The Mourning Emporium (32 page)

A large white lump appeared at the end of a wooden chute. A hatch opened, sending freezing wind whistling through the room. Teo caught a glimpse of the Thames, and a whole fleet of icebergs bobbing away from the Bombazine. The newborn iceberg rolled into the water and the hatch snapped shut. A few seconds later, another lump appeared at the end of the chute.

“Gristle and guts!” thought Teo. “The Bombazine has an ice generator!”

This must have been how Miss Uish had made the ice that engulfed Venice. Looking more closely at the treadmills, Teo recognized Augusto, a classmate of Renzo’s, who’d supposedly been drowned in the ice flood. She picked out other little Venetian faces she knew.

“Slave labor and baddened magic together!” Teo breathed. “How hideously clever. They used the ice storm to ‘harvest’ Venetian children for this infernal machine! The ship must have lurked in the lagoon on Christmas Eve, waiting to pick up victims. That’s why there were so many missing among the children. And why they never found the bodies! All this time, Augusto and the other Venetian boys and girls have been slaves on the Bombazine!”

Not just Venetians: Londoners as well. Greasy Ressydew and Marg’rit Savory marched on a treadmill, already reduced to shadows of their former plump selves. More boys and girls, hands cramped and bleeding, were kneeling at low trestles, stripping tar off of old ropes. Others were bent over trays of human hair, making mourning brooches. Ghost-Convicts flogged anyone who dared look up or slow down. Miss Uish was nowhere to be seen, but her chill presence was manifest in the fear and misery of the prisoners and the sound of their tears.

Teo clapped her hand over her mouth. She’d glimpsed Sibella sitting on a silken chair, sullenly playing with her worts and leeches. Sibella would give her away as soon as look at her! Then the girl turned and gazed straight in Teo’s direction. She paused in her games for a moment, yet she did not raise the alarm.

“Perhaps she did not see me after all?” hoped Teo. “And why hasn’t she told them where the Scilla is, come to think of it?”

Even if Sibella hadn’t seen her, Ghost-Convicts could. Teo wrapped herself carefully in a curtain, flattening her narrow body against the wall. And it was as well that she did, because two Ghost-Convicts now picked up the dead dog from the treadmill and marched toward her. Passing Teo’s slender velvet cocoon, they proceeded down one of the inner corridors of the Bombazine.

“They are taking the poor creature to be boiled,” Teo guessed, following them at a discreet distance. Fortunately, there were plenty of curtains and carved pilasters to hide behind.

The Ghost-Convicts paused to unlock a door. As they opened it, Teo heard voices, beloved voices, and the familiar sounds of gurgling liquids and clattering laboratory equipment. Teo’s heart jumped into her mouth. Her adoptive parents were prisoners aboard the Bombazine too, no doubt kidnapped at the same time as the Venetian children! All those days that the Bombazine had shadowed the Scilla and all these days here on the Thames, Teo had been but a mile away from Leonora and Alberto Stampara!

The Ghost-Convicts, minus the dog, came out of the room and slammed the door. As soon as they’d disappeared down the corridor, Teo ran to the door. She heaved against it with her shoulder, making absolutely no impression. She ran back up to the deck and dived straight into the Thames, dodging deftly between icebergs. Winded by the cold, she swam jerkily around to the porthole of the locked room. Her parents were inside, both tethered at the ankle by heavy chains. They were filthy, thin and surrounded by pots of boiling animal marrowfat. The large stateroom in which they labored, however, was fitted out with the latest equipment, much of it, she guessed, ripped from their laboratory in the Venetian lagoon. In a corner were two wretched camp beds, a washbasin and a screened chamber pot.

Teo tapped frantically at the window. Her parents did not turn.

“Oh, I’m between-the-Linings: they won’t be able to see, hear or feel me.”

A horrible thought entered Teo’s mind and refused to go away. Were her decent, loving scientist parents being forced to manufacture the Half-Dead disease from the marrowfat of the murdered animals?

Teeth chattering, she swam back to the ladder and crept through the Bombazine’s corridors to wait outside the laboratory door, where she hid herself between the wall and an unpleasant tapestry of a brutal boar-hunt. Five minutes passed; then ten. Her wet clothes clung to her body. She hoped she was not making a visible damp patch in the tapestry. After twenty minutes, a pair of Ghost-Convicts arrived, struggling with four heavy pails, and unlocked the door. The familiar stink of boiled marrowfat brought Teo vividly unpleasant memories of the bad days on the Scilla under Miss Uish’s cruel regime.

Trying not to gag on the smell, Teo stealthily followed the Ghost-Convicts into the room, hiding behind the door until they shuffled out, leaving it open. “They’ll be back in a minute with more marrowfat,” Teo realized. “I’ll have to be quick.” Her parents were bent over their microscopes and murmuring confidentially to each other in terms that would be perfectly unintelligible to anyone who was not a marine biologist. Teo’s chest squeezed. How haggard they looked! She hated to see the gray shadows under her mother’s eyes. Her father’s back was stooped with exhaustion. Teo longed to hug them and bury her face in the rough linen of her mother’s laboratory apron.

She rationed herself to kissing each of them on the cheek and stroking her mother’s hair.

Quite unaware of her presence, Leonora and Alberto Stampara handed one another glass petri dishes and slides, working as ever like two parts of the same highly efficient and graceful machine.

“Marrowfat is running short,” Leonora warned. “How are we going to give the Cala-Mary the initial burst of speed she wants?”

“Cala-Mary?” thought Teo. “As in calamari? Squid?”

Alberto unwittingly answered her question: “To call this evil submarine after a harmless sea creature—it is typical of our captors!”

He turned to stare with hatred at a tank of water. Teo followed his eyes.

Suspended in the water was a metallic pink object, which exactly resembled the colossal squid that had tried to kill her during their voyage to London. It had tentacles, claws and blank cruel eyes for portholes. It looked frighteningly real.

“Nothing surprising about that,” she thought, with a perverse kind of pride. “It was designed by brilliant marine biologists. So at least they’re not making the Half-Dead disease. It’s some kind of automaton.”

She climbed up the stairs to an inspection stage and looked down into the tank. The lid to the squid’s carapace was open. Inside, the machine was lined with padded green velvet and carved wooden racks for holding … what?

Teo thought, “There is just one squid submarine. And it has taken all this time to build. So they can’t mean to invade London with mechanical colossal squids.”

Now Leonora Stampara was saying, “I’m terrified for the children on the treadmills, Alberto. They’re getting so tired. They’re not as productive as when they were first brought in. Can’t you hear how the treadmills are running more slowly every hour? If the prisoners aren’t useful …”

“You think Miss Uish would actually sacrifice human children to fuel the Cala-Mary’s maiden voyage?”

“She hasn’t got a single scruple,” Leonora whispered. “You know what she told us about our Teodora. That our daughter has been taken hostage. That she will be killed and boiled and brought to us in a bucket if we do not cooperate.”

“Don’t torture yourself, dearest,” murmured Alberto.

But Leonora’s white lips whispered, “And that madman whom Uish works for? She said he hates our Teodora with the hatred of ages, whatever that means. How could anyone hate a dear innocent little girl like Teodora? It’s not natural.”

Teo asked herself fearfully, “Is that madman actually aboard this boat?”

“I fear we strayed from the realms of natural some time past. Remember”—Alberto grimaced—“what happened to Teodora’s real parents, Marta and Daniele Gasperin? And the rest of her relatives. All drowned in that strange shipwreck. I keep asking myself now: could that tragedy have had something to do with this brute who controls Miss Uish?”

Teo raged silently, “Of course it did. That brute murdered my whole family.”

“The Mayor of Venice himself assured us it was a simple accident. Mind you, I’ve never liked that man. It’s clear that Miss Uish has got her talons into him too.” Leonora visibly bristled.

“Dearest, think of something else. We must work on the improvements Uish requires for the automaton scolopendre this day.”

Teo flinched at the name of her old enemies, the scolopendre, a crawling, biting kind of insect that had spied for Bajamonte Tiepolo the summer before last. The scolopendre had also fought against the Venetians in the mighty battle of the lagoon, swarming over the faces of the brave soldiers and blinding them with bites.

Her parents limped on their chained feet to a glass case, where dozens of the hideous insects were corralled in transparent drawers. The mechanical scolopendre were different from the brown ones Nature had created. These tiny contraptions were a dirty white color. Somehow this made them even more alarming.

“I have to admit that Uish’s idea for a Russian-doll setup is ingenious,” muttered Alberto. “And the white color, of course, will give them excellent camouflage on the ice and snow. I hate handling dry arthropods, though.” He shuddered. “Give me an anemone or a real squid any day.”

Teo thought, “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen what I’ve seen.”

“Ingenious? I never thought I’d hear you say anything good about that woman.” Leonora was mortally offended. “I suppose those dancing eyes and auburn curls have finally had an effect on you?”

“I just wish,” attested Alberto defensively, “that Uish was working on the side of good. That brain of hers is a formidable weapon. Darling, you have to admit, it is a clever concept: if you kill the outer insect, a new insect pops out fully formed, and another … and another.”

“And just how clever are those spore syrups she is boiling up in the galley?” asked Leonora. Alberto knitted his brows.

“Spore syrups!” Teo exclaimed. “Half-Dead disease, no doubt!”

When the next two Ghost-Convicts entered the laboratory with their slopping pails, Teo slipped out of the door. In the dark corridor, she sagged against the wall.

“I don’t have to do this alone.” She pulled herself upright. It was time to report to the others, to gather forces and friends.

And yet—and yet, there was one more thing she had to find out. Creeping down the next corridor, Teo saw a ribbon of light under a door that was slightly ajar. She poked her head cautiously into a beautifully warm and luxurious room. The curved wooden walls glowed with color—for fixed upon them were all the Venetian Canaletto and Carpaccio paintings that had gone missing in the Christmas Eve ice storm. And pinned to the facing wall were postcards of other famous pictures of Venice, captioned with the names of the London art galleries that owned them. Those captions also showed the height above sea level of every gallery, and a date two days hence, February 2.

“The same day as the funeral of Queen Victoria,” thought Teo. “Just as we thought.”

He sat so quietly that she had not noticed him before. But now Teo felt the hairs lifting at the back of her neck. A man with long greasy hair was seated at a table in the far corner, painting transparent blue over a large plan of London. His back was to Teo: she could not see his face. There was a gust of cold air behind her and Miss Uish rushed in, all swirling skirts, piled curls and flashing eyes. Gone was the cruel voice that Teo knew so well. Instead, all kinds of sweet nothings flowed from that rosebud mouth as Miss Uish advanced across the room and stroked the lank hair of the man at the desk. She showed no sign of having seen Teo.

“At least that proves she is human, sort of,” thought Teo.

“Dearest sweeting,” purred Miss Uish to the faceless man, “you work too hard.”

The man did not acknowledge her in any way. His shoulders stiffened. His paintbrush continued to waft across the page.

“Ah, dearest, you are busy; I have come at a poor time for you,” chirped Miss Uish in a desperate-to-please voice. “I just wanted to see if you have everything you need? A drink, perhaps? Some bum-boo? Some rumfustian? Our cook has such a good recipe.… Oh, never fear, the galley is almost entirely devoted to the manufacture of the Half-Dead spore syrup. There’s just the tiniest corner for some warming drinks for us, dearest!”

A haughty silence. Miss Uish, Teo realized, had taken some wine already. The fumes of it subtly suffused the room.

Miss Uish was at this moment nothing more than a trembling girl with a crush on someone stronger and more ruthless even than herself.

“Professor Marìn was right about her,” thought Teo. “Her and Bajamonte Tiepolo.”

Miss Uish altered now. “My love, have I done something to displease you? For you, I would do anything, you know? Shall I have one of the Venetian whelps whipped again? The boy called Augusto is already on short commons.”

“Leave me alone, woman; stop your wittering.”

At the sound of that voice, Teo’s ears drummed and she felt pins and needles in the calves of her legs. She couldn’t pretend to herself that she did not know it. The trembling in her hands confirmed it. The ancient Gothic script ripped the air above his head with sinister black letters. It was perfectly familiar to Teo, but at the same time it was foreign. Then, of course, Teodora Gasperin—the Undrowned Child—had never heard Bajamonte Tiepolo—Il Traditore—speak English before.

“And never wished to,” she thought numbly.

All this time she had hoped against hope that he was dead. But he was not only not dead, he must be stronger than ever, for he had clearly evolved from his unstable, batlike form. From behind, anyway—she still had not seen anything more than the back of his head—he looked exactly like a human being.

Miss Uish clattered out, cooing, “I’ll leave you to your great work, sweetest.”

In the absence of Miss Uish, the room grew quiet. Now Teo noticed that the map of London was pinned to the table by a pair of daggers, the hilts of which were carved with intertwined Vampire Eels. A bell tower by the river tolled three somber notes.