Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A thanatist can live with an open wound of the soul, but only if he has the strength and willingness to stare unflinchingly at the memories that gave it rise.
—Delma the Older, first substantiated Child of Ash
He followed the dowsing stone through the Modern Stratum Dregs toward the Imperial War Museum. The building’s tall green cupola was half gone and smoking beneath enormous white columns. A block away, I pulled Cassius to a stop.
“This could be a setup,” I said, “but I think we have to take the risk. Odds are she’s a thanatist. If things go south . . . well, Precedent says you can’t engage unless you’re attacked first.”
“When you and I met, I was prepared to have my bindings run dark,” said Cassius. “I am no longer afraid of Precedent punishment.”
I didn’t exactly like the sound of it, but I nodded.
We made our way to the museum steps. The woman who’d given me the dowsing stone was leaning against the center column.
She was tall and lean, wrapped in a double-breasted coat over a black turtleneck; at her collar was a necklace pendant in the shape of the Shiguan sigil.
She took a step forward and greeted us. “If there’s a next time,” I said, “let’s do it without all the cryptic notes, huh? ”
“I’m happy to see you, too, Mr. Solomon,” she replied.
Several vestiges stepped into view from a dark archway. Cassius put his hand on his sword.
“You knew Henry and I would be shot,” I said, gesturing at her crew.
“Was it one of yours? How do I know you aren’t here to finish the job?
” She sighed. “Understandable, given the circumstances. Very well.” She held up a small knife.
“I formally grant you safe passage to and from this meeting. To this I bind my will.” With a well-practiced motion she pricked the meat of her thumb and flicked a small droplet of blood
toward me. It vanished in a bright flame.
“See? Perfectly safe. Now, let’s go inside, shall we?” She turned toward the archway.
After a brief pause, we followed. Cassius was stopped at the door by the woman’s vestiges.
“I don’t come without him.”
She waved a hand, and Cassius was allowed through. Once we were inside, the vestiges shut the door behind us.
“My name is Emaline.” She extended her hand, from which she’d already removed her glove.
I took it—her grip warm and soft. “May I call you Jack?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, letting go of her hand with a bit of regret.
A few paces behind her stood a woman similarly dressed, with long, red hair in a tail. “This is Margaretha, my personal attaché. She will be joining us. Would you please follow me?”
We passed under World War II airplanes hung from the high ceiling above.
Glass cases displaying armor and military uniforms lined the walls on either side.
Military vehicles and tanks hulked in the gloom, some so battle-damaged that they seemed hardly more than scrap metal.
Gun turrets and unexploded ordnance were on display, too.
Evidently, just looking at the displays triggered their illuminating lamps. And inside the golden light, the artifacts seemed to come alive in reenactments of their final battlefield moments—wind, sound, smells—showing how they were damaged.
I wished I’d had time to explore the whole place.
Emaline led us to the Lord Ashcroft Gallery and around to a display. She asked that Cassius and Margaretha stand a short distance away for privacy’s sake.
“Have you heard of Odette Sansom?” she asked me, indicating the display in front of us.
Next to an array of medals, artifacts, and pictures lay a few dolls. “I can’t say that I have.”
“As a child, she overcame polio and blindness. As a young woman she married and had children of her own, which she left behind to work for the Special Operations Executive during World War II. She was a housewife who became a spy and parachuted into France to fight with the French Resistance. She was one of the first women to ever receive the George Cross medal.”
I knew the George Cross. It was a big deal. “And the dolls?”
“She made them for a German priest while she was interned at the Ravensbrück concentration camp after she was captured and tortured by the Gestapo.”
Emaline looked toward a hooded lantern in the display. A holograph rose in a spray of gold light. It showed a woman strapped to a chair while the Gestapo pulled her fingernails out with pliers and stabbed her back with hot pokers.
“She never gave up the whereabouts of her comrades,” Emaline said, shutting down the holograph. “Her courage saved lives.”
“Remarkable woman,” I said.
Emaline turned to me, her face firm and beautiful in the dim lights of the glass case. “It gives me comfort to come here. It suggests that we can all outlast our captors, does it not?”
“You knew we were going to be shot,” I repeated. “Why didn’t you stop it?”
“It was beyond my power to do so,” she said. “But I am so very glad to see you alive.”
“Because you have a job for me?” I asked.
“Not only that.”
“And what about Henry? Is he alive?” I watched her closely, trying to see if she would lie to me.
Her smile faded. “I don’t know, Jack. But Mr. Wilkinson was the primary target, so they would have had extra measures in place for him.”
“Who is they?”
“The Shiguan, a schism and growing society of Strata-folk who share a mutual anger toward the world above.” She shifted her weight. “They are presided over by a Muster Brach, who personally oversaw Mr. Wilkinson’s assassination.”
I put a hand on the glass case to steady myself. “Are you okay, Jack?”
“Brach came to the Iron Horse last night asking after Henry. Bastard stood right in front of me talking about their friendship. Wanted me to join the Shiguan, to help find Henry.”
She looked surprised that I’d met him. “Clever bit of reconnaissance on his part.”
“Why would Brach kill his friend?”
“The Abyssal Steps, Jack. They can come between people, even friends.”
“What’s your play, then?” I pointed at her necklace. “Seems you’re part of the group that killed Henry.”
“I’m Mr. Brach’s urn-bearer. His right hand, if you will. I’m required, as are most Shiguan, to wear the emblem.” She pulled a cigarillo from inside her jacket and fit it to a filter.
I produced my Zippo. “Allow me.”
When I lit it, I glanced into the shadow of her chin thrown by the flame across her neck and shoulders.
Crisp lines. Storm-grey shimmer. Several occlusions.
And a thin aural band, not quite thanatist gold, more like amber.
But deep inside her shadow, I also glimpsed something else—it was almost like seeing two shadows at once.
Before I got a clear look, she reached up and snapped the Zippo cap shut. “I’ll forgive your intrusiveness this once.”
“Sorry—”
“What you nearly saw was my primal moment,” she said. “Every soul has one, a turn that shapes who they are and what they will become.”
I’d read about primal moments in the Shadowmancy text—for some, it was a hope or passion; for others, a belief or struggle; for a wraith, it was an anger or obsession. “I didn’t mean—”
“Perhaps we’ll talk more about my shadow another time.” She took a long draw on her cigarillo.
I put away my lighter and grabbed the dowsing stone. “So, your relationship to Brach, does that explain this?” I held up the stone. “And your question about what I’d do to escape a life of slavery?”
“We all wish to be master of our own fate, Jack, wouldn’t you agree?” “Brach doesn’t see it that way, though, does he?”
“His obsession with the Iron Horse has made him intolerable.” “What’s the obsession?” I asked.
Emaline stared at me for a long moment. “Revolution.”
I’ve never felt such tension from the Strata, Henry had written. “What kind of revolution are we talking about?”
“Though some of the Strata’s inhabitants are content,” she explained, “bitterness grows in a great many of them. They’re angry at the way historians and politicians and creatives have changed and weaponized history to their own advantage.
Others are angry at the pillaging of the Strata by topside thanatists—the summoning of semblances, the stealing of Strata wisdom. ”
“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the dead of London’s past are going to war with its present?”
“It is far more nuanced than that, Jack. And far more dangerous.”
I could have used a good, loud Slayer tune just then. “How do you mean?” She looked around us, then back at me. “If I read you in on this, Jack, you’ll either accept my offer or you’ll become my competitor. Sharing the information could get me killed, and you along with me.”
I knew secrets had a price. It was part of why I’d left LA. But this was about Henry. “Let’s hear the offer.”
She took a long breath. “Brach doesn’t intend to just fight back against the exploitation of the past . . . he intends to rewrite London’s future.”
It took me a minute to process that. “How would he even begin to attempt such a thing?”
“The way all revolutions begin, Jack—the music of the people.”