Chapter 44
Chapter
Glasswater Mill was a square red thumbprint pressed to rolling green hills, its singular chimney thrust into the sky like a raised fist. I watched out the coach window as the mill vanished and emerged, then disappeared again into the landscape as we drew closer.
Henry’s shoulder pressed against mine, and Ajax sprawled over our laps. Lucy sat across from us, her lips thin and her brow furrowed.
Last night I’d been furious at Buckland’s betrayal, but my rage had been tempered somewhat in the hours since by Henry’s soft hands and warm lips. Everything I knew had been flipped upside down. The man I loved like a father had betrayed me—and the man who once betrayed me now loved me.
I had mapped my life to Buckland’s, and done so happily, because I believed—foolishly—that he cared about me. And maybe he had. Just not so much that he wouldn’t use me.
That was the terrible irony of it all. I’d expected Henry to use me for his own aims. I had never expected it of Buckland.
The question I kept stumbling over was: Why? Why hadn’t Buckland simply told me the truth, back in Lyme Regis? When I’d demanded a nomination, why hadn’t Buckland just explained that it wouldn’t be possible unless he was president? I would have understood. I would have trusted him.
But clearly, he didn’t trust me.
Buckland must have feared that I would go elsewhere with Ajax—or with my loyalties.
Maybe even to Henry instead, and Buckland couldn’t risk that; he wanted the presidency too badly.
Maybe as badly as I wanted that nomination.
And when we made the arrangement, I hadn’t understood how precarious Buckland’s position really was.
I hadn’t known that his influence was waning, until Ajax and I had stanched the bleed in support.
We lent strength to his cause, and hitched the Church behind, to boot.
And still, he hadn’t trusted me enough to tell the simple truth—and that, I think, was the poisoned tip of the arrow.
The festering infection on top of the wound.
Up close, Glasswater Mill looked more like a fine estate than a factory. The flower beds were immaculate, and a fleet of gardeners was at work, digging near the hedges.
We wouldn’t be long at the mill, Henry promised this morning while we were still abed. “Only long enough for me to grab a few papers, and then back to London,” he’d said.
I’d flopped over, resting my chin on his chest. “Long enough for a tour, I hope.”
I still had only the vaguest sense of the thing Henry called the Loom, and I was eager to see the mechanics at work. “How does the steam engine work? Is the reliquemical formulation the same as slickers use? And you say the subjects have to be in contact with the material?”
My rapid-fire questions made Henry chuckle, and he’d kissed me, and then we missed the inn’s breakfast service.
Now I felt my chest flutter remembering what we’d been doing as our bacon went cold—as Henry helped me down from the coach. His smile deepened, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.
Two men had come out to meet our coach, and Henry went to greet them. I hooked Ajax onto my shoulder, but before I could follow Henry, Lucy grabbed my hand.
“Mary”—her voice was soft—“are you certain about this?”
“Oh, yes, Henry wouldn’t let us tour the mill if it were dangerous.”
“No, are you certain about him. After everything before…I am afraid Henry will only break your heart again. I…” She shrugged; her mouth twisted. “I don’t trust him, Mary.”
I wished I could tell Lucy she was wrong. But she’d seen me shattered. She’d held me together. She had every right to doubt Henry Stanton.
Except she didn’t have all the information. Henry knows I can resurrect the dead. He’s risked his own life—and career—to protect my secret. I trust him because he’s earned it.
I almost told her. But Henry was calling, waving us over, so I patted her hand. “It’s different this time.”
The mill employees were a funny pair. One was young, with a rust-colored mustache and a charming smile. He introduced himself as Mr. Stewart, operations manager. The other was old and stooped, with a shock of white hair. He gave us only his name—“Farnsworth”—and Henry had to provide the title.
“Our chief science engineer.” Henry clapped the old man’s shoulder.
“He was my father’s first employee, at Bridgewater.
Father always said the mill would have failed if not for Farnsworth, and the same is certainly true for Glasswater.
” Mr. Farnsworth grimaced, but looked quietly pleased once we’d all turned away.
Mr. Stewart led us into a neat reception area. There was a steady, low vibration underfoot, and a repeating pattern of rhythmic whirring and grinding so that our guide had to raise his voice to be heard.
“I was delighted when Mr. Stanton sent word that you would like to see the facility. We’ve been operational for six months now, but I’ve had very few opportunities to practice my tour with anyone but poor Mr. Farnsworth,” Stewart said.
A table had been laid with tea and warm biscuits, the tea rippling in its cups from the thrumming floor. Mr. Farnsworth snuck two of the biscuits to Ajax as we passed into the hall.
“Down that wing is a dormitory for workers. To our right, you’ll find more offices, maintenance, and laboratory space, nothing much worth touring.
Stairs just that way, up to the second level—we’re wrapping up construction on the upstairs rooms—and, aha, here we go—through here”—he opened the door straight ahead with a flourish—“is the manufactory floor, and the first operational Glasswater Loom.”
He had to raise his voice even further to be heard over the cacophony of sounds—grating and scraping, squelching and churning, clicking and grinding, and the hiss, hiss, hiss of steam powering it all.
I was hit by the sound first, and then the smell—oily and acrid—even as my eyes tried to make sense of the maze of pulleys and belts hanging from the ceiling, a net of crisscrossing thick black piping and clear glass tubes.
Ajax, on my shoulder, gave a high-pitched shriek and reared back, clacking his beak and waving his head around, scraping my ear and cheek.
“Whoa, whoa, hey, hey. You’re all right.
” I had to practically shout even to hear myself over the cacophony; no wonder Ajax was afraid, poor thing.
I plucked him off my shoulder to cradle him to my chest. That usually helped him settle, but this time, he still struggled against me, flapping and whimpering.
Poor fellow was terrified. “I’ll take him back out to the coach. Just a moment.”
But Mr. Farnsworth gestured. “Give him here. We’ll just go and have some more nice biscuits, then, where it’s quieter.”
Farnsworth held him expertly, wisely offering another biscuit from his pocket as they made for the door.
With Ajax gone, I had nothing to do but marvel. The manufactory floor was one long open space, running the whole length of the building. One machine was half finished and still, but the one directly before us was a blur of motion and sound.
My first thought was of an octopus. At the center of the Loom was a glass bell jar, about three feet tall.
Its lower half was filled with a black, viscous liquid.
The substance had the telltale iridescent shimmer of reliq-serum.
It roiled and popped in the jar, and the top half was opaque with steam and condensation.
That had to be where they put fossils. The jar was overturned in a raised open vat of more of the same.
The serum flowed outward from the vat via seven glass-tube “arms,” passing through wrapped copper coils and then a metal shunt, through which it entered each pod.
Lucy gasped. “Are those…”
The pods were a rounded teardrop shape, chalk-white in color, but lacquered smooth as glass. I thought they looked a bit like scooped-out hard-boiled eggs. And reclining in each pod, chest-deep in serum as if lounging in a black-water bath, was a person.
None of them spoke, but they all turned their heads toward us. I might have expected curiosity—the owner of Glasswater was with us, after all—or maybe embarrassment—I gathered they were all naked under there—but each face shared a common weary blankness.
“As you can see,” Stewart said, and led us closer, next to one of the seven pods, “the Loom is manned by seven subjects. The serum is activated by the physical contact with the body, just as a conventional reliq would be. Steam power is used to circulate the serum between the pods and back to the central charging station, there at the center.”
His hand traced the path in the air, winding in and out and between the pods—more like a wheel, then, rather than an octopus.
I tried not to stare at the woman in the pod closest to us, but it was difficult not to.
She was missing several teeth, and her face was deeply wrinkled, though I doubted she was out of her forties.
Purpled, sunken bags hung under her eyes.
Whatever she was outside of this place, or whoever she’d been before, her life was not a gentle one.
Now that I was looking closer, I saw several thin silver filaments emerging from below the black water, and another two that were embedded just under the woman’s chin, in her neck.
There was a web of silver cords, I realized, running between the pods.
Conical copper beads zipped on defined paths, shuttling back and forth.
“Oh,” I said, a little breathlessly. “It’s blood, isn’t it? You’re linking them by blood, filtering it through all of their bodies…that’s what compounds the magic? The serum, then, is treating them all as one being…is that how it works?”
I was speaking quickly now, walking along the machine and examining the channels and tubes pumping blood and serum. I grinned, and Henry grinned back.
“Now that I see it—now that I understand, it’s so obvious! How did no one think of it before?”
Henry laughed. “Well, they did think of it. The surgeon Al-Zahrawi theorized it would work all the way back in the first century. But it took the invention of steam power to make the transfer feasible.”
“But that means there must be something about magic that requires oxygenation for storage and usability, doesn’t it? Blood and breath. I wonder—” I stopped with a grimace. “Lucy?”
Mr. Stewart and I realized at the same moment that Lucy was not awed, as I was, by the scientific marvel of the Loom and the implications for magical theory.
No. She was upset.
Lucy had stepped past us all to grip the edge of the woman’s pod. “Are you—does it—is this—oh my God.”
Lucy covered her mouth, and her eyes went wide.
Stewart went to her side. “Miss Murray, I can assure you that the subjects are quite comfortable, there is no risk or danger involved, and they are compensated very handsomely for their participation, and, additionally, receive three complimentary meals per shift.”
I put a hand on her back. “Luce, she’s fine, they’re all fine, see?”
The old woman turned her head. Her long hair trailed in thick, serum-coated tendrils over her shoulders. She blinked a few times, her eyes focusing, and then she chuckled.
“It’s sweet of you to worry, dear, but it really isn’t so bad. We’re not even here, really,” she said, and then straightened her neck as her eyes unfocused again.
I turned to Henry. “What does she mean?”
“They dream,” he said softly, at the same time Stewart said, “Exposure to reliquemical serum is reported to have a hallucinogenic effect on its users; the same experience has been extensively studied by reliquemists, who describe it as a brief but pleasant euphoria.”
“See?” continued Mr. Stewart. “No harm done. Look, have you seen this mechanism here, with those shuttles running back and forth along the wire? It’s ingenious. Mr. Stanton, can you explain for us—”
“No harm done?” The white of Lucy’s eyes flashed, and her cheeks flushed. “This is barbaric. And if you can’t see that,” she snarled at Henry and me, “then you’re both more lost than I imagined.”
“Lucy, come now, that isn’t fair!”
But she was already slamming the door. Henry and I exchanged a bewildered look.
“Ahem. Erm.” Stewart cleared his throat. “Well, Miss Anning, if you have any further questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.”