Authors: C.N. Crawford
Everyone Jack had ever met who’d studied at Eton College had the same nasal laugh. It must have resulted from several centuries of passing along the irritating mannerism from one generation of black-suited schoolboys to the next.
Jack smiled. “Of course. I never need to announce my visits with you.” George’s alchemical expertise extended far beyond his own.
George pulled the door open wider, motioning for Jack to enter. “It’s always good to have a fellow philosopher here. Come with me to the drawing room.”
Jack followed him through a Georgian hallway, large enough that it could double as a ballroom. Portraits of Percy ancestors hung on the walls.
George’s black shoes clacked across the floor as he led Jack into a vast living room. Blood red walls reached twenty feet high, and alcoves held busts of great philosophers from the past. A bearded John Dee gazed pensively heavenward, and the Wizard Earl himself glowered at tall windows on the opposite side.
“Admiring my brother, are you?” George sat on a crimson loveseat. “I was the lucky recipient of all of his spell books, you know, after King James locked him in the Tower.” Another chuckle forced itself through his nose. “Please, sit.” He motioned to an antique white sofa across from him.
Jack sat, steeling himself for the inevitable barrage of pointless stories. “Percy Plantation looks beautiful, as always.”
George licked his teeth, looking around thoughtfully. “I did have servants. But what’s the point? Spells can do the cleaning for me.” He squinted at his fingernails, chewed to stubs. “Sometimes I think I should get a wife. A pretty little thing to amuse me.” He’d been saying that for hundreds of years, but women terrified him.
Jack arched an eyebrow.
Humor him.
“A wife would suit you.”
George widened his beady eyes. “You’re good with women. Women love you. You must teach me how you charm them.” He swallowed, his body suddenly rigid. “I just don’t know if women understand what I’ve been through. Do you know what it was like in Jamestown?”
Jack shook his head.
Here we go.
“I can’t imagine.”
George leaned forward, his thin lips quivering. “I was the governor. They relied on me to lead them. And I did. But the savages surrounded us, threatening to kill us. And the colonists didn’t want to farm. The King sent us with a bunch of bloody jewelers. What were we supposed to do with jewelers?” Another nasal guffaw, like a ship’s horn. “They thought we’d find rivers of gold in the New World. But there was nothing here but death, disease, and starvation.” He shot Jack a pointed look. “It was before I had the spell books.”
Jack nodded solemnly. “The world is fortunate you survived.” He was going to talk about the shoe next.
“The
starving time
, they call it. I’ll never forget it. There I was, a direct descendant of Sir Harry Hotspur, trying to eat through my own leather shoe.” A mirthless chuckle escaped his lips. “We were a bunch of desperate skeletons, slowly going mad.” He sank into the sofa, his eyes tearing up. “And then we ate Rebecca. Only fourteen, she must have been. So pretty. Would have made a nice wife.”
“Right. But you
had
to eat her.” Maybe there was some way to hurry this along.
George’s face brightened. “Yes, that’s true. We
had
to. The colonists were halfway in the grave, and I was their caretaker, being of superior breeding.” He nodded thoughtfully. “That filthy colonist John Smith had spent time with the Báthory family in Hungary. It was there he learned that human flesh and blood could revitalize a person. So, we did what we had to do.” A grin creased his face as he stared out the window. “And it did make me feel alive.” He sighed and pulled out his pocket watch, tracing his fingers over the back. “It was lucky my brother’s spell books helped me refine things, so that we might be young and vigorous, like wild stallions.” He looked at Jack with a simple smile. “A new wife would be proud to call me her husband, robust as I am.”
“I don’t doubt it. Speaking of watches—” Jack pulled his own out of his pocket. “—mine isn’t working so well. I can’t control the hunger.”
He could see by George’s glazed eyes that he was still lost in Jamestown, and the pseudo-Earl tucked his feet further under himself. “Pryse, the scoundrel’s name was. He blamed the gods for our misfortunes, raving through the dirt streets that we’d been abandoned. He got what was coming to him. The gods sent a wolf to destroy him. Ripped open his bowels in the wood when he was searching for berries.” He flared his nostrils. “One thing you can’t lose is your dignity, no matter what happens. I know that better than anyone.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “It’s fortunate
you
were able to keep your wits, Lord Percy.” Another lie. Anyone but George himself could see there had never been a Pryse. Just an insane Percy, ranting in the dirt when the depredations had broken his spirit.
Really, his unconscious should have come up with a more subtle alias.
The Earl blinked his small brown eyes as though waking. “What were you saying?”
Jack’s stomach churned with hunger, as though he were being eaten by a wolf himself. He forced his most charming smile. “I’m having a bit of trouble with my watch. I can’t control the hunger anymore. And then there was the succubus.”
George smirked. “Pretty one, was she? Almost makes it worth the draining.”
Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose, marshaling his patience. “You know, I still haven’t seen the wretched demon.”
“Hand it over.” George held out his hand, suddenly alert. “Do you have any other important business in the area?”
Finally, we’re getting somewhere.
He dropped the watch in the Earl’s hand. “I do, actually. I think I have a masked ball to attend, once I’m feeling myself again. But I have a suspicion I may need some extra strength for it. There might be a bit of trouble.”
Thomas lay flat on the chipped stone, his arms trembling with fatigue. He’d managed to sleep for a few hours, waking with a throbbing pain in his head in the bright daylight. Dried blood crusted around his fingernails, a relic of his attempt to smash through the floor in a frenzy of metal against stone. He’d managed to bash in the Scorpio mark, but that was as far as his iron bar had taken him.
Seven points…
The rhythm of the words still called to him, fainter now. He rubbed his eyes, sitting up against the wall. There
was
a pattern here. He just had to find it. Panic rattled him as he wondered if the arrow on the Scorpio sign had pointed to something important. He’d lost it now.
He needed to check the floor stones again. He must have missed a clue.
Eirenaeus
wouldn’t have left that mark unless there was a reason.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth. He couldn’t remember anymore why he was so certain
Eirenaeus
had left the Scorpio mark, but he had nothing else to go on.
He crawled over the floor, searching every damp inch of stone. His heart raced when he found a hatch mark by the window, and then two more on nearby stones. The other sides of the room had a similar pattern. The smashed stone would have been the final marking in this circle.
He stood and spun in a circle, his hands joined behind his neck.
Did
Eirenaeus
make these hatch marks? Or did I?
There were twelve marks in all—twelve, like the signs of the zodiac. His breath rattled in his lungs, strained in the stale air.
Eirenaeus
was communicating through the zodiac somehow.
I need to remember everything I know about the zodiac.
Seven points. Seven towers. Seven gods.
His pulse raced. In the ancient geocentric model of the universe, there’d been
seven
planets that orbited the earth. Each had ruled a different metal. His own sign, Scorpio, was ruled by Mars.
And Mars rules iron. The Iron Tower. Scorpio represents the Iron Tower. And Leo is the sun—gold. Leo is the Gold Tower.
He crossed the cell, dropping to his knees to stare at the zodiac wheel. At least two of the towers were named for metals. His chest fluttered as the pattern spoke to him. He ran his fingers over the chiseled lines.
Each of the seven towers was represented by one of the points and its corresponding star sign. The engraving told him the relationship of the towers to each other. If he was in the Iron Tower, then the Gold Tower—the Leo sign—was just to his left.
The zodiac wheel is a coded map of the Fortress.
He nearly whooped with joy. The lines weren’t latitudes and longitudes. They represented hidden connections between the towers.
He hugged himself, shivering. Seven and twelve.
It’s the sevens, the sevens and twelves. Seventy-twelve.
Selvin.
“Focus, Thomas!” The mental static was rising again.
His throat had never been this sore before. It was like he’d swallowed a bag of nails. Rubbing his swollen glands, he tried to remember all the connections between the star signs, planets, and metals.
Virgo goes with Mercury and quicksilver, and Pisces goes with Jupiter and—maybe tin.
He couldn’t quite get them all, but it didn’t matter. He only needed a few.
He ran to the window, stumbling over a pewter cup of water. Despite its proximity, there wasn’t a direct path from the Iron Tower to the gold. At least not according to his map. He needed to get to the Pisces—the Tin Tower across the way, and then make a sharp left to double back.
His chest swelled, filling his lungs with musty air. He knew how to navigate the tunnels to the Gold Tower. But he had no idea how to get into the tunnels. His plan to smash through the Scorpio rock was an abject failure.
He balled his fists.
Why is
Eirenaeus
making this difficult?
Wanker.
“
Eirenaeus
!” he shouted, banging his hands against the iron window bars, so hard his palms throbbed. “
Eirenaeus
! You can just tell me in words! You don’t need to use signs and hatch marks and lines in the sodding wall, you seventeenth-century twat!” He pivoted, pacing the floor. He threw back his head and laughed. It felt good to hurl insults, even if no one was listening. “
Eirenaeus
!
” His voice was hoarse. “You cryptic tosser! You gold-making leprechaun bell-end!” He doubled over with laughter. There was something inherently funny about leprechauns.
He straightened, his mirth fading. The sun was setting, and he was still here, locked in this cell. And in a few days, he’d be drowned in a vat of charmed liquid.
Gold. Gold. Gold.
This word alone demanded his attention now. He rubbed a hand over his hair.
Eirenaeus
had found a way to make gold from lead, the crowning achievement of any philosopher. “The Great Work,” he muttered. “Changing lead into gold.”
A smile crept over his face.
Eirenaeus
didn’t make his escape through the stone marked with the Scorpio sign
. It would have been Leo—the gold sign. His pulse racing, Thomas stepped along the edges of the room, starting with the shattered Scorpio stone. He walked clockwise, counting the hatch marks until he found the one that corresponded with Leo. The gold stone.
Heart hammering, he picked up the iron bar, and once again bashed into the stone. This time, the stone gave way.
Dr. Mellior finished a final slurping spoonful of his cucumber soup—a light lunch, as usual. He folded his long fingers in front of his chest and stared over the rims of his glasses. Fiona’s stomach rumbled. She could murder someone for a slice of pizza right now.
By the doctor’s side, Mrs. Ranulf scanned the students with a tight-lipped smile.
The doctor cleared his throat. “Today should be a joyous occasion, with the masquerade tonight. But I think we should discuss the elephant in the room. We’ve lost two students to the dark forces. There are only seven of you now.” His shirt was a sickly green color, like the pale green of hospital walls.
Jonah scratched his cheek. “Do you really think Connor was a terrorist though? I mean, I’ve known the guy for a while.”
“Do
you
think Connor is a terrorist?” asked Dr. Mellior.
Jonah hunched his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess, if you think he is.”
Dr. Mellior nodded. His chair creaked as he leaned back. “As unfortunate as it is, a smaller family can be a closer family.”
Alan’s spoon clanged as he dropped it in his bowl. “But where have you taken them?”
“That’s none of your concern, Alan Wong,” Mrs. Ranulf snapped. Her red dress matched the rubies in her chalice pendant.
Alan continued to glare, and Fiona had the uncomfortable feeling that he wasn’t going to back down.
“I thought we were going to talk about the elephant in the room,” said Alan. “The elephant is that you kidnapped two teenagers based on rumors and superstition, and you’re holding them somewhere without a trial.”
Mrs. Ranulf pointed at Alan. “You people think you can come into our country—”
The psychiatrist shot her a hard look, and silence descended.
Munroe shrugged
.
“Who cares where the witches are? If they’re trying to destroy our way of life, they should be killed.” She pursed her plum-colored lips.