The Crimson Shard (17 page)

“Well, Sunniver, you attracted much attention. A large brute attempted to carry you away. Another went at your friend, but there were enough of us to fight them off and spirit you both away. ’Twas far more entertaining than Neptune’s ridiculous grotto.”

“There was a third man after us, one who looked more like a gentlemen,” Sunni said in a small voice. “I heard his voice in my ear.”

Henry frowned as he tried to remember.

Sunni’s heart sank. “He was there. I hit him with a star.”

“I saw that,” said Martingale. “He was briefly in the fray but disappeared.”

“He’s the leader. The others take orders from him.”

“The man you called Throgmorton?” asked Amelia.

“Yes.”

“He must want you badly if he attempts to snatch you under the public’s nose. I hope we have done the right thing,” said Henry, rubbing a smear of dried blood off his hand with a handkerchief. “If you do turn out to be criminals —”

“We aren’t criminals. Throgmorton is.” Sunni shivered. “He may only be one step behind us.”

Henry leaned out of his window and shouted, “Anyone following, Rowley?”

The driver called no.

“You see? No one. You are safe with us. I expect you will sniff us out to see whether you can trust us. We shall do the same.”

Sunni’s head was reeling.
Say nothing more.
She held Blaise’s arm tight and watched for a sign that he was waking.

The carriage bumped and rolled through dark country where few lights appeared. At last, they turned into a long drive, past an imposing gate of wrought iron and stone. Winding through groves of swaying trees, the carriage approached a large mansion. It was silhouetted ebony against a sky full of cloud and rain, with four imposing chimneys rising above the roof like sentinels. A few windows glowed with dim lights.

Sunni gazed down at Blaise’s face, just visible in the darkness and as still as a marble statue.

Where are we, Blaise? What are they going to do with us?
Sunni touched his chilly forehead with her fingertips.
Please, please, you’ve got to wake up.

A
footman, holding a lantern aloft and squinting into the darkness outside, appeared at the mansion’s front door.

Rain lashed the roof of the carriage as it came to a halt.

“Good heavens, Hodge,” Henry shouted out the window. “Give us a hand here, man.”

The footman gaped and rushed to the carriage door. “I am sorry, sir. I could not tell . . .”

“Who else would it be? Help carry this boy inside. And why are more candles not lit? The place is black as Hades.”

“I am sorry, sir.”

Henry handed the lantern to Sunni, and she led them as quickly as she could in her shoeless feet. The three men hauled Blaise up the front steps into a wide entrance hall flanked by two ornate stairways right and left. The lantern picked out a polished floor and a door in the back wall. It also highlighted alcoves high in the walls, where stark white busts of men stared out from the shadows.

Two younger footmen burst through the far door, half bowing to Henry and Amelia.

“Bring him to the Red Room,” Amelia said, and the servants gingerly carried Blaise upstairs. “And get these boys clean nightshirts. Use Mr. Featherstone’s if you can find no others.”

As they laid Blaise down on the bed, Amelia bustled away, issuing instructions to a crowd of servants gathering in a gloomy corridor.

Blaise’s face was pale against the crimson bedcover. Henry was attempting to revive him with a cold compress held to his forehead. One of the footmen lit candles on a stand, flooding the room with warm light, and a maid brought in a tray of tea.

“The boy has taken several good knocks,” said Henry. “He’s as chilly as a corpse. Hodge, light the fire, will you?”

The word
corpse
made Sunni feel sick. “Can’t you get a doctor, sir?”

“My sister shall send for him forthwith, but it will take time for the man to arrive.”

Sunni bathed the bloody graze on the side of Blaise’s head and refused the hot tea offered to her. The maid whispered something to Amelia as she entered the Red Room with a clean nightshirt and a set of Henry’s old breeches and shirt.

“That boy’s wet clothes must be removed immediately. The bedding will be soaked, Brother. Did you not think of that?” she said fiercely.

“No, I admit I did not.” Henry eased himself into a chair next to Martingale, who was massaging his ribs.

“You are no better, making those chairs filthy. Off with you both, and I’ll send the footmen to help you presently. Mr. Martingale, you shall sleep in the Blue Room.”

“Sister, after what we have been through tonight, a filthy seat is the least of our concerns,” said her brother. He and his friend limped into the corridor, asking a passing servant to bring them something stronger than tea.

The footmen pulled off Blaise’s coat and threw it into a heap on the floor. Their money purse fell out with a faint clink.

“Your friend is in good hands now.” Amelia turned to Sunni. “Go with Anne. They are drawing a bath for you.”

But Sunni could not take her eyes from Blaise as his shirt was peeled off. The footman began to undo the boy’s trousers, and Sunni felt herself go red. Part of her was tempted to look, and the other part wanted to run away.

“Your clothes will need laundering as well,” said Amelia. “Anne will find a clean shirt and breeches while you are in the bath.”

“I — I’m not a boy,” Sunni whispered, finally averting her eyes. “I was forced to dress like this.”

At first Amelia peered at her, then she glanced over her shoulder at Blaise. Pursing her lips, she steered Sunni toward the door. “Go,” she said. “You will explain yourself, but not here.”

Blaise was caught in a tempest of swirling lights and shadows. He tried to climb out of it and get to the surface, wherever that was, but the higher he climbed, the more frustrated he grew. There seemed to be no end to the fragments of color and snatches of conversation flowing around him, no matter how hard he tried to get away from them. It felt for some time as if the chaos would suck him in for good, when suddenly he began to fly upward, passing all the mayhem and leaving the murmuring voices behind.

He broke through the surface with a loud gasp. His eyes rolled around, trying to take in his surroundings, but nothing was familiar. Everything was red, like the color of the pounding pain in his head, but soft. He was lying in a bed fit for a king, hung with draperies from a canopy on four posts. A low fire glowed, and many candles threw shadows on the walls.

The last thing Blaise remembered was being dragged roughly over the stage floor, broken plaster spiking his cheek and scalp.

A strange man in a chair by the bed came awake with a snort. “Ah, you are with us then, are you?” He leaned over Blaise, pulling down his lower eyelids and prodding a bandage tied around his head. “Very well, my labors here are at an end. Do not exert yourself, and you will soon be fit again.”

“Wait! Who are you?”

“Dr. Loftus. I shall alert your hosts that you are awake. Good evening to you.”

The man packed an array of tiny vials and instruments into a bag and hurried off. A woman in a dark dress and shawl swept in and laid one hand on his brow. He vaguely recognized her from somewhere.

Blaise tried to talk, but only croaks came out. She shook her head with a smile.

“Do not speak.” The lady propped him up and poured some cold sweet tea into his mouth. Just lifting his head that much nearly did him in, and he dropped back to the pillow with relief. She pulled a chamber pot from under his bed and said, “Do you have need of this?”

He turned his head away in embarrassment and managed to say, “No, thank you.”

“You are safe here.” She snuffed out most of the candles and checked the state of the fire’s embers before picking up the last lit candle and moving toward the door. “Sleep now.”

He raised one arm and called, “Who are you?”

“Miss Featherstone. All will be explained.”

“Where’s my friend?”

“She is asleep. You will see her in the morning.”

“M-my bag . . .”

Amelia pointed to a chair. The satchel Blaise had bought from Jenny was propped up against one leg. Their money pouch sat on a small table nearby.

“Sleep now,” she said, and glided out the door, taking the light with her.

Where are we?
Blaise lay in the blackness for some time, feeling his bandage and going over what had happened at Neptune’s Grotto. He was okay, sort of. Sunni was okay, apparently.
That lady knows she’s a girl.

He knew he shouldn’t get up, but he couldn’t help it. He inched his way across the mattress and swung his legs over. Realizing he was wearing a nightshirt that made him look like Ebenezer Scrooge, he started to laugh, but it made his head hurt too much.

Blaise felt his way to the chair and picked up the satchel, noting with a jolt of alarm that it was unbuckled. The earthy, smoky smell of it took him straight back to the Green Dragon. Anxiously, he fished around for the familiar shape of his own messenger bag and sandals mashed down to the bottom, and the soft jersey of his T-shirt and cut-off shorts. There was his phone, too, and a collection of London museum leaflets, pencil stubs, pens, and a pack of gum. At last he touched his sketchbook, flat against the back of the satchel, and heaved a sigh of relief.

He moved toward where he had seen the candles and stumbled into something, sending it and everything on it tumbling. A blinding pain shot through Blaise’s ear, and he had to steady himself against what he guessed was an overturned table.

The Red Room’s door creaked open and revealed Sunni in a white nightgown and shawl, holding a candle. “
What
are you doing?”

“Trying to get this.” Blaise held up the sketchbook. “Bring that candle over so I can look at it.”

“Are you crazy?” She quietly closed the door behind her and bustled to his side. “Your head . . .”

“Where are we?” he interrupted. “Who are these people?”

“We were sitting with them in the theater, remember? Two of them are a brother and sister, Henry and Amelia Featherstone, and this is their house, outside the city somewhere. The other guy’s called Martingale. They got us away from Throgmorton and his thugs.”

“The people in front of that guy we talked to? The one who said he’d met real magicians?”

“Yes,” she answered. “You don’t look too good.”

“Thanks a lot. My head’s splitting, but other than that, I’m okay. What about you?”

“Fine. I got off lightly.” She shone her candle over the mess of objects on the floor. “Just leave this till the morning. You’ve got to rest and get better.”

He held the satchel to his chest and nodded.

“I like your nightgown.” Sunni smirked.

Blaise dived back into bed. It seemed like the least embarrassing option.

She grinned and padded to the bed, setting her candle down on the bedside table. “Is your sketchbook okay?”

He hastily leafed through it. “Seems to be. Throgmorton didn’t get hold of it, anyway.”

“Wouldn’t it be useless to him without you there to explain your sketches? After all, he could have taken it from you before.” Sunni perched near him on the edge of the bed.

“I suppose. But just in case,” Blaise answered slowly. He dropped back against the pillows. “So these Featherstones rescued us. Why? They don’t know us.”

“I think it was because of the guy we talked to. Amelia told me he’d taken our story seriously.”

“But can we trust them?”

“I don’t know. My instinct says they’re honest,” said Sunni.

“My instinct was to follow Throgmorton through the painted door, and look where it got us.”

“Stop beating yourself up,” Sunni chided him. “I went into the labyrinth after Dean, and look where
that
got us.”

“We got ourselves out of that situation. I don’t know about this one,” he said.

“Stop it, Blaise.”

A stabbing ache made him cringe. “S-so they know you’re a girl.”

“Yeah, I told Amelia. They were about to throw me in the bath, so it would have been hard to keep under wraps.”

“Any reaction?”

“Shocked. And I think she was intrigued, too. I gave her only the basics about why I was dressed as a boy, but we’ll have a lot more explaining to do in the morning.”