She should have known it was coming.
In truth, Weiss had known. The confrontation with Ashton and Garnet was inevitable once Garnet's man had showed up in the alley. He had reported to his superior, as the chain of command provided, and then Garnet would no doubt report to Ashton, whom he'd apparently decided was his employer.
She was actually surprised they'd waited until noon; she'd have expected them to have started in on her the night before, after she'd returned to the Schnee manor. Maybe Garnet had wanted to get all the details properly lined up. Or perhaps Ashton hadn't wanted the bother of getting up, going over to the manor, and back home again in the middle of the evening just to ring a peal over Weiss for her latest antics.
"This has gone on long enough," he snarled at her. His face was in shadow; the window behind Weiss's library desk didn't shed as much light after noon.
Really, I should have picked a desk on the other side of the house, given how I feel about mornings.
"I fail to understand your point."
"Undoubtedly, which is my point. You are the heiress of the Schnee family, not a common adventuress to run about in the streets at night. You're fortunate that you weren't seen."
"That's what you're going on about? The potential scandal?"
"The potential scandal," he retorted, "is merely the more subtle of the problems you've raised, and in its way is just as much an example of the single, fundamental issue which lies at the heart of this entire debacle."
"Please, go on, Mr. Ashton. Tell me more about this apparent deep flaw that has created this 'debacle.'"
"You want me to put it into words for you, then? Fine. Ever since the night of the ball, you have shown no sense of awareness of your place."
"And what, exactly, do you think that place is?" Weiss sneered. "As an ornament on someone's arm as I allow some man to handle all the difficult thinking my pretty little head isn't up to handling?"
He scowled right back at her.
"Yes, Miss Schnee, that would be eminently more suitable, given that it's all you've ever been trained to do."
Her eyebrows shot up.
"Excuse me?" she screeched, probably not the best reaction under the circumstances, but there it was. "I have spent my entire life receiving a better education in economics, politics, accounting, and business management than most of the executives of the Schnee Dust Company!"
"You are twenty-one years old and have no hands-on experience at anything other than dancing and fluttering your fan alongside all the other debutantes."
Weiss drew her breath in sharply, affronted, and barely suppressed a wince as the sudden movement sent a spur of pain through her side where Miss Black had kicked her. She'd awakened with a nasty bruise at the point of impact, which while not hampering her ability to move, was definitely adding pain to a number of those actions.
Somehow, she figured that giving away additional injuries wasn't going to win her any points with the two men. And it was two, definitely. While Garnet hadn't said anything thus far, his eyes constantly moved back and forth between Weiss and Ashton, taking in everything.
"A lack of practical experience doesn't mean that I'm somehow relegated to the status of an ornament. My father wasn't born with years of business experience; there was a time when he was a young novice himself. When my grandfather founded this company, no one had any practical experience turning Dust into a commodity. Even you, Mr. Ashton, were once an unlicked cub who had never held an account book, and yet no one ever suggested that we'd all be better off if you never learned."
Even though I'm beginning to lean that way.
"In which circumstances I had the wisdom to accept the advice and guidance of those older and more experienced than myself. This is something, Miss Schnee, that you have shown no sign of doing thus far."
His sneers had no impact on Weiss.
"You shouldn't be surprised, since the only 'advice and guidance' you've ever given me has been to tell me to go back to my room and ignore the whole thing."
"That hardly—"
"No!" She slammed both palms down on the desk with a sharp crack. "I don't know if it's because you know more about this whole affair than you're telling and want to protect yourself, or if it's because you just think I'm a stupid girl who can't cope with big ideas like you tough, 'experienced' men, but the two of you have shown no respect for my position or my goals, from the moment this business started and I had blood dripping down my face!"
"Calm down, Miss Schnee. There's no reason for you to become hysterical."
"Hysterical!" she yelped, then bit her lip. This was exactly what he wanted to provoke from her, shrill and emotional ranting that he, Garnet, and anyone else could dismiss out of hand. This was her father's right-hand man, so his contempt carried weight among the company.
He'd earned his position. She hadn't.
Not yet.
"I am not hysterical, Mr. Ashton, I am angry. I would be very interested to learn, for example, what you would do in the case where you assigned one of the company's employees to do a job for you, and he deliberately chose not to report back to you but instead went and acted on his own, obeying one of your subordinates instead."
She folded her arms across her chest.
"This is the problem we have, Mr. Ashton. I assigned Mr. Garnet to try and trace Miss Black's identity. He followed up several leads, but told me nothing. I followed up the same lead and in fifteen minutes' conversation had an admission that she bought her weapon from Norbury Bell and had secured his aid in warning me when she came back." She turned to the silent security chief. "So you were not only disloyal, you were also incompetent." She looked back at Ashton and said, "Is this an example of the wise counsel I'm supposed to be yielding to?"
She wasn't sure exactly what she expected from him, to be honest, but she'd expected something from her point, some admission of Ashton's fault. Instead it was Garnet who spoke up while the director remained silent.
"It's true I didn't get Bell to tip me off—a tip which didn't prevent him from selling a dangerous new weapon, by the account I heard—but I didn't need to. I had all three of the armorers Dr. Verhart mentioned put under observation from the moment he told me about them. You might recall Strauss helping get you clear of the area and seeing that Sky and Bronzewing got safely away before the police arrived. Unless you deny that's how it happened?"
"Of course not. But that hardly changes things. Unless Strauss is considerably more than he appears, Miss Black would have gone through him in an instant, like she did Sky and Bronzewing."
"His job wasn't to confront her. His assignment was to follow her, find out her identity, possibly even let her lead him to the people that she works for, or I suppose her associates, from what she said. Then she could have been taken into custody when the circumstances worked in our favor, so that we could question her. Only that became impossible, once you barged in, let her get away, and sent her scampering over the rooftops to avoid pursuit that she now knew was after her."
"What do we have now?" Ashton said. "Nothing."
"A name, almost certainly false, and three people who have seen her face clearly enough to possibly be able to identify her again if they saw her," Garnet answered the other man's question in more detail. "And that was in bad light, besides."
Ashton leaned forward, planting his big hands flat on the edge of the desk.
"Do you see my point now, Miss Schnee? Your insistence on treating this business as a personal affront put you into physical and social danger and accomplished nothing but getting yourself and two good men hurt. This is why we attempted to handle this matter properly, without submitting our actions for you to second-guess and misdirect. If we were delinquent in our duty, it was by not keeping enough of an eye on you to be able to stop you before you bollixed things up with your hotheaded, short-sighted actions!"
"You work for me, Mr. Ashton. Regardless of what you thing about my goals—"
"I work for the Schnee Dust Company. My job is to protect its interests and promote its business strategies throughout this country, in the best way I see possible. Whomever this Miss Black may be, she's an enemy of those interests, be it as a paid spy or some kind of radical group's agent. She is not some noble for you to duel on the field of honor as if it was a hundred years ago and you were two aristocrats squabbling over a petty insult at the card table." He stabbed a thick finger at Garnet. "His job is to keep your body safe from harm, something best done by rooting out this enemy and running it to ground, not by putting you out directly in its path!"
"How dare you?" Weiss snapped at him. "Whether or not you agree with my priorities, they are my priorities. If you had been willing to work with me—"
The hand he'd pointed at Garnet slammed back onto the desk with a crack, cutting her off.
"I dare because I've given over thirty years of my life to the well-being of this company and your family's interests, thirty years I'm not going to see go to rack and ruin just because of a spoiled little girl's fantasy."
"Fantasy?"
"To hunt down the woman who scarred your face and defeat her in personal combat? What would you call it?"
"You have no right to be saying any of this."
"I have every right. I honestly didn't want to use this; I'd hoped last night's events had taught you a lesson, and that we could work together properly. Obviously, that isn't the case. You had a valid point back when we spoke the night you were attacked, about your authority as a Schnee family member and shareholder of the company, so I made sure I was on firm ground. I cabled the situation to your father in Vienna. Here's his reply, and a copy of the wire I sent so that you can see I didn't skew the facts in my report."
He reached under his coat and took out a folded packet of papers, which he tossed onto the desk in front of Weiss.
"Go on. Read them. If power is the only thing that can bring you around, then that's what we'll work with."
Glaring at Ashton, she scooped the papers up and flipped them open. Weiss began with the cable Ashton had sent, verifying even before she looked at the content that it was a directive for the text to be encoded and sent to the correct place. If it had merely been text, she'd have concluded it was a bluff—telegraph operators could be in the pay of rivals, and signals could be tapped, and Ashton would never have sent sensitive information without encrypting it.
No such luck. It wasn't a bluff.
Nor could she object to the actual description of her actions. The text of the cable was terse, the medium itself helping to confine Ashton to the facts even more than conscience might have inclined him to do. There were places where Weiss might have objected to a word choice here or there, but she could not claim that Ashton had tried to get his way by mischaracterizing what had happened.
The reply telegram was unambiguous.
Ashton. You are hereby granted full authority to investigate this outrage and respond according to your discretion. Keep my daughter from interfering further. Report any significant developments.
It was signed with her father's name, if the receipt codes hadn't been enough.
"I believe that's sufficiently clear, Miss Schnee? Or do you need it explained?"
"It's clear enough." She handed him back the documents.
"Good. Then since I will not deny you have made definite progress in your own investigation and are the best eyewitness to both incidents, it's time for you to stop fighting us and give Mr. Garnet full and complete answers to his questions. We may still be able to make progress out of this fiasco."
~X X X~
The Blake Belladonna who walked into the offices of the Star had almost nothing in common in appearance with the one who'd been up a tree earlier that morning. Other than the bow concealing her ears, she might as well have been a completely different person.
Her fellow members of the White Fang saw that as well. Too often, they would ask themselves which was the actual Blake. Too many of them suspected—or feared—it was the one she was now, with neatly pinned-up hair, white shirtwaist, and golden-brown skirt and jacket, the very model of an intrepid Lady Reporter.
To her mind, it was a bad joke. While people like that feared she had become all too human, Blake was well aware of the separation between herself and the people around her. She felt it more keenly that afternoon than she had in months, even more than she had last fall. The hustle and hubbub of the offices, as raucous and chaotic as ever, seemed somehow remote and distant.
The only way she could think to describe it was that it was like she was watching a play. No, it was more as if she had actually wandered up on stage while the performance was taking place. They interacted with one another, let the story play out, the lives and deaths, joys and sorrows of the characters progressing, but all at a remove from her, a world one step away that she could walk among but never truly enter.
They were human. She was not. That was an end to it. The fine details didn't matter. That was something people like Vincent or Lucrezia never seemed to understand. The barrier between "us" and "them," alien and belonging, was bold and plain and unable to be crossed. Blake could no more be one of them than she could walk on water or fly to the moon.
She did not even bother to visit her office first, just went directly to her goal, the Star's card files. These indexes contained not only references to the content of back issues filed in the newspaper morgue, but to much of the archived background research done by the reporters to produce those stories.
Since she had the resources, after all, it would be foolish to waste them.
Pandora Development, Saulbridge Sanitarium...the truth was, if what Blake believed was correct, these were the kind of places that the Star would want to investigate and expose. The paper's editorial policy had a definite radical-leaning bent. The reporters themselves seasoned it with a heavy dose of cynicism (witness Brown's jokes at the expense of Blake's "social crusading"), but the political aim was there. The paper was a definite enemy of the Tory government under Lord Salisbury and of similar iconic institutions.
Schnee Dust Company, oddly, filled a strange middle ground for the Star. On the one hand, they were a massively influential social institution, one that employed thousands of workers, and to the extent that such a thing wasn't self-contradictory, made up the face of faceless, soulless industry. To the champion of the "common man," they were one of the main sources of oppression, long hours at low wages in harsh conditions. At the same time, though, they were a relatively new player on the scene, one that had hammered its way in among the old guard and upset the balance of power beyond recognition.
Blake found nothing on Pandora, which was no surprise; she wouldn't have had to ask Brown's help if information had been readily available, but she did find a mention of Saulbridge. She felt her cat ears twitch, an involuntary reaction that she wished she could stop. It was one reason she never accepted the rest of the staff's invitations to their weekly poker games. It was bad enough to have a reflex that could potentially give away her nonhuman identity, without exposing it to the deliberate scrutiny of people who would be watching her closely for "tells."
Noting the file number, she replaced the card and headed to the door leading downstairs. She descended into the basement, dry and musty like she imagined the interior of an Egyptian tomb would be.
"Ah, Miss Belladonna, good afternoon!"
"Hello, Mr. White. How are you doing?"
The gnomelike little man adjusted his spectacles at the tip of his long, hooked nose. He was nearly bald, with only a fringe of white hair ringing his head just above his ears.
"Quite well, quite well, thank you."
"I'm glad to hear it."
"So, how can I help you?" he asked.
"I'm looking for some story notes, done by Robert Ross in '87, about a place called Saulbridge? It's slot 147, according to the index."
"I see. I'll be right back."
He shuffled off into the depths of the morgue. There was a musty stillness all around Blake as she waited for him to return. From above, she could hear the buzz of the newsroom, the clatter of typewriter keys filtering down through the floor, the rattle of printing presses churning out what was proudly proclaimed to have the largest circulation of any evening paper in the nation, but it was all muffled and distant, like it made up an outer world, different from the quiet solitude found here below ground.
It reminded her of the tunnels, of the bits and pieces of the underground where her fellow members of the White Fang had made their home. It gave her a feeling of nostalgia; as much as she liked what she did, to be able to stand next to humans, live in their world, call them if not "friend" at least friendly, she sometimes wanted nothing more than to give up the pretense and just go, relax, escape, and be herself.
Then again, it also worked the other way, the musty air and close quarters of the morgue were confining, shutting her in just as the White Fang was shut in. To them, the noise and chaos of the world outside beckoned, a lure that reached down to them but was ultimately come from the other side of the boundary, unreachable without crossing over.
Thinking that all she had to do was walk up the stairs—
All she had to do was tie on a bow.
—Blake started to think that maybe she could see why it was she was resented by those who didn't have that ability, who couldn't stand so casually between those two worlds.
Even if she wasn't sure if she fit in either of them, at least she had the ability to ask the question.
Her reverie was broken by the shuffling of White's feet, as the old man emerged from the depths. He extended the package of papers, sealed in a file not unlike those she'd found in the Schnee manor safe, and she accepted it.
"Here you are, Miss Belladonna. Mr. Ross's notes. I hope they're of use to you."
"So do I. Thank you, Mr. White."
His lips spread in a grin, revealing yellowed but surprisingly intact teeth.
"No need to thank me, miss. Just keep sticking it to 'em and you'll make me a happy man," he cackled. She smiled back at him, wondering what story, what exposé of the entitled and privileged he thought she was working on.
Don't worry, she thought. It may not be for a story, but they absolutely won't get away with what they're doing.
Blake took the file back upstairs with her and through the din of the "bullpen" area again to her office. She closed the door, then sat down at her desk, untwisted the string from around the clasp, and opened the folder.
The file of notes wasn't specifically about Saulbridge, Blake saw at once. Rather, the notes were about a story Ross had been preparing in 1887 about the state of lunatic asylums in Britain. He'd intended to be shocking and lurid, his story outline showed shamelessly, but while playing off the public fear of rampaging madness he also had the intent of showing up some of the more shocking practices—"care" of the insane that in any other circumstances would have been deemed torture and abuse.
Now that she was reminded of it, Blake could vaguely remember the story, which had been done in several parts. It had even spurred a bit of public outcry, and a couple of private asylums where high fees were charged and the inmates subjected to "science" that was more like something a crazed sorcerer would come up with, or just imprisoned in conditions better suited for an inquisitorial dungeon than a medical facility, had been forced to close their doors.
The thought of what happened in places like that, combined with her own pursuit of Pandora Development, combined together in a single thought. An asylum, particularly a private one where the management could be choosy about what kind of patients to accept, might be an excellent source of human test subjects for whatever evil Pandora might have planned. So often the families of the mad cared nothing about curing or managing the illness, but just wanted the victims locked away where they couldn't be a bother or embarrassment ever again. Indeed, how much of what Pandora's researchers might do was more horrifying than the experimental techniques outlined in Ross's notes?
It was enough to make Blake happy that she wasn't human. Her cat ears twitched again, but this time on purpose, reminding herself of what was.
She wondered if some of the others, if Adam or Vincent or Luna or any of the others had ever had that thought, taken even a moment's pride in being what they were. The thought wasn't helpful, though, and she forced it aside, turning back to the work.
There were cuttings of the published articles at the top of the file, and Blake skimmed through them. Saulbridge wasn't mentioned, which made her curious. She supposed Ross had just been throrough, listing every one of the places he'd checked and having their named indexed. That was, after all, the point of having an index, but it didn't make Blake happy. If Ross hadn't mentioned Saulbridge, it meant that he hadn't discovered anything particularly interesting or scandalous, and Blake wasn't likely to find much of use.
Even so, Blake paged through the notes. They were at least easy to read, being typed transcripts of what Ross had taken down in shorthand in his notebook. Some pages had photographic prints clipped to them, often disquieting, but not helpful to Blake. At last she came to the section about Saulbridge Sanitarium.
Formerly a private home, she read, and turned into a private lunatic asylum in 1874. That date was too early for Blake's purpose, and she wondered if she'd somehow made a horrible mistake, or been led astray by Winchester and Thrush. Had Thrush lied to her, fed her a prearranged story?
She remembered the presence of the sandy-haired man in the steam carriage, though. If it had been a lie, it had been a good one, part of a carefully prepared trap, or at least a wild goose chase with enough supporting detail to serve as a real time-waster. Blake shivered, nervous, as she read on.
Then, she let out a deep sigh, smiling sheepishly, happy that no one else had been able to see how she'd overreacted so dramatically. One hint that something was wrong, and she'd let her mind spiral away out of control with her fears.
But she knew why it was. After her mistake the night before, she was already on edge, afraid of any sign that her mistake had ruined things. Blake's sensitivity to potential bad news was at its most extreme.
In this case, though, she had nothing to concern herself with. A couple of sentences later, Ross had noted, Saulbridge Sanitarium was purchased by a new owner earlier this year. Since he'd written that in 1887, it changed things completely.
Had some difficulty securing interview with supervising doctor. Expected resentment—threat of the Press to get cooperation rarely makes things easy. Was surprised by genial welcome.
Dr. Hyde seems enlightened man—spoke at some length on the science behind madness, including the physical and chemical origins of brain-function. Suggested we stood on the edge of a new age, as alienists combine the different fields of medical study. Talked of using drugs to control human behavior. I mentioned laudanum—he laughed. Hyde said that was like amputating a limb to heal a broken bone, that it should be possible to tailor a drug therapy to patient's specific brain-chemistry.
Whomever this Hyde was, he'd certainly put on a good show. Blake supposed that he could have been a genuine enthusiast, invested in the research that he was conducting for Pandora. The scientists and researchers who served the Schnee Dust Company were the best in their fields, after all; there was a distinct difference between ethics and competence.
She turned the page and read on.
Doubt I'll be able to use any of this for article—scientific matters too dry next to horrors. Could serve as example of modern, positive care if such needed. Don't want to draw attention to Hyde, though. Clear his reluctance to talk to me not attempt to avoid Press, but personal reticence. Can easily understand—a man so horribly burnt naturally would seek to avoid scrutiny.
The papers hit the desk with a thump, slipping from Blake's nerveless fingers. An icy fist seemed to have closed around her heart; she couldn't breathe, couldn't think, only pray it could somehow be coincidence.
It was a prayer she was sure would go unanswered.
