Tiffany Trent: The Unnaturalists

I can’t think of any Doctrine of Logic that could save me. Not that I believe in it anymore, anyway. It’s not that the news is so very shocking—why else would they hide everything about my mother but the one thing that took away her power?—but the perspective is so very skewed. There is no language to express the wrongness of it. I don’t even want to think about what must have happened to my mother, trapped as I am in a society that feared and reviled her gifts.

There is nothing more to say.

Father slouches off down the corridor, back toward the main stair.

I pace until my feet remind me that they’re incapable of such abuse. I return to my pallet, thirst turning my throat and mouth to nettles. They haven’t left any water or food for me. This is not a good sign.

I think about what he said about my mother, how Aunt Minta never wanted to discuss her. I was told she died in childbirth, something which is still all too common. Aunt Minta had moved in to help care for me and Father had never remarried, his heart too broken. But now I’m sure there’s more than I will ever know.

I press my hand against my chest. The Heart ticks under a thin layer of skin. When I touch it, the skin dissolves and the Heart rests in my palm, singing out its ancient song. I look at it, trying to understand who made it, where it came from, how it came to be. There are characters I can’t read incised into its metal chambers. All I know is that it, like me, yearns to be in the place it most belongs.

Ironic that I thought the Museum was where I belonged and now I’m imprisoned here. I frown, remembering how I soared toward New London, as I looked down and saw my purpose laid out so clearly before me. And now I know I’m only a few feet from the goal. A powerful field and a rusting iron gate are all that separate me from it, but they’re enough to allow Charles to win and everyone else—the people of New London, the Elementals, the Tinkers—all to lose.

A slurring step. Charles. I press the Heart against my own again. My skin moves to accept it. Power surges through my limbs and I wonder . . . I wonder.

He is there in the doorway with his cursed jar.

The field dissipates.

I try one more time.

“Charles,”—I can’t help but keep addressing him that way, even if he’s not really Charles anymore—“what is it that you want? Is it really worth destroying everything for?”

He half-smiles. “Amusing that you should ask. We want the same things, little witch. Adventure, exploration, a means for our legacy to go on. It’s only just circumstances that Charles found me in my lair first and offered me a bargain I couldn’t refuse. In exchange for his body, I give him power. And soon, when he’s cut that Heart out of your chest and placed it in the Etheric Engine, he’ll give me what I crave.”

“And what is that?” I say. The Grue’s words coming through Charles’s lips and tongue make me shudder. His menace and cunning are darker and more ancient than any Elemental I’ve ever come across. I curse Pedant Mervold in the back of my brain for ever thinking he could contain this thing.

“New worlds. New bodies. New powers. A place free of the machinations of my kin, where I will no longer be confined to some stinking marshland eating muskrats in the dark.”

“But in your greed you are destroying everything!” I say. Charles’s hand closes on my upper arm like cold iron.

He nods. “Some things must be sacrificed. It was a shame to destroy my sisters, but their energies were necessary to increase my power. You are not the first, little witch, and you certainly won’t be the last.”

I start to summon energy to defy him, but he sends a deep, cold shock down through my arm.

“Naughty, naughty,” he says, rattling the jar to make sure I see it. I hear the Grue laughing underneath his words and I feel sick. “Up you go, now.” He pushes me before him. I don’t try to dissuade him any longer. I must figure out how I’ll get the cursed jar out of his hands so that it’s no longer a threat to any of us, how I’ll be able to run back down and get through the gate on my own.

The Heart whispers in me that I have the power to do all things. I’m comforted by that knowledge, even if it turns out to be ultimately false.

We enter the old observatory. The Empress is there with her daughter. I take one look at Olivia and her sealed lips. This at least is something easy I can do.

Open, I whisper. The threads unravel and fall as dark dust from her mouth. Though she still says nothing, her eyes are shining as she watches Charles push me toward my doom. I look at her mother and then I understand completely.

Hiding inside the Empress’s skin is a shriveled old man barely holding onto life. A warlock so ancient he saw the dawn of the New Creation with Saint Tesla. John Vaunt. The First Emperor and father of Athena. He is still alive, hiding inside a woman’s skin. And he wants his Heart.

And this is why the girl, the Princess Olivia, has been bound from speaking. She saw early on what hid behind the Empress’s stiff skirts. Is she truly the Emperor’s daughter? Whether she is or not, I see her heart. And she is far more fit to rule than that wizened thing ever was.

My Aunt Minta is there and Lucy and other people I don’t know—Pedants, Refiners, Lords . . . But why is the new Lord Grimgorn not with his wife? Perhaps he’s still so angry at me that he’s glad I’ll soon be gone.

The Etheric Engine looms over me like a great octopus. Its tentacles lie quiet beneath the dome; the Waste stirs inside its nevered beaker. I stop.

“Give me the Heart,” Charles says from behind me. “And we can end this ridiculous charade.”

“No,” I say softly.

Charles’s lips curl. The Empress’s dead eyes glint.

“If I have to, I will strap you to that table and cut the Heart out with my own hands. I know you’re hiding it under your skin. Give it here or else prepare yourself to suffer.”

“Do what you like,” I say. “Just know that the Waste will sweep through this place faster than it did at Virulen. All will die if you use the Heart in this Experiment, I promise you.” I’m stalling, hoping something will occur to me. If there was a way to control the Waste, to stop it from leaving the observatory and swallowing all of New London, I might be able to stop Charles and the Empress at one go.

“What are the promises of a witch?” Charles laughs. “I will have the Heart. And your soul. And everyone’s in this room if I so choose.”

Then he begins to chant. The Waste whirls; the tentacles of the strange Engine rise. There’s a noise like a clap of lightning and then a fan of light opens just under the mouth of the Engine. Things move in it—ribbons of roads, people in odd clothes. A peal of bells from some distant church echoes underneath the dome. I smell the breeze from an ancient world I’ve only heard of but never visited—Old London.

Charles laughs. “And now the Heart to speed me on my journey!” He reaches for me.

I hear the sound above the wildly ringing bells before he does. A thundering . . . the sound of hooves and wings and . . . song.

I want to laugh as the dome breaks above us. Tiles rain down and a huge, blocky face peers in at us. I glance at the grains of the Waste stirring, stirring, stirring in their beaker.

Charles’s gaze moves upward to meet that of the Giant glaring down at him.

And that’s when I do it. I reach forward and grab the horrid jar out of his slackening hands. Before I can think, with all the power coursing through my veins, I throw it to the ground.

Charles’s gaze returns to me, his eyes nearly white with terror. He screams.

It’s an echo of that day long ago when I unwittingly freed the sylphs with my growing magic. I don’t hear anything else because the release of souls nearly deafens me. They rise in a ghostly whirlwind, singing, screaming, crying, mumbling . . . so much noise I clap my hands over my ears. Their sound breaks the glass in the Engine. Together, the souls and the Waste whip up in a devilish dance. They sweep up people like matchsticks—I watch in horror as Lucy, Charles, my father, the Empress . . . all are thrown through the air like dolls. Olivia crouches under the orrery, holding to it for dear life. Aunt Minta I can’t see at all.