The Fire in the Glass

by Jacquelyn Benson

  There. Go there, Lily thinks . . . and she does.

  Waddington is next to her, close enough that she can smell the damp linen of his coat. It is too intimate, this nearness, her whole being aware of the horror of what this ordinary man has done.

  He must sense her presence. But he does not, because she is not really there. He is not really there—not yet. This is the future, something that has not been, perhaps by as little as a moment or two. It is Lily’s power answering her demand, taking her as close as it can to what she seeks.

  Waddington moves away and Lily returns to her purpose. She focuses on the glass, on seeing through the darkness to what lies beyond.

  Narrow water, black and still, where otherwise a road might have been. Across the open space is another row of warehouses. They are bland, anonymous—a view one might see a hundred places in London, were it not for the steel dragon clinging to the facade.

  The beast is long, its tail submerged in the dark water. The metal head extends out from the roof while thin folds of skeletal iron wings arch back against the skyline.

  Lily knows her mind is filling in gaps in the details, substituting for the things here she does not yet know like a child finding monsters in the clouds. She needs more to reliably orient herself, something unmistakably familiar.

  She looks to the broad expanses of the Thames. Two dark pinnacles, barely visible against the dull glow of the clouded sky, rise above the water. They form a silhouette no Londoner could possibly fail to recognize.

  Tower Bridge.

  But from what angle?

  She is on some kind of inlet. There are two inlets this close to the bridge—St. Katherine’s Docks beside the Tower and St. Saviour’s Dock on the Southwark side, otherwise known as Shad Thames, where the now-demolished rookery of Jacob’s Island once reigned terror.

  St. Katherine’s is a short waterway, one that gives quickly onto two great basins.

  She moves closer to the window, peering down the length of the inlet. It narrows, disappearing into the darkness between the close-set buildings.

  Her heart thuds noisily against her ribs.

  She knows where she is.

  Behind her, Waddington lifts a syringe. The needle glints in the lamplight. Estelle groans.

  The room shifts beneath her and she falls, tipping backwards past the crates through a dark hole in the floor. She crashes into ice-cold water, then fights for the surface, choking . . .

  . . . but something holds her down. She is submerged in the frozen darkness, lungs screaming for release, pushed to the edge of their resistance. Then she is free. She surfaces, gasping.

  She is not in the warehouse. It is a tiled bathroom and Lily sits in a tub full of water and floating chunks of ice. A narrow window looks out over a broad stretch of open ground—familiar ground. Someplace she has been before.

  Two men in white uniforms grasp her by the arms and drag her from the tub. She is pulled down a long hallway, past rows of closed and locked doors.

  It is a prison. No . . . it is someplace worse. She thinks of the horror of the burnt-out hospital, the tiled underground hallway lined with quiet nightmares, a place where no one would answer your screams.

  Panic chokes her, fear buzzing in her brain.

  She wants to escape. She wants to go home, to hide from all the knowledge she doesn’t want to have. She wants to be free of this terrible gift, free of its limits and its dreadful responsibilities. She wants . . .

  Stop fighting. Ask.

  It is impossible. She always fights. It is how she has survived despite the pain, the constant weight of failure. She battles for control either by shutting the thing out or by trying to wrestle it into submission—grants it the narrowest crack of entry, directed toward her own dire purpose.

  But perhaps . . . just perhaps . . . there is another purpose at play.

  Perhaps there always has been.

  Her arms ache under the grip of the uniformed men. Her knees drag against the tiled floor, the doors sliding past her. She knows what waits for her at the end of this hallway. It is horrible.

  She closes her eyes. For the first time, she lets go.

  “Show me what you want me to see,” she speaks aloud.

  The men are gone.

  She stands alone in the hallway lined with doors. It has grown longer, stretching infinitely before and behind her—thousands upon countless thousands of doors.

  She holds her walking stick in one hand. It has grown taller, magnificent, sprouting green leaves and red berries.

  In the other hand, she holds a key.

  It shifts and shimmers in her grasp, changing shape with every movement of her wrist.

  The doors whisper to her. They are infinite and they are powerful, every one opening to an as-yet-unthought future . . .

  To endless possibility.

  And she holds the key.

  For a moment, it dawns. She comprehends it, understands the unimaginable potential that lies before her and her astonishing place in it.

  You have no idea what you are capable of.

  The power and the responsibility is greater than she had ever dared to suspect. It is as wonderful as it is terrifying.

  She wants to run. She wants to wish herself back to ignorance. She wants to laugh.

  Should she choose? Does she dare?

  The door waits before her, one of millions. The key shifts in her hand. She fits it to the lock, turns it . . .

  Light spills through, impossibly bright. Something moves on the far side—something familiar, something utterly new, coming toward her . . .

  . . . and then she returned.

  The floor of Strangford’s study did not feel comfortable any longer. There was a crick in her neck and her mouth was dry, suffused with a terrible taste.

  “For god’s sake, Lily, wake up.”

  Fear had stripped Strangford’s voice raw.

  She opened her eyes.

  He knelt beside her, hair askew, as worried as she had ever seen him. His eyes closed in relief and he moved back as she slowly sat up.

  The paintings had returned to their frames. The fire crackled softly in the hearth, the darkness still lingering outside the tall panes of the windows.

  It flooded back to her, the impact of everything she had seen, running over her like a freight train. Strangford’s hands on her body, the sight of him obliterated in an explosion of mud and wire. The endless sea of graves. Sam and Gardner shattered, The Refuge locked and abandoned . . .

  All the doors. The key she held in her hand.

  She had touched something, come close to an understanding that would change everything. It was slipping away from her even now, fading like the wisdom of a dream.

  One certainty remained: there would be no walking away from this. Not again. Not ever. No matter how hard it got.

  There was no time to worry at it any further. They had to get to Estelle. While she’d been dreaming, Hartwell had been making his preparations. How much had all those detours cost her?

  “How long as it been?”

  The words were thick in her mouth. She felt a quick panic cut through the lingering fog of the vision. How narrow had their window become? Or had they used it up entirely?

  “Twenty-three minutes,” Strangford replied.

  She winced. Her head was pounding.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I can assure you I was quite aware of the time.”

  She risked a look at him.

  “You were worried.”

  “You drank what looked like a bottle of poison and then fell into a stupor. Of course I was worried. Can you stand?”

  “I think so.”

  He put a hand under her arm, another at her back, and helped her rise. She was aware of the pressure of his fingers against her skin, her senses sharp, still tingling from the after-effects of the drug.

  He kept his hold on her as she reached her feet, as though afraid she would fall over if he let go. It put him close to her
.

  He was not happy.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t drag you out into a carriage and drive you straight to St. Bart’s.”

  “A carriage . . .” she muttered.

  The rest of the pieces fell into place. She grabbed Strangford’s arm, hard. “We need a carriage. Now.” She met his dark eyes, her own intent sharpening, becoming clear. “I know where to find Estelle.”

  THIRTY

  THE STORM RATTLED THE windows of the carriage, a gust of wind making it sway. Snow blew past in violent swirls. Lily felt a pang of guilt at the thought of the driver bundled in layers of scarves, hunched over the reins.

  Their progress was much slower than she would have liked, but then, they had been lucky to find this hackney at all. Even at Paddington Station, there had been only a handful of carriages waiting at a curb usually lined with dozens. Roderick, who had been sent running the half-mile to the station from Strangford’s home, had sent this one back to them, taking another himself in the opposite direction. He would make his way north through the storm to wake The Refuge and summon help.

  Strangford had seemed poised for resistance when he demanded that they alert Ash and the others. Lily hadn’t fought him. Whatever reticence she might once have had about imposing in such a manner on people who owed nothing to her was gone, obliterated in the need of the hour.

  She had quickly vetoed Strangford’s suggestion that she be the one to head to Bedford Square, letting Roderick join him to proceed directly to the warehouse. She was the one best positioned to recognize the right place and besides, she doubted Roderick would be any use in a fight.

  And she was expecting a fight.

  She shifted her grip on the walking stick she had plucked from the stand at Strangford’s door. It was ironwood, heavier and less flexible than the yew she was accustomed to carrying. It would do.

  The carriage skidded around a turn and the driver slackened his pace, making their progress through the deserted, snow-covered streets of the city even slower. Lily glimpsed the dark silhouette of Tower Bridge through a gap in the buildings. They were getting closer, but the state of the roads left her with no illusion about how quickly Roderick would be able to reach Bloomsbury. She and Strangford could not afford to wait for the others to arrive. They were in this on their own.

  Inside the carriage, silence carried weight. Lily knew it should be broken, but each means she grasped to do so dissolved from beneath her, seeming paltry and insubstantial in the face of all that had passed between her and the man beside her.

  It was Strangford who broke the impasse.

  “There is something I must make clear, in case tonight’s errand proves . . . well.” The pause after the word spoke volumes.

  “I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Lily countered.

  “Are you?”

  She could feel his eyes on her. The question carried more weight when posed to a woman who could see the future.

  She looked away.

  He continued to speak, quietly, across the darkness of the carriage.

  “I let something stand yesterday in the park. Something you said that I should have addressed. I would like to correct that.”

  She realized that he was waiting—that he was asking for her permission to continue.

  She hesitated. The fear roared up by sheer habit, demanding that she stop him, that she open the door and leap from this carriage before something was said that changed things in a way that could not be ignored or undone.

  She held firm against the onslaught. She was not running anymore.

  “Go ahead.”

  The carriage rocked under another blast of wind.

  “There is no time to be anything but blunt in this, so I beg you’ll excuse my being less circumspect than I would prefer. In the park yesterday, you argued that because your mother was an actress—”

  “A whore,” Lily cut in. She turned to look at him, defenses prickling. “My mother sold her body in exchange for the financial support of a protector. She was a whore.”

  “You argued,” Strangford continued, relentless, “that because of your parentage, you could never be anything but a mistress to a man of standing.”

  The words bit even though Lily knew they were nothing more than the bald truth, plainly spoken.

  “I need you to know that you are wrong.”

  “My lord . . .” Lily began, but he cut her off, uncharacteristically quick.

  “No. I am a man of standing and you are already something other than that to me. You are a colleague. You are the only woman I have met who knows what it is like to be burdened with this terrible knowing. And you are my friend.” He spoke the word fiercely, as though prepared to battle for it. “I know your character—I have seen it, more intimately anyone else possibly could. Your bravery, your strength—such ferocious loyalty. I will not have you continue to live under the abominable notion that your worth begins and ends with the circumstances of your birth. You are more than that.” He swallowed thickly, his voice fracturing but pressing on. “You are so much more than that.”

  Something broke inside of her, crumbling under the impact of his words. For a moment, she wondered if the rest of her would fall apart with it.

  She answered him quietly but firmly.

  “You can’t just bat away the mores of an entire society.”

  “Says the woman in trousers.”

  She could hear the wryness in his tone and felt an answering tug at the corner of her own mouth.

  “I should have said that to you yesterday. I didn’t because I was afraid it would seem like an invitation.” He stopped, catching himself. “No. That isn’t what I mean. It’s . . . me, Lily,” he finished, as something in him seemed to give way. “It’s me. For anyone to be close to me is unavoidably . . . They would lose everything—every secret, every scrap of privacy. That . . . place inside yourself where you keep the things that are only yours. It would be an inordinate sacrifice, one that could not possibly be comprehended until after it was already made.” He took a deep breath. “I just . . .”

  “I know,” Lily cut in softly.

  In the shadows of the carriage, Lily felt the distance between them grow closer, filled with something like fire. It licked at her, both drawing her in and threatening to consume her.

  “If I were only a little less—”

  “Don’t you dare,” she snapped. “Don’t you dare wish yourself other than what you are.”

  The silence extended, the carriage rattling over the bridge.

  “Well,” Strangford said at last, rubbing his gloved hands across his knees. “I am glad we have clarified things.”

  Lily burst out with a laugh.

  She felt him smile back at her through the dark and the tension built again, setting her aflame with awareness. Her resistance to it had weakened, inviting all manner of complicated possibilities.

  The carriage lurched. Lily grabbed the strap as they slid to a stop.

  Strangford glanced out the glass.

  “We’re here.”

  Lily climbed down into the whirling storm.

  The carriage had reached the end of Shad Thames, where Jamaica Road swallowed the last narrow sliver of the old River Neckinger. The dark water of St. Saviour’s Dock wove out before them, visible through the veil of drifting white.

  Strangford joined her, his boots crunching against the frozen ground.

  “Where is it?”

  “Somewhere on the east bank, near where it meets the Thames,” Lily replied.

  “Should we keep the carriage?”

  She glanced back at the hackney, the driver a round pile of snow-dusted rags.

  “We don’t know how long it will take.”

  Or whether they would be back at all.

  He moved to the driver. Lily knew the man would be compensated generously for delivering them here to the heart of this old haven of thieves. The slum had long since been leveled into the ground, the mills and warehouses lining the dock springing up in it
s place.

  The carriage rolled slowly away behind them. Lily tried not to feel as though some lifeline were being severed.

  Strangford came beside her.

  “Would you take my arm?”

  Surprise made her hesitate.

  “It is rather slippery,” he added quietly.

  She answered by setting her hand around his sleeve.

  They walked up Mill Street, leaning against the blowing snow. At the end of the lane, a low arch opened onto a glimpse of the darkly glimmering Thames and the shadowy length of a wharf.

  Beside them, another entry opened into a narrow yard set before a long brick building. The windows of the ground floor were blocked up with only a slim iron vent at the top. The warehouse was old, stained with decades of soot, but the doors were not. They were sturdy oak, set with new locks.

  On the upper floors, the glass of the windows was dark, reflecting only the faint light of the gas lamps that lined the distant road.

  It looked silent, still, and deserted.

  She tried to match it to the place from her vision. She couldn’t. The window she had peered from must have been near the Thames, but how near?

  Assuming there was a real place to be found at all—that her vision wasn’t just some drug-addled nightmare.

  No, she thought, clear and certain. It had not been a dream. She couldn’t doubt that anymore, no matter how much safer it might make her feel.

  “Where’s Sam when you need him?” Strangford muttered, eyeing the brass locks.

  “We’re looking at this from the wrong angle. I need to see it from the river to know where we are.” She glanced back at the lane. “We need a boat.”

  They ducked into the narrow arch that opened onto the wharf.

  Rows of fishing boats and barges that plied the waters of the river during daylight hours rocked quietly against the piers, sails bundled against their booms.

  Lily’s eyes lit on a rowboat tied to the far end.

  Then her instinct flared.

  She moved her grip to Strangford’s hand, tugging him forward. They reached a ladder mounted against the side of the wharf.

  “Down,” she hissed.

  He descended quickly and quietly, Lily following nimbly after him. Strangford made room for her on the ladder, hanging from the side of it. They went still, boots suspended a few inches from the cold, lapping water of the Thames.