Noir (19 page)

“We’re in the world between the walls,” C.L. answers.

“We’re what?” Masheck makes a grim face.

“Don’t worry, we won’t be ’ere long. We can’t afford to be.”

C.L. reaches out, groping the air, tapping invisible bricks with his toes until at last we hear a solid clunk. “Follow me,” he says quickly, pushing at the spot. The air warps around him.

Masheck and I do the same, sucked into some sort of semispinning vortex. There is more blackness, then light, then blackness again. Then an unexplained, mind-crushing pressure has me throwing my hands to my temples. “What
is
that?” I gasp. “What’s happening?”

C.L. reaches for me, hurling me through the edge of a dark membrane. I trip out into the same corridor where we were before. Or at least it seems to be. The pressure from my head finally lifts. My ears pop, and I swallow. “We’ve lost Masheck,” I say, whirling around. “Masheck, he’s not here.”

Just as my heart ramps up speed, C.L. reaches in between the seam of the bricks and retrieves him, pulling him out through the dark seal in the wall with a pop.

“What just happened?” Masheck says, rubbing his head.

“I dunno,” C.L. says. “All I know is if yuh get trapped between there, yer a goner.”

He turns his attention back to the hallway, looking left and right before dashing out.

Masheck and I scramble to catch up with him, flying past flickering candlelit sconces.

The floors are made of stone, but the walls have now changed to smooth steel. I’ve never in my life seen anything like it. Another sound erupts at the other end of the corridor, and our heads swing around.

Boots drum their way toward us.

“Let’s go,” C.L. shouts, heading off in the opposite direction.

“Where are we going?” I hiss after him.

“To the barracks,” C.L. says, swiping a flaming sconce from the wall. His eyes are a brilliant shade of silver in the light. “They keep the women on the uppermost floors, which is sort of an illusion considering you come in through the basement. But, anyway, by my calculations, we should find Eyelet there!”

“We should, or we will?”

“I dunno.”

Th
irty-Four

Eyelet

I struggle against the restraints, strapped to a hard operating-theatre chair in the centre of a white windowless room. Shiny metal objects cover a smooth-surfaced table next to me. My breath lopes in my chest as I stare at them, the edges of scalpels peeking out from under a blanket of gauze. “You don’t have to do this,” I gasp, squirming.

“Don’t I?” The guard’s woolly brow jumps upward. He flicks bubbles from the sharp-needled syringe in his hand and places it on the metal table next to me.

I look around, desperate for a way to escape, but there is none. Only one door and it’s been sturdily locked. My legs are shackled to the bottom of the chair, my wrists belted down to the armrests. Even my neck has been harnessed to the headrest in back. I’ll never be able to get out of this.

I look up, blinded by the interrogation-style light shining directly into my eyes. “Please, you can’t do this! I’ve done nothing . . .”

“I’ll take it from here.” A voice drifts into the room. The guard leaps to unlock the door. A cool swish of dragging silk scrapes over the stones, then Parthena’s veiled face appears over me. Her grey, almond-shaped eyes are narrowed and fierce. “Leave us,” she says in a low, calculating tone.

The guard lowers his head and scrambles from the room, locking the door behind him. Parthena picks up the needle on the table next to me.

“Why are you doing this?” I struggle. “What have I done?”

She ignores me, picking up the loaded syringe and test-plunging it into the air.

“Please, don’t do this. I’ve done nothing to you.”

“That’s right. You’ve done something far worse.” She leans closer. “You’ve wronged my
sister
.”

I shudder as the corners of her lips curl into a wicked smile. There’s a strange light in her eyes.

“Penelope is
your sister, isn’t she? You are her twin?”

Something cold flashes in Parthena’s eyes, and I have my answer. She turns her back to me and engages a machine. Electricity crackles in the air as she twists the knobs.

“Why do you listen to her? Why do you carry out her requests?” I gasp. “What power does she hold over you?”

“Shut up!”
Parthena whirls around. The skirt of her mourning gown binds at her knees.

“She does, doesn’t she? She holds power over you. Her very word is your command—”

“Our arrangement is none of your business!” Parthena hisses.

“What arrangement?” I heave.

“I told you to close your mouth.” She pinches my chin. Unkempt brows crouch over her vengeful eyes. She stares at me long and hard. “Tell me, while you still can. How did you kill him?”

“What?”

“Smrt. How did you do him
in
?” Her lips are quivering, but not out of fear or anger—it’s something else.

“What do you care how your sister’s lover died?”

She strikes me, her hand rapping hard across my cheek.

“Answer the question!” she shouts through her teeth.

“I—I . . .”

“You killed him with your bare hands, didn’t you?”
Her voice is shaking, her eyes strangely filling with tears. “Or did you have your little boyfriend do it for you? Tell me”—she leans in—“did it happen instantly, or do you still have nightmares of him gasping in his last breaths?” Her voice fills the room. “Answer me. How did it happen?”

I stare into her hardened eyes. “He wasn’t your sister’s lover, was he?” I finally say.

She falters backward, as if I’ve just electrocuted her with my words.

“It was you, wasn’t it?
You
were Smrt’s lover, not your sister. That’s why you want to know—”

“Lies.”
Parthena’s voice trembles.
“All LIES!”
she shouts.

“That’s why they put you in here. She had you put away. Just like she has all the others.”

“GUARD!”
Parthena turns, grabs up her skirts, and pitches herself at the door.

A photograph tumbles from her pocket as she turns. It comes to a rest near my feet at the leg of the chair. The gaze of a child stares up at me: the image of a babe, not more than a year, with bright grey eyes and a head of dark curls—and a harrowingly damaged lip.

The story Urlick shared with me in the woods comes flooding back, of Flossie’s presumed and unplanned entry into the world. The product of Smrt and his supposed Academy-colleague lover . . . “It
was
you,” I say breathlessly. “You bore the child, not Penelope.”

Parthena lunges, snatching the photo from the floor. She stuffs it in her pocket, and pounds at the door.

“That’s why you’re here! You disgraced your family, so they put you away!”

“Guard!”
she shouts.

“They took her from you, didn’t they?”

She whirls back around, her brows fiercely knit.

“The child. They took her from you and hid her in the woods.”

“What are you talking about?” Parthena’s voice cracks.

“You don’t know, do you?”

Parthena’s eyes grow small and heavy. “The child is dead,” she seethes. “Died many years ago.”

The guard appears behind her. He throws open the door, and Parthena launches through it.

“No, wait!” I shout after her. “It’s not true!”

An ether-doused cloth drops over my face, and the room begins to turn.

Th
irty-Five

Urlick

Masheck and I follow C.L. to a metal spiral staircase and wind along behind him toward the top. The stairs grow narrower and narrower as we ascend, and I stumble, my feet too big for the systematically shrinking treads.

“How much farther?” I say.

“Not much,” C.L. answers, twining around the stairs’ centre post. “When we get to the top, we’ll need to get past the dorm-warden’s office before we can get into the coop,” he whispers.

“The coop?” I say.

“The henhouse. Where they keep the dingy dames. The guards call it the coop.”

“I see,” I reply, taken back by the cruelty of the Madhouse slang. To think poor Eyelet has been stuck between these walls and treated like a madwoman. I look round at all the fencing and chains. I pray no harm has come to her.

C.L. creeps up the final step, heaves in a breath, and presses his back to the wall. Masheck and I follow, squishing in shoulder to shoulder.

“There’s the guard hut there.” C.L. points to a tiny, fenced-in box next to a gate, leading down a fully fenced corridor. Even the roof of the corridor is covered by cage. This is serious lockup. “I’ll keep ’im busy, whilst yuh two muscle yer way through the gate.” C.L. turns to me.

I glance back at Masheck, thinking how much more suitable he is to muscle his way in than me.

“They’s a pair o’ tin snips ’angin’ on the back wall of every guard’s post, just in case the inmates ever riot and lock them up in their own cages,” C.L. explains. “Nip in there and steal ’em and use ’em to cut the locks.”

“You really do know this place, don’t you?” I turn my head.

“Aye, sir. I am a bit of an expert on the subject, I’m ashamed to say.”

“And then what do we do?”

“What do you mean, then what do we do? We go and save Eyelet.”

“What about the guard?” I whisper loudly.

“Don’t worry about ’im.” Masheck steps up, rolling his fist in his hand.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I twist around.

“Ready?” C.L. hisses. With the speed of a mink, he dives out from behind the jut in the wall. He dances round in front of the guard’s post, jabbering gibberish, tongue flicking in and out of his mouth like a lunatic. “Oi!” C.L. shouts, jumping up and down on the metal-grate catwalk like a monkey. “’Ey, you! That’s right, you!” He jams a toe through the wires of the warden’s cage. “You big ugly bear, you!”

The warden’s eyes pop open, and his arms unfold from what appears to be a position of sleep. He drops the newspaper under which he’s been concealing his nap and scowls hard at C.L., his underbitten jaw showing angry teeth.

“Yeah, that’s right, I’ve woken you up! Whatchu gonna do ’bout it, big boy?” C.L. continues dancing, his head tottering side to side.

A monster of a man rises, and I flinch. His discarded stool rings the metal cage behind him as he stands. He growls, busting open the hut door with such whiplike speed, I don’t even see him unlock it.

“You wanna go,
Crazy
?” He grits his teeth, launching in C.L.’s direction.

“’Urry, quick!” C.L. shouts.

The monster licks his lips as if he’s about to devour C.L. for breakfast. He curls his mitt-sized fist and takes a swing. C.L. ducks the punch, relieving the guard of his key ring in the process and tossing it to me with a flick of his toes.

I capture the key ring midair and bounce toward the gate, fumbling through the
billion
choices, as the warden launches another punch—cut short by Masheck’s wild right hook.

The warden’s jaw rocks side to side as he falls in a blacked-out heap to the ground. His melon rings loudly off the metal floor of the catwalk.

“Well, that’s the end of ’im,” C.L. grins.

Masheck smiles as he shakes out his hand.

“Come on!” I say, snagging the tin snips from the post and snapping the gate open. “As good as that was, it’s not gonna last.”

“Yuh underestimate me?” Masheck says as the three of us spring through the door.

“She should be somewheres in this section ’ere,” C.L. pants, racing to the end block. Frantically, we check each cell as we go, ducking our heads in and out of the bars. Women shout and scream, clutching their belongings. I dash round a skinny corner to the next set of cages, amid the cacophony of female shrieks.

It’s bad enough with C.L. peering in at them, but quite another range of terror when I stick my face in. I’ve forgotten how horrifying I look.

The sheer volume of their screeching may give us away
.

“Let me go first.” C.L. dashes out in front of me.

“No.” I clap his shoulder and drag him back. “I need to find her. She’s
my
Eyelet. I don’t care what happens here.” I push past both him and Masheck and continue my search.
“Eyelet!”
I cling to the cages, scanning their occupants. “Eyelet? Eyelet, where
are
you?”

“Does anyone know of an Eyelet Elsworth?” C.L. cups a foot to his mouth and shouts over the screaming. “Brownish hair. Amber eyes. She’d be fairly new ’ere.”

“Anyone?” Masheck shouts, following. “Anyone at all?”

“There!” A grimy old urchin of a woman shouts out, her stand-up white hair peeking through a strainer hat. “Over there!” She points a gnarled finger. “They’s a new one bunked in with ol’ blondie there! Three cells from the end!”

“Thank you,” I say and burst into a run, my boots slamming hard against the metal catwalk grates. C.L. follows. Masheck hangs back, trying to quiet the crowd, now rattling their bars and chirping like wild chimpanzees.

I wheel myself up in front of the cell the woman indicated. My eyes fall on the girl resting on a cot. Her back is to me, her face pressed against a stone partition, her hair twisted up in a ratty bun. “Eyelet?” I say breathlessly, clinging to the iron bars that separate us. “Eyelet, is that you?”

The girl flings around. Her shoulder-length blonde locks spill around her face. She nearly falls off of the cot.

“You’re not Eyelet.” I deflate, disappointment exuding from me.

“I sure as
’ell
am not,” the girl scoffs. She sits up, stares at me. “’Oo are yuh to be askin’, anyway?” Her pixie-like smile dampens into something more sinister.

“I’ve come for Eyelet. I’m here to save her. Where is she?”

The girl tosses back her blanket and pops to her feet. Her eyes rake over me suspiciously. “Yer assumin’ I know ’er.” She pinches her hips. “Maybe I don’t.”

“You’re her roommate, aren’t you?”

“I might be. Who’s asking?” She struts cautiously toward me.

“The name’s Urlick, Urlick Babbit.”

“And who’s that?” She narrows her already-narrow eyes.

Shouldn’t she know me? Wouldn’t Eyelet have mentioned me to her?

“Give me one good reason I should be tellin’ yuh anything,” the girl continues, her chin snapped up cockily.

“Because I’ve risked my life to come and save hers, that’s why!” I blurt. “Now, please, tell me where she is!” I bang a hand on the bars.

The girl jumps. “Yer not gonna ’arm ’er, are yuh?”

“Never.” I shake my head.

Alarm bells clamour overhead. The lights begin to flash.

“Please,” I say. “If you know where she is, for the love of God, tell me.”

“Gotta go, chief.” Masheck races up beside me. “The guards, they’s on their way up the stairs at the other end.”

I look down the corridor, seeing a swarm of guard-uniform blue winding up the staircase.

“Oooooh!”
the girl purrs, her eyes flashing at the sight of Masheck. “Look at
yuh
!” She primps her hair and bats her eyes at him. “Quite the specimen, aren’tchu.”

C.L. scoots up next, panting and breathless. The girl’s head swings
in his direction.

“Oh.
My.
Goodness . . .” she gasps, bringing a fluttering hand to her more-than-ample chest. “Aren’t
yuh
an interesting one?” She bats her eyes at him. “’Ave I died and gone to ’eaven?” She drapes a dramatic hand over her forehead.

“Can we focus here?” I shout and her head snaps back down. “Eyelet.” I repeat. “Where is
she
!”

“Locked up behind the torture gates.” The girl coos, licking her lips, never taking her eyes off C.L. “I can take yuh to ’er, if yuh’d like.” She smiles at me.

“I’d like.”

“Quickly,” Masheck says, grabbing the keys and tossing them off to C.L, guards gaining at our backs.

“C.L.?” I nudge him, he and the girl still caught in a stargaze. “Open her cell door, please!”

“Oh . . . yeah,” he stammers, drops his head, and fumbles through the ring until at last he finds the right key.

“Come with me,” the girl says, threading her arm around C.L.’s waist as she slinks from her cell. “I knows a way the guards knows nothin’ about.”

The girl moves with incredible stealth and speed, weaving in and out of the shadows of the dimly lit, cobwebbed basement corridors of this building between the walls. She is truly finessed in finagling her way around this establishment—even better than C.L.—leaving a dead-stopped, buzzing hive of baffled guards in her wake.

“This way,” she hisses behind a curved hand, shoving us through another tiny passageway in the stone corridor. We have to duck our heads to enter, reduced to crawling on our hands and knees as the space becomes narrower and narrower.

“How did you know this was here?” I ask.

“I know all the tangled webs the ol’ Brink weaves.” The girl grins back at me over her shoulder.

“How long ’ave you been in ’ere?” Masheck asks, crawling along behind me.

“Dunno,” the girl answers. “Don’t remember.” She makes a troubled face. “I might ’ave been eleven, maybe twelve when I come ’ere?” She poses it like a question, like we might know better than her. “The guards’ll know. They’s the ones that remember for me. God knows I can’t do it for meself.” She crawls on, then stops.

“I’m Livinea, by the way.” She sticks a hand back at me. “Livinea Langtry.” She winks at C.L., who nearly crawls right into Masheck.

“Langtry, as in the moving-picture star?” C.L. trips on his knees.

“You know ’er?” Livinea’s head swings around, her eyes delighted.

“Well, no . . . not personally.” C.L. drops his chin.

“Oh,” Livinea says.

I shake her hand.

“Livinea,” C.L. offers quickly. “That’s a purdy name.”

“Thank you!” Livinea perks up again. “What do they call you?” She pushes her gaze past me exaggeratedly, making sure I don’t mistakenly answer.

“C.L.” He grins like a fool. “Stands for Crazy Legs,” he adds. “That’s me performing name.”

“Yer a performer, too?”

“Of sorts.” He blushes. “Me real name’s Ernest. But ain’t nobody but me mum use that name, though.”

“Ernest.” The girl breathes the word slowly. “It’s got a real earnest sound to it.” She smiles.

C.L. smiles, too.

I flash a look back at C.L., trying to tell him to stop acting like an idiot, but it’s too late—I can tell by the goony grin on his lips he’s too far gone already.

The girl crawls on, then stops abruptly, swinging open a trapdoor in the floor at the end of the tunnel. The lid creaks up into the air. “’Ere we are,” she says, dropping through the hole without warning. She whoops as she falls, disappearing like Alice through the rabbit hole, skirts flying up around her ears. Candlelight shoots up all around her from the room beneath, cloaking her image in golden rays. It’s like she has no care in the world—or no sense at all.

“Just drop your feet over the edge, then thrust your hips forward. It’s easy.” She demonstrates. My eyes pop as she thrusts her hips forward. I don’t know what to make of this girl. “And prepare for a jolt when you land,” she adds, giggling. “It’ll put ’air on your chest, it will.”

I sit and hang my legs over the side of the hole, cautiously, following her instructions, feeling a little uncomfortable about the thrust in mixed company. My heart lurches up into my throat as my hips drop through the hole. The sudden light blinds me. I land—she was right—with a knee-crushing jolt. C.L. and Masheck follow, nearly landing on top of me.

Livinea giggles as we peel out of our heap.

C.L. giggles with her.

My eyes finally focus on the room. It is filled with unthinkable things. A miniature guillotine blade shudders in its mount in the darkened corner; whips and shackles
tink
together over the form of an iron maiden. Stretcher racks, lining the walls, rattle under the pouncing weight of Masheck and C.L. landing. “What is this place?”

“This ’ere’s the torture storeroom,” Livinea answers matter-of-factly.

“Is that a Spanish donkey?” I stumble toward it, pointing, then gulp and step away. The apparatus is displayed like a prize in the centre of the room.

“I think that’s what they calls it.”

I remember reading about this and other torture devices in the
Mandatory Civil Deterrent Handbook
Flossie brought from the Academy. I’d half hoped those manuals were a joke. Every potential graduate had to study them. I remember lying long nights in my bed, shuddering at the sight of the drawings, nearly retching over their descriptions. All the while worrying in the back of my head: which would be used on me if I were ever discovered? The Spanish donkey gave me the greatest nightmares. And now here it is, in the place where Eyelet’s being kept.