Mission: Nutcracker

Chapter 18

18

Terminus, 20 December 1871

After Lucy and Posey left with the strictest—and unnecessary—admonishments to Fiona to not let anyone know their plan, Fiona returned to her room and her violin. She tried to play through a minuet but her mind wouldn’t settle on the music. Instead, she kept thinking through the plans—how could they accomplish them? Lucy must have some pull with her family’s servants to be able to do such a thing. Fiona didn’t think that Mrs. Lillet would approve, and she definitely knew her own mother wouldn’t.

Fiona found herself fingering the krakatuk nut pendant, and she unclasped it from her neck. She opened the locket portion again and pondered the letters and number. G7. B5. c2. Then she frowned. The musical scale only went from A to G, and each key had seven chords, major and minor. What if she was looking at a sequence of chords? She put the locket on top of her clothes-press, frowned at it, and picked up her violin. First she played a major G seventh chord, then a fifth in the key of B, and then a minor second chord, which came out very discordant, in C. She played through the listed chords twice. A knock on her door startled her heart into beating at double tempo and stopped her from repeating the chords a third time. Tessa stood in the hallway and twisted her apron.

“What are you playing, Miss Fiona?”

“Oh, nothing. Just doing some experimentation.”

“You may want to switch back to your approved music. Your mother’s been out, but she’ll be back any minute.”

Fiona sighed. “Thank you for letting me know. Where did she go?”

“To the dressmakers. She tried on her dress for the ball tomorrow—one of the ones she had made so she could accompany you on your debut rounds—but found it too loose, so she went to see if they could tuck it in.”

“Right.” Fiona supposed she should be glad, but it was a reminder of how the family’s misfortune was partially her fault even though she hadn’t asked for all the new clothes. At least she had a dress for the ball the next night. “I’ll stop. I’m feeling faint, so perhaps I’ll lie down.”

“Do you need me to help you?” Tessa’s words swam through the air and sounded like they came through water, and Fiona shook her head. What was happening?

“No thank you. I’ll let you know if I need anything.” She shut the door in Tessa’s face—she’d have to apologize for that later—put her violin in its case, and lay on the bed. The room swam around her, swirling like Tessa’s words had, and every sound took on a strange echo, not like in a canyon, but more like a tunnel, where they whirled and magnified before coming back to her. She put her hands over her ears to make the noises stop but found her arms didn’t want to move, nor did her eyes want to open.

She opened her mouth to cry out, but all that emerged was a squeak. Then her clothing began to move, first her corset loosening itself and then the rest of her clothes sliding around and swallowing her until she found herself encased in a world of cotton, muslin, and whalebone. The smells of perfume, sweat, and the foods she’d eaten while wearing her clothing became as sharp and familiar as the sight of her room used to be. Meanwhile, colors muted and faded until the world turned monochrome and shadowy. She found herself trying to blink with her nose, but when she tried to scratch it, she pulled her hand away with a shriek because tiny claws had poked her. Thankfully she didn’t bleed.

There was light up ahead, so she followed it and found herself on a giant bed. Her pillow smelled like the soap she used when she washed her hair and again like the light floral of her perfume, but both so sharp that she could detect the individual ingredients that comprised both. The pillow itself loomed like a hill, and she had to jump and claw her way up it until she stood atop it. From there, she surveyed her room, or tried to, but found her eyesight to be sorely lacking. Furniture appeared as big, dark lumps, and the light from the window barely illuminated the space.

But her nose gave her a clearer picture. She located the pine-herb smell of the rosin from her violin bow, the sharp chemical smells of her oils and metallic odors of her workbench. And a strange smell with a heartbeat pulse, like the petrichor scent of plants when the rain has just started and they’ve opened their pores to ask for more. But this new smell wasn’t tied to anything she could recall in her room.

She followed its trail from the window across her blanket and down to beneath the bed. There she found the source and shrank back. Although the light was dim, she could make out the outline of a nutcracker doll. Twin orbs in its face pulsed, and Fiona hissed at it, wanting it to leave. How dare it be in her room, in her space? And what had it done to her?

Vibrations through the floor resolved into familiar patterns, and Fiona realized her mother was home. She would probably want to talk to Fiona about the ball, so Fiona needed to get back to her clothing. She hissed again at the doll for good measure, then scrambled out from under the bed, up the bedskirt, and over the mattress. She had a vague memory of waking up with her nightdress on backward, so she attempted to align herself with her clothing. The scientific part of her brain marveled at the experience, but the human part, the one that often argued her out of wonderment and encouraged her to stick with what was practical, argued that she was having a most enjoyable and interesting dream. And as she woke, her clothing slid over her once more, smells and sounds turned muted, and her eyesight returned so that when she opened her eyes, she found herself lying on her back on her bed. Heavy footsteps stopped just on the other side of her door, and someone knocked.

“Fee-Oh-na, are you awake? We need to talk about the ball.” Sniff.

“Yes, Mother, I’ll be down in a moment.”

When she sat, her hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and she looked back to see the pins that Tessa had so carefully installed in her curls scattered across the pillow. She wanted to look under the bed, but another call from her mother made Fiona twist her hair back in a bun, secure it with a ribbon, and run from the room. She told herself the doll had been part of a dream, and she didn’t want to keep her mother waiting.

Devon followed Henry down the stairs to the parlor where Hollowell had been resting. The man lay awake, his bruises still prominent, and he picked at the corner of the blanket that covered him. The smells of sweat, blood, and fear made Devon want to wrinkle his nose, but he refrained. There was no reason for him to make Hollowell feel more uncomfortable than he already did. Devon couldn’t imagine what it would be like to wake in a strange place in pain and alone.

The little girl was nowhere to be seen, but Devon thought he’d observed her following the scullery maid about early that morning and chattering about looking for eggs in the henhouse later.

“He said he wouldn’t speak unless the master of the house was present,” Henry said.

“I appreciate his respecting that I’m in charge here.” Devon tried to make his words wry, but it seemed that Henry had slowly tried to take over more than the security functions of the household.

“Of course,” Henry murmured, his agreement almost more annoying than an argument would have been. Devon again swore to himself to cut ties with the foreign service, the biggest regret of his life.

“How are you feeling?” he asked Hollowell.

The man shook his head and then grimaced. “Everything hurts.”

“Doctor Radcliffe will see you after we talk,” Henry said. “Since you said you wanted to report to Mister Meriweather first.”

Hollowell ducked his chin like he started to nod, then slowly brought it back up. “Yes,” he ground out. “There are some things you need to know.”

It was obvious to Devon that each of the man’s movements cost him, and he didn’t want to harm him further, especially since that would upset Fiona. But he needed answers.

“Was that Miss Fiona yesterday?” Hollowell’s face relaxed into a true smile.

Devon tried to ignore the jealousy that lanced through him at the memory of Fiona and Hollowell talking so easily. Why could she speak to the tinkerer, but not to him?

“It was. She flew us out of there in the Guild’s mini airship.” It would have been smart to use that machine to pursue the big one, but he supposed the fire had kept people from accessing it. The few people left who could get to it and knew about it, anyway.

“She’s amazing,” Hollowell said. “Truly, she is. That’s why what I have to tell you hurts more than my wounds.”

A cold spot started in the pit of Devon’s stomach. “Was she involved in the kidnappings?” The words came out before he could stifle them. He couldn’t imagine her knowingly harming others, directly or not, but was that why she had such difficulty speaking with him? She was withholding the truth?

“No, no, she didn’t know anything. The architects of the plans were her father, Bryan Telfair, and Thaddeus Lillet.”

Devon’s knees buckled, and he plopped to the armchair behind him. “Telfair and Lillet? Whatever for?”

Hollowell picked at the blanket, and Devon gave him space to think. His own thoughts whirled like the tornadoes that sometimes happened in the countryside around Terminus, funnels of rain and cloud that destroyed everything in their paths. Admittedly, he didn’t know Bryan Telfair or Thaddeus Lillet all that well, having mostly spoken to them at the few Guild meetings he’d attended, but they’d seemed like decent sorts.

Hollowell’s distress showed in his inability to meet Devon’s eyes as he continued speaking.

“They wanted to make automatons, but the other members wouldn’t cooperate. Afraid of the machines taking over if they got too much motivation shoved into ’em with the aether.”

“So those things at the ball…”

“Weren’t machines. They were men dressed up as them.”

Devon nodded. He had been ninety percent sure that was the case, but as a non-tinkerer, he’d doubted his own perceptions.

“And what happened to you?” Devon asked.

“I tried to fight them, not let them take me.” Now Hollowell looked up at him. “I knew my niece was in the house somewhere. I’d sneaked her in so she could see the ball and the costumes, and I didn’t want her coming to harm. They threw me over the rail from the third floor to the second and left me for dead in the hallway.”

Henry nodded. “The story is consistent with his injuries.”

Hollowell coughed and clutched the side of his chest. “I’ll see the doctor now.”

“Thank you for your forthrightness,” Devon told him. “I’ll look further into Telfair and Lillet.”

“You do that.” His words sounded like a challenge. Devon supposed that if his employer were to betray him and toss him over a stair rail, he’d be resentful, too.

“Did you believe him?” Henry asked once they walked into the hallway. Radcliffe slipped into the room. Devon admired how the man moved like a ghost.

Devon sighed. Of course Davidson would make things more complicated. “Did you?”

Henry looked at him, a line between his brows. “Something doesn’t make sense in all this, Mister Meriweather. I feel there are holes in the man’s story, and we need to further investigate to see what.”

Devon nodded. “I agree.” He, too, felt uneasy with what he’d heard, beyond the fact that Fiona’s father apparently had engineered the destruction and abduction of his own guild. The facts simply didn’t agree with what he’d known of him.

But then, the man had brought his family into financial ruin, so perhaps he had a dark side Devon hadn’t detected yet.

Chadwick Radcliffe emerged. “His heart rate was elevated, as was his respiration. You need to keep him quieter. What were you doing to him?”

He leveled an accusing look at Devon, not Henry, which piqued Devon’s annoyance.

“He insisted upon telling me who was behind the kidnappings,” Devon said.

“Oh?”

“Telfair and Lillet.” Henry’s English accent clipped the names. “I’m going to have the team look into their affairs further and search their houses. Would you happen to know if either of them have property outside the city?”

“I suspect Telfair didn’t. He seems barely able to hold on to what he has here. But Lillet might. He’s from a very connected family.”

Devon recalled that Thaddeus Lillet had two daughters and a niece, Veronica. He’d met the niece during the opening of the Terminus Art Museum. Veronica lived with her husband, a Frenchman with an eyepatch, and the two younger Lillet girls and the wife were still at home. Did any of them know of their father’s involvement in illegal activities?

“Would you like to accompany us to Fiona Telfair’s residence?” Henry asked. “Since the two of you have a connection, she may be more agreeable to letting you in.”

“That’s fine. And then perhaps she can help us get into the Lillet house.”