safe until I arrived. He was eager to assist. If not for my persuasion, he would not have taken payment.”
Words and words—what was he saying? Truth, William Shepherd, payment and persuasion. What did it matter? He was here and he was talking like her brother, like her too familiar, undead, infuriating brother, and the one thing she needed him to clarify was how.
“I killed you,” Molly said.
He raised the blade like a finger to his lips and said, “Shush. I will tell you how we came from Grayport to this. Whatever your emotions, I encourage you to rein them. Tom Orange has a much sharper blade to his throat.”
“Tell me what you’ve done.”
Nicholas laughed and wiped his face, amused by her contrariness but grimacing—in anger?—when his hand touched a spot above his eye where she had struck him. The knife was on his thigh now, close enough to snatch.
“In Grayport,” he said, “we were desperate. We were poor. Would you believe that I was terrified? I did my best to hide it, from the onset of the sickness I endured aboard the Cleaver to the first cold night we hid inside the church. We were victims in a city full of predators and strangers. You remember the pickpocket.”
Molly watched him closely. Did he know the man was dead?
“I found him easily,” Nicholas said, “the night he stole your locket. He was a coward, easily pinched, and I was struck to think the two of us had seemed an easy target. Never in our lives had we been so common, marked by common criminals and bent to common work. We belonged in higher spheres, and I resolved to make it happen. I knew of Kofi Baa from the Customs House. I knew his business and his wealth—they were no great secret—and I knew that he could lift us if his will were so inclined. I paid to have him attacked and played the selfless hero. My injuries were bought: a sensible investment.”
“How could you?” Molly said, recalling Kofi’s smile and his deep, melodious laugh. “After what he did for us!”
“Before what he did for us. I chose not to tell you—did you really not suspect?—because I knew you wouldn’t approve, however great the gain.”
“It’s terrible,” she said.
“How?” Nicholas asked. “I never did the man a single stroke of harm. He rewarded me with trust and benefited vastly. Then his colleagues and friends were benefiting, too. I dealt with business woes to start, mostly trade laws and customs, but soon their needs diversified. With every problem solved, my reputation grew. People asked for arbitration. For avoidance of scandal. For extrication from legal, marital, and ethical dilemmas. I helped them as I could and they were satisfied to pay. But everything was built upon my ironclad success. There were problems, now and then, that even I could not resolve, and one can never let the rabble question the magician. So what does the magician do? He makes his own illusions.”
The candle guttered out, sending up a fine, smoky ribbon in the moonlight. Molly’s thoughts weren’t in rhythm with the words he was speaking. She would start to comprehend but then her memory would stutter—back to Grayport, to sitting in the office while he worked, then to waking up tonight and finding him beside her.
“How do you control a blackmailer?” Nicholas continued. “Create one. How do you safeguard a secret? Know it. Whatever is required may be summoned or invented. Put simply, I devised my own worth among my clients. The truest self-reliance generates itself. My work was not so different from the tactics and deceptions we devised for Mrs. Wickware.”
“It’s criminal,” she blurted, feeling stupid as she said it.
“Criminal.” He laughed, sounding casual and warm. “I built the cages, in they went, and I provided them the key. All they lost was money. Each of them could spare it. I hope you aren’t aghast that I meddled with the law. These are men’s laws, malleable and thin: made to bend. They are not the laws of nature. Not the laws of life.”
There was just enough moonlight to see him on the stool. She focused on his leg, first the blood and then the knife.
“We didn’t sail three thousand miles to shiver, and starve, and be the browbeaten victims of the bright new world. We came to be strong. We came to be more. And what other option did we have?” Nicholas asked, leaning forward so his eye, only one, caught the moon. “Think