That same morning, at precisely five minutes past nine, Abigail Davenshaw rose smoothly from behind her desk and, running her hands over her skirts, crossed the quiet schoolroom to the hall. The manor was cool, filled with a scent of wet grass coming in through the opened windows. A coal fire burned behind her in the grate.
She’d seen no sign of the young talents all that morning, neither Komako nor Charlie Ovid nor anyone. Not at breakfast or in the corridors or in the yard. “Seen” being, perhaps, a strange word to use. For Abigail Davenshaw was, of course, blind; had been born thus, without sight; but because she had never known seeing, it was not a thing she missed, and she’d learned ways of navigating the darkness of her world with a swiftness and clarity that rivaled others’ sight. She was fastidious with her appearance, wearing her hair off her neck and not a strand astray. She had learned the importance of this early in life. She was the illegitimate daughter of the housekeeper of an estate in the Midlands, and the reclusive lord who had retreated there had taken it upon himself to cultivate her intelligence. Why, she would never know. Kindness or charity, an experiment or something else entirely. When she was little, he’d read to her from the classics, Shakespeare and Dante and Homer, and later from the modern sciences, later still from the philosophers and modern poets. She’d learned the theories of light and of matter and the new laws of thermodynamics. She’d learned languages and music and dancing and even, strangely, the arts of fencing and boxing.
“It’s not about seeing with the eyes, child,” he would say to her, “but about listening with the ears and with your skin and using all the good Lord saw fit to give you.”
She had a remarkable memory, and would quote back to him long passages word for word, and this, too, encouraged him in his education of her and in this way she grew, slowly, into a formidable young woman. How Dr. Berghast had found her, she’d never know. He’d written to her without introduction six weeks after her benefactor had died, and her mother, old by then, haltingly, had read out the letter in surprise. It seemed the Cairndale Institute had heard tell of her remarkable education and wished to employ her, in turn, in the education and guidance of their own rather unusual children.
She went now quickly along the corridor, tracing her fingers lightly over the wall, the familiar bumps and grooves that told her where the turnings came. She could feel the shifts in the air pressure, in the temperature, that warned her when a door was opened, when a person was approaching. In her rooms she kept a long switch of birch, very smooth, used by many with her impairment to scan their surroundings for obstacles. But she herself used it only rarely, only when she was going into unfamiliar territory.
She retrieved it, now.
The first place she went was to the girls’ dormitory. There she stood in the doorway of the empty room, with her chin lifted, listening. The place was empty, she could sense it in the particular kind of silence and in the way the air moved around her. Drawing the switch back and forth through the air, tapping her way forward, she felt around Komako Onoe’s bed, and then the rumpled poorly made bed of Eleanor Ribbon. Neither had slept there that night; she would swear to it. She sat very lightly on the edge of Komako’s bed and felt around under the pillow. Nothing.
So. The girls had been gone since late the previous night.
She would wager Oskar and Charlie and Marlowe to be with them also. The latter two surprised her, somewhat; she hadn’t thought Komako quite prepared to trust them. Oh, she’d observed Ribs’s mooning about the new boy, Charlie Ovid, and knew Oskar wanted more than anything for a friend; but Komako was stubborn, and independent, and wary. Miss Davenshaw wasn’t worried for their safety; whatever mischief they were getting into, they were more than capable of getting out.
Well.
She got to her feet and rubbed her left wrist with her right hand, thinking. There was, she considered, another possibility: Dr. Berghast. He hadn’t yet interviewed the new boys, and it was just possible he had taken the lot of them aside for one of his chats, in his study.
She went swiftly down the stairs and into the courtyard, tapping her way across through the rain. She passed no one. She knew the way, though she did not often cross into the wing that held Berghast’s rooms and the rooms of most of the older talents. The upper corridor that led to Berghast’s study was punctuated with fire doors, every fifteen feet or so, and all stood closed, so that she had to go slowly and find the doorknobs, and push her way through.
She knocked at Dr. Berghast’s study. No answer.
She tried the handle; it was unlocked. A scent of pipe smoke, coal, the spicy fug of brandy left out. And deeper, under this, a whiff of cracked leather, ink, mud, and stone. It was a room that made her shiver.
“Good day,” she called boldly. “Are you here, Dr. Berghast?”
But only her own voice came back to her, and the hot unmoving darkness. She stepped forward, swallowing. She could smell something else, she was sure of it: the boys, Marlowe and Charlie. Their particular scents. They had been here.
“Boys?” she called. And then, to be sure: “Dr. Berghast? It is Miss Davenshaw, sir.”
But the study was quite deserted. She entered and stood on the carpet feeling the warm air on her face and neck and listening to the sounds of the manor through the walls and floor, the distant movements of its inhabitants. That was when she felt something cool slide past her, a hiss of air, and she turned and went cautiously toward it and found herself at a door in the wall, a door that stood open a crack. She pulled it wide, called in, and her voice came back to her distorted. She could tell from the sound that she stood at the top of a circular staircase and that it descended a long ways. She furrowed her brow. The sensible thing, she knew, would be to turn around and leave. That is what she’d expect her wards to do. Instead, like a foolish student, she started down.
She went quietly, listening all the while. At the bottom of the stairs she found herself in a small antechamber, facing a locked door made of iron. She tapped at it softly, feeling a rising sense of unease. She had never heard of such a place. Cairndale was old, filled with secrets. And so, she thought sharply, was Henry Berghast.
She raised her voice. “Charles? Marlowe? Are you in there, boys?”
There came the quick rapid breathing of someone on the far side. The heavy clank of chains, shifting. Then more breathing.
“Who is in there?” she called, suddenly afraid. “Answer me. Are you in need of assistance?”
But whatever was within had gone very quiet, very still. The breathing, she thought, didn’t sound quite right. It didn’t sound quite … human.
Slowly, in the darkness that was her world, Miss Davenshaw pressed an ear to the cold metal of the door. She leaned in, listening.
34
WORLD MORE FULL OF WEEPING
The city of the dead was quiet. Mist swept the rooftops, rolling heavily over itself.
Charlie, crouched on the balcony, listened as Jacob Marber moved catlike and slow around the Room, circling Marlowe. Charlie wanted to leap out, throw himself at the monster. He had the knife Dr. Berghast had given them to cut through the orsine. And he was a haelan and not easily injured and though he didn’t know the full extent of Jacob Marber’s power he had a pretty good notion that his own body would recover, whatever happened.
But he didn’t move, didn’t breathe, just stood listening to the slow heavy footfalls on the planks. He didn’t know if it was fear or something else that stayed him.
Just wait, he told himself. Wait.