I glance at the crucifix in the back of the steam carriage.
Elliott grabs the crocodile skull, tossing it out into the street, where it shatters into a million white pieces. He does not discard the gold crucifix. And now we’ve turned. The fire is behind us. With no one to put it out. Wooden beams start to blaze, and then shingles on a roof high above.
“When I’m in charge of the city, I’ll re-form the fire brigade,” he says.
My hand throbs where the crocodile tooth scraped it.
The air is so dense in this part of the city that I can put out my arm and feel the condensation settling on my skin. In the light of the blaze I can see row upon row of arched windows. The glass is completely gone, and bats screech from within and beat their wings in the darkness.
The journey home is interminable. Elliott veers back onto the main street and stays there. The husks of churches sadden me as we pass them. They tie the neighborhoods together, tall and proud, solid stone buildings with their steeples and bell towers.
Finally the Akkadian Towers loom over us. “Almost there,” Elliott says.
I want to be home. At least in April’s carriage we had guards.
“When you have a chance, take another look around your father’s laboratory. See if you can find any correspondence from my uncle. Both my uncle and the rebels will want to use your father. We need to know what they might be planning so we can decide how to help him.”
I saw the way Elliott looked at my father, and I’m not convinced that he wants to help him. Elliott is willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of this plan, I am beginning to realize. And he thinks I am, too.
“I’ll look,” I say, but I’m really just breaking the silence.
My parents have always warned me about the dangers in the city. It occurs to me that though I’ve seen countless explosions from my own window, the only person I’ve actually seen blow things up is Elliott.
CHAPTER
TEN
MOTHER AND FATHER SIT ACROSS FROM EACH other, eating breakfast.
In the placid light of morning, it doesn’t seem possible that Elliott and I risked our lives so that I could be here with my parents, who have barely acknowledged me.
The roses in the centerpiece are wilting. Mother nibbles at some bread. She eats sparingly, mourning either vegetables that are no longer grown here or fruit that used to be imported. She says I don’t understand because I never had the delicate sauces or the tiny mushrooms that she dreams about. When Father stayed in his laboratory for days on end, Finn and I had to forage. Finn made a game out of mixing the most outrageous foods and daring me to eat them. I was ill several times as a result of his creativity.
Mother complains that there is no butter for the bread. I take a large bite, not caring that it’s dry. I eat to keep myself alive, because if I die here in this apartment, she will be the one who finds my body. No matter how much we disappoint each other, I won’t do that to her.
I sigh, and both parents turn to look at me, but neither asks what is wrong. Perhaps they are afraid of my answer. Perhaps they don’t care.
“I’m thinking of doing some charity work,” Mother says.
“Don’t forget that the poor have burned their own factory. No one can save the world. Not when it doesn’t want to be saved.” Disillusionment is making Father old.
It’s unusual for them to talk like this. Once they shared an interest in their children, but that was when there were two of us.
“I’m going to go downstairs and ask about conditions in the city,” Father says. “If it is safe, Araby, perhaps you will walk with me.”
I nod. I can’t stop thinking of what I’ve done. Even the smallest gestures could put my family in danger. It’s easy to deflect the worry in the heat of the moment, when Elliott sounds so sure. But now, away from him, breaking the prince’s hold on the city seems impossible.
Mother disappears into one of her fancy sitting rooms. The vases of flowers are wilting in there, too. When Father returns from downstairs, I’m happy to spend some time with him, despite my guilt. We walk, followed by his guards, through the lobby and out to the street.
“Your mother wants flowers,” he says. “She has taken a dislike to the roses your friend brought.”
What he means is that she dislikes Elliott, but getting flowers provides us with an excuse to leave the penthouse. To leave the building. The staff watches us. Perhaps they find it odd, how often we come and go. Most people stay inside, especially those who are rich enough to live on these tree-lined avenues.
It is a short walk to the market.
Father adjusts the collar of my coat. “You should have a scarf.” He looks down, embarrassed by the fatherly comment. “If there are flowers, we will take them home to your mother. If not, we’ll go to the pier.”
Beggars hover around the periphery of the market, more numerous than shoppers, and not a single vendor has flowers. Too frivolous for an overcast day like today, I suppose. I wonder where Elliott finds such beautiful roses in a city where beauty is no longer important.
Instead of flowers, Father buys two bushels of apples, and we lug them to the fence that has been erected to keep the beggars out. He polishes an apple with the edge of his shirt and hands it to a little girl. Other children line up, their eyes full of hope. Starving children are a dirty secret of the upper city. If they ever left, they’d not be allowed back in past the checkpoints. People don’t expect to find the poor here.
Many of the children have cloth masks tied around their faces. These makeshift masks may make them feel safer, but the idea of breathing through burlap makes me gag.
A bigger boy than most pushes to the front of the line. Father leans forward and speaks to him. The boy tries to grab an apple from the basket. One of Father’s guards comes to attention, putting his hand on his musket, but Father just smiles, shakes his head, and points to the end of the line. The boy considers the dwindling fruit and lines up behind a child who can’t possibly be more than five years old.
“Araby,” Father calls, “buy more apples.”
I buy all the apples I can find and drag them, bushel by bushel, over to Father. By the time the boy who pushed gets back to the front, many more children have lined up behind him. Father hands him a coin as well as an apple, and he walks away beaming.
I look away from Father’s charity, distracted by a little girl. She eats two bites of her apple and then puts it carefully into her pocket. It isn’t hard to imagine that she is saving it for someone, though it is hard to imagine a person who might be hungrier than the tiny girl. I want to give her a second apple so that she can finish the one she started and have another to take home. I look for her, but there are so many children. I’ve lost sight of her.
When they see that Father has given out the last of the fruit, the guards gather around us and hurry us away from all the outstretched hands. Father glances at the apple in my hand and raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. We walk, side by side, down to the harbor.
There are countless red scythes on the doors of the houses we pass. And then one black scythe. Clever to make the symbol of the rebellion so close to the symbol for the disease. Unless you are looking for it, you might not register the difference.
The water in the harbor smells of salt and fish and death. But the new steamship, the Discovery, is shiny and clean among the shipyard decay. I consider the ship, the copper accessories, the great wheel that will drive it forward, as I turn the cool apple over and over, passing it from hand to hand.
Father stares out over the waves.
“Something unexpected has happened,” I say.
I struggle with the words. It’s hard keeping everything to myself. April is gone. Mother is out of the question. Elliott would laugh. And of course I can’t speak to Will. That leaves Father.
“Your mother says that you have fallen in love.”
Surprise leaves me speechless.
Falling in love would be too much of a betrayal of
my vow and of Finn.
“Tell me.” It is a command, but his voice is gentle. It’s something he used to say when we were children. After a fight with Finn, I would shut myself in my room and brood. Mother thought it was best just to ignore me, but Father would come in and sit with me, sometimes for an hour or more. Finally, when I was ready to break down and cry, he would say, “Tell me.” And invariably I would. And he would listen, and at least pretend like he understood.
“I’m not in love,” I say softly, “but there is someone who could make me happy.” It is frightening to speak of this intangible thing that keeps going through my mind. What Elliott is doing is important, and I want to help him. But at every turn I keep coming back to Will. I could feel something if I let myself. It’s a terrifying possibility.
I can’t tell if Father has any desire to hear this. I remind myself that Finn will never meet someone who could make him happy. Guilt chokes me, even as I try to find the courage to speak.
“He’s raising his two younger siblings,” I say. “One of them needs a mask. The little boy. He saved enough money for the girl, but… I was trying to get a mask for Henry. Then the factory was destroyed.”
“One child without a mask. That’s dangerous.” His voice is soft. I got the mask. Finn died. Neither of us ever forgets.
I want, right now, to ask Father if he blames me. If he thinks that I was right to make a vow that keeps me from happiness, and from Will. But what would I do if he said yes? How could I live with the guilt? And if he said no, how could I ever trust him again?
“I’m glad you don’t think you’re in love with the prince’s nephew,” he says, and then there is silence except for the guards shuffling their feet and the waves hitting the dock. I’m glad I’m not in love with Elliott, too. That would be … disastrous.
Some part of me believes that Father is preparing to say something meaningful and deep, but when he finally breaks the silence, all he says is, “I always wanted a house overlooking the water. The sea intrigues me.”
He’s changing the subject. I can taste my disappointment as surely as I taste the salt in the mist from the sea.
“Do you think there will ever be peace in the city?” My voice sounds normal. Conversational.
“I used to think that we were capable of learning from our mistakes. But now I’m not so sure. The only thing that might hold us together is if we find other people.”
He gestures toward the shiny new ship.
“Do you think…” My voice shakes a little. “Do you think there are other people out there? Towns and cities that survived the plague?” He is the scientist who saved all of humanity.
“It seems impossible that the germs reached every place. In fact, we may take germs to new destinations.”
“We could give people masks. The factory has been destroyed, but we know how to make them.”
“We didn’t even give them freely to our own people. Why would our benevolent prince give them to others?”
The guards are too far away to hear Father’s treasonous words.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a child sitting at the edge of the pier with his legs dangling, looking out at the steamship. He is the same color as the rotting pier, all browns and nondescript shadows. I take two steps forward and hold out the apple.
The boy stares at me for a moment. Unlike the children in the market, he does not associate us, and our entourage of guards, with free food. He does not put out his hand, but after a long moment of staring at the apple in my hand, he snatches it and then sits there, clasping it like a great prize.
The thud of running feet startles all of us, and we turn to see a man in a brown robe running across the pier. When he sees that he has our attention, he screams. “Science will destroy us!” His robe falls back to reveal bright purple bruises and seeping wounds. He raises his hand. A black scythe has been tattooed onto the palm.
I grab Father’s arm just as a guard dives in front of us. The other guards move in carefully. They don’t want to touch the man.
I stare at him, amazed. His robes are not enough to hide the extent of the illness. He should be dead.
His unmasked face is twisted with hatred. The guards shove musket barrels in his face. They won’t risk direct contact. I adjust my mask to be sure I’m not breathing the same air as this walking dead man, and I see one of the guards doing the same thing. They prod him, forcing him away from us. He glares at Father, and I expect him to lunge at us, but all he does is murmur, “Science has failed,” in a voice so sad and soft that we can barely hear it. And then the guards take him away.
“Don’t hurt him,” Father calls.
“Of course not, Dr. Worth.”
Father and I pretend we don’t hear a gunshot from behind the building.
“It’s going to rain,” the guard who stayed with us says.
The choppy ocean reflects the darkening sky.
We trudge back toward the Akkadian Towers.
“He had the disease,” I say in a low voice.
“Yes,” Father says. “Some of them last longer than others.”
I shudder.
The guard was right. It is beginning to rain. I think of Father’s furtive meeting in the bookshop. I could ask him if he is doing anything to endanger us. But then he might ask me the same thing. The only sound, as we walk back to the Akkadian Towers, is the raindrops falling on the sidewalk.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
THE DOORMAN IS BOWING AND USHERING US into the ornate foyer of the Akkadian Towers when a movement from a doorway across the street catches my attention. Instinctively I move closer to Father. But there’s something familiar about these movements. It’s Will. My heart misses a few beats.
I’m not sure how to separate myself from Father and the guards. But it’s almost dusk, so I know Will has to get to the Debauchery Club and I don’t have time to go upstairs and slip back down.
Before I can think of a plan, I’ve been swept into the building. The guards are settling into their upholstered chairs. One of them shuffles a deck of cards.
I touch Father’s arm. “I’m going to stay in the lobby for a few moments,” I say.
Father is too dispirited to argue.
The hateful attack, followed by the gunshot that we pretended not to hear … these things take their toll.
No one seems to be watching me, so I step back outside, opening the door myself so the doorman won’t have a chance to ask questions. I hesitate in front of the building as two steam carriages pass. It’s unusual to see more than one an hour, but at this time of the evening people are looking for entertainment.
Will meets me halfway across the street. He reaches for me, but then his hands fall to his sides and he gestures me back to the alcove where he was seeking shelter from the rain. It’s the entrance to a store that closed years ago. The door is boarded up, and the display window holds nothing but dust and the disintegrating husks of insects.
A bit of fabric lies in the back corner of the alcove. I touch it with my foot. It is a small cloth cap. Whoever owned it probably slept here, out of the wind and rain. And I walked in and out of the ornate doorway across the street, never realizing that a child was living in the empty entrance of this abandoned building.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Waiting. For you.”
I feel a burst of total happiness. And then the doubt creeps in.
“Waiting?”
“Last night, after you left, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I was worried—”
The rain has evolved into a fine mist. Moisture beads dot his bare arms, and his dark hair is plastered against his face and neck.
Across the street, our doorman is taking a quick look around, pacing back and forth. He turns, speaking to someone … a guard?
“Let’s walk,” I suggest.
“Good idea,” he says. Even though he walked a very long way to get here. Even though it’s dangerous and he’ll be trudging back across
town to work soon. “You’re fine?” he asks finally. “Nothing happened last night?”
I think of the terrifying ride home, ropes stretched across our path. The shattered crocodile skull.
“I’m fine.”
“The club isn’t safe for you. Not anymore,” he says. He clears his throat. “The men on the top floor rarely come downstairs. But last night they were looking for you. The girl with the violet hair. Elliott’s private rooms were ransacked.”
Elliott had the book in his hand when we left the club, but who knows what else they might have found?
“Those men were murderers before death became a daily occurrence,” he says.
I remember the old man’s eyes. Will doesn’t have to convince me that he is dangerous.
He gives me a quick look that I cannot interpret. “It seems they expected to find you in Elliott’s bedchamber.”
“How well do you know him?” I ask. “Elliott.”
We’ve reached the end of this city block and turn to walk down the alley that runs directly behind the Akkadian Towers.
“Not well. And I don’t want to know him any better than I do.”
I start to question him, but I’m distracted by something partially hidden behind a stack of wooden crates. A shoe, and when I look closely, I can see a thin ankle.
A child’s foot in a well-made boot.
It’s starting to drizzle again. No one would lie in the mud with the rain.... The boy is dead. He died in an alley so narrow that the corpse collectors cannot come for him. We are in the shadow of Akkadian Towers Building Two, the unfinished building that people say is cursed.
Will makes a sound that is somehow both horrified and unsurprised. The dead boy is wearing a mask. Perhaps he is a runaway. Or maybe he stole it. Will stares at the boy’s mask. It is pristine white, unusually clean for a child’s mask.
“I have trouble believing—,” he begins, and I know what he’s going to say.
“I know better than anyone. You can’t share.” I grab his other hand and stand facing him, though I can’t look him in the eyes. “My brother … was supposed to get the very first mask. He was frail, and Father had been especially worried about him. We’d lived underground for almost two years, trying to shield him from the air above.”