The air-wardens kept the Spire clean by force.
Lucan hadn’t understood that until he was inside it.
From the lower city, the Spire was a white needle rising out of the smog into a circle of clear sky, like something in a fairy tale.
He’d imagined it would feel like climbing out of a dirty river onto a clean bank.
Light.
Easy.
Free.
It didn’t feel like that at all.
The carriage Lady Fennick had sent for him climbed the long spiral road around the base of the Spire, through the Lamplighters’ Quarter and past the white walls of the Cathedral of the Hollow Saint.
And at the edge of the Spire District, where the smog was thickest, it passed through the Wardline.
There was no wall.
Only a line of tall iron pillars, forty feet high, standing in a great ring around the base of the hill, a hundred yards apart.
Each pillar was topped with a huge crystal of polished bone-coal, glowing blue.
And in a little iron cabin at the base of each pillar sat an air-warden in a grey hooded robe, with his hands pressed flat against a brass plate, his eyes closed, his lips moving.
As the carriage passed between two of the pillars, Lucan felt it.
A wall of pressure, invisible, enormous, like walking into a gale that blew in every direction at once.
His ears popped.
His teeth ached.
And the smog peeled away from the carriage, rolling back on either side like a curtain being drawn, and suddenly they were driving through clean, cold, empty air, and there were stars overhead.
Lucan looked back through the rear window.
The smog stood behind them like a wall.
A vast, sheer, churning cliff of brown and orange, rising out of sight into the sky, pressing against the line of pillars like water against a dam.
He could see it straining.
He could see the crystals on top of the pillars glowing brighter and dimmer, brighter and dimmer, in long slow pulses, holding it back.
Above the nearest air-warden, as they passed, he read: Owes: 380 silver (Wardens’ Guild).
Is owed: nothing.
Lifespan remaining: 4 years.
He looked at the next one.
Lifespan remaining: 2 years.
And the next.
Lifespan remaining: 7 months.
“They burn out,” said Rook quietly.
He was sitting opposite Lucan in his naval uniform, which Wren had let out across the shoulders, watching Lucan’s face.
“Don’t they?
Holding it back.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
Lucan looked out at the long ring of iron pillars curving away into the dark, each one with its little cabin, and its hooded figure, and its glowing crystal.
“All of them,” he said.
Fennick House stood at the very top of the Spire.
It wasn’t one building.
It was a dozen, linked by covered bridges and long colonnades and terraced gardens, all built of a white stone so pure it seemed to glow faintly in the starlight.
Towers rose from it, slender and tall, crowned with domes of glass.
Through the glass, Lucan could see the shapes of trees.
Real trees, green and living, growing on top of a tower in the middle of a city where nothing green had grown for two hundred years.
There were footmen in blue livery at the door.
There was a butler in black who took his coat and Rook’s and looked at Rook’s knives for a long moment, and then decided, wisely, to say nothing.
There was a long hall floored with white marble and hung with portraits, and at the end of it, a staircase that wound up and up inside one of the towers, and at the top of the staircase, a pair of glass doors.
Coyle was waiting at the doors.
Grey suit, grey face.
He bowed.
“Mr.
Thorne.
Captain Salterre.
Her ladyship is in the garden.”
He opened the doors.
It was the most beautiful room Lucan had ever seen.
It was a garden under a dome of glass, at the top of the tallest tower of Fennick House, at the top of the Spire, above the smog.
Above the glass, the sky was black and full of stars, more stars than Lucan had seen in two lifetimes.
Below the glass, in every direction, the smog spread out like an ocean of glowing brown cloud, lit from beneath by the fires of the city, rolling and churning to the horizon.
And in the garden, there were orchids.
Thousands of them.
White orchids, on every side, in tiered beds and hanging baskets and climbing up slender trellises of white-painted iron.
White petals with golden throats.
The air was warm and damp and heavy with their scent, sweet and rich and cloying.
A fountain played somewhere among them.
Small white birds flitted between the trellises, too fast to see.
In the middle of it all, there was a table, set for four.
White cloth.
Silver candelabra.
Crystal glasses.
And at the head of it, rising as he came in, in a gown of black silk with a single lock of white falling across her pale forehead, Lady Isolde Fennick.
“Mr.
Thorne,” she said.
Her voice was low and clear and cool, like water running over stone.
“How good of you to come.
And on your birthday.”
She held out her hand.
He took it.
Her fingers were cold and very smooth.
He bowed over them.
And above her head, as he straightened, he read the words.
His new sight.
The Rank 2 sight.
True names.
Threads.
True name: Isolde Varga Fennick.
Lucan’s breath stopped.
He kept his face still.
He didn’t know how.
He held her hand a moment longer than was polite, and let it go, and stepped back, and the whole time his eyes stayed on the words above her head, on the threads running out from her in every direction like the strands of a vast golden web.
A thick cord, bright and taut, to Coyle, standing by the door.
Oath.
Others, dozens of them, running out through the glass and down into the city.
Seat VII.
Commissioner.
Registry.
And one, old and black and frayed, running down, down, toward the bottom of the hill and on toward the eastern spoil-heaps.
Varga, Edmund — brother — DECEASED.
And another, even older, even blacker, running nowhere at all, ending abruptly in empty air.
Fennick, Lord Aurelian — husband — 1 life (TAKEN).
Is owed: 1,204 lives.
Owes: 1 brother.
“You seem surprised by something, Mr.
Thorne,” said Lady Fennick.
“Your garden,” he said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“No,” she agreed.
“Very few people have.” She smiled.
“Please.
Sit.
You know my other guests, I think?”
He turned.
There were two more people at the table.
One was an old man.
Tall, thin, elegant, with a face like a weathered marble bust and snowy white hair swept back from a high forehead, in a dark velvet coat with a silver chain of office across his chest.
He was coughing gently into a handkerchief.
Above his head: True name: Ambrose Merrivale Teague, Lord Teague.
Seat VII, Chamber of Commerce.
Is owed: 3,812 lives.
Owes: 1 mill-master (Gorse — LOST).
1 asset (“Brutus” — LOST).
He looked at Lucan with pale, mild, rheumy blue eyes, and smiled kindly.
The other was a young woman in a gown of dark green silk, with her straw-coloured hair dressed high and pinned with pearls, sitting very straight in her chair with her hands folded in her lap.
Tamsin Marsh looked up at him.
Her face was perfectly calm.
Above her head, in silver: [ ACCOUNT HOLDER.
] Is owed: 1 life (Tobin Marsh) — by Lucan Marr.
Bound: 52.
And below it, in gold, a new thread.
Thin, tight, running from Tamsin’s chest to Lady Fennick’s.
Owes: 1 lawyer, 1 gown, 1 house in Brassmarket.
(Fennick, Isolde.)
“Mr.
Thorne,” Tamsin said quietly.
“Miss Marsh.”
Dinner was nine courses.
Lucan ate very little of it.
He waited for Lady Fennick to take a bite of each dish before he touched his own, and he drank nothing at all.
Behind him, Rook stood against a trellis of orchids with his hands clasped behind his back, very still, and watched everyone at the table, one at a time.
Lady Fennick didn’t seem to mind.
She talked.
She talked beautifully, about the orchids, which had come from the southern colonies, and the fountain, which had been designed by an engineer from the University, and the stars, whose names she knew.
She talked about the tragedy at Pit Nine, and the memorial she was building, and the compensation she was paying the families of the dead.
“Forty-five,” she said, turning her glass slowly by its stem.
“I’m told the final count is forty-five.
Two more men died recently at Shaft Thirty.
Bondsmen from Pit Nine.
Some poor clerk at the Registry had redeemed their bonds, it seems, only a day or two too late.” She looked at Lucan over the rim of her glass.
“A great shame.”
“A great shame,” Lucan agreed.
“Lord Teague has been telling me,” she said, “about a terrible accident at one of his mills.
A mill-master fell into his own turbine.
And his guards, all eight of them, murdered one another the very same night.” She shook her head.
“Such a strange coincidence.”
“The Herald says it was a drunken brawl,” Lucan said.
“The Herald,” said Lord Teague mildly, between coughs, “says whatever I pay it to say, young man.” He folded his handkerchief.
“And I didn’t pay it to say that.
Someone else did.”
He looked at Lucan with his mild, rheumy eyes.
“Gorse was a very useful man,” he said.
“I’d had him nine years.
Brutus, too.
Brutus cost me a great deal of money.
And when I sent my people to find Brutus, after the accident, they told me he was sitting on the floor of an apothecary’s shop in Tallowgate, in the corner by the door, eating a bowl of porridge.” He tilted his head.
“Fed to him by a little red-haired girl with a spoon.”
Nobody spoke.
“Oh, Ambrose,” said Lady Fennick lightly.
“You’ll frighten our guest.”
“I doubt it.” Teague smiled.
“He doesn’t strike me as a young man who frightens easily.” He picked up his glass.
“Happy birthday, Mr.
Thorne.”
The dessert came on a silver tray, carried by two footmen.
It was a cake.
Small and round and perfect, covered in white icing and decorated with sugar orchids, so delicate they looked real.
Nineteen tiny white candles burned on top of it.
The footmen set it down in front of Lucan.
“Nineteen,” said Lady Fennick.
“I hope I’ve counted correctly.
Your papers are very thorough.
Lowmere.
A lovely little town.
Such a pity about the flood.” She smiled at him across the candles.
“Make a wish, Mr.
Thorne.”
Lucan looked at the cake.
A small gold panel flickered at the edge of his vision.
It was very faint.
Very brief.
[ Consumable detected: Veritas tincture (Tier II).
Compels the drinker to answer all questions truthfully for one hour.
Present in: cake icing, wine glasses (all four).
]
All four.
She’d put it in her own glass, too.
In Teague’s.
In Tamsin’s.
He looked up at her.
She was watching him, perfectly calm, her pale silver eyes reflecting the nineteen little flames.
“You’ve drunk from your own glass,” he said.
“I have.”
“You’ll have to answer my questions truthfully, then.
For an hour.”
“I will.” She smiled.
“Isn’t it exciting?
An hour of perfect honesty.
I so rarely get to enjoy it.” She sipped her wine.
“I’ll go first, if you like.
Then you.”
Lucan looked at her for a long moment.
Then he blew out the candles.
“Ask,” he said.
“Are you Lucan Marr?” said Lady Fennick.
The tincture was in the icing.
He hadn’t eaten any.
But it was in the air, too, he realised, faintly, in the steam rising from the cake, in the scent of the orchids.
He could feel it at the back of his throat, a tight, cold, insistent pressure, like a hand on the back of his neck, pushing.
Answer.
He could have bought an antidote.
The Market had them.
One thought, one word, and the panel would have dropped a pill into his pocket that nobody else could see.
He’d thought about it, in the second after the panel flickered.
He didn’t.
He looked at her.
At her true name, hanging in the air above her black silk shoulders.
“Lucan Marr died in Pit Nine,” he said.
“On the same night as Dez Harlow.
He was thrown down a spoil chute among forty-three corpses on the orders of your brother, Edmund Varga.
Who was born Edmund Varga on Lower Cinder Street, in the same building I was born in, three floors up.” He held her eyes.
“As were you.”
The garden was utterly silent.
Even the fountain seemed to have stopped.
Lady Isolde Fennick didn’t move.
She sat with her wine glass halfway to her lips and her face perfectly still.
The only thing that changed was her eyes.
The pale silver in them seemed to darken, slowly, like a sky before a storm.
Lord Teague had stopped coughing.
Tamsin Marsh was staring at Lucan with her mouth slightly open.
“My turn,” said Lucan.
“Was Edmund Varga your brother?”
The tincture took her.
He watched it happen.
Her lips parted, and her throat moved, and the words came out of her in that low, clear, cool voice, as though she were reading them off a page.
“Yes.”
“Did you have your husband killed?”
“Yes.”
“Did Varga do it for you?”
“Yes.” Her face didn’t change.
Only her voice: a slight tightness in it, now, like a wire pulled taut.
“Aurelian was a fool.
He was going to sell the Concern to the Crown.
He’d have given everything away for a title and a seat on the Privy Council.
I’d spent twelve years making that company into what it is.
I wasn’t going to let him.” She set down her glass.
“Edmund arranged the horse.
It was a very good job.
He was always very good at accidents.”
“And afterward, you paid him.”
“No.
He paid me.” A thin, cold smile.
“He was my little brother.
I took him out of Lower Cinder Street.
I gave him everything he had.
His name.
His position.
His house.
The bone-coal he stole from my company was my gift to him.
My wedding present to myself, you might say.
And every quarter, he paid me back a share of it.
As he should.” She tilted her head.
“Edmund understood debts, Mr.
Thorne.
Better than anyone.
It was the only thing we had in common.”
“And the forty-three?”
“Forty-five.” She didn’t blink.
“I didn’t know about them.
Not the details.
I knew that Pit Nine’s safety figures were very good.
I knew Edmund was very efficient.
I chose not to ask how.” She looked at him.
“That’s true, isn’t it?
You can see that it’s true.”
He could.
He hated that he could.
“My turn,” she said.
“Who sent me the parcel?”
“I did.”
“Who sent the Bureau the bodies?”
“I did.”
“Who killed my brother?”
“He killed himself,” said Lucan.
“With a knife I gave him.
After I made him read every name on the wall of the gallery where he’d thrown them.
Out loud.”
Lady Fennick looked at him for a very long time.
Then she began, very softly, to laugh.
“Oh,” she said, when she’d finished.
She dabbed her eyes with a corner of her napkin.
“Oh, that’s very good.
That’s very good.
I always told him he’d be killed by a clerk.
I never imagined it would be a miner.” She shook her head, still smiling.
“Edmund was weak, Mr.
He was cruel and clever and very useful, and he was weak.
He killed himself because he couldn’t bear to lose.
I never could teach him otherwise.” She picked up her wine again.
“I don’t grieve him.
I’m telling you that truthfully.
I’m only sorry it was you who got to see it, and not me.”
Lucan said nothing.
“So.” She set the glass down.
“I have something you want, Mr.
Thorne.
And you have something I want.”
“The barge ledger,” said Lucan.
“The back pages of it.
The payments.
The four names.” Her silver eyes held his.
“Give them to me.
All the copies.
Every one.
And in return, I will give you your life.
Miss Marsh’s petition will be withdrawn.” She didn’t look at Tamsin.
“You’ll be Lucan Aurel Thorne of Lowmere, apothecary, for the rest of your days.
You can sell your miraculous medicines to whomever you like.
You can feed porridge to Lord Teague’s monster.
I’ll even send you customers.” She smiled.
“You’ll be very rich, and very happy, and very safe.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then the petition goes ahead,” said Lady Fennick.
“In three days.
Miss Marsh has very good lawyers, thanks to me, and some very good witnesses, also thanks to me.
And Inspector Maren Voss of the Detective Bureau will be called to testify under oath.
She’ll be asked about a certain warehouse fire in Brassmarket on the first of Thaw.
Why she took every Constable within a mile of Coldwater Mill with her.
On whose information.” Lady Fennick tilted her head.
“Inspector Voss has been a thorn in Lord Teague’s side for many years.
I’m sure he’d be delighted to see her hanged for conspiracy to murder.”
Teague coughed gently into his handkerchief.
“Delighted,” he agreed.
Lucan sat very still.
“Those,” said Lady Fennick pleasantly, “are your choices.
Truthfully.”
The tincture was still at the back of his throat.
Cold.
Insistent.
He could feel it pushing.
He didn’t need it to.
“I’ll keep the ledger,” he said.
Lady Fennick’s smile didn’t move.
Her eyes did.
“I’ll keep it,” Lucan said, “and the copies, and I’ll keep them somewhere you’ll never find.
And if anything happens to me, or to anyone in my house, or to the nine children in the crypt at St.
Ivo’s, or to Inspector Voss, all of those copies go where you don’t want them to go.
Not the Herald.
Not the Bureau.
Not the Commissioner, or Seat Seven, or the Registry.” He leaned forward.
“The King.”
The garden was silent.
“Aldric the Fourth has a thread of his own mana in every coin in this kingdom,” Lucan said.
“Every single one.
It must cost him a great deal.
I imagine he takes a very great interest in where his money goes.” He looked at her, at her true name, at the black frayed thread running to a husband who’d wanted to sell the company to the Crown.
“And I imagine he’d be very interested to learn what happened to the last man who tried to sell him the largest mining concern in his kingdom.”
For the first time, something moved in Lady Isolde Fennick’s perfect face.
It was gone in an instant.
But he saw it.
It wasn’t fear.
It was hunger.
“Oh,” she said softly.
“Oh, you are good.” She leaned back in her chair, looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read.
“Then we’re at war, Mr.
Thorne.
How very delightful.” She lifted her glass.
“Happy birthday.”
Tamsin caught him at the glass doors.
Rook stepped between them at once, his hand on his sword.
She stopped.
She looked at Rook, then past him at Lucan.
In her dark green gown, with the pearls in her hair, under the starlight through the glass dome, she looked very young and very small.
“Is it true?” she said.
Her voice was low and fierce.
“What you said in there.
Under the tincture.
It was in the air, I could feel it.
Is it true?”
“Which part?”
“All of it.
Varga.
The chute.
The forty-five.” She swallowed.
“Tobin.”
“Yes,” said Lucan.
“All of it.”
She stood very still.
“She asked me what I wanted,” Tamsin said.
“For your life.
When she first sent for me.
She said she’d give me anything.” Her mouth twisted.
“I said I wanted years.
Your years.
Every single one.
And she said she’d give me something better.
She said she’d give me every debt in Brassmarket.
Every bondsman, every loan, every note.
Thousands of them.
She said I could Bind the whole quarter if I liked.” She looked down at her hands, clasped in front of her green silk.
“She said it like she was offering me a box of chocolates.”
Lucan said nothing.
“I went to St.
Ivo’s,” Tamsin said, without looking up.
“This morning.
To Tobin’s grave.
And I saw them, through the crypt window.
The children.
Nine of them.
Singing hymns with that drunk old priest.” She lifted her eyes.
“One of them had a doll with no face.”
“Pip,” said Lucan.
“Pip.” Tamsin’s jaw tightened.
“She was waving at the window.
At me.
Like she knew me.” Something moved in her face, quick and painful, and was gone.
“It doesn’t change anything.
You understand?
It doesn’t change what you owe me.
It doesn’t bring Tobin back.
You still killed him.
And I’m still going to collect.”
“I know.”
“The petition’s in three days.”
“I know.”
She looked at him a moment longer.
Then she turned and walked back into the garden, among the white orchids, toward the table where Lady Fennick sat waiting with a glass of wine, smiling.
Ignatius was waiting up for them when they got home.
He was sitting in his armchair by the window of the back room, in the dark, with his ebony cane across his knees and his blind face turned toward the glass.
“She’s moving money,” he said before Lucan had even closed the door.
“A great deal of it.
The moment you left.
I can hear it all over the city.
Fennick coin.
Teague coin.” He tilted his head, listening.
“To the Registry.
To a lawyer’s office in the Lamplighters’ Quarter.
To a man named Harrick, a foreman at Pit Nine.
Sixty silver.” He paused.
“And to someone else.
A great deal more.
Two thousand silver.
To a place in Tallowgate where I’ve heard that sort of money go before.”
“Where?”
Ignatius turned his milky eyes toward Lucan.
“The Hanged Bishop,” he said softly.
“Saul Varney’s out of the infirmary, my boy.
And he’s hiring.”