“They are.”
“Do you think it’s possible that monster that attacked us is, I don’t know, one of us?” I thought of the mangled spoon in my pocket, of the sad little note reading “SO RY” in a messy, wibbly script. Something didn’t fit. “Could it be reasoned with?”
“Reasoned with?” She rounded on me, losing her temper. Her nostrils flared, one tendon working furiously on the side of her face as she pointed the damp vase at me. “That thing tried to kill Mary. If you hadn’t gained your senses for half an instant and shot at it, who knows what would have happened?”
“Well, it was Finch who actually—”
“I don’t care who did what, I only care that you two fools survived.” It was the closest thing to concern she had shown for me in a long time. Perhaps ever. Her furor ebbed, and she turned back to the basin, calmly washing the vase once more. “I know you don’t appreciate that there is, or was, an order to things around here, but some of us are doing our best to maintain it. That order does not have room for a mangy, flea-bitten . . .”
I couldn’t make heads or tails of the rest of her sentence, but it damn well sounded like she knew what that monster was. Even its proper name. I pushed my half-eaten plate away and stood, sliding smoothly out the door toward the foyer. If Mrs. Haylam knew what that thing was, then so did Mr. Morningside, and if she wouldn’t tell me then perhaps he would. I had leverage now, in fact: his precious translations.
“I should start my day,” I said as I left, feeling petty and triumphant that I had left behind a small mess to clean up.
“I dare say,” she drawled, her shoulders bunched up in irritation. “Enjoy it while it lasts, girl.”
Enjoy was a strong word, but I did intend to make the most of my short freedom. I had so far avoided my father, but the confrontation could no longer be avoided.
I planted myself in the west salon next to the foyer. It was commonly used for reading or taking tea in the afternoons, and it was only a matter of time before Croydon Frost found me there. Poppy mentioned over supper that he had spent most of the day there writing letters and perusing a book of poetry. While I waited near the windows, I watched the clouds pass low over the forest. The little path leading to the spring was always dark, like the crack in a cliff wall only into deep shadow. I usually avoided the spring, as guests liked to congregate there, and now I felt even less inclined to visit. The Residents were indeed flitting among the trees, and I watched them weave silently on their patrols, hunting for the creature prowling unseen.
There was a hot, building pressure in my forehead, and I recognized it for what it was—the strain of too many questions and an aching dread. Sailors often complained of pains before a storm, and this was no different—something horrible waited on the horizon, I could feel it, but I was powerless against our inexorable slide toward calamity. I did not believe Mr. Morningside’s trial would go as flawlessly as he anticipated, and I did not believe Mary had killed Amelia. A storm was gathering above us, and nobody but me seemed to notice the building, angry clouds.
“It’s an extremely finicky process, enfleurage. . . .”
I pulled away from the window, turning to find Croydon Frost picking his way across the carpets toward me. He was dressed as exquisitely as Mr. Morningside, making no attempt to hide his wealth, with a well-cut deep emerald suit in velvet, and glossy riding boots. His puffy silk cravat was patterned with moss-green roses.
“You are attempting to preserve delicate things, re-create something ephemeral and vanishing. The tallow must be imbued with a flower’s life over and over again, the fat hungry for the fragrance, not sated until it has devoured dozens, sometimes hundreds of blossoms.” He paused halfway across the room from me and pulled a small glass vial from his pocket. Holding it up, the crystalline bottle shimmered in the sunlight. Something moved along his shoulders, bright and strange, but I could not tell what it was until he shifted closer.
“And then, when the fat has had its fill, we come to this.” He opened the cork on the vial and approached, handing the tiny bottle of perfume to me. Even before it reached my hand I could smell the indelible, light beauty of lilacs. It was almost otherworldly, how perfectly he had captured the essence of the flower. My eyes fluttered shut, and I held the bottle just under my nose, breathing in pure summer.
“A gift,” he said softly. “A woman is not fully dressed until she has her parfum.”
I opened my eyes and stared down at the bottle. No wonder this had made him rich. I wondered how much this little vial would fetch, and slipped it into my apron pocket next to the bent spoon.
“Thank you,” I said. “It was very— Oh God, what is that?”
The thing on his shoulder skittered around from behind his neck to the arm nearest me. It was a spider, a huge, hairy spider the size of a bird, brilliant purple and pink, as if dyed to match some garish ball gown, and a small chain like a leash was secured around its middle. It was, quite frankly, the creepiest personal effect I could imagine. Carrying a bloody great spider on a chain everywhere? Was I really related to this person?
I recoiled, backing into the window and holding the curtain in front of me.
“Oh, this?” Croydon Frost laughed, urging the creature down his forearm to his palm, where it seemed to regard me with its many eyes, one fragile furry leg in the air swaying. “She’s quite harmless, I promise, just a stunning creature I found on my travels.”
“It doesn’t look harmless,” I murmured, cowering.
“Do you think I would let her crawl all over me if she were prone to biting?” He grinned and held her out closer to me. “Go on, it’s not like the fur of a cat. It’s completely unique.”
I had no desire to touch it, but seeing it in greater detail was morbidly fascinating—it had a spiral pattern on its back and I could not believe how bright and pretty its pink and purple stripes looked in the sunlight. Carefully, I reached a finger out and stroked one of its furry legs.
“Ouch!” I snatched my hand back in horror. “It bit me!”
“My apologies.” He stumbled away, shielding me from the spider with his other hand. “She’s never . . . That’s not like her.”
It felt like a bee’s sting, and my finger immediately became red and swollen where the creature lashed out.
“Is it poisonous? Oh Lord, am I going to die?” I felt immediately sweaty, cradling my hand defensively to my chest. How perfect. Closing my eyes against the pain, I went rigid, listening as the woman’s voice I had been hearing drifted toward me again, soft, like music from a neighboring room.
Run, child. Run, the slumber is ended.
“No, no, be calm, they’re not poisonous, you should be just fine once the swelling goes down,” Croydon explained. I almost didn’t hear him, focusing completely on the voice that came not from without but from within. Who was she? Why did I keep hearing her words of warning? She had been right last time, and I took a small step back from Croydon.
He sighed and shooed the spider back up his arm, where it seemed to watch me, peering around his neck, little black eyes glittering with interest. Or hunger. Maybe I had proved a tasty bite.
“And here I had hoped to win you over.” He strode to the windows to my right, placing his hands on his hips and surveying the lawn.
“Resist the urge to bring a spider next time,” I muttered.
“At least we know I’m a spectacular failure in all things,” Croydon joked, but he sounded genuinely miserable. “Consistency is important.”
“Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you. Nobody made you fail me and Mum, you did that all on your own.” I glared down at my wound, wondering if it would scar as badly as the marks left behind by the book. He said nothing, but I felt him gazing at me with desperate eyes. Forgiveness. That’s what he wanted, what everyone wanted, but I had no intention of giving it to him. “Seventeen years of neglect is not rectified with a perfume bottle.” I marched over to him, fishing the vial out of my apron pocket and thrusting it forward.
“You can have this back. I don’t want to be bribed, I just want you to answer my questions.”
“And money, I expect you want my money, too.” He sounded colder now, angry. His black eyes narrowed as he looked down his beak of a nose at me. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re my daughter—you have my eyes, you have my curse, you will also have my vices.”
It was so strange to see him, really see him, and know that we shared a kinship, for I felt nothing at all for him, no daughterly warmth, no familial connection.
“Why did you leave us?” I demanded, searching his face. If he lied, I would push him through that bloody window, spider and all.
“I didn’t know what you would become, if you would be odd like me,” Croydon replied flatly. “Without me . . . Without me you had a better chance of living a normal life.”
“A poor life! A miserable life with a drunk of a father!” I prodded him in the chest and he touched the spot as if burned. “So you are a Changeling?”
Croydon Frost considered the question for a long moment, and his eyes went hollow, almost dead, as if he had momentarily slipped into a trance. Then swiftly, before I could react, his hand flashed out, capturing mine and lifting it. He studied the bite on my finger, shiny and red, and then let go.
“I want to give you an inheritance,” he whispered. There was life again behind his black eyes, swirling, burning life.
“That doesn’t answer my—”
“But you will have to choose, Louisa,” Croydon interrupted sharply. “You can have wealth or knowledge, and one is infinitely more valuable than the other. That is a promise you can depend upon.”
I shook my head, hoping he saw that same, determined fire behind my eyes now. “No,” I said resolutely. “I want both.”
“Both,” he repeated in a growling whisper. What I saw then in his gaze frightened me. He was not disgusted by my greed or intimidated by my stand; he instead reveled in it, a kind of mad intent simmering in his eyes, like a thrumming kettle about to scream. “Then you will have both, daughter, but not here. Not now. You will meet me in the pavilion tonight, midnight, you will come alone, and you will have all your questions answered, and more. Some answers, I suspect, you will wish to forget.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Year Two
Journal of Bennu, Who Runs
I could track the months of our journey on my face, in the fading of the circular scar around my mouth and in the dark beard that had begun to cover it and darken my entire jaw. When I saw my reflection in puddles now, I saw not a naive young boy but a man, seasoned and changed by a year of endless peril.
Khent, too, had grown a beard, though due to his strange nature, it grew far thicker and wilder than mine, mottled as if to match his beastly counterpart’s pelt. He weathered the winter with greater ease, seemingly hardened against the ice and wind that drove at us constantly as we crossed a narrow channel by boat and continued north along the coast of this strange island. Its people were hardy, friendly, though coarsely dressed by our standards. They had strange blue markings in paint and ink on their bodies, and buried their dead in fields of raised furrows. When trade became necessary, we communicated with them only through hand gestures. We ranged over these areas quickly, keeping to ourselves as much as possible, mindful not to step on the sacred barrows of the locals, following the Sky Snake when it appeared, resting in crude shelters of branch and stone when it eluded us.
“Do you think we are the first of our kingdom to the south to find this place?” I asked Khent one morning. Our journey’s end felt near, for how much farther, how many more odd lands could we cross?
It rained steadily. Khent’s hood had long ago become soaked and useless.
“I think it will not matter, because we will never see home again to tell the tale.”
Months ago that statement would have wounded me, but I saw the wisdom in such skepticism. We had barely survived to this point; a return trip might kill us both, if only from exhaustion.
“A long rest,” I said softly. “That is what we both need.”
“I could sleep forever,” Khent replied with a snort. “Mother’s mercy, I have forgotten what comfort feels like.”
“And I have forgotten what it feels like to be dry. We will be among friends soon,” I told him. “And then we can sleep to our hearts’ content.”
I had never seen such wet days. Even during the rainiest seasons of home, the storms came in short bursts, never these days upon days of dreary damp. It kept the pastures lush, and we hopped many low stone enclosures where huge brown sheep grazed and watched us go by. The villages were few and sparse, though some had larger rings of low stone houses and even markets, markets that endured through the persistent fog and rain.
The morning wore on, the terrain stagnating, rolling field after rolling field, and in the distance what looked like a fortress from afar. As we neared it, I saw that it was merely a collection of pillars artistically arranged, some balancing straight up and down, others placed on top, almost like roofing slats.
“A sacred place,” Khent whispered. We had both stopped to marvel at the circle of stones. “It looks like a bunch of, I don’t know, doors. Gates.”
“Maybe we should go another way,” I suggested. “If it’s sacred we could be trespassing.”
But he ignored me, hefting his pack and pointing above us. “There. You see? She wants us to go this way.”
“The Sky Snake is a girl now,” I teased, following with a sigh. I had grown stronger over the months, but the pack still weighed heavily on my shoulder, and the bruises and scars there from the burden would never fade.
“She was sent by Mother to guide us, mm? It just seems right.”
The stones loomed larger, gray and dappled, gates for giants. I had stood in wonder at our own great sphinxes and pyramids, but this, too, was a marvel, simple, stoic, but awe-inspiring to behold. Khent pushed on, running his hand along one of the massive stones and ducking underneath into one of the gates.
“We could shelter here,” he said, gazing up at the gray sky.
“I don’t like it,” I replied, glancing in every direction. “It’s out in the open. And if it’s sacred . . .”
“All right, Bennu, you win. We will find somewhere else,” he grumbled. “If only this accursed rain would end.”
We passed under one stone gate and into the circle where it was clearer. Those who had built the sacred circle had left markings in the grass and bits of stone, swirls and circles, intricate and precise. I wondered if we should be walking across them at all, but Khent did not hesitate, casting his head back and watching the giant snake above us, angling his path toward its tail.
“See how she flies more quickly?” Khent called to me through the rain, pointing. “We must be close. She’s eager to take us there.”
“Eager? Ha. If she wants to get there faster, she could allow us to ride.”
“That’s the spirit,” he joked. “You are Bennu the Runner, yes? Not Bennu the Flier.”
“You gave me that name! I see no reason to abide by it.”
We both laughed, and my heart gladdened from the sound and from the sudden change of fortune in our favor—the rain lessened to a far more tolerable drizzle. When we were again in silence I heard the distant humming of bees, and cast about for hives. There had been few insects at all with the steady rain, but now I heard what sounded like a massive swarm.
Khent put out a hand, my chest bumping into it as he tilted his head to the side. He had heard it, too. We had not yet crossed the clearing in the stone circle. Had we angered the locals and invoked some kind of curse?
“A swarm?” I whispered, clutching the satchel with trembling fingers. “From where?”
“There, to the south; do you see those shapes that move across the clouds like cranes?”
“Bigger than cranes,” I murmured. “Swifter, too.”
They were indeed creatures of the air, though as large as men and hurtling toward us at great sp
eed. Before I could see them clearly or speak another word, Khent grabbed me by the shawl and pulled, urging me into a run.
“Look above you, friend. Do you see the moon? We are in no position to make a stand, not in daylight,” he huffed. He was faster than I was, and I struggled to keep up. Reaching over, he pulled the satchel from my shoulder, and I was grateful to be relieved of it as we fled.
“We cannot outrun them,” I panted, glancing over my shoulder and feeling my heart stutter, not just from the chase but from the sight of three winged monsters diving toward us. I shrieked and ducked my head as one swooped low, a hard talon scraping across the top of my hood.
We dove toward one of the stone gates, finding meager cover from our pursuers.
Khent dropped the satchel between us, backing up against one of the pillars and grabbing me close to his side.
“That sound,” he whispered, staring up with wide, frightened eyes as the winged things hovered and circled, the hum of bees loud enough now to drown out all other sounds in the valley. “Wasps. Wings. Servants of Roeh, no doubt, but none like I have ever faced.”
“They’re chanting,” I replied, cowering at his shoulder. “What are they saying?”
“I don’t know.” Khent ducked down and peeled off his own pack, rummaging inside and coming up with a crude bronze knife he had bartered for days ago. “And I don’t care. Chanting will do nothing to stop the bleeding.”
I did not share his confidence, staring up in mute terror. There were three of them, each with six massive white wings. The feathers looked more like knives than tufts of soft white. One pair of wings stretched around from the shoulders, covering their faces; another pair of lower wings wrapped around to hide their feet, almost demurely, their torsos draped in white shrouds threaded with gold.
And they had not come unprepared. Each of them wielded a sword, a long, honed blade of pure silver.