Chapter 7
Power seeped down my arm, through my wrist and into the pads of my fingers. My body stilled and my senses narrowed, forgetting the rattle of carriages in the street outside, the voices of passersby and the distant roar of automobiles. I sensed only my connection to the cup and my threads.
Though the reader may already be familiar with the nuances of Entwined power, I feel a short explanation would not go amiss, particularly at this juncture in my story.
There are three levels of Entwined power, dictated by proximity to the quality of light which triggers one’s inherent magic.
The first is the general, passive power accessible to an Entwined at any time of day or night.
As an Eventide—bound to twilight—that allows me to see the most immediate history of an object or living person or creature, within, say, a day or two.
The second level comes to me in simulated twilight, like the room as it was now or at the warehouse with Stoke and Harden.
With that I may see anywhere from a week to a few months in an object’s past, depending on its environment during that time—the more memories the object has gathered, the shorter my reach.
And finally, there is the power of true twilight. In those sparse moments just before dawn and just after sunset, I can reach years, if not decades, into the past of nearly anything I touch.
The same may be said of all Entwined classes, diurnal or nocturnal, from Silvers to Glims and Moonlights. Three levels of power, and three alone.
To return to the matter at hand: Recent memories seeped from the cold porcelain cup and into my mind. They were fragmented, non-linear, and evasive, as is common with inanimate objects.
Still, I felt the cup shake as someone jostled the desk. Luke-warm coffee spilled over my fingers, though in actuality the cup remained still and my hand was dry.
I moved my touch to the wood of the desk. Now I heard Mr. Stoke shout, his voice coming to me through a thin wall of memory. I glimpsed his assailant, pressing him down into the desk with a pistol under his jaw—each point of contact thinning the chain of memory.
His attacker was Mr. Wake, his hat fallen away and auburn curls hanging into his eyes from a middle-part.
“Then where is it?” Wake demanded the detective. His voice was low and deathly calm, chilling in a way that he had not used with me. “Who took it?”
“I don’t know.” Mr. Stoke’s chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, but he was admirably composed. “I’ll find it for you. I’ll find it and—”
There were more voices, unidentifiable and obscure, then silence. Events had separated from the wood of the desk, and therefore I could not see them.
The world slipped back to speed. Moving more quickly now, I crouched to plant a hand on the floor, but brief footsteps and thick-soled boots had, as usual, left little for me to glean.
I moved on to the bookshelf and set my open palm upon it.
I found nothing but stillness. The shelves had not moved recently, and before that they recalled only Mr. Stoke placing the box inside.
If anyone else had moved the case, they had worn thick gloves or used other methods to ensure they left no impression.
One more weight on Pretoria’s side of the scales, then. She knew the nuances and limits of my sorcery better than anyone else.
I crouched down, setting aside skewed stacks of files until I uncovered a knot of wood at the back of the shelf. I pried it out, revealing the latch.
I glanced at the window, then again to the office door. There was always a chance Mr. Wake would come back. I had to be fast. I lifted the latch, grabbed the shelf and pulled.
The bookcase swung out. There in the wall, right where an old fireplace used to be, sat the safe.
Three deft turns later, I heard a soft click. I pulled the door open and peered inside. Files. A small strongbox where Mr. Stoke kept cash, which was now painfully empty. There was nothing else. The canvas-wrapped artifact was truly gone.
I closed the safe and bookcase once more and sat against the wall, staring across the dim room and trying to sort my thoughts. If Mr. Stoke had fled and left me behind, there had to be a valid reason.
I glanced at the clock out of habit, but it was still gutted and mute. I lifted the curtains to peer outside, and found the angle of the sunlight across the roofs and chimney pots indicated that it was nearly noon.
The day was passing. I needed a safe place to think, gather my thoughts, and pass the time until I confronted Pretoria.
I gathered my things from my destroyed office, cast one last glance around the quiet building, and left.
* * *
I spent the noon hour at a café by the river, occupying a secluded spot in the warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze. I could see in nearly every direction, tucked between one outer wall of the café and a potted shrub, but only the most observant passersby might see me.
I scattered a few notebooks on the round wrought-iron table and stared at them, pen in hand and cup of tea growing cold.
I made a list of factors, random elements to the story that I could not piece together yet.
I recorded all I could remember of Wake, and every fraction of memory I had gleaned from the office.
I made a timeline of events, with gaps and questions and possibilities.
And I made a list of my options on a small paper, kept from the breeze by a spoon.
All the while, the river flowed by. On the far side lay Old Harrow and a great clocktower, its facade and clockface decorated in the windblown, wave-washed style of Old Harrow and its former Entwined rulers.
There, dancing women in gold and pastels and drapes of gossamer were captured behind elaborate clock hands, glinting in the sunlight.
A quarter past the hour sounded with one sweet note.
The water rushed beneath, grey-blue beyond a white stone balustrade.
This was the nicest part of the river, with the industrial docks and their smoke and unappealing barges far out of sight.
Here, instead of dockworkers and fishmongers, fine ladies twirled their parasols, and men sat under shoe-shiners’ umbrellas.
Nurses from the tall, graceful homes up by the palace—the palace where the Grand General refused to reside, preferring a town house among his subjects—guided pink-cheeked children by the hand.
Here, today, it was hard to imagine bombings and hangings. Here, life waltzed determinedly on.
It was as I contemplated this foolishness, eyes focused on the middle-distance over the river, that I saw Madge.
The world retreated until all I could see was my eldest sister.
She strode along the riverside on the arm of an older, grey-haired gentleman with a vicious-looking walking stick.
The man wore a short collar, his bare throat exposed to the light.
That was shocking, both on the level of fashion and common sense, but it was Madge’s throat that captured me.
Above the Guild medallion that both she and her companion wore, Madge’s fine Golden threads twined in the daylight.
They framed her strong, square-jawed face and entwined her neck, exposed to the stares of the crowd.
She made no attempt to hide them from the light, wearing no collar and only a silken scarf, low on the collarbone, in a cursory salute to modesty.
Madge. Madge was here. I had not seen her since my engagement, before Lewis and Pretoria had helped me escape the Guild.
She looked older, her cheeks a little thinner, her lips a little tighter, her waist a little broader.
But her eyes, they were the very same—the chill, haunting blue of my deadly, indomitable eldest sister.
I was not the only one who had marked her. The crowd parted like water around a rock. Madge watched them go, her gaze roaming face to face from beneath the brim of her grey, feathered cartwheel hat.
People turned away. No one in their right mind wanted a mage with golden threads to remember their face. Then she might paint them, stealing a memory, an emotion, a piece of themselves, as unwilling payment.
This, naturally, was a distortion of the truth, propagated by the Lusterless’s—humans with no threads or magic, as termed by the Guild—general fear and ignorance of Entwined powers.
In truth, Madge could steal memory and emotion, locking it into uncannily lifelike portraits, but only if her subject was physically present as she painted.
Some exposed themselves to her power willingly, secreting away their pain and sorrows and regrets into portraits of unparalleled beauty and poignancy. Others, like those bound to a chair at the Guild’s command to have a specific memory or tendency erased, might not be so enthused.
My nerves, already overtaxed, jangled. I dropped my chin so the brim of my hat shielded my face and watched the hem of Madge’s forest-green walking suit pass out of sight. Only then did I raise my head a fraction, reach for my pen and scrawl on my list of random, uncategorical factors:
Madge is in Harrow.