Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
Elswyth brought up her knee, driving it into Silas’s nose. He collapsed backward, falling into the dirt, and Elswyth ran. She dove for her knife, brandishing it just as Silas righted himself. Blood poured from his nostrils.
“I guess I deserved that, too,” Silas said. He stepped forward, and Elswyth pressed the knife at him, forcing him back.
“You knew. You knew all this time, every day you courted me, what had happened to my sister.”
“Elswyth—”
“I don’t want to hear your lies anymore,” Elswyth spat.
“I didn’t know,” Silas said, speaking over her.
“Not at first. When my father poisoned Aranyani, I went straight to Gall and begged him to save her. I gave him the amberheart, knowing how powerful it would make him. He was able to put her in a suspended state—somewhere between life and death. He asked me if I would do anything to keep her alive, and I said yes.”
“So you helped him kidnap those women,” Elswyth said.
“No, I—I never touched them.”
“And you think that absolves you?”
“He didn’t tell me what he planned to do. When he took the first girl, he said that if I didn’t do as he commanded, then he would kill Aranyani. And I… I…”
Silas looked away. She thought he would cry, but then he set his jaw. “And I did what I had to do. For her.”
Silas looked over to where his wife floated in the flower pool.
“I love her, Elswyth. It’s just like what you said.
Everything I see, everything I do, it all leads back to her.
A flower. A laugh. A song. I can’t live in this world without her and not be in constant pain.
But don’t you understand? Wouldn’t you do anything for someone you loved? ”
“Of course I understand,” Elswyth said. Tears stung her eyes.
“I understand only because you took Persephone from me. But you never stopped to think of that, did you? All you saw was your own pain, and you didn’t care if you caused someone else the same agony.
That makes you as much of a monster as Gall. ”
“I had nothing to do with Persephone, Elswyth, you must believe me,” Silas said, stepping forward. “Gall promised me that it would only be criminals—”
“Criminals are people, Silas! And you of all people should know that the law is not the same as justice.”
Silas raised his voice then. “I did nothing! I did nothing to them! Gall was the one who took them. Gall was the one who wielded the knife.”
“Was it not you who said that sometimes evil is not what we do, but what we fail to do? You are a hypocrite, Silas.”
Silas actually laughed then. “What of you, Elswyth? You pass the starving in the streets, knowing they will die, and you do nothing. Who weaves the fabric of your fine gowns but the battered masses? Who plucks the cotton from their fingers? Ten million die in India to bring you the food for your fancy parties, but do you throw yourself into the gears of the empire in an attempt to slow it down? Do you fearlessly fight for the colonies that feed you and clothe you and make you rich? Or did you wear the fine gowns and attend the fine feasts, all because you knew they would help you find your sister? That they would help you find a husband and pursue your education?”
“That’s not the same, and you know it,” Elswyth said.
“Isn’t it? You understood all along that what you wanted had consequences.
You saw the starvation and the oppression laid bare on the streets.
You saw the withered hands of the servants who made your food.
But you wanted Persephone back, and all you had to do to protect the person you love was…
was… just let it happen.” He choked on the last words. All the strength seemed to leave him.
Elswyth paused, even in her blinding rage. It was not the same. It couldn’t be the same.
Silas’s shoulders slumped, and his voice lowered.
“Everyone in this city is a hypocrite. They take what they want, and they tell themselves a story that makes it all right. And they have taken so much from me.” His eyes went to Aranyani, and the pain there was more than Elswyth could bear to see. “Haven’t I earned a little hypocrisy?”
Elswyth nodded toward Aranyani. When she spoke, she spoke softly. “And what would she think, Silas? Would she want to see what you’ve become?”
Silas looked helplessly at her. “I—”
A vine flashed from the shadows, wrapping itself around Silas’s throat. Elswyth screamed, scrambling backward and colliding with the table.
Dr. Gall slowly rose to his feet—but not by his arms or legs. Instead, his body warped into a nest of vines. They snaked from beneath his clothes and sprouted from the red wound in the back of his head, lifting his limp body like a spider’s legs.
“That… was impolite…” said a voice. The words came from Gall, but Elswyth did not see his mouth moving.
His face was corpse-still, as if the vines sprouting from him were a parasite, operating his body like a puppet.
There was something else in his voice, too, a second voice, layered over the first, that sounded like the groaning of ancient branches.
Gall’s corpse turned to look at Elswyth with glassy eyes.
“You people… so caught up in your love, your attachments… Don’t you realize that they too will die?
That the fate of flesh, no matter how soft and lovely, is to rot?
What they offer you is an illusion, a string of ephemeral pleasures, meaningless in the end. I can offer you eternity.”
Elswyth retreated, still brandishing her knife. A vine shot from beneath Gall’s suit, ensnaring her wrist. She slashed at it, severing the stalk, but two more reached out, wrapping around both wrists, and her blade clattered to the floor.
They began to pull Elswyth forward, toward Gall.
His limp body dangled in a nest of vines, and more crept from beneath his suit.
“You will join me, Elswyth,” he said. “You will join me beyond the constraints of your mortality. I will show you truths known only to those who see with eyes unclouded by flesh. We will be one, as all things are one, eventually, in the perfection of death.”
Elswyth reached into the vines around her wrists, finding the light within. She pulled, draining them, feeling their vitae fill her and the fog of Gall’s poison fade. The vines thinned, and then withered, and then fell away into dust.
“Your dim mak cannot harm me. You barely know how to use it. But I can show you. Don’t you want to know what really happened to your mother? Where that scar comes from and what it means? I could tell you, Elswyth.”
Gall’s body began to twitch. Vines tunneled beneath the skin of his neck, forcing his head upright.
Tendrils wormed over his glassy eyes. A vine crept out from Gall’s chest and wrapped around the amberheart, lifting it as if to show her.
It gleamed in the half-light of the lantern like it held its own flame.
“The amberheart has shown me all of this and more. Secrets beyond secrets. Knowledge from eldren days. But all of those secrets could be yours.”
“What do you—”
Silver flashed in her vision. Silas had gotten hold of a short saber. He hacked once and then twice, slicing through the vine that held him. He dropped to the floor, gasping for air.
“Silas!” Elswyth shouted.
More vines shot at him, impaling themselves in the dirt near his head. He rolled, lashing out with his saber and severing another stalk, then grabbing his pistol from where it lay on the floor.
Another vine jumped at him, but he severed it with a deft stroke. Then he aimed the pistol and fired twice.
The bullets impaled Gall—one in the chest, one in the side. Instead of blood, black ichor spilled from the wounds.
“Elswyth, take the baby and Mrs. Rose! Get out of here!” Silas shouted.
Elswyth snapped to attention, running to where Mrs. Rose lay strapped to the table. Her fingers shook as she unbuckled the straps.
Gall began to chuckle, a deep, uneasy sound that echoed in the catacombs. “Bullets, Silas, really? You should know by now that you cannot kill me.”
“Won’t stop me from trying,” Silas said. Then he grabbed the gas lantern sitting on the table next to him and threw it at Dr. Gall.
A vine swatted it down at the last moment. It exploded on the floor, sending a wash of flame across the stone. Gall backed up, vines carrying him away from the flames.
Silas took the opening. He spun the chamber of the revolver and fired again and again, this time hitting Gall in the neck—a hole the size of an apple appeared there, sending a spray of viscera behind him. Green tendrils quickly filled the void, crawling over one another like nesting snakes.
Elswyth hurried with Mrs. Rose’s restraints, trying to ignore the explosions behind her. Mrs. Rose stirred, still unconscious but slowly waking. Elswyth undid the last strap and shook her. “Mrs. Rose? Mrs. Rose!”
Mrs. Rose mumbled something unintelligible, eyes fluttering.
“I’m truly sorry about this,” Elswyth said. She brought her fingers to Mrs. Rose’s nose and rubbed them together. She fabricated white powder there—coca extract.
Mrs. Rose breathed in. Then she rocketed upright, screaming as if she’d been attacked. “Oh! Oh!”
Elswyth steadied her, tucking hair out of her face. “Mrs. Rose? Mrs. Rose, are you all right?”
“What? Where are we? I had the most terrible…”
She looked over Elswyth’s shoulder, at where Silas battled Dr. Gall. Then she began to scream. Elswyth tried to calm her. “Mrs. Rose,” Elswyth said.
She continued to scream.
“Mrs. Rose,” Elswyth said again.
More screaming. Elswyth slapped her twice, first with her palm and then with the back of her hand.
Mrs. Rose paused. She cleared her throat.
“Thank you,” she said primly. “That was unbecoming of me.”
Elswyth reached to the table next to her, where Persephone’s baby lay wrapped in blankets. The infant was beginning to sob, barely audible over the sound of Silas and Gall.