Chapter 39
I kept my constable’s helmet low as I surveyed the wreckage of the Grand Museum.
It had begun to rain quite heavily, and thunder rolled across the city as a proper autumn storm settled in.
It cooled the air, cooled my skin, and calmed the last of the conflict in the streets.
I had made the journey relatively unaccosted, dropping Detective Supford’s name to the singular patrol who had questioned me.
The success of my journey did not encourage me, though. Not as I watched the rain pool in the museum courtyard, glistening puddles smoothing away broken glass and washing smoke stains from piles of rubble.
Half of the museum’s magnificent windows were blown out and the remainder were cracked and blackened. Scars of smoke licked upwards from these, memories of the flames that I had had such an integral part in sparking.
My heart broke. So much beauty, so much history. Gone. I felt it on the air, tasted it on the wind. It held memories of licking flame and crumbling stone, all that remained of so many treasures.
That alone was enough to sadden me, but a thought came with it. Even if the artifact had not been cracked or crushed, how could I find it in this destruction?
A museum guard, armed with a night stick and a rifle, met me at the gate. At mention that I had been sent by Detective Supford, he admitted me inside, if only to get back out of the rain.
It was dark within, the gaslamps long blown.
Several lanterns illuminated the scarred foyer, and a table full of more guards off down the passageway towards the café.
They seemed demoralized by their task, guarding a gutted museum from further ravages in the restless city, and paid more attention to the meal they were sharing than to me.
The air stank of smoke, burned varnish, and singed hair.
“Brought in the cadets, I see.” The guard from the gate looked me over. “Well, lad, I can’t allow you past the foyer, but tell me your business and I’ll see what I can do.”
“A file in the offices, upstairs,” I said. I was aware I was treading a little close to the truth, but needed the legitimacy of a known name. “Dr. Maddeson’s office. If it… survived?”
“Got the fires out before it reached the third floor.” The guard waved this aside. “What file?”
I fluffed a random description and watched the man leave, climbing the stairs carefully to the second floor. Then, cautiously, I made for the doors to the exhibits, opposite to the hallway and the other guards.
I glanced back, once. One of the guards was looking my way, so I made a show of stretching and sitting down on a fallen chunk of masonry, slightly in the shadows.
He looked away, and I continued on.
As soon as I was out of sight, I started to run. My Eventide eyes unfolded the darkness with little effort, and though what I saw in their sepia tones was grim, I did not falter.
Collapsed sections of floor. Toppled chunks of roof. Bracing had been placed everywhere, and far off I saw the light and heard the sounds of men at work, erecting more scaffolding and pillars, beams and supports.
I came to the room where I had faced off with Wake, fingers twitching with tension and urgency. Half the floor was gone, but, miracle of miracles, not the section where I had hidden the dodecahedron.
I skirted the collapsed section, passing charred statues and cracked facades, until I came to the right one.
The little stone orb for which we had all fought and suffered slipped into my fingers. The moment felt… not momentous, but horribly insignificant. There was no great satisfaction, only an awareness of all the suffering it had caused, and the suffering it might yet produce.
I slipped it into my trouser pocket to join the others, beneath the protective fall of my constable’s jacket, and left the museum before the guard returned.
* * *
A feeling of unreality overtook me as I returned to the rain and headed straight across Old Harrow, for Dockside and Pretoria’s hotel.
It was not a short walk, but time seemed to skew around me, my only thoughts of my next step, the next street.
Before I knew it, I was in sight of the Old Citadel, before the statue of Lady Honoria Grey and her children.
Chanting wafted up the street as I approached. I slowed at the edge of a sudden and unexpected crowd, my skin beginning to crawl. There were dozens of people here, converging as I watched.
The citizens nearest me startled, pointing at my uniform. They carried clubs and guns, and did not seem to care for the rain slicking their hair and dripping from their hats.
Zealots. I instantly diverted. No one moved to stop me, though they watched me with caution—apparently they did not consider a lone, boy-faced constable a threat.
Suddenly a great shout tore all our gazes up. Up. Up.
A man swung up over the heads of the crowd, under the mournful eyes of the statue, isolated on her little island.
He jerked and clawed at the noose about his throat.
The more violently he struggled, the louder the crowd cheered, jeered, and screamed.
It was a manic sound, a primal sound, and it terrified me to the core.
Run. The word leapt to my tongue and clotted there, souring and turning fetid. Run.
I did not. Could not. I watched as the man was hauled higher, as his struggles lessened, as his strangulation truly began.
Copper threads sparked and lit and spread—the Zealots had stripped him to the waist. They twined across his collarbones, where a Guild medallion was plastered to the sweat-slicked hair of his chest.
A Guild mage. They were hanging not an Affinate, vulnerable and accessible, but a Guild mage.
A second rope was slung up and a second figure hauled into sight. She screamed as she rose, a middle-aged woman with her upper body similarly revealed, her clothing torn and corset exposed. Her threads spasmed into manifest—fiery, like the afterburn of lightning. A Gaslamp Entwined.
A hand dug into my hair, beneath the back of my helmet. No sooner had I cried out than I was barrelled under a massive arm and hauled forward. The crowd parted. I could not breathe. Could barely see. There was more shouting, more laughing, a clamor and a chaos that melded into ringing in my ears.
Then there was a noose, pulled tight, holding me in place on my knees. I felt the hands that tore the constable’s jacket from my upper body. I felt them tear open the top of my shirtwaist, buttons popping. I felt the helmet torn from my head and my hair skew down.
Incarnadine’s face filled mine.
“We got here eventually, Miss Rushforth,” she said, her eyes full of gentle satisfaction. “So kind of you to turn yourself in.”
Thunder boomed. Lightning latticed the sky, followed by another clap of thunder.
Another rope—my rope—was slung up over the lamppost. I was prodded and dragged into place, already half-strangled by the damp noose.
Above me the man swung, limp. The woman was still twitching, though that was more likely due to the jerking of the rope itself than her final exertions.
Those that held the rope had not tied it off to the balustrade as they had with the man.
They still held it instead, tugging and jerking and making her body dance.
“No bravado now,” Incarnadine observed, smoothing the wet hair back from my face. “As I expected.”
I could not reply. The rope was too tight. Too tight for pleading and begging, for last words and the bravado she was so satisfied to have killed.
I heard a gunshot, then another, then the blare of horns. Headlamps pierced the stormy gloom and people began to scatter, shouting warnings and grabbing comrades as they went.
Incarnadine turned. The Zealots holding me—a man and a woman—froze.
Their leader’s distraction was momentary, but it was enough for me to flail forward, tear the hatpin from her head and plunge it into the torso of one of my captors. They howled and dropped me. The other recoiled, confused, and I broke fully away.
The noose went tight. I toppled backwards and might have snapped my own neck, if I had not made a flailing grab for the nearest person.
I never saw who it was. Headlamps blinded me and a speaking horn roared over the crowd. “Zealots, stand down by order of Grand General Baffin! You are under arrest!” There was more to it, but I did not care.
The noose finally slackened. I shoved aside whoever I had caught myself on and jerked the thing over my head, panting, wheezing, and sobbing as I did.
And then I ran.