A staggered breath from the older man. “In the hundreds.”
Leena’s eyes flickered to the burned woman once more, wanting to see ifthiswould finally release her, but it did not.
“Do not waste my time. A factory fire that occurred ten years ago is not uncommon knowledge,” St. Silas said, every word a strike. “What isyoursecret?”
The old man released a breath. “Back then, thieves used to run rampant in my factory. To prevent the pilfering of precious merchandise, I-I…” He stuttered, swallowing the words, before continuing in a whisper. “I locked them all in.”
It took Leena a moment to understand.
There was no curiosity in Mr. St. Silas’s face. It was clear that while Leena’s disbelieving mind could not grasp the reality of the tradesman’s words, Mr. St. Silas understood perfectly and was not surprised byit.
“Locked you in?” Leena demanded, appalled, staring once more at the phantom behind his shoulder. Then she realized her slip. “I-I meant…whois it that you locked in?”
She knew, even without directly looking at him, that Mr. St. Silas had pounced on her slip of the tongue, his eyes narrowing again.
With trepidation, knowing she would answer for it momentarily, Leena instead focused on the man’s shuddering voice. “My workers, as I did not know who among them was responsible. When their shift began in the morning, I’d lock the doors until they were released home in the evening, with every person searched before their release. This ensured”—his voice broke—“that they could not steal material from under the nose of the foreman.”
The images roared through her mind—the fire licking at the cotton wheels, the workers pounding at the locked doors. This was why her father had wanted a union. She could not tear her eyes from the phantom, hovering with half her face unrecognizable from the fire.
In Leena’s peripheral vision, she saw Mr. St. Silas document the secret in his ledger, and in that moment she hated him more than she’d thought possible. She hated that he made her sit here and listen to such heartbreak, and she hated that he remained so unaffected byit.
“You may leave.” Mr. St. Silas dismissed the man, handing him a slip of paper with the amount he was to be paid. “Knock on the second room on the right, and Jeremy will settle your account.”
Vaguely, Leena noted that the number written upon the slip of paper had a higher value than any of the day’s previous confessions. It would make sense, she supposed. The more fatal the secret, the higher the recompense.
Leena was jarred back to the present by the sound of the tradesman staggering from the room.
A change had suddenly overtaken the old man.
He looked ten years aged, his steps hobbling, his back now bent, the weathered face contorting beneath some invisible pain. She was unable to look away from this horrifying transformation, her eyes staring unbelievingly at the man. She had never known remorse to have such physical manifestations. Her head swiveled once about the room in search of something that could cause this kind of instantaneous alteration, but she found nothing.
The door shut behind him, the ghost of the burned woman silently trailing after the tradesman as she, too, vanished.
The silence that followed was deadly.
For a few moments, Leena stared fixedly at her white-knuckled hands folded in her lap, her mind still swirling from all she had witnessed.
Finally, when she could bear the stillness no longer, she raised half-weary, half-defiant eyes toward Mr. St. Silas. “I did not mean to—”
“Tomorrow, before the start of your shift, you will drop off your botanical book at my study. For every interruption, every missed opportunity to inform me of vital information, every inattentive moment you pass, I shall rip out a page and feed it to the fire.” His smile was sardonic. “Three pages are already owed.”
A Guide to Botany?
She stood up, chair scraping against the floor. He did not rise at her standing, as was customary, but continued to take off his black gloves, folding them into his waistcoat pocket.
“You…How did…” Never had Leena stuttered so painfully in her life. How on earth did he know about her book, her most prized possession above all else, tethering her to her mother and a childhood long gone?
She thought wildly. Had she been carrying it in her hands in front of him? And even so, how could he possibly know its value to her? Was it that wretched housekeeper rifling through her things who had informed him? Did he have some darker means of acquiring information about the people around him?
Finally, he stood up, giving her a slow bow.
“This concludes our day. I bid you good afternoon, madam.”
“Mr. St. Silas—” He only turned slightly at her address, for which she was glad; her face revealed her near-panic. “Sir…I…I beg your pardon.” She swallowed hard. “I lost my concentration, but it will not happen again. If you could only spare my book.” She couldnot, even against her better judgment, pretend indifference to the immeasurable worth of that book—especially when it was threatened with being ripped from her and slowly destroyed.
“Sparing it, Miss Al-Sayer,” he said, opening the door and barely glancing back at her, “is entirely at your disposal. Do your work well, and you will have nothing but peace from me.”
His disdainful voice remained echoing through her mind long after he was gone, stinging her like a slap. For such a man to offerpeaceto her would be the equivalent of a burning flame offering condolences to a forest—a harbinger of devastation.
