Page 127 of When the Sky Breaks

Fifty-Nine

Neal

No pigeon came that morning. And immediately I set to work. I was a pessimist by nature. That’s what made me good at my job. I gave them two hours in case of delay, in case of some unexpected but benign contingency, and then called the communication missed and started executing rescue plans.

Ansel had spun some story about Sorcha being pregnant out of wedlock with a drunkard’s baby. And it made for an easy cover to go in and rescue.

I sent three sentries out to patrol near the house, explaining that if Sorcha was in danger she’d inevitably send animals out for help. Little ones. So I told them to watch for rats or songbirds—any tiny creatures behaving out of order, that seemed to be pointing to a specific location. I ordered them back at nightfall. And prayed that they would see some kind of pattern to guide me later.

In the meantime I rounded up my four youngest, roughest-looking guards.

“Assume everyone in that house is complicit,” I instructed. “One way or another they’re holding your sovereign against her will. We can’t have police called—though I doubt they’d risk it regardless—but no edged weapons, no firearms. Fight dirty. They’re expecting you to. Your singular job is to buy me time until I can get her out. Even if it means punching an old woman. Understood?”

No one breathed a word of disagreement.

“And O’Faelen?” one of the guards asked.

“Is smart and stubborn and ancient,” I replied. “Keep an eye for him. But Lady Sorcha is your number one priority.”

Nightfall came and there was no word from Sorcha and Ansel. I sat up on the roof until almost nine o’clock waiting, watching the horizon, feeling hope bloom in my chest every time I saw a pigeon and then collapse again as they all carried on without a message for me. My scouts returned at nine o’clock, all reporting that rats seemed to be trying to get attention for the back, right-hand corner of the mansion’s basement.

It wasn’t much. But it was enough to go on.

So I doused myself and my guards in whiskey and gin, roughed up our shirts with ash from the fire and my hunting knife, put belladonna in our eyes to dilate pupils for good measure, and then stalked down the darkened Edinburgh streets toward the eerie white marble house.

I banged on the whitewashed mahogany front door with the bottom of an empty whiskey bottle. I was here to make a scene, might as well begin as obnoxiously as possible. An older woman answered the door—taupe calico dress, severe low bun, no apron.

“May I help you? Are you here because you’ve fallen on hard times, sir?” she asked, eyebrows knitting together in an uncomfortably practiced gesture of concern.

“My piece of shit father-in-law brought my wife here,” I slurred, begging the woman would buy the charade. “I’m here to take her back.”

The woman’s brow furrowed farther, but I pushed past her and into the house.

“Now where are you, Albert, you leech?” I shouted up the steps. “Sally and I were happy, you bastard!”

“What’s all this?” A middle-aged man with a black mustache emerged from one of the aggressively whitewashed doors lining the front hallway. “Is something the matter? Do you need assistance, good sir . . .”

He trailed off as the four guards I had brought with me filed in behind, all reeking of alcohol, clothes stained and torn.

“Oh many things are the matter,” I said, getting right up to the mustached man’s face. “So many things. Can’t make a pittance in the mines any longer. But we’ve got mill owners blowing all kinds of their money on occult retreats instead of doctors.”

“I’m sure this is a simple misunderstanding,” the man soothed.

“And I’m sure that a man named Albert Mansard came here a few days back with a pregnant girl named Sally,” I said, raising my voice until it was nearly a yell, “and I bloody well want my wife back!”

And with that I punched the man square in the jaw. Blood sprayed across the whitewashed stairs. The old woman at the door gasped. And suddenly the hall was awash with activity. A half dozen other cultists emerged from rooms upstairs and along the hallway, and my guards followed instructions perfectly—fighting with blows designed to distract but not maim and creating every bit of ruckus possible so I could slip back through the hall and try to find a stairway down to the cellar to rescue my wife, my sovereign, and my unborn baby that she carried.

I found the narrow cellar stairway behind yet another identical whitewashed door. The steps led down to the left, back corner of the house, near the coal shoot for the fires. So if my intelligence was any good, once I got downstairs I would likely have to argue or fight my way through more of the cultists before I found Sorcha somewhere across the house. But as I rushed down the steps and down the hall it was suspiciously vacant. I passed a locked iron door—stark black standing out against the whitewashed surfaces that extended even down into the cellar. And then I glimpsed the kitchen with pots of stock that smelled like rotting flesh, still simmering but unattended, and six full-sized meat hooks dangling from the ceiling—the kind butchers used to gut whole animals. I suppressed a shudder.

I yelped as something darted over my foot. Then looked down to see a brown rat sitting up on my boot, nose twitching, paws raised, clearly here with a purpose. So I stepped back, gestured ahead, and hoped the animal would understand.

The rat skittered away, down the hallway, then turned off to one side passage, then another. I took note of the laundry as I passed—vats of linen that smelled like piss and sulfur. A laundry had to have ventilation, and ventilation meant windows, which meant means of escape.

I looked back down to be sure I hadn’t lost sight of the rat. The tiny animal had paused, nose twitching, outside a bolted wooden door—whitewashed like everything else.

“Sorcha?” I called, pounding on the door. “Love?”

“Neal!” Sorcha’s voice was muffled through the door.