Worlds of Ink and Shadow (24 page)

“Distressed?” he spat. “I'm not being snubbed by the duchess at the ball, my dear. I'm being murdered by my makers! Wouldn't that
distress
you?”

“It's not murder!” she insisted.

“What would you call it?”

“You're not alive. You are a story. We made you up.”

Rogue pounded his chest with his fist. “I
feel
alive. I don't
feel
like a story any more than you do!”

“I'm sorry,” she said, tears stinging her eyes.

“It's true, then?” he asked. “They're killing me off?”

Emily nodded, and he turned abruptly, rubbing a hand through his hair. She braced herself for a volcanic burst of fury, but his voice, when he turned back to her, was soft and full of pain. “Can't you stop it? Can't you save me?”

Anger she could bear, but the look of suffering on his face sent guilt stabbing through her body.

“You think we are all-powerful, but we are at the mercy of something else,” she said. “All this . . .” She lifted her arms to the scene around them. “All this comes at a price. If I were the only one to pay it, I would do so gladly, but I am
not
the only one.”

Now his anger came. “What the devil are you talking about?” he shouted. “I don't understand a word—but it doesn't sound like a justification for my death!”

“You must die, or you shall continue to torment me. Don't you remember coming to my world? You howled up at my window!”

He started, and she thought perhaps he did remember, but then he pointed a finger at her face, making her take a step back. “It is you who torments me, girl!” He fumbled for something in his jacket pocket, took it out. “Look at this!” He thrust something under her nose. “Why do I carry this? Why can't I get rid of it?” In his hand was a plait of hair tied with a scarlet ribbon. It was hers. He had cut it with the stiletto during the party at Wellesley House. “You'll have me writing poems next.”

“Oh,” she said. “You kept it.”

“You have done this to me, and yet I know you will betray me. I can feel it. You gave me a heart only to break it!”

Emily stared dumbly at the plait. She touched the place where it had been. “You . . . feel something for me?”

Carefully he put the braid back in his jacket pocket. “I believe you know that I do,” he said, with a fiery glare in her direction.

It wasn't true. She hadn't known, and she hadn't made him care for her, though she couldn't deny that she'd wanted it to happen.

“I suppose you will enjoy weeping for me,” he said, “the way women enjoy weeping over a sad book. Will my death be touching, goddess?” She hated the bitterness in his voice. “Will there be a moral lesson?”

“Don't. Please don't,” she said, as a sob escaped her. “Do you think I want you to die?”

“Don't cry, for heaven's sake,” Rogue said. “I have a heart of stone, remember. I am unaffected.”

Emily tried to stop, but a tear was running down her cheek now. It would be so much easier if he hated her. And if she hated him.

“I only laugh when women cry,” Rogue insisted. “Ha!”

Emily's breath stuttered and hitched as she tried to steady it.

“Oh, gods help me,” Rogue said in frustration. “I am slain already.” The next thing Emily knew, she was in his arms.

Emily didn't come from a family that embraced very often, but being held by Rogue was like something she had been waiting a long time for without knowing it. Something in her body that had been held tense relaxed. She cried harder. The wind all around them was like a song, a melancholy song, and the faint tinkling sound made it all the more sad. She pressed her cheek against Rogue's black waistcoat.

“I'm sorry I shot that cully,” Rogue said softly. “In Gondal,
I mean. And I've never been sorry for anything before. It's a strange feeling.” Emily laughed a little through her tears. “You're not reforming me, are you? Making me see the error of my ways? I'd rather die than be that kind of story.”

“Never,” she said. “You are irredeemable.”

“That's a relief,” he said, gently smudging away one of her tears with his thumb. “It will be all right. You'll see. We'll run away to Gondal, just you and I.”

“Yes.”

“I know it's those others who are to blame. Not you.” He took her by the shoulders. “That's why I needed to know who they were. That's why . . . You'll tell me, won't you? You'll tell me the name of the eldest Genius, the one who's truly behind what happens in Verdopolis. Lord Thornton promised me a name.”

Emily hesitated, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Perhaps we could go to Gondal. Perhaps we could go now.” She meant it. She didn't care how many days she lost. At that moment she was willing to go and never come back.

“Not yet,” said Rogue. His grip on her shoulder tightened. “The name first.”

There was something in his eyes she didn't like, and there was the hint of a threat in the tightness of his grip. Emily remembered how he'd tricked her before, in Gondal. Was he really sorry he shot that cully?

“Can't you guess?” she asked.

“No tricks,” he said. His voice had a hard edge.

Emily couldn't believe she'd been willing to run away to Gondal with him only moments before. She had to remember—she'd said it herself—Rogue was irredeemable.

“If you had the power to make a world,” Emily said, “wouldn't you make yourself the hero of every story? Wouldn't you make yourself the richest, the handsomest, the most dashing—the most fascinating man in Verdopolis?”

Rogue's eyes hardened to obsidian. “Zamorna,” he breathed.

“Of course.”

He let go of her shoulders and turned away. “It's so obvious. I should have known. And they say he's to be king of some new country.”

“Yes,” Emily said softly. “If he lives through the coronation day.”

“He won't,” Rogue said. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

The wind gusted, bending the white flowers all around them, and the dissonant tinkling sound she'd heard before grew louder. The foxglove. That was where the sound was coming from. The deadman's bells were all ringing, ringing, ringing—a death knell for her beloved Alexander Rogue.

ANNE

I
HOPE THEY DO NOT MISS THEIR TEA,” PAPA SAID
.

Anne didn't know what to say to this, but he didn't seem to expect an answer. She pulled a skein of red yarn from her workbasket and began to wind it into a ball. This was awkward with her bandages, but she needed something to do. She was on the sofa, and her father sat opposite her on the wooden chair. Everything was strangely ordinary. Snowflake and Grasper sat in their respective baskets, eyeing each other with suspicion. In the kitchen Tabby and Aunt Branwell were arguing over how many walnuts to put in an apple pudding.

“Let me,” Papa said, taking the yarn from her lap. “Don't look so surprised, my dear. Your mother taught me the skill.” He held the yarn between his two upright hands, letting it out gradually as Anne began to wind. “It doesn't hurt your burns?”

“Oh, no.” Anne's fingers were still a little stiff, but she wasn't in any pain. “I'm sure it will do me good.” It was so unusual to have Papa to herself. He was almost always shut up in his study at this time of day.

“I expected to look in on Branwell's painting or look over Charlotte's lesson plans . . . They left no word as to their return?”

“No,” she murmured.

“Nor Emily?”

She shook her head.

“Strange that they should go for such a long walk today, of all days.” He nodded to the windows spattered with rain, but Anne knew he meant something more. He meant,
Where have my children truly gone?
He waited as if expecting her to say something, then sighed. “You look tired, my dear.”

“I am, a little.”

Anne had been counting the minutes since Charlotte and Emily crossed over, and her nerves were frayed. She dreaded being asked a direct question about their whereabouts; she'd even hidden their boots so Aunt Branwell wouldn't ask why they'd gone without them in the rain.
What an excellent criminal I am becoming
, she thought with dismay. For a while they wound yarn in silence.

“Do you remember the painted mask I once had?” Papa asked.

She shook her head.

“Years ago, when Maria and Elizabeth were still alive, it
occurred to me that my children were growing shy, that they did not speak their cares to me, and so I contrived a method for hearing their thoughts. I sat them in a circle and had each wear the mask in turn, and I asked them questions. You were too little, I'm afraid, and didn't wear it, but with the others, it worked wonders. They lost their fear of speaking when they had that mask on, and I learned many instructive things about my children's character and intelligence.

“A parent shouldn't have to resort to such means, but my children had no mother, and men are never taught the art of raising children. I have had to make it up out of my own head, and I suppose I have done it very badly.”

“Not at all, Papa!” Anne insisted.

“I wonder. If I had you wear that mask today, Anne, would you find the courage to tell me what is troubling you?”

Anne would very much have liked to confide in her father, but where in the world would she begin?

He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “I will tell you a secret, my dear. All my children are shy. They have simply learned the art of wearing masks.”

Anne looked up at him. “All except Branwell.”

Papa laughed. “Especially Branwell. What do you think his arrogance is? Just a mask he wears to help him be the person he wants to be—though now I think he finds he cannot take it off as easily as he put it on.”

It was an interesting idea. Anne had often wondered if
Charlotte pretended to be Charles Wellesley sometimes, even when she was not in Verdopolis. Perhaps that's how she found the courage to go to school again—by wearing the mask of someone else until she became that someone else. A clever trick.

“Charlotte does it, I think,” she said.

“Yes. She wears the mask of the dutiful daughter.” It wasn't what Anne had meant, but she didn't interrupt. “It hardly ever slips, but when it does”—he leaned back in his chair—“Charlotte will never forgive me.”

“No,” Anne said quietly. “I suppose not.”

He fixed her with a piercing gaze. “Now, any other of my children would have denied that, denied they even knew what I was speaking of. But not you.”

Anne felt herself blush. She had strong memories of the ugly black wreath that had covered the parsonage door when Maria and Elizabeth died, of crying bitterly not because she missed them, but because everyone else's tears made her feel so bereft. Her memories of Maria and Elizabeth themselves were much more vague—but she'd always known that their ghosts persisted.

“Honesty is one of your great strengths, my dear. Never forget that.” Anne wasn't sure she deserved such praise. Perhaps she only lied less because she said less. “If you could choose any mask to wear right now, what would it be?”

Anne lay down her yarn. “I suppose if, as you say, I would
grow into this mask, then I would make it of my own face . . . but a braver, better version of myself.”

“And what would this braver Anne do?”

The answer came quickly, as if it had been there all along.
I'd save them
, she thought.

CHARLOTTE

T
HEY WOULD ALL DIE TODAY.

Every important person in Verdopolis was crammed into St. Michael's cathedral for Zamorna's coronation—artists, politicians, the wealthy elite—row after row, all wearing their finest clothes: the men in morning coats, the ladies in bright colors and elaborate hats. Charlotte stood at the back of the cathedral with about a dozen others who would also be part of the ceremony.

“We're here,” Branwell said, coming up beside her. Lord Thornton was a peer of the realm, and so he was dressed in an ermine-trimmed robe and coronet.

“Emily, your dress!” Charlotte said.

Emily's dress had turned an inky black, and its velvety black
roses left a trail of petals behind her. She looked down at herself distractedly. “Oh. I'm sorry, Charlotte. It simply . . . happened.”

“I suppose no one will notice in this crowd. What of Rogue? He'll be here?”

“He won't be able to resist,” Branwell said, “and I have an idea for how he'll make his entrance. I think you'll both be pleased.” Charlotte nodded, though Branwell's face was grim and she herself was full of misgivings.

“Find our seats, will you, Branwell?” Emily asked. “I'll join you in a moment.”

Branwell gave them both a look, but he nodded and made his way down the aisle to the front of the church.

“I'm worried about him,” Emily hissed when he was gone. “I'm afraid he's not ruthless enough.”

Charlotte didn't know how to answer. “Are you?”
Am I?

Emily caught up Charlotte's hand and held it tight, her expression fierce. “I saw. I saw what haunts you.” As she spoke her dress changed from black to vivid red again. “I'll be ruthless. I'll be . . . the lamb-horned beast!”

Charlotte found this a little alarming, but she didn't pull away. Instead she nodded. “
A great cheer rose up
,” she said, still looking into Emily's eyes.

Immediately they heard the roar of the crowd outside. Emily smiled and gave Charlotte's hand a final squeeze, then disappeared down the aisle. The wooden doors of the cathedral swung
open, and Charlotte caught a glimpse of waving crowds, of red banners flapping, of a dozen white horses pulling a golden coach. Someone came up behind her.