Chapter 49
Chapter
I couldn’t let her do it. Not just for the sake of the mill, or Henry. But for Lucy’s sake, too. There was no way she wouldn’t be caught.
I chewed my nails as Henry’s coach carried us to Palmanaeus. He caught my eye and looked up from the book in his lap.
“Nervous about initiation?”
I managed a weak smile.
“Don’t worry,” Henry said. “You read the bylaws and sign your name, promising to keep the Society’s secrets, to protect its interests and work on behalf of the Crown, blah, blah. But overall, I think you’ll find initiation to be an…interesting experience.”
I nodded, distracted. I could tell Henry Lucy’s plan. He would simply increase security at the mill. He would never trust Lucy again, but at least she wouldn’t rot in a cell the rest of her life. And that was the best scenario.
Henry closed his book, resting it across his knee. “Come up to my office when it’s over,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.” He tapped his fingers over the embossed title: Geomagical Faults and Thrusts of England. “And there’s an experiment I’d like us to attempt. If you’re amenable.”
“Your office after initiation,” I said. “Understood.”
Worst case, Lucy would be shot or killed with one of the very manifold reliqs they were manufacturing at Glasswater.
And what if I told Henry, and he went straight to the home secretary? I could beg him not to. But what if he didn’t listen? It wasn’t hard to imagine his fury if he learned of her plans.
I couldn’t risk it. I would have to convince Lucy myself.
“You’re late.” Conybeare sniffed.
“Sorry. The roads were crowded.”
He sniffed again. “Those black-bands? Prometheans? Ah. I understand, then. Menace, all of them. Well. Come along.”
I waved goodbye to Henry and hurried to follow Conybeare as he strode down the hall.
Conybeare was master of fellows, responsible for inducting and training any new members. My chest fluttered. New members like me.
“Is Buckland here?” I asked, trying to catch up. Conybeare was surprisingly quick for an old man. “I need to speak with him.”
“After. Initiation is a private affair. Here we are, then.” Conybeare stopped in front of a narrow, unmarked door just inside the library. I don’t think I’d ever even noticed it before—or if I had, I’d just assumed it was storage.
Conybeare unlocked the door. I followed him. It was empty except for some kind of podium in the center of the room. Then Conybeare lit the reliq-lamp and shut the door behind us. The walls swallowed both light and sound; the lamp’s light struggled to penetrate the darkness.
I could hear my own breathing, too loudly, and I had the unsettling sense that the room had expanded beyond these four walls, and was tempted to reach out and try to touch one, just to assure myself they were there.
Only, what if they weren’t?
“Come, Geomagician,” Conybeare said, and I gasped, as the sound seemed to come from deep in my ear, inside my skull. But I thrilled, too. Geomagician.
The struggling light lit his chin and little more as he took the box from the podium—I recognized it now as the bylaws—and tucked it under his arm. Still holding out the lantern, he walked away.
I was frozen. He should have hit the wall in two steps. But Conybeare was still walking, the swaying lantern light growing dimmer with every heartbeat. I broke out of my stupor and followed, nearly dizzy with excitement.
Henry made it sound like initiation would be a quick signing—maybe a certificate to hang on the wall. Something prosaic like that. A secret, endless tunnel was much more fun.
We walked through the eerie black. I’d thought the cave in Kirtlington was silent and dark, but in comparison, that was riotously full of sound and light.
I couldn’t even hear my own footsteps or the sound of my breath.
The darkness gobbled everything except the tiny pinprick of light from Conybeare’s lantern.
We didn’t walk long. Two minutes, maybe three. It felt eternal.
I knew we were through—whatever this was—when I began to hear my own exhalations. Short, anxious breaths. And moments after that, Conybeare’s lantern light bloomed like a slow sunrise, the glow spreading warmly as it should have all along.
We were standing in a winery’s cellar. Or maybe a distillery’s. Large wooden barrels lined the rough-hewn stone, and stacks of crates and porcelain amphoras leaned against the back wall.
Before us, in the center of the chamber, was a table laid with a white cloth.
“Is this her?”
The hair on my neck rose; the voice had come from behind me. Had he been in the tunnel, following behind us in the dark?
But there was no passageway when I turned to look. Only more of the same—stone and barrels, and the most handsome man I’d ever seen.
The man had golden-blond hair and a neat, close-cropped beard—unfashionable, but somehow incredibly becoming. His eyes were a piercing green, and his jaw was strong and sharp.
Conybeare smiled slowly at my expression, and my stomach dropped.
Conybeare had never liked me, but I’d never been afraid of him before. Even when he turned me in to the Inquisitors, I hadn’t taken it personally. He was a grumpy, fusty old man who didn’t care much for women.
But had he led me here to kill me?
He couldn’t. Right? Henry would know—they would all know—I was due to be initiated; the finger would land right on Conybeare. Was that enough to stop him?
“Mr. Conybeare,” I said, backing up until the lip of a barrel pressed into my hipbone, “please don’t.”
Conybeare huffed. “Always with the dramatics. Miss Anning, please meet Sir Oswald Burgess, Her Majesty’s Chief Reliquemical Scientist.”
“Pleasure to meet you at last, Miss Anning.” Mr. Burgess held out a hand. The nails were scrubbed pink and clean, but yes—there was a shadow of black on the cuticles.
Silly, silly girl. This must be the initiation. Maybe I was about to learn the scientific formula for reliquary serum. That made much more sense—yes. To serve the Society and protect its secrets, Henry had said. And what secret could be greater than this?
I shook his hand with obvious glee.
He laughed. “After you, please.” He gestured to the white-clothed table.
The first reliquemists were priests who left the Church when reliquary enchantment became a secular function, during the formation of the Church of England. Those eucharistic roots were on full display now, as Mr. Burgess solemnly slid off the top white cloth to reveal seven engraved pewter bowls.
I leaned forward in excitement. Oozing black bitumen in one, and glittering chips of silver in another. Blocks of something yellow—ah, beeswax! Oil, and then a saltlike powder. “Is that alum?”
Mr. Burgess nodded approvingly.
One of the pewter bowls was empty, and I couldn’t tell what the last held. Some kind of brownish powder, a little like cinnamon. But I didn’t smell cinnamon.
“And that one?”
The two men exchanged a look. They were afraid to say.
“That’s not ground-up fossils, is it?” I asked sharply. “Because that would be a terrible waste of good fossils.”
“Heavens, no,” Conybeare said quickly.
“It’s bone,” Burgess said, almost as fast. “Unconsecrated.”
They shared a look again as I absorbed this.
Not fossil, then, but the bones of the poor dead souls who were banned from the Church graveyards for any number of sins.
Ah. Well. Yes. I could see, very well, why the reliquary formula was a secret. Not just for proprietary purposes, then, but because there would probably be riots across the country if the truth were out.
From the tension in the two men, I imagined this was the part where some new geomagical initiates reacted rather negatively to the revelation that our magic—our whole world, really—was powered by the bones of the dead.
I had no such qualms. What did the dead care? They were dead.
“I see. And the last bowl?”
Burgess smiled, and Conybeare’s eyes widened for a split second. With surprise? Relief? Distrust?
Burgess reached into his coat pocket and brought out a knife.
Really, I’d expected it, after the Loom. I nodded, before I could lose my nerve, and Burgess gave it to me handle first.
“It only needs a little. Just prick your fingertip.” He shook his head, chuckling. “That last fellow slashed his whole palm. We had to throw out the tablecloths.”
Blood was always so much redder than I expected. It welled and swelled on my fingertip, then burst from its own bubble and dripped into the pewter bowl, sliding down the wall to pool on the bottom.
I wasn’t paying attention to Conybeare, but just as I started to stick my finger in my mouth, he caught my wrist.
“Sign first.”
He’d unrolled the bylaws, all the way to the bottom. It was a list of names, in bright red ink.
“It will make a mess,” I protested. The other names were neat, clearly written with quill. I wasn’t going to add a bloody scrawl; that would be embarrassing.
“It won’t.”
I hesitated, but when Burgess nodded, I set my finger to the paper and began to write my name.
Conybeare hadn’t been lying. My scrawl was a clean replication of my signature, just below Gideon Mantell’s.
“Per Her Majesty’s Charter of the Geomagical Society of London,” Conybeare said, “you are bound and bonded, as Geomagician, to faithful service of the Crown and the Realm; Her secrets are yours to keep, and Her purpose yours to obey.”
The sensation of something thick coated first the finger with which I’d signed, and then my hand, and then my whole arm, as if I’d dipped them into wax.
The feeling faded after a moment, sinking into my skin.
My heart pounded. These were powerful enchantments indeed.
But it was done now. I was really and truly a geomagician.
Conybeare stepped back, and Burgess began scooping and chipping from the other ingredients, settling them into the bowl with my bit of blood. I tried to pay attention to the measurements.
But when Burgess finished, there were still chunks of beeswax and silver. It didn’t look anything like the viscous, oozing serum I’d expected. It looked more like bread dough.
Conybeare drew a deep breath. He was nervous. There was something else, then. Another ingredient? Or heat, maybe?
“Now,” Conybeare said. He wasn’t looking at me. “There are words that must be said.” His hands twitched at his sides. “Words to set the enchantment.”
I didn’t understand. Words? That didn’t make any sense. What kind of—
There was a hitch between my ribs. A tug, pulling me toward understanding.
“Sorcery,” I breathed.