Chapter Fourteen Theo
In the dead hours after midnight, Theodore remained in the National House rather than return to his father’s estate. Some Crafter curled over the driver’s bench atop a coach parked on the drive, waiting for him to emerge.
He wouldn’t. He stayed instead by Nina’s side while she slept, her wrists shackled to the iron bed frame. An overly decorative quilt covered her to the throat, and Theo pulled it higher still. She looked softer this way.
It wasn’t chivalry that kept him here, but quite the opposite.
His father’s manor had a dozen empty rooms all with portraits of his ancestors looming on the walls, and they watched his every move.
The walls listened. They saw each failing and triumph, and at one point in his life, he’d cared about little else.
Eventually, though, it had all started to feel backward.
The triumphs felt more like a cost. How long had he ignored that pit in his stomach?
Surely it meant something, that sickness. It shouldn’t feel so foul to win.
The door opened, and a steel-jawed maid stepped around the guard to offer him tea.
Theo frowned. “No, thank you,” he said. “I didn’t call for tea.”
Her eyes shifted to the tray she held. “I ought to leave this here… in case,” she said, setting it on the bedside table and muscling a cup and saucer into his hands.
He took it reflexively and saw that a piece of paper was caught between them.
“I’ll leave you be,” said the maid. She couldn’t seem to close the door behind her quickly enough.
Theo set the cup down and pulled the paper free, reading the message scrawled on it.
The Alchemist has asked to speak with you.
Theo frowned once more. He wondered what could be said between them at this late hour.
Nina slept on in her deadened way, and Theo sighed. He knew he oughtn’t lock himself in a room with a man who wanted to flay him.
But then, perhaps he deserved to be flayed.
The man guarding Patrick’s door didn’t question Theo’s arrival.
He wore the robes of a minister, after all.
The Crafters who worked in the House moved about as if he weren’t there, though their eyes occasionally glanced off his chest buttons, never venturing upward.
On younger, drunker evenings in the years after Nina, he’d led women from the grand ballroom to this hallway and hitched their skirts up.
The maids and guards had continued on then, too, completely dialed to task.
Theo had found it was easier to think of them that way—as machinery.
It grew confusing when you remembered they weren’t.
Theo went back into the little laboratory. It was webbed over and caked in dust. This entire floor was filled with rooms just the same—there had once been an Alchemist per office, but they were now vacant except for Patrick.
The man was standing in anticipation of his arrival. The shadow of a beard was forming over his jaw. Moonlight washed over the acreage of his chest. His hair stuck up in the places he’d clearly pulled at it.
“How did you convince the maid to bring me a note?” Theo asked. Even to him, his voice sounded hollow.
“Bluff,” Patrick said dismissively, and Theo saw then the empty sack that had held terranium ore. Patrick sighed, looking more tired than he’d ever been. “It’s always bluff they want.”
Theo waited, but Patrick seemed thousands of miles away. “And what do you want?”
Patrick looked straight at Theo, and he hated the way his insides shuddered a little. The breath in his lungs clung to the sides.
“The same as you,” Patrick said in resignation. “I want to get her out of here.”
Theo’s tongue lodged in the hollow of his cheek. He tried to keep his voice plain. “Thought she was a stranger to you now,” he said. “A traitor—”
“They’ll strip her from the waist up,” Partick interjected, his voice black as pitch. “They’ll kneel her down in the dirt, and take her blouse, and then her bra, and some copper will crack a whip over her back until she’s cut from neck to waist.” He was breathing hard now.
But so was Theo. His eyes had shut tight, but the image came anyway.
“And everyone in the city will watch,” Patrick continued. “Every man and woman will see her like that. And once that picture’s in their minds, nothing’ll scrub it out. They’ll gorge themselves on it. There’ll be caricatures in the newsprint, ain’t nothin’ you or I can do—”
“Don’t,” Theo said, his fists balling, something hot cutting at the back of his throat.
“You’ll have to watch, too.”
The thought was unbearable.
“And you’ll know you helped put her there. You stood by while the pieces were put in place. Waited for ’em to fall.”
“There isn’t another way!” Theo shouted. He turned his back to Patrick and covered his mouth with his hand. “The pieces were set long before I arrived.”
“That doesn’t absolve you.”
“I don’t wish to be absolved.”
“Don’t you?” Patrick pushed, stepping closer. “Not even by her?”
Theo swallowed. Was that what he wanted? In truth, there was a part of him that prayed she’d stay sleeping. In sleep, she couldn’t hate him. Couldn’t know what he’d done—or hadn’t.
“She’s strong,” Theo said. “Far stronger than most.” Lord, he was a sounding of his father. A direct imitation.
Patrick laughed mirthlessly. He leaned over the desk, bracing himself, his fingers to the oak. “You ever get a beltin’, Teddy?”
Theo balked. His mouth opened and shut. “No,” he said eventually.
“No,” Patrick repeated. “Well, I have. She has. Every fuckin’ kid in the brink, besides. She’ll look at you like you’re the devil after tomorrow. Do you understand?” His stare bore into Theo. “Ain’t no forgiveness after that. She won’t work for you and your father.”
“She’ll see that there’s no choice,” Theo persisted. But even he didn’t believe it.
“That’s just it,” Patrick said. “You’ll have taken all the choice out of it. And the worst thing you could do to a woman like Nina Harrow is take away her choices.”
Theo’s hands rose slightly from his sides, then fell, hapless. “Choice is an illusion,” he said numbly. “There’s none of it left on either side.”
“You can stop it, Theo,” Patrick said now.
But Theo was already shaking his head. “Do you think I didn’t try?
” he asked. “That I didn’t beg my father to find another way?
Whatever you think of me, Colson, surely you’ve learned that I can’t rid myself of her!
” He said this last in a sudden onslaught, the words crashing over themselves.
It took him several moments to catch his breath.
He knew he was unraveling. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip and tasted sweat.
“If there was a way…” The sentence lingered.
Patrick looked at him as though he found him unfathomable.
But he didn’t know Theo’s father. He didn’t understand that the man lived up in his mind, and nothing breached his heart.
But he was a fair man. He was logical to the point of pain.
He understood that the continent could not continue on as it had.
“Despite any of our feelings, this is the only way forward. This is the cost of armistice, Colson. Of truce.”
“There won’t be a truce,” Patrick said now, looking dead into Theo’s eyes.
Theo frowned. “What?”
“Your father won’t hold up his end of the bargain, Teddy. Con men like him never do.”
Theo waited several moments. But Patrick didn’t expound, and his eyes continued digging into Theo’s. “He’s a man of his word.”
“Ask him,” Patrick said. “Ask him tonight, in person. Look in his eyes when he answers.” Theo never thought he’d see the man plead.
But surely he pleaded to Theo now.
“Look for the lie,” Patrick said. “If I’m right, then Nina goes under the whip tomorrow for nothing. You can stop this.”
Theo was shaking. His hands betrayed him. “And if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not.”
Theo sighed, felt nausea swarm him. He turned to leave, but just before he reached the door, he turned back to Patrick Colson. “It’s not her forgiveness I want,” he said, his voice choking something back. “She was happy here once, in this city. Like she was born for it. I still want that for her.”
Patrick only looked on in pity, but perhaps also understanding. “Might’ve been true once, Teddy. I wouldn’t know.” He looked back to the stained glass, pulled that infernal coin from his pocket and weaved it through his fingers. “But I know this; she won’t kneel. Not now.”
“She knelt to Lord Tanner,” Theo said weakly.
“She knelt when her mother’s life hung in the balance,” Patrick said distantly. “Now you’ve no leverage, and she won’t be forced.”
Theodore’s chest concussed. “It’s not my wish, nor my father’s, to force her.”
“Ask him,” Patrick insisted. He tossed the coin, and it levitated before his eyes, spinning rapidly in the air.
“Ask him how he intends to control a hostile earth Charmer. And you can be sure she’ll be hostile, Teddy.
” Patrick looked over at him. The coin continued its pirouette.
“Neither of us know her as well as we’d like to think, but I think we know enough between us to agree on that. There’s no forgiveness for this.”
Theo knew that already. Had known it the moment the lever was pulled.
“What about you?” he asked Patrick. “Can you forgive her?”
The coin froze.
Theo left him like that, staring into nothing.
Eleven hours remained. The clock tower chimed low over the city. Midday would find Nina beneath it.
Theo walked through those hallways of the National House and past the soulless Crafters and portraits of dead lords.
He found his feet on the stairs, and instead of descending to the cellar again, he climbed.
He found himself floating to the quarters belonging to the Head of House as though detached from his own body.
When he knocked on the doors, the sound was muted.
“Come in.”
His father hovered near the hearth, looking into the flames some Charmer had summoned. Purposeless, really. Why did they need Charmers to light their hearths and lamps when a match could do the same?
“Theodore,” his father greeted on exhale, irritation apparent.
Theodore inclined his head mechanically. His neck fought the act.
“The hour is late.”
“There’s something I want to ask you.”
“I’d urge you not to want for anything,” he replied. “And not for a good while. You still have much to atone for.”
Theo collided with his body again, smacked with ire. It was always this when it came to his father. Always what he’d done wrong.
But he’d agreed to that fabricated scandal and gone to Kenton Hill for two years.
Two years in the hole with Crafters who’d loathed him.
Two years of scurrying around the parish like a rat, looking for the Alchemist. Only one slip of loyalty, in the end.
And hadn’t he returned and taken his penalties with good grace?
Hadn’t he tucked his tail and heeled, the way a son of a lord should?
Hadn’t he forsaken the one thing, the only real thing he cared about?
“Nevertheless, I must ask,” Theo began, though the words were difficult to pass, “once Nina… recovers, where will she go?”
Again, his father sighed. “She will remain here, of course.”
“She ought to be offered something more comfortable.”
Lord Shop pulled his spectacles down the bridge of his nose and pressed his fingers to the pockets of his closed eyes. “These are trivial details, Theodore. They can wait.”
Theo felt his neck heat, but he bit his tongue. “She ought to be moved.”
“There are plenty of available rooms in this building.”
“Which offer no privacy,” Theo argued. “The conditions are hardly appropriate for a lady of her station.”
“A lady of her station,” his father repeated, as though feeling the words on his tongue. “And what station do you imagine for her?”
Theodore frowned. He watched, as Patrick had told him to. “She’s a Charmer. She graduated with a high-order fellowship—”
“And now, she is an assassin,” Lord Shop interrupted, finally turning from the fire to face his son.
“Perhaps the most infamous in all of our country’s history.
” He had his hands clasped behind his back.
His face was expressionless. “Where should such a lady be accommodated, Theodore, if not the cellar?”
Theo’s molars ground together. What he said next was quiet, tampered by embarrassment. “I could offer her my living quarters temporarily. Or—or they could be shared.” He heard how pathetic it sounded. Had he really imagined carrying her over that threshold? Nursing her back to health?
He had. He must have been mad.
His father was laughing now. The sound was cold. “You still believe yourself in love with her, boy?”
His skin burned hot; sweat collected along his collar.
“Love is the strangest illusion, don’t you agree?
I think it was the great poet Lady Pennyrook who once said Love is the reflection of the agony beneath.
” Lord Shop picked up his cane and tapped it on the floor.
He exhaled once more. “At the very least, it would serve us, if she could be convinced to love you in return.” He glanced up as though dissecting the thought. “Though I don’t hold much hope.”
Theo felt the blade of a guillotine overhead, balanced precariously.
“For now, Theodore, Nina will need to play the part of prisoner to appease the ministry, and every other Artisan besides.”
“For how long?”
“Until she has won enough favors,” Lord Shop quipped, having grown tired of the conversation.
“By finding terranium.”
“Of course.”
“And if she is unwilling?” Theodore asked now, the guillotine blade slipping free of its hold.
“If she ever wants to escape this House, she will have to,” Lord Shop answered. His knuckles cracked as they flexed around his cane. “Or perhaps you can atone by persuading her to our side.”
Theodore closed his eyes. “She’d be persuaded, I think, if she knew it were for a worthy cause. If she saw the bluff and idium distributed to the brink.”
There was no answer from his father, who had pulled The Stewards’ Testament from his pocket and flicked idly through its unreadable pages.
“You do intend to distribute to the brink, do you not?” he pressed, his heart beating a requiem.
Terrence Shop closed the book with a slap, then walked unhurriedly to that overlarge desk, shutting the old tome away in its drawer.
“I intend to show them whatever illusion is necessary,” he said.
Then he collected his coat and shrugged it over his robes.
“If that illusion eases your conscience, Theodore, then by all means, do not look beneath.”