Chapter Forty-Three
As much as she braced herself for it, when the cloth was ripped off her prison, she still wasn’t expecting it. Maybe she could never have fully been braced for such a thing.
The world spiralled back in, blinding her for a stricken heartbeat. Golden light flared at the corners of her vision. There were gasps and cries of astonishment.
‘But that’s a human, Joshua!’
‘Is it . . . is that . . .’
‘What is it?’
Frida lifted her eyes and found herself staring at Sir Joshua Beaufort, the 3rd Earl of Marlow.
His smiling, handsome face, just like in the portraits.
Not only in the Ground Control kitchen, but in the Extraordinary Café, in the New Library, at the entrance gates.
There was that auburn hair, curling in waves around his tanned face, the spattering of freckles across his straight, well-defined nose. Eyes the colour of deep chestnut.
There were others too that she knew she’d recognise if she dared look.
Women in silken gowns, glittering and bejewelled.
Men with moustaches, fine black coats and starched cravats.
Green liveried servants whisking away the heavy piece of cloth that had kept her hidden.
She’d imagined the servants would have been banished for such an event.
But no, they saw it too. Frida felt her heart shattering into a thousand pieces, crushed beneath her hero’s immaculate boot.
It was as if all her life, everything that she’d ever believed, flared before her in bright HD technicolour.
All the infinite ways she’d loved the LEZ. Her church. Her safe place. Her home.
‘How can you do this?’ she whispered.
This, of course, drew more gasps.
‘It speaks!’
One of the sisters touched Sir Joshua’s arm, her dark ringlets framing her delicate, intelligent face.
Her dress was blue as forget-me-nots, a match to her eyes.
It was Jane. Jane. Jane who’d called her kelpie Sappho.
Jane who would have been Frida’s friend.
‘You think it is a demon?’ she asked curiously.
‘Yes!’ Sir Joshua cried, picking Jane up and spinning her around in his delight. ‘Yes, you are quite correct, dearest. Always the smart one. A demon indeed.’ When Joshua set Jane down, the sister Frida had idolised gave a low, wondering laugh.
Frida’s body sagged.
Another of the sisters drew closer, her dress green as oak groves.
Eleanor, Frida knew by her button nose and light gold streaks in her reddish hair.
‘Are you not mistaken, dear brother?’ she asked, furrowing her burnished brows.
‘It looks very human, if not for the way it glows and those . . .’ She shuddered. ‘Those tattoos.’
‘And its eyes,’ Jane added shrewdly.
Joshua nodded. He patted Eleanor’s hand. ‘Jane is right. It is not human. Power consumes it. See how it shrinks from the bars, which a human may touch with no effect?’ To demonstrate, he wrapped a strong hand around the gate, his proximity making Frida flinch. He smiled. ‘You see?’
In the corner, another of the sisters had collapsed into an armchair and was in the process of being fanned by one of the servants.
But at Sir Joshua’s words, she pushed the servant away with a squeal and skipped forwards.
Wild red curls. Famous rosebud lips. Frida almost laughed out loud.
However much she willed herself to stop shaking, her teeth would not stop rattling in her skull.
Georgiana pushed past her sisters and the circle of leering men.
She had a cake clasped in one hand, and with the other she brushed a fingertip along the bars, making an affected oohing sound.
Without thinking, Frida lurched forwards and gnashed her teeth, coming as close as she dared to Georgiana’s pale fingers.
The woman shrieked with delight.
Someone else, Hannah – Frida guessed by the soft hazel of her eyes – also squealed, but with fear. ‘Step back, dear, please!’ Hannah begged her younger sister.
Joshua’s smile stretched wider. Frida regretted her display, but she longed to wrap her fingers around his smiling neck. The men had crowded back around and were pointing at her like she was a circus tiger. Even in her despair, she could acknowledge the irony.
‘It is time, Mr Gladstone!’ Joshua cried. ‘You must explain your genius!’
Frida’s head jerked, frantically twisting to try and see the man to whom she owed this nightmare.
The slippery, oily genius. She scanned all the faces of the LEZites, recognising each one.
Laurence Harding, notebook in hand, sandy blond hair swept back to reveal striking blue eyes, passionately scribbling.
God – if she ended up in one of his poems .
. . Edward Caval, near popping out of his waistcoat, face red as a tomato as he quaffed from a crystal-cut glass of what looked like brandy.
James Gaunt, tall and spindly as a rake.
William Cliff, the spy, with floppy jowls and a receding hairline.
No Charles, she noted. But then, she’d never heard of a Charles on the LEZ’s board. Clearly his talents pertained to other things.
She couldn’t see Henry Gladstone either. That is until William Cliff stepped aside, and then there he was, unfolding himself from a chair by the fireplace. Ink-stained fingers smoothing down his scruffy black jacket.
‘Yes, of course Mr Beaufort,’ the man said meekly.
His voice was barely audible. A thin croaky thing.
As he moved towards the cage, Frida did a double take.
This was not the Henry Gladstone that she’d imagined, the charismatic, slick, royalty-adjacent genius.
This man had a food stain on his shirt that he was awkwardly trying to remove.
In his portrait, he had sharp eagle-like features and strong hands that gripped the world.
But as he drew closer, she caught a faint unwashed smell about him.
The other men recoiled slightly, stepping back to make room.
Sir Joshua leaned against the mantle, crossing his arms patiently over his chest. If Frida had still been harbouring hopes that Sir Joshua was just a puppet for the scientific genius that was Henry Gladstone .
. . well, those hopes died a certain death as Gladstone nervously pushed a greasy wisp of pale blond hair off his forehead.
If Frida had to find one word to describe him, it would be wrinkled.
From his jacket to his trousers to the deep lines carved into his sallow face.
His clothes hung off him, as if he might prefer to just fade away, lost forever in the folds of his dinner jacket.
‘Ah – um . . .’ he stammered. ‘As you know, before now, we have relied on power extracted from the artifacts. The horn, the tongue . . . most latterly, the Jewel.’ He waved a shaking hand. ‘All . . . all useful, but all inevitably finite.’
‘Get on with it, man,’ Edward Caval muttered.
William Cliff, with the floppy jowls, chuckled.
Sir Joshua looked irritated.
Henry flushed crimson. ‘Yes, yes, my apologies.’ He waved a hand desperately, almost knocking Georgiana’s cake from her fist. She squealed.
‘Oh dear, I’m sorry. Oh dear. I, uh, well with these new advancements, we go right to the source.
’ As if to demonstrate, Henry rapped his fist soundly on the bars.
Frida shrank away instinctively. Henry jumped too, startled by his own boldness.
‘The creature – witness the light around it! I have . . . uh . . . found a way to pull the power from its very own body.’
This, it seemed, was Sir Joshua’s cue. He swept forwards, draping an arm companionly over Henry’s shoulders and looking to the others for confirmation. ‘Isn’t he a genius?’
Georgiana frowned, her pretty brows knitting. ‘I’m afraid I do not understand, brother.’
Joshua patted Henry on the shoulder and nudged him unequivocably back towards his chair by the fireplace. ‘Thank you, Henry, you’ve done a fine job. Have one of the servants get you a brandy, hmm?’
Henry fled, relief vibrating off his rumpled dinner jacket as Sir Joshua’s melodic voice carried into every corner of that hateful room.
‘Listen well, my friends. What Mr Gladstone has done surpasses all other scientific advancements.’ Like a boom of portent, Frida imagined his words seeping into every corner of the world.
He paused to look at each of the LEZites in turn.
‘I believe the consequences of that which we see here tonight will reverberate down the centuries.’
‘Yes, I understand that, but what exactly is it?’ Edward Caval boomed.
Sir Joshua’s chestnut eyes blazed. ‘Henry has found a way to harness the magic of these monsters, directly from their souls, Edward! We will have no more need for horns, messy body parts, scavenged accoutrements. We may now use the power of their very being to power the fences that hold them.’
There was a long moment of stunned silence.
‘They are the ones who fire their own entrapment?’ Jane gasped finally.
Frida let the words register.
‘It is poetic,’ Laurence Harding said under his breath.
Frida gaped at the poet. Then she stared in horror at the bars, and down at her own skin, sickly light seeping off them both.
Poetic? She was powering this cage. Not the Jewel, not the horn or anything else, but her own magic.
Lucky’s gift to her. This was what they were using to hold her, to torture her.
She thought of the LEZ, and the terrible pain in her head, that felt so similar to this pain.
Was this how the wards worked in the LEZ?
Un-magics, Lucky had called them.
It will reverberate down the centuries.
She gazed up at Sir Joshua, and his broad smile of affirmation was world-ending.