The Nine by Tracy Townsend

Author:Tracy Townsend [Townsend, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781633883420
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2017-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

DAY THREE

3RD ELEVENMONTH

20.

It was morning, well past first light. Rowena Downshire had awoken in a cloud of pillows and satin sheets perfumed with chamomile and rosewater—alone.

The last she remembered, she had been with the Alchemist in Master Meteron’s apartments. There had been supper, and a bath, and a change into a nightgown laid out in a guest room. The Alchemist had called down to the concierge for a lady’s nail kit, some iodide, and a roll of gauze. He waited for Rowena to emerge from the water closet, then gestured for her to sit on the edge of the bed.

She had watched him suspiciously as he donned his spectacles and examined her red, raw palms. The bath had soaked the glass splinters to the surface of the skin, prickling them out like tiny quills. She’d had a notion what the old man meant to be about with those tweezers and tiny scissors. It made her creep backward on the coverlet.

“The quality can just call down to a desk and get what they like easy, huh?” she piped nervously.

The Alchemist had said nothing. The little silver instruments glinted, waiting.

“I think I’ll be fine,” Rowena had insisted. “I mean, it hurts some, but—”

“Sometimes you have to open a wound up for it to heal properly. Now stop squirming.”

The Alchemist dabbed something retrieved from his coat all over Rowena’s skin. It was clear and smelled of wool factories and dye shops. It tingled a moment, and then he settled into the task, working steadily, drawing forth the needles of glass in perfect silence. Somehow, it didn’t hurt, though she could still feel a dull probing and pulling. They’d said nothing more. Rowena’s head was so full she could barely think how to pry words from it, let alone what they ought to be. The silence grew strangely comfortable. Finally, the Alchemist had finished, painting her palms with the iodide, bundling her hands into two gauzy mittens.

As the old man gathered up his things, Rowena was still deciding if she was cross enough to withhold her thanks.

He’d gone altogether before she made up her mind.

Now, hours later—awake, alone—she climbed into the morning clothes the help had laid out: an oak-colored woolen skirt and a white tunic that tied behind her back. A breakfast trolley waited in the hall. Her stomach rumbled, but she suppressed the urge to wheel it into the room and tuck in.

The place was deadly quiet, so it seemed a good time to give it the once-over. She unwound her bandages and found her hands only a little stiff, if very orange from the iodide. Then Rowena tiptoed down the bright, broad corridors of Anselm Meteron’s penthouse.

There was a dining room, narrow and long with a table fit for twelve, all cherrywood and marble and crystal chandeliers. She considered the china cabinet, opening one of its drawers. The other guest room’s door was open, but she paused to knock anyway, expecting to find the Alchemist with his gazette and a coffee.

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