But that was when the door clattered at the front of the shop; Ribs glanced back: it was Komako and Oskar, come dripping in.
And now they were struck down, the dolts. She ground her teeth. But watching the careful way the old woman and her companion handled them, the care they took not to knock their heads on the shelves as they carried them toward the cellar stairs, gave Ribs pause. Whatever else, the old woman didn’t seem to mean them harm.
At least not just yet.
There was an old rickety staircase leading up from the back of the shop to the second floor, and Ribs hurried toward it. Upstairs, the old woman had said. Ko and Oskar would need rescuing, sure. But when she’d done that, there’d be no more chance to look around; best get an eyeful first.
Silently, keeping to the outer edge of the steps to avoid creaking, she went up.
* * *
Komako opened her eyes onto darkness. Her head was throbbing. She shifted and saw her blotchy hands were tied in front of her, her pockets turned out. Oskar lay beside her, similarly tied. They were on the floor of a badly lit cellar, the dirt under her cold and damp.
“Ah, she wakes. Excellent.” The old woman was moving about in the darkness, shifting things, kicking through some rubbish, and her voice came creaking and muffled to Komako’s ears.
She groaned despite herself, shaking her head to clear it.
“That’d be Edward’s doing,” said the woman. “I am sorry about your head. He don’t know his own strength. But we can’t be too careful. Just one moment as I finish with this…”
She must have found what she was seeking then, for she paused, and a moment later a light bloomed in the cellar and Komako saw where they were.
It was a laboratory workshop. There were glass pipes high up along the walls with some sort of liquid moving slowly through them and stoves in two corners with something bubbling there. A bookshelf slumped under the weight of thick tomes. Near Komako, in a long wooden trough, she saw hundreds of white beetles crawling over themselves. There were crates and barrels covered in dust, looming up out of the darkness, and jars of dead things along the far wall. And at a long table in the center of the cellar Mrs. Ficke was working, shifting jars and books out of the way, making some concoction. She had attached a strange apparatus, a kind of iron hook with moveable claws, worked by gears and levers, to the stump of her damaged arm. It was held in place using leather straps and buckles that crossed her chest and ran behind her shoulders. Deftly she used it to move jars and lift boxes and unclasp wires that held the lids to jars. Komako stared.
Oskar was stirring now, lifting his plump face, peering in sudden fear around him as their situation dawned on him. “Ko?”
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “We’re all right.”
“Hello, Oskar,” said Mrs. Ficke softly. “I do apologize for the ropes.”
“What will you do to us?” Komako demanded.
“Do?”
“Will you hurt us?”
The old woman grimaced. “Oh, child. Of course not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“As you wish.” She was continuing to work at her long table, pouring out a fine powder onto a scale, measuring it with care.
“Prove it,” said Komako. “Untie us now, then.”
Mrs. Ficke paused only long enough to smile a condescending smile but she made no move to untie them. Above them the floorboards of the shop creaked as someone—Edward Albany, perhaps—walked heavily by. Dust sifted down in the lantern light.
“You would be the girl called Komako,” said Mrs. Ficke. “The dustworker. Yes?”
Komako blinked. “You … know who we are?”
“More than you can imagine. And you, Oskar. Where is your companion, your … flesh giant, is it? What is it you call him?”
Oskar glared. “He’s coming for me. You don’t want to be here when he does.”
“I am sure you are right. A rather formidable creature. I expected Eleanor to be with you.”
“She’s going for help.”
“Oh, I think not.” The old woman looked around at the darkness. “No, I think she is here, with us, now. You are here, are you not, Eleanor? I trust you are not intending to do something foolish.”
There was no sound from the darkness, no reply. It didn’t feel to Komako like Ribs was near, though it was sometimes hard to tell. She was afraid for her friend. Then again, she supposed, wherever Ribs was, was probably better than here.
“No matter,” said Mrs. Ficke. “Is it answers you are seeking? Henry never did like me much, but I don’t expect he’d send his wards as a … warning. So I’ll assume you are here of your own accord. What did you do, run off from the institute? Or have you come in search of something more … specific?”