Tiffany Trent: The Unnaturalists

I don’t like being ordered about by the likes of the Wad, but he has a point. If the sylphids get out on their own, they could truly wreak havoc. Not on the order of the Sphinx, of course, but still. They’re small and obviously adept at cursing things. As a group, it’s possible they could do a good bit of damage.

Of course they may just find a way to escape and have done, like the kobold at Miss Marmalade’s. Or the Grue. The Museum lost him not long after I came here, and such a creature is very, very bad to lose. No one knew exactly how it had all happened, but of course the Architects of Athena were blamed. Anything that goes wrong is always blamed on the Architects.

Or Athena herself, though saints know she’s been dead for five hundred years. She was a Princess, the only female Pedant. She was also a witch. Unfortunately for her, her father the Emperor happened to dislike witches quite a bit. He took to heart the saints’ old maxim, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live . He had her hauled out to the Creeping Waste and executed. Practically every household with a daughter has the painting called The Chastening of Athena hanging somewhere. It shows Athena dissolving into salt, looking back mournfully at our great city of New London. It’s a warning to us all.

Of course, in my typical stubborn fashion, I rather see it as a challenge.

“Miss Nyx!” Charles shouts from under the bench. I realize I’ve been daydreaming again.

I make certain the sylphids are still occupied with the skylights, and then I slip out the door.

I hurry down the corridor to the emergency closet, remembering just as I pull it open and find no containment unit that the old unit was sent out for repairs. The only unit we have left right now is in storage below the old observatory.

I run past a series of dour paintings, the founding Pedants of the Museum and the University of New London. The last one is of Athena, but I’ve never seen her face in this portrait, because it’s draped all in black.

I want to pull it down and look on her face, to see the one whose footsteps I’m following when she’s calm and serene.

Mind, I’m not interested in her because of the magic. No, I follow her because I’m determined to change history. We have an Empress now. Why can we not have a female Pedant? I’ve heard there was also an Empress in Old London. Surely there were female Pedants there, as well.

It’s hard to know. History begins with Saint Tesla and the experiment that brought us here to found New London. That’s the only history for which there are more than whispers and rumors. The rest of history before the New Creation is as shrouded as Athena’s portrait. We find rumors of it in antiquary shops, in the codices we use to identify Unnaturals and the Holy Scientific Bible, but Old London simply isn’t spoken of in polite conversation. One mustn’t dwell on the past. Or so Aunt Minta says.

I’ll take the old lift on the way back, but the stairs are faster right now. I hurry down them into the darkness; my boots echo on the worn marble.

Two floors down and the storage corridor greets me with its moldering damp and flickering everlights.

Right as I come alongside another stair barred by an iron gate, all the lights go out. I stand still, holding my breath. If the lights are out, that means that everything’s out—the paralytic fields, containment units, water closets. I can’t help but think about the other day when someone pushed me through the field and nearly let the Sphinx loose. Who did it? And why?

The Architects cross my mind again, and I’m not sure what to do. We’re trained upstairs to lock ourselves in safety closets until help arrives. But it’s pitch dark and there are no safety closets. No one knows I’m down here. Leave it to the Museum designers to assume no one would be in storage during an emergency.

And then I hear it—a deep inhalation, a vast purr. Something is breathing down here. Gooseflesh raises on my exposed skin as I think of the Grue again. Pedant Mervold managed to collect it on his expedition in a Southern stinkswamp. It was a dark and mysterious creature—couldn’t bear being exposed to light. Supposedly, it ate people’s hearts and lived inside their skins, stashing the bits of their organs in little caches here and there. Father wasn’t sure it belonged on display, but Mervold was so proud of capturing it and it truly was fascinating. It was on exhibit for a little while, trapped in a field like the other Greater Unnaturals. And then one day, it vanished without a trace. The entire Museum was scoured for bodies or bits of bodies, but the search turned up nothing.

Rumor has it that it’s still hiding in some dark corner. And no one knows how long a Grue can go without eating.

Another deep breath. Can it hear me? Is it stalking me even now in the dark?

Something floats past my fingertips—the ghost of scales, the tickle of phantom claws.

I can’t help it.

I scream.

I scream so loud I think it scares the lights back on.

They flare again along the corridor, brighter than they were before. The Museum above me hums and whirs to life; the pipes along the ceiling clank with steam forced from the myth furnaces deep below.

I still think I can hear breathing under the murmur and hiss, but Father would say it’s just my foolish fancy, and that I should be careful of my fancies getting the better of me.

I shrug and move on past crates and leaning, canvas-covered paintings, past the dark mouths of rooms filled with dusty specimens. Things shimmer in the gloom—glass eyes and scaled wings. I look carefully to see if anything has gotten loose in the power drain, but storage is empty of any living thing except me.

The closet is unlocked, thanks be to the saints, because I forgot my keys in all the kerfuffle. I drag the unit out of the closet, and its wheels squeak behind me all the way to the lift. I’d swear the breathing noises hitch as if I’ve disturbed something deep in a dream, but again, I am nothing if not fanciful.

I slam the lift door closed as quickly as possible, just in case the Grue is on my heels.

Upstairs is a madhouse. Scholars and Pedants are dashing everywhere, casting disdainful glances at me as I struggle to get the ancient unit over a crack in the tiles. I’m considering leaving it so that I can go find Father more quickly (though the thought of the Wad impaled by sylphid curses is pleasant), when Pedant Lumin enters the Museum through the University archway and comes to my aid.

“Let me help you, Miss Nyx,” he says in that low, steady voice.

He mistakes my frown for annoyance at him, but I’m thinking of how I once again look just as I did the other day—wild hair, stained apron, ungloved. I look down and see my left boot is also unlaced and my face flames. Why do I care this much about appearances?

I hear the smile in his voice as he says, “Unless you’d rather keep dragging that heavy thing along behind you. Where are you taking it?”

“Upstairs.”

He raises a brow. Again, I feel as though I’m looking at him through a cloud. He’s not handsome, but certainly not unhandsome, either. And I definitely don’t feel as though someone’s dumped a chamber pot over my head when he’s looking at me.

I stammer a bit before I can think what to say. Finally, the words push through my teeth. “I have to find my father; there’s been a slight accident upstairs in Cataloguing. Charles requested that I bring Father along with the unit.”

Pedant Lumin’s lips quirk, before he says, “Would you like me to take the unit upstairs for you?”

Normally, I wouldn’t allow anyone to do something like this for me. I don’t like showing weakness. But in this case, the sooner the unit gets upstairs the better.