A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 30

30

As ignoble attempts to escape pursuers by dashing through the ship went, this was Maud’s least favourite of her attempts thus far. Last time had involved a cheetah, and she’d been unsteady from the effects of a flung curse. She’d also had Hawthorn at her side, and the knowledge that she’d be relatively safe in crowded spaces and very safe once they reached her cabin.

This time, none of that applied.

“Where to?” Violet asked as they ran past a young woman who, wide-eyed, gathered two toddling boys into her skirts.

Maud wanted to snap at Violet, and also to burst into tears. Had letting Maud make the decisions ended in anything except more and more disastrous chaos, up to this point? Couldn’t someone else do it?

“Cargo hold,” she heard herself say. At least there’d be plenty of dark, poky places to hide and take a breath, and plan their next move.

“Slow down,” Violet hissed as they emerged into the Grand Reception. She enforced this by grabbing Maud’s hand. “People will remember which direction we went, if we’re running like hellions.”

It was crowded beneath the glass dome, a well-dressed mill of people emerging at a sedate, chattering amble from the main artery of corridors. Perhaps there’d been a performance, or some other activity that Maud could have attended if she hadn’t been so busy falsifying a séance—though was it false if there was a real ghost involved?—and being denounced as a career criminal, and if she hadn’t spluttered like a beached cod instead of defending herself—oh, God, what would Robin do if she went to prison ?

“Maud,” said Violet sharply. She squeezed two of Maud’s fingers together hard enough for the flare of pain to puncture Maud’s spiralling thoughts. “Breathe slower, walk faster.”

Maud shook her head to clear it. Her chest felt overfull of air. “Sorry.”

Violet was looking over her shoulder. Her head whipped back to face the elevators, her brow clouded. “Damn and fuck. And he saw me too.”

“Who?”

“Morris. Hopefully Hawthorn’s keeping Chapman distracted. Come on.”

They pushed their way towards the closest elevator. Maud ignored the grunt of outrage from a monocled man as she ducked beneath his elbow, pulling Violet with her, and slithered inside the half-full elevator just as the attendant pulled the cage closed.

A series of gasps and the monocle’s withering “I say, sir” heralded Morris doing his level best to reach the elevator.

“Going down,” said the attendant.

“Open the door,” snarled Morris, finally in front of them.

“Elevator’s full, sir.”

It was not. But the cage was closed.

Maud clung to Violet’s arm. Morris, breathing hard, stared at them from a yard away. Murmurs of shocked displeasure came from the others in the elevator. Maud contemplated swooning. If he reached through the gaps and grabbed her—if he tried to force the cage open again—

Lord Hawthorn would have done it without thinking twice. Even Chapman might have made a pompous fuss and demanded the elevator be halted so he could remove the pair of criminals.

But Maud saw, clear as if written, the moment when Morris’s habit of working in the shadows combined with his awareness that he was a servant in a space full of first-class passengers who were about to ask him his business.

The hesitation was enough. With a jolt, the elevator slid downwards.

Morris swore and looked around. Maud’s eyes were at the level of his waist, then his knees, and then his shoes moved and he began to run again.

“Are you all right, miss?” asked someone from behind them. “Is that chap causing trouble?”

“Oh, it’s awful,” said Violet, a masterful throb of tears in her voice. “He won’t leave her alone.”

This time the murmuring was supportive.

“I’ll call ship security at once if I see him again, miss,” said the attendant. Maud sent him a tremulous smile.

They took the elevator down two decks to the Grand Foyer. Morris was nowhere to be seen when they stepped off. From there they plunged down the staircase that led to the cargo hold, and Maud only took a conscious, rib-expanding breath when they’d stepped through the hatch into the familiar grey-gold dark.

“Don’t just stand there.” Violet tugged her between piles of crates and canvas-draped trunks. Maud stubbed her toe on an errant protrusion and yelped, then clapped her hand over her mouth. She listened hard but heard only the ship’s engines and the complaints of parrots from the menagerie corner. Perhaps if Morris appeared they could set the cheetahs on him.

Violet stopped next to a hulking shape tethered to the floor with ropes. “Hm. It’s not a dark street, but I suppose it’d look like one in a vision.”

“What?”

Violet was already opening the door. “ Harriet, on a dark street, climbs into a motorcar .”

The notebook. Robin’s vision. “Are—are you sure?”

“It gets us out of the open, in any case.”

“Can’t you hide us by magic?”

“I’d rather hide us by magic and by actual hiding,” said Violet shortly. She hauled and squeezed herself into the car’s cabin, and Maud followed, tugging the door closed behind her.

Violet sat on the floor with her knees tucked up and her back to the opposite door. Maud lay on the backseat, just beneath eyeline if someone were to glance at the windows. Inside the car, the smell of the cargo hold gave way to a richer one of new leather. Maud could only just make out Violet’s face, her hair gleaming like green-rotted copper in the meagre light, her pale gloves moving through a cradle.

“A curtain-spell? Good. Make it fast.”

Maud startled. Mrs. Navenby had been silent, her presence undetectable, since they’d left the séance. She’d entirely forgotten she was wearing the locket.

“I am, ” muttered Violet. “I’m trying to keep it confined to the car, that’s all.”

A pearly shimmer expanded from Violet’s hands and vanished.

“There. Nobody will be able to hear us, or see anything out of the ordinary, unless they come within the spell’s radius.”

They sat in a fraught breathing silence. Maud broke it as a thought elbowed its way into her mind. “Actually, this is my third time running from pursuers. If you count the time I ran away from Mrs. Vaughn’s cabin, when she caught me in there. And I was the one following Morris then, but it only made things worse. It made me look awfully guilty.” She looked down at Violet, a bubble of dread and anger rising within her. “Why did you tell me to run this time? Why did I do what you said?”

“Thank you, Violet. You’re welcome, Maud,” snapped Violet. “Would you rather have stayed there and let Chapman handcuff you?”

“Running makes it look like we have something to hide! Like we are jewel thieves and con artists. If Chapman and Morris go to the master-at-arms with the story of being secret policemen, then they’ll go straight to my cabin! Are we supposed to stay hidden down here for the rest of the voyage?”

“We’ve less than a full day at sea left. I know it’s not the conditions you’re accustomed to, Miss Blyth, but do you have any better ideas?”

Maud didn’t. Perhaps if she calmed down she could think of one, but her mind was going even faster than her heart, skipping back and forth, picking up threads of thought and shaking them into nothing. Neither of them was at their best with their nerves being shredded like this.

She opened her mouth with an apology in it. What came out was: “Violet. The rune on your neck.”

The red glow was like the burning end of a cigarette glimpsed at night, faintly illuminating the space behind Violet’s head. Violet put her hand to it. “It was itching before, too, I didn’t think…”

“That can’t be a good sign, can it?”

“Maud,” Violet said abruptly. “Get out of the car. Get away from me.”

“But… the curtain-spell.”

“ Yes , but I think—”

Footsteps sounded somewhere in the cargo bay.

Maud flattened herself to the cushioned seat, propping her head at a low angle for the comfort of being able to meet Violet’s eyes. She trusted Violet’s curtain-spell. Even so, she hardly dared to breathe.

Was it a crew member on some innocent errand? Hewitt come to see to the animals? Even if Maud lifted her head to peer through the window, she’d see only the nearest pile of crates.

The rune gave another red throb.

“ Tracking, ” said Mrs. Navenby.

“It must be,” said Violet in a grim whisper.

“A tracking clause to a rune-curse overrules a warding,” Maud blurted.

Violet stared at her. Maud stared back. Edwin would be so proud of her if she survived this; sometimes she did manage to retain the things he talked about, after all.

She ventured, “Could it… overrule a curtain-spell?”

“Shitting Christ,” said Violet weakly. “I—”

“Good afternoon, ladies,” said Chapman.

Maud, through the drenching crash of fear, had never wanted so badly to be someone else. If she were Robin, she could land a solid blow or two in Violet’s defence. If she were a magician, she could do some magic. What could she do, being only herself?

Nothing.

Chapman opened the car door a crack on Violet’s side. Violet was scrambling upright, a cradle of green light already coming to life in her hands, but Chapman said, “ No you don’t,” and tossed something through the gap. A small round thing bounced off Violet’s skirts and landed on the floor of the car. It gleamed like glass. Its contents were a swirl of grey smoke.

And then the glass ball fell apart, that grey smoke rushed thickly out to fill the car, and Maud choked. It was worse than fog. It was like sticking one’s head in a chimney, only without the heat.

Violet swore and turned to the half-open door. Chapman made a motion as if tossing a glass of wine down her front. Violet’s hands clapped together, clasped, and stayed there.

“Out you come, Miss Debenham,” said Chapman, taking her by the wrists.

Violet spat in his face and called him a name that Maud didn’t think she’d manage to bring herself to speak even if she lived to be a hundred, but she climbed out of the car.

Maud coughed. Her eyes were streaming with the smoke, her chest on fire. Her hands scrambled to open the door on her own side even as her mind howled protest.

Morris was there. Maud kicked out with her boots, but Morris ignored her as he would wave away a wasp. He reached in, took hold of one of her hands, and slipped a glowing piece of string around it.

Maud’s entire body went soft and useless at once. She could do nothing but follow, pliant and dull as a doll, as Morris tugged on the other end of the string and directed her to come out and be quiet and behave.

The Goblin’s Bridle. Robin had told her about this spell. Both he and Edwin had been subjected to it at various points during their own adventure; Bastoke’s people were clearly fond of it.

It was horrible. It was worse than horrible. It was sickeningly close to sitting aside in herself while Mrs. Navenby spoke, and yet worse, because she had no chance of seizing control again. Maud yearned to scream, but she couldn’t. She could do nothing but stand there at Morris’s side as they joined Chapman and Violet at the rear end of the car, the four of them awkwardly cramped in the space.

Behave . It had been said to Maud hundreds of times and never, never had she ever been left with no choice but to obey. She’d always been safe enough to misbehave and lash out and provoke. Now she stood in acute, trembling awareness of how much larger than her Morris was; of how much power he had over her; and that nobody would stop him if he decided to use it.

“Maud?” Violet sounded guttural with horror. “What have you— You leave her alone . I will slit your fucking throat.”

“So dramatic. I don’t think you will.” Chapman had the calmness of victory. “And she’s the one we’re interested in, Miss Debenham. You’re no more than a nuisance. Morris, give me the medium, and get rid of—”

The crack of Violet’s laughter echoed, wild as breaking stone, in the cargo hold. Maud would have jumped if she were able.

“You know even less than you think you do, young man.”

It didn’t sound like Violet. It didn’t look like Violet; her lips were drawn sneering back, her posture stiff with age. It was Mrs. Navenby.

“What the fucking hell,” muttered Morris. “Shut her up, Chapman.”

“You already tried that. Killing me was a fair effort, I will allow you that much, but I’m still talking. And I will continue to do so.”

Chapman looked from Violet to Maud and back again. Bewildered anger began to creep into his expression. “What—”

“Has my dear old friend Seraphina been keeping secrets from you? The Forsythia Club was doing magic beyond your comprehension before you were a spark in your father’s eye, my boy. Do you think a magician of my calibre would be limited, in death, to the use of mediums? There are barely any of them, after all.”

Maud, even as her heart skipped in slow realisation of what Violet was doing, wished savagely that she could turn her head to see Morris’s face. Still. Watching Chapman’s was satisfying.

“ This girl? ” Violet gestured with her magically bound hands towards Maud. “ She was only the closest useful mouthpiece. A prettier instrument than many I could have chosen, but not a special one. ”

“We’re wasting time and we’re in the open,” said Morris. “Bring them both along. Sort it out later.”

Chapman didn’t look pleased to be given orders, but he nodded.

Maud didn’t know if both of them being captured was better or worse, but at least Violet hadn’t been gotten rid of . And, selfishly, no matter what happened next, she was glad to have Violet with her. It would be easier to be brave.

Violet managed a quick wink down at Maud as the men directed them towards the hatch. Chapman was already building a spell that he said would discourage attention.

Maud hoped the wink meant that Violet had anything approaching a plan to get them out of this. Because Maud certainly didn’t.