Returning to the steam carriage, we rescued the ornate box on the roof. The designs had shifted, indicating it'd gone through some sort of transformation.
I wasn't sure what it meant until we were driving out of Gastonia and I glimpsed one of the hard-eyed men who had been lurking around when we'd arrived. He was behind a sloped building on the hillside, sitting in a wooden tub of water with his shirt off, scrubbing frantically. He had all his fingers, his limbs, and appeared whole in every other way, except that his skin was dyed a deep indelible blue.
Chapter Twelve
A week later, I found myself outside of the City Courthouse staring at a poster of my likeness—a nightmare fuelled version that made me look like Medusa's sister.
REWARD: $25,000
Reward for capture, dead or alive, of Katerina Dashkova for Witchcraft and Treason. Her powers include FLIGHT, turning men to LUST-filled creatures that will throw away their moral Virtues, bloodsucking, and turning CHILDREN into insects. If perchance you encounter this despicable Russian witch-spy, flee at great haste!
Though the sketch looked nothing like me, I was still worried about entering the building. The City Courthouse was the best place to acquire the proper records that might lead me to whatever was causing the plague to happen.
After we'd returned to Philadelphia with the dead creature that had attacked Voltaire and me on the way to Gastonia, Santiago confirmed it'd been a garguiem. With Simon Snyder in the position of Vice President, he no longer knew the comings and goings of the criminal class in the city. I needed information about any other incidents that may have happened, to help us determine how this plague of monsters might occur.
A gentleman in a top hat walked behind me, stopping long enough to clear his throat derisively. "Hellfire and witchcraft, sister. Next they'll want us to believe in fairies and grumpkins."
I nodded in agreement, keeping the nun's habit around my face as a shield. I'd let Brassy dress me in a disguise. I wasn't sure how she'd acquired the clothing from the Sisters of the New Charity. The long black dress was surprisingly comfortable and it allowed me to carry my oestium rapier and pistol without notice, but I felt eminently sacrilegious for donning the holy vestments.
When the gentleman was gone, I pulled the bird-skull from under my clothing. I'd kept it around my neck on the silver chain. Zora had claimed she could keep me from being recognized, even without the disguise, but I wasn't about to test that theory with my life on the line. But it didn't hurt to have overlapping protections, mundane and arcane.
"No one will recognize me?" I asked under my breath as I glanced around to make sure no one was near. The closest person was a woman in a lavender dress and bonnet riding sidesaddle down the street behind me. The clip-clop of the horse's hooves was set against the background noise of the industrious city.
"You're more likely to be noticed impersonating a nun," said Zora.
"Please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't trust you that well yet," I said.
"Probably wise, though unnecessary." The dainty skull shifted in my hand. "Not a very flattering poster. Maybe you do want to get recognized so they don't think you're a swamp hag."
"Better a live swamp hag, than a dead witch," I said.
"You call yourself a witch now?" asked the bird-skull.
"If the broom fits," I said.
The skull snorted. "You don't have a broom."
"I don't really care what you call me. I've never been fond of titles. They fail spectacularly when it comes to predicting people. I've met kings that were dunces and empresses that should have been philosophers," I said.
The bird-skull said nothing, so I tucked it in my dress and went inside.
The chubby cheeked man behind the counter winced when he saw my attire. Behind him were a few rows of shelves, a couple of tables, and a painting of the battle of Germantown that covered the back wall in exquisite detail, down to the wild eyes of the dying horses and the fierce expressions of the Continental Army's soldiers.
Hallways led to other places in the building. A judge in his powdered wig and robes wandered through the room on his way to another location.
"Greetings, Sister, how may I help you?" asked the attendant, though he couldn't match my gaze.
I wasn't sure if it was Zora's magic or some deep-seated guilt that kept the man from looking at me.
I paused before I spoke, deciding if I was going to try and hide my accent. The poster had clearly identified me as Russian, and most my fellow Americans wouldn't know that French was the language of the nobility, or at least had been, so I was safe to speak freely.
"Bonjour, monsieur," I said. "I am looking for records pertaining to any recent murders or other violent events in the city."
The straw-haired attendant reacted as if I'd splashed cold water in his face. "I...uhm...may I ask what these records are for?"
"Certainly. My Order, the, uhm, Sisters of the Holy Pestle"—I cringed, as I'd meant to say Vessel—"requires us to hold a profession so we may not lose touch with the people. I work for the New York Observer, assisting in matters of research."
"Oh," he said, as if it were a perfectly normal thing, "then let me get the ledgers."
He came back about ten minutes later with a stack of leather tomes in his arms. He dropped them on a table behind the counter and motioned for me to sit. It was away from the main hallways, which would give me a little privacy in my research.
"You can sit here while you read. It's probably going to take you a while. Do you need anything else?" he asked.
"My apologies for not being more prepared, I'm rather new at this, but do you have some parchment, an ink pot, and a quill I might borrow?" I asked.
He brought me the supplies and I thanked him for his generosity.
I hadn't specified what time period I was interested in, so he'd brought me all records since the founding of Philadelphia. I paged through a couple of the older books, but when I realized they were a waste of time, I grabbed the most recent.
Inside the ledger, in a neat script that would have made an engrosser proud, was the description of every crime that had happened in the city. I found what I was looking for right away. In fact, the prevalence of the signs worried me that I was too late and that the plague had already begun.
Using the quill, I copied down the forty-two instances of the arcane that had happened in the last four months. There were none before that window of time, or at least, if there were, the descriptions did not give ample reasons to connect them.
The crimes or disturbances were varied. Some had been attacked by horrible creatures, mostly in the countryside, while others had loved ones gone missing. There were murders, thefts, and an instance of a man who'd found a creature covered in white fur and horns that he'd claimed was trying to mate with one of his goats.
After I finished the recent tomes, I took a cursory glance through the oldest ones, mostly out of curiosity. The entries consisted of the typical offenses one might find in a colonial town, especially when governance was in short supply: hog theft, public drunkenness, slander, and even blasphemy. I thanked the Founders that they had wisely eliminated religion's grip on government.
I did find examples of what might have been the arcane within those older entries. Nothing spelled out in bold lettering, but one description spoke of a furred beast attacking livestock, and another complaint was about spells being cast. The happenings could have been the overactive imagination of the citizens at the time, or they could have been real. It was hard to say.
Lastly, I paged through the ledger detailing crimes around the 1799-1800 period. It didn't take long to find her name. Estelle Carriager. Her death was reported as an accidental drowning on account of her deformed legs. Nothing about Ben Franklin or why she was in the river.
I closed the tomes and informed the helpful attendant I was finished.
Before I left, he sheepishly asked, "Sister, may I have a blessing? I've always got this awful headache right between my
eyes."
I didn't know enough Latin to fool him, so I placed my hand on his forehead and said in French, "May the Creator heal this wound."
A surge of magic sent bright thoughts through my mind, but not enough to do anything.
His face was split wide in a grin as I hurried out.
As I made my way along the cobblestone street, the bird-skull rustled against my breastbone. I pulled Zora out and let her hang around my neck. As long as no one looked too closely, they wouldn't know what it was.
"Did you get what you were looking for?" asked Zora.
"I hope so," I asked.
"And that was? Or am I still not trustworthy enough?" asked the bird-skull.
I sighed. "I could use the help, I guess."
Then I explained the prophecy about the plague of monsters being released upon Philadelphia in less than two months and the hrevanti we'd found in Professor Walker's office, and the garguiem that had attacked Voltaire and me on the way to Gastonia. I suspected these early excursions from the Otherland creatures were the vanguard of the coming plague, and I hoped to find other instances in the city's records that I could investigate.
"So can you help me?" I asked, after I finished.
"No," said the bird-skull.
"No?" I repeated incredulously.
"Not for want, but I have nothing further that I can offer," said Zora.
I lifted the bird-skull to place it under my robes.
"Wait! Wait!" it cawed. "Maybe I can help with other things."
"Like what?" I asked. "And why suddenly so helpful now?"
"I can't take being stuck under your robe," said the bird-skull. "It's hard enough not having a way to affect the world. Ask me questions."
"So you once had a body?" I asked.
"Of course, you dolt. I was a Great Raven," said Zora.
"Apologies," I said.
"Ask, please," said Zora. "I'm feeling abnormally helpful."
Standing on the side of the street, I waited for a regiment of soldiers to pass before I crossed. They were headed north through the city while I was headed west. Further ahead was a steam tank, trundling through the street, spitting coal smoke.
"Do you know anything about the Shard of Time? The Jinn-Se-San?" I asked.
"Gah!" exclaimed the bird-skull. "Do not speak of that place. It reeks of madness."
"I was there recently. I want to know more about it," I said.
"You were there? No, I suppose you won't tell me the circumstance. What do you want to know?" asked Zora.
"Anything," I said. "What it is? Who controls it?"
"No one knows, really," said the bird-skull. "Passages open and close inside the tower, seemingly at random. The hrevanti that study it claim that there are patterns and if they watch long enough, they might be able to find a way to the top."
A cold shiver went down my spine. How had Neva known we would make it to the top? Had it been the prophecies in my head that had protected me? I was light-headed as I asked my next question. "Who made it?"
"Again, no one knows. It's been there for all eternity," said Zora.
"Does anyone know what the Shard contains? Or its purpose?" I asked.
"The hrevanti scholars have speculated. Some say it's the key to the end of the multiverse, or a doorway to the creation that exists above this one, or it is a puzzle created by a very demented god that existed a long time ago."
I couldn't think of another question to ask. "Thank you for your help, Zora."
The whole way back to the estate, I considered Zora's words and what Neva might know about the Jinn-Se-San. The old witch had been around a long, long time. It appeared she knew secrets even the scholars of the multiverse didn't know, which worried me as to her motives, unless she was as she said—only a collector.
Chapter Thirteen
Using the list I'd acquired at the City Courthouse, Voltaire and I began investigating each of the incidents. Thus far, our work had proved fruitless, as most folk refused to speak to us.
What little we could get out of them wasn't much more than what had been listed in the ledgers. Only the eighth visit, to Sumner Gladhouse, had provided additional information, though the enthusiasm of the "victim" called into question his truthfulness.
Sumner worked in the steam yards west of Germantown and owned a small plot of land in the countryside. He was a barrel-chested Irishman whose nose was as bright as a beet. He boasted that a beautiful faerie queen had come out of the woods one night to mate with him, on account of his good Irish stock (on his mother's side).
When we asked why he'd reported the incident to the authorities, considering nothing bad had happened to him, he'd said with a grin that he'd been telling everyone about his good fortune. We left him, noting that he owned a very well-used alcohol still, which sat at the back of his house.
Our tenth visit wasn't far from Sumner Gladhouse's place, a secluded little valley with a spring fed creek that ran through it. The Warmond family made cabinets in their little sawmill. The ledger indicated a missing daughter.
I drove the steam carriage down the dirt road, while Voltaire mused about the political organizations in Otherland.
The Warmond's two-story house, with a severely angled roof to keep the winter snows from collecting, sat next to an open-aired building. Mr. Warmond and his three sons were cutting planks with a steam powered saw. They were tall men, even the youngest, who looked in his early teens.
"Mr. Warmond?" I asked in a low voice as he approached us on the lawn. The sons stayed in the cabinetmaking shop, eyeing us warily as they cut another plank.
Mr. Warmond's lips were flat with distaste as he gave Voltaire and me the once-over. Voltaire was wearing a modest outfit, modest for him, of cream pantaloons and shirt beneath a bright crimson jacket embroidered with golden threads. I'd told him it looked a little too much like an English soldier's uniform for local tastes.
I wore a narrow-waisted Polish-styled dark blue coat that went down to my knees, overtop a pair of gray trousers. My hair had been tamed by a gray ribbon at the base of my neck. Voltaire had told me upon seeing my outfit that I looked like an effeminate young man, which had been precisely the point.
Mr. Warmond stopped a good distance from us and crossed his arms.
"I am, but you're trespassing," he said with a scowl.
"We're with the Constable's Office," I lied. "We've come to ask a few questions about your missing daughter."
Mr. Warmond's scowl twisted with pain.
"Quiet your voice," he said with a quivering lip. "My wife has not recovered from that horrible tragedy. It's only been a few weeks since she's been able to get out of bed. Unless you've found our darling Nell, I'd ask you to kindly leave now and never come back."
Voltaire and I shared glances. I cleared my throat. "My apologies. We have not found her, but there has been some progress in the investigation and we wish to further inquire upon the facts however painful that might be."
He screwed his face up and raised his voice. "I said you're trespassing. Don't care if you're a constable. You don't have a right to come and bother us."
"Good sir," said Voltaire, "you're absolutely correct. We stay upon your good graces. This is important. We wish for your cooperation."
"My good graces left when Nell disappeared," said Mr. Warmond. "Begone with you. I'll say nothing more. And if you don't get moving, my sons and I will put a whipping to your backsides."
As Voltaire and I turned to leave, I caught the rustling of curtains on the house and faced Mr. Warmond instead.
"Mr. Warmond, are you saying you don't want us to continue to search for your missing daughter? We've learned things recently that may indicate she's alive," I said in a voice loud enough to be heard through a thick window.
Before Mr. Warmond could hush me, Mrs. Warmond, a portly woman with apple red cheeks, came rushing into the yard.
"My Nell. My Nell. You have word about my Nell?" she asked. It came out almost as a beg.
T
he poor woman looked ready to collapse.
I held my hands out to temper her expectations. "Madam. Please don't mistake us. There are aspects of this investigation yet unexplored, which with your permission, we would like to pursue."
"Aspects of this...?"
Her words faded into a confused stare while her husband scowled at us. A quick glance to his sons summoned them. They put down their tools, rolled up sleeves, and joined their father.
"Yes, madam," said Voltaire, "we have word of your daughter. We only need a few minutes of your time and possibly the run of the property to perform a proper investigation."
At that, the woman threw her arms around Voltaire and kissed his cheeks. Then before I could protest, she did the same for me.
Mr. Warmond glared murderously from a safe position behind his wife.
"Husband," said Mrs. Warmond, suddenly sober, "give these constables your permission. I must have my Nell back, whatever it takes. I shall go inside and retrieve something that might help your search."
Mrs. Warmond waddled back inside, leaving us with the none-too-pleased husband and his three large sons. The largest son cracked his knuckles by squeezing his fist.
"I don't know what kind of hucksters you are, but my loving wife is in a delicate situation. Nell's our only daughter, through the grace of a gift from the Lord when we thought all hope of another was lost. If it wouldn't break my wife's heart, I would have my boys tie the shaft between your legs and thrash you back into town," he said.
Voltaire cleared his throat in a condescending manner. "I assure you, good sir, we have nothing but your daughter's return in our minds. Is there no common decency in Philadelphia anymore?"
"What's a couple of Frenchmen doing in the Constables Office, anyhow?" asked Mr. Warmond.
"The same that a Dutch cabinetmaker is doing in the countryside. Making an honest living," said Voltaire.
Mrs. Warmond returned before things got out of hand. She handed me a piece of paper with a drawing on it. The sketch of her daughter Nell was as lifelike as one of the masters of Paris. She was in that gangly place between girlhood and womanhood, lanky and self-aware, surrounded by a workshop that was filled with vials and jars, as if she were a work in progress.
Nightfell Games (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 5) Page 10
