The helm of midnight, p.51
The Helm of Midnight, page 51
And still her expectation did not fully prepare her for the wrongness in the room. The scene hit her like a punch to the diaphragm. De-Lia was there, as was Mademoiselle Dupont; Krona’s sister holding a bound bride with a fist knotted in her clothes the same way she would hold a cutthroat—all roughness and no dignity. Melanie was resplendent, glowing in aqua colors like a water droplet in the sun. And though the captain had changed out of her Regulator uniform and into her coterie skirts once more, she still had many of her typical accoutrements: her saber was free and flicking threateningly, her bracers—dulled and full of deep scratches—clung to her dark, muscled arms like a scarab’s plating. At her hip, over the top of her worship skirts, was her quintbarrel holster. Her pouch, filled to bursting with bulky protuberances, sat on a table next to an odd assortment of what appeared to be healing items.
Under other circumstances, the tableau might not have made any sense. An elderly servant with a veil slung around his shoulders, an ornamented apprentice healer, and a half-dressed Regulator, all coiled together absurdly. They seemed like the setup to some silly joke. But there was no mirth to be had.
“Let her go,” Krona demanded, putting herself between the trio and the door.
Her sister’s face was blank. It was De-Lia, but it wasn’t De-Lia. Krona knew every twitch and mannerism better than her own. She knew the shape of her and the sound of her and the smell of her. But now De-Lia held herself incorrectly. The captain’s strength was always apparent, as was her stiffness, but now she held herself like someone with a secret. Someone trying to look at ease while wearing stolen clothes.
“I think we’ve been discovered,” said Gatwood, clasping his hands behind his back and strolling to the center of the room, which was the twin of the nursery in size and shape, though not in furnishing. “I sincerely don’t want to injure the master and his family, you must understand that. But there are great things on the horizon, things larger than you or I or one noble family.”
“We need help in here!” she called, hoping someone, anyone, would hear.
No one answered.
“Call all you like,” Gatwood said smoothly. “Even if someone did take heed, I have people in place to ensure I’m not bothered too much before my work is done. Makes things easier that way.”
Krona pointed fiercely at her sister. “Where is the book? How is it that you’re still controlling her?”
“Did you really think the Thalo’s magic could be defeated by pulling a few leaflets free of their binding? This magic is old, and new, and borrowed, and…” He paused to chuckle. “Blue. The guilty and the sullen are the easiest to manipulate.” His tone changed, became dark and incredulous. “Those with terrible secrets fall easily to the Thalo’s will.”
He sighed heavily, as though the situation were truly taxing and he wasn’t in complete control.
“I have a job to do, you see. To uncover magic in its infancy—protomagic, if you will. This force resides in Mademoiselle Dupont, and I have no choice but to fish it out. If only I could make you see, Regulator, how noble my intentions. Then you would not lament the loss of your sister so. But, alas.”
Magic. She’d written that in the dirt. Yes, Fiona and Charbon and Eric had been searching for magic, she’d said as much to Thibaut while in the mask. And something about … children?
This was why he’d been killing pregnant people, taking those at their most medically and emotionally vulnerable, because he expected to find this “protomagic” deep in their wombs.
But there was more to it than that.
Melanie was his intended target all along. His true target. Those other lives, they were just practice to him.
But why the apprentice? Why was Melanie—?
She noticed that the woman’s forehead was bare for the first time, revealing a wound—raised and pink, like a new brand.
But the shape was intricate. Detailed.
Krona had seen a thousand designs just like it.
There was no mistaking an enchanter’s mark.
Which was impossible.
“Captain Hirvath, my dear, you’ve got something special to keep party guests out of my hair today, don’t you?” Gatwood waved a flippant hand.
De-Lia popped the clasp on her pouch and rummaged inside. From the way the items clanked together, Krona half expected to see vials of minutes, but the jar De-Lia drew forth was very different. Instead of small like a pill bottle, it was fist-sized and bulbous. A sickly green mist swirled inside.
A bottle-barker.
De-Lia was carrying jars of varger.
These weren’t like the normal bottles in which the Watch kept the captured creatures—not like the ones she’d faced at the vaults. This was a repurposed preserves jar with a simple metal lid. Someone had put an enchantment on the glass to keep the creature contained, but it wouldn’t take more than a flick of the wrist to release the contents.
De-Lia held the jar aloft, putting the ethereal varg on display.
Krona slipped sideways in her mind. Her bracers were lost to her, as were her weapons, and now her wits fled like so many spooked deer.
“Don’t…” was all she could croak out. She meant to bargain and argue, had convinced herself during the ride that if she was confronted by De-Lia while the captain was still under the Prophet’s spell, she could talk her down. But now the words abandoned her.
“You know what will happen if that monster is released,” Gatwood said. “You know innocent people will die. And she has a handful more just like it. Do you want to see it rip its way down your sister’s throat? I think not. So be a decent person and have yourself a seat, right there.” He pointed to a wooden chair not unlike the one Melanie occupied.
The young bride was wide-eyed, desperate for Krona’s help. Krona did her best to reassure her with a glance, to walk with her head held high and her shoulders back.
She didn’t have a plan yet, but she wasn’t about to take on the guise of defeat.
Gatwood seemed thoughtful for a moment, and Krona eyed De-Lia’s accoutrements. Maybe she could rush her, get a swing in before she could raise her saber. They sparred often, and Krona had only ever been able to disarm De-Lia once. If she couldn’t take her saber, perhaps she could get a hand on her quintbarrel. Or maybe even just one of her bracers. What Krona wouldn’t give for a couragestone right about now.
She plopped herself heavily into the chair.
“Captain,” Gatwood said. “That gift I had for Melanie, why don’t you give it to your sister instead?”
De-Lia nodded and turned, scooping something off the table.
Yes, Krona thought. Come closer. That’s it. She’d grab whatever she could manage. If De-Lia wasn’t expecting it, Krona thought she might be able to knock her over.
De-Lia approached Krona slowly, leading with the bottle-barker, holding it before her like a shield. Krona cringed away, trying to blot it out, to look past it.
Focus. Focus. Both of her hands are occupied. Her saber is on the table. You can—
—but what if she drops the bottle? What if it breaks?
What she didn’t expect was for De-Lia to plop the bottle-barker straight into her lap, to let it rest on Krona’s knees. Within, one ethereal eye roamed frantically. Krona nearly kicked out, but the fear held her still. She shut her eyes, willed herself to be calm, to ignore its presence—but that was nearly impossible.
It wasn’t until she heard the rattle of a jewelry box that she realized exactly what the false prophet had in store for her. What De-Lia held in her other hand.
Her eyes shot open, just in time to see De-Lia scoop the despairstone brooch from its bedding and jab the needle deep into the flesh of Krona’s breast.
Instantaneously, the emotion stone shoved its threads of feeling into her, more violent than any emotion stone she’d ever worn before. The thread wasn’t just demanding, the pain wasn’t a simple piercing. It was as though the thread were lined with thorns, tearing their way into her chest, through her insides, coursing around in her rib cage until they found her heart and squeezed.
She’d thought she could buy time, that if she cooperated for a few minutes it would give her a chance to formulate a plan. But there was no thinking now.
The despair in the stone was a thousand times stronger than the void she’d felt from Charbon’s mask. That had been a secondhand sorrow.
This was her own. A pit that ate itself. A hole in her soul so deep it could never be filled, so all-consuming she was lost—desperate and alone in her own mind. She cried out in loss. Nothing mattered and everything hurt.
Nothing mattered and everything hurt.
“I know what you’re wondering,” Gatwood said to Krona—he had no idea there was no room for wondering. “Did I use this on the others? Yes. I killed one woman once, and I’d vowed to never do it again. Better they go by their own hands. And I had intended to gift it to Melanie. But I think”—he turned toward Mademoiselle Dupont—“I must accomplish this last stretch myself. There is no reason to prolong my little splinter’s suffering. I will own this deed as an act of mercy. Swiftness, in the name of the Unknown god.”
Melanie began to cry, then to shriek behind her gag.
He addressed De-Lia. “Once your sister begs for death, let her do as her soul commands. Give her the options: needle, tablets, or blade.”
His words were distant in Krona’s ears, edged with a tin rattle.
Krona’s failure today was pure regret.
Her life was regret.
All life was regret.
She could barely sense what was happening beyond the confines of her own body. Barely noticed when Gatwood thanked her and yanked Charbon’s mask from where she’d tied it to her belt. Could barely comprehend when Gatwood scooped Melanie into his arms—throwing the healer over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes—and traipsed around Krona.
He was fit, and fast—she’d seen the truth of that when she’d chased him into the torn-out building. He used his age to play on prejudices, feigning frailty, deflecting suspicion.
Though he might have hefted her like produce, vegetables never put up such a fight. Melanie thrashed for all she was worth. Beads ripped free of her dress and veil.
And Krona observed from a distance. She cried out for Melanie, for Gatwood to stop, but only inside herself. She was too far away from it all, too deep in the pit. And though she told herself it was the brooch, that she must resist, the pit swallowed her whole.
Down, down she went. She saw De-Lia slipping away from her in the cellar. She saw Madame Strange, who may have been drug-addled but had certainly not deserved to die. Krona sank past the body of the third bloom, then the second—Hester—who she’d failed to protect. Who was simply trying to look after her own health and a man had killed her for it. Then came the first bloom, drifting by as she fell deeper. If only she’d held on to the mask at the Jubilee, the victim would still be alive. They wouldn’t have been nameless, wouldn’t have suffered so. And the master archivist, and the dead at the party—
The varger at the party. It was her phobia that had caused all this trouble …
In a snap, Gatwood was gone out the door. And Krona sank into her despair, finding herself in her most terrible memory, reliving it in excruciating detail, far, far away from the here and the now. Trapped in her own original sin.
It was all her fault.
* * *
The farmhouse felt snug. It was warm outside, the sun shining but not blazing. Maman had gone—was it to town?—and Papa had opened all the shutters to let the gentle breeze blow in. He never did like shutters, or glass—they didn’t have any glass in the windows because Xyoparian windows didn’t have any glass, and they were Xyoparian in heritage, just not in place, he liked to say. Thick oiled cloths were hung over the windows instead of shutters in Xyopar.
Krona toddled around the house—picking up spring leaves and petals that had blown in. They were all kinds—from cherry trees, and apple trees, and redbud trees, and all sorts of trees she didn’t know the names of. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the leaves yet. Maybe sew them together and make a necklace for Lia. Lia had given her a daisy chain bracelet only yesterday, but it broke already. Some things were just fragile that way.
Krona’s little mind told her something wasn’t quite right. She saw things from an odd perspective, from below, like she wasn’t very tall. The chairs in the kitchen were too big, and she could see the underside of the table without bending over. She couldn’t possibly reach the wash bin on the counter. But she was tall—she was grown. Why was everything so big?
No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t grown at all. She was small. A young bean, Papa liked to say.
This … this happened. Already.
No, it hasn’t. Lia calls that déjà vu.
“Are you in here, De-Krona?” Papa asked, coming in off the front porch.
“Yes, Papa,” she said, holding up her collection for him to see.
He had a hefty jaw, hidden in a thick black beard. And his dark, strong features framed shining eyes that were always smiling whenever he looked down at his young bean.
Playfully, he plucked a cherry petal from her cupped palms and flicked it against her nose. The soft, smelly bit of flower tickled, and she giggled. “Where’s De-Lia?” he asked. “I promised your maman I would get feed in your bellies before she got back.”
“She went exploring,” Krona said, tossing her find on the table before climbing into one of the wooden chairs, which groaned and rocked on uneven feet. “Told me I had to stay here,” she explained with a huff. She hated getting left out of Lia’s adventures.
On the table sat Maman’s special teapot, next to Papa’s armaments. His needle gun and his special syringe for sucking up vapored varger. It was funny-looking—round like a bulb, with a nipple instead of a needle on the end. The teapot and the Borderswatch gear were odd next to each other, two things that did not belong together, yet lived in harmony.
“You keep your behind planted right there. I’ve got to finish up my washing, then I’ll see if I can find your sister. She’s got to be getting hungry at this hour.”
“Yes, Papa,” she said obediently.
No. Tell him no. Scream and cry and pound your fists on the table. Throw Maman’s teapot. Try to play with his quintbarrel. Anything to keep him inside. Anything to keep him from going into the garden.
“Good girl,” he said, kissing the top of her head and patting her curly hair.
She arranged the petals and leaves in front of her in a half circle, looking for the most pleasing pattern. Humming a little tune she’d written herself, she barely noticed as the hinges on the side door, right off the kitchen, squeaked open.
I don’t want to see. I can’t. I can’t stand it. Don’t make me see this again. I can’t.
She stopped her song for a moment, dryly sobbing. Confused, she shook herself, then began to sing again.
Then she heard it for the first time—a deep, resonating growl. An unearthly sound. It sent a shiver through her little body before her mind even registered she’d heard it at all.
“Krona!” Papa bellowed.
She turned—both swiftly and slowly to her own mind—to the open door.
Thump, smack!
Her father collapsed under a mound of quill-like fur, half in, half out of the house. He kicked and punched and the heap on top of him just pressed down, down, down—
A foul, pungent odor filled the air.
“Krona!” he shrieked again. “The gun! My gun!” His face snapped in her direction as one giant, clawed paw descended on the side of his head. Frantically, he yanked one arm out from under the creature, reaching for her, fingers outstretched, palm open. “My gun!”
The mound of fur turned then, jaws and snout and eyes all focused on her. Sickly green slime dripped from its jaws, onto Papa’s temple, and its gaze bored a deep-deep hole into her being.
She went cold. Her body became very distant.
And she screamed.
One long, continuous shriek. It seemed to go on forever, coming through her and living outside her, filling the air with pure, unadulterated terror so intense she felt both like her limbs were made of stone and like they were unraveling like twine. She couldn’t move, couldn’t stop screaming, couldn’t do anything.
“Kro—”
Papa’s entreaty died as he did. The monster’s gaze left her as it delved into her father, massive jaws clamping down on his windpipe and tearing upward, yanking his entire throat away from his spine.
Another scream joined Krona’s. De-Lia had come in from the front of the house, just in time to see the grizzled horror. But hers wasn’t a wordless call of primal fear like Krona’s. Hers was anguished in a different way, filled with sorrow. “Monkeyflooooower!”
De-Lia’s hands were on her own temples—squeezing, pressing, just like the padded foot on Papa’s skull. Her face contorted into the most pain Krona had ever seen on a face—more so than Papa’s now. Papa’s face was more surprise than pain.
And then De-Lia saw the quintbarrel.
Krona suddenly gagged, halting her cry. The air smelled of bile and blood.
Determined strides brought the elder Hirvath sister to the kitchen table, and her hand found the gun easily. She leveled it at the monster, barely shaking, with tears streaming down her face. “I’m sorry!” she shouted, pulling the trigger.
* * *
Krona wanted to die. Swiftly. Like her Papa. But not like her Papa. Not like that at all.
That word: Monkeyflower. She hadn’t recalled that was what De-Lia had said that day. Even when Gatwood had said it in the cellar, she simply thought it a control command, a secret word unlikely to be spoken by unwitting company.
But what did that matter? What did anything matter?
“Kill me,” she groaned.
She wanted to die. And she would end it if De-Lia wouldn’t.
