Weavingshaw, p.43
Weavingshaw, page 43
“Ah, ah, ah,” Orley admonished. “A deal is a deal.”
He took out a glass vial filled with a red liquid from the package and gave it to her. “I am no longer in your debt. I have handed you the cure.”
Leena gripped the glass vial, hope rising in her chest.
Orley lunged toward her, striking her cheek with such force that she staggered backward.
Pain burst behind her eyelids. Her ears rang. The world spun.
In her disorientation, Orley tore the vial from her hands. She scrambled forward, but it was too late. Orley unlatched the window, throwing the vial out.
She heard it shatter on the cobbles below.
For a moment she could only stare at her empty hands before lurching for her pistol, but her pocket was empty. To her terror, she looked up to see Orley holding the weapon, twirling it in his hands.
“The Saint will hunt me down for what I know about you,” Orley said, turning the pistol toward Bram.
Leena flung herself at Orley, attempting to grapple for the gun, but he pushed her back. She slammed into the wall, shaking white dust from the ceiling.
“No,” Leena begged. “Please.”
He fired.
Once. Twice.
The chamber was empty.
In a rage, Orley flung the pistol to the side where it clattered against the mirror, shattering it to fragments.
Leena was too far away for any pieces to pierce her flesh, but she clawed on hands and knees to find a large shard. Gripping it so tightly that it drew a thin line of blood on her palm, she stepped between Orley and Bram.
Orley reared back, hands in the air. He licked his lips and grimaced at the taste.
Leena bitterly understood that Orley had fulfilled his end of the bargain—he’d handed her the vial—and she had nothing else to trade with him for the poison’s antidote.
“Leave,” Leena yelled. “Out. Now. Before I slit your sniveling throat.”
Just before leaving, he turned back to her. “One day you will see, my dear, what happens to all the women who come into contact with the Avon men. You will soon understand that there is no limit to what they will sacrifice for Weavingshaw.” There was a promise in his voice—someone who had seen calamity once and now saw it again in her. “One day you will remember me, and you will wish that I had killed him.”
Leena spat at him.
The demon’s face twisted as he wiped his chin with a flounce of his sleeve, then left without a departing glance. Leena bolted the door after him.
Light crept into the room, and she dared to peek outside to see Orley’s huddled figure making his way up a long street.
Their safe place was in an attic, Leena realized, in a town.
It was snowing here too, but the snow looked like gray ash. The houses were built in rows, all made from black stone with towering spires and long thin roofs that stretched toward the sky. Walkways lined the canals, the water inky and fathomless.
A woman—a demon?—standing beside the canal held a naked baby by the ankles. Leena watched as she plunged the squirming babe into the dark waters, then held it for so long that Leena gasped before the screaming infant was wrenched out. The woman wrapped the baby in fur, but the infant’s wails didn’t diminish even as Leena withdrew from the window.
Forcing herself away, Leena turned to check Bram’s bandages.
They’d bled through. She hung her head, weeping because she didn’t have anything sterile to replace them with. She fell asleep like that, kneeling on the hard wooden floor, head resting against the mattress beside Bram.
When she finally stirred, it was dark outside again. No phantom had come to possess her body; perhaps the demon world was bereft of ghosts. The only light came from the low-burning candle. She would need to replace it soon.
Leena’s breath hitched when she saw that Bram had also woken.
He was lucid.
She wondered briefly if he remembered their kiss—the way his fingers had laced through her hair or the way his lips had dragged across her skin.
There was no recognition of it when his eyes met hers, and she felt an odd squeezing in her chest.
Bram’s forehead was cool to the touch, but she didn’t know how long it would be before the fever ravaged him again. Perhaps it was better that way, she thought to herself—that Bram became too lost to hallucinations to notice death’s long shadow darkening his doorway.
Somehow, he didn’t seem as burdened by those grim thoughts as she was.
Instead, he looked at her oddly, as if she was something otherworldly and he’d been trapped in unholy reality his entire life.
“You stayed with me,” he rasped, his voice almost reverent. One calloused finger moved to touch her, as if to confirm his own words—as if to dispel any fears of her being an apparition. He traced her cheek. “Why did you remain?”
She didn’t have an answer for him. At least, nothing that would have sufficed.
His eyes caught sight of the bruise blooming on her jaw and he furrowed his brows, jolting to a sitting position. “Who—?”
“Orley,” Leena clarified, a knot in her throat. “He’s gone now.”
Fury ignited in his eyes. “I swear, I will kill—”
He stopped suddenly, looking around the room, before stumbling upward. He clutched his left side as he staggered toward the window. He stared outside for a long moment, eyebrows knitted together, before turning to her swiftly.
His voice shook as he stared at her in bewilderment. “What have you done?”
She knelt with her back to the mattress, her voice hushed. “I had no choice.”
He lowered himself slowly into the wooden chair beside the bed. He looked unnerved, clutching his timepiece, the gold chain swinging on a pendulum.
“Leena, I never wanted…” He swallowed. “I never wanted you to come here. I would never wish this place on you.”
She reached for his shoulder and he inhaled sharply from the touch.
There was, Leena thought desperately, no room to play games with each other. She had landed them in the demon world as the only viable option for survival. Bram must now complete the last piece of the puzzle; otherwise their survival would hang on an even thinner thread than it did now.
It was time Leena received a confession from the Saint of Silence.
“Bram, I know your father had something to do with the demons, but Lady Hargreaves could not tell me more.”
There was wreckage in his eyes—a past pain long buried but still felt.
Finally, his response came from a voice that was hoarse, as if dragged from him. “I was twelve years old when my father and Hargreaves took me here. They indentured me to the Duke of Fray, a powerful demon.” Unevenly, he unclasped the timepiece he always wore from his chest, thrusting it toward her. “I still do not know what I was traded for, and so I have never been able to break the contract.”
Leena took the timepiece, astonished to see that it was the same as both Margery’s and Lord Avon’s, all three indented with the same elegant scrawl: Fray.
Roughly hand-carved into the lid of the timepiece were five words:
Kill what you cannot survive.
“Open the timepiece.”
She did so. The top number, where the twelve o’clock position should’ve been, was in this case marked as one hundred and twenty. The rest of the numbers seemed also to increase by a factor of ten. The one o’clock was written as ten, the two o’clock was twenty, and so on until one hundred and twenty at the top.
The single hand was halted just below the one hundred and ten mark.
“That doesn’t tell time, Leena, it counts down the years.”
One hundred and eight years.
Leena’s eyes fell to his hands: green veins interlacing beneath the skin, strong fingers gripping the seat of the chair with too much force, the firm knuckles white and tense.
He continued, each word a jagged edge. “If I do not find a way to break the contract with the demons, I will be indentured past even the point of death.”
Leena reeled back, jaw clenched so hard she tasted blood on her lips again.
Images of the first day she met him echoed through her mind—how he’d been shrouded in seclusion and cruelty. How little she had understood then of Bram’s motivations…
The reaping of secrets…
The iron-clad contracts…
The misery he collected upon himself from the weight of his confessors…
The hunt for Lord Avon’s ghost…
All in pursuit of breaking his own imprisonment.
Leena felt as if she could choke on these revelations—all that had tried to ruin him.
He was trapped, the timepiece he always wore an incessant reminder that even death was no freedom for him.
Her heart—her entire being—ached for him.
Helplessness concentrated in her throat, suffocating her.
Vessel…
Leena’s mind shifted—the echo of remembrance building in her memory.
“Lord Kilworth spoke of a vessel before I…” She dropped the last words, not allowing her mind to linger on his death. “He called it the Limitless Vessel. He said Percival had hidden it. I wonder…”
At that moment, they both stared at each other in comprehension.
“Lord Hargreaves—”
“The red diary—”
Bram reached for the diary from his pocket, grasping it in his hand and staring down at it with a hard gaze.
“Do you think that is what they traded you for? The Limitless Vessel itself?” When Bram did not respond, still staring intently at the book in his hand, Leena asked another question before giving him a chance to answer the first. “What is the Limitless Vessel?”
It took him a moment to reply.
In that interim of silence, she wanted to steady the grip of his hand on the book, to draw him closer to her, to anchor them both within this unsettling life.
“It is common knowledge here, in Bastmore.” There was a brief narrowing of his eyes, a return to the former Saint of Silence—one whose sharp mind was a blade, cutting and culling. “It’s a powerful object, one that can open the gate between the human and the demon world indefinitely, ushering an uninhibited flow of demons aboveground. The person who controls this object would control that gate.”
Leena nodded slowly. “It would make sense that Hargreaves is hunting for it.” She paused. “Lady Hargreaves did try to warn me.”
His glance fell to her. “Warn you?”
“Yes. Our time on the moor was very limited and I could not tell you more about Lady Hargreaves’s memories.” Leena brought a hand to her forehead, squeezing her eyes to remember every important detail. “It was in the last memory she left for me. It was after they had heartlessly sold you; your father and Hargreaves were bitterly fighting over an object. Lady Hargreaves did not know what that object was, but it was evident that Percival had hidden it and Hargreaves had killed him in a futile attempt to find it. That must be it. That hidden object…is the Limitless Vessel.”
His grip on the diary did not loosen. “My father must’ve hidden its whereabouts, knowing such a secret would lead to his murder.” He flicked through the diary once more, before slamming shut the cover with force. “I wonder if he left instructions on how to track this object within the Avon diary? It must be read more carefully.”
“First we must find the antidote.” Leena leaned forward, drawing in her brows with determination crossing her face. “Then, if the red diary indeed has the map that will lead us to the Limitless Vessel, we will follow this map and release you from the demons.”
His gaze flashed to her at the word we. For a moment, looking at him—unable to look anywhere but at him—Leena began to understand the depth of his solitude. Of his loneliness. She remembered the way he had been back in Golborne, separated in his study, surrounded by those ledgers. All the while he’d been completely isolated, choked with his own secrets.
A hard realization shadowed his face.
“Leena—” He released a staggered breath at her name. “If this is all for the Limitless Vessel, that means that Hargreaves will send every man, every demon, every trader to hunt me for this diary.” His eyes swallowed every line on her face, the curve of her cheekbones, the shape of her lips, as if desperate to imprint them to memory. “You are not safe here. Should he get his hands on you, he will torture you, then kill you, to get to me.”
Then he averted his gaze, his voice turned detached, but the hand gripping the diary was still harsh and unyielding. “That means you must leave me. You must leave me immediately.” His throat moved.
“Leena Al-Sayer, I release you from your contract.”
Acknowledgments
This book would be nothing but forgotten scribbles without the tireless efforts of Chloe Seager, agent extraordinaire. Thank you for championing the book from its early stages to its last—I am constantly awestruck by how hard you work!
I am also indebted to my very talented editors, Anne Groell and Lara Stevenson, who have shaped my writing and pushed this book to its best possible version. Every editorial insight was right on the mark, and I’m so glad I had the chance to work with the two of you. The book would have been much worse off without you both as my editors.
I’m also incredibly grateful to the whole team at Madeleine Milburn Agency, including Maddy Belton, who was very kind to read the first drafts. As well as Valentina Paulmichl, who advocated for this book around the world—because of you I get to see my words in translation. And Hannah Kettles for being infinitely patient with all my queries about taxes.
The team at Penguin Random House has been nothing short of amazing. I am very beholden to copy editors Eleanore, Holly Reed, and Loren Noveck, who have saved me from public embarrassment by finding all my grammatical errors, as well as Madi Margolis for being a joy over email, Paul Gilbert, Erin Korenko, and Caroline Cunningham.
A huge thank-you to Micaela Alcaino, who remains my favorite artist. I knew my book was in the best possible hands the moment I heard you were designing the cover.
I’d also like to thank my tenth-grade geography teacher, Mrs. Sylvester, who gave me confidence that has carried me through my adulthood.
Thanks to my nieces, Zozo, Aya, and Mimi, who taught me not only how to work through all the noise, but also how much my heart can expand with love.
Of course, my adoration endlessly and endlessly to my husband, who makes me cups of tea without asking and buys me books just because.
And to my sister, Roua, who was the first person to teach me how to write. No one can tell a better story than you.
And lastly, but most of all, thank you to my Mama and Baba—who taught me how to read, who paid all my library overdue fees, and whose love I carry with me everywhere, especially in my words.
About the Author
Heba Al-Wasity was inspired to write by her own experiences of being born an Iraqi refugee in Libya, growing up in Canada, and attending medical school in the UK. She has worked in emergency care and several psychiatric inpatient units, gaining firsthand insight into the ways that poverty and deprivation can lead to social inequalities. She is based in Greater Manchester, England.
Instagram: @alwasityhh
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Heba Al-Wasity, Weavingshaw
