Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

Temptation fluttered through her, bringing a smile to her lips. She was restless and weary of looking at the same walls. Evelina picked up her wrap and slid her book into her coat pocket. The shadows were long and thin, the afternoon classes letting out. She wasn’t supposed to leave the Ladies’ College, but what harm could there be in getting a newspaper?

She hurried across the lawn toward the college gate. She wasn’t sure which of the faculty knew that she was confined to the college, but the fewer people who saw her, the better. Walking with her head down and her hands in her pockets, she avoided the other students crisscrossing the grounds. The scent of the early evening meal—lamb stew by the smell of it—was already wafting through the crisp air.

The gates were ajar, students coming and going in twos and threes. Evelina stepped to the side, waiting for the stream to pass. The path to the main buildings snaked up the hill, but she wanted to go in the other direction. It was a two-minute walk to the street—one she’d done a hundred times. As long as she didn’t go more than a dozen steps from the university’s front entrance, she obeyed the letter of Keating’s orders not to stray from Camelin.

A knot of excitement was building inside her—proof of just how bored she was if buying a paper was a grand adventure. She darted toward the gate, meaning to slide through and away before she was noticed.

Heat flared up her arms, sharp to the point of searing. She jerked to a stop, no more than four steps from the open gates. The heat coalesced into a sharp prickling, as if thousands of hot pins were stabbing her forearms. The bracelets! She jerked up the sleeves of her coat to look at them, but they didn’t look any different. Yet what else could it be?

She’d known the bracelets allowed the Yellowbacks to track her, but she’d had no idea they could deliver this kind of pain. Growing stubborn, Evelina took another step forward. The pain intensified until it seemed swords stabbed her through the elbows. She jumped back with a gasp, cradling her arms. Sudden, frantic panic surged up. It was one thing to be forbidden to leave, quite another to be caged. She rushed toward the gate, desperate to hurl herself against the barrier, to break through to safety. Agony blinded her before she gained two strides.

Evelina staggered back, sweat turning chill in the autumn air. She was shaking, sickness rising inside her, but it was hard to say how much was physical shock and how much was anger.

“Miss Cooper?”

Her head snapped up. It was Juniper—Moriarty—standing outside the gate. He had a walking stick in hand as if on his way out for a carefree stroll. He turned and came her way, the sleek malacca cane swinging as he walked. “You look rather peaked.”

Her words came out almost as a snarl. “What have you done?”

His eyebrows went up in mock surprise. “Me?”

It had been bad enough being confined to the entire university campus, but now she was stuck in an area one-twentieth the size. As her nausea faded, fury came to the fore. “You might have warned me that the bracelets would keep me locked up inside the Ladies’ College!”

He stopped a few feet away, the cane elegantly poised. “Testing our limits, were we?”

“Are you amused?” she snapped.

“Not really. None of this was my doing. I would be far more interested to see what you might accomplish unshackled. But that was the short-term compromise Mr. Keating reached with the chancellor until your ultimate fate has been decided.”

She seethed in silence.

“No one told you that your, uh, restraints had been altered?”

“No.”

“It did not occur to you that this might be the case?”

Evelina looked away, angry with herself for not anticipating more betrayal. “I just wanted a copy of the Bugle .”

He made a sympathetic face. “I’ll have one delivered.”

“Thank you.” But she didn’t care about the paper now. Her mind was too busy scrambling to grasp the implications of her shrinking prison.

Moriarty cocked his head. “I understand that the restraints are painful?”

“Quite.”

“Interesting. They are quite ineffective unless one is born with inherited powers.”

That caught her attention enough that she met his eyes—and then she regretted it. There was an avid sharpness to his expression that made her feel like a bug in a jar. “How do they work?” she asked. “They look like plain silver. That accounts for some of the reaction, but not everything.”

Though metal and gems often absorbed magic—especially gold—silver and the supernatural were a poor mix. No one knew why. Of course, that was precisely the sort of overlap of science and magic she wanted to research, and Camelin’s archive of books on magic had made the Ladies’ College her first choice. Little had she known that attending a university was no guarantee of the education she’d desired.

He went on. “I’ve never examined the mechanism, but both clockwork and magnetism are involved, as well as a rare element that reacts with magical energy to produce a chemical discharge. Only someone with inherited talent will trigger them.”

“Do you know how to get them off?” she asked.

“Alas, no. All that I know I’ve gleaned from the letter your patron wrote to Sir William, and Mr. Keating omitted that detail.”

“How unfortunate.”

“I concur.”

Moriarty took her arm and began slowly leading her toward the residence. Evelina forced herself not to shrink away. Common sense said that he might be as dangerous an ally as he would be a foe, but she wasn’t in a position to be choosy.

“I count my blessings that I aligned myself with King Coal and not Keating,” he said. “Your patron is too fond of absolute control. It’s impractical.”

“For me, certainly. It seems to be working for Keating,” she snapped, her anger hardening to a clear, sharp focus.

“For now, perhaps, but force is a clumsy weapon. It will fail him in the end.”

Moriarty’s calm critique amused her even as it made her uneasy. “Why did you involve yourself with the steam barons?”

Moriarty gave a quiet laugh. “Let us just say that I was in need of a position to get a start in the world. The Blue King opened my eyes to a dazzling array of enterprises that I had only guessed at as a well-bred young man of middling fortunes.”

“Enterprises?”

“There are men and women in all walks of life who will do one’s bidding. If there is a want or desire, they will fill it as long as one provides something they want in return. The Blue King is a master weaver of such webs of reciprocal desires. I studied his methods with great interest.”

She wondered what desire the Blue King had seen in Moriarty. Ambition seemed likely, but there was also the hauteur of one convinced of his own intellectual superiority. In fact, he was a bit like her Uncle Sherlock. “You are very frank.”

“Only with you, Miss Cooper. You of anyone understand the twin attraction and danger of being close to one of the Steam Council.”

“True.” And she had been resigned to Keating’s chess game until now—but after what just happened, part of her was screaming to dash the board and all its pieces to the floor.

Moriarty gave a thin smile. “Evidently Keating wishes you to remain close.”

“So it seems.” Evelina clenched her teeth at his quip, but then forced herself to remain polite. “And the Blue King let you go so that you could pursue your academic career?”

“He will recall me if he requires my services.” They had reached the steps of the women’s residence. Moriarty stopped, his expression serious. “I assume the reason you wished for a newspaper was that you’ve heard about the prince’s illness?”