THE BOY BROUGHT THEM AT LAST TO A STREET OF STORIED MANSIONS. Perhaps “small palaces” was a more apt description, each marrying different shades of colors and styles of stonemasonry. The homes announced themselves to passersby with doors that looked as though they could withstand battering rams if necessary, and windows from which candlelight and the gazes of servants fell softly over the three of them.
At the very end of the street, past the splendor of Prague’s wealthy, lived a narrow little shop, which leaned so severely to the right on its haunches that the windows and door had been installed on a slant. Its front window was covered with a curtain, blocking the interior, and it bore no sign.
Nicholas reached up to touch Etta’s earring on its leather cord and took a steadying breath. As he followed Sophia inside, the shop coughed up warm dust and the smell of rotting earth. Dozens of candles were scattered around the room like guiding stars. The dingy light, however, only served to make the shelves of bottles and jars, many cracked and half-full, seem filthier than the lace of spiderwebs connecting them.
Half of these same shelves had buckled and snapped, spilling their contents onto the floor, where they had been promptly forgotten. Wax from the candles was dripping onto the glass cases and chairs, many of which were torn or broken altogether. As much as he had longed to be in a place warm enough to begin drying out his clothes and thawing his blood, Nicholas’s skin only felt an overwhelming itchiness amid the decay.
“Madam!” the boy called.
A crimson curtain behind the far counter rustled, and out from under the portrait of a doll-faced child came a young woman. Her hair was like a raven’s wing: black, with a natural sheen that caught the candlelight, even without the gold-and-pearl netting that had been pinned to it. A heavy gold cross hung around her neck, dipping into the low bodice of her strawberry-pink silk gown—at odds with the filth that seemed to be steaming around her. Her face, with its too-large eyes and lips, was oddly arresting, so much so that Nicholas took a step toward her without meaning to. The thoughts that had been trying to sort themselves out went soft at the edges.
The woman received the boy warmly, leaning down to ghost a finger along the bridge of his nose, her smile as sweet as pure honey. He nodded at something she whispered in his ear and happily skipped off to a stool a short distance away, reclaiming a thin leather volume.
The woman glimmered in the candlelight as she smiled at them. Her skin, the gold, the beading and metallic thread shot through her gown—all called to him, shining and bold. The light caught her like flame on glass.
Nicholas leaned back against the pull of her, cocking his head to the side to better study her. There was something in the way she didn’t move so much as flicker around, like the candles burning on the counter near her hands—something that made him question his eyes.
“See?” Sophia scoffed. “I told you you’d forget Linden soon enough.”
He whirled on her, grasping for the words that only a moment before had been poised on the tip of his tongue. It wasn’t that. Nicholas didn’t feel a rush of attraction that set him back on his heels, the way he had with Etta, but…this was…it seemed closer to the flush that came with too much whiskey on a too-empty stomach. A sickness.
“Welcome,” the woman said, in such a soft voice that Nicholas and Sophia took another step forward to hear her. The candles mimicked their movement, and, for just a moment, he was able to tear his eyes off the woman—the Belladonna—and notice that, in the middle of the stack of reeking, swollen tallow candles was one burning a sullen blood red.
“Welcome, weary travelers,” she said again, this time with a smile that revealed beautifully white teeth, like seed pearls—something unheard-of for anyone in this era. “How may I assist you?”
This woman? This was the woman who had dueled with Cyrus Ironwood and won her independence from him? Perhaps this…beguiling charm…worked even on the stone-hearted.
“We’ve come to trade for information,” Sophia said, leaning an arm and hip against the counter.
Nicholas glanced up at the slight vault of the ceiling, not quite a dome. Much of it was covered with a damp cloak of dust and mildew, browned by time, but here and there he could make out the strange, mystical symbols that bordered its edges. At the peak was a large silver crescent moon, half masked by the dark clouds painted around it.
“I possess many remarkable objects,” the woman hedged. “And know of many more.”
“Can we cut through this nonsense and get to the heart of this?” Sophia said. “I was made to believe that you know everything and everyone. If that isn’t the case, we’ll take our business somewhere else.”
“Perhaps if you were to be more specific about what it is you’re searching for?” The Belladonna’s voice sounded as though it were being coaxed out of a violin.
“We’re looking for information pertaining to, ah,” Nicholas said, “travelers of a particular nature.”
“Perhaps you could be a little less specific and a bit more cagey,” Sophia muttered, shaking her head. “I’d love to be here to greet the next century.”
A sound shuddered up from beneath the floorboards—a heaving, stomping sound that seemed to rattle even the timber beams overhead. A portrait of a benign, pale man tumbled from the nearby wall behind where the boy sat. It smashed out of its frame when its gilded corner struck the ground. The steps passed beneath them—Sophia straightened, tracking the sound with her eye. Nicholas kept a hand on the knife at his side.