Dance of the Red Death (Masque of the Red Death) (7 page)

“Lovely,” I say, wondering if I can repair the damage to my own dress instead. Elliott counts out a few extra coins, but the man won’t take his money.

“We are glad that you’ve returned,” he says. “My brother was one of Prospero’s former guards. When he defected to your cause, the rebellion gave him something to live for.”

Elliott nods slowly. “Spread the word. We’ll need a meeting place. . . .”

“Some of the men have already been gathering here.”

“Excellent. I’ll return tomorrow, around noon, to rendezvous with whomever you can contact.”

The innkeeper beams, but his wife looks more skeptical. She has lost her daughter. Nothing Elliott does will change that.

The innkeeper arranges for one of his workers to drive us across town in an illicit steam carriage. “I would give it to you,” he tells Elliott, “but we use it to fetch supplies, and without transportation . . .”

“I won’t ask that of you.” Elliott claps the man on the shoulder, seeming for all the world like a ruler already. But I see the way he looks at the carriage when we go outside. It isn’t fancy like April’s, or modified for speed like his old one, but it’s transportation in a city where movement is limited. He won’t take it today, but he doesn’t have to. We’ve all seen that the innkeeper hides it in an abandoned building behind his establishment. He sends a driver and a guard with us. The guard has two guns and stands in the back, on a platform similar to what April’s guards used to occupy.

“Drive along the river,” Elliott requests. “I want to have a look at the factories.”

A corpse blocks the street, so the guard gets out and moves it, carefully using a wooden beam that he seems to keep on hand for this exact purpose.

“Not many carriages for hire, it seems,” Elliott remarks, watching with an air of longing as the driver works the controls.

“Prince Prospero has been commandeering them,” the man says. “His men take them at gunpoint.”

“Yet another challenge to moving enough food into the city,” Elliott says.

We are driving past an entire city block that has burned. Some walls are still intact, even a blackened window. In a partial wall a brick fireplace stands alone, charred and abandoned.

“Have Prospero’s soldiers tried to take this carriage?” Elliott asks. He’s scanning the buildings that line the river.

“More than once,” the driver says. “We know a few hiding spots.”

Elliott grins his approval. “I like a man who can avoid Prospero’s traps,” he says. The taciturn driver nods.

“Turn ahead,” Elliott says. “We’ll want to approach the university from the upper city.”

We’ve been gone for less than a week, but I’m seeing the city through fresh eyes. I glance at Will. Once he tried to make me see the beauty of this place, but there is so little left. Everything is dirty, crumbling, gray. A sickly sweet smell pervades everything, and I try not to gag.

Abandoned objects litter the road. A child’s hair bow, a wooden soldier, a fine silver flask that someone must have treasured.

Instead of dwelling on these things, I focus my attention on the buildings. So many are simply shells and ruins, but the city doesn’t feel emptier. Behind a collapsed apartment building we see more tenements, an exposed cellar, as if the layers of the city have been peeled back, revealing more and more. The hole that was once a cellar is now filled with greenish water.

Elliott pays the driver and salutes both the guard and driver before sending them back across town. We’re on the main avenue, and while stately trees still stand, the stately buildings have collapsed into piles of white rubble behind cracked marble columns.

Several are completely gutted. Elliott set his old apartment on fire before we left. Perhaps it caught other buildings on fire, too. Windows are smashed and glass gleams from both grassy areas and the streets. The walls of the science building are chipped from gunfire.

I hear the stream gurgling before we reach it. The sound of running water is soothing amid all the destruction, but the bank is empty. I hadn’t expected Father to just sit here, waiting for me to return. Still, I’m disappointed. Above the stream, where Father used to come feed the fish, is a hand-painted sign.
DOWN WITH SCIENCE.
THE SCIENTISTS ARE MURDERERS.

“The scientist
is
a murderer,” Elliott agrees, but he shuts his mouth when he sees the expression on my face. Will doesn’t say anything.

“Let’s look inside,” Elliott says, leading us around to the side of the science building. He tests a door, and the lock is broken, so it swings wide. The smell in the hallway is overpowering. I put my hand to my mask, and my eyes begin to water.

“Is anyone here?” Elliott calls.

“No one who was even half alive would stay here.” Will chokes out the words. A body is sprawled across the hallway.

Elliott takes my arm and attempts to pull me outside. “Will can check. He’d recognize—”

“No.” I won’t allow them to protect me.

“Let her look,” Will says. “She needs to know.”

“Besides,” I say, once we’ve stepped over the body and I can think a bit more clearly, “whatever bodies we find . . . Father won’t have died of the Red Death.”

Will’s dark eyebrows go up. He doesn’t know about the tiny vial that Father gave me, which may, perhaps, save me from the Red Death. If we can find him, maybe he can provide the same medicine for the children. And Will and Elliott.

We pass several large lecture rooms strewn with blankets and discarded clothing, but everything seems to be abandoned now. Some of the rooms have charts on the walls, with Latin terms that Father would understand, but I don’t.

Under a chart are some other notices, messages for the people who stayed here. Times and places for meetings. I reach out to touch the scrip about a rendezvous that happened sometime last winter.

We search all of the rooms. Nothing.

Elliott sees how disappointed I am. “It was our best place to begin,” he says. “The university is huge, Araby. Hundreds of rental rooms in dormitories. We’ll keep searching, and I know a man who can help us. We’ll check the Akkadian Towers as soon as we can.”

“We have four days until April returns.” Will’s tone is reassuring. “Plenty of time.”

We leave the building through the wide double doors of the front entrance. Above them are the words
EXPERIMENT ON THE SCIENTIST. SHOW HIM HOW IT FEELS.

I stare at the words for a long time. Father may not be susceptible to the Red Death, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe. He’ll be doing everything he can to stay hidden from people like the ones who wrote that. He could be anywhere. We might never find him.

But what if he could find me?

“Where could I get paint?” I ask.

“I’m sure Will can find some.” Elliott gives Will a challenging look, perhaps reminding him of his promise to follow orders.

“I’m good at finding things,” Will agrees. “You want something dark to put your own message on the walls?”

He can read me too well. I nod.

“We’ll split up,” Elliott says. “It’s growing late. My acquaintance won’t answer his door after dark. Meet us on the steps of the library in an hour.” Elliott walks away. I don’t like the way he assumes that I will follow. If I go with Will, it might communicate something to Elliott. But I know what Will is doing. Elliott’s visit to this person—who he does not refer to as a friend—is more mysterious.

I don’t have to hurry to catch up with Elliott. He’s only taken three steps around the corner and stopped. Our way is blocked by a pile of freshly dead bodies.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
’
VE SEEN DEAD BODIES NEARLY EVERY DAY SINCE
the first plague started, but never so many at once. They are heaped together, lying all intertwined. I gag like Will did in the science building and force myself not to be sick. The carefully tended lawn, once so vibrant and green, is totally obscured. Most of the bodies are in shrouds, but some untended corpses lie around the periphery. Red tears stain their cheeks. One is holding a bouquet of wilting flowers. Did she bring her loved ones here, and then die herself?

This disease leaves you little time to mourn. Little time to live with guilt and loneliness. People are dying so quickly.

I want to shield myself from the awfulness, but I can’t stop looking. Puddles surround the corpses. Soon this rainwater will mix with the groundwater, spreading further contamination. The innkeeper was right—whoever can rid the city of these bodies will be a hero. It is the first step in saving the city.

“Step away,” Elliott says, even as he goes closer. He doesn’t check to see if I’ve obeyed, and I don’t. Taking a vial of liquid from his pocket, he pours something over the nearest victim and then lights a match. As he drops it, he takes a quick step backward. Despite the recent rain, the corpse catches fire immediately. The blaze is very hot, hotter than any fire I’ve ever encountered, and the smell is terrible. Elliott’s face is illuminated by the blaze. He looks radiant.

“If I can mix enough of this compound, find enough men, I can begin to clear some of the streets.”

He empties two more vials over the heap, lights another match, and soon most of the bodies are burning.

What he’s doing is terrible in its own way. Cremation is better than leaving the bodies here, it must be. But one of the women who died here was blonde, and when her hair begins to burn, all I can see is April’s face. I crumple to my knees, tears streaming down my cheeks. We have to find a way to save her. I won’t let her end up like this.

Elliott doesn’t comment, and I’m glad. I collect myself and stand. “Where next?”

“This way.”

We walk, gingerly, around the burning bodies, to a main avenue lined with tall, cramped buildings where students used to live. Rows of identical doors face a paved courtyard. Elliott’s gaze darts everywhere, searching all of the alleys and shadowy nooks. A wise precaution, since men in dark robes seem to appear wherever we are. I watch over my shoulder as Elliott raps on a door.

“The man who lives here knows a good deal about the university and what is happening here. He also garners information from throughout the city.”

“If Father has been seen . . .”

“He’ll know.”

“What should I do?” I ask.

“Listen. This man . . . doesn’t have much reason to like me.”

He pounds on the door again, harder. When we hear slow footsteps from inside, Elliott shifts from one foot to the other. A completely unexpected emotion crosses his face. He’s nervous.

The door begins to open, and for a moment I see my father standing on the threshold. But of course the person inside the apartment isn’t my father, just an older gentleman with a white beard.

“The prince’s nephew,” the man says, sounding neither surprised nor pleased. But Elliott braces himself, throwing his shoulders back before he pushes me into the room and closes the door behind us.

The room is sparsely furnished with a cheap desk, a couple of rickety chairs, and a doorway leading to what might be a bedroom, or possibly a kitchen.

I study the occupant’s lined face, but he hardly seems threatening. What makes Elliott so nervous?

“So you’re following your uncle’s footsteps, taking over cities?” he asks.

Elliott nods. This is the first time since we’ve reentered the city that he hasn’t seemed proud of his role.

“Have you abandoned your writing? I’d always hoped to read your account of the day you and I met. But then I heard you’d burned everything you left.”

“As usual, you heard correctly. I’m . . . fighting for the city. Things will be better when I’m in control.” His usual arrogance is starting to seep back in.

“Your uncle did train you to continue his work.”

“We both know what my uncle did,” Elliott says. “Let’s go downstairs.”

“The girl stays up here.” The man eyes me with distrust.

“I go where he goes,” I say.

I expect an argument, but the man just turns and leads us downstairs. Elliott looks pained, as if the man’s rapid acquiescence hurts him.

“You will have to unlock the door to the workshop,” the man says, and he turns to Elliott and holds up his hands. My gasp is loud in this small subterranean antechamber. His hands are not really hands at all—rather a formless mass, as if he doesn’t have any bones beneath the scarred flesh.

Elliott jerks away as though he’s been punched. In fact, he looks worse than when Will actually did hit him yesterday. When he finds his voice, he gets out only a strangled “Of course.”

Elliott turns a series of locks and opens the door gingerly. The man leads us across his cellar to another, narrower doorway with the muffled noises of movement on the other side. When he opens the door, the cellar floods with light from rows upon rows of gas bulbs in the room beyond. It is lined with clocks, and there are tables covered with cogs and gears of all sizes and shades of shiny metal. The clocks are ticking and their parts are turning. As we step in, I realize with amazement that they are all set to the exact same time, that the thousands of parts are all moving together. It’s astounding.

“I make clocks,” the man says with a half smile. “Or he does.” A boy sits at a low table, putting gears together with nimble fingers.

A wide table sits against the wall opposite the clocks, with an assortment of mismatched chairs. This would have been a wonderful place for students to congregate before the plague.

“The domain of artists, scholars, and poets.” Elliott sounds wistful.

“They still meet here. The group that you started,” the clockmaker says.

But we have no time for nostalgia. The clocks tick, and it’s getting late. We told Will we’d be back in an hour.

“Have you heard anything about Dr. Phineas Worth?” I ask, since it’s the point of our visit. “The scientist who invented the masks?”

“I’ve heard many things about him,” the clockmaker replies, and I feel ill, waiting for him to tell me whether my father is dead.

“But nothing recent. The last I heard he was chased off campus about a week ago by Prospero’s soldiers.”

Elliott and I exchange a look. That was the last time we saw my father. Elliott called off the soldiers, but one was loyal to his uncle and shot at Father anyway.

“Dr. Worth is in hiding. I need you to organize a few spies to scour the campus. They will be compensated for their efforts, rewarded if they find the man.” Elliott picks up one of the gears from a table and toys with it.

The clockmaker inclines his head. “I’ll arrange a full-fledged search. If he’s on campus, we’ll find him.” The boy looks up at us, drawing his master’s attention. “The others will search. You need to keep working,” he says, and then to Elliott, “He’s my only trained apprentice, and we have a large commission. From your uncle.”

The gear falls from Elliott’s hand, hitting the wooden table with a loud
thunk
.

“The prince wants a great clock. The biggest I’ve ever built. And he wants it soon.” The clockmaker gestures to the wooden body of what will be an enormous ebony grandfather clock. It’s beautifully crafted, but the dark wood and austere lines are imposing.

“Why?”

“Prince Prospero doesn’t deign to tell a clockmaker why he wants a clock,” the man answers.

“Is it for his party?” Elliott asks. “Does it do anything besides mark the hour?” He walks over to the clock and puts his hands on the wood of the casing. “Are there weapons inside? Does it dispense poisonous gas?”

“If he wants to install instruments of torture, he’ll have to do that himself. I only design the clockwork.”

“My uncle loves oddities,” Elliott murmurs. “But a huge clock?” He looks over the cabinet one last time. “I thought you swore never to make anything for him again.”

“The boy is making it.”

I clear my throat. This cryptic conversation isn’t going to find my father.

The clockmaker turns to me. His eyes are piercing. He studies me while asking Elliott, “Does she love you?” Even after the audacity of the question, he doesn’t look back at Elliott. My face burns at the personal question, and my anger builds at being discussed this way. Still, I wait to hear Elliott’s answer.

“Not yet,” Elliott says. “But she will. Araby’s used to loving people who’ve done terrible things.”

I frown. “I wouldn’t count on it,” I say quietly, and I don’t bother to look at Elliott either. If all he can do is ignore me or talk for me, he doesn’t deserve any better.

The clockmaker smiles, as if my words amuse him. “Shall we test her?” he asks. Without waiting for an answer, he holds up his mangled hands. “Elliott did this,” he says.

The shock of it is like the time Finn jumped on my chest and knocked the air out of me.

“He wasn’t much older than my apprentice,” the clockmaker says. “Though his hands were less steady. This boy is well trained.”

“So was I.” Elliott’s face is drained of color, and his voice is hoarse.

Many emotions cross the clockmaker’s face. Hatred for Elliott, remorse, worry.

“My wife and my children died of the plague very early,” he says. “The prince never had an opportunity to hurt them. Be careful, my dear.”

“I’m through being careful,” I say. I’m sorry for his pain, and I’m sorry for Elliott’s guilt. But none of this is helping me save April. I step back toward the corridor and notice a small, nearly concealed door.

“How is Prospero paying you?” Elliott asks the clockmaker.

“Clockwork parts. Scrap metal from his storerooms. And this.” The clockmaker goes to a cabinet and pushes the door open with his wrist. He has just enough movement in his thumb that he can clumsily pick up a thick envelope. It’s an invitation to the prince’s ball.

“Why would you ever want to return to the palace?” Elliott asks.

While they are occupied, I take a few steps closer to the small door. When I lived with Father and Finn in the cellar, there was a door like this in the room Father adopted as his laboratory. He always kept it blocked with heavy boxes and a wardrobe.

“I never thought I would, but if things get worse here, I may seek sanctuary there.”

“Sanctuary?” Elliott’s eyebrows shoot up, truly surprised.

“The invitation is for two. I could save the boy. Better for him to live among evil men than die of the Red Death.”

I reach out to the door and turn a green-tinged brass knob. Neither Elliott nor the clockmaker notice my movement, though the little apprentice looks up for a moment.

“You won’t have to go,” Elliott says. “I’m working to make the city safe.”

“We’ll see.”

Elliott starts to say something and then stops, shaking his head. “I have something else to ask, and it’s important.”

I’m edging closer to the little door, but the urgency in his voice makes me pause.

“Tell me about the device that is supposed to hold back the swamp.”

The clockmaker’s gaze shoots up. “People have talked about it for years. The commonly accepted belief is that it never existed.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

The clockmaker smiles. “No. I don’t. I know that it existed, because I made parts for it.”

Elliott strides forward. The clockmaker falls back, nearly cowering. But Elliott doesn’t apologize, not now. “Where?” he demands. “Where is it?”

“That is the mystery. I never saw it assembled. The scientists who built it have either died or disappeared into your uncle’s dungeons. All I can tell you is that there are two keys. They look like watch keys, but bigger. To begin the machine, both keys have to be turned simultaneously.”

“And where are these keys?”

“They’re in Prospero’s throne room,” I hear myself say. Both Elliott and the clockmaker spin to face me. I remember seeing them during the terrible visit Elliott and I paid to the castle only a few weeks ago. They were on a table under a green glass window. Two gold keys among the instruments of torture that covered the table.

“Which means that Prospero must have found the device and destroyed it. He enjoys destruction.” The clockmaker stares at his hands. “The minutes are ticking away, and I do have a clock to design.”

I nearly reach out to Elliott, he looks so stricken, but I’m not close enough. Instead, I try to lessen the tension between the two of them. “Where does this lead?” I gesture to the small door, and as if the movement of my hand is magical, it creaks opens just a hair. I push it the rest of the way and peer into the darkness. A rough stone stairway leads down into the murk.

“It’s a passage into a network of earthen tunnels.” Elliott has crossed the room and is directly behind me. “Many of the older buildings have access to them.”