Masque of the Red Death (11 page)

Elliott takes my arm, and we walk outside and into the darkness.

“There used to be gas streetlights in some parts of town.” He lights two lanterns and hangs them on hooks at the front of his steam carriage so that our visibility is slightly better than nothing. The full moon doesn’t illuminate as much as you might expect. The buildings lining the street absorb the moonlight.

As we leave the Debauchery District, the darkness is briefly illuminated by torches. Robed figures slither in and out of my line of vision. Elliott’s eyes follow them through the gloom. I breathe in, hard, and point, though they are moving quickly and have disappeared.

“Malcontent’s men.” He drives slowly, uneasily.

The full moon casts oblong shadows. And then, for a moment, everything goes dark. Something blocks the moon. I’m reminded of Henry’s toy airship, but when I look up, the sky holds only clouds.

Elliott pulls a lever, and the steam carriage jumps forward. “If you ever need a place to hide, there are entrances to the catacombs throughout the city. They look like sewer covers, but they are marked with the open eye.”

“The catacombs are mapped out in your book,” I say.

He nods quickly. “Many of the passages have deteriorated along with the city, but at least now I know where they were.”

“You are looking for places to hide your soldiers,” I guess. “Or ways to move them through the city.”

“I need a way to organize. My father knew that the architects and masons who constructed the city built secret rooms and tunnels just for the challenge of it.”

“The soldier in the Towers had a pin on his lapel, with an eye. Like on the note you sent me. And on the book.”

“It was the symbol of my father’s secret society. I’ve adopted it. Prospero murdered all the members, so their secret places are mostly still unknown, and now I have what might be the only complete set of maps, thanks to you.”

I scan the buildings that line both sides of the street, wondering how many men are loyal to him, wishing that we could hide in the catacombs now. If someone attacks us, it will be my fault for demanding he take me home.

“Next time I will insist we wait until morning to leave. You can sleep at my apartment.”

He takes my silence as discomfort and continues. “Don’t worry. I can sleep in the dressing room.”

“I wasn’t worried,” I say, straining my eyes to see through the thick night air. “You don’t even really like me.”

“You underestimate yourself.” His voice reminds me of the first time I met him, when he asked what a girl like me needed to forget.

“No. I don’t. My parents don’t even like me. They wish that I had died and my brother had lived. Everyone liked my brother.”

He laughs.

“So I’m risking my life to take you home in the middle of the night, and your parents don’t even care?”

I don’t laugh with him, and of course he notices. He always notices. When he speaks again, his voice is gentle. “My father wished that April had been the son. She was ruthless, and I was a dreamer.”

The moon shines dully from behind a cloud. We live in a haze of humidity. Even at night when it’s cool, the air is heavy with moisture.

The buildings here lean over the street, which is little more than a muddy track. April’s carriage would never have made it through the back alleys that Elliott seems to prefer. A clothesline is stretched over the street, with garments swaying with the movement of the wind. This was a working-class neighborhood, back when there were jobs to be had. The air here is scented with the greasy smell of fried meat, and a pleasant aroma, like some sort of spice. Elliott’s hands on the steering wheel are less tense, and I take a deep, calming breath.

Something shimmers across the street in front of us.

“Elliott!”

Wires have been stretched across the road, and I brace myself as the steam carriage lurches to the left and we hit a pile of rubble.

I search the darkness for cloaked figures, anything moving.

“He set a trap for us,” Elliott says quietly.

I grip his arm just above the elbow, so hard that it has to hurt. We are vulnerable, with our lanterns shining brightly in the darkness.

I see a pendant with the black scythe hanging from a nearby window.

“Elliott?” My voice is shaking. I want him to back up, to get us out of here, but instead he’s fumbling for something behind his seat. The street is silent except for the purr of our engine. Elliott attaches a vial of liquid to a small candle. He hands me a match. “Light the fuse.”

I light it with unsteady fingers and hand it back to him. He looks at it for a moment, then tosses it into the street ahead of us.

It bursts, and there’s a flash of light before an explosion rocks the narrow street.

Elliott smiles and turns the carriage in a tight circle. “Which one of us do you think the reverend wants?”

I glance at the crucifix in the back of the steam carriage.

Elliott grabs the crocodile skull, tossing it out into the street, where it shatters into a million white pieces. He does not discard the gold crucifix. And now we’ve turned. The fire is behind us. With no one to put it out. Wooden beams start to blaze, and then shingles on a roof high above.

“When I’m in charge of the city, I’ll re-form the fire brigade,” he says.

My hand throbs where the crocodile tooth scraped it.

The air is so dense in this part of the city that I can put out my arm and feel the condensation settling on my skin. In the light of the blaze I can see row upon row of arched windows. The glass is completely gone, and bats screech from within and beat their wings in the darkness.

The journey home is interminable. Elliott veers back onto the main street and stays there. The husks of churches sadden me as we pass them. They tie the neighborhoods together, tall and proud, solid stone buildings with their steeples and bell towers.

Finally the Akkadian Towers loom over us. “Almost there,” Elliott says.

I want to be home. At least in April’s carriage we had guards.

“When you have a chance, take another look around your father’s laboratory. See if you can find any correspondence from my uncle. Both my uncle and the rebels will want to use your father. We need to know what they might be planning so we can decide how to help him.”

I saw the way Elliott looked at my father, and I’m not convinced that he wants to help him. Elliott is willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of this plan, I am beginning to realize. And he thinks I am, too.

“I’ll look,” I say, but I’m really just breaking the silence.

My parents have always warned me about the dangers in the city. It occurs to me that though I’ve seen countless explosions from my own window, the only person I’ve actually seen blow things up is Elliott.

CHAPTER

TEN

M
OTHER AND
F
ATHER SIT ACROSS FROM EACH
other, eating breakfast.

In the placid light of morning, it doesn’t seem possible that Elliott and I risked our lives so that I could be here with my parents, who have barely acknowledged me.

The roses in the centerpiece are wilting. Mother nibbles at some bread. She eats sparingly, mourning either vegetables that are no longer grown here or fruit that used to be imported. She says I don’t understand because I never had the delicate sauces or the tiny mushrooms that she dreams about. When Father stayed in his laboratory for days on end, Finn and I had to forage. Finn made a game out of mixing the most outrageous foods and daring me to eat them. I was ill several times as a result of his creativity.

Mother complains that there is no butter for the bread. I take a large bite, not caring that it’s dry. I eat to keep myself alive, because if I die here in this apartment, she will be the one who finds my body. No matter how much we disappoint each other, I won’t do that to her.

I sigh, and both parents turn to look at me, but neither asks what is wrong. Perhaps they are afraid of my answer. Perhaps they don’t care.

“I’m thinking of doing some charity work,” Mother says.

“Don’t forget that the poor have burned their own factory. No one can save the world. Not when it doesn’t want to be saved.” Disillusionment is making Father old.

It’s unusual for them to talk like this. Once they shared an interest in their children, but that was when there were two of us.

“I’m going to go downstairs and ask about conditions in the city,” Father says. “If it is safe, Araby, perhaps you will walk with me.”

I nod. I can’t stop thinking of what I’ve done. Even the smallest gestures could put my family in danger. It’s easy to deflect the worry in the heat of the moment, when Elliott sounds so sure. But now, away from him, breaking the prince’s hold on the city seems impossible.

Mother disappears into one of her fancy sitting rooms. The vases of flowers are wilting in there, too. When Father returns from downstairs, I’m happy to spend some time with him, despite my guilt. We walk, followed by his guards, through the lobby and out to the street.

“Your mother wants flowers,” he says. “She has taken a dislike to the roses your friend brought.”

What he means is that she dislikes Elliott, but getting flowers provides us with an excuse to leave the penthouse. To leave the building. The staff watches us. Perhaps they find it odd, how often we come and go. Most people stay inside, especially those who are rich enough to live on these tree-lined avenues.

It is a short walk to the market.

Father adjusts the collar of my coat. “You should have a scarf.” He looks down, embarrassed by the fatherly comment. “If there are flowers, we will take them home to your mother. If not, we’ll go to the pier.”

Beggars hover around the periphery of the market, more numerous than shoppers, and not a single vendor has flowers. Too frivolous for an overcast day like today, I suppose. I wonder where Elliott finds such beautiful roses in a city where beauty is no longer important.

Instead of flowers, Father buys two bushels of apples, and we lug them to the fence that has been erected to keep the beggars out. He polishes an apple with the edge of his shirt and hands it to a little girl. Other children line up, their eyes full of hope. Starving children are a dirty secret of the upper city. If they ever left, they’d not be allowed back in past the checkpoints. People don’t expect to find the poor here.

Many of the children have cloth masks tied around their faces. These makeshift masks may make them feel safer, but the idea of breathing through burlap makes me gag.

A bigger boy than most pushes to the front of the line. Father leans forward and speaks to him. The boy tries to grab an apple from the basket. One of Father’s guards comes to attention, putting his hand on his musket, but Father just smiles, shakes his head, and points to the end of the line. The boy considers the dwindling fruit and lines up behind a child who can’t possibly be more than five years old.

“Araby,” Father calls, “buy more apples.”

I buy all the apples I can find and drag them, bushel by bushel, over to Father. By the time the boy who pushed gets back to the front, many more children have lined up behind him. Father hands him a coin as well as an apple, and he walks away beaming.

I look away from Father’s charity, distracted by a little girl. She eats two bites of her apple and then puts it carefully into her pocket. It isn’t hard to imagine that she is saving it for someone, though it is hard to imagine a person who might be hungrier than the tiny girl. I want to give her a second apple so that she can finish the one she started and have another to take home. I look for her, but there are so many children. I’ve lost sight of her.

When they see that Father has given out the last of the fruit, the guards gather around us and hurry us away from all the outstretched hands. Father glances at the apple in my hand and raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. We walk, side by side, down to the harbor.

There are countless red scythes on the doors of the houses we pass. And then one black scythe. Clever to make the symbol of the rebellion so close to the symbol for the disease. Unless you are looking for it, you might not register the difference.

The water in the harbor smells of salt and fish and death. But the new steamship, the
Discovery
, is shiny and clean among the shipyard decay. I consider the ship, the copper accessories, the great wheel that will drive it forward, as I turn the cool apple over and over, passing it from hand to hand.

Father stares out over the waves.

“Something unexpected has happened,” I say.

I struggle with the words. It’s hard keeping everything to myself. April is gone. Mother is out of the question. Elliott would laugh. And of course I can’t speak to Will. That leaves Father.

“Your mother says that you have fallen in love.”

Surprise leaves me speechless.

Falling in love would be too much of a betrayal of my vow and of Finn.

“Tell me.” It is a command, but his voice is gentle. It’s something he used to say when we were children. After a fight with Finn, I would shut myself in my room and brood. Mother thought it was best just to ignore me, but Father would come in and sit with me, sometimes for an hour or more. Finally, when I was ready to break down and cry, he would say, “Tell me.” And invariably I would. And he would listen, and at least pretend like he understood.

“I’m not in love,” I say softly, “but there is someone who could make me happy.” It is frightening to speak of this intangible thing that keeps going through my mind. What Elliott is doing is important, and I want to help him. But at every turn I keep coming back to Will. I could feel something if I let myself. It’s a terrifying possibility.

I can’t tell if Father has any desire to hear this. I remind myself that Finn will never meet someone who could make him happy. Guilt chokes me, even as I try to find the courage to speak.

“He’s raising his two younger siblings,” I say. “One of them needs a mask. The little boy. He saved enough money for the girl, but… I was trying to get a mask for Henry. Then the factory was destroyed.”