Chapter 52
Fifty-Two
Sorcha
“Neal, it isn’t hot here!” I squealed when we got down the gangway and onto the Liverpool docks. The cuts on my face had nearly healed over, leaving barely a scar. And Neal promised that the stitches would come out once we reached lodgings in Edinburgh.
Smoke from steamships hung heavy in the air, and the white, domed port administration building was streaked with soot.
The wind shifted a few degrees, blowing the reek of the graving docks our way.
My stomach rebelled immediately, and I leaned over the railing and vomited into the harbor.
Ansel had disappeared into the crowd, no doubt negotiating something with luggage or train fares.
But Neal rubbed my back, offered a handkerchief, then water.
And then he went stiff. I looked up to see Guinevere Marchmont heading down the gangway, eyes fixed on the two of us.
“High Lady Wilson,” Guinevere said as she approached.
“Mrs. MacCairn,” I corrected her instinctively.
“Mrs. MacCairn,” Guinevere continued. “I just wanted to offer my sincerest apologies for my outburst.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“It was uncalled for,” Guinevere said.
“You called me a whore,” I muttered. “I’m your sovereign.”
Guinevere looked sheepish.
“Don’t stay in touch,” I replied. “Please?”
Guinevere simply nodded and ducked away, trailed by a string of porters with her luggage.
Ansel reappeared a few minutes later, brandishing not one but three sets of train tickets.
“Do you feel well enough for research?” he asked immediately.
“With the cold? And a real bed?” I replied. “Most likely.”
“We’ve got options. All first class—obviously.
” Ansel spread out the tickets on top of our trunk.
“London has the best libraries. But no official Outer Court outpost, which means hotels. Edinburgh has the big Outer Court headquarters plus the universities. It’s also where I’ve told all my contacts to report back with news of the cults.
Or if you’ve decided you’re tired of travel and want to reach our final destination as quick as possible and let the staff dutifully trek back and forth from the mainland, I’ve got tickets for Glasgow—we can catch a ferry to Islay. ”
“Edinburgh,” I replied instantly. “I’m tired of hotels. I want any updates we can get from your informants. We can make some progress before we properly set up shop in Islay.”
“I’ll send word ahead, we’ve got an archivist up there who can start digging,” Ansel said.
“We have archivists?” I asked. “And you’re just telling me this now?”
“We have everything up in Edinburgh, lass,” Ansel replied.
“Should’ve moved back ages ago,” I muttered.
The Outer Court outpost in Edinburgh was old, older than Ansel.
The original structure dated back to the 1300s, built by my great-granduncle with extensive remodeling done at the turn of the previous century.
Ansel had sent dozens of telegrams prepping the staff.
And so when we arrived there were no formalities, no awkward parades of servants, just a hot meal, a bed with silk sheets—apparently brought in from France after I’d mentioned how much I liked them in New York—a pile of updates from the Outer Court intelligence agents researching the cults, and our lead archivist Marta.
The only sticking point? Alexi. The same Inner Court nobleman who’d crashed Neal’s and my wedding back in Santa Fe was now squatting at a hotel three doors down, showing up daily with a new list of intrusive questions and reasons why the staff should let him in.
He had not, in fact, been let in.
It was far less aggressive a tactic than Iksura had been employing back in the States and I wondered if word that her legal claim was unfounded had somehow reached the Inner Court already.
Settled, with resources and time and relative safety, it was time to research the portals in earnest. So Ansel and I spent the morning after our arrival combing through memos from our field intelligence agents and folios from Marta.
Neal had disappeared with the outpost Steward hours ago after sending Alexi away yet again.
The Inner Court nobleman did seem to be on orders from Iksura.
But those orders were different from the dozens of letters we’d had since my father’s death.
He was to “keep an eye on any developments” and “see if he could foster friendship.” So far his only achievement was a set of broken fingers from trying to catch the door before a particularly disgruntled porter slammed it in his face when he showed up earlier than usual and refused to leave.
“There’s documentation here,” I said. “So the cops aren’t sweeping it under the rug like back in New Orleans. Discarded animal carcasses in strange places. Disturbances late at night. She even found records of people being denied employment due to ‘occult tattoos.’ Marta’s thorough. I’m impressed.”
“I think New Orleans was a fluke,” Ansel said. “City that already had too much comfort with occultism from hoodoo. It leapt onto something that just festers elsewhere and turned it into the dominant culture.”
“Define everywhere?” I asked.
Ansel spread the memos over my desk. “I’m seeing reports from Hyderabad to Greenland and anywhere you can name in between.”
“Greenland?” I asked incredulously.
“Greenland,” Ansel replied. “Higher concentrations in places already familiar with at least some degree of occult practice. Lower in places with high religiosity of other forms. Basically none in the Amish settlements in the American Midwest. Basically none around Rome. Best I can tell there’s very little in the Ottoman Empire or in Persia—or what there is has gone far underground.
Very limited in Tibet and Nepal. Lots in Ghana.
Lots in New Orleans. Lots in Paris. And uncomfortably lots in the rural far north of the States and Canada.
The bohemians seem to take to it readily.
Poets sacrificing to eldritch horrors to get published. ”
“And here?” I asked. “Scotland?”
“Still working on it,” Ansel replied. “I had them start at the farthest extremes. We’ll have notes back on Edinburgh and Glasgow soon.”
“Go through them as soon as they come in,” I replied as Neal rushed in, expression carefully controlled but clearly upset.
“What’s wrong?” Ansel asked.
“Our healer was called back to the Inner Court,” Neal said.
“What, all of them?” Ansel replied. “They had six here when I cabled from New York.”
“All of them,” Neal said.
A long moment passed in silence, and my hands drifted to my belly.
“So when I . . .” I trailed off. I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. “Who’s going to . . .”
“We’ll figure it out,” Neal replied.
“It’s sabotage,” Ansel said. “We all agree on that?”
“What, recalling our entire medical staff within hours of Sorcha landing on British soil?” Neal said. “Yes. Technically within her purview since healers are Inner Court regulated, but definitely sabotage.”
“So she wants me to die in labor,” I said.
“Probably,” Ansel said bluntly.
“But you won’t,” Neal replied.
“We should have someone look you over though,” Ansel added.
“But who?” Neal asked. “I’ve sent telegrams to everyone. She’s wiped all western Europe, Ansel. Edwin sent me a form letter.”
“So much for her conceding once we proved the legal claim was faulty,” I muttered.
“I know a guy,” Ansel said. “I’ll deal with it.”
“You know a guy?” Neal looked skeptical.
“Trust me.”
Neal spent the following days reading every midwifery book he could get his hands on.
Marta looked skeptical but sourced the texts without question or complaint.
By the time Ansel’s “guy” arrived Neal had three notebooks full of diagrams, backup plans, herbal remedies, birth positions, everything.
Our bedroom was littered with his notes—an unsettling change from his usual tidiness.
I tried to find it funny, but I was terrified.
My mother’s too-pale face lodged stubbornly in my mind.
The stillness of her. The puddle of blood on the mattress.
Kadish Himmelbaum was young by Elven standards—not quite two hundred—with thick, curly black hair and a knack for small talk that surpassed even the chattiest big city socialite.
He’d cut all official ties with Iksura’s Inner Court healers more than a century before and gone independent.
Most of his work involved disguising actual Elven magic behind crystals, tinctures, and powders then selling it at exorbitant price to wealthy or desperate humans.
The rest involved showing up at whatever poor Elven settlements Iksura had decided didn’t merit the services of an Inner Court healer and providing what services he could—at a cost.
“You want me to check on the baby?” he asked immediately when the Steward showed him into my office.
“And her,” Ansel added. “And ideally deliver the baby when the time comes. Can you get to Islay?”
“I’ll go to Timbuktu if you pay me,” Kadish replied.
“And why are you here when Iksura kicked everyone else off the Continent?” Neal asked.
“Because I don’t care,” Kadish said. “We all got orders from her lapdog ‘esteemed chief healer’ Edwin telling us to leave. New assignments. But I haven’t listened to that in a century.
I don’t work on a stipend. She has a power complex.
I don’t like it. I like to be paid. I’ve been in Venice the last eight months.
Lovely city. Great food. People will give you anything to get rid of a hangover. ”
“And you’ve delivered babies before? Elven babies?” Neal pressed.
Kadish shrugged. “A few? Usually if people don’t have someone local they just travel. Now given Iksura seems to be deliberately depriving you lot of healers? Travel probably won’t help.”
“No more travel,” I muttered.
“Pregnancy not agreeing with you, Lady Sorcha?” Kadish asked, crouching in front of me.
“We’re on day four without her vomiting,” Neal said. “It’s a record.”
“I’m cold and fed and stationary,” I said. “It’s a new sensation, takes the edge off.”
“You’re looking like what, twenty-two weeks?” Kadish asked me.
“Twenty tomorrow,” I replied.
“Big baby,” Kadish replied.
“Good,” I said. “That’s the goal.”
“And how many of those have been spent on the road?”
“Fifteen and a half,” I replied.
Kadish shot Neal and Ansel a glare. “You dragged her across a continent and an ocean like this?”
“In our defense we didn’t know we’d be traveling when she conceived. And we didn’t know it’d taken before we started traveling,” Ansel said.
“Alright, you two, out,” Kadish instructed. “I’ll check her over. Check baby over. Send you a bill. I’ll be back every month until she’s due. Questions? Complaints?”
Neal stiffened. “You want me to go?”
“I do,” Kadish replied. “You’re nervous. It’ll make her nervous. We don’t need an audience. Go make her tea. Fluff linens. Be useful.”
And with that he shoved Neal and Ansel out the door into the hallway.