Chapter 16 Theodore Daye #2
The last time Rami had seen a doctor was for his amputation.
They couldn’t afford the anesthesia, and the surgeon wouldn’t take Baba’s shoes or Leena’s faux jewelry as payment.
It had to be done without. Rami had been awake throughout the entire operation, witnessing his own butchering, falling into unconsciousness only afterward.
Baba had wrapped the limb in newspaper and taken it to the cemetery, and Leena knew that Rami had never forgotten that a part of him had been buried while he slept.
“You look awful,” Leena said—the same greeting she had given him every morning for the past week. This time, her voice shook with the weight that now plagued her mind, and she felt sick with it.
“Still have all my teeth,” was his usual response.
Leena had already told him of all the events leading up to her contract.
His eyes had blazed when he’d heard of Leena bargaining her secret for Rami’s medication, the fire growing even steadier when he heard the details of her contract.
The Saint will have to employ me as well was all he said.
For as long as you are indentured, Leena, so am I.
Leena didn’t know if her brother would be allowed to stay; St. Silas had already stretched his mercy to the limit by allowing Leena to shirk her duties to care for Rami.
Rami noticed her pale, trembling face, and he told her to sit on the chair beside the bed.
“What’s happened?” he asked, holding his ribs and grimacing as he turned to face her.
A part of Leena was afraid that Rami might not believe her. That if she accused the housekeeper of being another creature, he might give her that same pitying look as her neighbors. She didn’t think she could bear that.
“Are you thinking about the Black Coat you buried at the cottage again?” Rami asked. “Has his ghost come back?”
That was somehow easier to speak about. “No, not again,” Leena said quietly. “Do you remember what Margery used to say?”
“What did that old bat used to say?” Rami hated all their neighbors.
She threw him an irritated look. “She used to say that it was bad luck for the old to bury the young.”
His mouth twisted. “It’s all superstition, Leena. He would’ve killed you and not suffered your death as you are suffering his.”
She let out a shaky breath, still feeling overwhelmed.
Rami frowned as he pulled a piece of loose thread from his coverlet. “You shouldn’t have been there.”
“Did you think no one was coming for you?” She watched his profile carefully.
The thread snapped in his hand.
After a long moment, he said, “I knew you’d come. That’s the only constant.”
They had very few constants in their lives. They had both been forced to learn how to rebuild too early and too often.
“Why did you refuse to throw the fight?” The question had been beating Leena’s chest throughout the long nights spent watching over his sickbed.
His tone dripped with wrath. “Because devil take them, that’s why.”
She stood up in a huff. “I could throttle you!”
“Get in line, then,” he snapped.
“You’re a fool, Rami. And your foolish ways will kill us.” She crossed her arms. “What will you do if Mr. Martin tries again? If the Black Coats try again?”
The bruises on Rami’s face made him look like a ghastly, twisted reflection of himself. “I’ll make them pay.”
Leena turned and walked out of the room, slamming the door in the process.
—
Leena’s mind was a chaotic swirl as she left Rami’s room. What she needed was a semblance of her routine, repugnant to her though it was. For that, she would have to find St. Silas.
She’d only seen him in passing during the week since Rami’s kidnapping.
He had left a short note informing her that she would be excused from the duties of the shop while she tended to her brother.
That was a courtesy any factory Warden would rather drink poison than give to their workers.
For that, at least, Leena respected him.
While the Saint was demanding, she had come to find he was also fair-minded with all his employees.
Now that Rami was very much on the mend, she could no longer continue to take time off from both her contract and the hunt. So it was with deep reluctance that Leena knocked on the door of the Saint’s study.
“Enter,” St. Silas commanded. He was sitting behind his desk in his usual fashion, piles of ledgers stacked on one side, accounts and papers filled with scribbles on the other.
He didn’t look up. “You may leave the tray and go, Mrs. Van.”
“I’ve not brought food, I’m afraid. You ought to keep a tin of biscuits in here somewhere.”
At her voice, his head jerked up, and she was startled to see dark-gray shadows underneath his eyes. Otherwise, he was as immaculate as ever as he stood to bow to her.
“Miss Al-Sayer.” He assessed her wordlessly. His gaze lingered on her neck a moment too long.
“It does not pain me any longer,” Leena offered quietly.
“I didn’t ask.” And yet his sharp glance returned to her fading bruises once again.
Leena nodded, averting her gaze momentarily, fixing on the desk’s curved edges. “I only came by to say I am ready to begin our search again. Rami is almost out of his sickbed and no longer needs to be nursed around the clock.”
“Good. If that is all?”
She didn’t leave. “I also wanted to thank you for giving me time away from my duties to care for him. That was very generous of you.” She paused, tugging at a button on her dress. “The Black Coats will be looking for my brother, but they cannot touch him if he is to be under your protection.”
She could feel St. Silas’s gaze burn into her, although she didn’t return it.
“If you let my brother stay”—her eyes flashed to meet his—“I will work harder to find Lord Avon. I will—”
He held up a hand, and Leena fell silent. “If I do not have to hear or deal with your brother a moment longer, then he will be permitted to work alongside Arthur as a bruiser.”
Relief flooded Leena like a tidal wave. “Thank you, sir. He will not disappoint.”
“Your brother—for all that he is an impetuous fool—is talented with a sword. But mark my words, any sign of rebellion”—he slanted her a look—“the Al-Sayer rebellion—and he will be gone.”
He did not respond to her further show of gratitude.
She turned to go, but when she opened the door it was to see Theodore Daye waiting for her.
On peeking inside, the young ghost startled visibly, his eyes fixating on something behind her.
Leena first thought that he was looking at St. Silas, but she quickly followed his gaze and saw that it was Lord Avon’s portrait that had captured his attention so keenly.
“Do you know him?” Leena whispered, not wanting to startle the phantom.
“Know who?” St. Silas responded, not looking up from his work.
“Do you know Lord Avon?” she repeated gently.
The ghost’s mouth opened in his thin face and he nodded slowly.
Leena’s heart jumped.
“Is there a ghost here, Miss Al-Sayer?” Suddenly St. Silas was beside her, peering urgently into the nothingness.
“Yes, a boy who claims to know Lord Avon,” she continued to whisper, not taking her eyes off the phantom in case he vanished.
“Who is this ghost?”
“His name is Theodore Daye.”
She felt St. Silas stiffen beside her, a strange energy radiating off him like a building storm.
“Theodore…Daye?” St. Silas looked disturbed, so far removed from his normally languid manner that Leena threw him a questioning glance. “Describe him, Miss Al-Sayer. The ghost.”
Leena furrowed her brows. “A boy around fourteen, wearing a servant’s livery. Hair as fair as wheat. The color of his eyes is difficult to say, but I think they were once blue. I’ve seen him only in the past week.”
St. Silas stared rigidly into the absence where Leena could so clearly see Theodore, now looking back at St. Silas with equal intensity.
“Can he summon Lord Avon?” Although the question was meant for Leena, it felt as if St. Silas was speaking directly to the phantom.
Leena had never met a ghost that could call forth another spirit, but she asked anyway.
Theodore Daye, his mouth a firm line, nodded once more.
“He can,” Leena gasped, barely believing her own words. “How, Theodore?”
He pointed toward Lord Avon’s portrait, indicating specifically the red book in the noble’s hand.
“He’s signaling to that book that Lord Avon’s holding in the portrait.”
St. Silas inhaled roughly. “The red diary.”
“What red diary?”
“It belonged to the First Marquess of Avon. Now a lost family heirloom.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned this heirloom before?” Leena asked him sharply.
He met her accusing stare with stoic eyes. “It’s being mentioned now.”
She turned away from St. Silas in anger, focusing once more on the young ghost. “Can you confirm that you can bring Lord Avon to us if we have the red diary?”
He nodded slowly.
Leena didn’t know if she could trust him; she’d never trusted a ghost before.
But she remembered the way that Theo had warded off the other ghosts that haunted her, protecting her while she slept.
That he had the power to do so was unique.
That he wanted to help Leena was even more novel.
She decided that she had no choice but to trust him.
“Do you know where the diary is now, Theodore?” Leena asked eagerly, but she already suspected the answer.
He gestured toward a stray piece of paper on the Saint’s desk. Leena understood, hurriedly followed him to the desk, and began scrawling all the letters of the alphabet. With his tongue pointing out of his mouth in concentration, the ghost carefully pointed at the letters.
B—R—A—M
She turned to St. Silas. “He’s spelled your given name.”
The Saint said nothing.
W—A—V—N—G—S—H—A—W
Then, as if this act of revelation had fatigued him, the ghost nodded once more at her before flickering in and out, finally disappearing entirely. She hoped with all her might that this was not the last time she would see him.
The air felt like it had been extinguished from the room. Even the light from the burning fireplace seemed dim now, the magnitude of what she’d learned dulling it. It was a confirmation of what Leena already knew—it all led back to Weavingshaw.
She turned to St. Silas, eager to see his reaction.
“He spelled out Weavingshaw,” she said. But if she expected the Saint to share in her excitement, she was disappointed.
He’d already sat back down behind his desk, his attention not on his work but rather staring blankly at the fire, brows drawn together, the shadows beneath his eyes even more vivid.
He looked suddenly bloodless—bled out—and Leena knew with certainty that the mention of Theodore Daye had opened an old wound.
Slowly, and a little hesitantly, Leena walked around his desk. “How do you know Theodore Daye?”
He didn’t answer, but his eyes jolted away from the fire to meet hers. With effort, his expression turned deliberately remote once more.
Because she could not force a response from him, Leena began to think aloud, trying to sort through her thoughts.
She’d spent long hours theorizing about why St. Silas was chasing Lord Avon.
Was it for an unsettled debt? Hidden treasure?
A way to make amends to the dead? A way to take retribution on the dead?
None of it seemed plausible. “Were you a servant at Weavingshaw as a child?”
His brows rose faintly, a familiar sardonic lilt to his voice. “Interesting hypothesis, madam.”
“Is that a yes or a no, Mr. St. Silas?”
His gaze fell back to the ledgers encircling the study in another stretch of silence, then to his own timepiece hanging from his waistcoat.
“Will you call me Bram?” he asked instead, his voice uneven, once again bordering on the edge of something. “I’ve rarely heard my own name said back to me. Not since—”
Theodore Daye.
She tried not to rear back in astonishment. There was an intensity of emotion to St. Silas that she had never witnessed before, and there was now no doubt in her mind that the young Theodore Daye was the catalyst for this, dragging behind him a past she had no insight into.
Bram.
The name sounded in her head, and she tested the contours of it, wondering if it would turn into poison if she swallowed it. It felt as foreign to her tongue as some of the Algaraan words she’d practiced from her vocabulary books, the consonants at war with each other.
There was no peace to be had from that name, only invasion.
“I am safe here, sir, on the other side,” Leena finally replied, quietly, eyes not quite meeting his own.
“And what side is that?” His voice was strained.
“Where you are a formidable and uncompromising employer. And I a…” Leena’s gaze did not waver from its focus on the point of his collar.
She was not yet ready to acknowledge to herself that here sat before her a man blindly searching for a tourniquet with which to stem his bleeding, much as they did in wartime before they had to amputate.
“…ghost-seer,” he finished. Leena’s eyes shot to his, but before she could comment, he pointed toward the door, effectively dismissing her entirely from his presence.
“I have private business to attend to tomorrow. Then the day after I will be taking a short trip outside of Golborne. The shop will be closed until I return. Your duties can resume then.”