Ticker

TEN

In Which There Is a Mouse of Sorts in the Walls

By the time I woke in the morning, Marcus already had slipped out to the Perpetua Marketplace and returned with clothing and the necessary supplies to tint my copper hair the darkest of browns.

“It’ll help prevent you from being so easily recognized,” he said, sleeves turned up to the elbows and a hairbrush in hand. “No use trying to go black, it would only end badly.”

“And you know that because?” I let the question linger in the air, much like the scent of frying ham and burnt toast drifting up through the floorboards.

All I got by way of reply was an enigmatic half-smile. The intimacy of the previous night had gone the way of the shadows. Our RiPAs had yet to resume proper function, though they sputtered occasionally and caused us both to jump. Testing our weapons to be certain the river hadn’t similarly ruined them, we kept bumping awkwardly into each other. When the time came to wind my Ticker, I turned my back to buy a modicum of privacy as I unbuttoned the collar of my dress and inserted the key into the chest plate. The clickity-clack of the winding seemed to fill the room; by the time I was done, I was more than ready to escape our cozy confines.

“Come on, then,” I said, heading for the door.

“Wait just one moment,” Marcus said. “You’re not quite ready.”

I paused and peered down at my ensemble. The pearl gray frock and lace shawl were neat, clean, and subdued in both color and style. My newly darkened hair caught me off guard each time I glimpsed a loose strand or two out of the corner of my eye, fastened up as it was at the nape of my neck with a dozen hairpins. “Don’t I look every inch the respectable miss, visiting from Meridia?”

He held out a gleaming gold circle. “Here to take a honeymoon picture.” He already wore a matching band on his left hand.

To gain access to the daguerreotype studios, we needed some sort of cover story. With all our physical differences, it would be difficult to pass as brother and sister. A young married couple made far more sense.

“It is customary, I think, to go down on one knee when you propose, Mister Kingsley.” I reached for the ring, but he twitched it away from me.

“Quite right. Wherever are my manners?” The leg of his dark blue trousers hiked up a bit when he bent his knee and took my hand. “My dearest Miss Farthing, will you do me the unutterable honor of wearing this cheap bit of metal that will most likely turn your finger green, pretending to love and honor me as your husband for the purposes of subterfuge and stratagem?”

“My hearts and stars, that will go down in the history books as the most romantic business proposition of the century, I am certain.” Still, my Ticker thudded in its new, horrible way as Marcus slid the ring onto my finger. Given the number of diamantés winking back at me, it was far from the inexpensive bauble he’d described. “Fifteen photography studios will make quite a day’s work. Let’s have breakfast and get going.”

“Slowly,” he admonished. Tucking my hand under his arm, he led me to the door. “Young couples in love don’t rush to the streetcar first thing in the morning. They feed each other bits of toast and discuss the morning news.” When I dragged my heels, he turned toward me to add, “A bit of reconnaissance in the dining room is necessary to reassure me we aren’t being watched.”

So I found myself eyeing the other diners, straining my ears to make out the gossip over the rattle of plates and clink of spoons. Across from me, Marcus sipped cold coffee with the appropriate grimaces, rattled his newspaper, and gazed at me with false adoration every few minutes.

“Shocking,” he observed, making no effort to keep his voice down. “This city has gone to the hounds since last we were here. Perhaps we should have taken the steamer to Helvetica instead.”

When he nudged me under the table, I hastened to contribute “Of course, my dearest. We ought to have done that” before I returned the favor to his shin. “On the upside, this porridge is delicious.” Though it was rough and perhaps contained more sawdust than oats, it went down easily enough with a sprinkle of sugar. I followed that with two hot scones clabbered together with jam and pale butter. When I couldn’t find room in my stomach for a third, I wrapped it in a handkerchief.

Marcus peered at me over his newspaper. “What are you doing with that?”

“Putting it in my pocket for later,” I said. “No one knows what the day will bring, after all. Are you done with the broadsheets?”

“I am, my love.” He pretended to press a kiss to my cheek as he added in an undertone, “And certain no one is overly interested in us. It’s safe to go.”

The intimacy of the whisper sent a jolt down to my slippers, but I recovered my poise as we made our way outside. Faint as it was, the thin morning sunlight hurt my eyes, but thankfully, my body had otherwise recovered from our midnight swim. The Quick-Heal had dealt with the worst of my bruises and scrapes.

Marcus touched my elbow. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I think so.” A half-truth. I could still breathe. The Ticker was still beating, albeit with a highly irregular cadence. That was the most I could hope for at the moment. “Where shall we go first?”

“I thought we might try the Eclipse Studio on the Fourth Etoile Road. Does that meet with your approval?”

“And then perhaps lunch at the Sabaudia Hotel?” I queried for the benefit of the others standing at the streetcar platform.

“Whatever you desire, light of my life, though that might be a bit posh for our modest wallet.”

No one tried to interfere with us as we boarded the cherry-red tram. The mechanical horse team pulled us all the way to the West Side; when we arrived, only a handful of people remained on the streetcar, and we were the only ones to descend at our stop.

“So far, so good,” I noted. “How far is the first studio?”

“A brisk walk will put us there in less than five minutes,” Marcus replied with far too pleasant a smile for the occasion. “Not too brisk, though. We are, after all, on our honeymoon. Hasn’t the weather been lovely?”

“I prefer the rain.” I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye: someone dressed in a dark coat over a shiny vest emerged from an alleyway and walked toward us.

Marcus’s grip on me tightened almost imperceptibly, then loosened. “The inn is most comfortable.”

“I hardly slept a wink.” I had to fight to keep my voice even, my pace steady.

“It seems my bride is feeling most contrary this morning.”

I could hear footsteps behind us; with our backs to him, we were at a decided disadvantage. With a trilling laugh, I pulled Marcus into the nearest covered doorway. He reached under his coat for his MAG. My hand was in my pocket, thumb already depressing the charging switch on the Pixii.

“If I’m out of sorts, it’s because you forgot to kiss me this morning.” Standing on tiptoe, I brushed my lips over his.

It was supposed to be a ruse, a stolen moment to ascertain the danger of the situation, but I felt his breath catch in his throat. When the kiss deepened, I forgot about my Ticker, about the very real worry that it might stop working. I burned with white-light, lost in the taste of him. It was almost impossible to concentrate on anything but the feel of his mouth, of his hands circling about my waist and holding me against his chest.

Marcus pulled away first, drawing a ragged breath and pressing his forehead to mine. “Is he gone?”

I still had the stranger in my sights if not my crosshairs, but it was hard to form a coherent sentence. “He’s going into the greengrocer’s.”

We were running out of options. The sky knew it as well; when the rain started, it wasn’t a light dousing but a downpour. Waiting out the worst of it under the doorway, we stood pressed against each other, neither of us venturing to speak. The moment there was a break in the weather, we stepped out of our shelter and walked down the street to the first of the photography studios. Sleek and fat as a well-fed feline, the owner rushed to greet us when we opened the door.

“Good morning.” He took me by the hand and led us into the main parlor. Everything was upholstered, from the chairs to the walls. The air was heavily perfumed, the scent of lilacs twisting its way into my hair and clothes. “Whom did you want to memorialize today?”

With a rush, I thought of Dimitria. Her last moments with us. How Mama hadn’t taken a final photograph of her, instead seeking solace from the first of many psychics. I forgot all about Marcus and our supposed romantic excursion. “My elder sister. It was very sudden.”

“I understand, I understand,” he said, repeating himself as though hoping to be twice as comforting. “And you want to have a daguerreotype taken before the burial?”

I did my best to speak around the sorrow. “Yes.”

“Of course, of course.” The photographer offered his plush portfolio to me in a most unobtrusive fashion. “I have quite a lot of experience with young people. I think you will find the poses most lifelike.”

Indeed, they were. In sitting positions, in laps of loved ones, in cradles and in coffins, the children in the pictures appeared to be sleeping. Which they were, I realized. The longest of sleeps.

What would have become of Dimitria, had she lived? Would she be fighting alongside me, trying to get Nic and our parents back?

No, because none of this would have happened if she’d lived.

She and Warwick might have been married by now, well on the way to a house filled with laughter and music and fat-cheeked babies. Her death had pushed him to the darkest of places, and he was towing the rest of my family into the darkness with him.

When my hands started to shake, Marcus covered them with his own.

“Perhaps we’ll take your business card for now,” he said. “My wife has had a rather trying day.”

The photographer hastened to retrieve the necessary information. “My rates are most reasonable and studio hours accommodating.”

We excused ourselves as hastily as we could. Outside, I leaned against a brick wall and turned my face up to the sky. The rain landed on my skin in intermittent droplets, cold and clean, as I cleared the cloying perfume from my lungs.

“Not the right studio,” Marcus said.

“No,” I agreed, dragging in another water-heavy breath. “The glass was wrong, never mind that the photographer looked too placid and comfortable to engage in illicit portraiture.”

Marcus signaled a hansom cab with a flick of his fingers. “You can never tell what sorts of desperate things people will do.”

“I think Sebastian taught me that lesson last night better than anyone else ever could.”

The carriage paused before us. Marcus helped me up the metal folding stairs and into the vaguely damp interior. “Are you game for trying the next address?”

“Yes.” My Ticker thumped away—two quick contractions, one long, two short again—like it was sending a RiPA message. I closed my eyes and wondered what it was trying to tell me.

Marcus gave our driver the next address, and the mechanical horse took off with a lurch and a bounce. Several minutes passed before he said, “I’m sorry about your sister. I read about it in your file, but it’s not the same seeing it typed out as it is to live it.”

When I opened my eyes, I found him looking at me, his gray eyes a match to the weather outside. “Dimitria was very sick. None of us knew the extent of it.”

“That doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to your heart. Grief doesn’t take such things into consideration.”

I wanted to take his hand in mine but couldn’t bring myself to do it. “You’re thinking about Viktor now, aren’t you?”

“He’s always in my thoughts.” Marcus shifted in his seat. “There isn’t a decision that I make that I don’t wonder if he would have done the same. In my head, I see him laughing at me, the way he would when I ate too much cake or tried to climb the tallest tree. I like to remember him laughing. There are days when I think he’d be very disappointed in the way I’ve turned out, at what I’m doing with his company.”

“It’s your company now. You’re building it into something formidable.”

“Not by choice. I think that’s the worst part of it. He knew I didn’t want this life. Plenty of brothers would have fought over the business when our father retired, but we were happy with the way things were. Too happy, I guess. We must have tipped the Great Brass Balance Scale against us.”

“You can’t think that his death was supposed to punish you.”

“I can, and I do,” Marcus said softly.

We endured the rest of the drive in silence, each of us buried in our own painful memories. The cab carried us to a neighborhood where the plaster and bricks were scarred, like soldiers who’d waged a long battle with time and lost. The district was one I’d never visited before, for good reason.

“Stay close to me,” Marcus said as we alighted. “We’re a bit overdressed.”

Indeed, even in our inconspicuous costumes, we were peacocks among peahens. The women passing by were garbed in rough fabrics, carrying baskets, towing children. The men wore threadbare coats and fingerless gloves, and they marked our arrival with suspicion. It was a relief to follow Marcus down a side street to a faded door marked “Lucy Reilly, Portraiture” in flaking gold paint. Under that, in stronger black letters: “Memorial Photographs.” Several faded daguerreotypes were propped up in the window.

I tingled all over. “This is it.”

“How can you be certain?” Marcus attempted to peer through the thick layer of grime.

I pointed at the display pictures. “The glass is exactly the same as Nic’s pictures. I’d bet on it.”

Marcus tried to open the door, but it was locked. Two rounds of knocking yielded no response, and he looked through the window again. “No one appears to be in.”

“Guess we’ll have to see for ourselves.” Before he could stop me, I wrapped my shawl around my elbow and smashed the pane nearest the door.

“That’s breaking and entering,” he said with a deceptively casual glance over his shoulder. Thankfully, we were far enough off the main street so as not to draw the attention of passersby.

“Technically that was only breaking.” I reached inside and unlocked the door. “Now it’s entering.”

The interior was as dark and damp as the carriage, smelling of mildew, stale tea, and acrid chemicals. Miniature coffins stood along one wall. Rubbish had accumulated in the corners of the room and mingled with puddles of developing solution. The hearth hadn’t made acquaintance with a fire for quite some time, judging by the amount of ash and the empty coal scuttle.

Marcus sidestepped a stack of glass slides on the floor. “Careful as you go.”

His timing was uncanny; the second he spoke, I fell over something heavy and unyielding. Going down with a crash, I flailed at the unseen obstacle.

“Hold on,” Marcus ordered, pulling the drapes closed and switching on a gas jet.

The sudden flare of light revealed the body that lay sprawled on the floor, mouth open, eyes staring. I could only assume it was our photographer. “Marcus . . .”

He was by my side before I could draw another breath. Reaching down to her neck, he tried to find a pulse.

I knew just by looking at her that we were too late. “It seems we’re in need of some Luminiferous Re-Animator if we want her to tell us anything.”

It wasn’t altogether a jest. The popular drink earned its name not only for the faint golden glow achieved by means of a top-secret combination of alcohol and alchemy, but also because the concoction was rumored to have brought corpses back from the dead.

“Not necessarily.” With his RiPA still nonresponsive, Marcus crossed to an ancient PaperTape machine. Cranking it over twice and bashing it firmly on the side with his fist, he connected with the Flying Fortress. “I’m sending for Philomena and the psychic unit.”

Whatever I’d been expecting for a battle plan, it wasn’t that. “You’re joking.”

“Not in the slightest.” Marcus returned his attention to the photographer. “What killed her?”

Studying the body, I cataloged more than a dozen Augmentations: her right leg at the knee and ankle, left arm at the elbow and wrist, both ears. The healing was far more advanced than what the timeline would suggest, given that Warwick only escaped custody this week, but my guess was that he administered the Quick-Heal to her as well. No sign of infection or decay. With a frown, I pulled back the woman’s unbuttoned collar to reveal the clockwork ventriculator set into her chest. It was more advanced than my own, its polished brass plates nearly seamless against the flesh and its winding mechanism impossibly delicate.

“By all the Bells,” Marcus breathed. “The shock of that surgery certainly could have done it.”

Only then did I realize I had my hands pressed to my mouth. I forced them back to her body, tracing over the infinitesimal screws used to hold everything in place. “These are from the Gears & Rivets Factory.” Checking over the less invasive Augmentations on Lucy’s arms and legs, I recognized more parts. “All of them are.”

Marcus looked up at me. “How can you be certain?”

I indicated the small identification number stamped along one edge. “These are unique for each piece. We register them to their new owner. The last three numbers tell me it’s a batch that just came off the line, earmarked for Currey Hospital. My supervisor notified me they were missing. When Sebastian’s men set off the explosion at the factory, they must have stolen inventory out of the stockroom.”

Sitting back on his heels, Marcus shook his head. “This is a lot of work to do on one person. She couldn’t have needed all of it. Warwick probably brought her in to photograph Nic and then kept her as a subject, to test the Quick-Heal and the heart implant.”

“He wouldn’t have willingly let her go. She must have escaped.” Reaching up, I gently pressed two fingers to the woman’s eyelids and closed them for her.

Marcus jerked his chin in the direction of a threadbare carpetbag, overturned and disgorging its contents upon the floor. “She was packing quickly for a journey.”

Thankful for a reason to step away, I crossed the room to examine the luggage. “There’s a ticket over here, too. One way to Glacia on a steamship that left this morning.”

Falling into an uneasy silence, Marcus and I upended the room, looking for more clues, emptying drawers and cupboards, scouring closets, and pulling up loose floorboards. In various hidey-holes, Marcus located half a dozen burlap pouches containing copper pence and silver denarii.

“Looks like she didn’t put much stock in any of Bazalgate’s banks,” he said.

Up to my elbows in a basket of mending, I nodded. “Or she needed to keep ready cash on hand for something. Perhaps she owed money to someone.”

A soft knock drew our attention. Quite unnecessarily, Marcus signaled for me to stay quiet as he went to check the door. Three plainclothes Ferrum Viriae entered, carrying crates of equipment. Philomena de Mesmer strode in at the end of the unusual procession.

She took in her surroundings with a sweeping glance and headed straight for the corpse. “Another of Warwick’s victims. At least this one isn’t a child.” Without sparing either Marcus or me a second look, she set down a leather valise that strongly reminded me of a surgical travel kit. “How long has she been dead?”

“Guessing by the body temperature, a few hours, maybe a bit more,” Marcus replied.

The two of them knelt near the corpse, heads close together. Unwilling to waste precious time on parlor tricks, I returned to rummaging. The group made a circle of golden light with lamps. The largest and most scarred of the wooden crates held what appeared to be a portable Cylindrella machine, complete with hand crank and brass trumpet.

Baynard’s device for speaking to the dead, I realized. The original Grand Design.

Philomena pulled out a set of wires that ended in circular cotton pads and placed them upon Lucy Reilly’s body at various pulse points. The clockwork ventriculator gave them pause.

“Her biological heart was removed,” Marcus explained. “Will that impede the reading?”

Sorting through the contents of the photographer’s satchel a second time, I noted, “Her lack of pulse should prove more of an impediment.”

“Tesseraria . . .” It was all Marcus said, but there was a warning note that I heeded with reluctance.

“Fine. I’ll be over here, conducting a proper investigation.” I went back to the hastily packed clothes, scrutinizing every piece. Pursued by an unknown madman, Lucy thought them important enough to pack. Faded, worn soft with a thousand washings, some of the shirts and smocks were far too small to fit her.

I turned to tell Marcus, but he wore a Long Ear listening device and a frown of concentration. Philomena had the photographer’s limp hand cradled in her own, and it was all I could do to repress a shudder.

One of the aides slowly turned the Cylindrella crank ten precise rotations. I counted off the seconds on my Ticker. After exactly one minute, he turned the crank again. Ten rotations. Another minute of excruciating silence. In the third pause, I thought I heard something. The scrabble of a rodent in the walls, maybe, but it was enough to set my teeth on edge.

“I’m here,” Philomena said in a voice not quite her own. My skin rippled with a sudden chill, and I couldn’t help but turn to look at the group. It was like staring at a daguerreotype: Marcus and the other technicians holding impossibly still, the light from the lamps glinting as though off glass, Philomena’s eyes, open and staring.

Ten more rotations of the hand crank. A minute in near silence. A scrabble from the walls, this one followed by a muffled noise that no rodent would make . . .

A tiny sob.

I stepped toward the sound, running my hands over the plaster, seeking out what was hidden.

“I’m here,” Philomena repeated, a bit stronger this time before adding, “Please. You must help.”

“Tell us what happened here,” Marcus said.

My fingertips located a nodule, and I instinctively pressed it, feeling the panel shudder and start to swing out.

“My heart . . . My own.”

“We see what was done to your heart,” Marcus murmured, trying to encourage the spirit of Lucy Reilly—if that’s who or what it really was—to stay with them.

“My heart, my own.” The words were a needle stuck in the groove of a ghostly recording.

“Tell us who did this to you,” Marcus said in a hoarse whisper.

A door was hidden behind the panel. Locked, of course, not that such a thing had ever stopped me before. Removing a hairpin, I knelt next to the keyhole and set to work with trembling fingers. It was hard to concentrate, what with the refrain of “my heart, my own” echoing in the background. Then Philomena began to croon a lullaby, so softly at first that I almost missed it.

“Come to me, child of mine, rest your weary head . . .” Filtered by the psychic, the dead woman’s voice strengthened, slowly filling the room with the song. “No harm will come to you, child of mine, so long as I watch over you.”

The same song that was on Dimitria’s Cylindrella player. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears. My hands were shaking so badly that they slipped, jamming the hairpin into the keyhole at an impossible angle.

Impossible, and just what was needed to trip the lock.

“Child of mine, child of mine,” the dead woman sang.

In the hissing silence that followed, the trick door opened, and I found myself looking down at a shivering bundle of humanity.

“Mama?”