CHAPTER 8A wild thumping and muffled shouts brought Vespa to the door. She unlocked the warding charm to find Truffler hovering over someone slumped against the doorframe. Someone in a gown and a hood.
“Athena’s Girdle!” Bayne breathed behind her. “Get them in here!”
Together they dragged Olivia over the threshold until Bayne could lift her up and carry her. Vespa locked the door behind them, setting the strongest charm on it she knew, her fingers trembling as she did so.
She returned to the parlor, where Bayne had propped Olivia up on the couch. Truffler was shuddering over by the hearth, and Piskel, woken by the commotion, was patting his friend’s hairy head with one hand and yawning behind the other.
“What happened?” Vespa asked.
Bayne peeled back the Empress’s hooded cloak from her throat.
Vespa’s hands flew to her mouth at the sight of Olivia’s hair and clothes matted with blood. She wanted to swear by St. Darwin but knew it wouldn’t help in the least. Air seemed impossible to breathe, as if she’d just been plunged underwater or punched in the stomach.
“Is she . . . ?” She couldn’t finish the question.
Bayne was feeling Olivia’s pulses, delicately examining the wound. “No,” he said finally. “But she isn’t conscious.”
Vespa looked around. And then there was another punch. “Where is Syrus?” she asked.
Truffler was crying on the hearth, big, fat tears that sizzled with blue light when they fell on the hot stones.
“Truffler, what happened?”
In fits and starts he tried to tell them, but the words were nearly impossible to understand.
Finally, Bayne interrupted him. “Look, Truffler, is Syrus alive or dead?”
“Alive when we leave him,” Truffler said. “Must be still alive. Would know in here”—he touched his chest—“if not.”
“You would know if he died?”
Truffler nodded.
“Who did this?” Bayne asked. But Vespa was fairly certain she already knew the answer.
“Xiren.”
“By the Ineffable Watchmaker . . . ,” Bayne began.
Vespa stared in shock.
“But how—” Now it was Bayne who couldn’t force out the words.
“Many of them kill the faun guard. They take Syrus,” Truffler said.
Olivia groaned and stirred a little, and they turned back to the task at hand.
“I’ll get hot water and cloths,” Bayne said. “We’ll figure the rest out in a bit.”
Vespa nodded, too numb to say more. She was thinking of the shriveled exoskeleton of the shadowspider back in the Museum, and Lucy Virulen’s bridal gown, spun entirely of the finest scarlet shadowspider silk. She contrasted all that she had once known with the scarlet-robed figure silently watching them that morning. And there was the spider-figure who had lurked behind the webs of dark energy that had nearly ensnared them before they were dumped into the River. She shook her head. Nothing could be stranger than this.
She held Olivia’s hand, and the Empress shuddered at her touch. Her eyes were rolling under their lids. Her skin was clammy and gray.
Bayne returned with a pan of water and clean cloths. Vespa dipped one in and wrung it out with shaking hands. “There must be something we can do against this,” she said. “Some charm or spell.” She couldn’t bear to think of the potential repercussions of the bite. And she couldn’t bear to think of Syrus, somewhere behind that dark field of energy, suffering the same.
“I know of a tonic for when people are bitten by other werebeasts,” Bayne said. “But whether it will work on a shadowspider bite . . .” He shook his head.
Though the cloths came away bloody, it was soon apparent that Olivia hadn’t lost as much blood as it had at first seemed. The bite, however, was disturbing—an angry purple knot with a red ring around it. It was hot to the touch and swelling quickly.
“This must be what Syrus saw on the kinnon,” Vespa said.
“We should call Doctor Parnassus,” Bayne said. “Truffler, Piskel, do either of you know how to find him in the Forest? He received a letter from me to call Council, so he should be aware that there are problems.”
“Though I doubt he’s expecting these kinds of problems,” Vespa muttered.
Truffler nodded. “I find him,” he said. Between one breath and the next, Truffler was gone. Piskel floated over to Olivia. He checked under her eyelids and looked up her nose. He listened to her breathing and cooed sadly as he fluttered near her. He looked at Vespa and shook his head.
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“Piskel,” Bayne said, “can you go alert the Imperial household? Let them know what’s happened to the guard and that the Empress is safe here for the moment.”
Piskel nodded, his eyes like lanterns in the low light. He fled up the chimney and out into the night.
“Let’s get her somewhere more comfortable,” Bayne said. He scooped Olivia up again and carried her upstairs.
Vespa looked around her before following him up. The house was quiet, almost too quiet. She realized she had no idea what the shadowspiders could actually do. Could they crawl down a chimney or under a door? Was their magic strong enough to break the wards? If so, the house could be overwhelmed with them before they knew it.
She shivered and prayed to the false saints under her breath that the wards would hold.
After they’d settled Olivia in as best they could, Bayne said, “I’ll brew the tonic. It may not help and it may make her feel a bit worse, but it can’t ultimately hurt.”
“I don’t see how it could get much worse,” Vespa whispered. Now, as the lantern flickered over Olivia’s pale hair and paler skin, Vespa allowed herself to fully feel the tenuousness of their situation. Unknown Elementals had wounded the Empress and taken Syrus. And someone in Scientia had sent them a secret message that she was sure had no better news than this.
She looked at Bayne, seeking solace. Tentatively he put an arm around her. Just this morning he had saved her life. Now Olivia’s life hung in the balance, and possibly Syrus’s, too.
“Do you think they hurt Syrus?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But if they took him, as Truffler says, I’m guessing they may have other plans for him.”
She wanted desperately to lean her head against his shoulder, but feared that he would pull away if she did. So she stood, feeling the warmth of his hand against her waist and trying to find some measure of comfort in that.
“He’s a clever boy,” he said. “He’s escaped death many times before this.”
Vespa looked up at him. “I know.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but he stepped back, glancing at Olivia. “I’ll just go brew that tonic now.”
She bowed her head as he closed the door behind him.
The world suddenly felt so cold.
Vespa didn’t know how she had fallen asleep. She dimly remembered Bayne bringing the tonic. And he must have put a blanket over her as she nodded in the chair by Olivia’s bedside, though she couldn’t quite fathom it.
She had just woken from a strange dream. In it she had found herself in a chamber that she knew from the lack of windows and light to be deep underground. She held a lit candle, and its faint flicker tricked out gold bedframes, lanterns, baskets of what looked like loaves of bread and jars of oil, and elaborate carvings of Elemental creatures long lost to antiquity. There was a sense of great urgency. She needed to find something, and she needed to find it before many people died. She knew that. But she had no idea what she was seeking. She was deeply frustrated and utterly lost.
Restless, afraid she’d wake Olivia, Vespa floundered out of her blanket and stood. She longed momentarily for her old cozy slippers and wrap, both lost during the Rousing. She thought she had seen a book on dream interpretation somewhere and hoped that perhaps she could find it quickly and read it in the parlor undisturbed for a few moments. She didn’t want to leave Olivia alone too long.
She opened the door as carefully as possible, whispering a silencing spell as she passed and trying to ignore the chill of the bare boards on her toes.
She was halfway down the stairs when she realized that the magic was working again. She’d set a strong charm on the door earlier and now had been able to keep the wood from creaking. Maybe she’d just needed something to help her focus.
She also realized she’d forgotten to light a lantern for herself. She tried to make a flame in her hand as she’d seen Bayne do, and was pleased when a little blue spark danced to life on her palm.
Just as she crossed the threshold into the library, the flame went out. Immediately she stubbed her toe on the table leg and swiped several books off the table in the process of keeping herself from falling. She hopped on one foot, cursing under her breath.
A light flared, and she startled. Bayne, who had seemed little more than the lumpish shape of a quilt in a chair, resolved into himself. He held a yew stake in one hand and an oil lamp in the other. His eyes were shadowed midnight blue. He looked almost leaner and more wolfish-looking than Syrus did these days. The harsh light aged him well beyond his nineteen years, and she could imagine how he would look, years hence. He was as beautiful by night as he was by day, old as well as young.
Vespa tried not to curse aloud again. She hated it when she couldn’t ignore her attraction to him, and that seemed to be happening with greater frequency than usual.
“And to what does the library owe this visit?”
He’d seen her nearly naked this morning in her chemise and corset. Bare feet shouldn’t matter so much, but she found herself trying to shake her gown around her ankles, as if the rumpled hem could somehow hide them.
“I might ask the same of you,” she said, looking down at her toes.
“I’m keeping watch. But I gather that’s not why you’re here.”
She shook her head. “I can’t sleep anymore. I was looking for a book.”
“About?”
After the Rousing, Bayne had collected all the books he could find and brought them here. She knew he’d be able to find what she wanted faster than if she just pretended she could find it on her own. But she was hesitant to tell him. It wasn’t that she wanted to hide her dreams from him. She just didn’t want to appear incapable of solving her own problems. She had been very careful to find her own solutions and learn in her own way, rather than relying on him to train her, even though she knew she probably made everything harder on herself by doing so.
He had found her obstinacy puzzling and infuriating—he had said as much—but had eventually given in to it, as he did with most everything these days. Except for the one thing she most wished he would give in to, of course.
She wasn’t about to let him know that. And she didn’t think he was about to give in.
“Dreams,” she said at last.
To his credit, he didn’t ask the nature of them. “Second bookcase to your left, seventh shelf.”
She looked up. The ladder was on the other side of the room, and she wasn’t quite tall enough to reach without it.
Bayne put the quilt aside and rose. “The ladder’s too far, and you’d likely fall off it anyway.”
She glared at him. He brushed past her, and she stepped out of his way before she could feel the etheric charge that always danced between them. Shaken as she still was by the dream and all that had happened today, she didn’t want to deal with this now too.
He pulled the book off the shelf and handed it to her. She slid her fingers out of the way just before their hands would have touched. She had spent the past year adjusting to their relationship as business partners. They had gotten too close today, and she could feel that. She needed some distance. She couldn’t endure having her heart shattered again.
Vespa had once believed being a Pedant would be more than enough.
Now it would have to do.
She looked down at the book. Dreams and Their Interpretations: A Compendium of Magical Insights.
“If you are having dreams, particularly a cycle that repeats, that could mean you are growing into the next phase of your power,” Bayne said.
Vespa looked up at him. Words she couldn’t say clutched her throat as his gaze swallowed her whole.
“You will need help if this is the case. Your power, repressed for so long, is likely to overwhelm you.”
She frowned. “How’s that? It’s never done so before.”
“But you had the Heart. Though it was powerful, I suspect it steadied you, helped channel your growing magic. Now there is nothing.”
Somehow, though he obviously didn’t intend it, his words were like a punch to the gut.
Because they were true.
She’d thought the same thing this morning. She’d only carried the Heart of All Matter briefly, just long enough to return it to its rightful owner. But she remembered how she’d felt—capable of nearly anything and more dangerous than she cared to admit. She remembered how the power had moved through her like blood. Like fire. She couldn’t bring herself to say how much she missed having the Heart when it had never been hers to begin with, but sometimes that place in her chest where it had lived felt unutterably hollow.
She deflected all she felt by asking about him instead. “Was it like that for you? In the beginning, I mean. Unsteady and hard to manage?”
“Occasionally. But I was very good at hiding my power. It was never suppressed like yours was.”
She clutched the book tighter, glad to talk about something besides herself or the ever-present dangers that plagued them. “No?”
“My parents had far too much else to worry about. I rarely saw them. It was easy for me to go off by myself in Scientia during the transition times when the power was growing and changing. Luckily, it only caused obvious problems twice. The first time, no one saw and I was able to put it to rights. The second, I was fortunate to be observed by an Architect who began my training shortly thereafter. I was ten. I’ve been in training ever since. Until now.”
She nodded. There had always been secret encouragement of her Scientific learning from certain Pedants at the Museum, but that was as far as it went. She almost couldn’t imagine not only being aware of her own power from the beginning but also being mentored by someone in the art from a young age.
“But weren’t you afraid? Didn’t you ever once feel you should give yourself up for heresy?”
“The thought occurred to me, but the Architect convinced me otherwise. He opened my eyes. I’m sure it was easier because of my youth.”
Sorrow echoed in his voice. His mentor—and all the Architects—had been murdered by the Grue. Bayne was the last, the only, Architect remaining, as far as they both knew.
She had never seen him grieve once, though Syrus had said Bayne had wept as he closed the Architects’ eyes.
Vespa didn’t know what to say. “I’ll just take this and study it, then. I’m sure something will turn up.”
He nodded. Her heart sank as she turned toward the parlor. She wanted to say something that would ease the discomfort, something to bridge the chasm between them.
“Vee,” he said. His voice was low and urgent. There was no fun in it as there had been this morning. Steady, she remembered thinking once, when he’d saved her from the Sphinx.
She closed her eyes for a moment and then turned, hugging the book to her chest.
“I can help you if you’ll let me. It wasn’t this way for me, but it was still frightening. Dealing with it alone must make it even worse. In the time that may come, we will need all the power you can muster.”
For a second, a single second, she thought he’d forgiven her. She thought he had finally let go of his anger over being charmed into marrying Lucy Virulen. Maybe all her diligent work, her careful respect, would finally make him see that she meant him no harm.
He took a step toward her and then stopped, his brow furrowing. Concern transformed into uncertainty and mistrust. His eyes were shadowed again as he said, “But then, you do always seem to prefer doing everything on your own, don’t you?”
He was still afraid that she would somehow snare him, still wounded that she’d charmed him, even when she’d had no idea she was doing so. Still. A year later, after her heartfelt apology, after all they had been through.
It was infuriating.
She lifted her chin. “Of course. I wouldn’t want to put you to the trouble.”
“It’s not—” he began, then sighed.
His face hardened. The vulnerable moment was utterly gone. “I’d better get back to my post. Truffler says the xiren can be relentless, and we don’t really know what they’re capable of.”
“What about Syrus?” she asked. “When are we going after him?” She was beginning to feel that every moment might be precious.
“We’ll find him. Have no fear. We need to wait at least until the doctor gets here. I don’t want to leave you alone with the Empress, and I certainly don’t want you going off by yourself to try to handle this.” It was as if he’d read her mind again.
She nodded, even though she wasn’t entirely happy with the answer.
He returned to his chair and doused the oil lantern.
Vespa went slowly into the parlor, trying to pretend the moisture that fell on her hand was a stray droplet of water rather than a tear.
She couldn’t go back to her room now. She knew she’d burst into sobbing if Olivia happened to wake and question what she was doing.
No, she’d sit here alone and read for a bit before checking on Olivia. Bayne had said earlier when they put her to bed that she’d probably succumb to night sweats and seem even more feverish for a bit. Vespa hoped that the discomfort Olivia was going through would help cleanse the poison from her body. She wished the doctor would get here, though she worried that somehow the shadowspiders would make that impossible. And would they let Olivia be? Surely they knew where she was now. The shadowspiders might return and bring friends.
And poor Syrus. Even if, as Truffler said, he was still alive, she feared what might be happening to him. After a year of relative quiet it was all a bit much.
She turned the thick pages of the dream book slowly, reveling in their must. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. What was the room she’d dreamed herself in, exactly? The book smelled just like the Museum had—leather and paper, formaldehyde and ink. Only one odor was missing—that faint scent of burned bone that came from myth power. Vespa didn’t miss that in the least.
A movement around the dying fire caught her eye. Piskel had returned. He floated over to her shoulder, clearly exhausted.
“Were you able to speak to the chamberlain? All is well there?”
He nodded, gesturing that all was well and there had been no further attacks.
It still surprised her that Piskel stayed with them. He had been angry at her for a long time for working in the Museum and for the fact that all his brethren had gotten dusted—quite literally—by the Grue. Only later had they learned that the Grue was actually eating the other Unnaturals in the Museum when he could to boost his power as much as possible.
Now Piskel was alone, the only sylph of his species in this part of the world. Somewhere across the sea beyond the jungles of Newtonia, there was a grassland where Piskel had said his people roamed. It had taken a while to figure all that out until one day they’d all been looking at a map together, and Piskel had marched across the Winedark Sea and thumped down on the unnamed savannah with such a disconsolate look that finally his origin dawned on Vespa. She’d known that Pedant Simian had gone somewhere beyond Newtonia on his expedition, but not precisely where. Piskel didn’t particularly like the forest sylphs he’d encountered on his journeys with Syrus, so he stayed here most of the time, curled like a cat in his basket.
He looked over her shoulder at the book. Then he pointed to her head and made strange little gestures and noises.
“I had a dream, Piskel. About buried treasure.”
She turned to the entry entitled “Treasure.”
If the subject finds himself dreaming repeatedly of treasure, buried or otherwise, he is about to enter a new phase of life. He is seeking new power, buried within him, which will come to fruition when the dream cycle finally ends.
Either that, or he is possessed.
“Perfect.” Vespa sighed and snapped the book shut. Piskel looked between her and the book. The next thing she knew, he was inspecting her—looking in her ears, making her follow him with her eyes, looking up her nose.
“Stop it, Piskel,” she said. “I am not possessed.”
He stuck out his tongue and shook his head at her as if to say that possessed or no, she was still not right in the head. She rolled her eyes and yawned.
But when she put her head on the couch and curled up against the worn pillow, he nestled in the crook of her arm, his tiny warmth radiating against her side.