The Unnaturalists

Bayne froze. For a moment, naked despair clouded his eyes until he closed them. “She will soon be at Virulen,” he said, standing and putting his back to Syrus. “We can find her there and persuade her to go to the Manticore after we meet with the Architects.”

There seemed to be no brooking his argument. He was resolute.

“All right,” Syrus said, despite a gnawing sense of misgiving. The Manticore had said he must bring a witch to free both the Elementals and his own people. But he had grown tired of waiting and hoping that the witch would comply.

Bayne must have seen his unease, for he returned from the fire and laid a hand on Syrus’s shoulder. “I understand your impatience. We’ll go tonight. It’ll be dangerous and difficult because of . . . certain matters, but never you mind. I’ll sort all that out. Just rest and be ready.”

“All right,” Syrus said. He would give the Architect this one chance, but if all went awry, Bayne’s key would be in his pocket before dawn.

* * *

Syrus had fallen asleep waiting, but when the door clicked he was wide awake. The fire had burned into embers and the book Syrus had been idling through for days—maps of Old London—had slid to the floor.

Bayne slipped into the room, holding a candle rather than the everlantern most Cityfolk would have used. “Come,” he whispered.

Syrus followed past the hulking bed and a massive wardrobe that threatened to trip him in the dark.

“They’ve nevered the door against my leaving, but not against a skilled lockpick.” Bayne’s smile was ghoulish in the flickering candlelight. He handed Syrus the tools of his trade.

The boy rolled his eyes and bent to the task, hoping it wouldn’t be like the Harpy’s cage. His wrists still smarted just thinking of those little iron hands grasping them.

As the tumblers turned, there was a spark and a fizz. One jolt whizzed into Syrus’s thumb. He shook his hand, cursing.

Bayne watched him expectantly. “Once the lock is sprung, I can disable the rest.” Syrus sighed and turned back to the work.

At last, the door opened. Bayne whispered something and Syrus saw a faint web stretched between the doorposts dissolve into glimmering nothingness.

The house was vast and echoing; Syrus felt swallowed by it. They crept through everlit halls hung with dour portraits and mounts of things both Elemental and not. Down a curving, creaking staircase, back along another hall, through the silent kitchen with its spit-boy snoring by the hearth, and to yet another door Syrus was forced to pick open. Then along a cobbled corridor, through a garden and a courtyard to an iron side gate that sizzled with warding magic.

“A moment,” Bayne said. He stretched his palms toward the gate. Then he paused, looking over at Syrus. “Can you run if required?” he asked, glancing down at Syrus’s foot.

Syrus nodded, grinning.

The next thing he knew, Bayne seized him by the sleeve and pulled him. One moment, they were on one side of the fence, the next they were on the other, running madly through the deserted Uptown street while a banshee alarm wailed behind them. The Empress’s Tower reared so very close on its hill that Syrus thought he could almost see faces looking out at him from the windows. The Imperial Refinery coughed green smoke just beyond it.

“Couldn’t avoid that one, I’m afraid!” Bayne shouted. He grabbed the boy’s sleeve again and yanked him through space and darkness and wailing alarms to stand before the maw of a cave on the River Vaunting.

Syrus put his hands to his head to stop everything from spinning. “Think you could warn me first?” he gasped.

Bayne chuckled. “That was a bit rough. The danger and suddenness and all that. Didn’t have much time to prepare.”

“Why couldn’t we have just done that from your room to here like we did the other night?” Syrus asked. His temples throbbed.

“A little more difficult getting out than getting in. And the summoning stones . . . well . . . their magic is older and more refined than what little we’ve managed to learn in these dark days. The stone draws me to it; I can’t help but go to it. But on my own, without a witch. . . Pffffft.” He gestured lamely and half- smiled.

“Without a witch? She makes you stronger?” Syrus asked.

“Indeed,” Bayne said. “Which is why we’ve been hoping one would arise for so very long. Without her, we’re rather like a hive of drones without a queen bee. Everything depends on her.”

Syrus nodded, though he wasn’t exactly sure about all this talk of drones and bees and whatnot. Sounded like something Nainai would’ve understood much better than he did.

“But don’t tell her I said so,” Bayne added suddenly. “Wouldn’t want her to get a swelled head.”

“I think you’re too late to prevent that,” Syrus said.

Bayne chuckled. “She’s a saucy thing, is she not?”

“Minxish is more what I’d say,” Syrus muttered. He glanced at the Architect. Shadows hid most of his face, but the City lights from far above tricked out a glimmer of something that chased the amusement from his expression. That hardness, whatever it was, wherever it came from, returned.

Bayne looked up at the wavering everlights of the Night Emporium and the phantasmagoric smoke of the Refineries. “We’d best get moving,” he said. “Getting back into my family’s house won’t be easy.”

The stench of the river mud and City offal slimed the back of Syrus’s throat. He coughed as they climbed over detritus and battered rock. He had been down on the shores of Lowtown, where the mudlarks scavenged the refuse caught in the river bend. But he’d never been this far—never had he imagined anything like this existed within the walls of New London. Crumbling columns and pediments carved with weathered faces loomed over them. Even higher, armless dancers, faceless gods, and curving tails of Elementals wormed through the cliff face.

“What is this place?” Syrus whispered.

“It was a city once, a temple of learning where men came in peace to treat with the Elementals. Now it’s a ruin. It’s also a convenient hiding place. No one comes here for fear of what may lurk, even though the Museum up above is built on the old city’s bones,” Bayne said.

The Architect opened his palm and a light sprang into it, a pure, living flame, so very different than the sickly green everlanterns all the Cityfolk used. Syrus followed him under the shattered eaves and through the labyrinth of fallen ceilings and vanished doors, while the river’s muttering echoed in the cavern ceiling overhead. Things looked at him out of the shadows—little nyxes or water sprites or other things he couldn’t guess in the darkness. Syrus missed Truffler fiercely and wondered if he would ever see the hob again.

Bayne didn’t seem to notice the Elementals, but was concentrating on a path only he could discern. At the center of a soaring cavern, a great stair spiraled down from the roof. Old rusting pipes crisscrossed here and there from other tunnels and up along the staircase. There was a sound far below—a whooshing noise that reminded Syrus of the Refinery bellows breathing in and out, fueling the furnace into which the Refiners had thrust the poor Elemental.

“What’s down there?” he asked.

Bayne looked back at him. “Down there? The Lowtown Refinery pipes join up with the Museum fittings in the roof. Just steam, most likely. Come on.”

Syrus followed him around the pit; there was a landing where the sound was particularly loud. A tunnel carved roughly in the living rock plunged off to the left, gated by rusting bars that rattled with the noise.

Syrus stopped and listened. There was a hitch and then a drawn-out snore. No myth-powered machine made a noise like that.

“It sounds like a sleeping animal,” Syrus said.

Bayne listened. “Maybe all those stories about the Beast in the Well are true,” he chuckled.

“The Beast in the Well?”

“It’s said that when Tesla’s Grand Experiment landed our ancestors here on the river bank, they encountered a temple enclosing a deep well. And that if you looked into it, it would look back at you. Some people think the Well ended up underneath the Museum, but no one really knows. I imagine everyone was surprised enough to be here, much less to have buildings showing up at random for several days afterward.”