Though she was tempted to contradict him, Sunni kept silent. Their predicament had shifted again, and she was trying hard to keep up.
“I believe your story. I have no doubt that Corvo endowed that labyrinth with magical powers when he designed it. He was suspected of sorcery, and because of it he escaped from Venice, never to be seen again,” said their captor.
Blaise burst out, “So would I, if some power-hungry guy had put a bounty on my head and sent his spies after me.”
“Who are you talking about?” Throgmorton asked.
“Soranzo,” Blaise muttered.
“What do you know of him?”
“Soranzo went after Corvo because he wouldn’t sell him some paintings he wanted. If it hadn’t been for him, Corvo wouldn’t have had to run. Soranzo ruined his life.”
“You know many things about Corvo,” said Throgmorton, not moving a muscle.
“No more than anybody else. Everyone knows he was chased out of Venice in 1582.”
“I disagree. You know things no one else does. And I have been waiting for an opportunity to speak with you about them. Destiny brought you to Starling House yesterday.”
“No, a man with a beard brought us there,” Sunni said. “He spoke to us in a café. Some coincidence.”
“It was no coincidence,” Throgmorton replied smoothly. “He is my associate.”
“What do you mean?”
“He had been following you for some time before bumping into you in the café. He knows your town, Braeside, very well.”
Sunni shuddered. “That man was in Braeside?”
“Yes. When he learned you were coming to London with Blaise’s father, I knew we would meet. I saw to it.”
“You set this up!” Blaise said, charged up with anger. “Sunni and I didn’t come to Starling House to talk about Corvo.”
“But now that you are here, we will discuss your adventure.”
“No.”
“What did you say?” Throgmorton’s eyelids lowered.
“No. There’s nothing to tell you, or anyone else. We told everything we know to the police, and that’s as far as it goes.”
“Fausto Corvo’s painting, The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia. You know it very, very well.” Throgmorton’s hand twitched. “You entered that painting and saw things inside it that you drew in your sketchbook.”
Sunni pressed her lips into a tight line. Blaise was sitting forward, his jaw clamped shut.
“It was rumored that Corvo went to Blackhope Tower, where Sir Innes hid him. It would make sense for him to have concealed himself in The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia,” Throgmorton said. “Did you see Fausto Corvo when you were inside that painting?”
“No,” said Blaise and Sunni as one.
“I see,” said Throgmorton. “Then how did you come to draw him, Blaise?”
Sunni cursed to herself. Why did Blaise have to carry that sketchbook around with him? She’d told him umpteen times that he’d either lose it or damage it, but he refused to put it aside until he had filled all of its pages with pictures.
“I didn’t draw him.” Her friend’s voice was edgy.
“His portrait is in among your drawings.”
“I copied that from a self-portrait he made.”
Throgmorton frowned. “I do not know of any self-portrait like your sketch. Are you certain you did not draw it from life?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Blaise muttered.
“From memory then?” asked Throgmorton.
“It’s partly copied and partly from my imagination. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Throgmorton peered at them from the half dark. “I think Sunniva has a bad influence on you, Blaise, encouraging you to lie. But I also think you are the sort of young man who would lie only to protect others.”
Sunni bristled at being described as a bad influence. “You have no idea what sort of person I am.”
“Nor am I interested. I only want the truth about what is inside Corvo’s painting. Now.”
“We’re not telling anyone anything. There’s nothing to tell.” Sunni stood up. “Take us back to our time, Mr. Throgmorton.”
Blaise jumped to his feet, too, and picked up the lantern, shining it in the tour guide’s face.
Throgmorton’s eyes were fixed on them, cold blue like shadows on icebergs. “Sit down.”
“No, take us back through that door upstairs,” said Blaise.
“Sit down!” Throgmorton’s command emanated from somewhere deep in his chest, as violent as a crack of thunder and just as unnerving.
Shaken, Sunni sat back on her chair, and Blaise put the lantern onto the table.
Their captor’s face returned to impassive calmness. “This is a serious business. Do you think I would have brought you to this time if it were not?”
Sunni and Blaise remained silent.
“You know far more than you admit. You have seen paintings come to life before! And Blaise has drawn symbols and creatures in his sketchbook that could only be recognized by few learned men from the distant past. He may deny it all he likes, but I know he copied them from what he saw inside The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia — including Corvo’s three lost magical paintings.”
Sunni’s face twisted. “So you know about them, too. Why am I not surprised?”
He gave Sunni a cool look. “I brought you against my better judgment. But you are here now and will make yourself useful.”
“What does that mean?”
“You admit you know about the three lost paintings: The Chalice Seekers, The Jewel of Adocentyn, and The City of the Sun. It is said that Corvo hid the deepest, most powerful secrets of the universe below their surfaces. Tell me their exact location, how to find them, and how to get out of the painting.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Blaise said. “The labyrinth is closed down now. It’s over. There’s no way back in.”
Throgmorton’s eyes glinted. “The labyrinth is only closed in your time.”
“You want to go into the painting yourself!” Sunni said, horrified.
“And to return safely, for my daughter’s sake.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.” Her face was set.
“Will you be more sensible, Blaise?”
Blaise just shook his head, glowering.
“So be it.” Throgmorton rose and smoothed out his long overcoat.
“You will remain pupils of the illustrious Jeremiah Starling at the Academy of Wonders. For the other boys, this is luxury compared to life on the streets. But for you, it will be hell. When you are so tired and hungry you cannot go on, you will be eager to tell me everything you saw inside The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia.”
“You can’t keep us here! You haven’t bought us like you have the other boys,” cried Sunni.
“Stay in that chair, girl, and do not move.” Throgmorton clamped one hand onto Blaise’s arm and steered him to the door, which he unlocked with his other hand. “In this house, you are my property, though you, Sunniva, have far less value than Blaise and his sketchbook. You are expendable to me, but perhaps not to him. If he values you, he will soon reveal what I want to know — or you, too, will vanish without trace. Just like the boy who once wore Blaise’s clothes.”
He pulled Blaise into the hall and locked the door behind them with a hard click.
Blaise was asleep when a rising chorus of gasps and cries yanked him into consciousness. He sensed movement nearby and heard something scraping along the floor. Rough men’s voices came out of the darkness, and then what sounded like a sharp slap on skin.
He lay still, huddled against the wall of the boys’ bedchamber, watching a dim light travel across its cracked surface. It vanished, and the sound of boots and bumps faded away down the stairs. Blaise slowly turned toward the boys.
One was sobbing into a pillow, and another was cursing, trying to light a lantern. A tiny light finally burst into life, and Toby held it to a candle’s wick. His forehead was creased with
anguish.
Blaise whispered, “What’s going on?”
Robert and Jacob hovered above Toby like ghosts in torn nightshirts.
The eldest boy ignored Blaise and said, “Back to bed, both of you.”
“But where’s he gone?” whimpered Robert, gnawing on one knuckle as he and Jacob crawled back into their beds.
Toby could only shake his head.
Blaise leaped up and crept into the workshop to see what he could from the windows, which overlooked the square. In the light of a single lantern over the entrance below, he saw dark figures in action.
Toby stood, pale-faced, at the workshop door, the other boys behind him. “Get away from there, Blaise.”
“Not till I see what’s going on. Put that candle down on the floor, Toby, or behind something, so they don’t see me here,” Blaise said in a low voice. “There are three men and a cart with a horse. They’re loading something onto it. A sack. One of them is tying it up at the end.” He let out a hoarse cry. “One of them just hit the sack with a stone or something!”
Toby buried his face in his hands.
Blaise had a horrible feeling he knew what was inside the sack. One of the men had jumped on the cart and was holding the sack down, while the other two swung onto the driver’s seat. The cart rolled away into the night.
He jerked away from the window and herded Toby and the others back into the bedroom. “Tell me what happened.”
Toby pointed to one of the beds wrenched out of its place. The sheets had been torn away, and there was only an indentation where Will had slept.
The boys gathered around the bed, clutching their arms tightly across their chests against the chill air and the shock.
“Somebody tell me where Will’s gone,” Blaise said.
“They’ve taken him,” said Toby.
“Who has?”
“Them strangers,” whispered Gus. “They takes boys and they don’t come back.”
Blaise looked under Will’s bed. A small trunk was there, untouched.
“His things is still there,” said Toby. “But he’s gone for good. Just like the others.”
An icy bead of sweat snaked down Blaise’s spine. The others. How many boys had left behind dirty stockings like the ones hanging from the nail by Blaise’s bed? Throgmorton’s threat to Sunni echoed in his head. You, too, will vanish without trace.
“Where’s he been taken?” Blaise didn’t want to know but had to ask.
“To the country.”
“Country as in forests and mountains?”
“Yes. Though I’ve never seen it.” The boy angrily scrubbed a tear off his cheek.
“But why?” Something Jeremiah had said passed through Blaise’s head. Boys incompetent at learning are taken back from whence they came. Will had not been incompetent. He was making copies as well as any other boy. “Did Will come from the country?”
“No, he came from Spitalfields parish, here in London.”
“I can’t believe Jeremiah Starling would send him away.”
No one answered this at first.
“Mr. Starling don’t send boys away,” Toby muttered. He didn’t have to say who did.
“Will’s a good artist,” said Blaise, his blood rising. “He shouldn’t have had to go.”
“No, he shouldn’t have.” Toby’s face twisted. “And he wouldn’t have, if it had not been for Jack Sunniver.”
The diffused candlelight emphasised the hollow shadows in the boys’ faces, hardening their features.
“She . . . Sunniver kept asking questions,” said Robert. “And Will answered.”
Gus and Samuel nodded in agreement.
“So? You were all talking! I asked you questions, too, before that.” It was all Blaise could do to avoid looking at Jacob and risk giving anything away about their conversation.
Robert’s voice dropped to the barest whisper. “But because of Sunniver, she overheard Will say that Mr. Throgmorton takes our work away through the door.”
“She?” repeated Blaise, confused. “Sunni heard Will —”
“I do not mean your friend,” whispered Robert, eyes riveted on the door.
Blaise flinched when he realized who Robert did mean.
Livia.
Sunni lay awake, listening to the sound of Mary’s even breathing — and the scratching sound coming from under her bed. Cockroach, mouse, rat? Her neck was stiff from lying so still in her muslin binding — and from the bruising Throgmorton had given her when he “guided” her back down to this dank room.
When he’d returned from hauling Blaise upstairs, he’d said, “You will no longer speak to Blaise. Not even to ask him to pass you salt at meals. If you do, I shall lock you in your bedchamber until you are removed from this house.”
Throgmorton had gone on, his face a mask of mildness. “If Blaise cares for you, he will tell me everything. If that is not enough, perhaps Livia can convince him.” He had smiled at her. “You may have noticed that Blaise is susceptible to the persuasive charms of my daughter. Fifteen-year-old boys fall very hard into love.”
Sunni had winced inside but had held herself as still as she could.
Throgmorton had moved to her side and taken the nape of her neck with one hand. Like a cat with a helpless kitten, he had pulled her up from sitting and steered her down the stairs, pushing her into her room and locking the door.
Mary hadn’t stirred, even when Sunni had tripped over something and fallen against the wall. She’d felt around for her candle and managed to light it, before rolling onto the rickety bed, fully clothed. The nightshirt she had been given smelled even worse than her shirt and breeches.
The scratching under her cot started up again, and something small and ratlike darted across the flagstones and out of the light. Sunni leaped across the room and huddled against the locked door.
“What are you doing?” Mary stared at her sideways from under a floppy nightcap.
“Something was scratching under my bed. A mouse,” Sunni said gruffly.
Mary rolled over toward the wall and sighed. “Is that all? I would never sleep if I worried about all them creatures living here.” Her voice trailed off into steady breathing again.
Sunni lay back down on the bed, her insides churning. Would Throgmorton really get rid of me? Who was the vanished boy whose clothes Blaise was now wearing?
She heard a low rolling sound from somewhere outside the house and footsteps in the hall above. Her sharp ears caught the sound of the main door opening and a vague murmur of voices. A herd of feet ascended the stairs and went out of earshot.
When the herd returned, it was anything but quiet. A party of men seemed to half stagger along the floorboards, grunting to one another. The main door was locked behind them, and the rolling sound eventually moved away.
It no longer surprised Sunni that this house was active around the clock. Even the vermin didn’t sleep. When the scratching began again, she held the pillow tight, grappling with deeper worries.
At dawn, the boys filed into the kitchen and ate gruel made from water and oatmeal. Blaise, who hated oatmeal, gobbled down two bowls of it and three cups of weak tea fortified with sugar.
No one spoke. Gus, Samuel, Robert, and Jacob barely ate, and Toby did not even come downstairs. He had insisted on staying to make Will’s bed and tidy his clothes away into the trunk underneath it.
There was no sign of Sunni.
Mistress Biggins called Blaise back into the kitchen as he shuffled toward the stairs. She handed him a broomstick and said, “At last we have a tall boy in the workshop. Climb the stairs and get rid of all the cobwebs you see in high places. I shall take a tumble if I try to do it myself, and Mary is useless.” She tied a bonnet onto her head, took a basket in hand, and left him to go to market.
Blaise walked past Sunni’s room, his head bent under the low ceiling, and tried opening the door. It was locked. An irritated voice came from the other side.
“About time,” Sunni said. “Why do I
have to wait till all the others have finished eating?”
“Sunni, it’s me.”
“Blaise! Don’t let Throgmorton see you trying to talk to me. He’s warned you, too, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah. But we’ve got to make a plan. Now.”
“Go on,” she said.
“If we don’t figure a way out soon, he’ll get rid of you. I mean it.”
“You’re not going to tell him anything about Corvo?”
“No, but I’m not going to let anything happen to you, either.” Blaise clenched his fist against the door. “I’ll try to buy us some time, but we’ll have to work fast to find another way out of this. We’ve got to try to get help from anybody we can, starting with the servants.”
“What if they refuse?”
“Then we might have to run away.”
“But the painted door is the only way home, and it’s here!”
“I know.” He paused for a moment. “Don’t ask the boys any more questions. Something horrendous happened last night —”
The floorboards creaked above his head.
“I gotta go.” Blaise scurried up to the ground floor and ran straight into Fleet and Sleek.
“Are you off for a ride on that broomstick?” asked Fleet, and Sleek snorted into his hand.
“I’m clearing cobwebs for Mistress Biggins.”
“Are you, now?” Fleet stood about two inches taller than Blaise and made a point of looking down his long nose at him.
Sleek snorted again and pointed toward the steps down to the kitchen. “Breakfast.”
“Momentarily, Sleek,” answered Fleet. “I’m rather curious about you, young sir. Which parish is you from?”
Blaise leaned on the broomstick. “I’ll tell you if you answer a question from me.”
“I admire your approach. It depends upon the question.”
“Do you know why three men would carry a sack out of this house in the middle of the night and take it away on a cart?”
“Does we know anything about a sack, Sleek?”
“Nay,” said Sleek, clamping a pipe between his teeth.
“Could be anything inside a sack,” said Fleet. “Laundry . . . rubbish . . . anything.”
The Crimson Shard Page 7
