“How delightful.” I shuffled back and reached behind me for the way station’s door latch, and from it removed the iron rail tie I’d used to keep Montrose imprisoned inside. “I can’t fathom why everyone finds you so utterly repulsive,” I mentioned as I pocketed the spike. “I mean, other than the way you talk, behave, think, and smell, you’re quite the catch, aren’t you?”
He grabbed hold of my bodice, tearing it as he jerked me close. “Open your mouth.”
“Go back to hell.” I spat in his face.
He took hold of my throat with one hand and cut off my air, and no matter how I clawed at him, kept strangling me. Shadows loomed before my eyes, inviting me to throw myself into them. Looking into death was such a terrible relief that I gasped.
Zarath’s hand clapped over my mouth at the same time he released my neck, and the need to breathe overcame everything. I didn’t realize he had shoved a stone into my mouth until it slid to the back of my tongue and went down my throat. It burned my insides as it went down, and I fought to stop it, coughing and retching violently. Nothing came out, and then I felt it in my stomach, hot and cold, an unbearable weight.
Zarath put his mouth next to my ear. “Do you feel her? That is my queen, Anamorg. She is inside you now, and she will keep you from breaking any spell. I have only to release her from the stone, and your body will be hers. Then Anamorg will devour your spirit, and you will be nothing.”
“Not a very pretty name, is it? Anamorg.” I rasped out the words as I reached in my pocket for the rail tie. “Sounds to me like a disease of the bottom.”
His expression tightened with outrage. “For that I will make you know agony as you could not imagine.”
“Sorry, but it’s my turn now.” I threw myself against him, knocking him down on his back. I had only a moment to straddle him, raise the iron spike I’d taken from the door handle of the way station, and strike.
I thought I might hesitate, staring down at Dredmore’s face, knowing what I was about to do. Yet my hand never wavered or faltered, and I plunged the spike deep into his chest, thrusting it down with all my strength.
Zarath heaved me off, clutching the end of the spike as he convulsed. He rolled onto his side, curling over before he lurched onto all fours. His head came up and he roared out his pain and fury until the sound died and a bloody froth bubbled from his lips. I backed away into Montrose, who stood gaping at the sight.
“What have you done?” he yelped.
Zarath staggered onto his feet, pulling at the spike as obscenely wet sounds poured out along with the blood from his mouth.
“I killed a monster.” I couldn’t bear to see him die, but I couldn’t look away until I was sure he had. “And I saved a man.”
The Aramanthan reeled toward the ship, but he strayed too close to the edge of the dock, where he fell into the water with a tremendous splash.
Celestino, who had run toward us, stopped in his tracks. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed like a rag doll. I saw the other men by the gangplank do the same, and then Montrose fell in front of me, face-first into the dock.
I knelt on the edge of the pier, shoving my fingers deep into my mouth so that I might cast up the stone, but it wouldn’t come out of me. The sensation of burning and freezing faded, leaving me with only the feeling of a rock in my belly. Anamorg, queen of the Reapers, waiting to awake inside me.
“Miss Kittredge.”
I turned my head and saw Inspector Doyle standing a few feet away. “Oh, hello, Tommy.” Two beaters flanked him, and each held their nightsticks ready. “Filthy day, isn’t it? All this smoke is plaguing my eyes something awful.”
Chapter Eleven
As I sat in Questioning at Rumsen Main Station I idly wished for a dagger. They’d taken Wrecker’s from me, but I didn’t especially need a kneecapper’s blade. Any dagger, even a penknife, would suffice for the last bit of killing I had to do.
I caught a whiff of piss as I imagined it. A quick slash across the carotid. Lots of blood—lots of mess—but they were used to tidying up death here. I knew no one would shout for help or call for the whitecart. If anything, they’d have their tea hour down at the pub and share a few good-riddance pints.
They might still at that. I had one sleeve left intact. When they tossed me in my cell, I’d be alone.
For now I’d have to endure this. Sitting shackled to a chair for hours wasn’t comfortable, but it was a nice break from the hell I’d been through over the past two weeks.
Questioning, for all its hideous rep, wasn’t as bad as all that. Dust coated the gaslight chimneys, all of which were blackened on the inside from long use. Yellowed wanted posts and faded ambrotype tints hung on point from a warped cork-backed board, on which someone had pasted a headline from
Grimy footprints and skid marks from rubber-soled shoes made odd trails across the cheap pine floor planks. Old pipe and cigar smoke had shriveled an orange-clove pomander hanging from the window bars to the size of a walnut.
I wasn’t in any better shape. I needed a bath, a drink, and my head examined. Whatever they did to me, though, I wasn’t explaining what had happened at the docks. I wasn’t even sure I understood it. All I could feel was the awful weight inside me, like some hidden rot just waiting for the right moment to bloom.
Chief Inspector Tom Doyle came in and closed the door behind him. He didn’t come at me but walked to one end of the room, and then the other.
I watched him back and forth it. Working three straight shifts hadn’t wrinkled his jacket or trousers, and damp comb marks streaked his short hair. It didn’t surprise me that he’d taken the time to wash up and shave. He’d spent ten years in H.M.’s Fleet, and now had a bit of that all-hands-on-deck look about him. Now I was the enemy, and naturally he had to evaluate my threat potential before he issued any orders. I wondered if he’d ever dreamt we’d come to this.
Doyle finally tired of pacing, yanked out the chair on the other side of the table, and dropped in it. Gave me that cool, flint-edged stare he’d inherited from his Grandda, and said: “Why did you do it, Kit?”
I gave him my full statement in four words. “I didn’t kill him.” Of course I had, but admitting it wouldn’t gain me much chance to finish the work. For that I’d need a nice, quiet, isolated cell in lockup. “Is that what this is about, then? You’ve got the wrong—”
“They’ll send you to the gallows.” Beneath his rage was something more I hadn’t expected to see: regret.
“I doubt it. They hardly ever hang women.” A cramp in my right shoulder made me adjust the drape of my arms round the back of the chair. The five-link chain between my shackles jingled. “You’ve no body, no credible witnesses. How could I have done him, what with me being such a young, helpless female and all?”
“I’ve better.” He bent to one side, took something from his case, and placed it on the table between us. A small, flat square, carefully swaddled in soft black cloth. He didn’t have to unwrap it to show me what it was.
I stared at it, fascinated. “You’ve glass.”
“Aye, I’ve glass.” He braced his hands on the table and leaned over it. “Why did you kill him?”
It had to be a trick, the glass blank, the threat empty. Unless—“Show it to me.”
Tom unwrapped the cloth to expose the plate inside.
Silverblack mottled the slick surface with splotches and lines. They formed the reverse image of a long dock, a tall woman, and the possessed lover she was straddling. This tint showed the finer details. The tears in her bodice. The blood on her mouth. The iron spike she was just about to thrust into the monster’s chest.
Damn me, he had it all on glass. “That’s not what it looks like.”
He picked up the ambrotype showing me killing Lucien Dredmore. “This is
