Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Mrs. Rose set down the brandy, hands shaking. She nodded and then allowed Kehinde to take her from the room. Elswyth inclined her head gratefully. Mrs. Rose’s constant doting was making her anxious.
Percival sat next to her bed and took her hand.
“I was reticent to say so at first. To think that someone out there would want you dead… but I should think I agree with you, Elswyth. Kehinde reached out to an old acquaintance familiar with the criminal underground, and she was able to provide some information.”
Percival produced a small folder, which he set on Elswyth’s bed. “The man who attacked you was one Mr. Autumnus Clipper. A member of the Nightshade Society of Gentleman Assassins.”
She took the envelope and opened it. Within was a report on the man, including two photographs. One was of the man’s face as she remembered it, with dark glasses and sagging jowls. The second showed the man’s corpse, withered and rotten, nearly mummified. Her stomach lurched at the sight.
“The Nightshade Society is the premier syndicate of assassins and poisoners in the empire. To procure the services of a Nightshade assassin is no small feat. They are difficult to find and even more expensive to hire. A single operation by a Nightshade assassin costs as much as any palace. Mostly because their reputation is sterling. They do not fail.”
Elswyth frowned, looking down at her stomach. “And yet they did.”
“All the more troubling. I do not think the Nightshade Society will take kindly to the death of one of their own. Mr. Clipper may be only the beginning.”
Her muscles ached. A headache threatened at her temples. She rubbed them, setting down Mr. Clipper’s file. To her dismay, Percival continued.
“And then there is the matter of the knife,” Percival said.
He reached into his suit pocket and procured a small package wrapped in cloth.
When he unwrapped it, Elswyth saw the flash of silver.
He placed the blade in her hands, and for the first time, Elswyth noted its intricate details.
It was forged of Damascus steel that rippled with lines like the grain of wood.
It was nearly a foot long, with a serpentine edge, and the handle was made of wood and jade with a hollow center.
She noticed small pores in the surface of the handle that burrowed toward the blade.
“A poisoner’s kris. Sixteenth century, Indonesia. A floromancer can concentrate poison into the handle, which pools in the central compartment and then leaks into the grooves on the blade. An assassin’s tool, and a priceless artifact—impressive even for a Nightshade Assassin.”
Elswyth turned the blade over in her hand.
She fabricated the essence of nightshade into the wooden handle and watched as it pooled in the jade chamber.
When she turned the blade upside down, threads of lavender-hued poison ran across carvings on the surface of the blade like water through the veins of a leaf.
“It seemed my assassin was paid quite well,” Elswyth said.
“Indeed.” Percival took the blade back and wrapped it in the cloth and then set it at the foot of the bed. “What I have yet to discern is why he was sent or who precisely sent him,” Percival said.
“I think it is rather obvious, is it not?”
“I feared you would say that. You believe the Reaper sent him. And you believe the Reaper is Prince Oliver.”
“Who else would pay Mr. Clipper well enough to acquire a blade like this?”
“But why send an assassin at all?” Percival asked. “Why attack you, and why now?”
“The Reaper sent the mandrake to spy on me. I captured that spy, but perhaps there are others. He might have heard that I discovered the truth and sought to end my life, lest I reveal it.”
Percival frowned. He dropped Elswyth’s hand and stood, beginning to pace around the bed. “Then he is watching you very closely now. And he is concerned enough that he hired a Nightshade Assassin to kill you. This is not good, Elswyth.”
“On the contrary, one could think that this is affirming. My efforts are bringing me closer to him. He is afraid.”
Percival rubbed his beard. “Perhaps,” he said. “There is no way to be sure. Only Mr. Clipper truly knows why he was there that night, and who sent him.”
Elswyth turned away, hiding her scar. “The only man who might have known the truth of the Reaper’s identity, and I killed him.”
Percival shook his head. He knelt next to Elswyth, taking her hands. “You had no choice. He would have killed you if you had not fought back.”
Tears stung her eyes. The rush of emotion surprised her. “I told myself that I would never kill again, and I cannot even keep that oath.”
Percival looked uncomfortable. He hesitated and then said: “Elswyth, I must ask. Dr. Gall made some rather frightening comments about… about the state of the man’s corpse.
It was rotting. At first we weren’t sure what to think when we found you with him.
It seemed as though he’d been dead for weeks. How exactly did you kill Mr. Clipper?”
Elswyth looked at Percival, mouth open. She wanted to tell him the truth, all of it, about her scar, about her abilities. But she couldn’t. He would never forgive her.
Still, she spoke. The words seemed to come of their own volition. She looked down, unable to meet his eyes.
“I can do it. Take the vitae out of anything. Plants, animals… people.”
“I see,” Percival said. He tapped his finger on his cane.
“I understood this to be impossible. In all my travels, I have never seen such a thing. There are folktales, of course. In China, I heard of witches who could drain the life from people with a kiss. Dim mak, they called it. Death-touch. But those were only stories.”
“I don’t know how I do it,” Elswyth said, “and I never choose to, not unless it’s absolutely necessary.
After my mother died, my father caught me sapping mice in the basement.
The vitae from people and animals… it feels good.
It helps me heal. Lets me do floromancy that no one else can.
Father made me promise never to show anyone my ability. He called me a monster.”
Percival turned back to her. “You are not a monster. You did what you needed to do to protect yourself. That man deserved to die. Some people just do.
“I, for one, am glad that you have this ability. This will not be the last assassin the Reaper sends. He failed this time only because he underestimated you. A man with his resources… he will not fail again.”
Elswyth began to cry. “I don’t want to kill again, Uncle. The next time he comes, I won’t do it. I’ll find another way.”
Percival frowned. “You need to defend yourself, Elswyth.”
“I cannot,” Elswyth said.
“And if it were the Reaper himself, the man who took Persephone—what then? What other justice is there?”
“Uncle Percival, please,” Elswyth said. Tears ran down her face in warm streams. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”
A look of sympathy came over him. “What is it, Elswyth?” He knelt beside her bed and looked up at her. She hesitated, struggling to make the words come.
“I killed her,” she whispered. “I killed my mother.”
Percival’s brows knitted together. He looked confused for a moment. “What? Cerise?”
“I killed her, Percival. It was me,” Elswyth said. The tears fell freely now, and she choked out each word.
“That’s… that’s nonsense. Cerise died of blight.”
Elswyth shook her head. “No. No, she never had it. She was healthy. It was me. I was the one who was sick. She was taking care of me.”
The memories washed over her, panicked portraits of those days in bed. Her a little girl, wracked with fever. Her mother, leaning over her, laying a damp cloth on her forehead. Her father, first speaking in hushed tones to the doctor, and then raging at him.
“Your father said—” Percival started.
“He lied. To protect me.”
Realization came over Percival’s face. “Your ability… You…”
He took his hands from Elswyth’s.
She nodded, tears flowing freely. “I was going to die. That’s what the doctors said. It was hopeless. But my mother wouldn’t give up. She stayed with me all through that night, caring for me. I kept falling asleep, and she would wake me, beg me to come back, and then…”
“And then what?” Percival said.
“I fell asleep for the last time. When I woke, it was to her voice. Screaming my name. And there was something flowing into me, something like lightning. I remember how much it hurt, like it was burning my insides. Burning all the sick out of me… Her hands were over my heart, and something hot was rushing out of her. It was her vitae. I was draining it.”
Percival’s face dropped, paling. His eyes grew distant.
“I watched her die. I watched the life leave her eyes. And I killed her, Percival. I—” Elswyth’s voice was a small, shattered thing. “I killed my own mother.”
Her mother’s face flashed before her eyes.
Her gray skin. Her eyes, yellowed and sunken.
The weight of her dead body on top of Elswyth.
And more than that, how good it felt, that first breath after days of choking for air.
And her father, barging through the doors, seeing his dead wife and his now-healthy daughter, whispering: You monster… what have you done?
Percival said nothing, but the words kept coming out of Elswyth, a secret she’d kept for a decade, even from Persephone. “It’s how I got this scar,” she said. “The vitae I took from her. It was too much. It burned through me. And now I’ll always look like the monster that I am.”
Percival stood and took two steps backward. “No. No, I do not believe it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Elswyth said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know I had the ability. I was just so frightened, Uncle.”
He shook his head. “Cerise… my sister… she loved you, Elswyth.”