The Copper Canary: Sneak Peek
The First Chapter and Interlude of THE COPPER CANARY
Chapter 1: Cast in Stone
August 4, 1906—17th Anniversary of The Great Fire
Avery Black stood between the brick walls of the textile factory and steam plant, glaring into the canal of industrial run-off swirling twenty feet below. She wiped her shaking hands on her skirts and lifted her scowl to the opposite edge of the concrete culvert.
Why in Wylian hell was she hesitating?
An infuriating flood of logic responded to rhetorical thought—Avery backed down the alley anyway. She’d vaulted this gap twice a day for the last decade. Never once had she wobbled on leap or landing.
“Come on.” She muttered as she gathered her skirts and focused on her target. “I got this.”
And she would have—if three strides into her sprint, a shiver hadn’t jolted down her spine, buckled her knees, and sent her stumbling toward the lip of the canal. At the last second, Avery slammed her body against the jagged corner of the steam plant and wrapped her fingers around a loose rain gutter. Eyes shut; she waited.
Familiar stabs of electric energy raced down her spine and pulsed twice below every drabscale plaque that perpetually marred her skin before fading to nothing. With hesitant care, Avery stepped back into the alley—and her mind resumed its bickering.
Yes, fine. So, attempting to jump across a sewage ditch while signs of an impending paralytic attack wrenched through her body wasn’t her best idea.
But that was no reason to get all petrified and pansy-ish.
From her understanding of the matter, this morning’s full-blown episode of drabscale-instigated spasming—which had handed her a demotion from the sewing floor twenty-minutes ago—should prevent another seizure from striking so soon. So, these were just aftershocks. Probably.
Regardless, she still needed to get home before Hestia caught wind of the demotion. The last thing she needed today was one more thing for that batty old woman to hold between her and finally being free from her guardianship.
Avery shook her arms at her sides to rid them of the definitely-not-a-massive-red-flag-hum still vibrating her bones. She hadn’t spent seventeen years hopping this canal and passing nightly inspections just to fall on her face inches from the finish line.
Avery crossed her fingers, tapped them to her lips twice, hiked up her petticoats, and launched herself once again toward the canal. The very second her buttoned-boots leaped from the cobbles, a crack snapped through her spine. Her body slammed to a stop as if she’d hit an invisible wall midair.
God. Damnit.
With all the grace of a sandbag cut from a zeppelin, she plummeted into the canal and landed not with a splash but a shlumph. A patch of refuse dense enough to trip a Clydesdale had caught her flat on her back.
Avery knew better than to feel lucky. This marked the sixth time in a week that a paralytic episode had cold-cocked her out of nowhere. The fourth to send her flying headfirst toward a deadly predicament. None had let her get off this easy, and Avery was entirely fed up with the experience.
Sure, she had expected the days leading to her seventeenth birthday to be miserable with episodes. But drowning in the back-alley canals of Spokane—which she assumed was where this was headed—was truly unacceptable.
Avery bobbled on the surface, body stiff as a starfish below her tangled pile of muddy skirts and readied herself for the moment the river chose to swallow her. Or maybe her muck island would delay her demise for now, and allow her to be shucked into the Spokane Falls instead. Hell, maybe the sunbaked blob would simply float her under a conduit and let her suck on a waterfall of grey water.
As if wishing to underline that thought, a boiling wave of run-off came barreling out of the steam plant lines and crashed a yard away. The force rolled a wave under her island, giving Avery only enough time to draw a shallow breath before the current caught hold and pulled her under.
Avery’s lungs burned as her body somersaulted in the deep river. An odd sensation of breaking apart from the inside coursed through her, the physical violation of the feeling broke each rail of emotional restraint she’d held in place for seventeen years like a brittle cage.
Her heart begged her to let the pieces of herself fall away. But the foreign nature of the wish bit into her mind and she forced it back.
No. She’s waiting for me. I’m not leaving Spokane without her.
A swell of malicious insistence demanded that she give in. This time the thought sank deep like poisonous fangs into her mind. The shock of it nearly sent her gasping against the wastewater. Enraged, Avery sent the full force of her will against the mental intrusion.
STOP!
It did, and so did she. No longer tumbling, her body was held stiff in the surrounding mud. The silt had shifted, solidified, and grabbed hold the moment she had commanded the thoughts back. And now, as her lungs begged for air the mud stretched her spine straight, flung her limbs wide, and launched her up into the warm August air.
Avery gasped as the river released her just enough to let her body float just below the surface, face up. Directly above and in her line of sight, a window-heavy building painted in the citrus hue of early sunset. The glass panes reflected a peaceful array of clouds, all blushing with brazen summer cheer—in complete tactless disregard for her predicament.
In what was as much of a shock to her as it would have been to the innocent cumulus companions to which it was directed—had they been sentient—Avery hurled a tirade of curses at the heavens.
“Take your sunset and shove—Oh!”
Her echoing voice and the returned control of her jaw muscles stopped Avery’s fury over the sight of the building at once. Her brain recalculated.
Yes, this ridiculously over-windowed building announced she had less than three blocks to save herself before death-by-rocky-waterfall-river-gorge—hence the cursing—but it also meant the Post Street bridge would be over her in seconds. Post street meant traffic. Traffic meant people. And if she had her voice back, that meant—
“HA!” Avery shouted at the armada of brazen sky-blobs.
Attention-grabbing, wailing display of damsel-in-distress feminine impropriety. She could do that. It went against everything she was taught. Hestia would likely prefer she just go on and drown, but Avery wasn’t doing things for her anymore. Screw passing her last inspection. She was seventeen. An adult. If she wanted to end her wardship or scream for help she could damn well do so without her grandmother’s permission.
Swallowing hard, Avery braced herself to yell. And just as the brick of the bridge came rushing up to replace her view of the sky—a rusted pole of rebar slammed her across the ribs.
Avery’s spine jackknifed around the metal rope, her bated breath coming out in an undramatic uhnf, and the current turned her face down. Without thinking through how or what she was doing, Avery pushed her will into her mind again.
NO!
Her right arm bolted from her side at once, seized the rebar, and her fingers inexplicably held firm. In no mood to question yet another inexplicable event today, Avery decided that there must be a not-what-she-thought-it-meant plausible explanation and yanked.
As her head popped above the surface an onslaught of mortar, tar, and grime rained down—and her wet-handed grip went back to to following the normal laws of physics.
The moment her fingers slipped from the steel, the rebar gripped her back. The cold metal coiled itself around her wrist and spiraled down her arm.
“Wha—!” Avery managed before a second strand dipped down and pinned her jaw shut. Wide-eyed, she thrashed against their grasp as a third tendril whipped from the canal wall, hooked around her waist, and—with unnerving precision—pitched her into the closest conduit.
Avery landed hard, far up the concrete cylinder. She gulped at air that tasted of citrus mold and rotten garden mulch as her body took an odd amount of effort to sit up. Even taking into consideration the uncoordinated rigidity that always followed the end of her attacks, the level of electric vibration still in her was unusual.
No. Not unusual. There had to be a normal and non-The-Four-Wales-based explanation for this.
It was probably a side effect of whatever hallucinogenic gas obviously collected under the bridge. Because of course there must be hallucinogenic gas under the bridge. Why else would she be out of breath, or have seen those rebar tentacle…things.
See? It was all normal. She just had to ignore the fact that gas didn’t have enough density to chuck her into a conduit…or chuck things in general.
Home. I need to focus on getting home.
The tunnel Avery’d landed in was massive—larger than most of the lines she frequented—and the glittering grate set into the sidewalk above set a mental map of the conduit and steam lines unfurling behind her eyes. Fancy grates, lemon verbena and tobacco scented wastewater meant first avenue. That meant maintenance shafts.
Avery stood, bracing her shaking body against the wall as she scanned the conduit for a maintenance connection. The mud surrounding her rose in kind. And like a wave of sand, slapped her back to the ground. Thick ribs of stone snapped up from the concrete curve like a rat trap and wrapped their rigid bands around her sides, anchoring her in a stone straitjacket to the floor.
A crackling thrum of horse and buggy rumbled closer. Too close. Far too close to be passing overhead.
A sudden nails-on-chalkboard screech of wheel connecting with stone rang through the air as a matte black carriage skid to a stop just feet from her. The glare from its blinding orange headlamps went black as a drift of heavy conduit goop slicing off its wheels and coated Avery from head to toe.
A door slam made it past the sludge-now clogging her ears, as did a sharp rap-rap-rap making a beeline for her.
Avery blinked gunk from her eyes just in time to see the horse and carriage stagger back from a looming shadow of a woman walking straight into the mud to mutter something down at her with the same clipped sharpness of her heels. With an audible growl, the shadow swiped her hand in Avery’s general direction and the claws of stone holding her wrenched open and sank back into the ground.
Which did not stun Avery at all. Because this woman’s clear irritation instantly shoved Avery’s bewilderment and fear to “back-of-the-brain” territory and all that remained was a rapidly rising level of indignation.
Avery sat up, flicked mud from her hands, and spat a good hunk of debris in the general direction of the woman’s annoyingly clacky shoes.
Which, she discovered, was a dumb move.
The mud surged in a single undulating lurch this time. It regrouped below Avery’s torso and snapped up like a flicked sheet, all while still gripping hold of her feet. It popped her up in front of the woman like a stomped rake.
Avery’s head pounded in protest at the quick ascent. Her ears popped, releasing cold rivulets of mud to slip along her neck and dribble below her collar.
“I highly recommend you not do that, again.” The woman growled. “Unless you’d like me to chuck you back into the canal.”
The woman folded her arms across her chest and cocked her head. Which seemed to Avery as if she were daring her to respond.
Still very much unwilling to acknowledge that the woman had just moved the earth with the flick of her wrist, Avery let her attention be compromised by the impeccable matte-black riding gown the woman wore instead.
The fabric was indistinguishable and stunning with gold pinstripes done in a metallic thread that widened to ribbon as each traveled to the ground. The whole shape of the shift was tailored with jaw-dropping precision and pressed so stiffly that each pleat took on the appearance of a gilded steel plate—all riveted together with very familiar black-laced peridot pearls.
The rigid shape of the gown and the yellow-green of the laced beads contrasted with striking beauty against the soft copper-orange of the silk cuffs and trim. A stylish leather and lace riding hat sat curtly atop the woman’s artfully tangled knot of black hair, and shimmering copper and gold lines traced the curves of her neck.
Avery’s gaze froze on those lines with a jolt. This woman was a Mountain Drabby. However, this was no ordinary drabby. She wasn’t living a life of exile in the mines. Based on the pristine appearance, this was one of their trade ambassadors.
A trade ambassador who traveled through sewage canals by carriage. And moved mud with her mind. And saved Browne’s girls from muddy public deaths. Right.
No. This had to be a dream. Definitely a toxic-fume induced hallucination just like the rebar tentacles. Rumors of Drabby’s being able to move the earth with their minds was just a twist on an old myth about the Erroso of the Four Wyles. That was all.
There couldn’t be any truth to the myths, because if there was, Avery herself would be able to move metals and earth. And she sure as hell hadn’t moved any mountains recently.
No. But I moved that bolt-folder this morning. And froze the river mud…Were the tentacles me?
Shutting down the disturbing thoughts at once, Avery concentrated on the woman again. Which was far from difficult.
The Ambassador exuded a strength and elegance that commanded awe with the power of a streamliner. From below the steel gray of a retracted mourning veil, her intense eyes flashed copper and sapphire blue. The blending of the two colors tangled around the iris and emitted an unnatural glow in the dim light. Gorgeous and elegant. And in an elite political position.
Avery knew exactly what she needed to do.
Clasping her hands in front of her hips, and straightening her posture, Avery dipped a curtsy. Angling her head just enough to infer an appropriate level of shame and regret. She then stared down at her inferior mud-caked skirts and cleared her throat.
With a practiced air of apology, she said, “Yes, of course, ma’am.”
Avery’s voice was light and sweet, but right around ‘of course’ it shifted involuntarily and ended with a tone that held a hefty dollop of “you dumb twat.”
A playful snort of laughter came from the carriage’s coachman perch that made Avery jump. She had so resolutely given up on making sense of the mere sight of a carriage rolling through the underground that her brain had done its utter best to forget it was even there.
Avery bit hard on the inside of her cheek and gripped her fingers to stop herself from scowling at the driver. She had no ruddy clue how anyone could lead a team through the tunnels without manipulating some rock. The case for hallucination was definitely getting stronger. She looked back up at the Ambassador and scrunched her eyes. Maybe if she focused differently…
All at once the formidable woman went wide-eyed in what looked like recognition. She leaped out and grabbed Avery’s arm and as soon as her gloved fingers made contact, the mud coating her cured into a solid shell.
The sensation of immobility was vastly more comfortable than Avery’s paralytic attacks, which terrified her more than the reality that she was being held hostage. But from the look on the woman’s face, Avery wasn’t the only one with fear streaking along their spine. The woman’s fiery eyes bored into Avery as though she were staring at a lit stick of dynamite.
“What,” the Ambassador hissed, “in all god’s name do you think you are playing at?”
Switching her grip, she grabbed both of Avery’s shoulders with stoney fingers. Avery tensed against the feel of the woman’s nails drilling into her skin—and the shell went slack in response.
On instinct, Avery shoved the woman and railed against the now fracturing shell holding her joints stiff. But before she had shed enough to take a step, the mud cracked back to solid stone. With a sickening crunch, it compacted itself against her in an undulation that rippled up her stomach and back. It turned and tilted her toward the woman, scraping the heels of her boots against the stone floor as it drew her closer to the Drabby’s glare.
The stone pressed in on her from all angles, covering everything from her toes to her top lip in dense layers of mud. Avery’s heart pounded in her chest, eyes watering from the deep inhale of a scream that now had to be exhaled through her nose. The woman’s steps snapped and clacked as she circled Avery; her arms raised as if warming them over a fire.
“You were given strict instructions for handling your ager episodes when they arrived. Why on earth are you wandering off the anchor lines?” She stopped in front and made a quick scooping motion with one of her outstretched hands. In response, Avery’s right arm jerked up of its own volition.
Chips of mud fell from her fingertips as it rose. Then, just as abruptly as it had started, Avery’s arm froze, straight out in front of her chest. The woman’s hand shifted again, this time in a dismissive flick. The muddy cuff of Avery’s sleeve rolled itself up to sit above her elbow, leaving an unnaturally clean swathe of skin in its wake.
Shock drew a sharp breath through Avery’s nose. Where there should be at least four quarter-sized drabscale birth marks sat clear, unmarked, olive-pink skin. A rush of tears reached Avery’s eyes, and a void formed in her throat as she furrowed her brow at her arm in disbelief. They had to still be there. Drabscale didn’t just go away.
The woman gestured closer to Avery’s arm now, fingers rubbing together as if sprinkling pepper on her bare forearm and a solid dark line began forming below her skin with the sharp feel of a papercut. Avery’s eyes bulged as far as the plastered dinge on her face allowed as the woman pressed her finger against the line and the mark itched its way even deeper into her skin. It swelled a moment before it settled into a thick band around the middle of her forearm as a scream rammed against Avery’s locked lips and another rush of tears spilled from her eyes.
The stiff sensation of the band felt no worse than something foreign wedged under a fingernail; but the line pulsed with Avery’s heart with the sting of a nettle, beating the same dark burgundy brown of her Drabscale as it bubble under her skin.
The myths are real. How could this be true?
The woman lifted her finger from Avery’s forearm and gestured in the air above with a firm flourish. The line in Avery’s skin jumped back to life again and reconfigured itself. It formed skittering symbols and numbers that raced up Avery’s forearm and drew a handful of letters as it went. Only legible for a second, their lines of text dissolved and rushed back into the thick line as the woman released Avery’s arm.
In horror, Avery saw the band underneath her skin rotating with a new pulse all its own. It pressed out not only against her arm, but somehow also her entire body and the surrounding air. Not thinking about her entrapment, Avery went to pull her arm closer.
As before, the shell holding her went slack against the force of her will. Shocked, but emboldened, Avery jerked back again. The concrete around her joints and jaw chunked off and landed with loud splashes as they fell into the shallow water below. Avery staggered back, looking at her marked arm as she clasped it to her stomach.
Her body felt icy, bruised, and gritty; but her arm burned. Avery sneered and stepped forward.
“Witch!” Avery yelled as the woman yelled at her coachman.
“Silas?”
Two metal clicks sounded, and a pitchy male voice answered back from the carriage, “Still clear.”
“And?”
“You were right.” The boy said with resignation. “I’ll start slicing the recordings.”
Then, with a world’s worth of tactless gall, the woman smirked at her.
“What have you done to me, you wretched Drabby?!”
Avery’s voice echoed in the tunnel. The raw relief from shouting at the woman was countered by the nauseating familiarity of the words. Those were Hestia Blakely’s words.
With a roll of eye and a complacent opening of her palm, the woman re-encapsulated Avery in thick stone from neck down and stepped forward. She tilted her head a moment before shaking it at Avery and undoing the button of one glove. Shifting her weight into her hip, she leaned down until her face hovered inches from Avery’s, mirroring her scowl.
“You,” the woman said, removing one of her gloves with a snap and smiling at Avery’s lack of a reaction. “Are absolutely abysmal by Aourelian standards.” She then stepped back with a smile. “But you really aren’t half bad for a topside Drabby.”
“Who. Are. You.” Avery growled through her teeth as she tried to muscle her way free. The new stone coat withheld her efforts without a single sensation of yielding.
This had the unfortunate effect of launching another Hestia-ism from Avery’s lips.
“I assume that isn’t too difficult of a question for your Drabby-addled brain to manage?”
She squinted and sucked at her teeth in disgust. “She didn’t tell you a damn thing.”
“For god’s sake, Fauxe,” the coachman said, still sitting frustratingly outside of Avery’s vision. “Can you at least brush the girl off before you blow a gasket at her? You have time.”
A click and a shearing hum came from the carriage and a warm sensation of dropping into a bath climbed up Avery’s bones and relaxed her joints. Her brain threatened to wrench from her body at the overly familiar sensation, but she held her awareness on it despite herself. Part of her hated that she didn’t hate it, but the other part could care less what that part thought. This felt like finally being able to breathe even more than surfacing from the canal had. And she remembered it from somewhere.
The woman called Fauxe huffed and rolled her eyes back to the carriage.
“No, Silas. We don’t. And shut the disruptor off. The penalty mark isn’t set yet.”
“Fine.” Silas said with a snap, matching the metallic one that followed. The warmth and lightness in her heart and lungs left Avery like a summer breeze. Her glare deepened at Fauxe’s returning gaze as the feeling of the heavy world around he settled back against her body.
Silas continued, “But I’d be confused as hell if I was her, given everything you’ve done so far. Didn’t you used to have a script? You are supposed to be good at this.”
The woman huffed and gestured with an angry jerk of her palms. Avery’s stone-arm shot back toward the woman and with a grinding click, her elbow snapped straight, and the new crust of stone dropped from her forearm, revealing the same patch of skin as before.
Avery’s heart contracted at the sight of four familiar dark circles that now lay scattered around the solid line. Very much not gone. Each patch was now connected to the band by a lace web of metallic streak. The woman pressed a finger on Avery’s wrist and more dust scratched into her skin. But this time it collected in precise locations under the patches.
The dark marks on her arm then sloughed off her skin like chalk-dust being blown by the wind, leaving only the band and four silver circles. At her wrist, a thin dark line began to form, but unlike the one before, this mark just grazed the surface of her skin.
“Now.” Fauxe said. “As long as you don’t go sprinting off the second I release you, I will shed the rest of them. Deal?”
Avery looked up from her gleaming marks, heart pounding. She nodded. With a smile, Fauxe flicked her hand downwards. The mud encasing Avery released enough to allow freedom of movement. Her body was shaking and clammy, and her instincts pinged between making a run for it, tackling the woman, or fervently begging her to remove the rest of her marks immediately. All of which left her obediently following Fauxe to stand in front of the carriage.
Avery looked down and smoothed a finger over the dark line that continued to form at her wrist. The pulsing sensation was slowly sending it deeper.
“What is it?” she asked, tracing the line and softly tapping at the gleaming silver shimmer of each circle.
“It?” The woman raised an eyebrow, but the edge in her voice was gone.
“Yes,” Avery swallowed. “It isn’t like the drabscale plaques. Does it help heal my skin?”
Fauxe’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. With reinvigorated irritation, she asked, “Did Hestia not? … Did your dolt of a grandmother not even bother telling you what ‘it’ is? What they all are?” Fauxe said the last bit with a casual wave at Avery’s whole body.
As much as she wanted an answer to that very question, Avery found herself dumbstuck yet again. How in the hell did she know Hestia was her grandmother? No one in town but Morton knew that!
“Who are you?” Avery demanded.
“Alameda Fauxe,” the woman responded with a nod of her head. “You may call me Fauxe, Avery. And honestly, Ms. Black, you would have a far better chance at being threatening if you didn’t look so damned ridiculous.”
Fauxe gestured for Avery to come closer, and her mind having been effectively wiped clean by the sound of her own name coming from the woman’s mouth, Avery complied. Fauxe lifted Avery’s arms up an inch, and then dropped them back down as if she were dressing a child.
A sudden sensation of warm sandpaper slid across Avery’s skin. Every inch of mud covering her clothes dried with a crack and dropped away. All of it sinking in a dense puff to the damp ground beneath her. A feeling of zingy freshness coated her now slick skin. It felt as if she’d just dried after bathing. But so, so much better.
Avery noticed her own dress before anything else. It was still the faintest bit damp, but the fabric was now cleaner than it had been before her shift, and as warm as a sun-dried blanket. She ran her hands over it and then stopped, lifting her hands and turning them in front of her. The skin of her hands and fingers was no longer marred with the dark patches. She had clear, soft skin, down to her nails. Avery had spent years trying to scour from her skin with detergent and with one simple gesture the woman had removed them all.
She palmed her ribs, feeling for the coarse plaques that left everything she wore bumpy. Avery turned her upper body this way and that, but not a single seam snagged anywhere on her person. Nothing caught against stony patches. Her skin felt smooth through the fabric. They were gone. All of them.
An odd sensation gripped Avery’s heart, wrenching her emotions sharply into a panicked desperation. Not a single part of their absence felt natural. This rapid shift from her momentary relief caught her off guard and at once she ripped her awareness away from the unfamiliarity of her skin and glared at the bemused look on the Fauxe’s face.
“Put them back!”
Fauxe’s head jerked back in shock. Then, sighing, she pulled on her missing glove and re-buttoned it.
“So feisty. Should have known you’d be more Willa than Eli.”
“Excuse me?!” Avery clenched her fists as her heart sank at the names of her parents. “Why… how do you…just … No! That wasn’t my question!”
Another snort of laughter from the coachman named Silas snapped Avery’s anger away from Fauxe. She stepped toward what she noted as an extraordinarily odd-shaped carriage and the outline of its gangly driver hunched over the reins. The boy was still hidden in the shadows behind the glow of the carriage’s front lanterns. Avery couldn’t make out his face, but she jutted her chin in his general direction.
“Unless you plan to answer my question, take your laughter and stuff it or I’ll jump up there and do it for you, sewer rat!”
Her voice caught a bit at the last few words in recognition of yet another favored lance of Hestia’s, and she took a step back. She wasn’t used to being openly angry for this long, and stooping to the depravity of her grandmother’s caustic words was making her stomach heavy, cold, and hollow.
A flicker of amusement danced in Fauxe’s eyes, “Look at you.” She smirked. “If it wasn’t your birthday, I’d have to cast you back in stone for those fighting words. You do know today is your birthday, yes?”
Avery blinked at her, then stuttered, “Yes?”
It sounded far more like a question than she had intended.
“Jax should have registered you by now.” Fauxe said, adjusting her pristine gloves. Then, with a slight head tilt toward the carriage, she asked, “Silas, how long?”
“Two clicks.” Silas answered with bravado. “Wait. … No.”
Fauxe closed her eyes with a grimace, “How long?”
“Now, don’t get all huffy at me for this, but Dad and O’Donnell will technically be in range of recording in about 50 seconds.”
Fauxe huffed loudly, but it held little animosity. She looked at Avery with a faint twinkle in her eye and said, “You’re lucky I love a challenge. Now. Avery. Honey. I’m sorry about this, but there is protocol to follow and a city to hide from. We’ll have to continue this conversation after the transfer.”
“What?” Avery’s gaze lifted as Silas and the carriage backed away. “Transfer of what?”
“No time for that. I can’t go this long without recording now that the Zephyr storms passed.” Fauxe shrugged. “Right now, I need you to use that brilliant Drabby mind of yours and just follow my lead. Savvy?”
“Five seconds.” Silas said, as he continued to back the carriage down the conduit. Avery attempted to ignore the concrete walls that seemed to bend out of his way.
“What’s going on?!” Avery’s gaze shifted between the two.
“Brilliant Avery, exactly like that,” Fauxe said, stepping closer.
“NOW.” Silas yelled.
“Miss Black,” Fauxe said loud enough to cover the echo of Silas’s yell.
Avery startled and stepped back, hands up in defense.
“I will be in contact with your watcher.” Fauxe reached out a hand to swat Avery’s fists down. Avery opened her mouth to say something but was cut off.
“Being an ager doesn’t excuse you for disobeying the bylaws. What were you attempting to do in the canals?”
Avery’s brain throbbed as she looked around her for evidence of anything resembling a newly arrived recording device.
Who on earth is she saying this for?
Avery squared her shoulders and allowed her frustration to take its seat at the reins. “Answer my questions and maybe I’ll tell you.”
A hushed laugh caught at the edge of the woman’s eyes, and she bit her lips closed a moment before continuing.
“No matter.” She said through a grin that hadn’t entered her booming voice, “Just don’t let me catch you at it again. Now go home and stay there this time.”
She gestured to Avery’s arm. “From the looks of that penalty mark, you’ll want to hurry.”
Avery followed the woman’s gaze. The lower mark now swirled around her wrist. Its width pulsing from thick to thin like a bulging vein. Holding back the urge to vomit, Avery tried with frantic panic to rub the mark off with her skirt. But the sharp clack-clack-clack of the woman’s steps redirected her attention.
Fauxe circled her and leaned down to whisper in her ear before heading to the carriage. “Don’t leave until I come for you.”
“Wait!” Avery yelled, lunging for Fauxe’s arm. But Fauxe was already at the fully turned-about carriage and deftly leaped in as the horse hit a canter.
The carriage melted into darkness and a returned rage prickled along Avery’s spine. She kicked at a broken barrel lying against the wall and gripped her wrist as if squeezing it would make everything that had just happened disappear from her memory.
And then, the nightly six o’clock bell-song chimed overhead. Avery’s stomach dropped, and so did her grip on her arm.
She was late for inspection.
# #
Interlude
August 4, 1893–4th Anniversary of The Great Fire
Avery’s Fourth Birthday – Blakely Estate, Basement
The gowns swished soft and cold over Avery’s bare legs, but this one tugged at her palms, almost pleading for her to come with it. Avery firmed her grip on the fabric.
“Momma, are these those lace pea… pear—”
“Peridots?” Willa offered as she paused her folding long enough to steady the wiggling four-year-old on her lap. “They are. Did you have a question about them?”
“They look like peas,” Avery giggled, rolling the smooth green stones inside their lace pouches. “Momma, why are there peas—” The giggles got the best of her this time and Avery hid her face in the dress.
Willa chuckled as she tugged the dress away from Avery. “Are you wondering why these little ‘peas’ tug at you?”
Avery nodded again, amazed. Momma always knew what she was trying to ask.
“Because you are like your father, and…” Willa trailed off.
Avery frowned into the tense silence that followed her mother’s words. “Why are the pear-doughs only on this dress?” She blurted out the question before her mother could find the other side of the silence.
Willa leaned over to peer at her daughter’s expression while Avery’s tiny fingers coaxed the dress back from her hands. Willa snuggled her and fluttered the velvety soft cotton out wide over their stacked legs. “Because this one is special.” Willa said with a tense sigh.
She guided Avery’s hands, showing her how to undo each button. “It was my debutante’s dress. Grandmum was in a right tizzy about how expensive the proper frilly pink fashion statements were at the time, so I made one. Papa Aldin caught me sewing it in secret one night and was so proud that he brought it to a master seamstress and had it finished—with seventeen peridot pearls as buttons. All for my birthday.”
“It’s beautiful,” Avery said in a breathless whisper as she caressed the forest green hills of fabric and touched each of the black lace beads—each now lay loose against their tatted loops. “Was Grandmum happy she didn’t have to buy the pink face-on stuff?”
Willa laughed—louder than Avery had ever heard. Hard. Real. So different it made her want to memorize it. “You know?” She said. “She should have been. Instead, she made a big fuss over your Papa and me going behind her back. I’d wager even by the time you are old enough to wear it, Grandmum will still see it as us ‘trampling all over her hopes and dreams for the family.’”
“But I don’t want to trample Grandmum’s hopes. Or her dream family!” Avery replied with sadness that leapt to the surface from deep in her bones, leaving tears in its wake.
Willa laughed again—the soft, hollow kind she often used—as she kissed Avery on the cheek. “Avie, you couldn’t possibly trample anything,” she said. With a stern look she returned her focus to doing the buttons of the gown back up. “You are the sweetest little pea to ever pop up in our family pod. One day, each of these buttons will remind you of that. And frankly, Grandmum can bugger off if she doesn’t like you wearing it.”
Avery laughed at Momma’s naughty words, but her stomach and heart knew she was wrong. She couldn’t be the sweetest pea because sweet peas didn’t make their Mommas shake when they sat in the same room for too long; didn’t have to hide from public because their skin formed plaques of grime whenever they got upset; didn’t make their Grandmum angry enough to send their Mommas away. Sweet peas didn’t make the pea pod snap.
Willa lifted the last collar button of the dress, bringing it closer to Avery’s eyes as her small fingers worked it through the loop. When the laced stone slipped through, Willa yelped with joy, wrapped her up in a hug, and tumbled them both into the mountain of folded gowns. It would need folding all over again before they could go into Mommas trunk. Avery grinned.
The two tumbled together, giggling, but then Willa’s hands began to grip at Avery. Too hard. Too fast. With a cry of frustration, Willa shoved herself away from the pile. She slammed against the closed door of the storage room—one hand grabbed at the surrounding air in desperation as the other reached for the rectangular silver locket at her throat. She slid the panels of the locket back and forth, back and forth and breathed heavily as tears slid down her cheeks. A heavy hum and shimmer permeated the room, bathing them both in calm.
Avery stiffened as the reality of why they were packing the dresses claimed her mind. She looked down at her skin and sure enough, a series of metallic-toned plaques had risen along the backs of her hands in the excitement of the tumble. Long shimmering ghost-like tendrils reached toward them, coming from her mother’s core. But with each snap of the locket a tendril slipped from Avery and returned to Willa. Forming a solitary beam that rose to the ceiling, stretched to the floor, and then disappeared.
A cold, burning ache hammered behind Avery’s heart—empty but overfull all at once.
“Don’t go.” Avery burst into tears. “Momma, please! I can get rid of my spots! I can!”
“Oh, Avie, no.” Willa rushed to her daughter, still gripping her locket tight. She held Avery’s balled-up form on the sea of green. Her voice and arms shaking as she pulled Avery even tighter. “No, sweetheart. I am not leaving because of your Drabscale spots.”
“But Grandmum says—”
“Grandmum is wrong,” Willa said at once. “Don’t you dare believe her when she says any of this is your fault, Avie. Do you hear me?”
Avery shivered at her mother’s sharp tone, but nodded.
“You be proud of those spots. Your father would be… he would be so proud to see how much you are like him. I know I am. And Drabscale, well it… it isn’t the disease they say it is. I need you to believe that.”
Avery nodded harder, struggling to stop her sobs. She didn’t want to upset Momma—not now, not before she left. But like before, Momma had this wrong, too. The tendrils her spots had pulled from her proved it. She gulped back a sob and said, “I believe you, Momma.”
“Always my strong girl,” Willa said, stroking Avery’s hair with a shaking hand. “I promise you, my sweetest little sweet pea. Change will come. It will.”
Avery pulled the green waves tight to her chest and buried herself deeper into her mother’s embrace. She breathed in the scent of her mother’s perfume and wondered if Momma would smell the same after she came back from the asylum.