Below her, the girl was drinking the bowl of her sweat with a dagger at her throat, made to swallow, helpless to resist. She was dying, and Thatch was inside her now. Soon they would give her the antidote to the poison, but by then her mind would be too weak to resist the old wych.
Alaizabel could not see her face, could see nothing but darkness, and finally she went limp and unconsciousness claimed her.
The padded walls of her cell were familiar to her by now, though she had not been at all certain that she would wake up again after the ceremony. It was with a sense of relief that she looked around the soft squares of dirty white, the gridwork of flat buttons that formed their edges, row upon row surrounding her on all sides.
Still here, she thought. She had survived the ceremony, and the Fraternity had not killed her yet.
Distant shrieks forced their way through the cushioning of the cell, a cacophony of anguish from some of the asylum inmates nearby. She lay where she was, her cheek pressed to the gently yielding floor, and let a tear slide from her eye. At least she was clear-headed again. They had kept her drugged ever since that American wych-hunter had brought her here. He had snatched her off the street that night, striking like a cobra the second Thaniel’s back was turned. One moment she had been pursuing him as he chased after the final Green Tack victim, the next she was being pulled into an alley, her mouth muffled by a handful of cloth, and the sharp smell of chloroform was the last thing she knew before she awoke in this cell, deep beneath Redford Acres.
She had no idea how long they’d kept her here. Probably not very long, she guessed; they would have wanted Thatch out of her as soon as possible, and into a host body with a spirit that was a little more willing to leave. They had conversed with Thatch several times, sedating Alaizabel before each session so that her conscious mind was powerless and the spirit within her could speak through her mouth. She could not recall the content of the conversations. Maybe Thatch was making requests; maybe the reason she was alive now was because Thatch wanted her to be. Certainly, she was of no more use to the Fraternity now that they had Thatch. She recalled the words of the spirit during the ceremony: You’ve been a troublesome thing to old Thatch, a most troublesome thing. I’ll see to you, oh yes, I’ll see to you!
She feared to think what Thatch had in store for her.
Tenderly, she levered herself up and sat with her back against the padded wall, facing the door. She was wearing a coarse cotton shift of drab white, the uniform of an inmate. Her throat was still dry, but she was not as dehydrated as she might have expected to be after the ceremony. Perhaps they had made her drink afterward? Possibly she had been awake at some point between the ceremony and here; she could not be sure.
A faint smile forced its way on to her haggard features. But I am my own again. I am Alaizabel Cray; no other. And if I should get away from these people, I promise to God that nobody but I will ever have a hold on my mind. Not by drug or by wych.
It was true. It was only when Thatch was gone that Alaizabel realized how noticeable her presence had been, a weight on her mind, making her head heavy. She felt lighter now than she ever had, liberated and free.
But you are still in a cage, Alaizabel[ she pointed out to herself.
She would not despair. She was herself again, and her staunch will had always been strong. She would wait, and see what happened.
In the hour that followed, she thought of her parents and felt little remorse for their deaths. They were too far away; they had always been strangers to her. They had joined the Fraternity; they had been the instruments that had drawn Alaizabel into this chaos in the first place. They deserved what they got, floating downstream in the murky Thames.
She thought of Thaniel, too. How did he feel now? Was he worried about her, searching for her? Did he want her back because he wanted to keep Thatch from the Fraternity, or did he just want her back? Did he want her back at all? She could not fathom the way he reacted to her. Sometimes he was warm, sometimes cold. But she liked his smiles, and the way he sometimes turned his words, and the odd flash of his eye. She would like to be back with him again. He was the only honest thing she had ever had.
It was while thinking of him that she began tracing patterns in the grime that lay on the white fabric of the cell padding, carving little lines of clean white through the dirt. Her doodles were at first idle shapes, then more complex pictures; and finally, in the midst of a depiction of a steam-train, she was struck by a thought that froze her with its possibilities.
Could it really be that simple?
She got to her feet, hunger and weariness making her head light, then crossed the cell to the door and knelt in front of it. It was blank, with no handle on the inner side, a section of the quilted wall outlined by a dark, narrow rectangle. She closed her eyes, remembering. How elusive memory was, and yet the image of the shape she wanted burned in her mind with a definition and solidity so strong as to be unnatural. She had seen it only once, and yet she could remember it more perfectly than her mothers face.
With her finger, she began to draw in the dust of the quilting, her fingertip drawing a track. Lines met and linked, curved and swept, seeming to form themselves before her. When she was satisfied, she sat back on her heels, and there in the dirt was a perfect Ward of Opening. The same as she had drawn that night when Thatch had first taken control of her body, when she had been locked in Thaniel’s room and seeking escape.
Nothing happened. She pushed the door experimentally. It was still as locked as it had ever been.
Her heart sank, no longer buoyed up by the hope that she had felt for a time. It had been foolish, anyway. The foul spirit inside her had been drawing the Ward, not her. She had hoped, perhaps, that some small part of that power might have remained inside her by some arcane osmosis. Apparently, she had been wrong.
She squinted at the shape she had drawn. Like all Wards, it seemed a little too real, as if the rest of the world were faded slightly by comparison. And yet... did it not seem as if the fabric was somehow thinner where her finger had passed? As if she had worn a little way into the padding of the door?
Suddenly excited, she ran her finger over the lines she had already made, forcing herself to go slowly and carefully, willing the Ward into existence. Her first trace of the shape produced no effect; undeterred, she tried again. This second time, she thought she could see something, but she could not be certain it was not her imagination. By the fourth time, she was no longer in doubt. It was not the padding that was thinning beneath her fingers, but some invisible gauze in the air, wearing away steadily to open into another place, the place where the Wards existed.
Her heart began to race, her eyes to widen and glitter in astonishment. Heat was building in her gut, like it had the first time, when Thatch had been in control. There was some technique to this, some drawing of the power, but it was so natural to her that she did not even know how she was doing it. She had seen Thaniel drawing Wards in pigs blood, but the blood took treatment and preparation, needed Rites and mixing with other reagents. She was drawing a shape with her finger, and it was working, actually working!
Thatch, you festering thing, I may have something to thank you for yet, she thought, and beneath her finger the glowing red of the Ward welled through like blood from a surgeons incision, and she made the final pass and took her hand away. It lay on the door for an instant, a fierce glow of red, darkening the room around it; and then it was gone, leaving its imprint on her eyes like the after-image of the sun.
There was a soft click, and the door drifted open a few centimetres.
She wasted a few moments in silent disbelief before standing up shakily. She pushed the door open and peered out. An empty corridor, dank and echoing with distant shrieks, gas lamps marking the way and reflecting from the wet stone floor. Out here, without the muffling effect of the padding, she could hear the muttering, the crying, the thump and scuffle and yell of her neighbours in their cells. A thousand mad voices whispered in the air all
around her, echoing and multiplying in the corridor. No wonder there was nobody here; a sane jailor would quickly join his inmates if he had to patrol this corridor day after day.
Barefoot, she stepped out and on to the damp, cold floor. Small puddles and runnels of water crawled across the corridor. She shut the door of her cell behind her, then looked either way. A door was at one end. She began to run.
Weak though she was, the thought of getting away from the voices in the corridor was enough to push her on. Mercifully, there were no windows on the doors of the cells, so she could not see the tortured souls that made such awful sounds; but her imagination provided more than adequate substitutes. Reaching the end of the corridor, she found the door unlocked, and hurried through with little regard as to what might be on the other side.
She found herself in a treatment room. A trolley stood in the centre of the room, with straps at wrist, waist, ankle and neck for restraining the patients. To her right, a tall thing like a cabinet stood, cold and forbidding and covered with dials and switches. It hummed with electricity, no doubt from some generator deep within the guts of the asylum. There was a metal cap on the trolley, attached to the cabinet by thick wires. Alaizabel felt a thrill of disgust, not wishing to know what went on in this room. She hurried past, leaving the noises of the inmates to fade behind her.
She found herself in what appeared to be the staff quarters. Within, she found a small kitchen with a burned copper kettle, and a table in a nearby room with the remains of a meat pie on a chipped plate. She stole the pie without a second thought, and was relieved to find it cold. The fact that the pie was old enough to cool suggested that whoever ate three-quarters of it had not been by this way for a while. She ate what was left, as she was ravenous and needed the strength it would give her. It was not at all unpleasant.
A search revealed a narrow set of stairs leading upward to a short, dark corridor ending at another door. This one was locked, and there was no dirt on which to draw. She frowned briefly, then raised her hand and traced the shape of the Ward in the air before her. The shape stayed, nearly invisible, hanging in the air, sketched in deeper darkness.
Why is it that I can do this? she thought to herself, and traced it again. Each time, she expected to find that it was a trick of her eyes or her mind, but it never seemed to happen. It was more than simply drawing in the air; it was as if her finger were following a groove, a pattern that it would take more effort to get wrong than to draw correctly. She was remembering, but it was more than remembering. Thatch had cleared out of her mind, but she had left things behind; experiences, memories that were now Alaizabel’s. The old wych had unwittingly shown Alaizabel the art of drawing a Ward, and once it had been achieved it could not be forgotten, like the riding of a bicycle. Alaizabel did not even know how she was doing it, but it was working, and that was all that counted at the moment.
The Ward completed, the door clicked softly and popped open. Alaizabel allowed herself a smile of pure, childish pleasure and pushed the door. It was immensely heavy, but she put her shoulder to it and shifted it.
Here, the room that faced her was not dank like the others but furnished beautifully, an attractive study with a picture of Queen Victoria above a stone fireplace and a phrenologists model on the desk. Through a window, she could see that it was deep night outside. She stepped inside and saw why the door was so heavy. It was a section of a bookshelf; and when she closed it behind her, it was indistinguishable as an entrance.
Were there passages like that all over Redford Acres? Was this Pyke’s study, or someone else’s? She did not have time to find the answers. There seemed to be nobody about in the asylum tonight, and she did not intend to waste the opportunity to get out. She checked outside and then made her way onwards, listening for sounds, hearing none. The asylum had its own electricity supply, and light bulbs glowed inside little brass lamps. A shriek echoed from somewhere in the depths of the building, loud enough to penetrate the walls. She jumped, cursed, and continued to where a balcony looked over a wide reception hall. Ahead of her was a dark mahogany door, with an unmanned desk next to it. There was no sign of life.
Why is nobody here? she thought, and crept her slow way down the curving stairs, ready to spring away at any time. Her bare feet padded over the carpeted floor, making not a sound. When she reached the bottom, she looked around. Several interior doors faced her, all closed. The one which led outside was obvious, and she went for it, glancing over her shoulder as she crossed the hall. This glut of good luck could not hold out. She had to hurry.
The door was locked, as she thought, but she drew her Ward over it. It was done with a little more haste than it should have, but the effect was the same. The door clicked and opened, and she looked through on to the porch of Redford Acres. The electric lamps held back the night a short way, and beyond that she could see the dark lunge of the walls and the gate; but there was no light in the gatekeepers hut, no sign of movement anywhere. Of course, she would not expect a lot of staff at this time of the night, but surely all hospitals kept a skeleton crew around the clock? Lunatics did not respect office hours.
She had no way of knowing that the ceremony involving the transference of Thatch involved more than one Rite; it would take until the dawn to complete the necessary preparation of Thatch’s new body, to fix her there and prevent her soul from straying. Most of the staff of Redford Acres were in the Fraternity, and those who weren’t were given the night off. Pyke wanted no interruptions for his business tonight. He trusted to his locks to keep Alaizabel where she was until he decided what to do with her, and the inmates could fend for themselves for a night.
So Alaizabel stepped out into the freezing November night, feeling her skin goosepimple under the cotton shift that was her only clothing. It was mortally cold, but she dared not stay a second longer than she had to. She shut the door and ran barefoot down the gravel drive, fleeing from the light to the safety of the darkness beyond the gate. It could not be more than a kilometre or two to London, over the fields. She would be able to see the lights of the city and head for them.
But by the time she reached the gate, her teeth were chattering and she was shivering uncontrollably. The soles of her feet were scratched and bleeding from the gravel. Doggedly, she climbed the gate, nearly fainting from the exertion. She dropped down the other side and slipped off the road. She could indeed see the lights of London, but they would do her no good. She would freeze to death in half an hour. It was a choice between dying out here, or going back into Redford Acres.
Die here, she thought. Better that way.
No. She would try. She would try to make it, hopeless as it was.
She had no sooner come to the decision than a sound came to her ears. It was the distant rattle of a carriage, coming down the road towards her. Hunkering down to the grass, she drew herself out of sight, concealing herself behind a row of bushes that edged a field. The flare of hope that had ignited within her caused her to forget the cold for a moment.
It might be Pyke, a cautionary voice warned.
It might not! she replied.
A distant blot of white resolved itself into the shape of a horse down the road, with the body of a dark carriage behind. Then she realized there were two horses pulling, one as black as the night it cantered through. The carriage showed no sign of slowing as it approached her. If it was not going to Redford Acres, then perhaps it would be her saviour. She held her breath as it came closer, still not slowing; and when she was sure that it was going to pass the asylum, she leaped out with a cry.
“Sir! Please help me!” she called, the volume of her voice overcoming the juddering of her jaw. “Take me to the Peelers, please! I was kidnapped, but I have escaped!” She knew the Peelers could not help her, but any other destination would be too suspicious.
The driver, his collar high and his hat low and his face in darkness, reached around and pulled open the carriage door. He took a blanket from the back of one of the horses and threw it to he
r. “Young lady, this is no place for you. Get inside. I will take you wherever you want to go.”
Too relieved to thank him, she threw open the door and clambered into the dark carriage, wrapping herself in the blessed gift, which was still warm from the horse and smelled of its previous owner.
“Go, please! Go!” she called urgently from the inside of the carriage.
“Of course, Miss Alaizabel,” Stitch-face said under his breath, and urged the horses into motion.
THE BEGGARS READY FOR WAR
THE INEVITABLE ARRIVES 19
“Do you sense it?” said the Devil-boy, making Lord Crott jump as he appeared like a spectre at the tableside. “Whores blood!” he swore in shock, then rounded on his aide. “Why aren’t you in your sanctum trying to find us that girl?”
Crott had been more and more agitated of late, and his calm, roguish exterior was slipping. Some in the feasting hall looked over to him with concerned expressions on their faces, then returned to their platters. Crott was cracking steadily under the strain of his responsibility; he had hundreds of men, women and children under his protection, and he was damned if he could do a thing to prevent whatever the Fraternity was doing, the darkness that he knew would come. This interminable waiting had sanded his nerves raw.
“Do you sense it?” Jack repeated, and this time it was obvious he was addressing Cathaline and Thaniel, who sat opposite Crott and Armand.
“Sense what?” Crott demanded before she could reply.
“The Fraternity have got Thatch,” Cathaline said, paling. “I felt something.; but... I didn’t know. Have they done it?”
“Unquestionably,” croaked Jack. “Chandler’s Distillation. I would never have expected to feel the force of it. The Fraternity have more power than we had guessed.”