A Study in Darkness (25 page)

“As long as that’s understood.” She sounded ungracious, but she wasn’t going to lie awake worrying about a sorcerer’s feelings.

“I could use you, though. What can I say that will change your mind?” And he gave her a disarming smile.

Confusion jammed her thoughts. “I don’t know what there is to say. You’re an insane practitioner of death magic who should be in his coffin by now. And you stole my Mouse.”

“I apologize for the toy, but I had to lure you somehow.”

“And look where it got you.”

“Keating sent his streetkeeper to kill me. You can’t take
credit for that.” He gave a slight grimace. “At least we have the hatred of him in common.”

“I’ll give you that much, but it’s not enough to make up for what you’ve done. If I’ve guessed correctly, you also stole Lord Bancroft’s automatons.”

Magnus chuckled. “You were the busy little detective, weren’t you? They were mine as much as his, since we both had a hand in creating them. You might say I did him a favor. He was always terrified that his early experiments would become public knowledge. A touch of magic among all those logical gears? Tsk, tsk. His political career would be finished.”

That sounded like Lord B, all right. “Do you still have them?”

“Alas, no, they burned in the fire that destroyed my house.”

She fell silent. The matter of the automatons had been a convoluted mess. Two grooms had been killed during the theft, Lord Bancroft had offered a huge reward, and Magnus had used the automatons to blackmail Lord B. It was just another reason never to trust Magnus. But if the dolls were truly gone, there wasn’t much she could do about them now.

“Consider this,” said Magnus. “I can pay you decently. You do not need to hide around me. I know you are a magic user. There is no danger of being whisked off to prison for using magic under my roof. Here, you are entirely free and safe.”

That was a strong seduction. Stronger than she had expected.
I could be myself without worry
. And Magnus, for all his evils, had always fascinated her. Just look at what he had accomplished here.

She jerked her thoughts back on track. She was forgetting why she was here. “What about the Blue King? Does he bother you? I thought the steam barons frowned on anyone tinkering without their approval.”

“I may be down on my luck, but I can still protect my employees against the local ruffians. As for King Coal himself, he allows me to run my business and build my automatons despite the number of parts and other mechanical
contraband it requires. I do him a favor now and again in return, mostly designing this and that.”

“Like what?” All he needed to say was “an army of sentient automaton soldiers” and she could go home. But of course it wasn’t that easy.

Magnus shrugged. “Men like him are forever in a race to destruction.”

It was almost, but not quite, an answer. She had a week to find the information Keating wanted and if she failed, she was entirely at the Gold King’s mercy. Her reputation and the safety of her family were at risk.

There was a good chance Magnus was the maker, but she also needed to know what weapons the Blue King possessed.
If I work for Magnus, I’ll have plenty of excuses to go looking for parts and to mix with the other makers. And I’ll be here, seeing everyone who comes and goes. Surely I’ll find out something about what he’s made
. And best of all, she could learn how Magnus had created his doll.

Serafina returned with a tray, setting it down on the workbench. Then she started to pour the tea with what appeared to be intense concentration. Evelina drew near, watching her work with renewed amazement.

Surely I can stand being near Magnus just long enough to find out what Keating needs to know. It couldn’t possibly take longer than the week I have left
. But she knew the drawback—Magnus was a sorcerer, and he was extremely clever. His goal had long been to enlist her as a student, and what he had to offer was in fact tempting. It would be too easy to grab that sorcerous knowledge and have her revenge on Keating for everything he’d done. Was she strong enough to resist touching it?

And Magnus was well aware of that struggle. Even if she decided to work for him now, she could not agree too easily. That would make him suspicious.

“If I agree to mend your automatons,” she said slowly, still making up her mind even while she spoke, “there will be rules.”

He spread his hands, all innocence. “I’m not asking you to
do anything but mend my automatons. I’ll pay you a fair wage to do it. No further obligations on either side.”

“No talk of turning me into your protégée in sorcery?”

“If that is what you want.”

“It is.”

When Serafina passed her a cup of tea, Evelina heard the cup rattle the moment she took it. The doll was steady; it was her own hands that shook.
Do I accept? Don’t I?
What had her uncle said:
Difficult times do not last. Difficult, obstinate, and impertinent people do
. She had to take the risk.

She didn’t want to. She didn’t trust Dr. Magnus even enough to drink the tea, and she didn’t trust herself. She set the cup down to hide the trembling in her hands. “I’ll think about it.”

Magnus just smiled. “You should come see a show.”

THE FACADE OF THE MAGNETORIUM STOOD AT THE END OF A
long, dark alleyway where the cloudy indigo gaslights of the Blue King barely reached. Evelina stood in the shadows to one side of the entrance, taking in her first impression of the place on a performance night.

The brick buildings that flanked the narrow alley were blackened by coal dust, the stony mud that passed for cobbles wet with that afternoon’s rain shower. In stark contrast to the long, dark chute before it, the front of the Magnetorium was bathed in ghastly blue light, from the yawning, arched maw of the iron-banded doors to the vaguely steeple-like point of the roof. It gave the impression of a chapel of the damned.

And not a well-advertised one. Despite the size of the work area in the back, the entrance was narrow, the name of the place written above the door in neat black lettering. The playbills posted to the side of the entry were small and unremarkable. It clearly depended on word of mouth. But, judging by the steady stream of humanity approaching, that word was more than enough. If Ploughman’s had done this kind of business when Evelina was a child, they’d all have been eating fresh meat twice a week and sleeping on feather mattresses. Already piqued, her curiosity about
Magnus and his enterprise strained like an overwound spring.

Only a day had passed since she’d found Magnus in the back of the theater, and she hadn’t accepted his offer of work yet. Part of her reluctance was calculated, a necessary show of caution so she didn’t appear to be too eager and give herself away as a spy. But the truth was that she simply hadn’t had the courage—or perhaps desperation was the right word—to spend so much time in the company of a sorcerer.

But was Magnus more of a threat than the certain doom that awaited her if she failed Keating? She wasn’t sure that watching the show would help her to a decision, but the doctor had given her a ticket, and it never took much prodding to get her to an entertainment.

Especially one that seemed to be so popular. The Magnetorium might have been located in the poor part of town, but the audience came from the fine houses farther west—a theory borne out by the price of the tickets. No doubt the trip to the East End was part of the excitement. Men and women—though mostly men—arrived in anonymous hansom cabs at the far end of the passageway and hurried toward the doors, anxious to get seats. Evelina smiled to herself, because she knew the names of a few of the fine gentlemen here and there. As for the ladies—well, many weren’t.

She watched another moment, feeling the cold clamminess that promised fog later that night. And then she thought of all the people in the cramped, drafty buildings nearby who couldn’t simply shrug on a thick coat and swagger out for an evening on the town. She desperately wanted to be back in the comfort of her old life, but at that moment she despised it.

Cross and tired of standing in the chilly darkness, she slid through the door between two young men she was certain she didn’t know. Three of Magnus’s other employees—a pretty girl in a low-cut dress, flanked by two burly bruisers prepared to keep order—were taking the ticket money. Another counter was set up to sell beer and wine—a better
grade than could be got at the local taverns—salted nuts and paper-wrapped sweets. Evelina climbed to the farthest reaches of the seats, careful to sit in an empty row so far back that no one would look there. The last thing she needed was to be recognized by one of Imogen’s gaggle of admirers, or a friend of Tobias.

The first thing she noticed was how intimate the place was. Despite the huge workshop in the back, the orchestra and boxes held only a few hundred seats. There were no bad views of the stage, and everyone was close enough to hear even the softest whisper. Whoever had designed the place had known his business—but it was no wonder the cost of a ticket was dear. One had to turn a profit, and fewer seats meant fewer pounds in the investor’s pocket.

But then the lights dimmed to blackness, and Evelina’s ruminations were cut short. An anticipatory whisper ran through the theater as a tiny flame appeared to hover in the dark. Then she understood the placement of the seats and the perfect sightlines. Every sense claimed that she was floating, the only point of reference that flickering light.

And then something passed before the light. Fingers, perhaps, teasing an audience suddenly dependent on that flame for an anchor in the limitless black.

“Welcome, sirs and ladies fine and fancy,” purred Magnus. His voice seemed to come from everywhere—the stage below, the rafters above, the seat next to her. “Welcome to the Magnetorium, where wonders never cease.”

Evelina sat poised at the edge of her seat, the hair on her neck already ruffling with the expectation of fear. But then something changed, the blackness becoming a little less suffocating. She couldn’t tell if it was her eyes getting used to the lack of light, or if it was some trick of stagecraft, allowing just enough diffuse illumination to turn the atmosphere from midnight to the uneasy hours just before the dawn.

The stage was still a void of darkness, but then a gust of fog drifted across it, subtle as gossamer. As the trailing fingers of mist swept across the stage, tiny lamps were lit, one by one, by an unseen hand. The glimmering light turned the
night to a cobalt blue, giving just enough illumination to see tombstones crumbling beneath a canopy of twisted trees. A graveyard, then—one of ancient vintage forgotten by any grieving heart.

The throb of a cello sounded from a tiny gallery high above—long, slow notes that ached under her ribs. Evelina searched the shadows above for the musician, but could only see the shapes of two carved angels, expressions of pity frozen on their wooden faces, fingers pointing to the stage. Inexorably, her gaze was drawn back to the stage below.

Dark figures stood or crouched, still and silent as the grave markers. As the music swelled, more lights glimmered to create an unearthly glow, not just along the ground but in the trees and spangling the sky. And it seemed to be the sky, for so beautiful and breathtaking was the set that Evelina forgot she was simply in a seat in the balcony. She was in that graveyard, beneath that star-strewn night, where the gusting breeze made the points of light glitter like diamonds spangling the fog’s silken veil.

And then the dancers moved, their costumes as pale and insubstantial as the mist. And Evelina was stricken—not simply with the elegance of the choreography, or the perfection of their form, but that they existed at all. The automatons moved as one, every gesture smoothly executed, every step an exquisite achievement of the maker’s art. She sat forward in her seat, forgetting to breathe.
I want to know how this was done. I need to know
. It was more than clockwork—there
had
to be magic involved.
And Magnus said he would teach me
.

And then Serafina entered from the wings, as light as if she had flown. She was clad in a gauzy white costume spangled with silver, as if a piece of the starlit mist had coalesced into female form. Her long, red hair was bound up in a glittering diadem, showing off the exquisite line of her bare shoulders and neck. In the strange cold light, nothing hinted that her bare arms and snowy bosom were anything but flesh.

A collective sigh rose from the audience, startling Evelina
because she’d forgotten they were there. The only sound had been the mourning of the cello, but now that was joined by another voice, the husky sweetness of a wooden flute. Like Serafina, it was made of something finer and brighter, dancing aloft like a creature made of aether.

Serafina floated across the stage
en pointe
to a melancholy tune. Steel-strong, immune to pain, completely obedient, and a machine of boundless energy, Serafina was the perfect ballerina, if one didn’t mind a slight stiffness in the
port de bras
.