Marcus followed the sudden shift in the conversation, opening his eyes and sitting up. “Where was it? When?”
“Just after Cygna died,” I said, nearly choking on the memory. “A photographer came to the house.”
The woman had posed Dimitria behind the horsehair chaise where Nic and I sat. Mama had placed the baby between us with instructions to hold her gently and stay very still. Cygna, so named because of the swan-soft down upon her tiny head, was dressed in white muslin ruffles and a pink cap. Her little lips were pursed, ready to be kissed, but death had stolen even the smallest of newborn noises from her.
I won’t disappoint you, Mama. I won’t let Cygna fall.
I’d put my arm about my dead sister and held her for the first time. Nic sat on her other side, stiff and stubborn, the way he always was when trying desperately hard not to cry. Dimitria stood behind us, aloof in her grief.
“It’s the only picture ever taken of the four of us together,” I said faintly. “I knew there was something about the way Nic had been posed and the quality of the glass that I recognized. Whoever took the daguerreotypes of him specializes in pictures of the dead.”
“There isn’t enough business to support such an occupation outside the city walls,” Marcus said, already deep in thought. “Nic and your parents are still in Bazalgate, then. If the RiPAs resume functioning by the morning, I’ll deploy investigative units to all the photography studios.”
“And if we can’t get a message out, we’ll call upon each and every one of them ourselves,” I insisted.
“I had a feeling you wouldn’t be left out of it.”
“You’re learning, Legatus.” I permitted myself a single jaw-cracking yawn before returning my head to his shoulder. “You’re learning.”
TEN
In Which There Is a Mouse of Sorts in the Walls
By the time I woke in the morning, Marcus already had slipped out to the Perpetua Marketplace and returned with clothing and the necessary supplies to tint my copper hair the darkest of browns.
“It’ll help prevent you from being so easily recognized,” he said, sleeves turned up to the elbows and a hairbrush in hand. “No use trying to go black, it would only end badly.”
“And you know that because?” I let the question linger in the air, much like the scent of frying ham and burnt toast drifting up through the floorboards.
All I got by way of reply was an enigmatic half-smile. The intimacy of the previous night had gone the way of the shadows. Our RiPAs had yet to resume proper function, though they sputtered occasionally and caused us both to jump. Testing our weapons to be certain the river hadn’t similarly ruined them, we kept bumping awkwardly into each other. When the time came to wind my Ticker, I turned my back to buy a modicum of privacy as I unbuttoned the collar of my dress and inserted the key into the chest plate. The clickity-clack of the winding seemed to fill the room; by the time I was done, I was more than ready to escape our cozy confines.
“Come on, then,” I said, heading for the door.
“Wait just one moment,” Marcus said. “You’re not quite ready.”
I paused and peered down at my ensemble. The pearl gray frock and lace shawl were neat, clean, and subdued in both color and style. My newly darkened hair caught me off guard each time I glimpsed a loose strand or two out of the corner of my eye, fastened up as it was at the nape of my neck with a dozen hairpins. “Don’t I look every inch the respectable miss, visiting from Meridia?”
He held out a gleaming gold circle. “Here to take a honeymoon picture.” He already wore a matching band on his left hand.
To gain access to the daguerreotype studios, we needed some sort of cover story. With all our physical differences, it would be difficult to pass as brother and sister. A young married couple made far more sense.
“It is customary, I think, to go down on one knee when you propose, Mister Kingsley.” I reached for the ring, but he twitched it away from me.
“Quite right. Wherever are my manners?” The leg of his dark blue trousers hiked up a bit when he bent his knee and took my hand. “My dearest Miss Farthing, will you do me the unutterable honor of wearing this cheap bit of metal that will most likely turn your finger green, pretending to love and honor me as your husband for the purposes of subterfuge and stratagem?”
“My hearts and stars, that will go down in the history books as the most romantic business proposition of the century, I am certain.” Still, my Ticker thudded in its new, horrible way as Marcus slid the ring onto my finger. Given the number of diamantés winking back at me, it was far from the inexpensive bauble he’d described. “Fifteen photography studios will make quite a day’s work. Let’s have breakfast and get going.”
“Slowly,” he admonished. Tucking my hand under his arm, he led me to the door. “Young couples in love don’t rush to the streetcar first thing in the morning. They feed each other bits of toast and discuss the morning news.” When I dragged my heels, he turned toward me to add, “A bit of reconnaissance in the dining room is necessary to reassure me we aren’t being watched.”
So I found myself eyeing the other diners, straining my ears to make out the gossip over the rattle of plates and clink of spoons. Across from me, Marcus sipped cold coffee with the appropriate grimaces, rattled his newspaper, and gazed at me with false adoration every few minutes.
“Shocking,” he observed, making no effort to keep his voice down. “This city has gone to the hounds since last we were here. Perhaps we should have taken the steamer to Helvetica instead.”
When he nudged me under the table, I hastened to contribute “Of course, my dearest. We ought to have done that” before I returned the favor to his shin. “On the upside, this porridge is delicious.” Though it was rough and perhaps contained more sawdust than oats, it went down easily enough with a sprinkle of sugar. I followed that with two hot scones clabbered together with jam and pale butter. When I couldn’t find room in my stomach for a third, I wrapped it in a handkerchief.
Marcus peered at me over his newspaper. “What are you doing with that?”
“Putting it in my pocket for later,” I said. “No one knows what the day will bring, after all. Are you done with the broadsheets?”
“I am, my love.” He pretended to press a kiss to my cheek as he added in an undertone, “And certain no one is overly interested in us. It’s safe to go.”
The intimacy of the whisper sent a jolt down to my slippers, but I recovered my poise as we made our way outside. Faint as it was, the thin morning sunlight hurt my eyes, but thankfully, my body had otherwise recovered from our midnight swim. The Quick-Heal had dealt with the worst of my bruises and scrapes.
Marcus touched my elbow. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I think so.” A half-truth. I could still breathe. The Ticker was still beating, albeit with a highly irregular cadence. That was the most I could hope for at the moment. “Where shall we go first?”
“I thought we might try the Eclipse Studio on the Fourth Etoile Road. Does that meet with your approval?”
“And then perhaps lunch at the Sabaudia Hotel?” I queried for the benefit of the others standing at the streetcar platform.
“Whatever you desire, light of my life, though that might be a bit posh for our modest wallet.”
No one tried to interfere with us as we boarded the cherry-red tram. The mechanical horse team pulled us all the way to the West Side; when we arrived, only a handful of people remained on the streetcar, and we were the only ones to descend at our stop.
“So far, so good,” I noted. “How far is the first studio?”
“A brisk walk will put us there in less than five minutes,” Marcus replied with far too pleasant a smile for the occasion. “Not too brisk, though. We are, after all, on our honeymoon. Hasn’t the weather been lovely?”
“I prefer the rain.” I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye: someone dressed in a dark coat over a shiny vest emerged from an alleyway
and walked toward us.
Marcus’s grip on me tightened almost imperceptibly, then loosened. “The inn is most comfortable.”
“I hardly slept a wink.” I had to fight to keep my voice even, my pace steady.
“It seems my bride is feeling most contrary this morning.”
I could hear footsteps behind us; with our backs to him, we were at a decided disadvantage. With a trilling laugh, I pulled Marcus into the nearest covered doorway. He reached under his coat for his MAG. My hand was in my pocket, thumb already depressing the charging switch on the Pixii.
“If I’m out of sorts, it’s because you forgot to kiss me this morning.” Standing on tiptoe, I brushed my lips over his.
It was supposed to be a ruse, a stolen moment to ascertain the danger of the situation, but I felt his breath catch in his throat. When the kiss deepened, I forgot about my Ticker, about the very real worry that it might stop working. I burned with white-light, lost in the taste of him. It was almost impossible to concentrate on anything but the feel of his mouth, of his hands circling about my waist and holding me against his chest.
Marcus pulled away first, drawing a ragged breath and pressing his forehead to mine. “Is he gone?”
I still had the stranger in my sights if not my crosshairs, but it was hard to form a coherent sentence. “He’s going into the greengrocer’s.”
We were running out of options. The sky knew it as well; when the rain started, it wasn’t a light dousing but a downpour. Waiting out the worst of it under the doorway, we stood pressed against each other, neither of us venturing to speak. The moment there was a break in the weather, we stepped out of our shelter and walked down the street to the first of the photography studios. Sleek and fat as a well-fed feline, the owner rushed to greet us when we opened the door.
“Good morning.” He took me by the hand and led us into the main parlor. Everything was upholstered, from the chairs to the walls. The air was heavily perfumed, the scent of lilacs twisting its way into my hair and clothes. “Whom did you want to memorialize today?”
With a rush, I thought of Dimitria. Her last moments with us. How Mama hadn’t taken a final photograph of her, instead seeking solace from the first of many psychics. I forgot all about Marcus and our supposed romantic excursion. “My elder sister. It was very sudden.”
“I understand, I understand,” he said, repeating himself as though hoping to be twice as comforting. “And you want to have a daguerreotype taken before the burial?”
I did my best to speak around the sorrow. “Yes.”
“Of course, of course.” The photographer offered his plush portfolio to me in a most unobtrusive fashion. “I have quite a lot of experience with young people. I think you will find the poses most lifelike.”
Indeed, they were. In sitting positions, in laps of loved ones, in cradles and in coffins, the children in the pictures appeared to be sleeping. Which they were, I realized. The longest of sleeps.
What would have become of Dimitria, had she lived? Would she be fighting alongside me, trying to get Nic and our parents back?
No, because none of this would have happened if she’d lived.
She and Warwick might have been married by now, well on the way to a house filled with laughter and music and fat-cheeked babies. Her death had pushed him to the darkest of places, and he was towing the rest of my family into the darkness with him.
When my hands started to shake, Marcus covered them with his own.
“Perhaps we’ll take your business card for now,” he said. “My wife has had a rather trying day.”
The photographer hastened to retrieve the necessary information. “My rates are most reasonable and studio hours accommodating.”
We excused ourselves as hastily as we could. Outside, I leaned against a brick wall and turned my face up to the sky. The rain landed on my skin in intermittent droplets, cold and clean, as I cleared the cloying perfume from my lungs.
“Not the right studio,” Marcus said.
“No,” I agreed, dragging in another water-heavy breath. “The glass was wrong, never mind that the photographer looked too placid and comfortable to engage in illicit portraiture.”
Marcus signaled a hansom cab with a flick of his fingers. “You can never tell what sorts of desperate things people will do.”
“I think Sebastian taught me that lesson last night better than anyone else ever could.”
The carriage paused before us. Marcus helped me up the metal folding stairs and into the vaguely damp interior. “Are you game for trying the next address?”
“Yes.” My Ticker thumped away—two quick contractions, one long, two short again—like it was sending a RiPA message. I closed my eyes and wondered what it was trying to tell me.
Marcus gave our driver the next address, and the mechanical horse took off with a lurch and a bounce. Several minutes passed before he said, “I’m sorry about your sister. I read about it in your file, but it’s not the same seeing it typed out as it is to live it.”
When I opened my eyes, I found him looking at me, his gray eyes a match to the weather outside. “Dimitria was very sick. None of us knew the extent of it.”
“That doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to your heart. Grief doesn’t take such things into consideration.”
I wanted to take his hand in mine but couldn’t bring myself to do it. “You’re thinking about Viktor now, aren’t you?”
“He’s always in my thoughts.” Marcus shifted in his seat. “There isn’t a decision that I make that I don’t wonder if he would have done the same. In my head, I see him laughing at me, the way he would when I ate too much cake or tried to climb the tallest tree. I like to remember him laughing. There are days when I think he’d be very disappointed in the way I’ve turned out, at what I’m doing with his company.”
“It’s your company now. You’re building it into something formidable.”
“Not by choice. I think that’s the worst part of it. He knew I didn’t want this life. Plenty of brothers would have fought over the business when our father retired, but we were happy with the way things were. Too happy, I guess. We must have tipped the Great Brass Balance Scale against us.”
“You can’t think that his death was supposed to punish you.”
“I can, and I do,” Marcus said softly.
We endured the rest of the drive in silence, each of us buried in our own painful memories. The cab carried us to a neighborhood where the plaster and bricks were scarred, like soldiers who’d waged a long battle with time and lost. The district was one I’d never visited before, for good reason.
“Stay close to me,” Marcus said as we alighted. “We’re a bit overdressed.”
Indeed, even in our inconspicuous costumes, we were peacocks among peahens. The women passing by were garbed in rough fabrics, carrying baskets, towing children. The men wore threadbare coats and fingerless gloves, and they marked our arrival with suspicion. It was a relief to follow Marcus down a side street to a faded door marked “Lucy Reilly, Portraiture” in flaking gold paint. Under that, in stronger black letters: “Memorial Photographs.” Several faded daguerreotypes were propped up in the window.
I tingled all over. “This is it.”
“How can you be certain?” Marcus attempted to peer through the thick layer of grime.
I pointed at the display pictures. “The glass is exactly the same as Nic’s pictures. I’d bet on it.”
Marcus tried to open the door, but it was locked. Two rounds of knocking yielded no response, and he looked through the window again. “No one appears to be in.”
“Guess we’ll have to see for ourselves.” Before he could stop me, I wrapped my shawl around my elbow and smashed the pane nearest the door.
“That’s breaking and entering,” he said with a deceptively casual glance over his shoulder. Thankfully, we were far enough off the main street so as not to draw the attention of passersby.
“Technically that was only breaking.” I
reached inside and unlocked the door. “Now it’s entering.”
The interior was as dark and damp as the carriage, smelling of mildew, stale tea, and acrid chemicals. Miniature coffins stood along one wall. Rubbish had accumulated in the corners of the room and mingled with puddles of developing solution. The hearth hadn’t made acquaintance with a fire for quite some time, judging by the amount of ash and the empty coal scuttle.
Marcus sidestepped a stack of glass slides on the floor. “Careful as you go.”
His timing was uncanny; the second he spoke, I fell over something heavy and unyielding. Going down with a crash, I flailed at the unseen obstacle.
“Hold on,” Marcus ordered, pulling the drapes closed and switching on a gas jet.
The sudden flare of light revealed the body that lay sprawled on the floor, mouth open, eyes staring. I could only assume it was our photographer. “Marcus . . .”
He was by my side before I could draw another breath. Reaching down to her neck, he tried to find a pulse.
I knew just by looking at her that we were too late. “It seems we’re in need of some Luminiferous Re-Animator if we want her to tell us anything.”
It wasn’t altogether a jest. The popular drink earned its name not only for the faint golden glow achieved by means of a top-secret combination of alcohol and alchemy, but also because the concoction was rumored to have brought corpses back from the dead.
“Not necessarily.” With his RiPA still nonresponsive, Marcus crossed to an ancient PaperTape machine. Cranking it over twice and bashing it firmly on the side with his fist, he connected with the Flying Fortress. “I’m sending for Philomena and the psychic unit.”
Whatever I’d been expecting for a battle plan, it wasn’t that. “You’re joking.”
“Not in the slightest.” Marcus returned his attention to the photographer. “What killed her?”
Studying the body, I cataloged more than a dozen Augmentations: her right leg at the knee and ankle, left arm at the elbow and wrist, both ears. The healing was far more advanced than what the timeline would suggest, given that Warwick only escaped custody this week, but my guess was that he administered the Quick-Heal to her as well. No sign of infection or decay. With a frown, I pulled back the woman’s unbuttoned collar to reveal the clockwork ventriculator set into her chest. It was more advanced than my own, its polished brass plates nearly seamless against the flesh and its winding mechanism impossibly delicate.