Dark Metropolis (16 page)

H
e hadn’t expected Arabella von Kaspar. But Uncle wouldn’t be expecting her, either.

As Freddy left the room where Nan lay unconscious, he caught his name amid the conversation drifting from downstairs.

“I know who he is…” Arabella was saying. He couldn’t catch every word. “But of course, we both…”

Murmur, murmur.

“…boy.” She was talking about him. Freddy edged farther out on the landing to hear. From where he stood, he couldn’t see them and they wouldn’t see him, but there was the risk of servants’ noticing.

“I know what you’re involved in these days,” Uncle said. “I don’t know what brings you here, and I don’t care to. I must ask you to leave.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Well, if you’d rather I be direct, don’t think I don’t know what
you’re
involved in, Rory.”

“Please leave,” Uncle repeated. “Or I shall have to ask my guard to assist with your departure.”

“Just one guard?” she said, her tone now as hard as his under its false politeness. “I think I can manage him.”

“Where is Wolff?” Uncle asked the guard.

“He’d been at the bottle last night, sir. Passed out in the kitchen,” the guard said with some reluctance.

“Go get Wolff!” Uncle barked at someone. Maybe a maid; he surely wouldn’t send his single guard out of the room. If Uncle had only one guard available, well, this was definitely Freddy’s best chance for escape. Uncle’s house would have at least one back set of stairs. He checked the bedrooms until he found an inner door. Although it was made to look like part of the wall, the door’s outline was still visible.

Downstairs he heard some low, harsh words exchanged, and then Arabella called, “Freddy! Please come out. I know you came to see us last week! I won’t hurt you.”

He opened the door to a narrow stairway and hurried down into the servants’ quarters. A boy of Freddy’s age was walking by with a tray of household silver. “Master Linden!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“Where’s the back door?” Freddy growled.

“I can’t tell you that!” The boy looked behind him. “Somebody, help! Master Linden’s escaping!”

Freddy knocked the tray of silver so it scattered on the floor. The boy gasped and seemed briefly frozen between gathering up the valuables and stopping Freddy. Freddy found a door that led up stairs to a narrow back alley. He started running for the nearer exit just as Uncle’s guard rushed into it, blocking the opening. Freddy quickly turned the other way. But the alley was much longer in that direction, running past several large houses. He pushed his legs—farther, farther—hearing the man coming closer behind him.

A hand caught his shoulder, and the other grabbed his arm.

“I’m actually a spy for the revolution,” Uncle’s guard hissed in Freddy’s ear. “Come peacefully and Arabella won’t hurt you.”

Freddy lunged, trying to break free, but the guard caught him around the chest with one muscular arm. “Don’t make this harder on yourself,” he said.

The guard hurried Freddy into Arabella’s car and climbed into the backseat with him. Arabella rushed out of the house with a pistol in her hand. Uncle held one, too, as he stood in the doorway, but he didn’t shoot. He was shouting to whomever was behind him. Arabella took the driver’s seat.

The car was pulling away now. Freddy was sweating, even in the brisk autumn air. He bit back an urge to curse, knowing he shouldn’t anger Arabella now, but he’d been so close to escaping.

“Marcus, I’m sure the Valkenraths will be finding every guard they can spare to go after me,” Arabella said. “Give me two hours with this boy, and then inform the others.”

“What do you plan to do?” Freddy asked, trying to keep his voice even.

She smiled back at him, as if they were just out for a Sunday drive. “What a striking color your hair is. Do you know the saying about silver hair?”

“No.”

“All the old wisdom is lost these days. Each strand is a spell worked ‘too strong or all wrong.’ You work magic every day of your life, don’t you? And you do it at their bidding. But then, we shall talk about that more when I’ve gotten you home.”

“I don’t know that we’ll have much time to talk before Uncle’s men catch up with us.”

“Rory Valkenrath isn’t stupid. We’re the same age, you know. I’ve danced more than a few waltzes with that man. I’m a woman of society and the face of a revolutionary movement with thousands of members. If he kills me in my own house, there will be a lot of angry people leading the investigation.”

“I don’t know. Apparently, he’s pretty good at getting rid of people. And I
wanted
to escape him. But if we’re going to work together, we should talk now.”

“We aren’t going to work together,” Arabella said. “I’m going to tell you what must be done, and you can make your choice from there. I’ve been waiting too long to find you. I heard talk of a silver-haired boy at the Telephone Club. I asked around there, and what do you know? I heard the boy was always accompanied by Gerik Valkenrath. The gossip in this city can be a beautiful thing. And here we are.” As she spoke, her words curled into anger. “And if Rory really wants to send his goons after me, I shall use you as my shield.”

She had pulled down an attractive street. These were not the staid gray mansions of Gerik’s and Uncle’s, which had seen several emperors come and go. The houses here were fashionable, scaled-down versions of country villas—whimsical stone and pointed towers, glass greenhouses built on roofs, flowers spilling from window boxes. She pulled up to one of them. “Lead him into the house,” she told Marcus, trading her grip on the steering wheel for the pistol she kept under her coat.

Marcus muscled Freddy along the stone path to the front door. A nervous-looking young housemaid greeted them and took their coats.

Arabella took Freddy’s arm now, pressing the barrel of her gun into his back. “Marcus, I thank you for your part. Make yourself scarce.”

“Are you sure I should leave you?”

“Oh, yes. I know what I’m doing, and I want to do it alone. This way, Freddy.” Arabella waved him up the stairs. Through open doors along the upstairs hall, he caught glimpses of half-finished paintings and empty canvases, sheets and splatter and unglazed pottery. She brought him into a study adorned with a stuffed, spiral-horned gazelle, a tiger rug, and a variety of birds preserved in midflight around a painting of her as a young woman, with her long hair spilling free, twined with flowers.

She was dressed modestly now, in a plain cream suit and pearls, but over her desk hung photographs of her youthful self—in pith helmet and sporting linen, posed with elephant tusks, or with only a draped cloth to cover her, exposing a white length of back. There was just one photograph of another young woman. Compared to Arabella, she looked innocent, though impish. “Do you remember when you brought her back?” Arabella asked, indicating the young woman’s picture.

He nodded. “She came to slowly. Like she’d been dreaming. I don’t think she said anything to me.”

“She was my daughter, Sigi.”

“Sigi?” The same name Nan had mentioned.

“Yes.” Arabella’s tone was bitter. She shut the door behind them. “You must listen to me closely and understand well. This magic of yours is causing thousands of people to suffer—including you. If you bring someone back from the dead, it is your responsibility to release the person again, but if you don’t do it, if you keep working more and more spells, it will take its toll on you, as it clearly has.”

“I know,” he said.

“If you know, then you would have already let them go.”

“I can’t let them go without touching them.”

She scoffed. “Of course you can!” She paced quickly to the window and back. “Have you heard the stories of Queen Sofie’s witches?”

“No…” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear them, either.

“A hundred and thirty-five years ago, this paranoid queen employed curse-workers to cast spells upon her enemies.
These witches she demanded so much of withered away into nothing. The first sign was always the hair. Every strand of their hair turned silver, and their faces grew thin, just like yours. Have you noticed yourself tiring when you run or take too many stairs?”

“A little…”

“And I’ll bet you are always quite hungry, and you never seem to get enough sleep.”

He shrugged, although it was true. He didn’t want to admit any weakness to her.

“It will grow worse. Soon, walking will begin to seem like an effort. But of course, I’m sure Queen Sofie liked it that way. Bedridden witches can’t escape. They said she had a room of them, and servants to feed them and clean them and keep them alive as long as their magic didn’t kill them first. It is said that at the end they were nothing but skin and bones, and their hair had fallen out.”

She took a step closer, her long skirt rustling softly. “That will be you, Freddy. And Rory and Gerik know it, even if they haven’t told you. Day by day, they are leading you into an adulthood of complete helplessness—pure magic, neatly trapped for them in the withered shell of a boy. You might have ten or fifteen more years of this. Another several thousand people. And then one day you will die, and they will all go with you, because in the end they need their connection to you to survive.”

No, Freddy had not expected a story like that. But it made sense.

The pressure to have an heir. This was the explanation he’d wanted from them, because none of their reasons justified their urgency.

Gerik really didn’t care about him.

He knew Uncle didn’t; the man didn’t seem to care about anyone. But Gerik, for all his irritating gregariousness and chauvinistic views, had been indulgent and even kind. Whereas Uncle would have worked him to the bone, Gerik would limit the number of revivals he could do. He made sure Freddy always got plenty to eat. He insisted Freddy needed to see his parents at holidays. Gerik had let him keep Amsel, even though the cat sprayed on the curtains sometimes.

He couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to be trapped in bed, with dead people placed under his skeletal hands. His rooms already felt like a prison, but at least he could walk the little garden, work on clocks, read a book. Maybe Gerik wanted him to have a child to save him from the fate of Queen Sofie’s witches. But if he really cared about Freddy, he would have told him it was time to stop.

“You see, don’t you?” Arabella said. “You need to let them all go this moment.”

“What about Sigi?”

“I wanted to see her one last time. For so long, our plan was to get all of the dead out of the underground. But I never expected to find you. This might be my only chance to end all of this. If I kill you, they will all die, and I would still rather have put Sigi out of her misery than let this abuse continue. As I told you, I don’t have time to be nice. The Valkenraths will be here before long.”

“But I heard…she’s being held in a cage.”

Arabella’s hand twitched. “A cage? Have you seen her?”

“No. But I overheard.” It seemed like too much to explain Nan.

He could see that Arabella was rattled, but it wasn’t enough to make her reconsider her plans. “Well, all the more reason to put her out of her misery,” she said, her voice low. “And then I will make the Valkenraths suffer for what they did. But I don’t blame you, Freddy. I understand you are a victim, too. You will not suffer—as long as you can end this magic.”

“Wait—just listen. This isn’t the way. We have to get them out of the underground. There’s an entrance in Vogelsburg.”

“I know there are entrances,” she said. “But there are also dozens of reasons why we might be stopped before we could possibly get them out. Viktor and the rest, they were always talking of these plots and logistics, how nothing could be done unless it was all done properly and peacefully. Well, I’m tired of waiting. Look within and feel it, feel those threads connecting you to all the people you’ve ever revived, and cut them loose. If you can’t do it, then the only way to undo it is to kill
you
. But I know you can.” She walked to the door. “Try to figure it out. I’ll give you ten minutes.”

A
s soon as she left, Freddy went to the window. Prickly shrubs below and the gate beyond seemed to mock the very suggestion of escape.

Arabella wanted him to destroy his life’s work and end thousands of lives in ten minutes. Maybe she was right that it needed to be done. But not at this moment. Not on her terms.

He turned back to the study, which had an air of stifled adventure, with all the pictures of Arabella in linen pantsuits and the taxidermy on every wall. The gazelle seemed almost to stare at him with its glass eyes.

Dead animals everywhere…

A wild thought shot through his mind. Did these count as dead animals anymore, after having been skinned and reconstructed? He’d revived people with gaping holes in their vital organs, but Valkenrath had never brought him parts or pieces. Still, dead was dead. He brought life to things that shouldn’t function.

He touched the wing of a pheasant frozen in mock flight. At first there was nothing—he might as well have touched the desk. But deep down, he felt the telltale tingle, a sweet strength rising to his command. It didn’t flow freely, the way it had when he brought back fresh bodies, but it was there to be coaxed.

The pheasant’s wings suddenly flapped, stirring dust. Its head moved stiffly, the beak opened, and a wheezing sound emerged while the wings continued to flap, faster now. It was like some doll brought to life, testing alien limbs.

He had never known he had this kind of power inside him. Gerik and Uncle brought bodies to him and he revived them; it had always been that way, but he had never tested himself like this.

The pheasant thrashed, and he could feel its panic the way he had felt Amsel’s hunger.
Very soon, I will let you go,
he thought, hoping maybe the animal would sense him, too.
But I need your help.

The pheasant’s wings settled into a restless flutter. He tugged it free from the base. Wires ripped from its feet, but the bird didn’t seem bothered. It half-flew, half-crashed to the ground, where it limped a few steps, head turning from side to side. It seemed to be blind and silent. All the better. He could revive every animal in this room before Arabella returned.

Now he knew to free the birds from their bases first and revive them afterward—two ducks with rounded black crests, a white egret with long plumes, a fierce owl, all brought to life, making attempts to fly, crashing into walls. He watched them for a moment, the initial rush of bringing them to life fading as, again and again, a brief ruckus of wings ended in a thump against the wall.

He scooped up one of the ducks. Tucked under his arm, it stopped struggling.
Just one more…

He turned to the gazelle. It was only about two feet tall, but the horns were fierce enough to skewer someone.

He pushed magic from his fingers, imagining it coursing down the gazelle’s legs like running water. The head creaked sideways. It moved even more stiffly than the birds did, its limbs making squeaks and groans, but when he tried to urge it toward the door, it wheezed and attempted to run, smacking pell-mell into the side of the fireplace.

“It’s all right,” he said, stroking the animal’s back. The fur was thin in places. “I won’t keep you long.” The gazelle calmed.

He remembered feeling Amsel’s fear when the cat went without serum. Seeing the way the animals responded to his touch, he wondered if the transfer of thought could go the opposite way. Maybe he could keep them calm, influence their movements.

He shouted, “Mrs. von Kaspar! Get back in here!”

She pushed through the door, her mouth opening to speak and then hanging silent as she took in the birds flapping madly around the room. Her face drained of color.
Keep moving!
He tried to push his thoughts toward them.
This way!
The egret knocked against her hip, and the key in her hand clattered to the floor. He had meant to simply run, but this was even better. He snatched up the key.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Arabella kicked him in the head, scraping his cheek. He shoved his elbow into her, trying to knock her down, but she held her ground.

“Don’t move.” She pointed the pistol at him. “Drop the key.”

He went still, but he kept the key.

“What have you done?” she growled. “What kind of grotesque magic is this?”

“I’m done with doing magic at someone else’s orders. I’ll let the dead go—after I’ve freed them.”

“You’re only making it worse, Freddy. You’re a monster just like the men who’ve kept you.”

“You call me a monster? You’re giving up on your own daughter!”

Arabella’s gaze darkened even further. “Of course I don’t want to give up on Sigi. You don’t know how badly I want to tell her I’m sorry. But I have no other choice. I—” She broke off as the gazelle struck her with its horns. It moved too awkwardly to do more than throw her off balance, but this was his chance. He flew to the door, slamming it shut behind him, thrusting the key into the lock.

“Stop!” she shouted. A bullet punched a hole in the door. He moved sideways.

He turned the key, tried the handle to see that it was secure, and bolted down the stairs and toward the front door.

Arabella was screaming to be let out, and he heard servants behind him saying, “What’s going on?” and “It’s that boy! Stop him!” But the maid at the door looked somewhere between surprised and bewildered as he rushed past her and flung the door open.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t let himself think about the stitch rapidly developing in his side. He veered down a side street.

When he hit the busier street ahead, with congested traffic and shops, he finally slowed, his breath coming sharp and desperate. He ducked into a stationery shop, knowing he must look half mad.

“May I help you, sir?” asked the man at the desk, but Freddy was too breathless to speak. “Is someone chasing you? Perhaps you should move along if you have no need of stationery.”

“I’m fine,” Freddy gasped. “Just…give me a second.”

He turned his mind back to the animals. He had promised them he would let them go, but he had never released his magic from a distance. This was his test, feeling the threads of magic, even from afar.

He closed his eyes a moment, looking inward. There—

The magic shimmered like memories of dreams upon waking. He felt the sparks of their lives—the birds, the gazelle.

Thank you,
he thought before letting them go.