Chapter 21 The Metal Box
Weavingshaw sat like a wraith upon the moors—an entity that thrived in the dead and decaying season.
Leena could not imagine the estate in summertime; likely it would look shell-shocked and glassy-eyed in the growing season.
Indeed, from the moment Leena had her first look at the dark house, she had the unsettling feeling that it had fed on its surroundings until it was the last living thing within miles.
Leena felt, rather than saw, when they finally entered Avon land.
The earth smelled different on this side.
Richer, more iron-clad, like it had soaked in the blood of its defenders for centuries and would not let them go.
Even the wind was coarser across her cheeks, as if still carrying with it the remnants of sunken ships.
But most of all, it was the howling that jarred Leena. It was widely known that the north was the only land that still held wolves, and their terrible howls pierced her like arrows.
Leena closed her eyes and tried to ground herself in the present, focusing on the sound of her even breathing and the feel of her skirt beneath her fingers.
Yet, in spite of her best efforts, her mind wouldn’t be quieted.
Their journey had taken five days.
Thanks to Leena’s pleading, St. Silas had allowed Rami to accompany them, as Golborne was crawling with Black Coats who wanted her brother’s blood.
It was clear St. Silas was dubious at best about bringing Rami, but she had told him that she’d be useless with worry over her brother while in Weavingshaw, and would likely need to take to her bed with her nerves.
St. Silas had commented drily that Leena’s nerves would likely outlast even him.
It felt like a terrible plan to Leena, knowing they were visiting the estate belonging to the same man who had ordered Rami’s beating.
Still, she’d rather he stayed where she could keep an eye on him and try to keep him out of trouble.
Leena had additionally forced Rami to promise that he would remain discreet and not further incur Mr. Martin’s wrath.
He did so, but the begrudging way he agreed made her uneasy.
The five days of the journey had been uncharacteristically warm, although the sun hid behind a dense sleeve of clouds and mist. Theodore Daye was her companion in the beginning, but the farther north they went, the more he seemed to fade, nearly disappearing entirely by the fourth day, as if the journey had exhausted him.
This worried her. She was afraid that he might vanish completely before he had a chance to deliver Lord Avon to them.
Leena spent most of the trip with her nose buried in her books. She distracted herself with linguistics, translating newspaper articles from Morish to Algaraan, using her aged dictionary as a reference. And all the while terribly missing her botany book.
But it was difficult to concentrate on her handwriting when her mind was pulled in a thousand different directions.
Ever since Mrs. Van had revealed her unsettling age, Leena’s nightmares had become disturbed—images of dark creatures with abnormal hands that upset her rest. She’d gone to see St. Silas just after he’d come back from his prolonged trip, but he’d merely laughed at her suspicions.
“Come, Miss Al-Sayer, can anyone be that old?” he’d asked, but the smile had never reached his watchful, half-lidded eyes. “Mrs. Van was jesting at your expense.”
He was lying to her.
Just as he stepped around the truth of his ledgers and his own past, St. Silas carried his secrets close to his chest. He was hiding something rotten, a twisted history—one that Leena was determined to find out.
She watched St. Silas through the window now, riding alongside them on a brown thoroughbred.
He was an expert rider, in total control of the temperamental beast, and yet there was no enjoyment on his face as he rode, as if he was being propelled forward to Weavingshaw rather than leading the way there.
It had been a fortnight since the courtyard, and the time had passed for Leena in a whirlpool of morning confessions and preparations for their journey north.
She had heard reports from Mrs. Van that the boy brought to them on that dark night was now recovering well at the convalescent home, and would likely be out of bed in another week.
Leena was heartily glad to hear that; at least some good had come of that evening.
But since then, something foreign had lain between her and St. Silas.
It took all her efforts not to dwell on this; to name it would have been to give power to it.
She did not want St. Silas to hold any more of her than he already had.
Already he employed her abilities on his behalf.
Already her body seemed to react to his presence.
She didn’t want him to have command over her thoughts or emotions as well.
They stopped for the nights in various posting inns, where Leena stumbled into the clean sheets, her back aching from the journey.
Then, in the mornings, she would sit in the carriage, entirely travel-weary, her hair often still wet and curling from her bath the evening prior.
The hours stretched with blinding boredom, and she had begun to miss even Golborne’s dirty but familiar streets.
On what Leena desperately hoped was the last morning of travel, she was surprised to see that St. Silas had elected to sit in the carriage with her, no longer in his riding habit but his normal stiff collar and black suit.
Mrs. Van and Rami rode atop the box seat; she knew that Rami didn’t like the claustrophobic interior of a carriage, especially after his accident.
Still, he popped his head through the window.
“You okay, Leena?” he asked her, eyeing St. Silas suspiciously.
She merely waved him away.
She tried to ignore St. Silas, keeping her own head bent over her language studies, but sitting so close to him, even in silence, still brought a startling awareness of him.
They did not speak, but more than a few times she was sure she felt his gaze burn into her.
She refused to meet it, pretending to be engrossed in her book.
In the moments he studied her, what did he see?
Did he notice that her hair was particularly untidy this morning?
Or that her dress was wrinkled? Or that she had excellent posture, a habit acquired from when she was a lady’s maid?
Still, she ran a discreet hand to smooth the folds of her dress.
—
The smell of decay thickened the air as they traveled into the moors—the scent of roots rotting, of mildew entrenching itself deep into the frost-ridden soil.
Twilight pulled a curtain across the sky, and Leena caught her first sight of Weavingshaw moments before the darkness settled.
A single turret—a beacon, a warning. It sent a jolt of fear through Leena’s stomach.
On the maps she studied, Weavingshaw was the last human dwelling this far north before the empty expanse of sea. Only a tiny miners’ town called Lytham bordered it, and it was still widely considered Avon land, despite His Lordship having been dead for a little more than a decade.
They pulled into the town just as the miners finished their shift, trundling past with soot-covered faces and tin lunch pails.
As the carriage passed by, it was clear that the Saint’s horses were better fed than the townspeople.
The miners stopped to stare at them, their picks and hammers swung over their shoulders, all lined up in a single row.
An eerie welcome—but as Leena peered through the dark, she could see that their expressions were not welcoming at all.
Their mouths were twisted, their eyes hostile.
One spat at the wheels. Another snarled, “Aristo pigs.”
Nearly all of them wore a twine of rope pinned to their lapel. A sign of the Rebels.
“They think we’re nobles,” she said, lurching away from the window, her heart pounding.
St. Silas met the miners’ stares as they wheeled past, his posture unwavering, and for a stark moment he looked like an errant noble from a forbidding fortress.
Leena clutched the copper coins between her fingers, a tremor overtaking her body.
“What if they overturn the carriage?” They’d reach Rami first, and he’d barely survived his last beating. Although the bruises had finally faded from his face, she knew that his ribs still ached with every sharp inhalation. He could not afford to be in another fight so quickly.
“They won’t. Their anger has not yet surpassed their fear,” St. Silas replied, yet he didn’t turn away from the miners until they had passed them.
As they progressed deeper into the town, they saw dilapidated houses sunken from years of rain—the broken shingles, the makeshift patches used to cover the leaks.
St. Silas straightened, an odd anger in his voice. “Martin has been idiotically deficient in his duty to his tenants.”
Leena turned to him sharply. “How so?”
“Simple attention to the safety of the mines and the houses they reside in would have improved their productivity.” His mouth thinned. “And decreased the chances that half these men will end up hanging from a tree for treason.”
“This is why,” she said softly, “my father wanted a union. In the end, the Mr. Martins of the world always win.”
“Victory,” St. Silas replied with an edge to his voice, “comes to those who wait.”
Leena had no doubt that he was not talking about her father, Mr. Martin, or even the Morish King, but she refrained from saying any more.
—
Although they were only a few miles from Weavingshaw, St. Silas had decided they would stay for the night in the posting inn that bordered the forest between the estate and Lytham.
Leena was eager to press on, her mind returning to the snarling faces of the miners, but St. Silas was firm; they would arrive in the morning.
He seemed oddly cautious about riding toward the estate at night.