Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden (18 page)

“We?” I said, backing up in surprise when she reached out her hand. She went with the cabin—immaculately curled hair, a traveling skirt and boots that probably cost more money than I’d been given to live on in an entire year as a ward of the City. Her ivory blouse was pressed, and a blue stone brooch sparkled at the collar.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Aoife,” she said, attempting a friendly smile that looked slightly out of place on her perfect porcelain features. She wasn’t much taller
than I was, but there was a sureness to her posture and a set to her delicate face that told me she was used to being listened to and obeyed.

“How do you know who I am?” I started casting around for a weapon. Something not good was definitely happening here.

“Aoife …,” she started, but I snatched an animal leg bone from its display hook and waved it at her.

“You stay away from me!” I didn’t know how the woman knew my name, but her perfect facade didn’t inspire trust. Beautiful things were usually ugly under the surface, in my experience, and I wasn’t about to trust this one.

“Aoife!” Another voice called from above, and I looked up to see a tall, rangy figure with a shock of white at his temples standing on a balcony.

I felt my body go slack, and the bone tumbled from my hand as I stared at the figure, shocked. “Dad?”

My father looked much different from when I’d glimpsed him in the jail cell. There he’d been masked, with deep half-moons under his eyes and his hair wild. Now he wore a natty safari outfit similar in color and style to the blond woman’s clothes, canvas pants held up by leather suspenders, a linen shirt open at the collar and boots shined within an inch of their lives. He looked every bit the wealthy gentleman my mother had always told me he was.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said. He descended the curving brass staircase that led from the bridge. He held up a hand, as if to still a temperamental child. “Calm down.”

“I …” I took a second look around the airship. It really was a marvelous craft, the cabin more like a stately apartment than the interior of an airship. “What’s going on?” I
said. It was a lame response, but it was the only one that came to mind.

“I’ll explain it all as soon as we’re clear of the city and those damn Proctor sweeps,” my father answered. “Now I’ve got to get back to the helm.” He gestured to the blond woman. “Val, make sure Aoife is comfortable, and tell her friends they can come up from the hold, will you?”

The woman stooped and picked up the bone I’d liberated, setting it gently back in its display rack. “Of course, Archie.”

I stood awkwardly in the center of the dark night sky–blue carpet, feeling both underdressed and acutely aware of how filthy I was after the two days of hard travel from Windhaven. I didn’t know who the woman was or why she was being instructed to take care of me. I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t like that. Confusion was my least favorite state.

The woman—Val—gestured me into a leather wing chair, which was bolted to the floor, like everything else. “Would you like some tea?”

“All right,” I said, a bit in shock. The two of them were acting as if rescuing Dean, Conrad and me from a horde of ravening ghouls was the most usual thing in the world. Or at least, not strange enough to interrupt afternoon tea.

I watched quietly as Val went to an aethervox panel in the far wall and pressed one of the intricately worked silver-and-brass buttons. “You two can come up now,” she said sweetly. “Aoife is fine and we’re not going to hurt you.”

She went over to a steam hob built into the bookcases and set a silver teakettle on it. “You’ve had quite a journey,” she said to me. “You must be worn out.”

“I’m sorry,” I answered, shutting my eyes briefly in an attempt to reconcile what had almost happened in Lovecraft with my new opulent surroundings and the gentle hum of the airship’s fans. “Who are you, exactly?”

“Oh, how rude of me!” She fluttered her hands around that brooch. “I’m Valentina Crosley. I’m an associate of your father’s.”

“And this?” I gestured at the airship cabin as Dean and Conrad poked their heads through the hatch. Dean relaxed visibly when he saw that I was in one piece. His hand came out of the pocket where he kept his knife, but he trained a wary eye on Valentina.

“This is your father’s craft, the
Munin
,” said Valentina. “It belonged to my father, but now it’s Archie’s.”

“It’s very … nice,” I said cautiously. It was too nice—I clearly didn’t belong here, and neither did Dean. Conrad was the only one who appeared at ease. I wondered if his composure would last when he saw our father. Conrad had always taken it harder that Archie had left us with our mother.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” he told Valentina, seeming calm enough. “There were some letters in my father’s house from you. Archie and I never spoke about you, but I’d hoped we’d meet someday.”

Valentina blinked at him, staring for a moment, and I stared as well. Where was Conrad’s sullen rage at being abandoned? The outrage that Archie had clearly taken up with another woman? I was feeling both in spades, but my brother seemed pleased as punch to be here.

Valentina recovered inside of a second and held out her hand. “And it’s really a pleasure to meet you at last, Conrad.
Your father has told me so much about you and your sister both.”

I shot a glance toward the bridge while pleasantries were being exchanged. My father stood alone, silhouetted against the glass. I rose and climbed up the brass steps and stood at the lip of the bridge, feeling awkward but needing to see him, to speak to him again and convince myself this was really happening. How to start a conversation like that?
Why did you save me from the Proctors? Where have you been? Why did you leave our family behind?

“Two of my friends are still in Nephilheim,” I said at last. “Cal and Bethina.” I figured he’d at least appreciate my being to the point.

“Bethina, really? My maid? She’s come a long way.” He looked over his shoulder at me. The
Munin
was flown standing up, with a half-moon brass wheel for the rudder and two controls for the fans. It was really a beautiful craft in every way. If I hadn’t been put so off guard by how I’d come aboard, I would have been excited to see something that was this much art along with its function. And would have been doubly excited that my father was at the helm and I was face to face with him for only the second time in my life.

“We need to get them,” I said. “Or you need to let me off there so we can go somewhere safe together.”

Archibald locked the rudder in place and turned to me, folding his arms. He was taller than I remembered from meeting him in the interrogation room in Ravenhouse, and his eyes held none of the warmth they’d had then. “And what if I said no?”

I kept his gaze and adopted the same icy tone. “Then I suppose it’s been nice to see you again.”

Archibald shook his head, dropping his arms. “I swear, you’re even more stubborn than your mother.” I flinched. It was strange to think of his spending time with my mother before Conrad and I were born, learning her expressions and her moods and seeing them in me.

My father banked the craft, dropping us over the dour gray roofs of Nephilheim. “Don’t think I don’t know,” he told me, “that your little buddy Cal Daulton is a ghoul. And don’t think I’m going to welcome him aboard.”

“He saved my life, Dad,” I said, folding my arms to mimic his earlier posture. “He’s not like the other ghouls.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m picking him up.” He spun the wheel and we crossed the river, drifting up the far bank, over the foundry and into the village, which from this vantage looked like a ruined toy, stepped on by an angry child.

“There,” I said, pointing to the broad avenue where we’d left Cal and Bethina. My father throttled back the fans, hovering, and the
Munin
shivered as the thin, delicate ladders unfurled from its hatches. I saw figures emerge from the nearest ruined cottage, and mere moments later, Cal and Bethina were in the main cabin with the rest of us.

“Mr. Grayson!” Bethina shrieked, running to my father and wrapping her arms around him. She’d been his chambermaid; he probably knew her better than he’d known me, before all this happened. I was just relieved they were both all right, and didn’t begrudge her the reunion.

My father smiled at her and patted her on the back. “Glad to see you in one piece, Bethina. Didn’t I dismiss you, though?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Someone had to keep your house in order.”

Cal sidled up to me. “That’s your father?”

“In the flesh,” I said, still barely able to believe it myself. Every time I looked at Archie, he seemed like he should shimmer and vanish like an illusion, rather than be standing not ten feet from me, pouring Bethina a cup of tea.

“Something to sweeten it?” he asked, reaching for a cut-glass brandy decanter in the sideboard.

“Oh, no,” said Bethina primly. “You know I don’t do that sort of thing, Mr. Grayson.”

“Seems nice enough,” Cal muttered to me. “Certainly not the raving lunatic Draven was always yelling about.”

“Jury’s out on the first part,” I said, just as Cal’s eyes lit on Valentina.

“Who’s the dame?” he said, brows going up. “She looks like a lanternreel star.”

I spread my hands. “I’ve been here about ten minutes longer than you have, Cal. Her name is Valentina. Aside from that, your guess is as good as mine.”

Valentina bubbled up to us, carrying a tray holding two delicate china cups painted with briar roses. “Tea?”

I took it and pointed to the brandy. “I think I’ll have something in mine.” My old teacher, Mrs. Fortune, would give us tea with brandy when we had the flu at the Academy. I could use the calming effect just then.

“No, you won’t be having any brandy,” my father returned crisply. “The rest of you, make yourselves comfortable. Conrad and Aoife, we need to speak privately.”

He gestured to a small hatch that led to the room
Valentina had appeared from and waited until we’d followed him in before shutting and latching the door. I felt as if we’d been called on the carpet for passing notes during class, not as if we were having the first real meeting with our father, ever. His expression was stern and his eyes betrayed no emotion beyond annoyance.

This was not how I’d imagined my first conversation with Archie going, and I could tell from Conrad’s fidgeting and his frown that he felt the same way.

“First of all,” Archie said, “what the
hell
were you two thinking, going back into Lovecraft?”

“I—” I started, but Archie pointed his finger at me and focused his eyes on my brother.

“I’ll get to you. Conrad?”

Conrad spread his hands as if to ask what was the big deal. “It wasn’t my idea. I was actually against it.”

“Oh, come on, Conrad!” I shouted, furious that now we were actually caught, he was trying to wriggle out of getting in trouble. “You were the one who ran off in the first place! It’s because of
you
that I’m even here! You and that
stupid
letter!”

“I wrote that letter to get you out of Lovecraft, not rip apart space and time and destroy the entire damn city!” Conrad shouted back.

Rage overwhelmed me and I cocked my arm back and whipped my teacup at Conrad’s head. He ducked and the cup hit the wall, sending tea and china shards spattering across the cream-colored damask wallpaper.

“Enough, both of you!” Archie bellowed. He stepped between us, pointing at the door. “Conrad, give us a minute.”

“You always overreact,” Conrad muttered at me. “That’s why we’re in this mess.”

“
You’re
an idiot,” I returned, too angry to watch what I was saying. Conrad could treat me like I was still his excitable little sister, but I’d managed on my own for over a year after he’d run off. I’d managed after he’d nearly killed me. He didn’t get to talk to me like that any longer.

Archie thumped him on the side of the head with his knuckles. “I said enough. This is not your sister’s fault. Not entirely. Go.”

Conrad turned and stormed out, slamming the hatch behind him hard enough to rattle the framed paintings on the walls. In the silence that followed I looked anywhere but at my father’s face: A bunk in the corner immaculately made up with cream linens and rows of clothes neatly hanging in the wardrobe. A brass globe swaying from the ceiling, lit from the inside by aether. Outlines of continents and seas glowing softly against a ceiling painted like the night sky, constellations spelled out with silver thread. Finally, I ran out of things to stare at and had to look at my father again and see his shoulders slumped with fatigue, the dark circles under his eyes and the new lines along the sides of his mouth. I felt horrible for screaming at Conrad, for breaking my father’s things. What must he think of me after that?

Archie sighed, sitting down in one of the two small, overstuffed chairs by the cabin’s porthole. “Have a seat, Aoife.”

I stayed where I was and fidgeted. Being around him was still too new for me to sit and act comfortable—as if we were actually father and daughter. Besides, if I sat, I couldn’t study him while we talked, look for the similarities in our
faces that I wanted to be there. I wanted to be a little bit like Archie—otherwise, my only fate was to end up like Nerissa.

Archie’s eyes were an eerie reflection of my own when we locked gazes, dark green and glittering, like something that had waited for light a long time in a dark place.

But his held none of the uncertainty mine did, just a calculating hardness that seemed to measure me up and dismiss me as wanting. I’d always hoped that Archie would be warm, like the fathers in books and lanternreels who came home every evening, hung up their hats and kissed their wives and children hello. But I’d known I was probably just fantasizing. His hard eyes weren’t really a surprise, just a disappointment.

“It’s good to see you,” he said at last, more quietly than I had expected. “It’s been a really long time.”

This I hadn’t expected. A lecture, maybe, or a punishment for making him rescue us from the city, but not the sadness that hung on his frame like an ill-fitting coat. “Yes,” I said at last, matching his soft tone. “It has.”