Chapter 37 #2
“That odor is excrement and filth, not rot,” she said, speaking in the lightning syllables she used when excited. She headed to the stove. “We have not opened a crypt.”
I retreated a few steps into the lesser stench of rotted fish, drained my lungs, lidded my eyes, and was surrounded by a whirlpool of swarming draca minds.
Dozens had arrived, and more were coming, dashing through the ruined door and leaping through the broken windows.
A roseworm was at my feet. I stroked her awareness, found her willing, and sank into her vision.
I saw myself, shapeless in my robe but massively haloed with brilliant gold, a great wyfe with her influence cast wide.
The cracking plaster and old timbers snapped into ridiculous detail.
Scent, thankfully, faded. Now that I thought of it, I could not recall ever noticing scent through draca senses.
Perhaps draca noses were less sensitive, a tradeoff for their incredible vision. Here, that was convenient.
I shared my curiosity about the open hatch, and the view bounced forward and peered down.
A ladder descended to a dirt floor that was a neutral cool spotted with the magenta of soil chilled by damp.
Two wooden buckets stood to one side, filled with unpleasantly lumpy liquid.
As curious as me, the roseworm’s perspective shifted as she trotted around the perimeter.
A person’s warm figure, lying flat, came into view, then another beside. The view lowered—I felt the roseworm’s jaw rest on the edge of the hole—and I saw farther.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“What?” Mary cried into my ear, breaking my concentration. I shook free of the roseworm’s view and found Mary distraught, a few pieces of kindling flaming in her white-knuckled hand like a torch.
“There are more than I expected,” I said.
“Guard the man!” Mary said. She hitched up her riding robe, got her boots on the ladder, and descended into the black with her wavering flame.
Wondering when Mary ended up in charge, I turned to the man. His rebelliousness had drained. He stared at me in open terror. “You’s one of them witches!”
It seemed counter-productive to argue semantics, so I said, “I am,” and produced what I hoped was a menacing smile. He quailed nicely.
Faces were gathering outside the gaping door.
I put my shoulder to the wood and ground it across the floor pavers, one broken hinge flapping, until the view was mostly blocked.
I returned to stand over the man. “Who comes here?” He jutted out his chin, so I waved my hand showily and sent a silent request. The roseworm jumped onto the man’s chest, little razor fangs bared.
“Tell me, or I shall transform you into a newt and have her eat you.”
“That whisperer. The American,” he grudged. “But he haven’t been here for days. He took one of them girls.”
“And Mr. Tinsdale?”
He gave a surprised shake of his head. “Just the beggar lady who feeds ’em.”
I reviewed our plan and remembered an important goal. “Where is the dagger?”
“I got a pistol,” he said, scowling as if this was some trick. “Broke it lightin’ the stove. Got no flint. It been freezin’.”
“What do you do here?”
“Add fish every day. Keep people out. Don’t see nothing.” His list was rote, a child repeating a lesson.
Mary clambered up the ladder and clumsily rolled onto the floor.
She stood and shook out her hair, a cleansing fueled by disgust or anger.
“Rebecca is here. She is alive but unresponsive. They are dehydrated. We need help. Let nobody in.” She ran to the crooked door and squeezed through the gap.
Through a broken window, I glimpsed her gray robe flapping as she ran down the street.
“Who’s she?” the man asked.
“Witch number two,” I said absently while trying to convey the concept of Keep People Away as images for the hoard of draca outside.
Then I began an organized search, lifting refuse and tossing crates, although I knew it was pointless.
The dagger was priceless. It would not be left in filth guarded by a fool.
Finally, I turned up a tiny lamp like the one I had used to write or read in the night when I shared a room with Jane. An ounce of oil sloshed in the base. I lit a splinter at the stove, lit the lamp, faced the dark hole, and found my feet balked at that chamber of horrors.
Mary was unquestionably brave. I could more easily walk to my death than descend into that stinking filth and pain. But that was cowardly and selfish. I had killed one of her friends. Another was down there, with other innocents.
“Do not attempt to flee,” I called to the man. “The draca will rip you limb from limb if you rise.” Actually, they would simply alert me, but the threat was gratifying.
Step by step, I descended the ladder into dark.
The stench crawled up my nostrils. Each breath was clinging filth in my throat.
At the bottom, I raised the lamp and counted.
Nine women, all in the filthy remnants of dresses that had once been good, now terribly soiled because they could not rise to relieve themselves.
There were no beds, only strips of blankets and straw thrown on the floor.
The women were packed close as cargo, their feet trapped in horrible, heavy iron shackles.
The nearest set lay open, that strip of dirt empty.
A few faces turned vaguely toward me, or to the light more likely, blinking owlishly and unknowingly. No one answered when I spoke. They were drugged to insensibility, but it was something other than crawler venom or I would have sensed them all.
There was a squat table with stubs of candles, metal dishes, and glass jars with tied leather lids. One metal dish held a few ounces of sticky, brown paste. I had to bring it close to my nose before the medicinal fishy odor penetrated the general stench. Laudanum, but stronger. Raw opium.
My eyes had adapted so swiftly to the dark that the lamp flame was a knife. I shuttered it and set it on the table, relying on the dim light through the cellar opening. The darkness was soothing, but peculiar reds and yellows surged and faded at the sides of my vision. That did not seem healthy.
I knelt to examine the shackles on the ankles of the woman nearest me. They were thick iron bolted with a hammered rivet, not a lock. A wyvern’s claws would tear it easily, but the nearest I remembered was at an estate twenty miles from London, too far to reach without being bound to the creature.
Work with what you have. I called the lindworm, and he jumped down with ease.
I slipped my delicate lady’s fingers between the iron, pulled futilely, then pictured him trying.
He scratched at the metal, his claw ringing like a hardened file, then began working at it like a dog with a bone, paws pinning the metal while he chomped at different angles.
When the rivet caught between his back teeth, he clamped down with a satisfied purr.
With a screech, the rivet head popped off and bounced off the ceiling, and the shackles fell loose.
I bent to give him the effusive praise a dog would adore, but the lindworm stepped impatiently around my outstretched hand, found the next set of shackles, and began gnawing.
Just as I noticed a shadowy shape beneath the low table, several pairs of footsteps entered noisily above my head. Mary’s voice shouted, “Lizzy!”
“Down here.”
Mary clambered down holding her own, larger lamp. I shielded my eyes and said, “We will have the shackles off soon,” as another rivet pinged free in the shadows.
Carefully, Mary removed the iron bars from the first wyfe’s ankles. The skin was scabbed and bloody, and I looked away while Mary gently examined and prodded. “No bones are broken. She can be moved.” Mary called instructions up the ladder, and a man’s voice answered.
“The dagger is not here,” I said, squatting to look beneath the table. Mary’s lips thinned in dismay, but I held up what I found in a box. “Books.” That lit her interest.
We climbed up, and I met two black-clad, straight-haired Marys and a burly, mustached constable. The constable was tying the captive man’s hands and ankles with a thick length of hemp.
Mary sent the constable into the cellar. He swore a streak at the reek by the ladder, then swore again, softer but more shockingly, when he saw the women below.
With him out of sight, I raised an eyebrow at Mary.
The last person I expected her to summon was a constable, and she looked embarrassed, muttering, “He is one of the good ones,” before beginning instructions to one of the Marys: “These women need specific care. Provide this note to Dr. Davenport. They must be concealed. The men who took them may seek to recover them. Reopen the old shelter house.” She was scribbling on a square of notepaper while she talked.
Leave it to Mary to bring pencil and paper.
The Mary she had addressed, an auburn-haired woman around Mary’s nineteen years, said worriedly, “You must hide. Men came to my house. They frightened my Mamma terribly, but they were seeking you. They asked if you were in Derbyshire. They claimed to be constables, but I did not believe them. Mary, London is descending to madness. Already, there are districts where gangs of men roam shouting that Britain Awakes in the south—”
A strange sensation prickled my mind. I stopped listening and turned slowly, trying to locate it. It was very far. So far, I was amazed I sensed it. But it was coming nearer. Quickly.
“Mary!” I said, interrupting another tranche of rapid-fire instructions. “We must go.”
She blinked behind her spectacles. “I cannot. Rebecca did not even recognize me. I must—”
While she spoke, I had grasped the silver thread of my binding to Yuánchi and sent, Find us. Hurry.
Aloud I said, “We are out of time. Fènnù is coming.”