Tempered: Book Four of The St. Croix Chronicles

by Karina Cooper

  “Cherry, damn it,” Ashmore growled. “Look at me!”

  I ignored him, my innards twisting into a complex knot of uncertainty, guilt, fear, and in an awfully roundabout way, gratitude. “Did you fetch Ashmore to save me?” A gentle inquiry. I was not sure if saying the man’s name would provoke a lapse into high emotion.

  To my relief, St. Croix shrugged his bony shoulders. “Couldn’t see me,” he muttered, looking down at his gnarled hands. “Couldn’t be seen. Pushed the wardrobe, kicked the foot out.”

  “And then Ashmore came running,” I filled in.

  The overlarge head on his skeletal frame bobbed.

  I wasn’t certain what to say. As he busied himself at the table once more, I forced myself not to glance at the circles behind me. Instead, fingers clenching at my side, I whispered, “Thank you.”

  If he heard me, he did not say so.

  “I am at your service,” I added. “What shall I do?”

  “What?” The bowl he’d cupped clattered to the table. He shot me an irascible glare from under tightly knitted eyebrows. “What’s the matter with you, girl? Pay attention.” He jerked his head; not a tic, for I followed the line of his chin and saw the old, charred book beside him.

  Smudges of grime were left on the pages. Fresh writings decorated the margins, but I could not make heads nor tails of what it said. The hand mirrored closely the writing on the pages, were it not for the sharp departure from sanity that colored the new ink.

  So this was my father’s original journal.

  I had, after all, asked for journals from my family. Only fate would be so cruel as to deliver them like this.

  On cautious feet, I approached the book. He growled something without words, but his fingers trembled as he arranged the bowls to his exacting standards. “Is this the formula that will keep Ashmore from preying upon mother?”

  “Yes.” A low hiss. His beard shook with it as he curled his lips back. “Finish it, poppet. Finish what I can’t. I can’t see it anymore, you understand?” The tips of his fingers grazed the bowl he framed. It shuddered. “I can’t see it. Only you can make it right.”

  “Is mother all right?”

  He froze. Eerily still, he stared down at the bowl he cradled, then turned his head so slowly, a whisper of disquiet shuddered down my spine.

  Whoever—whatever—this man was, he was not my father. Not anymore. Barely anything sane peered out at me from the windows of his diamond pale sight.

  “You’re fine,” he said, rather more steadily than I’d expected. His shoulders smoothed, his mouth eased into a more natural smile as he faced me. “Aren’t you, my girl?”

  Of course. I hadn’t ever been his girl.

  I was not my mother, but Abraham St. Croix had never truly understood that. Not when he’d filled me full of opium and aether, and not now, in the height of his lunacy. He thought I was Josephine now, and it was better that I leave him to his illusions.

  I inclined my head and forced resolve through my jangling nerves. “Of course,” I murmured. “What was I thinking? I’m quite fine.”

  His smile brightened. “Then let us attend to our magnum opus, shall we?” He held out a hand that would have been considered gentlemanly and quite dashing, were it not for the filthy and malnourished thinness of his fingers. Yet his smile did not fade as he watched me with unabashed adoration.

  I took his hand despite my revulsion. “Tell me what you have accomplished thus far,” I said softly, “and I shall see to the rest.”

  His laughter squealed. The grip on my fingers tightened, painfully so, and I watched what brief sanity he’d re-gathered crumble to nothing. Shoulders hunching once more, he tugged on me so hard I stumbled.

  “See,” he cackled. “See what I’ve done for you? See, poppet, how easy it will be. Look, look.” He proffered a bowl, its contents settling into dry bits of muted green and brown. “This is for you.” The bowl hit the table, flecks scattering across the surface.

  I reared back when another, smaller bowl was thrust beneath my nose. The silver contents within sloshed close to the rim.

  “This too,” he cried, gaping smile a crooked slash in his beard.

  “Quicksilver,” I managed, identifying the liquid by its mirror-like shine.

  St. Croix made as though to tip the contents into his mouth.

  “Don’t do that,” I gasped, reaching for him.

  He danced out of the way, cackling madly. “No, no,” he admonished. “Not for drinking, is it, poppet? Mustn’t go wasting the prima materia on just anything. Yes? Yes?”

  Mercury, called quicksilver for its gleam, was often considered the prima materia from whence all matter could be formed. Primitive and pure.

  He showed me others, but he did not name them. There was no need; I recognized most. Opium, aether, mercury, cinnabar and arsenic.

  Gold dust, as well. Prima materia could create gold, in theory, yet that wasn’t all it could do. When banded with gold, it would create an alloy of something else depending on what ingredients might then be added to it.

  My mind reeled as I worked through the evidence laid out before me.

  The serum I was to create was the very same that St. Croix had forced upon me in that Thames Tunnel laboratory. I thought I’d recognized elements of the formula, but had not realized exactly what the fusion had entailed.

  St. Croix shuffled to the distillation rack, trilling a monologue I could not wholly catch as it rose and fell. I turned, found my glance snared by Ashmore’s searing stare.

  Unable to look away, he raised a deliberate eyebrow at me. Maddie Ruth slumbered at his feet, her hair a curtain over her face.

  I gritted my teeth. No matter how conflicted I felt about the man’s past, his secrets and his lies, I did not wish him dead. Saying so, even hinting at this, might cost us both. “Break out, if you’re so offended.”

  His jaw set.

  “He can’t,” called my father, laughing when Ashmore’s mouth flattened in response. “The fool, laid low by love.” The word spat from him, causing the open flame before his face to flicker against the base of the retort it heated. The vapors inside wafted unevenly.

  Ashmore’s gaze did not leave me, despite the taunt.

  I looked away. “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t know, did you, poppet?” My father nudged a beaker into position, studied its placement for a moment, then shuffled away from the table. He approached a large armoire, twice the size of the one in Ashmore’s chosen study. “The magician has a secret.”

  He’d called me poppet. In his eyes, I was myself once more, so I phrased my question simply. “That he loved my mother?”

  The door to the armoire cracked hard as my father’s arm jerked on the swing. A wild chirp of birds accompanied my suddenly pounding heart.

  Mad St. Croix bent to retrieve that what he wanted.

  I did not glance again at Ashmore, afraid that I might inadvertently see that awful pain I knew instinctively he did not want to share.

  When the wild-haired man popped back upright, he was smiling once more. In his arm, a cage. A flutter of wings inside revealed a small bird, whose frantic chirrup only made St. Croix’s calm all the stranger. “Did he tell you?” he asked, nonchalant as he shuffled to the distillation rack once more. “Did you know when you set out to seduce him?”

  My cheeks burned. “I didn’t—”

  “Oh, tosh,” he snorted. He set the cage down upon the floor, then knelt to open the small catch and seize the flailing creature in one fist. “Such things occurred before our marriage, I know, I know.” He said the words soothingly, a gentle reassurance to the panicked bird. “I should not hold such things against you, my girl. I know.”

  There were those who might go quietly, fashionably insane—men of towering intellect whose foibles might be forgiven. I had always imagined Abraham St. Croix to be one of these, long before I’d ever come face to face with the truth in London. His guise as the sweet and absent-minded Professo
r Woolsey was much more what I’d thought my father might have been. Even that split from his true face as Mad St. Croix, less sweet and far more dangerous for it.

  The months following his ineffective murder had not been kind to an already crumbling façade.

  St. Croix plucked a blade from the table beside him and held the bird above the warm glass beaker.

  “Wait,” I whispered.

  His moon-pale eyes flicked to me.

  “How did you get Ashmore here?” I asked, hoping to forestall this bit of grisly necessity. I was not squeamish as a rule, not about matters of science or experimentation, but the mad fluttering to he fragile wings captured in his spindly hand drew a lump to my throat.

  He grinned, exposing his blackening teeth. “Shot him outside the stable.” He waggled the poor bird, which garbled in panicked terror. “Before the dogs, of course. Bloody dogs, howling all the time.” His other hand thumped the table, the knife glinting in the light. “It’s my house,” he growled. “I can walk where I want!”

  “Including through the walls,” I asked, a faint smile forced to my mouth. “You had me quite frightened.”

  St. Croix beamed like I’d offered the highest praise.

  “Why is he here?” I asked. “Can’t we just—”

  “Revenge!” The word crackled. “Just as you wanted, my girl. Always as you want.” St. Croix’s eyes filled, milky fluid turning his already pale gaze murky. “Yes? Yes, of course.”

  “Of course,” was all I could murmur, for I couldn’t envision a solution to Ashmore’s predicament.

  All I could do was hope to seize the opportunity before such revenge bore fruit.

  “Now we draw the aether,” St. Croix announced, and capturing the bird’s frantically writhing throat between thumb and blade, he cleaved it in two.

  The tiny head bounced to the ground.

  St. Croix’s gaze held mine as he squeezed the helpless creature between his fingers. Blood dribbled into the glass container. Thicker gobbets clung to his skin.

  I swallowed hard.

  Aether from blood. It could be drawn from the ambient air, as Mr. Finch’s aether engines did, but this was not mechanical aptitude we spoke of now. This was alchemy, and if ’twas life we sought to perfect, then quintessence from life would create the most powerful solution.

  My stomach clenched in mingled fear and abject remorse.

  That bird had done nothing for this.

  St. Croix dropped the twisted, fragile corpse to the ground and bent to stare into the red-rimmed glass. “This is all I can do,” he said, his mouth pulled into an abstract frown. One large eye magnified in the glass, and pinned on me through it. “You must do the rest, all right, poppet? Just like we practiced.”

  “Practiced?”

  When he jerked upright, I hastily raised a hand.

  “All right, all right,” I said, and hefted the book as proof. “Let me go over the directives once more.”

  “Quick, quick,” he muttered. “Quick as she can, she says, quick as she can. Yes, yes.” The repetitiveness of his muttering grated, but I stared down at the page and tried to concentrate.

  What could I do? He’d caught me unawares, but there was a monstrous strength to his twisted body that would easily overpower me.

  Even if I did manage to escape, I could not go far. Ashmore was trapped, and I couldn’t possibly leave him in that circle.

  Silver and gold melted into the symbols. Which symbols?

  “Need to say the words,” he said, poking at various tubes set up in the rack. “The words, what were they? I’m sorry, my dear, I can’t recall. Something clever, something ever so pointed for—” he caught himself, stuttering over whatever he’d meant to say, and I looked up from the page I stared at to find him scowling at Ashmore.

  For his part, Ashmore stood motionless, his hands clasped behind his back and his gaze focused somewhere else, not here.

  “Why him?” my father scoffed bitterly. “Bloody nuisance. I could have—” His hands jerked, and he turned as though something might have blown against his ear. His eyes were huge as he rubbed at his cheek. “No, no,” he hastened to say, shaking his head for emphasis. A plaintive note crept into his voice. “No, I understand. Yes, my girl, yes, yes, all will be as it was. Didn’t I promise?”

  The book sank in my arms as I watched this exchange. Torn between pity and dismay, I winced as he hunched against a blow I could not see. What did he imagine?

  Where did he think he stood?

  “I’m sorry,” he said in broken syllables. “I’m sorry, of course I know.”

  The book I held jerked, and I tightened my hold in surprise, taking a step back. The act brought me sharply against the table, sending a wicked burst of pain through my side. I winced, looking about me with wide-eyed uncertainty.

  My mother was close. I had not thought her capable of affecting the material world, not without alchemical help, yet I did not imagine that tug. My father clearly saw something; his lunacy left me doubtful as to the veracity of what it was he saw. I was obviously not my mother, but could he see her ghost?

  St. Croix jumped. “Are you ready?” he demanded, and I looked to find him glaring at me once more. “Hurry, hurry, the blood is nearly thin enough.”

  “Yes, I will be,” I called, and focused intently upon the page. Not all the sigils written on it were known to me. Some I knew, such as Fu, for fusion. Others I thought I’d known, until I’d learned that DG’s reference to digestion was not only that of the body’s ability of the same name, but a means by which a substance would be carefully heated over a period of weeks.

  This lapse, then, might indicate at least in part where Miss Hensworth’s invisibility formula had gone awry in early October. The substance she’d imbibed had weakened her body, and would have continued to do so to the point of catastrophic failure had I not found her first.

  She’d chosen to take her own life rather than give in to my offer of help, but even so, I regretted that she had gone so far.

  Just as I regretted that I had allowed myself to do much the same, giving up everything so that I might simply cease to exist by way of opium.

  My heart stilled within me. The familiar pulse of craving I no longer welcomed gathered in its place. I closed my eyes and tried not to notice that my mouth watered at the thought of the tar that had turned so bitter.

  Poor Miss Hensworth. If only she had known that the symbol for imbibition was a six-pointed star, as the Star of David. It might have saved her life, if not her sanity, to know the difference between imbibition and digestion.

  I opened my eyes and turned my back upon Ashmore and St. Croix both. “Have you gathered all I need?” I asked.

  “But the aether,” he insisted. “Quick, hurry!”

  How to extract aether from blood? I didn’t know that one.

  “You must hurry,” he demanded.

  So I would be forced to complete that what had taken decades for my family to learn—and in a matter of hours, no less.

  As I crossed the floor, Ashmore stirred. A flare of violet glowed beside me, sparks flying, and I jumped to the side; a useless gesture, for the light bloomed only when Ashmore attempted to cross the barrier.

  His eyes seared into mine. “Don’t do this.”

  I had no answer for him. I looked away. “Don’t speak to me,” I whispered.

  “Cherry, don’t. Your blood is so much more important than this.”

  The intensity in his voice ate at my resolve, but the words galled me. Of course it was better than this—he needed me to survive, did he not? I would not mistake his intentions again. Regardless of how I felt about him, I would not accept the burden of his life.

  He and I, if we survived this, would have words. Perhaps we would scrap. Whether we drew blood from each other, tears, or apologies, his was a life I intended to hold on to—I would not walk under the burden of his corpse as I did too many others.

  I approached my father’s side with the book in hand, set it
down beside the distillation rack and watched the vapors as they coiled through the tubes, dripped into other containers.

  My blood was only important in that it carried the madness of this entire family.

  I almost laughed at that.

  “Don’t listen to him,” my father said, his shoulder nudging mine. I shuddered at the feeling, for it was as though he were made only of bone.

  I glanced at him to find his eyes pinned earnestly upon me. They shimmered, innocent as a child’s.

  My heart hurt. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking that drew a gleam of sanity to his demeanor, but I could not stop myself from embracing it.

  Of all the things I regretted, I did lament my inability to tell my father goodbye.

  “Father,” I said softly. His eyes brightened some, and a long, spindly hand settled on my arm. A tear slipped over my cheek. “You are supposed to be dead.”

  His smile was kind. “Come now, poppet. Didn’t I say? Didn’t I tell you? What did I say?”

  I didn’t know. When I only stared at him, he patted my arm awkwardly.

  He had never known how to treat his own daughter.

  That was not all madness, I think. Some men are not natural fathers. I would never know for certain if mine was one.

  “Didn’t I tell you that I’d learned the secret?” He leaned in, his gaze shifting left to right. “Didn’t I say I’d taken the draught I’d made for your mother?” His whisper sounded overly loud, echoing into a sibilant hiss. “It was an accident, you know, that fire. All those fools come to end me, yet I promised your mother I’d survive. I took the draught, thought to make it again.”

  “Can’t you?” I asked.

  The light in his eyes faded. “What for? She died. My girl. My sweet girl.”

  My sweet girl.

  As I heard it in my father’s voice, I remembered it crooned by the ghost of my mother, and I flinched.

  “Don’t worry,” he hastened to add, gripping my forearm tightly. “Don’t worry, poppet, we can bring her back! That’s what matters now. That will bring a smile.”