“Thank you so much, sir,” she says. “We’ve been afraid to go outside.”
“You’re welcome,” he says gravely.
“We’re going to need more food,” the soldier says. “And something for them to drink, since we’ve been telling them the water isn’t safe.”
Elliott nods, and the group plods away.
“I should check in with Kent,” Elliott says. “He’s in the brew house, working on the water problem. We need more of everything.”
“Yes.” We’re back in sight of the Debauchery Club. Elliott makes a move to walk with me, but his attention isn’t on me anymore.
“Go to Kent,” I tell him. “I can walk down the street by myself.”
He doesn’t argue, so I set off. After a few moments, I hear footsteps behind me, and I turn to tell him that I’m not completely dependent on him to protect me. But the street is empty.
I speed up. Malcontent’s people could grab me from the street and sweep me into a tunnel deep underground.
And . . . maybe that’s what I want. To make contact with Malcontent. But not before trying the Akkadian Towers. And on my own terms, not as a prisoner. I’m close enough to the club that Elliott’s guards will hear me if I scream. So instead of being afraid, I find myself annoyed that someone is following me. I turn, waiting for the person to emerge. It’s a man in a dark hood.
Before he can react to me waiting for him rather than running away, I reach up and push his hood back. I don’t recognize his face, but his skin is unblemished.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” I ask.
“Are you the scientist’s daughter?” the man asks.
“Yes.”
“I want to know if there is still a reward for information about Dr. Phineas Worth.”
“Yes.” My voice quavers, and I put a hand to the lamppost beside me to steady myself. “Yes, of course there is.” I have gold to reward him for his information, but it’s in Elliott’s room, in his pack.“What of my father?” I ask.
The man steps away from me. “I want to see my payment first.”
I reach into my pocket. The diamond ring is there. Can I trade it to this man for his information? I can’t take him to my chamber, and if I go up to retrieve the gold, he might well disappear.
“Take this,” I say.
The man stares at the ring, and unexpectedly, his eyes fill with tears. A long-lost memory of some other diamond ring? I don’t know, or care. “What do you know of my father?”
“He’s dead,” the man says. I can’t tell if he’s happy or sad. His voice is weary. Emotionless. I study his face for some sign that he’s lying, but he meets my eyes. He believes what he’s just said. The world wavers for a moment, and I have to grab the rough wall of the building beside me to keep from falling.
“How do you know this?”
“He used to feed the fish in the stream behind the science building, at the university, yes?”
Father always saved bits of bread for the fish, in the same way that he saved food for hungry children. That stream is the place Elliott and I last saw him.
“Some of the students realized who he was. They went after him. Killed him and threw his body in the river. It’s better, I think, throwing them in the river, than leaving them in the streets.”
It’s this detail about the fish that convinces me.
Could he be dead? A wave of dizziness and nausea sweeps over me, but I force it down. My father, who took me to parades. Who comforted me when I was hurt. Who made me sleeping drafts and kissed my forehead as I drifted to sleep.
“Did you see it happen?” I ask. “Or simply hear about it?” Either way, his story rings painfully true.
He reaches into his robe. I step back, expecting some weapon, but instead he pulls out my father’s spectacles. I put out my hand, and the man drops them onto my trembling palm.
They are lighter than I would have expected. But they are his. The left earpiece is twisted. I’d recognize them anywhere.
My legs refuse to hold me up, and I collapse there in the street.
“I’m sorry,” the man says. And this time I can hear the regret in his voice. He steps to the mouth of the alley, calls to the guards at the club. They come running, helping me to my feet. The man is gone. Along with Elliott’s diamond ring, and my hopes for repairing my world.
Without my father and his elusive antidote, there is only one person who can save April. Malcontent. He claimed that he had a cure. If it isn’t too late for that. If he isn’t too angry that she allowed me to escape. Would he forgive her transgression if I turned myself over to him? I need to prepare myself to find out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AS I APPROACH APRIL’S ROOM, I’M EXPECTING the worst. But she is sitting up, dressed in a bright gown.
“You keep leaving this,” she says, instead of “hello” like a normal person. She’s holding my makeup bag.
I throw myself into her arms and hug her. “How do you feel?” I start to ask, but she puts her hand to my mask, shushing me.
“Let’s not talk about that. We’re back in the Debauchery Club.” I stare at her, at a loss, and then she laughs. “Let’s dye your hair.”
She pulls bottles and vials from her own bag. I want to laugh with her, but I’m afraid if I do, something inside me might break. The most I can summon is a smile.
“This is the first time I’ve seen you smile in a long time,” she says softly.
“There hasn’t been much to smile about.” My father can’t be dead; April can’t be dying.
But I know better than that. I held my twin brother while the life bled out of him. Bad things happen every day. Unspeakable things.
“You aren’t even going to recognize yourself,” she says, and it takes me a moment to realize that she’s talking about my hair.
The first time she dyed it was so that I wouldn’t see Finn when I looked in the mirror. Whether or not the color had anything to do with it, I rarely see him now. For weeks, since Malcontent’s attack, I’ve barely thought about him. But the memories are still there. With Father dead, and if Malcontent kills me, then only Mother will be left to remember Finn.
Preserving his memory is important. But he’d still want me to fight for April. Even if it means losing everything. Including him.
“You told Elliott about our father,” April says, pouring water into a basin. “I can tell by the way he looks at me. Halfway pitying, half angry.”
April’s room is more opulent than mine. Hangings cover the walls and carved furniture looms over us, dressing tables and mirrored chests and armoires. A dressing room stands open, and a variety of dresses are strewn about. The tray from this morning with the remains of breakfast is still on the bedside table. The servants haven’t come back for it, too afraid of catching the contagion.
“He needed to know.”
April turns me so that she’s behind me. Her hands are in my hair, massaging in the herb mixture that will change the color.
“Does he deserve to know that you’re in love with Will?” she asks softly.
Even though she’s working with my hair, I move to face her. Her blond hair is lustrous, falling in waves over her shoulders. But a sore oozes over her left eyebrow, and she isn’t wearing eye makeup because of it. Her eyes look nak*d.
“I’m not in love with him,” I say.
“You’re angry at him. That doesn’t mean you don’t love him.”
“I’m not angry anymore. I understand what Will did. The decision he made. And I won’t pretend I’m not attracted to him. But I’m not in love with him. I’m not in love with anyone.”
“Is this the same speech you gave Kent?” she asks, spinning me back around and smearing something that smells of lavender into my hair. “‘April is more important than kissing boys,’” she mimics. “He believed you. I don’t.”
This is what girls are supposed to do with their best friends. Gossip about boys. My lack of interest in it has always been a sore spot with April. And now . . . the weight of the world seems to be on my shoulders. I can’t forget that Father is dead, that April is sick. That I shouldn’t be sitting here—I should be devising some plan, no matter how crazy, to save her.
She wraps my hair in a towel and drops into a matching chair, so close that our knees touch.
“Who is a better kisser?” she whispers. And then her nose wrinkles. “If it’s Elliott, I don’t want to know details. Is it Elliott?”
“I’m not going to tell you details,” I say, indignant. But then, because she’s my best friend, and because she’s waited a long time for this sort of discussion, taking me to the club two or three times a week . . . I sigh. “Elliott is insistent. Intense. With Will, it’s like I forget that anything else exists.” I feel my face burning. “I don’t know,” I say quietly. “They are both important to me. Without kissing.”
“But kissing makes everything better,” she says. Her eyes meet mine, and I laugh. A real, true laugh.
I reach out and take her hands. “What can we do for you?” I ask, though I know that this change in subject will kill the laughter.
“Nothing. Kent has tried everything. If there were any cure, he’d know. He lost his mother to the plague, and he knows everyone who’s been experimenting and inventing. He’s smarter than anyone I’ve ever met.” She glows a little when she says this.
“What about your father? He said that he could cure you.” This is as close as I will come to revealing my desperate plan.
“Don’t believe him, Araby. I’ve thought about it, wondered if I should’ve stayed.” She gives me a sad smile. “Not because I regret saving you. That was the good part.” She runs a comb through my hair, untangling it. And then she rinses it with water from a small pitcher.
My heart sinks. If Malcontent can’t save her, then she’s doomed.
“Why shouldn’t we believe him?” I ask.
“Because he’s a liar,” she says. “And he’s crazy. If he could cure the contagion, wouldn’t he cure all those men who are following him?”
But I’m not so sure. It’s convenient that Malcontent has never gotten the disease. His men believe he is a saint. But we know better. He must have some cure that we aren’t aware of. He’s my last chance to save April.
She’s running her hands through my hair, though surely the tangles are all out by now. I lean into her, comforted by her touch.
“Will took me up in the hot-air balloon, the one that used to be tethered on the roof of the Morgue,” I say. Because I’ve not told anyone. I’ve not let myself think of it. But lately Will is slipping back into my thoughts.
“What? Why didn’t you mention this before? Tell me everything!” She’s animated suddenly, spinning me around to look at her.
“He showed me the city and said that I had to believe in good things.” This is where my heart drops. “Because he was getting ready to betray me.”