking to a plump sorcerer with ample sideburns. No sign of Erris.

“I’d feel much better if we were allowed to bring our staffs inside,” Hollin said.

Karstor snorted. “I do think we’d all have killed each other by now if that were permitted.” He checked his pocket watch. “Well, good luck.”

“Same to you,” Hollin replied.

“Wait,” I said. “I—I—could I come with you?” I had agreed to wait in the carriage before, but seeing Smollings again, knowing Erris might be in the building now, I couldn’t bear it. “I have to know if Erris is all right.”

“No,” Hollin said. “You’ll disturb the plan.”

“But how? Smollings will just think I gave you the slip and found Karstor—er, Dr. Greinfern on my own, and now Dr. Greinfern is bringing me to the council to present my side of the story. Right?” I looked at Karstor hopefully, and to my relief, he nodded.

“We don’t have time to argue,” he said. “I know how it feels to wonder if someone you care for is alive or dead. Come with me.”

Smollings and the plump sorcerer had disappeared through the doors. Karstor left the carriage first, then offered me a hand. Hollin seemed very tense, and I wondered if he had argued for me to stay so he wouldn’t be left alone with Annalie while she summoned Garvin’s spirit.

We weren’t halfway up the stairs when a stone-faced guard stepped forward to bar our way with his sorcerer’s staff. The other guard slipped through the doors. “I’m sorry, Dr. Greinfern, but I’m sure you know it’s a council meeting today. Your company will have to wait outside.”

“She’s with me,” Karstor said. “I have business with the council, very important, and she’s part of that business.”

“Ambassador Smollings explicitly reminded us that the rules do not allow anyone to attend council without proper authorization.”

The doors opened again. Smollings emerged behind the other guard, and if he was surprised by my presence, he didn’t show it.

“Well, Dr. Greinfern, what fascinating company you keep.”

Karstor stared at Smollings. He merely stared. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. The guards shifted uncomfortably, for it looked very much as if Karstor was about to grab Smollings by the neck and strangle him right there on the stairs of Sorcerer’s Hall.

“Well,” Smollings said. “Look, you can’t bring her in.”

“She is not company,” Karstor said. “She is evidence. Evidence of treason, Mr. Smollings. And I have every right by law to present
that
to the council.”

“Treason!” Smollings shook his head. “My goodness. I shall be interested to see if this trouser girl’s affection for that machine has anything to do with such an idea.”

The guard permitted us to cross the threshold, and as we entered the council room, I spotted Erris at once. But it was not Erris as I had known him. His arms and torso had been stripped of skin. He was metal and gears. A toy. A dead thing. His face and hands were still as I had known and touched them, but his eyes were closed, his mouth slack. I clapped my hand to my mouth, suppressing a shriek.

Karstor took my arm and turned me around so I couldn’t see him, but I was still making some terrible whimpering sound, and I felt the eyes of a roomful of sorcerers upon me.

“I apologize for the shock,” Smollings said. “I removed the automaton’s clothes. Some members of the council wished to inspect his mechanism.”

“He had skin!”
The scream ripped from my throat. “What did you do to him?”

The sorcerers were murmuring. Smollings lifted his arm with a flourish. “Well, miss! And how is it you know this? Had you . . .
disrobed
the automaton?”

Someone chuckled.

“No! No, but—he was alive!” I spoke through sobs. “I just—I knew!” It was true, I never had seen Erris beneath his clothes, aside from where the keyhole showed in his back, but I had held his arm, embraced him, touched his hands. He had thought himself brought fully to life until his mechanism wound down. He must have . . .

But now I wasn’t entirely sure.

“I’m getting ahead of myself,” Smollings said. “Let us officially convene. I gathered you all here to present the interesting story of this automaton, and I do believe this girl may support my theory. She, in fact, has been living in Hollin Parry’s house, where I found the automaton.” He pointed at a chair next to the one that held Erris . . . or his body, at least. “Please. Sit down.”

I took the chair, for I didn’t see how I could refuse it. I struggled to regain my composure. I must not let Smollings have any more of his desired reaction.

Oh, but how my lips
would
tremble. And how my heart would break!

“Some of you may have heard the rumor, that a prince of the House of Tanharrow still lived, trapped in the body of an automaton.”

As Smollings told the council of his suspicions, I had a moment to muster my courage. I had fought for Erris before. He didn’t look truly dead, just unwound. Annalie would summon Garvin.

Breathe . . .

“When I heard Mr. Parry had purchased the automaton from Garvin Pelerine’s estate, it roused my interest, for I had never heard Mr. Pelerine express an interest in automata. I paid Parry a visit, and although he denied anything unusual, I heard this girl speaking with the automaton. Parry and the girl later managed, through forbidden contact with the underworld, to bring the automaton to a kind of grotesque life.”

“This automaton is the fairy prince?” the plump sorcerer asked, although I suspected he already knew the story by the smug expression on his face. “Well, what did Mr. Pelerine intend to do with him? He should have turned him over to the council immediately.”

“That is exactly my question,” Smollings said. He slipped his hand beneath his black vest and took out Erris’s key.

I squirmed in my chair as Smollings walked behind Erris and inserted the key in his back. I imagined that key grinding in my own spine. I wanted to do something to spare Erris from the moment to come, but a terrible paralysis seized me.

Erris began to tick. It was not a loud sound, but I heard it like a far-off cry for help. The sorcerers quieted their murmuring.

Smollings didn’t take the key out. He kept his fingers on it while it turned.

Erris opened his eyes. His expression was pure shock, seeing all the sorcerers with their pointed cuffs and serious expressions, sitting at their heavy wooden tables.

And me. Our eyes met, and my nostrils flared with the effort of not crying, and Erris looked down at his arms and chest. The slow turning of the metallic drum was visible through the armature.

He let out a small horrified sound that echoed in the room.

Smollings loomed behind him, cold and hard as the face of a rock. “What is your name?” he asked.

I wondered if Erris had even heard. He seemed lost. He wouldn’t look at me anymore, but I couldn’t stop looking at him, although I would have torn out my own eyes not to see him so pained.

Smollings made a jerking motion, twisting the key, and Erris started to fall. He snapped up again when Smollings let go, a look of shock on his face. “What is your name?” he asked again.

“Erris!”

Smollings could turn Erris off and on at will.
And he was hurting him. Could he break?

“Erris what?”

“Erris Tanharrow.”

“Did you know Garvin Pelerine?”

A pause. Another twist of the key. Erris gasped, like a drowning man fighting to keep above the waves.
“Yes.”

I couldn’t bear another moment of this. I shot to my feet. “You’re hurting him!” I screamed. I hardly even thought about the sorcerers anymore, or anything except the fury that raced through me. “Stop! You
stop!
”

“I suspect the girl has inconceivably fallen in love with the automaton,” Smollings said. “She risked her life, indeed the lives of everyone in Mr. Hollin Parry’s house, to free him. Finishing a job that I believe Garvin Pelerine began. What did Garvin intend to do with you?” he asked Erris.

“I—I don’t know.”

“He didn’t speak of restoring you to the throne?”

“I don’t want the throne!” Erris shouted.

A nervous-looking man stood up, smoothing the front of his suit. “But . . . if this is true . . . Many fairies have yet to give up hope that the House of Tanharrow might be restored. What would this mean for us?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Smollings said. “All I know is that Mr. Pelerine was communicating with this—thing, this . . . fairy prince, and he told no one . . . except, perhaps, Dr. Greinfern.”