Oskar looked hurt. “You never told me.”
Gently, Komako put her gloved hands on the boy’s shoulders. “We need to find the place that carriage is coming from, Oskar. Albany Chandlers. Before whoever it is comes looking for us. You saw the place in your vision. You can take us there.”
Oskar swallowed. “But we’ll get in trouble. If Miss Davenshaw—”
“There’s a reason you were shown that vision,” Komako continued. “The Spider wants us to go. He wants us to see. There’s got to be a link to what’s happening to him, and the kids.… It’s all connected, Oskar.”
Oskar shivered.
“Okay,” he said, trying to sound brave.
Only Ribs seemed not to be listening. She’d gone back to muttering, scowling to herself. “Not like I even care, stupid Spider an his stupid visions.…”
Scratching miserably at the windowsill with her nail as she whispered it.
* * *
After leaving the others, Charlie and Marlowe were led back across the grass to the manor, and along a corridor and through a door and up a stairwell, and then along a second corridor, this one punctuated by doors every twenty feet, until they reached Dr. Berghast’s study.
“Touch nothing,” said the manservant. “Dr. Berghast will be with you shortly.”
Charlie, for his part, saw little worth the touching. It was the same room he’d been in just a few days earlier, but cozier somehow, less frightening. A great lump of coal was burning in the fireplace; the sconces along the walls were lit, casting the room in a golden hue; leather armchairs were arranged in front of the fire. The air was warm, sleepy, smelling faintly of cigar smoke. In one corner stood the wooden file cabinet, locked. In the other stood a birdcage, the silhouette of a bird unmoving on its perch. The strange ink painting of crosshatched lines and circles hung in the gloom. Marlowe stepped gingerly over the Persian carpet and stood in front of it, staring. In the very center of the room loomed Dr. Berghast’s desk: sleek, dark, empty but for a tray with a decanter of wine on it, and a solitary glass still half-full. Charlie saw no sign of the journal.
It might have been a cozy room, that is, if not for its particular strangeness: the doors. Nine in all, all of them shut, all of them carved out of the same ancient heavy-looking oak, covered in strange scrolling marks, as if shipworms had eaten their way through. So many doors gave the study the feeling of a deserted railroad station, or of a post office after hours—a place that should have been full of bustle, interruptions, hasty exits. Charlie peered around, uneasy. He hadn’t noticed them all, that night he’d snuck in. Then he saw the birdcage more clearly and stepped closer to see. The things inside were not birds—living concoctions of bones and brass fittings, they turned their skulled heads side to side, as if regarding him from their eyeless sockets. He shuddered.
Marlowe though, silent, sat on the big sofa and just swung his little legs and picked at his hands and waited. Charlie knew the kid would be anxious, that it was his adopted father they were to meet; what was in the boy’s heart he couldn’t imagine; and he wanted to say something, to ask if he was okay, offer some reassurance, but then all at once it was too late, for the door they’d entered by opened briskly and in walked Henry Berghast.
Charlie froze. Marlowe raised his face, a half-hopeful shine in his eye.
But the man walked right past him, right past both of them, giving them scarcely a glance. At his desk he pulled out a notebook, he unscrewed the lid of a fountain pen. For several minutes he sat, writing quietly. And yet all the while Charlie sensed how the man was aware of them, was observing them, weighing their silence coolly and finding them wanting. At last he looked up, frowning.
“Well,” he said.
And that was all.
Charlie knew him, of course, had seen him lurking in the dark windows while they trudged to the outbuildings, had glimpsed him at the ends of corridors, moving quickly, had seen him deep in conversation with the old talents in the courtyard some mornings. But never close up; never so near that he could feel the man’s electricity, the intensity coming off him, like a low hum. Berghast was tall, taller than Charlie even, and broad-shouldered, with big hands. He wore an expensive black frock coat, an immaculate white collar, as if he had just come from dinner. His beard was white, his eyes the gray of a river in winter, bright and reflective and piercing, his hair thick and long at his collar. There was an aristocratic air about him; he looked like a man who was used to remaking the world in his image. Charlie immediately felt afraid.
Dr. Berghast interlaced his hands on his desk. He was as still as an adder. “It is late, boys,” he said quietly. “You will be hungry.”
Both Charlie and Marlowe shook their heads. Across the room the bonebirds clicked and rattled.
Slowly, fiercely, Dr. Berghast’s eyes slid to Charlie. “You are the new haelan,” he said. It was not a question. “I am Dr. Berghast. Tell me, how do you like Cairndale?”
Charlie swallowed. “I like it, sir.”
“And yet you seem incapable of obeying its rules. You trespass after curfew, you come to my rooms in a state of undress. Your nightshirt is filthy.”
Charlie looked at himself, the heat rising to his face. It was true: there was mud and grime from the island in streaks all over.
“You have been to see Mr. Thorpe,” Dr. Berghast continued. “It is not permitted.”
Charlie blinked. “Thorpe—?”
“Our glyphic. He is … not well. I trust you knew it was forbidden and that is why you snuck across, after midnight. Did you find the answers you sought?”
“I … I don’t know, sir,” he mumbled. “We—”
“It was my idea,” said Marlowe boldly. “I wanted to know if Alice was okay.”
Dr. Berghast turned his intense gray eyes on the little boy. “And is she?”
Marlowe hesitated. All at once it was like all his boldness was gone, and he chewed at his lip, coloring. “I don’t know.”
“But that is not all you asked about, is it? That is not the only reason you disturbed the rest of a dying man. Do you know who I am, child?”
Marlowe nodded. He was staring at the floor.
“Look at me. Who am I?”
“You’re my adopted father,” whispered Marlowe.
“Yes.” He smoothed his beard, weighing them both in his gaze. “And what is it you do, when you are not sneaking around the institute? Does Miss Davenshaw instruct you in the use of your talents?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did she explain to you what it is the glyphic does?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
Marlowe looked quickly up, a question in his eyes. “Miss Davenshaw says he keeps the orsine closed. But she’s wrong, isn’t she? He opens it sometimes too. You make him do that. But he’s got to be careful or else any sort of a thing could come out.”
“How do you know that?”
“The Spider. He … told me.”
“I see. And what sort of a thing would come out?”
Marlowe furrowed his brow. “Is it Jacob Marber?”
Dr. Berghast folded his big arms and leaned back on the desk and regarded the boys. “There are worse things in that world than Jacob Marber,” he said softly.
The boy lifted his eyes then, defiant. “But you sent them in there anyway, didn’t you? You sent the old talents in, even though it was dangerous. All those years ago.”
Charlie felt a sudden misgiving. He looked at Marlowe, wondering just how much the glyphic had told him about this place, what had happened here.
Berghast was obviously wondering the same thing. “Mr. Thorpe has been rather forthcoming, it seems. Despite his condition.”
It had never occurred to Charlie that anyone could be sent through the orsine. But then Charlie thought of something. “That’s what you want us for too,” he said. “To go in there.”
Dr. Berghast’s eyes glittered in a way that made Charlie suddenly afraid. “Yes,” he said.
“Because it is important,” said Marlowe.
“Because it is important,” echoed Berghast.