Margaret nodded. “Anything can.”
The keywrasse, purring, lifted its four golden eyes.
* * *
At that very moment, deep under Cairndale, Walter Laster was scrabbling backward in the wet darkness, his chains rattling, until he was pressed up against the stone wall. He was cold. So cold. Somewhere in the dark on the far side stood the little table, the blue dish with its opium. He had always done right by his Jacob, hadn’t he? He did love him, didn’t he?
Oh, but Jacob had not abandoned him, not his own friend …
Time passed in the absolute. Lightless hours, lightless days. Sometimes the door would click, the bolts rasp back, and then a crack of light would groan and widen, and the tall silent man would come in, the servant, what was his name … Bailey … He’d peer down at Walter with a frightening look in his eye and Walter’d whimper, oh, Walter’d beg. Please, please, don’t hit me again, please. Then the dark again, and the door. The click, the bolts drawing back, that same crack of lantern light widening, and the manservant, Bailey, would be back, bringing him water maybe, bringing him meat.
But the other one, the doctor, the one with the white beard and terrible eyes who pretended to be kind, Henry Berghast, yes … he did not come. And Walter waited, while all around him the air hummed with violence, the stones trembled faintly, and he felt the orsine like a living thing, eager.
Walter Walter—
“We are Walter,” he would whisper. Feeling a sadness in his heart. Running his tongue along the needled points of his teeth.
Jacob is coming, Walter. It is almost time …
And he would whimper to himself, and rattle the chains at his wrists, as if the voices could see, could hear, and he would shake his head in frustration. “But we can’t do it, how can we do it, look, look at us.…”
The thrumming in the air kept on. The voices did not cease.
Walter Walter little Walter, they would whisper. Jacob is coming. Find the glyphic. Find the glyphic find the glyphic find the—
36
THE ALCHEMIST’S TRUTH
Komako watched Ribs in her heavy cloak cross between the bollards on the far side of the street and go into the chandler’s. The door closed behind her. The shop was dark and the windows reflected back the watery distortions of the street. At her elbow Oskar was sniffling, eyes creased with worry.
Five minutes passed.
Ten.
“All right,” said Komako. “Let’s go get her.”
“Aren’t we supposed to wait for her to come out?” said Oskar. “Isn’t that what you said?”
She wiped the rain from her face. “Whose plan is this?”
“Yours?”
“Mine. And if you’d like to wait out here alone—”
“I don’t,” said Oskar quickly.
* * *
The inside of Albany Chandlers was very quiet, very dim. The front windows were greasy with soot on the inside and a rainy daylight came through poor and thin. The door shut with a clatter of its bell behind her and Komako stood a long moment, letting her eyes adjust.
The air felt close, unhealthy. A reek of tallow fat and oils and something sharper and meaner, like lye, burned her nostrils. Tall stacks of industrial candles beside the door, wooden crates sealed and stamped. Komako stepped cautiously forward, peeling off her gloves as she did so.
It was a narrow corner shop, with the clerk’s desk far at the back. Her eyes scanned the low ceiling, stained brown where the water had got in over the years. Gas sconces, turned weakly up, hung from the walls. When she could see better she started down a long aisle cluttered with tins and jars and stacks of ropes of all manner of thinness and she heard Oskar follow, his wet shoes squeaking softly. There was arguing from deeper in the shop. Two voices.
But neither belonged to Ribs. It was a man and a woman, old, married maybe. The woman sounded unhappy about something, affronted. Komako ducked her head as she neared but then, before she’d reached them, her eye caught on something under a shelf, and she froze. It was a wet cloak, neatly folded. Also a plain gray dress, a shift, a pair of very wet shoes.
Oskar crouched beside her, shaking his head. “She’s got undressed, Ko,” he whispered. “She’s gone and made herself invisible.”
“Brilliant.” Oskar’s real talent, she thought irritably, might be for stating the obvious. But if Ribs had stripped down it meant she might be anywhere. It also meant she must have seen something, heard something that required caution. She and Oskar should be wary.
“Oi! You!”
Komako looked up. An old woman in a leather apron and with a handkerchief tying off her hair was glaring down at her. She sounded English, not Scottish. A wooden spoon was gripped in one wizened fist. Her other hand was missing.
“What’re you lot sneakin round for, then?”
“We are not sneaking,” said Komako calmly, enunciating each word. She pulled her hood back off her face. Oskar did the same.
“Why, it’s a wee lascar girl, Edward,” the woman exclaimed. She was looking past them and Komako turned now and saw at the other end of the aisle, blocking their retreat, an old heavyset man in shirtsleeves. His beard was unkempt and stained by tobacco around the mouth. His hairy wrists were ringed black with dirt. “An if she don’t speak the Queen’s English!”
“Huh,” the man grunted.
Komako lifted her chin at the man’s name, ignoring the old woman’s remark. “Mr. Edward Albany?” she said. “That is you, sir?”
“Huh,” the man grunted again. His eyebrows came down in a suspicious glower.
“We’ve been looking for you, sir. We’re from the Cairndale Institute. Do you know it?” She watched his face to see his reaction but there was nothing, not a flicker of recognition. She turned back to the old woman but she too seemed to be waiting for Komako to say something more.
“Go on,” said the woman. “What of it?”
“Do you not make deliveries to the institute?” Komako said, suddenly uncertain.
Edward Albany frowned and peered helplessly over at the woman. Komako saw then that there was something childlike about him, despite his age. His other hand held several loops of wire and he hung them on a hook on one shelf, replacing them, and then he shrugged and shuffled off to another part of the shop. She could hear his heavy breathing even after he was gone.
Oskar was looking at her under lowered lashes, a question in his eyes. Ribs was nowhere.
“So what is it you’d be needin then, lass?” the woman asked, taking charge. “Deliveries, you say? We make aplenty of takeaways but only inside the city limits. It’s just the two of us here, you see. An we ain’t half what we used to be. Where did you say you was at?”
She’d drifted closer now and Komako could smell the lye and fat coming off her. Her one hand was scoured to the wrist and discolored and her other stump was raw-looking like meat. She had eyes yellowing with age or malnutrition or some darker illness and they wept slightly at the corners and Komako saw all at once that she’d been mistaken, that the woman’s gruffness was not unkindness. She was just poor, and had lived a hard life.
“You’re soaked to the bone, the two of you,” muttered the woman. “You’re drippin all over my floors.”
Komako nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Come, come. I’m Mrs. Ficke. We must be at gettin you warm. Now, there’s a wee stove in the back what gives off heat like a horse. An what’s your name, lad?”
“Oskar, ma’am.”
Komako could feel herself relaxing, too. “Mrs. Ficke,” she said, “does the name Henry Berghast mean anything to you? We’re here on account of him.”
The old woman, close now, tapped the wooden spoon thoughtfully against her chin. “Berghast, Berghast…,” she muttered. Her eyes lit up. “Why, I believe it do.”
Komako was drying her hands on her pinafore. “You know him, then?”