Chapter Twenty-Two
Two days by coach and three by crowded train later, I could scarcely stand my own smell, and I never wanted to hear a wheel or a machine or any sort of cacophony again in my entire life.
So, when we came to stand beneath the hand-painted sign at a gambling hall in Sterling City, with rancid smoke and the sour scent of spilled ale pouring from the open door, all I could ask was “Here? Are you sure?”
Sterling City shivered around me, a metropolis without rest. I’d never been to this district before.
Flickering lamps shone down on us, each connected to ribbony conduction cables.
The Far Bank had been the last district to have its lighting upgraded from gaslights to radiance lamps.
Now that we were here, and my boots were sticking to the filthy cobblestones at my feet, I could imagine why.
My gaze drifted from the sign that read BIG T TAVERN to a column of posters pasted to the brick beside the door.
They advertised card tournaments and dance revues and medicinal elixirs.
One simply depicted clowns lined up to view the Hall of Radiance at the Continental Exposition.
“That’s evocative,” I murmured appreciatively.
Regardless of the fascinating art on display, I wanted Julian to be wrong about Nikola’s whereabouts.
I wanted her to reside in a lovely manicured garden somewhere.
Or even better, in a large room in a clean boarding house where I could order a bath and borrow her downy mattress for a very, very long nap.
“I love gambling,” Ezra said unhelpfully.
“Not on my tab, you don’t.” Julian walked into the blueish cloud of smoke, and we had no choice but to follow.
Loud music and louder voices assaulted me, a thick noise reminiscent of the dining hall on the rare times when we’d been allowed to play during our first years at the House.
Ezra’s fingers wrapped around my upper arm when a man with a spittle-stained beard leaned back in his chair and made a sound somewhere between the yowl of a cat and the howl of a dog—his wormy blue eyes locked onto mine.
“Come sit on my lap,” he called, patting himself suggestively.
I wrenched myself from Ezra’s grip and lurched toward the man.
For a heartbeat, his eyes widened with delight.
Then my small hands wrapped around his bristly throat and twisted into his greasy hair, and I let him feel the radiance skittering around my fingers.
I tightened my grip. This was delicate work. Good, easy work.
The smell of burning flesh rose between us, but it was lost in the rest—the vomit and perfume and rancid food and pipe smoke. He made no sound at first, only a frantic whine. Then his throat vibrated with a panicked cry.
“Do I make you warm?” I asked with a wide smile, enjoying his gurgling scream until Julian and Ezra dragged me away.
“I wasn’t finished,” I protested weakly, craning back to watch the man fall out of his chair and seize on the ground, patting frantically at the blistering, raw bruises on his throat. No one paid him any attention. He was another senseless drunk in a room nearly too packed to see across.
“You are vicious,” Ezra observed mildly.
“Try not to have us thrown out,” Julian muttered.
“Surely we’re in agreement that my actions were justified,” I said breathlessly, all lit up inside with a surge of fear and rage and vengeance that made my skin tingle. They herded me between them, both so annoyingly tall that they blocked most of my view of the crowd that we pressed through.
Ezra shook his head with a rueful grin that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. He was looking all around, surveying the mob of people as if expecting someone to lunge at us.
“I remain surprised they didn’t make you a Transistor,” Julian said, taking my elbow to lead me up creaking stairs that sagged like they might collapse under our weight.
We passed two figures done up in lace and frippery, her brown skin lit with gold cream and his white cheeks reddened with rouge.
I skirted around them, face heating as I realized they were harlots.
The girl gave me a wink that left my breath stuttering.
I could see quite a lot of her bosoms. The boy laughed musically and swatted at Ezra’s bottom.
“Where are we going?” I hissed at Julian.
We reached a landing with a balcony that overlooked on the gambling den, and up here there were others lounging on velvet settees, displayed in all manners of dress—and undress.
“There’s only one thing people pay attention to in a gambling den’s loft,” Julian was saying.
A low, amused voice finished the thought for him. “And it certainly isn’t science.”
Julian stopped short, his grip on my sleeve tightening until he nearly ripped the fabric.
I followed his stare to the sight of a woman with thick black bangs and hair that fell unbound to her waist like a curtain of night.
Her skin was richly tan and her lips full.
She wore baggy men’s trousers held up by leather braces, and a tailored black vest over a crisp gray shirt.
She was nearly as tall as Julian. And she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
I resisted a strange and strong urge to bow as Julian smiled and let go of my sleeve to clasp her hand in both of his, cradling it like a treasure.
He looked back at me and Ezra, eyes shining.
I saw the boy who had held Maggie fiercely, the boy who had cried in my arms. “This is Nikola. Nikola, these are my friends.”
“You have friends?” she asked, one brow rising in an arch like a fine brushstroke. “We must have a lot to talk about.”
“Why is she in a place like this?” I asked Julian in a whisper as I dodged gauzy lace, acutely aware of the tittering laughter that followed us down a narrow hallway and up another set of stairs that groaned beneath our feet.
“It’s my father’s building,” Nikola said, unlocking the door with a ring of keys fastened to her hip. She gave me a quick look that dared me to object to what she had to say next. “He’s in a debtor’s prison. No one has bothered to sell the place off and get him released.”
“Oh,” I said, slowly making sense of her words. Julian had said that her early life in the city had not been ideal. No wonder she didn’t sound troubled by her father’s circumstances.
Ezra followed behind me, ducking his head as we entered an attic loft with tall, narrow windows. Several gas lamps lit the room full of bookshelves and long tables and one narrow cot in the corner.
When Julian spotted an unlit lamp with the seal of the House of Industry wrought into the iron, he lit it with an effortless touch of radiance, and a brighter glow filled the room.
“That’s much better,” Nikola said, picking up a pair of spectacles from the table and sliding them on.
Ezra and I shared a confused look, before I dared to ask, “I thought you were opposed to using radiance?”
“That’s an oversimplification. Radiance is toxic, but we have the power to control exposure to it and use it ethically and responsibly.
The wasting is rooted in excessive use.” Nikola sat on a stool at the high table, watching me as if gauging whether I was capable of following along.
“My theory is that very young Children of Industry have no control and emit a constant low dose of radiance that accelerates the wasting in their caretakers. Typically their parents. That’s what you were going to ask, correct? ”
“Well,” I said weakly, “perhaps not immediately.” It’s what I’d assumed, though not with such stark clarity. In a way, it was a dark comfort. I had control now. More control than a little child, at any rate. That meant I wasn’t hurting Ezra simply by being near him.
Nikola turned to Julian, who continued to fidget uncharacteristically with the lamp. “Why aren’t you in Cascade with my grandparents?” she asked.
All the air left my lungs. Maybe it left the room, too. Left the sky above us.
In the strangeness of this encounter, I’d briefly forgotten why we were here. I should have stayed outside, downstairs. Stayed with Ezra and left Julian to this terrible private errand.
Yes, even as the thought struck me, I knew I wouldn’t have left him alone to bear this.
Julian’s hand stilled. He straightened and turned to face her, his posture too stiff. For a moment, he was the Senior of Frostbrook’s Mission again, cold and haughty.
“Don’t do that.” Nikola stood, the stool wobbling with the swiftness of the motion. But she did not approach him. “Don’t.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant the artifice of his sudden formality or the words she feared would come.
“Two Transistors went to Cascade and attacked Maggie and the others.” Julian spoke plainly, his gaze on the floorboards between them. “They burned down the laboratories. And everything else.”
With trembling fingers, Nikola removed her spectacles. She set them down with a clumsy clatter. “Did anyone escape?”
“They did not.”
Slowly, Nikola nodded. I could hear her breath coarsening, but she did not cry.
She placed her palm on the table, fingers splayed widely, and leaned against it as if she would not allow herself to crumble.
I wanted to scream at Julian to go to her, but at the same time, I recognized the chasm between them, plain as the cold light from the lamp.
No matter how many letters they’d exchanged, this was the first time they’d seen each other face-to-face.
“The House will surely be hunting for you,” Julian finally said. “We must continue our work in great secrecy.”
“I see. Did it not occur to you that perhaps the Transistors followed you here?” Nikola’s voice was deep and breathy, with a musical quality. It made it impossible not to listen to her.
Ezra swore under his breath. Julian looked appalled.
“If they followed us here, I’ll fight them,” I said. “I’ll kill them for what they did.”
“In good time. No one’s killing anyone tonight.” She turned to me, eyes narrowing in appraisal. “What is your name?”