A Breath of Frost (15 page)

They listened carefully, hearing only their own breaths echoing loudly in the dusty dark. Eventually Emma could make out a woman’s voice but it didn’t sound like Penelope’s mother. Nor did it sound distressed.

“I’ll just sneak up and have a look. Where’s the ladder?” Penelope wondered, her shoes scraping the beaten earth floor.

Emma squeaked in response. “That was my backside,” she added wryly.

Penelope shuffled around. “I can’t find the ladder.”

“Let me try,” Emma said.

“No, you don’t understand. I can’t find the ladder because there is
no
ladder. There are four walls I can touch without barely a step from the middle of the cellar and nothing overhead.”

“That’s impossible,” Gretchen said.

“There seems to be a lot of that going around,” Emma said, waving her hands wildly over her head. No ladder. She waved harder, then jumped up and down as high as she could.

“My eye!”

“My foot!”

But still no ladder.

“Blast,” she said. “Now that I could use a hand that glows, it’s not glowing.” She shook it, like a pocket watch she’d accidentally dropped and was hoping to reset. She swallowed thickly. “And do you know something?” she added in a strangled voice. “I don’t think I care for the feeling of being buried alive.” Cold sweat pinpricked her arms and the back of her neck. Her breathing felt shallow, rattling in her dry throat. She tried to picture
the stars, the forests of Berkshire, the stag in the park … anything but the walls closing in on her. “We really need to get out of here.”

“Let’s make a careful search,” Gretchen suggested. “In case there’s a tunnel leading outside. Didn’t the Catholics build escape routes when Henry the Eighth got all choppy and insane during the Reformation?” Gretchen spent so much time in libraries at balls that she’d developed very diverse reading habits.

Emma could barely remember her own name, never mind historical trivia. She counted her breaths the way she usually counted stars. Five for Cassiopeia, nine for Leo, seven for the Plough.

“Wait!” Penelope said. “Let’s link fingers so we always know where each of us is. We can stretch to investigate the walls and the floor.”

“It’s not like we can get lost in here,” Emma said tightly. “There’s not enough room. There’s not even enough air.”

“Are you sure about that?”

She thought of dead girls, witch knots, and turning into a deer. “Good point.”

It was slow, tedious work but the feel of cool stone and damp mud under her fingers was calming. The others didn’t seem to be as affected as she was. She focused on dragging her nails between the stones to find a hidden latch or lock.

“Got it!” Gretchen called out just as Emma’s hair started to fall out of its pin, slippery with sweat. “It feels like a regular doorknob but I don’t feel a door.”

“Turn it anyway,” Emma said.

A door opened to sunlight so bright it blinded them for a long, disorienting moment. Emma took a deep steadying breath, glad for the feel of the breeze on her face, even though it smelled strange, like flowers and sea salt.

They were definitely not in Penelope’s mother’s stillroom.

They emerged into a narrow alley between two crooked shops that rose over three stories high, blotting out the sunlight. The cobbles under their feet were marked with symbols. Pomegranates were strung like lamps, crisscrossing over the bridge from rooftop to rooftop. They were peeled open in sections, revealing phosphorescent red seeds. Below the red fruit lanterns, the narrow bridge teemed with every creature imaginable, haggling over tables piled with curiosities.

There were bottles filled with graveyard dirt, lengths of cords in every color imaginable, jars filled with feathers, herbs, and iron nails, stones with holes in them strung on pieces of leather, tarot cards, baskets of fruits, and tiny birds in wire cages swinging between the pomegranates. Silver coins crossed palms, mandrake roots were carefully inspected and sorted according to some process Emma didn’t recognize. A pack of white dogs with red ears slept in the shade. A little boy darted between passersby, chased by little shadows attached to some invisible creature.

Emma found her voice. “I guess we found the goblin markets.”

Between the humans, creatures prowled. A naked woman with a lion’s head padded by a man with ram’s horns. A little girl with a bloody, gap-toothed grin walked a griffin on a silver chain. Three men circled a pegasus with blue-black wings,
inspecting it as if it were a regular horse for purchase at Tatter-sall’s. And through the open window of a nearby tavern, goblins in red caps sang about murderers and poets over tankards of black ale.

“Is that the Thames?” Penelope leaned over the side of the railing between two narrow shops tilting toward each other. “I don’t live anywhere near the river.”

“And I don’t remember London Bridge looking quite like this, do you?” Emma shook her head, stunned.

“Not for nearly two hundred years,” Gretchen agreed. She pointed to pikes over the main drawbridge gate. Long black hair hung with silver charms caught the light. “They haven’t put heads on those pikes since then.”

Emma took a step back. “I’m not sure those heads are even human.”

“That doesn’t make it any less revolting,” Penelope said, sounding queasy. She turned back to the bustling market, watching a ghostly lady in a white dress drift by, icicles falling from her bell sleeves and breaking into pieces. The cousins stood and stared at the peculiar business of the bridge for longer than was probably wise.

Definitely longer than was wise.

Bells began to ring softly. Emma didn’t notice them at first. They blended into the confusing swirl of colors and textures but now she could see them hanging from wooden signs, attached to posts, on cat collars and dog collars and strung on a necklace of beads wound around the pomegranate lanterns. The sound was gentle at first, like wind chimes on a summer day. The volume
built and built, until the sound shivered through the air, turning summer day to autumn storm.

The street emptied.

Winged ladies took flight; hobs scurried up drainpipes to run across the roofs. Shop doors slammed shut and were bolted; hidden cellars opened and were locked just as quickly. A man with a mane of soft blue spikes like a hedgehog vanished entirely. A horse bolted down the way, hooves striking sparks.

“
Now
what?” Emma asked.

“The Order,” an old man spat as he shoved past them to the black iron railing. “Hide yourselves!” He pulled a shawl over his head and leaped off the bridge, a long white feather in his hand.

“We could jump too,” Penelope suggested, casting another dubious glance at the river. The old man had drifted easily down to a boat and he was now racing from deck to deck toward the shore.

“We’d break our heads on a boat,” Gretchen said.

“Or get eaten by a kraken,” Emma added.

“How do you know there are krakens in there?”

“How do you know there aren’t?”

A man shot past the opening of the alley. Those who hadn’t taken cover fled from him, including a beast with three rows of needle-teeth. The cousins crowded back into the alley. Emma peered through a clump of ivy trailing off the tavern sign. The man stopped at a stall across the street and spoke to a woman with long white hair. There was a black stone set into the top of his cane. “He’s turning back this way,” she warned, flattening
herself against the wall. “Since everyone else is avoiding him, we should too. He’s got to be a Keeper.”

“
By footprint I mark you, by iron I bind you
,” Penelope blurted out.

Emma and Gretchen stared at her. “Come again?”

“I stab you … no, that’s not right.”

“I should hope not.”

Penelope squeezed her eyes shut. Emma watched the man slide a coin to the white-haired lady. “
Struck through mud and struck through dirt, if you return, return to hurt
. That’s it. One of my mother’s rhymes,” Penelope explained impatiently. “Now we just need an iron nail.”

Gretchen pulled the hair bob Penelope’s mother had made them from her hair. “Try this.”

She tossed it at Emma, who watched the Keeper across the bridge turn around to face her way. He was momentarily distracted when two other men marched a woman with a bloody witch knot on her hand to a halt in front of him. She snapped something at them, sparks lifting the ends of her hair. The black stone set in the man’s cane exploded. He stumbled back, his hat tumbling to the ground and rolling toward Emma. She edged away from it as if it was poisonous.

The witch screamed pitifully when the Keeper, ignoring his hat, slipped a chain around her neck. The pendant was made of iron nails, bent over each other like wheel spokes, all circling another black stone. She cringed when it touched her. The bridge stank of lemons and fennel.

Emma dropped to her knees, where the dirt of the alley
spilled out onto the cobbles. She searched for human footprints among the hooves and claw marks. Finding one, she drove the pin through it with as much force as she could. The iron bit into her fingertips, bruising them. Penelope gave Emma her hairpin as well.

The witch sagged between her captors.

Penelope glanced around desperately before she leaped at an empty ale barrel, scratching furiously at the iron studs until her nails tore. The bands were rusted to the thick wooden slats. “It’s no use.”

“Give me your brooch!” Gretchen told her. She used the pin to dig a nail out of the soft wood of a window frame, grown gray with the steady drip of rain down the uneven walls. “Got one!”

Emma pierced another shoe print, and assorted marks belonging to boots, birds, cats, and what she swore must have been a badger the size of a pony. A prisoner’s cart with iron bars around the sides and across the ceiling rumbled into view. Inside, men and women sat with bound hands. One wore an iron collar attached to the bars. Even the other prisoners leaned away from her.

“This isn’t happening,” Emma whispered, feeling useless. She didn’t notice the clouds gathering, like ripe plums on a branch. Rain pelted the bridge, pinging off rooftops and cobblestones. At the very border of the stones, she saw the unmistakable print of an expensive shoe.

“The rest of the nails are stuck,” Gretchen replied, contemplating using her teeth. “Damn.” She ducked down. “I think the innkeeper just saw me.”

“But I need one more!”

“Use mine,” Cormac said from behind Emma’s shoulder. He wore breeches and a dark green cutaway coat. His cravat was spotless and the brim of his hat shadowed his face. She felt her cheeks flame just to hear his voice.

“You!” Gretchen hissed through the sudden rain. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Cormac didn’t look away from Emma. He offered her the nail the way other men would have offered a posy of rosebuds. “It will help,” he said. “But I’m afraid it won’t be enough. Folk magic can’t fool the Order. Not for long, anyway.”

Emma snatched it from him, relief and suspicion drowning any response she could have made. Jagged light speared the sky. The bridge shook under the force of the thunder, chasing down the lightning. She jabbed the nail through the last clear footprint, using her shoe heel to add as much force as she possibly could. Gretchen slipped between her and Cormac, scowling.

The witch was hauled up into the cart, where she sprawled on the floor spitting curses. No one looked their way. “It’s holding,” Emma murmured.

“But we still don’t know how to get home,” Penelope said, pushing her thick wet hair off her face. “And I wish you’d stop making it rain.”

“I can get you home,” Cormac said quietly.

“And why should we believe you?” Gretchen asked. “You’ve broken our trust before.”

“Stay here then, if you prefer.” He said it like it made no difference to him either way, as he took a bundle wrapped in black velvet from the leather satchel he wore across his chest like a
sword. Under the velvet was a doorknob made of cut glass and painted with a miniature map of London. “Or take this instead. It will take you back to London proper,” he said.

“Why are you helping us?” Gretchen asked.

“Does it matter?” Cormac asked in return. His wet hair tumbled over his forehead. His smile was grim and enigmatic.

“You could have taken us in before,” Emma said. “Several times in fact. Why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t have to,” he said curtly. “But you can stay here, if you’d like. It’s your choice, and I won’t offer it again.”

“Very well,” she said reluctantly, raising her voice to be heard over the wind. She wasn’t about to let her cousins be snatched away in an iron cart, or worse, just to save her pride.

“Just place the doorknob on any door and it will take you back,” Cormac instructed, handing it to Gretchen. She snarled but took it.

“There’s a cellar door over here.” Penelope motioned them to the back corner of the shop sharing the alley with the tavern.

“Not another cellar,” Emma muttered.

Gretchen crouched, gingerly setting the glass handle on the wooden door. Light filled the lines of the map like fire following a trail of lamp oil before it shone through, and stabbed out in all directions. Gretchen pulled and the door unlatched, opening so swiftly it slammed into the ground.

“How do we know he’s not sending us off somewhere worse?” Gretchen asked, not moving to climb down into the dark hole. Dust wafted up, disturbed by the rain.

“Because there is no place worse right now,” Penelope
squeaked, pointing at the mouth of the alley. Three men wearing badges with the iron wheel of the Order blocked any other hope of escape. “Emma, come on!” she added, trying to reach out, but Gretchen had already pushed her into the opening. Penelope grabbed Gretchen’s hand as she fell. They both tumbled out of sight. Emma ran to join them.

Cormac jerked her back like a flyaway kite. He was stronger than she remembered. Of course, last time she’d fallen
into
his arms. He hadn’t had to resort to snatching her against her will. She tugged back, trying to break his hold.

“I’m sorry, Emma,” he said as the door slammed shut and the painted glass handle cracked in half. The cellar was just a cellar again. “Saving them was the best I could do for you.”