There was no sound from the darkness, no reply. It didn’t feel to Komako like Ribs was near, though it was sometimes hard to tell. She was afraid for her friend. Then again, she supposed, wherever Ribs was, was probably better than here.
“No matter,” said Mrs. Ficke. “Is it answers you are seeking? Henry never did like me much, but I don’t expect he’d send his wards as a … warning. So I’ll assume you are here of your own accord. What did you do, run off from the institute? Or have you come in search of something more … specific?”
Komako wet her lips. She felt the cold come over her wrists, the icy pain, and she breathed in sharply as the dust began to swirl around her fingers. If this woman knew as much as she claimed, then she’d have known ropes would be little use against Komako’s talent.
But Mrs. Ficke made a soft clicking noise, as if in disapproval. “That is neither necessary, Komako, nor useful. Not if it is answers you are seeking.”
And the old woman took out one of her alembics with her good hand and came around the table and poured a dark powder in a circle around where Komako and Oskar lay. All at once the pain went out of Komako’s fingers, the dust settled, her talent was gone.
“What—”
“It is a muting powder, child. Of my own devising. I got the idea of it from study of a bone witch, oh, many years ago. It doesn’t work for long. But it will allow us to be civil with one another, at least for now.” Mrs. Ficke stumped back around her long worktable, shifted some bottles and jars, poked at the smoking liquid. The lantern was shining from a stack of ancient books beside her.
“You are afraid my intention is to harm you. But we are not at odds, you and I. Our kind should not be. It is not right. Besides, Henry will have his own punishments for you, when you return to Cairndale.”
“Our kind?”
“I’m like you. Or used to be, at least. You look surprised.”
If Komako’s face betrayed her disbelief, she couldn’t have helped it. She lowered her chin so that her hair fell across her eyes.
“I’m one of the exiles. Ah, you’ve heard of us? Not much though, I expect. They rarely spoke about it in my day either.” The old woman frowned. “There’s some as lose their talents, when they come of age. For no reason anyone can explain. They just … fade, one day. An if that day comes, it’s the Cairndale way—it’s Henry’s way—to ask them, politely, to leave.”
“She was sent away,” Oskar whispered, understanding.
“Dr. Berghast would never do that,” said Komako quickly, firmly.
But Mrs. Ficke just raised her face in the glow of the lantern. Her voice was soft. “You know Henry so well, then?”
“She’s been alone ever since,” Oskar whispered to Ko. “Imagine…”
“I’ll have none of that, boy,” she said, glaring at Oskar. “No pity from you. I’ve had a life more interesting than most. There’s no shortage of experiments to be done, knowledge to be acquired.” She gestured at the cellar around them. “It don’t look like much, it’s no fancy university. But it’s mine. There’s never been much room for a woman in the Royal Academy, anyhow. But their kind wouldn’t much care for my interests. Think only what they’re supposed to think, they do. Whereas I have made a life’s study of the opposite. I’ve studied what ought not to exist.”
Komako glowered. “Yeah. Candles.”
“Alchemy, dear. An older branch of knowledge than science, and a wiser one. Oh, the scientists are afraid of what we alchemists once knew. When Henry sent me away, I was nineteen years old. I was of little use to him then.”
“You think he needs you now?”
The woman’s eyes glittered. “Oh, I have made myself useful.”
“Because of the glyphic.”
“My tinctures, yes,” murmured Mrs. Ficke. “I’ve kept him alive this long. You are a clever little bird, hm? But I’ve done more than just that, my pet.”
The knots at Komako’s wrists bit into her flesh. She glanced at Oskar in the lantern light; he was staring wide-eyed at the old woman, frightened.
“What’re you saying?” Komako whispered slowly, dreading the answer. “What things have you done?”
* * *
Ribs stopped at the top of the stairs. Below her, the shop was quiet. She could hear the sound of the rain drumming against the roof, faintly, somewhere. She took a cautious step forward.
The upper floor of Albany Chandlers was unlit and dim. Ribs found herself in a long hallway running the length of the building, ending at a street-facing window. That window had been bricked over sometime in the past. There were several small high windows set in the right wall, casting what little light there was; on the left were many doors, as in a boardinghouse, all of them closed.
It was then she heard the sound. A kind of whimpering, coming from the nearest door. It might have been a kitten, crying. She tried the door pull but it didn’t open and then she pressed an ear against the door. The mewling stopped; started again.
There were seven doors in total. Each of them was locked. She could hear no sound from the others, except for the penultimate door—a scrabbling sound, from within, as of a small animal digging.
She turned, unsure. Heavy footfalls were approaching up the stairs.
It was the large man, Edward Albany. He was carrying a wooden crate in his scoured fingers and something in the crate was clinking. Ribs watched him kneel, set it down on the floor with an unexpected gentleness, and then lift out a bowl of some kind of slop and a greasy drinking cup. Then he unlocked the first door and went in.
Swiftly, her heart in her throat, she padded back down the dim hall. A strong reek of unwashed flesh reached her. At the doorway she paused, trying to make sense of what she was looking at.
A small room. The interior was dark, the far window boarded over. Slats of daylight came in between the boards and fell across the floor in stripes. Ribs saw the small bed. The clothes chest. The ragged figure in one corner, hunched and turned away, shuddering, weeping softly. And she saw how Edward Albany placed the dish and the cup down just within the door and went in and loomed over the child.
Except it wasn’t a child. She saw that now. It was soft and deformed and lifted a crooked arm up as Edward Albany crouched beside it. What looked like roots or branches had sprouted all along its back, and its gown had been cut away to accommodate them. Albany took it into his arms and held it and rocked it and crooned to it and slowly, slowly the thing stopped its weeping. The strange rootlike protrusions entwined all up Edward Albany’s wrists and arms, but gently. It seemed the creature could not walk but only drag itself and after a time Albany lifted it effortlessly and carried it to the little bed and laid it down. There was a shelf with books on it, Ribs saw now, and he opened one and began to read. And it was then the creature lifted its face, and moved its tongue as if trying to speak, and Ribs saw in horror just who it was.
His features had shifted, melted almost. His nose stood crooked and the eyes were strangely sunken in their sockets, yes, but it was him, she knew his face, had seen it for the past six years in the halls, in the dining room, out in the fields.
It was the missing boy, the one they called Brendan. The one who’d been building the model of Cairndale out of matchsticks.
Edward Albany was reading gently to Brendan, one big scarred hand tousling the boy’s hair. That hair was white and growing strangely from the side of his scalp. Ribs glanced down at the crate and saw six more bowls and six more cups and she peered back along the corridor at the six other doors and then she understood.
* * *
Below, in the cellar, Komako was rubbing her wrists, shifting closer to Oskar, watching through the gloom as Mrs. Ficke continued at her work on the long table. The old woman had gone mercurial, sly. She seemed like she wanted to say more but had stopped herself.
The air smelled scorched, strange.
“Go on,” said Komako, frustrated. “Why help Cairndale, if you were sent away? Why work for Dr. Berghast at all, if you don’t like him?”