Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ovid believed that the bloodred color of Morus nigra, the black mulberry, was due to its association with the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, who ended their lives beneath its branches. In the language of flowers, Morus nigra means I shall not survive you.
Elswyth ducked back into the tunnel, clamping a hand over her mouth.
Dr. Gall. Oleander. Her husband.
He was the one who’d attacked them in the alley. He was the one who had killed Lady Sheers. He was the one who’d sent the mandrake.
He’d killed Percival. And he’d taken Persephone.
Her stomach turned. Bile rose in her throat, and a scream threatened to follow it. The blood drained from her fingers. They began to shake in the cold.
She wanted to kill him. She wanted to run across the room and strangle him until the light left his eyes.
But more than anything, she had so many questions.
Silas had told her that Aranyani was dead, poisoned at the hand of his father—so what was she doing in the pool?
Why did he think Gall could bring her back?
And more than that, how could Oleander be the Reaper?
Why would he agree to kidnap and kill women just to help Silas? And why take Persephone?
All she could do was listen, but everything seemed far away and every sound was a whisper.
Her lip trembled and she realized she’d stopped breathing.
Her heart thundered in her ears, but she forced herself to take one deep breath and then another.
Then she inched her eye past the edge of the wall, catching sight of them again.
Dr. Gall moved to the far side of the room, where he began preparing surgical equipment.
“Where is she?” Silas asked. Something deadly tinged his voice.
“Fear not, Silas. I have done nothing to harm Elswyth. She sent me a letter this evening, informing me that she would be late to our wedding night. That was of no concern to me, of course. But I had my suspicions. I followed her, only to find that she had found the hedge witch. That was too close for comfort, wouldn’t you say?
I had no choice but to put her off the matter for good. ”
“You don’t understand Elswyth,” Silas said. “You haven’t deterred her.”
Dr. Gall laughed. “I should think I understand my own wife. You may have known her body, Silas, but I know her mind.”
The casual tone in his voice made Elswyth queasy. She clutched the baby closer to her chest.
“No,” Silas said. “You kidnapped her friend.”
“Her tutor. She loathes her.”
“No, her friend. And she won’t stop until she’s found her. You made the same mistake with Persephone. She will come for you.”
Dr. Gall frowned. He picked up a scalpel. “Then we will dissect her tonight and dump her body in the morning. Aranyani needs a new liver, after all. Perhaps this will finally discourage the tenacious Miss Elderwood once and for all. Ready my scalpels—”
The baby in Elswyth’s arms cried out. It echoed once and then twice. The sound faded and silence fell over the chamber.
“Curious,” Gall said.
Elswyth stayed perfectly still, not even daring to breathe.
The baby cried out again and this time it was a mournful wail.
Elswyth ran. She turned back to the room only to see that Gall had vanished.
Silas stood there, alone. For a split second, his eyes met hers.
He reached out, eyes widening, but she was already running toward the tunnels, clutching the baby to her chest, and—
She collided with a nest of writhing ivy.
When Elswyth woke, poison clouded her mind. Voices cut through the fog, arguing loudly. The baby was gone. When she tried to move her hands, leather straps stopped her.
“We can’t do this. People will ask questions.”
“I assure you we are well protected.”
“This is getting out of hand, Gall.”
“I have it under control.”
“But—”
“Wait a moment, Silas. Our guest is waking.”
Elswyth opened her eyes. She was strapped to an operating table, tilted upright so that she could see the room.
The chamber twisted in her vision—Persephone’s tree in the center, Aranyani’s pool by the wall.
Mrs. Rose lay on the table to her right, still unconscious.
Gall and Silas stood in the middle of it all, looking at her.
Gall’s face had returned to normal, but in her poison-warped mind his skin looked green and sickly.
Black veins seemed to shift under his face like worms.
He moved toward her and brought something to her lips.
“Drink,” he said. “It’s only water.”
She sealed her lips shut, refusing it. Gall looked at her and frowned. “Very well. I must apologize, Elswyth. I did not want to incapacitate you, but I did not know how else to make you listen to what I have to say.”
She thrashed against the restraints, but the straps held firm. “You monster,” she spat.
“As hurtful as that is, I suppose I can understand. You are upset.”
Elswyth thrashed again. “You killed all those women. You took my sister. You… you did that to her.”
Gall looked over his shoulder at Persephone. “I’m afraid it was a necessary evil, my dear. Your sister has contributed greatly to my work.”
Elswyth turned to Silas. He leaned against a workbench, arms folded, staring at the floor. “And you… you sat by and watched. You let him kill those women, let him take Persephone, all so that you could have your wife back. You liar. You pathetic coward.”
Silas looked away, toward the woman floating in the pool of flowers. “I did what I had to do. I promised her that I would love her forever, and I have. Love means you will do anything for a person. Sometimes, this is what love looks like.”
“Is this what you meant, then, when you said you loved me?” Elswyth asked. “Because if your idea of love is a pile of corpses, I don’t want it.”
Silas looked at her. He moved to speak, but no sound came out.
Gall chuckled. “Have mercy on the boy, Elswyth. Love can make us do terrible things. I never imagined, when I told Silas to seduce you and learn what you’d discovered about your sister, that he would actually be the one seduced.”
Elswyth looked from Gall to Silas. Of course, she thought. Of course it was all a trick.
Gall noted the expression on her face and waved his hand. “Oh, don’t be upset, dear Elswyth. I do think Silas was quite smitten with you, in the end. But nothing will stray him from his dear Aranyani.” He gestured toward the pool.
Elswyth shook her head. It still ached from the poison. “I just don’t understand. Why help him, Gall? I thought you saved lives. I thought that was your life’s purpose.”
Gall blinked. “It is, Elswyth. Can’t you see? When Silas came to me and begged me to save his wife, I saw an opportunity. If I could bring her back, then I could bring anyone back.”
“By killing innocents,” Elswyth said.
Gall shrugged. “Innocents. Such a precarious word. Some would say these women are not innocent—not that I share that opinion—but it was important that I take my subjects from the lower rungs of society, yes. How long does a prostitute in the Rows live? Thirty? Forty years, if they’re lucky?
Their lives would be wasted on drinking or violence or consumption.
But here, with me, they contributed to the greatest achievement in human history. The end of death itself.”
“For you. You want to live forever,” Elswyth said. “Don’t pretend that this is all some grand act of charity.”
“Don’t you, Elswyth? You said it yourself: You want to live forever through your work. Well, I don’t want to live forever through my work. I just want to live forever.”
“You’ve gone mad,” Elswyth said.
“On the contrary. I think the forestalling of one’s death is the most logical thing in the world. I’m surprised you do not see it, Elswyth. I had planned to include you in my research, when you came to live with me.”
“Include me? Cut me up and use my parts in your experiments?”
“Heavens, no! I would never waste a mind like yours as a specimen. No, I would include you as a partner, Elswyth. I am so close to restoring Aranyani’s mind. But I need your help to calculate the proper amount of vitae to use and devise a method to administer it, I—”
“You don’t really think I would help you? After what you’ve done to my sister? After you sent a man to kill me?”
“Oh, Elswyth, of course I didn’t send that man to kill you. I would never harm you. You are the only one who understands. The only one with the curiosity and the drive to match my own. Look, look what we’ve accomplished!”
Gall moved to her right and then wheeled out a cart covered with a sheet.
He ripped off the sheet, revealing a massive glass orb banded with steel.
Green liquid bubbled within. It was her living engine—the prototype she’d been working on for months under Gall’s supervision.
The one she’d given up on. “Together, we created this. Think of what we could do, if both our minds were set on immortality? If we faced it head-on, as partners, as husband and wife?”
Elswyth blinked. “You… you fixed it? It works?”
“It never needed fixing,” Gall said. He seemed frantic, gesturing wildly at the engine. “All it needed was proper materials and enough vitae. Your designs worked, Elswyth. You’ve given the empire a source of energy it could only dream of.”
Her head swam. She stared at the engine, watching the liquid bubbling within. How had he fixed the problem of excess gas? Would it still explode if not depressurized? And how had he scaled it to that size? An engine that large could power a ship. Could it power a city? Could it—
Elswyth shook the thought away. “No,” she said. “I will never work with you. I will never forgive you for what you did to Persephone.”
Gall frowned. His arms dropped to his sides. “You weren’t supposed to learn about her. But once you see what I’ve discovered, what has been gained from her sacrifice—”
“Sacrifice? A sacrifice is a choice. You stole her life from her.”
“I had no other option, Elswyth. I didn’t want to, I promise, but she would have—”