“Precisely,” Draken said ponderously. “A sense of collective responsibility would avoid that danger.”
As the members went on, gradually expressing their general support for Simeon’s plan, I began to fully realize the consequences of what was being decided. What would be my role in this? Alas, I didn’t need them to specify instructions—my role was obvious. I, no doubt, would be tasked with collecting the spirit of the murdered woman for the man who had desired her for a thew. It was ghastly. It was unimaginable. It was evil. And yet it was being discussed by the Cisneros men quite casually.
I had always imagined true evil as something quite extreme, resulting from a long and committed descent into malice. But I realized then that true evil was much simpler. Evil is merely the incapacity to see and imagine how one’s own desires destroy others.
I would not be able to continue my work for Cisneros. Until now, the work had been dangerous, but Corbin had always found spirits who wished to enter the world as thews, and those women had died natural deaths. This was something else altogether.
As these considerations ran through my mind, I lifted my head. Consumed as I was with my thoughts, the room was only a blur. Dimly, I saw the cluster of seated men, the cloud of tobacco smoke above the table, the ring of white figures around them, behind their chairs or by the bookshelves. Then the room cameinto focus, and my breath caught in my throat. Every thew in the room had her eyes fixed upon me.
They had seen what was in my mind. They had witnessed my opposition. I met Juno’s eyes; they were boring into me.
Hurriedly, I tried to amend my scurrying thoughts.I must do what the Society asks of me. My life depends on it. I don’t like this, but I can bring myself to do it if I have to. The thews didn’t seem persuaded. Decima looked at me loftily, her dark eyes still. Principa, Norbert Trench’s thew, opened her mouth to speak, but a gesture from Cassandra stopped her. Reluctantly, she closed her lips.
My mind was full of whirling thoughts made more confused by my wish to conceal them. I didn’t know if I’d persuaded the thews of my loyalty or if they had, for some reason, granted me a reprieve. I didn’t know what Principa would do once the meeting was over. I tried to think about my studies: the book waiting on my desk, the paper on shielding that was still undone, the class I had tomorrow morning. I concentrated furiously on these, and the meeting ended. Hornsby walked up to me and gave me instructions for the following evening. “Take this,” he said, handing me something.
I looked down and saw a small, sharp tool in my hand. “What is this?”
Hornsby smiled. “You told me the knob was loose on the other side of the portal.”
“Yes,” I said, “so I did.”
“Tomorrow you can fix it.” His tone was cheerful, almost collegial. I hardly heard him, but I nodded mechanically. I had a vision of Corbin in his bed, bound by his own rope.Take nothing from them, I heard Corbin saying. What could this small tool, animated by bone, do to me?
My only wish was to get out of Pebbles.
I compelled myself to move slowly as I traced my way through the subterranean corridors and out through the Camera, then across the green and to my dormitory. There I locked the door and took a moment to breathe. I didn’t think—no, that would be too perilous. But I did pause. I looked out of my narrow window above the desk, seeing the bare branches of the oak tree and, beyond it, the gates of Commonwealth. A beautiful view: it had filled me with elation and ambition at the start of my studies. I’d felt that the world was mine for the taking, and that with a little ingenuity and hard work, I would succeed despite all the obstacles of circumstances and birth.
It was over. I needed no spirit’s wisdom to understand that my time as a student of enchantment had come to an end.
There was one more thing I had to do before packing. I thought about my departed father, and I basked for a moment in the memory of that gentle smile he would give me when my meddling resulted in mishap. I opened my desk and took out a piece of paper and an envelope. Using all my strength, I guarded my thoughts. I wrote quickly, addressed the letter to “Miss Lancaster, Orange Street, Salem,” stamped the envelope and put it in my jacket pocket. Then I packed my rucksack.
As I did so, I thought about dead worth. I’ve always found the calculations tiresome, and they leave no room for anything else in my mind. In particular, I dislike calculating decimals without paper and pencil. I let the troublesome formulas fill my mind, eclipsing what I saw and what I felt. I realized then, as I never had before, that dead worth is not soulless mathematics. All the contrary: it is a numerical expression of how much love can overcome. Only a small portion of a human being’s love is bestowed to the objects they cherish. And even that amount ofaffection is sufficient to do great things. I felt this keenly as I packed my paltry but beloved objects, which felt newly precious to me as I considered their prospective loss. The worn books that went into the bottom of the rucksack, my carefully tended clothes, and then the handkerchiefs monogrammed with my initials by my mother. I tucked one of these into the pocket of my jacket, closed the rucksack, and shouldered it. Then I took off my tokens. I was wearing three of them: spectacles, a silver button, and a brass buckle. I placed them on my desk, for I wouldn’t be needing them any longer.
The mismatched armor I left in the wardrobe, for I had no plans to travel into the spirit realm again. I left Hornsby’s tool beside it. But the coil of rope my father had made, the precious rope that had been my lifeline many times that winter, would come with me. I carried it on my left shoulder to balance the weight of the rucksack, and I left the dormitory. Men stared at me as I walked across the green. I passed several who knew me as Byron, but none now recognized me as Sam. I dropped the letter into the mailbox outside Tenny with a whispered word:guíar.
The trip to Saddle Street seemed shorter than usual. I kept my eyes closed as the coach bounced along, ignoring the other passengers and still concentrating on my calculations. When I arrived at the edge of Saddle Street, I felt a surge of unmerited relief. I’d come this far. Perhaps I would yet have time to explain to my mother and Cris, to urge them to escape with me. Perhaps we could go back to Havana. Or perhaps another destination nearer by—Philadelphia, where my brother had apprenticed, or Portsmouth, which my mother liked. I extinguished these thoughts and returned to my formulas.
Walking along Saddle Street, I felt absurdly grateful for this place. The neighbors who called and waved from their frontsteps, the children who dashed about, chasing one another and disappearing into the narrow passages between the buildings, the familiar smells of laundry and tobacco and sawdust. I approached my own house, and I saw my brother by the side of the road, speaking with Mr. Benjamin, an old man who lived three houses down. Cris waved to me, surprise lighting his face. I was glad to see some genuine happiness there, for sometimes I wondered if my visits were mostly a cause of displeasure.
Then, to my confusion, I saw someone else standing right there on our porch, leaning against the railing with a proprietary air. It was the young man I’d just seen at the meeting: Simeon Trench. He was smiling, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. He was smiling like the man who’s just beaten you at cards and is about to seize his winnings.
Fear stabbed at my belly. Where was my mother?
As I looked back to Cris in alarm, something strange happened. It seemed to me that his own expression mirrored mine: confusion and fear, mingled together. But he wasn’t looking at Simeon; he was looking at me. Or was he looking behind me? I turned to look over my shoulder and saw something inexplicable. Only a short distance away was a horse. It was pulling a driverless coach. The horse seemed deranged, its gray head tossing madly, its eyes wild. Horse and coach careened toward me at full speed. But they made no sound.
I was frozen. Some part of me, the part of me ruled by instinct, couldn’t believe that a soundless horse and coach were real. This was surely an illusion, a trick of the eye, like the wolf that guarded the portal. Wasn’t it? But no, it had to be real. I could see the dirt and stones flying under the wheels; the swerving carriage had just collided with a barrel, and the horse—the poor horse, I realized—was on fire, its tail aflame, the sparks not quite catching yet on thecoach but clearly driving the desperate animal onward.
It was a silence spell. Simple, deadly—the coach was real, the animal was real, the flames were real. Only the silence was false.
Abruptly Cris was beside me, and the coach was only a few feet away, and I felt a surge of terror. Over Cris’s shoulder, I saw Simeon’s grin—a grin of satisfaction, of eager anticipation. I understood—too late, far too late—that I was witnessing Simeon’s punishment for the Cisneros Society, the penalty for my premeditated disobedience, the price for my wish to escape.
“Sam!” Cris shouted, reaching for me. In that moment, I felt that I saw my brother clearly as I had never seen him before. He was my older brother, after all. And all he had ever done was try to protect me, even by keeping me away from enchantment. And how had I thanked him? I saw with terrible clarity his delicate hands, his carefully ironed shirt, his anguished face—every precious part of him.
“Get back!” I cried.
I pushed Cris aside with all my strength. The rope and the rucksack impeded me. I was propelled backward. The coiled rope flung off my arms, its full weight landing on Cris’s chest and pushing him farther backward so that he lost his balance, tumbling in the dirt road. I tried to dive after him, but the momentum had pushed me in the opposite direction, and now the approaching horse—frantic, terrified, burning—was upon me.
The hooves struck my legs first. A terrible pain bloomed, and I saw the furious hooves over my face, and a glimpse of its burning tail, and the cracked, swollen underbelly of the coach, and lastly the wide blue sky. I turned my head sideways to look for Cris. Heavens! The bundle of rope covered his chest. He was motionless. He did not lift his head. I pleaded then to any power that could hear me.Let him live; please let Cris live. I couldn’tbelieve the incredible excess of blood, the protrusion of white bone against the rent fabric of his trousers. He was broken, utterly broken.