“We will bring the creature,” Mrs. Harrogate said.
Alice grimaced. “It … spoke to me. Last night. It showed me that it … it’s trapped by the keys, hurt by them. It deserves to be freed, Margaret. It’s in pain.”
“It spoke to you?” Mrs. Harrogate pursed her lips. “The weir-bents are the only things that keep it in check, Miss Quicke, and keep us safe. Make no mistake. They are the bars on its cage, true. But would you have a wild beast walking free? The longer it remains among us, not locked away, the less our hold on it lasts.”
The keywrasse lifted its face, flicked an ear. Yawned.
“It is listening, of course. Aren’t you?” Then Mrs. Harrogate met Alice’s eye with a dark and troubled look. “You saw what it is capable of. We must recover that key.”
“Or?”
But Mrs. Harrogate left Alice’s question hanging and did not answer it. She didn’t need to; Alice knew only too well the older woman’s meaning. Or it must be destroyed. It felt wrong to her though. When she looked at the keywrasse she saw not savagery but dignity. Did it not deserve to meet its own nature, to return to its own rightful place?
But the older woman was not finished. “We have another problem. If Jacob holds the other weir-bent, then the keywrasse will not be able to attack him. He is safe.”
Alice absorbed this. It seemed it couldn’t get much worse.
Last of all Mrs. Harrogate added, in a low voice, “Jacob is not going to wait for Mr. Thorpe to die. He intends to hasten his demise, Miss Quicke. He means to kill the glyphic.”
“But he can’t get into Cairndale, not while the glyphic is—”
“He will use Walter.”
Alice blinked. “The litch? How?”
“He’s already there. At Cairndale.”
Alice rubbed at her face, trying to make sense of it all. “Walter’s dead, Margaret. He died on the train—”
“He did not, unfortunately. Dr. Berghast has him at Cairndale. He was found unconscious off the railway line after the attack and taken north by Dr. Berghast’s manservant. He was to be … interrogated.” Mrs. Harrogate’s eyes were black with disgust. “We thought we were being clever. But we were not clever. Walter is there by design. Jacob wants him there. And if Walter gets loose, and kills the glyphic—”
Alice wet her lips. “Then that monster can get in.”
Margaret nodded. “Anything can.”
The keywrasse, purring, lifted its four golden eyes.
* * *
At that very moment, deep under Cairndale, Walter Laster was scrabbling backward in the wet darkness, his chains rattling, until he was pressed up against the stone wall. He was cold. So cold. Somewhere in the dark on the far side stood the little table, the blue dish with its opium. He had always done right by his Jacob, hadn’t he? He did love him, didn’t he?
Oh, but Jacob had not abandoned him, not his own friend …
Time passed in the absolute. Lightless hours, lightless days. Sometimes the door would click, the bolts rasp back, and then a crack of light would groan and widen, and the tall silent man would come in, the servant, what was his name … Bailey … He’d peer down at Walter with a frightening look in his eye and Walter’d whimper, oh, Walter’d beg. Please, please, don’t hit me again, please. Then the dark again, and the door. The click, the bolts drawing back, that same crack of lantern light widening, and the manservant, Bailey, would be back, bringing him water maybe, bringing him meat.
But the other one, the doctor, the one with the white beard and terrible eyes who pretended to be kind, Henry Berghast, yes … he did not come. And Walter waited, while all around him the air hummed with violence, the stones trembled faintly, and he felt the orsine like a living thing, eager.
Walter Walter—
“We are Walter,” he would whisper. Feeling a sadness in his heart. Running his tongue along the needled points of his teeth.
Jacob is coming, Walter. It is almost time …
And he would whimper to himself, and rattle the chains at his wrists, as if the voices could see, could hear, and he would shake his head in frustration. “But we can’t do it, how can we do it, look, look at us.…”
The thrumming in the air kept on. The voices did not cease.
Walter Walter little Walter, they would whisper. Jacob is coming. Find the glyphic. Find the glyphic find the glyphic find the—
36
THE ALCHEMIST’S TRUTH
Komako watched Ribs in her heavy cloak cross between the bollards on the far side of the street and go into the chandler’s. The door closed behind her. The shop was dark and the windows reflected back the watery distortions of the street. At her elbow Oskar was sniffling, eyes creased with worry.