CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Together, Dot and Theodora hurried down and down the steps, drawing ever deeper beneath the city. Dot’s heart thrummed in the back of her throat.
‘We need to break your contract,’ she said, taking the stack of paper from Theodora.
‘Let’s do it now,’ said the witch, pausing.
‘I’ve only ever fought the Ancient Spirit’s magic; I’ve never used it.’
‘Your human magic is strong,’ said Theodora. She took Dot’s hand. ‘This city is flooded, and you’re still going.’
‘It’s weakening,’ said Dot. ‘I keep drawing on my anger but it’s not enough anymore, Theo. I don’t know if I can—’
A wind ripped up the staircase and yanked them violently down.
Dot and Theodora crashed and tumbled down each remaining step until they landed, at last, on the wet cement floor of the true laboratory of the daemon, Salamander.
‘You’re early, Tessa.’
The giant room reeked like a zoological enclosure mixed with old magic and burnt chemicals.
It was noisy and Dot, after subtly stuffing the contract in the back of her trousers, hidden by her coat, stopped herself from drawing her hands over her ears.
The sounds of squawking and babbling and moaning rose all around in an orchestral encirclement.
Surrounding them were thousands of stacked cages, each of them carved in varnished wood just like the King’s menagerie.
Dot paled. There was a spirit the size of an elephant in a cage beside her; she was shaped like a bureau, half broken and splintered.
Runes were carved into her side, tubes sticking painfully into her body.
The tiniest of the trapped spirits were the size of thimbles, with minute cables wrapped around them.
The largest was in the far corner, a gaseous cloud of wax and fire, as big as a Ferris wheel, wheezing, sobbing.
To her right was a mountain spirit whose wide, grey body glittered like stone under morning sun.
A huge rune had been burned into his chest. He was crumpled and crying like a babe.
‘And hello again to you, Miss Walcott,’ said Salamander. The daemon sat in the middle of the giant room behind a mahogany desk. His fountain pen paused in his grip.
Theodora threw out a hand, but the daemon’s amphibious fingers twitched, and the nearby mountain spirit shone with sudden light.
He screamed as his magic was leeched from him through the conduence and shot out at Theodora.
Stone bindings sprang around Theodora’s arms and legs, pinning her down.
Like a match burned through, the spirit expired and turned to ash.
Dot shrieked and ripped her eyes away from the violence of it. She dropped to Theodora’s side and, with shaking hands, tugged uselessly at the stone bindings.
‘You are lucky that Belchamber was not my conduit,’ said Salamander, rising.
Dot balanced her magic, picturing the rune for unlock, the rune for break, the rune for shatter.
Every spell she sent at the stone failed.
In her panic, she took to Theodora’s bindings with her hands, ignoring the pain of her amputation, fingers scraping the stone, talons scratching at it.
‘I suppose,’ the daemon went on, drawing nearer, ‘Opal Weyer barely used a hair of Belchamber’s magic. ’
‘Dorothy,’ said Theodora. ‘You can do it. Break the—’
Salamander waved one finger. Theodora’s voice was lost.
The witch’s eyes went wide, darting between Dot and the daemon.
Dot reached for the contract beneath her coat but one of Salamander’s long white barbs shot out from his back and yanked her up by the wrists, turning her to face him. He towered over her.
Then, Salamander looked down on Theodora.
‘I expected to chase you across Calléum,’ said the daemon. ‘I did not expect this. Gone is the young lady who in her hubris pretended to be some foreign sorcerer’s daughter. How amused I was. How I enjoyed tearing down all that you had the arrogance to create.’
The daemon stepped slimily past Theodora and, to Dot’s surprise, placed her down. Freed from his grip, she rubbed at her wrists.
‘I will not harm you, Dorothy,’ said Salamander. ‘And I admit, I now regret the unhappy memories I made you relive. I have an offer for you. It is generous and I believe it will bring you some excitement.’
Dot’s mind churned. If she ran, Salamander would only tear her back. If Dot reached for the contract, the daemon would seize it.
‘Dorothy,’ said Salamander, commanding her full attention. ‘I would like to offer you an apprenticeship.’
Dot’s eyes went wide.
Salamander smiled. ‘Ah. What did you think I wanted with you? To cage you like one of these specimens? To turn you into a conduit like I did to Miss Weyer? Your magic is too special for that. Let me prove your value.’
Dot glanced down at Theodora, twisting in her stone bindings.
The witch shook her head, desperate.
‘I have seen your memories,’ said the daemon. ‘Your family was cruel. Emily was cruel. Robert Liutprand Lashkari was cruel. Theodora betrayed you. I ask you, Dorothy, what did you do to deserve their nasty glances and perverse laughter?’
‘Lio wasn’t cruel,’ said Dot. ‘He was hurt.’
A long white barb shot out from Salamander’s back and connected with Dot’s temple. She buckled as the daemon’s magic surged through her.
‘He told you to grow up,’ came Salamander’s voice.
Dot watched flashes of Lio, drunk in the courtyard, yelling at her – she was back there, ashamed and furious and humiliated.
Salamander took back his barb and Dot dropped to her knees on the wet cement.
‘He was not the only one. They all told you to grow up, in one way or another. They mocked you when you talked about the radio or the ocean or maps. Your brother, Willard, laughed at the way you flapped your hands and covered your ears and counted the planks of wood on the pier. Why?’
Salamander circled her, now standing between Dot and the staircase. She shrank under his gaze, her back now to Theodora.
‘Your father yelled at you when you were only a babe for casting the spells that were your birthright. He did this until you masked it all away, stifled it, used magic only in your dreams. That man told you he loved you. He lied.’
Dot skirted away from the daemon and stumbled over Theodora’s pinned body. She sat promptly beside the witch, eyes fixed on Salamander. Theodora strained against her bindings to take Dot’s hand in hers.
‘How old were you,’ said the daemon, crouching, ‘when you understood in earnest that the only way to be loved was to be something other than yourself?’
Dot closed her eyes.
‘You have spent a lifetime, Dorothy Walcott, manipulating people into loving you. Laughing at quips you did not understand, smiling as others excluded you, pretending that their snickers did not hurt your feelings. In so many ways, your performances have been more myriad, more masterful than Tessa’s, Theodora’s, Kae?s’s, Justine’s, Bianca’s.
The one time you lifted that mask and showed someone your anger, what happened? ’
Dot’s eyes were stinging now.
‘You killed a girl,’ said Salamander.
‘I didn’t.’ The tears flowed from Dot’s eyes. Theodora clutched tighter at Dot’s fingers. Rupert was dead. Lio, somewhere above them, was surely dying. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘You did,’ said Salamander. ‘She deserved it.’
Dot’s throat tightened. Fatigue descended. Her ears began to ring.
Salamander’s barbs shot toward her again.
They wrapped around her wrists and yanked her from Theodora.
Dot began to balance. She pictured the rune for enflame, but the spell did not take. Within herself, she threw the twin streams back and forth, lurching into the deepest of historic hurts to fuel her spite.
It wasn’t enough.
Her anger, so hitherto untapped, had at last run empty.
Dot pushed harder for her magic, but she slipped into despair. Two new scales grew over her shoulder and she winced.
The daemon reached for her temple. His magic connected with her mind once more. Dot felt vicious now. Envying, jealous, ambitious. None of it was fair.
‘That is who you are, Dorothy,’ said Salamander. ‘Not this timid woman of twenty-three years, repressed and relegated to the spells of children. Others smothered you until you bit at their hands. That Emily girl was the first to feel your teeth, and it served her right.’
Salamander’s barbs wrapped tighter around her wrists. Theodora stared up at Dot from the floor, tears cascading from her eyes. Around them, the spirits in their thousands were watching from their cages. It was too much. Too loud, too tight, too sad. Dot buckled, and his barbs supported her body.
‘Dorothy,’ hissed Salamander, coming closer. She felt his wet breath on her face. ‘You could not be loved, so you wanted to be magic.’
Her breath turned thin. Somehow, from the recesses of her mind, came the sound of Belchamber’s voice.
About the room, Miss Dorothy. Name what you can see.
Darkness. Scales. Stone. Wood. Theo.
What you can smell.
Salt. Mould. Sweat. Seaweed. Blood.
What you can feel.
Pain. Regret. Fatigue. Guilt. Shame.
‘Dorothy,’ said Salamander. ‘It was not until I had Opal draw upon your magic that I began to understand it. You have been told your whole life that you are too sensitive. Yet, this is the very reason you are not yet an acolyte.’
‘How could you know that?’ asked Dot weakly.
‘Because I can do this.’
Salamander touched Dot’s temple again. She screamed. Dot saw flashes of Emily drowning, of Opal cutting off her finger, of Theodora taking a bread stick, of Theodora handing Dot a blue towel, of Theodora beside her in the tea shop.
‘If you were your true self, Tessa would despise you,’ said Salamander.
Dot glanced down at Theodora. The witch shook her head again. When Dot looked back at the daemon, he smiled.
‘What are you really offering me?’ asked Dot.