The Sweet Far Thing

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

They say it takes a village to raise a child. I’ve discovered that that’s largely true. (Well, that and a truckload of M&M’s.) But to write the last book in a trilogy, it takes more than a village. At last count, it takes a great coffee shop; lots of caffeine and chocolate; Guitar Hero (curse you, “Bark at the Moon” on medium!); a drool cup; Kleenex; and many, many understanding friends, family members, editors, publishers, and other writers to nod and pass you the Ben & Jerry’s and occasionally pull on the bungee cord of your self-esteem to snap you back from the Perpetual Night of the I Suck Abyss. (Perpetual Night of the I Suck Abyss—new band name. I call dibs.) I went through so many revisions on this book that I was reminded of the movie
Airplane!
: “Look—I can make a hat or a brooch or a pterodactyl….” Also, I think I lost a lot of what was left of my brain cells, and since I’m afraid of forgetting someone here, let me just issue a blanket “You rock—here’s a big old fruit basket” to everyone I might have shared oxygen with in the past eighteen months. I am sure you helped me enormously. Seriously. So extra high fives to the following: My editor, St. Wendy of Loggia, who deserves to have her face on a prayer card, for calling me with a calm, cool “Let me just show you how the dates back out” rather than screaming into the phone, “If you miss another deadline, I will put your head on a pike outside my office as a warning to other authors!”

You da best, babe.

Pam Bobowicz, aka the Lifeline, for letting me stroll into her office sporting an eye twitch and say, “Hey, got a minute?” only to release her from my grip two hours later, having told her every single possible plot thread until I’m convinced she kept a bottle of Scotch hidden behind her computer monitor. Love you, Pam.

My long-suffering agent/husband, Barry Goldblatt (that sounds so
Chinatown,
doesn’t it? “My agent [

slap!
], my husband [
slap!
]”), who tolerated unbelievable amounts of whining and handled that plus the child care with aplomb.

Beverly Horowitz—sometimes it takes a village; sometimes it takes the best Jewish mother in publishing.

Big kiss.

Chip Gibson, for prying my fingers off the keys and forcing me to come eat cake and laugh at people doing Jell-O shots.

The cool folks at Random House, who let me crash there for three months and who would sometimes drop by with chocolate like the Keebler Elves of Publishing.

Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, and Emily Lauer, the Holy Trinity of Awesome, Badass, Magic Systems R Us Writers-in-Arms, for
everything
. Lunch on me, ladies. And Holly, I will seriously birth your child for you, that’s how much I love you. (I’ve done natural childbirth, and let me tell you—piece of cake compared to the third book in a trilogy.)

Rachel Cohn, for the espresso balls (still vibrating), the CDs, the writing dates, and the company.

Maureen Johnson, Justine Larbalestier, Dani Bennett, and Jaida Jones, for doing the world’s fastest read on the last draft and offering invaluable insights.

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My peeps, Cecil Castellucci, Margaret Crocker, and Diana Peterfreund, for being there with grace, style, and snark.

Über-librarians Jen Hubert and Phil Swann, for the research help, and for continuing to take my increasingly desperate calls.

Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, Jo Knowles, Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, Cynthia and Greg Letitch-Smith, Nancy Werlin, YA Writers, Tony Tallent, and Chaundra Wall, for the support and inspiration.

Cheryl Levine, Susanna Schrobsdorff, Pam Carden, and Lori Lebovitch, for talking me off the ledge and just generally being lovely.

My pals at Kensington Publishing, for letting me take the time off I needed.

The fabulous baristas of Tea Lounge in Brooklyn—Aimee, Alma, Amanda, Asia, Beth, Brigid, Geri, Kevin, Rachel—for keeping the caffeine and the hilarity coming.

Ben Jones and Christine Kenneally, for being so incredibly funny and supportive, and the Gang on the Couch—Jeff Strickland, Nicola Behrman, Matt Schwartz, Kyle Smith, and Jonathan Hafner-Layton (or is it Layton-Hafner?), for making sure to tell me a joke when I started to look like Jack Nicholson in
The
Shining
.

My mother, Nancy Bray, for the poetry help. Thanks, Mom.

My readers, who kept me going.

David Levithan, for the boffo title suggestion. Unfortunately, marketing felt that
Lick My Sweat
was perhaps not quite what we were looking for.

And last, but definitely not least, my wonderful son, Joshua, for being so patient about “the book” (insert eye-rolling here) when the least I could have done was write something about ninja bunnies or dragons.

Next time, sweetie. Next time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LIBBABRAYis the author of the
New York Times
bestselling novels
A Great and Terrible Beauty
and
Rebel Angels.
She has never lived in the Victorian era, is not British, and has no superpowers, though if she did, they would involve being able to eat her weight in Swedish fish without feeling the urgent need to shave her tongue afterward. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, their son, and a cat of questionable intelligence. Feel free to visit her at her Web site,www.libbabray.com .

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PROLOGUE

1893

LONDON

THE NIGHT WAS COLD AND DISMAL, AND OUT ON THEThames, the rivermen cursed their luck. Skulking through the shadows of London’s great river for profit wasn’t a cheery occupation, but it paid for a meal here and there, and the damp that stiffened your bones, put the ache in your back, was a part of it, like it or not.

“See anyfin’, Archie?”

“Nuffin’,” Archie called to his friend, Rupert. “’S as foul a night as I’ve seen.”

They’d been at it for an hour now, with nothing to show for it but a bit of clothing taken from the body of a sailor. That, they could sell to the rag-and-bone men come morning. But a pocketful of coins would put food and ale in their bellies tonight, and for rivermen like Archie and Rupert, the here and now was what counted; hoping to see beyond tomorrow was a cockeyed optimism best left to people who didn’t spend their lives scouring the Thames for the dead.

The boat’s single lantern wasn’t much use against the infernal fog. The gloom haunted the banks. Across the river, the unlit houses were skulls of dark. The rivermen navigated the shallows of the Thames, poking their long hooks into the filthy water, looking for the bodies of anyone who’d met with misfortune on this night—sailors or dockworkers too drunk to save themselves from drowning; the sorry victims of knife fights, or of cutpurses and murderers; the mud larks carried away by a sudden strong tide, their aprons heavy with prized coal, that same coal that pulled them under to their deaths.

Archie’s hook hit something solid. “Oi, slow there, Rupert. I got sumfin’.”

Rupert grabbed the lantern from its perch and shone it over the water where a body bobbed. They fished the corpse out, dropping it onto the deck and rolling it over onto its back.

“Blimey,” Rupert said. “It’s a lady.”

“Was,” Archie said. “Check ’er pockets.”

The rivermen set about their grisly task. The lady was well heeled, in a fine lavender silk dress that could not have been cheap. She wasn’t what they were used to finding in these waters.

Archie smiled. “Oh,’ ello!” He drew four coins from the lady’s coat pocket and bit each.

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“Wot you got, then, Archie? ’Nuff to buy us a pint?”

Archie looked closely at the coins. Not pounds. Shillings. “Aye, and not much more from the looks o’

it,” he grumbled. “Take the necklace.”

“Righ’.” Rupert removed it from the woman’s neck. It was an odd thing—metal fashioned into the shape of an eye with a crescent moon dangling below it. There were no jewels to speak of; he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting it.

“Wot’s this, then?” Archie called. He peeled back the woman’s stiff fingers. She tightly clutched a scrap of sodden paper.

Rupert nudged his partner. “Whassit say?”

Archie shoved it at him. “Dunno. Can’t read, now, can I?”

“I ’ad schoolin’ till I was eight,” Rupert said, taking it. “‘The Tree of All Souls lives.’”

Archie nudged Rupert. “Wot’s that supposed to mean?”

Rupert shook his head. “Dunno. What should we do wif it?”

“Leave it. There’s no profit in words, Rupert, m’boy. Take the clothes and toss ’er over.”

Rupert shrugged and did as he was told. Archie was right that there was no money to be gotten from an old letter. Still, it was sad when the deceased’s last words were lost with her, but, he reasoned, if this lady had anyone to care about her at all, she wouldn’t be floating facedown in the Thames on a rough night. With a sharp shove, the riverman dropped the dead woman overboard. She made only the slightest splash.

Her body slid slowly under, the bloated white hands remaining on the surface for a few seconds more as if they were reaching for something. The rivermen pressed their hooks against the muddy bottom and cast off with the current, looking for treasure that might make a night in the cold worth the ache.

Archie gave the woman’s head a last prod with his hook, a violent benediction, and she slipped below the filth and muck of the mighty Thames. The river swallowed her up, accepting her flesh, taking her final warning down with her to a murky grave.

CHAPTER ONE

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March 1896

SPENCEACADEMY FORYOUNGLADIES

THERE IS A PARTICULAR CIRCLE OF HELL NOT MENTIONEDin Dante’s famous book. It is called comportment, and it exists in schools for young ladies across the empire. I do not know how it feels to be thrown into a lake of fire. I am sure it isn’t pleasant. But I can say with all certainty that walking the length of a ballroom with a book upon one’s head and a backboard strapped to one’s back while imprisoned in a tight corset, layers of petticoats, and shoes that pinch is a form of torture even Mr.

Alighieri would find too hideous to document in his
Inferno.

“Let us keep our eyes trained toward heaven, girls,” our headmistress, Mrs. Nightwing, pleads as we attempt our slow march across the floor, heads held high, arms out like ballerinas.

The loops of the backboard chafe the sides of my arms. The block of wood is unyielding, and I am forced to stand as stiff as the guards at Buckingham Palace. My neck aches with the effort. Come May, I shall make my debut a full year early, for it has been decided by all parties involved that at nearly seventeen I am ready and that it would do me good to have my season now. I shall wear beautiful gowns, attend lavish parties, and dance with handsome gentlemen—if I survive my training. At present, that outcome is very much in doubt.

Mrs. Nightwing paces the length of the ballroom. Her stiff skirts
whisk-whisk
across the floor as if to rebuke it for lying there. All the while she barks orders like Admiral Nelson himself. “Heads held high!

Do not smile, Miss Hawthorne! Serene, somber expressions! Empty your minds!”

I strain to keep my face a blank canvas. My spine aches. My left arm, held out to the side for what seems hours, trembles with the effort.

“And curtsy…”

Like falling soufflés, we drop low, trying desperately not to lose our balance. Mrs. Nightwing does not give the order to rise. My legs shake with exhaustion. I cannot manage it. I stumble forward. The book tumbles from my head and lands on the floor with a resounding thud. We have done this four times, and four times I have failed in some fashion. Mrs. Nightwing’s boots stop inches from my disgraced form.

“Miss Doyle, may I remind you that this is the court, and you are curtsying to your sovereign, not performing in the Folies Bergère?”

“Yes, Mrs. Nightwing,” I say sheepishly.

It is hopeless. I shall never curtsy without falling. I shall lie sprawled upon the gleaming floors of Buckingham Palace like a disgraceful stain of a girl, my nose resting upon the boot of the Queen. I shall be the talk of the season, whispered about behind open fans. No doubt every man will avoid me like typhus.

“Miss Temple, perhaps you will demonstrate the proper curtsy for us?”

Without ado, Cecily Temple, She Who Can Do No Wrong, settles to the floor in a long, slow, graceful arc that seems to defy gravity. It is a thing of beauty. I am hideously jealous.