“I’m not denying it’s beautiful, madam,” Criminy said with a smirk, “but we do prefer our performers to be a bit more lively.”
With an answering smirk, Madam Morpho put her mouth very close to the book and whispered something. As she straightened up, the butterfly wobbled to standing, flapping its orange-dotted wings slowly as if just waking up and in need of a good stretch.
“Curious,” Criminy said. “And impressive magic. But still not enough, unfortunately.”
Madam Morpho held a black-gloved finger to the butterfly, and it stepped up like a trained bird, careful and sure.
“I mentioned my travails in London,” she said as if addressing the butterfly. “Due to a grave misunderstanding, I cannot return there. But you’ll find I won’t drive a hard bargain, salary-wise. And given a few days’ time, I am confident that I can construct the props my performers need to amaze any audience. I don’t think I need tell you that most city dwellers have never seen a live butterfly and even the London Zoo is without a living specimen. I could easily sell this collection, even dead, for a large enough sum to purchase my own island and retire in reclusive comfort.”
“Why don’t you, then?” Criminy said sharply.
Madam Morpho stroked the butterfly’s quivering antenna and said, “I would sooner sell my own children.”
Hands on slender hips, Criminy sighed and stared down into the depths of the trunk. Other than a bulk of black cloth strapped into the lid, it held nothing but dozens and dozens of books, each of which, one had to assume, held a rare, beautiful butterfly.
Tish put a hand on Criminy’s shoulder and gave him a meaningful look. “I think I can solve this conflict easily enough.”
He chuckled and nodded. “Smart lass.”
“If you’ll be so kind as to remove the glove on your right hand,” Tish said with a smile. The first time she had spoken the words before touching someone and reading his future, she had felt like a fraud, but now she had a professional grace and confidence about her glancing.
Madam Morpho cocked her head, making her tall hat list to the side dangerously, but she slipped off her glove without complaint and held out her hand. Tish grasped it and shuddered briefly before relaxing with a smile. She leaned over and whispered into Criminy’s ear, and he burst out in laughter so loud that the nosy tightrope girl came running from her wagon to see what all the fuss was about.
“I don’t understand,” Madam Morpho said.
“You’re hired,” Criminy said. “And that’s that.”
3
After a comfortable night listening to the muffled but oddly melodic snoring of Abilene the Bearded Lady, Madam Morpho found herself standing under a watery morning sun. Before her was the forbidding door of a wagon painted the glittery gray of pyrite. Calligraphed in the familiar carnival curlicues were the words The Mysterious Mr. Murdoch, and underneath that, in smaller letters, Artificer and Metallurgical Zoologist. She smoothed down her jacket, made sure her hat was on straight, and knocked on the door.
She didn’t like to think of herself as one of those foolish, tremulous women who needed their hands held through life. In fact, she had elbowed her way through university with more fortitude than all the males in her class, smirking to herself each time one of them dropped like a dead fly under the pressure. She was one of the tenacious few who had earned top marks and a degree in eclipsazoology, and it had been a struggle every day, both within the classroom and without. There was no way this Mr. Murdoch was going to be a harder creature than the world-renowned Professor Beauregard under whom she had studied . . . in more ways than one.
She knocked again, and the door opened. A small man in a flapping leather coat and enormous goggles stared at her without saying a word.
“Mr. Murdoch, good morning. I’m Madam Morpho. Master Stain sent me along—”
The man gulped and stuttered, “I-I-I’m sorry, miss, but it’s not me. I mean, I’m not him. I mean, he’s someone else.”
“Could you please procure him for me?”
The man gulped again, tugging at the tightly laced leather collar of his coat.
“Mr. Murdoch, he doesn’t much like being bothered at b-b-breakfast, miss,” he said. “Later, perhaps?”
“Sadly, no. Master Stain’s orders. Time is of the essence.”
Trembling all over like an aged poodle, the man stood back, holding the door open for her. She pointed to her trunk, and he hurried out. Before he could make a mess of everything, she said, “Please, do take the foot, and I’ll take the front. The contents are extraordinarily fragile.”
He nodded, and together they muscled the heavy trunk into the front room of the wagon. The chamber was cluttered with broken things, the walls painted the creamy gold of parchment and utterly coated with scrawling in pen and pencil. The cursive was slanted, and several bits were crossed out with varying degrees of fury. Amid the jumble on the floor, Madam Morpho identified half of a clockwork unicorn, the ruined bits of several chairs, a brass octopus on a stick, a mirror with a deep gouge through the metal, and the cunningly painted torso of a lascivious-looking redhead. A thick rug that had once been quite lovely flopped untidily in the center.
“What in the blustering blazes, Vil?” a man shouted from behind a closed door.
Although the layout of the wagon was different from the one she now shared with Abilene, she assumed that the door separated the workshop from a personal sleeping compartment. Madam Morpho blushed, saying, “I do hope he’s out of bed and dressed. Interrupting breakfast is one thing, but—”
The door slammed behind her trunk, and she turned to discover that Vil had disappeared, leaving her to face the mysterious Mr. Murdoch alone.
“Sir, Master Stain sent me . . .” she began, and the door squeaked open just enough to emit a warm glow and the confusing but musical din of ticking clockworks.
She waited several heartbeats, but no one appeared, nor did he yell anything further. After glancing into the scarred mirror and composing her face into the professional mask she’d learned to put on when facing men who thought themselves superior, she opened the door and simply stood there, mimicking his silence.
The room inside gave the appearance of simultaneous confusion and strict order in a way that she found deeply comforting. In her own study at home, the shelves had been organized in a similar fashion that made sense only to her. Her fastidious father had forever sneered at her clutter of books, bell jars, and specimens, but she had known exactly where the very last bludvole skull belonged. She suspected Mr. Murdoch held the same knowledge of his domain. The left-hand wall was entirely covered in clocks reading various times. The right-hand wall contained shelves heavy with books and half-made creations. And the wall facing her was a pegboard of instruments and tools, settled carefully over their painted outlines.
A long worktable ran the length of the pegboard, and a man huddled over it with his back to her. He was partially uncovered, which was more than a little shocking. In the city, people rarely revealed an inch of skin unless they were in carefully locked bedrooms, where neither bludrat nor Bludman could threaten their exposed skin. At the very least, he should have worn a coat to greet a visitor, and he definitely should not have left the nape of his neck bare to the world under his ponytail.
“Mr. Murdoch—” she began again, but he shushed her.
She sighed deeply and watched as he hung up the instrument in his hand and selected a different one from the wall without standing up or turning around. Fine, then. If he was going to make her wait while he fiddled with his toys, then she would take the liberty of exploring his shelves. She skipped the rows of books on clockworks, steam power, metallurgy, and other topics that bored her. Instead, she focused on a long line of books on animals both existent and extinct.
“Oh, my stars!” she cried, plucking a volume reverently off the shelf. “You’ve got a first edition of Viviparous Mammals of Sangland! And . . . good Lord. You’ve written all over the pages! Have you any idea how much this book would have been worth without all your frenzied scrawling?”
He chuckled, and she looked up from the once-priceless tome. The man had finally spun around on his stool to face her, and she was startled to find that he was far from the cantankerous old man she had envisioned. He was, in fact, quite handsome, in an outdoorsy sort of way, if one liked that sort of thing. His hair and beard were the color of hay in the summer, his eyes the color of grass in the spring. In all, he gave her the feeling of someone who belonged in a field amid nature, a hearty specimen who could handle a scythe or a butterfly net, if there had been any reason to employ one.
“I actually find that my additions make it all the more valuable.”
“Not to a librarian.”
“A librarian has never attempted to build a juggling polanda bear.”
“Touché, sir. I am Madam Morpho.” She approached and held out her hand, and he raised an eyebrow before giving it a rough shake. “And you’re the mysterious Mr. Murdoch?”
“It would appear so,” he said with a smirk. “The generally reclusive Mr. Murdoch. Since I haven’t managed to scare you away yet, I suppose I’m obliged to ask what brings you to my workshop.”
He had not yet stood, and she studied him with a scientist’s eyes. She was struck almost immediately by a pleasing sort of raw-boned honesty about him, a robust good humor that had been conspicuously absent during her time at the university and, later, the museum. Her fellow students had seemed, as a group, to be sickly and underfed, sharp and secretive. Not so this Mr. Murdoch.
His shoulder-length hair was slightly lighter than his beard and tied back neatly. He was wearing goggles, of course, brass and brown leather, with various optional magnifying lenses bristling from the corners. She had a pair much like them herself, abandoned in London with most of her belongings. Aside from a white shirt rolled back to the elbows, he was all over brown and tan, his waistcoat and pants made of rougher stuff than she would have guessed, although once she tallied the ink and oil stains and burns, she could see why. Unlike Master Stain, he wore the newer style of trousers that went all the way to the toes of his boots. She hadn’t liked the way it looked on the university men, but it seemed to suit Mr. Murdoch.
