3. Tea and (a lack of) Sympathy

“Perhaps just a tot, to take off ze chill,” Henry Villard agreed. “Zees old bones, ach...but perhaps it has been a little less grey zis fall, no?” His gesture at his broad satin waistcoat struck Holly as if he thought he was showing generosity in allowing her to serve him her best brandy.

Dr Vonken regarded Villard with cool, unreadable eyes. “Do you surmise we may be emerging from the Grey Time, then, Herr Founder?”

Villard shrugged, smiling. Holly tried to keep her hands from trembling as she brought out the tiny crystal snifters and all that remained of her father’s imported French spirits in a matching decanter. She poured three glasses and handed them to Villard and Vonken before resuming a hesitant seat next to the doctor. Vonken sniffed the rim of the glass and let a drop touch his lips, but then spoke dismissively as he set the snifter on the table. “Our best ambianologists have concurred: we shall have no lifting of the Cataclysm’s clouds for years to come.”

Villard returned in a friendly enough tone, “Und perhaps zey are correct, but you cannot fault a hopeful man.” Vonken gave him a nod, more courtesy than agreement. Feeling a bit desperate, Holly took a larger swallow of the brandy than she’d anticipated, and coughed. She started at the gentle smack of Vonken’s gloved hand between her shoulderblades. Villard’s brows knit a moment. “How are you holding up, my dear?”

“I...all right, I suppose, thank you, Mr Villard,” Holly said, her throat on fire. Suddenly she recalled she’d not eaten since luncheon, and looked askance at the glass in her hand. Perhaps this wasn’t a wise choice. Best stick with the tea. Forcing calm, she picked up her teacup and sipped. Vonken apparently knew how to brew it properly.

“I vas vundering,” Villard mused, swirling the ruby liquid in his glass and gazing heavy-lidded into its purity, “vhether you have received any strange packages lately, Miss Autumnson.” He looked up and caught her gaze, his own somber. “I have heard some...rumors vhich disturb me greatly, zat perhaps some of our more radical elements, who do not share our reverence for your late brutter, may be plotting some sort of...demonstration. Something involving this house, or you. I vould not vish to see harm come to you.”

“Really?” Holly squeaked. She took a deep breath, and wrenched control over her voice. “How...how preposterous. Everyone loved my brother.”

“Ah, but zis vould be a strike at me, you see,” Villard explained. “Everyone knows whom your brutter worked for, and there are some uninformed riffraff, you know, who still blame me for ze tragedy at ze Refinery last year.” When the Concordia-Villard Dust Refinery had exploded, an entire neighborhood of workingclass houses was vaporized in an instant, and the outlying roads now bore a slippery coating of glass not unlike the obsidian artefacts displayed in the City Museum.

Vonken sipped his tea while Villard spoke. Now he offered, “Outrageous.” His tone was flat, ordinary, and completely free of outrage.

Villard nodded. “Ach, it vas awful, awful. Those poor people.” He sighed, and quaffed more of the brandy, then refilled his glass from the decanter still on the table. “So, you have an idea already of the ignorance of zis type of person; and as ve all know, Ignorance is ze paving-stone on ze road to Catastrophe.”

“I have not received any packages at all in weeks,” Holly said. “But why would anyone try to harm me to get at you, Mr Villard?”

Villard smiled as if he was teaching a precocious but not particularly well-read child. “My dear girl, because zey are ignorant, and ignorant people often strike out at anything zey see as associated with ze object of their misdirected wrath. Your brutter worked conspicuously for me; your brutter was given a hero’s memorial by me – und by ze way, I hope you vill approve of ze final design; Concordia’s finest sculptor is hard at work – and so, some poor souls, undoubtedly with minds deluded by Dust-poisoning –“

“Undoubtedly,” Dr Vonken murmured, gently stirring a cube of sugar into his second cup of tea.

Villard nodded at him, and continued to Holly, “Deluded, you see; so zey may strike at you, thinking zat by doing so zey will hurt me.” He offered a smile again. “As it certainly would. You are absolutely certain nothing out of ze ordinary has arrived at your home, since, shall we say, September?”

Holly noticed Villard’s two men reentering from the hall, their faces impassive, though the red-lensed man shot a suspicious look briefly at Vonken. She could have sworn she saw the man’s nostrils flare wide like a horse’s, but then he stood straight and gazed at nothing in particular. “Well...no. Not out of the ordinary, no. But I...I thank you for your warning, Mr Villard. I shall certainly inform you if anything unusual arrives.”

Villard nodded, but seemed somehow disappointed. “Be sure zat you do. One cannot be too careful where some elements of vat ve are pleased to call society are concerned, ja?” He glanced at Vonken, and chuckled low. “Herr Doctor, you have barely touched our hostess’ good brandy. It vould be a shame to let it go to vaste now zat it has been exposed to air.” Villard’s own second glass had vanished as quickly as the first.

“I find my taste these days runs rather more to stimulants than depressives, Herr Founder,” Vonken replied evenly. “Do feel free to quaff it as you have your own.” His smile under the curling moustache gave no offense, but Holly stiffened in anticipation of the city founder taking it.

“And now I realize I have been remiss in not examining ze papers of ze Krampf Society Journal of late,” Villard said. “Vat research are you currently exploring, in zat great dark laboratory of yours, Herr Doctor Vonken? Many of my aldermen have joked with me, how much zey desire to get a...a sneak peek, as ze newsmen say, at your experiments. How long has it been since you pioneered ze Dust prosthesis industry?”

Holly busied herself with putting away the empty decanter in the chamber of the maple sideboard. The insult in Villard’s words was clear, though his tone also remained casual. She heard Vonken match him, geniality for geniality: “Why, not so very long...about as many years ago, Herr Founder Villard, as it was that the Northern Pacific Transit Company began slaughtering natives of the Interior to retrieve the Dust rocks, and sending back maimed soldiers with that precious cargo.”

“Slaughter is...a harsh word, Herr Doctor. Do you not recognize the savagery of ze tribal intruders to the Interior?”

“Intruders? It was their land before our ancestors shoved them off it; and one may hardly blame them for becoming crazed after the effects of the Cataclysm. Many a settler in the Dakotas or a rancher in Texas suffered the same horrible fate,” Vonken responded. “My dear, you look pale. Forgive us for blathering on about such terrible matters, won’t you?” Holly turned, realizing she’d been standing motionless at the sideboard for over a minute. Vonken patted the loveseat cushion. “Do sit. Doctor’s orders.”

Reluctantly, she rejoined him. Vonken looked as if he might put a hand on hers, and she drew back, giving him a quick glare. He smiled as if he hadn’t noticed at all, but made no move to touch her. Villard turned his attention back to her as well. “Ja, forgive us, Miss Autumnson. It is not often I have ze chance to engage in...debate.” He glanced at the mantel clock. “But ze hour lengthens, and I am sure you vish to rest. You do look peaked, forgive me for observing.”

“She has had a traumatic few weeks,” Vonken said. “As representative of the hospital’s Visiting Committee this month, I thought it prudent to drop by and see what Miss Autumnson might require for her health.”

“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” Villard said, inclining his head. He rose to his feet slowly, and his men perked their shoulders as though coming to attention. Villard gestured with his hat. “May I valk you out, Herr Doctor, so zat ze lady may not trouble herself more tonight?”

“I have yet to perform a check of Miss Autumnson’s vitals,” Vonken answered smoothly. “But I’m sure she would appreciate you not standing on formality, Herr Founder.”

Villard’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he nodded. “Of course. Perhaps I vill drop by and continue our little chat about ze Interior at your lab sometime, Herr Doctor.”

“I’d be delighted. Good night, Herr Founder.”

Villard bowed to Holly, waving her down as she half-rose out of ingrained habit. “No, no, it’s all right. Good night, Miss Autumnson. Expect to hear from me again soon, and by all means come to me if you see anything suspicious.”

“Thank you,” Holly managed, fuming inside. Vonken thinks he’s going to stay here one minute longer? Oh, I think NOT. “Good night, Mr Villard.”

Vonken sat placidly next to her until the door latched, and they heard the soft footsteps of all three men descending from the front stoop and crunching on the pea gravel path to the driveway. A quiet creaking was the only sound which carried indoors after that, from Villard’s personal steam-carriage heaving itself into motion. Holly began, “I don’t know what sort—“ but Vonken shushed her, his hand on her arm, listening intently. Despite her anger at being ordered around, Holly bit her lip, waiting.

When finally the doctor relaxed, she shook off his hand and stood. “Dr Vonken, I do not appreciate you using my home as some sort of...of stumping-block from which to insult the most powerful man in Concordia, and who was very kind to my brother and myself!” She gave a very unladylike snort; she didn’t care what he thought of it. “Men who will take from me by force, indeed! The only force anyone has used here tonight is that awful serum you forced upon me earlier!”

To her surprise, he nodded. “I should have known, from your brother’s description of you, that such a measure wasn’t necessary. My apologies, Miss Autumnson. I have been...out of Society for some time, I fear.”

“Injecting me with a truth serum –!”

“Vitae veritae,” he corrected, and calmly finished his tea.

Incredulous, Holly stared at him. Was he really going to sit here in her parlor and pretend his assault had been no more than a slip of manners? As she opened her mouth to give him a harsher piece of her mind, he set his teacup down and gave her a very direct stare. “Blinky will be watching the house. He may try to get in when he thinks you’re not home...or asleep.”

“What?”

“Although I’m fairly sure Hammer will trail me home,” Vonken continued, ignoring her gape of shock. “We’ve given them cause to suspect that I’ve already taken the element, which should ease Villard’s mind enough that he won’t harass you openly again.”

“That was harassing?”

“Had I not been here,” Vonken said sharply, standing to glare down at her, “the polite questions would have rapidly turned to a brutal search, and when they didn’t find anything, they’d bind you and use far more painful methods to extract information from you than the little pinprick you suffered at my hands, my dear.”

Holly struggled to make words come out of her rising rage. “You are making some insufferable accusations, Doctor. I wonder what might happen to your rank and standing among that vaunted surgeon’s society were I to repeat any of this to Mr Villard!”

“Am I?” he countered. “Go upstairs. See how many things you find out of their places in every room. Since their boss was playing nice, they probably made at least a halfhearted effort to put things back instead of leaving your home a wreck, but I’ll wager you’ll discover they have been rifling your belongings.”

Holly shook her head vehemently. “I don’t even know what to say to such an outrageous claim!”

“If you think that’s outrageous, my dear, what about that tragic explosion which destroyed the refinery and two streets of slums around it? Oh, yes, it was sad, but they were only the dregs of society, weren’t they, the poor who hadn’t even the skill to be employed as launderers or cart-haulers or trash-pickers, but spent their days, some of them their lives, crushing the rocks from the edge of the Wastelands for a few specks of Dust, none of which they ever owned or reaped any benefit from beyond a day’s meals! Who cares about a few hundred of them, when the banner of the Northern Pacific Company must fly ever higher over Castle Villard until its shadow covers all of Columbia Pacifica!” He was nearly shouting, his eyes dark under heavily creased brows, teeth flashing white as his moustache didn’t quite hide his sneer. Holly stared, frozen in place. No one had ever shouted at her before tonight. Vonken took a deep breath, and finished in a lower register: “Why would Henry Villard care that his own laxity in refining the most dangerous substance mankind has ever known caused the loss of a small swath of the poorer neighborhoods? Plenty more will breed. He’s already completely rebuilt the refinery bigger and with faster machines than ever. And plenty of men, women, and those urchins one hardly notices for their very ubiquity are desperate enough to risk their safety for the promise of hot Pacifica crabs and broth every day. Why don’t you ask him what measures of protection he has installed in this new factory? Better yet, I urge you to go see the conditions for yourself, and then have the stupidity to insist Henry Villard gives a damn about anyone but Henry Villard.”

He turned away from her, one hand gripping the mantel, his head down. Holly felt herself breathing hard, and tried to calm her rapid pulse. Could he possibly...but why would... A thought struck, and she tentatively found her voice again. “Last...last winter...the Ladies’ Auxiliary Club sewed over four dozen little coats for those children. Mrs Atherton herself delivered them to the refinery!”

Vonken lifted his head, and gave her a sardonic smile over his shoulder. “And did you see any of the little dears wearing them?”

“Why, I...well, I...I didn’t...didn’t often go to that part of the city,” Holly said, fighting back a blush.

“I’ll bet,” Vonken muttered. “Well, my dear, had you bothered to step out of your Hillside neighborhood even for a day after that New Year’s blizzard, you’d have noticed the unusually high number of urchins frozen in their hovels, or in the streets after they were turned out of cupboards in the factories where they’d been trying to hide for warmth. I guarantee you the men who shoveled their bodies from the dirty snowbanks saw no coats on them. I can state this unequivocally because I treated a number of the survivors.”

Holly couldn’t believe anyone could be so cruel. “But those coats! I saw the coats; they were most of them of wool! Some even had little hoods, to cover their ears! Surely the foremen wouldn’t have denied them...” But she stopped. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Mikael had kept a secret business partner from her, had kept a book with a secret compartment in their home without her knowledge; the city founder asked her strange questions and gave strange reasons for doing so; this enigmatic doctor threw horrible accusations around like poisoned Dust in a Wastelands dirt-devil. And the way they both were snapping at each other, pretending to be polite, drinking up all my brandy, and those frightening men of Villard’s... At the thought of their appearance in the parlor again, before Villard left, Holly shuddered. Whatever they’d been doing, she didn’t like them at all. Especially not the one with the false red lens for an eye... She bit her lip again, feeling Vonken watching her, allowing her to turn it all over in her mind.

Quietly, his voice softer and with even a possible hint of approval in it, he said, “Mikael spoke of your quick mind. He told me once it was a good thing women weren’t allowed to join the Scientific Expeditionary Brigade, or he’d never have been the Autumnson to make Captain.”

Holly swallowed, and raised her eyes to the doctor’s. All coldness had gone from them, and now they seemed quiet reflecting pools, deceptive in their blueness, fathomless. “My brother said that?” she asked.

Vonken sighed softly, and gave her one nod. As she considered this unlikely statement, he roused himself again, and went to the window to peer cautiously past the curtain-lace. “He’ll be in the trees, most likely. You’ll need stronger wards.”

“Mikael?” Holly asked, confused.

“Blinky.” Vonken shot her a grin, then strode briskly from the room. Holly nearly tripped over the stupidly long mourning skirt trying to keep up. He halted at the back door, stretching his lean frame up to examine the jamb. “Hmm, yes. Completely unacceptable.” He braced himself as if expecting a wind to try and blow him back, and then began murmuring in that same glottal tongue he’d used earlier. Holly watched, fascinated, as the energy snaked out of his fingertips, slow as mist at first, then pouring out of him, glowing golden, cooling to blue as it settled along the lineaments of the door, then creeping outward to outline the kitchen windows as well.

Vonken rocked back on his heels, appearing winded. “That...that ought to do it,” he gasped, then gave a breathy laugh. “Wish I could see Blinky’s face when he tries to open that. He’ll be in for a nasty shock.”

Holly took a cautious step closer, staring at the dying glow surrounding Vonken. The last thing to fade, she saw, was a patch over his heart. “You’re a Coldspark,” she said, then blushed as she realized how rude she must sound. However, Vonken only smiled.

“Maryland,” he said, and walked through the swinging door to the dining room. Holly trailed after him, mesmerized when he repeated the whole ritual for the windows there. Although the Interior of what had been the United States was hardest-hit in the Cataclysm, with jagged boulders the size of whales, they said, the size of buildings, slamming with such force into the once-grassy plains that the Crater had formed from their toxic, explosive impacts, much of the eastern seaboard had perished as well. More of the rocks from some wretched Hell of the heavens found their graves in the Atlantic, and waves like Noah’s flood covered the shores, and one horrible Cataclysm Stone had screamed to earth right upon the Capitol building, so it was said. Many viewed it as proof that the Union had been the wrong side to be on in the late war, or that an evil administration had brought horror down on the whole country. The Freemasons were blamed, the Indians were blamed, the new advocates of descent from apes contrary to Biblical teachings were blamed, but in the end everyone suffered. Streaks of fire caught the eyes of those few survivors who made it back to the States from ships at sea, north, south, east and west, from fur trappers in the far treeless snows to half-crazed former banditos begging asylum from the burning southern desert. All reports suggested that the astral destroyers had spared no corner of the globe.

The worst eyewitness report, however, had come from a preacher who took it as his mission to carry the tales of terror, the wrath of an old god, across the entire continent east to west. Before he died of Dust poisoning in the convent of the Sisters of the Oncoming Storm, the preacher told of the rock which did not quite strike the earth of Maryland...but exploded in the sky above it, and rained down death for days. It was the first sign of the Cataclysm, a full week before any other horror struck. All the fish in the Chesapeake writhed in the shallows; those which didn’t die, they said, grew more eyes, legs, fierce claws, and snarled and shrieked day and night. The birds attacked people, and those clawed by their poisoned talons spasmed and frothed at the mouth before expiring in agony. And the people...

Vonken had moved on to the front hall and door, again chanting strange words as he wove his long fingers in the air, directing the flow of Cataclysmic energy through his very body, shaping it into protective locks around every point of entry. Holly stayed a few paces behind him, watching in silence. Those who had breathed the air in that place, the air full of Dust, had either died in raving anguish, eaten from the inside out by a fierce fire which made their bodies glow and burned with frost anyone who tried to touch them...or become channelers of the very aether. Whatever power the Dust contained, stored for aeons in its fine crystals as it hurtled through the vastness between stars, the few men and women known as Coldsparks could somehow concentrate it from the very air they breathed, rumor had it. They could shape it to their desire. The very first krakenpilot was a Coldspark.

When Vonken gathered his strength, his breathing noticeably labored, and placed his foot upon the lowest tread of the stairs, Holly spoke up. “Why are you...why are you doing this?”

The look he gave her was perplexity itself. “Good lord, woman, do you really think I’d leave this house defenseless now that Villain has an unholy interest in it? The more time passes without that element arriving in his hands, the more unhappy he’ll be...and he won’t stop tearing your home apart until he’s completely satisfied you’re not withholding it from him.” He started up the stairs grimly. “I’ll throw him off as much as I can, but it would be a blot on my conscience if I had to perform an autopsy in your bedroom tomorrow.”

Shivering all over once, Holly forced her feet into motion after him. “But...but I don’t have the faintest idea what this thing is!”

“Something your brother discovered on his last expedition. Sorry, bad phrasing: on the one he returned from earlier this year, before he went out again in June.” Vonken didn’t pause, muttering and weaving shimmering ribbons of light, moving on from room to room on the upper floor as soon as the glow began to turn from gold to blue. Holly approached one window closer in the library, and felt the chill from the ward. She glanced outside, thinking of his comment about the trees, but saw nothing. She drew the curtain anyway. Bizarre as this whole affair was, she admitted to herself she did feel a little safer seeing Vonken apply stronger wards to her entire home. Embarrassed, she realized which room he was heading into next.

“Wait! But that’s my...” She stopped in the doorway to her bedroom, but her shyness was suddenly breached when she saw its condition. “My books!”

The pile of reading material which she always kept on the floor near her bed had been toppled, and Vonken hadn’t been near it. Turning quickly, Holly saw her desk drawers ajar, her wardrobe slightly open. She strode to it angrily and yanked open the doors. One of her best silk dressing-gowns slid the rest of the way off its hanger to puddle on the carpet. “They rummaged through my things!”

“Your surprise surprises me,” Vonken said dryly, then focused on raising the wards here. Holly gathered up the gown in her arms, furious. The instant he stopped speaking that disturbingly familiar language at the window, she snapped at him.

“How did you know my brother? What was this business venture you had with him? Why is it turning my home upside down?” she demanded.

He paused, staring coldly at her, then stepped around her and went down the hall to the last room. Mikael’s room. He began chanting again, facing the windows and the hearth in this grander room, which had been their parents’ once. Holly stepped in front of him, and he jerked his hands up, startled. “Tell me! If this is as dangerous as I’m starting to think, tell me just what the hell you’ve dragged me into – you and my stupid brother!” she almost yelled. Only when his eyes narrowed at her did she realize how foolish she’d just been; his energy sparked and crackled around her. She was inches away from his chest, and he held his hands, fingers spread, out to her sides, forming a cage of energy enclosing them both. Frightened, she dropped her voice. “Please stop.”

“No,” he said.

“Stop, please. Turn it...turn it off.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he growled, teeth gritted, lips taut. “Stay absolutely still.”

She started to nod, then stopped herself. She held herself as frozen as possible while the cold radiating off his entire body enveloped her, driving up shivers in every limb. Vonken took a breath and resumed speaking, his voice quiet, repeating the same words he’d used at every ward, and suddenly Holly recognized two of them. I know that! I know that language! Where have I heard it? No...no...not heard it, read it! What book, what book could I have heard the language of a Coldspark in? Wonder overcame her fear suddenly, and as he finished with a last gesture, drawing the wisps of energy into himself again, she burst out, “Why does that make me think of Hans Christian Anderson?”

He blinked at her, recovered himself, and took a step back. “That was Dutch,” he said, sounding surprised and...perhaps...amused. “My family was Dutch, generations ago.”

Holly looked quizzically at him. “Coldspark language is nothing more than Dutch?”

He laughed outright then, and Holly listened in wonder. Where his speaking voice was sharp, midrange, inflected only for stark emphasis, his laugh was melodic, shooting upward. “I have no idea what the rest of them do. It’s just harder for anyone to break my wards this way. Most of you pioneer-family types can’t pronounce a glottal stop to save your skins.” He appeared weary, and the smile faded. “I can’t tell you what arrangement your brother and I had, Miss Autumnson. The less you know, the better.”

“That’s not a very comforting excuse, Doctor Vonken.”

“It’s all I have.”

“So Mr Villard’s hired thugs won’t harm me if I don’t know anything, is that what you’re implying?” This whole night had begun to feel like a mystery by Mr Poe, or one of those awful penny-dreadfuls Mikael had enjoyed in the cheapside paper.

Vonken touched the door of Mikael’s wardrobe. It too had been opened and roughly pawed through. He gazed at his own reflection in the mirror on the inside of the door, and abruptly Holly thought, But he can’t have been in Maryland on the day of the Cataclysm. He looks too young! That was nineteen years ago, and he can’t be so much as thirty...well, perhaps he was a boy. But doesn’t the Dust age a person early? Maybe it doesn’t affect him because of his blood, whatever it was that made him a Coldspark instead of sickening him, killing him? How did a youth survive the journey from the East to here? I’ve never heard the like.

He broke into her inner questions by answering the one she’d asked aloud. “Oh, I didn’t imply that at all. They’ll still torture you if they suspect you’re holding out any information. At least I’ll have the comfort of knowing you won’t be able to implicate me.”

Holly stared at him. The corners of his auburn handlebar twitched. Incredulous, she realized: “Is that your idea of a joke?”

Vonken flashed a grin, then straightened his broad shoulders. “I advise you not to leave the house for a few days, Miss Autumnson. I will make an amulet for your personal use, but it will take me a short while to craft, and I do have more pressing matters to attend right now...”

“More pressing than my safety? I don’t much care for your sense of –“

“That wasn’t a joke,” he said brusquely, leaving the room, trotting down the stairs with what seemed forced energy.

“Doctor! Wait!”

He paused at the front door. “If I stay any longer, Miss Autumnson, your neighbors will begin to gossip. Besides, that gent with the piledriver for an arm is waiting out there for me. Wouldn’t want to deprive him of a comeuppance.” Another brief, cynical smile. “I bid you good evening, my dear. Pleasant dreams.”

And just like that, he left. The door latched behind him. Exasperated, Holly rushed to the glass inset and rapped at it. If he heard, he gave no sign; she watched his back moving farther and farther until only the crunch of his boots on the gravel gave a hint as to his direction. Holly let her hand fall from the glass. “But how do I open the wards to get out?” she groaned.

She wandered into the parlor, saw the snifter of brandy Vonken had barely sampled where he’d left it upon the low table. The last of the French brandy her father had kept as his personal stock. Wasted. Holly sighed, and held it up to the light. Which side had the doctor sipped from? Did she want to put her lips where his had been?

Oddly, that idea didn’t repulse her.

She drank it in two great swallows, hoping to drown her anger and frustration at the whirlwind her life had unexpectedly become. Then it occurred to her she might have a Dutch dictionary among the foreign phrasebooks her father had collected during his years as a merchant, a baron of trade to places she would only ever read about. Places which no longer existed. She lifted her skirts and nearly flew upstairs to the library.

The library window afforded a wonderful view of the front drive and the gates at the bottom of Autumn Hill, but as Holly paged through books in foreign tongues, trying to decipher what each was without benefit of English translation on the pages, she didn’t draw back the curtain again to look out. Which was a pity, as she missed seeing the burly man with the mechanical arm leap from the copse of aspens onto the weary back of Dr Vonken.