“What way is that?”
“Carve out the glyphic’s heart, an sink it into the orsine.”
“Nope,” said Ribs quickly. “I’m out.”
Komako glared. “That’s disgusting.”
Mrs. Ficke allowed a grim smile. “The world’s an ugly place, loves. Unfortunately, I weren’t consulted when it were being made. But here’s the truth: Henry Berghast can’t allow the orsine to be closed. How else is he to bring the drughr to him, if not through the orsine?”
“Through the orsine?” whispered Ribs, turning. “Did she just say through the orsine?”
Komako wasn’t sure she’d heard right, either. “He wants to bring the drughr into Cairndale? Why would he do that?”
Mrs. Ficke’s voice was soft. “The drughr is the difference between horror and fear, my pet. It’s the kind of fear what fills you with revulsion, what makes you prefer … obliteration. This,” she murmured, stroking the girl’s hair, “is preferable to the drughr’s bite. And yet, even so—it’s Henry Berghast what you ought to fear more.”
Ribs, for her part, just scowled. “Maybe luring the drughr into Cairndale’s the best bloody way to destroy it.”
“You aren’t listening,” said the old woman, shaking her head. “Henry Berghast’s been hunting the drughr since before you were born. The drughr’s power has never been measured. If it could be harnessed, if it could be absorbed…”
Komako raised her face in shock. “Absorbed—?”
Mrs. Ficke gestured with her hooked claw. Daylight filled her eyes, sad and bright. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Henry don’t mean to destroy the drughr, pet,” she whispered. “He means to become it.”
37
THE STRANGE MACHINERY OF FATE
Something was coming, something awful.
In a second-class carriage north of Doncaster, Alice Quicke sat with her face turned to the window, brooding out at the early light. She could feel it approaching, a kind of dread, racing toward her over the spine of the world. In a basket at her feet lay the keywrasse, purring; in the pocket of her greatcoat lay the old revolver, its chambers loaded. She gripped it fast. They would not reach Princes Street Station in Edinburgh until evening.
Margaret Harrogate, in the seat across from her, did not permit herself to brood, not about her crushed spine, not about how she’d never walk again, not about the bad feeling that was in her. The wheeled chair Miss Quicke had built, wedged in a corner, bumped softly against the paneled door. Across the fields the white sky filled with light, darkened again.
At Cairndale, far to the north, Henry Berghast could feel it too. He stood in the damp cell where Walter was chained, a lantern raised in his fist. For two days the litch had eaten nothing, drank nothing, refused even a dish of opium, and now it lay fetal and still on its side, in the weak lantern glow. Was it sick? Was it dying? He didn’t know. He thought of the two boys who had passed through the orsine and not come back and he nudged the litch with his boot where it lay unmoving like a dead thing. He had the sudden feeling—the unfamiliar, unpleasant feeling—that events were spiraling out of his control.
When the cell door groaned shut at last, and the locks turned and double-turned in the darkness, Walter Laster lifted his head, listening. He was very weak. Jacob was close now, so close. The manacles spun loosely over his bony wrists but though Walter struggled he couldn’t pull his hands through. In the absolute blackness he put a thumb between his teeth, and held it there a moment, like a baby. Then, ignoring the pain, he bit down hard, and wrenched and twisted and started to chew.
There was no one in the glyphic’s lair to see how he trembled and thrashed up out of his dream. He could feel it, the white creature that did not belong in either world, devouring itself. But there’d been another presence, too, a living child, alone and in pain in the other world. Who was that? He tried to reach out with his thoughts but in his mind there was only the creature, its hunger like a mouth, the evil of it. They were not strong enough.
The spirits were gathering outside the Room. Marlowe lay cold and hungry, still tied fast in Jacob’s ropes of dust. He could see the fog of the dead hovering at the top of the stairs, silent. Just waiting. Just watching. Brynt was with them, his Brynt. She never took her eyes from him and though her face was changeable as the light, and her form but a column of air, her stare was black and lifeless and did not change. The boy turned his face away.
Something was coming. Abigail Davenshaw, seated at her vanity, drawing a hairbrush through her long straight hair, was trying to make sense of it. It was after midday. The children were still missing. Dr. Berghast was nowhere to be found either. And there was a locked room hidden beneath his study. She’d felt a cold fear as she’d stood there, listening to whatever lay inside it breathe. She lowered the hairbrush. She unscrewed a jar of cream, thinking.
The white sky was blinding as Komako rode out of Edinburgh in Edward Albany’s wagon, Ribs and a sleeping Oskar jolting alongside her on the bench. The midmorning roads were crowded. She was a poor driver of horses but the mare seemed to know its way and the mud was not deep. There was fear in her heart, and dread, and something else, too. Rage. Beside her, Oskar started to snore.
Meanwhile, miles away, across the rough Scottish hills, a creature of meat and sinew lurched unsteadily on, skin glistening wetly. Lymenion was strong enough to uproot a tree with his bare hands but his thoughts were filled with worry. Oskar, he thought. Oskar—Oskar—Oskar—
White clouds massed under a flat light. Shadows shrank and grew long.
Tick-tick-tick went all the gears in all the clocks in all the world.
* * *
With the last of his strength, Charlie Ovid forced a shoulder against the viscous skin of the orsine, feeling it stretch and shape itself around him, and desperately, with the knife gripped in his two shaking hands, he stabbed and stabbed his way through, sawing a ragged opening, bursting up out of it, gasping, soaked, shivering into the dim light of his world.
He’d got through. He’d made it.
That was what was in his head: relief. The feeling of it. His thoughts, such as they were, were sluggish, as if he’d been asleep a long time.
How long had he been gone? A lantern had been left burning on one wall; but the chamber was empty. He tried to stand, but couldn’t. Instead he curled up on the floor, amid the roots, shaking, the cold smoking off him like steam. His hands were twisted into a rictus of claws and the skin across his knuckles was a dark gruesome shade and the ring, his mother’s ring, burned where he wore it on his finger.
What had happened in that other world was a blur. Marlowe had been there, was still there. Yes. And there’d been a man, a man with a black beard and dark gloves. Charlie gasped, remembering something. He raised his bleary face. The glove.
He scrabbled at his satchel. The glove was there, safe, whole, its empty fingers curled inward, a strange artifact of gleaming iron and gleaming wood. All around him, the orsine glowed its mysterious blue, casting everything in an eerie light. Charlie got unsteadily to his feet.
He stumbled over to the stairs and made his way down into the tunnel, along the wet darkness, his footfalls echoing ahead of him, the satchel swinging heavily, and then he was climbing the curving stone stairs, opening the door to Dr. Berghast’s study.
A fire was burning in the grate. Berghast was in his shirtsleeves, at his desk, writing in a journal. He glanced up and removed his spectacles in the same moment.
“Mr. Ovid,” he said softly. “You are alive.”
Charlie swayed in the doorway.