The Native Star (14 page)

“Are you all right?” he asked, looking back at her.

“No,” Emily said. “I don’t think either of us are anymore.”

CHAPTER NINE

Mason Street

It was well after midnight by the time Emily and Stanton felt safe enough to emerge from the shadows and walk slowly along the narrow gaslit street. The light, however, did nothing to improve either one’s appearance or attitude. They were both covered in mud and scratches from their mad tear across lots, and they were both thoroughly dismayed and disheartened. When they came upon an all-night chophouse offering “Eastern Oysters—All Styles” they went inside and took a table in the darkest corner farthest from the door.

Stanton ordered coffee and sticky buns and a hot cup of chamomile tea to soothe Emily’s still-fluttering stomach. The tea was served with a little almond cookie, but Emily couldn’t even think of eating. Her whole body felt shaky and sick and cold, and even her good hand was trembling so violently that she could hardly lift the cup to her lips.

“Well, Mr. Stanton, it was a pleasure getting to know your colleagues.”

“I couldn’t understand why she was so hesitant to contact Professor Mirabilis.” Stanton popped a glazed walnut from atop one of the buns into his mouth. “Now it all makes sense.”

“If it all makes sense, explain it to me,” Emily said. “Explain why I heard Komé chanting in my head, or why I saw Mrs. Quincy and Captain Caul talking, or why I tasted blood …”

“The last one is the easiest,” Stanton said. “Caul is a sangrimancer—a blood sorcerer. You could tell from the alembic he used to cast his spell. The stone absorbed the spell he threw at you, and that must have made you feel ill.”

Emily shuddered, taking a sip of the chamomile tea to wash away the sickening memory.

“You’ve told me about credomancers and animancers, but you left sangrimancers out.”

“They’re not a pleasant topic of conversation,” Stanton said. “Sangrimancy is the most powerful of the great magical traditions. But a sangrimancer’s power comes at a terrible moral cost. He must obtain it by extracting it from the blood of living creatures.”

“Like … animals?”

Stanton inclined his head slightly. “Some branches of sangrimancy use animal blood, but its potency is minimal.” He paused. “Remember when I said that magic wasn’t in words, but rather in how words act upon the human mind? Likewise, it’s not the blood itself that provides the sangrimancer with his power—it’s the emotions bound within that blood.
Human
emotions. Hate, love, anguish, despair—these are his weapons. To obtain them, he must have human blood, taken by force, seasoned with pain.”

“Seasoned?”

“The greatest concentrations of power are found in humans who are slaughtered in a state of extreme physical or emotional distress. Which means sangrimancers are usually accomplished torturers as well.” Stanton flexed his hands in a strange way, as if he could flick the thought of sangrimancers off his fingers like drops of water. “The practice of blood magic has been illegal for the past fifty years, but laws won’t stop people from taking advantage of such power.”

Emily stared at him for a long time. Then she remembered something else from her vision. “Mrs. Quincy said Captain Caul was a Maelstrom.”

Stanton blinked at her.

“What did you say?”

“A Maelstrom. She said the Maelstroms don’t care about propriety.”

Stanton took a deep breath, then let it out in a long hiss.

“They most certainly don’t.” He looked down at the table.

“You know them?”

“The Maelstroms are a special branch of President Grant’s Secret Service. The units are commanded by old military Warlocks who served in the war—Caul could certainly fit that bill.”

“Then they’re all old men?” Emily asked.

“No, they continue to actively recruit …” Stanton paused as if momentarily lost in a maze of thought. Then he shook his head. “They have a special dispensation to practice sangrimancy, supposedly for the public good. They are deployed in situations that need to be resolved quickly, quietly, and without bothering with that troublesome little thing called the Constitution. If the Maelstroms are after us”—he let out another long breath—“then we really are in trouble.”

At that precise instant the little bell above the door tinkled merrily. Both Emily and Stanton startled; Emily saw Stanton’s hand go to the inside pocket of his coat as his eyes darted to the door. There was the sound of heavy, irregular footsteps and a loud, drunken demand for a steak to be prepared, double quick. Stanton withdrew his hand, lifting it reassuringly, but Emily did not relax.

“Why should the Maelstroms be after us?” Emily whispered. “If the government needs the stone for the public good, why didn’t they just ask?”

“Maelstroms don’t ask.” Stanton shook his head. “Honestly, I knew the stone in your hand was an incredible discovery, but I never anticipated—”

Stanton stopped speaking as the drunk man who had called for the steak lumbered by their table, giving Emily a good hard leer as he passed them. She sank down in her seat, lowering her eyes while the man moved past.

“Are my eyes still black?” she whispered to Stanton.

“No, they’re returning to their customary ‘dewy violet,’ though it looks as though the garden has suffered a recent bout of frost.” Stanton dipped one corner of his cloth napkin into his glass of water and gestured to her. She leaned forward, and he wiped dirt off her cheek.

“And what about Komé? Why was she in my head chanting?”

“That’s a more difficult question. I imagine it has something to do with the acorn she gave you.”

“The acorn? You think I’m having visions because of a magical acorn?”

“Do you have a better explanation?”

Emily sighed. Of course she didn’t. “Well, what are we going to do?”

“We have several problems.” Stanton reached into his pocket and pulled out a few small coins and laid them on the table. “Problem number one. That’s all the money I have.”

“What about your Warlock’s Purse?”

“I’m afraid I left it sitting safely with all my other things, on a chair in Mrs. Quincy’s spare bedroom,” Stanton said. “Shall we go back and ask for it?”

Emily stared at him. “You left it in the spare bedroom?” She said each word slowly.

“We were just going downstairs for dinner! How was I to know we would end up exiting through the parlor window?”

“All right,” Emily sighed heavily. “That’s problem number one.”

“Problem number two. We have to get out of town, and quickly.”

“And the minute you go back for your horses, Captain Caul is certain to be waiting.”

“Actually, that is not a problem.” Stanton looked smug, and for once, Emily found it very comforting. “Mrs. Quincy does not know where my horses are stabled, nor did I divulge that information to the proprietor of the Excelsior Hotel. I took them to my customary stabler near the waterfront to get them reshod. It should be quite safe to retrieve them. But that brings us back to problem number one. I don’t know what I’ll tell them when it comes time to settle the bill.”

Emily reached into her collar and pulled out the silk pouch. From it she withdrew the ten-dollar gold coin that Pap had tucked into her pocket when she’d departed Lost Pine.

“Will this be enough?”

He took the coin from her, looked at it with astonishment.

“I guess Pap thought I should have something in case of emergency,” she said.

“Your pap is an astute old gentleman.” Stanton tucked the money into his pocket. “All right, that’ll get us the horses back.”

“That’s a mercy,” Emily sighed. “So when we get out of San Francisco—if we get out of San Francisco—what then?”

“We have to go to New York,” Stanton said finally. “We have to get to Professor Mirabilis.”

“New York!” Emily stared at him. “That’s … that’s thousands of miles away! We can’t go to New York!”

“Name me an alternative,” Stanton said. “Stay in San Francisco and wait for Caul to find us? Go back to Lost Pine and wait for Caul to find you there? Mrs. Quincy was my only connection to the Institute on this side of the continent. Now that she’s betrayed us, I won’t trust anyone but Professor Mirabilis himself.”

“And how, exactly, are we supposed to get to New York without any money?”

“I’ll have to sell my horses,” Stanton said.

“Oh, no!” Emily blurted, for she had grown surprisingly attached to Romulus. “I’m sure Pap still has the money you gave him, and that’s enough to get us a pair of tickets to New York. Maybe we could sneak back to Lost Pine and—”

“Lost Pine is the last place we should go. The Maelstroms will be looking for us there, after everything we told Caul.”

“But your poor horses!”

“Better them than us.” To his credit, it sounded as if he mostly meant it. “But I don’t think we should sell them in San Francisco. It’ll take too much time, and the Maelstroms will be on the lookout. Besides, it just so happens that luck is on our side. You remember when we were riding out of Dutch Flat, and we stopped near Colfax for lunch? I talked to a small group of men.”

“I remember. You didn’t tell me what they wanted.”

“They wanted to buy my horses,” Stanton said. “They were from a place called New Bethel, about ten miles east of Dutch Flat.”

“Dag goes to New Bethel to buy hay for his teams every week.” She paused, the memory of Dag giving her a twinge. “But Pap never let me go there. He said it wasn’t wholesome.”

Stanton
hmph
ed grimly.

“Well, we’ve been through quite a number of unwholesome experiences already; I suppose one more won’t hurt.”

Emily sighed in frustration. The thought of selling Stanton’s regal horses to those sour-looking men made her angry.

“Isn’t there any other way to contact Professor Mirabilis? What about those Haälbeck doors? Can’t we get to one and … well, you could go through anyway, and bring Professor Mirabilis back!”

“Magical society in San Francisco is small and close-knit. There are only two Haälbeck doors in San Francisco, one of which is in Mrs. Quincy’s house. The other is at the Calacacara, a club for gentlemen Warlocks. I am not a member, and even if I were, Caul will have surely posted someone to watch it. The Maelstroms know that flight is our only recourse. I’m sure they’re doing everything they can to cut off our avenues of escape, magical or otherwise.”

“How about a telegraph? Couldn’t we telegraph the professor and tell him that he must come to San Francisco?”

Stanton thought about this, stroking his chin.

“Professor Mirabilis, your presence San Francisco required. Stop. Urgent. Stop. Professor Quincy untrustworthy. Stop. Maelstroms hot on our heels. Stop. Look for me lobby of Excelsior Hotel, wearing red carnation. Stop. Signed, Dreadnought Stanton, the man of whom you thought so highly that you banished him to the most pathetic little town in California.” Stanton gave her a look.

Emily gave him his look right back and then some, but said nothing.

“Besides,” Stanton continued, “there is no way to know who might intercept such a message. Mrs. Quincy is a highly placed member of the faculty. The fact that she betrayed us makes me worry that there might be others. A telegraph could be easily intercepted and a misleading reply composed that would send us directly into a trap. No, I won’t be satisfied until we’re standing in front of Professor Mirabilis himself.”

Emily was silent, biting her thumbnail thoughtfully.

“Your father,” she said, after a moment. “He’s a senator, right? Isn’t there some way—”

“Entirely out of the question.” Stanton said curtly. “I prefer not to involve him in such matters.”

“Well, I prefer not to run around San Francisco with blood sorcerers chasing me and no money!”

“No, Miss Edwards.” Stanton’s voice was firm. “My father is a … blunt instrument. Contacting him wouldn’t make things better. It would very likely make things worse. Trust me.”

Emily pondered this. Then she let out a breath.

“All right. We sell your horses. We take the money and catch the train. We can board at one of the smaller stops above New Bethel—the Maelstroms can’t watch them all.”

Stanton nodded. It was clear that he was thinking hard. His green eyes were lustrous with concentration. His long forefinger tapped a rhythm on the tabletop as he whistled softly to himself. He stopped abruptly, looking up.

“Yes, it seems a reasonable plan,” he said. “Which leaves only my immediate concerns to be addressed.”

“Immediate concerns?”

“After I pay for the shoeing and stabling of the horses, we’ll have less than five dollars. That’s hardly enough to feed us past Walnut Creek, much less all the way back to New Bethel.”

“We’re running for our lives, and you’re worrying about whether you’ll get your regular breakfast?” Emily was incredulous. “Going without a few meals will hardly kill you.”