The Crimson Shard (9 page)

“That’s where he sleeps?” Blaise whispered to Jacob, incredulous.

Jacob gave a quick nod.

“But this is his house, isn’t it? Why doesn’t he sleep downstairs in a bedroom?”

“Do not speak of me behind my back.” Jeremiah got to his feet, looking unsteady. “Yes, this is my house!”

Blaise backed away from Jacob, so as not to bring Jeremiah’s anger onto him.

“My father built it thirty-five years ago. It is the only home I have ever known, and the only home I shall ever know. Nothing — no one — shall force me from it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Blaise. “I didn’t know —”

“Mr. Throgmorton and his daughter are my, er, lodgers and stay downstairs,” said Jeremiah. “That is all you need know. My living arrangements are no business of yours.”

“I — I’m sorry. . . .”

“You remember what I told you. Keep to your work.”

Blaise sat down at his table and stared at his pile of ink drawings. He sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was pick up that quill pen again.

“What’s going on?” Sunni appeared in the workshop, late and bleary-eyed, from her own bed in the cellar.

“Don’t talk right now,” Blaise said through clenched teeth. “Someone’s in a bad mood and taking it out on us.”

Sunni dipped her quill in the inkpot and started scratching away on the corner of one of her practice sheets. A huge black blob rolled onto the paper and she groaned. “This pen is terrible.”

“Have you honed the quill, Miss — er, Sunniver?” grunted Jeremiah. “Instruct him, Toby.”

The Master sat down heavily in his seat and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “There is no use in a blunt tool. We must have sharpness at all times.”

With that, he let his eyes close, and his chin fell to his chest.

A distant church bell rang two o’clock in the morning. Sunni paused from her work to examine the lump on her middle finger. It was so sore from drawing, she could hardly bear anything to touch it.

Jeremiah snored in his chair. Toby had already warned them not to wake him.

She studied the boys’ wan faces. All of them worked without complaint, barely stopping to stretch, except for Blaise. For the first time ever, even he seemed to need a break and couldn’t stop fidgeting and yawning.

So he’s not a perpetual drawing machine,
she thought, stifling a yawn herself.

She couldn’t stop glancing at the painted door, half expecting Throgmorton or Livia to step through it at any moment. But she knew they were both downstairs, having waved off their dinner guests an hour and a half before.

As she drew yet another sketch, holding her pen so it would not press on her raw finger, she thought of Dean, tucked up in bed at home in Braeside with her dad and Rhona. But would they actually be sleeping or awake, worrying about her? Sunni had managed to disappear — again — and no doubt her stepmother would lock her up and throw away the key after this.

From down below, slow footsteps climbed the stairs. A lantern cut through the gloom, illuminating Throgmorton’s figure at the workshop door.

“Blaise. Jack Sunniver,” he said. “Come with me.”

They followed Throgmorton in silence as he led them into a dark-paneled study on the ground floor. The atmosphere was chilly, with no embers glowing in the hearth or candles on the mantelpiece, and was stagnant with spent tobacco.

Throgmorton gestured for them to sit and locked the door. He set the lantern on a small table littered with half-empty glasses of port wine and a discarded pipe. The gentlemen must have sat here talking and laughing after dinner, but they had taken everything light and jolly away with them when they went home.

“How is your instruction progressing?” Throgmorton asked softly.

Play along,
Sunni told herself. She forced her face into a pleasant expression. “I’ve learned about making a quill and drawing with ink.”

“Me, too” was all Blaise managed before he had to yawn.

Throgmorton pushed the lantern closer to Sunni and Blaise, lighting their faces and sending his own farther into the darkness. “You are not used to working properly. Life is very easy in your world. And you have great opinions about work, about what is too much or too hard. I am speaking to you, Jack Sunniver.”

Sunni met Throgmorton’s gaze.

“You have been especially busy not working this evening. Instead you have been exploring, listening at doors, asking questions, demanding things,” said Throgmorton. “I was not expecting this kind of behavior from my guests.”

“I’m not your guest — I’m trapped in this house,” she said. “Though it’s more like a sweatshop, isn’t it? With slaves copying artwork that you take away from them.”

“You have a loose mouth, Jack Sunniver.”

“That’s not my name.”

Sunni could sense Blaise tensing and willing her to shut up, but it was too late.

Throgmorton released a long breath. “It is your name now, Miss Forrest.”

A sharp shock ran through Sunni at his mention of her surname. She had never told it to him or anyone else there.

“How do you know my —?”

“Blackhope Tower,” said Throgmorton, crossing one leg over the other. His shoe buckle glinted sharply in the candlelight. “You know the place.”

“What?” Sunni gasped. “Who
are
you?”

Throgmorton did not answer. “Of course you know Blackhope Tower, the castle built by Sir Innes Blackhope. And all who can read newspapers or see those magnificent devices, the television and the computer, know about you.” He gave them a nod. “You are famous for vanishing there in the Mariner’s Chamber, a room that was already notorious because skeletons would appear from nowhere on the tiled labyrinth in its floor.”

Sunni knew exactly where the skeletons had come from, but she was not going to tell him.

“You were only in the Mariner’s Chamber to see Fausto Corvo’s painting,
The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia,
” said Throgmorton. “But you happened to discover Corvo’s once-secret password,
chiaroscuro.
” He let the Italian word that meant “light and dark” roll off his tongue in an exaggerated way.

Sunni cringed at hearing this man say it aloud. Of course she had talked openly about the password that connected the tiled labyrinth with the painting’s hidden world. Since the labyrinth’s power had been closed down, there hadn’t been any reason to hide the password. Not that she, Blaise, or her stepbrother, Dean, had dared to divulge any of the painting’s
real
secrets; they had sworn to protect them. But now she wished she had kept the password to herself.

Throgmorton continued. “Then both of you, and the other boy, Dean, vanished from the Mariner’s Chamber with no explanation. People became obsessed with the mystery of the missing children. When you finally reappeared, you told a fantastic story — that you had entered Corvo’s painting by walking the labyrinth and repeating the word
chiaroscuro.
Some believed you, but many others thought you had invented the tale.”

Though she was tempted to contradict him, Sunni kept silent. Their predicament had shifted again, and she was trying hard to keep up.

“I believe your story. I have no doubt that Corvo endowed that labyrinth with magical powers when he designed it. He was suspected of sorcery, and because of it he escaped from Venice, never to be seen again,” said their captor.

Blaise burst out, “So would I, if some power-hungry guy had put a bounty on my head and sent his spies after me.”

“Who are you talking about?” Throgmorton asked.

“Soranzo,” Blaise muttered.

“What do you know of him?”

“Soranzo went after Corvo because he wouldn’t sell him some paintings he wanted. If it hadn’t been for him, Corvo wouldn’t have had to run. Soranzo ruined his life.”

“You know many things about Corvo,” said Throgmorton, not moving a muscle.

“No more than anybody else. Everyone knows he was chased out of Venice in 1582.”

“I disagree. You know things no one else does. And I have been waiting for an opportunity to speak with you about them. Destiny brought you to Starling House yesterday.”

“No, a man with a beard brought us there,” Sunni said. “He spoke to us in a café. Some coincidence.”

“It was no coincidence,” Throgmorton replied smoothly. “He is my associate.”

“What do you mean?”

“He had been following you for some time before bumping into you in the café. He knows your town, Braeside, very well.”

Sunni shuddered. “That man was in Braeside?”

“Yes. When he learned you were coming to London with Blaise’s father, I knew we would meet. I saw to it.”

“You set this up!” Blaise said, charged up with anger. “Sunni and I didn’t come to Starling House to talk about Corvo.”

“But now that you are here, we will discuss your adventure.”

“No.”

“What did you say?” Throgmorton’s eyelids lowered.

“No. There’s nothing to tell you, or anyone else. We told everything we know to the police, and that’s as far as it goes.”

“Fausto Corvo’s painting,
The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia.
You know it very, very well.” Throgmorton’s hand twitched. “You entered that painting and saw things inside it that you drew in your sketchbook.”

Sunni pressed her lips into a tight line. Blaise was sitting forward, his jaw clamped shut.

“It was rumored that Corvo went to Blackhope Tower, where Sir Innes hid him. It would make sense for him to have concealed himself in
The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia,
” Throgmorton said. “Did you see Fausto Corvo when you were inside that painting?”

“No,” said Blaise and Sunni as one.

“I see,” said Throgmorton. “Then how did you come to draw him, Blaise?”

Sunni cursed to herself. Why did Blaise have to carry
that
sketchbook around with him? She’d told him umpteen times that he’d either lose it or damage it, but he refused to put it aside until he had filled all of its pages with pictures.

“I didn’t draw him.” Her friend’s voice was edgy.

“His portrait is in among your drawings.”

“I copied that from a self-portrait he made.”

Throgmorton frowned. “I do not know of any self-portrait like your sketch. Are you certain you did not draw it from life?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Blaise muttered.

“From memory then?” asked Throgmorton.

“It’s partly copied and partly from my imagination. Not that it’s any of your business.”

Throgmorton peered at them from the half dark. “I think Sunniva has a bad influence on you, Blaise, encouraging you to lie. But I also think you are the sort of young man who would lie only to protect others.”

Sunni bristled at being described as a bad influence. “You have no idea what sort of person I am.”

“Nor am I interested. I only want the truth about what is inside Corvo’s painting. Now.”

“We’re not telling anyone anything. There’s nothing to tell.” Sunni stood up. “Take us back to our time, Mr. Throgmorton.”

Blaise jumped to his feet, too, and picked up the lantern, shining it in the tour guide’s face.

Throgmorton’s eyes were fixed on them, cold blue like shadows on icebergs. “Sit down.”

“No, take us back through that door upstairs,” said Blaise.

“
Sit down!
” Throgmorton’s command emanated from somewhere deep in his chest, as violent as a crack of thunder and just as unnerving.

Shaken, Sunni sat back on her chair, and Blaise put the lantern onto the table.

Their captor’s face returned to impassive calmness. “This is a serious business. Do you think I would have brought you to this time if it were not?”

Sunni and Blaise remained silent.

“You know far more than you admit. You have seen paintings come to life before! And Blaise has drawn symbols and creatures in his sketchbook that could only be recognized by few learned men from the distant past. He may deny it all he likes, but I know he copied them from what he saw inside
The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia
— including Corvo’s three lost magical paintings.”

Sunni’s face twisted. “So you know about
them,
too. Why am I not surprised?”

He gave Sunni a cool look. “I brought you against my better judgment. But you are here now and will make yourself useful.”

“What does that mean?”

“You admit you know about the three lost paintings:
The Chalice Seekers, The Jewel of Adocentyn,
and
The City of the Sun.
It is said that Corvo hid the deepest, most powerful secrets of the universe below their surfaces. Tell me their exact location, how to find them, and how to get out of the painting.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Blaise said. “The labyrinth is closed down now. It’s over. There’s no way back in.”

Throgmorton’s eyes glinted. “The labyrinth is only closed in
your
time.”

“You want to go into the painting yourself!” Sunni said, horrified.

“And to return safely, for my daughter’s sake.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.” Her face was set.

“Will you be more sensible, Blaise?”

Blaise just shook his head, glowering.

“So be it.” Throgmorton rose and smoothed out his long overcoat.

“You will remain pupils of the illustrious Jeremiah Starling at the Academy of Wonders. For the other boys, this is luxury compared to life on the streets. But for you, it will be hell. When you are so tired and hungry you cannot go on, you will be eager to tell me everything you saw inside
The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia.
”

“You can’t keep us here! You haven’t bought us like you have the other boys,” cried Sunni.

“Stay in that chair, girl, and do not move.” Throgmorton clamped one hand onto Blaise’s arm and steered him to the door, which he unlocked with his other hand. “In this house, you
are
my property, though you, Sunniva, have far less value than Blaise and his sketchbook. You are expendable to me, but perhaps not to him. If he values you, he will soon reveal what I want to know — or you, too, will vanish without trace. Just like the boy who once wore Blaise’s clothes.”

He pulled Blaise into the hall and locked the door behind them with a hard click.