Ravensclaw (24 page)

Having declared he’d be struck down deid afore he set foot in a ladies’ emporium, Jamie waited in the street outside, for which his companions were grateful, due to his tarry-fingert tendencies. In no time at all, Emily found herself in possession of a morning cap trimmed with white work embroidery, and an evening cap confection of colored satin trimmed with ribbons and lace; a fichu of fine sheer white muslin embroidered with a continuous band of purple flowers and shaded green leaves, the edges scalloped and embroidered with green silk; ivory satin garters to hold up her stockings; a pretty pair of slippers in robin’s egg blue, another of green leather with blue-green silk ribbon trim and ties, and half-boots of brown kid leather embellished with silk rosettes at the toe. Jamie attempted to balance the pyramid of purchases, and muttered that since he was packed up like a donkey, the ladies might want to bewaur ‘is teeth.

“Don’t sham it so, you cheeky wee rapscallion!” Lady Alberta caught a package in mid-tumble and tucked it back under his chin. Her questing eye was next caught by a chemist’s shop. There was nothing for it then but they must sample Improved Gowland’s Lotion, Royal Tincture of Peach Kernels, and Olympia Dew. Did Emily know that the juice of green pineapples would take away wrinkles and give the complexion an air of youth, and that if pineapples were not available, onions would do as well?

Emily did not. Nor had she been aware that powdered parsley seed prevented baldness, or that grated horseradish immersed in sour milk would remove freckles. Of this latter, she remained unconvinced.  If her recent adventures had left her freckles unaffected, then they were with her for life, in their vast numbers and various hues.

Their transactions finally completed — Emily having at the last minute been inspired, or coerced, to invest in some Pomade de Nerole for her unruly hair — the ladies returned to the street. Jamie’s pile of packages now reached almost to his nose.

“Hsst!” He gestured. Outside the Penny Post Office, from which letters and small parcels were dispatched eight times a day to Leith, stood Michael Ross.

Michael threaded his way through the traffic. “Emily! I almost didn’t recognize you without your spectacles. Have you broken them again?” He cast Lady Alberta a dark glance. “I must speak privately with you.”

Lady Alberta drew herself up to her full height. “I trust you jest, young man. Anything you have to say to my niece may be said in front of me.”

Emily winced as Michael grasped her elbow. Lady Alberta continued, “I trust I make myself clear. You may be as private as you wish with Emily
after
you are wed.”

Michael didn’t argue. He simply punched Lady Alberta on the chin. With a screech and a flurry of petticoats, she toppled over, landing on top of Jamie. Packages went flying everywhere. Passersby quickly gathered round to gawk and offer advice and try to snatch some of the scattered parcels. Jamie kicked one would-be thief in the knee and elbowed another in the cods and demanded to know what had given anyone the idea he was a chuntyheid? In the midst of the confusion, Michael hauled Emily with him down the street.

She snatched at her bonnet. “Do slow down, Michael, pray! I will accompany you willingly, if only you stop pawing me about.” Or not-so-willingly, truth be told, but it was past time she discovered what the deuce he was about.

“You
haven’t gone anywhere willingly with me since you came to Edinburgh.” Michael’s fingers dug into her flesh.

Through a labyrinth of crooked closes he drew her, turning first this way and then the other, so that even if she wished she couldn’t have found the way again. They came at length — if Emily’s sense of direction had not entirely deserted her — to the warren of vaults formed by the arches of the South Bridge. Michael plunged through a crumbling doorway, down a dim passage so narrow that Emily could have laid a hand on either side, so steep that in bad weather the ground would be as treacherous as ice.

So this was the underground city she had heard so much about. The atmosphere was dense with open fires for heat and cooking, the stink of human excrement, the reek of fish-oil lamps that provided what little light there was. Loiterers littered the broken pavements, unkempt barefoot children, ragged men, women wearing tattered flannel petticoats and ancient tartan shawls. Some were sleeping, some were drunk. Some would never venture out into daylight. Michael grabbed a lantern and dragged her through a series of abandoned tunnels. Emily gasped for breath. The air was noxious, stifling. Michael was muttering under his breath.

Around one last corner, down a slippery incline. An ancient door loomed ahead. Michael inserted a key into the lock. A tomblike vault gaped open. He pushed Emily into the room. She tripped and fell to the ground.

The hard ground. Emily cried out as her hands encountered stone so rough it tore the soft kid of her gloves. Behind her, the door slammed shut.

She scrambled to her feet. The palms of her hands stung. Emily pulled off her torn gloves.

Michael had hung his lantern from a rusted hook set high in the old wall. Laid out on a rickety table, a collection of instruments gleamed in its sickly light. Spring-loaded lancets, fleams, a scarifier with a series of twelve spring-driven blades that when cocked and released would cause many shallow cuts, a sharp curved sword—

The room stank of fish oil, and worse. Pungent herbs smoldered in a brazier. What was that, tossed so carelessly into a corner? Emily choked back bile. From the grisly stack of severed heads came the stink of rotting meat.

Ravensclaw would have
her
head for putting herself in this position. If only she had her pistol, lost in the encounter with Samael. Or even her umbrella, which Lady Alberta had insisted be left behind, because to carry it in such lovely weather would seem odd indeed. At least she had the pendant. And her necklace of charms.

She couldn’t just stand here, quivering like a trapped rabbit. Emily attempted to sound stern. “What is this place, Michael? Why have you brought me here?”

“You left me no choice.” Michael pressed one palm against his temple. “Deuce take it, Emily, why are you so determined to be a thorn in my flesh?”

Was it the headache that caused him to appear unwell, so feverish and gaunt? “How?” Emily asked.

Michael looked confused. “How what?”

“How am I a thorn in your flesh?”

He glared at her. “You shouldn’t have come to Edinburgh. All this is your fault.”

“How can you say that? I’m not the one who broke into the Society’s vaults. Were you also responsible for Papa’s accident? Was it you who sent those men to snatch me? Who summoned Samael?” Emily almost wished the demon would pop up now. She would rather bargain with Samael than with Michael, which gave rise to the question of which was the greater fiend.

Michael wrinkled his brow. “Summoned who?” he said. “The gull-gropers had got their talons so deep in me I thought I’d never manage to row myself out of the River Tick. But then the professor— You know how he went on! He was waxing enthusiastic about Jean Baptiste Lamark’s theory of
Transformisme
, and not paying me attention, at least I thought he wasn’t, and so I grasped the opportunity to pocket his keys. Unfortunately, as it turned out, he may as well have had eyes in the back of his head. I meant him no harm, I swear it. If you weren’t so damned unreasonable you’d admit I had no choice.”

If Emily had been unreasonable, it was in giving this horrid man the benefit of the doubt. “Of course you had a choice. You could have chosen
not
to murder Papa. Michael, you must give me the athame.”

“I must, must I?” It was as if a stranger stared at her through his eyes. “What I
must
have is your pendant. Now.”

Emily felt the amulet flare to life. “I’m not wearing it today.”

“Liar.” Michael raised his hand. His sleeve fell back. Lamplight gleamed on leprous flesh, glittered off the sharp edge of a blade.

Independence and so forth were all well and good in their place, but it was clearly time to call for assistance. Even though she wasn’t speaking to him.
I’m sorry! I’m a peabrain! Please help me, Val!

Michael started toward her. Emily edged away from him, stumbled over something lying on the floor. A large something, lean and muscular, with chestnut hair half-hiding a harsh, scarred face. She knelt beside him, saw no obvious injuries. “Mr. Torok?”

“It is not so difficult to snare an old fox. Give me the pendant, or I will take it from you.” Michael raised the knife.

Emily didn’t doubt he’d try. Fluttering her eyelashes, she said, “Does this mean you no longer wish to marry me, Michael?”

Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.
(Romanian proverb)

Val would have been first to admit that he was very old. Just recently he had attempted to reckon his own age, using human lifetimes as a measuring stick: if he counted four generations to a century, he could be Emily’s grandfather how many times removed?

The resulting answer caused him to swear off higher mathematics. Val and Emily weren’t May and December, they were this century and the dawn of time, and why was he tormenting himself? He couldn’t have Emily, and that was the end of the matter. He couldn’t let her have him. And he would be eternally damned before he allowed anyone to do her harm.

Not that he wasn’t already eternally damned. And damn Lisbet as well for showing up before he’d found an opportunity for explanations and then keeping him with her until well past dawn.

He’d left her now, and without a word of explanation. Let Lisbet make of that what she would. She was already displeased with his performance, or his lack thereof.

Emily was frightened. Val experienced her emotions as if they were his own, and with them a great rage. Emily was his — well, not really, but if he wasn’t what he was she damned well would have been — and if anyone was going to frighten her, it should be him.

He didn’t wish to frighten her. He
did
wish to shake her until her teeth rattled in her head.

She served as his beacon. In less than the time it took to think his angry thoughts, Val was in the vaults beneath the South Bridge.

Into the gloomy abandoned tunnels, where his keen eyesight and heightened senses guided him more surely than any light, around one last corner, down a treacherous pathway— Emily’s presence was so vivid Val could almost touch her. Her voice came to him through an ancient barred door.

She sounded calm, all things considered. “You can’t get your hands on all my lovely money unless you marry me, Michael. And you can’t marry me if I’m dead.”

Val paused, poised to break down the door, as Michael spoke. “You shan’t tell me what I can and cannot do! Anyway, I’m not the one who wants you dead.”

“Then who?”

“I can’t say.”

A moment’s silence, while Emily ruminated. Through her eyes Val saw the small stone chamber, the table with its grisly instruments, the grim corner display — and Andrei? What was Andrei doing here? Emily appeared to be in no immediate danger, so Val waited to hear what she would say next.

Which was, “Do you remember the Phantasmagoria, Michael?”

“The Magic Lantern. Adjustable lenses and ventriloquism and moving slides. I remember everything, Emily.” A pause. “Almost.”

“Then you may also remember that people believed the forces of darkness and sorcery were responsible for the lantern’s ability to project images where none had been before. Which was so much twaddle. Whatever
you
believe, Michael, the athame must be returned to the Society.”

Val felt the athame, stronger now than he remembered, even more dangerous. It was the nature of the thing to feed off the person who wielded it. Michael Ross was no longer the young man who had courted Emily.

“The knife belongs to whoever holds it, and I’m holding it now. See how it gleams in the lamplight, Emily.” His voice was almost pensive. “Feel how sharp it is.”

Val felt the sting of the blade as it pierced her skin. Furious with himself for delaying, he kicked in the door.

Emily glanced at him. Her wrist was bleeding.
I apologize for wishing you to the devil. Thank you for coming anyway.
Michael took advantage of the distraction to slip his knife under the clasps of her pelisse. They melted like soft butter, exposing the pendant to view.

He reached for it. Emily clasped her hand around the ruby and backed away.

Marie d’Auvergne’s athame and her pendant in one place at last. The air throbbed with unfocussed power. Val felt as if his feet were mired in sludge.

He couldn’t move. Not only power, but something else had him in its grip. Burning in the brazier were pungent herbs. As Val tried to identify them, Michael spun and sprang at him, athame upraised to strike.

Val!
Emily hurled herself in front of Michael. He shoved her aside. She slammed against the instrument-laden table. It collapsed, taking her with it to the floor.

Val recognized the unfamiliar smell then, as his limbs refused to obey him. “Adder’s tongue,” said Michael Ross. “So much for vampiric powers. You walked into the trap, just like your friend.” The young man feinted and jabbed, putting Val in mind of a whirling dervish he had seen lifetimes ago.

Mr. Ross was fortunate that Val couldn’t move, else he would have snapped the bastard’s neck. He stood frozen while Michael slashed at him with the athame, and the sharp blade drew blood.

One hand emerged from the table wreckage, then a leg. Emily was swearing, viciously, in his head.
What in all the hells is the matter with you, Val?

The herb burning in the brazier. It renders us helpless. See if you can rouse Andrei.

Michael paid no attention as Emily scrambled out from under what was left of the table. Her scalp was bleeding now, as well as her wrist.

The adder’s tongue hadn’t affected Val’s vision, or his ability to appreciate the sight of Emily’s sweetly upturned bottom. If this was to be his last sight, it was at least a pleasant one. He regretted both his prudence and his forbearance, now that it was too late.