She seemed to glow in the near darkness. Her skin was like ivory, her hair almost white, and her gown as white as her hair, but she was not a figure of loveliness. Like her widower, Mary was prepared for war, and she bore two shotguns upon her back in the precise manner Mr. Morrison did. It occurred to Lucy that she knew almost nothing of their lives together. Had they gone on adventures, faced magic and monsters? What had passed between them had been real and true and lived, not like the silly infatuation she had felt for Mr. Morrison when she was sixteen or the foolish attraction she’d felt for Byron. Theirs had been a true love, forged and built and earned. She could see that in Mr. Morrison’s eyes as he gazed upon her. He swallowed hard, and appeared to look away, but then turned back, determination in his eyes. He would be telling himself that this was not his wife, not his Mary, Lucy thought. She could not imagine the suffering.
She would have imagined Mrs. Emmett would have reacted more strongly to seeing her old mistress, but she only stood, gazing almost stupidly, awaiting the next situation that would require her attention. This one, evidently, did not.
“I’ll not murder him in cold blood,” said Mr. Morrison. “Not like that.”
“He deserves no better,” said Mary.
Mr. Morrison gritted his teeth, and then took a deep intake of breath. “Perhaps not, but I shall have to live with what I do, and I cannot be so base as he. But you don’t need me. You could do what you like for yourself.”
She shook her head. “I have no fear of consequences. No fear of God or damnation or my immortal soul. I
“Perhaps you are more like what you once were than I credit,” Mr. Morrison said in a quiet voice.
“No,” she answered. “If it were you to whom he had done this, my old self would have slit his throat in that chair and never regretted it.”
“You killed Spencer Perceval,” said Lucy. “You have murdered already.”
“I merely put his murderer in Perceval’s way,” she said. “It is not the same.”
“Ahh,” said Byron, who had gone off to a corner to make use of a necessary pot. Lucy tried to ignore the sound of splashing. “That is just the thing. Almost better than deflowering a virgin.”
“And so you thought to deliver to us Byron and the last two pages,” said Lucy.
Mary laughed. “Lucy, you are so sweet. You must understand that those were the only pages I had the means to find, that I ever had the means to find. I did not give the last two pages to you. You have brought the first ten pages to me. Now I must ask you to make them mine, so I can best use them.”
Lucy felt her face burn. She felt dizzy, as though the floor had vanished beneath her and she tumbled through space. She thought about the will she had written, leaving the book to Mary. Had this been her strategy all along? Did she mean to kill Lucy now? Lucy had some notion of how to kill revenants, and she had the means upon her, but Mary was strong and quick and clever, and she did not believe she could defeat her in a fight.
“All along, you lied to me,” Lucy said quietly. “You used me. You are no better than Buckles or my uncle or Lady Harriett.”
“Do not say it, Lucy. I have withheld information I did not think you ready to hear, but it was always with your interests in mind. And in this matter, I have been truthful. It was your destiny to gather the leaves. It was your duty to fight this war by my side. I have always said it, but I will not ask you to do what comes next. I do not wish to trick you, but to fight for you. If you will give me the pages and let me do what needs to be done, I will not take human life, but I will grind Lady Harriett and her kind into the dust. I would fight on behalf of those who labor with their hands, not those who would own that labor and crush those hands. Tell me I am wrong, Lucy, that what I do is in error, and mean it, but if you cannot say it, and have not the will to fight by my side, I do not judge you. I only ask that you step away.”
“You may ask,” said Mrs. Emmett, “but you may not command.”
Mary smiled at the serving woman. “I have instructed you well, I see. You are Lucy’s now, as I wished. But Lucy, you will have to act decisively, and you cannot hesitate. You cannot show compassion for Lady Harriett. You cannot think to spare her or hope she reforms herself. You must have the strength to kill her.”
Lucy understood that Mary was right, but she did not like the implications. There were many revenants after all. “It will not end there, will it? Those others, the strange men and women I saw at her estate, they are like you, are they not? If you destroy them, you destroy them forever.”
“There is no other way,” said Mary. “This is the time of reckoning. Now, Lucy. Tonight. We shall not do things by half measures. We shall not simply destroy Lady Harriett and hope that magic and machines can find some balance. No, Lady Harriett and her kind will fall. Those who have been her toad eaters, like that monster there, with his foolish grin”—she pointed, of course, to Byron—“shall fall with them.”
“With you as the new ruler?” asked Mr. Morrison.
“Do you know nothing of me?” she asked. “I know I am not what I was, that I cannot feel as I felt, but am I so alien to you that you think I seek only power? I want only to live in a world worth living in. I will fade into obscurity when this work is done.”
“Nevertheless, you’ve indulged your power, haven’t you?” said Byron from across the room. “Someone sent me to warn little Lucy off marrying her intended. Someone made me believe I had feelings for her. That tenderness could not have been mine.”
Lucy turned to her. “Is it true? Did you use me so?”
Mary looked down. “I did not use you. I used Byron, and I shall not repent of it. I put him in your way because you needed your world to change. Though I despise him, I knew Byron’s appearance and his clumsy affections would have that effect. There was never any real risk to your heart, Lucy, and I cast no love magic upon him. That was you, Lucy. It was your charm, your own magic. You brought out in him what was best even in so base a creature.”
Mary’s reasoning was cold and logical. She had toyed with Lucy’s feelings to effect the end she wanted. It frustrated her because, as terrible as Mary’s actions were, they were not so different from what she herself had done to Mr. Morrison.
None of this was about her or her pride, however. She would examine her resentment more closely another time. “And Ludd, whom you have summoned into this world?” she asked. “What does he care for?”
“This island,” answered Mary. “This land. The people in it. Nothing more. He cares not for power, nor for empire, or dominion over nations—which has been the care of your little band of Rosicrucians, has it not, Jonas? We have no care if England is the weakest or the strongest nation in the world so long as its people have bread and their share of happiness.”
“The
“I would spare you from doing it,” Mary said.
“Spare me nothing,” said Lucy. “This is my task, and I shall endure it, I hope with your help. But for now, let us take the book and go while we still can.”
“Hold,” said Mr. Morrison. “If her intentions are no more than she says, then why did she send her monster to attack us?”
“What monster?” asked Mary, her eyes suddenly narrowing.
“Byron’s tortoise,” Lucy said. “It was transformed into a raging beast and set upon us.”
Mary’s expression darkened. “Lucy, for the love of God, we must leave at once.”
“What is it?” Mr. Morrison asked.
“If what you say is true, then Lady Harriett is here, upon these grounds.”
In a swift motion, Mary removed one of her shotguns and held it in her hands. It looked absurdly incongruous—she, the pale, ethereal beauty, taking hold of the weapon.
Mr. Morrison watched her for a moment then took one of his own weapons. “They’re here?”
She nodded. “I can feel them. I’ve loaded my gun against their kind, but my little trick won’t work on Lady Harriett, you know. She is too powerful.”
“I know,” he said. “After I killed her late husband, she found a way to indemnify herself against it, but not the others.”
