Madame Celeste Gearhart's Arc

Chapter 13 of 24

The morning after Akiko fled, Celeste stood at her workbench and counted the risk. The fleet would come soon. She needed every restless spirit in Everblack bound to her totem. But the totem could hold only so many. She had felt it strain the last time she pushed it. Bind too many spirits at once, and the whole thing would crack before the pirates ever arrived. She had power. She did not have room. She set her hands on the totem and reached out. Cold pressure filled the cottage. Spirits poured toward the core, drawn like iron to a magnet. The gears on the walls rattled. The candle flames bent flat. Celeste pulled in a dozen, then a dozen more. The totem grew hot under her palms. Something inside it hummed too high, a strained metal whine. She stopped. Her breath came short. The totem was near full, and the fleet had a hundred dead men she had not yet claimed. A knock came at the door. Not spirits this time. Something heavier, and a scrape of claws on wood. Celeste lifted the bar and opened it. Percival Venomsworth stood on her threshold. The platypus barely reached her knee, but he tipped his brass top hat like a lord. A row of colored vials glinted along his belt. He was the one who had traded her the venom to seal her totem's valve. In return she had handed him a vial of her own sap poison. She had regretted that trade since. "You look tired, Madame," Percival said. His duck bill clicked. "You've been feeding it too fast. I can smell the strain from the water." "Say what you came to say." He waddled inside without asking. From his belt he drew a small brass drum wound with copper. "A reservoir," he said. "You bind the spirits into this first. Then feed them to the totem slow, a few at a time. The core never overloads. You hold ten times as many." His flat tail swept the floor as he set it on the bench. "I built it after our last deal. I do so love a dark little contraption." Celeste eyed him. "And your price?" "Another vial of your sap. You have plenty." His black eyes were bright and unblinking. She knew she was arming him again. She had no time to refuse. She filled a vial and set it in his waiting paw. Celeste fixed the reservoir beside the core. She reached out once more. This time the spirits flowed into the drum, not the totem. The whine was gone. The brass held them, patient and cold. She could gather a hundred now, and feed them across the coming days. The overload was solved. Percival tucked her poison into his belt and tipped his hat. "Until the next deal," he said, and waddled into the fog. Celeste watched him go, holding a weapon that was hers.