Chapter 22 Kane
KANE
Kane passed the next day and a half in a slow spiral of whiskey and preoccupation. He’d spent more time than usual in the company of the other crew members, looking for anything to indicate that one of them might have been passing information to the Curator.
The obvious suspects—Cleland and Ferrington—were long gone, but Kane paid particular attention to those he knew had been friendly with the duo.
After confiding his suspicions to Fletcher, he got him to do the same, but they hadn’t learned anything as of yet.
Oh, there were handfuls of men Kane didn’t trust, but he couldn’t very well confront them without proof.
That risked revealing far too much information.
He had also taken it upon himself to personally deliver the alchemological supplies from the workshop near Moore Zaria reacted as though he’d hit her, reeling back before swallowing hard.
In that moment, she looked like a young girl, her face wiped clean of everything but shock and uncertainty.
Fletcher shot Kane a sidelong glance that might have been assessing his sanity.
“I thought you might want to go there,” Kane was quick to add.
He’d intended it as a kind gesture—now, though, he feared some reevaluation might have been warranted.
“It’s conveniently located, and you said there was more you’d wanted to learn from Cecile, so I thought we could take a look around.
Also, I know you… uh, miss her.” God, but he was a fool.
“How did you…?” Zaria began, then snorted. “Of course. That’s how you were able to deliver my request to meet with her. How could I have forgotten you knew where she lived?”
“We can go elsewhere,” Kane said.
Zaria shook her head. “I mean, Cecile said she wasn’t practicing alchemology anymore, but if all her old notes and books are still there…
” For the first time since they’d agreed to work together again, Kane saw a flicker of a rarely betrayed emotion cross Zaria’s face—one that looked remarkably close to hope.
“If Cecile knew the necklace was a fake, which I’m starting to suspect was the case, then maybe she knew who the Curator is. ”
“Then let’s go there,” Fletcher said, and Zaria nodded.
Kane felt his shoulders loosen. He knew Zaria blamed him for Cecile’s death, at least in part.
He’d been the one to summon the woman to the church where she was killed, and the men responsible had only been there because of him.
Because he’d neglected to notice that Ward was the one trying to murder Zaria all along.
Had Cecile not stepped in front of her, Zaria would have been the one dead on the crypt floor.
It was a fact Kane tried very hard not to dwell on.
Cecile’s apartment lay between Seven Dials and Regent’s Park.
It was only a couple blocks removed from Oxford Street, a busy thoroughfare that bisected London from east to west. Zaria was solemn as they approached the front entrance, Kane noticed, and after a moment of steeling himself, he joined her at the bottom of the stairs while Fletcher went to contend with the door. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing,” Zaria said, but the tension in her jaw could have bent a metal rod. Kane could tell she was withdrawing. Trying not to feel whatever it was that threatened to overwhelm her. When the hell had he come to know her so well?
“Zaria—”
She made to brush past him before he could finish, but Kane reached out and caught her wrist. He was propelled by some unidentifiable need to… what? Show her he’d not only noticed her strange behavior but that he cared about the reason behind it? Did he care?
“Stop manhandling me.” Zaria spoke through her teeth. Her dark gaze was flinty.
Kane released her. She was right—he had the unfortunate habit of using his hands when words ought to have sufficed. It was like some part of him couldn’t bear to let her walk away.
“Forgive me,” he murmured, “but there’s no use lying. Your mood changes aren’t as subtle as you think.”
“I don’t see how my mood concerns you.”
“Fine, then. Forget I asked.”
Fletcher cleared his throat. “Not to interrupt, but it looks like we won’t need to pick a lock after all.
” He gave the door to Cecile’s apartment a shove, and it swung inward a few inches, slightly off its alignment.
Odd, in this area, that Cecile wouldn’t have bothered to get that fixed before her death.
The room beyond was an inscrutable black. “Are you two coming?”
“Yes,” Kane said, but no sooner had he stepped away than did Zaria speak, the words seeming to slip out against her will.
“I just… I can’t believe she was here the whole time. Hardly more than a neighborhood away, and yet she never tried to contact me.”
Fletcher ventured a glance at Kane, who didn’t know what to say any more than his friend did. He turned back to Zaria, trying to soften his expression. It felt like wrangling his features into some unfamiliar configuration.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sure Cecile thought about contacting you all the time. She was probably just trying to keep you safe from Ward.”
The words were halting and indistinct, but Zaria seemed to appreciate them. She blinked. “I suppose. It just feels like such a waste.”
Kane reached out and grasped her shoulder firmly, the way he’d seen Jules do more than once. It might have been his imagination, but for a moment, he could have sworn she relaxed into his touch, her head canting to the side. Their eyes met. Locked. Kane was frozen, unsure, untethered.
There was a terrible squeal of hinges as Fletcher shouldered the door open farther. Kane wrenched his gaze away from Zaria’s, letting his arm fall.
“Sorry,” Fletcher said awkwardly. “But—ah, something isn’t right.”
He stood aside to let them enter the apartment.
Zaria went first, Kane on her heels. She gave a sharp intake of breath, and as Kane’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw why: The place was a mess.
Books lay face open on the floor, surrounded by loose sheets of paper and bits of metal.
A bottle of ink had toppled onto the carpet and since dried, leaving a tar-like stain.
Shards of glass lay scattered beside a half-empty shelf of dishes and stoppered vials—it looked as if someone had swept them onto the ground in a fit of rage and not bothered to tidy the mess.
What really gave Kane pause, though, was the sofa. Both the seat and the back had been sliced open in obvious haste, leaving slashes just large enough to insert one’s arm into. Ice threaded along his bones. “What the hell happened here?”
“I guess that explains the unlocked door,” Fletcher said darkly.
Zaria bent to pick up a ruined book, the misery in her face shifting to rage. “Cecile’s been gone less than a fortnight, and already thieves have ransacked her home?”
“I don’t think they were thieves” was Kane’s grim reply. “Not in the sense you’re thinking, anyway.”
Fletcher, partway through a slow lap of the room’s perimeter, nodded. “They were looking for something.”
“Cecile wouldn’t have had anything of value,” Zaria argued. “She hadn’t practiced alchemology in years.”
“Maybe it wasn’t related to alchemology,” Fletcher said.
Kane scanned the array of items. “Look at what the intruder went through: books, documents, and vials that you’d use to store supplies. I think it’s pretty obvious what they were looking for.” He kicked a bit of metal, causing it to roll across the wooden floorboard with a hollow clink.
Zaria dully watched it approach her feet. “And what’s that?”
“The primateria source. Obviously Cecile had information about it, and I suspect you aren’t the only person who figured that out.”
“Having information is one thing. Why would anyone think she had the source itself ?”
“I suppose that’s the question.” Kane wondered fleetingly if Cecile could have had any connection to the Curator, then dismissed the notion.
The Curator clearly didn’t want anyone to know the necklace in the Waterhouse display was a forgery.
Cecile, on the other hand, had been trying to convey that fact to Zaria upon her death.
“Well, whoever it was, we can assume they didn’t find what they were looking for,” Fletcher said. He held up a slashed pillow with two fingers, grimacing as feathers fluttered to the floor around him. “Nobody slices open a sofa unless they’re growing desperate.”
Zaria knit her brow. “Who would know to come here, though? I mean, I didn’t even know where Cecile lived.”
“Ward knew,” Kane reminded her.
“Maybe he told someone, or else let it slip,” suggested Fletcher.
“He’d never give away information by accident.”
Zaria waved a hand to silence them. Impatience settled in the shape of her full mouth as she crouched in the center of the room, grabbing the nearest sheets of paper.
“It doesn’t matter. It happened, and hopefully whoever was here didn’t take anything important.
Now, I suppose if we want to find out what else Cecile knew, we’d better start reading. ”
Kane settled himself on the arm of the ruined couch with a sigh, using the toe of his boot to pull a torn bit of parchment closer.
He picked it up and turned it over. It appeared to be a page from a book, with several notes in what he assumed was Cecile’s hand scrawled in the margins.
It made little sense to him, and he wasn’t a fast reader, but ultimately he was able to glean its irrelevance and tossed it aside.
Fletcher hovered in one corner of the room, his arms crossed. His cheeks pinked when Zaria glanced up at him.
“By all means, just stand there,” she said crisply, rearranging a handful of pages.
Kane replied on Fletcher’s behalf. “He can’t read.”
“Oh.” Now it was Zaria’s turn to be embarrassed.
Although periodicals were increasingly accessible to people of all classes, it wasn’t uncommon for those in the slums to be illiterate.
Fletcher didn’t technically live in a slum, but he hailed from a poor farming community in Ireland where learning to read simply hadn’t been a priority.
Kane had attempted to teach his friend a few times, but being a poor reader himself, he wasn’t a very good instructor.
He was tense as he waited for Zaria’s response, prepared to defend Fletcher from her derision, but she only said, “Okay. Never mind, then.”
Fletcher visibly relaxed. “I’ll search the other rooms while you two do that.”
There couldn’t have been much more to the apartment, but Kane nodded. Once Fletcher was gone, he addressed Zaria in a whisper. “Thanks.”
She looked up from her book. “For what?”
“Not giving him hell.”
“I know a lot of people who can’t read. It’s not a big deal.”
“Ward’s men are supposed to be able to, though. He’s one of a few who can’t.”
Zaria shrugged, flipping a page. “I’m not going to judge someone for the things they weren’t taught. Besides, what does it matter? I thought Ward’s men were yours now.”
There was a slight edge to her voice, and the words landed like a sobering blow. All at once, Kane remembered who he was. What he was. Something about sitting here with Zaria, surrounded by books and the sound of her voice, made his role as kingpin feel impossibly far away.
“They are,” he said, slamming a tome shut. He’d already forgotten what it was about. “I’ve made sure of it.”
He didn’t miss the flash of alarm in Zaria’s eyes as she turned back to her reading. Before Kane could try to mend whatever had just fragmented, however, Fletcher reappeared in the doorway.
“Guys? You might want to see this.”