Ice slid down his spine at the question, fingers spasming around the chain he held. He wanted to lie but knew it would be pointless. So he said nothing at all, and Eimarille only smiled at his silence. “Your secrets won’t be kept past dawn.”
She turned on her heel, and the pressure against his back from Terilyn’s blade had Nathaniel walking forward. The chain connecting the manacles around his ankles scraped against the wooden floor as Eimarille led him deeper into the embassy.
No servants attended them, the place quiet to his ears. That changed when she led them into a library and went to a bookcase. She spun the rings of a miniature astrolabe, and the quiet sound of gears moving filled the room.
One of the bookcases opened outward, revealing a hidden space behind it, with stone steps leading down in a spiral staircase. Eimarille didn’t look back as she gathered the skirt of her gown in both hands and stepped into that hidden space. Terilyn shoved him forward, and Nathaniel could only stumble toward a fate he couldn’t escape.
The descent was slow, but Terilyn let him take his time so he didn’t fall and break his neck. Though perhaps that would’ve been the better option.
Because down below, in the catacombs, was a horror worse than death.
When they reached the bottom of the staircase, a short corridor led to a door marked with spellwork that Nathaniel couldn’t read. He thought it had something to do with silence, for it was quiet in that corridor, but his ears filled with someone’s agonized scream the second he shuffled through the door Eimarille had pushed open.
He couldn’t comprehend what he saw in that moment. Not right away.
The laboratory was brightly lit by gas lamps that spotlighted a worktable where a woman lay. She was naked, body covered in blood and other fluids. Her arms were outstretched and strapped down by metal restraints, as were her legs. Tubing ran from ports in her veins to machinery around her.
A man dressed in a warden’s uniform had his hands buried in her chest, her ribs cracked open like grotesque butterfly wings.
Nathaniel thought she was dead, that the scream had come from one of the other two people he could see huddled in a cage at the far end of the laboratory.
But then her head turned toward him, eyes staring at him unseeingly, as the warden pushed something into place in her chest cavity. When the warden removed his hands, they were covered in blood.
“Klovod,” Eimarille said. “I have a task for you.”
Nathaniel’s mind tripped over the name, staring at the puppet master and finally understanding what he was seeing.
“You make therionetkas,” he croaked out.
Terilyn shoved him forward, and he had no choice but to approach the woman’s deathbed, for all that she was still alive. The stench of rotten flesh lingered in the air, even if she looked nothing like a revenant.
Set against the pulsating beat of her lungs, nestled amidst the gore of vivisection, was a clockwork metal heart. In the center of that intricate framework was the glimmer of magic, the aether beating like the heart it had replaced.
Bile crept up his throat, acid searing his tongue, as Nathaniel hunched over and got sick.
“I need to finish with this one,” theKlovodsaid.
“Make it quick. This man is to be your priority.” Eimarille stepped aside, her gown swirling around her ankles. The hem dragged through the blood on the floor, but the black color would hide the stains. Nathaniel averted his face from the torture happening before him, but he was unable to block out the sounds of the woman’s screams and the crack of bone breaking.
Eventually the screaming cut off, and the quiet was almost worse. He chanced a glance only once, sick at the sight of theKlovodsewing up the woman’s chest. The docile expression on her face reminded him of a child’s doll—empty and mindless.
When theKlovodfinished, he undid the metal straps, disengaged the tubing with its chemicals, and tapped a brass wand against a newly scarred chest. “Sit up.”
Therionetkasat up, revealing no pain in the aftermath of the horrifying operation she’d undergone. The blankness in her gaze never left, and she only obeyed her master as theKlovodsent her to stand in a different cage from the other prisoners.
Then he turned his hideous attention on Nathaniel.
“He’s a merchant. Useless for your politics,” theKlovodsaid.
“He’s a cog, and I want answers,” Eimarille replied.
TheKlovodgrunted and came around the worktable, tapping the wand against his leg. Nathaniel jerked back, right into the point of Terilyn’s stiletto. It cut through his ruined day jacket and into his skin, making him hiss.
Terilyn tipped her head back, catching his eye. “Don’t move.”
TheKlovodstood in front of Nathaniel, reaching up to remove the blood-spattered goggles he wore. The scar on his cheek pulled at his lips oddly. This close, Nathaniel could see the impression of teeth in the scar tissue.
“Why are you doing this?” Nathaniel asked.
