Eros Element (18 page)

“I'm looking forward to it,” Iris said. “Now tell me about your collection.” She glanced over her shoulder at Bledsoe and Anctil, and she caught the Renaissance curator giving her a curious look as they walked in the opposite direction. Something about it made her fingertips tingle to read something of his.

Firmin led her into a large room where statues peered out at her from alcoves and pottery shards and reassembled pieces lay arranged on tables.

“Where would you like to begin?” he asked.

A movement at the corner of her vision startled Iris. She looked to her left and expected to see their shadows moving along the wall, but no, one of the statues lifted its hand.

Chapter Twenty-One

Musée du Louvre, 13 June 1870

It's a shadow, a mere trick of the light.

Iris tried not to appear to be one of those vapid, jumpy, “Oh, I think it's waving at me,” females like the girls at Madame Cornwall's School for Young Ladies, where they'd had one—just one—trip to the London Museum of Art. Her stupid classmates, having been stirred up by an admittedly handsome street preacher at the Huntington Station, were convinced the remnants of pagan times were in some way imbued with Satan's spells and therefore out to get the Christian misses. The curator had rushed them through the tour as a result of the girls' silliness, and Iris, being the last out due to trying to get a final lingering glance at an Egyptian sarcophagus, heard him say to the docent before closing the door behind them, “Good grief, they're raising them stupid up north!” She'd fumed the whole way home and begged her parents to allow her to go to a real school, or at least to the boys' academy down the road. Of course her mother had refused, although her father later told her he thought she belonged more with the boys, anyway, in terms of interest and intellect. At least the preacher who'd started the trouble had been “encouraged” to move on.

But no, the arm of the statue moved at the elbow and raised its hand as if to greet her. Iris simultaneously had the compulsion to look away and the desire to watch it in case it decided to move other parts and come after her. Monsieur Firmin gestured to various objects and droned on, but Iris couldn't concentrate on his words. She noticed he had stopped talking.

“Miss McTavish, you barely seem to be listening. Is something wrong? You do realize I'm taking time from my busy schedule to show you my collection.”

His condescending tone, so similar to that of the London Museum curator, snapped Iris out of her fear.

“I apologize, Monsieur, but I was distracted by your statue's apparent familiarity with me. It hasn't stopped waving since we arrived.”

“Oh!” He walked over to it. “It does this sometimes. She was once part of the Magna Graecia Automaton, and certain footsteps, often one light and one heavy, set her off.” He stilled the statue's hand and gestured for Iris to come closer. “See? She has a hinge at the elbow and clever counterbalancing. Writings from that period tell us that when it was complete, the automaton had a twenty-minute cycle with several statues performing different movements.”

Iris studied the statue and moved the arm herself. Certain aspects of the statue told Iris it was made too late to be part of the automaton, but it was designed to appear so.

Someone wanted this young woman to be remembered, but it was a risk.

The girl seemed to stare through her, her slight smile like that of a woman with sad but precious memories. The expression looked odd on such a young face. Iris decided to play along with Firmin's assumptions.

“What do you know of this statue other than that she was part of the Magna? And where are the other parts?”

“I don't have good answers for you, I fear. Legend has it that the automaton series was dismantled and brought to Rome, but a curse soon resulted in its being destroyed except for a few pieces deemed not to be threatening such as this young lady here.”

“A curse,” Iris murmured. “By whom?”

“You have heard of the Pythagoreans, yes?”

Iris shrugged to cover her interest. “Yes, the theorem every geometry student has to learn.”

“The cult had a dark side. Rumor has it they killed the poor man who discovered there was no rational way to derive the square root of two. After the massacre at Metapontum, they went underground, where according to legend, some of them went mad and turned to occult and secret arts.”

“There is a price to pay for magic, after all.” Iris's fingertips itched. She wanted to read the statue of the young woman, but she couldn't take her gloves off in front of Monsieur Firmin without appearing wanton or forward. “Well,” she said, “as you said, you are busy. Do you mind if I wander around in here on my own while you do what you need to do? You could come back in a half hour to take me to the main gallery.”

Firmin cut his eyes to the right and left. Iris knew she guessed correctly—he didn't see the point in babysitting an English miss. “I will return in thirty minutes. Don't touch anything.”

She clasped her hands in front of her and nodded with the most serious expression she could muster over her delight. As soon as his footsteps faded from the gallery, Iris stripped off her gloves and wiggled her fingers. A chorus of sensations washed over her with objects begging to be touched and read.

I have a small amount of time. What's the most important?

“Definitely you, my dear,” she said to the statue in front of her. She reached for the marble girl's hand but stopped. Firmin touched that part of her, and Iris wanted older impressions. She caressed the maiden's cheek and saw a flash of a real girl with her features and dark curly hair, a tear coming from each eye. The roar of a crowd, a human scream, and an animal's howl pressed in on Iris's ears. Terror radiated from the girl, and Iris had to step back and clutch her lower back, where pain stabbed through her after the vision subsided. Now she was horrified…and more curious.

“What happened to you?” she whispered. She placed a hand on the girl's shoulder and noted the stone felt warmer. Iris hadn't touched the statue there yet, so the increase in temperature couldn't have come from her own body heat. Now the floor shifted beneath her, and her feet stood on cold stone. Iris followed someone's gaze up the side of a temple to a high window. The sensation that accompanied this vision was the crushing sense of despair at the thought of an impossible to escape situation.

Iris tried to make note of the delicate stuccoes, mostly of couples.
Psyche and Eros.
The words came to her mind,
The price of love is deception.

Now a chill came over Iris, and she blinked to see the white walls and soulless eyes of the statues in the Classics Gallery at the Louvre. Her walking boots pinched her feet, but she preferred them to shackles, and she bent to rub one ankle. She followed the compulsion to move to the other side of the room from the girl, but the suspicion that she'd gotten into something way over her head followed her.

Approaching footsteps made her pull on her gloves over trembling fingers, and a glance at the clock told her that the half hour had passed. This most of all perturbed her—where had the time gone? Where had
she
gone? Her visions had always been
of
someone, not vividly from their viewpoint since that one where she'd gotten caught up in her mother's puerile fantasy.

“Ah, there you are, Mademoiselle!” It was the genial Monsieur Anctil. “
Allons-y
. I have much to show you in the Renaissance wing.”

Edward gazed out the window, the now completely dismantled clockwork butterfly in front of him. He thought he'd isolated all the different parts, but for some reason, he couldn't figure out how to get it back together. Actually, he knew the reason. He was an aetherist, not a tinkerer. If he was going to be stuck in this hotel room and acting according to his usual routine, he could at least have the chance to run some experiments to see whether anything changed being this much closer to the Equator. Part of him mourned the equipment he lost in the airship crash, particularly the beloved copper sphere he'd sacrificed to defending himself and Iris against the Clockwork Guildsman.

Iris… He supposed she was at the Louvre by now with Johann exploring the treasures there.

A knock on the door startled him before he could follow that line of thought any further.

“Come in,” he called. He glanced at the clock—
Oh, right, time for midmorning tea.

The Irishman Patrick O'Connell entered carrying a tea tray. “The chef said he wasn't going to waste his good butter on scones, so he sent croissants up instead.” He looked around for a place to set the tray. “Where do you want this?”

“Oh, you might as well put it here.” Edward swept the remains of the clockwork to one side of the table. “I'm stuck as to what to do with this anyway.”

O'Connell set the tea service in front of him. “Looks like you got it apart without breaking anything. Now what do you want to do with it?”

Edward gestured for the other man to join him. “I can ring for more tea if you're thirsty.”

“I'm fine.” He remained standing. “Not sure if I'm supposed to stay. Chadwick said you're to be left alone between the hours of eight and eleven except for bringing your tea.”

Edward shifted to ease the tightness in his chest that started that morning during his conversation with Johann. He wondered if it might be his lungs—wasn't the doctor concerned about something he heard in them?

“Well, I'm stuck, and sometimes I'll go to my colleagues to see if they can make suggestions to move me along.”
Or to see if they need me to make suggestions, but close enough.

O'Connell sat, and Edward reached for the handle for the tube that would relay his wishes down to the kitchen. “I can't drink alone.”

“Aye, I appreciate that, Professor.”

Edward wondered if he'd accidentally referenced the Irish tendency to drink too much alcohol and scrambled to change the subject so O'Connell wouldn't leave. “Oh, please call me Edward. You see, I'm hoping you'll act as a colleague and help me to understand these clockwork devices better. I'm sure I can use them somehow in my research.”

“Patrick.” The look he gave Edward made him feel as though he were a device being picked apart by the Irishman's brain.

A servant brought in more tea and croissants at Edward's request, and he poured, pleased to see his hand shook less than at breakfast. Of course the pot was also lighter, but he would take the improvement.

“So you're a tinkerer,” Edward said.

“I prefer the term inventor,” Patrick said and helped himself to a croissant. “Can't seem to resist the chocolate ones.”

“Oh, and what is your training? I fear I missed out on much of the introductions since I was, well, unconscious after we landed.”

“Landing isn't the most accurate term for what you did.”

“What would be?”

“Try falling from the sky with the chutes opening and catching you in barely enough time for you all to not be smashed to bits. It's a miracle you survived.”

“Well, yes, I suppose.” Edward experienced a jolt of anxiety at the thought of what had almost transpired.
Smashed to bits? How terrifying!

“So if your brain isn't working like you want it to, don't worry, it will. I've been hit on the head enough times to know it comes back.”

“In fights?” Edward kicked himself for vocalizing another assumption based on stereotype. What must Patrick think? Edward wasn't putting forth his best enlightened self.

“Aye.” Patrick held his teacup as if to toast Edward. “Mostly against university types like you who didn't want to see beyond my hair and beard to my brain. Luckily my skull is harder than theirs.”

“So what professional training and education do you have?”

Patrick poured more tea to warm Edward's cup, thereby disrupting the delicate balance of cream and sugar flavors, but Edward didn't say anything. Edward had never cared about insulting others previously, but he found himself not wanting to alienate his new red-bearded colleague.

“My father was a blacksmith, and I learned from him. Then I went across to the States and learned what I could until I met Chadwick, and he convinced me to stay in one place long enough to get a degree.”

“And that was…?”

“Harvard.” He grinned, and Edward tried to school the shock from his facial expression.

“Harvard, that's impressive.”

Patrick dismissed Edward's comment with a shrug. “It's a school like any other, and Chadwick helped pay for it. I owe him a lot, hence why I'm on this crazy trip with him. But that's his tale to tell. Let's look at the beastie you've taken apart. The best thing to do is put it back together so you can learn how they work.”

“And you can help me do that?”

“If you're fine with a redheaded Irish brute for a teacher.”

“Oh, most definitely.” Edward took the last sip of his tea, which wasn't bad even if not perfectly sweetened, and set the cup aside. “I'm ready to learn, Professor.”

“Then the first thing will be how to catch and disable them. There's another one flitting around outside the window.” He picked up one of the teapots and filled it with steaming water from the faucet on the wall adjacent to Iris's room. “Watch and learn. You have to put them to sleep so they won't cry out. I heard Miss McTavish captured the one in front of you.”

“Yes.” A smile pushed through Edward's sour expression in spite of his efforts to keep his facial expression neutral at the mention of her name. “She's quite clever, you know.”

“Aye.” Patrick balanced on the settee and held the steaming spout under the butterfly. “Did you know she's engaged?”