Like the dining room at Prospero’s palace, the one here is decorated with polished mahogany and dragon statuettes. Our rather frugal meal is served on antique imported china.
We eat our soup in near silence. Then Elliott says, “So tell us, gentlemen, what is the news in the Debauchery District?”
“We understand that a certain young man has been inviting people to our territory, to our building, no less,” Prospero’s former henchman says. “Men in uniform have been arriving all day.”
Elliott smiles. “You can keep your rooms for as long as you need them. I know you have nowhere else to go.” His words are low and loaded with threat. I watch the scientist. He’s eating steadily, but he eyes Elliott the way you watch a serpent.
“How did you get away?” I ask the scientist, unwilling to play along with Elliott’s pretense that he was Prospero’s invited guest.
“Someone left the doors of the dungeon open. All of us escaped.” He puts down his soup spoon and smiles at me. “Someone very courageous . . .”
When he glances at me, my heart stops. My mother is with the prince, in his palace. “Someone who has a soft spot for scientists?” I ask.
He nods.
And now I’m both proud of Mother and worried about how the prince will punish her.
“Why did you come here?” Elliott interjects. He isn’t even pretending to eat now, just interrogating the man.
“The other men went to the swamp.” The scientist’s voice drops. “They were looking for something. A rumor.” He looks up quickly at the men who are listening, and then back to his soup. “But I have a grandson. I plan to search the city for him.”
“I’ll assign a soldier to help you search,” Elliott offers. “If there’s anything else—”
“Thank you.” His consideration of Elliott has softened a bit.
“Dr. Winston has been telling us fascinating rumors,” the old man across the table says. “He says that both Prospero and Dr. Worth knew that there was a way to protect against the plague, and they chose to suppress the information.”
“Those rumors aren’t new. They start up every few months,” I say. And who can blame people for being suspicious, when Prospero kept control of the masks and Father never fought him on it?
“The prince never cared about anything except control,” Elliott says. “Now he’s focused on his masquerade balls. Those, he can control.”
Elliott doesn’t seem surprised that rumors are circulating. He knows something that he isn’t saying.
“I suppose you would know the prince better than any of us,” the old man says. Looking at Elliott, he says, “Your familial connections are quite . . . surprising.”
Elliott ignores him, but I meet his hooded eyes. What does he know?
I’m glad when Elliott pushes back his chair and places his napkin on the table. I can’t stand being in this room any longer.
“We’ll talk soon,” he tells Dr. Winston. I follow him out of the dining room, where he pauses to speak to the guard on duty. After assigning a man to Winston, he walks me upstairs.
“Will picked this room for you.” We’ve stopped at a door, and Elliott hands me a key. “I think you would be safer in my room. I’m not sleeping on the floor again, though.”
“This will be fine,” I say. “I don’t wish to sleep on your floor either.”
He pulls the book of maps from an interior pocket.
“You’ve spent more time reading this than I have. I need to know which passages are near, which ones may connect with the cellars. Whether Malcontent can attack us from below.”
I take the book from him, and in the same movement grab his wrist.
It’s time to tell him who Malcontent is.
I never meant to keep this secret from him. Never wished to know more than he did about the enemy who foiled all of his carefully laid plans.
“Come inside with me,” I say.
He arches his eyebrows and follows me.
This room has two upholstered chairs, a tapestry depicting a tree with white leaves, and a doorway that must lead to a bedchamber. “Sit.” I gesture to the chairs. “I need to tell you something.”
“You adore me and are having trouble keeping your hands to yourself?” he suggests.
“No.” But my seriousness is lost on him.
He sits and pulls me close. “I’m having trouble keeping my hands to myself.” The look on his face is completely earnest. I don’t pull away. It’s better that we are touching.
The silk of my dress billows as he draws me into his lap. Removing his mask, he kisses the side of my face, and slides my mask off. I turn to meet his eyes, but I don’t kiss him.
“Elliott.” We are so close I can see his pupils contrasting with the pale blue of his eyes. “Your father isn’t dead.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HIS HANDS DROP, AND HE STARES AT ME.
I plow on. “The corpse collectors took him, but he was alive. He survived. He stayed in the swamp. The diseased men took him in and worshiped him because he seems to be immune to the contagion. They consider him some sort of saint, a miracle.”
“Malcontent,” he says slowly. “You’re saying that my father, who I watched my uncle murder when I was a boy . . . is alive . . . is Malcontent?”
I grip his shoulders tightly, waiting for the knowledge to sink in. He shifts, and I slide from his lap, hitting the floor hard. He doesn’t seem to notice. He sits very straight, staring ahead.
I expected him to curse. I expected indignation, but he surprises me.
“Does he know who I am?” He’s gripping the arms of the chair, his knuckles white.
“Yes. He knew what he was doing when he blew up the steamship.”
The confident, arrogant Elliott that I’ve come to appreciate is gone. He slumps in his chair. I don’t blame him. His father—not an unknown madman—tried to kill him.
I don’t reach out to him or speak.
I kneel beside him. It isn’t the most dignified of poses, but I don’t care. My mother might have adopted the same position to comfort me as a child. I know how it feels to have your world crash down on you.
“Are you sure?” Elliott’s eyes are haunted.
“Yes.”
He starts to say something else.
“Elliott,” I say gently, “April was with me.”
A clock in the corner ticks away the minutes.
Elliott is so pale I’d be afraid he might pass out, if he was the sort of person prone to fainting. I reach to touch him, and then pull back.
“If anyone finds out, you must hide how you feel. Let them think you don’t care.”
“Like you, Araby? Nonchalant? Uncaring about your own father’s sins?” He’s getting angry now, defensive. That’s the Elliott I know.
“I don’t suppose I was very good at hiding my feelings when I learned about Father. But you have to be.”
“Your father didn’t try to kill you.”
I used to like to see Elliott with his guard down, saw it as a chance to peer past the walls that he’s constructed. But now that I know him, it makes me uneasy to see him so unsure. Even when he doesn’t know the right course of action, the Elliott I know is always ready to fake certainty.
“No,” I say. “My father tried to kill everyone in the world because I wasn’t happy.”
Elliott puts his hands on either side of my face. He looks into my eyes. I don’t look away. For once, I don’t try to hide the guilt. The pain.
“You told your father you couldn’t find happiness?”
“The world is bleak,” I say.
Then his arms are around me. It’s an embrace, but not a passionate one. He bows his head. I put my own forehead against his cheek. And we don’t move. Even when there are footsteps in the hall, and they stop in the doorway.
“Sir?” It’s one of Elliott’s men, blushing furiously at whatever he thinks he interrupted.
“Our meeting.” Elliott groans. “Of course. Araby, I’ll be back for you in an hour. We’ll make plans.” He looks pointedly at the book of maps.
Elliott releases me and strides across the room. He hesitates in the doorway, but I don’t say anything, don’t ask to go with him. The regret is setting in. I shouldn’t have been so open, shouldn’t have revealed so much about my father and my feelings.
So he goes.
I walk over to lock the door behind him, and suddenly Elliott reappears in the doorway, alone.
“I’d like to give you a reason to live.” He tosses something to me, and I catch it without thinking. And then he’s gone again, and I’m holding a diamond ring in my fist.
Is this some sort of diversion? Is he trying to keep me from the overwhelming guilt? Was he afraid for my sanity? Or was it more?
It seems so long ago that Elliott asked me to wear the ring, to pretend I was madly in love with him in front of his uncle. Since then I’ve come to understand him, and on some level I think he understands me. I slip the ring into my pocket.
While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t need him to be my reason to live. And I don’t plan to wait around for him to come back for me.
As I reach the stairway, I see Will slipping down a side corridor. And I follow him.
At first I mean to call out to him. But he’s moving furtively, and every time he passes a corridor, he looks down it quickly. He’s sneaking off, and I want to know where.
He grabs a candle and starts down a flight of stairs. I wait until he’s passed through the door at the bottom before I follow him. In the darkness on the other side of the door, I can’t tell where he went. As I turn, while my eyes adjust, a hand reaches from the shadows and grabs my arm. I stifle a scream.
“Did Elliott ask you to follow me?” Will asks.
I shove him. “Did you really think I’d spy on you for Elliott?” I cross my arms over my chest, furious.
He grins at me. “So you’re following me because you want to.”
My anger is replaced by confusion. I’m following him because I wanted to see where he was going. That’s all.
“He didn’t ask me to follow you.” I try to steer the conversation back to Elliott. “But he does want to know where your printing press is.”
“He’ll figure it out soon enough. And then he’ll have someone take over the machine and print whatever lies he wants.”
“And you only print truth?” Somehow the darkness makes it easier to ask the question.
“I don’t always know the truth. But I don’t print things I know are lies.” His voice is quiet and thoughtful. “Give me your scarf.”
“Why?” I ask as I unravel it.
Will sets the candle on the floor, and then his hands are on me. He puts the soft fabric of the scarf over my eyes.
“You’re blindfolding me?” My anger is returning. Does he trust me so little?
“Araby—”
“I trusted you. Despite—” I clear my throat. I won’t throw his betrayal in his face. “I don’t spy for Elliott.”