The Unnaturalists (33 page)

“Oh, I know. It is terribly exciting, isn’t it?” She flashes that radiant smile, and my heart aches.

She gestures me to come closer, and when I hesitate, she puts her arm around me and draws me close. “I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

I’m terrified that she somehow knows what’s just transpired between me and her husband. But what she says is even worse. “Charles has said he has special plans for you after the masque, your clumsiness at tea notwithstanding.”

I stiffen. I think I know exactly what those special plans are.

“I think he would make a wonderful match, don’t you?” she asks. She lifts her head to look at my face.

“I d . . . don . . . I don’t . . .” I stutter.

“Oh, come now,” she says. “I think Charles would be perfect for you. He shares your interest in those unnatural creatures, saints know why, and will probably be in charge of the Museum once your father’s gone. A marriage between two Unnaturalists seems quite . . . natural, don’t you think?” She giggles at her own pun.

I sit up and try to hold back my tears. I sincerely doubt that Charles has any intention of marrying me, nor do I want him to. I’d rather he sucked my soul into the cursed jar than be his wife. Once, I would have had no problem speaking my mind about such a thing. The irony now is that I literally can’t say a thing in my own defense.

“Oh.” Lucy sits up and hugs me as I rock and hiccup at the edge of her voluminous bed. “My goodness, I never took you for a girl given to hysterics.”

She pats me on the shoulder and stands up, stretching.

She brings me her silver snuff box. She sniffs a bit of
myth
herself and then offers it to me. But I can no more bring myself to sniff up fairy bones than I can unseal my tongue.

“It’s all right,” I gasp. I pull the handkerchief from my bosom and dab at my face. I’m sure my cosmetics have been utterly ruined. Lucy confirms this when she orders a maid to touch me up. She looks at me as if she doesn’t quite know what to do with me, but I pull myself together as best I can and help the maids dress her for the ball. Lucy has gone back to her usual love of feathers with this gown, and she sighs happily when the maids remove the roses in her hair and affix a bejeweled spray of kingfisher feathers instead.

I try not to see the maids laying out her negligee for her wedding night as we leave the room in a cloud of scent and feathers. I
am not going to think about it anymore. There is more important work I have to do. I have made up my mind. When the Manticore is brought out of the Refinery, I will free her and take her to the Beast in the Well. I’m not sure how I’ll fare without magic, but perhaps she’ll be able to protect us long enough to get us there. I pick at my gown as we descend.

Nervousness translates into hunger for me and by the time we’re allowed to proceed to our places, I’m so hungry I feel I could eat an entire horse by myself. Luckily, the feast will be held before the ball, in the same Great Hall where the wedding took place earlier in the afternoon. We shuffle around, waiting to be allowed inside, and the smell of exotic foods is close to making me either faint or scream. I chatter aimlessly with Father and Aunt Minta, only half-listening to what they say, when suddenly the herald’s trumpet rings.

“Her Most Scientific Majesty, the Empress Johanna! Her Heir, the Princess Olivia!” he cries.

I freeze.

Though the Empress had been invited as a matter of course, none of us expected her to actually attend. She hadn’t responded to the invitation. She never leaves the Tower. So, why has she left now?

It can only be one thing—the Manticore.

Places are made for them hastily. The entire seating chart will be thrown off, and, more importantly, House Virulen has lost face for not being prepared for the Empress’s surprise arrival. Lucy’s dark eyes glitter against her pale face. She’s livid. Her smile is terribly forced as she curtsies low before the Empress.

The Empress says a few words to my mistress and then she and the Princess lead our procession into the banquet. I watch Olivia follow her mother like a ghost. I can no longer see the spell that binds her lips, but I feel a kinship with her nonetheless. When her eyes find mine as we’re settling ourselves, we gaze at each other in wordless sympathy.

Dish after dish is brought in—roasted peacock recovered with its original gorgeous skin and tail fanned out, suckling pig with everlights in its eyes and a golden apple in its mouth, a whole python coiled around a towering pastry. There are other cuts of meats that shimmer with their own light as they’re carved—haunch of Satyr, tentacles of Kraken. I had heard that the Lords sometimes still eat Unnaturals at high feasts, but I never really believed anyone would, as fearful as they are of all things Unnatural.

What comes next has made me ill from the first time I heard of it during the wedding planning. A fleet of servants bearing glass-covered dishes with napkins carefully placed over the top file out along the table. I watch one eager lady whip the napkin off, and the stricken form of the flambéed fairy under the glass makes me gag. I think of Piskel hidden safely in my room and hope he remains so.

I know what comes next, but I watch helplessly as one person after another drapes the napkin over their heads, spears the tiny form on a silver fork, and lifts it to their mouth under the napkin. The sound of tiny bones crunching is almost more than I can bear.

I am just about to hurry my poor appetizer into my napkin and shove it under the table when someone takes me by the arm and drags me from my seat.

Charles.

“It’s time,” he says. “Let’s go.”

I nearly stumble as he pushes me out of the hall, out onto the veranda, and toward the old house Refinery.

“What are you doing?” I try to turn and kick him in the shins, but get tangled up in my dress and the sliding of my shoes.

“The Manticore is being uncooperative,” he says. “I am guessing she will only allow you to bring her into the Hall.”

“I won’t,” I say. “I won’t do it.”

“You will do it, or I will force the bishop to wed us right now. I think you know there are worse things than having one’s soul trapped in a jar.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t care what you do!”

He shakes me. Hard as he did the night he silenced me with that wretched kiss. I can’t figure out how a boy who’s only a few inches taller than me and slender as a snake can have such strength. “I can make you, you know. And it will be far more unpleasant than the spell I used to seal your lips.”

I open my mouth to speak, but then he puts his hand over my lips and says a word, a single, vicious word. My lips fuse into a solid piece of skin. I cannot say a thing, and I cannot open them. I can hear my own muffled screaming in my head as he drags me to the Refinery doors and unlocks them one-handed.

“Now, unchain her and make her follow you to the Hall!” He pushes me so hard that I trip over the broken marble and fall to my hands and knees again before the Manticore. My reticule slides from my wrist and tumbles directly between her paws. The steel hoops of my skirt bite into my knees, but I daren’t move. She’s crouched over my neck, growling.

I can’t say anything as her iron breath makes goose pimples of my flesh.

Pleasepleaseplease,
I think at her. Hoping that she can release me. Hoping that she knows how to bring the magic back or can at least show me the way.

Her teeth are at my throat and for one moment, I’m afraid perhaps this has been her intent all along, that she’ll dupe everyone and their hopes for me by eating me alive here in the twilight.

Then my lips split and I can open them and breathe through my mouth. And speak.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

She laughs a low, feline laugh.

I stand and bend to unhitch her chain. In one swift motion, she lifts my reticule. The silk dissolves and I see a mirror, a pot of lip stain, and my handkerchief slide down her throat. She clamps her iron teeth around my toad.

“No!” I cry.

She bites down on it hard, and it dissolves with a sharp green flare. I’m suddenly lighter, as though I’ve sloughed off a heavy skin. The Manticore smiles and winks at me.

Charles, who’s lurking in the doorway, laughs. “I see she disposed of the dampener. Doesn’t matter, though. Your powers won’t help either of you.”

“What are you talking about?” I say. I’m still looking into the Manticore’s eyes, wishing I could speak to her.

“It’s a dampener,” Charles says. “Families with known witches or warlocks in their bloodlines use them to suppress the gift.”

“You mean . . .” I whisper, more to the Manticore than to him.

“Your father has known all along what you are.”

My gut wrenches. I feel like I might fall down again. Memories flash with ever-increasing clarity—Father’s concerned looks, being
expelled from Seminary, whispered conversations outside my door, Father telling me to carry the toad with me as a good luck charm, all those sylphids singing to me in that exhibit long ago . . .

The Manticore nudges me as if to remind me we have work to do.

I inhale as deeply as I’m able. “Yes,” I say.

She gazes at me with her great eyes and silver smile. I understand now why Athena went to her death bold and unrepentant for what she did. If it comes to that, I will do the same. Energy dances all around the Manticore and in and out of the ivy—threads of nearly invisible light—and I know I have but to reach out and weave it into whatever shape I need.

I nod, leading her through the door. Her claws click on the marble, then go silent on the mossy steps.

Charles turns. I see the dark thing inside him; it’s curled around his heart, an evil homunculus gnawing through his chest.

And at that moment, as I watch the last shreds of his humanity disappear, I understand. “You fool,” I whisper to him. “You let the Grue eat your heart in exchange for its power.”

He raises his hand to cuff me again, but thinks better of it when the Manticore growls.

“The witch is clever,” he says. “Charles offered me something I could not refuse. And we will both soon have what we desire.”

“What?” I ask. “What is worth destroying everything? For that’s what you’ll do if you let her die.”

I turn to the Manticore. “Why should you abide by the Law if he doesn’t?”

She stays silent.

He looks at us with dead eyes and a truly gruesome smile. “Not so clever,” he says. “Come.” He turns. I consider leaping on him
and trying to kill him with my bare hands. But even though I have the magic back, I’ve no idea how to use it or if I’m strong enough to overcome him. I’m pretty certain I’m not. The Manticore paces behind me, the ticking of her heart like a metronome counting out my steps. Her iron breath is colder on my back than the oncoming night. She needs me.

I turn and follow the thing that was Charles.

When we enter the warmth, light, and noise of the Great Hall, we’re met with a few shrieks that fall away into fainting and silence. The Empress stands so abruptly that she knocks over her chair and the crash echoes all the way to the domed ceiling. I follow Charles to the dais and the Manticore follows me. She settles behind me, her spiked tail scraping the steps, lashing like an agitated cat’s. I glimpse the true redness of her fur for the first time; it’s crimson and plush as fresh-spilled blood.

“What is the meaning of this?” the Empress asks. Her voice is gritty and ancient beyond her supposed years. The way she moves, the way her eyes are like holes in her heavily made-up face make me wonder how old she truly is. It’s strange to stand higher than her; it feels almost sacrilegious. She is so very small.

Charles bows deeply to her. The golden ribbons on his shoes are one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. “Have no fear, Most Scientific Majesty,” he says. He raises his voice so that all can hear. “I bring the Manticore as a wedding gift to the new Lord and Lady Grimgorn, and as a salve to Lord Virulen’s longstanding wounds incurred from this deadly Unnatural. I know your Majesty has some quarrel with the Manticore, as well.”

Charles gestures to someone at the back of the Hall, and I see them slowly wheel in a collecting unit.

“No,” I whisper. I think of the Forest and all her people, the Waste creeping close. I know with a certainty as sure as my ability to properly identify a rare sylph that the Manticore’s death will spell disaster for the Tinkers and all the creatures who rely on the Forest. By morning, the Waste will be at New London’s back gate.

Lord Virulen struggles to his feet and limps over to the dais. He looks up at the Manticore with his one good eye. It’s difficult to read his expression because of his perpetual leer, but I see fear gleaming in that eye. Fear and gloating.

“A worthy gift, Scholar Waddingly,” he says. “Quite worthy indeed.”

I’m holding the chain loosely, too loosely. I hear it slide almost before I feel it.

The Manticore leaps. Lord Virulen’s thin scream evaporates beneath her razor claws. I’m dragged down the stairs after her, my elbows knocking the stairs, my knees scraped by steel.

The Hall reverberates with overturning chairs and screams, not least of which are Charles’s screams of rage.

But the Manticore looks at me. The light around her heart is so bright I can barely see.