Curio (40 page)

She met his gaze then, her eyes wide and dazed, and nodded.

They climbed out of the truck and crossed the gravel lot behind the grocer's to the connecting alley running behind the Colfax storefronts. The sun sank dangerously close to the mountains looming over Foothills Quarter. Shadows bled across the dirt beneath their feet.

After a brief search, Whit hefted a chunk of broken cement. His fingers curled around the rough surface, pressing in until his palm stung. The pain was nothing. Nothing compared to an exsanguinator striping his back. Would he experience it anew for the girl next to him? In the truck when he'd held her, he'd been almost willing. Now his brain screamed, “No.” But his feet continued down the path. Perhaps he did still have Cagey's potion running through his veins. Or maybe he was just stupid.

He stopped at the back door of Haward's Mercantile and peered through the beveled glass. Nothing moved inside. He checked the alley for onlookers then hoisted the rock and lobbed it through the pane. The shatter of glass carried through the quiet. Marina jumped and scanned the alley.

“Clear,” she muttered.

He snaked his hand through the opening and felt around for the knob inside. His stomach soured. Why hadn't he
thought—the lock probably required a key like the front door. He gnawed his lip. There! A bolt. He slid it over and tried the outside handle.

The door swung open, and he and Marina ducked into the darkened back room. The sleeve of her frock coat brushed against his arm. In the silence the whisper of the broadcloth against the tweed of his jacket sounded like a chug boat engine.

Whit dragged a hand over his forehead and stepped around a small table placed in the middle of the back room. Marina followed but caught her thigh on the corner of the table.

“Ouch.” She kicked the leg then swore when the table didn't move.

“Shh.” Whit motioned for her to follow.

They crept into the front of the store. Gray-green light filtered through the front windows, giving the ravaged contents of the shop the look of a bleak landscape.

“What happened here?” Marina picked through the debris.

“I don't know. Steinar's father, Olan, owned this store. Now he . . . he's dead.”

Marina squinted at the Chemist placard hanging in the door. “What did he do?”

“I'll explain later.” Whit pointed to the side of the store where Olan had repaired Chemist devices. A lump formed in his throat as he stepped over a toppled stool, the one Grey's grandfather had always sat on while working. He swallowed and began sifting through the piles left behind by whoever searched the place.

Would they have left a gauntlet writer on the premises after the Hawards' rebellion? Whit dragged his hand through his hair. Of course they wouldn't.

“Here.” Marina's whisper brought his head up.

“You found something?” He squatted down next to her.

“Maybe.” She dug through a pile of gadgets. Without the green glow of Chemia, they looked like ordinary objects—a lantern, a compass, even a camera with a strange reddish-black substance coating the bellows.

This had been a fool's errand from the beginning. Even if they found a gauntlet, without Chemia, how could they operate it?

“Here!” Marina uncovered a slender wooden case with leather straps dangling from beneath it. She stuffed the gauntlet writer inside her coat.

“Let's go.” He straightened to find the light had dimmed in the few minutes they'd spent in Haward's.

They sneaked by the ransacked cabinets. Olan's books were strewn over surfaces and spilled onto the floor. What had the deputies been looking for here?

In the back room, Whit eyed the hole he'd smashed in the door. At the sound of voices carrying down the alley sweat broke out, adhering his shirt to his scarred back. He flung a hand up to signal Marina. She stumbled back, colliding with the center table again before moving to the side of the room.

Whit drew back against the wall, eyes on the floor. What would the passersby see if they looked through the window? Faint light washed the bare floorboards and touched the edge of the rug beneath the table.

He stared at the square of carpet. In the back of his brain, two thoughts struggled to intercept one another. The table was small and so was the rug beneath it. So why didn't the furnishings budge when Marina stumbled into them?

The voices drew closer. An oil-slick tone twisted around the other speaker's gravelly words. Ice slid through Whit's stomach.

“Chemist,” he hissed to Marina.

Her eyes bulged and her chest heaved up and down.

Following his hunch, Whit darted forward and lifted the table up. The rug came with it, as did a section of the floor, the boards creaking up on hidden hinges. Marina gasped and rushed to his side, dropping to her knees to peer into the hole. She turned her gaze on Whit.

“What's down there?”

“I don't know.” The Hawards had more than their share of secrets.

Marina's eyes darted to the broken door. “What do you say we find out?”

She lowered herself down and Whit followed. A flight of wooden stairs disappeared into the darkness below. He stopped after a few steps and pulled the trapdoor down by a rope attached to the underside. Just before the light disappeared, he spied a latch attached to the ceiling at the hatch's seam. He slid the hook in place and turned into complete darkness.

An exclamation carried from the alley. They'd discovered the break-in. Whit froze, blinking in the heavy blackness. Could the magic of a Chemist's monocle reach through the floorboards to read his thoughts?

Whit focused on the darkness in the hidden cellar as footsteps sounded overhead.

If only he'd warned Marina . . .

Darkness.

What were the men above doing?

Blackness.

The voices carried to his position. He couldn't keep them out. “. . . likely simple vandalism or theft,” the gravelly voice said.

Whit's head snapped up. That was Olan's assistant, Haimon.

Adante's voice cut in. “Who would risk a striping for the rubbish in this store? No, this is no random misdeed.
Haimon, if they've escaped . . . if you've fouled this up again, I'll banish you to one of the tower vaults.”

Footfalls creaked almost directly overhead. Dust sifted down from the floor above to coat Whit's face, but he remained rigid.

“She got in by accident,” Haimon said. “The lock on the outside will accept any blood it's given, but mere happenstance cannot get them out. The system is far too intricate for that.”

The groan of weight on wood filtered through the trapdoor. Was Haimon sitting on the table? Whit's heartbeat pounded in his chest. The man had to know about the secret cellar. He'd seen Haimon disappear into the back room often enough.

The Chemist's light footsteps moved away. Adante probably searched the store. After seconds that cramped Whit's neck and turned his heartbeat to lead, the conversation above continued.

Adante called from the other room. “No signs the enchantment has been altered.”

The table creaked. “See, she's gone. Your Chemia has held for one hundred years. They're not getting out of that cabinet anytime soon.”

Whit tried to focus on the blackness, but his brain buzzed with the overheard discussion. Enchantment? She?
She
had to be Grey. He knew it in the place that ached for her. But one hundred years? Would he never see her again?

Ears ringing with the rhythm of his own pulse, Whit followed the tread from the front room back to where Haimon waited. The store assistant hadn't moved from the table. He was guarding the trapdoor.

“Stay here.” Adante's slippery voice held a bite. “I'm due to report to the Council tonight. I have extra agents in the Foothills Quarter, but I can only divert resources so long without an explanation.”

“What's there to worry about? You have Steinar in the tower, Olan is ossified in his living room, and Grey is banished.” Haimon's voice lowered, taking on an almost threatening tone. “No one but me knows.”

“That isn't true.”

“The others have as much to lose as you do.”

Steps moved toward the back door. “Just stay here, Haimon. If Blaise and Grey get out of that case together, I will see you skinned.”

Whit's heartbeat slammed with the bang of the back door. Silence followed, lulling him out of panic. He craned his neck, searching for Marina in the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, but movement above his head immobilized him.

The sound of wood squeaking signaled Haimon's attempt to access the trapdoor. The latch rattled but held.

“Grey?” Haimon's whisper came from the seam as though the man pressed his mouth to the floor. “Grey, is that you?”

Whit pressed his lips between his teeth. Haimon had only just finished telling Adante there was no way Grey could escape. Why was he expecting her to be in the cellar of Haward's Mercantile?

After a few seconds, Haimon spoke through the floorboards again. “Whoever you are, you're better off pleading your case to me than Adante.”

Whit kept silent, but a voice in his head agreed with the man.

“You don't want to be here tomorrow when he returns,” Haimon said. “Come on, who's down there?”

A noise at the bottom of the stairs told him Marina waited. Their only chance to get out and escape punishment was with Haimon. The Chemist would show no mercy.

He lifted his head toward the door. “It's Whit.”

“Whit? Grey's friend? What are you doing down there?”

A muffled oath floated from the dark cellar.

“It's a long story,” Whit said.

“Open the door. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Scuffling from below told him Marina had probably fled into whatever chamber lay below the store. He unhooked the latch and pushed on the trapdoor. It lifted from his hands, and Haimon's face appeared in the dim light.

Whit started to climb, but Haimon put a hand out.

“Stay there. I'll come down. You've missed curfew, so we'll need a plan to get you home.”

The glow from Haimon's lantern flooded the staircase as Whit made his way down to the room below. Haimon followed, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to light a fixture on the wall. Greenish-white illumination spread across the cellar. No, not a cellar.

Whit blinked as what first appeared to be clutter took shape as mechanical contraptions, various instruments, and glass beakers filled with what looked like potions of differing colors. Long counters supported the collection of laboratory equipment. An odd, padded chair with an attached footrest that appeared to lever up and down occupied the center of the room. Beyond it, Marina huddled against the far wall, her eyes whizzing about the space.

“Dealers?” she asked Whit, before zeroing in on Haimon.

“No, the Hawards aren't dealers. The Hawards are . . .” Who exactly were the people he'd lived next door to his whole life? He leveled a stare at Haimon.

The man with the scars crisscrossing his face drifted to stand before a curtained-off area below the stairs. He studied the two of them with iron-colored eyes.

“Who is this?”

“A friend. A refugee from the outpost.”

Haimon lifted gray eyebrows. “Making friends with the mountain folk now? One striping wasn't enough for you, Whit?”

Heat built in Whit's chest. He stepped toward the wiry man. “Steinar was arrested because of me. Olan is dead and Grey is . . . gone because of me. I had to do something.”

A flicker of annoyance passed over Haimon's face. “None of this happened because of you, boy. This mess between the Amintores and the Hawards began long before you were born.”

Whit shrugged off the declaration. “Someone had to carry on Steinar's work.”

Haimon eyed Marina, who hunkered in the back of the room like a cornered rabbit.

“So what are you two doing here? You'll find better supplies at a dispensary, if that's what you need.”

“We needed a communication device. Marina's twin brother was taken today.” He cleared his throat. “She needs to tell her little brother, but she can't get back to the camp tonight. They had one of the deputies' gauntlet writers up there.”

“Ah, so in addition to ration running—I assume that's what you've undertaken at the outpost—you thought you'd add theft and destruction of property to your Stripe Report?”

Whit threw up his hands. “What does it matter to you?”

“Breaking the law matters to all of us.”

“So you are going to turn us in.” Whit backed toward Marina, though he couldn't protect her. He saw no way out but the stairs.

“No, I'm going to help you.”

Whit stopped inching backward. “Why?”

Haimon lifted his hands, displaying his myriad stripes. “Do I look like someone who plays by the rules?”

Whit couldn't look away from the device Haimon held, a small metal cylinder with a scalpel point. An urge to vomit mixed
with the tug of unconsciousness. The whir of the machine Haimon had switched on muffled all rational thought.