Chapter 28
Maeve made it off the Post grounds, walking aimlessly for an hour in the freezing snow before she thought to hail a coach. She held out six shills and asked the driver to take her to Dunsmore Station, just south of the city, where the overnight train to the southern coast picked up. He scoffed and said six shills wouldn’t get her past Gloam. But she needed the remainder of the coins for the train ticket.
Her legs ached from racing out of the Post, then all the walking. The thin mattress in her rented flat called to her, but if someone met with Fion this evening and learned her name, they might be standing outside her door when she woke, ready to greet her with handcuffs.
“Then bring me to Alewick,” she told the driver. Dunsmore Station was only an hour’s walk from there.
The cab wasn’t any warmer than the air. The seats were sticky and smelled of tobacco and stale sweat. She pinched her nose as they set off over drifts of snow. It clogged the main streets and crusted over the coach’s wheels, making the ride painfully slow. They didn’t arrive in Alewick until just after ten—long after the last train of the night had already left.
There wouldn’t be another train south until first thing the following morning. At least the snowstorm would slow down the constabulary. If she was lucky, she might still catch the train before anyone found her.
Not sure where to wait out the night, Maeve wandered the streets of Alewick until her feet grew numb once again. Then she turned a corner and found herself in front of the inksmithy.
The shop was shuttered, the curtains drawn on Mr.Braithwaite’s second-floor flat.
She slipped her fingers under the base of the doorframe, pulling out Mr.Braithwaite’s spare key, then pushed it into the lock, letting herself in as silently as possible.
After the bracing winds, the shop felt like stepping inside an oven. Maeve settled into the worn leather chair in the corner, hoping to doze for a few minutes, but couldn’t so much as close her eyes. Her mind kept wandering to that memory scribing in her saddlebag.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled out Claryman’s paper then kneeled on the shop floor, placing the paper on the roughened floorboards.
She didn’t have the rose journal. If she were caught now, this memory scribing might very well be the only thing to help her. As much as she didn’t want to see her father’s murder, she should probably give it a read.
Slowly, she opened her crematory ash satchel and placed it beside the paper, then scooted it a few inches away. She would have to be careful with the ash. If she got any on the scribing and nulled it on accident, before anyone else had a chance to see it, she could ruin everything.
She peeled off her sodden gloves. The old white wax seal crumbled as she cracked it, then unfolded the thin paper.
It was dated six months after Inverly, right after she’d run away from the orphanage. The handwriting inside was shorter than expected.
Dearest Maeve,
I’m very sorry that you’ve been pulled into this situation. Please know I swore to your father that I would protect you. I never wanted to see you harmed, but things don’t often work out the way we want, do they? If there was another way to keep you safe, I would have done it already. Now keeping you silent is the best course of action for every party involved. Trust me on that.
—your old friend
The words bled together.
Before she could grab her ash satchel, a sharp pain stabbed her finger.
She lifted her hand in horror.
Ink had burrowed beneath her nail bed in the spot where her finger had touched the paper. She stood slowly, staring at her finger. A foul metallic flavor filled her mouth. Heavy liquid pooled against her tongue that tasted like metal and ash, and her throat burned hot as if a candle were sparking to life inside of her.
She choked and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and a smear of oily black residue came off. Ink. She tried to scream, but only a muffled scratch came from her throat.
Keeping you silent is the best course of action .
The professor had meant it quite literally.
Panicked, Maeve emptied the entire bag of crematory ash between her lips and forced herself to swallow it down.
The pain in her throat receded, which only made her conscious of how badly the fingers on her left hand stung from where she’d touched the letter. Her thumb had turned black. It was spreading up her hand.
There was no ash left save for a dusty coating on the inside of the satchel, but she plunged her thumb inside of it, swaying at the barest relief, until her stomach cramped, probably from ingesting the ash.
A light flickered on.
Mr.Braithwaite came out in his pajamas. “Isla? Is that you?”
Maeve turned to him.
He staggered at the sight of her. “What is this?”
She tried to speak, but her throat was too ravaged. Ink dripped from her nostrils. It streamed down her chin. She gagged and barely managed to keep herself from retching.
“Demon, shoo!” Mr.Braithwaite shouted, coming toward her. He swung his cane down on her thigh with a crack. He raised it again and jabbed it into her stomach.
“I’m not a demon,” Maeve silently mouthed, wincing in pain.
Swiping her mouth, she crouched down and scrambled for her saddlebag and cloak.
Mr.Braithwaite’s cane cracked against her back, tearing her blouse. The sharp wood bit between her shoulder blades, and she shook in a silent scream.
Before he could bring the cane down again, she ran out the front door, and didn’t stop.
Dunsmore Station was an hour’s walk west on a good day, but it would take longer in the snow. The station would have heated lavatories and benches to rest.
Maeve tossed on her cloak and started for it, stumbling over wheel ruts, black ink dribbling from her mouth and hissing as droplets fell against the fresh snow.
The wind picked up. A freezing gust hit her blackened hand, and her eyes watered from the pain. Her body was filled with hot adrenaline. Her mind was sharp. Flooded with fear. She didn’t know what that scribing had done, but she knew enough to be worried. She had no more crematory ash, and there was no way to get more without returning to the Post and begging the stewards—and likely being arrested.
She had to keep going.
Using her good hand, Maeve felt her pocket for the lump of a biscuit she’d saved. It was a day old, but she shoved it between her ink-smeared lips, then pulled a glove down over her searing fingers to keep them from freezing off, biting the biscuit against the pain.
She swallowed it down afterward, immediately regretting her decision. Her gut churned from ingesting the ash, and she bent and retched a black puddle onto the snow. Then she forced herself to continue west, through a southern section of the city populated by shuttered factory buildings and little else.
The roads were empty. Desolate. Maeve could barely see anything in the snow. It drifted over her feet, lapping at her legs.
Doubts crept in. She began to wonder if she’d accidentally turned southwest instead of straight west and whether she would make it to Dunsmore Station at all. She didn’t recognize anything around her and couldn’t feel her feet. Then she turned down another street and halted at a dilapidated barn, its large door hanging open. A shelter.
She hobbled for it, moving as quickly as her half-frozen feet would allow, then slipped past the rusted door. There was nothing but straw and old horse pens long empty. At least it was out of the wind and snow.
Maeve gathered old hay against an interior wall, then tucked herself into the pile. Her hand throbbed, but there was nothing to do but hold it against her chest and shut her eyes.
The night was long. She slept in fits and starts, dreaming of nothing but black sky and frozen ground. Then she eventually fell into a deeper sleep, only to be jolted awake by pain.
An excruciating pain radiated up her left arm.
It left her breathless—afraid to move. She tried wiggling her fingers and managed to wag her thumb. Biting down on her lower lip, she tore off her glove and held up her left hand.
Good god. Blisters lined the pads of her thumb, which was now fully black, along with half of her pointer finger. She brought it to her nose. The skin smelled like ink set to flame.
The saliva soured in her mouth, and she bent and retched again onto the moldering hay, then sat up with a violent shiver.
She had to find help. There was no denying it now.
Clutching her blackened hand to her stomach, she was able to stagger outside, where a stark morning greeted her.
Night drifts had blown a bank of snow against the side of the barn. Her blackened fingers barked with protest as she plunged them deep into snow and kept them under until a blissful numbness swallowed them, and she was able to replace her glove without expiring right there in the shadow of the rotted barn.
Using her good hand, she scooped a handful of snow and pushed it between her lips to soothe her aching throat. Curious at the extent of the damage, she tried to say a few words but could barely speak through the pain.
She had her journal, at least. If her inks weren’t frozen, she could always try to communicate by writing. A carriage would come through here at some point. She could write out instructions to take her to City Hospital.
Maeve paused at the thought and glanced down at her left hand curled in on itself.
There was no way to hold a quill to write. If she hadn’t dunked her thumb in the dregs of her ash satchel, there might not be a hand at all.
Fion Claryman had tried to silence her completely.
Her teeth ground together, then ached from the bitter cold. This day would kill her if she didn’t get somewhere warm soon.
She tried to hurry, but her feet were still numb. Her progress was slow at best. When a carriage finally turned and came up the road, Maeve waved desperately, but it didn’t so much as slow down. She considered throwing herself in front of it, but the pain in her hand prevented her from any sudden movements. It ached all the way to her gums. Eventually, it forced her to slow, then sit down hard on an iced-over stump beside the road.
Her body was too tired to remove her glove and check her left hand, but she could feel blisters scraping against the material at her wrist.
Would she even make it to get help? Maybe a constabulary courier would find a corpse instead.
No, they wouldn’t find her at all; the tracking scribing didn’t work on the dead.
For some reason, Maeve found that funny. Hilarious, in fact. Laughter burst from her ravaged throat until her belly shook from it. Yes, she was certainly delirious.
She stopped abruptly at the sound of more horse’s hooves.
Staggering up, she managed to drag her limp body to the middle of the road, where she squinted into the gray winter light.
It was a coach, all right. Large and black, it hurtled toward her, its two draft horses kicking up icy debris.
It wasn’t stopping or slowing.
Maeve leapt out of the way before it could hit her, landing on her back on the side of the road.
Unable to move her head, she squinted up at the sky as the morning sun tried its best to scrape through the gray clouds.
She wasn’t sure how long she lay there. Minutes? Hours? But eventually, she heard another, smaller noise. The crunch of footsteps over packed snow.
Maeve thought she was hallucinating and rolled to her side, blinking at a polished pair of boots filling her field of vision. An officer’s boots? Someone must have tracked her here to arrest her. At least prison would be warmer than this.
The owner of the boots knelt.
“I thought I told you to never leap in front of oncoming carriages,” Tristan said.
A wave of relief hit Maeve as sharply as a blow.
Tristan had come for her. Did he track her here? No, he wouldn’t have broken his promise. The constabulary had to be searching for her, and Tristan got word and decided to find her first. That had to be it.
She waited for him to mention it, but he didn’t. He brought his hand to her cheek and gently tilted her face, his expression carefully blank. “Why, pray tell, is there black ink covering your mouth?”
“A long story,” she whispered, then winced in pain.
Biting off his glove, he brought the back of his hand to her forehead and swore. “You’re burning up. We need to get you inside.”
He gestured to a saddled horse waiting a few paces away. Butternut.
“I’d rather stay put,” Maeve whispered.
He ignored her and helped her to stand.
Too quickly.
The world tilted, and she lost her balance, falling against him. Tristan might have said something, but she wasn’t sure. Her right ear rung, and her left felt entirely plugged. She peeled off her cloak so the cool air could chase away the heat of her skin. The chill felt divine, until Tristan gripped her left hand.
A scream tore from her ravaged throat.
He took her wrist. She tried pushing him off, but her muscles felt useless.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a clipped tone, and peeled off her glove, drawing in a hiss through his teeth.
The blackened patch had spread to two more fingers and half of her palm. The sight made her drop to her knees.
“Shit,” she whispered.
“ Shit is right.”
“It was from a scribing.”
“I can see that.”
Bending, he put his hands beneath her. She tried to push him away, to stand on her own again. “Stop struggling, you fool.”
Maeve felt the ground rush away as Tristan lifted her into his arms and made for Butternut. When the large horse stomped its hooves, she passed right out.