"And this is your seat, Miss Curnow," Lydia Boyle said. "Or can I call you Callista?"
"If you like, Lady Boyle," Callista said. Her mind was firmly elsewhere. The last place she wanted to be tonight was a party, this party. Geoff had just returned home from a quick trip abroad to White Cliff, and it was the first night in two weeks that Emily didn't have some function or lesson with one of her more 'appropriate' tutors and had wanted to see her. But Callista didn't have the social standing to ignore an invitation from the remaining two Boyle sisters, no matter how ridiculous, or ill-conceived - even to visit with the Empress.
She sat down at the seance table and folded her hands in her lap.
"Please," Lydia Boyle said, shifting so her hip was propped against the table, "call me Lydia. You're with friends here, Callista."
Friends. She glanced around the table. Miss White, Mr. Ramsey, Thalia Timsh back from her sabbatical in Serkonos, and six or seven other wealthy merchants, nobles, and generally landed individuals who had survived the end of the Regent's reign sat around the table, heads bowed together, gazes darting to her or passing over her entirely. She was the only person in the whole room who did not possess her own estate, let alone two or three.
She was also the only person in the room who was currently welcome in the Tower, and one of only a few people in all of the Isles the young Empress clearly and openly favored. She didn't need Corvo to tell her she was not among friends at all, but the most dangerous of enemies. While Emily favored her, she was still only the niece of a watchman, a governess not trained enough to be formally employed in the crown's service. There were many things that could be done to her, by any of the men and women in this room. So she'd said yes to the invitation, and tried not to think about why they were asking for her.
"Of course, Lydia," she said, trying (also unsuccessfully) not to look at the candles on the tables and the designs painted beneath. She had enough death in her life; she didn't need a seance to make fun of it for the entertainment of the elite.
"You look so glum," Lydia said, voice softening. She had paper-thin skin that seemed yellow in the lamplight, and thin lips. She was not the greatest beauty of the Boyle sisters. She also was notably avoiding her other guests, and her back was turned to most of them.
"I confess I'm not a fan of... events like these," Callista said.
"Why? The subject? Or... the people?" Lydia leaned forward a little, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "I'm not good with too many people around me, you know. That was... always Esma's skill."
Callista blinked, unable to form any other response. Lydia Boyle, whispering a secret to her? No- it was some manipulation. Callista swallowed and glanced around the room again.
Sharp footsteps echoed on the fine marble of the entryway and Waverly Boyle stepped through one of the doorways and into the room, her dun hair cropped scandalously short, all in black with a veil pinned over her eyes.
Lydia's lips quirked just a little. "Theatrical, isn't she?"
Waverly, in comparison to Lydia, had more severe features and smaller eyes, but her lips were full and her gaze held a measure more of animation. Callista found herself watching until the woman took her seat at the other end of the table. Lydia had settled into a chair beside Callista while she wasn't looking.
"I think this is the first time I've seen her," Callista said, and Lydia shot her a sly little glance.
"She's the one who wanted you to come, you know."
"Oh." Callista folded her hands in her lap, ignoring how her skin was beginning to crawl. Waverly Boyle barely spared her a glance, but the knowledge that it was her invitation that had brought her here pinned Callista helplessly between the two women, skewered on a whip-thin line of tension. "Do you know why?"
"You're part of society now, in your own way," Lydia said, motioning for two glasses of wine for them both. "And she had heard rumors of your- unfortunate familial state. Our spiritualist suggested specifically that we had somebody acquainted with the dead and dying here at the table."
"That could describe all of Dunwall these days," Callista said, gaze flicking between Lydia and Waverly. Waverly still ignored her. Wine was set down at her elbow, and Callista fought the urge to down it in one heady gulp. Instead, she watched Lydia carefully as she said, "Yourself included. My condolences."
Lydia smiled, but it was tight and the tensing of the muscles about her mouth indicated a different story than the pleasant acceptance and courtesy the other woman was trying to project. "It was a very unpleasant time," she said.
"Are you hoping to speak with her again?"
Callista watched as Lydia looked toward the other end of the table. "I am not," Lydia said at last, then turned back to the governess, eyes a little narrower. "You are very perceptive, Miss Curnow."
The return to formal address made Callista reach for her glass despite her better judgment and drain half of it. She'd stepped wrong. Boldness was not appreciated - only the appearance of it. She would have to learn this new dance carefully.
As the sweet, heady wine coated her tongue and throat, the doors opened once more. A man with quick, dark eyes and a full beard - trimmed carefully, unlike Anton Sokolov's - dressed in fine eveningwear emerged from the hall. He inclined his head and bent forward at the waist just enough to acknowledge the vaunted personages within, then strode over to Waverly's place at the table. Callista listened to the whispers from her neighbors as he took Waverly's gloved hand and bowed more formally over it.
"This," Waverly said, turning from the man to look directly at Callista, "is our guide for tonight - Sergei Ivanolov. He's from Samara."
"The most distant city of the Empire," he confirmed, his accent thick but not unpleasant or obscuring. He enunciated clearly, and with all the emphasis of a trained stage performer. "It is often dark for months at a time, that far north, and whales are visible from the shore."
"Is that where you learned your tricks, then?" one of the nobles Callista didn't know so well asked. Callista barely marked her. She was too busy shifting under the weight of Waverly's fixed gaze. She glanced up one more time at the woman, and the spell broke; Waverly turned away, leaning back in her seat and propping her chin on her fist.
"No," Sergei said with a low chuckle. "No, there's only black magic up there, so close to the edge of the world."
"And summoning the dead isn't magic?" another asked.
"Last time we saw Brigmore manor! As if we were there!" Thalia Timsh crowed, beaming as she glanced to everybody at the table who hadn't been there to see it.
"Brigmore manor?" Ramsey asked, eyes narrowing. "That sounds more like dark magic than parlor tricks."
Sergei straightened. "What you are about to see tonight, esteemed guests, does not go against the Abbey of the Everyman. It is not witchcraft. It does not touch upon the Outsider one single iota! But that does not mean it is safe." The man looked about the room, but did not fix his gaze on each and every member of his audience, as he might have on a stage near Drapers Ward.
The room quieted. Waverly lifted a hand, and Callista glanced around to see maids - nervous-looking women who had been nearly invisible before - dimming the electric lights and putting out the fire in the great hearth.
When the room was lit predominantly by the glow of ratlights on the table, Sergei stepped back from Waverly's seat and began to pace.
"We are told," he continued at last, "that when life departs us, our souls fade and merge with the cosmos. We become one with everything beyond the bounds of our cities and our electricity and our whaling ships. And we become that much more vulnerable to the depredations of the Void, do we not? For we know that the Void swallows up whole stars, and what is a human soul to a star?
"And so it makes sense that, should we create a conduit from our world of solid constancy to the swirling cosmos, and if we provide a roadmap in the form of living relatives, a few souls might long to escape the threat of the Void and manifest here, with us. Not all, and not many; most turn to fine gossamer and spin apart in the cosmos," he said, motioning with fingers pinched as if holding onto a thread then spreading his hands wide, "and those that are left often do not have the strength to visit here with us. It is a dangerous feat, opening this portal without knowing if anything will come through - and what that anything might be. I am not always successful. But tonight I am told that one of you is a lone survivor, with a host of spirits who might come to visit.
"Callista Curnow, if you would please rise?"
She stood only because she feared what might happen if she didn't; all eyes were now on her. She smoothed out the front of her jacket and clasped her hands before her, saying nothing.
The spiritualist looked her over. "And how many family members have you lost? Family only; do not count friends or acquaintances."
She cleared her throat, the sensation harsh and leaden. "Forty-seven, all within the last fifteen years."
A murmur went through the room. Miss White looked positively distraught for a moment, before turning to Mr. Ramsey and reaching for his glass - hers was empty. Thalia Timsh looked bored and faintly incredulous. And Waverly Boyle looked at her, solemnly.
Callista returned her gaze, trying not to hunch forward and make herself smaller where she stood.
"Forty-seven," the spiritualist repeated. "That is- unprecedented. And in the last fifteen years?"
"Every member of my family that is known to me, except for my uncle has died. So I'm not- I'm not a lone survivor," she added, quickly, hoping it would damage his interest.
He didn't flag. "Of what causes?"
"Many. Illness, violence, bad fortune." She cleared her throat. "It has been- a strange generation."
"And other compatriots of yours?"
She thought back to the conspiracy. Martin, Pendleton, Havelock... Lydia Brooklaine and Wallace. Five dead out of ten. And then there were her former students she still didn't know the fates of, and so many others-
"Many," she settled on. "... Does that satisfy?"
The spiritualist looked troubled, and as she watched, his hand settled on the back of Waverly Boyle's chair and he bent down to speak in her ear. Waverly's gaze never left Callista. She canted her head to one side as she listened, then lifted a hand in dismissal.
The man straightened up, brow creased with worry. "It does," he said at last. "You may sit."
She felt leaden as she sank back into her chair, and she only made a soft sound when Lydia settled a hand on her wrist. Apparently the woman had wanted a stronger response, and so she pulled away without a word. Callista took her hand back, and folded them both in her lap, listening only distantly to the droning of the spiritualist's voice.
Candles were lit. Bowls of exotic herbs from Serkonos were set about the room and lit to a smolder so that their thick, sweet smoke would curl into the great open space of the sitting room.
There were the usual pageant tricks; the table juddered and jolted, and some of the women around the table yelped, and some of the men gasped. Sergei spoke a few times of messages whispered in his ears.
And then Waverly Boyle pressed her fist to the table. She didn't strike the wood, but it made a sound all the same - soft, but final. The room went silent. Callista lifted her head.
"Enough of your parlor tricks, Sergei," she said. "Even if they might appease Ramsey's sensibilities. Please proceed with the real seance - we've all seen these theatrics before. You promised me more."
"Sister-"
Waverly lifted her hand from the wood. Her sharp gaze went to Lydia. "I'm not here for games," Waverly snapped.
Lydia went silent, throat working, brow drawn down.
The other guests began to shift in their seats. Callista cleared her throat, and made to stand. "I- I really shouldn't be staying much longer-" she began.
"Miss Curnow," Waverly said, voice sharp enough to make Callista flinch. "You will come to the head of the table. Sergei?"
The Tyvian took a deep breath and let it out through his nose, then reached for his pocket and withdrew a cigarette case. "Do you have what I asked for?" he asked as he fished out a finely-rolled fag and reached forward to light it from a candle. His voice was more muffled now, not the booming stage magician's anymore.
Waverly snapped her fingers. The sound was muffled by her gloves. Still, two maids emerged from the other room to set out a deep bowl of what smelled like seawater, a fine-handled knife, and a pile of bones.
Callista swallowed, then cleared her throat again. "I really must object," she said, pushing all her strength into her voice.
"Yes, really, Waverly," Thalia said, standing up as well. "We came here for games. Whatever else you're up to these days, you won't involve us."
"The new High Overseer will send a whole regiment down on your house if you keep this up," Ramsey laughed, but the sound was hollow. He, too, was rising from his chair. "Adele, let's go."
Miss White rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, Jack darling. It's not like Lydia hasn't been tugging at the Outsider's pantslegs for years. The Abbey-"
"The Abbey has nothing to do with this," Waverly snapped, stalking around the table. Callista thought too late to turn and run, and before she could get a few steps towards the door, Waverly's hand closed around her wrist. "The rest of you can leave," she snarled as she jerked Callista towards her, "you gutless, spineless cowards. Adele, didn't you tell me you wanted to see your nephew again? And Thalia, I know you hated your uncle - so I know you wanted to spit in his face one last time. But if you're really going to run, then I want you out of my house."
"Let go," Callista whispered.
Waverly only fixed her with an unyielding, unwavering stare.
The rest of the guests murmured and shifted, some moving towards the doorways to the entry, some sitting back down. Lydia had leaned far back in her seat, and ignored Callista's backwards glance for help as she stumbled to the head of the table.
In the end, curiosity and a desire to see just how Waverly would ruin herself seemed to win out; only one minor lord left the party entirely, while two other guests moved across the hall to the sitting room for brandy.
Callista stared at Waverly. "Whatever you're planning on doing, Lady Boyle," she said, keeping her voice low, "you would do best to remember that I am the close friend of the Empress and my Uncle is the head of the City Watch."
"I don't care you who you are," Waverly said. Her lips twitched in a mockery of a smile. "Don't you miss your family?"
Callista shook her head. "That- that doesn't- of course I do."
"Have you never felt guilty over a death?"
She thought of her younger brother, of her mother, of a cousin she'd barely known but had been playing with the day she slipped on a rock and tumbled into the surf, only to be caught by a riptide-
Waverly leaned forward, reading the pallor of her face. "Then you will understand why I need this," she said.
It was only after, with her arm on fire, that Callista realized that Waverly had taken up the knife.
Blood flowed down from the shallow cut by the inside of her elbow, and Callista quickly moved to cover it with her free hand. But Waverly caught that wrist, too, the knife pressed between them, pushing hard on the bones of her hand. Callista gasped for breath as Sergei, cigarette still between his lips, pressed two small bones against the cut, dying them red.
The room was silent except for the quiet tapping of her blood falling to the floor, and her pained, confused panting.
Sergei said no incantations as he held each blood-soaked bone over a whale-oil lantern fire. Her blood burned, and the bone charred. Callista again jerked against Waverly, and this time the woman let her go; she stumbled back and collapsed on the floor, cradling her arm against her chest.
The sound of Sergei dropping the bones into the bowl of seawater was deafening; her world narrowed to it. The door was only so many feet away, but she couldn't move.
The seawater began to boil.
Her eyes went wide as her lungs filled with seawater, and her world went dark.
Waverly saw everything.
She watched as the thin, pinched woman, too untrained and lowborn to be anything more - or less - than the Empress's favorite fell against the wall, cradling her arm like a wounded child. She watched as the woman looked up and stared at Sergei's silent ritual. She watched her lips part and her fingers twitch, faintly.
And she watched as Callista Curnow was enveloped in a thick, black, amorphous shroud that blinked into existence and quickly began to spread across the billiards room.
Behind her, chairs scraped against the floor. Ramsey was swearing. Adelle screamed. Thalia had begun a long denunciation, and everybody, even Sergei, was making for the exit. They weren't running, yet, but nobody remained at the table.
Waverly stayed very still.
She stared at the blackness, squinting, trying to make out details. A hand, yes- and a face, not Callista's but similar. Two sets of shoulders seemed to strain at the darkness, and then another face turned towards her, its features covered not by stretched fabric but by a thin, slick membrane. Her thoughts went briefly to a hunting trip with her father and the Pendletons, when she was barely a woman; they'd killed a pregnant doe, and Morgan had cut its belly open with enough skill to preserve the sack inside its uterus. There had been a single fawn, and it had been near fully grown. It had pushed at the blood-covered sack, stretching the thin skin covering it, and then Morgan had cut it with the tiniest flick of his knife.
He had, of course, broken the creature's neck shortly after when it failed to amuse him anymore.
Waverly shifted the weight of the knife in her hand. She looked for Esma's face in the mass swirling over Callista. If she could just cut her free, and see her again-
But before she could reach out and nick the surface of the shroud, it heaved. It seemed full to bursting with whatever souls swirled within. She saw more elbows, more feet, more things that weren't human pressing at the surface, and her stomach threatened to revolt before her brain could catch up with it. Hands pressed against the membrane with more fingers than they should have had, and less, and there were so many of them. The darkness had taken up almost half the room and was spilling out into the hall.
And then the surface split open.
Sea water rushed from it, striking Waverly's ankles in short waves as it coated the floor. The lights in the room winked out, their fine glass shades shattering as they went. She heard a great roar, and finally she stumbled back, just as forms crashed into her, knocking her from her feet. Adelle screamed again. Lydia shouted her name, and Waverly finally let out a small, broken sob as she reached out a hand and said, "Esma, Esma."
Something cold and wet curled around her hand. It gripped at her and pulled at her skin, and a sucking mouth found her arm. She thrashed, but her booted feet could find nothing to connect with. She scrabbled against the floor, then, as the agony began deep in her bones, and she managed to stand.
She ran.
In another room, a pistol cracked. She could hear people pounding on the doors. The whole house was in darkness, lit only by what ill moonlight could filter through the smog and the other buildings and the drapes, and she grabbed at her veil, ripping it from her head. Hair came with it, and pins, but she barely noticed the pain.
"Lydia!" she shouted, cradling her arm to her chest. "Lydia, the sitting room!" They'd practiced this. Even before Esma's murder, she'd made sure they all knew what to do in case of emergencies. She'd been prepared. Her heart thundered in her ears, as loud as all the inhuman shrieks from every corner of her home, and her mind was numb with the realization that Esma hadn't come after all- but she clung to the knowledge that they had practiced.
She ran to the sitting room and cursed the lack of doors to block off the entrance. Ramsey was there, and Jane Blair with him. Adelle was nowhere to be seen. "Waverly, what is going on?" Ramsey hissed. He'd gotten close enough to reach for her elbow, but she jerked away. "The doors are all bolted shut! Your little game-"
She ignored him and went to the windows, and felt along the edge of the casement for the right pane. She'd made sure it could come out, and a bit of wood with it. There'd be just enough room to crawl through.
The howling grew louder.
The window refused to give.
Jane Blair gave out a tremendous shriek, and Waverly turned. In the light of the one fire still burning in the hearth, she could see Thalia Timsh gripping at the door frame, barely holding herself up. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open. And around her throat were two slender child's hands, wringing the breath from her.
She dropped to the floor. Waverly shouted. Ramsey fumbled for a pistol he likely barely knew how to use.
Thalia's eyes rolled back, and the child's hands were gone. The child had never been there to begin with.
Mother, no!
The words bubbled out of her throat, pushing past the seawater that had filled her lungs and all the interstitial spaces of her body. The water even dripped from her eyes, a mockery of crying when all crying was impossible. There were hands on her, but they weren't gentle hands, or comforting, and she cried out again, thrashing.
Somewhere, she was lying on the floor. Somewhere, she was drowning. But here all she knew were the murmuring, babbling voices she'd almost forgotten - her mother talking about the neighbors, her brother asking her about skipping stones. A thousand memories were coming pouring back, but she was full, too full of seawater to take them in. They beat against her, split her skin, crushed her bones. Riptides and sunny afternoons in the fields and the harsh grey of Dunwall and Geoff's house filled with people, and the cake- the cake- when she hadn't known if Geoff would survive that night at Holger, she'd thought again and again of the cake she'd eaten-
Hands closed around her wrists and her ankles, her elbows and her throat and her hair. They pulled at her, small riptides in their own right, and she couldn't fight them.
Mother, Mother, I'm sorry, I don't want to go with you, I don't want to go-
And they shouted and screamed back at her in words that were no longer words.
They'd taken her aside at her cousin's funeral, and they had told her in quiet, serious voices that if the ocean ever tried to take her, she was to either be brave and swim parallel to the shore. She wasn't to swim against it. That had taken her cousin. She had fought too hard, and in the wrong direction.
Callista choked on seawater, and blindly rolled onto her stomach.
She had read, years later, that the other way to come back from the ocean was to let it take you where it wanted to. Eventually, the current would lose strength. But by then you could be so far from land. Hands tore at her hair and pulled at her clothing, and she knew that if she closed her eyes, she would drown or be torn to shreds. This ocean would take her where it wanted to take her, but she did not want to go there.
So even though she could see nothing with her eyes open, she kept her lids fixed, the salt water burning them as it slipped from around the curve of each eye and down her cheeks.
She crawled. She crawled like a child, like a dying woman, like a rat. No, Mother, I don't want to go. Father, I am sorry. I am not yours. I am not yours, she thought, and then she thought of Strictures, and then she cast off the Strictures because they couldn't stop this. She opened her mouth and let seawater pour out, she coughed and brought up kelp, she slipped and fell against the fine stone floor.
Her family howled.
There was her grandfather, fallen from his balcony in his nice Dunwall townhouse, skewered on the wrought iron fence in front. There was her cousin, torn apart by frenzying wolfhounds, a mistake, a mistake. There was her mother, with blood down the front of her shirt from her coughing.
She moved slowly, and nothing changed. She pushed, and pushed, and they pulled in turn. The saltwater grew coppery and she heaved, vomiting blood or bile or some other horrible thing.
Her fingers closed around a boot toe.
She could see nothing, but she felt her way along the prone, still body. It was warm, but cooling fast. Her stomach twisted. She felt the hard line of a man's waist, and then the brittle curls of his finely-cropped beard.
The Tyvian man from the farthest city of the Empire. Sergei.
Rage went through her, then fear, then grief, and she threw back her head and howled. She dragged herself to her feet and staggered to the table, colliding hard with its edge. Her hands scrabbled over the surface, knocking over rat lights and the lantern and finally, finally, the bowl of saltwater and bloody bones.
Her fingers sought the small bits of vital detritus, and then she opened her mouth and set them on her tongue, and sucked hard to pull her blackened blood from the porous surfaces.
It was bitter and the bone crumbled in places, giving way in powdery and jagged bursts. She moved her tongue and her lips, ignoring how the hands pulled at her, clawed at her, beat her. She ignored her mother's voice, and her father's, and she kept her burning eyes open.
The bones grew clean beneath her tongue.
She spat them into her cupped palm, and the darkness lifted. The hands let go. Her lungs were no longer filled with seawater, and the salt on her cheeks was from tears. She gasped and grinned and sobbed with pain.
And then she ran.
Waverly was halfway to the servants' stair when she saw her. Callista Curnow stood at the door to the gardens, sagging against the wood and metal, hands pressed to the surface. Her hair was down from its simple bun, and was wet and scraggly and knotted with kelp. Her chin was covered in blood, and her clothing was torn.
But she was alive, and had emerged from the darkness.
She beat her fists against the door, and slowly began to sag against it. Waverly felt her throat tighten in a mix of violence and guilt. She hesitated only a moment, then went to the woman and grabbed her shoulder.
Callista howled and pulled away, falling back and staring up at her like a wounded, crazed animal.
"Miss Curnow, come with me," Waverly hissed.
Callista's hand curled protectively over the cut Waverly had made in her pale flesh. Her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed in red, and they filled with rage. With a wordless screech of pain, she launched herself up at Waverly, her hands closing around her throat. Two hard nodules pressed into her neck, but Waverly barely noticed them as she kicked and thrashed. They fell to the ground, Callista losing her grip for just a moment.
Two small items clattered on the floor. Callista let go entirely, reaching for them. She was mumbling something - you did this, you did this, it sounded like - and her shoulders were shaking.
Waverly swallowed thickly and pushed away from the younger woman, until her back hit the sealed door.
Somewhere in the darkness was Lydia, and all the rest. Thalia was dead, but Ramsey had been alive when he had torn off in search of Adelle, and while Jane had refused to move, cowering in the sitting room, there was a decent chance that she lived, too. Whatever had killed Thalia hadn't attacked any of them. Waverly fixed on that idea as she caught her breath, and as Callista gathered up what looked like two bones and stared down at them.
"You did this," she murmured, this time more loudly, more firmly.
Waverly flushed. "I have a way out," she said. "I- I'm glad to find you alive. I wasn't sure what would happen."
Callista looked up with a glare and a snarl, but as Waverly watched, it melted away into resignation. Callista looked at the two bones in her hands again, then tilted her head back and swallowed them whole.
"That might end it," she whispered.
Waverly could only nod, uncomprehending.
"The way out," Waverly said. "It's- it's in the basement. My sister should be there already." It was the only hope she could cling to - that Lydia hadn't heard her because she'd already fled to their last-ditch escape route. Slowly, Waverly stood again and held out a hand to Callista. "The doors are all sealed, but there should still be a way out down there."
Callista took her hand, and pushed up to her feet.
Waverly led her to the servants' stair. They felt their way down in the dark. Only a few ratlights were strewn along the steps, and they moved with nauseating, terrifying caution. Above, Waverly could still hear the occasional shout, scream, or gunshot. Doors rattled in their casings. But they seemed to leave it all behind as they descended.
They reached the kitchen. The fires still burned, and the room was more brightly lit than any had been. But though the food and the light should have been comforting, they disappeared at the sight of Jane Blair stretched out dead at the bottom of the stairs, eyes staring, blood leaking from the back of her skull.
Waverly covered her mouth with her hands, fighting down the urge to turn and run back up the stairs. Jane must have overtaken her while she grappled on the floor with Callista. She imagined the young woman creeping across the great hall, then running down the steps, fast, too fast-
Callista was silent as she stepped over the corpse, refusing to look back.
"How much farther?" she asked when Waverly didn't move.
"I should have kept the Watch here," Waverly said, shaking her head. "And Overseers. Like I did when Burrows was in power. It was foolish to stop." Her voice was soft; its gentleness surprised her, as did its even cadence. She felt numb. "If we had a few Overseers-"
"This woman would still have tripped down the stairs in fright," Callista said. Her voice was also even, but bleak. "How much farther, Lady Boyle?"
"Not far," Waverly said, and did her best not to look at Jane Blair again as she stepped over her corpse and led Callista towards the cellars.
The lever had already been pulled, and the gate to the lower rooms was up. Waverly picked her way down the stairs carefully, grateful that they hadn't decided to pull up barrels of wine from the cellar for the night; there were no slick boards covering half the steps. The hulking shapes of casks disappeared into the darkness of the cavernous chamber, but ratlights still lit the way down towards the finger of canal that was diverted into the mansion.
Just a few more feet.
The vault door was open, and there was light inside, but Waverly ignored it as she passed rows of casks and made for the last staircase. Somebody was helping themselves to her fortune - she didn't care. What she cared about was meeting Lydia down by the boat.
"You're- you're not supposed to be here-" Lydia's voice whispered from the vault.
Waverly froze. Callista stopped beside her, and turned.
"Wasn't that-"
"We- need to keep moving. Lydia knows the plan. She knows to meet me down here. She wouldn't have gone into the vault. I don't-"
Lydia's voice turned to a shout.
"Esma!"
Panic fogged the edges of her vision, and she hunched from the sudden urge to vomit. Callista's reached for her, but she jerked her arm away, curling both against her chest. She was a little girl again, and the woman who had been so frightened by her own raging feelings for a servant boy, and the woman who had woken up after her grand party to find her eldest sister dead and torn apart on the floor of her bedroom, and in that moment, all she felt was overwhelming, drowning helplessness.
And then she turned and ran into the vault, its door standing uselessly ajar.
Lydia was backed against the far wall, suit tattered, and advancing on her was the specter of Esma, dressed in red like she had been the night of the party, mask gone, legs and arms gnawed to shredded meat from the rats that pooled around her ankles and clawed their way up her pantslegs.
"I'm sorry," Lydia whispered. "I'm sorry! Isn't that enough? It- it was always enough-"
Esma lunged. Waverly cried out as her fingers found not Lydia's throat, but the busk of her corset. Her fingers, stripped to bone and sinew and a few nails cracked and jagged, scrabbled at the coutil, and Lydia screamed and kicked.
Waverly threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around Esma's chest and arms. Tears stung her eyes, and her chest heaved from sobs she couldn't hear over her own shouting. Esma, Esma, Esma her chest seemed to thunder, and in a blinding flash she knew that if she only held on long enough, it would be enough to bring her back. Then the three of them would be united again, and-
Esma's rotten flesh gave beneath her arms.
It collapsed with a sickening squelch, revealing bones held together by the jaws of rats. Their ooze-slicked fur stuck to her arms, and she hurled the mass that had been Esma away from her. It didn't matter; they were on her, swarming, and she felt the first few bites of their teeth into the soft skin of her wrist, the tender flesh of her thigh.
Lydia was screaming.
She thought of Jane, dead and alone, her features empty and blue, and she thought with a burst of rage that her death had been decorous, just a blow to the head and nothing else. And Callista- Callista should have been torn apart, and yet she still stood.
No - it wasn't fair. She was Waverly Boyle, and she howled and rushed to the cabinet at the other end of the room, grabbed at the key she always kept attached to her belt, and opened the door. She hurled herself into the shelves, scrabbling and smashing whatever she could touch, and soon the room was full of strange glow of ratlight and bits of shrapnel whirring past her ears and biting into her skin, striking the rats and driving them off.
She fell to her knees.
Lydia's screams had stopped.
She turned, slowly, to look at her sister. She was slumped to one side. Her nails had been ripped from their beds, spattering the lovely fabric of her corset with spots of blood. The fabric had been torn, too, and as Waverly dragged herself closer, she saw the telltale blackening and carving of the baleen, and the inner lining of vibrant purple, that meant that the whole garment had been one of Lydia's heretical indulgences.
Bone charms littered the ground around her.
She was breathing, but only faintly, and her face was scratched and swollen. Whatever Esma's specter had been built of, it had savaged her as surely as it had savaged Waverly - and more. Waverly dragged herself over the shrapnel strewn floor, too exhausted to stand, until she reached Lydia's side and pulled her against her chest.
They were both alive, still. And only a few feet away was freedom, the canal that led out of the estate. It would be easy. They would be safe. They would-
"Lady Boyle."
She looked up to find Callista Curnow staring at her from the doorway. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, and her hands were white-knuckled against the frame.
"We need to go," she said.
Waverly looked down at Lydia. "O-of course." Callista hadn't helped her in her struggle, but she couldn't blame the woman - not with the rats, and the blood, and the old springrazor mines. "There should be a boat-"
"No, we need to go up," Callista said. "The water is- the water's rising." She looked behind her, and Waverly saw her jaw quiver in profile. She hugged Lydia's limp body more tightly. "It's already nearly filled the room below - it's rising fast, like a storm surge, like it did in Rudshore."
"There's no way out, up there," Waverly said, weakly. "They're all sealed. I tried them all."
"Then we climb as fast as we can and try to get out by the roof," Callista said, turning back to face Waverly. In the purple ratlight, her wet, lank hair looked as if it were coated in oil; the kelp reflected a sickly sheen, and the harsh, pinched planes of her face looked skeletal. "Can you move? Is- is your sister-"
"She's alive," Waverly said, and tried to stand. Her knees buckled. Callista picked her way across half the room, then gave in to reality and rushed the last few feet, crouching to help the two women up.
"That ghost-"
Waverly shook her head. "She- she must be angry with us, for allowing her to die. For not stopping her. I certainly would have been."
"That's not what I meant," Callista said, staggering under their combined weight as she moved them all to the door. "That ghost was not your sister, Lady Boyle. Waverly."
She scowled. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that when the ghosts of my relatives descended on me and tried to tear me apart, only some of them even remembered who I was. They weren't- they weren't themselves anymore. They were only anger and pain and void. My mother was not my mother." Callista spat each word out as they made for the stairs and began climbing to the main floor again.
Waverly panted for breath, her cuts and bites making each movement agony. Her mind spun. "I don't care," she managed. "That was Esma, and she hates us. She hates Lydia. Why did she- I don't-"
They passed the door that would have led out to the great halls of her estate. She heard only moaning. The door rattled in its frame, then crashed against it. She flinched and her legs nearly gave once more; she clutched onto Lydia.
Callista halted, and Waverly nearly stumbled.
She looked up to find the governess's gaze fixed on the shaking door. "We should get the others," Callista said, her voice thin and strangled. "It's wrong to leave them- without you, they won't know how to get out."
Waverly flinched. "And how shall we know where to find them? Or if they're still alive? My house is very large, Miss Curnow-"
"It's wrong to leave them," she repeated.
Waverly scowled and clung more tightly to Lydia, the better to stay upright herself. Her mind still spun with pain and terror, but the rage was back, too. She reached clawed her fingers into Callista's arm.
"My sister just came back from the dead full of rats, and nearly killed me, and I want to get out of this house. You will help me. Everybody else- everybody else is probably dead by now."
The high-pitched, human scream and answering gunshot that broke out from somewhere on the first floor of the house struck at her. She shrugged it off. "I have to protect my family, Miss Curnow. Surely that's something you can sympathize with?"
Callista's expression crumpled.
The door shuddered once more in its frame, and she cursed and resumed their halting ascent.
They were almost to the landing when the latch creaked, then broke with a resounding crack quickly overwhelmed by the splintering of the door. Callista shoved Waverly forward, and she fell onto the landing, clutching Lydia's unconscious form to her chest.
"Go!" Callista shouted.
"I can't!" Waverly scrabbled against the wood, and tried to lift Lydia. "I need you!" She lifted her head in time to see Callista descending the steps towards a young boy in his nightclothes, standing in the wreckage of the door. A student? A relative? The woman should have known better, though, and Waverly struggled to her feet, clutching the banister.
"It's not real!" she shouted.
Callista crouched before the boy.
"I'm so sorry," Callista breathed. Waverly could barely catch the words.
"You're better than this, Miss Curnow!" Waverly cried, voice growing shrill as she tried once more to lift Lydia. Lydia's breathing was growing shallower, and blood still leaked from her various cuts, slow but steady. "You're better than this! Run, damn you!"
Callista did run - down the stairs. She took hold of her brother's hand and drew him down towards the basement, blinking past the burning tears and the pounding of her heart.
"Come with me," she whispered, and she thought she saw him smile as he followed.
He was not Waverly's Esma, decomposed and recomposed of things not herself. He was not the clawing specter of her mother, begging her to remain. He was only her little brother, lost far too early to illness that none of them could have prevented, and he was silent.
He was also strong, though. She could feel splinters in her palms where she'd grabbed him, bits of the door clinging to his not-flesh. And he was not human. She could feel it in the coldness of his 'skin', and hear it in his silence.
Above her, Waverly continued shouting, crying for her. The woman needed her. But so did her brother, and so did everybody on the main floor of the house.
She reached the kitchen, where Jane Blair's body now floated in a few inches of water.
Turning, she smiled at her brother. "You always loved swimming," she said. And then she clenched her jaw and grabbed his small form shoving it into the water. Her brother let out a shrill screech and began thrashing, but she held him down, pinning his body beneath hers. She bit her lip and hoped, desperately, that this was the answer. She remembered her own lungs filling with seawater, and she remembered her brother playing on the shore, and she tried to ignore how his body began to fall apart into writhing, grasping, slippery eels and tentacles.
When her brother no longer existed, she stood up and scrambled back onto the stairs.
Waverly had destroyed Esma's body, and inside had been rats, rats that could be dealt with. She had killed her brother, and eels couldn't rise from the surface of the water. Maybe- maybe, then, as the water rose, it would kill all the ghosts it touched. Maybe the survivors would be able to swim to safety. She braced her hands on her knees, smelling the fetid saltwater and rot of stormsurge water below her and in her hair.
The water rose another inch; she retreated up another step.
At that height, she could see over towards the cellars, where the water was deeper. She made out faint lights, like swampgas, hovering just above or below the surface of the water. And as she leaned forward, craning her head to see, she saw her cousin, dead from riptides, surface from the depths.
She turned and fled up the steps.
She met Waverly halfway to the landing she had left her on. The woman grabbed hold of her, fiercely, and swore and cursed and bitterly rebuked her, but she let Callista haul her back to the landing all the same. Without a backwards glance, she helped gather up Lydia's form, and resumed her ascent to the second floor.
The door to the main hall still hung open, and through it she could hear screams and sobs. Whatever was down there struggled fiercely. But as she thought of her cousin rising with the water, she realized she couldn't go back.
She had to survive.
That was always the first rule.
They emerged from the stairs in a bedroom, lovely and disheveled and untouched. Waverly let out a small sob, and pulled Lydia from Callista's arms. She settled Lydia on the bed, and Callista watched as she began fumbling with the clasps of her corset.
"I want to get her out of this- this blasphemous thing," Waverly gasped. "She had gathered up all her bone charms and they didn't do her any good. Esma still came for her. Esma found her. I don't want any of this touching her," she said. She was crying, weakly, but her movements were determined, violent, obsessive. Callista watched helplessly as she stripped down Lydia to her undershirt.
Blood had soaked through it.
"You're going to be okay," Waverly whispered. Her hands trembled. She touched Lydia's cheeks with red-streaked fingers. "Lydia, we're almost there."
Lydia spasmed; fresh blood soaked through the fabric. Waverly let out a weak wail.
"Put her corset back on," Callista said, coming closer to the bed. "It- maybe it was stopping the bleeding." She reached for the corset, but Waverly struck her hands away. She rucked up her sister's shirt and found the wounds - many of them, some shallow, some deep. Some had shrapnel still embedded in them. Others Callista couldn't identify the cause of.
They pulsed blood, slowly- and then not at all.
Waverly's head tipped back, and she howled in agony.
There was an answering roar from the staircase, and the sound of fighting outside the door to the rest of the second floor. Callista wrapped her arms around Waverly and pulled her tightly against her chest. Waverly turned, beat a limp fist against her shoulder, then sagged down with pitiful sobs.
Callista held her up, looking at the still form of Lydia.
You're with friends here, she'd said.
What had her last sight been? Esma, bearing down on her? Or Waverly destroying the illusion of her sister's ghost?
Maybe if Callista had run into the room with Waverly, instead of desperately fleeing towards the exit, afraid of what she'd see, terrified of all she couldn't do-
"There's a rope," Waverly mumbled against her shoulder.
Callista looked down. "A rope?"
"By the door. Pull it. Then fetch the ladder from the bathroom. There's an attic- it will be safer up there, and we can break out the window."
Callista nodded and slowly loosened her grip. "What will you-"
"Put me on the bed with my sister," Waverly said. "Esma's bed, actually, though Lydia took her room after- it's all of ours, though." She let out a weak little laugh.
Callista settled her on the mattress, and went in search of the rope.
She could feel herself growing lightheaded and exhausted, and though she found the cord easily, and dragged the ladder into the room and propped it up, she moved as if caught in a nightmare. Every step seemed to take her only an inch. Rain pelted against the windows, and the sounds of pain and fighting never stopped from beyond the doors to the room. Below, the water had likely reached the main floor. Jane Blair's body likely floated, trapped, against the ceiling of the kitchen.
When she returned to Waverly, the woman had tucked herself against her sister, and was fingering a small bone pendant around her neck.
"This was Esma's, too," she whispered.
"Leave it," Callista said, her heart aching. She helped the woman to her feet, then up the ladder; she went without protest.
The attic was reached through a small access door, and Waverly cried out as she crawled through it. Callista felt her head swim. But as soon as they were through, and Callista had dragged the ladder up with them and shut the door, an illusion of safety descended on her. They were alone. The sounds below were muffled.
Callista stood, hunched for the low ceiling, and helped Waverly to an armchair covered with an old dropcloth. The air was thick with dust. She covered her nose and mouth as she went to the nearby window, and began searching for a latch.
"You'll have to break it," Waverly said. "I had it sealed with lead. I- the last time- he came in from above, I'm sure of it. So I had it sealed."
Callista nodded, and grabbed up a bedpost propped nearby. She lifted it and swung with all her might.
The sound of glass shattering was explosive.
She grinned and reached for the shutters, but found them locked - and made of metal.
"There's a latch," Waverly said. "But it was jammed."
"To protect you?" Callista asked, breathless.
Waverly thumped her fist against the chair. "I didn't know- I thought I'd protected us. I- Lydia-" The woman let out another helpless wail, that soon turned to an angry cry. "I just wanted to see Esma again! I just wanted to tell her that I was sorry!"
Callista turned to see Waverly glaring at her, clawing at the dropcloth, twitching as if to lash out.
"If you hadn't come here, this would never have happened! It's your blighted death-cursed family that unleashed all of this!"
"Sergei warned you. I tried to leave!" Callista snapped, exhausted and frustrated.
"It hurts!" she cried.
Callista's eyes widened.
Waverly gasped for breath, and Callista stopped trying to force the shutters. The woman had ceased her paranoid twitches and turns, and now simply sat limply in her chair. She'd let her head fall back. She didn't hunch or move to protect herself, or even cradle one of her many injuries.
Callista knew that position of abject surrender well.
But she could also hear the distant roaring and trickling of water as the lower floors continued to fill with fetid canal water, and the pounding of the rain hadn't let up on the shutters. She fumbled with the shutter latch again. Her hands were swollen and numb from the cold and her heart ached from seeing her brother again, only to be beaten and dragged nearly to her death. The latch refused to move, no matter how hard she concentrated.
She swallowed down a sob.
"What hurts?" she asked, looking back at the wan figure in the chair. If concentration wasn't working, perhaps distraction would.
Waverly looked at her with red-rimmed, exhausted eyes. "Everything," she said. "Everything's always hurt. I can't- I can't control myself some days. I've never been able to. And then I come down and see what I've done, and I can't allow it, and so I wipe the slate clean. I killed a boy, once. I killed him because I loved him, and love was one of those uncontrollable things. So I killed him." Her lips curled, cruelly. "And it hurt. It was agony. But that was good, and the pain wasn't perfect, but it was good because at least that pain meant I was fixing something. But you know..."
Callista's fingers fell away from the latch.
"But you know, Esma never had that problem. Lydia did. Lydia never let anybody close. She was the true killer of us three. I killed a boy I loved but Lydia would kill just because somebody caught her blaspheming, or caught her fucking, or caught her... being human. I'm the one who built secret exits into her home, but Lydia was the one so scared of being caught. The thing is, she never let herself know she was scared. I knew I was scared. I knew I had to have ways out.
"But Esma..."
Waverly's head lolled again, as if she'd lost the strength to hold it up. Callista moved to the old chair, thinking of the boy Waverly had killed and of all the secret passages and of Lydia scared but not knowing she was scared.
"But Esma knew when she was scared, and she knew when she was happy, and it was overwhelming for her, too, but she had her vices and they kept her well. She would drink and fuck and then she would cry, and she would build alliances and destroy them, and she would eat and talk philosophy, and none of it was happy, but she was an empress in her world. Ruined by the world itself, but perfect despite it, and she knew it. So she could handle the pain. And I...
"I let Esma die, even though she was the best of us."
Callista looked down at her, and thought of Lydia's body, lying tucked into its bed on the floor below. Waverly had not had as many people to lose, but now she was more alone than Callista had ever been.
She thought of all the people that Waverly had killed, and Lydia, and how many had died in their mines or because of their politics, and she wondered, for the first time, if some of the angry dead churning below weren't her family at all, but were victims of the Boyles, just as she had been in that seance room.
Maybe that was why she was still alive.
And Waverly was alive- why? Because she had only killed one? Because she felt such deep guilt over not having built a way out for her sister? Because Callista had kept close to her this whole time?
Waverly lifted her head at last, looking at Callista like Emily had looked at her once, full of pain and the smallest measure of childish hope. "It hurts," she murmured again, "but I- I think I wouldn't like to die tonight."
"Nobody wants to die," Callista replied, weakly. "Even the ones who kill themselves. There's always that last moment where the mind rebels-"
"No," Waverly said. "Some do. I have. Once, I mixed a poison of- but it doesn't matter. I woke up the next morning. I was furious. But I don't- the point is- are you going to leave me here? Knowing everything?"
"Knowing that two years ago, if we had met, there would have been a good chance that I would have been abused and possibly murdered?" Callista whispered.
Waverly nodded, slowly.
Callista didn't answer, and instead went back to the shutter. This time, the latch gave.
"Esma's death has broken something inside of me," Waverly said, pain lacing her words. "It's agony."
"You will learn to live with it," Callista said, pushing open the shutters and staring out at the pouring rain. The roof would be slick, and they would likely fall and break their necks on the ground far below. She swallowed, licked her lips. "Just as you learned to live with your father's death. Your mother's. It becomes a dull ache, manageable but ever-present. And it won't go any faster just because somebody reaches out to you and cares about you."
The chair scraped against the floorboards, and Callista turned to see Waverly crawling to her. Her throat tightened.
"My saving your life is not forgiveness," Callista said, frowning. "It's not acceptance, and it's not hatred, and it's not anything except- except-"
"That you are a good person," Waverly whispered.
She shook her head. "No, it's weakness," she said with a small laugh. "I... can't turn you away." She crouched. "I have failed to save others. There have been times I should've thought. I never did. But I can't let anybody else go, now. Forty-seven deaths, and all I'm left with is... this."
Callista closed her arms around Waverly and hauled her up, the gently helped her to sit in the sill. The roaring of the water below was growing louder, and she thought she heard the breaking of glass as windows were forced out by the pressure.
Then the house gave a great shudder, and another, in time with her pounding heart. New fear crashed into her, and she grit her teeth and levered Waverly out of the window and onto the slick roof. The house rocked on its foundations.
And then there was only open air and a great roar as the house and the ground beneath it collapsed. Callista and Waverly tumbled from the slick roof, and out over the great pit of darkness that the house was quickly falling into. The crash of wood and stone was deafening, and Callista clung tightly to Waverly as they plummeted.
Debris struck her arms, her back, and she sobbed with pain as they collided with the remnants of a balcony rail. Everything was unknowing chaos, and Waverly clawed at her cheeks and throat. The city disappeared as they fell below the surface.
And then they hit water.
The force of it snapped bone and battered her flesh, and in the shock and agony of the moment, Callista's mouth opened. Seawater rushed in, the same kind that had filled her to brimming when the ghosts had rushed onto her. She thrashed, letting go of Waverly and clawing her way towards the surface. The water moved as the debris from the mansion struck its surface, and she was tossed, helplessly, until she collided with the side of something. It didn't sink. She tried to climb up, hoping desperately that she wasn't going sideways or down. Her left leg refused to work, as did the fingers of her left hand, but she fought and fought and, at last, her head broke the surface.
By street lights and the moon, she could make out the open, ragged circle of sky above her. The sinkhole was full of rushing water, and she clung to the rock wall, desperate to keep her head above it all. She imagined currents, or dark, living things lurking further out that would grab her ankles and drag her under. She sobbed, cradling her broken hand against her chest.
Waverly was dead - she was certain of it. She'd hit the water first, cushioning the blow to Callista, and the noblewoman had probably never learned to swim. She'd been barely able to move in the attic. Now she was dead, and Callista looked for any sign of her body floating to the surface.
It would probably be trapped by the debris.
Slowly, small glowing lights sprung to life. They seemed to dance on the surface of the water, but as Callista squinted, she could see that they were floating up to the surface. Some were ratlights. Others, though, resembled the ghost lights she'd heard of in stories. She shivered and tucked herself closer to the edge of the cenote.
Waverly's head broke the surface of the water.
Callista cried out, but it was weak, and her chest ached from it. She watched as Waverly thrashed against something. Then she saw the second head, half-eaten - a boy's face. The ghost clawed at Waverly and dragged her under again. The lights grew brighter.
They reflected off something red, bright and undeniable, too bright to be blood on the water. Waverly surfaced again. She screamed.
"Waverly!" Callista shouted, but her voice bounced off the sinkhole walls, echoing. Waverly would never be able to find her, or to swim to her. Her movements were weak and uncoordinated, and Callista thought of her bones snapping on impact. There was something dark looped around her throat, and she struggled, then went under again.
When she surfaced the third time, she was accompanied by what looked like a few red flowers.
She was also only a few feet away.
Callista let go of the wall before she could fight the impulse, and she swam, sobbing with pain, to the woman's side. She looped her good arm around Waverly's back, and struggled back towards the wall. Her bad leg burned, bone grinding on bone, but soon she bumped against the stone.
Waverly moved weakly in her arms.
"Grab on," she panted, throat hoarse. Water lapped at her jaw and lips, Waverly weighing her down. "Please, grab on. I can't- I can't hold us both-"
I can't lose you.
Waverly shifted. She sobbed in pain. But she managed to hook her hip onto a dip in the stone, and shove two swollen fingers into the wall.
She whispered something.
Callista leaned in closer.
"Esma," Waverly breathed.
Callista looked out to the water, but the red flowers were gone. The ghost lights dimmed, and fell away. She curled her bad arm tight around Waverly, listening to the hammering of her heart, the weak, gasping shudders of breath. Slowly, both grew even.
It was only a few hours until morning.
Shortly after sunrise, a search team led by a joint effort of the Watch, the Abbey, and the Academy lowered a platform and a dinghy into the sinkhole that had opened up in the Estate District, swallowing up Boyle Manor and destroying the canal that serviced the area. They found several corpses, much debris, and a few bone charms that had floated to the surface and were immediately confiscated and locked in heavy lead boxes.
They almost missed the two women, still barely alive, clinging to each other against one far wall of the sinkhole.
They were wrapped around one another, bloody and beaten to a near pulp, but they breathed still and cried out when the rescuers attempted to separate them. They were sent to the Royal Physician still curled together on the same gurney.
The sinkhole was declared the work of black magic, and everything else in it was abandoned and left to rot.