Chapter 37 Detritus Poison #2
Leena could now see that they’d passed the forest surrounding Weavingshaw. In the distance, she could see big plumes of smoke rising from the miners’ town, but she didn’t have a moment to wonder about the cause.
“Hargreaves wanted the red diary for the Wake.” St. Silas tried to sit up straighter, but Leena pushed him back, continuing to wrap the bandages firmly.
“Why?”
“He very rudely did not specify his reasons.”
“Have you read the diary? Could there be anything in there that could capture his interest?”
His mouth was a firm line. “There are few passages, mostly mundane accounts from the First Marquess of Avon. The rest of the pages are blank.”
Blank?
“Do you think Lord Hargreaves knows this?” Leena asked.
“I doubt he does,” St. Silas said, gazing down at her hands tying the bandages. “My father must’ve fooled him into believing that it held vital information.”
Leena held her misgivings. If the red diary retained benign, mostly blank pages, would this be enough to capture Percy back from the dead?
Leena looked back out the window, her mouth pursed. They’d just entered the moors, leaving behind Lytham and Weavingshaw’s ever-watching tower.
He continued softly. “There is something else, something about Theo—”
Horror descended into Leena’s stomach with St. Silas’s brief but concise explanation of the events leading up to the duel. His expression remained neutral throughout, his voice continuing in that same slow cadence.
Warring emotions played through her chest: hurt on St. Silas’s behalf, fury at the betrayal of the boy-ghost who stood guard over her bed each night, and shame that Leena had led their entire party to disaster on Theo’s word.
She felt like the worst sort of fool. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes.
St. Silas must have marked the expression on her face, for he opened his mouth to say something, something soft and careful—
—but he was cut off by the deafening screech of wheels, followed by the snap of breaking metal.
This time, the carriage didn’t correct itself, instead plunging into the snowbanks with force.
Leena was thrown forward toward the window as the carriage fully overturned, her back painfully crashing against the glass panes.
Stillness.
Leena blinked through the confusion, trying to gain a sense of orientation, instantly looking for St. Silas. Before she could utter a word, the carriage door—now where the ceiling had been—flew open, and Rami’s panicked face appeared.
“Are you two all right?” he cried, eyes jerking between the two of them.
St. Silas slowly straightened beside her, his hand spasming across the site of his wound, jaw tense with pain.
Relief flooded Rami’s face when he saw them both begin to stir. “The wheel of the carriage had broken and I couldn’t stop it from toppling over into an icy ditch.” He helped Leena exit the carriage first, followed more slowly by St. Silas. “Hurry. We must move fast.”
Mrs. Van helped Rami unharness the horses, but her attention kept slipping back toward the road. “They are not far behind.”
The snow had thickened. Already the sky had darkened beneath the clouds; only a thin remnant of light remained to guide their way. All around them the earth was covered in white, the snow now up to Leena’s ankles, coating the hedgerows and the trees.
Her teeth chattered, more from spent nerves than the cold, but she knew that the temperature would soon drop further. Already the tips of her ears felt raw.
St. Silas was leaning against a birch tree, eyes too bright and slightly unfocused.
She drew closer to him, reassessing him for any new injuries. “Are you all right, my lord?”
He nodded, the flush in his cheeks a contrast to the paleness of his skin.
Leena placed a hand against his forehead, her heart sinking when she felt his temperature scorching.
“You have a fever,” she cried in alarm, turning to Mrs. Van. “He says that he has been injured with demon poison—”
“Describe the wound,” Mrs. Van demanded.
Leena did so as best she could, emphasizing the black marks emanating from its center.
“Detritus Poison.” Mrs. Van’s breath hitched. “The antidote is rare.”
St. Silas nodded toward Mrs. Van. “Can you make it?”
“I can,” Mrs. Van confirmed, “but I must go back immediately to Golborne where my books are. Then it will take a few hours to collect the ingredients.”
Golborne, which was five days away. And now their carriage was broken. “How long does he have before the poison reaches his heart?” Leena’s eyes swung between St. Silas and Mrs. Van in horror.
Mrs. Van fleetingly looked at St. Silas before answering.
“A few days. At most, a week.” She struggled to meet St. Silas’s gaze.
“First, he will swing in and out of acute delirium, and infection will ravage his body, before he falls comatose—likely around the fifth day. I have only ever seen this poison used once. Afterward—”
Mrs. Van stopped, unable to continue.
Leena touched her chest as if her own heart felt the ache of the poison, already preparing for the end.
Coming to Weavingshaw’s hunting party, a thousand grim scenarios had played out in her mind. But never once had she seen St. Silas dying in any one of them—or imagined that the very thought of such a possibility would send her into a premature grief, as if that loss could already be felt.
Leena finally looked at all three of them mutely: Rami, his teeth clenched; St. Silas, poison thrumming in his veins, already ravaged with infection; Mrs. Van, demon-born, whose grim face belied a depth of emotion.
Leena knew with certainty that St. Silas would not last a journey on horseback.
She inhaled a lungful of crisp air, welcoming the way it burned her throat.
Steeling her nerves, she turned to her brother.
“Rami, you and Mrs. Van must ride to Golborne now. You will have to push yourself to the limit, but you can make the journey in two and a half days if you ride day and night. You will have to change horses at every posting inn.” Leena glanced at the horses.
They were carriage horses and would need to be traded for two riding horses at the next town.
That would slow them down as well. “Once you arrive in Golborne, Mrs. Van will concoct the antidote. Once that is done, you must ride as quickly as you can back to us.”
“Where will you be?” Rami asked as he took hold of the horses from Mrs. Van, already preparing for the long ride ahead.
“In Lytham, a couple of miles back. There is an old housekeeper who lives in the center of the town. We’ll hide there.”
Rami nodded. “You two must not walk back on the road, but circle around the town. I will lead the Black Coats away from you. Mrs. Van will take one horse and I will take the other, so that they may think that we have all gone to Golborne.” He paused in the act of knotting the long reins.
“If we are lucky, they will not uncover the deception until we are back in the city.”
Mrs. Van’s gaze raked St. Silas. “He is fever-touched already. Our time is very short—especially as Mr. Al-Sayer will have to travel back with the antidote in this weather.”
“You will have to make it, Rami,” Leena said firmly. “If not, then I will personally track down Lord Hargreaves and trade the red diary for the antidote.”
Leena had seen St. Silas hide it in his coat pocket when they’d struggled out of the upturned carriage.
At this, St. Silas jolted, stumbling forward to grasp Leena’s shoulders in a tight grip. There was urgency in his eyes. “Swear to me that Hargreaves will never get ahold of that diary, Leena. It is essential. Swear it.”
Leena locked her stare with his. For the first time in her entire life, the lie felt natural on her tongue. “I swear it.”
He released her, turning toward Rami. “Here.” He thrust out a drawstring pouch, full of coins. “If you need more, Mrs. Van will know where to look in my study.”
Mrs. Van took one last look at St. Silas, her stern eyes memorizing the contours of his face, and for a moment it looked as if she was in prayer. Then her straight brows formed a formidable scowl as she swung herself onto the horse.
“I’m sorry,” Rami said as he climbed onto the other black gelding, “that you both have to walk toward town in this snow, but this is the only viable way to lead the Black Coats away from you.”
St. Silas nodded, his gaze already turned toward the miners’ town and the road that lay ahead.
Leena kept the information from Rami tucked away in her mind, unable to focus on it now when so many other problems required her immediate attention.
“Be careful?” Leena implored, looking up at Rami with a lump in her throat. At Rami’s short nod, she gave him the satchel in which she’d packed her botany book and the housekeeper’s timepiece. “Take this back to Golborne for me.”
Rami took it distractedly, glancing at St. Silas for a moment with a hooded expression that she’d never seen him wear before.
He shook his head before he bent to her, his voice low so that only she could hear him.
“The Saint knew the duel was an ambush from the very first. He knew it was slaughter. He still went.”
Leena absorbed the words. “Yes, he told me, but what I don’t understand is why he would do such a thing. It is very unlike him.”
Rami straightened, staring down at her with something bordering on exasperation. He took the reins and turned the horse southbound.
“Rami!” She tried to go around him but he threw her an irritated glance before trotting forward.
“Have you not guessed by now?” The horse grew restless, Rami barely able to restrain it single-handedly.
“Do not play games now.”
Rami speared one final glance at St. Silas, before looking back at her intently. “I was going to be executed on the steps of Weavingshaw. The Saint saved me. And it was all for you.”
Then he lashed the reins forcefully, a canter turning to a gallop, Mrs. Van following closely behind. Leena watched him go, his words echoing in her ears.
She felt his absence like the cleaving of two branches that shared the same root.