Saint Margaret with the Wyrm, Saint Katherine with the Wheel, Saint Teresa in her Tower …

“My people cursed me and cursed my name right out of existence.”

All the saints with all their sacrifices cannot save Sebastian Robarts from himself or from the words of Trueblood, the Vistana gifted with the Sight. Into Cornwall, into the inexorable whirlpool of their madness, are drawn Dr. Sophia Huxley and policeman Artemis Donovan, determined to stop the murders.

“They say she don’t know she’s dead yet.”

In Riverbend, after the Fire, a little girl asks questions with no answers as her father searches for diversion from the sterility of their home and the horror that lurks in her mother’s bedroom. And Daniel who doesn’t have a name tries to save her from her own secrets, but it takes an outsider to tell him where to look.

“I don’t destroy people; I heal them. At least, I try. All I’ve striven to become, all my work, becomes ashes if I become a killer. Can you understand that?”

Horror becomes more when it is shared, witnessed by another, and no one who knows of the Gentleman and the houses in Riverbend and Cornwall will soon forget what they have seen, the madness they have touched. But they will forget women that Robarts is saving.

“I’ll admit up front that Cinderella Suicide is not the type of fiction I usually prefer to read. However, I was bowled over by its sheer elegance.… Henderson has woven in elements of a mythic quest as well as a poignant and somewhat horrific resolution. Excellent story.”

—Aimee Poynter, Tangent Online

HEAVEN’S BONES

Samantha Henderson

MITHRAS COURT

David A. Page

MADNESS IN HARMONY

Walter H. Hunt

BLACK DAMASK

Scott Fitzgerald Gray

A CROWN OF ASHES

Ari Marmell

HEAVEN’S BONES

©2008 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Represented by Hasbro Europe, 2 Roundwood Ave, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB11 1AZ, UK.

Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, all other Wizards of the Coast product names, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA and other countries.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Cover art by: Android Jones

eISBN: 978-0-7869-6467-3
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www.DungeonsandDragons.com

v3.1

Yet under the stars that lay under the stones,

I still hear the cry of those Heaven-born bones.

—Christopher Crauley

SERIAH

I am a Recording Angel.

Once there was a city of fog where beauty hatched sometimes in the mud, where ancient kings sat underground in lead coffins, where Father Thames lurked green-bearded in the sewers, and where machines were being born. It was a city of underground rivers, although few of its inhabitants remembered its lost waterways anymore.

I live there now, in a tunnel that ought to be a river, in a brick-walled passage where Romans born in Albion, Romans who never knew Rome, once barracked. Man’s great machines, trains bejeweled with electric light and steel, pass overhead, roaring like dragons triumphant, carrying their cargo from parish to parish.

I claim kinship with them, though I’m but a poor construct, a failed machine, mere flesh, not like my sisters. Like the trains, my sisters are terrifying and beautiful, sculpted by clever, cruel hands into creatures of flesh and metal.

The trains thunder through the heart of London and frighten the old gods, but inside is clockwork as delicate as the gears embedded in my sisters’ bone and muscle.

I like the close darkness of my lair, and the hum and thrum of the engines just overhead as comforting as the rain outside a fire-lit room. The pale new electric lights shine weakly through the grates. I have company: the skeleton of a man sleeps disjointed in the corner. The bones of a dog are mingled with his pelvis and thighbone. When I’m about to go to sleep I’ll sometimes hear a dry whisper from that corner: an old tale or a snatch of song. It’s a comfort.

Sometimes, very late, I venture onto the platform, knowing that it’s night only by the silence, and I forage for food. Some of those who master the trains know of me and will leave me sandwiches wrapped in greasy paper, and strong working-man’s beer, and cakes their wives baked.

Some, glimpsing me creep, beetle-backed, beneath the grates, call me monster. Others, seeing the same, call me the Angel of the Underground.

Sebastian Robarts, skilled of hand and mad as a March hare, made me an angel, and named me Seriah. Cursed Trueblood infected me with the Mists, the Mists that gift me with visions of the past. Angel I’ll stay until the Mists venture underground to find me again, through the tunnels past Knightsbridge and Newgate and Buckingham Palace, and that may never be.

Robarts read of the Recording Angels in his uncle’s library, how they kept the books of heaven, how one stood behind every human and noted every deed or thought, whether good or evil. But I am made and not created and only stand paralyzed while time eddies around me like the sea.

In my bower, brick against my back with the secret rivers of London trickling ten feet beneath my feet, I sit and remember what’s happened and some of what will happen—because it is the same thing. The trainmasters will never know that, nor the whores in their palaces, nor the gentry with mud on their boots, and it’s a blessing on them they don’t. Robarts who made me couldn’t understand it. Maybe Trueblood did, bad cess to him. The future is a matter of record and the past is yet to come, and I a spark who floats above the embers, seeing pieces of stories for a time.

Bones on a beach, scattered and yellow. Here one has a scrap of tendon still adhering. That one is half-buried in jeweled sand. Only Heaven knows how they fit together. That’s how I see the past, and the future’s past, like a broken ivory necklace.

Once there was a house in the bend of a river, where slaves chopped cotton and their master and his kin lived in a state they called gentility. Terrible things happen when a person is given absolute power over another. This was no exception.

Once there was a boy with the gift of cursing who grew to be a man who loved his Sight-born sister, so much that he sought to destroy her and all who bore her blood. Such is the nature of love that it is a shiver away from all-consuming hatred.

There was a boy who saw the truth of things when he touched them and a girl who wanted to heal with her own hands and another boy who wanted so very much to fly …

Shall I tell you?

Yes?

Well then …

PROLOGUE

Riverbend, after the Fire

Fanny Weldon didn’t remember much about her life before the Fire. She had vague memories of a gentle voice singing her to sleep, or of riding in a close carriage, all bundled up in stiff, itchy clothes.

And sometimes the screaming at night.

“What is that, Mama?” she remembered asking.

And her mother would purse her lips and look up from her embroidery, out the window at the darkness.

“Nothing, my dear. An animal in pain. Let your father tend to it.”

But the sounds continued, whimpering now, sounding very human.

“Mama! If it’s a rabbit that a fox got we must put it out of its pain, mustn’t we, Mama?”

“Hush, dear. Don’t interfere in your father’s work.”

But now, after the Fire, she never heard the screaming.

The servants were gone, replaced by invisible hands that tended the house and fields, whispering, bodiless, in corner and corridor. Mama kept always to her room. Fanny had to admit to herself that she didn’t much like visiting Mama now.

Papa didn’t seem to want to talk to her much, but that was nothing new. Nowadays he seemed to be always searching for something in the desolate plantation, something he never found, and it made him impatient and bad-tempered.

To herself she admitted that she liked Riverbend now, after the Fire. She liked wandering the misty banks of the rivers and the dark borders of the woods.

She didn’t like the way her father looked at her sometimes. But that was true even before the Fire.

There was someone else, she realized dimly. Someone who should be there. Not a servant, not quite. Had she ever had a sister? Someone whose absence was haunting, like the space where a tooth was missing.

The day of the Fire. Late November, 1864, with a trace of the summer’s heat lingering in the chill autumn air. Even Fanny knew about the armies of the North descending on the plantations, of Sherman destroying everything in his path, of the stories of slaves taking what vengeance they could. She knew better than to ask about it, but when visitors came she would hide beneath the lip of the great central staircase or behind the thick tapestry curtains and listen.

That way, when she heard the shouts of the slaves saying Sherman was coming and freedom was coming, she knew she had to hide. She bundled herself up in her customary safe place, the nook behind the curtains of the sitting room. She stayed there while different voices, her mother among them, shouted for her. She stayed there as many footsteps rushed by. She stayed there as the air grew thick and heavy and hard to breathe, and as she grew sleepy.

She curled up on the carpet beside the window, pillowing her head on her arms and a corner of the curtain. She thought she saw bits of ash in the air before her eyelids grew heavy and she went to sleep.

When Fanny woke, the air was clear but her throat felt raw and sore. She uncurled herself from her corner, feeling stiff. But walking about loosened her cramped limbs, and nothing seemed to be disturbed in the house.

She spent a long time looking for somebody, anybody, to tell her what had happened. None of the kitchen servants were around, no maids. The little children that usually hung about the back door, ready to take messages, were gone as well.

Perhaps they had run off with Sherman. She wouldn’t blame them. It must be terrible to be a slave.

She ventured upstairs. Her little bedroom, tucked under the eaves, was undisturbed—just as she left it that morning.

Down the corridor was her mother’s room. She was forbidden to venture there without specific summons. These were so rare she rather dreaded them.

But perhaps Mama was hurt—perhaps she needed help. Fanny raised her chin, fisted her hands in the folds of her pinafore, and walked, silently as she could, down the hall.

One, two, three doors, seemingly an eternity between each. She counted her steps on the dark flowered carpet, reaching fifty. Her mother’s door was in front of her.

First she called. “M-mama? Are you all right, Mama?”

No answer.

Fanny put a small hand, palm out, on the smooth white painted wood of the door. It was warm, almost hot.

“Mama? Are they gone?”

The door was unlatched, and moved inward a little at the touch of Fanny’s hand. Biting her lower lip, she took courage and pushed. The door swung open. The room was dim and quiet, with no sign of damage or char. But a strange smell, like roast pig, and the stench of burned hair, came from inside.

Fanny’s hackles rose at that smell. She forced herself over the threshold, squinting in the semidarkness.

Something stirred in there, something hunched up against a corner. It shambled toward her, opening something pink and wet inside it.

“Fanny?” it hissed. “Fanny, dear. Come to Mama.”

Fanny felt her face blanch, frozen in horror as she watched the thing that had been her mama, burnt black and reeking on the outside, with that great moist pink maw. For a second she could not move, jaw dropped open in a scream that would not come.

And then the burnt thing raised a melted lump of a hand, and as it brushed her cheek Fanny moved through sheer will, stumbled back through the room, over the threshold and, gripping the massive door in her small hands, thrust it shut with all her might and ran, ran down the hall and stairs and out the front door and way across the lawn, the meadows, down the grassy banks to where the river shook and sparkled, clean and pure in the sun.

CHAPTER ONE

London, Spring 1867

Dr. Sebastian Robarts, his hands slippery with blood, risked a glance at his wife’s face. It was a mistake; Margaret’s mouth was twisted open in a rictus of agony, and she was looking at him in dumb appeal, like a dog that doesn’t understand why it must be hurt in the vivisection lab. Janet was frantically mopping her mistress’ forehead.

“Help support her back, girl,” Robarts snapped. “She has to stay sitting up.”

Janet flinched and nodded.

He dropped his gaze to where the baby’s head was crowning between Margaret’s legs, where it had been stuck for what seemed an eternity. He was going to have to cut her, and although he’d done it more times than he liked to think about during his career, the thought of taking a blade to his wife filled him with horror.

Everything had gone wrong. Where the hell was Symons? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be an easy birth. Margaret had the best medical treatment available in the civilized world. He had watched her like a hawk through every stage of her pregnancy. She had been cheerful and healthy, glowing with the promise of the new life inside her, his most precious patient. And now the birth was tearing her apart.

It was if he’d been plunged into a nightmare world that a mere hour ago did not exist.

Only an hour ago. They’d settled in the sitting room after supper. Margaret was embroidering a baby’s cap and Robarts was ostensibly finishing his notes on some case studies he was planning to present to the Royal Medical College that autumn.

But instead he kept glancing up at Margaret, unable to avoid smiling at the sight of her, flushed with life, her delicate brow slightly furrowed as she plied her tiny stitches with long, elegant fingers. She propped the embroidery hoop atop the lace-clad bulge of her stomach, which he found ineffably charming.

He was watching when her hands stopped mid-stitch and she frowned.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

She looked at him and smiled.

“Quite all right, love. He’s found a new place to kick, I believe. Or else he’s following his father’s footsteps and is engaged in examining my spleen.”

He was about to make some sort of joke about the future Junior Physician, when suddenly Margaret’s warm, open face went dead pale, like a death mask molded in porcelain. For a second he froze, uncomprehending.

Then she crumpled in on herself, grasping her middle. Robarts dashed to her side, scattering papers everywhere. He kneeled by her, hand on her forehead. It was clammy and cold.

Margaret drew in a great, gasping breath, a scream in reverse. A dispassionate part of Robarts’ mind noticed that she’d driven the needle deep into her finger, and all her delicate work was smeared with blood.

And with horror he saw more blood, blooming down the length of her white peignoir, bright red, arterial. Without leaving her side he turned to the door.

“Meadows!”

He bellowed for the servants, loud as a bull, and almost immediately the houseman, who was serving as an in-town butler while Simpson readied the country house for the great event, appeared, startled and confused. His eyes widened at the sight of his mistress, coiled in pain, a study in white and red.

“Fetch Doctor Symons,” growled Robarts. “If he’s out, find him. And send Janet on your way. The baby is coming early.”

Before Robarts could draw breath for further orders, Meadows was gone, leaving the door wide open. Margaret was grasping Robarts’ arm with a preternatural strength, still convulsing in pain.

“Steady, love,” he whispered in her ear, struggling to make his voice gentle and calm. A great coldness was spreading in his guts. “Try to breathe, my dear. Help is on the way.”

He loosened the top of her peignoir. The metal of her medallion of St. Margaret, which she’d picked up on their honeymoon through Rome and worn, half as a joke, ever since she’d found she was pregnant, shone dully forth.

St. Margaret, burst forth from a dragon, protectress of women in childbirth.

Robarts did not consider himself superstitious. But now a heartfelt appeal sounded in his mind.

Margaret, watch over your namesake. Guard my love in her hour of trial.

A little sound at the door brought him to his senses. Margaret’s maid stood there, hands over her mouth at the sight of her mistress.

“Damn you, girl,” Robarts began, and then breathed deeply. It wasn’t her fault.

“Come, Janet,” he said in the voice he reserved for his clinical work. “Help me take her to her room. And then I’ll need you to boil water, and bring clean cloths. A lot of them.”

Robarts fumbled at the instruments on the bed, scattered by Margaret’s writhing and his own clumsiness. He cursed his lack of foresight in not engaging a nurse in time, to have nearby, just in case. The Sims Speculum and the forceps were half-buried in the damp sheets, and his fingers felt big and unwieldy; he had no idea how to use any of his tools, as if he were a first-year student as ignorant as mud.

There—the scalpel. He was going to have to make an incision. He lifted the tool in shaking hands, unable to still himself, unable to find that professional, detached calm center that had allowed him to preside over hundreds of births.

Her flesh was so tender, so torn as he lifted the knife unsteadily over her. He had to control himself. He had to do it, now.

A huge hand closed over his shoulder.

“For God’s sake, man,” said Symons. “Stand aside. You’re in no shape to do this.”

Robarts almost sobbed. “The position—it’s stuck …”

Symons’ professional gaze took it in. “Yes, a posterior presentation. And the baby further along than we thought. Here, you …” He eased the instrument from Robarts’ grip and indicated the sweating Meadows, who panted in the doorway. “Take Doctor Robarts outside, and come back to see what’s needed. Sebastian,” the measured tones were close to Robarts’ ear. “You’re of no help here, not now.”

“Sebastian!” Margaret’s breath came in painful gasps, and she was holding Janet so tightly that the girl’s hand was turning white. “Don’t leave me!”

“Now, Mrs. Robarts,” said Symons. “We’ll take care of you, not to worry.”

Robarts felt Meadows grasp his shoulder, and all the strength seemed drained out of him. Symons’ assistant hurried into the room, a competent doctor of much promise who Robarts had met often enough but whose name he could not recall.

Symons followed Robarts to the door while the assistant instructed Janet to keep wiping Margaret’s forehead with a clean, wet cloth. “I fear she’s too narrowly made to push it out easily. But we are here now, and I’ve seen harder births.”

“Where the mother lived?” hissed Robarts.

Symons wrapped a great beefy hand, so incongruous with the delicate work he was capable of, around Robarts’ upper arm.

“We will do our best,” he said, “but this is not the place for you now. You must wait outside.”

“No! I want to help—I must help!”

But Symons was gently forcing him out.

“You know this is not the place for you, Sebastian,” he said. “Now let us do our work.”

“What can I do?” said Robarts. The feeling of helplessness was intolerable.

“Pray,” said Symons, and closed the door in his face.

So Robarts pressed against the door and prayed, while Margaret’s groans sounded over the clinical, impersonal mutters of Symons and his underling, and when he could straighten up he saw he’d left bloody handprints on the painted surface.

Saint Margaret with the Wyrm, Saint Katherine with the Wheel, Saint Teresa in her Tower …

Where had he heard that? In Rome?

He remembered: Margaret stopping by the gypsies’ stands outside the Vatican, pausing to examine the trinkets and cheap jewelry.

“Gold from a secret treasure,” squawked the vendor, wrinkled and brown as a berry and missing half her teeth. She wore a kerchief of bright, beautiful colors—red and blue and rose—elaborately binding up her hair. “Gold from a Roman house—no one knows where. But my son found it, my lady, and …”

“Nonsense,” said Margaret, so gentle and friendly in her manner that the crone stood a moment with her mouth open, and then laughed until she turned dusky red. Margaret smiled at her and continued looking over her wares.

The vendor, her manner frank and open now, showed her the bracelets and medallions, explaining which was what, with no claims of rare and ancient and improbable provenance. Sebastian was content to let her linger, and himself enjoyed watching the pigeons fly in great waves over St. Mark’s Square and the bustling groups of people, both native and foreign. The gypsy vendor’s voice was a soft murmur in the background, and he caught the sound of names strange and familiar: George, Theresa, Veronica.

“And this, Margherita,” said the crone. “She will protect you in travail, in childbirth.”

“Oh, I think I’d better have her, then,” said Margaret, giving him a sly look. As she pulled money from her purse the woman suddenly cupped her cheek with a brown, wrinkled hand.

“You will need it, my child,” she said, her voice low and serious. “And I will pray for you.”

Margaret had laughed gently, and tucked away the little medallion of St. Margaret, and they hadn’t mentioned it since. But now Robarts remembered with a sick chill the mutter of the old woman when she bowed her head as they passed:

Saint Margaret with the Wyrm, Saint Katherine with the Wheel, Saint Teresa in her Tower …

On the other side of the door Margaret screamed.

Damn Symons. Robarts put his shoulder to the door and burst inside. Margaret’s lovely face was distorted into a horrible mask of pain, and her legs were spread impossibly wide. She was white as the pillows beneath her head, which made a terrible contrast with the gouts of dark red that soaked the sheets from her waist down. Everywhere on the floor were blood-soaked clothes.

From between Margaret’s legs protruded a round bulbous head, a baby’s head. His son’s head. It was blue.

Symons turned and saw him in the doorway.

“For God’s sake, man, are you mad? Meadows!”

The servant loomed from the corner of the room.

“Take him away!”

Meadows hesitated.

“Do what I say, now!” bellowed the physician.

Meadows complied, glad to be given a direct order, a task to accomplish in this chamber of helpless horror. Strong hands seized Robarts and pulled him gently but implacably away.

He couldn’t resist. The sight of Margaret rendered him helpless and weak as a puppy. God knows he’d seen worse in his practice, but this …

… this was Margaret.

He sank against the wall for support and sat on the floor, burying his head in his hands.

A wyrm was a dragon, he remembered uselessly. A wyrm was a dragon.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked up, startled. Could he have slept? The light was dimmer, more golden than before.

“Sebastian,” said Symons. “God help me, I am so very sorry. So very, very sorry.”

The door to the chamber was wide open now, and the assistant—what was his name, after all?—stood there, wiping his hands over and over with a towel. Such delicate hands he had, for a man. Perfect for delivering babies.

In a trance he walked to the door. After a worried glance at Symons, the assistant moved aside to let him pass.

“It was a son, after all,” said the burly doctor behind him. Beside the bed stood Janet, her usually cheerful, ruddy face streaked with tears. She held a white-wrapped bundle in her arms. It was very still.

“Strangled in the womb,” continued Symons. “The position … well. I can only say I’m sorry.”

Symons’ words seemed far off and nonsensical. Margaret lay still in the bed, her hair a great dark cloud on the pillow, framing her white face.

As if in a dream Robarts stopped beside Janet. He flicked open the blanket that covered the baby’s face.

His son was still, and pale blue now without a trace of purple. But for the color he looked like a doll, a finely wrought plaything crafted of wax.

“Oh sir …” began Janet, and her face crumpled.

“That’s enough, girl,” he said, gently covering his son’s—Margaret’s son’s—face with the cloth. He recognized it now—Margaret had spent a week embroidering the yellow and green daisies on it. He patted Janet on the arm, automatically, feeling nothing for her.

Margaret’s chest moved ever so slightly and Robarts sat on the bed beside her. As his weight shifted the mattress her eyelids fluttered and she looked up at him, her pupils huge and unfocused.

“Sebastian?” she breathed.

He smiled down at her wanly. Her color was ghastly, and the remote dispassionate, professional part of his brain recognized the symptoms of blood loss, irreparable, the shadow of death on her brow. Her gown was drenched in sweat, and through the loosened laces at her breast he could see the medallion of St. Margaret gleaming dully. The chain had dug into her neck, he saw, and left it red and irritated. Automatically he reached behind her neck, brushing away the damp tendrils at the nape and unclasping the offending chain.

“How are you, my love?” he whispered, stifling the tremor in his voice, forcing a calm expression on his face. He knew she was dying. If God was merciful, she didn’t.

Her eyes closed again and for an instant he thought she was gone. Then they blinked open, with an energy that startled him.

“The baby, Sebastian. I don’t hear any crying …”

He brushed a lock of hair from her face.

“That’s because you dozed off, my dear. He’s had a good strong bawl and Janet is giving him a bath in the other room.”

He felt tears creeping down his face and knew she couldn’t see them. Her eyes were glazing over already.

“A boy?” she managed. He had to bend close to hear.

“Yes,” he said firmly, willing his voice not to break. “A fine healthy boy. Sleep, my love, and when you wake you can see him.”

Her eyes drifted halfway shut and stayed there. A smile crossed her lips. She sighed once, and was gone.

He stayed sitting there a long time, dimly aware of others going about their business in the room, moving things, cleaning up. When he was quite sure she wasn’t going to stir he reached up with an only slightly shaky hand and thumbed her eyelids shut.

Then he saw that his hands still had her blood on them, drying and peeling, and that he’d left traces on her neck and eyelids.

The medallion chain was still tangled about his fingers. He looked at it a minute. A crude little figure, barely identifiable as female, with a snake-like form tangled around her legs. The dragon seemed to be smiling up at the saint, in collusion with her instead of planning to devour her.

He tucked the medallion in his pocket. He sat a long time beside Margaret’s body as the shadows in the room grew long and the light behind the curtains faded away.

At one point Janet, or at least some woman, came and touched him on the shoulder, asking him a question. He ignored her and eventually she went away. Symons came and spoke to him and Robarts looked at him blankly, seeing his mouth move and hearing garbled sounds but understanding not a word.

Eventually he felt about for a discarded damp cloth, and wiped his hands over and over with the rough fabric until the blood was gone and his fingers were chapped and raw.

Robarts rose and walked to the doorsill. There his legs failed him and he leaned heavily against the frame.

He hung there a second. Then he drew back one arm and struck the wall with all his might.

Beneath the bright striped wallpaper the plaster dented. Robarts examined his fist.

The skin across the knuckles was torn, and blood welled in the pink gash. The flesh was already starting to purple.

He didn’t feel a thing.

CHAPTER TWO

The Mists

When he dreamed, Tibor saw his sister’s face.

They were gathering the freshwater mussels that clustered thick as grapes under the banks of one of the many rivers that branched from the Musarde in the land of Kartakass. It was the end of summer, when the river was low enough to get at the mussels easily, and that was a good summer, he remembered, stretching out over the beginning of the autumn season when the land gave and gave like a generous lover.

They went there almost every year so that the men could break the Lord Meistersinger Harkon Lucas’s horses, and the good weather held so long that year they stayed longer than usual, until the halfwild creatures were so tame they would come at a child’s call. He and Jaelle brought armloads of sweet grass to their fields, and the mares and half-grown foals came readily to eat what they brought and to mumble at their fingers.

Lord Harkon was well pleased with the weather and their work, and ordered three great heifers to be slaughtered and delivered to the Vistani camp with his compliments, together with a barrel of strong red wine. Jaelle remembered the mussels and promised their aunt a good skirtful to make stew, together with the seaweed and tubers they’d gathered that morning.

There’d been no rain for at least a month, and the banks of the river were eroded under like the empty crust of a pie. Tibor and Jaelle walked along a stretch where the channel had been forced deep into bedrock. Under the lip of the bank Tibor spotted a bunch of mussels all grown together and left exposed when the waters receded. He kneeled, grasped the shellfish, and gave them a determined tug.

The crust of sand and stone crumbled under him and he hung over empty air, the still-forceful torrent of the river on the rocks below, ready to sweep him out to sea. Still grabbing onto the cluster of mussels with one hand, he paddled desperately in the air with the other.

“Tibor!”

Jaelle was by his side, moving faster than thought, and seized his forearm in a strong grip. He struggled back from the brink, collapsing into her.

“Don’t let me go,” he said, although he was safe now.

“Never,” she said.

He realized he still held the shellfish, torn free from their rooting-spot under the banks, and he waved it at her triumphantly. An instant of astonishment, and they both burst out laughing.

There: Her face, Jaelle’s face just before it crumpled into laughter, that’s what he saw when he dreamed.

Not the anger.

Not the betrayal.

Not the lift of her chin when she vowed to destroy him, even if it destroyed her in turn.

Not the look in her eyes when she realized he would pay every last measure he had, including her, for the power he sought.

He only saw the laughter.

Tibor didn’t dream much. For the most part, he didn’t even exist.

And then, little by little, he started to come together, coalescing out of the Mists that were his sea, his doom, his rocks, and his prison.

Sometimes it was as if he was suspended, spread out in particles like dust over strange lands and peoples. Awareness was dim, and not related to any particular sense; he was a deaf, blind, insensate witness to events he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

Then, slowly, he realized he could see a little, the barest lightening or shadowing of the invariable gray. And sound—sometimes a whisper threaded through his consciousness before it vanished and was gone forever.

How long passed before he understood any of it, he never knew. It might have been centuries.

But then—a tickle of sound in his ear. So long it had been since he heard words, even his own; at first he didn’t recognize them for what they were.

Words.

A little twist and I’d have it.

Meaningless syllables—gibberish.

Then, picking them apart, sound by sound. So unfamiliar, a language he didn’t even speak. And yet, when he pulled the words apart and crawled inside them, a rat burrowing in straw, he began to understand.

A little twist …

… and I’d have it.

Something desirous there, something composed of want and fear. Hunger, as well—the insistent demands of the belly when there’s no money for food, and your woman hungers, and your children hunger, and everyday they look at you with hope and disappointment.

More, a flicker of boldness, wanting only a little push.

A little twist …

Something bright and sharp in there, a bright shank, just right for a sudden thrust and you’re three streets away before anyone knows anything’s wrong.

… and I’d have it.

Something heavy there, coins clanking together in a pouch, meaning so much more than that soft clink—a warm bed, food in the belly.

From inside the thought Tibor made an effort and flexed. Such a little thing, and life so cheap, a coin thrust back and forth across a table. First he has it, and then she has it, why shouldn’t you have your turn?

Twist the knife and take it. Tibor couldn’t speak out loud, not yet. He made his thoughts a vine and coiled around the mind that lay so exposed before him.

And someone did twist and take, and ran away with a coin-purse heavy and soft in the hand and scarlet blossoming behind, a life lost behind, and Tibor fell away again, fell into the rivers of Mist and oblivion.

But, still, a fleeting thought. I did it, and I’ll do it again. I made one man kill another. I have all the time in the world, dear sister, do you hear me?

All the time in the world. And I will prevail.

Cornwall, Summer 1867

“How long has he been in there?” Meadows indicated the library door with a twitch of his head and Simpson pursed his lips at the liberty. But everything was topsy-turvy after the tragedy in London.

Simpson couldn’t help thinking that if the mistress had been in Cornwall, where she belonged, all might have gone smoothly. And he found it hard to fault Meadows for impropriety after the event that shattered the household.

“All last night, as far as I know,” he replied in hushed tones. “And all this day as well.”

“ ’Tisn’t a healthy place for him to be,” said Meadows. “Morbid, all those dusty old books. He needs exercise and fresh air.”

Simpson shook his head at Meadows as he passed on, busy at his duties, but despite the young man’s impertinence he had to agree with him. Dr. Robarts had been drawn to the library since his return to Bryani House, ensconcing himself there like an owl in an attic. Simpson had looked at some of the books before, when he was dusting or seeing to the bi-annual airing of each room of Bryani House, and while they might be considered scholarly enough he thought them grim and, in some cases, bordering on obscene.

He paused before the heavy oak door and its polished brass knob, considering bringing the master some tea, if only to stir him out of his funk. But it was early yet, and Dr. Robarts would see through all subterfuge.

Perhaps he had gone to sleep. More than once in the past week Simpson woke to the sound of pacing, and when he investigated, candle in hand, it was always Dr. Robarts walking, back and forth, as if mindless repetitive action could numb him.

No sound came from within. Let the poor man sleep, then.

Bryani House was an inheritance from Robarts’ uncle, Yorick Sebastian Robarts, who died unmarried and therefore without legitimate issue—or any issue, as far as Robarts was ever able to determine. As the estate was entailed and Robarts the nearest male heir, after his father, it was a fait accompli that he would inherit—but he and the old man always got along exceptionally well regardless of considerations of property.

Taking nothing for granted, Sebastian Robarts’ parents had taken the precaution of naming him after his uncle.

“You were almost Yorick,” Robarts’ mother told him once. “But I just couldn’t do it; I begged and pleaded with your father not to do such a dreadful thing to his only child. Eventually he did listen to reason, but it was hard going for a little while there.”

But mostly the man and the boy found a kinship because little Sebastian, on visits to his bachelor uncle, fell in love with the library. Since Yorick Robarts was in love with his library too, it gave them both one great principle on which they could agree.

It wasn’t so much the library, of course—although it was a pleasant enough room, with high windows, rich wood paneling, comfortable armchairs, a massive desk on which one could spread out all manner of papers, and a great globe fixed in the center, formed of puzzle-pieces carved of semi-precious stones depicting continents and seas. It was the books.

Yorick Robarts was a well-respected scholar in his time, his collection of books famous in his particular academic circle. Students and scholars from around the world still petitioned to be allowed to come for a day, or even just an afternoon, to browse among Uncle Yorick’s tomes.

Uncle Yorick had studied for the church at University, and although he had never entered orders—nor needed a living, as his wealth made him independent—along the way he had developed a taste for anthropology of an increasingly esoteric sort.

He became, in short, fascinated with angels, and their obverse side, demons. From the not-unusual study of Cherubim and Seraphim that any respectable student of religion might make, he ventured into the foreign, the exotic, and in some cases, the forbidden. It was natural to examine the heavenly creatures described in Mohammedanism, for they closely resembled those of Christianity. From that leaping-off point he discovered the Devas of Buddhism, and the Apsaras of the Hindu. And demons too, for were they not the mirror-side of angels? He learned about the angels that govern every hour, and the demon of Friday, and the hundreds of names that Lilith bore across the centuries in all the secret places that she lived. He traveled to Persia and to places in Asia not marked on any maps, and ventured into temples in India where no white man had ever dreamed of going.

And he brought back treasures—not the gold or jewels that some men sought to plunder in those exotic climes, but books, scrolls, papyri—some of them new-penned by scribes remembering what their masters taught them, others unimaginably ancient. He filled the library at Bryani House with these tomes and documents, and soon the scholars found him. They came from Oxford, from Cambridge, from the universities of Europe and America. Priests came from the Vatican to clarify some obscure doctrinal matter, and amateur gentlemen scholars wrote to beg an hour in that vault of knowledge.

One memorable summer a little brown wizened man had come to the door of Bryani House, accompanied by a phalanx of shaven-headed attendants dressed as he was, in yellow robes, some of whom walked before him, brushing at the ground with feather switches. Another shiny-pated brown man, dressed in Saville Row’s best, acted as translator, asking diffidently if the Arahant visiting from India might be permitted some time in the honored English gentleman’s library? The sage was immediately permitted entry, where he asked for and was shown a scrap of parchment that Yorick Robarts and all the scholars of England had never been able to translate—an insignificant-looking fragment that consisted of one sinuous symbol written in a queer, grainy-looking, deep green ink.

The Arahant examined this fragment closely, being careful not to touch it, and clapped his hands with a gleeful expression. He then bowed deeply to his bewildered host and took leave, followed by the Saville Row gent and a double line of monks. Yorick Robarts never knew what the little holy man sought, but a month later a parcel was delivered, containing a small but near-flawless emerald of unmatchable color.

Sebastian Robarts remembered many such incidents in his uncle’s house—now his. They all seemed so long ago—before his medical studies had occupied his whole being—and then there was Margaret, and happiness.

And then that nightmare in London, and everything precious ripped away.

The days of his childhood seemed no more than a dream, or a story told another child to quiet him, or to lull him to sleep.

He wondered if he’d ever sleep again.

Robarts realized he had been staring at the bookshelf for—how long? He couldn’t remember. Over an hour at least. Or had it been the whole morning? Surely the shadows had moved across the room from their sunrise to afternoon positions.

But he hadn’t really been staring at the bookshelf so much as one particular book. Its spine, gold letters on age-darkened leather, looked familiar.

His eyes narrowed and he rose, walking through the dust motes that floated like bits of gold in the afternoon sun. He knew that book.

His fingers caressed the old leather. Of course—now he remembered. As a child given free rein in his uncle’s house he had been fascinated with this book—Wormius’ Treatise on Angels. He eased it carefully from his place, as if still conscious of Uncle Yorick’s eye on him, making sure he wasn’t cracking the spine or dog-earing the leather.

The book seemed a lot lighter nowadays, of course. Twenty years ago he’d had to carry it two-handed, carefully place it down on the massive library desk. Now he could balance it in one hand, picking through the pages with the other.

Ah yes—there was the appeal—the pictures. Half of the Treatise was text that was rather dense and convoluted for a child, but the remainder consisted of beautiful hand-painted illustrations of angels and demons and all manner of winged creatures. The thick, soft paper beneath his fingertips seemed to slow time, to halt it and make it run backward, and he could almost swear that if he looked up he would see a small boy at the table, in a short coat and a round collar, poring over the book in front of him.

The pictures were as beautiful as he remembered them, their colors at once rich and subtle, and he could see now with a mature eye the skill and technique that went into making them.

There—that had been one of his favorites. An angel, pinning a sinuous creature that was either a dragon or an enormous snake to the ground with a spear. Her—Robarts had always thought of the angel as female—her wings were outspread and the artist had delineated each feather, twisting against the air, as if the wings were beating hard to keep her aloft. Her arms were muscular, and strained against the writhing of the beast below.

The creature itself was a work of art; each scale shaded its own particular color of green. It looked like a great twisted belt of tourmalines, turning around on itself in its death-agony, reaching one scythe-like claw in an effort to gut the angel that transfixed it.

What attracted him was the odd contrast of violence and tranquility in the print—although now, as he looked closer, it seemed more that it was a watercolor that had been tipped into the book. The power in the angel’s arms, her beating wings, the impaled serpent all bespoke death and grim determination. But the angel’s face, her wide gray eyes, and the strong lines of her features, her expression—it was calm, quiet, and a little sad, as if she grieved for the beast even as she killed it.

There was something heartbreaking about the peace in that face, what it had witnessed, what it foresaw.

That face.

With a shock he realized it was Margaret’s face.

Not exactly; of course not exactly. He could not pretend to himself that Margaret’s portrait was painted there.

But the expression, that look of sad peace, as if she understood everything, the hope of joy, the inevitability of sorrow. It was what he first noticed about her, what he most cherished.

And he would never see it again.

Her body and her baby lay rotting in Trinity Cemetery.

It was raining at the gravesite when they lowered the coffin into the crumbling loam. How many coffins had rotted away, and their contents rotted too, generation upon generation dissolved into the mournful earth? The London drizzle puddled atop the matte black surface, and the first shovelful of dirt hit the lid with a dull thud.

Something twisted in Robarts’ chest with that sound; something broke inside him. He didn’t think he had anything left to break; he thought he’d reached the apex of his pain. He was wrong.

Someone was touching him on the arm. He looked down. Lady Cecelia Agnew—Margaret’s sister, who had ventured out in defiance of tradition and propriety to attend her sister’s funeral. In the background loomed the gray figure of her husband, Lord Agnew, a baronet whose fortune had been made in bananas, or plantains, or some such. Robarts couldn’t be bothered to remember.

“I am so very sorry, Sebastian,” she said, in the low clear voice she had shared with her sister. “I won’t pretend I can help you, but please, if you need me …”

Cecelia had something of Margaret about her face, enough so that the differences were a mockery. He turned away from her and walked away, blind in the rain, the rhythmic thump of the dirt on the coffin behind him like a dreadful drumbeat.

With a start, he realized that he was crumpling the watercolor. The soft paper was tearing.

Too fragile. Like Margaret. Angel as she was, she had not the strength or substance to carry her child, to survive the labor, to live.

What kind of God creates something that destroys itself in the course of its own destiny?

What kind of creature is built for perfection but is torn apart achieving it?

His hand relaxed on the paper, smoothing it out. Then in a sudden spasm, he seized it and tore it from its binding. It came away, the edges ragged, and fluttered to the floor.

Sebastian Robarts let it lie. He lowered himself back into the armchair and watched the motes dancing in the reddening light.

SERIAH

I’ll tell you something about Tibor Vadoma that not even he knew, nor will ever.

When his mother nursed her twins, she feared putting her son to her breast because once his teeth started coming in, sometimes he’d suckle sweet as any other babe, and sometimes he’d bite her, and she was too proud to ask the advice of the other women, who might know how to discourage a suckling from nipping. Also it seemed to her that there was a knowing look in his face when he did it, and that he would intentionally lull her into complacency before he bit down on her, so that she never knew when to expect it.

She was ashamed of thinking so, and ashamed that she nursed the girl more than the boy, so that Jaelle grew plump and strong while Tibor, though not starving, stayed thin, almost wiry.

One morning she put her boy to breast and he bit her hard, like an animal, and she flung him halfway across her chamber inside the caravan. He landed on a pile of cloth ready for the dye vats and so did not crack his head, but lay squalling. His sister stirred in her cradle and cried too, while Mirela Vadoma hunched on her bed, clutching at her bleeding breast.

Pride and fear and yes, love, were her downfall.

Pride because her brother was the Feri, the headsman of the clan by common agreement, pride because Pietre Volmi, her husband, was desired of many women but gave her brother a mare pregnant by a stallion of the rarest bloodlines, and a string of gold pieces, and a bottle of Krishnov brandy as her bride-price.

Fear because one who has much has much to lose, and Mirela knew some of the women would gloat over her pain. Fear of losing the regard of her handsome, broad-shouldered husband, who brought in the most horses each year, over her failure to nurse his son. Fear that that son would be destroyed, for already she knew that he had the Sight.

Although the Vadoma, unlike other Vistani tribes, sometimes tolerated the existence of a male with the Sight, even they would kill a demon-child—and what else would seek blood from its mother’s breast?

And that fear most of all kept her silent, for despite all, Mirela loved her son.

She packed the torn flesh with cotton and bound her breast, and went about her business as if nothing was wrong. But because the bite was not cleaned as one of the wise women would have taught her, the wound festered and infection spread rapidly through her body, and three days later she lay in her cot, soaked with sweat and babbling of horses, while Pietre paced outside and the twin babes stayed tucked up with their cousins in their uncle’s wagon.

Jut before dawn she died, and when the women washed her body with the cold water from the river they found that her breast was a rotted mass of tissue, purple and black and foul smelling.

They told the Feri, her brother, that her milk ducts might have blocked, or maybe she had a cancer deep in her breast that she never knew about, that burst into fatal bloom at the birth of her children. Why she would have hidden her affliction away, when there were those willing and able to succor her, they could not say.

Pietre stayed for his wife’s burning—for like a very few other Vistani tribes the Vadoma put their dead to the torch so that their souls would ascend to heaven the faster, rather than burying them, so that they might have time to return before they rotted away. The next morning he took his prize mare and a gelding and returned to his father’s tribe, saying he was done with the Vadoma who would keep a manchild with the Sight alive. Since Mirela died he had spent some time studying Tibor’s infant face, and he didn’t like the look of knowing in those innocent-seeming dark eyes.

Tibor and Jaelle were left in the keeping of their mother’s brother, and well enough he raised them. It may be worth noting that the babies were put in the care of a wet nurse until they were weaned, and, save for one nip, which earned him the tap of a hard finger on his tender gums, Tibor did not bite her.

I see it, while the monstrous engines of this time rumble through the stone and steel over my head; it falls on me to remember what no one but a dead woman knew.

CHAPTER THREE

Whitechapel, Summer 1867

The girl took him for nothing but an evening’s employment, and Robarts took care that no one else should get a good look at his face in the dusk. She was pregnant—Robarts’ practiced eye saw that. The thin face and wrists and the slightly protruding belly, where the fetus sucked every scrap of nutrition. The violet shadow under the eyes that betrayed her weariness, her body’s need for rest denied by the bare brutal need to work, to walk the streets, to sell herself to keep body and soul together.

He remembered Margaret at four months gone, the exhaustion that would overcome her in an instant. He’d make her rest in a darkened room, feet up on her needlework footrest.

There was no one to do that for this girl, he knew. A terrible pity welled in his throat like a stone and he forced himself to swallow it, to speak before he lost his courage.

Before he lost his nerve, as he had between Margaret’s legs, holding the scalpel impotently, unable to act. He lost Margaret then; he’d failed her.

But this girl he could save, if he acted quickly. If he had the courage to do what needed to be done to fix her.

He let his accent slip: a little more vulgar, but not enough to put her off. A successful clerk out for a lark, or a ship’s officer home on leave and looking for a bit more than a cuddle.

“At my place,” he said. “You can rest a while. Put your feet up by the fire and have a bit of a meal and a cuppa.”

He smiled at her warmly. “My housekeeper’s off to visit her sister, and won’t be there to give you trouble. She’ll have left me some supper, more than enough for two. Come on, love. I’m up for a bit of fun, but I want a girl rested and fed, first.”

She paused and he could see she was thinking of warming her cold legs, of soft cushions for her aching back and hot toast with butter. He knew he had her then.

Cherise was cold, and damn tired. Her feet were swollen in too-tight boots, and the weariness and chill of the streets struck through her body.

She smiled hesitantly at the gentleman before her. She’d never gone to a customer’s place, and it was very rare they’d ask. No one much liked taking the likes of her to their cozy nests.

She was hungry too, although nausea had plagued her much of the morning. She knew the reason for that right enough, and would take care of it as soon as she could get together a little money to pay the midwife.

Just now a warm chair and tea and toast sounded like absolute heaven, and payment enough for any services the gentleman might require.

She reached for his proffered arm, and then hesitated. Something chimed from deep within her—a warning. This isn’t right, there’s mischief here. A girl wasn’t on the game long without getting some sort of street sense.

She glanced at the toff’s face, and saw no danger there. Last year a punter turned on her and bruised her face up bad before she could claw her way out, but there was a look to him, a sort of a sneer beneath the façade that showed he thought she was scum. This one had none of that.

And damn, but she was tired. She smiled and took the proffered arm.

Haymarket, 1855

“Stop, thief!”

The frantic yelp cut through the babble of the morning marketing crowd. Artemis, holding onto his mother’s hand more to save himself from drowning in the crowd than because of residual shyness, turned with the rest.

The orange-seller, his fruits set proudly before him in his barrow, individually wrapped like the precious objects they were, pointed accusingly at the skinny figure that hunched before him.

“That one! He took an orange!”

The accused looked around him bewilderedly, as if some unimaginable fate had fallen from the skies upon him. Thin to the point of emaciation and twisted as if his bones bent inside with the stress of his slight weight, his mouth moved in what Artemis supposed was denial, but only faint, choppy sounds came out.

“ ’Ow d’ye know, then?” called out a woman nearby, stout as the accused was meager, with red arms chapped to the elbow like a washerwoman’s. “Ja see ’im do it?”

“There was one right there”—the fruit-seller pointed to a bare space in front of the heap—“and now it’s gone, and ’im passing by.”

No one present doubted that he knew, with painful precision, exactly where each and every one of his precious fruits was at all times. Oranges were a luxury, an exotic treat, and if one had a chance to taste the sweet juice once a year, one was lucky.

Some shoppers passed on impatiently but most stayed to see what would pass. Some surged closer, closing their ranks with the vague idea that they would stop the miscreant from escaping, should he dare try.

But he showed no sign of trying, spreading stick-thin fingers wide.

“I never!” he managed, finally. “I never took nought.”

“Couldn’t be no one else,” retorted the merchant. “You was right there. Stepped across and it was gone. I know where my goods are, and I’m right sick of thieves like you ruining my business.”

“Come on home, then,” said Mrs. Donovan, giving Artemis a little tug with her left hand, her right being burdened down by her great market basket.

Artemis hesitated, resisting. “Hold a minute, Mum,” he said.

He looked at the space where the orange had been, then at the thin man who wriggled like an insect on a pin in the Museum.

Something was wrong here, and he couldn’t tell what.

A burly figure pushed through the crowd, dressed in dark blue and made taller still by the top hat on his head.

“Officer!” called the merchant eagerly.

“In time,” said the peeler, curtly. He took in the situation with a practiced eye and came to a stop in front of the accused man, who looked smaller still by comparison.

“Now, what’ve you been up to, Bill? Not stealing fruit, are you? You disappoint me.”

“I tell you I didn’t!” Bill was turning purple with earnestness. “Search me, then!”

He spread out his arms, increasing his resemblance to an outsized spider.

“ ’E’s got a million nooks and crannies to hide things in, the old pickpocket,” sneered the fruit-seller. “You’ll never find it, but ’e took it right enough.”

“Turn him upside down and shake him!” The suggestion came from somewhere in the crowd, and the others laughed.

“Search ’is bones,” said another, grimmer voice, and poor Bill grew pale indeed as cruder suggestions came from the crowd.

“It’ll be transportation for you right enough this time, me lad,” said the peeler. “So you might as well be out with it now.”

He laid a huge hand on Bill’s shoulder.

“He didn’t do it,” shouted Artemis.

He felt his mother give one last frustrated tug, but he pulled his sweaty little hand free of her and dodged to the front of the crowd.

The laughing and catcalls had stopped abruptly at the sound of his voice, but now started up again fresh at the sight of a little boy interfering in men’s business.

Artemis ignored them all and pushed his way to the side of the policeman.

“Please, sir,” he said, tugging at the big man’s coat. “He didn’t do it, sir.”

The peeler looked down at him, caught between anger and amusement.

“Well then,” he said kindly enough. “Who did, then?”

Artemis glanced again at the bare space where the orange had been. Everything seemed to slow down as he squinted through the air, which gradually appeared to thicken, as if two times existed in the same place. He heard nothing except the sound of his heart beating in his ears. From the corner of his eye he could see the policeman’s mouth opening, slowly. It was as if the entire marketplace was caught in treacle.

And then everything was normal again. And he knew.

“He did it,” he declared, pointing behind the orange vendor, who looked at him open-mouthed. The crowd quieted, and then, as the vendor moved aside, the laughter started. A boy, with a bulging belly and an unpleasant expression, stood behind him.

“That’s my son, boy,” said the vendor. “And ’e’s not going to be taking ’is own da’s fruit.”

“But he did,” said Artemis, his mouth dry. His voice cracked but he continued. “He did take it. It’s in his left pocket.”

He saw it again in his mind’s eye, and prayed that he was right—the boy, looking hungrily at the fruit that was too precious for a child to eat, his father distracted. The small, chubby hand reaching for the sweet treasure. The same hand slipping it away into a trouser pocket. The panic when his father saw the orange gone; the relief when someone else was accused.

The peeler’s heavy hand dropped to his shoulder.

“It’s a serious business, accusing when you’ve no proof. Are you sure, boy?”

Artemis nodded, and tried to swallow.

“Didn’t!” snapped the vendor’s boy, staring at Artemis venomously.

“Check his pocket!” called some of the gathered market-goers, who were delighted to have this increasingly unexpected entertainment provided them for nothing.

“Shan’t!” the vendor retorted. “ ’E’s my own boy, in’t he? ’E ain’t gonna steal from me.”

Perhaps the policeman saw the same flicker pass across the boy’s face that Artemis did, because Artemis felt the weight lift away.

“Let’s check that pocket anyway, shall we?” he intoned. “Just to make sure.”

The boy backed away as his father turned to him. “Show us your pocket, Alf,” he said. “Show us it’s empty so we can get on with the business.”

Alf looked down and pulled his hand from his pocket. His hand was empty, but the round bulge in his pocket was very obvious.

“It’s a ball,” he said, low so only the bobby, the grocer, and Artemis could hear.

“Show us your ball, then, son,” said the peeler.

When the boy didn’t move, his father gave a grunt of impatience and grabbed at his trousers, digging in the deep pocket.

He brought out the orange.

His eyes opened wide in astonishment, then narrowed in anger.

Artemis turned away before he could see the blow.

His mother was standing a little distance from him, her basket on her hip and her mouth quirked on one side.

“Had to speak up, didn’t you?” she said. “Now you’ve made us late for your uncle’s dinner.”

The crowd was ignoring them, some off about their delayed business, others craning forward curiously to see the beating.

“I did have to, Mum,” he said. “They would have transported him.”

“I know,” said his mother. “But it’s always the wrong time, you know, Artemis? Although I suppose you can’t help that.”

Artemis wanted to be nowhere but home; the sound of the boy sobbing was making him sick. But a large shadow fell on him, and he looked up into the red fleshy face of the peeler.

“You’ve a good eye, boy,” he said. “And a quick tongue for speaking up.”

Artemis could only stare.

“That he does, sir,” said his mother. “And he needs to get his good eye and quick tongue home now sir, begging your pardon.”

The officer ignored her.

“The city watch always appreciates a word from someone with a good eye. But I’ve a feeling you don’t like the idea of snitching on your neighbors, do you, boy?”

Artemis shook his head.

“And I won’t be saying you’re wrong to feel that way. But I will tell you this: Keep watching, and learning, and speaking up when you’ve a mind to, not keeping mum when that’s the right thing too. And when you’ve grown, you might find that working for Sir Robert Peel will suit you.”

He smiled. “You’ve a time to think it over, any road.”

He touched his hat and stepped smartly back to his patrol as Artemis’ mother hurried him home.

Whitechapel, Summer 1867

Artemis Donovan smelled the bright tang of blood before he saw the body. It left a faint metallic trace in his mouth. Before he even entered the alley he knew what he’d see.

He spared a glance for the bobby who was vomiting, as inconspicuously as possible, into the gutter that drained from the alley. The thick sour smell mingled with the funk of urine from the brick walls and the cloying scent of rotted vegetables from the market cart down the street—but still it couldn’t mask the thin reek of blood that permeated the air.

The pallid gray light of dawn had succeeded the darkness but the streetlights were not yet extinguished. The two policemen in the alley had been holding lamps but had just damped them, and there was another smell too, of burnt and dying wick.

He recognized one of them—Christian, who looked up from adjusting his bull’s-eye and gave him a one-sided smile. The other was holding a grubby handkerchief over his nose, and Donovan couldn’t make out the features.

“Nice piece of work to find of a morning, Detective,” said Christian. “You’ve been a bad boy, then, to earn the graveyard shift?”

“Not bad, just low man for now,” returned Donovan good-naturedly. “Let’s have a look and then we can all get inside where it’s warm.” He knew what the night patrol’s feet felt like at the end of the shift—stiff and frozen. He’d had that duty often enough, and not so long ago either.

“Poor little bitch,” said Christian. He moved aside so that Donovan could access the scene. “Happens often enough, poor sods.”

Yes, it did, thought Donovan. Whoring was a rough life, and those that couldn’t shake off the game sometimes came to this end, although more often they drank themselves to death or died of the pox.

But this—this was different. He was aware of that queer feeling that sometimes came over him when he was presented with a puzzle that so often, if he trusted it, gave him the answer to the mystery.

The girl had been placed carefully on her back, hands folded demurely over her breast. Her limbs were arranged decorously, almost tenderly.

Most murder victims Artemis Donovan had encountered lay sprawled in the position where they first fell, discarded by their killers like an abandoned doll. This was not the case here.

At first it seemed as if she wore a richly colored gown, but the flounces around her ankles were a dingy, dirty white.

It was blood, he realized, with a dull shock. He was used to blood, of course, and had seen far more of it than he cared to in his life. But the quantity of it …

From neck to knee her dress was soaked dark burgundy. It contrasted horridly with the stark white of her face.

He kneeled by her side and frowned.

“We can’t shift her yet, boys,” he said. “Leastways, not before I’ve got a good look at her.”

Christian began to make a coarse comment, but let it trail away.

Donovan studied the girl’s hair—it was dirty, like the rest of her—but a rich brown with cornstalk highlights. She was—or had been, at least—pretty for all the squalor that surrounded her.

A parcel of rough fabric was folded in her hand. He touched it, cautiously. Her grip on it was loose—it must have been tucked in between her fingers, after she’d been placed here.

She’d certainly been killed elsewhere and brought to this place, everything spoke of that. Even if his experience had not told him so, he could see it, in that strange mind’s-eye that assisted or afflicted him sometimes, depending on how you looked at it.

He let his eyes unfocus and saw it: The dank dark of night, the figure bearing the girl in its arms, shambling along furtively. Venturing into the alley, aided perhaps by moonlight (for it was the full moon), placing the girl carefully on the ground.

Donovan saw the figure reach forward to tuck a wayward lock of hair behind the girl’s ear.

Donovan opened his eyes. Indeed, the hair was tucked away as he had seen.

It almost had been a lover’s gesture.

He pulled away the small cloth parcel and unwrapped it. Coins clinked inside, and more—a scrap of paper with writing on it.

The writing was clear, careful block lettering with nothing to show the personality behind it.

“To bury her decently,” it said.

Donovan rocked back on his heels, the paper in his right hand, the coins in his left, and considered this. Two gold sovereigns. Far more than sufficient to give the girl a respectable funeral, with a proper coffin and cemetery plot. No potters’ field for this one.

He’d never seen anything quite like this. He’d seen prostitutes beaten to death by their pimps, or knifed by a rival in the rowdier taverns. He’d seen a man sitting, dazed and weeping, on a soiled bed beside the body of the woman he’d strangled.

But this girl, arranged neatly in a foul alley, with money left to bury her?

He wrapped the coins back in the paper and tucked it away in his waistcoat pocket, taking care that the bobbies could see him do it. He’d turn it in as evidence later—he’d never been like some who would nick a few loose coins from the pockets of the dead to supplement their admittedly inadequate salaries.

He shifted his weight to kneel beside her, knowing his landlady would scold him for the state of his trousers. It was too late to worry about that now; the filthy ground had already left its mark.

“Come here a moment, Christian, and bring your bull’s-eye,” he said. He didn’t trust what the less-experienced officer would do when faced with what must lie beneath that gory dress.

He heard the man come up behind him, and a little circle of yellow light fell on the dead girl’s breast. Donovan braced himself and reached for a corner of the fabric. The blood-soaked material was still slightly damp, and unpleasantly stiff beneath his fingers.

Donovan tugged experimentally. The cloth lifted away from the body, and he realized that the entire garment had been sliced neatly down the middle. The stiff fabric stuck to the body underneath slightly so that tugging it loose was not unlike pulling the bark away from a tree.

In the end he had to peel parts of the dress away as if he was skinning a rabbit.

Inside her dress she was surprisingly clean. Donovan wondered if the killer had bathed her and then replaced the dress as a kind of shroud.

He didn’t have a chance to suppose much more, however, immersed in the shock of the girl’s body. Christian gasped into his ear and the light of the bull’s-eye shook.

From the bottom of the sternum, just beneath her breasts, to the top of the pubis, she had been sliced neatly open. Her belly gaped wide, and inside, where there should be lights and liver, stomach and kidneys and uterus, there was nothing.

Donovan felt an acid tickle at the back of his throat, and fought the urge to vomit.

Christian managed to control the shaking lantern, and once again a beam of light shone steadily on the eviscerated girl.

Inside her body, semicircular and polished as a bowl, Donovan could see the stalk of the spine and the curving ribs. Between them were the red slabs of her back muscle.

“Now,” came Christian’s voice, only a little shaky. “I wonder where he’s gone and put them?”

That was exactly what Donovan was wondering.

Something else struck him as well. It wasn’t as if the girl had been torn apart in a bestial rage. She’d been cleaned out with what he could only describe as care, almost the way a historian would excavate a barrow, as he’d seen sometimes in his boyhood. Excavated with the same care that she’d been laid out, with her ankles crossed and money to bury her.

There was evidence of brutality. But none, whatsoever, of hatred.

After the Crowner’s men had come and taken her away, Donovan stayed a while at the scene of the crime, waiting for there to be enough light to examine the alley for any further evidence. Where the body had been was now a sticky red-black oblong. That would be the responsibility of the street cleaners soon enough.

As the wan morning sun struck down into the alley he studied the slimy bricks intently, looking for anything—a button, a cufflink, a scrap of fabric. There was nothing that didn’t have the grime of the streets on it, nothing that was left last night, nothing that seemed to belong to that shadowy figure he’d seen, in his mind’s eye, brushing the hair away from the girl’s face.

But there.

There, where a layer of dirt had washed into the alley. The print of a boot heel, clear as a picture, the semicircle showing that the owner had faced the precise spot where the girl had lain.

It must be from last night; any older and the traffic of the streets would have already obliterated it.

And it was unlike most heels that ever would leave their mark here, in this part of London. The print was crisp and new, and the heel mark showed little sign of wear, no scuffing from the cobblestones, no deterioration from the hard labor men of these parts, and women as well, endured.

It wasn’t necessarily the murderer’s.

But Artemis knew it was.

Or at least, it belonged to the man who brought the body here, who left it with money to bury it. And it was a sure bet it was the same man.

And that heel meant a man who was well shod, with little sign of the streets on his footwear.

A toff.

A rich man had come to the slums to kill a whore. Was it an accident, or had he planned it? Did he plan more? Were Whitechapel and Stepney his hunting grounds?

Artemis had no illusions about the wealthy. He didn’t doubt their capacity for violence, although admittedly they had less opportunity and cause to use it.

He straightened and stretched his lower back. The morning was already warm. The day would be hot, and breezeless.

And this summer would be a bastard.

CHAPTER FOUR

Whitechapel, Summer 1867

Dr. Sebastian Robarts stood shaking on the embankment, the canvas bag with its dreadful contents heavy in his hand. The filthy water was thick and turgid beneath him, and the quarter moon and a few flickering gas lamps cast a dull illumination on ripples so slow and solid it looked like the Thames was made of molasses.

It had gone wrong, as wrong as Margaret bleeding to death under his hands, under his impotent scalpel.

The girl hadn’t noticed the drug, sipping thirstily at her tea, trying to pretend a gentility she didn’t have. She hadn’t had time to have more than a bite or two before her lids grew heavy, each blink longer and longer before finally her eyes stayed shut and her chin drooped to the tattered lace of her collar. Her hands lost their grip on the cup and saucer and he’d taken them swiftly before the dregs could slop out on her skirt. He set them aside and waited a few minutes to let the drug take full hold before he moved in, checking the pulse at her wrist and beneath her ear. As he bent over her, her chin lifted and her eyes opened wide, as if she was struggling for consciousness, and her startled light blue eyes looked straight into his. Her lips moved, as if she would protest. He froze, not daring to blink, waiting to see what she would do. There was a terrible awareness about her regard, as if she could look straight into his soul and root out his intentions, holding them up to blazing light.

Her eyes glazed over, and her pale blue gaze became opaque; her lids sank and she sagged against the wing of the chair like an exhausted child.

She was so light and frail in his arms as he carried her to the laboratory he’d prepared behind his examining rooms—under-nourished—her body was like a child’s despite the hard living in her face.

The examining couch was equipped with thick leather straps with brass buckles. They were well padded; he had no intention of bruising his subjects. He had not come to bring them pain, but to release them from the bonds of the earthliness that kept them imprisoned, that kept them bound to the relentless fate of women since the fall, the deadly cycle of birth and pregnancy and the weakness of their own bodies that had trapped even his beloved.

He had to admit the thought excited him.

I will unbind Lilith …

And then …

Beneath the knife she had fallen apart; her vitals escaped him and he could not stop the blood from flowing. At one dreadful moment the blue eyes opened and she stared at him, uncomprehending, red spatters on her chalk-pale face. And he thought it must be a reflex, a galvanic reaction that a corpse makes when the still-vibrant nerves respond to unusual blood flow: eyelids switching open like an automaton’s, no feeling or true life there. He’d seen it, sometimes, in his work; he’d read plenty of scholarly works about the phenomenon.

He prayed it was true, that she wasn’t really alive at that moment.

When it was over and her body lay hollow before him and he knew he couldn’t bring her back, that he had failed her as badly as he had failed Margaret, he slumped in a corner and covered his face with his hands, sticky with her blood, and wept like a child.

When his tears were spent he was sleepy, and felt he could curl up in his corner and doze until dawn. But he forced himself to his feet, forced himself to walk the few feet between them and contemplate his botched work.

A memory: His first year learning surgical work, stitching the great wound in a corpse’s neck for practice. The master, a corpulent fellow no one liked and who had the yellow skin of chronic jaundice, came over to watch. Robarts’ hand shook under the gaze of the yellow-tinged eyeballs and the high hawk nose, hatchet-like in the fat face.

“ ’Strewth, Robarts,” came the unpleasant, coarse voice. “It’s a damned good sight the poor bastard’s dead. Wouldn’t last long with you pulling him about like that.”

He mopped his brow with his rolled-up cuff. That was many years ago. He was Dr. Sebastian Robarts now, young and promising, a member of the Royal Society, inventor of the Robarts Spreader, whose technique for shifting breech babes still in the womb had the most success of any yet tried. He was a man of property. A family man.

Was a family man.

Until he’d killed his wife and son.

That’s insane. You didn’t kill them.

Robarts started and looked behind him, seeing nothing. Where had that voice come from? Had he imagined it?

She died because she was flawed. They all are flawed. But you can still fix them.

No, I can’t. I failed.

There will always be failures. But you can’t give up now. You owe it to them.

True. It was true. His work wasn’t finished here, not by half.

Hastily he wet a cloth and mopped the blood from the girl’s face. There was nothing to be done about the gore that soaked her dress. He considered stripping her but dismissed the thought—he couldn’t leave her naked, alone in the streets of Whitechapel. For he had to take her away, leave her where she could be found and buried—he could do nothing more for her here.

Her face was so peaceful. More than once he caught himself thinking that she was merely asleep, and touched the side of her face, only to feel the cold of her flesh, the spark of life fled. It seemed like hours he spent in the harsh light of the laboratory, cleaning her up as best he might.

And the mysterious mechanisms inside her—he spread them out on the dissection table, looking for a clue, the key that would tell him what had killed Margaret. Was it the size or configuration of the uterus? Something about the tiny, fishlike fetus, with its disproportionate eyes and primitive tail?

Nothing. They told him nothing. Years of education and practice, and he felt confused and ignorant as a neophyte.

If anyone saw him as he bundled the body through the streets they didn’t say; perhaps the darkness and the cloth he’d wrapped her in hid her sufficiently, although any witnesses must think it odd to see a well-dressed man carrying a burden in the thin hours of the morning.

He walked blindly, barely feeling her weight across his shoulder. The alley appeared before him, its dark mouth like the entrance to a tomb, and he automatically turned inside. When he lowered her body to the ground he regretted the hard stones beneath her, but there was nothing to be done; he must not be caught, he must escape, he must continue … what?

His work? When he had failed so utterly? When he was so obviously incompetent?

He arranged the girl’s limbs into a semblance of propriety. He might as well find the nearest policeman, walk into the nearest police station and confess.

Her hair was swept untidily across her face. He reached out to tuck it back neatly and paused as something rippled through his mind.

You didn’t fail.

Of course I did, he answered automatically. The girl died, didn’t she?

She would have died hereafter. The strange voice sounded amused.

What do you mean? Robarts tucked the money and the note into the girl’s hand—at least she wouldn’t be tumbled into an unmarked grave, bereft even of a coffin. He could give her that much.

There will be losses. There will be consequences. Any man who has discovered anything of worth has found it so.

Robarts stood beside the body. Something strange, something like hope sparked beneath his breast.

Yes. That’s true. But …

Will you give up so easily? Wasn’t your wife … your Margaret … worth more to you than that?

Robarts’ fists clenched.

How dare you? She was everything to me.

Then prove it.

The voice, little more than a tickle in his brain, was gone, and he stood alone in the moonlit alley, the girl at his feet.

He had more work to do. Robarts turned and walked to his rooms, little caring who saw him. The night mists were beginning to form in the damp streets, and his feet stirred white wisps like ripples in a stream.

Home in his rooms, he cleaned up the floor and wrapped the girl’s insides with the rags, bundling all inside a canvas bag. And now he stood on the banks of the Thames, the bag dangling from his fingertips, and before he had time to think of it anymore, he let it drop.

It seemed to fall forever before it hit the turbid surface, where it slipped under with barely a splash. An instant, and it was gone.

Robarts flexed his cramped fingers, suddenly aware of the drying blood that soaked his coat and trousers. He couldn’t let daylight find him like this.

The mist had thickened into fog, making a maze of the city streets, but he found his way home without thinking about it, picking his way surefooted across the cobblestones.

The fog rose to hide his passing.

St. Thomas Hospital Morgue

Southwark, Summer, 1867

“Beautiful job, it was,” said the surgeon, wiping his hands. “Someone who knew right well what they were doing. No slopping work here—cleaned out nice and neat. Someone took pride in what they were doing there.”

Artemis stifled his nausea at the surgeon’s casual admiration for the man who had butchered the girl.

“What was taken, exactly?” he said. “I mean, from the inside …”

“Oh—uterus, of course, all the female organs. And intestine too, bowels, liver. Not a trace of feces, which is tricky to manage in such a case. The girl was basically cleaned out, like the butcher does a heifer.”

“Did it look like butcher’s work?”

“Hmm.” The surgeon gave his hands a final wipe and drew from a drawer a neatly wrapped packet of greased paper. “You don’t mind if I have my bit of supper, do you? Haven’t had a chance for a bite all day.”

Artemis nodded, but even his hardened stomach twisted a bit as the surgeon produced a thick-cut slice of ham between rough bread and munched it happily, seeming unaffected by the smell of chemicals and death about him, not to mention the neatly split body of a drowning victim not ten feet away, yellow fat bursting from his incised belly and a blank expression on his purple face.

“It would be a remarkably neat butcher,” he continued, talking around a mouthful of his sandwich. “Though I won’t say they don’t exist. But this was delicate work. One of them butchers the Jews use, p’raps, so that the meat’s killed kosher.”

“Could it be a medical man?” Artemis wondered if the police surgeon would take offense, but he continued chewing blandly.

“Oh, aye. Most likely, to my way of thinking. The way the arteries were dissected, it was unlikely a layman’s work.”

The man with the boot that left that clear print was coalescing in the detective’s mind. A rich man, and a doctor or a surgeon at that.

Artemis felt a headache prickle behind his eyes.

“Oh, and another thing you might find interesting.” The surgeon displayed a well-masticated mouthful of sandwich as he gestured at the sheet-covered body. “I’m fairly sure your girl was pregnant.”

“Really? How can you tell?”

The surgeon gestured with the remaining half of his sandwich. “The breasts were swollen—I took a look and the milk was starting to come. Can’t be too sure—it’s possible she was nursing. But she didn’t have the look of that to me.”

Silently Artemis walked to the girl’s side and pulled the sheet from her face. It still retained its porcelain perfection, although the violet circles under her eyes were starting to spread to the rest of her face and a sweet smell spoke of the beginnings of decay.

Give her a day or less, and her face would be swollen and unrecognizable. Perhaps they could bury her before that happened, bury her decent with the money the murderer left.

Maybe it wasn’t murder, after all. Maybe it was an abortion gone wrong.

But why would a doctor with those boots, a man of substance, risk his practice, risk imprisonment to give a prostitute a back street abortion?

He drew the sheet back over her face.

Did the evisceration have anything to do with the pregnancy?

He thought of rooms in the British Museum, and apothecaries’ shops with jarred, floating fetuses in various stages of development side-by-side on the shelves, and shuddered.

“Course, I’d have more information about him if I could have a go at another.”

“What?” Artemis turned from the corpse.

“Another body, I mean, if he tried it again. Gets a taste for it, you know. You find another of these beauties, you send her my way, right? I could spot this beggar’s handiwork a mile off now.” The thinly disguised eagerness in the surgeon’s voice curdled Artemis’ stomach.

“Sure thing,” he answered, breathing heavily and slow. “Sure thing.”

Gets a taste for it. The surgeon eyed Artemis as he left, the policeman’s thoughts clear on his face. Part of what made something lovely was that it could be destroyed. The smooth surface of a porcelain vase, shattered. The ivory column of a woman’s neck, bruised and purple. The surgeon understood it better than Artemis could. He knew his own kind. He knew there would be more.

Artemis was usually a polite man but today he trod swiftly though the passages of St. Thomas Hospital, eyes down and hands deep in his pockets, and he raised his hat to nobody.

CHAPTER FIVE

Riverbend, after the Fire

Alistair Weldon fancied sometimes that he could still smell the burning. He would pause, watching the water pool in the bend of the river, still enough for duckweed to cluster, and sniff the breeze. But it always faded, leaving an ashy aftertaste on his tongue.

Strange how he had accepted the changes in not only his life, but also the very fabric of existence, walking his lands each day as if nothing had happened. But not so strange, perhaps, when the change was so complete, so inevitable. Sometimes it seemed like it had always been like this, as if all that went before was a dream.

The knowledge that Sherman was marching, burning the plantations as he went had struck him and his neighbors with a dull horror that robbed them of the ability to take any sort of action, besides perhaps the helpless packing and repacking of certain possessions, in an endless fugue of sentimentality and practicality.

Beatrice had retreated to her rooms; Fanny was nowhere to be found. And the house servants—you could see it in their faces, the realization dawning, something going out like a snuffed candle. The careful masks they wore, made of that precarious mingling of fear and caution and cunning, were dissolving now they saw that everything was changing.

From the window of his dressing room, over the ridge of the trees he could see the smoke rising—one, two, then three columns—from the neighboring plantations. There, that must be the Shaws and the Choinards, and that closer one, the Andersons—he thought he could see flames flicker at the base of the column of smoke. The line of burning mansions arrowed toward Riverbend, and there was the faint smell of fields burning.

Weldon had gripped the windowsill until his knuckles turned white.

Then, overcome by the silence in the house, he made his way through the empty halls, the heavy-framed oil paintings of dubious ancestors his only witnesses. Down the double balustrade staircase, his footfalls echoing on the hard marble surfaces.

Still he met no one, but from outside came a faint murmur. He strode to the heavy mahogany doors and thrust them open, feeling the sun on his face like a flame, like the flames destroying the families of the South, house by house.

On the lawn, as if they were waiting for him, the house servants stood: James, who had stood behind his chair at dinner for more than seven years. Suz, the cook, her muscular arms akimbo. Between them were other faces less familiar, faces he rarely saw these days: the field hands, the sugar mashers, the women who cooked for the seasonal workers that swept through at the height of the season. Weldon had given over their governance to Holbart, his overseer, and his team of crackers. There wasn’t any trouble under Holbart, none that he need bother his head about, and if folks whispered that Holbart’s men were more brutal than they need be then folks should mind their own affairs. And he was a useful man, Holbart, for when an extra hand was needed in the surgery, or when a mess must be disposed of.

He didn’t see Holbart anywhere.

It didn’t occur to him to be afraid—not at first. The gathered mass of black faces looked at him with what seemed like mute appeal, asking him, master in loco parentis, what they should do now the world was come to an end.

Then they parted before him, and Holbart stood amongst them, stiff legged, with an exaggerated grin on his face.

He didn’t have time to register his annoyance at the overseer’s smug expression before he saw that two field hands were holding the white man up. When they let go, Holbart didn’t walk or bend or crumple: he fell straight forward on his face, stiff as a board, on the grass in front of the porch.

A hand axe was embedded deep in the back of his skull.

One of the men who had been holding Holbart up flung something at the porch, and it landed a few steps down from where Weldon stood. It looked like a couple of raccoon pelts tied together, wet as if they had been floating in the river.

Still not completely registering what had happened to Holbart, Weldon peered at the object. It wasn’t any kind of fur.

Knowledge came like a sickening thump to the belly. It was hair. Scalps. Three scalps strung together—Holbart’s men.

Then his body, not his brain, realized that what had happened to Holbart was no freakish accident and he backed against the solidity of the door. The half-moon of faces watched him, impassively, and then there was a shift and they advanced toward him. Slowly, as if they had all the time in the world. Slowly, as if they intended on savoring this moment.

There, where Holbart had stood. It was Sadie.

But that was impossible, not after what he’d done to her.

She didn’t move, and the mass of bodies swallowed her as they advanced.

If he walked by the river when wisps of fog still clung, streamerlike, to the banks, he could hear the voice.

Free of you.

Just a breath, as if her voice itself were part of the mist—free of you, forever.

Fanny Weldon had no intention of telling her father that the Mists were alive.

She first realized they were on a strange day that was half-sunlight, half-gloom, sitting on a smooth, speckled boulder at the place where the river crooked just out of sight of the house. A wash of pebbles buried the base of the boulder, and she’d collected a handful of them to chuck at the water. The sunlight caught the ripples and the water that splashed from the stones she threw; she stopped when her arm began to ache.

Presently she noticed the fog that started to roil from the surface of the river, gathering where the water eddied and clumping together like a solid thing. The air became colder as it coalesced and grew, still over the water, higher and higher until it was a wall of impermeable gray, with only a few swirls here or there to show it was a vapor.

She wasn’t afraid, although she knew the dangers of getting lost in a thick fog. Before the Fire all the children were warned of it—don’t go wandering in the tule fog, or you might fall into the river and no one would ever know.

But sitting on the rock she wouldn’t get lost, and despite the increasing chill, she had no intention of stirring. She tucked her hands beneath her pinafore and waited.

The river had vanished beneath the thickening mist, and although she could still hear it chuckling the sound was muffled and distorted. She understood now how one, wrapped in fog, could think the river someplace else entirely and slip right in.

The sunlight behind her shone oddly on the wall of mist, and the gray took on some tints of gold and amber. Although foggy tendrils wafted around her, most of the vapor was concentrated about a foot from her face, and seemed inclined to stay there.

Curious, she reached out a small hand, wondering if the mist would swallow it so it was invisible to her.

But instead the vapor before her moved, shifted back so that her hand touched nothing.

That was strange. She moved her hand right, then left. Each time the mist made haste to avoid her touch, the vapor visibly moving, making a hole in itself that shifted to accommodate her.

She folded her hands back into her lap and considered.

Strange.

Very strange.

Was it trying to lure her into itself, trying to drown her in the current she still could hear within that gray mass?

Perhaps.

Cautiously she tried again. Moving slowly, as she would around a shy animal, Fanny stretched out a damp palm to the thick murk.

It didn’t move until she almost touched it, and then it flowed back from her hand, and only in the area of her hand, forming a dimple in its own substance.

She brought her other hand up, just as slowly, creating a second dimple in the wall.

On impulse, Fanny moved her hands one over the other, trying to carve a sphere out of the mist. It worked. It was as if she had scooped out two semicircles, one atop the other, in the mud: a perfect round formed and floated freely, substantial as a smoke ring.

The circle, detached from the main body of the mist, floated toward her, stopping just in front of her face. She studied it. She imagined it studied her.

For the first time in a very long while, Fanny smiled.

Black Warrior River

Outside Birmingham, Alabama, 1832

Alistair Weldon had barely turned eleven when the Perfect Day happened.

There was a frantic bustle and packing in his parents’ house, a hasty dismissal of servants and wrapping of china in underclothes, and whispers about the rent and imprecations about the landlord. His mother shooed him away, telling him to return by bedtime because in the morning they must be away by first light, with him or without him.

Years later he understood was happening, and his cheeks burned to remember it: moving from place to place, one step ahead of the rent collectors, desperately pretending to be respectable. Then he swore to always have money, to control what happened to other people, down to their very breath and bone, to never let anyone tell him where and when to go.

But that day he knew it was best to stay away from the semi-shabby house that was soon to be vacated and he found himself walking beside the river.

Did he buy Riverbend, so many years later, so he could seek the peace of that day by the banks of another river?

If so, he never found it.

It was near the end of summer, a warm day with the promise of autumn in it, so instead of searing white the sunlight was golden and gilded the surface of the water that chuckled by his side. Something was blooming that touched the air with a fine gold dust, and birds chattered in the willows that clustered where the water bent around huge chunks of granite thrust up from the rocky soil.

A familiar ache smoldered in his breast: the sense that his home, his true home, a place he had never seen, was near. Sometimes in his short life he’d caught of glimpse of it, a flicker in the corner of his eye. The window of a strange house placed just so, or the arrangement of bricks in an archway leading to a garden, or the black swoop of swallows in the evening sky. Or a smell, of cakes baking or of jasmine, or the sharp astringent pucker of new paint.

Nowhere he had ever lived was home: habitation only, cottage and shack and sidewalk-level city flat. Dirty or clean, bright or dimly lighted, sweet-smelling or imbued with the odor of old boiled cabbages. Home was elsewhere, and he longed for it with a physical pain that, later, made him think how appropriate was the simple term heartbreak.

It was close now; so close.

He didn’t know how far he walked, buoyed by the gilded air and the sound of the river. He could smell the grasses that had dried in the heat of summer and the musky green of them down in the dirt. Late-blooming flowers, blue and deep rose, peeked from between the stems.

When a pleasant ache in his legs told him he was tired, he sat on a smooth boulder that overhung the water and watched the sun strike crystal from the surface, and the occasional swirl and plash of a trout.

Alistair closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face. The rock was warm too, and smelt like baking bread.

Insects hummed as they darted over the water, and somewhere was the low droning buzz of a beehive. Once he felt something touch his cheek, then his arm, and opened his eyes to see a plump bee, its legs fat with orange sacs of pollen, crawling down his bare forearm beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his second-best shirt.

It tickled, but he stayed still as the bee investigated his knuckles before flying away, clumsy under its burden, without stinging him.

Lazily he turned his head and watched it fly toward the fringe of oaks that ringed the riverside meadows. His forearm itched faintly where it had crawled.

He stretched his legs and jumped down from the boulder, vaguely following the bee’s path. More bees, similarly burdened, bumbled back and forth between the trees and the water. He supposed their hive was somewhere in a hollow in one of the oaks, and as he reached their shade he fancied he could smell the tang of dried, powdery honey.

Alistair looked up through the thick latticework of leaves of the oaks nearest him, and the sight filled his senses and seemed more real, more present in his world than his parents or their shrill worry or the pokey, cabbage-smelling house that was merely one of a series of cabbage-smelling houses to which they’d flee, one after another, a few steps ahead of the sheriff’s men.

He was reaching for the fissured bark of the oak when he heard the dog bark.

He turned, ready to scramble up the tree, bees or no, if necessary. He didn’t like dogs; in his experience, they bit.

It was a fierce-looking thing coming at him through the grass, part mastiff at the least, with its huge head and black as Satan. It barked again and he braced himself, but it stopped a few yards away and watched him, considering. Again it barked and it seemed almost an invitation to come and run in the dappled sunshine, and then it lowered its head and snuffled its way right to him, until he was backed up against the tree with the creature slobbering on his boots.

Tentatively he reached out and scratched it between the ears. It sat down with a satisfied grunt, its red tongue hanging from the side of its mouth.

“Mala!”

The dog turned toward the voice and woofed again, and Alistair saw a man standing there between the oaks. He wore a dark jacket, a bit like a topcoat, with a rich green shirt underneath, and leaned on a stout staff that would work equally well as a weapon or as a walking stick.

“Come away, Mala. Leave the boy alone.” There was the slightest touch of an accent in his vowels, nothing Alistair was familiar with.

The dog grumbled, but rose and padded toward the man. Halfway to him, it paused and glanced back at Alistair.

A sudden impulse came over him. “He was no trouble, sir,” he called.

The man raised his bushy eyebrows. “A bitch, she is, and a passel of trouble, for all she’s a good watchdog.” He gave Mala a hearty pat on the back. “But it’s kind of you to say so.”

Alistair was shy of strangers, and didn’t make friends easily. But he felt no fear of the man as he approached the oak, Mala at his side. Perhaps it was that the man’s demeanor was casual and he didn’t fuss. It didn’t seem to matter that Alistair was a child, and far from anywhere he had any business being.

It was as if Alistair belonged here as much as the bees, or the grass, or the dog who panted at her master’s foot.

The man wasn’t much taller than Alistair, but he was very burly through the shoulders, and strong-looking for all he was well past middle age. He stood beside the boy and looked up at the branches of the oak, as if he could pierce the canopy of leaves with his gaze.

“A new swarm, making a new hive,” he said, reflectively. “They ain’t in a mood to sting now, but give them an hour or three, and then they’ll have something to get angry about. You’d better come away now, while they’re still in a mood to let you go scot-free.”

He turned and strode away, leaving Alistair confused. Was the man warning him off his land? He hadn’t meant to trespass.

The hum of the bees was growing more intense, more purposed, he realized. Perhaps it was time to go home and risk the consequences.

Then the man turned and called over his shoulder.

“It’s getting on to dinnertime, boy,” he called. “If you’ve not eaten, come join us.”

Dinnertime? Alistair’s family didn’t dine so early, but suddenly a rumble in his belly reminded him he’d had no lunch, and for breakfast only an apple filched from the larder.

He followed the man and the dog a few steps. “If it’s no trouble,” he called, wondering where his boldness came from.

In response, the man waved his arm, almost impatiently. Alistair trotted after him until he caught up. The man barely glanced at him, accepting his presence as if he were another dog, and Alistair tentatively laid his hand on Mala’s great back for reassurance.

Along they went, through oak and meadow, and in that place where the trees and sky and small blue flowers in the grass, and the thump of the man’s stick against the ground, and the warm solidity of the dog’s flesh beneath his fingers was almost too real, he felt a great upwelling inside him, a river of happiness to match the chuckling waterway behind him, ready to break free. It did not break its floodgates but stayed, trembling inside him, and he didn’t dare speak for fear he would babble.

The man would understand, he knew.

He didn’t know how long they walked, but his pangs of hunger were sharpening when they came to a clearing and the dog’s muscles under his hand tensed. Alistair stopped, wondering if what he saw was real.

They were pulled up alongside a grove of birch that clustered together like a pale green jewel in the golden band of oak: two wagons—gypsy caravans—one a deep forest green, the other the cheerful red of a cardinal’s wing. Their sides were heavily carved with fantastic patterns and the details picked out in gold. Two enormous draft horses grazed a little way apart—a bay with a dark mane that ignored him and kept rooting at the sweet grass, and a coal black creature without a trace of white who lifted its great head and stared at him, considering. Then it snorted and returned to its grazing.

In the center of the clearing, before the wagons, was a fire banked with round stones and over it a tripod with a stewpot. Alistair sniffed and his hunger overwhelmed him all at once, as if he had been starving all his life.

“What have you brought us, Nicolae?”

A woman stood at the edge of the clearing, her arms full of kindling. A little girl stood beside her, similarly burdened. The woman was in her forties, perhaps—a little older than his mother—but although her face was tanned and lined there was a peaceful joy to it that he had never seen in his mother’s face, and it gave her an air of youth and vitality. She wore a full dark skirt and a shawl over her head, but a quantity of thick gray hair peeped out.

The little girl was maybe five or six, small with a serious expression.

Nicolae walked over to the stewpot and considered its contents.

“Enough to share,” he commented.

“Of course,” said the woman in her deep voice, quiet but penetrating. Followed by the girl, she walked to the rearmost wagon, the green one, and placed her wood on a pile behind it. “There always is.”

The stew was lamb: delicious, and followed by hot tea with a bite to it like mint, and as Nicolae sat with him and carved at the top of his walking stick with a short knife they talked about the river, how it linked the small towns of Alabama like beads on a string necklace, and the animals they’d seen, and all manner of inconsequential things that afterward Alistair would try hard to remember, knowing that somewhere inside Nicolae’s innocuous words there was some nugget, some clue that was of immense importance.

The woman’s name was Tariel, and when he asked after the girl’s name she smiled and stroked the girl’s blonde hair. The girl looked at him unblinking, with dark eyes, incongruous with the rest of her coloring.

“She hasn’t told us her name yet,” was all Tariel would say.

The girl sat nearby, listening to Alistair and Nicolae’s conversation. When Tariel gave her a close-woven basket, telling her to find berries, she pulled Alistair by the hand until he followed her between the birches, across a patch of meadow to a shady bower where blackberries clustered, swollen and dusky purple, thick and close to the ground. They filled the basket, staining their fingers and scratching their arms on the brambles.

All the time she never spoke to him, but after a while she did begin to smile.

Long afterward Alistair would remember bringing the berries to Tariel, and eating something thick and sweet that he’d never had before, and sitting on the bay horse as it paced the paths of the meadowlands. Perhaps once he slept, because he could remember Nicolae and Tariel speaking nearby, their words drifting like silt through the wide-meshed net of his drowsing.

“Do you see anything?” Nicolae’s voice was husky, and a little sad.

“Only what you know already,” replied Tariel. “Only what we both know about the Children of Jaelle.”

“So it’s true, then? Her seed scatters further than I’d guessed.”

“It’s the nature of the Vistani to wander.”

“He hasn’t the Sight.”

“Nor Curse neither. But he holds inside him the capacity for great good and great evil, like two halves of a ripening peach, and an empty space inside where the pit once was. I can’t tell which will stay and which will wither away. It won’t be an ordinary life.”

“Shall we take him, then?”

In his half-dream, Alistair stirred, fear and joy threading through him: Take me! Take me Home.

“You know we are not permitted.”

Alistair must have awakened, because Nicolae was standing before him, his expression at once stern and kind.

“You must return to your family, boy, and the day is growing old.” It was true; the shadows were creeping across the ground and the sun was low and swollen-red.

Alistair said good-bye to Tariel and nodded at the silent girl, and Nicolae and Mala walked him back to the bee-tree, where the hive was settling down and humming drowsily. It felt like a curtain slowly closing across the last, tantalizingly incomplete final scene of a play he didn’t want to end.

“Can you find your own way back? Just keep left of the river, and right at the triple-trunk oak.”

Alistair nodded, too overcome to say anything more.

He was well on his way before he wondered how Nicolae knew the way he should take to get home.

He half-turned, but in the darkening twilight all he could see under the honey-oak was the dog, Mala, who stared after him. Then even the dog looked away, as if someone was calling her, and then she was gone.

Sometimes, after the Fire, when Alistair Weldon left the confines of the house and the whispering of unseen attendants and walked beside the river, he saw the shimmer of pollen or heard the humming of a bee and thought that it might happen again—that the smell of dried honey would lead him to a gnarled oak, and a black dog would be waiting for him, and a silent girl would be standing with a stained bowl full of berries.

He’d think of Nicholae’s words, and the secret he know lay inside them, loosely concealed, as if the gypsy had wanted him to figure out the secret. Of what? Of the Children of Jaelle, whoever they might be? If he could puzzle out the secret, even now, buried between the tangled threads of childhood memory, if he could tease it out and hold it to the light, would Nicholae, and the woman, the girl, the dog—would they emerge from the woods and take him with them that elusive place he still, to this day, longed for, however hidden, however unseen?

But then the golden moment would dissipate, like smoke, like ashes in the water, and he saw himself walking away, back to his life of chaos, and the choices he made, one by one, and the desires he fed, all to fill up that empty space, isn’t that what she called it? The hole where the pit once was.

SERIAH

They are beginning to come to me.

For a moment I thought it was one of my sisters, creeping down the wide steps to find me, to take me home. But this was my home now, the forgotten chambers and corridors under London, and I could imagine no other.

Her worn shoes clanged against the iron stairs. She paused and peered around a pillar, blinking in the bad light and the smoke from my fire in its salvaged steel pan.

I sat with my back to the rough sandstone wall, so she couldn’t see my twisted wings. Her shawl was draped decorously over her hair; she had the air of a temple suppliant about her, come to ask the Oracle her fate.

I wondered if she would ask me that ancient question: What do you want?

And I wondered if I’d answer, like the Sybil: I want to die.

But when she opened her mouth the illusion was lost; her accent was pure and uncouth and told of the East End I once knew so well.

“Your pardon, I’m sure, miss,” she said, twisting her fingers in her skirt. “But they say, up there—”

She glanced at the roof of my chamber, where a crude grate showed a wavering light where people walked on the platform far overhead, and the faint sound of the trains leaked through. She must have been very brave, or desperate, to come this far down. I wondered if she had any comprehension that this room had once been a plague pit, and that the bubo-swollen bodies of men, women, and children had lolled where she stood now. If I closed my eyes I could hear the dull thump and crack of their bodies being tossed, one by one, from above, so I kept them open.

She swallowed and continued, quicker now. “They say that you know things, miss, and sometimes will tell. And I want to know …”

“About the baby.” I interrupted because I was tired and hadn’t the patience for her story. I’d seen it, so why make her explain? Still, her lips twisted in dissatisfaction. She had practiced the telling all the way here.

The baby lay, still and unresponsive, its colorless eyes glazed open. Occasionally it moved and a thin string of saliva trailed from the corner of its mouth. It was wrapped in a swaddle made clean as possible and lay in a basket on the floor. A girl of about eleven kneeled beside it, anxiously keeping watch. Her skirts were much-mended and too short for her, and her knees were scuffed. She held a rag soaked in watered milk at the corner of the baby’s mouth letting one drop at a time trickle in.

“Will’e get better, miss? Is there aught we can do? I can’t afford no doctor, but if I must …”

Her hands twisted harder.

Another bone on the beach. In my mind’s eye, I picked it up and looked at its polished surface. I saw another time, a month ago, the girl with the too-short skirt left to look after the baby while her mother worked. It was teething, and cried, and cried, and would not be consoled for all she could do. She rocked, she dandled, she paced up and down with it in her arms and still the constant, tearing sound did not abate. And she was tired, so tired with the night work of sewing the gloves her ma brought home every evening, and they were lucky to have the work, but still she was so tired, and if the baby slept she could too, but it wouldn’t shut up.

And she held it up, face to red, squalling face, and shook it.

And it was quiet.

And it was always quiet.

Now the girl crouched by her brother, trying to feed him, trying to bring him back, wondering if I knew, if I would tell her mother.

I shook my head.

“There isn’t anything you can do,” I said, gently as I could. “These things happen. There isn’t anything anyone can do.”

“Will he die?”

“Yes.”

She looked down quickly, although it was the answer she’d been expecting. A single drop fell to the floor and darkened a spot where a dead man’s hand had splayed, purple with the infection.

She was at the stairs when I called her back.

“Bessie mustn’t take the factory work,” I told her, still seeing that girl dripping milk into the baby’s mouth.

Her shoulders sagged with despair.

“But I only got the chance of putting her up for it once,” she said. “And I don’t know no others.”

“Still,” I said. I could explain about the foreman with the insistent hands, the dark corner, the desperate need to keep paying work that enforced silence, the back street abortion—but she knew about the risk of these things as well as I. It would be of no use to tell her they were assured.

“Listen,” I said. “St. Ann’s Church, past Newell—you know it?”

She nodded, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“Minister’s wife is looking for a girl to do for her. Cleaning the parish house and such. If Bess shows up early tomorrow, clean as can be and makes her curtsey, she’ll have work.”

She bit her knuckle nervously. “Truly? You wouldn’t lie to me, miss?”

“It must be tomorrow. First thing, and clean and patched—do you understand?”

“That I do.”

She bobbed me an uneven curtsey and trotted up the stairs, and I turned back to the reddening coal, for a chill was striking through the hollowed sandstone.

The next day I found, wrapped in a scrap of greasy newsprint, a small cake that had been left on the stairs where she’d found me. It smelled of lemon.

CHAPTER SIX

Riverbend, after the Fire

The fog was a solid wall, and Weldon stared at it and felt his slow-burning anger flare.

How dare something so insubstantial try to imprison him? He was master of this place, no matter what happened. He would not be bound by a phenomenon of weather.

He walked off the porch into the gray bank of fog, half-expecting to hit a solid barrier.

But he didn’t, and it seemed to him that the mist gave way before him, not dissipating entirely but dissolving enough that he walked in his own circle, able to see the ground before him and breathing air that was less heavy than the moisture-laden substance of the mist.

Weldon paused. Was this a trick of this strange place? Was something in the fog—perhaps the fog itself, absurd as it sounded—trying to lure him to some unimaginable doom? Was not the isolation, the mocking, invisible servants, the reminders of his once-absolute power, and the presence of that grotesque creature upstairs, once his wife—was that not enough?

He realized he couldn’t hear the ever-present babble of the river. Perhaps the insidious mist was trying to trick him into stumbling in and drowning.

Well then, let it. He strode defiantly into the gray bank and it opened before him, closing up behind as he passed. The river was still silent, and it appeared that many of the familiar features of Riverbend had vanished—the ground never sloped beneath his feet, and the footing was strangely uniform. He stopped, breathing heavily.

By this point, he should be in the forest or in the river. But neither was anywhere near.

Somewhere ahead of him he heard a groan.

A cold sweat sprang across Weldon’s forehead. He’d never heard a sound quite like that before, and he was used to the sounds of people in pain, despairing, pleading for a scrap of hope.

This was different. Perhaps it was an animal? A cow, stuck in the river mud, wherever the damnable river was.

The sound was repeated, just a few yards away.

Of course, it could simply be a wounded rabbit, or a dog. Fog this thick could twist and distort sound; he’d witnessed it often enough.

He swallowed and proceeded, feeling in front of him with his walking stick.

But he did see it in time—a huddled mass curled in the fetal position on the featureless ground.

It could have been a heap of trash, or a bundle of old clothes, but it wasn’t.

Weldon approached and crouched down beside the figure, who groaned again, faintly. His felt for a pulse at the throat—it was there, although weak and thready. The skin beneath his fingers was as cold and clammy as a frog’s belly.

It was a man, and Weldon gasped to see hair and features that resembled closely, more than anyone he’d seen after, the party of gypsies that shared their meal with him on the Perfect Day. But it wasn’t actually one of them; he was sure of that.

The man was convulsed in on himself, as if a great pain had struck him in the gut. The respiration was shallow, and Weldon thought it likely, given the exposure to the elements the man had endured, that he was suffering from hypothermia.

He rolled the man to his back and the eyes fluttered open for a brief moment. They were an extraordinary color: pale green that darkened at the center of the iris.

The man blinked up at him, unfocused, and then turned away. Perhaps he thought Weldon was a mirage.

Weldon couldn’t see any outward sign of injury; the man’s clothing was once rich, now tattered, and showed no bloodstains. Perhaps he had some kind of internal damage.

What could have happened to him here, in the mist? Weldon glanced around nervously.

The man was looking past him and muttering something beneath his breath. Weldon bent close to listen.

“Wings. They need wings. How are they to fly if they have no wings?”

Those words were clear—the rest devolved into incoherent syllables.

Weldon rocked back on his heels, considering. What was he going to do with this odd specimen?

He knew some would say once a physician, always a physician, and that the oaths of his profession still held: he was obliged to tend to the sick and suffering, and not refuse help.

But Alistair Weldon had long since considered himself above the bonds of any trifling oath. He was a law unto himself, and since the Fire, absolute law.

It would be very easy to kill this interloper.

Experimentally, he placed his hand around the man’s neck. Weldon’s hands were quite big: The tenuous life beneath his fingers was at his disposal. It would be little effort to choke him.

Or to tip him in the river and let the waters carry him away.

Then his mystery would be lost, and perhaps the man’s presence had something to do with what had happened to him, to his house, and his estate.

And Weldon was bored—bored with having servants he couldn’t see, couldn’t touch. This man would prove a diversion for a while, and if he became boring as well, then …

… well then. Perhaps a return to old divertissements was in order.

The man continued to mutter under his breath, his eyes still unfocused as if he was blind. Weldon wondered how he was to get him to the house—in fact, how was he to find the house in all this unnatural mist?

But it was dissipating, drifting away in great clots, and Weldon turned and laughed to see what was behind him.

The wide, white-painted front steps, not twenty feet away.

Weldon was a powerfully built man, and had not yet run entirely to seed, and the man of the Mists, though above average height, was slightly built. Weldon heaved his unresisting form over his shoulder and faced the house, its wide windows staring at him like the faceted eyes of some enormous insect.

“Wake up, my little sprites,” he called, and heard bodiless voices answer. “We have company!”

As Fanny walked through the fog she listened intently for the trickle of the river on her right side, clinging to it as if the sound were a thread she could follow to get through a minotaur’s maze. Behind her and to each side the mist was a solid gray wall, but before her it churned its substance into the form of a tunnel, a passageway that opened as she advanced into it. The passage was like a lens through which she could see clearly the ground, hedges, trees and rocks in front of her.

She had to be careful to concentrate to make it so—when she grew distracted the passageway would begin to close, and the confusing, dislocating banks of mist would start to close in—but with a thought they parted again, and she could see her way clear.

Once she stopped, listening to unfamiliar birdsong, and when she looked around again the Mists had gathered around her—but she listened again for the river on the right, and yet again they parted like a curtain.

But now there was someone crouched on the ground before her, a few yards away. To her surprise she recognized her father, and then saw he was kneeling beside another figure on the ground.

She started to call him, then hesitated.

Don’t disturb your father at his work.

Was that her mother’s voice she remembered?

Sudden sweat sprang cold all over her body, and she tasted bile at the back of her throat.

Don’t disturb your father at his work.

Fanny closed her eyes and fought for control. She felt the Mists close in over her and this time the vaporous strands felt like they were caressing her face. She felt oddly comforted.

Presently the nausea and dizziness passed and she could open her eyes again. The way was still clear and her father had barely moved.

Now she saw that his hand was around the other figure’s neck.

“Father!” she called, her voice quavering.

He didn’t react.

She walked closer, not bothering to walk quietly, letting the twigs break beneath her boots. The figure on the ground was a man, but she could see that he was insubstantial, solid through the center but feathery at the edges, as if his flesh were trickling into the fog like a small stream into the river.

Or maybe it was that he was forming out of the fog, because as she watched he appeared to become more solid.

She was standing directly behind her father now, but he still did not seem to be aware of her presence.

She reached out and touched his shoulder.

Her fingers went through the broadcloth of his coat. She felt nothing.

Fanny gasped and snatched back her hand. The man on the ground opened his eyes and looked at her vaguely. His strange green eyes narrowed.

“Wings,” he muttered. “On the sixth day God gave them wings.”

Fanny was rubbing her fingers as if they pained her. Abruptly she turned away from the couple on the foggy ground and walked away.

She didn’t know whether she was happy or frightened that her father couldn’t see her—that she herself was invisible, insubstantial.

The strange man and her father were lost in the mist behind her when she realized that the sound of the river was on her left side, not her right. Yet she could swear she was going in the same direction.

She was beginning to suspect that direction didn’t matter to the Mists that had infiltrated Riverbend.

But the Mists were dissolving now, opening before her like a gauzy curtain disappearing in shreds. The smell of old, stale smoke came to her, and charcoal, and the air tasted of ashes.

In front of her was a gnarled pile of blackened wood, shards and boards, some tumbled to the ground, some reaching up to the sky as if in appeal. It took her a few seconds to realize what it was.

It was the charred remains of a plantation house. She recognized the burnt rounds that had once been proud pillars, the hollows, still studded with broken, melted glass where windows once looked out. Around the house was a dead zone where the grass had burned and where a few privets stood, their leaves brown and curled. There was a haze over the structure, as if smoke still rose from its entrails and Fanny wondered if embers still glowed deep underneath.

Another shock of recognition, close upon the first when she realized the ruins had been a house. It was her house.

The gutted hulk was Riverbend. She could see where the pillars once stood, the wide porch steps, a heap of charred timber where the central staircase had collapsed. It was nestled in the bend of the river for which it was named, and the water flowed and sparkled and chuckled as before, as if nothing at all had happened.

Fanny whirled around, looking for her father behind her, looking for some kind of explanation. No one was there, not even the mist. The day was clear and transparent: the sun shone down out of a clear sky and glittered on the water, and birds chattered in the woods that were unshrouded by fog. Her father and the strange man were nowhere to be seen.

How had the house burned down so completely and quickly?

And her mother?

Was her mother inside when it happened?

Was she inside now, somewhere underneath the rubble?

Reluctantly, Fanny walked closer. The bottom-most porch step was somehow undamaged; the paint looked weathered, as if by a hundred rainy days, but not burned. The next step looked complete and solid, although the paint was blistered away. The third was ruined.

She stepped tentatively on the first step, which gave slightly beneath her, and listened.

Nothing but birdsong and the splash of the river.

She noticed something else. Although the trees to either side of the ruins were just charred hulks, the grass grew, strong and green, up to the very step where she stood. Vines, some young and pale, others thick and spiny, wound here and there over and between the blackened wood.

This house had not burned down this morning. Not this week, or this month. This had happened years ago.

Fanny sat on the bottom step and wondered whether to cry.

“There are better places to sit on a fine day like today.”

She started at the sound of the voice, with no idea how long she’d been there. Surely the sun had moved in the sky.

The speaker was a man who hovered somewhere between being middle-aged and elderly. His skin was dark and leathery-looking, as if he’d been in the sun for much of his life, and he wore a broad-brimmed straw hat. He wore what looked like work pants, and a maroon shirt, and a cheerful yellow paisley vest, and she was so startled to see another human that she looked at him with her mouth open.

His face was cheerful, but there was sadness about his eyes when he looked down at her, and she had a feeling that he knew far more about her than a stranger should.

“What happened here?” she blurted out before she thought, then blushed fiercely at her forwardness—although whether this man was servant, slave or landowner, it was impossible to tell.

“I mean—what happened to the house? When did it burn?” She indicated the charred remains of the plantation house with a small wave of her hand, although there could be no doubt of what she meant.

“Ah, missy,” said the man, hands on hips and feet apart, regarding the ruin. “ ’Most twenty years ago, it would be.”

“Twenty years?”

Fanny stared ahead, frowning.

“Then this can’t be Riverbend Plantation,” she concluded, puzzled but relieved.

“Oh, yes.” He took off his hat, revealing a shiny pate surrounded by a fringe of curly gray hair, and sat on a fragment of unburned step a few feet away from her. “Yes, child, this is Riverbend, or what’s left of it.”

Something cold lumped in her belly, her throat constricted, and the world went black at the edges.

“No,” she said but no sound came out. The man sat still, looking at his hat, which he turned over and over in his hands.

Something about him calmed her, and after a while the cold ache eased and her vision cleared. They sat together in silence a long time, listening to the chatter of birds and the breeze in the grass.

Finally she spoke, and sound did come out this time. “What happened?”

“Sherman’s March, missy.” The man did not hesitate. It was as if he had been expecting her question and had his answer ready.

“General Sherman took a little walk and lit a few fires. ’Cepting this one was helped along, you might say. The Yankees didn’t have to do all the work on this one. Weldon’s slaves, and a few others too, were ready to help.”

“Why?” asked Fanny, and it struck her that she didn’t think it strange that the servants would delight in burning Riverbend down, although she did not know exactly why. She had a sudden vision, or maybe it was a memory, of a circle of faces, black and white both, standing impassively in an irregular circle as the tall windows of Riverbend shivered and cracked in the heat, and fire flared up the curtains.

“Simple truth was that Doctor Weldon was not a nice man. Oh, he got along fine with all the other families in the area—the white families. Married a local girl and did everything he was supposed to. He wasn’t a practicing doctor—too high-class for that, though folks said he had a practice out Alabama way, or wherever it was he come from. But he never talked about it.

“One thing he did was buy slaves that had something or other wrong with them—got hurt chopping cotton or torn up giving birth, and he’d fix ’em. Said he liked to get his hand in for something to do and to develop new ways of treating folk. He corresponded with other doctors about it, and took all the medical journals he could subscribe to.

“That was all well and good, until people started to notice that the slaves Doctor Weldon bought—well, sometimes no one saw them again. And there were stories about sounds coming from that outbuilding he used as a laboratory—like people crying out in pain.”

Fanny thought: Don’t disturb your father at his work.

Fanny thought: an animal in pain.

It occurred to her as well that this man was speaking about her father, and that she ought to be offended. But she listened instead.

“Then there was the matter of that girl—not much more than a child—was a maidservant to Mrs. Weldon. She’d had her since she was a little thing, a present from her father. Played with the Weldon child like she was her big sister.”

Sadie. Fanny’s knees felt weak, and she was glad she was already sitting down. A dizzying cascade of memory poured into her, filling that empty spot that belonged to Sadie.

How could she have forgotten Sadie? What other pieces were missing from her past?

Sadie, playing hide-and-seek with her at the edge of the woods. Sadie, gravely taking tea in Fanny’s refuge behind the living room curtains.

Then one day Sadie was gone, and when she asked Mama where she was, Mama ignored her. When she pressed the point, Mama turned red.

“Slaves come and go,” she had hissed at her. “They get sold and given away like any other animal. Don’t ask me again.”

It was strange, seeing such emotion in her mother’s face. In an instant, Beatrice Weldon had smoothed away all signs of it.

“Don’t bother your head, or me, about the girl,” she said, turning back to her correspondence. And that was that.

The man was still talking.

“There came a day when the house servants said that Mrs. Weldon’s maid wasn’t to be seen anymore—no one saw hide or hair of her again. It got to the white folks and for some reason that rubbed them all the wrong way. A field hand was one thing—but a house servant, especially a maid—those you had some affection for. Like a pet. White folk didn’t look too favorable on Doctor Weldon—nor his missus—after that.

“After that was when some of the Weldon servants began to run away—even a couple house servants. If they tracked a house servant down, they got sold downriver as a field hand—or worse. But it didn’t seem to make much difference to them.

“Then Sherman came, burning his way down Georgia, and people had other things to worry about. And when the Yankees got here, they burned Riverbend with the rest. But it may be that they didn’t. It may be that the slaves got to it first.

“One thing for sure is no one ever saw the Weldons again. They say they burned up in the fire—whether by accident or intent. Even when the fire died out no one could say because of the smoke that stayed on longer than smoke had any right to. Maybe because the house was right by the river, and prone to queer mists and tule fog. Maybe it mixed with the smoke and you got a fog like I hear London does sometimes, with no one seeing a foot beyond their face. People didn’t like to come near, because there was tales of strange things roaming in the smoke—queer hunchback dogs with red eyes, and things like wraiths ten feet high. Pure superstition, like enough.

“When time passed and the smoke did clear, we searched the ruins.” He looked at his hands as if could still feel the ash on them. “Didn’t find a thing in the big house—and never found hide nor hair nor bone of the Weldons, not the doctor or his missus, nor yet the little girl. But under the outbuilding, where Doctor Weldon did what medical work he cared to …”

He stopped and breathed deeply, and Fanny tensed.

“The floor had fallen in, and there was a room underneath—must’ve been a trapdoor before the whole thing burned. A boy stepped wrong and fell through—he weren’t hurt bad, because it weren’t so deep. But he was screaming, because it was dark and because he could feel the bones beneath him.

“We hauled him out and shone torches down there. They were laid out neat enough, except where the boy had fallen and scrambled about. Near as we could tell, about fifteen bodies. Some were clean bone, and some still had their flesh dried on them. One had most of her face left and I heard someone say it was Mrs. Weldon’s maid—Sadie that was. I didn’t see her face—didn’t like to look long. The whole middle of her was carved away.”

Fanny shut her eyes tight and hot tears crept down her cheeks.

“We gathered up the bodies best we could and gave ’em Christian burial in the churchyard—didn’t seem right they should be anywhere near the family plot. After that, folks gave the place a wide berth. Property belongs to some relative of Alistair Weldon’s that lives up North, but they’ve never been inclined to do anything with it, so it stays. Folks don’t like to come here, for all that fishing’s good on the river hereabouts. They say the place is haunted. Strange sounds and all that, and some have spotted a little girl walking about the grounds, a little white girl. They say it’s the ghost of little Frances Weldon, who don’t know she’s dead yet.”

Had she come here before? Had she wandered through the Mists to this place and forgotten she had?

Fanny felt a catch in her throat and looked up at the man, into his eyes. She hadn’t noticed, before, that they were huge and a strange color, amber, almost yellow, with dark rims like an owl’s.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d met him before, that she’d had this conversation before, not once, but many times.

He looked down at her with a look of sympathy.

“Maybe if we could’ve found her bones she’d be at rest. But we never found any of the Weldons. The girl, at the least, deserved burial.”

Fanny looked down and watched the now-cold tears drop into the ashy soil. Something touched the top of her head, as if in benediction.

“Where are you, Fanny? Where your bones at, child?”

Fanny shook her head. When she looked up again, the man was gone.

She sat there alone a long time on the step, on the threshold of the burned-out hulk of a house, listening to the river and the scraps of birdsong, and the insects in the trees. The sun was low in the sky and the world touched by amber when the Mists came back for her, drawing her into their cool gray embrace.

Fanny closed her eyes and let them take her.

SERIAH

Daniel, who doesn’t have a last name yet, stands on the lawn outside the Big House, blades of grass cold between his bare toes. The others, field hands and house slaves alike, stand together like a glade of charred saplings. The acrid tang of smoke stings the back of Daniel’s throat. The air is gritty with it; the great plantation houses have been burning all day.

There’s another smell, sharp and bright under the smoke. When they peeled the scalps of the overseer’s men from their skulls there was less blood than he thought there would be, just veiny patches of red and pink on white, glistening muscle. But the smell is there, like a pig butchered for the Big House’s Sunday dinner.

Beside him, Suz shifts her bulk and sighs. The others, including Daniel, are silent.

He thinks he will never forget the meaty thunk the hand axe made when it bit into the back of Holbart’s head. He thinks he’ll never forget Weldon’s expression as he stared, horrified, not at the scraps of skin and hair on his porch or the body of his overseer, but at something invisible at the bottom of the steps.

Bright orange flames lick out the windows of Riverbend, tipped black like a fox’s tail. Smoke streams up the sides, staining the white paneling. Once in a while the crack of breaking glass rings out like a gunshot. Daniel flinches when this happens.

Vines are beginning to twine around the ruins of Riverbend. Daniel Greensmith works for a man, once a slave and now a sharecropper, who might be his father. For the sake of convenience they assume so, since his mother did not live to testify to it. After Freedom, everybody makes their lives, their families, their futures as best they can.

Daniel ventures to Riverbend sometimes, because there’s a crook of the river where the water stills and just before a rain it’s the best place to catch trout.

The skies are gray and he readies his pole and line. Something makes him glance at the carcass of the house behind him and he catches a glimpse of white behind a fallen pillar, white as a cabbage butterfly in the wild anise.

But it’s much bigger than a butterfly, and he goes cold all over. He’s heard the stories that this blasted site is haunted, that the slight figure of a little girl sometimes walks the ruins, searching for something, a child awake in an unfamiliar place.

He lays the pole down on a flat rock and approaches the house. The last time he stood here the grass was manicured and he watched the plantation house burn. Now the grounds are thick with weeds and wildflowers, and the persistent vines that entwine everything eventually.

The humid air is warm and he is sweating but his body feels cold and clammy. There, where he thought he saw the flicker of a white dress—there’s nothing now. And yet he knows he’s not alone.

They knew at the time, as they stood and watched Riverbend burn, that Beatrice and Fanny Weldon were still in the house. They might have walked out, they murmured later, and none would have interfered. Why didn’t Weldon send his wife and child away to safety? Let their deaths, like those of the slaves found in Weldon’s dreadful abattoir, be on his head.

And yet, and yet. No trace was found of the Weldons. Perhaps it was fitting that the Devil took them straight to Hell.

But the little girl. She was inside, and he did nothing. Nor did Suz, nor the house servants. Perhaps they thought that it was a matter of balance, Fanny for Sadie, an innocent for an innocent.

Daniel watches a long time, until the rain comes and ruins the fishing. He doesn’t see Fanny Weldon that day.

But years later, after his father’s passed and he’s got forty acres of cotton himself, he comes back after the trout and he does see her exploring the ruins. He decides there’s nothing to fear from a little dead white girl.

He speaks to her; he realizes she doesn’t know she’s dead. He wonders if that’s a mercy.

A year or more later he sees her again and realizes she doesn’t remember him. It’s unreasonable, perhaps, to expect a ghost to remember anything. He’s curious about where she is when she isn’t here.

One summer he sees a wagon among the gangly trees that have started to invade the property. The wagon is old but it’s freshly painted bright yellow and green. Two draft horses graze free a short way away.

A woman stands watching the grounds as if something might stir inside them, her hand resting against the smooth bark of a sapling. Her skirt is green as her wagon.

She’s pale and her hair is yellow but her eyes are dark, as if smudged in with charcoal. She stands preternaturally still, and doesn’t glance at Daniel as he approaches.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to say when he opens his mouth, and listens with some curiosity to his words.

“Have you seen her?”

At first he thinks she didn’t hear. Then she answers in a voice that’s hesitant, and rusty from disuse.

“No. I came to find what’s become of Alistair Weldon.”

She turns her great, smoky eyes on him, and he tells her about the plantation, the burning, the bones in the chamber beneath the ground. It seems at one point that her eyes brim with tears, but none fall. When he finishes she nods briskly and straightens, wiping her hands on her green embroidered skirt.

“So it ended,” she says in her creaky voice that’s far too old for her. “We are done, then, with Alistair Weldon.”

She goes to the horses and takes one by the bridle, and he follows and helps her hitch them to the gypsy wagon. When they’re done she mounts the box and takes the reins in hand.

She looks down at him, backlit by the sun. There are fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes; she’s older than he thought at first.

“Daniel Greensmith,” she says, although he hasn’t told her his name. “If there’s a ghost about, lost between worlds, it might be that she’s lost her bones but is still bound to them. Was she buried proper?”

“No,” he says, remembering the sound of the windows cracking. “She never was.”

She gathers the leather together and clucks at the horses.

“Find the bones,” she says, turning away. “And bury them, somewhere sacred, somewhere friendly. That’ll settle her, if anything can.”

He nods his thanks and the wagon creeps away, bumping over the abandoned ground to the dirt road that leads to the thoroughfare.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kartakass

It was a good season, and the Vadoma had broken over thirty horses at Lord Harkon’s pleasure. Twelve were destined to mount his private bodyguard, magnificent creatures of noble bloodlines, gelded so they’d be biddable but spirited enough for all that—for it was the gift of the Vadoma that they could bring a horse to bridle without breaking its soul, and there was a memory of the freedom of the meadows in the stamp of their hooves and the curl of their nostrils.

There was dancing in the camp that night, and the smell of the roasting meat that was the lord’s customary gift drifted to Tibor as he sat at a distance, and it made his stomach rumble.

Tonight was his chance. Tomorrow they’d break camp and journey over the mountains, and such a collection of horseflesh would not be under his hand for a long time. This was why he’d returned, stealthy and secret, to the clan’s spring campsite.

Sometimes a small voice told him he should wait, hone his skill on more small creatures and study the forbidden books more closely, and a still smaller voice told him he should abandon his plans entirely.

But he wouldn’t listen to the first, much less the second. He’d worked hard, first to master the language of the Voyna Codex, second to puzzle the difficult treatises and instruction from the book. And upon his last visit to Grayhalme, he’d started on a path from which he could not turn.

He must have been rising twelve or thirteen when he first met the old man, rooting in the wares of a bookseller at the unfashionable end of the Grayhalme market, well away from where the ladies bought their silks and perfumes. Under the distrustful gaze of the proprietor, Tibor was rifling through the tattered, falling-apart leather bindings of the cheaper books, tossed in a barrel and sold for a penny apiece. Most were useless—dull, archaic histories of this or that noble Grayhalme family, or a housewife’s recipes for conserving rancid meat, or a book of bad love poems by a dullard with more cash for fancy bindings than common sense.

Once Tibor had found a small clothbound book, barely clinging onto its covers with a few rotten threads, which looked at first like a housewife’s amateur herbal, with crude scratching for writing and a few poorly-rendered sketches. Something about it appealed to him and he bought it with a carefully hoarded copper, intending it as a winter holiday present for his sister or his aunt.

But puzzling over the obscure notes by candlelight one night, he realized that this was no herbal that made sense—there was a queer, almost sly intent crawling behind the chicken scratch. Some words had been blackened darker than the others, as if they were of special significance, and he thought they might have something to do with the pictures of common herbs and weeds in the margins—something that went beyond teas for upset stomachs and tisanes to rouse a lover’s flagging interest.

Creeping apart from the caravans where his cousins slept, Tibor collected a handful of common chickweed—he’d identified it by one of the illustrations—and took the book to a birch hollow where he liked to hide sometimes. Arranging the greenery in front of him, he pronounced the bold words on the page with the picture of the chickweed.

Nothing happened except that perhaps the ragged leaves trembled slightly. But when he tried it again, this time pronouncing the words with deliberation and thinking about them, thinking about the sound of them and how they fitted together like puzzle pieces, the result was immediate and unambiguous.

The leaves and stems drew up together, as if trying to escape, and with a final shudder, disintegrated into blackened slime.

He looked at the little heap and thought: Very impressive—but what does it accomplish? It’s a parlor trick, nothing more.

But after a moment’s consideration he drew his kerchief, sprinkled a few shreds of chickweed on top of it, and tried again. The kerchief disintegrated as well.

From then on he searched the booksellers whenever he had the chance, looking for tomes that held the tantalizing hints of a magic forbidden him by tradition, but irresistible to him by his nature.

He was reaching for a promising fragment of a manuscript when a hand, yellow and wrinkled as old parchment, grasped it first. Tibor straightened up, thwarted and angry, and met the gaze of an old man who regarded him with faded blue eyes.

He wore the long robe of a scholar, and although he was bent by age he still topped the young Vistana by at least a foot.

Tibor began to say something but stopped—there was something in the look of the old man that counseled restraint. The skin around his eyes was deeply scored with wrinkles and the corners of his lips were quirked up in a smile that was more calculating than pleasant.

He held the yellowed papers between his long fingers, which seemed to have too many joints to be quite human.

“A Vadoma lad usually seeks horseflesh, not useless bits of paper,” he said. “And a Vadoma you must be, since you’ve been allowed to live thus far, unstrangled.”

He nodded at Tibor’s startled look. “Oh yes, I see you’ve been touched. But whether your gift is to see or to curse has yet to be determined; it’s veiled from me, and with the Vadoma, it’s one or the other. But I have my suspicions.”

He tilted his head, still staring at Tibor intently, and Tibor felt at the same time dizzy and rooted to the spot, as firm as the cornerstone of the market square, which marked the heart of the city. His vision began to blacken at the edges, and he heard a sound like the roaring of a thousand seagulls whirling around the dead body of a seal. The sound grew louder and louder, and he knew that it was as possible to be as lost in that sound as for an unwary traveler to be lost in the Mists.

Tibor squinted at the old man, fighting the urge to close his eyes, to let everything go, to lose himself.

Louder the seagull sound grew, and louder, and he braced against it as against a drowning wave, and just when he knew his head would explode under the pressure the man shifted his body and everything—the sound, the darkness—stopped. Tibor staggered, as if he’d been pushing against a barrier suddenly gone, and steadied himself against a bookshelf.

“Here,” said the scholar, holding out the paper with a negligent gesture. “It’s bit of trash, nothing more. But there might be a scrap of use to it, so take it as a gift. I’ll have the owner put it to my account.”

Slowly, Tibor reached out and took the document by the corner, so as to avoid touching the man’s strangely jointed fingers. He held his prize awkwardly, feeling foolish.

Suddenly the old man thrust his face forward, and Tibor flinched back, feeling wooden shelves at his back.

“I know you have questions, and needs unsatisfied you don’t yet understand,” said the scholar, his breath reeking of raw mint. “If it suits you, you’ll find me round the corner from the Headless Dog—you know the place?”

Tibor nodded, and the old man grinned. “Ivy Lane, though that’s a pretty name for the spot. There’s a bottle seller, a bone man, then me, but good enough for this place. If you’ve an inclination and a talent, I have some things for you to see that might interest a Vadoma boy with a talent for …”

His pale eyes unfocused for a second before he turned back to Tibor.

“… with a talent—with a prodigious talent—for cursing, I think.”

He straightened and flicked the edge of the paper, and a crumbling chunk fell to the floor.

“Get on, then. Take it and go, and remember what I said.”

Tibor ran out of the bookseller’s, away from the sour smell of decaying books. At the encampment, he tucked the manuscript away in his bedroll for safekeeping, but when he took it out again it disintegrated into pieces.

He swore at the old man and his useless gift, but he did remember and when next the clan passed through Grayhalme he made his way past the tavern with the sign of the headless mastiff, down the alley where the bottle seller washed her used wares in a bucket on the stoop and the bone man stared out his window with dead white eyes. He knocked on the heavy, unadorned door and when it opened the old man looked as if he’d been expecting him, and moved aside without a word to let him in.

Tibor’s education began in earnest that day. He returned, again and again, during that season, and while his clan sold the women’s dyed cloth at market he read the books the old man placed before him and memorized the strange, forbidden alphabet of the Black Histories. When his uncle’s caravans rolled away at the end of the season Tibor went with them because he was not yet of age, and whenever he closed his eyes he saw the blasphemous letters flickering behind his lids.

The next spring he ran away from his uncle’s wagons and the running of the wild horses and stayed a month in that alley with the clink of bottles echoing down the cobbles and laundry hanging from the upper windows instead of ivy, sleeping on the floor of the old man’s crooked study. When he returned to the Vadoma encampment at the foot of the mountains in Kartakass, his uncle whipped him with a willow switch, because hands were short that year and they’d lost three mares they could have taken with his help. Tibor stood through his punishment unfeeling, indifferent to the blows Serge Vadoma rained harder and harder on his shoulders, until flesh bruised purple and the blood started to come. Finally his uncle threw down the switch and walked away in disgust, muttering that it was foolish of his people to allow a boy with the Sight to live past babyhood.

Still Tibor stood, his eyes glazed, reading and rereading in his mind the strange tomes the old man had placed before him, hearing nothing but the clink of old bottles being washed and stacked across the way. Finally his sister came and led him to her tent, where she washed his cuts and bathed them in sweet smelling, stinging ointment. He lay still under her ministrations, not talking to her, thinking of the bone man’s ceaseless, blind vigil, the smell of crumbling leather, the glyphs, at first meaningless, that the scholar had coaxed into coherency beneath his eyes until the strange figures began to sing to him.

Jaelle pulled a blanket gently over his bruised shoulders.

“He shouldn’t have done it,” she said, her low voice at once bitter and saddened. “Mind, you must understand—the hill stallion took back three of the best mares—one was the black spot mare, and uncle’s wanted her for two years. The lord’s man was less than understanding. But this went too far.”

“It doesn’t matter, Jaelle,” he croaked. “It was worth every blow.”

He rolled on his side, wincing because he did feel his torn flesh now, despite Jaelle’s ministrations.

“You should see it, sister,” he said, looking up at her with his liquid dark eyes, so similar to her own. “The books, the writings, the possibilities, the power. All there for the taking—all in our hands, if we would only reach out and take it.”

Jaelle sat cross-legged beside him and folded her hands in her lap. “Don’t ask me to follow your path; nothing good can come of it. I have always wished I could find a way to deter you, although I know I can’t. Nothing good will come of it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes,” she returned. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

She reached out to stroke his forehead and he grasped her wrist.

“We know so little,” he said. “Even the Tribes, who think they understand the Mists, who travel where no others can go—they are blind. Did you know, Jaelle, that there are other worlds than this one?”

“Of course, Tibor.” She let her hand rest in his. “I know about the Mistrealms. We are not ignorant, like the Gadjikane.”

“No,” he squeezed her hand until she winced. “No, I said other worlds—worlds beyond the domains we know. Worlds that don’t know the Mists.

“There’s a world where men are considered little more than embryos until they die, and then they can begin to learn. There’s another where machines are being born—like watches and music boxes, but enormous, that tunnel through the ground like worms and gallop over the land and even fly. Engines that explode in one man’s hand and kill another. There’s a world where men have destroyed themselves, and only the insects and the rats remain. There’s worlds, and pieces of worlds, that the Mists steal and bring here, and hide away. Maybe that’s where we all come from—some nameless world that might not even exist anymore.”

Jaelle twisted her hand free of her brother’s and watched him, rubbing her wrist.

“You’ve heard the old men tell the story of a land that lies inside an emerald, and that emerald around the neck of a king’s consort, and that kingdom nestled beside a country that one can only reach through that same consort’s hand mirror—the worlds I’ve seen are like that, Jaelle. The Mistrealms are a small fragment in a mosaic of worlds, and we’ve the key to them all, if only you’d listen!”

She bent toward him and spoke sharply. “You’ve seen these worlds?”

He rolled back on his stomach.

“In books. I’ve seen them in books.”

“Books do not make wisdom, Tibor.”

“That’s what Serge and the rest of them would have us believe. But I’ve seen what they hold, sister. I’ve read the Black Histories.”

She didn’t reply; Jaelle had nothing to say to that. She closed her eyes and breathed a prayer for her brother’s soul.

“I have to go back. I will go back, and learn more, and I’ll show it to you, Jaelle.” His voice was growing thick with sleep. “You’ll see. You’ll stand with me at the threshold between worlds.”

He muttered something indistinguishable and was still.

Jaelle was trained by skilled healers, so she sat by her sleeping brother into the night, watching for signs of fever.

But she also considered the place where the spine met the back of his head. Touch it with a long, thin, steel blade, pause to brace yourself, and push it in with a strong, sure motion. Don’t flinch or else you’ll wake him.

For Jaelle had glanced into the future, and what she saw made her shudder, and her mother-wisdom told her that the worlds that Tibor spoke of would be made to suffer if he was allowed to live.

But sister-love is stronger than mother-wisdom, and it is a delicate matter to interpret the future, so Tibor woke safe, although sore through the shoulders. He apologized to his uncle, made himself useful in camp amongst the horses, and as soon as he adjudged himself to be of age he vanished from his family’s caravans, and Jaelle didn’t see her brother for many years.

Before he returned to the Vadoma he visited once more the alley around the corner from the Headless Dog in Grayhalme.

He saw a flicker at the window of the bottle seller, behind the rows of cataract white and green bottles, racked one on top of the other. He didn’t see the bone man.

He paused before the familiar door. It looked more weathered, and a new crack fissured the thick oak. When he gave it a slight push with the tips of his fingers, it swung silently open on well-oiled hinges.

The scholar sat with his back to him, a blob of lit candles that had melted together his only illumination. He was bent over a manuscript that lay open on the desk before him, quill ready in his hand. As Tibor watched, he made a note in the margins and the scratch of the pen seemed loud in the quiet room.

Tibor slipped inside, quiet as a snake, and nudged the door shut behind him.

The old man didn’t turn around—not yet. He placed his quill carefully beside his manuscript, unhurriedly blotted his notes, and sat up straight, shadow-gray hair falling down his back.

“I wondered when you’d return,” he said.

Now he turned on the backless stool to face Tibor. The Vistana had grown lean and tall in the past few years. His dark eyes glittered in his thin face, but his lips were compressed and immobile. He stared at the old scholar as a serpent stares at a sparrow.

His mentor studied him a long moment. A slow grin spread across his face.

“You’ve found the Voyna Codex,” he said. “It’s left its mark on your face. You need to learn how to hide that; some will recognize what it’s done to you.”

“I’ll work on it,” said Tibor, and his hand moved slowly to the knife at his belt.

“It’s rare to find one like you,” the old man continued, conversationally. “Once in a lifetime, if I’m lucky. And then so often, no matter how well I’ve taught them, no matter their innate talent, they just can’t take that last step and enter greatness.”

“What step?” Tibor’s voice was as gentle as the breeze.

“You know very well. You came back for nothing else.”

Somewhere far away a bottle broke, and there was a muttered curse, then silence. Through all of it young man and old watched each other, each suspended in the other’s regard as if on a circus wire.

Then they both moved at once. With a swiftness that belied his years the scholar reached behind him, under the table. Tibor simultaneously drew his blade, long and thin like a stiletto, and moved across the room without seeming to touch the ground.

He seized the old man’s hair and forced his head back, almost touching the tabletop, at the same time pressing the point of the blade beneath the scholar’s chin. He saw the weapon in the other’s hand blur toward his own neck and without hesitation slid his own long, sharp blade up, slanting back through jaw and throat and into the base of the brain.

For a second they were locked together. Tibor felt the edge of a circular, saw-toothed blade brush the base of his throat. Then the old man’s eyes glazed over and he relaxed in Tibor’s grip.

He waited a moment to make sure, then withdrew the knife swiftly. The dead man sagged against the table, twisted upon the stool. No blood had come before, but now it gushed across the manuscript, obliterating both the new-inked notes in the margins and the ancient, faded, spidery writing of the text.

Still the clump of candles burned, though guttering now, and the smell of smoke and wax filled the chamber.

Tibor worked quickly. Still holding the knife, he lowered the old man’s body to the stone floor, straightening the limbs so he lay decorously on his back. The sharp blade razored through his garments easily, laying bare his belly and his right side.

Barely pausing, Tibor flicked his blade against the yellowed skin. It parted as easily as the fabric had, peeling back, showing a trace layer of fat and the muscular wall of the diaphragm. With a few more deft movements of the stiletto and a wet plunge of the fingers and a twist of the wrist he held the liver, still warm, in his hand.

It only took a few gulps to get it down. It was spongy, and tasted like damp flakes of iron in his mouth. He swallowed the last morsel and paused, fighting an urge to vomit. He breathed deeply and the feeling faded.

Tibor wiped his mouth, then cleaned his hand and his knife on the shredded garments. Beside his crouching form, thick trickles of blood crept to the edge of the table and a fat drop hit the floor, into the black pool that widened beneath the body.

He felt something moving inside him, something warm and alien that stirred and settled, becoming entangled in him, becoming one with him. It faded, yet he was still aware of it—power, his to call and control. Not enough, not yet, but a start.

He turned and crouched as the door opened, the faint light from the alley shining into the dark room, illuminating a cloud of dust motes. A bulky figure stood there. Tibor blinked and recognized him: the bone man, with white orbs for eyes. He looked blindly inside and bared his teeth, straight and separate like pegs lined up in his gums. The Vistana touched the handle of his weapon but didn’t draw it.

“He was waiting for you,” said the bone man in a voice that was surprisingly hollow, as if all his bulk was a shell. “He never lost faith.”

The bone man entered the room and Tibor edged around him, keeping a respectful distance, but the larger man simply walked in and stood beside the body. The room smelled increasingly of vinegar, and something under it, bitter and acrid. Everything Tibor had learned told him to get out, now.

Yet at the door he paused. “The others,” he said. “His students, who weren’t able to take the final step. What happened to them?”

The bone man didn’t turn around. “When they didn’t kill him, he killed them, of course. It ripped him apart. There wasn’t a single one of you he didn’t love, not one. You should remember that, if you live.”

As Tibor turned away he thought he heard a horrible lapping sound.

In the pens, one of the horses nickered, another answering. Tibor rose from his crouch in one fluid motion, a blade in each hand—the stiletto in the left, and in his right a short curved knife of curious make, with a wicked crook at its tip.

As he stood, a circle of glyphs ignited on the ground around him, glowing in the short grass with a sickly pale green light. The bloody red edge of the sun was just vanishing beneath the horizon, and its ruddy illumination fell before Tibor like a path, a red path toward the horses in their pen; a path toward power, and knowledge, and the key to all those other worlds.

He stepped over a glyph and it vanished, opening the circle.

Arms spread so that his blades glinted crimson at his hips, he walked toward the horses.

CHAPTER EIGHT

London, 1867

Artemis stared at Inspector Crutchly. He felt the heat of his face flushing.

“With all due respect, sir, have you gone mad?”

Crutchly went red in his turn.

“Watch yourself, Donovan. The Superintendent’s determined this is an isolated case. We don’t have the resources to chase down every fancy-man who’s lost his temper with a whore.”

“Did you read my report, sir?” Artemis sputtered. “That was no beating. In fact, it was anything but—her face was untouched.”

Crutchly waved a dismissive hand. “However he did it—we have bigger fish to fry. Rabble-rousers in the public parks, for one—and pickpockets on the Strand for another. The Superintendent would like to know why a decent woman can’t seem to go shopping without having her purse lifted.”

“There’ll be more, sir, if my guess is right,” said Artemis. “More killings in Whitechapel before the year is out—killings like that one. Someone who does that is hungry, and he doesn’t know what he’s hungry for, so he’ll do it again and again until his hunger is satisfied—which, often as not, is never. Please, sir.”

He stepped toward the Inspector. “Did you see the body? I know you read the report—but did you see her?”

Crutchly shook his head, putting his hand on the detective’s shoulder.

“No, I didn’t. And it wouldn’t do any good if I had. Look, Donovan, I would feel the same way in your position. But this is a fight you can’t win. The Superintendent doesn’t feel it’s of significance, and I have no choice in the matter.”

“It’s not right, sir.” Artemis growled.

Crutchly paused. “I know.”

The Inspector gave his shoulder a final squeeze and turned away. Artemis considered probing his supervisor’s thoughts, and finding there a nugget of information he could hold over his head. It was surprising, sometimes, the petty and not-so-petty crimes men rolled over and contemplated and remembered in the place just below conscious thought, in the muddy river of the mind that even they were not aware of. Sometimes Artemis was able to look into that murky stream and find information he could use to coerce cooperation out of a suspect or informant—although to do so made him feel sick, as if he’d seen acts best kept behind closed doors.

Be careful, he could hear his mother say. Sometimes it’s a gift, and sometimes it’s a curse, and sometimes the greatest gift is to be headblind and ignorant of the secrets beneath. Folk, and good folk too, won’t thank you for knowing too much.

But Crutchly was a good enough man, and like as not it was true he had no choice. Artemis would accomplish nothing by probing his secrets.

Crutchly sat at his desk where a great pile of paper awaited him—reports to be approved, orders to be carried out. Artemis did not envy him his work.

As he walked out the door of the Inspector’s office, Crutchly’s voice caught him midstride.

“Of course, what you do on your own time, Detective …”

Artemis glanced back. The other man didn’t look up from his work.

“Understood, sir,” Artemis said.

The next day was a Saturday, drizzly and gloomy, the day Cherise Daughtery was buried, the funeral paid for with the money her killer had left behind. Artemis knew on sight some of the women that ringed the small grave, and stood well back so they would not be made uncomfortable. Bowler in hand, he watched the sexton and his boy lower the coffin unsteadily into the earth and the minister—an overworked assistant, not the man who presided, full of righteous grace, on Sundays—intone from the Book of Common Prayer.

As they reached the end the rain began in earnest, drumming on the lid of the coffin and making a thick slurry of the dirt thrown up from the grave. The service concluded hastily and the minister hurried inside to his office and a hot cup of tea while the women dispersed, the cheap feathers in their hats a sad tangle from the wet. The sexton and his boy seized their shovels and quickly filled the hole, the clumps of mud thumping loudly on the casket, then softer as the grave grew shallow.

There was a little depression still over the grave when they shouldered their shovels and left, likely as not seeking something hot as well. Artemis stayed for a while, the rain wetting the shoulders of his greatcoat, looking at the little dip in the graveyard that was all the evidence left of that girl named Cherise Daughtery who once lived in London.

Kartakass

Jaelle was about to step into the circle of dancers when she heard the horses scream.

She jerked back as if the dancing-circle, beaten down into the grass of the clearing, had been made of hot coals.

Jaelle glanced around at the dancers. No one else seemed to have heard it. Was it her imagination? Or a sound from a future that hadn’t happened yet?

Another scream, full of unearthly pain, that bent her double, hands over her ears.

She looked around frantically. Still the dancers kept their circle, their steps unnaturally even and precise, their expressions frozen. She stepped through the circle to the center, watching each of her clans-folk as they passed—Gris, whose burly shoulders and arms belied his gentleness with the horses; Mikal, who was the cleverest at negotiating terms with the lord’s men, was invaluable to her uncle, and who she knew there was talk about hand-fasting to her and binding to the tribe. Both men went through the steps as if they were enchanted.

This was the only dance where the Vadoma men and women were allowed to dance together, for when the horses went to their masters the taboos were broken for a night, and youth and maiden could move together and touch hands. Jaelle looked Mari, her little cousin, in the face, and saw no recognition there. Her Aunt Sonja had joined the circle under the amused glance of her husband Serge, but even her face was frozen like a mask.

The drummers and the sitar player kept up a monotonous rhythm, as if the dance had trapped them in position and made them move their hands and fingers whether they willed it or not. Lord Harkon’s emissaries stood apart with her uncle, alien yet welcome here, watching the dance, their smiles of tolerant condescension frozen on their faces.

Her guts twisted as another scream penetrated the glen, and this time she saw a flicker pass across the dancers’ faces, a momentary awareness, a misstep in their compulsive dance. The music faltered and the emissaries looked around and frowned.

But then whatever force compelled them took hold and was renewed, and the drums maintained their beat, and the dancers stayed in time.

A strange feeling passed through Jaelle’s limbs, and her mind felt cloudy. The drums and the sitar pounded in her head, numbing all thought, and she felt the urge to step into the dance, to lose herself in the rhythm of the circle. Mari passed in front of her and Jaelle moved to take her place beside her, her arms lifting of their own accord into the proper position.

Dance, a voice intoned in her head. Take your place until I come for you, sister.

Tibor’s voice.

There was a horrible satisfaction in that voice, like a beast glutting itself with fresh meat.

No!

She pulled away from that hypnotic voice and burst out of the circle, running toward the pens where the horses were kept. Away from the fire her eyes swiftly grew accustomed to the dark, and the light of the moon that was just peeping over the hills was enough to guide her.

Another scream and she staggered, regained her footing, and ran.

Tibor! Don’t do it, brother! she called, although she knew it was too late.

She reached the pen just as Tibor plunged his knives into the eyes of the last horse, the last of the twelve. Several lay motionless, some were horribly still. A few staggered about blindly, maddened by pain and the smell of blood, falling over the dead beasts.

One reared, its hooves striking blindly over Tibor’s head; it fell on its side and churned the dirt, screaming in its last extremity. Jaelle wondered why they hadn’t broken free at the first, for the wooden pen was no barrier for a herd of panicked horses. Then she realized that they had been ensorcelled too, under the same spell Tibor had managed to cast across the camp that imprisoned the Vadoma in their dance.

He turned to her, smiling, still holding the knives, bloodied to the elbows, his garments blackened and wet. She backed away from the pen as he walked toward her. He kicked away the loose boards of the barrier, lifting his gory arms as if to embrace her. Behind him a few dying horses still milled, and their confusion and pain stabbed through her body.

She saw blood on his mouth.

Why?

She spoke only inside her head, but knew he heard her.

He paused, still smiling.

“Because I could, and because I needed to,” he said. “Each level reaches to the next.”

“I don’t understand,” she managed, her voice choked with tears.

“Twelve perfect horses,” he replied. “The life of the man who made me. Great power has a price. Opening the passage to other worlds, controlling other worlds, has its price.”

The last horse fell to its knees, whinnied in exhaustion, and collapsed to the ground. A night-fog was rising from the bloodied ground of the slaughter and from the grass around it, mercifully blurring the horror from sight.

“I can walk between the barriers now,” said Tibor. “Watch.”

He closed his eyes, arms still extended, and she saw him flicker and fade, almost vanishing entirely. He reappeared, becoming solid, and opened his eyes, his expression beatific as a child’s. Like his face when she saved him from falling into the river, she thought suddenly, holding a cluster of mussels triumphantly, both of them laughing with the joy of being alive.

He stepped toward her again. “Come with me, Jaelle. We’ll rule where we will, and you’ll be my queen. I’ll give you anything. Come with me.”

She fought the urge to scuttle away like a crab.

Sight and Curse were the two gifts of the Vadoma, and so far Sight was all she knew. She reached out with her mind, her thoughts brushing against Tibor’s, and felt behind them his enormous power of Cursing.

She resisted her instinct to flee and stepped toward her twin.

She felt his power focus on her, away from the horses and the Vistani camp, felt the spell of the dance fade away, felt the confusion of the Vadoma as their steps faltered and they came to themselves.

He was drunk on death and the power death gave him, she saw, and unable to think clearly. That gave her a chance.

She stood before him and reached out, taking the stiletto-like blade from his left hand, the handle sticky with horses’ blood. He let her take it.

“I always knew we’d be together,” he said, gently as a lover. Jaelle felt cold down to her belly. She mastered herself and stepped into his embrace.

“Sister,” he murmured, drawing her to him.

“Brother,” she replied, plunging the knife into his belly as deeply as she could.

The mist was getting thicker, but a Vistana knows how to run through the mist without misstep. Swiftly they ran through the grasses and down the slope and they saw them, brother and sister in close embrace, night-fog puddling around their feet, and the shambles of dead horses behind them. The clan clustered behind Serge and Sonja, seeing the destruction of the season’s work and the doom of their tribe before them.

As they watched, Jaelle made a sudden movement, still locked in her brother’s arms, and Tibor jerked in her grasp and stared down at her, openmouthed.

They saw Tibor raise his arm behind Jaelle’s back, pause, and thrust the blade down between her ribs. Jaelle cried out but didn’t pull away.

Mari screamed and started forward toward her cousin, but Sonja pulled her back violently.

“I curse you, Tibor Vadoma, who killed your mother and disgraced your gift,” she screamed, slashing the air before her with a complicated motion.

“We can’t save her now,” said Serge to the sobbing Mari at his feet.

Sonja continued. “I cast you out. I take away your name. Tibor Vadoma is no more, and never was.” Her face was distorted with hatred, and the mist rose thicker and thicker from the ground.

“I cast you out. I take away your name,” cried Mari, rising to her knees, and the phrase was echoed over and over again, until the entire tribe cursed Mirela’s son from the day of his birth and onward.

Pain slashed red-hot across Jaelle’s back; she gritted her teeth and pushed the blade up, ripping her brother’s abdomen.

“I curse you, Tibor Vadoma,” she gasped, staring up into his face. His eyes had been wide and astonished, and now they were clouding with hatred.

Behind the agony between her ribs she felt power, the power from the slaughtered horses, flowing through Tibor into her. She, too, felt drunk with the power to curse. “I cast you out,” she spat. “I take away your name.”

She sagged in his arms as the mist boiled around them, tearing her brother asunder, tearing her wounded body away from his embrace and from her home, pulling her through the barrier between worlds.

The Vadoma watched as the mist cleared, leaving nothing where Jaelle and her nameless brother had stood. The air was heavy with the smell of blood. They could see the bodies of animals, released from their torment, piled in a heap inside the pen that they’d never even tried to escape from.

Serge spoke into the silence. “The Dukkar shall no longer live amongst us,” he said. “From now on, we shall be as other Vistani, and the boy cursed with Sight shall die as an infant.”

No one answered him as the moon rose over the torn, blackened earth.

CHAPTER NINE

London, 1867

Robarts glanced ahead and winced. A pigeon was crushed in the busy London street—perhaps by a cart or simply taken unexpectedly by the press of the crowd. The body was a bloodied mass of feathers, and one wing extended incongruously, perpendicular to the flattened body. Somehow the wing of the dead bird had avoided damage and stretched up into the air, spread as if about to take flight, and the feathers and the articulation of the joints as clear as if it had been an illustration in an ornithologist’s manual.

Despite himself he drew closer, allowing the pressure of the bustling masses to push him forward until he stood before the bird. A pigeon was little better than a rat, he knew—filthy and unbeautiful and a danger to the public health. Yet there was grace in the wing, which arched up, fragile and beautiful.

It looked like the wing of an angel, stretched out protectively, as in a Renaissance painting of the Holy Family with Gabriel hovering above.

Wings.

Of course. How were they to fly without wings?

He closed his eyes, seeing a twisted figure falling through an eternal abyss made of smoke and cloud, hands raised beseechingly to heaven—a figure with Margaret’s face, and raw fleshy stumps where her wings had been torn away.

Someone thumped into him with an oath and the vision was gone. Robarts looked around confusedly. The sidewalks were full of people, strangers shoulder to shoulder about their business, or seeking work, or just trying to get home. The mangled pigeon was gone, kicked to pieces by the crowd and scattered in the gutter.

He moved on with the crowd, first glancing at the dirty gray sky, half-expecting to see an amputated angel miles above, plummeting toward them.

“Beg pardon, sir.”

A woman with a faded scarf wrapped about her head was trying to get past him, her market basket on her hip and a child, a little dirty-faced blonde girl, clinging to her side. He stammered out an apology and moved aside and she passed by, weariness imprinted in the angles of her body and the defeated curve of her shoulders.

Of course she’s tired, Robarts thought, sparing a backward glance. They’ve taken her wings.

He shouldered onward in the crowd, slipping his hand in his trouser pocket and feeling the reassuring solidity of the St. Margaret’s medal between his fingers.

Robarts unlocked the front door of his rooms. He had dismissed even his London servants, as well as those at Bryani House, so there was no one there to let him in.

The foyer had the strong odor of antiseptic; the smell grew stronger as he went through the sitting room, through the kitchen, and let himself through another locked door in the back of the terrace house. His footsteps echoed loudly through the empty rooms; through the little consulting room, now very dusty with no one to keep it clean, and into the examining room behind.

He closed the examining room door, locked it in its turn, and stood with his back against it, watching his angels.

The two women lay immobile on padded tables. There were straps around their chests and across their legs, fastened underneath their improvised beds, but those were only for safety’s sake, to keep them from falling off. They had not tried to escape his laboratory.

They wore simple shifts, and each had a black rubber tube protruding from the corner of her mouth. The other end reached down the back of their throats, halfway down the esophagus.

The tubes were to keep their air passages open, for they still breathed, although very slowly—perhaps once a minute; he’d timed them at one point.

He still didn’t understand how that was possible.

It happened when he had the one called Nellie—he’d heard someone call out her name when he decided to take her—on his table; he hadn’t bothered to coax her inside, but had come upon her in the fog and overpowered her without much effort, assisted by a bottle of chloroform and a clean rag. She was tiny, almost child sized, and it was easy to wrap her in an extra coat and carry her over his shoulder to his rooms.

He was going to use the ether to subdue her further, although it would be tricky without assistance—the fumes from the chloroform were unpleasant for both doctor and patient, he had found, and he used it in his practice as little as possible.

Then, as he positioned the awkward mask over her face, the voice spoke in his head—but so real and tangible he glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was there.

Not like that, it said.

He paused. He had learned to trust the voice. So far it had guided him true, and kept him steadfast on his course. He would listen.

Robarts waited, hand hovering over the girl.

Open yourself to me.

That took more than trust. “How?” he asked aloud, and the girl on the table turned her head restlessly.

Open. Let me inside the passages of your body.

The sane part of Robarts hesitated. But the command was too strong; he put the ether mask aside and stood, his arms spread to either side, making his mind a blank, letting his muscles relax.

Something cool seemed to fill him, starting in the pit of his stomach and extending throughout his abdomen, up past his chest, down into his groin. It flowed like a cold stream through his legs and arms, trickling into feet and fingers.

Instinctively he placed his hands on the girl’s shoulders, and the coolness flowed through him into her, emptying out of him and filling her. As it passed he could see, in the darkness of his mind behind closed eyes, hints of its nature.

He saw an enormous book, made of a queer thick paper, open on a table that seemed to bear the marks of weapons. There were dull crimson stains across the pages of that book, and the markings in it resembled no alphabet he had ever seen, in or out of his uncle’s library.

His vision was obscured by a mist, and through the haziness he saw the strange glyphs and letters lift off the pages of that book, and float through the foggy air, thickening into a stream that flowed through him—through his hands—into the body of the girl before him.

He was drained. He opened his eyes, blinking in confusion. His examining room seemed to be filled with a light smoke—but it felt damp, like a winter’s fog. He watched while it gathered itself over Nellie, becoming more solid as it did, and poured into her, entering her nostrils, her mouth, and the corners of her eyes.

It was gone, and she lay still. He would have thought she was dead, but after a while her chest rose, very slowly, and just as slowly, she exhaled.

As she did, he thought he could see the merest trace of a mist above her mouth.

There. The voice sounded satisfied. She won’t wake until you desire it. You may do as you will.

Concerned about sufficient air reaching her lungs, Robarts had threaded the tubing down her throat, but that was all—she remained immobile, quiescent. When the other—Eliza, was it? Liz?—was lured inside with promises of gin and a night’s worth of coin, he’d drugged her easily—although she’d fought more than little Nellie—and again the voice called him to let it fill him, and he had, letting the coldness pass into his patient, casting her into a sleep past all waking.

He was able to carve them as an artisan might carve wood, or a sculptor shape stone. Their blood, while it still flowed, was sluggish and easy to contain, and their flesh healed quickly, scarring into the shapes he desired them to take.

But wings. He recalled the dead pigeon, a bird as common as a rat, and as well regarded. Yet with beautiful wings, stretched forth as the angels’ were.

Wings? The voice sounded curious.

“Yes,” he replied aloud, as he often did now in the privacy of his town house. “Everything fallen from heaven has wings, or should have.”

Heaven, said the voice, seeming to taste the word like honey. And Robarts instinctively opened his mind to the voice, showing it the vaults of the cathedrals and the tops of the mountains, the depths of the ocean where Leviathan crawled, the thrones, dominions, Saint Margaret with the Wyrm, Saint Theresa in a frozen tower, and the great burning wheel that Elijah saw.

Ah, said the voice. Yet another world. It must be a great thing to storm heaven.

There was a longing in the voice, and a gloating satisfaction—but Robarts was bent to his work and didn’t notice.

Riverbend, after the Fire

Weldon heaved his burden onto the bed in the nearest guestroom, and stood contemplating his patient. The man was muttering now, under his breath, and although Weldon listened closely he couldn’t understand a word.

There was a great slit on the man’s garments, as if they’d been cut away. Curious, he flipped the torn edge of the shirt back.

Even Weldon was startled at what he saw.

It was clear the man had been knifed, and deeply. What was more, the weapon had been drawn up through his abdomen, slicing it open neatly. Too neatly, for there should have been all manner of internal organs visible—not to mention a great deal of blood.

But this wound was as bloodless as that of a cadaver—indeed, Weldon glanced up at the stranger’s face to see if he was still, impossibly, alive. He was still mumbling fretfully. But there was a gray look to him, even now, even out of the insistent river fog, which gave him the look of a dead man.

Weldon examined the wound again. Where there should have been the remnants of a stomach and the severed coils of the small intestine there was a blank grayness, which appeared semisolid. It was as if the stranger’s insides were composed of solidified fog.

Weldon felt his interest pique. His hand had been idle too long.

“Fetch my kit,” he ordered, without looking around to see who, or what, would obey. And presently his worn, black leather case was placed on the coverlet, beside his right hand, just the way he liked it. Almost imperceptible footsteps withdrew to the door, and seemed to wait for whatever orders came next. Weldon didn’t bother to turn and look. He knew he wouldn’t see anything.

When Fanny opened her eyes she was still sitting on the steps of Riverbend Plantation, and the birds were still singing. Now the house was whole and clean again, with no sign of the Fire.

Had someone been there? Wasn’t someone speaking to her, just a moment before? Someone with a kind voice, who looked at her sadly. Someone who told her about the fire, and her father, and …

… and Sadie.

This time she would not forget Sadie, clinging hard to her memory, and the words of the man with the amber eyes. Where had she been? Some other Riverbend, charred and collapsed, and the smell of smoke …

Fanny concentrated on the smell of smoke.

She’d met him before, in the ruins of Riverbend, many times, perhaps. He told her a story about her father, about the slaves, trying to make her remember. A story about bones.

This she remembered: her mother had given Sadie to the monster that was her father.

She rose and walked into the house, and invisible hands opened the doors for her.

There was nothing to clean, and no blood or discharge to be wiped away. Weldon concluded that his only course would be to stitch up the wound as best he could.

He enjoyed it, he found. His fingers were big but deft, and he felt their old delicacy and skill return as he threaded his needles and proceeded, tiny suture next to tiny suture, so that the wound wouldn’t scar much as it healed. He had no means to anesthetize him, but the stranger didn’t seem to feel the prick of the needle or the pull of the catgut, and although he continued to turn his head and whisper to himself he stayed motionless enough for the work to proceed.

As he put the last stitch in, some door seemed to close in the man’s troubled mind; he ceased the fitful turning of his head and incessant muttering and lay still. In the end the slash was closed up neatly as the seam of a dress in the hands of a talented tailor. Weldon admired his handiwork as he wiped his instruments—not that there was any blood to clean up, but old habits die hard—and put them away neatly.

He wondered what had attacked his patient so viciously, and what had happened to him to make the composition of his body so very alien. But Weldon had learned to be patient, and he knew that whether he liked it or not, he had all the time in the world. He could afford to wait for the answers.

He snapped the leather case shut and turned to the door, starting when he saw the small figure standing there. Fanny was watching the stranger’s face with a grave frown on her face. She didn’t look at Weldon.

He wondered, suddenly, how long they had lived here, in this strange Riverbend where the Fire never seemed to have happened, where he was trapped on all sides by the Mist and the river, where the Perfect Day always tantalized and never reappeared. Months? Years?

Long enough, at the least, for Fanny to have grown. Yet she hadn’t aged a day, her small features still plumped with baby fat, her dress still fitting perfectly—neither too tight nor too short. He rarely spoke to her—she kept her haunts separate from his, and presumably the invisible hands that served him took care of her needs as well.

He was suddenly very curious about what Fanny did with her day.

Still not looking at him, she moved to the stranger’s bedside, staring at his face. It occurred to Weldon that she might have seen him somewhere in her wanderings.

“Do you know who he is?” he asked, his voice loud in the small room. It had been a long time since he had spoken directly to his daughter.

“No,” she replied, not looking at him.

Weldon found that irritating, and his fingers twitched.

“Well, be careful,” he said, annoyed. “He might be dangerous.”

“I don’t think he’s allowed to hurt me,” she said.

Then she did turn, and looked at him with gray eyes too old for her little-girl’s face, with its chubby cheeks and artless pink coloring.

“I don’t think you are, either,” she said.

He stood as if struck, while an inarticulate rage mounted inside him.

The little bitch. How dare she?

Fanny spoke again. “What did you do with Sadie?”

Weldon’s hand fisted. Without reply, without even thinking about it, he stepped toward her and struck at her face, his teeth bared in a snarl.

She didn’t even flinch. With his fist a foot from her temple, some strong, invisible hand wrapped around his wrist, his arm, his shoulder and held him immobile.

He grunted and strained against it, but the force only grew stronger to match his efforts. He felt his face flush hot and red.

With an effort, he wrenched himself backward, out of the irresistible grip, which released him so that he half-fell on the bed. He regained his balance and clutched the medical bag to his chest, panting with frustrated rage.

Fanny watched him dispassionately.

“Aren’t you going to tell me?” she said, her voice still childish but an adult contempt in her too-old eyes.

When he didn’t answer she turned back to her contemplation of the stranger’s face.

Still clasping the leather bag, Weldon ran from the room.

The man’s face was lean and dark, more relaxed now he was still. Although there was no physical sign of it, save for the large cut her father had stitched up, there was a worn look to him, as if he’d suffered some bodily torment for a long time.

Fanny decided it was a handsome face, a little like Holbart’s, the overseer. She wondered what had happened to Holbart. She hadn’t liked him, either.

From downstairs, from the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, she heard her father cry out: a great animal roar of anger and frustration.

Fanny smiled.

London, 1867

“Penny daily, sir!”

Artemis tossed tuppence to the newsboy and took a Daily Telegraph in return, waving away the change. A few steps away he leaned against a pillar, scanning the close-printed, smudged columns for any mention of a girl’s disappearance, any call for investigation, any sign that anybody besides the whores of Whitechapel—and himself—was taking notice of what was happening.

Nothing. There was a letter from some Under-Minister of one of the Home Departments commending the actions of a body of reform-minded ladies who had ventured into a tenement, been appalled at the squalor they’d seen, and forced the landlord to reduce the number of bodies he could stuff in each room. Of course, the result was more homelessness as families were evicted.

But of the three women he knew to have vanished without a trace, not a word.

“Liz would never ’ave gone without telling me,” one of his informants had told him, leaning over the greasy table in the Cat and Whiskers that was his quasi-official office in the district.

“You were such good friends as that?” he’d asked lifting a finger to the barmaid to call for a dark ale for the lady.

She tossed her head and snorted. “That’s not why, although I’m fond of ’er as any of the bitches hereabouts. Oh, thank you, love,” she added as her beer was conveyed to her.

“It’s ’cause that I owed her a pair of gloves and a ’at,” she continued, after a healthy gulp. “I split ’er gloves last winter, when I went north to visit me sister, and the ’at—well, that was a bet, and I’d rather not tell you the wager and shock your tender nature, Officer.” She giggled coquettishly and Artemis smiled politely—although indeed he had heard of the bet, which involved seventeen sailors on shore leave after rounding the Cape, and indeed he’d rather not hear all the gory details.

“Anyroad, she wouldn’t ’ave left town without getting ’er winnin’s, or at the very least ’er gloves back. And if she did she would’ve told me where to send ’em.”

“When did you last see her?” asked Artemis.

“Two night gone—she was stepping out to see if she could rustle up a few quid to pay ’er rent, and I was stayin’ with her on account of having a cold. She never came back, and I didn’t think much of it because maybe she got a doss somewheres else for the night. But last night, when she didn’t come back and all her stuff still in her room—and a bit o’ cocoa left she was saving for the night before—I knew something was wrong.”

She tipped her head back and drained the dregs of her ale.

“You’re not a bad sort, for all you’re tetched in the ’ed and a copper to boot,” she continued, wiping her mouth on her sleeve and grinning at him, gap-toothed. “And the girls roundabout know you’re lookin’ out for ’em. And nobody—or precious few, cares if we live nor die nor vanish from creation. So keep an eye out fer my Liz, right? You won’t forget?”

He promised to make inquiries, and watched her walk spraddle-hipped out the pub, and knew neither he nor her friend were like to see Liz Stridemore again.

Some children were playing on the sidewalk, a game with jacks and an irregular rubber ball, and as Artemis continued to scan the paper he half-listened to their chatter as he always listened to the sounds of London around him. They broke into a chant as one player bounced the ball in a hard, steady rhythm on the cobbles. Artemis registered the song almost as soon as it began, and he turned his head to watch them.

Two girls and a boy, maybe as old as eight, and no grubbier than one might expect in this part of London. Their eyes were focused on the black rubber ball and the pot-metal jacks and their childish voices chanted with all earnestness:

Take caution all you ladies

Who go by Grosvener Square

Who take the air at midnight, for

The Gentleman is there.

He’ll tip his hat most proper

If you be maid or whore

And if you stop to talk to him

You’ll ne’er be seen no more.

Artemis folded his paper with a snap. When he heard about the disappearances of Nellie Howard and Liz Stridemore, he’d gone to Crutchly and asked to open an investigation. Crutchly refused categorically.

“There’s been no more murders like that other,” he said. “You can’t think they’ve got anything to do with that. The perverted breed who kills as a hobby wants us to find the bodies—it’s part of their game. And in all seriousness, you want to spend the Division’s time and money looking into—what? A couple whores gone roundabout?”

“Nellie Howard wasn’t—isn’t a prostitute, sir,” said Artemis, controlling his temper with an effort. “She sells pies down the market, and her friends tell me she was expecting, too.”

Crutchly shrugged. “Unmarried, I take it.”

Artemis sighed. He knew it would do no good to explain that many poorer couples considered themselves wed without benefit of clergy, as a marriage license cost as much as a few good meals, and those were painful to skip.

“Bodies,” continued the Inspector. “Give me some bodies, and I can take that to the Superintendent. Even a Thames suicide. Bodies are evidence. Disappearances—that’s anything from taking a holiday to moving to the country to lying drunk in some alley for a few days. We can’t waste time on that.”

Artemis knew, with that strange knowing that made him respected and a little bit feared in the halls of the Yard, that there would be no bodies to satisfy Inspector and Superintendent. He also knew these women had not vanished of their own free will.

The children knew. The whores knew. The people who lived close to the street knew that something alien moved among them. He could see it in the new fear in their eyes, the whispers in the doss-houses, the songs the street children sang.

Somewhere out there in the city his quarry was looking for prey in his turn; Artemis could feel him. When he shut his eyes he could almost see him, a figure of the shadows, a cultured silhouette, his seeming harmlessness a weapon in itself.

They called him the Gentleman now, in the streets. There were stories of a great-coated, top-hatted figure looming in the fog when it descended in the night, approaching a woman, luring her with promises of hot food and a warm fire, and then sweeping her away somehow, without a trace of her passing left behind.

The Gentleman will catch you

And take you to his door …

Artemis pocketed his paper and walked over to the children. The boy hastily grabbed the ball and tucked it away in some inner pocket while the girls scrabbled up the jacks, as if he had designs on them.

When they looked up and recognized him, their faces relaxed a little, but not completely. He was, after all, a policeman—and worse, an adult.

“I’ll not take your toys,” he said. “Nor chase you off. But wait a moment.”

On impulse, he crouched down beside them, seeing them consider whether to flee or to tolerate this strange encroachment into their world. One jack was left on the cobble; absently he picked it up, careful not to bend the cheap metal, and dropped it into the hand of one of the girls.

“If somebody ever saw the Gentleman,” he said. “Or somebody they might think is the Gentleman—you mustn’t go near him, of course. But if you got word out to me, and it turned out to be the Gentleman after all, there would be a nice reward in it for you. See?”

He pulled a shilling from his pocket and made it dance between his knuckles. Their eyes shone as they watched. He spun the coin between his fingers and held it out to the boy.

“Mind you share, now,” he said. “Because I’ll find out if you don’t.”

“Hot pies, Davy!” chirruped one of the girls, and Davy nodded.

With a polite chorus of “thank’ee, sir,” the trio was off round the corner, holding their games and booty. Artemis’ practiced eye caught a slight limp in the boy’s gait, but then, so few children of these streets were completely whole and healthy.

“Remember what I said!” he called after them, and the limping boy turned and nodded before vanishing down the lane. Artemis could hear them singing as they ran toward the bakeshop and the pasties and the sweet buns.

The Gentleman will catch you

And take you to his door

And though you scream and though you shout

We’ll never see you more!

Artemis shivered. Goose on my grave, he thought. Nothing more than that.

SERIAH

Jory Penhallow was walking the frosty edge of his father’s field where the winter fodder grew when he saw the bloody woman lying facedown in a trench. It was lucky it wasn’t the rainy season, else she would have drowned.

He though she must be dead or dying when he saw the great gash in her back, but in kneeling by her and examining her he saw that although a blade had obviously slipped between her ribs, there was no bubbling of air and blood that would mean a lung had been punctured.

Crouching by the injured stranger, Jory thought something that only a Recording Angel could know. He thought he was tired, and he didn’t want the work of carrying her back, especially when she was like to die anyhow. And there would be questions, and perhaps a Crowner to sit on the matter, and he would have to testify. Best to go home, and leave the body to be found during the plowing.

But decency did out in Jory Penhallow that day, and he heaved her over his shoulder and took her to his mother’s house, a stone cottage on the outskirts of St. Agnes.

They saw at once she was a foreigner, a gypsy perhaps, with that dark coloring, and that her face was rather pretty, though streaked with blood and dirt. Then they saw she clutched a knife to her breast, the blade flat against the grimy linen of her dress—a knife with a long, thin blade and a handle curiously wrought. Something about that knife—the odd patterns on the handle, perhaps, that seemed to swirl and change before her eyes into wicked little faces, and then dissolve again into formless lines, made Mistress Penhallow quite take against it, and she made her son work it away from the woman’s clutch before she would bandage her wound.

I can’t fault her for this. Even I can’t tell you the history of that blade; its life—for it does, and did, and will have life—was long and buried in shadows and blood. Not even the Vistana once named Tibor truly understood what kind of weapon he carried.

When the knife was wrested from her fingers, the woman stirred finally and opened her eyes, staring up at the faces gathered about her. I know that some thought gypsy, and others beautiful. She muttered something, and although Mistress Penhallow bent close, she couldn’t understand.

“Is that English?” she asked Jory, who shook his head.

The woman spoke again, and this time in good clear Cornish anyone could hear.

“The mine,” she said. “Don’t let the boys go down the mine tomorrow.”

Mistress Penhallow stared at her, then at Jory, then at her other sons who clustered at the door. Jory and her next two eldest, as well as her man who sat with his boots up in the kitchen, worked the Weald Hole as their fathers and grandfathers had before them. Tin was the life and money of Cornwall.

The gypsy woman sat up, blood soaking through the torn fabric of her dress.

“200 fathoms down,” she said. “The wall is weak, there where they’re taking the ore, and they can’t see it. Tomorrow the tunnel will go. Don’t let them down!”

Mistress Penhallow took her by the shoulders, and eased her down, and dressed her wound, and forbade her sons the mine on the morrow, and sent word to every cot in St. Agnes that had a man at the tin.

The next day seven men died in the Weald Hole, but none from St. Agnes was among them.

What of the woman? Some say she married a Cornishman and had twenty children. Others say that she vanished into the Mists that were unusually persistent that year. Others say she was an emissary for the Prince of Wales, or King Charles as some would have it, and had been attacked by Roundhead spies.

I know that Jory Penhallow thought she was a fair enough wench, and Jory was not bad looking himself and had a gentle touch with a woman, and Jaelle knew she would never go home again.

What of the knife? His mother told Jory to throw it from the White Cliff into the sea.

I know that Jory thought the thing must be valuable, and as he was a thrifty man he wrapped it in a strip of Jaelle’s skirt and stowed it in the bottom drawer of a Welsh dresser, and there it stayed for many years.

CHAPTER TEN

London, 1867

There was something familiar about the girl’s profile, and Robarts watched her closely from his place between the pillars of the British Library.

His day’s outing had proved a disappointment. On the Nature of Angels, one of the books in the library at Bryani House, referred to some obscure texts that his uncle had been unable to obtain, and he had come here in search of them. The docents were more than willing to let him browse the stacks, considering the importance of the documents he owned and that they hoped might be bequeathed to the Library someday. But he had found nothing.

It was dusk by the time he emerged, and the late spring air was nippy, so he paused to raise his collar against the chill. Absently, he watched the stream of people lap against the library steps: businessmen hurrying home from the ’Change, women with market baskets on their arms, laboring men looking forward to their dinners.

Perhaps it was the anonymous wash of the faces in the crowd, but he felt more at peace than he had in some time. The insistent, guiding voice that sounded in his head more and more was quiet this day, and although at first he felt lost and confused without it, he did feel the silence was refreshing.

Then he spotted the face, grave beneath its bonnet. He knew her, did he not? But from where?

He watched her all the way to the end of the block, and when she crossed the street he trotted down the steps and followed her, keeping far enough back so that she wouldn’t suspect she was being followed. It had rained earlier in the day, and she had to slow down to avoid the heaps of mud and manure that had been swept up in piles on the street, waiting for the nightsoil-man to take them away.

It was getting darker, and she turned her face to look at the sky, showing him her profile again, and he had it. Janet, Margaret’s maid, who he last remembered holding his dead son, the tears crawling down her face.

He paused, confused. What was Janet doing here? Wasn’t she at Bryani House, with the rest of the servants? With Simpson, and Meadows?

No—there were no servants. He had dismissed them all.

He couldn’t remember why.

The streets were getting narrower now, the broad sidewalks giving way to cobblestones, and there were fewer people now. Fog was falling across the city, and somewhere in the distance there was the dim yellow glow of gaslight. Janet’s wide skirts swished back and forth, threatening to vanish in the fog, and he had to quicken his steps so as not to lose her.

He put his hand in his pocket, rolling the warm metal of the medallion there between his fingers.

Margaret’s maid. Surely she had loved Margaret. Surely she belonged back in Margaret’s house.

She glanced back and saw him walking toward her, and he stopped in his tracks. She frowned, not recognizing him, and hurried on, lifting her skirts a trifle so she could go faster across the rough sidewalk.

She’s seen you now, he thought—or had the voice returned? In a minute she’ll remember you and then all hell will break loose.

His chambers were not far from here. It would be a simple matter to take her there. Perhaps she’d understand what he was trying to do.

Eventually they’d all understand what he was trying to do.

She’d quickened her pace now, the metal taps of her shoes clacking against the cobbles.

Robarts hurried after.

It was cold and damp enough that Davy McPhee was thinking about going home, although the foyer of a doss-house sounded more comfortable than the crowded, flea-hopping tenement room he shared sometimes with an assortment of siblings, an overworked mother, and an occasional stepfather who was just as likely to be in an ugly drunk than not.

The doss-house would be warmer, and he could earn his supper by cleaning shoes, but at home he could lie down instead of leaning against a wall to sleep, and his hip was hurting worse than ever. The pain in his bones started a year ago, and got worse every month, and now he was beginning to notice that his leg was twisting inwards when he tried to run.

From his vantage point in a boarded-up doorway he glanced up as a woman hurried by. Then a man hurried after, and Davy forgot the pain in his hip.

The Gentleman will catch you

And take you to his door …

It was him; it had to be. If he got a good look at his face, and told that ’tec, he’d eat easy for a month.

Dragging his leg only a little behind him, he slipped into the fog easily as a cat and followed.

Artemis Donovan was passing by the noble pillars of the British Library when it hit him: the scarlet trace of danger, like a thread of blood in the water. He paused, to the annoyance of the woman burdened with packages behind him who had to dodge around to avoid crashing into him. He muttered a distracted apology and moved aside.

The people and buildings around him faded and grayed away, and he half-closed his eyes and sniffed the air as a bloodhound might.

He had been here, not ten minutes before. The Gentleman. Artemis could feel him like a fish feels a warmer current in the sea.

More: The Gentleman was hunting. He could sense a smaller, slighter current—the memory the street held of a woman passing; a woman the Gentleman, for whatever reason, desired.

A woman who would disappear if Artemis did nothing.

Which way? His instincts told him, and he followed blindly, barely registering the pedestrians who flooded the sidewalks. At a corner he paused; which direction had they taken? Had a street-sweeper obliterated whatever mysterious trace he seemed able to follow?

No—there. He knew the place the Gentleman’s foot had trod as sure as if he’d left a scarlet print. There, and there. He followed the trail across the dirty street and up the cobblestones and so down, down the narrows and the alleys, where the cobbles were cracked and slippery.

She was all but running now and the street was empty of all other people, although the fog was rolling in now in great misty coils. Robarts was able to match her pace with his longer stride, and now the anticipation, the predatory joy that sometimes he suspected came from elsewhere was rising to the surface.

Janet turned a pale face backward and lost her balance, stumbling and falling heavily on one knee and stifling an inarticulate cry as her ankle twisted. She struggled to her feet and limped onward, glancing back now and then to watch his approach.

Poor Janet. He could take care of that ankle. He could take care of everything. He could fix her if she was broken—and she must be broken; they all were broken.

By now the street was one gray tunnel of mist. Janet staggered to the side of a building, supporting herself against a grimy brick wall.

“You back away, now,” she said, turning on him, her face white and sweating. “You leave me alone—I’ve got a knife, I have, and I know how to use it.”

He almost called out her name—Janet!—but the voice intervened, choking him off sure as a noose.

No—don’t give them your voice. Give nothing of yourself.

But surely she should know him! He took the medallion out of his pocket and held it out to her—surely if she recognized Margaret’s charm she’d know him, and know he meant no harm, and come along quietly.

As he moved toward her she braced herself against the slimy wall and screamed.

Davy saw the flick of the man’s—the Gentleman’s—greatcoat in the fog, and followed it like a beacon; the worn soles of his boots made no sound on the sidewalk. It must be him, and Davy’d be the one to catch him, and what would his ma say then, and his stepda who called him a useless limping brat? He grinned and trotted on.

This fog was a queer one, though, thick and yellow-tinged, like those summer vapors that sometimes smothered the life clear out of folk. And coils of it, solid as the burly arms of the dock-men, seemed to be reaching out over and around him, reaching for the top-hatted figure in from of him.

He paused, irresolute, and then he heard the woman scream—a thin, lost sound somewhere in the murk.

Cursing himself for a fool, he darted toward the sound.

It was getting dark, and an insidious yellowish vapor was rising from the cobbles, pouring over his ankles like ditchwater. At first Artemis barely noticed, intent upon his prey and the tenuous, invisible thread that connected them. Higher and higher the fog lapped, until he faltered, confused.

He thought he knew the streets of London blind, fog or no, but at this moment he didn’t have the first idea where he was.

More—he wasn’t sure where up and down were, either. Instinctively he raised his hands and moved forward slowly until his hands touched a damp, mossy surface: the wall of a building that bordered this lane. He exhaled in relief and breathed slowly until he was able to get his bearings. That was up; this was down.

On the other side of the street, the sharp tap of booted feet passed and faded the direction he had come. He wondered how anyone was able to trot so fast in this heavy fog.

Cautiously he moved forward, keeping his shoulder to the wall. Light flared in the fog ahead of him, leaving an elevated glow more than head-high. After a pause, another disk of light appeared closer to him, trembled, then burned steadily.

The lamplighter, he thought as another light was born, almost across the street from him this time. His realization was borne out by the small amber lights that accompanied the man, one hip-height, one suspended above him as he carried the tool of his trade high.

How could the man go about his work in this murk? He almost hallooed out to him, but something, some unreasonable fear, some desire not to be noticed kept him quiet.

A fourth light some feet down from the third, and then farther away, a fifth. The lamplighter was moving away from him, leaving him alone in the fog.

Another set of feet tapped by, staccato and quick—a child, nearly running. The sound of breathing, a quick panting, magnified in Artemis’ ear, then was gone. Everything was distorted here.

He knew the Gentleman was somewhere in front of him. Cursing softly to himself, he launched himself into the solid mist, away from the shelter of the wall, like a man swimming for land he can’t see but knows must be there.

Artemis stopped, blind and displaced in the murk. His quarry was still ahead of him.

But there was something else. Something that knew he was here, something that saw him, despite the fact that he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. Something that wanted him. Something that hated him.

It sought him in the fog, as he sought the Gentleman. Artemis froze, trying not to make a sound, trying to stifle even his breathing.

Jaelle’s Breed.

It sounded in his ear, a low growl like a starving dog over a bone—a voice at once hungry and hateful. There was nothing human about it.

It was questing for him, seeking him out, seeking to destroy him. Artemis broke into a clammy sweat.

Something reached out for him, grasped the air and missed. Instinct told Artemis to stand very, very still, and he obeyed.

Again that inarticulate growl, a low rich sound that made his hackles rise, and the sensation of something pawing though the air toward him.

And then, somewhere ahead of him, a choked cry, and the trill of something metallic hitting the cobbles, and the malevolent presence was gone.

Janet shrank away from Robarts’ outstretched hand and screamed again, weakly. Annoyance sparked in him.

Get rid of her, the voice commanded.

He had no chloroform. No matter. He could choke her into silence easily enough.

He reached out for her and she tried to scurry aside, but her ankle gave way and she staggered, clinging to the wall in desperation.

The fog whirled around him, thick and insistent as water, reaching out to him, embracing him. Deep inside he felt the same kind of possessing coldness he’d felt when the voice helped him cast the women in their trance, the same sense of being elsewhere and here at the same time.

But now the pull of elsewhere was getting stronger, and he couldn’t fight it. He was drowning in the vapor, the miasma filling him, his own body betraying him as he breathed it inside.

“Stop!”

Startled, he turned. A small figure emerged from the fog, running awkwardly: a child with a set, white face. It stopped at the sight of him, staring up in horror.

The Gentleman looked at Davy, his face pale and haggard, and later the boy remembered the look of sadness in his eyes. But now he only saw that the vapor was twisting around him, coiling around him like a snake, and tendrils of it, horribly alive-looking, were reaching into him, penetrating his flesh. He was growing insubstantial, like fog himself.

Davy watched as the coils of fog tore the man apart. For an instant, the boy could see an eye beseeching him with a mute appeal. It evaporated, and there was nothing left.

Dimly he heard the long shrill tinkle of some sort of coin as it bounced against the cobbles. Behind the spot where the man had stood he saw a woman crouched against the bricks, hands fisted and shaking like a leaf. She looked at Davy and started to cry.

“There, missus,” he said, automatically. “There’s no need for bawling now, the Gentleman’s gone.”

She bit her lip and tried to walk, hissing at the pain.

“Lean on me,” he said, moving to her side. Maybe there’d be a hot meal for him if he got her home safe.

Neither of them noticed the medallion that had come to rest, shining dully in the muted lamplight, not half a span from Janet’s boot.

The fog was dissipating, dissolving into transparent strands. Artemis breathed the filthy air of the city deeply; it had never been so sweet.

Now the air was clear, and Artemis found he was in a small lane. After a few seconds he recognized it—that way to a main thoroughfare bordered by greengrocers and bakeshops, this way to a neat row of the newer middle-class terrace houses that, cheek-by-jowl and identical, were springing up across the city. Besides him, the lane was empty.

Jaelle’s Breed? What could it mean? He’d never heard such a name before.

Behind him a trail of lit gas lamps offered to lead him home. Feeling foolish, he looked around the abandoned lane one more time before turning about.

It must have been his imagination, brought on by a rogue localized fog. Artemis usually wasn’t affected by such phantasms, despite the rumors in the Department that he had more than a touch of the Fae.

Two women lay in Robart’s examining room, frozen save for the slow breathing that raised their breasts almost imperceptibly. The room was lit only by the yellow flicker of the gas lamp that burned in the corner. As before, a thin thread of mist coiled over their faces, moving in time with their breathing.

Now the mist thickened over their faces; each time they exhaled more came forth. It started to seep from their nostrils, from the corners of their eyes; their bodies were steaming like smoldering logs.

Still the mist grew thicker and thicker, until it filled the room. The gas flame guttered low in its socket, ruddy in its last extremity. The room was opaque and impenetrable.

Then, little by little, the mist thinned, and the flame, heartened, sprang up again. Like a tide the vapor receded, through no visible egress, fading away to nothing.

The strong yellow flame illuminated the room. The women were gone, and the tables they lay on. The counters where Robarts’ tools and instruments had sat were empty as well.

Ignorant of this, the gas flame proudly presided over nothing.

Since the dismissal of the servants, the gardens of Bryani House had overgrown and the shrubs tangled in upon themselves until they made a wild, labyrinthine barrier around the dwelling. In the dusk, the windows were dark and the glass reflected back the red light of the setting sun, seeming to stare longingly in the direction of the sea.

Fogs were common this season, but the mist that boiled from the damp ground was unnatural in its thickness, its gray coils tangible in the gloom. It engulfed the house and grounds, rising like a relentless tide, foot by foot up the bricks until it flooded the chimneys. Hungrily it descended down the stacks and quested throughout the house, filling its crannies and secret places.

If someone had been watching they would have seen the house flicker and vanish and leave an empty swirl in the fog.

After a moment they would have seen it coalesce out of the mist again.

It was a week at least before a wayfarer went by: a man from St. Agnes Town in search of a straying lamb. On the grounds he found it. The animal had panicked and darted into the thick, untended undergrowth and the dead branches and thorns had trapped it.

Sighing at the stupidity of sheep in general, he kneeled to the work of releasing it, glancing up at the bulk of the house as he did so.

It reared up against the sky as it always had done: the noblest house in these parts, and yet now there was something incomplete about it, as if the walls were eaten away and would tumble down at a touch. Although its bulk of bricks and timber was still whole it seemed an empty shell, insubstantial as the fog, eaten away from the inside and desiccated as a dried crab’s shell caught above the water line, and as hollow.

But that was an absurd notion, of course, and the man from St. Agnes worked the lamb loose and bore it away in his arms, trying to ignore the sensation that someone in the house was watching him with no friendly eye, that an invisible presence passed him on the overgrown path and touched his arm with cold, foggy fingers.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

London, 1867

Miss Sophia Huxley had a new dress for visits; it was a pretty pink with many ruffles and she would have liked it if it had not been so very itchy, especially about the waist. As her mother paused, waiting for the street to clear, she dug surreptitiously at the band across her back.

Something pressed into her slipper uncomfortably and she moved her foot, feeling something hard and round grate on the cobbles underneath. She glanced down and flicked the offending object with her toe.

It was round, and shone dully in the paltry morning sun. Was it a coin? It looked about the size of a shilling.

Her waistband dug into her skin unpleasantly as she bent to retrieve the disk, and her mother tugged at her other arm.

“What are you thinking, Sophie? That sidewalk is filthy.”

Determined, Sophie made herself stoop lower and caught up the object between two fingers.

It wasn’t a coin, or perhaps it was a foreign one. On one side was a blob that, when she looked closer, revealed itself to be a heart with a crown of flame. On the other side was the figure of a woman, robed like the illustrations in her storybooks, with a strange creature that looked like a snake twined around her legs.

“Sophia Huxley, what are you doing? Now you’ve ruined your glove.”

She had: a circlet of greasy dirt had transferred itself onto the palm of her white glove, new this past week. She glanced guiltily up at her mother.

“I’ll clean it, Mama. But look at this!”

Her mother bent to consider the trinket in Sophie’s hand.

“It’s a saint’s medal, child. A bit of papist trash.”

“You mean Catholics?” To Sophie, raised a socially respectable Anglican child, Catholic seemed as exotic as Persian or Hottentot. She looked closer. While the woman’s face didn’t have much detail, she could determine that there was some sort of crest, maybe of feathers, on the snake-thing’s head.

“Now come along, child, and drop that filthy thing. We’re late to your aunt’s, and I shall never hear the end of it.”

But Sophie tucked the little disk into her pocket, wiping off the last of the grime with careless abandon for her glove.

Aunt Marabelle did notice the dirty glove, and made several helpful suggestions to Sophia’s mother about the proper grooming of little girls. To her credit, Mrs. Huxley smiled though clenched teeth, did not respond the way she would have wished, and wasn’t as snappish with Sophia on the way home as she might have been.

Dr. Huxley was reading his newspaper beside the fire, as was his custom in the evenings.

“Don’t bother your father, dear,” said Mrs. Huxley in a patient tone as Sophia ran to him, crumpling his paper before he could lift it out of the way. Smiling, Sophia’s father pulled her into his lap, dropping the wrinkled newsprint on the side table.

“And how was Aunt Marabelle?” he asked, in a tone that implied he was rather glad not to be part of the visit.

“We had lemonade, and no biscuits, and I’ve ruined my gloves,” declared Sophia.

“You needn’t make that a point of pride,” commented Mrs. Huxley, examining a list Cook had left for her with a slight frown. “Aunt Marabelle was less than impressed.” Although certainly, she thought to herself, terms like hellion and tomboy were exaggerations when applied to Sophia. The girl had spirit; that was all.

Sophie was fumbling in the pocket of her jacket. “Look what I found, Father,” she said. “Mummy says it’s a saint’s medal.”

Dr. Huxley examined the disk with interest. “It certainly is.”

He pushed his glasses up and rubbed the worn surface between his thumb and forefinger.

“Looks like Saint Margaret,” he said. “See the dragon at her feet?”

“Margaret! Like my middle name!” Sophie squinted at the crude rendition. “Did she have a dragon as a pet?”

“Oh no. A dragon ate her, if I recall correctly. A dragon sent by the devil himself. It didn’t do him much good, because she burst from the dragon’s side, killing the poor beast.”

“Goodness!” said Mrs. Huxley, busy at her dinner planning.

“But she was martyred none the less, like the rest of the saints,” he continued. “She was one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and if I recall correctly she’s the saint who looks after women in childbirth.”

“I’ll keep it for good luck,” declared Sophie. “Since it is my name, after all.”

“Very good. Now run off and have your supper like a good girl, and let me finish my paper,” he said, reaching for where it lay in its sad crumpled state on the table.

Sophie made sure to retrieve her medal before she left, and tucked it into her treasure box on her bureau, which contained an amber cross on a thin gold chain—a christening gift from her Aunt Jane—and a tiny silver ring her mother had given her and which she rarely wore for fear of losing.

Riverbend

Weldon stood on the bank of the river, watching the water crest up the boulders that protruded midcourse. Here the current was swift and dangerous, and the unwary swimmer likely to be pulled under despite their efforts. The sun was low in the sky and the ripples atop the water ran amber.

He was still holding his leather case. Now he crouched on the long, bladelike grass and opened it. Carefully he took out the cloth bundle in which his scalpels were wrapped and laid it reverently on the ground.

The needles were next, in their black enameled case, and three different sizes of scissors, the larger two with wicked, serrated cutting surfaces. The spreader, and two bone saws—one long and delicate, the other heavy with a wide, flat blade.

Then several lengths of leather, stained with sweat and something darker. These he caressed as he laid them on the grass.

The black bag gaped open. He found four double-fist sized, water-smooth chunks of granite, and placed them inside, then strapped the bag shut again.

With an effort, he heaved the bag and two of the leather strips to the waterside. He stripped, carefully laying each article of clothing neatly on a boulder, folded lengthwise. Topcoat. Vest. Collar, with its stud beside it. Shirt. The shoes side by side at the base of the boulder, with socks and garters tucked inside. Trousers.

He looped the leather strips through the handle and straps of the medical bag with its burden of stones, and tied it around his waist. The restraints cut into his flesh a little. Holding the bag, he stepped into the water and waded knee-deep, his skin goose-pimpled at the chill.

There were sharp little rocks in the river bottom, and he wished he’d left his socks on.

Here the submerged lip of the bank dropped away into deep water. He looked down into the depths of the river a long time, starting to shiver as the cold penetrated, watching the geometric patterns the fading light made in the current until the advancing dusk made it too dark to see.

His legs were numb. Without allowing himself to think about it, he stepped off the underwater lip and plunged into the heart of the river. The water closed over his head as the weight of the bag pulled him to the bottom.

After a minute his body cried out for air, and he couldn’t stop his arms and legs from thrashing, trying to reach the surface. He rose slightly, but the weight bore him back down. Of their own volition, his fingers fumbled for the knots in the leather, but he had known that would happen and had knotted it tight at the small of his back.

The dispassionate part of his mind noted his vision going velvet black with hard white spots of light, the involuntary, weakening, thrashing of his limbs, the ache in his chest as his lungs filled with the cold water. For a brief moment he was suspended in pain, and fought against the panic of his animal mind.

Then warmth and lassitude filled his body, and he relaxed, feeling the current as a caress, and the blackness as welcome sleep.

Weldon woke with a start. At first he didn’t understand where he was.

But the firm softness of the bed was familiar, as was the morning light through the sheer curtains. He was on the bed in his dressing room, lying on the coverlet, fully dressed save for being barefoot, and completely dry.

He found his shoes, socks still neatly tucked within, beside the bed. On the bedside table was his medical kit, dry as well.

He opened it. All his gear was packed inside, as handily as if he’d done it himself. The leather straps he’d used to bind the bag to his body were neatly folded, and he pulled one out.

In the center it felt just a little damp.

He replaced it and pulled on his shoes.

Beatrice’s room was beside his own. He paused outside her door and laid his hand upon it. The door felt hot to the touch, as if the room behind it were still burning.

Something heavy, sounding lopsided, dragged itself around inside.

With a shudder he passed on, toward the guest wing. The stranger was sitting at the edge of the bed, looking at the greenery outside the window.

Weldon had half-expected Fanny to be standing vigil at the bedside, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Weldon cleared his throat. The man on the bed slowly turned to look at him. His dark eyes made him look even more like a gypsy. He rose, carefully, as if still unsure of his legs. At some point someone—the invisible hands, doubtless—had dressed him in a nightshirt that Weldon recognized, with a twinge of annoyance, as one of his own.

The man gestured at his abdomen, where he had been slit open and repaired.

“Your work?” he said. His accent was strange, but not uncouth.

Weldon inclined his head slightly. “I found you in the fog,” he said. “You seemed to have been … injured.”

The man nodded. “Yes.” He smiled ruefully. “It was a woman, naturally,” he continued.

“Naturally,” Weldon returned.

“I thank you for your aid and skill …”

“Weldon. My name is Weldon, and this is my house.”

“… and your hospitality, Doctor Weldon.”

He sat back on the bed, as if speech exhausted him.

“There was a little girl here when I woke …” He looked around, frowning.

“Fanny. My daughter,” said Weldon, sourly.

The man didn’t seem to hear him. “A strange look about her.”

Weldon didn’t want to talk about Fanny. “And your name, sir? And your business on my property?”

The man looked at him a long moment, his dark eyes narrowing. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Can it be?” he murmured. “Jaelle’s Breed, even here?”

Weldon felt a dull, cold shock in his belly. Long ago the gypsies Nicolae and Tariel had called him that, when they thought he didn’t hear.

What did it mean, Jaelle’s Breed?

The man was still looking at him speculatively, almost as a predator regards its prey.

“I wonder,” he said, as if Weldon wasn’t there. “I wonder if they’d allow me to kill you?”

Weldon tottered between anger and amusement, and the latter won out. “Gracious, man,” he chuckled. “I’d like to see you try.” He licked his lips. In his weakened state the dark man would be no match for the powerful Weldon. He would like to see him try.

The man shut his eyes. “I have no name,” he said finally. “It was taken away from me, and I must find another. As to the other—surely you know by now that the Mists live—if they live—by their own law. I became a creature of the Mists, and subject to their will. Whatever world this is, is where they choose to take me.”

He opened his eyes. “But I’m stronger than they are. I remade myself. I can force myself past the barriers.”

He looked down and wrapped his arms around himself. “I am complete again.”

The Mists live by their own law. Weldon felt a prickle up his spine. If that was true—and it seemed to be true …

Then he was trapped in Riverbend forever.

London, 1867

Her mother was tired from visiting and had an egg sent up to her room, and her father was called out to see a patient, so Sophie was allowed to sit at the big oak table in the kitchen and eat her bread-and-milk under the watchful eye of Mrs. Blanchard while Cook did the week’s baking. Mrs. Blanchard had Cook fry her up a bit of meat as well, for she had strong opinions about building up little girls’ blood that would have shocked Sophie’s aunts exceedingly.

Before Sophie had finished, Maggie, who was something between a parlormaid and Sophie’s nursemaid, came looking for Mrs. Blanchard.

“It’s the Greenes’ girl,” she told her, with a quick glance at Sophie that told her the situation was Not Quite Proper for a little girl to hear. “They say her time’s come, and it’s her first.”

The housekeeper sighed. “Bring me my basket then, that’s a good girl,” she said. “You’ll find it on the floor by the armchair in my bedroom. Mind you bring it quick, and don’t go poking around my things.”

Sophie finished off the last few spoonfuls. “May I come, Mrs. Blanchard?” she said, slipping off the chair and gathering the plate and spoon to wash.

“You need to stay here in case your mother needs you, Miss Sophia,” said Mrs. Blanchard, taking the dishes from her into the scullery.

“She’s got Maggie. Please, Mrs. Blanchard?”

“Very well, if you’re quiet and stay out of my way.”

She took the basket Maggie brought her. “Go up and fetch your coat and hat, then, child, for the night chills have started.”

As Sophie scampered out Maggie watched her, hand on her hips. “You’ll lose your place one of these days, if you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am. Taking that child to see God-knows-what.”

“Mind yourself, girl,” replied Mrs. Blanchard, wrapping herself up in a woolen scarf that looked too knobby to be comfortable. “She needs something to keep her occupied now her brother’s gone off to that University, until they get her a proper governess. Are you ready, then?” This to the child, who had scampered back into the kitchen, suitably attired although gloveless.

“Yes, Mrs. Blanchard,” she replied. “May I take your basket?”

“You might as well,” returned the housekeeper, and they ventured out—an odd sight, the little girl bustling behind the slow-moving woman, bearing an oversized basket, but one the neighborhood was used to and took little note of.

There was a chill in the air, and Sophie had forgotten her gloves, so she tucked her free hand into her coat pocket. Her numb fingers encountered something round and hard, and she absently caressed the rough texture of its surface.

Then she realized and pulled it out, still hurrying behind Mrs. Blanchard, squinting at the disk in the yellow lamplight. It was the medallion of St. Margaret.

She frowned. Surely she had put it away?

She must have picked it up again without noticing. Shrugging, she tucked the trinket away and hurried behind the housekeeper, the basket heavy in the crook of her arm.

Artemis sat at his accustomed table at the Cat and Whiskers, scanning the Evening Standard with a keen eye. Seeing little that interested him, he laid it aside and turned to the Daily Telegraph.

No reports of missing women between the columns of blurry typeface about housebreaking in Seven Dials and pickpockets in Hyde Park.

More than that, there was an abiding feeling that had pervaded him since the night he was lost in the fog. Something he hadn’t known was there was lifted away revealing an awareness of a figure bent over a mutilated girl in a Whitechapel alley—gone.

The Gentleman was gone.

Riverbend

Fanny was trying to lose herself in the Mists again, but the ground remained maddeningly firm beneath her shoes and the fog would not enclose her. So she walked instead, away from the river this time, out across the fields and meadows where the fog should rise and either block her or allow her access to that other Riverbend, burnt and desolate but somehow more real than this.

But the air remained clear and she found herself walking across rolling fields she’d never seen before, velveted with a short, rough grass and starred everywhere with tiny white flowers. The ground beneath the grass was rocky and hard at the tops of the hillocks she crossed; softer and spongy in the little depressions between.

She turned and looked behind her. Far away there was a green haze where the woods about Riverbend grew, and a little white square where the plantation house stood. She could see the river. The air was absolutely clear.

There was a salty smell in the air, sharp and bracing. Fanny could almost taste it in the back of her throat: like brine, but not so sour. A cool breeze, freshening, stirred her hair.

A tan-gray smudge on the horizon grew bigger, and she looked down to see that she was walking along an old track, almost vanished in the rough grass. Ancient ruts from wagon wheels dipped on each side in the spongy areas, and here and there in the hard-packed earth a row of worn bricks surfaced.

The smudge on the horizon was resolving itself into a structure: a house all twined about with vines. The path was leading her to it.

A frantic whirr almost under her feet startled her, and she jumped to the other side of the track. A quail, plump and gray and black, scurried from a thicket of long grass beside the path, dashing away across the plain, followed by four miniature versions of itself. At a distance, a long warbling cry—unfamiliar birdsong—sounded as dark-winged silhouettes rose from their nests on the ground. The only trees in sight were those surrounding the house.

The salty breeze was teasing goose pimples from her arms, but she didn’t mind. Fanny had never felt so alone.

It felt good. She wondered how long the Mists would allow her to stay.

The house, big enough to be called a manor, reared high before her, three stories of rumpled glass staring past her to the horizon and what lay beyond. The vines that were roped across the old brick walls had thick, woody stems, as if they’d been there for a hundred years, and their leaves were dark green, almost black. In contrast the small flowers that peeked from the leaves were white, with a pale pink blush at the center.

She studied the imposing oak door, shut tight against the breeze, and knew it in her bones: the house was waiting, and not for her. There was a tension in it, like a dog that hears the voice of its master but cannot see him yet.

Fanny found herself holding her breath, waiting with the house.

A wrinkle, quickly smoothed, across the sky, and the windows rippled as if they were briefly made of water. The house trembled and stood still, and Fanny knew that whatever it had been waiting for had arrived.

“It’s here.”

She didn’t start, but a cold sweat broke across her at the sound of that voice behind her. Cautiously she turned her head.

The dark man from the Mists. He stood almost beside her, but had eyes only for the house.

He wore a suit she recognized as her father’s. It was a little baggy on him, but suited him somehow—it would be impossible for him to be clownish. Her father himself was standing a few yards off. He looked confounded and angry.

“What is here? What do you see?” he called to the dark man, frustration and hope battling in his voice. He peered ahead under heavy brows, as if he couldn’t see the sparkling clear day, as if he was enmeshed in …

Fog.

As if he was trying to see through the Mists.

Fanny realized he couldn’t see the house right in front of them; he couldn’t see her. He took a tentative step forward, hesitated, then called again.

“Where are you? Dammit, sir!”

The dark man looked down at Fanny and smiled. She looked back at him, expressionless. The peace of the day was gone.

The house was his object, though, and he followed the primitive path to the bottom of the steps that led to that solid door, the door that looked as if it would never open again, so sealed was that structure unto itself.

With a creak, the door opened. Fanny couldn’t help a little startled jump.

A man stood in the doorway—but he couldn’t have been inside a few minutes before. She knew the house had been empty, as alone as she was.

He was above middle height, and thin, and worn-looking. Not so tall as the dark man, but a little broader in the shoulders.

He looked stooped now, as if he hadn’t slept in some time. His clothing was a little strange, with enough of the familiar to make it disconcerting—the tie was not quite right, the jacket not quite right, the trousers …

He looked down at the dark man and cocked his head, puzzled.

“I don’t remember,” he said in a queer accent, different than the ones she was used to but not sharp like a Yankee’s. He paused, as if speaking startled him.

“I don’t like this,” called her father from behind them. The man in the doorway didn’t seem to hear.

“Meadows,” he continued. “And … and Janet. Where are the servants?” He glanced around as if an assortment of maids and footmen should be waiting on the porch. “Shouldn’t Janet be here? I sent her home from London.”

The dark man had been studying the other; now he drew himself up at attention.

“No sir,” he said. “I am your only servant, sir. The others have gone.”

He walked up the steps, slowly, as if the man might startle and retreat inside. But the man only watched him, seeming hypnotized.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do recognize your voice.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And … and you will forgive me? I’m not myself, as you know. But I can’t seem to recall … what is your name?”

There was the merest pause while the dark man hesitated.

“Trueblood,” he said at last. His voice was polite but firm. “My name is Trueblood, Doctor Robarts.”

“Of course.” The other man—Robarts—looked as if he was going to emerge completely from the doorway.

“Your work, sir,” said Trueblood. “It’s time you got back to it.”

“Ah,” said Robarts. “But I was just going to take a little walk, to clear my mind. A turn around Piccadilly, I thought.”

“But Piccadilly Square’s in … London,” returned Trueblood, sounding out the name as if it was new to him. “And you’ve had your walk, sir, and now it’s time to return to work.”

“Is it?” Robarts whispered. “Well, if I must.”

He turned back inside. “Come then, Trueblood,” he said, sounding brisker and not quite so old. “Come inside and help.”

Trueblood smiled. “Yes, sir.”

Without a backwards glance he entered the house and shut the door firmly behind him.

The windows were blank spans of glass now, blind. It was just a house sitting in a meadow, nothing alive about it, no longer waiting.

Alistair Weldon was still peering around him, lost in a fog Fanny couldn’t see. She considered leaving him alone and letting him find his own way out.

But something stopped her, a queer feeling in the pit of her stomach that after a few seconds she recognized as pity. He reminded her of a turtle turned over in the sun.

He might leave the turtle; she wouldn’t.

“Here, father.”

He looked round at her approach, blinking.

“Fanny? Is that you?”

There was a trace of fear in the gruff voice; she wondered who else he thought it could be.

“Fanny. How can you find your way about in this muck?”

“Come, Father. I’ll show you the way home.”

She walked past him and found the path, walking slowly that he might follow. After a suspicious glance backward, he did.

“That man, that gypsy—he walked out of the house, looking for something. The fog didn’t seem to bother him. I thought he was …”

The tone of forlorn hope struck her and she hesitated on the path.

“He went into the house,” she said. “The manor house, just behind us. Can you see it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, child,” he snapped, abruptly.

Fanny opened her mouth, closed it. With a shrug, she turned and walked along the rutted path.

Stumbling a little in the thick fog, Weldon followed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

St. Agnes, Cornwall, 1855

“Why won’t you?” Dirk Penhallow taunted. Artemis turned red and bit his lip.

Dirk wouldn’t relent. “Are you afraid? Fraidy-cat?”

“No,” Artemis retorted. “I just think it’s wrong, that’s all. Don’t want to rob my mam, an’ all.”

Dirk snorted. “It’s not your mam’s knife, not really. And I’ve a right to see it; the Penhallows had it first.”

“No one had it first,” corrected Artemis. “Save the Lady that came from the moor.”

Dirk struck him lightly on the shoulder. “Yeah, I’ve heard all that, same as you. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

Artemis bit his lip again, looking at the ground and thinking furiously. The truth was, he was curious. Dirk had the right of it there.

“All right,” he said finally. “But we’re only to look, and leave right after, understood?”

Dirk nodded, his face eager.

Artemis knew his mam wouldn’t like him playing with his cousin Dirk, although for family’s sake she wouldn’t forbid it outright.

“He’s a darkling one,” she had said once over the night’s washing-up. “Sight or Curse is the gift of the Lady.”

He’d only heard the term—darkling—once or twice, and wasn’t quite sure what it meant—although he did know it was true what some said of his cousin—that the boy had the gift of cursing, and sometimes he wished bad things on people that later came true.

Today Artemis’ mother was taking a basket to the Tregards’, where grippe had taken down half the family and there was no one well enough to cook, although the little ones that weren’t stricken were parceled out betwixt the neighbors. With his father at the tin the house was empty, with no one to stop the two boys from creeping into Artemis’ parents’ room and investigating the bottom-most drawer of the great oak dresser.

Artemis had no brothers or sisters to interfere, which was unusual in their small Cornish village. “It’s why you have the Sight so strong,” said his mother, philosophically. “You’ve no sisters of your own to thin it out betwixt and between you.”

They approached the cottage like housebreakers, although the door was unlocked and they knew full well the house was empty; still, it added to the adventure to creep up to the door, to assign one to lookout duty, to listen for footsteps. Once in, it was easy enough to tiptoe across the kitchen floor, and his mother’s well-swept sitting room.

But outside his parents’ bedroom Artemis hesitated, despite Dirk’s gestures. His parents’ bedroom was a mysterious place, their private sanctuary, and he never went in except under particular circumstances—to help his mam drag out the carpet for beating, perhaps, or to bring his father a hot stone when he was poorly.

“Fraidy-cat,” Dirk mouthed, and with a defiant shrug Artemis pushed open the door. The room was small and neat, although given grandiose proportions in Artemis’ imagination. The white coverlet was folded tidily across the foot of the brass bed and dust motes winked golden in the beam of light that streamed between the parted curtains.

It was a peaceful scene, and Artemis would remember it for a long time after that day.

The oak dresser stood altarlike on the other side of the room, and they ventured across the polished wooden floor, stopping in panic and bursting into laughter when a board squeaked. They kneeled at the foot of the dresser, and wrestled the heavy drawer open between them.

Here was the treasured Irish linen, hand-embroidered and never brought out in Artemis’ memory, and a few pieces of silver carefully wrapped and stowed away. Artemis reached to the back of the drawer and groped around, coming out finally with a bulky object wrapped round and round again in a long swaddle of linen.

It gave him a queer feeling to handle the bundle, and he passed it over to Dirk, who took it eagerly.

“Good-o, Artie,” he whispered, untucking the corner of the swaddling and unrolling it. It seemed an absurd length to wrap such a small object in—the heirloom silver had not half so much. The linen piled up on the floor between them, provoking more hilarity, until the knife was exposed in Dirk’s hands.

“ ’Strewth, Artie,” he said, lifting it up to the light. “Isn’t that a pretty thing, then?”

It was a long thin blade, deadly sharp, with an elaborately patterned handle made to nestle in the palm of the hand. Mastering his unaccountable distaste for the object, Artemis leaned over and looked at it.

Was it his imagination, or were there dark stains crusted at the base, where the blade was sunk in the grip?

The handle was covered in a repeating circular pattern. When he peered at it, he saw the swirls looked like skulls, grinning at him obscenely. He blinked and looked again, and now they were row upon row of sinuous dancers, an entire harem of beautiful girls, smiling invitingly. When he tried to look closer they dissolved again into meaningless spirals.

Artemis felt nauseous.

Dirk ran his finger over the patterns appreciatively.

“That’s workmanship,” he breathed. “They knew their work, they did, back from where the Lady came from.”

“It’s just a story,” said Artemis, gruffly. “No one knows if it’s true.”

The blade, he saw, was as shiny as if it had just been polished and there was a faint design on the flat of it, hard to see unless you saw it move in the light: a double ribbon twisted together.

“ ’Course it’s true,” said Dirk. “Leastways, your mam believes it, and my granddam too. And it seems like a thing from another world, don’t it? Here,” he held his hand out to Artemis, the blade lying flat on it. “Hold it awhile. It feels warm, almost. Almost alive.”

Reluctantly Artemis reached out, and then paused. The sick feeling in his belly worsened.

“Don’t be a damned jessie, Artie,” said Dirk exasperated, seizing his hand and pressing it down against his so that the knife was sandwiched between them.

Something jolted through Artemis’ bones: a jolt as strong as if he’d dropped out of a tree and knocked the breath from his body. He wanted to pull away from Dirk’s grip but was immobilized.

An image shot through his vision: a dark place with a bright bloody flame burning in the center, a flame with a blue core at its crimson center. Something leaned over it, a huge, burly creature, corded with muscle and slicked with sweat, and thrust a length of metal, clasped in an enormous pair of iron pinchers, into the flame.

Once the metal glowed red-hot it was withdrawn and Artemis heard the clank of a hammer in the darkness, and the hiss of tortured water.

The muscular figure loomed again, and again thrust the blade-form into the fire, and now it seemed him that there were faces in the flames—not the friendly images one sees in the hearth fire of an evening, but figures with their mouths stretched open in silent, tormented screams; figures trapped and burning forever in the service of that monstrous blacksmith.

Then the image shifted and changed like meltwater, and now he saw a woman facing him, cloaked in a dark gray robe laced with silver. Her hair was silver too, under her hood, and her skin was so white it seemed almost blue. But her eyes were black, with no pupils to be seen. She held the knife in her palm, just as Dirk had done, holding it out as if it was a gift, and she grinned at him; her lips were blue and chilly and her teeth were separated and sharp, as if they’d been filed into points.

Artemis screamed and jerked his hand out of Dirk’s grasp, and the knife went flying and skittering across the polished floorboards. Dirk’s face twisted in annoyance, and Artemis clutched his hand to his chest. It felt like it was burning.

“Sweet Jesu.”

They both turned, startled, at the voice, and Artemis felt his heart drop to his belly: It was his mother, her mouth open in horror, her expression terrible. She was standing in the doorway of her violated bedroom, her visiting hat still pinned to her hair. The knife was lying at her feet. She was as white as a wraith.

Dirk managed to speak first. “We were just …”

He paused, and never finished. Fiona Donovan strode the three steps it took to reach him and struck him with all her might in the side of the head.

“Abomination,” she hissed in rage. “Darkling. Get out of my house.”

Dirk raised a trembling hand to his temple, where the red print of her hand stood out. Artemis was frozen in shock. He had never seen his mother strike anyone; he had never seen her angry.

Dirk’s face flushed.

“Bad luck to you and yours,” he spat at her.

“Get out,” she barked, and grasped him by the collar.

The earth shook beneath their feet.

They froze in place; they all knew, every man, woman, and child in St. Agnes Town knew what that shaking meant.

The Weald Hole, where the men were after the tin. The mine was collapsing.

Artemis saw it: the dark tunnel, a trickle of water down the passage. The length of the wall peeling away like the bark of a tree. The wood supports buckling under the strain, the men trapped beneath.

“Da,” he gasped, seeing his father’s face startled and white in the light of his lamp, and then a fall of rock and the spark extinguished.

“No,” said his mother, releasing Dirk and backing to the door. “Saints and angels, no!”

She was gone, outside, to the streets, where all the women must be gathering now, gathering to go down to the Weald Hole and know the worst.

“Oh God,” said Dirk to the empty doorway. “My God, I didn’t, I didn’t mean …”

He shot an agonized glance at Artemis, who still sat frozen, the image of his father in the rock fall as painful as a punch to the stomach.

Dirk’s expression shifted again, twisted and angry.

“Damn you all, then,” he said, his voice trembling and weak.

He staggered for the door. The knife still lay on the floor, and he scooped it up. With a final bitter look at his cousin, he was gone.

Artemis breathed slowly until the image faded, until he was able to rise and join his mother and walk with her and the women down the well-worn path to the Weald Hole.

It was a passage they had tapped for the last year, and solid every day of that year. Until today, when it crumbled away like sand.

Twelve men gone, not as bad as it could be with thirty down there, but bad enough.

Artemis’ father was one of the twelve.

Fiona Donovan never mentioned the knife to anyone, not even Artemis. She wore her black, and when she found the third Pollard son was looking for a house for himself and his new bride, she made over her lease and packed herself and Artemis off for London, where her brother’s family lived and she could make her living doing laundry in the rich folks’ houses.

They never spoke of Dirk.

Bryani House, the Mists

Here and there from his vantage point in the front doorway, Trueblood could catch a glimpse of gray-green foliage where the vapor thinned, but for the most part the fog was solid. It reminded him of the flank of an immense animal, breathing in and out.

For an immeasurable time he had existed, torn asunder, within the Mists. Jaelle and the rest of his kin shattered him, damn their eyes, but the Mists held him helpless and disembodied when he otherwise might have restored himself.

And then he had restored himself, drawn by the thoughts of others in places touched by the Mists, following their voices like echoes down a corridor until he found Robarts’ mind, ripe with insanity and despair.

Could it be that once he’d found Robarts and his dominion, this place where an ancient, archaic world was rebirthing itself from the stones of its foundation, that the Mists themselves released him?

Robarts’ world, with its machines and great engines. Its empires, creeping across land and sea. Warrens and alleyways, teeming with humanity, where life was as nasty, brutish, and short as any place where bloody Nature ruled. Cathedrals, where people tied to earth by their own mortality dreamed of heaven. It was a fascinating place, at once attractive and repulsive.

It suited him. He would make it his own.

Trueblood drew closer to the vaporous wall, drawn to it in spite of himself. Everything he’d read, everything he’d learned told him the Mists did nothing without a purpose.

What did they want with him?

At the top of the steps, he reached out and stroked his hand across the surface of the fog. It swirled and rippled as the surface of a still lake might, and as it parted beneath his fingers he saw, not the thyme and heather of the Cornwall landscape, but the damp glistening bricks and cobbles of an alleyway, lit by the harsh glare of a naphtha light.

Trueblood ventured down one step, then another. As if impatient, the fog thickened around and behind him, all but pulling him into the urban lane. The silence of Bryani House was left behind, and he entered into the sound of a light patter of rain on the slate roofs overhead and the cry of peddlers on the main boulevard beyond the alley.

He would make it his own.

Trueblood smiled at the red sky overhead, where factory stacks belched smoke into the moonlight, and made for the grumble of traffic at the end of the close passage.

Cornwall, 1870

Lady Cecelia Agnew looked out the carriage window at Bryani House. The vines that gave it its name had engulfed the proud stone walls, twining untamed across windows and the tops of arches. The front gardens, once so cheery and charming, were neglected and derelict, with sad gray stalks where roses had bloomed.

It was as if with her sister’s death, the house she loved had decided to die too, slowly—flower by flower, stone by stone.

She drew her collar close about her chin and shivered. The day was chilly, and the warmth of the heated brick that Gertie had tucked beneath her cloak that morning was long gone. And Bryani House looked cold at its very heart, and wisps of coastal mist clung about it, although she hadn’t seen fog anywhere else on the way.

“Shall I come with you, milady?”

Alexander’s gruff voice broke through her reverie. Her coachman stood at the door, bulky in the window. She hesitated. Alex had been her escort through many a rough part of London; he was six feet tall and seemingly as broad, and few cared to challenge him. His close-bristled head and unbeautiful face made him even more imposing.

But this was not Limehouse, nor the burnt-out tenements where she hoped to build her clinic—this was Bryani House, where her brother-in-law lived, where Margaret had lived and loved, hoped and dreamed. There was no danger here, only melancholy.

“No, Alex,” Cecelia said, as he opened the door and handed her out carefully. “That won’t be necessary. Will you be warm enough, in the coach?”

Alex gave her an odd look. “ ’Tisn’t midsummer but it ain’t as cold as that, milady. I’ll do well enough.”

But she did feel cold, and as she walked up the path bordered by barren flowerbeds she felt a chill strike to her bones. Perhaps it was the mist that still clung, despite the late morning sun, to the house and the bare trees about it.

Last year’s dead leaves, curled and crisp and drained of autumn color, drifted across the upswept steps. Margaret would never have tolerated an abode so unwelcoming.

The ram’s-headed knocker was oxidized and the massive doors were weathered and starting to splinter. Cecelia lifted the green copper knocker with the tips of her gloved fingers and let it fall. A dull clank sounded.

She was startled to hear footsteps, quick and sharp, on the other side of the door, incongruous in all this decay. Instinctively she backed away from the door.

She did not recognize the man who opened the door. He was tall, with a thin face and dark eyes and hair to match. He wore the neatly pressed clothes of an upper servant, somewhere between a butler and a personal valet, and his expression was bland.

He didn’t seem at all surprised to see her.

“I know I’m unexpected,” she said to his mutely inquiring expression. “I’m Cecelia Agnew—the late Mrs. Robarts’ sister. I was hoping to see Doctor Robarts.”

“I’m sorry, Lady Agnew”—an upper servant indeed, if he knew who she was and the correct form of address—“but Doctor Robarts has gone abroad.”

“Oh!—but …”

It must be a mistake. Surely he would have told her, sent word at least?

But then, she’d barely seen him after Margaret’s death, and the baby’s—perhaps once or twice after the funeral. Each time he’d looked paler, and more haggard, and he’d isolated himself more and more at Bryani House. Finally he hadn’t returned to London, and then there were all the affairs to be settled after her husband’s death …

She gathered herself together. “And when is he to return?”

“I do not know, milady.”

She frowned. “It’s very strange he didn’t let the rest of the family know. Very unlike him.”

The—what? Butler? Maybe a valet—smiled pleasantly. “I am sure of that. By all means to come in, milady. I must apologize for the condition of the house—I am the only one in attendance at this time.”

He stepped back and opened the door wide, inclining his head in invitation. She studied his face covertly for a hint of a smirk, but if it was there, she didn’t see it.

She hesitated, tempted to call Alex to her side. But this was no Limehouse tenement—this had been her sister’s house, once. She stepped into the foyer.

Dust and cobwebs wreathed the blown-glass sconces, and dust covers shrouded the furniture of the living room beyond. Cecelia looked in dismay at the chandelier, once ablaze with light, now wrapped about with canvas. The place was a ghostly mockery of her sister’s warmth and cheer.

Suddenly the walls were much too close and every instinct told her to leave, to get out of this place, before …

Before what?

… before it is too late …

Absurd. But she found herself backing away from the dusty, desolate interior, to the door and the blessed air and wind and life outside.

She clung to the doorframe with one hand, steadying herself.

“Tell Sebastian,” she whispered. Then she straightened and faced the too-polite, indeterminate servant, forcing herself to smile.

“What is your name?” she asked.

He bowed correctly. “Trueblood, milady.” He paused. “I had the honor of serving Doctor Robarts during his years in residency.”

“I see. And the other servants?”

His expression was bland. “Doctor Robarts chose to let them go well before my time here.”

“Tell Doctor Robarts,” said Cecelia. “When he returns, please do tell Doctor Robarts that I called. That we are concerned for him.

He has only to send word.”

“I will, milady.”

Cecelia nodded and turned away, then started as she saw Alex was standing behind her. He was staring at Trueblood with the intent expression usually reserved for the worst kind of tough. Trueblood smiled innocuously and shut the door behind them.

“Doctor Robarts is abroad,” she said, as Alex handed her into the carriage.

“That’s what that one says, is it?” he said gruffly through the window. “I wouldn’t trust ’im as far as I could toss ’im—not near so far.”

“Goodness, Alex. Such an attitude toward your fellow man.” Cecelia smiled and tucked her skirts around her legs. She still was cold, but it felt good to be out of Bryani House with its chilly desolation and memories of happier times.

“My fellow man’s well enough,” came Alex’s voice from the driver’s box, as the carriage shifted into motion. “But I’ve seen eyes like his in worse than man, and that’s saying some.”

Cecelia wasn’t listening—she was watching the gray bulk of Bryani shrink behind her like a solitary gravestone.

Trueblood hung onto the handle of the door for a few seconds after he closed it behind Cecelia. When he turned finally toward the foyer, all had changed. A fire burned on the hearth, and all the dust covers were gone. The furniture was pushed aside to make room for a strange contraption in the middle of the room—a man-sized assembly of tubes and brass fittings that stood next to a misplaced couch.

There were some horrible brown stains on that couch, which was otherwise empty.

Past the jumble of table and chairs a large curving stairway led to the upper floors. Trueblood glanced at the figure that was descending.

It was a woman—or had been once—of middle height, with dark hair that streamed down her shoulders in stark contrast to her white skin and pale garments. Below her breast her gown was split and buttoned neatly back, then gathered again at the waist, so that her midriff was exposed to the top of her pubis.

Once, a long time ago, her name had been Nellie Howard.

The skin of her belly was peeled back vertically, stitched neatly to the sides as one would tie a curtain back, exposing a fleshy cavity framed all about by puckered scar tissue. Inset in this hollow inside her was a fetus of about six months’ growth, still coiled up but swiveled about so that it faced Trueblood. Strips of skin were bound around it that it might not tumble out.

The woman’s mouth was stitched shut in tidy X’s, the black thread stark against her white lips. One eye, the left eye, was also sewn shut. The right eye, once hazel and now a milky gray, stared at Trueblood, unblinking.

“Where is the doctor?” he asked.

The baby stirred and answered in a high, croaking voice.

“He is resting. This morning was tiring for him.”

Trueblood nodded. The woman and her baby stood unmoving. The baby’s eyes were shut tight; the woman watched him close with her one clouded eye.

“You are wondering why I didn’t take her,” Trueblood said.

The woman’s head moved in the barest hint of a nod.

“Because she is watched, and because there will be time enough.”

“The last one isn’t going to live,” said the baby. “Not unless he puts her back together. She’s too young. You should put her back.”

Trueblood considered this. “If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out,” he said. “But what shall we do with the other, little Angel?”

Neither the woman nor the baby answered.

From behind them, from the upper reaches of the house, came a long, hair-raising moan.

London, 1875

The more observant of Bartholomew McPherson’s medical students noticed that before he gave a lecture or remarked upon their work he had a habit of picking up the nearest smooth object—a paperweight or a fountain pen, for example—and fiddling with it. It was possible that he was unaware of this habit, which served the purpose of allowing him to compose his thoughts before he spoke. And so he turned a fossilized ammonite—a curiosity which was undoubtedly the gift of some long-ago student or associate—over and over in his hands as he considered the girl perched on the edge of the chair on the other side of his desk.

Sophia Huxley was by no means a pretty girl, he thought—but there was something in her wide, intelligent eyes and pointed chin that promised obstinacy and had the potential of charm. He noted to himself with some amusement that it wasn’t the general custom to consider stubbornness in a female an attractive quality—but if she was going to accomplish what she proposed to do, she would need that stubborn streak.

Having delivered her startling proposition she was poised as if ready to take flight, her body tense, her hands folded in her lap in a pretense of calm. She stared at him without blinking and that pointed chin quivered almost imperceptibly.

He remembered her as a little girl, called into the drawing room to make her curtsey and be polite to her parents’ guests before being taken to bed. Were the signs of some unconventional ambition imprinted on her face at that tender age? He had to admit to himself that he had barely noticed her at that time. She had been no more than part of the normal furnishings of an unremarkable, pleasant middle-class family, and as an up-and-coming medical professional he had no interest, like most busy men, in talking to little girls.

Dr. McPherson placed the ammonite carefully on the desk in front of him.

“You realize, of course, Miss Huxley, the enormity of what you are asking?”

She let out her breath at that—she hadn’t realized she’d been holding it. At least it wasn’t an outright “no.”

“Yes, Professor McPherson, I do,” she said.

She was about to say more—she was about to say that many male medical students asked to be tutored by Professor McPherson and it was not considered an enormity. But then she looked at the doctor’s face, and let her words stand as they were.

He flicked the side of the ammonite and watched it spin slowly.

“And how fares your brother, Miss Huxley? Has your family had word from him lately?”

She frowned, discombobulated by the turn of conversation. “We had a letter from Bernie—from Bernard a week ago. He seemed cheerful, although one knows the conditions are not as one would wish. But he is in good health, which is a great relief to all of us.”

“Of course. A good doctor, your brother. Very competent, which I know seems like damning him—if you’ll excuse the expression—by faint praise. But simple competence is an underrated commodity, and more valuable than the fashions of the time would seem to admit.”

Another pause, which seemed like an eternity to Sophia, while McPherson made the fossil spin again.

He shifted his weight and suddenly Sophie felt the force of his gaze, as if she’d been a student who’d made a mistake in a diagnosis.

“Exactly what training have you had, Miss Huxley?” said the professor, his voice more brisk than it had been.

“I completed my nurse’s training at the end of the year,” she returned. “And I have been attending Doctor Thompson’s lectures on the arterial and venous systems.”

He nodded. “Anything else?”

She took a breath. “Doctor Dixon has been allowing me to accompany his students when they make their rounds with him at the Charity Hospital.”

McPherson raised an eyebrow at that. “And how did you manage to convince him to allow it? Dixon is not particularly well known as a supporter of the suffragettes.”

Sophie’s mouth twitched. “I told him that I was concerned that the nurses did not take enough notice of the patient’s sanitary condition so that doctors were too often—inconvenienced—during examinations. He allowed me to come so long as I stayed in the background and did not ask any questions. He’s even asked me to assist in turning over patients and unwrapping wounds for examination. By now I’m just part of the background.”

“I see.” McPherson drummed his fingers. “And what education did you have before? At home, I mean?”

“Well, I had a governess, of course. And my brother’s tutor allowed me to take some lessons along with Bernie. Mathematics, mostly. And in addition …”

She paused, as if about to confess to something indelicate. McPherson was amused at the thought—as if any girlhood indiscretion could compare with the shocking and inappropriate desire to undertake medical training.

“Our housekeeper worked as a midwife when she was in the country, before my parents came to London. You understand, of course, that many of the working and servant class cannot afford professional medical treatment. She would go on her own rounds of a sort, you might say, and sometimes she would let me accompany her. To assist—hold her basket and such.”

“Indeed. I’m curious what your mother thought of such … adventures.”

“She didn’t know.”

“No? I wonder …”

Doctor McPherson placed his hands palm-down on the table and fixed Sophia with a piercing gaze.

“It’s a difficult course you’ve chosen. Since the accomplishments of your fellows in Edinburgh, of course, the idea of a female physician is far less the travesty it was once considered. You can thank such as Doctor Blackstone for that.”

Oh, I do, thought Sophia, not daring to interrupt out loud.

“And I must consider the consequences to myself. Rightly or wrongly, I will be subject to a certain amount of censure from my colleagues for taking a woman under my wing. Among too many the notion is, regrettably, still considered absurd. Even obscene.”

Sophia allowed herself a slight nod.

McPherson continued. “You are aware that Doctor Jex-Blake intends to open a Medical School for women within the next year?”

“Yes; I am aware of that. But I want to …”

“You want to start now.”

“Yes.”

Dr. McPherson looked at the desk and sighed deeply.

“I have a good deal of regard for your father, Miss Huxley, and I know he supports you in this. And I have long thought the health of the nation depends far more than the Royal Society believes on the health of women. And that in the future the health of women might improve with the training of female physicians.”

Sophia didn’t dare breathe. Could it be that he would consent?

“Accordingly, I will agree to tutor you. You are too intelligent, I am sure, to disregard the fact that poor performance on your part will reflect badly on us both. I trust you to keep that in mind.”

“Oh, thank you.” Sophie let out her breath in an undignified whoosh. “And yes, I understand. I don’t expect or desire any … kindly … treatment.”

“Good.” McPherson permitted himself a friendly smile. “I suggest you get some rest, Miss Huxley. We anatomize in the morning. Do not, I pray, be late.”

“No sir,” said Sophie, gathering herself and rising. “No, that would never do.”

Artemis Donovan leaned in the shadow of a doorway, watching the pickpocket at work across the street. His eye was momentarily distracted by the sight of a girl in trim tweed, her thick hair arranged well back from her face and tucked under a sensible hat. She strode down the sidewalk as if she had places to go and armies to conquer; there was such joy in her step that she practically bounced, and her large eyes in her curiously heart-shaped face were lustrous.

Artemis permitted himself a smile and watched her until she was safely out of the corridor of pickpockets and petty thieves this street had become, and it wasn’t until she had vanished that he returned to his observation of Slick Joe, dipping his fingers in the pockets of the unwary, convicting himself over and over again.

London. In winter her streets were slick with a slurry of mud and sleet, and the chill damp penetrated everywhere, and the cold went deep in her bones and stayed there. For many, the only warmth to be had was the thick moist fug of too many souls crowded in a stuffy room, and lucky enough they were to have that. The sky was gray then, a constant unvarying gray during daylight hours, and pitch black with nary a star at night. The brick buildings—gray too, to match the sky—funneled the wind into concentrated arctic bursts, in which bits of ice often pricked those out walking, and after a day treading the slush one’s feet were numb and raw.

In summer her streets were thick with heat, choking in the alleys and the tiny windowless rooms where families huddled and babies gasped for air, and save for a rare breeze there was no relief. The Thames subsided, leaving mud-cracked banks littered with piles of rotting garbage, through which stunted children grubbed for bits of things to salvage.

But now, in autumn, it was a magical time, when the summer’s heat fled but returned to linger in the twilight, and fall winds eased the funk of close quarters and teeming streets. Then gypsies performed in the streets, there were juggling shows and Punch and Judy shows, and the smell of the vendors grilling sausages drifted around the corners, making one’s mouth water. It was then that Artemis Donovan loved his city, although she was a jade and a bitch otherwise.

Artemis made a decision and moved from his hiding spot. The quick eye of the pickpocket caught the movement, as he’d intended, and Slick Joe stopped, hand halfway extended toward his next victim, with a look of dismay. Artemis only shook his head, looking grim; the pickpocket grinned in return and vanished down the lane.

Artemis was hungry. The smell of meat pies was distracting and the joy that autumn brought him was welling in his breast. Stepping down to the sidewalk he was jostled by a passerby. After a lightning-quick assessment determined that his pocket had not been picked he nodded in apology to the mild-looking man whom he’d bumped.

And froze as a series of images flashed before his eyes like a magic lantern show: a woman lying sprawled on her back in an ill-lit alley, tumbled like a broken doll with her throat slit wide open. A dirty wall with a jagged scrawl in chalk, obscured by the dark silhouettes of men standing in front of it—the words BLAMED FOR NOTHING the only words visible. A crude newspaper cartoon depicting a corpselike figure with unbound jaws, floating over the city streets with a knife in hand. A room, lit by the yellowish light of a candle, with a scene of horror huddled on the bed in a corner.

With an effort he broke free of his trance, and turned around. The man he’d jostled was halfway down the sidewalk, and as Artemis watched he turned around briefly and looked back.

For a moment they paused midstep, staring at each other as if nobody else existed in the world. And then the man with the mild face turned away and proceeded on his unhurried way, and Artemis considered, for a fraction of a second, chasing him down, smashing him to the ground—for what? For something that might never happen?

Artemis walked on, the rare beauty of the fall day spoiled for him. As he passed the meat-pie man’s stall, the savory smell of the pasties made his stomach turn and his gorge rise, and he hurried past, head down, hands deep in his pockets.

“Bitch!”

The blow landed heavy on Marta’s ear, snapping her head back and sending her stumbling across the slimy cobbles of the courtyard. Pain tingled hot through the side of her face. That was going to show purple and black in the morning.

She staggered against the splintered slats of the fence that separated the yard from the street, and when he came at her again she braced herself on them, and managed to kick him hard in the groin. He grunted and dropped, grabbing at himself and she couldn’t help a chuckle at the expression on his face.

She was too dizzy to get away immediately, however, and when she tried to skirt round him he was recovered enough to snatch at her ankle, upending her.

“Damn you!” Marta’s imprecation was heartfelt as she heard a ripping sound, the ruination of her best skirt. She scooted back from him as he rose, still cradling his insulted genitals through his thick trousers.

“I’ll mark you well for that, my girl,” he growled, his face purple. “And teach you to steal my wages.”

“I never,” she said, backing against the side of the tenement. Only one window glowed weakly yellow above her, and that quickly winked out. No one wanted to interfere with Black Jimmy Barnett in a foul mood. She could count on no aid here.

“I never stole back for what you owed me,” she gasped as he loomed over her. “Owed me for the drinking at Gonagal’s, and the meat and such after.”

She wedged herself against the wall and forced herself partway upright, looking for a chance to get another kick in. Before she could stand, his foot lashed out and struck her knee, smashing her leg under her. This time the pain was white hot, and she collapsed with a cry.

Across the street a lantern flashed, then was extinguished.

Barnett drew something from his belt. The dim light glinted on a long, wicked sharp blade, curved like a gutting knife.

Marta curled in on herself, her mouth frozen open, staring transfixed at the weapon in his hand.

He held it to one side, whether to stab down or simply threaten she never knew, because all of a sudden he staggered away from her and bellowed in pain. The knife clattered away over the cobbles.

Standing behind Barnett was a figure dressed in black. Marta blinked at her unlikely rescuer in confusion. A nice-looking man, rather dark, in a proper suit that looked strange in Miller’s Court. He held the silver-topped walking stick with which he’d struck Black Jimmy in gloved hands, and still kept it ready.

Barnett cursed fluently, but kept his distance, holding his injured hand in the other. Probably broken, Marta thought with some satisfaction, and serves him right.

The man moved toward Barnett, raising his stick.

“Get away at once, you blackguard,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

“Filthy bastard,” retorted Barnett, but his knife was out of reach and his right hand useless anyway, and there was a look in the man’s eye that made him quail.

“You ’ave the use of her, then, and be damned to you both,” he spat. With the man’s sharp eye upon him he made his way to the gate of Miller’s Court, wincing as the bones of his insulted hand ground against each other.

When he was gone, the dark figure turned to Marta.

“You’re hurt,” he said, his voice concerned. He had the faintest trace of a foreign accent, a little like the sailors that shipped in from Russia.

He held out a gloved hand, and Marta hesitated. The man simply waited patiently until she reached out and took it, feeling his fingers warm beneath the soft leather.

Holding onto his hand, she levered herself upright. Pain flared in her knee and lower leg, and she cried out, staggering against him. He did not recoil but supported her, his grip strong on her arm.

“Your knee might be dislocated,” he said. She stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Your knee is out at the joint,” he amended, “and your bone might be broken.”

She almost wept. Last month a woman she sometimes shared quarters with had broken her fingers and wrist bones in a mangle, working double shifts at a laundry, and lay screaming, then moaning on her filthy bed while her injuries festered. Finally someone had bundled her away to the Charity Hospital; she was dead, for all Marta knew. There was no easy way with broken bones.

“I can help you,” said the stranger. She looked up at him. His dark, shadowed eyes glinted wide. “A good friend of mine is a physician, and works in the area; I’ll take you to him.” He urged her gently toward the street, where a yellow fog was beginning to rise.

“You’re very kind, sir … but I can’t pay.” Maybe she could find the midwife to patch her up for the promise of payment next week. Surely by Sunday she’d be fit to go back on the game.

He took more of her weight, so he was almost carrying her.

“Nonsense, my girl. He takes only charity cases these days, and wouldn’t take your money if you offered. He’ll fix you up in no time, Doctor Robarts will.”

“If you’re sure, sir.” She was too tired, in too much pain to resist, and confused now, with the thick sallow fog swirling thick about her. How had it come, all of a sudden?

All she could offer was between her legs, and that got her by when times were hard. But maybe her rescuer would make no such demands, at least not yet.

“Not to worry, my dear. Quite the gentleman, Doctor Robarts is.”

“The Gentleman …” Something chimed warningly in the back of Marta’s mind. Maybe it was a story she’d heard as a child, or a snatch of an old song—something about the Gentleman.

But that was childish nonsense, and when the stranger picked her up and carried her bodily into the fog it was such a relief that all protest was driven from her mind, and she only hummed distractedly—

The Gentleman will find you

And take you to his door …

“That’s a lovely tune, my dear,” said her rescuer, smiling over the top of her head.

SERIAH

When he was eleven years old, Henry Thorpe was chasing his cousin Bernard Huxley, who had robbed him of his kite and run ahead, taunting him in the time-immemorial manner of schoolboys the world over. Over the downs they ran, and Henry, caught between annoyance and the delight of the chase, drew closer and closer to the laughing Bernie, reaching out to seize him and tumble him down.

But his foot hit a stone and he fell, and as he hit the ground and rolled he felt a sickening crack in his shin. Bernard stopped and turned, a catcall on his lips and froze at the sight of his face. He let go the string, the kite swooping forgotten to the ground, and ran back to Henry.

He was lucky, the apothecary said. A clean break with no green-stick fracture, nothing lodged in the flesh where it would become infected; no danger of losing the leg. But he must remain still in bed, his leg splinted and stretched immobile before him, and so he stayed for a month, while the soft green days of summer passed one by one as he watched through his window, and a remorseful Bernard brought him insects and minnows in jars, and stories of wars with the village children over tree forts and solitary days spent fishing.

One day, when his backside was sore from laying still and his leg itched fiercely under its wrappings, a sparrow came to the windowsill—his mother had opened it that morning to let the breeze in. It pecked at a shadow, then looked straight at him, cocking its small striped head, its yellow-rimmed eyes reproachful. The next day he begged his mother to leave some breadcrumbs on the windowsill and two sparrows came that day, pecking at the food and ruffling themselves up with delight. When they dived away his heart longed for that kind of freedom; broken legs wouldn’t matter if he had wings.

Finally the day came when the apothecary pronounced the bones knitted together enough for him to hobble about, and he was allowed to come downstairs, to venture to the front doorstep, and finally, gloriously, to sit outside on the grass, the injured leg still propped in front of him, and feel the breeze on his body and the sun on his face.

He’d walk until his leg was too sore to bear it, Bernard with him, and then he’d sit while the mending leg throbbed, and watch the birds swoop and flutter in the grass and the trees. He watched how the sparrows and finches fluttered from perch to perch with their short, efficient wings, and how the rooks and hawks soared on the updrafts, pinions spread to catch the rising air.

For the rest of his life he would associate watching birds with the ache in his leg and a crick in his neck, the breeze on his face and the sound of Bernie Huxley calling to him from across the meadow.

Nowadays, the only memory of the broken leg of his 12th summer was the faint ache of it when the weather was rainy and he had walked all day.

That and the birds.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

St. James Mortuary
London, 1880

The surgeon was quietly hilarious at the idea of a “lady doctor” interfering in police business.

“Matter of expertise,” he said. “The girl’s been torn up some, but was it murder or did she do it herself?”

“Herself?”

“Matter of a street abortion. I can make my guess, but I don’t treat women as a general practice—not live ones, at least. I asked McPherson to send down one of his students, and I’m told to expect a Doctor Sophia Huxley. Don’t know if it’s the man’s idea of a joke, but he’s not a humorous type, for the most part.”

Artemis nodded at Dr. Huxley when she appeared. The surgeon just grunted at her. She was on the short side, with thick brown hair pulled back from her face, which was a little too cat-shaped for beauty.

He had seen her before, he knew. Perhaps he’d passed her in the hospital corridors and taken her for a Nightingale.

She winced at the smell but didn’t comment on it, placing her bag carefully on the counter and bending to her examination.

To Artemis’ amusement, the surgeon pulled out a meat pie and peered over her shoulder, chewing reflectively.

Artemis, leaning against the white-tiled wall, had to admit a grudging respect for the man’s intestinal fortitude. The smell of decay was pervasive and although he was used to dreadful sights and worse smells, he would never have attempted to take his supper in the dissection room.

The girl—or Dr. Huxley, he should say—went deathly pale when she lifted the sheet that covered the deceased. The dead girl had been in the water a few days, and the fish had gone to work on her face and extremities. Artemis watched as Dr. Huxley tightened her jaw and composed herself.

That’s the way, girl, he thought. But don’t take a deep breath while you’re at it.

She eased the deceased’s knees up and looked closely at the damage, lifting sloughed tissue aside carefully with her speculum. There was no sound but the mastication of a meat pie during her examination. Artemis studied Dr. Huxley’s face and the way she held it, careful to show no emotion.

Finally Dr. Huxley lowered the dead girl’s legs and replaced the sheet. She went to the sink in the corner and spoke over her shoulder while she washed her hands over and over with harsh yellow soap.

“She tried to abort herself,” she said. “With a blunt knife, the kind you’d find in a tavern or a chop house, or maybe a common kitchen. It didn’t work, but she did enough damage that sepsis set in.”

She shook her hands and dried them on her coat, avoiding the mortuary’s linens.

“Must’ve hurt like hell,” she continued in her clear, clipped voice. “You think she was a jumper?”

“Like as not,” said Artemis. “And you’ve seen this sort of injury before?”

She nodded. “Too often.”

She wrapped her speculum in a length of linen and repacked her bag.

“Thank you for your assistance, Doctor Huxley,” said Artemis, looking pointedly at the surgeon.

Jolted, he swallowed the last of the pie.

“Yes, thank you,” he said thickly. “Mind you, only confirms what I thought, but it’s nice to be able to amuse yourself, isn’t it, miss?”

She opened her mouth, shut it, and took her bag in hand.

“Gentlemen,” she said with a nod, and left the room.

Artemis caught up with her near the back entrance, where supplies were brought in. The bag was on the floor and she leaned back against the stained plaster wall, breathing heavily. She looked quite green.

“Sit, and get your head between your knees,” he said, holding her elbow.

She flashed him a venomous glance but did as he said, arranging her skirts decorously around her ankles as she sat. As she bent forward he placed the wet towel he’d grabbed from the mortuary on the back of her neck. She flinched but didn’t resist it.

He sat silently with her until her breathing steadied.

“Your first pulled from the river, isn’t it?” he said presently.

She started to nod but stopped, keeping her head down.

“Yes,” she managed.

“You did well,” he said. “Most can’t keep it down, their first one. Makes a bigger stink than the body.”

“That’s a comfort,” she said, her voice muffled. “I think I can get up now.”

“You sure?”

“Oh, yes.”

He helped her to her feet, letting her retrieve her bag herself.

“Thank you,” she said, brushing off her skirt. “Mr.…?

“Donovan. Artemis Donovan.”

“Mr. Donovan. I’m fine now.”

“You want me to go away now?”

She smiled. “Yes. But no offense intended.”

“None taken, Doctor Huxley.”

He left her composing herself under the curious glances of deliverymen. When he had touched her arm he’d had a vivid picture of a young woman, doubled over in pain, hovering at the lip of the embankment, and the terrible cry as she fell into the dark waters below.

He wondered if it was his vision or Dr. Huxley’s.

Bryani House, the Mists

“Trueblood!”

The man who called himself Trueblood frowned, and looked up from the book spread open on the heavy oak table in Yorick Robarts’ library. On the page in front of him was a sketch of a connected string of gears, twisting across the yellowed paper like a snake.

He made as if to close the book, then paused, and drew a sheet of foolscap over the page.

Robarts was in the great foyer, bent over a woman who was spread-eagled and facedown, on a wide metal table that had come from his laboratory. She was bare from the waist up and a folded sheet protected her from the cold surface.

Trueblood could see her face; it was turned, facing him as he came from the hall that led to the library. Her eyes were glazed open but there was no spark of recognition or even awareness within them. Only an occasional flutter of her eyelashes as she blinked hinted that she was alive; she was tranced as deeply as Robarts’ drugs and Trueblood’s powers could make her.

From the dip in her back just above the buttocks to the tops of her shoulder blades Robarts had flayed away two immense sheets of skin and flesh, each almost half the width of her back and still attached to her body along the spine. Beneath the flaps the structure of her back muscles was visible, dull red and corded with white tendons. Blood welled in the crevices between but didn’t spill; it looked dark, thick and jellylike.

Trueblood studied Robarts. The doctor was holding his scalpel over the flaps of skin; his hand was shaking now and droplets of sweat stood out on his forehead. He was deathly pale.

He glanced up at Trueblood’s approach, and withdrew his instrument from over his subject’s back.

“May I be of assistance, sir?”

Robarts wiped his mouth with his shirt cuff. Trueblood eyed the other hand, the one that held the scalpel.

“It’s not going to work.” There was an edge of hysteria in the doctor’s voice. “I thought … it made so much sense, when I imagined it. They should just grow right out of them. It should be natural.”

“I think, perhaps, that you might put down your scalpel, sir.”

Robarts looked puzzled, then glanced at the blade trembling in his right hand.

“Oh. I see. Yes.”

With great care he laid the scalpel on a small stand that held several other of his instruments: needles, a pair of long-handled tweezers, wide, flat blades and other tools of the surgeon’s art. Some of the other knives were clotted with blood.

“Look.” Robarts gestured at his work lying before him. “It’s too flimsy to support the weight; she would crash, just like …” A spasm disfigured his mouth and he struggled to master it while Trueblood waited patiently.

“And if I include more of what lies beneath, enough to make a sufficiently thick wing, one that she could use—well, then there’s not enough muscle left to support it from below.”

Trueblood looked past Robarts. The Angel who was once a woman named Nellie was watching from the other side of the room.

“They’re still missing something,” continued Robarts, oblivious. “I should be able to make them whole again.”

“Respectfully, sir,” said Trueblood. “I believe you must revisit the idea of wings separately and specially constructed.”

“Do you think it’s possible?”

“I think anything’s possible, in this day and age, sir. An age of infinite resource.”

Robarts gestured at the woman in front of him. “I’ve ruined this one,” he said, his voice cracking.

Trueblood crouched beside the woman, looking into her glazed, unresponsive eyes.

“I don’t know, sir. Is it necessary that all Angels fly?”

“The properties of angels is that they have wings, can fly, and know the future,” said Robarts. “The Haigaiah says so, also the Talmud and the Menachen Papers.”

“Flying is as flying does,” said Trueblood. “And wings, well, they were taken from them long ago, and it remains for us to give them back. As for the future, and the past, for that matter …”

“The Gregori,” came a strange, high-pitched voice at his back. The Angel with the baby in her belly had circled the room, silently, and now stood at his side. Trueblood stifled an impulse to jump.

“Yes,” said Robarts.

“The Gregori are the watchers,” continued the eerie voice of the baby. “The Mishavah, the destroyers.”

Trueblood licked his lips. “The Mishavah can storm heaven,” he said, reflectively. “And the Gregori … well, knowing the past is just as useful as knowing the future. More so, sometimes.”

Robarts stroked the tumbled hair of the woman in front of him.

Trueblood raised his hand over her, palm down. He concentrated, drawing out what he’d had the power to put inside her. From the raw surfaces of her back, a vapor began to rise.

She came out of it slowly, not stirring except to blink her glazed eyes and lick her dry lips. And at first she looked confused, as if the pain were a new sensation not immediately comprehensible. Then her eyes opened wide and she started to tremble.

Robarts’ hand stilled on her hair. “What are you doing, Trueblood?”

Trueblood didn’t answer and more vapor coalesced from the woman, birthing itself from the tissues and fibers of her bare muscles as philosophers once thought maggots spontaneously generated from meat.

The Angels beside him moved slightly.

“Don’t think on it, Tamar,” he told her, sotto voce. “I hold her life between my fingers now.”

“That’s not my name,” said the baby.

Trueblood grinned like a feral dog. “What is your name, then?”

The baby said nothing. The woman beneath his hand was shaking.

“Lost it, didn’t you? Doesn’t feel good, does it?”

Still nothing.

“Answer me.” He made the slightest movement with his hand and the woman on the table screamed.

“Trueblood!” Robarts cried.

“No,” said Tamar. “It doesn’t feel good.”

He made another motion and the woman stilled, breathing heavily. Her legs moved, trying to find purchase against the table, and her hands clenched into fists and unclenched again. She made a thin mewling sound, like paper tearing.

Tamar reached under Trueblood’s arm and took the other woman’s hand in hers.

“Stop it, Trueblood,” ordered Robarts, and there was something different about him, something saner, more in-the-world than Trueblood was used to from him.

When he first found Robarts’ broken mind, when he reached out to him from his exile in the Mists, there were pieces of Robarts left that were like this—pieces of the man he had been. Pieces his Margaret would have recognized.

He could destroy Robarts where he stood, if he wanted. But he needed the doctor, needed his obsession and skill.

He couldn’t build his army, his Mishavah, without Robarts.

“Not long now, sir,” he said, soothingly.

A layer of vapor, like the smoke of a smoldering fire, lay over the woman’s body now, stirred here and there by her fitful movements. Cautiously he removed his hand from its position hovering over her. The vapor remained.

He kneeled quickly beside her, his mouth near her ear.

“Look,” he told her. “Do you see yourself? In the midst of the fog, thicker than any you’ve ever known.”

“A spring mist,” she gasped. “Out in the fields by the river, when winter came. I was lost there once.”

“Yes,” he said. “You’re in the mist, but the pain makes you sharp. Do you see yourself, standing out against the mist?”

Tamar made a small sound.

“You’re dissolving,” said Trueblood. “You’re dissolving into the fog, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“No,” said the woman.

“It’s taking you. What do you see? Open your eyes and look. It’s your only chance.”

“I see …” She was panting. “Color. Every color that was.”

“What else?”

Her voice was deep and resonant now. “Every light that was. Every shape that was. Every person that was. Everybody I’ve been.”

Her terrified eyes focused on his face.

“Everybody you’ve been.”

“She can’t take more,” said Tamar in a low voice. “Even you can’t afford to waste another one.”

Trueblood looked up at her and the baby, baring his teeth. The infant regarded him calmly with too-large eyes.

She was right.

“Come out of there,” he said, turning back to the woman. “Grab the pain, pull yourself out of the mist. You’re coming back together.”

“Coming back,” she repeated. “Coming back. Coming home.”

Trueblood stood and stretched out his hand again. The vapor gathered beneath it and sunk back into the woman. She quieted and lay still.

“She couldn’t go home,” the maimed woman continued after a pause. “Because like you, she was destroyed in her time and place. Too mingled with you, within you.”

“Jaelle.” Trueblood stared down at the woman. “Jaelle.”

“Yes. She loved you, you know. Beneath the hate you created.”

“Where did she go?”

“The Mists brought her here,” she said. “Far from you.”

He bent over her, avoiding touching her raw flesh with his coat sleeve.

“Is she here now?”

He braced himself for the answer.

“Here? Here we’re nowhere. But in the place this house once touched, Jaelle walked. And now you can’t touch her. She’s been dead a hundred years or more.”

Now he understood what he felt in the city called London, making Robarts hunt that last time, when he’d felt that other in the fog. A figure that burned bright, but out of reach, like a star reflected in the water. A man with Jaelle’s gift. Jaelle’s Breed.

She must have met a man, bred others like her, who bred others, and so forth. While he lay a shattered prisoner in the Mists, she had lived, and loved, and died, and was at peace. Far from home, in exile, but still …

Jealousy burned in him, and fear.

Jaelle’s Breed could destroy him. She had laid him open to the Mists, risking her own soul. She had added her curse to the rest of the clan, the final element that triggered his own dissolution. In her blood, which was his blood, was bound Sight and Curse.

No wonder the demesne of Weldon, child of Jaelle’s blood, touched the doctor’s house. No wonder the Mists had called him here. What game were they playing? Why did they let him hunt for Robarts, for women for Robarts to transform? Why did they allow him passage? For Trueblood knew the Mists had a purpose in anything they allowed to happen, even if that purpose lay dormant for countless generations.

Jaelle’s Breed could destroy him, unless he destroyed it first; every branch and root and bud.

Tamar kneeled beside the woman now, still holding her hand.

“What did you do?” asked Robarts. He was his broken self again.

“She is Gregori now,” said Trueblood. “A Watcher. She doesn’t need wings.”

“A Recording Angel,” said Robarts. He turned back to his tray and picked out a needle and a length of catgut.

Without his asking, Tamar rose and came to his side. Even with one eye stitched shut, she was able to thread the needle with lightning speed.

“We’ll have you patched up in an instant, Gregori,” said Robarts. “You won’t be able to fly, but I’ll give you wings of a sort, so you’ll remember that you had them once, before you fell, and maybe you’ll know to find them again.”

He paused, and bent down to her, curious.

“Do you remember the fall?”

Her dry lips moved.

“Falling,” she croaked. “It was a long way down. The ones in front heard the ropes snap first, but it was too late in that single, horrified moment for them to run back. The old, decayed slats went one by one, and the people spilled into the river below like dried peas from a bowl.”

“I shall return to the Library, sir,” said Trueblood. Robarts barely nodded in reply, but Trueblood was already gone.

Robarts placed careful stitches, one by one, in the woman’s flesh, suturing her skin back together, but not as it had been before.

“She needs a name, Tamar,” he remarked. “Seriah. The Recording Angel. That sounds well, doesn’t it?”

Tamar made no reply, but Robarts nodded as if she had.

“Seriah.”

London, 1882

A cacophony of knocking woke Sophie from a deep sleep, the product of a day of clinic work where the patients came fast and furious, one after the other, everything from fingers dislocated from factory work to one particularly bad case: a deep-set infection from a botched abortion. Sophie had barely managed a cup of tea and a boiled egg before collapsing, weary and sore, into bed.

She was grateful for the work; she couldn’t deny that. It was a chance to prove herself capable as any man in her profession, a chance to show Professor McPherson that his faith in her hadn’t been misplaced. A chance to make her parents proud of her in their quiet way; she had been pleasantly surprised that they’d supported her, both morally and financially, in her endeavors. They’d been worried and concerned, but in the end when she’d proved her determination they’d backed her to the finish.

She knew it was no good to look for validation and support from the rest of the family. All the aunts had been appalled, from Bernice to Marabelle, and Marabelle had taking the further step of disinheriting her—which was only to be expected—to forbidding Sophie’s name to be mentioned in her presence and eliminating it from every family record she possessed—which stung a bit. Even gentle Aunt Jane had voiced—or written, rather—her disapproval in a lengthy letter that attempted to reconcile Sophie to her duty as a lady, daughter, and future wife (of somebody-or-other suitable, whenever he should choose to appear), and cited many learned men’s opinion of the role of women, the Angel of the House, and the sin of drawing attention to oneself.

As for her brother, Bernie, settled and secure in India with a colonial wife and her family’s status and money—he wrote in a tone of mild confusion, bewildered that his little sister, whom he clearly still imagined to be nine years old with a raggedy doll under her arm, should select the medical profession, or any profession at all, for that matter.

It was perhaps for the best that Sophia was not aware of the letter Mrs. Huxley had received from Bernie, pleading with her to dissuade his sister from this path, since it was well known among the medical profession that such intellectual endeavors were too much a strain on the female mind and would inevitably produce malaise, hysteria, and eventually madness. He knew, everyone knew, that Sophie had been a tomboy and been allowed far too much freedom in the company of that saucy Mrs. Blanchard, but she should have outgrown such childish fantasies.

Mrs. Huxley was a wise woman, and wrote an innocuous reply to her son, hiding away his letter at the bottom of her correspondence drawer and declining to mention his concerns to her husband or her daughter.

Upon the taking of her medical degree Sophie had received a letter from Dr. McPherson, congratulating her and asking the favor of a visit at his offices. Smiling at her mentor’s old-fashioned and courtly tone, Sophie had scribbled an assent and met him the next day in the same room where she had sat, nervous but determined, and asked him to instruct her.

This time there was a woman perched in one of the doctor’s chairs, some years older than Sophie, with coifed blonde hair under a stylish hat. Her clothing was fashionable, but not extravagant, and she was what her mother would call “quite lovely,” with gray-blue eyes in a delicately colored, friendly face.

She was taller than Sophie, but thinner, and the hand she held out was wiry and strong.

“Lady Cecelia Agnew,” said the Professor. “May I present Miss—pardon, Doctor Sophia Huxley, one of the best students it’s been my honor to teach.”

Sophie felt herself blushing deeply at the Professor’s heartfelt tone. Lady Cecelia smiled at her, and Sophia decided that she liked her very much.

“I’ve heard so much about you, Doctor Huxley,” she said in a clear alto voice.

“Really?” said Sophie, raising an eyebrow at Professor McPherson. “I hope the reports were favorable.”

Lady Cecelia laughed.

“Indubitably,” she said. “So much so that I’m here to offer a proposition.”

She gestured for Sophie to sit, and she did, wondering if the woman was looking for a personal physician, a companion of some sort with the added bonus of medical expertise. She looked to be in good health, certainly—but one never knew what real or imagined illnesses could be lurking beneath the surface.

She didn’t seem the self-indulgent type, however. And her name was familiar—Sophie was sure she’d heard the name of Cecelia Agnew before.

Professor McPherson rang for tea before taking his place behind the desk.

“Lady Cecelia is an acquaintance of long standing,” he said, reaching for his ammonite and turning it over in his hand. “And I have been privileged to be able to assist her in some small ways in some of her charitable endeavors.”

That was it. She’d heard her mother mention her name—after she’d been to one of her at-homes, perhaps. A young widow with a substantial fortune, for her husband’s estate had not been entailed; she was on the board of several charitable organizations. Sophie had also heard that she had purchased property near Whitechapel, where several tenement houses had burned down some years before.

A pretty widow with money—it was surprising that she hadn’t remarried. But perhaps she found good works more engaging, and didn’t want to give up her freedom.

Sophia could certainly understand that point of view.

“For the last few years I’ve been engaged on a project that I hope you can help with,” said Lady Cecelia, leaning forward in her chair and fixing Sophie with her clear eyes. It occurred to Sophie that she must be rather hard to resist.

“I’ve wanted, for some time, to build a medical clinic for the needs of women, specifically poor women, in the London slums,” she continued. “I’m sure you’re aware that there’s a dreadful lack of adequate care for women of the lower classes, and that they are subject to a great deal of neglect and ignorance—harmful ignorance.”

“Very aware,” returned Sophie. She felt the spark of excitement in her breast. This wasn’t a woman who sat at teatime with a circle of upper class, well-meaning matrons criticizing the Poor’s lack of initiative. This was a woman who built things.

“The situation has been improving,” Lady Cecelia continued, over the jangle of tea things being brought in. She took a steaming cup from the maid and smiled at her.

That’s her strength, thought Sophie. That’s why she’s not like the women on a dozen charitable committees, who knit scarves for foundlings but discharge the servant girl when the son of the house gets them pregnant. She sees people, no matter what they are.

“The London Maternity Hospital has a charitable wing, as does the new Hospital,” Lady Cecelia went on. “But I want to reach the women where they live, in the streets, in the slums. The shop girl, the docker’s wife, the prostitute.”

She smiled again. “I’m sure you will excuse my indelicacy.”

Over her tea Sophia smiled back. “I am difficult to shock, although I’m sure it can be done,” she said. “But not by mention of the oldest profession.”

“Doctor McPherson has kindly agreed to supervise the clinic,” said Lady Cecelia. “And will make some rounds there. But I would like a full-time physician on staff, a physician the clients will talk to honestly, more honestly than they might a man. I want a female doctor. The job is yours, if you will take it. You’ll receive an adequate salary, plus room and board.”

Sophia put down her cup carefully. Her hand was trembling a little.

Her own clinic, her own place, her own work, without having to put up with the condescension of the male doctors who would not acknowledge her existence, or who considered her a freak and an amusement. Doctors less qualified than her who would be promoted over her. Men who would treat her with less respect than a nurse, because she had dared to step out of her proper place.

“Not all women like to be treated by a female doctor, you know,” she said, trying to keep the excitement from her voice. “Many will refuse to see me.”

“I will attend several days a week,” said the Professor, laying the ammonite on the glass top of the desk and giving it a spin. “And they will get used to you.”

“If Professor McPherson thinks I can do it,” said Sophie, “then I have every faith I can.”

Lady Cecelia beamed and clapped her hands.

“Oh, I am so glad!” she declared, looking suddenly girlish. “I was dreadfully afraid you’d say no, Doctor Huxley.”

Sophie couldn’t help laughing as Lady Cecelia drew her into an embrace.

“Sophie,” she said through a mouthful of feathers from Cecelia’s hat. “You must call me Sophie.”

Sophie snuggled down into her sheets and pillows, hoping against hope that the noise came from next door or from the street and had nothing to do with her.

No joy. “Doctor Huxley,” called Janet, letting off pounding the door only to call her name. “Doctor Huxley, you’re wanted.”

“Always nice to be wanted,” she muttered, staring at the ceiling, which was dimly illuminated by the glow of streetlights that curtains and shades could not quite keep out. What time was it, anyway?

Another flurry of knocking, and Sophie kicked away the down comforter, cursing beneath her breath.

“I’m coming, Janet,” she called, untangling her legs from the sheets and groping about for her dressing robe. The knocking ceased and she was tempted to fall back into bed, but it was a fool’s dream—Janet was relentless when necessary. An admirable, even essential, quality in the woman—but at the moment Sophie didn’t appreciate it.

The glow from the yellow gas jet in the hallway dimly lit Janet’s face—her familiar dour, puffy face with its lines bought from a life lived harshly, mostly on the streets, now in Sophie’s service.

Three years ago now, Janet had come to her door, looking for work, and she didn’t seem afraid either of blood or the fetid streets Sophie ventured through often enough. She was ill-tempered, obstinate, and fiercely loyal to her friends. Sophie loved her dearly.

Janet was already dressed in her customary gray work blouse and black skirt.

“It’s Lottie Barnes, miss,” she said, pronouncing the last name in two syllables as “Bar-ens.” “She’s asking you to come out, quick. Something’s happened to one of the Haymarket girls—something bad.”

Sophie considered her work clothes draped over the chair at the foot of her bed—she’d been too tired to hang them up and sponge the day’s grime away. Very well—Lottie Barnes would have to take her as she came. If she knocked her out of bed at three in the morning she couldn’t expect her to be daisy-fresh as a minister’s wife at Sunday service.

“What’s wrong? A bad job?” asked Sophie, shrugging off her robe and tossing it on the bed. A “bad job” had become her shorthand for a back-street abortion gone wrong, which happened far too often.

Janet picked up Sophie’s skirt, shaking it out and holding it ready for her to step in. Sophie was used to dressing herself but this early—or late—she appreciated the help.

“I don’t think so, miss. Seemed worse’n that, from the way she asked for you. She’s fair shaken, our Lottie is.”

Sophie stood still while Janet fastened the buttons at the back of her neck. Lottie Barnes was a respectable—by Whitechapel standards—woman, who owned one of the cleaner boardinghouses on Whitechapel Road. The whores who rented her rooms were expected to behave with a modicum of propriety, and they did, for Lottie could be fearsome.

She also served as an occasional midwife and was as much an expert on contraception as any medical professional of Sophie’s acquaintance. She was also known to be available to “take care” of inconvenient pregnancies, but she was careful in her work, taking a certain professional pride in it, and Sophie had never been called to treat an infection from her efforts. She tolerated Sophie and her work with benign contempt for the most part, which had evolved over time to grudging respect as Sophie had proved to be neither faint-hearted in her work nor of the breed of do-gooders who descended periodically on Whitechapel, blazing with plans of reform, poking their heads into every tenement room with sound financial advice and threats of eviction from hygienic-minded Societies for the Benefit of the Poor.

Sophie wondered what it would take to shake the somewhat draconian Mrs. Barnes.

“Must have been a beating,” she remarked, sitting to lace up her boot. Janet kneeled and slipped the other one on.

“P’raps,” she said. “There—you’re done now, miss. Don’t forget your coat. It’s a chilly night, and the fog’s still thick on the ground.”

Sophie let Janet drape the coat over her shoulders and grabbed her medical kit from its place on her bedside table. The weight of the bag, warm worn leather with brass buckles, felt good in her hand, as always. It had been a gift from her father upon her receiving her medical degree. She could never help smiling when she hefted it.

Lottie Barnes was waiting in the foyer and inclined her head slightly as Sophie, shadowed by Janet, came down the stairs.

The older woman was deadly pale, and some ineffable expression crossed her face at the sight of Sophie—could it be relief?

“Thank you, Miss Sophia,” she said, and Sophie stifled a smile as she felt Janet tense at her back. It was an endless source of frustration to Janet that so many of her mistress’ professional acquaintances refused to call her Dr. Huxley.

“I wouldn’t have hauled you from your bed,” Mrs. Barnes continued, her voice implacable despite her white, shaken face. “I felt—I felt you might be able to help. It’s a case for the police, I suppose. But …” She shrugged. “You’ll understand when you see her. I’d never imagine such a thing.”

The fog was indeed thick outside the comparatively warm interior of the row house, although it was breaking up into clots that exposed the damp street and sidewalks. Lottie strode purposefully along, with Sophie and Janet close behind, surefooted, turning down this alley and that byway as if she was the mistress of the East End streets—which, in a way, she was.

Once a drunken figure lurched toward them, accosting them when he saw three women out at night. The filthy figure might have been twenty or fifty, with features blurred by gin or worse, and he leered at them, showing blackened teeth. His expression changed, however, when he recognized Lottie, and under her piercing gaze he shrunk aside, touching his grimy cap.

“Beg pardon, missus,” he managed, as all three swept past him. “I didn’t know.”

The building where Mrs. Barnes presided presented a slightly better appearance than most, in that even in the dim light one could see that its steps were swept free of debris and that the glass of the front windows was unbroken, not plugged with wads of cloth and newsprint as so many were against the autumn chill and the persistent fog. It seemed to Sophie, waiting as the door was unbolted from inside at Lottie’s imperious knock, that a wisp of the fog coiled about her face and stroked her cheek with a clammy and unwarranted intimacy, and she shivered to her very bones. Goose across my grave, she thought, as yellow light streamed from the entrance and silhouetted the slight, bent figure of the crippled boy that served as Lottie’s doorman.

He peered past Lottie at the two women behind her, blinking nervously. Lottie spoke to him softly.

“It’s nought, Davy. I’ve brought the doctor lady.”

Davy McPhee nodded and moved aside to let them in. Although his back was twisted, his shoulders were broad and his arms as thick and muscular as a gorilla’s, and none of the toughs of Whitechapel cared to get close enough to come within his grip. There was little Davy had to fear as guardian of Mrs. Barnes’ foyer, yet here he was shaking like a leaf.

It must be the ague, thought Sophie, as she mounted the steps. It was early yet for influenza to strike, but she had seen a few cases in the tenements, and there was little to do but pray that it was a less virulent strain than had been seen in the past.

“Do you have a fever, then, Davy?” she said, automatically reaching for the forehead where great drops of sweat were standing.

“There’s nothing wrong with Davy but that he’s had a bad scare,” said Lottie.

The cripple rubbed at his forehead with the back of a beefy hand.

“Too right, missus,” he said. “And begging your pardon, miss. But it weren’t anything I was expecting to see of a night, and that’s the truth. And anyone’d say the same, I’m sure.”

“Really, Mrs. Barnes,” snapped Sophie, irritated by the strangeness of the circumstances and the loss of her warm bed. “If you’d tell me why I’m needed, I would be most appreciative.”

An odd look flashed across Lottie Barnes’ face. Fear, and anger, and something else—almost satisfaction. I know something you don’t know, the expression seemed to say. You’ll find out—but for as long as it takes you to climb my stairs, you will have no idea what you’re about to see. And I will.

It was gone in an instant, and the doyenne of Petticoat Lane was as implacable as always.

“Upstairs,” she said. “Davy found a girl wandering the alley tonight, and he brought her back here because he thought she was hurt, and when he got a good look at her in the light he got his wind up. He’ll be all right. But the girl … I don’t know how to describe it, Miss Sophia. You’d better come look.”

Something about her tone made Sophia’s skin prickle, and she was glad of the staunch solidity of Janet at her back.

The carpet on the stairs was worn but relatively clean, and gas lamps burned low in the alcoves instead of candles. Mrs. Barnes kept a tidy house, by East End standards, and although whores inarguably dossed here and brought the occasional punter, there was a dignity about the place that no one cared to trifle with.

As she and Janet followed Lottie to the second floor, Sophie felt an unwarranted strangeness to the place. It was too quiet: There ought to be chatter down the hall as girls borrowed each other’s hairpins and giggled over the day’s adventures.

At the landing a door in a long hallway of similar doors cracked open a fraction, stayed open long enough for the occupant to glance them over, and then shut too. Three rooms down a door gaped open like a maw, and a woman leaned against the sill, clearly waiting for them.

When she saw them she started toward them eagerly.

“Any change?” said Lottie, forestalling the babble that came to her lips.

The woman shook her head. Angie, Sophie thought. She’d treated her for a torn perineum some time ago. She couldn’t remember her last name. Maybe she’d never given one.

“No, missus,” she said. “She’s just sitting there, still as can be.”

Sophie’s irritation returned. Perhaps this mysterious patient’s face had been beaten to a pulp—but they’d all seen worse. It was no occasion for this creeping about and whispering and cryptic statements. She shouldered her way past Angie, not taking the effort to be polite.

It was a bare little room, though neat enough, and the dim flicker of an oil lamp on the bedside table cast a pale yellow glow on the occupant. She sat on the edge of the bed, a young woman of perhaps twenty. Her face, thin with enormous dark eyes that were shiny as a spider’s, was devoid of expression.

There were dark circles under her eyes, but otherwise no sign of damage. Her brunette hair had been shorn close to her head and was growing out in ragged layers. In her absolute stillness there was something of a nun about her; she didn’t seem to respond to anything in the room, not even Sophie placing her bag on the bed beside her. A plaid shawl was draped around her shoulders, covering her upper body; she also wore a full petticoat that was muddy at the hem, as if she’d wandered the streets without bothering to lift it out of the way of the city’s grime.

Her feet peeped from beneath the petticoat—bare toes: she was unshod.

Had she been assaulted? If so it was odd that her face was untouched, although that would go far to explain her near-catatonic state.

“It’s Lydia Dare—Gummige, her name was properly, but she went by her mother’s.” Angie’s low tones, almost a whisper, at her shoulder made Sophie jump. “I haven’t seen her for near on three years—thought she’d gone to the country. She said she had family there.”

“You said she was hurt,” said Sophie, turning to Lottie. The older women merely looked back at her, then flicked their eyes back to the woman on the bed, who had not stirred or said a word.

Feeling like she was being tested under the stare of Professor McPherson, Sophie moved to the woman’s—Lydia’s—side.

“Lydia,” she called gently. “Lydia, I’m going to examine you. Is that all right?”

The woman blinked, but that was her only response.

Sophie placed a cautious hand on her shoulder, feeling the bones underneath. As she bent close, she became aware of a strange smell, unnerving in that room. It was a smell she was familiar with, certainly—but in the hospital, in the examining room, in the surgery and dissection chamber—the antiseptic smell of alcohol and disinfectant. In Mrs. Barnes’ lodging house that smell was as out of place as the whiff of manure in St. James’ Cathedral.

“She must have been to hospital recently,” she said, mostly to herself, as she cautiously loosed the shawl that Lydia wore and drew it away from her unresisting body, exposing what lay beneath.

She heard Janet gasp behind her. Angie made a choking sound. Beside her she felt Lottie tense and brace herself.

“Sweet Jesus Christ in Heaven,” said Dr. Sophia Huxley.

At her exclamation Lydia turned her head and stared at Sophie with her too-bright, insect eyes. Without the shawl she was naked to the waist.

Sophie felt frozen in that gaze, pinned like an insect herself. Her brain was spinning like a cogwheel that had slipped and spun by itself, out of true with its fellows.

How? she thought. How is it possible that this woman is alive?

The flesh and skin between each of Lydia’s ribs had been carved away, so that each bone stood out like a skeleton’s. It looked like extra skin had been stitched around each rib, so that they were clad in scar tissue. On Lydia’s spare frame it looked like a barbarian kind of lacework.

Sophia drew closer. The smell of antiseptic grew stronger.

At first she thought the woman’s stomach had caved in for lack of food, but now she saw—How? But, how—that like the skin and muscle between the ribs, the flesh of her stomach had been scooped away, leaving a concave surface.

“Miss,” said Janet, her voice trembling despite her iron control. “I think you should send for Mr. Donovan.”

Sophie took a minute to consider this, listening to the woman’s slow, steady heartbeat, staring abstractedly at Janet’s somber face.

She was very likely right. This situation was beyond her.

Sophia Huxley’s relationship with Artemis Donovan was a strange one. The women who were too often her patients had little trust in the police, although Artemis had gained a certain grudging regard in the stews of Whitechapel, for more than once he’d made it clear to certain gentlemen with a taste for the rough trade that they were not welcome there. And he had a gentle way of speaking to a girl, as if he’d forgotten she was shop-worn and street-soiled, as if he was talking to a girl from his own Cornwall village, as if her parents and his had sat together in church of Sundays year after year.

Sophia knew that if she informed the police of every crime against human flesh that was committed in her domain, she’d lose the fragile trust, hard-won, that the women of Whitechapel had in her—that she’d fought so hard for, with competent care and gentle hands and an understanding nature. It wasn’t easy. What she so often saw horrified her, and more than once she’d considered giving up her profession and retreating to the safe confines of home.

More than once she’d had to remind herself how hard she’d fought for her medical degree and the right to practice. How hard so many women had fought—Elizabeth Blackstone and the Edinburgh Six, and those that struggled now for acceptance in medical schools across the country; across the world.

But a few times, yes, she’d sent for the tall, soft-spoken detective, when she felt something must absolutely be done and the police engaged. Once it was with the consent of her patient. Once it was not, and she’d bought herself a torrent of abuse as a result.

This, yes. This was beyond her ken. The case of Lydia Dare was hard enough to comprehend medically. When she tried to imagine the person who could do this, who could carve another human being like a block of soapstone …

“Yes, Janet,” she said, straightening and coiling away her stethoscope. “I think Mr. Donovan should be informed. I’ll tell Lottie—she might object, in her house.”

But Mrs. Barnes, although she paled and her jaw clenched at the idea of the police in her house, had little opposition after all. This case was nothing she could control with the force of her formidable personality, or with a word and a coin to the right person.

Besides, it was Mr. Donovan, after all.

Her examination over, Sophie waited for Artemis in the hallway with a nervous tension that was not altogether due to the horror on the other side of the door. In her previous encounters with the detective she’d had to fight a certain tightening of her belly to maintain an air of cool composure, and her hands would sweat in a most annoying manner. She supposed that despite her upbringing and respect for the laws of the land that she had a primitive desire to break the law—and that a part of her feared Artemis would search the impulse out.

She admitted of no other reason for the clammy palms or the flutter beneath her diaphragm.

She heard his tread up the stairs and had time to compose herself, so that when Janet and Mrs. Barnes appeared with the detective following she was able to maintain a suitably icy demeanor appropriate to a medical professional, despite the expression in his warm eyes and his smile when he saw her.

“It must be something extraordinary, to have you send for me voluntarily, Doctor Huxley,” he said, hat in hand. Silently Lottie Barnes took it from him, as if for all the world he’d simply been another gentleman seeking an evening’s entertainment in her house. “And for Mrs. Barnes to look so foreboding, and Davy McPhee to have the wind up—what have you got yourself into this time?”

It was hard not to smile back, but she managed it.

She opened the door and nodded. “I don’t know what to make of it. It’s impossible, medically—and yet … I’ve no idea what to do. Take her to St. James’, certainly—I’m sure she’ll not want for attention there. But somebody’s done this to her, and they must be found, Mr. Donovan. They must be stopped.”

Artemis frowned and moved past her into the room, stopping when he saw the woman sitting so quietly on the bed. Sophie had covered Lydia up again with the shawl when she had finished examining her and as Lydia’s face was untouched, it seemed that nothing was amiss.

Sophie crossed to the bed and gently removed the shawl from Lydia’s shoulders, exposing her body to the detective’s view. She heard the sound he made as he suddenly sucked in his breath.

It was more than simply the elegant brutality of the girl’s injuries, the deliberate nature of the mutilations, the ominous, indefinable purpose in the way she’d been carved out and allowed to heal.

It was also the shock of recognition, the nearly physical blow of knowing he’d seen this man’s work before.

Only once, and many years before. And compared to this, it had been unpracticed, amateur work. Not far from here, in a Whitechapel alley, when he was a new-made detective, when he’d been told to turn his attentions to more important matters than a gutted prostitute, when he’d had no power to argue. It came back in a rush—the girl laid down in the trash of the streets with an incongruous tenderness, her body cut open with a clinical skill, for what purpose he couldn’t begin to imagine.

Somewhere, somehow, this man had honed his skill. Somehow he’d become the master of an unspeakable craft.

And this time, whatever it took, whatever the cost, Artemis would find him.

Sophie was still standing at Lydia’s side, ready to step in between them if he came too close. It was something he liked about her, although he’d never tell her—the fact that her patients were foremost with her, that she still could treat them with respect and gentleness, that she would protect them with every ounce of her being. She had years ahead of her, of seeing the slow grind of poverty and despair destroy every tender feeling, years before a self-protective cynicism took hold.

She had yet to realize that she could never protect her patients against themselves.

He wondered when it would happen. Something lovely would be gone from his world when Sophia Huxley lost her shining faith in her ability to treat every broken lamb.

Sophie seemed to realize it was not much use to call him into a case only to prevent him from examining the evidence, and she moved to his side. Part of Artemis was very aware of the small warmth of her beside him.

He stepped closer to the mutilated woman and she looked up at him indifferently, showing no fear, no embarrassment at her nudity. Although, to be sure, she wasn’t like a naked female at all—more like a sculpture, or a bird …

A bird without wings.

Artemis stifled a soft exclamation. An image came to him suddenly, of a clever construction of paper, sailing on the breeze. A sheet that was folded and cut to resemble a bird.

Was it his own childhood memory, or that of another? He had learned that these sudden, vivid images often belonged to others—memories they might not remember themselves, but vivid enough to impress themselves on their minds.

More than once he’d seen the act of murder as the killer remembered it: quick violent images full of black and scarlet. More than once was too many times, useful as it proved to be in his profession. Each time the homicide had looked surprised when he forced a confession from them, as if they’d only just recalled the crime, as if they’d forgotten to remember.

He glanced down. Sophie’s sleeve was touching his arm—could the memory of the paper bird be hers?

“How can she live, without her insides?” he asked her, his voice low so as not to startle the woman.

Sophie’s answer was in a half-whisper. “I think that certain vital organs have been—I can only say rearranged. I found a heartbeat in more or less the normal place. But the lung noise is … odd … and I think the intestines have been shortened, if such a thing is possible, and tucked behind the abdominal cavity.”

“Is she in pain?”

Sophie shook her head. “I don’t believe so. In fact, I’m sure of it. And I don’t understand how she could have undergone such a … transformation … and survived. There have been remarkable advances in anesthetics, and surgery in general, but this …”

“I was thinking,” said Artemis, as he moved closer yet to the woman, kneeling down carefully on the floor. Her gaze followed him incuriously. “I was thinking that this …” He passed a cautious hand before the exposed ribs. “That this reminds me of something.”

“What?” she said from behind him.

“Of the ribs of a boat that’s been cast ashore—or before the siding goes on, in the shipyard,” he said. “There’s an efficiency to it—everything excess has been stripped away. Like a bird—the hollow quills of the feathers, the lightness of its skeleton. There’s no extra weight.”

“A woman’s skin and internal organs could hardly be said to be ‘extra weight,’ ” Sophie returned.

“No—not in the realm of sanity,” he said. “But here in this room we’re in a different place altogether.”

Before she could stop him he had reached out and gently traced the curve of a rib with his forefinger, barely touching the strangely rearranged skin. Sophie started forward instinctively to stop him, halting when she realized the woman had no reaction save to look down at the detective with almost a reflective look.

Artemis lowered his hand and considered a moment.

“It’s as if she’s something that’s been constructed for flight,” he said.

Lydia blinked.

“If angels have incorporeal bodies, as well as incorruptible,” she said, in a sharp staccato voice, “then they are one with the air, and may transverse it as they choose, taking what form they may. But if they are creatures of flesh, or if entering the earthly sphere makes them so, then they must be physical constructs of great cunning, to take the form of a human and defy, as no human can, the bonds of gravity.”

Artemis and Sophie stared at her, dumbstruck.

Lydia Dare reached out her own hand in turn and touched Artemis on the brow.

Before Sophie’s astonished eyes he grunted, turned pale, and slid to the floor, unconscious.

Artemis came to with his tie loosened and the taste of whiskey on his lips. Sophie was bending over him, and he felt her fingers at his neck. He stared at her face, so close above his own, uncomprehending.

“He’s come round, then?”

It wasn’t her voice but Lottie Barnes, who was standing behind the doctor, one arm akimbo, one holding the whiskey decanter. Janet stood beside her. They both had the disdainful expression of courtesans contemplating a client who had indulged too much and made a fool of himself, and he winced, feeling himself blush.

He sat up, pushing Sophie aside as gently as he could. She sat back on her heels.

“Don’t get up too quickly. You’ll faint again.”

I didn’t faint, he wanted to say, but was overcome by a sudden wave of dizziness. He leaned his head against his knees and the feeling started to pass.

“How long?” he said, not looking at her.

“A few minutes—perhaps five. Has this happened often?”

He couldn’t help smiling at the professional tone of her voice. Somehow he’d become her patient.

“Not often.”

“But sometimes?”

“Once before.”

Once before he’d had a reaction like this. When he was a patrolman he had heard a child cry from a boarded-up house owned by a family that had forgone the London season, leaving their town residence sealed and bereft even of servants.

No one else could hear it, and he almost had to take an axe to the door himself before the sergeant on duty would agree to pull away the boards and investigate.

In an upper room they’d found a waif of indeterminate age or sex, who flinched away from its rescuers and had to be coaxed out of its foul den. Inside the room—one of the maid’s quarters, it seemed—they found a few gnawed heels of bread and a bucket that had been used for daily functions. It was a puzzlement how the child got there, until they found a hole that had been made in the door that opened on the back alley.

It wasn’t the work of the child. An adult had put it there.

The same adult who had made those marks across the half-feral creature’s face.

An adult that had returned to the scene on a regular basis.

Artemis had lifted the child into the carriage that took it to St. Bethlehem’s. When he touched the child’s hand, a series of images flashed across his consciousness with the force of a blow.

He had watched the carriage and its pitiable burden recede down the street. And then he had crumpled to the sidewalk like a rag doll.

Afterward he had been subject to his fair share of joshing, which he took in good part, blaming his weakness on a bout of influenza. But the memory—the darkness, the face hovering over him, the light of a single candle branding it with monstrous shadows, the figure bending to its dreadful purpose—left its taint on him and he dreamed it nightly, not even free of it by day as he closed his eyes for a moment’s respite. So, unsleeping, he roamed the alleys behind those fine houses, seeking other ominous doors or that face half-glimpsed through a child’s terror. But he never did, and eventually they faded.

His head stopped spinning and he looked past Sophie at the bed where Lydia Dare had sat so quietly. With a start he realized she was gone.

He was on his feet in a second. “Where …”

“Gone,” said Sophie, rising in her turn and giving him a speculative, professional glance.

“What, just walked out?”

“Yes.” She reached out and took his wrist, considering his pulse with a grave expression.

He fought the urge to shake her off, looking down at her angrily instead.

“How could you let her go?”

“Hush,” said Sophie, and he bit his lip and waited for her to finish. After half a minute she released him.

“Your heart’s strong enough, at any rate,” she said.

He tugged his cuff down over his wrist, still feeling the touch of her small, capable fingers warm on his skin.

“We’ve got to find her,” he said, looking over Sophie’s head at Lottie, who snorted and hefted the whiskey bottle in both hands.

“That won’t be easy,” she said. “Miss Lydia decided to take a walk when you took your tumble.”

Here Artemis flushed, and Lottie smiled crookedly.

“And the doctor and myself were too preoccupied with your handsome self to stop her.”

Artemis pushed past her and Janet to the bedroom door.

“She can’t have gone far,” he said, heading for the stairs. Davy McPhee waited for him at the bottom, eyes wide as saucers.

“Why didn’t you …” Artemis paused and considered the cripple’s terrified expression. “Well, never mind. I don’t particularly blame you, at that. But surely you saw which way she went?”

He strode to the entrance, reaching for the knob.

“No, Mr. Donovan,” said Davy sharply. “She didn’t go anywhere. No—I tell a lie—she walked past me, and that shawl draped over her didn’t hide that—thing—that had been done to her. She didn’t even look at me, and I thank the Lord for that. She went out there.” Here he nodded past Artemis at the stout oak door with its locks and bolts all open and dangling useless. “She opened the door and went out and then I thought to myself, I did, that I had orter see when she went to, and …

“The steps out the door were clear enough. But down at the bottom—one of those great swirling masses of fog you only see in February or March, most ways. Something strange about it too—it was yellow like they get, but a queer tint to it. She walked down right into it and, God’s my witness, Mr. Donovan, she just vanished away.”

“Of course she did, man,” retorted Artemis, working loose the one lock Davy had managed to close against the terrors of the night. “She went into a fog, you say?”

“You don’t understand.”

Artemis glanced up. Sophie, Janet, and Lottie were watching them from atop the stairway. Sophie was holding her bag, and Lottie had stowed the whiskey away somewhere. Janet was staring at Davy, her brow furrowed.

“I could see her when she went in it,” Davy continued. “It wasn’t as thick as that, not so much one ’o these where you can’t see the hand in front of your face. She walked in and kept walking and she hadn’t gone more’n three, four steps when she just faded away, sir. I swear on my life to that. She was there one second and then … nothing.”

He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Never seen anything like it before … except oncet. I was a kid, and followin’ a man—back when that man, the Gentleman, we called ’im, was grabbing those women, and I thought I had ’im.”

None saw Janet take a step back into the shadows of the upstairs passage, white as a bleached bone.

Artemis turned away, impatient, and loosed the lock.

He felt Davy’s hand on his sleeve.

“Don’t open it, Mr. Donovan! Wait for a while. Wait till daybreak if you can, but at least an hour or so. It can’t stay out there forever.”

“Nonsense, Davy,” said Artemis, and flung upon Mrs. Barnes’ door.

And stood in shock of what waited there. The fog had advanced upon the threshold: a swirling mass of vapor and filth, pressing upon the door like a living thing seeking entrance. It was an odd, earthy tint of yellow, and composed of coils and streamers that looked like a cluster of tentacles, like some strange sea creature. Now it roiled into the house as if it was searching, eagerly searching, for someone.

Davy let out an inarticulate cry and Artemis heard one of the women gasp as a wisp of fog drifted over his shoulder into the foyer and thickened, questing about like a living thing. He pushed the door shut and fancied he felt a resistance, as if the murk were pushing back against him, threatening to spill inside like water. Davy slipped past him and shot home the locks.

London fogs were ubiquitous and sometimes deadly. When they mingled with the smoke of industry and the thousands of fires that kept the city’s inhabitants warm they became a choking miasma, and Artemis recalled vividly the blue face of an elderly beggar who had stifled one winter’s night on the thick murk.

But this was different—the vapor had seemed alive and horribly intentioned. It was impossible. But then, so were Lydia Dare and her mutilations.

Sophie clutched her medical bag to her chest, and Lottie was pale as death, her hand clamped clawlike on the stair rail. Still, her voice was steady enough.

“It seems you’ll be our guests for some hours, Detective Donovan, Doctor Huxley,” she said, ironically. “Shall I send for tea?”

She started down the stairs. “Gracious, Miss Janet,” she remarked, glancing behind her. “Sit down before you faint away like the detective.”

Bryani House, the Mists

The Mists were thick and impassable today, and Trueblood knew the risks of defying it. Yet one of Robarts’ Angels was missing, and the Vistana could not allow such a creature loose in the world, free from his control.

Robarts stood beside him on the porch of Bryani House, clucking reproachfully at the fog.

“If one of the villagers finds her they’ll bring her back,” he said. “My worry is that she’ll wander down by the sea in this murk, and go over the cliffs.”

The fool still thinks he’s in Cornwall, wherever that may be, thought Trueblood.

Aloud, he said: “That would be St. Agnes Town, sir?”

“Yes,” said Robarts, distractedly. “Not a bad lot—clannish, like all these rural folk tend to be. But salt of the earth.”

Trueblood smiled hawkishly. They would be salt in the earth when he was done. A town full of Jaelle’s Breed—the one folk in this world who might be able to see him as he was, the only people who might, remotely, be able to hurt him. There would be others, he knew, scattered throughout the country, but as for this nest, when his—Robarts’—army was ready, he would deal with them.

A small figure loomed in the fog, and both men started forward. The woman with the hollowed-out ribs was walking toward the house. Ignoring them, she walked up the stair and passed into the foyer.

They followed. She stopped beneath the immense chandelier, immobile as if she were an engine run out of steam.

She had a blanket draped over her shoulders. Trueblood reached out to feel it. It was dry, for the most part—as it wouldn’t have been had she been walking for hours in the fog.

“Where have you been?” he said.

She didn’t move, or look at him. “In a city,” she said. “The city I came from. I’ve been to London.”

Now she did turn and stare at him with her great dark eyes.

“I didn’t see the Queen, though.”

She giggled suddenly. Trueblood flinched.

“You’d never get to London in your bare feet, my dear,” said Robarts, obliviously checking her pulse. “You must have wandered into St. Agnes.”

The Angel was still looking at Trueblood.

“People took me inside, and tried to help me,” she said. “They were kind. The Mists called me back. They wanted something, and I don’t know what. But now they’ve seen me in London. They know.”

She drew the blanket, which had been hanging loose around her, over her shoulders, and walked up the stairs, disappearing into the upper levels of the house.

“Well, I’m glad she came to no harm,” said Robarts, briskly.

“Yes, sir,” replied Trueblood, distractedly. He looked out the open front door, at the Mists that still loomed at the base of the stairs.

One day he would take Robarts’ Angels back to London with him, to the strange world where both nature and artifice held sway. But not yet—they were not yet ready. He must keep them on a tighter leash.

He turned his back on the Mists and shut the door.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

London, 1882

Henry Thorpe might have taken the man for a Frenchman, with his dark hair and eyes, save that he was too tall for a Gallois. He had a very slight accent, barely more than an emphasis on his “Ts” and “Ks.” Henry wondered if he was a German; he had a bit of the look of a Bavarian about him.

Absently, he dog-eared the corner of the card the man had sent up, and motioned him inside. The small apartment was filled with the detritus of his work—half-completed models of balsa wood; detailed sketches of wings and tail flaps and propellers; a drafting table scattered with pencils. A copy of da Vinci’s ornithopter sketches was pinned to the wall behind the table, and from the central beam depended a graceful structure of balsa and muslin: a miniature craft that with its poised pinions and gentle scalloped curves resembled a bat—Thorpe’s re-imagining of Clement Ader’s Eole.

“They must have more lift,” he’d told his mentor. “The engines will be too heavy for them, yes, even so small.”

Ader expostulated, and together they’d reworked it on paper. Henry had cobbled together his model, but before they had a chance to try it out, Ader, too eager for the chance of more funding, had agreed to a test flight of an earlier experimental model of the Eole before a military commission.

Ader would always swear that it had worked—that the Eole had flown under her own power. Henry had his doubts, but remained silent. Some few members of the commission had conceded a short flight had taken place, but as for the distance—none of their notes agreed, and none came close to Ader’s estimation. Others frankly denied that the craft had done more than glide, and clumsily too.

Whatever the facts, the commission was less than impressed, and Ader’s funding was eliminated.

The Frenchman was philosophical. “I will find a patron,” he told Henry that last afternoon as they drank strong red wine in the café where they’d taken their dinner for the past year. “It was my fault; I was ambitious, and tried too soon. But I will persevere.”

“You sell the Eole short,” retorted Henry. “It has the superior wing structure—or would, if you would follow my suggestions.”

Ader laughed and shook his head. “Would that you could prove me wrong, my young friend—or I you. But alas, it is time to—retrench, do you call it in English? Yes—to lick our wounds and plan another approach. I hope we can work together again. But for now—I have no work, and therefore no need of an assistant. Go back to your England and gift your countrymen with flight, if you can.”

Henry had returned, and with his meager savings and patrimony he had set up a tiny studio that barely had room for a drafting table yet also functioned as his house. His cousin Bernard was abroad in India, raising a family, and Bernard’s sister Sophie was his only relative—or indeed acquaintance—in London. He must write his aunt and find out Sophie’s address. What must she think of her daughter’s shocking choice of a career?

Little Sophie, whose braids he had pulled, a doctor. He still found it hard to believe.

He scooped a pile of books and paper out of an armchair, deposited it on the floor, and gestured to the dark man to sit.

“Please forgive the disheveled appearance of the room, Mr.…” He glanced at the rectangle of pasteboard he had mutilated. “… Mr. Robarts. This is my workspace as well, and I tend to get—rather exuberant.”

The dark man remained standing. “Not to worry, Mr. Thorpe,” he said, the faint accent barely apparent. “And Doctor Robarts is my employer.”

“Ah.” At a loss, Henry sat in the vacated chair himself, wincing as he felt a stylus hiding in the depths of the upholstery prick his thigh. “I see,” he continued, seeing nothing.

The man smiled pleasantly. “Doctor Robarts is abroad at the time, and not in the best of health,” he continued smoothly. “But he is returning shortly, and most interested in the work you and Monsieur Ader were doing.”

“Oh!” said Henry, a trifle nonplussed.

“In fact, Doctor Robarts communicated to me that he visited M. Ader recently and was sorry to hear that the funding for his experiments in manned flight had been … terminated.”

“Yes; it was a great shame,” said Henry, leaning forward in the chair. He was about to launch into a diatribe about the foolishness of trying the Eole prematurely, before he could complete his modification of the wing. But there was something odd in the dark man’s expression, something on the verge of the sardonic that made him pause.

“M. Ader informed Doctor Robarts that you had returned to England and, that as he intended to retire for a time and, as he puts it, retrench, he suggested that Doctor Robarts contact you in regard to his wishes.”

“And Doctor Robarts wishes …?”

“Regrettably,” replied the man, “Doctor Robarts suffered a great personal loss some years back, and went abroad in order to recover himself. He has decided that once he returns to health and public life he wishes to dedicate his fortune to improving the welfare of his fellow man.”

“Very commendable,” said Henry, wondering what any of this had to do with him.

The man’s smile spread slightly. “Indeed. But Doctor Robarts has no intention of funding soup kitchens, or Magdalene Houses for unfortunate women. He wants to direct his resources to innovation, Mr. Thorpe. He wants to help usher in the future his wife and child could never see.” He leaned forward a trifle, and Henry straightened unconsciously at the intense scrutiny.

“He wants to help people fly, Mr. Thorpe. To let them take to the skies not only while traveling great distances but for small errands, and little journeys. And he wants you to make it possible.”

“Do you mean a personal aircraft of some sort, Mr.…?”

“Trueblood. I am called Trueblood,” the man replied. “And a personal aircraft—yes, of a sort. But he had nothing so bulky in mind—or as expensive either. Doctor Robarts wishes such transportation to be in the grasp of the common man—or woman.”

“Interesting.” Henry leaned back in his chair. “I do wish you’d sit, Mr. Trueblood.”

Trueblood only smiled politely.

“But I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. Affordable and efficient transportation is our ultimate goal, of course—and the goal of all progress in the field. But the common man is well served by the underground or the omnibus. I don’t see aeroplane travel for the masses having a practical application.”

“With all respect, Mr. Thorpe, Doctor Robarts considers that kind of thinking limiting.”

Henry frowned. The voice was too smooth, the words too innocuous to be insulting, and yet he felt mocked.

But then, maybe Trueblood—and this Dr. Robarts—were right. He remembered the inexpressive faces of the French military commission, and his professors who declared human flight to be impossible, and his father’s friends who would look at him as if he was an idiot when he spoke of the advances in the field.

Hadn’t he always found their lack of imagination, their refusal to look outside their own experience, their limited thinking, frustrating? Even contemptible?

Perhaps he deserved to be mocked.

Henry shrugged and opened his hands, indicating the disarray that surrounded him.

“You—and Doctor Robarts—have a point,” he said. “But with my employment to M. Ader terminated and few resources of my own, I am somewhat at a loss these days and my work of necessity must be theoretical at best. How may I be of service to Doctor Robarts?”

Now Trueblood did sit, perching on the edge of the overloaded armchair opposite Henry’s, and bending close.

“Doctor Robarts proposes to patronize your work,” he said, his voice low and silky. “Understanding that funding is needed, and generous funding in order not to stifle the work, he wishes to supply you with a studio and such materials as you may need—or rather, the money needed to procure such. You, of course, know what you require to pursue your studies. Simply inform me of what you want and funds shall be advanced to you.”

Henry stared, wide-eyed, at the emissary. A thrill of hope and of anticipation went down his spine. This was the dream of any innovator—the means to obtain what he needed, without begging or scrimping or making do with what was on hand.

Yet a warning throb of doubt started in his belly, persistent as a drumbeat. It was too good to be true. Such gifts, seeming heavensent, always were.

“Doctor Robarts is very generous,” he said picking his words carefully. It would never do to offend. “Does he understand, however, how expensive such a venture can be? To my mind, those who would seek to develop manned flight must get support from an arm of a university, or more likely the military.”

In answer Trueblood reached inside his coat. For a cold second Henry wondered if he might have a weapon—not that there was anything worth stealing in the tiny studio, not unless the dark stranger had a fetish for balsa wood.

But he only brought out a parcel, wrapped in paper and tied with string, and placed it on the tea table beside him that was currently serving to hold an assortment of pencils.

“Seed-money,” he said. “Pray do Doctor Robarts the favor of using it to obtain and secure what facilities you need for your research. When you are ready, send word to Bryani House and more will be forthcoming.”

Trueblood rose and Henry, bewildered, stumbled to his feet a moment later. With a pleasant “good evening,” the messenger bowed himself out, leaving Henry with a swirl of emotions—joy, relief, and persistent doubt—that left him speechless.

Almost absently he scooped up the parcel, hefting it in his hand and looking out the window where he could see a few swallows swoop and forage for the insects that emerged with the cool air of dusk.

Secure what facilities you need.

Could it be true? Would he be allowed to continue his work?

Distracted, he thumbed open the string and unwrapped the package. It had been secured in a paper that looked like it had been manufactured abroad, thick and faintly patterned, and giving off a slight spicy odor.

He couldn’t help a gasp when the paper fell away. In his hand was a brick-sized packet of hundred-pound notes—more than he’d ever earned in a year, more than his father had earned, or his professors, or his so-disapproving uncles.

He sat back down in astonishment, money in hand, watching outside as the swallows darted to and fro and later, when it was dark, the bats.

Bryani House, the Mists

Trueblood had a half-dozen books spread out on the Library table. He was bent over one manuscript that seemed to consist mostly of illustrations which looked like complicated cityscapes—until one looked closer and saw that they were diagrams of wheels and gears, interlocking in fantastical and curious ways.

To the side and slightly behind him stood Seriah. The flaps of skin that Robarts had peeled away hung from her back, and she resembled nothing so much as a bat with its wings folded in rest.

Trueblood had scribbled notes in the margins of the manuscript: neat little rows of lettering that resembled no alphabet that had existed on Earth for thousands of years. Here and there were words scribed in recognizable Greek, Arabic or English.

One was “Antikythera,” and below that a crude diagram of a large gear with several smaller wheels adjoined, like a mother hen with her chicks, and around that, an arrangement of stars.

“Seriah,” he said. She remained frozen in position, and “Seriah,” he said again, louder this time, pointing at the word and the diagram. Still she didn’t move, and now he clenched his fist as if grabbing a fly.

She started as if he’d struck her, and bent over the page.

After a considered pause, she said, “Nothing.”

“No?” he said, clenching his fist tighter. She shuddered, and drops of sweat stood out on her brow.

“No,” she gasped. “I can’t see anything. It’s darkness to me.”

Impatiently, he opened his fist and the Recording Angel flinched back away from him. Trueblood continued his perusal as if nothing had happened.

“Here,” he said, after a moment. He flipped over the pages of the book with the elaborate diagrams. “Here,” he said again, running his finger down the margins where the traces of something that had once been bound in the manuscript could still be seen. “And here—something’s been torn out, once, twice, three times at least. Look, Seriah, and tell me what you see.”

She bent again, and this time she reached out with thin, tentative fingers and brushed the feathery remains of the torn sheet. A slow smile spread across her face.

“What is it?” Trueblood breathed, not wanting to interrupt her vision. “It’s Harun El-Iman’s Book of Wondrous Objects, and it’s like every other copy of it I’ve seen, except for those remnants.”

“The Caliph made him write everything down,” she said. “So that his inventions would not be lost to time.”

“The Mechanical Elephant, the Golden Nightingale with its jeweled plumage and beautiful voice,” said Trueblood. “The chess-playing Automaton that was sent to the Regent’s Court. All of these El-Iman made, and more. The book is rare, but not unique. What makes this one different?”

“There were secrets he hid from even the Caliph,” she said, still stroking the book. “Cunning ways of working metal, methods of constructing objects so realistic you would swear they were flesh and blood. He didn’t want to share that knowledge with the world. So he bowed to the Caliph’s wisdom and wrote his book, but in one copy only he bound the sketches of his cleverest, most remarkable creations. That book alone he kept for himself.”

“What happened to them?” Trueblood reached for Seriah’s hand, then thought better of it and withdrew.

She shook her head. “I can hardly see—wait—”

She closed her eyes and swayed. “Darkness, and a candle, and a book wrenched open to the light. A man lying on the ground, his head in a black puddle. Somebody tearing, and tearing again.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell.”

He took her by the shoulder and she writhed away from him, wrapping her arms protectively around herself.

“I can’t see! I don’t know!”

Trueblood sighed.

“Very well.”

“I can’t …”

“Quiet!” he snapped, and she withdrew to the corner, curling up on herself, becoming as small as she could.

Presently all that could be heard in the Library was the scratch of Trueblood’s pen in the margin, and the occasional scrape of a book against the table as he pulled one closer.

After an hour he began to chuckle. From her corner, Seriah glanced up, startled.

Trueblood laughed outright.

“No wonder you couldn’t see who it was,” he said when he could speak again.

“I still can’t,” she said.

“No, I don’t imagine so,” he said. He rose and stretched his cramped arms.

“But you will,” he remarked over his shoulder as he left the room.

London, 1882

“But I don’t understand, Henry. If it can’t fly …”

Henry Thorpe reached for a cake. The tearoom was filled with women meeting each other for refreshment and gossip.

“Oh, it could fly, theoretically, at least. But it didn’t when Ader tested it, and it won’t if he tries again. The engines are too bulky, and the wings won’t be able to support their weight.”

“Then why …”

“Because, my dear practical cousin, the only way Mankind will fly is to fail many, many times over. It’s the grim side of invention we don’t like to talk about too often.”

Sophie was watching Henry’s hands, which wouldn’t stop fiddling with the objects on the table. He put down the fork only to take up the teaspoon and twist it between forefinger and thumb. Leaning over the table to describe the latest developments in gliders, he unconsciously picked up the saltshaker, unscrewed the silver top, examined the threads and replaced it. His fingers were long and white, calloused at the tips and stained with what she supposed was grease or some other substance he used in his work. Surreptitiously she glanced at her own, decorously folded in her lap. Her nails were cut far too short for elegance, the skin dry from constant washing, no matter how often she applied lanolin.

She picked up her cup and lifted it to her lips, hiding a smile. How appalled her mother would be at her chapped fingers, at the stains about Henry’s nails. It was one thing to choose to work; it was another to let one’s hands show the world how they were used.

“How dreadful for M. Ader, Henry,” she said, lowering her cup. “I do wish I could have seen it.”

Henry grinned sheepishly at his cousin. “Oh, it would have done your black heart good, I’m sure.”

“Is it possible, do you think, that that this Echo …”

“The Eole, my dear.”

“Goodness, Henry, what a pedant you are. Is it possible that it did fly? Perhaps the French Military had unrealistic expectations.”

“I have no doubt they did. I am willing to believe M. Ader to some extent—that it glided, or even that it did fly, in the strictest sense of the word, a few yards. Ader is an honest man, but hope and expectation are capable of blinding the most analytical of minds. But I must say it could not have flown far. The wing structure completely forbade it.”

“And your craft, the Echo …”

“The Eole, Sophie. Come now—do I confound the Fallopian tube and the Eustachian simply to provoke you?”

Sophie reached for a sandwich. “You’d be surprised how many darlings of the medical set do. But go on. The wing structure?”

“It’s all in that, I know it. The question is: How does a wing lift an object that is heavier than air? No bird is propelled by steam power. I was getting close, with my modification of the Eole.”

“And all that research is lost now? Surely not. Your notes …”

“Oh, I’ve notes a plenty. But da Vinci had notes. It’s no use without resources and, therefore, the ability to test, and fail and test again. Success needs failure, and failures cost money. All the notes and sketches in the world can’t predict humidity, say, or a freak gust of wind.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“But it looks like that might change now. It seems I’ve acquired a patron.”

“Oh!” Sophie clapped her hands, and Henry had to laugh at the girlish gesture. “That’s wonderful, Henry!” She ignored the glances, equally distributed between offended and amused, from the other denizens of the teashop. “Who is it? What’s he like?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. I’ve only dealt with his assistant so far—or manservant—or messenger. Queer chap.” He gave a little shake of his head. “But the name’s Robards—no, I’m sorry. Robarts. A Sebastian Robarts. Evidently he’s been abroad some time.”

“I know that name from somewhere.” Sophie frowned, trying to remember.

“Never heard of him myself.”

She shook her head. “I’ll think of it eventually. Anyway, do go on. Did he give you lots and lots of money?”

Henry snorted. “Enough to stand you tea this afternoon, you greedy beggar.”

“Then we can order more cakes, since you’ve eaten the lot.”

Sophia heard Lady Cecelia’s voice in the waiting room and smiled. She washed her hands thoroughly in the bucket and removed her bloodstained smock—the birth had been uneventful save for a tear in the perineum that had threatened to develop into a fistula, and she had spent a long time stitching it up. She enjoyed Cecelia’s visits: the philanthropist seemed instinctively to know when to come, when to encourage, and when to leave one to one’s work.

She opened the waiting-room door, for once free of patients, to see her patroness standing with a distinguished-looking man, perhaps a few years older than her. It was difficult to say, however: Sophie’s practiced eye saw that the lined face and strained features of the gentleman might be due to ill health rather than age. He had the look of one who had suffered either a devastating sickness or an unbearable grief, and was only lately beginning to recover.

Lady Cecelia turned to her eagerly.

“Sophia, this is my brother-in-law, Doctor Sebastian Robarts,” she said. “Sebastian, allow me to present Doctor Sophia Huxley. We are very lucky to have Sophia to administer to the patients here; I count myself fortunate that Doctor McPherson recommended her.”

“Robarts!” Sophie exclaimed. “But this is wonderful—Henry Thorpe is my cousin, Doctor Robarts. Today he told me that the entire future of aviation will benefit thanks to your patronage.”

“It’s my pleasure, although I haven’t yet had the chance to meet the gentleman,” said Dr. Robarts in a husky voice, bending over Sophie’s hand. “And a pleasure to see that the fair sex has made such strides in the profession during my absence. I am beginning to feel quite the Rip van Winkle.”

At Sophie’s puzzled look he smiled. “An American story about a man who sleeps for a hundred years, finding everything alien to him when he wakes.”

“And you’ve been abroad, I understand?” asked Sophie.

“You might say that,” he said, the lines in his face deepening. He suddenly looked very tired.

“Sebastian has been in retirement for the last fifteen years, after the passing of my sister,” interjected Lady Cecelia. She put her arm through his and drew him close. “And we are very happy to have him back again.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Sophie, feeling maladroit. She was racking her brain—surely she had run into the name of Sebastian Robarts at some time during her medical studies. And the death of his wife—that struck a familiar note as well.

“I am giving a supper party to welcome Sebastian home,” said Lady Cecelia. “Just family and a few intimates. Do come.”

“It would be my pleasure—but I don’t want to intrude on a family affair,” began Sophie.

“Nonsense! You are family. And Doctor McPherson will be there: You can all sit together and talk business and pay no mind to propriety at all—will you come then?”

Sophia laughed and assented, trying to remember if she had any suitable frock at all. Most of her party-going clothing was at her parents’ house in the country—although certainly one need have no fear of being “cut” for being unfashionable at one of Lady Cecelia’s parties.

“Is that Bartholomew McPherson?” asked Sebastian Robarts, suddenly. “Trained under James Symons?”

“I have no idea whom he trained under,” said Lady Cecelia. “But his name is certainly Bartholomew. Sophie,” she turned back to her. “I know you’re dreadfully busy, so we’ll leave you now. But we can expect you tonight, correct? We need beauty amongst the Hippocrates!”

“Yes, certainly I’ll come,” said Sophie. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Doctor Robarts. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have notes to make.”

“Delightful,” he returned. Sophie, after a quick embrace from Lady Cecelia, returned to her office, wondering if the feeling of Sebastian Robarts’ gaze burning on her back was merely her imagination.

In the hansom cab on the way to Lady Cecelia’s she remembered—Robarts’ essays on the speculum. Dr. McPherson had recommended them particularly. And she remembered more. Robarts’ wife had died in childbirth, along with her baby: A particularly difficult case that was the more cruelly ironic, given her husband’s profession. By all accounts the best possible care was given, but to no avail. Margaret Robarts died—Sophia had never realized she was Lady Cecelia’s sister—and Robarts had soon after retired to his country estate, and from there had gone abroad, seeking balm for his sorrows.

Robarts was already in attendance at Lady Cecelia’s, and Sophie was glad to be able to tell him how valuable she had found his scholarly works.

The effect was profound. His expression brightened, and she could see glimpses of what he had been before—young, vital, and brilliant. The gray sadness fell off him like a cloak, and he drew her into private conversation by the fire, asking her about strides in modern scholarship and the cases she most often saw at the Clinic. At one point Sophie saw Lady Cecelia flash her a sly smile, and she wondered if her patroness suspected her of plotting to catch the eligible widower herself.

With the arrival of the other guests, including Dr. McPherson, they assembled for dinner. Sophie couldn’t help noticing that when Bartholomew McPherson arrived Robarts lost his sparkle and became serious again, almost grim. Her mentor seemed oddly subdued as well.

He shook the other man’s hand politely enough.

“I’m sorry to hear of Symons’ death, Bart,” Sophie heard Robarts say. “A great loss to the profession.”

McPherson thanked him sincerely.

Sophie could not help notice through dinner the looks Robarts, sitting opposite her, flashed McPherson, sitting beside her—reflective, almost speculative. Not at all friendly.

Perhaps they’d had a student rivalry. Sophie mentally shrugged and tried to forget it.

Sophie left the party at nine, pleading early hours the next day. Robarts saw her to the door, taking her coat away from the waiting servant and helping her on with it.

“I hope, if it’s not too presumptuous, Doctor Huxley,” he said, with some of the vivaciousness she’d seen before dinner, “you might allow me to attend you at the Clinic and assist you in some small way. I have no intention—or need—at this time to return to private practice. But medicine remains my passion. I should like to use my hands once more, and not leave them idle.”

“You are more than welcome, Doctor Robarts,” she replied. “We can always use more help, and I look forward to learning from you.”

He nodded and shook her hand, and as she turned away she thought she caught a gleam beneath his eyelid, an eager, almost predatory look that didn’t seem to belong to him at all. It was gone in an instant and he returned to his place in the drawing room, but as she mounted the steps of the waiting hansom a chill ran through her bones at the memory of it.

Or perhaps it was the cool night air, with wisps of fog already rising. She remembered the nightmare fog that had so terrified Davy McPhee—and, she had to admit, frightened the rest of them—and shivered.

Dr. Robarts wasted no time; the next day Janet escorted him into her office. He was holding his hat and gloves and looked tired and worn again—but at the same time more rested. It must be doing him some good to be home again, under Lady Cecelia’s expert care.

She rose to show him about, but suddenly Janet spoke.

“Excuse me, sir, but I don’t suppose you’d remember me?”

There was a quaver of uncertainty in her voice. Robarts, startled, turned to look at her.

“Why, yes,” he said after a long moment. “Surely … surely it’s Janet?”

She nodded, and he stepped forward to take her hand. Sophie was startled to see tears brimming in her attendant’s eyes.

“It’s been a long time, sir,” she said. “And forgive the presumption, but I never had the chance to tell you how sorry … how sorry we all were at the loss of your good lady. She was …” She pulled away to pull a handkerchief from her sleeve. “She was very kind to me, and patient. I was such a stupid girl.”

“Thank you, Janet,” said Robarts. “You were always a good girl, and very helpful … at the last …”

Janet pulled herself together and bobbed a curtsey, a gesture incongruously young for her, and excused herself.

“Janet was my late wife’s maidservant,” said Robarts, turning back to Sophie. “I’m afraid I had no need of maintaining a household, after …”

“I am so sorry about what happened,” said Sophie. “I had heard of it, of course—and it seemed there was nothing to help it.”

Robarts paused and looked reflective—and, oddly, cunning.

“That’s what was said, and I suppose they were right—but I wonder. But Doctor Huxley, this is no time for dredging up the past. I am very curious to see your new facilities.”

Later, brushing out Sophie’s hair, Janet told her of that dreadful day.

“She just bled and bled, miss, and there wasn’t any way they could stop it—not the doctor, nor that Symons who came after …”

“James Symons?” said Sophie, curious. No wonder Robarts was interested in the name of Professor McPherson’s mentor, if he was present at the death of his wife. She wondered if Robarts blamed him.

“I wouldn’t know his name, miss. Never have I seen so much blood out of one woman, not even in your work.”

“It sounds like the wall of the uterus separated,” said Sophie, with professional curiosity. “If so, there was certainly nothing to be done. And the baby?”

“They said he was strangled—blue, he was. Blue as your Sunday best.”

“The umbilicus prolapsed,” murmured Sophie.

“Doctor Robarts prolapsed after, is what happened, begging your pardon, miss,” rejoined Janet with some spirit. “Dismissed the lot of us and went to earth in that dreary house in Cornwall. Wasn’t dreary when the missus was alive, of course. She made everything cheery. But after, it lost all the life in it … just like he did.”

“Ouch, Janet!”

“It’s a tangle. Sit still and let me work it out, else I’ll have to cut it out and your mother’ll have my hide when you show up home in a suffragette bob.”

“I don’t see why you have to do this every night,” said Sophie, impatiently. “I can brush my own hair.”

“You’ll never do it right, and never enough,” said Janet. “You’ve no time as it is. One hundred times a night, not a lick and promise, like you’d do.” Her voice quieted. “Mrs. Robarts told me that.”

Sophia subsided, watching Janet’s work-worn face in the mirror as she bent to her task.

“I’d be a sad mess without you, Janet,” she said, finally.

“That you would, miss,” said Janet, firmly applying the ninety-fifth stroke, ninety-sixth, ninety-seventh …

Bryani House, Cornwall, 1882

Trueblood staggered out of the fog, collapsing on the front step of Bryani House. He glanced behind him. The Mists were dissipating, leaving no sign of the place he’d come from. The vapors retreated in streamers and swirls and the meadows, with their gray-green grasses and tiny, starlike flowers were exposed to view.

Trueblood watched, panting. His clothing was soaked in sweat and there was still a trace of fresh blood that streaked from the corner of his mouth to under his ear. He held the papers in a roll, carefully away from his clothing that they might not get stained, and to protect the delicate lettering and diagrams from smearing.

When he had his breath back he rose, still watching the meadows, and in the distance, a hint of the sea.

Seriah was waiting in the doorway.

“It’s different,” she said. “We’re back in England.”

“Yes,” he said. Then: “Did you see it?”

In answer, she shuddered and backed away from the doorway, giving him space to enter.

He chuckled. As he passed her he heard her mumble.

“What?” he turned on her.

She blanched, but held her head high. “I said, may God forgive you.”

He laughed then. “When we storm Heaven, little Gregori, God will do whatever we tell him to.”

She watched his back as he strode down the hall to the Library.

London, 1882

“It came on sudden two days gone,” Aunt Cora told Artemis without preamble when he arrived at her door. She hurried him over the stile and through the house, which was more alarming than anything she could have said—were all well, she would have plied him with tea and plum cake before he would have been allowed into the inner reaches of the dwelling. “Her heart’s been bothering her for a while, and her breath’s not good, as you knew. But day before yesterday, she went all queer and took to her bed. We thought she’d be up soon; else we would’ve called you before. But she’s just faded since.”

“A doctor …” he began. Maybe Sophia would come if he asked.

“Doctor was out yesterday and listened to her chest until she sent him away. He told me her heart was failing, but I didn’t believe it until I saw her today. You’ll understand when you see her. And she won’t have the doctor back, so it’s no use trying. She says she knows it’s her time.”

At the doorway to his mother’s room he paused, hat in hand, suddenly at a loss. His mam was such a tough little woman, and now death was to take her? It seemed impossible.

Fiona Donovan looked tiny up against her white pillows, but her eyes were huge and feverish. She was staring at the ceiling as if she’d burn a hole through the unoffending wood, which would greatly disturb Cora, as her chamber was above.

She turned her burning eyes to him and it seemed to take her a few seconds to recognize him before she blinked and her eyes were normal again.

“Artie,” she said, and touched the side of the bed. He went to her, feeling suddenly shy, as if he was a boy again and his parents’—his mother’s—room was sacrosanct, to be entered only with permission.

He sat carefully on the edge of the bed, feeling her fragility in all his bones. Had she always been this small?

She had closed her eyes and seemed to be asleep, so he took her hand, little bigger than a child’s in his own palm, and held it carefully. She opened her eyes and smiled up at him.

“No flowers at the funeral, Artie,” she said in a soft rasp. “I don’t hold with them, all showing-off, and then there’s the expense.”

He wanted to tell her that was nonsense, that there’d be no funeral now or anytime soon for any of them, that she had years ahead of her. But his throat was dry and it would be a lie anyway. If she knew she was dying that was the truth of it and that was all. He had never been able to lie to her.

“All right, Mam,” he managed. “No flowers.”

Her fingers moved convulsively in his hand and she looked forward, her eyes large again.

“Dirk,” she gasped.

“What?” He bent closer. “What did you say, Mam?”

Her burning gaze swept over him, through him.

“Dirk Penhallow,” she said, articulating each word carefully, as if each breath was precious and hard-fought-for. “The darkling one. Never came to no good that I heard.”

Artemis’ lips set in a hard line. He hadn’t heard his cousin’s name in years.

“What of him, Mam?” he said, his voice harsher than he meant.

Fiona’s lips worked but nothing came out, and he had to lean close again to hear her.

“Go to Dirk, Artie. In your dire need, you must find him, and forgive him.”

“Dirk cursed our own, and father died, and eleven men besides,” Artemis whispered. “Twelve good men and he killed them with a word. You named him darkling and cast him away from our house. How can I forgive Dirk Penhallow?”

Some of her old spirit crept into her voice. “That’s not for me to say, Artie. You must find the way yourself. My time is up and I’ve earned my rest. But I know that Dirk, for all my hard words, was born darkling and cannot help his nature. You must find Dirk, else all perish.”

He kissed her wrinkled brow gently.

“Yes, Mam.” He didn’t know what else to say.

She swallowed, a dry movement in a dry throat. “I shouldn’t have …”

She paused, and her bright eyes darted around the room as if looking for something.

“What, Mam?”

“I just … shouldn’t have …”

Her face stilled and she glanced up at him with a wry look, as if the final joke was that after a long life, there was simply too much to tell.

“It’s all right,” he breathed, not knowing if she could hear him. “You don’t need to.”

She fell back asleep then and he waited through the night, holding her tiny, frail hand in his until somewhere between the church bell tolling three and the cock’s crow she was there in her body, and then she was gone.

SERIAH

It was said that out of spite and jealousy Dirk Penhallow cursed his sister Claire in the womb, so that she came out weak and crippled and killed her mother when she came.

It was a lie: Dirk was innocent of this, at least. There was little for him to be jealous of, for one, for his mother had cast him out long before, when the Weald Hole took the men of St. Agnes. He went away then, some say to Liverpool (but I know it was to London) and came back a few years later, every kind thing beaten out of him and a black look what went past his eyes and down into his soul. He lived in back-street rooms in the winter and sheltered in barns in the summer, working when hands were needed and sometimes just taking what he needed from those who feared the Penhallow Curse.

When his mother died he had enough decency to come pay his respects (though some said he came only to gloat), and saw his sister, a puling, mewling little scrap with a twisted leg, not expected to live out the week. And he said she would live, or the town could tumble down the Weald Hole for all he cared.

So Claire Penhallow was taken into the care of an aunt of sorts, who did her best by her, and she did live, and her brother, so grim and glowering for the most part, smiled whenever he saw her. She was a cheerful child despite her useless leg, although frail and each year she lived was accounted a small miracle. Her aunt taught her sewing—mending and embroidery, enough to earn her keep, and so Claire had a tiny room at the back of the house, just outside the garden where she could sit in the sunshine and warm her limbs, the twisted and the straight alike.

Dirk stayed away for the most part, knowing he wasn’t welcome. He cherished his visits with Claire like rare wine, only to be taken in small sips, for Claire was the one creature he loved in this world and it was certain that in all this world Claire was the one creature who loved him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

London, 1882

Henry was bent over a span of balsa wood, adjusting the clamps that kept it in place. If the leading edge of the wing could be bent just so, and if the wood could keep its shape without splintering, he might be able to improve on the Eole’s record.

“I hope I find you well, Mr. Thorpe.”

Henry’s fingers tightened involuntarily on the clamp, denting the delicate wood. He stifled an oath and turned to see Trueblood, a tall, ravenlike figure in black, looming by the studio door.

He forced a smile on his face, wondering how the man had got inside: He thought he had locked that door. Trueblood must have the feet of a cat to enter so silently—how long had he been standing there?

Still, the man—or his employer, rather—had been very generous thus far, and Henry could tolerate a few improprieties.

“Very well, Mr. Trueblood,” he replied. “Thanks to Doctor Robarts’ patronage, I have been able to make progress in the design of a workable wing. Would you care to see it?”

He stepped aside while Trueblood approached the worktable. The balsa model upon it brought to mind the dissected wing of an eagle in a university laboratory, although in the height of the arch at its apex it also resembled that of a bat.

“The key is the leading edge of the wing,” said Henry, pointing to the highest point of the curve. “Whether it is to flex like a true wing or remain stiff, like a glider—that’s where my research takes me, every time.”

Trueblood’s sharp, quick eyes took in the model, and Henry could see that he looked at it with no mere polite interest but was analyzing it, marking out its strengths and flaws, weighing his work in the balance.

Slightly unnerved at the scrutiny, Henry kept talking.

“Of course, for Doctor Robarts’ goals, the wings would be affixed and stiff, like a glider’s …”

Trueblood turned to him. “But with gliders the height and control is limited. One must rely on updrafts, and use the hands to control the flex to guide it. Gliders do not fly under their own power—in fact, they do not fly at all, technically speaking. Correct?”

“Correct,” said Henry, somewhat taken aback.

Trueblood turned back to his contemplation of the wing. “Then the glider model is not acceptable.”

“What?”

“Doctor Robarts requires a wing in its true sense—a wing that moves, that can be used to take off and achieve an adequate height, that can be controlled by its … wearer.”

“But … but …” Henry sputtered. “Such a thing is impossible. You want to make birds out of people, and that can’t happen.”

“You sell your skills short, Mr. Thorpe.”

“But listen! For one thing, humans are not built for flight. A bird has hollow bones and is light for its size. Its muscles are constructed to accommodate its wings. Its entire body is designed for that one purpose—and humans—well, humans are like apes, Mr. Trueblood. We were designed to walk upright on the ground, not to fly under our own power.”

Trueblood’s mouth quirked into a smile. “What of angels, Mr. Thorpe? Don’t you believe in angels?”

Henry laughed. “Angels are supernatural creatures, and as such are not subject to the physical laws of the Earth. Humans are—well—human.”

“Mostly,” Trueblood conceded.

“For adequate control, wings would somehow have to be able to be connected directly to the human musculature,” Henry continued, ignoring this. “Which would pose innumerable difficulties, and the wings themselves—they would have to be works of art. Perhaps sophisticated gears would do, but …”

“Like the Mechanical Elephant,” interrupted Trueblood. “Or the Golden Nightingale.”

“What?” said Henry, confused.

“History, Mr. Thorpe,” said Trueblood. “A very useful study. But I do understand your concerns, and I think you perhaps need to understand in turn the resources Doctor Robarts commands. Money in plenty, to be sure. But more importantly, he has done extensive research in his turn—from more a medical standpoint, of course, and in addition, he is in possession of a most remarkable Library. We—my employer and myself—think the best thing to do would be for you to come to Bryani House—my employer’s residence in Cornwall—and continue your research there.”

“Cornwall …”

“I have a carriage waiting outside.”

“But … I can’t just up and move to Cornwall.”

“Really? That is a shame, Mr. Thorpe. In that case, I’m afraid my employer will be obliged, with infinite regret, of course, to terminate your association and to withdraw his patronage and financial support.”

Henry stood, irresolute. What, in fact, was here for him in London? He had no resources—soon he would have to give up his researches into aviation and seek employment as an engineer’s or mechanic’s assistant, if he was lucky, until Ader obtained funding, and who knew when that would be?

He shrugged. “Very well, Mr. Trueblood. I’m eager to see what kind of studies Doctor Robarts has made on the subject.”

“Excellent, Mr. Thorpe,” said Trueblood. “I think you will find Bryani House a refreshing change from your limitations here. Refreshing and surprising.”

Bryani House, the Mists

Weldon peered through the fog. For an instant, through a void in the vapor, he could swear he saw a house. Then the mist rose again and it was gone.

He clenched his fists and cursed, and realized how blunt and weak his anger had grown during the years—if it was years—of exile. This felt a little like his old anger, fresh and raw, sudden and red.

He had left Riverbend early, when dawn was still only a promise in the sky, and walked beside the river until the sky was streaked red. Then, on impulse, he started in the direction the mist-born stranger had taken the day he left, a direction he had seen Fanny take sometimes on her wanderings.

He walked without regard to landmark, and as he left the chuckle of the river behind, the mist began to rise, eddying around his ankles at first, then rising like a flood. He fancied he saw evil intent and purpose in those wisps and streamers of fog that surrounded him; for some time he had suspected that there was a sentience and a purpose in the vapors that surrounded Riverbend. What their motives were he could not begin to determine.

He grinned mirthlessly as he was plunged entirely in fog. If the Mists’ intent was to keep him home, within the confines of his plantation or the small freedom the river offered, he would defy them. Why should Fanny be the only one allowed to roam?

And if he was lost forever, well, so be it. Perhaps he would become a creature of the fog, like the stranger. The ennui of the plantation, and the proximity of the creature, at once monstrous and pitiable, that was once his wife held little charm for him.

Let him walk until he left Riverbend far behind; let him walk until he dropped from exhaustion, let him die. They had no power over him; he didn’t care. He strode blindly, careless of stones or voids in the ground that could topple him.

A sound, the clink of metal against wood, came from somewhere in the murk, and he peered uneasily through the haze. That noise was familiar, but he couldn’t place it: a sound he’d heard in childhood perhaps, and never since.

He heard it again, and more: a long, slow grind, like wood rubbing against rock. It was difficult to determine what direction the sound was coming from—sometimes left, sometimes right, and sometimes all around him.

And there—he recognized that sound: the jangle of reins. And he caught a whiff of something now, besides the faint moldy funk of the mist and the grass he trampled underfoot.

The honest smell of horses, like a stable in the morning when dew still silvers the wood and lies on all the stones.

Movement to his right, and he glimpsed it for a fraction of a second: a dark bulk between streamers of fog, some large animal, moving slowly. Now he heard the tramp of heavy hooves, and the jangle of the bridle was very distinct.

He staggered toward it, but it was gone. No—there, ahead of him now. The bright cardinal siding of a gypsy’s caravan rolling behind a coal-black draft horse.

Weldon’s heart leaped into his throat; his chest hurt with the upwelling of memories. He knew that cart. He knew who rode it, upright behind the black horse; somewhere there must be another cart, green with gold detailing.

He ran forward, tripped and fell on the wet grass, bruising himself. Ignoring the pain, he pushed himself up again and staggered forward, arms stretched out, looking for the wagon.

It was gone, and the day was silent, bereft even of birdsong.

His eyes stung, and he pawed at them, smearing his face. The Mists closed on him triumphantly, and he closed his eyes, refusing to sob, refusing to give them that satisfaction.

Now he understood. He cared for no one, not his wife, not his daughter—he never felt much affection for either. His parents had been strangers to him, shrill and unpleasant. Land and house and money were pleasant to have, but if lost, there was more to be got somewhere else, where he was unknown, where he could rely on manners and charm to work his way into good society, and from there into the affection of the daughters of those that made good society.

But the memory of that day, all gold-drenched and perfect, that day he found the little kernel of peace that he later abandoned—that was his weak point, that was his one desire, and the Mists knew that. How, he couldn’t imagine, but they did. Why they’d brought him here he couldn’t know, but they had.

“You seem to be lost, Mas’ Weldon.”

His head snapped up. Beside him stood a dark-skinned girl, wearing a simple cotton dress, her dark braids tied back with a flowered scarf.

“Sadie,” he breathed.

She tilted her head to the side, peering up at him.

“Oh no, Mas’ Weldon,” she said, with a delighted chuckle. “Sadie is free now. Free of you.”

She reached out and ran her fingers down his arm and through his coat sleeve he felt her touch—nothing warm in it: it was cold, cold and damp like the fog. She grinned; her grin was much too wide, too wide for a human face, human skin. He watched frozen as the skin peeled away from her, mouth first, exposing teeth and jaw and skull. Flesh gleamed wet for an instant, then dissolved away, and her body disintegrated as well, melding back into the mist from which it came. All that remained of Sadie was a mocking chuckle, and the ghost of a whisper: free of you.

That was its game, was it? Very well.

Did it want him to slink, cringing like a whipped cur, back to the plantation? He would not.

Limping slightly on his bruised leg, he pushed forward. The illusions didn’t recur. Somewhere in this purgatory of the Mists there must be a way to find oblivion.

But now the fog was not quite as solid as it had been, and voids were appearing within it. Ahead of him he caught a glimpse of a house.

It vanished and reappeared with each shift of the fog. Weldon found with his new, sharp anger that he could think better, better than he had in years, and he wondered: Was the fog mocking him again, as it had with the vision of the gypsy wagons and Sadie? Or was it the nature of this particular place, this house, that it both existed and didn’t exist at the same time?

With the clarity of his rediscovered anger, he walked forward boldly.

And found himself at the doorway.

The steps were solid under him, the door solid beneath his fist.

When Trueblood opened the door he smiled.

“I hope you have quite recovered,” said Weldon to the Vistana.

“Quite, sir,” said Trueblood, moving aside to let him enter. “I wondered when you might be visiting us.”

“It’s taken me a while to get around to it,” said Weldon. “But I’m curious, I’m very curious indeed to see what you’re up to here.”

“I’m sure Doctor Robarts would be pleased to make time for you,” said Trueblood, with a wolfish grin. “You will find much in common to talk about.”

Bryani House, Cornwall, 1882

It was surprising, certainly.

Henry Thorpe stared in horror at the girl sitting in front of him, the Angel who had once been Lydia Dare. He took in her hollowed-away abdomen and the spaces between her ribs.

Then he turned, hypnotized, and looked at Seriah, who stood nearby, her flaps of skin dangling from her back.

He turned away, just in time, and vomited.

Only a short time ago, when the carriage, driven by the useful Trueblood through an unnaturally heavy fog, rumbled to a stop before Bryani House, he had been impressed at the quiet dignity of the residence, with its age-colored bricks and the noble vines twining over it. Dr. Robarts had welcomed him with great affability, a man with sadness in his eyes—that’s right, he’d lost his wife, hadn’t he?—but an open manner, and he seemed delighted at the prospect of sponsoring Henry’s research and grateful that he had come to Bryani House.

And then Trueblood had suggested in a slightly gloating manner that Henry didn’t quite understand, that Mr. Thorpe should have a chance to see Dr. Robarts’ researches. And Robarts had agreed. And so he was taken upstairs, where Robarts maintained his laboratory, and he was shown Robarts’ Angels.

“Are you quite all right, Mr. Thorpe?” Trueblood asked solicitously, as Henry kneeled over his mess and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“My God,” said Henry. The Angel with the drooping, useless wings moved beside him with a cloth, wiping up the vomit. She shot him a sympathetic glance.

“Not pretty, like the birds when you broke your leg, is it?” she said, as she mopped it up.

He managed to rise and stagger away.

“My God, what have you people done?” he gasped.

Robarts was unperturbed.

“I can see it’s a shock at first,” he said, cheerfully. “But you’ll get used to them, and you’ll see how you must help them, as I wish to help them. They are Angels, every one of them, but they need wings, don’t you see? They are incomplete without their wings.”

“The police,” Henry managed. “You have been mutilating these women. I must get the police.”

“I don’t think so,” said Trueblood, as Henry stumbled to the door, looking for the way out.

Robarts looked puzzled. “He doesn’t seem to like my proposition,” he said, sounding slightly hurt.

“He needs to get used to the idea, sir,” said Trueblood, with equanimity. “Remember how confused you were, at first, when you realized the work you must do.”

Robarts brightened. “You’re quite right, of course,” he said. “Go explain things to him a little, there’s a good fellow. I have some work to do here.”

“Of course, sir,” said Trueblood, closing the door carefully behind him.

Henry passed mutilated creatures in the hall, down the stairs, in his mad rush for the door. They all looked at him, confused, and he was torn with horror and pity.

Mad. Robarts was completely mad. And Trueblood?

He must be mad too, because if not …

Then he must not even be human.

He reached the massive oak door, and flung it open, and froze.

The fog had multiplied. Before him, where the pastoral Cornish meadows had stood, was a horribly-roiling murk that was like no fog he had seen before. It was so thick as to be solid-looking, and seemed to be composed of thick tentacles that twisted and writhed on themselves.

He recoiled.

“It doesn’t seem you’re going anywhere,” remarked the calm voice of Trueblood, just behind him.

“Come, Mr. Thorpe,” he continued. “Consider the possibilities. These women are, for the most part, the dregs of your society, to be discarded and tossed away. Robarts has given them a second chance, a chance to be the creatures of myth and story, to soar above their common lot. It would be a shame to throw away the chance for real experimentation.”

Henry stared at Trueblood. Something tickled in his mind, and whispered that yes, yes, it’s true, think of what you could do …

He shook away the thought and opened his mouth to protest.

“And in addition,” continued Trueblood in a darker voice. “It would be a shame if, without your assistance, we were to experiment on our own and make irreversible and … painful … mistakes. It would be even more regrettable if we were forced to involve your pretty little cousin, Sophia—or I should say, Doctor Huxley. I know that Doctor Robarts has struck up an acquaintance with her in town. I believe he has a certain affection for her. The same sort of affection he has for his Angels.”

Henry blanched.

“Come now, Mr. Thorpe. I believe I mentioned this house has an extraordinary library. And recently I’ve obtained some remarkable documents that I’m sure you’ll find of interest.”

He reached out and took Henry by the arm, and pulled him along down the hallway.

“Some amazing diagrams of gears. This way, Mr. Thorpe.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

London, 1882

It had been a difficult procedure. The baby had died in utero, and the girl, barely old enough to be out of pigtails, had had to deliver it regardless, and it was almost too big for her. Thankfully, they had not lost the mother with the child, and once she was assured that her patient was out of danger Sophia retreated to her inner office to wash up.

Robarts was there, and, seeing her state, hastily made his apologies.

“I’ll return another time,” he said.

“No—I would much appreciate you checking in on the patient, if you’re so inclined,” said Sophie, scrubbing under her fingernails. “She’s resting, and I’m reasonably confident she’ll recover, but one can never be completely sure there’s been no internal damage in an in utero death …”

She turned to find him pale and transfixed, staring at her with a stricken expression.

“Oh!” she said, horrified. “Oh, I’m so sorry. How insensitive of me.”

She blushed red-hot, concentrating on wiping her hands over and over to regain her composure.

“Where,” he said, in a strangled voice. “Where did you get that medallion?”

She looked at him, puzzled. He was staring at the hollow of her neck, and she automatically felt there.

The Saint Margaret’s medal. During her exertions it must have slipped out; she always kept it neatly tucked away beneath her chemise, against her skin.

She put the towel away and held out the medallion for him to see.

“It’s my good-luck charm. I know it seems superstitious, but I found it when I was a child—in the street, of all things—and always kept it with me.”

He drew close, still staring at the circle of metal as if hypnotized.

“It’s the medal of St. Margaret, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. My father showed me her dragon—see it here, between her feet?”

“A wyrm,” he said. “A dragon is a wyrm.”

She was beginning to feel uncomfortable, and foolish, which made her babble.

“I kept it because Margaret is my middle name, you see, and I had an idea the saint might have sent it to me, to keep me safe. Isn’t that silly?”

He had been reaching up to the metal, his fingers hovering over her breast, inches from the charm. Now he glanced up at her and she was struck by the expression in his eyes: interest was there, and wonder, but also that predatory spark she’d noticed at Lady Cecelia’s party—something alien, almost outside himself.

“Your name is Margaret?” he said, almost harshly.

“Yes—well, it’s my middle name,” she said, somewhat taken aback. “Sophia Margaret.”

Then she remembered. His wife’s name had been Margaret.

He held her with his stare, and then something passed over his face, something soft and kind, and the alien expression was gone, and he withdrew his hand.

“Saint Margaret with the Wyrm, Saint Catherine with the Wheel, and Saint Theresa in the Tower,” he said, smiling at her expression.

“No, I’m not mad, it’s just an old rhyme I remembered—those three ladies were the most powerful saints, if I recall correctly. St. Theresa protected people from fevers, I think, and St. Catherine from the plague. St. Margaret, of course, protects women in childbirth.”

He reached out again, just a finger this time, and touched the medallion, gently pressing it against her skin.

“It suits you.”

He turned away and took off his overcoat.

“And now, shall we see your patient?”

She assented and led the way, tucking the charm back under her shirt. Odd—when he had pressed the metal against her skin, it had felt almost red-hot; it still felt unnaturally warm. She could still feel the circular area like a mild burn.

Robarts followed the girl, his heart singing. She had found Margaret’s medallion. Her name was Margaret. Margaret herself had sent her to him.

She was destined to help him; Margaret had marked her for him fifteen years ago. It all made perfect sense.

Tomorrow he would meet with this Henry Thorpe, whom Trueblood said would be able to make him wings. And now, with a great burst of understanding, he realized why fate had sent him Sophia Huxley.

He must take her to Bryani House to help him in his great work. Together they would perfect his Angels.

Bryani House, Cornwall, 1882

“A weapon to storm heaven,” breathed Trueblood. “Mishavah.”

The blades were embedded along the undersides of her wrists, leaving a thick ridge halfway down the insides of her forearms. She looked down on them in bewilderment.

“Like this,” he said, taking hold of her right arm gently. Carefully, he extended it to that her palm was outstretched and facing the floor. Then he took her fingers and pulled them back with a sharp movement.

In response, six inches of razor-sharp steel sprang from her wrist, at the joint where the hand meets the forearm. A small slit constructed in the skin at the juncture of the bone allowed the blade to pass through without tearing the skin.

The Angel stared at the knife that protruded from her flesh, and glanced up at Trueblood with a searching expression.

“See?” He lifted the other arm to show her. The slit that would allow the left-hand knife to pass looked like a tiny eye, closed in sleep.

“You just flex your fingers back like so,” he said, indicating the bared weapon jutting from the right wrist. “It’s rooted at the bone, so it’s not flimsy. It’ll hold tight no matter what you do.”

She tilted her head and looked at the smooth white skin, like the underbelly of a frog, at her left wrist. Experimentally she flexed, and a second blade sprang out.

Trueblood smiled proudly. “Very nice.”

She looked up again, and he didn’t read her expression until it was too late, until the blade under her right wrist was buried in his throat.

He inhaled, shocked at the speed of it, and she stepped forward and swung the left-hand blade as hard as she could, straight into his gut.

They stood there an instant, the Angel and the Vistana, locked breast-to-breast in a deadly dance, looking deeper into each other’s eyes than lovers. And then, negligently, Trueblood shrugged.

“My people cursed me and cursed my name,” he told her, his voice burred by the four inches of steel buried in his throat. “They cursed my name right out of existence. The Mists took me, and tore me apart, but they couldn’t keep me.”

He took a step backward, sliding off the knives in both his gullet and belly.

“But I’ll tell you a secret, little Angel—when they destroyed my name and blasted my body to the Mists, there’s one thing that didn’t occur to them. And that was: Without my name, no weapon could find me.”

There were gashes in his throat and across his stomach where she’d struck, and in the neck wound a swell of blood throbbed forward, threatening to spill. But the crimson blood halted, and turned gray, and sat in the wound until the gash closed, smooth and seamless.

The Angel backed up a step, raising her wrist-knives threateningly.

“Don’t worry,” he said, smoothly, lifting his hand in a peacemaking gesture. “I’m not cross.”

She paused, and lightning-quick, he dashed out a hand and plunged it into her chest. She cried out and staggered back, but he followed her, his cruel, strong fingers burrowing into her flesh as if she were made of soft clay.

She flailed at him with her blades, opening slashes in his face that welled for an instant with blood and then closed up again, leaving not a trace. She struck and struck again, her screams becoming ragged and her movements spasmodic, until he grasped something, twisted, and withdrew his hand, holding her bloodied, beating heart in front of her.

Mouth open unnaturally wide, she stared at the pulsing lump of flesh, so small in his hand, and slumped to the floor, the tattered hole in her chest gaping. The blades protruding from her wrists looked graceless and clumsy now. One was stuck between the floorboards, holding her wrist at an odd angle.

The heart stilled in his hand, growing cold. He looked down at the Angel and prodded her with his toe. She was still.

With her death, his magics released her: The gap in her chest started gushing blood, slowly at first, as if it was surprised at its freedom, then copiously. Before the scarlet puddle beneath her could grow bigger he kneeled beside her, held his hand over the wound, and concentrated.

The blood stopped, and a coil of vapor rose from the wound. But still she didn’t stir, and never would again.

Trueblood snorted in disgust and considered her arms and the fleshy sheaths where the blades were planted.

“I hope you’re satisfied, my girl,” he growled. “Now I have to tell Robarts I’ve broken one of his Angels.”

London, 1882

McPherson had finished his rounds at the Clinic—Sophie had asked him to check on a patient that had a difficult miscarriage and he had obliged.

He was about to leave when he realized that there was a light under the door of Sophie’s office. He knew she was planning to stop in tonight—he must not have heard her come in.

But when he opened the door he was startled to see the tall figure of Sebastian Robarts, bent over the desk.

“Oh!” he said, as the other man looked up. “I thought you were Doctor Huxley.”

“I am meeting her here tonight,” returned Robarts.

“Oh,” said McPherson again, nonplussed. He turned to go, then, on impulse, turned back to Robarts.

“I never got a chance to tell you, Doctor Robarts,” began McPherson hesitantly. “I mean—to express to you my regrets over the passing of your wife. I am so sorry circumstances went as they did—I know that Doctor Symons took it very hard, afterward.”

“Did you?” said Robarts. McPherson thought his tone was odd—cold and sharp—he would almost say flippant. But that was impossible.

“We reviewed it afterward, many times over,” McPherson continued. “But we could never find anything we could have done differently—not at the time, at least. Of course, during the intervening years, there have been new developments—in anesthetic, especially. I wish they had happened sooner.”

Robarts smiled—or rather, twisted one side of his mouth into a parody of a smile.

“You with your clever hands, Bartholomew,” he remarked. “Even you couldn’t help her. And I know how much Symons depended on those hands of yours—small and deft, he always said. I wondered how you felt about that.”

“I don’t understand you,” said McPherson. “Doctor Symons always treated me very well—as a student, and later as a colleague and friend.”

“I wonder how often he took advantage of your skill with your hands, and took credit for work that was yours by right,” continued Robarts, as the other man watched him, astonished.

Unperturbed, Robarts reached for a paperweight Sophie kept on her desk—a heavy lump of glass, with the cunningly wrought figures of fish and other sea creatures in its center—a birthday gift from Cecelia. He lifted it, peering at the creatures inside, green and blue and black.

“Of course, you never seemed to mind, did you?” Robarts grinned at the speechless McPherson through the bubbled glass, his face warped and distorted. “Working with Symons gave you certain advantages, opened doors for you, did it not? You were content to have him use you.”

McPherson was red. “I must make allowances for your loss, and I understand it still affects you,” he said. “But if you’re implying that there was any impropriety …”

“Oh, I didn’t think of it at the time,” said Robarts. “But in the years since, I’ve had time to think of it. I’ve had time to consider and puzzle it out. But I don’t think I really believed it until I saw you at that dinner party, so smug and self-satisfied, taking your position for granted. Oh yes, Symons took care of you. And how easy it must have been, with your clever hands, doing just the wrong things at just the right time.”

“How dare you, sir!” McPherson stuttered.

Robarts let his hands drop, still holding the paperweight. “Symons was jealous, wasn’t he? I was a threat to him, to his position, to his supremacy.”

“This is absurd,” said McPherson. “It was a terrible thing, and I understand you must have been angry at times. But to say that James Symons would ever consider such an action … to imply that between the two of us we killed your wife …”

“Margaret,” said Robarts. McPherson felt he didn’t recognize this Sebastian Robarts at all; it was as if something outside, something alien was in possession of his features, that he only could see Robarts through a subtly shifting mask.

“Her name was Margaret, just like this one.” With the hand holding the paperweight, he indicated the desk. “And you thought you could take her away from me too, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“After you killed her, Margaret found her. Margaret sent her to me. Somehow you found her and tried to make her yours. You never thought I’d come back, did you? But I have, and you can’t deceive me. You won’t take away my Margaret again.”

“Enough,” said McPherson, with cold anger. “You have said quite enough. Good day, sir.”

He turned to the door and a spasm of rage contorted Robarts’ face. He leaped at the other man, swinging the paperweight at his head with terrible strength.

It smashed into McPherson’s temple, shattering the fragile bone at the side of the skull. He swayed, stunned for a moment before he crashed to the ground. A trickle of blood came from his right ear.

Robarts stood over McPherson, lifting the lump of glass for the final blow.

“Shall I send up tea, gentlemen?”

Janet stood in the door. The smile froze on her face.

“Janet,” said McPherson, weakly. “Sophie. He’s after Sophie. For God’s sake, stop him.”

Teeth bared, Robarts brought the lump of glass down again, this time on McPherson’s forehead. He cried out softly and was still.

Janet screamed, and Robarts looked up at her. Mouth open, she stared at him.

That face. The face in the mist, in a London alley, fifteen years ago. The man who chased her through the fog and reached out for her with terrible purpose.

The Gentleman. Robarts was the Gentleman.

She backed away, trying to scream, trying to accuse, but it was as if a giant hand was clamped around her throat.

Robarts shoved McPherson aside. His limbs lolled brokenly and a sticky dark puddle was forming under his head.

For an instant, Robarts stared at McPherson, puzzled, then at the paperweight in his hand.

Had he done this?

Why had he done this?

He looked back up at Janet, and his expression shifted again. He reached inside his coat, where he kept his scalpels safe in a small leather pouch.

“You might have been an Angel, Janet,” he said. “But it’s too late now.”

He sprang for her but her paralysis was gone and she ran, desperately ran in the dark, out the door, down the abandoned street, too out of breath to call for help. She felt him close at her heels and summoned up every reserve of strength she had.

A sharp burning pain struck her shoulder, and she staggered into the wall, desperately trying to stay on her feet. She dodged as he swung at her again, narrowly missing her.

He was off balance and she struck out instinctively, and he fell away from her, giving her a chance to run again.

She ran until she could no more, turning to face him in one desperate effort, but he was gone, and the gas lamps shone on nothing. She could only hear the sound of her labored breathing echo off the alley walls. Her shoulder was on fire, and the back of her dress was cold and wet.

Sophie. McPherson said Robarts was going to take Sophie.

She must find Artemis Donovan.

Robarts watched Janet run away, the bloodied scalpel in his hand. He should hunt her down and finish her off—but Sophie would be at the Clinic soon, and he mustn’t miss this opportunity.

“Foolish girl,” he remarked, as he wiped the scalpel clean on his sleeve. “She could have been an Angel.”

Sophie stared at the man on her office floor.

“Doctor McPherson?”

Shaking, she kneeled beside her mentor, feeling for a pulse in his neck, finding none.

Blood congealed beneath his head, and there was an unnatural depression in the middle of his forehead, discolored purple. His eyes were open, staring blindly at the ceiling.

She touched the cornea, trying to provoke some reaction, some sign of life. There was none.

Her mind noted details automatically, noting the color of the inner eyelid, the bruising of the forehead, the stiffness of the limbs.

Someone grabbed her from behind; something wet and sickly-sweet smelling was pressed against her mouth and nose and she flailed uselessly at the air until her limbs stilled and her eyes were forced relentlessly shut.

The last thing she saw was Bartholomew McPherson’s empty eyes, looking at her like a gutted fish.

Janet staggered down the streets, trailing one hand along the filthy wall for balance. The base of her neck, where Robarts’ scalpel had bit deep, burned. She concentrated on putting one foot before the other—each step was agony, but she knew that if she fell she would never get up again.

Late-goers, singly and in pairs, walked the streets, but she hadn’t the strength to call out to them. Once, a couple, man and woman, passed close by and she reached out to them, begging for help—but her tongue didn’t seem to work right and it was impossible to articulate, and they had drawn back from her in disgust.

“Drunken trull,” she heard the woman exclaim, and the man laughed, and their footsteps faded behind her. She didn’t even have the strength to turn around.

I’m going to the Clinic late tonight, Janet, she heard Sophie say, cheerful in the bright sitting room that was a thousand miles from this dark, despairing place. Doctor Robarts will be there so you needn’t fuss; I’ll be quite safe.

She might be there already, at his mercy.

Quite safe.

Men—four or five of them, fresh from the pub and laughing boisterously—stumbled down the opposite side of the street, and one called out to her crudely, provoking more laughter from his fellows. He started across the street for her and she cringed against the wall, fearing he’d come to her, and fearing he wouldn’t.

The others called him back and they stumbled on down the alley. She wanted to call after them but it was too much effort; at the same time, she was relieved they’d left her alone.

Her vision was fading at the edges; she saw only dim light at the end of a cloudy black tunnel, the cobbles of the sidewalk in sharp contrast, a slick of moisture in the gutter where the evening’s waste had been thrown. While she had strength, should she try one of the doors?

Most likely they’d take her for a madwoman or a drunk, and leave her be. If she was loud enough they might summon the watch, and she might find Artemis Donovan that way—but she doubted she had the power to be noisy long enough.

What little she could see of the streets and the doors looked suddenly familiar, and she racked her fading consciousness to remember.

Lady Cecelia. That was Lady Cecelia’s town house.

Of any of these doors, that was the one most likely to open to her. She grasped for the rails, pulled herself painfully hand-overhand up them, nearly slipping on the polished stairs.

At least Lady Cecelia’s maids knew how to clean marble, she thought, although their diligence might be the death of her.

Somehow she made it to the top, her shoulder throbbing. Somehow she reached the door, seized the polished knocker, lifted it and let it fall. It hit the door with a hollow thump: no chance, she thought, of it being heard inside the house. She would die here, cold on the doorstep.

She leaned her forehead against the panels of the oak door and began to slide down, no more strength left in her legs. She sank down into the pool of pain that spread from her body, hot and pulsing. But there was peace there in the center, and cessation of the agony: a quiet stillness in the chaos of pain, sleep, and death.

A lozenge of warm yellow light spread above her as the door opened, and a dark figure was silhouetted against it, leaning over her. Someone exclaimed: a gruff male voice, and a softer voice answered from inside that place of light and warmth. Strong arms gathered her up, pulling her out of the black center of the pool, back into pain but back again into life.

It was Alexander, Lady Cecelia’s coachman, who held her. She could feel the strong thump of his heart against her.

“She’s bleeding, milady, all blood soaked down the back,” she heard him say. It seemed to come from a great distance.

“Why, it’s Janet,” came the gentle voice of Lady Cecelia, and Janet felt soft fingers on her face, lifting her hair away. “Lay her on the sofa, and fetch a doctor at once—fetch Doctor Huxley.”

Sophie. Janet tried to form the word, but no sound, no air would come.

“Don’t try to talk, Janet,” said Lady Cecelia.

She was placed on something soft, and Lady Cecelia was kneeling beside her. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and sink into oblivion, but she mustn’t; she must speak now or it would be too late.

“Sophie,” she gasped. “He’s going after my Sophie.”

“Sophie was hurt? Alex!”

“No—you must listen.”

Janet swallowed—it felt like razors in her dry throat—and tried again.

“Robarts—killed McPherson. Tried to kill me. He wants Sophie, wants to take her … I don’t know. He’s mad. Those women, fifteen years ago, when his wife died … it was Robarts the whole time.”

“Janet, Janet dear.” Someone was fumbling at her clothing, carefully stripping away the sodden cloth over the wound. “You must be mistaken. Sebastian would never hurt anyone.”

“Stabbed me with … scalpel.”

There was a pause, and she felt air across her back.

“Could be, ma’am,” came Alexander’s voice, monotone and noncommittal. “Wound’s narrow like a scalpel would do.”

“He’s mad,” Janet managed. “He’s not … him anymore. Like that time in the fog. I should have known, but it wasn’t him. Haven’t you seen it? You must. And now he wants my Sophie too.”

With a sudden, desperate surge of strength she sat up and grasped Lady Cecelia by the arm.

“Artemis … Donovan. He’s with the police—a detective. Clever as the devil. Pub—Cat and Whiskers. Get Donovan. Tell him this: ‘Robarts is the Gentleman.’ He’ll know.”

Lady Cecelia’s face was pale, her dark hair and her lips a shocking contrast against the whiteness of her skin; her eyes were wide and horrified as she stared at her. Gray spots swam into Janet’s vision then and she sank back into the sofa, her strength failing at last.

“Have you heard of the man, Alex?” demanded Lady Cecelia.

“I have,” came the coachman’s gruff voice. “Touched, some say, but a good sort, and catches his man most of the time.”

“Send Hamish to the Cat and Whiskers—was that it?—yes, and tell him what Janet said, and ask him to meet us at the Clinic. But first, Janet must have a doctor.”

“I’ll knock up the apothecary, ma’am, and then take you to the Clinic,” said Alexander, and Janet tried to say no, no, Clinic first or else it’s too late, but there was a roaring in her ears and everything faded to nothingness.

Artemis sniffed the air and frowned.

“Chloroform,” he said, staring abstractedly at the body on the floor of Sophia Huxley’s office.

The victim—for the great dent in his forehead and the dark viscous pool spreading beneath his head bore witness to his murder—was a distinguished-looking gentleman of about fifty, with salt-and-pepper hair, professionally clad. His eyes were glazed over and beginning to go opaque, and he stared at the ceiling with the indifference of the dead.

Hamish, who was still fairly breathless at the speed with which he’d run from the Cat and Whiskers, hard on Artemis’ heels, stood in the doorway, goggle-eyed at the sight. Belatedly it occurred to the detective that the boy was too young to see this. But many a child of the streets had seen this and worse: Life in London could be nasty, brutish and short, and he couldn’t be guarding the sensibilities of every overgrown messenger boy.

“Chloroform?” echoed the woman—Lady Cecelia, she must be, sitting on the edge of Sophie’s desk. Beside her was a huge brute of a man, with gorilla-like arms and a thick neck, incongruously dressed in neatly-pressed coachman’s attire. “He was drugged first?”

Tears streaked her face and her lips were pale and compressed; she was composed, however, although her chin trembled.

“Not he,” said Artemis, with a calm he didn’t feel. He crouched beside the victim’s head. Beside the pool of semi-congealed blood there was a mark, also in blood—the triangular apex of a woman’s shoe, a woman with a small foot.

Small feet like Sophie.

He forced himself to concentrate. Next to the first print was a second, the same triangular shape but this time twisted on itself, as if the subject—Sophie—had turned suddenly.

There was a third bloody print, just a thin, wavering line, as if the owner of the shoe had been dragged some few feet’s distance.

“My guess—my belief is that Doctor Huxley was chloroformed, and conveyed elsewhere. Fortunately I don’t see any sign of her being injured.”

Not yet, anyway.

He must remain calm and detached. If he had any hope of helping her, he must stay cool as ice.

Artemis looked up at Lady Cecelia. “Do you have any idea why this Robarts would attack Doctor Huxley?”

“Doctor Robarts is … was … my brother-in-law, Detective,” returned Lady Cecelia. “Since the tragic death of my sister his behavior has been profoundly affected; I can’t deny it. But he had just returned to England after an extended exile, and was beginning to practice again, to assist Doctor Huxley in her work. She and Bartholomew …”

A spasm passed across her mouth and she covered it with a gloved hand. Mastering herself, she continued.

“I can’t imagine he could have done such a thing.”

A doctor, thought Artemis. A doctor would have ready access to chloroform, and the knowledge of how to use it.

“How long ago did your sister pass away?” he asked, almost absently.

“Fifteen years now. It was the spring of 1867. Whatever is the matter, Mr. Donovan?”

For Artemis was looking at her as if she’d uttered some unspeakable horror.

“What did Janet say, exactly?” he said, brusquely.

Lady Cecelia simply stared at him. It was Alexander who spoke.

“She said to tell you that Doctor Robarts was the Gentleman. She said you’d understand.”

Artemis shut his eyes. A dizzying swirl of images went through his mind—the girl, laid out so carefully in the alley; the children playing at jacks and singing that song; that dreadful plunge into and chase through the fog, with the sensation that some malevolent, inhuman force was hunting him down.

When he opened his eyes Cecelia started away from the intensity of his gaze.

“Is Janet fit to be seen?” he asked.

“I don’t know—I doubt it. She was badly hurt, Mr. Donovan. I don’t know how she made it as far as she did.”

I do, thought Artemis.

“It’s worth a try,” he said, taking a notebook and pencil stub from inside his coat. He scribbled something down and beckoned Hamish over.

“Do you know your way around the streets? All right then, you don’t have to tell me all about it. Take this to that address, you see, and ask for Clarkson—Henderson if he’s not available, and be prepared to show him here posthaste, understand?”

He looked up at Alexander. “Can you be persuaded to stay with the body until they arrive, while Lady Cecelia takes me to Janet?”

The big man shook his head. “I stay with her.”

Artemis shrugged. “Understood.”

The apothecary shook his head at them. “I don’t like it. I’ve patched her up as best I may, and she’s sleeping now, which is the best we can hope for at the moment. I don’t want her disturbed.”

“For a minute only, and only if she’ll wake,” insisted Artemis, and the apothecary reluctantly led him to where Janet lay on the sofa.

She did stir when he leaned over her, and opened her eyes. Recognizing him, she smiled.

“I knew you’d go after her,” she said faintly.

“Robarts—are you sure?” he said.

“The other—the killed man, McPherson—he said so,” she gasped. “And I remembered, so long ago, in the fog. He’s been looking at her, I know—as if he had hope again, some mad hope.”

“I’ll find her,” he said, straightening.

She closed her eyes. “You had better, Mr. Donovan.”

“Bryani House,” said Lady Cecelia immediately, when Artemis asked her where Robarts might flee. “His family’s estate, in …”

“… Cornwall,” he said. At her surprised expression, he said. “I’m originally from St. Agnes, about a mile away. I know the area well.”

“I need to get there, and quickly,” he added. “Your carriage?”

“Certainly,” she replied, briskly. “So long as you understand that I must come along.”

She hurried down the stairs, Alexander in her wake, and he followed.

“Lady Cecelia, I really don’t think it’s safe …”

She whirled on him, bringing him up short at the bottom of the stairs.

“I don’t know—and I can’t really believe—if Sebastian is the cause of this. But if something’s happened, and if he’s in distress—he’s still my brother-in-law. If you’re to have my carriage, you must take me as well. Am I understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Artemis. He suppressed a wry smile as Alex flashed him a sympathetic look.

“On the way,” he said, as he handed Lady Cecelia into her carriage and mounted up after her, “you might tell me all you know about Doctor Robarts. I’m especially interested in the last fifteen years.”

As the door shut upon them and the bays gathered themselves and trotted away, a wisp of fog drifted after them, yellow in the lamplight. It was odd; thus far it had been a very clear night, unusually clear for London.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Bryani House, Cornwall, 1882

Sophie woke with a headache and the sickly-sweet taste of the chloroform still in her throat. She rolled to her side and sat, her head bent close to her knees, until the nausea receded.

When she could, she looked around. She was alone in a room, with what little furniture there was shrouded in sheets. She sat on a small bed piled with blankets and pillows. The room had the odd anonymity of Lottie Barnes’ boarding house, and for a second Sophie wondered if she’d been conveyed there.

But there’d be noise outside at Lottie’s: girls giggling, occasional catcalls. This place was utterly silent.

“Hello,” someone said.

Sophie sprang up and almost doubled over again with nausea. When her vision cleared she saw a girl—a young woman, really, standing against the opposite wall. She was oddly clad in what looked like a shift, and she wore a strange, leather-looking cape over her shoulders.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” continued the girl.

“How—how did I get here?” Sophie’s mouth tasted vile.

The girl cocked her head. “Doctor Robarts brought you here. He brought all of us here,” she said, as if explaining things to a child.

Robarts. Sophie raised her hand to her mouth. Now she remembered—Dr. McPherson, horribly still on the floor of her office …

“I see we’ve awakened,” said Sebastian Robarts from the doorway.

Sophie barely bit back a shriek. Robarts looked cheerful, like a child anticipating a Sunday treat, not at all as if he’d smashed a man’s head in and kidnapped her.

Oh God—Dr. McPherson, his head crushed, lying on her office floor. Such a kind man, how could anyone possibly have wished him harm? Sophie choked back a sob. There would be time to mourn him later, after she’d gotten through this nightmare.

“You’ve met our Seriah,” continued Robarts, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

The girl nodded and walked past Sophie to the door, and as she did Sophie realized with a dull shock that her cape wasn’t leather at all.

But it was, of a sort. The skin of the girl’s back had been peeled away in two great sheets and left to hang free, like a mockery of wings.

Wings. Hadn’t Henry told her at the teashop, something about wings, that Robarts was obsessed with making a practical wing, for human transportation?

Robarts couldn’t possibly … no one was that mad.

Sophie faced her captor.

“You killed Doctor McPherson,” she said, knowing it was a dangerous thing to say but not caring overmuch. Hot tears welled at the back of her eyes.

Robarts looked—of all things—a little sad.

“I had to, my dear. He was trying to keep you away from me, you see. He shouldn’t have done it, because Margaret sent you to me.”

The sane, reasonable voice made the words even more insane.

“Sent me …”

“To help me in my work!” He beamed. “She knew I’d need assistance—professional assistance—Trueblood is all very well and good, but there’s nothing like a doctor’s touch, is there, my dear? And she prepared you, by sending you that medal, St. Margaret with the Wyrm, you know. She was always very clever, my Margaret. Clever and considerate.”

He paused and sighed.

“I miss her very much. But now,” he said delightedly. “Now I have another Margaret, clever and considerate.”

“Doctor Robarts,” she said, between clenched teeth. “Doctor Robarts, I must go.”

Something shifted in his gaze.

“Oh, I don’t think so, my dear, at least not for now. There’s so much work to be done. But come,” he backed away and beckoned her to follow. “Come and see!”

Tense and ready for any opportunity of escape, Sophie reluctantly obeyed.

She followed him down a hallway, which opened onto a great central staircase. Sophie realized that he’d brought her to a manor house, three stories at least, with halls that led, mazelike, from the central stair.

Was this his estate that she’d heard Lady Cecelia mention? Brian House, or some such?

And if so, was she in Devon? Or was it Cornwall?

Panic shot through her. How long before anyone thought to look for her? And who would suspect Robarts?

Still, she followed Robarts down the stairway, barely listening to him babble. There were more people in the foyer—could they help her? And what about that girl with the dreadfully flayed back?

At the sight of her and Robarts the people in the house stilled, watching them with particular gravity. They were all women, and they were all …

Sophie had rarely come even close to fainting. But now she felt her knees start to buckle, and she grasped the railing for support.

That one, with no lower jaw or mouth, just a smooth hollowed curve of skin from throat to cheek. That one, with great black eyes, shiny like those of an insect, and placed too low in her face. That one, normal of face and body but behind her, coiled casually on the polished oak floor—could that possibly be a tail?

Women, all mutilated in varied and unimaginable ways, staring at her in calm fascination as if she were the freak. And they all, all of them …

They all had wings, curving above or neatly folded against their backs. She looked them over with a clinician’s eye, fighting to maintain control of herself. None of the wings were exactly the same, although they were generally bat-shaped.

One of the women shifted from one foot to the other and Sophie saw the gleam of metal along the arched edge of one of the wings. There was nothing feathery about them, nothing natural, as an angel in a painting seems natural. These were all rooted in their backs, as if some catastrophic accident had melded the fleshly and the mechanical.

Sophie reeled, still feeling the effects of the chloroform, and sank to one knee. She struggled to stay conscious, knowing that in that house there was no room for anything but nightmares, but it was no use. Darkness stooped upon her, and she sagged against the cool marble steps. Above her she heard Robarts exclaim, felt his hands on her, thought desperately as the void took her: Don’t touch me. God in Heaven, don’t touch me.

Outside St. Agnes

They must have been half a mile from Bryani House when it struck the carriage: something big, and heavy enough to tip it dangerously far. Outside on the driver’s bench, Alex let out an inarticulate, horrified cry.

The horses screamed in terror as the carriage tipped in earnest. Artemis pushed Lady Cecelia behind him, pinning her against the upholstered inside of the carriage to prevent her from tumbling about. It landed on its side with a bone-twisting jerk, one door beneath them, one like a hatch above their heads. Ignoring the pain of his bruised ribs, Artemis forced the door open and scrambled out, dragging Lady Cecelia behind him.

Both stared, frozen in shock, at the front of the crumpled carriage.

In the first confusion Artemis thought it must be an eagle that grappled with Alex. But no—it was much too big.

It was a woman, a woman with wings sprouting from her back. They extended at least four feet in either direction.

The horses screamed again, and reared against the traces; they’d break their necks at this rate. Artemis dashed forward, avoiding the woman’s wing as she bore down on Alex, and struggled with the reins and traces, freeing the horses. They ran with their bridles still on, faster than they’d ever run, he’d reckon, and for all he knew they ran into the sea.

Alex fell to the ground and the woman reared over him. She extended her hands, and somehow was holding knives, one in each—but no. The knives came out of her, were part of her, like a serpent’s fang or a lion’s claw. With deadly purpose she stabbed down at the man at her feet and he cried out again in frustration and pain.

Artemis leaped at the woman and saw Lady Cecelia do the same.

Gutsy lady, he thought, as he struck at the winged woman’s knee, hard as he could. He felt something snap under his fist and she recoiled, snarling.

Alex gained a slight reprieve as she hovered again, her injured leg dangling uselessly. With instinct born of a dozen childhood street fights in the London slums, he brought up his legs, so that his knees nearly touched his chin, and as she descended upon him again the burly coachman struck out with both feet, hard as he could, squarely into her midriff.

The effect was devastating. She fell back hard against the ground, and didn’t rise again.

Artemis approached her cautiously. The only movement the woman made was to scrabble and dig at the ground with hands that he saw were dreadfully deformed, carved to allow her weapons to be rooted under the skin. Under her thin garment her body looked wrong, as if it too had been carved and formed into some kind of abominable instrument of destruction.

She looked up at him with bright, birdlike eyes.

“ ’e’s broken me back,” she whispered in a Cockney accent. “ ’e’s killed me, ’e has.”

She closed her eyes and sighed.

Artemis couldn’t help but run his hand along the edge of the wing. It was a light metal, he saw, and wonderfully articulated to allow movement, so she might imitate the motion of a bird. Were the wings rooted in her like the knives?

He didn’t want to see.

She opened her eyes.

“I can go now,” she said, with a kind of wonder.

Pity made him kneel beside her, and reach for her hand. It was clammy, and as her fingers tightened on his he felt the tip of the blade brush his knuckles.

“Why did you attack us?” he said. She looked at him, brows furrowed, as if puzzling out the answer

“Trueblood gave us orders,” she managed. “Trueblood told us: kill Jaelle’s Breed. Every one of ’em, man, woman and child. Sparing not the infant in the cradle, not yet the old man on ’is deathbed. Kill each and every.”

“Jaelle’s Breed,” said Artemis. The malevolent entity in the fog called him that, fifteen years before. “What is that?”

“Why, you are that,” she said, as if it was the simplest thing in all the world, “You and all your kin. The only folk that Trueblood fears, because you can see ’is nature, and ’ow to destroy him in the end. All your kin in St. Agnes Town. We’re killing them all.”

A mist was rising from the ground, and Artemis saw with a shock that it came from her body; it was pouring out from under her like water.

“Robarts, ’e made us Angels,” she said, her voice fading. “ ’Cause we fell so long ago, and Trueblood gave us the mists to keep us alive. But now I’m dead and free of ’im. Run.”

With a great effort, she turned her head towards him. “You can’t save ’em. Run and hide from Trueblood, and live on.”

Her fingers twitched and the blade dug deeper, until the cold hand relaxed and he let it fall.

He turned to see Lady Cecelia crouched before the wreckage of the carriage, Alex’s head in her lap. She’d covered him with her coat; the mists were rising from all over now, and the air was damp and chill.

Now Artemis could see the two great wounds where the angel had stabbed Alex—one was shallow, where the blade glanced off his collarbone, but the other had sunk deep into his abdomen. Lady Cecelia held a wad of cloth torn from her skirt, and was pressing it against the wound to halt the bleeding. The coachman watched her with the glazed look of a wounded animal, silent save for his heavy breathing.

“Artemis,” she said. “Was that an angel?”

“She said she was. A fallen angel. She said Robarts made her.”

Lady Cecelia shook her head. “Sweet Jesus.”

“And Trueblood ordered her—them—to kill us.”

“Trueblood. His manservant.” Over Alex’s body, she frowned. “I knew he was evil.”

“I have to go to St. Agnes, Lady Cecelia—for help, and to see … if more than that one there are hunting my folk in St. Agnes, I have to stop it.”

“I’m staying with Alex.”

“Lady Ce—”

“I. Am. Staying. With. Alex.” She smiled suddenly. “Go to St. Agnes. Send help if you can.”

He nodded, inarticulate, and trotted off into the Mists. Cecelia watched him until he vanished.

“That Hamish,” said Alex, suddenly. “Not a bad lad, but terrible flighty. Can’t tell you how often I’ve told him to polish the brass on the tack, and found him begging in the kitchen, or reading a penny dreadful in the stables.”

He closed his eyes and for a second Cecelia thought she must have lost him, but he came to himself with a start and shifted his heavy head in her lap.

“He’s a good boy,” she said, still pressing on his abdomen. “No harm in him.”

“Oh aye. Just flighty is all.”

She watched as two figures loomed out of the fog, approaching slowly, but with inexorable and terrible purpose: two figures with great wings spreading behind them.

Alex laughed briefly.

“Goin’ to be bugger-all trying to catch them horses.”

“Oh aye,” she said, watching the Angels, the dreadful Angels, come.

Bryani House, the Mists

Sophie woke—again—in a small, shrouded room, sighed, and swung her legs off the bed, wondering how often this penny-dreadful scenario would play out. Her head was clearer now, the drug mostly worn off—that was different.

There was another bed beside hers, and a woman lay on it.

Her chest had been split down the middle and her ribs spread apart. Within the hollow of her chest cavity her heart lay and, impossibly, beat, very slowly. Fascinated despite herself, Sophie counted. One. Two. The rate was one beat per ten seconds.

The woman looked at the ceiling indifferently. When Sophie bent close to examine her, she blinked and looked at her.

Sophie jumped and backed away from the obscenity on the table, horror and pity twisting together in her breast.

Someone grasped her arms. She drew breath to scream and a hand clamped hard on her mouth.

She stifled the urge to pull away, instead turning into her attacker and stomping as hard as she could on his foot. He released her with a heartfelt oath.

“Gods and little fishes, Sophie,” said Henry, hopping on one foot and rubbing the other. “What else have you learned socializing with whores?”

“Plenty,” returned Sophie. “What are you doing here?”

He laughed hollowly. “Well, it appears that when my patron said he was interested in wings, he didn’t exaggerate.” He laughed, and it had a mad edge to it.

She shuddered. Was Henry responsible for those mutilations?

No. She couldn’t believe that. Not her cousin. He’d been fooled, tricked, and somebody else had …

“How long have you been here?” Her voice was snappish, and he flinched.

“I don’t know.”

“Nonsense!” It was a relief to be irritated at somebody. “It can’t be more than a week, Henry.” She edged past him, looking down the hallway.

“Ah, yes, but the time … the time is different here, Sophie; I finally figured that out.”

His voice was hoarse with an edge of hysteria. “Sometimes it seems you’ve been here a year, two, twenty. Then you remember, and it’s as if you arrived this morning. You’ll find that out soon enough.

Unless we leave. Now.”

She followed him down the hallway, and she recognized the same staircase. Instinctively, she held back.

“Not to worry,” said Henry. “They’ve been sent off, you see—all the little Angels on a great big mission,” he continued. “Practicing for storming heaven, as Trueblood says.”

“Trueblood?”

She peeked downstairs. The foyer was empty.

“Oh, Trueblood’s invaluable, a very great asset,” babbled Henry. “A man of infinite resources. And the very devil, I suspect. If only he’d stay out of my head.”

Sophie half-pulled her cousin down the stairs. He was babbling, and she barely registered what he was saying, but she nodded as if she did.

“He shows me things—the diagrams: marvelous work. Marvelous, monstrous work; who knew anyone was capable of such fine tolerances that long ago? I wish … I wish, sometimes, I could have taken them home with me, home in London, or take them to France and show Ader. He would … he would do something, I’m sure …

Sophie cut him off. “We’ll get out and find someone, someone with a horse or a cart—something. We’ll get word to the police.”

This seemed to galvanize Henry.

“This way,” he said.

He flung open the door and froze, staring outside. Sophie looked over his shoulder.

The fog had risen, thick and solid, seeming to glow from inside with a pallid yellow light.

“Mother of Christ,” said Henry. “It’s like the world ended.”

“Oh, surely you exaggerate, Mr. Thorpe,” came a silky voice from behind him. “Perhaps you’ve been working too hard.”

They both whirled around. Sophie saw a tall man, dark complexioned, with an ineffable air of authority.

This must be Trueblood. The very devil.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, he turned to her.

“And my dear Doctor Huxley. It’s so good to meet you at last. Doctor Robarts is quite taken with you.”

She reached out and took her cousin’s hand; it was cold and clammy in hers. The man—Trueblood—was looking at her but she felt Henry tense at her side, as if a galvanic reaction was passing through his body.

“Get out,” she heard him mutter through clenched teeth.

The fog was as thick as a solid wall, but she preferred it to hearing one more word from Trueblood.

“Now, Henry,” she said, and by main force she swung her cousin around and toward the door, like they’d done as kids with Bernard, vacationing in the countryside—swing around, swing around, one, two …

“Three!” she cried for no reason at all, and she and Henry dashed into the fog.

It had been many years, but the boy inside him remembered the path through the fields, invisible to the eye but ever-present underfoot, an ancient path first forged by ancient peoples. Dimly seen through the rising mist were the landmarks and touchstones of his youth—there the mound, an old, empty tomb you could mount to catch sight of the sea; here the twin standing stones, raised in time immemorial, that marked the boundaries of the village.

Now Artemis heard the screaming and saw, ahead and up in the sky, the winged figures of Angels that were come to kill St. Agnes.

He sagged against the nearest stone—the lover’s stone, it was called, because of the hole bored through its middle and the oaths taken there, hands thrust through and clasped in the middle.

He saw the eternal blue skies of heaven, and the helpless, flailing forms of angels, their wings thrashing against the fall, to no avail. They fell, and they fell and they are still falling.

Artemis grabbed his temples and moaned with the pain of it.

Find Dirk.

His mother’s voice was as clear and cool as a pitcher of water on a hot day.

Find Dirk, else all perish.

With difficulty, Artemis rose. He could see only the outlines of the houses—which was it? Was it possible Dirk was still living where he remembered?

You’ve been in London too long, paying attention to addresses and house numbers, he thought. Find Dirk, and let the Sight take you to him.

They’d run—how long could it have been? Hours, although the light hadn’t changed, the sun no more sunken than when they ran for their very sanity out that door. They ran blind, trusting the road or their own sure-footedness and the very pavestones seemed to rise below their feet. The fog dissipated, breaking away in wispy clots the further they got from the house. Sophie risked a glance back, feeling like Lot’s wife. There was no house to be seen: only a solid barrier of mist. It was if they waded along the shallow depths before a great impenetrable ocean of fog.

They slowed, still walking hand-in-hand. Sophie looked desperately about her for a cluster of houses, a shepherd’s shack, anything—any sign at all of habitation whatsoever. They must find aid, they must alert the authorties.

How they’d get said authorities to believe them was another matter, she thought. She wished Artemis Donovan was there.

The country was not only curiously void of any sign of settlement. The very landscape seemed out-of-place. A cluster of trees appeared, then another—pines, perhaps, but subtly unlike any pine Sophie had ever seen. Was it the height, or the color …

“I don’t like it,” Sophie said, turning back and staring into the distance from which they’d come. There was no sign even of the mists that bound Sebastian Robarts’ nightmare house.

“There’s something wrong with this place. It doesn’t look right, it doesn’t smell right. It’s like we’re not even in England at all.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” came a voice so close she jumped. “But if you give us a chance perhaps we could change your mind.”

Sophie whipped around to face the speaker, a powerfully-built man wearing a light-colored suit. He held a close-woven straw hat in his hand, and his accent was strange. He must be an American, thought Sophie, who has bought a manor from a family that couldn’t pay the death duties.

The man looked past her at Henry, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

“I do know you, sir, don’t I? Aren’t you that boy that Robarts brought in to help him with his flying scheme? Thorpe, isn’t it?”

Henry stammered in confusion. “Indeed, yes—Henry Thorpe, and this lady is my cousin, Doctor Sophie Huxley.”

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” said the man, with a courtly bow to Sophie. “It seems this part of the world does not lack for doctors.”

She nodded warily in return.

“Weldon is my name, Alistair Weldon. And I have been a doctor myself, in some past life.”

“Mr.—Doctor Weldon,” said Henry. “There’s something dreadful happening at Bryani House.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Weldon, unperturbed. “Is Robarts not well?”

“No,” said Sophie. “That is—he’s mad, Doctor Weldon. He must have been going mad for years, and no one knew it.”

“I don’t like the fog,” said Weldon shortly, with a malicious glance at the mist that wisped around them. “Let us go inside, like civilized people, and you can tell me everything.”

“I don’t think there’s time,” said Sophie, but Weldon was already leading the way along the road, the same direction they’d been headed, so she bit back her objections and followed.

She whispered sideways at Henry. “You know the gentleman, then?”

He shook his head. “No. Yes, I mean. I might have … I don’t remember, Sophie. I’m sorry.”

She would have replied but the road curved and there was a house at last, nestled against more of the odd pines that grew thicker and thicker, obscuring any faint smell of the sea that remained with the scent of balsam. It was a sprawling, strange-looking house, with great white pillers bracketing a wide porch and huge windows like outsized, staring eyes. Had this American doctor built or transported this monstrosity to the Cornish countryside?

And was it her imagination, as their host lead them up the steps, that the door opened wide for them to enter, and no one was there to do it?

I’m tired, she thought. And I’ve been drugged; of course someone opened the door, then slipped away again.

Weldon showed them to a sitting room.

“Make yourself comfortable, and you can tell me all about it,” he said.

A long, low moaning sound, as if the wind was prowling the hallway, echoed from upstairs. Weldon looked a little annoyed.

“My wife,” he said. “She’s an invalid, unable to see company.”

The moan was repeated.

“Pray forgive me,” said Weldon. “I had better check on her. I won’t be a moment.”

“But the police,” began Sophie, but Weldon just gave her a pleasant nod and was gone.

“He has horses, I’m sure,” said Henry, and was about to continue when the haunting groan filled the room again.

“Whatever is that, I wonder?”

He wandered to the sitting room door, looking upstairs inquisitively.

“Oh, do sit down, Henry!” cried Sophie, exhaustion making her irritable. “Don’t go poking your nose in the poor woman’s business.”

“You’re a doctor, Sophie,” said Henry, with a trace of his old mischief. “Maybe I can offer your services.”

“Henry …”

He waved at her impatiently and slipped down the hall. Sophie sank into the soft cushions and closed her eyes. A little nap, perhaps. She was so tired. A little nap wouldn’t hurt.

She opened her eyes suddenly to see a little girl in a pinafore contemplating her, with long blonde curls, and an expression out of place on her child’s face.

Good Lord. She’d fallen asleep. For how long?

She heard Henry’s voice. Time, he’d said. The time here is different.

Stress and shock to sensitive nerves. Henry always had been sensitive.

“You have to get out of here,” said the girl, matter-of-factly. “My father … hurts women like you.”

Sophie stared at her, wondering if she was real or a fragment of a dream.

“Henry,” said Sophie, rising unsteadily. “My cousin—he’s upstairs. I have to get him.”

From the upper reaches came a bloodcurdling scream that struck ice into Sophie’s every limb. Her skin prickled all over, and she felt herself blanch.

The little girl tilted her head with a knowing look that was far too old for her childish features.

“Henry—that was Henry,” gasped Sophie, starting for the door. “He’s in trouble.”

“I think it’s too late,” said the little girl, in an odd voice that made Sophie stop and stare at her. “He’s already met my mother.”

Artemis found Dirk where the Sight led him—in a dirty hovel, half a dugout, behind the tanner shop, where the stench of leather found every secluded corner.

Dirk was crouching on a makeshift bed, barely looking up when Artemis entered.

“I’ve done it this time, haven’t I, Artie,” he said, with a harsh laugh. “Cursed us well and proper.”

“No, Dirk,” said Artemis. “This time you’ll be our salvation.”

Dirk looked up swiftly then. “Don’t mock me, Donovan. We were friends once, but that doesn’t give you the right to mock me.”

“It’s a gift, Dirk,” said Artemis. “Don’t you see? Yours is the gift of Cursing.”

The other man snarled at him. “So they say, and hate me for it. I’ve been called darkling since I was a child, and as it turned out, they were right to do it. I am filthy black at my very soul.”

Born darkling, and cannot help his nature.

On impulse, Artemis reached out to the other man, grasping his forearm. Dirk tried to twist away, but Artemis held firm, and pulled him close.

“You weren’t born evil, Dirk,” he said. Dirk laughed once, harshly, more a bark than a human sound.

“Get away,” he said. “Get out while you can, Artie.”

“Listen to me.” Artemis shook the smaller man a little. “You were born with one of the Lady’s gifts, just like I was. Mine’s served me well enough. Yours—it’s a hard gift to have, Dirk. And a rare one.”

Dirk finally twisted free, but didn’t move away. Artemis was standing so close he could feel him breathing in short, shallow gasps.

“I suppose, where she came from, they knew better how to teach a lad like you,” he continued. “How to control it, how to manage it.” His voice hardened. “How not to bring a tin mine down on the men.”

He felt Dirk flinch.

“God knows, cousin, I’ve had to learn how to control my gift, and it’s been a hard lesson sometimes. But I’m lucky. It hurts no one but myself.” He swallowed, thinking of the things he’d seen: the mutilated girl in the brothel, the child in the abandoned house.

“But you—with this terrible gift of saying something, and sometimes having it so—you’re like a child with fire for fingers, burning all around you. You can’t help it.”

“It’s true,” said Dirk. “And it was my fault, Artie, for I never thought it through, never bothered to learn how to control it. I suppose there’s some in this world familiar with such a nature as mine, and I never sought them out. The child whose fingers burn learns not to touch his playmates, else …”

He moved to the window, and nudged aside a corner of the filthy curtain. Mist pressed against the windows.

“Else he becomes as I am.”

Something flopped against the window, and they both jumped. A man’s face pressed against the pane, his nose and cheek flattened, his eyes vacant, his mouth grotesquely open, his head at an unnatural angle. Limbs askew, he slid to a heap on the ground, leaving a dark streak on the glass.

Dirk swore and backed away, staring at the fishy gaze.

“Your people are dying, Dirk,” said Artemis, when shock let him speak. “And you were born to save them.”

“How?” The word was a bark, a demand, a curse, an order.

“The knife, Dirk,” Artemis said. “The knife we stole, the knife the Lady of the Mists brought.”

“What of it?”

“We need that knife.”

Dirk shrugged and moved to the bed, shifted the straw mattress with a careless motion. From underneath he brought out a small wrap of leather. He unrolled it, and with a thrill of recognition Artemis saw the knife, a true deadly work of art, lying on his cousin’s palm.

“Here it is, and much good’s it done anyone,” said Dirk. But Artemis saw that he couldn’t help fondling the handle, as if his fingers were in love with every curve forged into it.

“Come, Dirk,” said Artemis, drawing him to the door. “Sight and Curse. Let’s show the Lady what we’re made of.”

The little girl’s hand was cool and dry in Sophie’s sweaty fingers. She led her out the front door, and this time she was sure no servant opened it. Outside, the fog had risen, thick and hungry, and Sophie recoiled.

The girl tugged her hand. “You’re safe with me,” she said. “At least in the fog. Otherwise …” She frowned. “Otherwise, I don’t know. But you must come.”

“What’s happening?” cried Sophie, desperate to understand something of what was going on.

“Slaughter,” said the girl, calmly. “Massacre. Trueblood’s called the Angels down on St. Agnes, and they’ve no choice but to answer. He’s built them that way.”

“Henry.”

“It’s too late.”

She was about to object, about to dash back into the house and find her cousin. But a wave of dizziness passed over her, fast and hot and strong, and only the grip of the girl’s fingers on hers kept her from falling.

It was receding, thank God. Her face flushed hot but at least she hadn’t fainted.

She smiled at the girl, at her serious little face, and opened her mouth to speak, and stopped, puzzled.

“What is it?” The girl sounded as if she might already know the answer.

“Why, that’s odd,” said Sophie, frowning. “I don’t know what I was going to say. Something I left inside, perhaps.”

“There’s no time now,” said the girl, insistent. “You must come. Please.”

The fog pressed in around them, and Sophie couldn’t help but imagine that it wanted to press closer, to be inside her, to possess her. She gripped the girl’s hand a bit tighter. The girl walked through the blinding vapor as if it were transparent.

“What’s your name?” she asked her.

The girl paused, and seemed to consider.

“I forget sometimes,” she said, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. She frowned.

“Frances—Fanny Weldon,” she said.

Of course—she said she was Weldon’s daughter.

“How long have you lived in England?”

“England?” Fanny tugged her forward and she followed, trusting the girl across the odd terrain. “I don’t think Riverbend’s in England. After the Fire, we were just here, in the Mists. England’s far away, sometimes. Sometimes close. Like now.”

It seemed to Sophie that for some time the fog had been lessening, and the familiar—or at least, less alien—landscape of Cornwall was visible periodically through fractures in the mist. She had the dim impression of two tall stones to her right, and the remains of a primitive path beneath her feet.

“Past the stones is the town,” said Fanny. “And Trueblood’s Angels are killing them.”

Someone called for help, many someones, and Sophie automatically started toward the sound.

Fanny tugged on her skirt. “But over there,” she pointed in the opposite direction. “The Angels are killing your friend.”

A chilling cry pierced the air and Sophie gasped. She knew that voice, although she had never heard it raised in terror.

Cecelia.

Without a word she dashed into the still-thinning mist, leaving Fanny behind at the stones.

Fanny watched the woman vanish in the fog. She didn’t follow; she had done what she could.

Somebody was standing, almost solid, behind her.

“Sadie,” said Fanny, without turning around. “I remember you now.”

Sadie’s voice tickled her ear. “It’s hard for a ghost to remember,” she said.

A ghost—was that what she was, in the end? Nothing more?

“My father,” said Fanny. “He—I’m sorry. You were my friend.”

Sadie’s voice became harder. “Your father’s found his place of damnation—or redemption, although I don’t think he’ll choose that path. Listen, Fanny—I don’t have much time. I need to tell you about the foxes.”

“Foxes?”

“Do you remember, how they’d come sometimes, and play at the edge of the woods in the moonlight?”

“Yes. I remember.”

That summer, a year before Sherman came, when it was still warm but after heat and humidity made the nights a misery. Fanny and Sadie snuck out to the porch and huddled together once the night became cool, and watched the vulpine bodies slip over and around each other, silver in the white light. She could feel the warmth of Sadie’s body as she leaned against her. Sadie told her that the den was not far away, at the base of a big oak, and that Holbart had put out a poisoned rabbit that she had removed. Fanny could hear the laughter in her voice as she said it.

A few months later, Sadie disappeared.

“They found mine,” said Sadie, as if divining her thoughts. “So I know what I am. But yours, Fanny. The foxes pulled them out from the ashes, and took them to their den to play with, the naughty things. Tell him the old den at the base of the lightning-struck oak. That’s where he’ll find you.”

“Poor foxes. They didn’t burn, did they, like in the Bible?”

Sampson had tied foxes together, set them alight, and loosed them in the fields of the Philistines. Clever but cruel, like her father.

“No, child. They’re gone now, but they didn’t burn. Don’t forget to tell him, now. He’ll take care of the rest.”

The lightest of touches on her shoulder, and Sadie was gone.

Sophie trusted her feet to find the path, fearing that if she thought about it too much she’d stumble and fall.

Her breath was catching in her throat when she saw the remains of the carriage—Lady Cecelia’s carriage. Two figures stood beside it, next to a heap of …

Bodies. Two bodies. And the standing figures had widespread wings. One had a rope that extended somehow to one of the bodies …

God in Heaven. It was a tail. The creature had a tail, long and muscular, that protruded from its back, and it must have had a sharp tip or razor, because it was pinning …

… Cecelia. The thing had her pinned against the ground like a butterfly in a collector’s box.

It seemed to go through her shoulder, and she was still moving, grasping the tail, trying to pull it off and out of her.

A few feet away the body of the coachman—Alex—lay still.

Sophie grasped the tentacle-like tail and pulled it out of Cecelia as best she could, trying to avoid any more tearing. Cecelia looked up at her, pale as death but still very much alive.

The Angel retracted her tail and she crouched over Cecelia, facing them both.

The one with the tail was at least otherwise normal, as far as she could tell. The other, who stood regarding the horrible scene with equanimity, was simply frightful to behold. Every ounce of Sophie’s medical training rebelled against the possibility of the existence of such a creature.

From the woman’s—Angel’s—creature’s midriff protruded another creature—a twisted mockery of a baby. The woman’s face was mutilated as well—one eye sewn shut, and the mouth stitched closed as well.

“Get away,” Sophie shouted at them. It didn’t look like any of Cecelia’s vital organs were hit. She might still save her.

When the baby spoke, part of Sophie, the part that wasn’t concerned about getting a cloth and staunching the bleeding, realized she was, they all were, in Hell, and England was, indeed, far away.

“We must,” said the baby. “We must kill all within and without St. Agnes. You as well.”

The other Angel whipped its demon tail around, aimed straight for her heart. Sophie didn’t move, and felt Cecelia’s hand tighten in hers. She closed her eyes for the blow.

When it didn’t come she squinted up at the creature. It was—both of them were—staring at her in wonder. The sharp, razor-tipped point of the tail was poised just over her sternum, touching her …

… no. Touching her medallion, which had fallen from under her shirtfront as she ran. She felt the same burning sensation underneath the disk of metal as she had when Robarts had stared at it, when he had called her …

“Margaret.” The baby breathed the name, and the Angel’s remaining eye was open wide. A tear trickled down her ravaged face.

“You are Margaret,” said the other Angel, and her tail withdrew.

To Sophie’s amazement, both of the terrible Angels kneeled to her.

A man was standing in the middle of the road. The wisps of fog made it unfamiliar, but Artemis recognized the place: It was where the main road intersected Hallows Lane, which led across the fields to the low stone church that had squatted there since Saxon times. It was as near the center of the village as never mind, as his mother would say, and a chill went through him as he remembered the sight of her, bearing a basketful of linen or apples, stopping to talk with the other women before the bake shop.

The man was tall and dressed in a dark suit, and there was something about his profile that made Artemis’ chest catch, falter a beat—something familiar. It was the sweep of the nose and cheekbone, he realized. Half a dozen of his childhood friends had it, and more of their mothers and fathers. It was a trait of the village.

The man was looking at the sky, a dark blue-gray, where a deadly flutter of wings passed over, hesitated, and swooped. He turned his head to follow it, and Artemis saw the sharp curve of a cruel smile.

A bloodied bundle, child-size, lay almost at the man’s feet, and he looked at it reflectively. He ignored the screams that echoed through the town, distorted by the omnipresent mist.

The man looked at Artemis, and Dirk behind him. His smile did not reach his eyes.

“More yet of you,” he said, in clear but queerly-accented English. “My sister was prolific in her day and her man potent. Else, perhaps she was a whore, and I wouldn’t like to think that.”

From somewhere across the moor came a long and lonely cry, and the wings above them swerved away to find it.

Dirk held the knife low and ready against his leg, and it could be the man …

What was his name? Artemis groped for it at the edge of his consciousness, but it slipped away and he couldn’t see it, or hear it, or touch it …

… it could be the man didn’t even see it. If he did, he didn’t care.

“This one,” he said, indicating Artemis with a negligent flick of his thumb. “This one is Sighted, but you, my young Vistana, you have the gift of Cursing. And I’m sure they made you suffer for it, didn’t they?”

He bent close, his face inches from Dirk’s. Dirk’s lips thinned and he paled but he stood his ground.

The man gave a short harsh laugh. “I’m weak in the Sight, myself, but even I can see that. You were kept outside the light. You were turned away from hearth and home. You were called …”

The man seemed to consider his words, determining the flavor of them like a strange dish. Suddenly he smiled.

“You were called Darkling.”

Dirk did flinch then, jerked back as if slapped.

The man didn’t move. “Why would you spend a moment trying to help them? Why would you spend a second trying to stop me?”

“Don’t listen to him, Dirk,” said Artemis, his words sounding false and hollow in his own ears.

For the nameless man was right. They had turned Dirk away. They had called him darkling.

The nameless man reached out and placed his hand on Dirk’s shoulder. Dirk closed his eyes.

“Come with me, nephew,” said the man. “Darklings belong together. Together we’ll learn how to control the Mists. Together we’ll lead this army of Angels, straight up to God’s throne, to this heaven you people speak of and fear and desire and know so little.”

Dirk opened his eyes, lifting them to the man; they glittered with tears. He opened his mouth; Artemis knew his answer would be yes.

The bundle, lying forgotten almost at their feet, stirred and moaned. A scrap of cloth covering the face fell away, revealing a bloodless face.

It wasn’t a child—it was a woman, tiny and undergrown. Her pale features were familiar, and Artemis realized with a shock she must be related to Dirk—and to him.

Dirk looked at her and his mouth snapped shut; he turned as if to go to her but stopped, as if an invisible physical force held him in place.

“Claire?” he managed, sounding incredulous.

“Dirk,” said the child-woman. “Brother, help me.”

Claire—his mother had mentioned her. Blasted, crippled out of the womb from Dirk’s malevolence, or so he supposed.

Artemis tried to go to her, to help her, but some strange power gripped his limbs, holding them in place.

The man looked down at her in surprise.

“They didn’t finish you off, I see,” he said. “Well, that’s easily taken care of.”

And with a brutal ease that was breathtaking, he kneeled by the girl and broke her neck with a swift, efficient twist.

With superhuman effort, Artemis lurched forward a pace and was brought up short again. Dirk cried out in disbelief and horror, a primal cry that had little human in it, and raised the knife high.

The man rose and turned to Dirk, and Artemis found he was released. Swiftly he kneeled at the girl’s side, feeling at her neck for a pulse. There was nothing.

Still kneeling, the Angel with the sewn-shut mouth reached out to her companion. As if knowing what she wanted, the other allowed her to take the tip of her knife-blade tail. Delicately, the Angel lifted the point to her face and severed, one by one, the threads holding her lips together.

She threw back her head and called out, a great howl of longing, of summoning, as if that cry had been bottled up inside behind her sewn mouth for ages.

Now silent, she lowered her head and looked at Sophie with her one eye. Scarlet drops oozed from the needle holes around her mouth. The baby was silent.

Sophie shifted her weight and tore away her petticoat, ripping it into strips. She wadded a pad of fabric against Cecelia’s wound, both the entry and exit points, and bound it tightly, all under the disconcerting gaze of the Angels.

There was the flutter of wings overhead, and the soft thump of more of them landing. They had come at their sister’s call. Sophie kept her hands and her mind on her work.

“Am I going to die, Sophie?” whispered Cecelia.

“I’ve seen worse, and treated worse. No, Cece. You’re not going to die.”

Her patient glanced at the Angels, rank upon rank of them, gathering around them.

“They’re going to kill us, though.”

“No, they’re not,” said Sophie, between her teeth, as she tied off the last bandage.

“We must,” said the one-eyed Angel, the drops of blood like rubies on her lips, her voice hoarse with disuse and that tremendous cry. “Not you, because you are Margaret. But the rest …” She nodded at Cecelia, and the prone body of Alex. “And the villagers. Trueblood’s orders, and Trueblood controls us. We would rather die, but we don’t have the privilege.”

Sophie glanced around at the Angels. At the sight of her medallion, they all kneeled, an army of the damned—killing machines. She was torn between disgust and pity, pity at what had been done to them.

“You don’t have to obey him,” she said, angrily.

“He animates us with the Mists,” the Angel replied, weeping. They all were weeping.

The Angel turned to her companion. “Finish it,” she said, and the other rose, her great weapon of a tail arched high, and moved toward Cecelia. Sophie stood between them.

“You’ll have to kill me first,” she said.

A great sigh went up from the Angels.

“So be it,” said the Angel with the tail.

“No weapon can harm me,” said the man, almost gently, explaining the facts of life to children. “Because no weapon knows my name.”

Artemis, still kneeling beside Claire’s cold body, spoke, and knew. “This weapon knows you.”

Incredulity, then scorn passed quickly over the man’s face. And then his features froze.

Dirk held the knife, plunged to the hilt in the man’s belly.

Tibor. His name is Tibor. It was as if the knife, mated now with its master, sung it out for all to hear.

Tibor stared down at Dirk, wide-eyed. Dirk pulled the knife up, slicing Tibor’s abdomen open, just as Jaelle had done in a different time and place.

“I curse you, uncle,” spat Dirk Penhallow. Another voice seemed to speak with his, deeper, older. “Darkling, Dukkar. I cast you out.”

Something heavy and thick and gray spilled out from the widening slit in Tibor’s belly.

Dirk drew breath to say more and stopped. Tibor had moved swiftly, and the handle of another blade, plain and unadorned but deadly enough for all that, protruded from Dirk’s throat.

Dirk mouthed words that never came out, and Artemis watched in horror as he staggered away from Tibor, hands frantically scrabbling at his own neck.

Artemis managed to catch him as he fell. Dirk’s body was heavy in his arms, and he staggered back and almost fell to the ground.

Tibor pawed at the elaborate handle of the knife, knocking it free of him. More misty grayness poured from him, gushing out as thick as blood, and the slash spread up to his chest and down to his groin and widened, splitting him further and further apart.

He looked in astonishment at his own sundering, helpless before the speed and power of it, and snapped his head up at Artemis, kneeling with Dirk clasped in his arms.

He shot them a look of venomous hatred, and opened his mouth and Artemis knew that Tibor Vadoma had the gift of cursing stronger than any male of his line ever had, and that its fury would fall on him and his cousin unabated. He held Dirk closer and braced himself.

Instead Tibor threw back his head and screamed, a cry not and never of this world: despair, hatred, pain, and longing were embodied in it. The fog thickened around him and met the substance pouring from his mutilated body, his mouth opened wider than should be possible and the mist surged from it, jaw dislocated and hanging free.

Tibor Vadoma felt the Mists tearing him apart, the sensation horribly familiar, and he fought it with every fiber of his being, brought skill and experience and hard-won knowledge to bear on the simple problem of staying whole, in one world and not trapped between. But it was no use: within the Mists he heard a gentle chuckle—the voice of his old mentor of Grayhalme, so many ages ago. Within the swirling vapor he saw, just for an instant, the blind gaze of the bone man. And he knew, with a bitterness that eclipsed the pain of the knife in his belly or the surprise that Jaelle’s Breed had bested him, that he was no master of the Mists, that they were and had been using him for their own inscrutable purposes, that he was a tool to be used and discarded, that they were mocking him even now.

Fog met fog and he was suspended in it for an instant, writhing like a stuck frog, coming apart at the seams. Then the mist thinned away and he was gone.

Artemis kneeled with Dirk across his knees, staring at the place Tibor had been.

Dirk stirred weakly, unable to speak with the blade through his throat. Artemis considered pulling it out—would it make it worse?

Sophie would know.

“You did well, cousin,” said Artemis, rocking Dirk back and forth like a child. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. Claire was dead, and Dirk dying in his arms, and so he rocked.

“You did well,” he said again.

Sophie braced herself for a blow that never came. The Angels were looking up at the sky, and something in the air changed, something passed through them with a visible quiver.

“He’s gone,” said the Angel with the mutilated mouth. “Trueblood is gone. The Mists have taken him.”

Swiftly she dashed forward, wings furled, and grasped Sophie by the arm. Sophie was too startled to resist.

“Quick,” said the Angel. “Before he finds a way to come back—and he will, sooner or later. Quickly.”

“What?” said Sophie. At last she was truly afraid.

“Order us …” The Angel looked around at her fellows, and with one accord they nodded.

“We should never have existed. We are monstrous, and a monster controls us. Order us to destroy ourselves.”

“Destroy yourselves?”

“Before it’s too late.”

“No,” Sophie snapped.

“You must.”

“I said no. There’s been too much death here already.” She twisted out of the Angel’s grip.

“Margaret—you don’t understand. There will be more death, more destruction if Trueblood can control us again.”

“I don’t destroy people; I heal them. At least, I try. All I’ve striven to become, all my work, becomes ashes if I become a killer. Can you understand that?”

The Angel threw back her head and cried out in despair, and Sophie had to struggle not to cover her ears against that piteous sound.

The Angel lowered her head and fixed Sophie with a burning gaze that was nearly physical.

“Margaret,” she hissed. “Sophia, what do you do with a cancer?”

She couldn’t tear herself away from the creature’s stare as she realized what it was asking.

“I cut it out,” she said slowly.

“Why?”

Sophie felt tears cold on her face. “Because if I do not, it will destroy the rest of the body.”

The Angel reached for her hand, gentle now, and Sophie didn’t resist as she took it.

“We are a cancer, Sophia. When Trueblood controls us, when he makes us his weapons, his armies, we are a cancer in the body. He can use us to destroy the innocent, and he will.”

Her fingers were warm in Sophia’s. “Because Robarts made us, because some of him is in us, we can obey you this once. Help us.”

“No,” said Sophie, but her voice was weak.

The Angel pulled her closer.

“Have you any idea what it’s like to go mad? To be, entirely, subject to something outside yourself? To recover, however briefly, self-control?”

She shut her eyes, the scars across her left eyelid vivid white. “To feel oneself descending again into madness? Please. Don’t let us become his tools again. Don’t let him rape our spirits again.”

Sophie in her turn pulled the Angel into an embrace, drawing her dreadful head down on her shoulder.

“The sea,” she whispered into her ear. “There.” She released the Angel and pointed.

Over the cliffs to the treacherous Cornwall shore, where ships had broken up as soon as there were ships in England. Over the cliff to the rocks that jutted out of the water like a drowned titan’s broken teeth.

She spoke to all the Angels, who strained close to hear.

“Fly out to sea,” she commanded. “Over the cliff and onto the rocks. Let the sea swallow you.”

“Let the sea swallow us.”

With one accord the Angels rose and took wing, each by each, flying with grim determination where Sophie pointed. The Angel with the baby, the sewn mouth, flew last, pausing to cup Sophie’s cheek in her hand.

“Thank you,” she whispered, before she flew upward with powerful beats of her wings, flying to the sea and oblivion.

Sophie stood watching until they vanished.

She was startled by a groan. Alex stirred, tried to rise, and fell. She dashed to his side.

“Stay still, you fool. You’ll hurt yourself worse.”

“You’ll have to catch the horses, Sophie,” commented Cecelia from where she lay.

It hurt to do it, but she couldn’t help it: Sophie laughed, and Cecelia laughed, and Alex looked with glowering wonder at the fool women and their frivolity.

Someone at the Cliffside, a refugee from the slaughter at St. Agnes, perhaps, would have been startled to see the flight of Angels over the Cornwall cliffs. Perhaps they crashed on the rocks, perhaps they were devoured by the hungry sea, but it was impossible to know, because a tremendous mist had risen off-shore, an unnatural, yellow mist, all wrong for this season, and they flew right into it.

The mist seemed to swell upon itself, and then dissipated, inch by inch. When it was gone, there was no sign of the Angels.

Sometimes, in the years to come, someone wandering the shore at low tide would find a fragment of metal, a thin piece of tin, perhaps, shaped a little like a feather.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Riverbend, the Mists

Henry Thorpe was at the end of his strength. The river’s current was stronger than it looked, an all-but-irresistible force under the deceptively tranquil surface, and he was pulled back two strokes for every one he made.

His legs were heavy; his entire body seemed made of lead, and his arms ached dreadfully with the effort of keeping him afloat. His head kept slipping under the surface and his mouth filled with water.

The setting sun struck the skin of the river as he sank, making it sparkle with all manner of autumn jewel-tones: ruby and orange and topaz-yellow. It was beautiful and clean: The river washed away all dirt and sin, while in that nightmare house stewed filth and evil.

Her hands … her hands were on me … better to drown than to have her hands on me.

And then he swallowed river-water and began to drown in earnest.

He was flailing, sinking, his vision darkening at the edges while at the center gleamed the bright mosaic of the water’s surface, so close and so far away. Somewhere in the panicked cacophony inside his head was a kernel of peace, the balm of the drowned as death became inevitable, the small voice saying peace, be still. It is better like this.

The water’s pull was not so forceful. He had drifted into the lee of a boulder that jutted up from the bedrock midstream. For a time, the relentless current was blocked, and Henry was able to kick his legs freely, and his arms didn’t seem as desperately heavy.

Galvanized, he kicked with newfound strength, ignoring the ache in his shoulders and the cramps in his calves. He propelled himself upstream, and once out of the sheltering shadow the boulder made in the stream, he persisted, remembering to alternate arm strokes, remembering to breathe, until after an eternity his fingers brushed the grass sprouting along the shore and he was able to hook his hands into the mud and pull himself, his shoulder joints screaming with the effort, halfway out of the stream and lie, spent, on the mire that bedded the river’s edge.

Half of his face was buried in the mud and the sun beat down on the other, but it wasn’t the blinding heat of noon. The rays of the setting sun warmed his cheek and his right ear, and half his forehead. The left ear was buried and he could hear uncountable creatures moving, and hatching in the mud, and feel them moving against his skin—worms and tiny reptiles, and insects winged and unwinged, strange little living jewels under the surface of the earth. The thought occurred to him that if he listened carefully he could hear the song they sang as they hatched and grew and ate each other, and that inside that song were secrets he’d never imagined, although he’d spent his life trying to find them out.

His legs were still in the river; he was too exhausted to drag himself farther up the bank. But now the current only seemed interested in playing with him, in pulling his legs gently to and fro, as a kitten plays with the tail of a friendly dog.

He fancied he could hear the river breathing inside its banks, and beneath that the low, slow heartbeat of the world itself—this strange world, at once familiar and alien, made from the sundering and patchwork of other worlds but still its own self, seeded from something that his own reality could never know.

Henry knew he should force himself to his knees and run, away from this river, away from this house. But he was weak as a kitten, his muscles spent rubber, and the only balm he wanted now was the warmth of the sun and the song of the earth beneath him.

Through closed eyelids he sensed the sun blotted out as someone leaned over him. He struggled to rise to his knees, to open his eyes at the least.

A hand like a steel trap closed over the back of his neck, lifted his head momentarily, then plunged him facedown into the mud.

In sheer panic he managed to lift his weakened arms and grasp at the wrists of his attacker. Mud filled his nostrils and sharp, colored shafts of light shot through the darkness. His lungs ached for air.

The grip on the back of his neck shifted and his assailant lifted his head out of the mud by his hair. Henry gasped and blinked until his vision was clear.

Crouched before him, still holding up his head with one hand, was a burly man, red-complexioned with disconcertingly clear blue eyes. Weldon.

But who could that creature—hardly even a woman—be?

Weldon grinned at Henry’s expression and with a flex of his massive arm he plunged Henry’s face back down into the mud. Henry tried to strike out but he missed and heard Weldon chuckle.

This time the grip on the back of his head lasted longer and Henry’s mouth started to fill with silt. His nose was filled with it already and it felt like his body was screaming, begging for one breath of air. He hadn’t the strength to fight anymore; he tried to move but couldn’t, his body seized with a paralysis like the nightmare twilight of sleep, when the mind is aware but the body will not move, whatever phantasms might haunt the corners of the room.

Now I’m going to die, he thought, and there was no peace to it as he had felt drowning in the clean water of the river, only the bitter ashy taste of disappointment and despair. I’m going to die at the hands of a madman, far from home.

With a twist he was flipped on his back, the sucking mire giving up its grip reluctantly. He blinked at the sun while someone’s fingers—Weldon’s—cleared out the mud from his mouth with a brutal, expert motion. Henry sucked in the air, sweet for all the decayed stench of the mud and the things that hatch in it.

Finally he was able to push himself to his knees, coughing and choking on the mud that was left. He rubbed the dirt from his eyes with the filthy sleeve of his coat and blinked at the man who stood over him, whose head blocked the setting sun, giving him an incongruous fiery halo.

Henry was painfully aware that with little effort Weldon could shove him back into the mud, or kick him back into the river that lapped at his heels.

Weldon smiled.

“I see you’ve met my wife, young Thorpe,” he said, complacently. “And I must say you were most rude to the lady.”

Weldon crouched again, his deceptively bland face uncomfortably close.

“But I think there’s a way you can make it up to her. I think she’d appreciate a most beautiful set of wings.”

No, Henry mouthed. No, I won’t.

But no sound came out.

Weldon grasped the front of his shirt and lifted him easily. Tossing Henry’s limp body across his shoulder, he turned and walked toward the house. Henry stared at the glittering surface of the river, taunting him now.

Why didn’t I drown when I had the chance?

Someone was standing there, someone who hadn’t been there before. Weldon squinted. At the bank where he’d dragged himself out, where Weldon had plunged his face into the mud, stood a slim figure. It shimmered in the glare of the sun, but it looked like a girl, almost grown to womanhood. Here eyes were dark and her skin coffee-colored.

She shook her head sadly.

Mist, faint at first but thickening like curdled milk began to rise from the ground. He could smell it, icy and sulfurous and cloying all at once. The mist enveloped him, enveloped Weldon, who didn’t abate his pace. It obscured all, the girl, the river, the trees, and he knew it was doing the same to him: he was erased, forgotten, buried inside layers of fog. It was as if he, Henry Thorpe, dreamer and would-be inventor, never had been at all.

He began to weep.

Robarts was lost. He couldn’t find Bryani House, although he knew it should be right here. The strange fog had him confused and ground that should look familiar was strange and foreign.

But he could hear the sea, beating against the distant cliffs. The sea was eternal.

Houses loomed out of the mist. He must be in St. Agnes Town.

That’s right—St. Agnes. He must have made his way over the heather, by half-obscured paths to the little village. He was looking for someone.

Except he couldn’t remember who.

“Margaret?” he called, but his voice fell flat in the fog. No one answered, and he saw no one in the streets. “Margaret? Are you here?”

He paused, frowning. Who was Margaret?

He’d reached the place where the two main roads crossed. The ground had been torn, and there were two great black stains on the hard-packed earth.

He kneeled and touched the nearest. The ground was damp, and his fingers came away red and sticky.

He called again, knowing there would be no answer.

Blood. Blood on the ground, and … something else about blood. It was a name, wasn’t it? Blueblood?

Somebody had been hurt here. Finding a handkerchief in his pocket and wiping his fingers, he crossed to the nearest cottage and knocked on the door. It swung open at his touch, and, calling first, he ventured inside.

There was nobody inside. There was nothing inside: no furniture, no sign of life, no detritus, no dust. The walls were as white as if they’d been new-plastered. The place was as hollow as an empty eggshell.

He left the house and walked past the bloodstains, and his foot struck something he hadn’t seen before.

Robarts bent to pick it up. It was a knife, a queer antique thing. He examined the patterns on its hilt. They were intricate, well crafted, but oddly unattractive. Without being themselves obscene, they gave the impression of uncleanliness.

Traces of blood remained at the base of the blade. He peered closer. The abstract figures were familiar; he’d seen something like them before. Something in a book, a book in a library, the library at Bryani House.

He’d almost forgotten about Bryani House.

He dropped the knife in his coat pocket. St. Agnes was abandoned; there was no help here, and he must get to Bryani House before this fog grew thicker. It looked to be almost pouring out of the ground now, thick and corporeal.

Robarts didn’t know how long he’d walked before he realized that he could not see anything before him, couldn’t see his own hand before his face. He breathed the vapor in, and it pressed heavy on his lungs. He was saturated with it, drowning, but there was nothing to do but walk, his footing miraculously sure on the overgrown path, one step after the other.

He fancied it was beginning to thin; he could see again, the dim shapes of bushes and hillocks to either side. A figure loomed ahead of him on the path, dark, with great outstretched wings like a bat, waiting.

Tamar. The stitches that held her mouth shut were torn away, the baby that protruded from her was dead or asleep. She smiled at him with her twisted lips.

“I’m lost, Tamar,” said Robarts. “And I can’t find …”

He paused, trying to remember.

“You won’t find him here,” said the Angel.

He took the knife from his pocket.

“I found this,” he said, pointing vaguely backward. “In the village. There was blood. We should tell someone.”

Gently she took the knife from him.

“Tell me, on the way home,” she said, turning away.

“Home?” he said.

“Yes,” said Tamar. “The Mists brought Bryani House here. They brought all of us here. We’re home.”

“Home again,” said Weldon cheerfully, depositing Henry on a couch.

There was a strange singed smell, as if someone had held a handful of hair too close to a candle.

Henry fought for breath. He recognized the hallway outside the room he had entered and fled in horror. From inside came a weak mewling sound, and something else—the smell of burnt meat.

Weldon pulled him toward the door. The mewling continued: a long, sustained whine.

“Don’t worry,” said Weldon, clearing his throat as if the air was smoky. “I’ve restrained her. She can’t hurt you.”

He reached past Henry and nudged the door fully open and pushed Henry inside.

Weak as a kitten, he couldn’t resist.

Two oil lamps illuminated the interior of the boudoir. Any other detail was lost to Henry—he was caught up in the view of what lay on the four-poster bed before him.

Or, more accurately, what was bound there. Silk cloths tied each limb to the corresponding pillar at the corner of the bed. The woman was spread-eagled, facedown, as a sacrifice on an altar might be. He hadn’t really seen her before; he’d only been aware of a twisted thing coming at him, and the smell …

Despite himself, Henry looked closer, fascinated and repelled. At first he thought she was covered with a crazy quilt in shades of red, maroon, and ochre. Then he realized, with a sickening jolt, that she was naked and that much of her skin had been burned and charred away. Sheets covered her to the waist and left her bare above, and as she writhed as if she would burrow into the bedding she resembled some sort of fantastically-colored, huge garden slug. The pieces of skin that were left were blackened and stuck on randomly, like ill-stitched patches, and the parts that weren’t burned were blistered, some of the swellings whole and smooth, some leaking a clear lymphatic fluid.

He staggered back a few paces. “How … how …” He gestured at the figure, unable to articulate further.

Weldon frowned. “A house fire—the entire dwelling was consumed. She managed to make it out of the ruin, somehow. Might have been more merciful if she had died; however, God disposes …”

“God.” Henry began, then stopped. There was no God here.

This isn’t right. This isn’t natural. She shouldn’t be alive.

“What do you want?” he asked, his goråge rising.

“The same service you provided Robarts, of course,” replied the American. “Although this should be easier, and more interesting, really, with only one patient.”

“You must be mad,” gasped Henry.

Weldon was unperturbed. “By no means,” he said. “After all, why shouldn’t I have my own Angel?”

No, thought Henry. I won’t. Better to die.

And then.

The voice, Trueblood’s voice, that had plagued him so in Bryani House, invading dream and waking-time, pushing and urging, and insinuating …

Look. Look, do you see?

He looked at the ravaged back. There, protruding from either side of the spinal ridge were the gray, mottled planes of the shoulder blades. One barely peeped out; the other rose from the surrounding meat like a new island in a receding sea.

You could mount wings there. Bolt them right into the scapula. The voice was familiar, and persistent, as if it already had a comfortable purchase in his head. As if it was part of him.

It could be done.

No!

Had he said it aloud?

Why not?

He was tired, near-drowned and half-dead, the mud still sticky in his face. He wanted to sleep. The voice insinuated itself further.

Weldon’s mad, and he’ll kill you as soon as look at you, if you’re not useful to him. Ask him what he did with his slaves, but not unless you want to know.

What do I do?

Go along. Do what he wants. You can fix it later, when he trusts you more. But if you want to survive, you’ll do as I say.

Who are you? Trueblood?

Why no, I am yourself. I must be. Or else you are mad in your own turn. And besides …

What?

Wouldn’t it be … interesting?

Henry looked at the woman again, the bones, the healed areas that were a horror in their own right, since human flesh should not be able to do that.

“I’ll need,” he began, hardly believing he was saying it, “I’ll need my tools, and materials,” he said.

“You’ll have them,” said Weldon, in a coaxing voice. “You’ll have everything you need.”

SERIAH

At midnight in Southwest France, in a small studio on the outskirts of Toulouse, M. Clement Ader sits before a drafting table, sorting a litter of papers. He picks up a tattered page covered with faded equations and frowns. The handwriting is not his own, although there is something familiar about it—something that stirs that memory: a shadow of a face; a voice, young and brash with an English accent. He puts it aside for perusal in the morning. By dawn, the paper remains but the equations have faded completely.

Sophia Huxley turns restlessly in her bed, on the edge of a nightmare. In her dream, she is running down a hallway that lengthens and lengthens before her, its walls anonymous and grey and devoid of door or window. She must remember something—someone—before it is too late. An inarticulate cry outside her window, an anonymous sound in the London night, wakes her and the dream shivers away like thin-worn glass. Later she sits in her dressing gown, holding a cup of silver tea, as Janet calls plain hot water, and tries to recall something, someone she’s forgotten, whose existence has left a fading footprint in her mind.

In a cramped studio, bachelor lodgings, a stray breeze from a cracked window stirs the papers that lie on chair and table. The landlord leans in the doorway, wondering how someone could have squatted here for any time without notice. These rooms have been empty for months, although he can’t for the moment think of why: he’s never had a problem getting a tenant before. A name flickers through his mind—Hubert? Henry?—and with it the fleeting memory of a face. But his wife calls from belowstairs and he turns to answer and the memory fades. He’ll clear out the squatter’s trash that afternoon, and the curious balsa-wood models will be sold to the rag and bone man.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

London, 1882

Sophie kneeled before the small gravestone, its granite discolored by the London air. Still, the names carved into its face were as readable as the day they were made.

Margaret Robarts. Beloved wife and mother.

And then, underneath. Jonathan Robarts. And the year: 1867. Such a bare little number.

She took the medallion and its chain from her pocket and looped it around the stone, arranging it so that it hung between Margaret’s name and her son’s.

Sophie reached out and caressed the letters chiseled in the granite, feeling them through the tips of her thin gloves.

“Thank you for lending it to me, Mrs. Robarts,” she whispered. “But it’s yours and it’s time you had it back—both of you.”

She rose, her knees stiff with the cold. A clammy drizzle had started and the back of her neck was wet. She looked at her gloves ruefully. They were filthy.

“I never could keep my gloves clean,” she murmured to herself.

Artemis was waiting for her at the gate, his hat in his hand.

Without asking, he saw her home, and they fell into a companionable silence, their measured treads matching each other.

“Have you written your report?” she said, presently.

He laughed. “It’s beyond my powers of composition. A madman and his army of Angels. At the least I’d lose my job, at the worst, they’d lock me up as mad myself.”

He stopped, for they had reached the steps of her house.

“I am sorry they had to die,” said Sophie, raising her troubled face to him. “They were innocent, in the end.”

“Yes,” said Artemis. “Even Robarts, in a way.”

“Will you ever find him, do you think?”

He only smiled and shrugged wordlessly.

She put out her hand for him to shake, and after a pause he took it in both of his, and they stood there together, in the gathering fog, with dusk coming on fast.

ENVOI

Seriah

Daniel Greensmith kneels at the base of a blasted oak. And old lightning scar twists white down its trunk, and only the south side of the tree is still alive, embracing its dead half. Beneath the great root of the tree and half-hidden by a fall of moss gapes the mouth of an old animal den.

Daniel can still smell the musk of the foxes that once lived there.

He’s wearing the thick leather gloves he keeps for field work, knowing there might be snakes in the burrow. Cautiously, he probes the hole. It’s deeper than it looks, and wider, and soon he’s up to his shoulder, his cheek against the rough pad of moss.

There’s only space and the smooth dirt walls beneath his gloved hands. Any deeper and he’ll have to go home and find a shovel to dig it out.

His fingers scrape against something hard. It might be a tree root. He withdraws his arm and sheds the glove, risking the snakes, and probes again.

It’s smoother than a root, like polished wood with a slight curve to it. He pulls it out, knowing what he’ll see.

Long and smooth and mottled brown and ivory by years underground. There are still signs of char along its length, and the marks of small, sharp teeth on one knobby end.

It’s a human thighbone, sculpted and delicate-looking as a violin bow. It’s shorter than his forearm. The owner must have been about four feet tall.

Daniel probes again and finds more: rib bones thin as willow branches, a handful of finger bones. He does have to go home eventually and fetch a shovel to dig up the lot, and spreads his find on the grass beneath the living and the dead branches of the oak.

It’s not complete. The legs are there, and one arm, and most of the ribs. Only one vertebra remains, its companions lost to the ruins and the earth and the playful foxes. The skull is gone. Daniel searches for it, digging under the tangled roots. He must admit he’s relieved not to have to face the bony gaze of Fanny Weldon after all.

He gathers the bones into the burlap sack he’s brought and sits beside it a while, under the tree, gazing at the distant glint of the river that chuckles its way past the ruins and the woods, houses and graveyards and places where no man lives. It’s the closest thing he has to a prayer.

Before sunset he buries the sack, neatly bundled together, in the tiny graveyard where the Weldon slaves were buried. He thinks he remembers where they buried Sadie, and there he lays Fanny beside her in the earth.

Daniel Greensmith never returned to the Riverbend ruins; he caught the influenza the next winter and was laid to rest in the colored cemetery in his turn. He never married and his lands fell to his brother’s child, who, when work allowed, enjoyed a day’s trout fishing at the same crook of the river that his uncle visited.

Neither he, nor anyone else, ever saw again the figure of a little girl, searching the shell of the house for something she’d forgotten.

An Angel stands, wings folded back, on the porch at Bryani House, Bryani-House-of-the-Mists, of course, because the stately manor of this world has long since fallen into ruin. The fog has retreated to the border of the grounds, and she watches it unceasingly.

Sister, I call to her, but she does not hear.

Something lurks in the fog, hungry and desirous, and this is what she watches for. Her arms are folded across her breast, and in her right hand she holds the knife that shattered Tibor, that knows his name, that keeps him at bay.

She will keep her sisters safe, she will keep mad Robarts safe. That is what Angels do.

In the bowels of the London Underground, in a chamber that few men knew of below the platform, a figure stirred.

It was gaunt, and walked oddly, and its back was draped with a strange material that looked like leather.

It made its way up the steps, avoiding the water that trickled from some unseen source, and entered the platform. Tucked between two pillars, a small shrine was set up.

There were candles burning, and a small icon of the Virgin, and a rosary draped over it.

There was also a plate with an embroidered napkin draped carefully over its contents. The figure bent to take it, and moved back to her lair.

She is Seriah and I am her; I see myself as well, like a tiny portrait in a great gallery of moving paintings.

I am a Recording Angel.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to acknowledge the immeasurable patience and support of my family–Martin, my darling girls Josie and Gennie, and my parents and their infinite acres of books. Many thanks as well to wonder-editor Cortney Marabetta, to my wise readers Merrill Mielke, Jaime Lee Moyer, Andrew Nicolle, Lon Prater, Marsheila Rockwell, Josh Rountree, and to the members of the never-to-be-forgot CritcalMS.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Flora, Russell, Rose, Coral, Betty and Ruth.