Madame Celeste Gearhart's Arc

Chapter 10 of 24

The sap still glowed when Celeste woke. It fed on the bound spirits without her hand on the stone. She pressed the totem cold at last, but the danger stayed. Mei-Ling had promised to return prepared. Celeste knew the pirate would strike the totem's weakness, and now the totem had two. If Mei-Ling forced the sap to run wild, it would drain her spirits faster than she could hold them. Celeste needed a way to shut the sap off on command. She could not build it alone. She limped through the fog to the salvage yard. Rusted machines loomed in the gray light. Gideon met her between two shelves of pipe and gauges, wrench-arm swinging as he sorted scrap. He did not smile. "You built the trap. Now you're back," he said. "That means it went wrong." "The totem holds too much," Celeste said. "The poison keeps feeding after I let go. If my enemy jams it open, it eats everything I've bound." Gideon set down a gauge and looked at her a long moment. He had given her his father's core once, and helped wall her totem in brass. He owed her nothing more, and they both knew it. "I can build a valve," he said. "A cut-off. But I don't have the venom to seal it against the sap." A voice answered from the shelf above. "Venom I have." A platypus stepped into view along the rusted rack. He wore a top hat and a wide steampunk belt lined with glass vials. His beaver tail dragged behind him. This was the poison-seller who worked the marsh, Percival Venomsworth, a trader Celeste had bought from before but never trusted. He tipped his hat. "My saliva stops many hungry things," he said. "For a price, madame." "Name it," Celeste said. Percival's flat eyes gleamed. "A vial of your sap. I have plans of my own for what feeds on the dead." Celeste did not like the thought of that duck-billed inventor holding her poison. But Mei-Ling was coming, and she had no time to bargain further. She gave him a sealed jar. He gave her a vial of thick venom. They worked all afternoon. Gideon shaped a brass valve to fit the sap channel. Celeste coated the seal with the venom until it hardened black. She fitted the valve beside the core and pressed her hands to the totem. She called the spirits, held them, then twisted the valve shut. The sap stopped pulling. The stone cooled at her word. The hunger obeyed. Celeste breathed out. She could bind Everblack now and cut the poison off before it turned on her. The master totem was almost whole and finally safe in her grip. But Percival tucked her sap into his belt and walked into the fog without another word. She had armed herself against Mei-Ling, and handed a stranger the seed of her own weapon.