Berghast’s eyes tracked down to the heavy satchel at Charlie’s side. “You have found it, then. Remarkable.” He rose smoothly and came around his desk, studying Charlie with a wary eye. “It has been two days, and yet here you are. How are you not dead?” Then he looked sharply up. “You did not use the glove?”
“The—the glove?” stammered Charlie. “No, I … I don’t think so.”
The man took the satchel from Charlie, removing the glove, holding it out in the light and turning it. His eyes glittered. “Mm. Where is the notebook?”
“Isn’t … isn’t it in the—?”
Berghast turned away. He upended the satchel on his desk and its contents spilled out. Notebook. Knife. Pencil. Parchment. He flipped through the notebook with a frown, set it aside.
“What is this? Did you write nothing down? I require directions, distances, details of the Room and its condition of—” But he must have seen something in Charlie’s expression then, because he paused, and said slowly: “You are alone.”
Charlie trembled.
“Is he dead, then? The boy?”
Charlie shook his head, struggling to remember. “I … I don’t think so. He was in the Room. I … I had to go. I didn’t want to leave him, but he couldn’t come away.…”
Berghast’s cold gray eyes were boring into him, a look of fascination and fury mingling there. His fingers crawled spiderlike over the glove. “You remember it?” he whispered.
Charlie felt sick, ashamed. He’d left Marlowe behind, he’d left his friend, and he couldn’t even remember doing it. He tried to concentrate: shadows materialized in the fog, slipped away.
But Berghast was still staring at him, unfazed. “You shouldn’t be able to remember anything, Mr. Ovid,” he said quietly. “How is this possible? Tell me, what else do you … remember?”
The older man gave a peculiar emphasis to the word. It felt suddenly dangerous.
Charlie started to talk, but the words came out in a jumble, and Berghast held a hand up to calm him. He sat him down in front of the fire. Rang a bell. A few minutes later his manservant, Bailey—tall, forbidding, gloomy as ever—appeared with a tray of hot tea and afternoon biscuits.
“First you must drink. Eat. It will help.” There was no kindness in Berghast’s voice, only efficiency. When Charlie had eaten, the older man asked again. “Tell me. Everything.”
And Charlie did, he told what he could. Haltingly at first, confused. But as he spoke he began to remember other things. His recollection before descending into the orsine was sharp and clear; but now he could piece together some of his journey to the Room, too. He described the city of the dead and the creature in the alley and the way Marlowe had fought off the spirits. He remembered the white tree that bled, and entering the crooked house. But after that … everything went hazy, no matter how hard he tried. There’d been a man in black, yes. And pain. Or was it fear? The feel of water on his face. Running. Then slashing and hacking his way back through the orsine. As he sipped the warm tea, Charlie felt the shaking begin to ease. But he felt light-headed still. He put his head in his hands.
“You should be dead,” Berghast murmured. “Even a haelan shouldn’t be able to survive so long. Not without assistance.” He regarded Charlie where he sat with his head in his hands, and then hesitated. “What is that on your finger?”
Charlie turned his wrists. It was his mother’s ring.
“Where did you get it?” Berghast demanded. He seized Charlie’s wrist in a strong grip and turned his arm to the firelight but he seemed afraid to touch the ring. He took up a letter opener from his desk and for a terrified moment Charlie thought he meant to cut the ring away but instead he only scraped at the silver. It flaked away; underneath, the ring was made of alternating bands of black iron and metallic black wood.
Just like the glove.
“By God,” said Berghast. “This is how you didn’t perish in the orsine.”
“Let go,” Charlie protested, unable to pull free. “It’s mine!”
“It is not,” said Berghast. “It belongs to no one. The metal has been reworked, but I’d know its trace anywhere. This, Mr. Ovid, is one of the two missing artifacts. Immensely powerful and older even than Cairndale.” He increased his grip. “Do not lie to me: Where did you acquire it?”
“It was my … mother’s,” Charlie gasped, reluctant. “My father gave it to her.”
“Your father.” Berghast released his grip.
Charlie withdrew his hand sharply, as if it had been burned. He folded it up under his armpit. “He was a … a talent, here. But his gift disappeared, and he got sent away.”
“Impossible. Talents do not come from talents.”
But Charlie just stared stubbornly back, refusing to look away. He knew where he came from. And not only because of the file he’d read. Somehow, he knew it with a new certainty, a new clarity. And it wasn’t for Berghast or anyone else to tell him otherwise.
Dr. Berghast, however, seemed unimpressed. He rose to his feet still holding the glove and he went to the door and rested one hand on the pull. “I must think about this,” he said. “This has been a most illuminating encounter, Mr. Ovid. You may keep the ring for now. Go. Get some rest.”
Charlie got up numbly, not understanding. “But aren’t we going to go back in?” he said. “For Marlowe, I mean? He’s all alone in there.”
Berghast frowned. “What would you have me do?”
“We have the glove. And, and now there’s this ring. I thought—”
“You did not think,” snapped Berghast. “There is nothing to be done. That boy was your friend, and yet you left him. You abandoned him, and now it is too late. Marlowe may be able to survive in the orsine. But the spirits will have come for him by now.”
“The spirits?” Charlie was shaking. He’d had no choice; surely he could see that.
“Leave me now, Mr. Ovid,” Dr. Berghast finished. “It is what you are best at, is it not?”
The disgust in the man’s tone was final, was crushing. Berghast stood silhouetted against the firelight, his hands cradling the ancient glove like a thing from an unremembered past, a thing that had showed him once his truer self, and might yet show it again.
Charlie, devastated, went.
* * *
It had been a long cold day on the road as the cart led them back from Albany Chandlers, back along the green crooked ways, to the gate at Cairndale, and through.
It was late; the sun was low in the west. They’d slipped unhindered past the wards, and along the gravel drive toward the manor. Lymenion was waiting for them in the cold, his hulking shoulders slick in the moonlight, and Oskar had stood in front of him with a look of deep relief and then all of them had gone, troubled, in.
But they hadn’t crept up to their rooms, hadn’t bothered, but instead had gone into the schoolroom and shut the door carefully and drawn the curtains so as not to be seen. The dinner bell would be ringing soon, and anyway they were all too disturbed by what they’d witnessed in Edinburgh, by all that Mrs. Ficke had told them, to rest. Komako folded her hands together over a wick of candle and a flame bloomed and then the four of them sat on the floor behind Miss Davenshaw’s desk.
Hopeless.
That’s how it seemed to them all. Komako, when she let herself think about it, felt a quiet rage building in her. But she’d come to a decision, all the same.
“We need to seal the orsine,” she told the others. “Mrs. Ficke knew it, too. That’s why she told us how it’s to be done. The Spider’s afraid it won’t be finished, that’s what he was trying to show us. He’s guarded it for centuries, and it won’t have meant anything if it rips open now.”
Ribs scowled. “Or … we could just grab any of them what would listen, an go.”
“Go where?” said Oskar, rubbing at his reddened nose. “Running won’t do any good, Ribs. If the dead get loose, where would be safe?”
“Rrh rruh,” agreed Lymenion.
Ribs popped her knuckles, one by one, her green eyes staring gloomily into the candle flame. “How good are you with a blade, Ko? Cause I ain’t cuttin his heart out of his body. Uh-uh.”
Komako frowned. “We’ll draw straws. That way it’s fair.”
“Come up with a different plan, then. I ain’t doin it.”
“I—I—I’ll do it,” said Oskar softly.