Something shifted in Mrs. Ficke’s face, a flicker of shadow, just beneath the skin. She said, “White beard? Handsome as the devil?” She nodded. “A fair temper on him though. Oh, aye, I reckon I know him.”
Komako hadn’t worked out in her head what she’d say after that. She’d been imagining they’d have to sneak in, eavesdrop maybe—not meet the owner or director or whatever she was, and find her quite so … obliging.
“Mrs. Ficke,” she began, “we’re here on account of some deliveries Cairndale receives, every two weeks. And the, um, passengers the carriage takes on. We were directed here. We have some questions—”
“Directed here? To my shop? By who, love?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Most things are, I don’t doubt it.” A shrewd look came over her face. “Tell me true though. Do Henry know his wards is escaped, an is pokin around in his business?”
The old woman’s yellow eyes flicked—for only a second—to the left of Komako. But it was warning enough. Komako spun quickly on her heel, drawing the dust to her fingertips.
But there was Edward Albany, already looming up over the top of the shelf, a heavy cudgel in his fist. Everything happened very fast then. Albany knocked over the jars as his heavy arm swung hard down and Komako heard Oskar cry out. She was summoning the dust but it was too late, his arm was coming down again, and then a searing pain filled her head and her eyes rolled back up in her skull and all at once everything went blessedly, painlessly, soundlessly, dark.
* * *
Ribs, invisible behind the counter, watched in silence as her friends were struck unconscious. She made no move to help them, nor, as the old chandler locked the front door fast and flipped the hanging sign to CLOSED, did Ribs stir and try to get closer. Manipulating her talent after a long night of no sleep was making her skin crawl, the seams in it feeling like they were on fire. She winced but kept the pain in check. What she needed now, most of all, was to be still.
Truth was, she was feeling irritated. Irritated at Komako’s impatience, irritated by the old woman’s sly questions. Sure, it’d been maybe a stupid notion, sneaking down to Edinburgh to find out what Berghast was up to. She could’ve told Ko that. Hell, she had. But did anyone ever listen to her?
Like to get them killed, it were.
She’d slipped into the shop quietly, reaching up to muffle the bell as the door closed behind her, and then started her slow way down one aisle. That was when she’d heard the old ones talking, and crouched suddenly, and listened. Almost the first word she’d heard was Cairndale. She stripped silently down and rubbed her hair dry with her shirt and then left her clothes hidden. She let the prickling come over her skin until there was only light and dust where her flesh ought to be. It was always a dizzying moment, looking down at her hands and feet and seeing nothing, and always there was that quick instant when she felt like she was falling. But it passed, as it always did; her head cleared; and she crept forward to hear better.
The old woman with the missing hand was talking about the deliveries. One was due that night, it seemed, and she was instructing the grizzled man as to the particular care of the crates. Whatever was in these ones, it seemed, it was breakable, and of greater value than usual. The man just nodded in time to her instructions, mute, grim. And that was when the old woman said it.
“Soon, now,” she muttered. “That poor glyphic won’t much longer live, an there’s no solution here for it. Ye can’t stopper a hole in a boat with beeswax, my old Mr. Ficke used to say. An them what’s upstairs is beeswax, or worse. No, Henry’ll not put it off much longer.”
The old woman broke off, raised her yellow eyes. Ribs held her breath. The woman was glaring in her direction, almost as if she could see her.
But that was when the door clattered at the front of the shop; Ribs glanced back: it was Komako and Oskar, come dripping in.
And now they were struck down, the dolts. She ground her teeth. But watching the careful way the old woman and her companion handled them, the care they took not to knock their heads on the shelves as they carried them toward the cellar stairs, gave Ribs pause. Whatever else, the old woman didn’t seem to mean them harm.
At least not just yet.
There was an old rickety staircase leading up from the back of the shop to the second floor, and Ribs hurried toward it. Upstairs, the old woman had said. Ko and Oskar would need rescuing, sure. But when she’d done that, there’d be no more chance to look around; best get an eyeful first.
Silently, keeping to the outer edge of the steps to avoid creaking, she went up.
* * *
Komako opened her eyes onto darkness. Her head was throbbing. She shifted and saw her blotchy hands were tied in front of her, her pockets turned out. Oskar lay beside her, similarly tied. They were on the floor of a badly lit cellar, the dirt under her cold and damp.
“Ah, she wakes. Excellent.” The old woman was moving about in the darkness, shifting things, kicking through some rubbish, and her voice came creaking and muffled to Komako’s ears.
She groaned despite herself, shaking her head to clear it.
“That’d be Edward’s doing,” said the woman. “I am sorry about your head. He don’t know his own strength. But we can’t be too careful. Just one moment as I finish with this…”
She must have found what she was seeking then, for she paused, and a moment later a light bloomed in the cellar and Komako saw where they were.
It was a laboratory workshop. There were glass pipes high up along the walls with some sort of liquid moving slowly through them and stoves in two corners with something bubbling there. A bookshelf slumped under the weight of thick tomes. Near Komako, in a long wooden trough, she saw hundreds of white beetles crawling over themselves. There were crates and barrels covered in dust, looming up out of the darkness, and jars of dead things along the far wall. And at a long table in the center of the cellar Mrs. Ficke was working, shifting jars and books out of the way, making some concoction. She had attached a strange apparatus, a kind of iron hook with moveable claws, worked by gears and levers, to the stump of her damaged arm. It was held in place using leather straps and buckles that crossed her chest and ran behind her shoulders. Deftly she used it to move jars and lift boxes and unclasp wires that held the lids to jars. Komako stared.
Oskar was stirring now, lifting his plump face, peering in sudden fear around him as their situation dawned on him. “Ko?”
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “We’re all right.”
“Hello, Oskar,” said Mrs. Ficke softly. “I do apologize for the ropes.”
“What will you do to us?” Komako demanded.
“Do?”
“Will you hurt us?”
The old woman grimaced. “Oh, child. Of course not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“As you wish.” She was continuing to work at her long table, pouring out a fine powder onto a scale, measuring it with care.
“Prove it,” said Komako. “Untie us now, then.”
Mrs. Ficke paused only long enough to smile a condescending smile but she made no move to untie them. Above them the floorboards of the shop creaked as someone—Edward Albany, perhaps—walked heavily by. Dust sifted down in the lantern light.
“You would be the girl called Komako,” said Mrs. Ficke. “The dustworker. Yes?”
Komako blinked. “You … know who we are?”
“More than you can imagine. And you, Oskar. Where is your companion, your … flesh giant, is it? What is it you call him?”
Oskar glared. “He’s coming for me. You don’t want to be here when he does.”
“I am sure you are right. A rather formidable creature. I expected Eleanor to be with you.”
“She’s going for help.”
“Oh, I think not.” The old woman looked around at the darkness. “No, I think she is here, with us, now. You are here, are you not, Eleanor? I trust you are not intending to do something foolish.”