Page 27 of A Slipper in the Smoke
As much as she wanted to tell someone—anyone—she couldn’t. Her words had seized up in her mouth.
Pip hurried out of the room, giving her a few moments to collect herself. Before long, he was back again, pressing a glass to her lips. The room stopped spinning, the nausea fading to a dull ache.
“Elena?” Pip prompted, hand hovering by her shoulder. “Are you ill? You look awfully pale.”
“A headache,” she whispered. “Nothing more. The water helps—thank you.”
Pip did not look convinced, but he did not press it. “You’re sure you don’t need anything else?”
She shook her head. Pip urged her to drink again, and got up and went to her desk. It took her a while to realise he was tidying it for her, putting everything back in its place with surprising efficiency.
“You’re done for the day,” he declared, fetching her coat from the peg beside the door. He helped her into it, hands hovering over the fasteners. “Can you stand? Let me help you.” He put an arm around her waist and tugged her to her feet. Stable as she was, she was glad of the weight, the sturdiness of his presence. “Can I send for someone to escort you home? I… I can’t leave the palace, I’m afraid.”
Elena shook her head again, about all she could manage. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s only a headache.”
Pip swallowed, saying nothing, remaining tightly by her side the entire walk towards the lifts. Any dim thought of asking him why he had come had been evaporated by the horror she had witnessed.
“I’ll come and check on you tomorrow, if I may?” he asked as they neared the booth.
At this, she could only nod.
A coldness crept into her bones as she descended through the clouds, needle-thin and everywhere at once. The bodies—thosethings—were branded into her.
Were they alive? Some of them were moving, their few remaining muscles twitching as the wires spasmed out of them…
Please let them not have been alive,she prayed,let them not have been in pain.
She knew, even before the lift juddered to a stop, there was no going home tonight.
No goingback.
Elena didn’t know which garage was Snowdrop’s, but she’d break into them all if necessary. She banged on every door, hissing her name, cursing the stars and the Dome and everything under it. Her knuckles cracked from pounding, but she barely felt it.
“Snowdrop! Answer me!”
“Thank you for reminding me why we have codenames,” said a voice.
Elena swivelled. Snowdrop stood under one of the garage doors, leaning on a makeshift cane. There was a smirk on her face, but it dropped the second she spied Elena. “You’ve seen something.”
“I saw…” her voice choked on the words. “I saw…”
“Come in,” said Snowdrop quickly. “In case the shadows have ears.”
Elena hurried inside, dimly aware of the trust Snowdrop was placing in her, revealing the location of her safehouse. The trust barely registered, panic and horror still coursing through her. Snowdrop handed her a flask of something. Whiskey, cheap and foul. Elena downed the contents.
“There’s a… a workshop. Under the palace. I saw all these bodies…”
“All?”
“Dozens. Dozens of them. Men and women, half flesh, half gears. Alive, dead… it didn’t seem to matter. Some didn’t havelimbs.They’d been… snipped away, to be replaced with something else. I can’t… I can’t even…” Her chest shuddered. “It’s true, isn’t it? Every rumour. All of it. The Crown is using the dead as fodder.”
Snowdrop hung her head. “We knew that they’d used soldiers in the past to make dread doctors. We knew they used the dead to make the coal. We only suspected they sometimes used them for… other things.”
Hot tears dribbled down Elena’s cheeks. What had her father been used for? Had she passed his walking corpse on the street, or used it to power her furnace?
“I want to help,” she said, trying to voice that pain into meaning, to strengthen her resolve. She would steel herself. She would not crumble.
Snowdrop nodded, but she did not seem pleased with this victory.
