The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [3]
At last, Portnoy said, “I suggest you think about your mother’s final disposition before your birthday, Aoife. Make arrangements with the city while you are able. It can go badly for charity patients with no one to care for them. Cristobel is an experimentation facility, you know.”
Experimentation, a glorious word to most of the students I studied engineering with, sent a spike of nausea straight into my stomach. It didn’t mean the sacred tradition of hypothesis, theory and proof here. It meant electricity. Locked rooms. Water tanks and halogen lights. Portnoy didn’t fool me—he wanted to be the one to cure viral madness, to find the golden key where all before him had failed. I’d seen some of the creatures he wheeled through the halls. Twitching limbs, shaved heads, empty eyes. Experiments.
My mother tethered me to her madness, but no matter how much I wanted escape, I didn’t want it to happen like that.
The bells on St. Oppenheimer’s cathedral started tolling five, and I pulled my arm out of Portnoy’s grasp. He looked at me, the steam from the outside world fogging the lenses of his spectacles. “I have to go,” I said, and tried to still my hammering heart.
“A pleasant evening to you then, Miss Grayson,” he said. The sentiment didn’t reach his eyes. Portnoy slammed the door behind me with a final bang, a tomb sound. All of the madhouses had the same heavy doors, the kind that let you know they always kept a piece of you, even when you could leave.
As I walked, I wrapped my school scarf around my face to keep the cold air out of my lungs. Leaving the madhouse always felt like a temporary stay of execution. I’d just have to go back next week, assuming my mother hadn’t lost her visitor privileges again. I hurried, letting the cold burn the torrent of anger and panic out of me, calm me, turn me back into an anonymous girl rushing to catch the jitney. The White Line, back to the Academy and the School of Engines, was three blocks away, on the corner of Derleth and Oakwood, and it only ran once an hour after five bells.
I arrived at the corner just as the jitney pulled away in a roar of gears and a dragon belch of steam. Cursing, I kicked the pavement. A passing pair of Star Sisters glared at me and made the sign of the eye, two fingers to their foreheads. I looked away. The Star Sisters and their Great Old Ones could curse me all they liked—it wouldn’t supersede the curse that was already ticking time down in my blood.
I put my scarf up over my head and walked on, since there was nothing to do but walk until I caught up to a jitney that would take me back to Uptown. Dr. Portnoy’s words turned in my mind, mingling with Nerissa’s dreams. My head hurt, steadily throbbing in time with my heart, and I still had studying to do, an exam in the morning. My day wasn’t likely to improve.
When I’d gone a few blocks, my mood worsening with each step, I heard a voice yelling to me from across the traffic stream.
“Aoife? Aoife! Wait!”
A nimble figure darted in front of a pedal jitney pulling a roast-nut cart, and the driver shouted something in German. I’d taken enough courses to know it wasn’t the least bit polite, but Calvin Daulton hadn’t.
“Made it to you!” he panted, pulling up beside me, his cheeks twin combustions of red in the cold. “Almost didn’t. Saw you walking by.”
“Why are you all the way in Old Town?” I said, surprise coloring my question. Cal hefted a sack from the stationer’s store across the way.
“Nibs and ink. Only store in the city that carries a decent india ink. We’ve got a schematic due tomorrow—or did you forget again?”
“Of course not. Mine’s already finished.” Only a small lie. Not like my lie to Dr. Portnoy about my dreams. The sketches for my schematic were finished, but the transcription to good paper, the writing in of technical specifications, the math—all of that was waiting for me back at the girls’ dormitory. That bit, I’d forgotten about. Nerissa ate up my thoughts the way the Great Old Ones were said to devour suns on their journey through the spheres.