“Jesus, it’s Charlie,” Ribs breathed. “What—？”
Komako went to him. She felt a surge of something inside her, not relief, not worry, but something else, something like an angry kind of happiness, and it confused her. She touched his dirty sleeve and then she said, “Where’ve you been? What’s happened, Charlie?”
“I left him,” he whispered. “I left Mar. I did, Ko. Me.”
She put her hands on either side of his face and tilted it down to look at her. “Hey,” she murmured. “It’s okay. Where is he? Where is Marlowe, Charlie?”
“I … I can’t remember,” he said, grinding his knuckles into his forehead. “We went through the orsine, Ko. Me and Mar. We went inside it.”
Then in the candlelight he told them all that he remembered, broken as it was. How Berghast had drawn them into volunteering, and the murder of Marlowe’s mother, and the cold fire of the orsine, and the city of the dead and the glove and what Berghast had revealed about his own mother’s ring. They listened in silence. Komako’s heart hurt when he talked about Marlowe, seeing the stricken look on his face. He couldn’t remember abandoning him. That was almost the worst of it, it seemed. He couldn’t remember it at all, only knew it was so, only knew his friend was in there still, alone, little, afraid.
When he was finished, Ribs told about Edinburgh. She left out nothing, not Mrs. Ficke and what she’d said about Berghast, not the glyph-twisted kids, not the girl Deirdre.
“It were Dr. Berghast what done it,” she said. “It were awful sad to see, Charlie.” Last of all she told about the orsine tearing open and the terrible method of sealing it forever. However a glyphic’s heart was to be carved out of the thick armor of its bark, it had to be done. Oskar, she said, giving the boy a quiet appraising look, had already volunteered for it.
Charlie cleared his throat. “What about Marlowe?” he said softly. His eyes searched their faces. “If you seal the orsine, he … he can’t get out.”
Ribs was solemn. “We all want Marlowe back, Charlie. But what’s he comin back to, if the orsine rips open? There won’t be no one here.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying it,” said Komako. “But Ribs is right.”
“I’m not leaving him in there.”
“Charlie?” said Oskar, nervous. “Marlowe can survive in the orsine, right? So we got time to think of something.” He looked at his flesh giant, as if listening. “Lymenion says we could ask one of the old talents. They might have some ideas. He says maybe there’s a way to get Marlowe out and seal the orsine.”
Charlie lifted his face and his eyes were haunted. “It’s worse than that,” he said in a low voice. “I … I think Jacob Marber’s on his way here.”
Komako looked up sharply. “Jacob—？ Here?”
“It’s just a … a feeling. I can’t explain it.”
“Aw, hell,” growled Ribs. “We ought to just go on over to the island and seal the orsine now. While we can, like. There won’t be no drughr comin through then, an no dead neither.”
“But the wards will fail too, when the glyphic is dead,” said Komako. “Jacob Marber can just walk right in. There’s no good side to this, there’s no right way. Either we close the orsine and risk trapping Marlowe inside it, and Jacob being able to come into Cairndale as he pleases…”
“Or we don’t,” Ribs finished, in a tone of disgust, “an the dead come through, an the drughr, an the whole fucking world breaks.”
Oskar breathed out slowly. “Dr. Berghast cares only about trapping his drughr,” he whispered. “He won’t help us.”
Komako got to her feet, running her hands through her tangled hair. She was exhausted. She hadn’t slept properly since before they went to see the Spider, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t washed. She rubbed at her neck. The others looked at her, expectant, like maybe she had an answer. Only Charlie didn’t look at her. He seemed different from how he’d been before, older somehow. More determined.
The shadows in the room were thickening.
“Right,” she said tiredly. “We need to find a way to get Marlowe safe. Obviously. But whatever happens, that orsine has to be sealed.”
* * *
After the others had gone up to wash and change, maybe to try to rest, Charlie climbed onto the windowsill and stared out at the darkening lawn. He could just make out the mist moving across it. Like the spirit dead, he thought dimly, though it was nothing like the spirit dead, not really. The candle burned down. His heart was empty. He sat and he stared at his hands and he felt nothing at all.