“It’s a trap,” she muttered. She stood, the clatter of her chair echoing in the gloom. “He knew we were coming. He lured us here, he wanted to be found.”
“Quite so,” said Mrs. Harrogate calmly.
In that same moment, Alice raised her gun.
She’d meant to shoot him through the eye. She had shot many men in her life; she was quick, and accurate, and deadly. But as she stepped backward to take her balance, she saw Marber’s expression change in a flicker, from malice, to puzzlement, to a sinister understanding.
And then something extraordinary happened. He flicked his wrist, just casually, just as if he were waving away a wasp, and Alice’s own wrist flicked in response. She felt herself stagger in shock—the force of it, the violation. Her revolver leaped away, skittering off into the darkness.
Marber was looking at her gravely. His own hand was still suspended. He turned his wrist and Alice’s wrist turned too. She felt it in horror, watched it happening, but it was like it was someone else’s wrist, like it was happening in a performance, on a stage. A sudden fierce revulsion filled her.
Marber seemed transfixed, mesmerized.
“How is this possible?” he whispered. He rose slowly, painfully, to his full height. He looked so pale, so unwell.
Coulton stood yet among the pillars, white, hairless, unmoving.
“Of course. The train. My dust.”
“Leave. Me. Alone!” With a great effort, clenching her jaw, Alice made her hand close into a fist, and she forced it down to her side. It felt as if she were pushing against a tremendous wall of air. She was trembling with the effort.
Slowly Marber’s own fist lowered in response, as if against his will. His expression darkened; all at once he released her, and the connection between them was severed.
She stumbled back, gasping, her head spinning.
“Interesting,” Marber whispered. He studied her. “What is that around your throat?”
Alice, suddenly afraid, put a hand to the leather cord, to the weir-bents there. Mrs. Harrogate began to speak but Marber just lifted a hand toward her and she fell silent. Her arms were stiff at her sides and she was arching her neck, turning her head in a halting circle, swallowing in discomfort, a black dust swirling around her.
“Alice,” he murmured. “What have you brought me?”
She saw Mrs. Harrogate, struggling to breathe. A thick rope of dust began twisting around her throat, holding her body tight, half lifting her onto her toes. Her fingers were scrabbling at her knives, unable to work them free.
“Let her go,” Alice cried. “Leave her be!”
But Marber just walked calmly over to her, to Alice, and with his long twisted fingers lifted the leather cord, pulled at it with a snap. He stood very close. Alice could smell the dust in his clothes. His eyes were wholly black, so that he seemed to be looking everywhere and nowhere at once. But then he turned away, studying the weir-bents in his palm.
Margaret made a gurgling noise, her face darkening with blood.
“Let her go, please,” begged Alice.
And Marber, with a casual glance back at Alice, shrugged. “As you wish.”
All at once the tendrils of dust lifted Mrs. Harrogate into the air and hurled her bodily across the chamber. She struck a pillar and fell crumpled against the stone floor. One of her knives clattered away across the floor. Her body looked strange, bent wrongly. The litch, Coulton, still had not moved. Alice heard his teeth clicking, clicking.
“These,” said Marber, sliding them from the cord, “these are rather … unusual, yes? What do you know of them, Alice?”
She could feel the muscles tightening at her throat. She was breathing in quick shallow breaths. She couldn’t seem to get enough air.
He was watching her with that same cruel indifference and now it was she clutching at her throat, trying to breathe, knowing that she would die. She wanted to shout, to scream at him, to hurt him in some way, but all she could do was fall, heavily, to her knees, gasping. The keywrasse, she was thinking, where was the keywrasse? She tried to summon it, silently. But she could do no more; for, at that very moment, Mrs. Harrogate lifted her head weakly from the ground and slid her small silver-plated pistol out of her handbag and leveled it at Jacob Marber’s heart and pulled the trigger.
Everything erupted. The sharp roar of the gunshot ricocheted off the ancient walls. Marber recoiled and spun under the impact and fell back in a sudden explosion of black dust. The weir-bents flew from his grip. All at once the air rushed back into Alice’s lungs, and she was wheezing and shaking her head and heaving with the effort, stars in the corners of her eyes.