The Lost Girl

9

Loom



I see only what is straight ahead of me. A blue-eyed stranger’s shoulder. The back of a seat in a car. A tall, ornate gate. Hallways. A flight of stairs up a tower. A tiny window. Then Sean. His face is over mine. He is speaking, but his words don’t make much sense. He touches me, but I don’t feel it. I try to tell him I’m still here, but I can’t. Not yet.

When the feeling finally starts to come back, so does the pain. My head is on fire. It’s not the sharp, quick flash of having someone cut into your back. This is a slow burn, a candle held to a single focused point inside my skull, burning hotter and hotter. I hear a low, pained moan and realize it’s me. At least I can make sounds again. I thought they’d turned me to stone.

“Eva.” Sean sounds almost sharp with relief. “Can you sit up?”

It takes me another minute, but I show him I can.

“I think I’m okay.” I test my voice. Flex my fingers. Both shaky but working. “Though my head hurts like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Theseus told me it was temporary, but I wasn’t sure I believed him.” I look at him, confused, and he explains. “He’s the seeker with the scars. The blue-eyed one. The other one is called Lennox.” He makes a sound in his throat. “They were almost nice. Introduced themselves and everything. They even took me back to get our bags. The staff at Victoria wasn’t happy about the way we dropped them and ran. I found them still trying to decide whether or not to call a bomb squad.”

I feel a sharp surge of dismay. “I didn’t see you in the car. I couldn’t, my head was turned the wrong way. I hoped you’d gotten away.”

“I stopped struggling the moment Theseus stuck the needle in your arm,” says Sean. “Wasn’t going to let them take you away alone.”

“You should’ve kept running.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot if you thought I would.”

He looks as bad as I feel. Blood has congealed on a gash halfway down his arm; there are cuts and scrapes all over his exposed skin. I put a tentative hand to my head and feel my hair matted with dried blood. I wait for panic, for terror, but I only feel exhausted. We’ve lost.

I think we’re on a bed of some kind. The room has stone walls and a window. It’s also curved like a slice of a tower. It’s not a cell, but it has that sort of feel, with its narrow bed and narrow window and heavy wooden door. My boots are on the floor.

“What was it?” I ask, carefully readjusting my body so that I can lean against the wall behind the bed. “What did he stick me with?”

“Apparently it’s some kind of serum Adrian developed. It causes temporary paralysis.”

I shudder. “It was horrible. Like you’re screaming and struggling in a cage but no one can hear you.” I lick my dry lips. “We’re still together.”

He almost smiles. “I yelled the place down when they tried separating us, so they put us both in here.”

“You look awful.”

“So do you. Positively ghastly, really.”

We laugh, the slightly hysterical laugh of the soon to be destroyed.

“Honestly?” I say. “You look kind of sexy.”

“So the bloody, battled look gets you going? And here I thought my intellect and wit would be enough.”

I smile up at him. “I thought you looked sexy before you were bloody and battled.”

A faint flush creeps up his neck, but he grins lopsidedly. “Wish I could say the same for you, but you definitely look sexier with your head half bashed in.”

His worried eyes undercut the desperate humor, and soon neither of us is smiling. Cold slips under my skin.

“Are we at the Loom?”

He nods.

I saw photographs of the Loom once. Not of a room like this, but of outside, the way it looks from the street, beyond the grounds. It is sprawling and austere, with spires and chimneys and a tower at the western corner. It looks like it was once a cathedral and once an opera house and at some point a home to a gentleman who kept his mad wife shut away in the tower.

Bile rises in my throat. I force myself to my feet. My head feels so heavy. I stumble across to the window and breathe in the clean air. When I feel a little better, I look out at the skyline of London. From here, with so many of the new, shinier landmarks out of sight, the city looks hundreds of years old. I have stepped into time and wandered backward to a place where waifs threw themselves in the gleaming river, and chimney sweeps scurried through the dirt, and Weavers and hunters first began their war over life and death.

I am about to turn back to Sean when something catches my eye: letters have been scratched into the windowsill. I try to make them out and realize it’s a sentence repeated several times. I AM HENRY WILLOW. I AM HENRY WILLOW. I AM HENRY WILLOW. Who was he? I conjure up memories of long-ago lessons with Erik. I know the first Weaver at the Loom was a Henry Borden; I know he made the first echoes here and the Loom has passed down through his family since. But who was Henry Willow? I trace my fingers over the letters. I feel like I understand him. Whoever he was, he was also a prisoner like us. How long would they have to keep me here, in this cold, lost room, before I too tried to scratch my name to remember who I was?

Shivering, I stumble back to the bed and curl up next to Sean again, burrowing close to him for warmth. He puts his uninjured arm around me.

“I think we’re in trouble,” he says, quite matter-of-factly.

I don’t reply. I don’t know how we can both escape. All I know is it’s me they want to destroy. I’ve got to get him out one way or another.

A new noise makes my stomach clench. We both go quiet and listen. It’s the sound of voices outside the heavy door.

I shrink closer to Sean, all my muscles tensing for attack. The door creaks open. Ophelia steps in, fluttering cautiously by the opening.

“Why haven’t they seen a doctor yet?” she asks someone out of my line of vision. She sounds worried. “Look at them!”

She steps into the room but doesn’t come any closer. Whatever she sees in our faces, it makes her stop.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says softly. “I didn’t mean for them to hurt you. They didn’t mean to either, but they have rules. They had to stop you. Oh, Eva. I didn’t want to turn you in, but you are safer this way. Why can’t you see that?”

“Because I was safer out there,” I say angrily, “away from the Weavers. Why can’t you see that?”

“You understand, don’t you, Sean? This was the only way I could protect her!”

“Protect her?” Sean demands. “What about protecting her from them, Ophelia?”

She shakes her head frantically. “But it’s not like that at all! The Weavers will vote to save her when she goes to trial. You’ll see.”

“They’ve never voted to save anyone—”

“I asked,” she says. “I asked my father. Eva, he knows how important you are to me. He said he’d make sure you were spared as long as you were reasonable. And you will be reasonable, won’t you?”

“Ophelia,” says Sean, “your father is not going to save her!”

“He wouldn’t lie to me!”

“I thought you wouldn’t turn me in,” I say quietly. “People can be wrong.”

Ophelia’s eyes fill with tears and, impossibly, I feel guilty for upsetting her. “I thought it was the only way to keep you safe,” she says. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry you hate me right now but I—I did what I thought was b-best! I didn’t lie to you. I did want to help you. I love you too much to do otherwise. And anyway,” she adds, taking a deep breath, “you’ll see for yourself in a minute. He wants to talk to you. He’s on his way up to the tower.”

My heart misses a painful beat. Why would Adrian Borden want to talk to me?

Ophelia glances out into the hallway. “He’s here.”

A shadow appears in the doorway.

It’s a man. About Matthew and Erik’s age, late fifties. He is standing absolutely still, but it’s the contained stillness of a jungle beast. His shirt is creased; he is wearing socks but no shoes, and there is a feverish cast to his skin that makes me think of Victor Frankenstein, working all hours, day and night, to achieve the impossible. Words pop in my head like corn. Grave-robbing. Rumors. Obsessions. I make them go away and I look up into the golden eyes of Adrian Borden.

His voice is quiet, but it reminds me of thunder. Thunder tightly boxed. It makes me afraid of what will happen if the box is broken.

“Take the boy to the next room,” he says. “I want to speak to her alone.”

Sean and I don’t budge.

Adrian makes an impatient sound. “Now.”

One of the Guard walks into the room. It’s the blue-eyed seeker with the scars. Theseus. I try not to hate him. This is the only life he’s known.

“Please come with me,” he says very politely.

“Sean, please,” Ophelia begs, “for Eva’s sake. They’re just talking.”

Sean’s eyes take in everything without expression. Then he stands up and follows the Guard out of the room.

“Don’t worry,” Adrian tells me, “I will have him brought back after we’ve talked. Ophelia,” he adds, with a shade of something like warmth in his dark, indifferent voice, “I’d like you to leave, too.”

Ophelia leaves the room and shuts the door quietly.

“May I?” Adrian gestures to the chair by the battered old desk.

“It’s your Loom.”

He smiles. It’s not a nice smile. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? I thought you may have forgotten that.”

I don’t answer. My heart pounds.

“Do I frighten you?”

I shake my head defiantly.

“I think I do,” he says, amused. “But you put on a bold face. I like that.” He moves the chair to the edge of the bed and sits down. He rests his elbows on his knees and looks at me for a moment or two.

I force myself to look back.

His eyes sharpen to gold points, splintering me. I swallow.

“I expect you understand that when an echo runs away, breaks from their purpose as you’ve done, they forfeit the life we’ve given them.” Adrian straightens the rumpled edge of the bedsheet. “It’s been thirty-four years since I inherited the Loom. In that time, three echoes have tried to run. All three were subsequently destroyed. Do you see where this is going?”

“Did you come here to tell me what I already know?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Matthew told me you weren’t the meek sort,” he says. “I usually put everything he says down to exaggeration, but with you I see he was spot-on. It’s obvious you’re one of his, you know. Uninterested in rules. Reckless. Temperamental. My echoes tend to be more calculating and more restrained. Elsa’s are gentler.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I stay quiet.

“I assume Ophelia told you she has asked me to spare your life at your trial?”

I nod carefully.

“Echoes are rare beings,” says Adrian. “We gave you life. You were nothing before us. Bones and dust. I think it’s a terrible waste when your lives are destroyed because you’ve been so careless with them. For that reason I’m willing to indulge my daughter. I will spare you.”

Hearing it from him, in a voice that leaves me in no doubt that he means every word, it makes me take a sharp breath. Everything I have ever heard about Adrian, everything in his voice now, tells me that he does not play games like Matthew does. He’s ruthless. He will do what it takes to get what he wants. He won’t dance around it because it amuses him.

And remembering this makes my hope gutter and die again.

I will spare you.

“And what would you want in exchange?”

“Your help.”

“My help?”

“We made you,” says Adrian, his eyes like two bright sparks, “but there’s still so much about you we don’t fully understand. So much potential that could be harnessed. I have created life, but that isn’t enough. What if I could find a way to prolong it? What if we perfected you? I could transform the world. Defeat death. If I could prolong my own life, I could work for another hundred years, another thousand, if it came to that. It’s unthinkable to me to die before I achieve everything I intend to. We have broken one of the greatest barriers set on humankind. I’ve stitched life from dust and bones. I will break the others.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Unfortunately . . .” He sighs. “I can’t experiment with these ideas without studying echoes. You tread the line between life and death. You could be very useful to me. You’re young. Healthy. Whole. If you gave me two years of your life, even less perhaps, I could study you.”

I stare at him in horror. “Why can’t you create an echo just to study him or her?” But even as I say it, I realize what a terrible thing that would be. To create someone to be nothing but a guinea pig, a tool to be played with.

“I have,” says Adrian, without pity. “I once created two copies of an other, instead of one, and kept the second. Naturally, the familiars weren’t aware of this. But creating an echo isn’t as simple as snapping my fingers. It is a difficult and time-consuming thing, and I have to save my time for copies like you.” He shrugs. “Others have been persuaded to help me in the past. But I’m not quite there yet. You would live here and be completely cared for. Any pain that resulted from the experiments wouldn’t last long. When I’ve learned all that I can from you, you would be free to leave.”

“Don’t you have to ask the other Weavers before you give me a choice like this? What if Elsa or Matthew thinks I should be destroyed?”

“I doubt they will feel strongly enough to disagree with me,” says Adrian, unperturbed.

Then he must believe Elsa will simply be happy to spare somebody’s life—but what about Matthew? Is he so sure of their friendship that he knows Matthew won’t care enough to object to this experiment?

“This is your only way out,” Adrian adds, in a harder, colder voice, “the only way to survive now.”

“You said you’d spare me. From trial. But what about the Sleep Order? I ran away to escape it. If I help you, will you revoke that, too?”

“Like I said, you would be free to leave. Bear in mind your familiars signed the order. It was their choice to make. I can’t force them to take you back. If, when the time comes, they refuse to take you, we will have to find an alternative life for you. But I will revoke the Sleep Order. You will live.”

“And what if I’d rather die?” I ask him.

“You will die,” he assures me. “The way things stand, you won’t last long at trial.” His gold eyes are pitiless. “I’m offering you a chance. Take it.”

I swallow hard. I know exactly what I want to tell him. I don’t even have to think about it. The thought of being treated like a toy for months, of putting my fate in Adrian’s hands because he wants to do the impossible, is appalling. It saves me from trial. It saves me from the Sleep Order. But at such a heavy price.

And then, before I can offer an impulsive, passionate reply, a little voice in my head reminds me to stop and think. It sounds like sense. It sounds like Amarra.

And it tells me to ask him one more question.

“What about Sean?”

“The boy?”

“Yes. If I agree to this, what happens to him?”

Adrian cocks his head and considers me. His gaze is shrewd. “What would you like to happen to him?”

“I forced him to help me,” I say, weighing each word carefully, “so it doesn’t seem fair that he should be punished. If I agree to stay, I want him to be allowed to leave. Now. I know you can’t let him be a guardian anymore, but I want that to be his only punishment. You can’t hand him over to the police or lock him up or whatever it is you do to guardians who break your laws.”

“Very well,” says Adrian, and from the tone of his voice I know he doesn’t believe a word of my lie. “He can leave. Right away, if you like.” He is dismissive. “I don’t care about the boy. He doesn’t interest me.”

I take a deep breath and let it out again in a rush of relief. I swallow back the sour taste on my tongue.

“Then I’ll stay. I’ll help you.”

“Very good.” Adrian stands. “I told Ophelia you’d make the sensible choice. We’ll begin work tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. I shiver. That leaves me very little time.

Adrian opens the door. Ophelia and the blue-eyed Guard are on the other side. Ophelia looks so anxious it’s almost difficult to stay angry with her.

“Bring the boy back,” says Adrian, sounding satisfied. The Guard nods and steps out of sight. Adrian smiles at Ophelia. She looks relieved. It’s a slightly nicer smile than any he gave me. “We’ve worked something out.”

I don’t think she knows what he offered me. He glances at me. Waiting. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I could tell Ophelia everything. Tell her that her father set a price on my life. Tell her what the price is. It looks like he’s been a good father to her, and I get that she only turned me in because she believed I’d be safe with him. I’m sure there is something good there that she sees and loves. But I could tell her the truth and take it away. I could destroy her love for him. Destroy her.

And he knows I won’t.

“I’m so glad,” Ophelia says, smiling at me. “I told you it would be all right, Eva. This has all worked out for the best.”

“It has.” Adrian sounds pleased. Now that he has what he wants, he can afford to be generous. “Give her a moment alone to say good-bye to the boy.”

“You mean he’s—you’re letting him go?”

The Guard returns with Sean. Adrian glances at me. “Five minutes,” he says, and turns back to the Guard. “Theseus, send someone to fetch the boy’s things.”

Then he strides away and they shut the door again.

“What was that?” Sean demands. “Why are they giving me back my stuff?”

I gulp. I didn’t expect the words to claw their way so painfully through my throat. “I— They’ve let you go,” I say. “You’re leaving.”

“What are you talking about?”

I tell him. My tongue feels thick and heavy and the look on his face makes it a thousand times worse, but I tell him everything.

He stares at me, deathly white. “You can’t do this. You can’t make me leave.”

“You can’t want to stay here!”

“Not here, Eva. With you.”

“You have a life,” I say as the first tears slip down my face. “And if I’d said no, you would’ve lost everything. I don’t know where they’d have sent you. This way neither of us needs to run. Neither of us will be in any danger. This is the only way I know to save you. Sean—” My voice cracks. “Please. Let me do it.”

He dashes at his eyes. “You’re asking me to leave you here, to become nothing more than a neat little puzzle for him to use and break, one of his experiments—”

“Yes.”

“Eva—”

“Please.”

Sean gazes at me for a long moment, his dark green eyes burning straight into mine. I want to look away but I can’t.

“All right,” he says. I flinch at how polite his tone is. It’s worse than outright anger. “If this is what you want, God forbid I stop you.”

He crosses the room to the door and knocks so that they’ll let him out. At the last minute he turns back and kisses me fiercely and I taste blood and tears and something else, something so Sean-like I want to grab hold of his shirt and never let go. When he pulls away, I catch a look in his eyes that tells me he will never forgive me.

Then, just like that, he’s gone.

Sunlight turns dust motes in the room to gold. I watch them swirl in the air. I feel a thousand times worse than I did half an hour ago. I feel raw and bruised and the red-hot pain in my head hasn’t gone away.

I don’t have much time. Tomorrow Adrian means to start studying me. Today is nearly over. If I want to escape the Loom, escape a choice between certain death and Adrian, I have to find a way out soon. I close my eyes. If nothing else, at least I got Sean out. If I can’t do the same for myself, at least I know he won’t suffer the consequences of my choices.

Amarra used to read books about battles. Great heroic battles. Swords and shields and knights and honor. Battles like that don’t happen anymore, yet I feel like I am caught in one. Once I may have hoped to fight for my life with all those things: swords and shields and knights and honor. But I don’t have a sword. My shield is broken. I don’t know what is and isn’t honorable anymore. And now I’ve sent my knight away.