Ruin
He couldn’t bear this place for another sunrise.
The first alchemist’s home was empty of relevant literature. His home had tomes, but they looked more like the gentle love stories his mother had read to them on cold winter nights. Covers with curly text and illustrations of couples embracing or walking down garden paths.
The alchemist himself slept nearby. A fussy-looking man with higgledy-piggledy curls, in a lacy nightshirt.
Elias walked through his home but did not find anything that reminded him of Victor or his book. He put everything to rights and left quickly, pulling the door shut tight.
The second alchemist’s house looked more promising. Elias had never seen a dwelling this large in his life. All the windows were dark except one with light shining from the third floor.
Elias felt the urge to knock again but tamped it down. He had not known many wealthy people in his life, but so far the ones he knew had been horrific. The authorities came swiftly for them as well.
Instead, he pried open a window on the first floor with his blade and slithered inside. Elias took off his shoes and placed them on the floor outside the window. Franz’s church shoes would not be quiet on the wood.
He slid, socked, across the room and out into the hallway. He could hear movement in two places, one farther into the house on the first floor and another higher upstairs. The recognizable creaking of someone pacing and the ceramic clatter of dishes being washed.
Wealthy men did not clean their own mess. Elias took the stairs.
He wanted to close his eyes against this opulence.
The gleam of everything in here felt threatening.
Even the walls were covered in paintings, an unthinkable luxury.
Elias remembered buying his younger sister paints for Christmas and having to serve kidney pies instead of beef for a full month afterward.
At the very least, this man would probably be able to afford books other than the ones in the first alchemist’s house.
Elias moved slower, quieter, until the sound of pacing was right before him. He placed a hand on the doorknob and started to turn it.
A strap of leather landed around his throat and tightened. Elias jerked back, clawing at his neck.
“You don’t belong here,” a reedy voice said calmly. “Guests enter through the front door.”
Elias took one step forward and sprang backward, smashing his attacker against the wall.
The leather loosened, and Elias tore it away, tossing the garotte down the hall.
The man behind him replaced the leather with his hands.
Elias twisted in his grasp and grabbed the man’s hair. He kneed him hard in the stomach.
The man, older, gray, and fierce, recovered quickly. He slung a leg over Elias’s and pinned him to the floor. Elias flipped over, but in the struggle, the bandages on his face had gotten loose and were beginning to blind him.
Elias thrashed wildly, clawing at anything he could reach. He managed to grab the man’s hair once again and tugged hard. His captor could not suppress a cry, and footsteps charged to the door.
“Reiner? Good God, Reiner!” Large hands fisted Elias’s throat, lifting him high. The bandages fell from Elias’s face, draping loosely around his neck.
The man holding him was immense. He certainly had no need for a bodyguard like this, as he was quite able to restrain Elias well enough on his own.
But one look at Elias’s mangled face startled him enough to drop Elias immediately. He paled and he took a step back.
“I had him, Jaan,” Reiner griped, tugging his uniform sharply.
“Leave him be,” Jaan replied. “He must be Victor’s.”
Elias looked between both of them and thought of the knives in his coat.
“Victor isn’t here; he left to find a way to undo what he’s done.” Jaan put a hand on the door. “Are you looking for him or are you looking for me?”
Elias peeked through the open door and saw large shelves filled to bursting with books.
“Both, perhaps,” he replied in his new harsh whisper.
Jaan continued to stare at him. Reiner glanced between the two of them, still visibly furious.
“I want . . .” Elias swallowed again: all of this talking was too much for him. He could feel the scabs in his throat crack and bleed.
“Do you know where he has gone?”
Jaan looked back at Reiner. “We should be fine, dear. You may go. Leave . . . leave him a token for his journey.”
Reiner scowled at Elias. “Exit from the front entrance,” he said firmly, then turned on his heel and strode quickly away.
Jaan opened the door to the room with books wider and gestured for Elias to follow him.
Elias had never seen so many volumes in his entire life. He didn’t know that books could have a smell when you got so many of them close to each other like this. He did not feel at ease here, but he paused, breathless, to look at them.
“Are you here to take my life?” Jaan said, settling into a plush armchair and crossing his legs.
Elias narrowed his eyes. “Should I be?” he whispered. “Who are you to him?”
“I am the man who gave him the book. Jaan Sauer,” Jaan confessed. “To be used for study, not application, though I doubt that matters much in the grander scheme.”
“Do you wish to pardon your sins by offering your life?” Elias slid one of Franz’s knives from its hiding place and twirled it, catching the candlelight on the edge of the blade.
Jaan watched it intently. “Perhaps.”
Elias paused, then tucked the blade away.
“I do not yet have children of my own, but I did raise my siblings while my parents worked. I do understand the difference between intention and impact. I can recognize the guilt of inadvertence,” Elias replied dryly. “You’ll have to earn your penance another way.”
Jaan frowned. “If I may ask, how old are you? Who are you?”
Elias tilted his head to the side. What did that matter?
“I have seen eighteen summers. I am Margarite’s child.”
Jaan made a complicated face. “You’re a baby . . . just like him.”
Elias shrugged. “I do not have time for this. I need to know where Victor has gone, and I need the blue book.”
“I cannot give it to you. It’s too dangerous in anyone else’s hands,” Jaan said immediately. “But I can tell you where Victor has gone.”
There was a stack of paper and a pen on the table beside them, in a mess uncharacteristic to the rest of the space. Jaan pushed the papers into a neat stack, then began to write.
“You must tell me out loud when you have finished, so I can remember,” Elias said pointedly.
Jaan looked up at him. “Oh,” he said softly, immediately understanding.
“I will find someone to recite this to me if the memory fades, but I can carry important things for a long while,” Elias insisted, defensive.
Jaan pressed his lips together. His eyes grew shiny and wet, but he did not comment further, to Elias’s relief.
“I cannot tell you in which order he has traveled, but here are the places he will be visiting and the people waiting for him.” Jaan handed Elias the list. “He is headed to France to see Alain Cloutier, the Netherlands to see Willem Dijkstra, England to see Bradley King, Scotland to see Ayan McClean, Ireland to see Brogan, Italy to see Cupido Colombo, Greece to see Orazio Sal, and Russia to see Yaroslav Voronof. Victor . . . is the son of Alphonse Frankenstein, who works in Geneva. I do not know his exact address, but he is well known for his work and once there, can be sought by the asking.”
Jaan looked contemplative for a moment. “Wait here.”
He went deeper into the book room, then returned with the tome Elias had been seeking beneath his arm.
“Perhaps in the hands of a man who cannot know it, things may be different.”
Elias took the volume from him and stared at it.
“These men, are they like Victor or are they like you?” he asked.
“Alchemists are a mixed selection. The only traits they share are respect for the arts and being inordinately powerful. Some are monsters of greed and wealth; some are farmers with an extra touch of green,” Jaan admitted. “You should be careful at all times when you are with them.”
Elias handed the book back to Jaan.
“Go to the section you think Victor may have used and read the first few words from each page so I may recognize them.”
Jaan looked worried but complied. When Elias heard a familiar phrase, he snatched the book back. Then he parted the pages around the section. Before Jaan could stop him, Elias drew his knife and sliced the section clean out of the book.
“What—?”
Jaan watched in horror as Elias turned to the beginning of the chapter, using the bold typography as a starting point, and cut the rest of the chapter on incantations out completely—leaving just the entire first two-thirds of the book and the single three pages of the incantation Victor used intact.
Then he slid the book into his jacket and placed the rest of it on the table.
“If the only thing these demons share is a respect for their art, then I will use this as currency. The pages removed you can keep. I assume they’re the dangerous ones.”
Jaan touched the paper with shaking hands. He looked extremely upset.
“Only a man who doesn’t understand books, doesn’t love them and the beauty of their form, could find a solution such as this,” he murmured.
Elias pressed his blade against Jaan’s throat in gentle warning.
“I understand books. I’ve been read to. The letters just swim before my eyes. Don’t make the mistake of assuming I am simple.”*
Jaan met his gaze, and a tear finally fell. He said nothing.
“When Victor is dead, I will return to this city and find you. I will tell of my travels and what I have learned from this wickedness done to me and you will write it down. It will be put together with these pages to make a new book. Do not lose them,” Elias said sternly.
Jaan nodded. Elias’s blade made a shallow cut on his skin from the motion, and Elias took the knife back immediately.
“I didn’t know you would move; I am sorry,” he said, immediately contrite. He reached out to swipe a tender thumb across the wound.
Jaan shook his head, then swallowed hard.
“You . . . are something new, entirely,” he whispered.
Elias stood. He didn’t like the idea of being changed by this madness.
“I am still Margarite’s child. I must go.” He folded the paper of names and places and tucked it into his jacket with the book.
“Where are you going?” Jaan asked. He stared up at him like he was looking at God.
“A hospital. Every inch of me bleeds.” Elias began to walk away.
“A religious hospital?” Jaan called after him.
“I do not know.”
“Wait!”
Elias stopped in the doorway, then looked at Jaan over his shoulder.
“I cannot be sure, but . . . whatever you do, do not let them see your back,” Jaan said.
Elias frowned. His back didn’t feel any more painful than the rest of him. There weren’t stitches there, he knew that for certain. But he nodded curtly and shut the book room behind him.
When he reached the first floor and finally found the entrance, his shoes that he had left outside the window were set directly in front of it. Cleaned of the dust of a full day in the roads, leather buffed to a shine.
Next to them, folded carefully in a soft suede envelope, was more money than Elias had ever seen in his life. More than the tavern made in a year. More than enough to buy a farm and start anew. More than enough to cross land and seas.
A token for his journey, indeed. Elias tucked the envelope in his jacket. Jaan must be a Catholic. They paid their penance in coin.
Elias wanted to say thank you, but the halls were empty, silent. He did not have the power to even shout a goodbye into the darkness.
So he pulled the book out of his coat and tore out the first blank page.
Elias folded it into a Froebel star and left it sitting on the doormat.