Chapter 36 Kane
KANE
Kane felt, absurdly, as though he were being led to his death.
He’d negotiated a deal with Price, yet he didn’t trust the man at all.
Foreboding settled around his shoulders as he was led through the downpour in the direction of the Crystal Palace’s main entrance, surrounded on all sides by armed, irritated-looking coppers.
Jules and Fletcher were somewhere behind him, he knew, but he didn’t dare turn around.
His blood felt like ice in his veins, and not just from the cold.
He couldn’t afford to be wrong about this.
If he was—if nobody was at the Exhibition tonight—then he’d gambled all their lives away for nothing.
That, and he would have failed to rescue Zaria.
Would undoubtedly never see her again, given that he’d be spending the rest of his life in prison.
Of course, in that instance, the rest of his life would only be as long as it took to condemn him to the gallows. Price had kindly reminded Kane of that fact on the way here.
Still, all signs pointed to something being about to happen.
Zaria being kidnapped on the same day the fourth alchemological device appeared at the Exhibition couldn’t be a coincidence.
She was the one who’d realized the center of the Crystal Palace was arranged in the perfect orientation to be a site of creation for the Magnum Opus, and Kane trusted her knowledge.
It was the only reason he’d raised the matter to Price at all.
Zaria was cleverer than the rest of them combined. Without her help, Kane wouldn’t have the few clues he did. Now he had to hope that what she’d discovered would lead to her rescue.
“What the hell is that?” Price said, jolting Kane out of his mental spiral.
A hand held up to shield his face, the inspector squinted through the rain at what appeared to be a pile of clothing on the gravel a short distance from the building.
A beat after Kane had the thought, however, the shape moved, briefly illuminated by a silent crack of lightning.
His heart plummeted into his stomach. Because it was a girl, he saw as they approached, a few of the officers raising their guns.
His first hope was that it might be Zaria, but at the same time, the idea promptly terrified him.
The ground around the girl was stained with what could only be blood.
It didn’t appear to be enough to suggest she was bleeding out, but then again, it could well have been washed away by the downpour.
“State your name,” Price ordered, motioning a couple of his men forward. They approached the girl with weapons raised, and she lifted her head, pale face contorted in pain and eyes wide with fear.
Not Zaria. Kane silently thanked God, though He likely hadn’t had much to do with it.
Jules’s voice sounded from just behind Kane. “You don’t need to point your guns at her! Do you seriously think she poses any danger?”
Price ignored that. “Your name.”
The girl swallowed. Her hair was soaking wet, having come partially loose from its knot.
It looked as though it might be a shade of red when dry.
She had both hands pressed to her hip area firmly enough that her fingers made bloody indents in her ruined dress.
“Maisie,” she said, the word a barely audible gasp.
Kane was vaguely aware of Fletcher taking a few steps forward, ignoring the coppers that moved with him.
His friend’s gaze was wide, his jaw slackening.
Despite his cuffed wrists, Fletcher lifted both hands as if to reach for the girl.
His head canted to the side as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
Kane shot him a warning look, silently trying to dissuade his friend from taking another step.
Fletcher ignored him, his lips forming a word Kane couldn’t decipher.
“What are you doing here?” Price asked Maisie. He was hovering over her now, raising his voice as if concerned she might not be able to hear him. “How were you injured?”
Maisie blinked rapidly. There was something familiar about the way her cheeks hollowed when her mouth tightened. “You need to get inside. There’s—” she cut off, wincing. “You need to stop her.”
“Stop who?” Kane interrupted, ignoring the inspector’s venomous look. The officer nearest him muttered something under his breath.
Price sighed through his nose. “Answer him,” he told Maisie, the demand laced with annoyance.
She didn’t, though. Her focus snapped up to land on something—no, someone—behind the inspector.
She had been shivering, either due to the cold or impending shock, but all at once her entire body went motionless.
A single word escaped her lips that Kane couldn’t hear.
This time, though, he recognized its shape.
Fletcher.
“Did you hear me, girl?” Price said. “I told you to answer the question.”
A distant rumble of thunder punctuated his command, but Maisie wasn’t the only one to disregard it. Jules was glancing between the girl and Fletcher with an expression of dawning comprehension, and even a couple of the coppers lowered their weapons slightly.
“Fletcher?” Maisie said again, hoarsely but this time aloud. There was an impossible amount of emotion injected into those two syllables: Disbelief. Hope. Caution. Shock.
“Answer the—”
“Shut up,” Kane told Price sharply, unable to help himself.
Despite being the one restrained, he knew that Price wouldn’t harm him personally after the threats he’d made.
He would let the court deal with Kane if it came to that.
Still, even if chastising the inspector had put Kane in the line of fire, he would have done it.
The look on Fletcher’s rain-streaked face was unlike anything he’d seen before.
It was the face Kane might have made had he seen his parents rise from the dead.
“Mairéad,” Fletcher whispered. Then, after giving himself a shake: “Help her. She needs medical attention.” He glanced wildly around at the dumbstruck coppers. “Help her!”
The name struck a chord somewhere deep in Kane.
It had been years since he’d last heard it, but he remembered it nonetheless.
Mairéad—that was the name of the little sister Fletcher had lost. The reason he’d come to London in the first place, desperate to find her, though he’d ultimately given up the search.
He rarely spoke about her and hadn’t in years.
Kane, not wanting to pry into his friend’s anguish, never raised the subject.
“You heard him,” Jules shouted, surprising Kane. His onyx hair was plastered to his face and neck, and his eyes were flinty as he lurched forward, pulling an officer with him. “It doesn’t matter why the girl’s here. You’re the police. Aren’t you supposed to help people?”
His scathing tone made Price’s nostrils flare, but the inspector indicated for the two officers nearest Maisie to move in.
They did, one using his coat to apply pressure to the wound at her hip.
She gave a sharp intake of breath. Despite their difference in coloring, Kane could see Fletcher in her face.
Her eyes were dark where her brother’s were light, but they were the same distance apart.
Her nose was the same proud shape, and when she grimaced again, Kane saw that her front teeth were crowded in precisely the same way.
Meanwhile, Fletcher had sunk to his knees where he stood, unable to pull his gaze away from his sister’s. He didn’t go to her. He didn’t appear to know what to do. He was a man whose entire world had just shifted on its axis.
Maisie gave her head a slight shake, dragging her attention from Fletcher with obvious difficulty.
“You need to go inside,” she insisted to Price.
Her voice held the same nearly imperceptible lilt that Fletcher’s did when he was trying to conceal his accent.
“Aurora Vaughan—she’s in there. She’s been using the Exhibition to collect energy—to steal it—and now she plans to use it to create magic.
Mass amounts of it. She wants to use it to clear out the slums. Members of the Royal Commission are working with her—possibly even members of Parliament. ” Maisie took a rasping breath.
Nobody appeared to know what to say to this. The surrounding officers looked to Price for instruction, and he grimaced. “What do you mean, magic? Are you talking about alchemology? And what do the slums have to do with it?”
“Yes, alchemology.” Maisie’s voice, although weak, was snappish. Kane decided he liked her right then and there.
To his credit, Price only nodded. “Take her to a doctor,” he told the copper still holding his coat against Maisie’s hip. “Question her once she’s been dealt with, and then look into whoever this Aurora Vaughan is. Martin, Andrews—you two go as well.”
“Hold on.” Kane’s mind was spinning as it tried to catch up. “Did you say Aurora Vaughan?”
“Yes!” Maisie tried to push herself farther upright, relieved that Kane appeared to recognize the name. “She has her daughter with her—Zaria Mendoza. She needs her to complete the Magnum Opus.”
“The what?” Price said, scanning his men as if expecting one of them to answer.
Kane, on the other hand, was reeling. Daughter, Maisie had said. Vaughan was a woman, and she was Zaria’s… mother? Not only that, but if Aurora Vaughan was the one harnessing energy from the Exhibition, didn’t that also make her the Curator?
“That’s impossible,” Jules said, his lips colorless. “Zaria’s mother left nearly two decades ago.”
“Left Zaria, maybe.” Kane twisted his wrists in the handcuffs. “Apparently she didn’t leave London.”
He almost couldn’t conceive of it. The kingpin who’d attempted to get Zaria to spy on him, who yearned for control of the dark market, wasn’t at all the Ward-like figure he’d imagined.
No wonder she never showed her face and used others to do her dirty work.
If Kane hadn’t been so deeply resentful, he might have been impressed.
They’d been right to suspect a connection between Vaughan and the Curator. What they hadn’t considered was that the two might be one and the same.
Price drew himself up tall, adjusting the collar of his uniform.
Something about the action was resigned.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered. Then, more loudly: “Officers, get into formation. I don’t know how this Aurora Vaughan has been getting into the Exhibition without our knowledge, but it ends tonight. ”
“Wait,” Kane said sharply. “We had a deal.”
From the corner of his eye he could see Fletcher crouched beside Maisie, finally having reached her.
He was still cuffed, but he’d managed to take her hands in his own and was staring at her as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real.
As if he were seeing sunlight for the first time after millennia of darkness. Something in Kane’s chest flipped over.
Price spoke through his teeth. “Indeed. Finnegan? Let Masters Zhao and Collins go.”
“What?” said Jules, overhearing. He stared at Kane in stupefaction. “What about you?”
On the way over here, Kane—alone in a stagecoach with Price and two of his men—had struck a deal: If he was right about the Curator’s plan, Price had to let the others go.
Jules, Fletcher, and Zaria, assuming they found her.
In return, he could keep Kane as long as he wanted, and use him as a witness to help put the Curator away.
In the event that they weren’t able to catch the Curator, Kane would take sole responsibility for all recent crimes at the Exhibition.
“I’ll be fine,” Kane told Jules. He forced a sardonic smile.
Jules shook his head stubbornly as his hands were freed. “If Zaria’s in there, then I’m coming.”
“No. Listen to me: I want you to go with Fletcher. Help him make sure Maisie’s okay, and that she gets away from the coppers.
Someone needs to be there for him, and it can’t be me.
Not right now.” Maybe not ever again. “I negotiated your freedom, Zhao, and you’re going to fucking take it before Price changes his mind. ”
“But—”
“I swear to you, if Zaria is in this building, I’m going to get her out.”
“How can you be—”
“Jules,” Kane implored him, urgently now. “Please—you need to trust me on this.”
There was a long, charged moment, and then Jules gave a slow nod. “All right.”
“Come on,” the copper beside Kane grunted, giving him a shove. Kane silently complied, but not before tossing a final look to where Fletcher had his arms wrapped about Maisie.
He was just in time to see his friend smile.