The Cerulean (The Cerulean Duology #1) - Amy Ewing Page 0,123
felt good to be free of the crate. She stood and stretched as the swing was slowly lowered from the ceiling. There were circles of iron on the chains and Sera quickly learned that they were for her, to keep her attached. Francis helped her onto the wooden platform, locking the iron around her wrists. He looked miserable, and when their eyes met, he muttered, “I’m sorry.”
He stepped back and the swing began to move. The initial lurch was frightening, but then she was rising up and up, away from all the staring faces, away from the horrid crate, and she felt a whoosh of freedom, like she was back at the top of the temple. The glass ceiling came closer, but she was lifted higher until she was behind the curtain that ran along the top of the stage, and the red seats disappeared.
She looked around—perhaps there was some window or vent up here she could crawl through. But the scaffold she was attached to was sunk into flat wall on either side. There were no windows or doors or other visible means of escape. And she couldn’t get out of these irons anyway.
“She seems awfully calm up there,” Martin said.
“Guess her kind isn’t afraid of heights,” James replied.
Afraid of heights? Sera wanted to laugh. She wondered how long they would keep her up here—she certainly preferred it to the crate and all the staring.
As it turned out, they kept her there the whole afternoon. The performers repeated the same part of the story over and over, and Sera would be lowered down so that she hovered at a level with Boris’s topmost branches, then raised back up again.
It was maddeningly repetitive. Sera could not help but feel that every second that passed was a second she was not on her way to the tether, and though she knew it was not an easy task to accomplish, she still wished she could have the sense that something was happening. Surely Agnes or Leo had to come to this place sometime. Unless they had been found out, or sent away. Sera had not considered that possibility, and it stunned her into stone as she was brought back down to the stage and shuttled to her crate.
“Excellent work, everyone, excellent work today,” Martin said, clapping his hands. “It’s all coming together. I’m confident we’ll be ready to go by opening night. And in the nick of time too, it’s only days away!”
The performers began putting on hats or shawls and leaving the theater in twos and threes. When only Martin and James were left, the theater doors opened and the red-haired man called Kiernan entered, followed by Leo. Sera’s heart leaped with hope, an odd reaction to seeing the person she had so recently despised. She watched them through a break between two of Boris’s saplings.
“Good evening, Mr. Jenkins,” Kiernan said, shaking Martin’s hand. “Mr. Roth,” he said with a nod to James. “How did it go today?”
“Very well,” Martin replied. “You may tell Xavier she fits in perfectly. The height doesn’t seem to bother her at all. And as you can see, something has definitely been having an effect on Boris. I don’t know what Francis is watering him with, but these flowers are just . . .”
“Magnificent,” Kiernan agreed. “Leo, we’ll take some cuttings of the new ones; I don’t recognize all of them. Boris could be gifting us with new species. How exciting!”
Sera kept her eyes trained on Leo, waiting for a moment when she could speak to him, swallowing down all the questions she had.
“I hear you refused Xavier’s offer to travel with young Mr. McLellan and myself around Kaolin,” Kiernan said to James.
Leo’s scissors froze in the act of cutting a flower, and Sera listened closely.
“I’m no salesman,” James said, flashing Kiernan a charming grin. “The stage is the place for me, and if Xavier is no longer in the theater business, well then, I think our work together is at an end.”
Kiernan gave him a pitying look. “My dear boy, your work with Xavier will be at an end when he says it is at an end. Surely you have taken the measure of him by now. He is not one to be trifled with or refused.” Kiernan’s normally cheerful face grew somber. “Trust me on this.”
James shifted from foot to foot. “I’ve been in worse scrapes with worse men.”
“No,” Kiernan said, and something about his tone made Sera shiver. “You have not.”