The Twelfth Enchantment

34

LUCY MOVED FORWARD, BUT MR. MORRISON, ONCE MORE, STOPPED her by putting a hand on her shoulder. His touch was gentle and hesitant, and even in these terrible circumstances, it had a tentative shyness that thrilled her.

“Wait,” he said. “Let us not do anything hastily.”

“We can’t leave him bound like that,” Lucy said.

“Can you explain why not?” Mr. Morrison asked.

It seemed a good question. Lucy had no wish to set Byron free, not after the way he had treated her, but letting him suffer because he was a scoundrel hardly seemed right. “Because as vile a man as Lord Byron is, he is not our enemy right now, and I should very much like to know who put him there and set out those pages for us.”

“Hold the lantern,” Mr. Morrison said, thrusting it out to Mrs. Emmett. “I want to make certain there is not some trap upon the pages. Then we shall see to Byron.”

While Mrs. Emmett held the lantern aloft, Mr. Morrison carefully approached the baron. Byron’s eyes were wide and wet. He rocked back and forth in his chair, and he mumbled under the gag. Perhaps he feared Mr. Morrison would harm him, but somehow Lucy did not think that would happen. Mr. Morrison had been tempted before and resisted, and he was not the sort of man who would take pleasure in revenge against so helpless an enemy. It was possible that Byron would not recognize that, being the sort of man who would take revenge against a helpless enemy.

Mr. Morrison approached, examined with his eyes the pages upon Byron’s lap as best he could, and then snatched them up in a rapid gesture. Nothing happened. No monsters attacked and no trapdoor opened. He walked back to Lucy and handed her the pages. She did not even need to look at them to know that they were real. She felt their harmony with the ones in her bag, and she put them in to join their brothers. She saw the familiar images now, which she associated with Mr. Blake—the men at work, struggling against bonds or busy at their labors. One man, nearly naked, held a great boulder upon his back. A woman lay upon her side, suckling wolves. A divine arm extended from the heavens, giving something to the people below, or perhaps unleashing punishment.

As she held them, she felt an energy course through her, but their message was harder to understand than that of the other pages—not because it was less significant, but because it was more complex. Deciphering these pages, let alone the entire book once assembled, would not be the work of hours, but days or weeks. She knew that at once, but she did not know if she would have such time.

“I am going to untie him,” Lucy said.

“For what reason?”

“So we know how he got there. Do you not think it important?”

“No,” said Mr. Morrison. “We have the pages. We should go.”

She shook her head. “I cannot believe it will be that easy, that we will be permitted simply to walk away. Someone has orchestrated this for their benefit, and I would know who.”

“Then for God’s sake ungag him, but do not let him go.”

Lucy walked over to Byron and grabbed the gag from behind his head. He grunted as she tried to pull it off. Clearly it hurt him, but Lucy could see no alternative.

She found the slack and pulled it off. Byron gasped and spat and swallowed and then gulped down the air. He breathed hard, but grinned wildly. “Thank you, Lucy. I knew I could depend upon your goodness.”

“I have very little goodness left for you. How did you get here? Who tied you thus?”

“Oh, I cannot recall,” he said. “Perhaps my memory will return when you free me.”

“Perhaps if I cut off his nose he will recall,” Mr. Morrison said drily.

Lucy went to her bag and retrieved a knife. “If I cut him free and he refuses to help us, you may cut off as many pieces of him as you like. For now I will depend upon his humanity.”

“That is a poor prospect,” Mr. Morrison said.

Lucy cut free his hands and then his feet. Byron rubbed his hands together and raised and lowered his legs as he attempted to restore circulation.

“Ah,” he said. “That is the most gratifying thing you have ever done for me, Lucy. There is some hope for you yet.”

“Shut your mouth,” Mr. Morrison snapped. “Tell us what we want to know. How did you get in this state?”

“ ‘Shut your mouth’?” Byron repeated. “ ‘Tell us what we want to know’? Once again, Morrison, you are an intruder in my house, and it seems to me you have no business ordering me to do anything.”

“Lord Byron, please,” said Lucy. “I know you have done terrible things, and there must be a reckoning, but I have also seen you be brave and selfless. Set aside what you feel for one moment, and do what is right. Tell us.”

He sighed. “Only because you are so much kinder than this dullard. Alas, I can tell you almost nothing. I do not know who brought me here. I came from London in search of some personal effects. Once I left, I was upon the road and then abducted. A bag was placed over my head, and I saw nothing of my attackers. They brought me here and kept themselves hidden from me. I have been waiting in that chair since this morning, and, if I may be so bold, I must piss at once or I shall die. Will you excuse me?”

“The quality of this meeting, much to my surprise, continues to deteriorate,” said Mr. Morrison. “And that is keeping in mind how basely it began. Let us go, Lucy.”

Then came the voice from behind them. “I packaged him for you like a present, and you let him go. I am disappointed, Jonas.”

They turned to see Mary Crawford.

She seemed to glow in the near darkness. Her skin was like ivory, her hair almost white, and her gown as white as her hair, but she was not a figure of loveliness. Like her widower, Mary was prepared for war, and she bore two shotguns upon her back in the precise manner Mr. Morrison did. It occurred to Lucy that she knew almost nothing of their lives together. Had they gone on adventures, faced magic and monsters? What had passed between them had been real and true and lived, not like the silly infatuation she had felt for Mr. Morrison when she was sixteen or the foolish attraction she’d felt for Byron. Theirs had been a true love, forged and built and earned. She could see that in Mr. Morrison’s eyes as he gazed upon her. He swallowed hard, and appeared to look away, but then turned back, determination in his eyes. He would be telling himself that this was not his wife, not his Mary, Lucy thought. She could not imagine the suffering.

She would have imagined Mrs. Emmett would have reacted more strongly to seeing her old mistress, but she only stood, gazing almost stupidly, awaiting the next situation that would require her attention. This one, evidently, did not.

“I’ll not murder him in cold blood,” said Mr. Morrison. “Not like that.”

“He deserves no better,” said Mary.

Mr. Morrison gritted his teeth, and then took a deep intake of breath. “Perhaps not, but I shall have to live with what I do, and I cannot be so base as he. But you don’t need me. You could do what you like for yourself.”

She shook her head. “I have no fear of consequences. No fear of God or damnation or my immortal soul. I am my immortal soul, and if I kill, even once, then why shall I not do so again when it is convenient or when I am angry or looking to amuse myself? I will save this world if I can do so, but I will not take a life except to save another.”

“Perhaps you are more like what you once were than I credit,” Mr. Morrison said in a quiet voice.

“No,” she answered. “If it were you to whom he had done this, my old self would have slit his throat in that chair and never regretted it.”

“You killed Spencer Perceval,” said Lucy. “You have murdered already.”

“I merely put his murderer in Perceval’s way,” she said. “It is not the same.”

“Ahh,” said Byron, who had gone off to a corner to make use of a necessary pot. Lucy tried to ignore the sound of splashing. “That is just the thing. Almost better than deflowering a virgin.”

“And so you thought to deliver to us Byron and the last two pages,” said Lucy.

Mary laughed. “Lucy, you are so sweet. You must understand that those were the only pages I had the means to find, that I ever had the means to find. I did not give the last two pages to you. You have brought the first ten pages to me. Now I must ask you to make them mine, so I can best use them.”

Lucy felt her face burn. She felt dizzy, as though the floor had vanished beneath her and she tumbled through space. She thought about the will she had written, leaving the book to Mary. Had this been her strategy all along? Did she mean to kill Lucy now? Lucy had some notion of how to kill revenants, and she had the means upon her, but Mary was strong and quick and clever, and she did not believe she could defeat her in a fight.

“All along, you lied to me,” Lucy said quietly. “You used me. You are no better than Buckles or my uncle or Lady Harriett.”

“Do not say it, Lucy. I have withheld information I did not think you ready to hear, but it was always with your interests in mind. And in this matter, I have been truthful. It was your destiny to gather the leaves. It was your duty to fight this war by my side. I have always said it, but I will not ask you to do what comes next. I do not wish to trick you, but to fight for you. If you will give me the pages and let me do what needs to be done, I will not take human life, but I will grind Lady Harriett and her kind into the dust. I would fight on behalf of those who labor with their hands, not those who would own that labor and crush those hands. Tell me I am wrong, Lucy, that what I do is in error, and mean it, but if you cannot say it, and have not the will to fight by my side, I do not judge you. I only ask that you step away.”

“You may ask,” said Mrs. Emmett, “but you may not command.”

Mary smiled at the serving woman. “I have instructed you well, I see. You are Lucy’s now, as I wished. But Lucy, you will have to act decisively, and you cannot hesitate. You cannot show compassion for Lady Harriett. You cannot think to spare her or hope she reforms herself. You must have the strength to kill her.”

Lucy understood that Mary was right, but she did not like the implications. There were many revenants after all. “It will not end there, will it? Those others, the strange men and women I saw at her estate, they are like you, are they not? If you destroy them, you destroy them forever.”

“There is no other way,” said Mary. “This is the time of reckoning. Now, Lucy. Tonight. We shall not do things by half measures. We shall not simply destroy Lady Harriett and hope that magic and machines can find some balance. No, Lady Harriett and her kind will fall. Those who have been her toad eaters, like that monster there, with his foolish grin”—she pointed, of course, to Byron—“shall fall with them.”

“With you as the new ruler?” asked Mr. Morrison.

“Do you know nothing of me?” she asked. “I know I am not what I was, that I cannot feel as I felt, but am I so alien to you that you think I seek only power? I want only to live in a world worth living in. I will fade into obscurity when this work is done.”

“Nevertheless, you’ve indulged your power, haven’t you?” said Byron from across the room. “Someone sent me to warn little Lucy off marrying her intended. Someone made me believe I had feelings for her. That tenderness could not have been mine.”

Lucy turned to her. “Is it true? Did you use me so?”

Mary looked down. “I did not use you. I used Byron, and I shall not repent of it. I put him in your way because you needed your world to change. Though I despise him, I knew Byron’s appearance and his clumsy affections would have that effect. There was never any real risk to your heart, Lucy, and I cast no love magic upon him. That was you, Lucy. It was your charm, your own magic. You brought out in him what was best even in so base a creature.”

Mary’s reasoning was cold and logical. She had toyed with Lucy’s feelings to effect the end she wanted. It frustrated her because, as terrible as Mary’s actions were, they were not so different from what she herself had done to Mr. Morrison.

None of this was about her or her pride, however. She would examine her resentment more closely another time. “And Ludd, whom you have summoned into this world?” she asked. “What does he care for?”

“This island,” answered Mary. “This land. The people in it. Nothing more. He cares not for power, nor for empire, or dominion over nations—which has been the care of your little band of Rosicrucians, has it not, Jonas? We have no care if England is the weakest or the strongest nation in the world so long as its people have bread and their share of happiness.”

“The Mutus Liber is strongest in the hands of the person to whom it belongs,” Lucy said. “You want me to gift you the book because you do not think I will do what must be done.”

“I would spare you from doing it,” Mary said.

“Spare me nothing,” said Lucy. “This is my task, and I shall endure it, I hope with your help. But for now, let us take the book and go while we still can.”

“Hold,” said Mr. Morrison. “If her intentions are no more than she says, then why did she send her monster to attack us?”

“What monster?” asked Mary, her eyes suddenly narrowing.

“Byron’s tortoise,” Lucy said. “It was transformed into a raging beast and set upon us.”

Mary’s expression darkened. “Lucy, for the love of God, we must leave at once.”

“What is it?” Mr. Morrison asked.

“If what you say is true, then Lady Harriett is here, upon these grounds.”

In a swift motion, Mary removed one of her shotguns and held it in her hands. It looked absurdly incongruous—she, the pale, ethereal beauty, taking hold of the weapon.

Mr. Morrison watched her for a moment then took one of his own weapons. “They’re here?”

She nodded. “I can feel them. I’ve loaded my gun against their kind, but my little trick won’t work on Lady Harriett, you know. She is too powerful.”

“I know,” he said. “After I killed her late husband, she found a way to indemnify herself against it, but not the others.”

“Have you discovered what will work on her?” asked Mary.

“Not yet,” he said.

Mary turned to Byron. “Why would she choose to come here? Have you made any arrangements with Lady Harriett? Have you leased her any land? Is anything here hers?”

Lucy understood. At Lady Harriett’s estate, Lucy’s charms had been ineffective because there had been wards against them, wards that only the rightful owner of a property could employ. Newstead ought to be neutral, but if Lady Harriett had legally acquired the rights to part of it, that part might be protected.

“Oh, put the shotgun away, Mary,” said Byron. “It is unbecoming. Yes, I leased her some land. She wished to use part of my property to establish a hosiery mill, of all things.”

Mr. Olson’s new mill. It came full circle. “So much for your speech in defense of the Luddites in the House of Lords,” Lucy said.

“Oh, I never really believed most of that. It sounded quite right, of course, but there is politics and there is money, and I know which I value more, so when Lady Harriett made her offer, my lukewarm sympathy for the Luddites cooled entire. In any case, I owed her a debt, and Lady Harriett is not someone to refuse.”

“There must be something in the contract that grants her power here,” Mr. Morrison said to Lucy. “She will first try to make you give her the pages. She will want to take them from you by force, but her first choice will be to own them. Lucy, you cannot let her have them. Better to destroy the book than to let her have it.”

Lucy clutched the pages to her chest. “If we destroy the book, we will have no weapon against her. If I cannot defeat her, I cannot safely return my niece to her mother. We must get away until I’ve had a chance to learn what the book will teach me.”

Mary smiled at Lucy. “I admire your courage, Lucy, and applaud your sentiments. I shall lead the way. In the meantime, I suggest we do something about Byron. He is a menace and unpredictable.”

The latter part of her assessment certainly proved correct, for when they looked around, Byron was nowhere to be found. After a brief discussion it was agreed that he could not easily be discovered if he wished to hide in his own ruined abbey, and that he possessed little that could harm them and nothing they needed. While he might have run off to alert Lady Harriett to their presence, taking the time to search for him would be a self-defeating effort. In short, their first priority was flight. Byron was a problem that would wait for a more opportune moment.

Lucy held out her hand to Mary. “We might be separated. I must have what is mine.”

With no more hesitation than a few rapid blinks, Mary handed the final pages to Lucy. They felt as heavy as iron in her hands, as alive as a beating heart, as vital as a bolt of lightning. She did not even look at them except long enough to see the telltale signs of Mr. Blake’s designs. They felt so powerful, they frightened her, and they seemed to be gathering power, quickening in her grasp, urging her to action. The pages wanted to be looked at, to be understood and deciphered.

She closed her mind to them. New ideas would only confuse and distract. There would be time enough for that when she was alone. Instead she took the pages and placed them with the others. She rolled them up into a tube and placed them into the secret folds of her frock, where she kept her herbs and charms and tokens. The secret pockets were getting heavy with old and discarded tokens of her adventure that she dared not throw away, for she could not know what she would need to survive.

Mary led them out of the hall toward the main entrance. The body of the horrible tortoise lay there, already covered with an impossibly thick halo of flies. More flies crawled upon it, countless flies, an impossible number, so that the body appeared a living, writhing, buzzing mass. It turned Lucy’s stomach, and she hesitated to approach, and in that moment of hesitation she saw movement in the darkness. Four figures, cloaked in shadow, and yet vaguely familiar. In the flickering light of Mrs. Emmett’s lantern, Lucy recognized the revenants she had seen in Lady Harriett’s house, led by the gray-haired Mr. Whitestone.

“Oh, dear,” said Mr. Whitestone, stepping forward. “Lady Harriett says we are to take your book, young lady. Please hand it to me.”

At that instant, Mr. Morrison and Mary raised their shotguns.

Mr. Whitestone managed a nervous smile. The other three revenants looked at them and then at Mr. Whitestone, then at the ground. They seemed dazed and disoriented, and Lucy understood they were so impossibly old that their sense of self had in some manner altered. They had been in the world so long, they were no longer of this world.

“You cannot harm us,” said Mr. Whitestone. “There is no point in resisting.”

“If we cannot harm you,” said Mr. Morrison, “why did Lady Harriett not come herself?”

“We can harm you, and we will,” said Mary.

“No,” answered Mr. Whitestone. “You would not use our own secrets against your own kind. You have never wished to be one of us, but you cannot be so lost as that, Miss Crawford.”

He stepped forward, reaching out as if to take Mary’s weapon away from her. She fired. The heavy scent of rotten eggs filled the air, and Mr. Whitestone staggered backwards, a massive wound open in his chest. Shot had scattered among the other revenants, but their wounds were smaller, less brutal. They bled all the same.

“This feels odd,” said Mr. Whitestone, looking down at his wound. “It does not close.”

They had filled their shotguns with sulfur, mercury, and gold, allowing the shot to penetrate and preventing the wounds from closing. The same understanding crossed Mr. Whitestone’s pale face. He staggered forward and fell to his knees. He looked up at Lucy, as though she were the one who had fired upon him. “All along,” he said, “it was you. And here is the other secret.” But he said no more. He pitched forward, face-first onto the cold stone.

The three remaining revenants looked at one another, then looked down at the body, then looked at Mr. Morrison and Mary, who was in the process of discarding her spent weapon for the fresh one. Perhaps the creatures were so outraged that one of their own had been, impossibly, killed, but Lucy did not think so. Even at that moment she could not help but believe they wanted to die, to end their existence, these creatures who had walked the earth for so many centuries that they could no longer remember who or what they were. They leapt forward and Mary and Mr. Morrison discharged their weapons nearly simultaneously. Mr. Morrison then cast his spent gun aside and took the fresh one, and fired it into the mass moving toward him.

Smoke engulfed Lucy and her party. Neither Mr. Morrison nor Mary made an effort to reload their weapons, and Lucy suspected the process was too complicated to do in the midst of a conflict. She had no idea what they intended to do if the revenants were not all down, but as soon as the smoke began to clear, she saw that they posed no further threat. Two of them were still, and one—a woman with thick white hair—lay on her back, her gown covered with blood, her fingers twitching like a dying beetle. It sickened Lucy to look at it, but in a moment the creature stopped all motion. It lay still, eyes impossibly wide.

Lucy looked at Mary to see her reaction, to see if killing her own kind had taken a toll, but on her face was only grim satisfaction. “Let us reload and continue,” she said.

“Mary—” began Mr. Morrison.

“You cannot understand, so there is nothing to say,” she said, not unkindly. “This is why I am here. Not to talk, not to negotiate, and not to capitulate. I am here to end them. Now reload.” She tossed one of her weapons to Mrs. Emmett, who caught it easily with one hand. “You know what to do?”

“I’ve always known,” said Mrs. Emmett.

Mary smiled. “In case you needed to protect Lucy from me.”

Mrs. Emmett betrayed neither pleasure nor pride. “I did not think it likely, but I thought it best to be prepared.”

Some ten minutes later, after a lengthy process of mixing shot, gold dust, sulfur, and mercury into their weapons, they were ready to proceed. Lucy was frightened and determined, but she also felt strangely useless. She might have owned the book, but this was Mr. Morrison and Mary’s adventure. She was merely the person who needed protecting. They were a team. She hated the feeling of being left out, and she realized, much to her own surprise, that what she wanted was to impress them—to impress Mary, to be sure, but to impress Mr. Morrison most of all. She wanted to be worthy of him, to be as useful as Mary made herself, but even after all she had learned and done, she was still weak and ignorant and helpless.

“Will there be more?” asked Lucy.

“That depends on how much they want to die,” answered Mary.

They walked out the front door, and Boatswain, the ghost dog, remained there, but it flared its ghostly nostrils in Mary’s direction, let out a hollow bark, then a whimper, and fled.

They took only a few steps before Lucy realized the coach in which they had arrived was no longer there.

“Very well,” said Mr. Morrison. “It does seem rather hopeless, but it’s not. Not entirely. Here is what we are going to do.”

He never had a chance to explain his plan, however, because right then men emerged from the woods. There must have been a dozen of them, their long rifles raised to their eyes as they advanced like soldiers upon a battlefield. These were not revenants, but mortal men.

“They cannot harm me,” Mary said quietly, “but I cannot disarm them all before they fire their weapons. The chance of harm coming to you or Mr. Morrison is too great.”

“What do we do?” asked Lucy.

“You may have to confront Lady Harriett now. Tonight.”

“I am not ready,” Lucy said. She felt light-headed and terrified. She was not ready for this. The confrontation could not come now. “I don’t know what to do. You and Mr. Morrison know what you are doing, but I do not.”

“You will have to be ready,” Mary said. “The book is yours. Be worthy. Take what the book offers. Remember what I told you. Twelve pages and twelve enchantments. Power and luck. Do not depend upon them, but know that the pages want you to succeed.”

“You are ready,” said Mr. Morrison. “You know more than you allow yourself to believe.”

His voice cut through the buzzing in her head, the cold grip of fear. There was something else. A warm feeling she hardly understood until she realized that he held her hand firmly in his own. He smiled at her, and Lucy managed a smile in return. She would be ready. She had to be.

One of the men stepped forward to collect their weapons. They took Mr. Morrison’s guns and bag, and they took Mary’s guns, but they did not search her or Lucy other than to ask them to remove their pelisses to make certain they contained no weapons. Lucy still had the pages of her book and many more things besides hidden in the folds of her frock. She did not know that she would be able to put what she had to use, but it made her feel better to have at least something.

Half the men moved behind them, with two at each side, and two in front. They were then marched along a path around the back of the estate. Lucy huddled close to Mary, and Mr. Morrison walked behind the two of them, trailed by Mrs. Emmett, who hummed softly to herself.

The men led them through a narrow path that bisected a thick wood. Off in the distance they saw glowing lights through the trees, and Lucy perceived that they were coming upon some sort of habitation. In another moment or two she began to hear a repetitive and discordant clicking noise, one she had heard before. It took her a moment to recognize it as the beat of stocking frames. They were hard by the newly built mill. It was low and flat and wooden. Despite the late hour, it was in full operation.

The path took a sharp turn around a thick and ancient copse that had been obscuring their vision, but when they came out into a clearing the mill was revealed, larger than Mr. Olson’s old mill, nearly twice as large. Though it had few windows, the light blasted out of them as though the building were on fire. It was also guarded. Here was a mill that would stand against the Luddites. Armed men stalked the perimeter, and there was even a tower from which one man stood with a long rifle. The guards showed no alarm at their arrival, however. Near the door, a burly man with a few days of beard raised his upper lip in a sneer.

“Got them, did you?”

“Likely so,” said one of the armed men.

“We was told to expect only three women.”

Lucy looked around, not knowing what he meant, but walking alongside was Sophie Hyatt. How long she had been with them, and how had she joined them without the armed men knowing or objecting? Lucy turned to her. “What do you do here, Sophie? It isn’t safe.”

She shrugged. Whatever her reasons, she was unwilling to write it upon her slate.

These men would hardly let Sophie go, but Lucy wished to try something.

She could not simply react to whatever circumstance Lady Harriett presented. She would need to plan ahead, form her strategy, anticipate her enemy’s actions. While the armed men talked among themselves, Lucy took the deaf girl aside. The others watched as the girl wrote a few things on her slate. Lucy nodded, and Sophie wiped away her words with her palm. And though she hated to take the risk, Lucy did what she had to. She put herself at risk, she put Sophie at risk, and worst of all, she put Emily at risk, but to not take that chance would be to condemn them all.

“You will not betray me?” Lucy asked.

Sophie shook her head. Never, she wrote on her slate.

It would have to be good enough. Lucy prayed it would be.

At last the guards opened the door for them, and the armed men gestured for them to go inside. They did not follow. Lucy stepped inside and saw a mill much like Mr. Olson’s previous establishment, though better lit for the nighttime work, and far, far bigger. There was row upon row of women and children and the elderly, working their stocking frames as overseers walked the space between them, cudgels at the ready. It was an almost deafening tumult from the machines as they churned out their hosiery, and the noise was interrupted only by the occasional thwack of a cudgel or the cry of a stricken worker.

Mr. Olson now came up to them, hobbling upon a cane, one leg bulky under his trousers where it was no doubt wrapped in bandages. He was red in the face, and his eyes were sunken and ringed with alarming blackness, and yet there was a look of contentment, almost childlike happiness, on his face. Lucy had never seen him so happy, and she could not help but see his mood as a dark sign.

“Ah, Miss Derrick,” said Mr. Olson, waving his hand in a vestigial hint at a bow. “Reunited at last. And I am told Mr. Buckles is on his way, too.”

Lucy snorted. “You cannot still think to force me to marry you.”

“We are past that, I fear,” he said. “What happens now is all in Lady Harriett’s hands. She wishes for you to meet her in her chamber. Follow me, though we shall not move too quickly, I fear. I’m not so limber as I once was.” This last was said without bitterness. Indeed, he barked a little laugh.

“I think we are all quite comfortable here,” said Mr. Morrison. “Well, perhaps comfortable is overstating it a bit, but we are as comfortable as we should hope to be. I think if Lady Harriett wishes a word with us, she ought to come out here.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Olson, leaning heavily upon his cane. “You have been rude to me in the past, and I am grieved to see you would continue this infamous tradition.”

“You may call it rudeness if you like, but I am determined. Now run along and fetch her. We are waiting patiently.”

“It is too loud,” said Mr. Olson. “The noise will distress Lady Harriett’s ears. She has condescended to speak with you, and it is wrong to reject her generosity.”

There was something in his tone that seemed familiar to Lucy. It took her a moment, but then it occurred to her that he was acting and speaking like Mr. Buckles. Could it be that Lady Harriett had worked some sort of enchantment upon him, and she now worked it upon Mr.

Olson?

“No doubt this entire building is well warded,” said Mr. Morrison, “but she will have particular protections in her chamber. I don’t think that suits us. As for the noise, if she doesn’t care for it, send your workers home.”

The expression of good humor dropped from Mr. Olson’s face. “Have you any idea what a night’s labors is worth?”

“No,” said Mr. Morrison. “Nor do I care. But I believe I understand what Lady Harriett’s patronage is worth to you.”

Mr. Olson stared at him, and then turned to limp off to the far end of the mill. In a few moments the overseers removed whistles, and began to let out a series of sharp tones. The workers looked about in surprise, but were soon setting down their hose and exiting the building. It took perhaps a quarter hour for them all to depart, and soon the five of them found themselves standing alone in a cavernous and deserted building. Without the workers and their sounds, the space seemed larger and even more forlorn. The overseers were gone, and strange though it was, Lucy would have felt comforted by their presence. Perhaps they might have acted as a restraint upon Lady Harriett.

“What now?” asked Lucy.

“She’ll come,” said Mary. “You should be in no great hurry.”

“I’ve faced her before,” said Lucy, attempting to summon her courage. She had seen Lady Harriett toss Byron across the room as though he were an unwanted pillow. What could they do to stop her now?

“You have not faced her when she is desperate,” said Mary. “She will do anything to get that book from you. You must know it. She will want you to gift it to her. It is not too late to gift the book to me, Lucy. I can protect it better than you.”

“Leave her be about the damn book!” said Mrs. Emmett, her voice sharp.

Everyone stared at her. Lucy had never heard her speak so, and it seemed to her, as it must seem to everyone, that this strange, meek woman, with her hair perpetually in her eyes, must be incapable of such passion.

Mary recoiled as though slapped. “I want only to help.”

“I know you do,” Mrs. Emmett answered. “You want to bear the burden for her, but you cannot. It has always been Miss Derrick. You must accept that. You resist it because you love her, but you must not permit her to doubt herself.”

They heard a door open and footsteps. They could not see across the mill, for the stocking frames obscured their vision, and in silent assent they agreed not to move. Soon Lady Harriett appeared, flanked on one side by Mrs. Quince, on the other by Mr. Buckles. So, Mrs. Quince had, all that time, been in Lady Harriett’s employ. Lucy should not have been surprised. Indeed, it all made sense, and she would have felt more indignation had not her attention been arrested by a far more urgent matter. Mr. Buckles held in his arms a baby, and Lucy knew it at once to be Emily. The real Emily, small and pink and sleeping sweetly in the arms of her father, who was so eager to sacrifice her to his mistress. Yet, she appeared calm and healthy and unharmed for the moment. Lady Harriett would use Emily’s life to bargain for the book. Of that there could be no doubt, and Lucy did not know that she would have the strength to resist. And yet she would have to, for Emily’s sake, for everyone’s sake.

The urge to step forward and grab the child was overwhelming. It roared in her ears and spots manifested before her eyes. She wanted that baby, wanted to protect her from her father and Lady Harriett, but she knew that was not the way. Attempting to take Emily by force would only endanger her. She would protect her niece, but she would have to be clever. Lady Harriett would try to force Lucy to choose between the child and the book, but Lucy could not. She would be worthy of the burdens placed upon her and find a way to leave with both.

Lucy looked over at Mr. Morrison, and he inclined his head in the most imperceptible of nods. He seemed to have deduced her reasoning, and agreed with it. Do not rush. Do nothing to put the child in danger. Wait for the moment.

Mary was less calm. “Dear Lord. She’s found Emily. I would not have thought it possible.”

Lucy had been so absorbed by her niece that she had hardly given Mr. Buckles a second glance, but now she observed that he was greatly altered. His skin appeared less sallow and more pale. His hair had turned far lighter, and his eyes were a peculiar blue. Gone was his expression of simpering foolishness. He looked at Lucy, and his countenance held nothing but cold cruelty. He was not what he had been before. Mr. Buckles had died and returned. He was now a revenant, and that meant none of them, not even Mary, could hope to be fast or strong enough to rescue the child by force.

Lady Harriett and her retinue stopped perhaps ten feet from them. “So, it comes to this,” she said. “All will be resolved tonight.”

“Lady Harriett,” said Mr. Morrison. “You look well. No, that’s not it precisely. Not well. Awful. That is what I meant. You look awful. Like the dead warmed over, so to speak.”

“Silence, Morrison,” said Lady Harriett. “You and your kind disgust me. You cannot hope I shall let you live.”

“What makes you think I shall let you live?” answered Mr. Morrison.

“Your shotgun shall not work on me. You must know that. I have ordered it so the revenant who leads is imbued with a special strength, and so resistant to those elements.”

Mr. Morrison scratched his head, as though genuinely confused. “I do recall hearing something about that, yes. On the other hand, I was told that your late husband would be impossible to kill, and I made short work of him. Or perhaps you did not know that was I.”

It seemed to Lucy Lady Harriett had not known that Mr. Morrison was responsible for the destruction of her beloved Sir Reginald. She blinked at this intelligence, and then glanced at Mr. Buckles. “Give them a taste of things to come,” she said.

Moving forward quickly, impossibly quickly, Mr. Buckles was no longer ten feet away, but directly before Mrs. Emmett. Mrs. Quince now held Emily, and Mr. Buckles, with his lips pulled back in a vicious sneer, grabbed the serving woman by the hair, and, gathering it all in his left hand, he lifted her off the ground. Mrs. Emmett’s eyes went wide, and her mouth opened, but no noise came out. Below her skirts, her legs kicked, and her arms flapped like a drowning woman’s. Below Mr. Buckles’s clenched fist Lucy could see, for the first time, Mrs. Emmett’s forehead, and she now understood she had kept her hair and bonnet low in order to conceal her flesh. Inscribed, just above her thin eyebrows, written seemingly in thick black ash, were three Hebrew letters: . Lucy struggled with what little she knew of Hebrew, and realized, once she remembered to read the letters from right to left, that the word spelled emmet.

Lucy searched her memory—for it was so familiar—and then it came to her. The Jewish story of the golem. She’d read of it in more than one of the books she’d had from Mary. In the legend, Jewish magicians were able to create a man out of mud, and upon its forehead was inscribed the word —emmet—meaning “truth.” To destroy the golem, the first letter was erased leaving only : met. “Dead.”

Mr. Buckles smiled, as though he saw that Lucy now understood. He raised his free hand and allowed it to hover over the .

“No,” said Lucy.

“It is mindless thing,” said Lady Harriett. “It has no soul. It is an abomination, but I know it is of some value to you, so I shall give you one opportunity to save it. Give me the book now, or I shall have Buckles destroy it.”

Mrs. Emmett’s eyes went wide. “I shall not be used against Miss Derrick. I could never allow it. The sacrifice I make, I make for her.” So saying she reached up and, shoving Mr. Buckles’s hand out of the way, wiped away the from her forehead in a clean and simple stroke.

It happened faster than the eye could register. Mr. Buckles held nothing in his hand. At his feet fell a tangle of wet, watery mud and clothing. It landed with a solid splash, heavy and sickening. Mrs. Emmett was gone.

Unspeakable sadness shot through Lucy. She felt Mary take her hand, and she squeezed it hard for a terrible moment, as though her friend’s cold touch was the only thing that prevented her from collapsing. She stood that way, like the victim of a lightning strike, absorbing electricity, and then it passed. She let go, for though the sadness was not diminished, it had receded. Anger took its place.

That anger was real and solid and heavy, but it was not all she felt. Lucy felt alive and strong, coursing with a new vitality. It was Mrs. Emmett’s words. She knew that. She had made a sacrifice of herself, and Lucy had gained something. She knew not what, but it was powerful, and it wanted to strike.

Mr. Buckles lifted his lips in a lupine approximation of a smile as he retreated to stand by Lady Harriett. He brazenly put a hand upon her shoulder, a gesture of startling intimacy.

“It is remarkable,” said Mrs. Quince. “I tried to make such a thing once. Jewish magic was always too devious for an honest Englishwoman like myself.”

“I shall teach you,” said Lady Harriett. “It is no difficult thing, even for a weak-minded woman like you, Quince. Though Mary made a particularly clever one. Still, even the cleverest of tricks can be undone, as we have witnessed. And what of the infant? Is not that baby but another trick, an ugly illusion of copulation and generation. It sickens me.”

“It was as vile in the making as it is now,” said Mr. Buckles.

“Dear God,” Lucy said. “I hate you for daring to touch my sister.”

“Oh, don’t be so sanctimonious,” said Lady Harriett. “You cared for that lifeless bit of clay, so what do your feelings for your sister or her wretched child signify? You will give your pathetic heart to anything who looks upon you. It is what has undone you, you know. Your compassion.”

Lucy felt black rage course through her. She had known people who were small and petty and selfish and vile, but never had she encountered pure evil. Whatever reservations she had had about destroying Lady Harriett, destroying her forever, were gone. She would do what she must. “My compassion does not extend to you,” she said.

“I do not fear you,” said Lady Harriett. “How could I, when your loyalties are so easily manipulated? Now, here is what happens next. You shall give me the pages of the Mutus Liber, and I shall give you your niece. If you do not, I shall make you watch while Mr. Buckles kills her. None of your spells will work here, girl. This building, like my home, is warded. You can give me the pages in fair trade, or I can take them by force, and you would not like that.”

Lucy had defeated wards before, but she did not think she could depend upon doing so. “How can I know you will give me Emily?”

“What care I for the baby?” asked Lady Harriett. “It was only ever of interest because it was important to you. But I am serious in my threat. Mr. Buckles, take the child, and be ready to strangle it when I command.”

Buckles took the baby from Mrs. Quince’s arms. He held it in the crook of his arm, but there was no tenderness in him. He might have been holding a log.

“You must not believe her,” Mr. Morrison told Lucy. “Do nothing on her terms.”

“I cannot see that I have a choice,” she answered. She turned back to Lady Harriett. “What will you do with the pages besides cast away Ludd?”

“That is my concern, not yours.”

Lucy stood still for a long moment, neither moving nor blinking. She then reached into the folds of her gown and pulled out a rolled tube of papers. Tentatively, she held them out while Lady Harriett stepped forward and snatched them from her hand, as though fearful that Lucy was a serpent ready to strike.

“No!” Mary and Mr. Morrison cried out at once, but the act was already finished. Lady Harriett had the pages.

Lady Harriett retreated back to her own people and examined the pages. “They are remarkable,” she said, leafing through them. Her chest heaved with her breathing, and her face colored. “You give them to me? These are mine?”

“Lucy,” Mary cautioned.

“Yes, I give them to you,” said Lucy. “They are yours for so long as you want them. Now give me my niece.”

Lady Harriett smiled at her. “No. I don’t think I will.”

“Why do you want her?” said Lucy. Her voice was shrill, even to her own ears. “You said she means nothing to you.”

“I want her for spite,” said Lady Harriett. “Perhaps it is because of your friend Mr. Morrison, and the debt I owe him for striking down Sir Reginald. Perhaps it is because I hate you enough for your own sake. Perhaps I want to keep her to punish you for standing in my way, and to mock you for agreeing so foolishly to trust me. Having her gives me pleasure in direct proportion to your pain, and it allows me to show you how poorly you played your hand. I now have everything, and you nothing. With this book I can destroy all of you, and there is nothing you can do. You have made a great blunder.”

Lucy could not help but smile. She did not think of herself as a vengeful person, as one who took pleasure in the suffering of others, but this was different. Here was Lady Harriett who had lost all shred of her humanity, who was evil beyond reckoning. She thought herself superior to everyone, but she was not superior to Lucy Derrick.

“I would have blundered indeed,” said Lucy, “had I given you the true pages.”

Lady Harriett looked through them again. “You lie. I have seen the false pages, and these are not the same, but they are of the same hand.”

“I had them of the artist who drew the true pages,” said Lucy. “They were a parting gift from a very wise man. I believe this is what Mr. Morrison would call sleight of hand.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Morrison gazing at her with open admiration. She suspected that if she took the time to think about it, she would very much like the feeling.

Lady Harriett looked at the false pages. She stared at them and then sniffed them like a dog and rubbed them against her face. The truth of Lucy’s claim made itself known to her, and she tossed Mr. Blake’s drawings down in disgust.

“Very clever,” said Lady Harriett. “But I do not make idle threats. A father sacrificing a child on my behalf—a sacrifice on that order shall give me the power I need to force you to gift me the book. Kill the child, Buckles.”

“He shall not!” cried Mary. “Lucy, be prepared to take the baby.”

Lucy turned and saw that, while their attention had been on Emily, Mary had surrounded herself with something upon the floor, a circle that glinted and sparkled in the dim light. Lucy understood at once what it was—Mary had encircled herself in gold.

Casting her gaze to Mr. Buckles, she saw him standing in mute horror, the baby still cradled in his arm, but he appeared to have forgotten it. He made no effort to harm it. He merely stared in disbelief.

“No,” said Lucy, her voice cracking. She remembered the story Mary had told her, and she knew what the circle meant. “There must be another way.”

Mary shook her head. “No, my dear Lucy. There is but one way.”

Lady Harriett had her eyes fixed upon Mr. Buckles, and seemed not to have noticed the circle upon the floor. “Buckles, why is that child still alive? Sacrifice it to me.”

“Look at the Crawford woman,” he snapped back. “She’s drawn a circle.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Lady Harriett. “Spells won’t work here.”

“Not a spell circle,” hissed Buckles. “One of our circles.”

“It is far more elemental than a spell,” said Mary. “You should know that. It is the flow of the universe itself, and your wards will no more hold it than you could hold back the wind with a basket.”

Lady Harriett turned toward Mary, and seeing the thin line of gold upon the ground, she set her jaw hard, perhaps in defiance, perhaps in disdain. “You’ll not sacrifice yourself for that infant.”

“I cannot let you have the book. If you take possession of it, the age of the machine will be ushered in, and nothing will stop it.”

“No,” said Buckles, his eyes wide with understanding. He understood what Mary did, what it meant. “I won’t harm the child. Here, Quince, take it.”

Mrs. Quince shrank back. She wanted no part of the child either, and so, desperate, Mr. Buckles rushed forward and handed his daughter to Lucy. “Take it! Take it, and see that I do not harm it. Now stop your friend.”

“You blockhead!” cried Lady Harriet.

“Get behind me!” shouted Mr. Morrison, raising his shotgun. “This may not kill you, Lady Harriett, but I’ll wager it will sting.”

Lucy retreated behind Mr. Morrison. Emily was deep in infant sleep, but healthy and unharmed. It was her niece. She hugged her to her chest, feeling her warmth, listening to the low rumble of her breathing, smelled the yeasty odor of milk about her mouth. It was truly her niece in her arms, safe at last.

Lady Harriett stepped forward, but Mr. Morrison put his finger on the trigger, and she stopped.

“That’s right,” he said. “It’s hard to retrieve a baby when you are writhing upon the floor in pain. I recall that is how it was with your husband. The first blast did not kill him, but it made him much easier to manage.”

Lady Harriett balled her fists in rage. Her face turned red, and she whirled on Mrs. Quince. “Do something!”

“I don’t know what to do!” Mrs. Quince cried out.

Mr. Buckles was in full panic. “She hasn’t stopped. Why hasn’t she stopped? I’ve returned the child. One of you must stop her.”

Mary looked up, and her eyes were moist. Her hands trembled as she poured a sprinkling of sulfur atop the gold, but there was a smile upon her lips. “I cannot let you live while you are willing to destroy what Lucy loves best. You would harm your own daughter simply to gratify your mistress, and so that is why I have already done it. Can you not see that? I have contained myself in the circle. I cannot turn back.”

“Please,” said Mr. Buckles. “Miss Derrick, you have the child. Tell her to spare me.”

“Mary,” Lucy said softly, beginning to understand what her friend intended. “You may stop.”

“It is too late to stop.”

Lucy clutched her niece even more tightly, as if her hold on this infant could steady her while her world appeared to whirl around her. “Mary, you cannot. I have Emily. I have the pages. With your help, we can escape and defeat Lady Harriett another day.”

“It cannot be undone,” said Mary. “Gold and sulfur have been set down, and I have made this sacrifice. Like Mrs. Emmett, I make the sacrifice for you.”

Mr. Morrison turned to her. “No, Mary, you cannot.”

“Oh, Jonas, I am sorry you must see,” she said. “I tried to love you—to remember what it was to love you, but that part of me died with my flesh. Even so, I feel compassion for you, and I beg you not let the past stop you. And Lucy, you have been my friend. I have loved you, and I do this for you.”

“Oh, Mary,” said Lucy, “please don’t.”

Mary smiled at her. “It is better to be nothing than to become like one of them.” She looked at Lady Harriett and Buckles. “How long until I forget what I was, and care nothing but for my own pleasures? How long until, like her, I am willing to murder an infant for some strategic advantage or the pleasure of shocking my own sensibilities, to destroy a world if it will better suit my needs? How long until I become like those wraiths she shepherds, existing but hardly alive? If I can end my existence in an act of love, then how much better for me to face oblivion as some reflection of my true self, than eternity as a perversion of what I once was.” She took out a vial, this one containing mercury, and she began to pour it in a circle around her. “Thank you, Lucy,” she said.

And then she was gone.

There was no flash, no cry, nothing to mark her passage. She simply dissolved out of existence, as though the air folded over her. At the same instant Mr. Buckles was gone. He was no longer in the room with them, and Lady Harriett stood in mute astonishment.

Lucy set down the child behind Mr. Morrison, who kept his gun trained on Lady Harriett. She needed her hands free. Reaching into the hidden pocket of her frock for her little pouch and fishing out the talisman she needed, finding it by touch even as she worked herself into a sprint, Lucy ran directly at Lady Harriett. Perhaps she was about to die, but she would not let anyone else die for her. There had been sacrifice enough, and Lucy would rather die than let Mrs. Emmett and Mary destroy themselves for nothing.

With the talisman in her hand, she leapt at Lady Harriett, shoving it deep into the revenant’s black gown. It was the talisman to vulnerability, the one she had made in Lady Harriett’s house after seeing Byron tossed across the room. The wards should have rendered it useless, but Lucy remembered Mary’s words the day she had first told her about the Mutus Liber. The most powerful sacrifices could nullify the most powerful of wards, she’d said, and the most powerful sacrifices are those that friends make out of love. Two of Lucy’s friends had obliterated themselves from the universe out of love for her.

Lady Harriett toppled under her. Lucy saw the look of surprise on her face as the two of them struck the earth of the mill. Lady Harriett tried to rise, tried to push her off, but her arms had no strength, and Lucy saw the panic in her ancient eyes.

Straddling Lady Harriett, holding her still with the weight of her body and her left arm, Lucy fished in her bag until she found her tiny vials of gold, sulfur, and mercury. Placing them between her fingers, pressed near her knuckles, she removed the cork stoppers with her teeth. She then gripped all three vials in her tight fist, and glared hard at Lady Harriett.

“You are a fool if you don’t know that I am immune,” said Lady Harriett.

“Oh, I know,” answered Lucy.

“Then what do you mean to do with your elements?”

“I mean to make you eat them.”

She pressed her free hand to Lady Harriett’s jaw and forced it open, as one would with an animal, and poured in the contents of all three vials. Lucy shifted hands, using her left to hold Lady Harriett’s head still. The revenant’s eyes bulged. Her body bucked weakly, and her arms flailed ineffectually at Lucy’s sides. She might have been immune to the elements, but surely they were unpleasant. Beneath her shut mouth, Lady Harriett appeared to retch.

Maybe her efforts would amount to nothing, and maybe all her friends had given would be in vain, but what Lucy intended seemed possible. She might suceed, and so Lucy intended that she must succeed. The pages would want that. Twelve pages and twelve enchantments. By itself that meant little, but with everything Lucy knew and did, with everything Mary and Mrs. Emmett had given, perhaps those twelve enchantments would mean everything.

“Mr. Morrison,” called Lucy. “As we have been disarmed, be so good as to find a knife for me as quickly as you might.”

Mr. Morrison, with his free hand, drew one from inside his waistcoat and handed it to Lucy. “Sleight of hand,” he said. “But what do you mean to do, Lucy? The power of those sacrifices must wear off soon, and the elements may make her unhappy, but they shan’t kill her.”

“Let’s see about that,” said Lucy. She took the knife and began to carve into Lady Harriett’s forehead. She would have to act quickly because she knew that the revenants healed with remarkable speed, but she believed she could effect it in time. That she was straddling this woman, carving into her flesh, she was distantly aware of, but she was too focused on the act, on the necessity of what she did to dwell on its strangeness and barbarity. First she drew a square of tolerable symmetry, and then, within it, a triangle. Below her, Lady Harriett struggled against the power of the symbol, and she understood its meaning. She redoubled her efforts to throw Lucy off, and Lucy detected a new strength. Perhaps it was her will to save herself, or the power of the sacrifice was already fading. Either way, Lucy was almost finished. It was the same symbol Lucy had left upon Mr. Gilley, who was so afraid of catching cold—the talisman to make its victim susceptible to what he most feared.

With one last quick stroke, Lucy made an X inside the triangle, completing the charm by speaking Lady Harriett’s name. Briefly Lucy wondered how she would know if it worked, but it was but an instant, for Lady Harriett was gone, vanished as if she had never been there. Lucy knelt over the empty earth, knife in her hand, and even its tip was clean of blood.

Lucy rose, letting the blade fall to the earth. She scooped Emily off the floor and cradled the cooing child to her breast. She had done it. She had done it all. She had rescued her niece, saved the book, and destroyed the most powerful and dangerous creature to walk the earth. It had cost her Mrs. Emmett, and it had cost her Mary, and Lucy could take no joy in what she had done. She must settle for relief.

Lucy wanted to cry for her friend and for herself and for her loss, but she would not. She would cry later. “Have we won?” she asked Mr. Morrison. “Is there more to do, or have we won?”

Mr. Morrison stared at the spot where Mary had stood, he looked at the empty circle. “Yes,” he said. “You have done it.”

Lucy clutched the baby tighter. How she resembled Martha, and also her namesake, Emily. There was nothing of Mr. Buckles in the baby, though perhaps that was wishful thinking. What mattered was that the child was safe. Lucy had the sweet, sleeping child in her arms. Their struggles were over. Mr. Morrison had said so.

She turned to him to say something to comfort him, to let him know that he was not alone in his grief. She was about to speak, but no sound came out for she watched as his chest exploded with blood.

Lord Byron strode into the room, tossing aside the freshly fired pistol. In his other hand he held a torch, and with his newly free hand he removed another pistol from his pocket “That was so we know that I’m serious. Also, I’ve always hated him. Now, Lucy, give me the book, and give me the baby. The baby you shall get back. It is merely a means by which I can get away unharmed. You’ll not curse me or bring down any dark magic upon me if the baby is in my care. When I am somewhere safe, I shall send you the child.”

With Emily clutched to her breast, Lucy bent over Mr. Morrison. He was breathing, but his breaths came shallow, and there was blood in his mouth. She needed to work magic upon him, but she could not do it in the mill, not with all the wards set upon it.

“You have not much time to act,” said Byron, tossing his torch onto a pile of hose. It went up at once, and the flames began to catch, spreading over the stocking frame, and then catching to the next. “Hand me the pages, Lucy. And the child. If you do not, I shall shoot you and take the pages off you myself. How shall your niece fare then?”

The building would burn in ten minutes, but Mr. Morrison had not that much time. The moment had come. She saw it with perfect clarity. She had been carrying the piece of paper upon her for weeks, for Mrs. Emmett had said she must. Mrs. Emmett had known this time would come. Lucy’s fingers trembled as she reached into her sack. Doing this was against everything she believed, and yet she could not let Mr. Morrison die. Not when she had discovered that she loved him.

She took out the paper, the magic circle she had botched, the one Mrs. Emmett had saved her from using because it contained a flaw, a flaw that would set the demon free and have it assault the most arrogant living thing in the room. Here and now, that must be Byron. It had to be.

She balanced the sleeping baby in the crook of her arm while taking the circle between her fingers. Using her thumbnail, she dug savagely into her own finger until she succeeded in making a cut. It was small, but it was enough, and she let a drop of blood form upon the circle.

“What are you doing?” asked Byron. “Your spells won’t work here.”

“The spell was cast long ago,” said Lucy. “I merely awaken it.”

It happened too quickly to see. It was like a wall of wind, dark and terrifying in its shapelessness and void. It was without form, and yet that form had a face and eyes and teeth in its nothingness. It was like the creature she had seen those months ago when she had freed Byron of his curse, but more so—blacker and more shapeless and more horrifying. It was invisible to the eye, and yet it blotted out all light. It was terror itself, and Lucy’s mind reeled at the thought of what place such a being must come from.

She staggered back, remembering to hold the baby, concentrating, for she knew if she did not, she would let go. She would let go of everything—the child, her sense of self, her sanity. She had unleashed this thing upon the world, and she had to hope it did not destroy her.

The terrible, empty void lifted Byron and tossed him across the room. He hit a wall and landed upon the floor. His body rocked with spasms, and blood flowed freely from his mouth. Then he was still, his eyes wide and unblinking. Whatever manner of creature had killed him had gone back to whence it had come. It had been in the mill for but a few seconds, but Lucy believed she was lucky to have escaped with her sanity intact. Lord Byron was not so lucky. The poet lay amid the growing flames with his neck twisted into an impossible, grotesque angle. Blood poured from his nose and open mouth. Lord Byron was dead.

There was no time to regret what she had done. The fire was spreading quickly, and smoke was already choking the mill. Mrs. Quince had already fled the building. Sophie ran over to Byron’s broken body, weeping silent tears.

“There is no time,” Lucy cried. “He is dead. Get out before the whole place burns.”

Sophie could not hear her. Had she the power to hear, she still would not have comprehended the words. She was lost in grief.

Holding Emily in one arm, Lucy put her other around Mr. Morrison’s chest and began to drag him to the door. He was so heavy, and her exertion strained her every muscle, yet she would not relent. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sophie doing the same with Byron. She was making great progress as well. Good for her, Lucy thought. Let us see what she could do with a baby in one arm.

Emily began to cry, perhaps from the movement, perhaps from the growing heat. Lucy could spare nothing even to soothe her. She pulled and pulled, gaining ground by inches, until she managed to get Mr. Morrison out of the building and ten feet away. She dropped him, heaving, panting for breath. Emily was wailing. Lucy saw a crowd of workingmen, of machine breakers, of Luddites. She recognized one from the crowd who had, so long ago, accosted her outside Norah Gilley’s party.

“Don’t worry, miss,” he said. “We won’t keep the mill from burning, but we’ll make sure it don’t spread. And we already took care of Lady Harriett’s men and her woman Quince too. You do what you’ve got to, while we put out the fire and then destroy every frame in there.” In the crowd she thought she saw a familiar form, stooped and ragged and visible only out of the corner of her eye. It was Ludd. Only it was not Ludd any longer. He was diminished—perhaps by Mary’s death. Lucy could not know. Now he was but a man, a strong, healthy, and vibrant man, but no longer magnificent and unknowable

Lucy set down the baby, who continued to wail loudly, but out of fear, not pain. For now Mr. Morrison needed her. She took out her bag, and began to reach for her healing herbs. She tore open his shirt to reveal the wound, above the heart and to the right. It bled copiously. It would be fatal, she was sure, without her help, but she would keep him alive. She would save him. He would still need a surgeon to remove the bullet, but she would keep him alive until one was found.

Lucy applied her herbs. She wrote out a healing charm in the dirt around him, and gathered dirt and put it in his pocket. She placed a bloodstone and a piece of quartz in his pockets.

His breathing came more easily. He turned to her. “Byron?” he asked.

“Dead,” she said.

“And me?”

“Not dead.” She forced herself to smile. “I mean to keep you that way.”

“If I do not live, you must not use the book on my behalf. I do not want that.”

“I could not if I wished it,” said Lucy. “Sophie had the book all along. I could not risk Lady Harriett finding it upon me.”

Mr. Morrison tried to rise but fell back again. “You must get the pages away from her. She has knowledge of the craft.”

“But what could she …?” Lucy began to say, and then she saw what Mr. Morrison meant. She knew what Sophie could do with it. Holding the crying child close to her breast, she darted up to where she had last seen Sophie, but the girl was gone, as was the body of Byron. In the soft earth, two sets of footprints led away, and remaining, pressed to the earth with a stone, were only the pages of the Mutus Liber fluttering gently in the soft breeze as though they were not mere paper, but living things.