“This building is just a shell,” he says. “Let’s get out of this alley.”
The air is fresher out of the shadow of half-burned buildings with their charred timbers exposed. We’re now several streets away from Elliott and the tavern.
These must be the oldest buildings in the city. The masonry on the ornate doorways and around the arched windows is crumbling. Does anyone even live here anymore? Could Father be in one of these desolate homes? We pause in the shadow of a cathedral.
“If I remember correctly, there are steam-powered bathhouses on this street,” Will says. “Kent used to drag me here to look at the mechanisms. And I just wanted to hang out in the Debauchery District. Now I see how important it is to learn about the world around us. Now, and the world before the plague.”
I nod, enjoying the sound of his voice.
“I could have learned so many things from my father.”
He knew more than anyone in the city, and I never even questioned him. All I experienced was what I could see from April’s fancy steam carriage. Will knows this, but he has the decency not to say anything.
We walk along together, stopping occasionally to hang more flyers. The shadows are lengthening, and as always, the city looks increasingly sinister as darkness falls.
“We should get back,” I say. “We’ve come a long way.”
“That we have.” Will stares out across the street for a moment, and then he turns to me, his eyes crinkled in a smile above the white of his mask. He hangs one more flyer. His hands are as deft as they ever were in the Debauchery Club, taking my blood. “I’ll get these up as widely as possible,” he offers. “I know a lot of places, and I can operate on very little sleep. You never know where your father might be hiding. He could be someplace you would never expect.”
I used to think that Father was predictable, with his thoughtful but fumbling way of speaking, his vagueness. “Parents are supposed to be boring,” I say bitterly, hating myself for a burst of anger that feels childish. Useless.
“He’s smart enough to find a hiding place where the mob won’t find him.” Will’s voice is neutral.
But I don’t respond, because something brushes against my ankle. I look down at a hand thrust through rotten wood at the base of the building. It grips my ankle and pulls hard, knocking me sideways into Will. The flyers scatter around us.
I scream once, and then the hidden assailant pulls my feet completely out from under me. I try to scramble backward through the dirt, but the hands don’t let go, and now a whole arm is exposed. A man’s arm, marred with weeping sores, reaching from some unseen cellar. The wood splinters at the base of the building.
Papers fly everywhere in the wind.
As the man pulls me forward, my left leg twists under my body. I claw at the knife in that boot, feeling a brief chill as the blade slides against my hand, a flash of pain. Then, finally, it’s free. I thrust it forward, aiming for the area between his thumb and forefinger, the fattest part of the man’s grimy, infected hand.
Will’s shadow falls over me. He stomps down hard, and his boot crushes the man’s grubby wrist. Then he lunges forward, grabbing the diseased man by both of his arms and pulling him up. He dashes the attacker’s head violently against the building wall. When he lets go, the man falls away from us, into the cellar, as if he has no bones to support himself.
I’m sprawled in the street, and Will is half over me. We don’t move for several breaths.
A bloody stain drips down the wall. I lean forward and peer into the cellar. It’s full of low tables and bodies. I gasp and almost scramble away. But . . . there is no sudden stench. No sickly sweet smell of rotting corpses. No sign of movement. Perhaps the black shapes aren’t victims, but simply heaps of dark cloaks.
Is this some sort of hideout or storehouse for Malcontent’s men? How many of them are down there?
A crash from inside the cellar makes me jump, and Will wraps his arms around me, yanking me away from the opening.
“Come on,” he says. “If someone is down there . . . we need to run.”
My first step lands on a flyer and I slip, but Will catches me. Then we are running, my hand in his, threading through streets and alleys to the tavern where Elliott’s men come to attention as they see us wildly dashing toward them.
We burst through the front doors, gasping for breath. Will explains quickly, and Elliott takes off in the direction we came from. His men follow, pouring around me as if I am some sort of blockade in their path.
But I won’t be left behind.
Will tries to hold me back, but I pull away, so he follows. By the time we return, Elliott and his men have pushed through the wooden door. Others are involved in knocking away the rotten wood at the base between the foundation stones and the upper part of the building.
A soldier carries out a heap of ragged homespun robes.
“Don’t touch anything if you don’t have a mask.” Elliott’s voice is not exactly afraid, but concerned. I see him jump from the top of the cellar stairs, all movement and excitement. He’s at his best, commanding his men. “We’ll burn everything except the weapons.” But then his demeanor changes. “Out,” he yells, just as I cross the threshold, his voice higher than usual. “Everyone out. This man died of the Red Death.”
The soldiers flee the building. But Elliott won’t join them. He won’t risk his men, but he isn’t afraid of risking himself.
And he has no protection from the Red Death. I offered him whatever was in that tiny vial that Father gave me, but he put the glass to my lips and made me drink it instead. If anyone is protected from the Red Death, it’s me.
Slowly, ignoring the twinge in my ankle, I enter.
The last sunlight has faded outside, and it is fully dark inside. In his deliberate way, Elliott strikes a match against the wall, watches it for half an instant, and then drops it onto the pile of robes. “This will provide a little light,” he says as they ignite. “But also smoke. We only have a few moments to discover what this place was.”
It seems to be something of a storeroom. Several bottles of liquor stand on a table, as well as a loaf of bread and some dark lumps that must be rotting vegetables.
“Look for a door,” Elliott says.
I spot it before he does and move forward across the uneven floor. The body of the man Will killed is close enough that I could touch it if I wanted to. But I try not to look at it. The door is small, like the one we saw in the clockmaker’s basement workshop. Elliott pushes against it, but it won’t budge.
“Sir?” One of the soldiers asks from outside.
Elliott throws his weight against the door, but still nothing happens.
“It’s locked from the other side,” he says. The cellar is filling with smoke. We’re out of time—my eyes are watering and my throat is closing. I start back, but I trip over the body, and even in the inferno I see it clearly. Two blood tears stain the cheeks.
“Come.” Elliott guides me back to the street, and then turns to help the men. Will pulls me around the bend in the alley, where none of the soldiers or bystanders can see us.
His face is set. Calm.
“You killed him, before the Red Death did,” I say softly.
He shrugs. “If he wanted to live, he shouldn’t have grabbed you.”
The light of the moon is faint, but it shines on a tiny jagged scar just above his eyebrow. There’s disgust on his face, but no remorse.
Without meaning to, I reach up and touch the scar. “How did you get that?”
“That one is from a girl in the Debauchery Club. I was trying to get her to the door. She lashed out. Her fingernail caught me there.”
He’s calm about the memory, and about what he just did, but I know how he loathes violence.
“I’m sure you saw many . . . interesting things at the club.”
He laughs. “I’m not sure ‘interesting’ is the right word. But yes, I saw things.” Before I can ask him to elaborate, Elliott is there with us.
CHAPTER TEN
ELLIOTT OFFERS ME HIS COAT, BUT I DON’T NEED IT.
The crack in my mask seems to have gotten worse, probably in the fight, and it’s sharp against my lips.
“Are we going to the Debauchery Club?” I ask as one of Elliott’s men quietly hands him our packs. He must have sent him back to retrieve them.
“That’s what I told everyone,” Elliott says. He looks to Will. “Did you prepare for our arrival?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We’ll arrive early tomorrow. Tonight, I’d rather no one know where we are sleeping.” He gives the smoldering cellar a last look, as if the man’s attack is tied to his caution.
Behind us, the entire building that housed Malcontent’s supply cellar is burning. A few families from the upper floors stumble down the stairs and to the street.
“Make sure they find someplace safe to stay,” Elliott tells one of his soldiers, and then he’s leading us away, though my legs feel rubbery and weak.
“I’ll want to continue our search for my father tomorrow,” I tell Elliott.
“Of course.” He nods but shifts from one foot to the other. Today he got a taste of leadership, and while I’m happy for him and I support his quest to take over the city, I won’t let him forget his sister.
I walk by Elliott’s side through the frightful streets and alleys, always aware of Will two steps behind us. Shadows creep in around us, full of the threat of Malcontent’s malice. We killed one of his men today, but how many hundreds does he have? Do we have any chance fighting both them and the plagues?
Elliott stops before a wrought-iron gate. The building it guards is set back from the street. Elliott leads us through the gate to a shadowed stairway that winds around the side of the house and then down beneath.
The entrance isn’t like the one that led to the cellar where I lived with my father and Finn. This house is much nicer, the neighborhood grander. But something, the angle of the stairs, the brick on the side of the building, takes me back. All of a sudden I am ten years old, staring down the cellar stairs that led to years of exile. Years in the dark with Finn. Mother slinking away, out of the corner of my eye. I know now that she didn’t choose to leave us, didn’t want to go, but the memory still stings. And Finn died in that cellar.
“We’ll be safe here,” Elliott claims. But I feel anything but safe. “We shouldn’t be where we are expected to be, not yet. Not with so much riding on me. On us.”
It makes sense, but I shake my head. My nightmares, the ones that forced Father to sedate me, always occurred in a cellar.
I look away from the entrance, and I focus on the empty street. The leaves rasp against the sidewalk. The moon is unnaturally bright. Footsteps echo from the street beyond. Heavy footsteps.
Both Will and Elliott are waiting for me to continue, to descend into this new cellar, but I don’t move.
“We need to get inside, Araby.” Elliott’s voice is cool, calm.
“No,” I say.
But he ignores me, walking carefully down the stairs and opening the door into darkness. I tremble.