Witch Finder (26 page)

Luke
.

There was a sudden snap and she fell sideways out of the chair, one wrist free. It was enough. With one hand unbound she made a superhuman stretch and grabbed a paperknife off the desk. It was not very sharp, but it was enough. A minute of frantic, panicked sawing and her other wrist was free, then her ankles, and at last she was free to crawl away to a cool corner of the room and examine her wounds.

They were not as bad as she’d thought. One sleeve was charred and smoking and the skin beneath was hot and tender, swelling in fat white blisters, and there were red weeping welts on her wrists and ankles, but it was nothing that she couldn’t heal, given time. The most important thing was that she could walk.

She climbed painfully to her feet and went to the window. It was shut and barred, and beyond there was nothing but a tiny yard, bordered on four sides by grey concrete walls stretching upwards. Could she scrape together enough magic to force open the window? Then what?

Perhaps the door would be better. She could hear the sound of flames but they didn’t seem to be right outside. She opened it and peered out.

The corridor was dark but she could hear the hiss of the gas-lamps. They must have been turned on without lighting, by someone trying to flood the place with gas. It was only a matter of time before the gas met the flames down below, or the ones in the grate in the office, and the whole place went up. But why?
Why?
Why would he destroy the factory, rather than set the workers free?

The answer came to her at once: insurance. Undoing the spells was risky and expensive, and it left the central problem still there: the fact that she, Rosa, knew what had happened.

Sebastian didn’t care about the buildings, he didn’t care about the workers, he didn’t care about
her.
What he cared about was money and his family’s reputation. Burning down the factory solved all his problems. This way, Sebastian could walk away with a suitcase full of insurance money, free to start again in new premises, with no one the wiser.

She had to get out.

But how? Which way? She thought of the design of the factory – the high, windowless outer walls. There was no escape outwards; she had to go inwards, towards the central courtyard. She began to run down the corridor, feeling the heat grow as she came nearer to the source of the fire.

At last she turned a corner – and came to a dead end. The corridor carried on – but there was no floor, only a blazing inferno where it should have been. But something was moving across the gap. A figure – tall and muffled – a dim black shape behind the scarlet blaze. For a moment her heart seemed to stop.
Sebastian?

She raised her hand, shaking, ready to strike with what little magic she had left.

Then a hoarse, breaking voice shouted,
‘
Rosa? Rosa, where are you?
Rosa!
’

It was Luke.

‘R
osa!’

Luke was close to giving up. The heat was becoming unbearable and the floor seemed to rock and groan beneath him.

But he could not. If only he had come when she asked him. He thought of all it must have cost her – to betray her kind, betray Sebastian, betray her own family – and he had sent her away with a curse and a raised hammer.

There was no future for him, if she lived. But he could not let her die.

‘Rosa!’ he called again, turning a corner. ‘Where are you?’

But there was nothing there – no corridor – no floor – just a mass of burning flames. The floor beneath his feet shuddered and he could feel the heat striking through his boots. He thanked God for the guard’s greatcoat – the thick densely woven wool keeping off the sparks and the heat of the flames.

‘Rosa!’ he yelled again, his voice cracking and breaking. He was hoarse from shouting, hoarse from the smoke. There was no answer, just the endless crackling roar of the flames, and he turned to go back, try another passage.

As he did there was a screaming roar and another section of floor suddenly gave way behind him, flames and sparks shooting into the air like fireworks. Luke looked down. He was standing on maybe three joists, each being eaten away by the flames. He was going to die. The realization came quite suddenly, quite calmly. There was no way out. There was no point in fighting any more.

He wished he had said goodbye to William.

He shut his eyes.

Then he heard a voice.

‘
Luke!
’

She was standing on the other side of the burning chasm in the floor. Her white face was smudged with soot and ashes, but her eyes were bright, and her hair blazed like a crown of flames in the dark, firelit corridor.

‘Rosa?’ He was so hoarse it came out as a croaking whisper.

‘Luke! I’m so sorry! You shouldn’t have come. Sebastian, he’s flooded the place with gas; the workers are all going to die . . .’

‘They’re out,’ he shouted back hoarsely. ‘Most of them, anyway. The ones who could walk.’

‘Then why are you still here?’

‘For you,’ he said, his voice so low he didn’t know if she would hear, across the roar of the flames. She did. He could see it in the stricken look of – almost
grief
, on her face. She didn’t speak. Just put her hands to her face. She was shaking her head.

‘No, no!’ He could hear her low moan across the gulf between them. ‘Luke, no! If you die because of me—’

‘I don’t deserve to live.’

‘What? No!’

‘I tried to kill you, Rosa. That’s why I came to your house. I was sent there, to kill you.’

‘Luke—’ she began, but whatever she might have said was drowned in the sudden scream of breaking wood, the roar of the fire, and Luke felt the floor beneath his feet shiver and begin to tip. For a second he stood frozen, and then he gave a great, hopeless leap, scrambling for the far side of the divide, where Rosa stood.

She leant out, across the flames, her slim arm bare to the blaze, but he knew, even as he reached for her hand, that she could never hold him. His fingers brushed hers, wet with sweat – she screamed something unintelligible – and then, like a miracle, she was holding him.

It was not possible. He hung above the furnace below, feeling the agonizing heat of the fire on his legs. Rosa lay on the floor, her bare arm hanging down into the burning chasm. Luke could only stare up at her, at her white face, at her wrist and hand holding his – impossibly small. There was no way she should have had the strength to even hold him, let alone catch him as he fell.

She had her eyes closed and her face was sheened with sweat.

‘Rosa!’ he gasped.

‘Shut. Up.’

He felt her nails digging into him. He could see her lips moving in some inaudible exhortation.

Slowly, slowly, she was dragging him back from the edge, pulling herself backwards along the floor, her lips constantly moving with a low litany. Her magic blazed around her, a fierce flaming gold, and suddenly he understood. Witchcraft. She was holding him by witchcraft.

He knew he should struggle. He knew what William and John and all the Brothers would say – that this was devil’s work. That it would be better to burn in life than be saved by such unholy means and burn in death. But he no longer cared. He no longer cared about anything except the unbearable heat of the fire on his smouldering boots, the stench of burning wool from his great coat, the flames eating away at the joists below Rosa, minute by minute.

He was almost there. He was almost to the edge. In another moment he would be able to swing his leg up, pull himself to safety . . .

But just as Rosa gave one last superhuman effort, the veins in her forehead standing out in desperation, her hair wet with sweat – there was a massive earth-shaking
BOOM!

A roar, like a river bursting its banks.

An explosion that rocked the building to its foundation.

Concrete and bricks and burning beams tumbling around him – and he was falling. He felt Rosa’s magic wrap around him in a fierce embrace.

And then nothing.

When Luke opened his eyes he could see sky. It was not quite dawn, but there was a thin yellow light at the horizon, as if the sun could barely penetrate the river fog. He was lying on the cold ground with a beam digging into his spine and there were bricks and masonry scattered all around. His leg felt as if it might be broken. He couldn’t feel his arm at all and, when he tried to lift it, it wouldn’t move.

With difficulty he turned his head to see what was pinning it and his heart gave a great leap of hope and despair.

It was Rosa. She was lying on his arm. Her head was flung back, her white throat bare to the sky. Her hair was loose and straggled all around.

Her face, beneath the soot and blood and muck, was white – and her hand, when he touched it, was cold. There was not a single spark of magic around her.

A great sob forced its way up from his gut.

‘Rosa.’ He pulled her up, pulling her against him. ‘Rosa, what have you done? What did you do?’

He began to cry there, crouched in the deserted ruins of the factory. Her death solved everything. He was free. And he would have given anything to undo it.

‘I’m so sorry . . .’ He put his cheek against hers. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t care what the Brotherhood says, I will burn for what I did to you.’

‘We nearly did burn.’ Her voice was soft by his ear – and then she coughed and pulled back.

‘Rosa?’ He clutched her, hardly able to believe she was alive, and she cried out, pulling her arm from his grip.

‘My arm!’ She held it up ruefully, looking at the weeping skin and broken blisters. ‘God, for a bit of magic to take the edge off . . .’

‘But – but you were cold!’

‘I
am
cold.’ She rubbed her hands and then touched his. ‘So are you.’ She shivered and then winced again. ‘Oh, my arm . . .’

‘Why can’t you heal it?’

‘I’m spent. Magic’s like . . . it’s like strength, in a way. If you asked me to lift that beam now, I doubt I could. My muscles are like wet wool. It’ll come back, but for now – I couldn’t conjure so much as a witchlight.’

She looked down at her scorched and blistered palm and Luke remembered the stable, the frail white glow in her hand . . .

‘You saved me,’ he said slowly. ‘I tried to kill you – and you saved me. Why? I deserve to burn for what I tried to do to you.’

‘You came back for me,’ she said simply.

For a long time they said nothing, just sat side by side in the ruins of Sebastian’s factory, looking out to the river and the boats drifting past. It was still early, the sky pale in the east, but Luke could hear the cries from the waterfront drifting downriver and he knew that the East End never really slept.

‘We must get going.’ He stood, painfully, feeling his exhausted muscles complaining and his stiff joints cracking. His hurt leg screamed as he stood, but it was not broken – just stiff and sprained. He put out a hand and Rosa scrambled to her feet and stood brushing down her charred silk gown with a rueful face. ‘Where will you go?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, we can’t stay here.’ Luke looked at the sky and then the river. ‘The police will come soon. And Knyvet will be back.’

Rosa shivered.

‘He has everything now: Southing, the factories, the Chair . . . But not me. And he would kill me for that, if he found out I was still alive. I cannot go home. Can we go back to your uncle’s? To the forge?’

‘No.’ Luke shook his head. ‘I told you, I was sent to kill you – the price for failing was death. My death.’

‘So, your people are as barbaric as mine,’ she said softly.

‘Not William,’ Luke said. He swallowed against the pain in his smoke-scorched throat. ‘William loves me. But I can’t – I can’t make him choose between me and the Brotherhood. I must go my own way, alone now.’

‘So must I.’ She took his hand and a faint prickle of magic, like a flame, lit her face for a moment, like a ray of warmth in this dreary fog-muted dawn. ‘So we are not alone.’

Luke nodded.

They turned, and together they began to walk towards the rising sun.

My thanks for all the help with
Witch Finder
and The Winter Trilogy would fill a chapter if not a book, but I will try to keep this brief!

First, thank you to the fabulous people at Hodder, in particular Naomi, Victoria, Laure, Anne, Michelle and the ever-marvellous Sales and Rights teams.

Also to my agent, Eve, and the redoubtable Jack for everything!

Love always to my first readers – Meg, Eleanor, Kate and Alice (particular horsey thanks to the latter two).

Carriages at Eight
by Frank E. Huggett (Lutterworth Press) was enormously helpful with details of the world of Victorian carriages and stable-hands.
The Victorian House
by Judith Flanders (Harper Perennial) helped with details of servants and practical details, and the
Victorian Family
trilogy of memoirs by M V Hughes was a wonderful evocation of everyday life in the 1880s from the perspective of a young woman.

I must also record a huge debt of gratitude to Paul Binns, blacksmith, for his invaluable technical help with the details of a Victorian forge. I only wish I had been able to cram in more historical detail! Needless to say, any errors are mine, and I hope blacksmiths and farriers will forgive any dramatic licence I’ve taken with details.

Finally, thank you to everyone who supported, bought, read, reviewed and loved The Winter Trilogy. I quite literally couldn’t have done it without you.