And If Thou Wilt, Forget

Gertrude could claim all she wanted that she kept her various helpers separated to protect them, or to keep them from betraying one another, or simply to keep from having all her eggs in one basket. And perhaps all of those were true, to a certain degree. Certainly it gave her a modicum of safety if no two people knew the same things about what she was up to, and if they never met to compare notes, they were less likely to put her plans together, which meant those plans were less likely to be disrupted.

But right about then, her biggest reason for wishing she had been able after all to prevent Tim and Gerard from meeting was to spare herself from having to watch them flirt outrageously with one another in the middle of her Archives.

Well. She supposed she didn’t have to watch them. She could just close the door and ignore them. But that was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. Gerard’s first response to her explanation of the rituals had been to ask if Tim knew. She didn’t think he was particularly convinced by her claim that telling him would hinder his ability to walk away—which was, of course, a lie, since he was bound to the Archives now, but Gerard likely didn’t know that—but he had, at least so far, respected her injunction not to divulge anything to Tim yet.

The yet had also been a lie, one it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

The trouble was that the more Gerard learned, the more insistent he was that Tim be brought in on the truth about the rituals. At least the Unknowing. Gertrude had tried to spare Gerard too many details, but he knew enough to be concerned. The Circus was looking to remake the world in a way that would fit the Stranger, and Tim was prime bait to help bring that about—if they could get hold of him. Gertrude hoped that, by keeping him unaware, she could keep him from attempting to poke into things he oughtn’t and becoming the inadvertent linchpin of the ritual. Gerard, on the other hand, argued that he would be more likely to stumble into something he couldn’t get out of if he wasn’t aware of it. Safety in ignorance could only take you so far, he had pointed out, and kids were much less likely to go poking around in the abandoned quarry if you told them there was a den of adders living in the holes there than if you just forbade them to go.

As she watched Tim flutter his eyelashes hard enough to stir the papers on the shelf and deliver the cheesiest pick-up line she thought she’d ever heard in her life—honestly, had that line ever worked on anyone?—and Gerard clasp his hands dramatically to his heart, she admitted to herself her true reasoning for wanting to keep Tim unenlightened. The Watcher’s Crown was still a very real threat, and she didn’t know enough about it yet to know how she would disrupt it when it eventually happened. But the Stranger and the Eye were in opposition to one another, and there was a part of her that hoped Tim’s mark would be strong enough that she could use him to disrupt the Beholding ritual without having to…

Without having to what? Sacrifice yourself? Gertrude started as the thought struck her, enough that she actually pulled away from Tim and Gerard’s conversation, such as it was. Obviously she would prefer not to die to save the world. However…she had never considered herself exceptional, or at least not consciously. She was no more deserving of survival than anyone else, nor any less deserving of dying. Yet here she was, calmly considering offering up yet another young man who trusted her to something he didn’t understand only so that it didn’t have to be her.

No. No, that was…different. The Worker in Clay would never have let the likes of her past its doors. Michael Shelley’s innocence and naiveté had been the only reason he was able to get far enough to stop it. She had had to lie to him, to trick him, in order for the sacrifice to work. And she wasn’t heartless. She had cared for Michael, in her own way. Just not to the extent of being willing to risk the whole world for his sake. Nor would she risk the whole world simply for Tim’s, or Gerard’s.

But would she risk it for her own?

A long, drawn-out groan drew her attention back to Tim and Gerard just in time to see Tim pull his arms back from where Gerard had—evidently—swooned into them. Gerard hit the ground with a thump that rattled the spoons in the mugs on Tim’s desk and laughed. Laughed. She’d rarely even seen him smile before he met Tim. The life he’d led didn’t lend itself to humor, and while he would occasionally lift the corners of his mouth, in varying degrees of bitter or triumphant or darkly amused, she could not once remember him smiling for genuine joy, and she didn’t think she’d ever heard him actually laugh. For that matter—when had she last laughed?

“No,” Tim said emphatically, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at Gerard, but Gertrude didn’t need any kind of supernatural assistance to know that he was fighting very hard to contain a smile. “Absolutely not. That was too much.”

“Are you saying it would be too much for you to handle?” Gerard was obviously trying to deadpan, but he was still laughing. Tim gave in and laughed, too.

And Gertrude made up her mind.

“Tim. Gerard,” she called from her office door, trying to sound calm if not stern. “In my office. Please,” she added. It was a word she had found herself using with Tim a lot more often in the last three months. Most of the people she worked with understood that she didn’t have time to be polite, she simply needed to be obeyed. And, to be fair, Tim did understand that as well. But this was hardly a life or death situation, and she could afford to be a little polite.

Both boys—not really boys, she had to admit, but at her age one tended to see everyone younger than oneself as children, and she had worked with Gerard’s father—instantly turned serious. Gerard held up his hand to Tim, who hauled him to his feet without a second thought, and they made their way silently into her office.

Gertrude only had one chair besides her own, and she had a brief moment of wondering who was going to sit on whose lap, but she needn’t have worried. Gerard leaned against the corner, his mouth pressed into a grim, straight line and arms crossed over his chest, and Tim took the chair, feet planted firmly on the floor and hands resting on his knees. She half expected him to immediately start protesting his innocence against some perceived offense, or to start in on whatever research he had theoretically been working on. Instead, he simply sat, silent and expectant, and waited for her to tell him why she’d wanted to speak to them.

She’d definitely made the right decision in hiring him. She knew she was making the right decision in telling him now.

“Gerard is right,” she began, taking her seat behind her desk and folding her hands on its surface. Gerard started, his arms uncrossing and expression morphing into one of genuine surprise as he straightened up. “You deserve to know the truth of what we do here.”

“At the Institute generally, or in the Archives specifically?” Tim asked, his eyes never leaving hers.

“Both, but I’m thinking in particular of what we do down here.” Gertrude tilted her head to one side, studying him. “What do you think the truth is?”

Tim didn’t answer right away, another quality she appreciated in him; he didn’t rush to judgment, not when it mattered. Finally, he said, “I know that not every statement made at the Institute is a genuine encounter. I also know that the Institute is…not well respected in either academic or paranormal circles, the former because we study something frivolous and the latter because we’re credulous morons—we don’t turn away any statements, even the obviously fake ones, except the ones that have to do with dreams. I think the reason we don’t turn those away is precisely because we’re looking for the real ones, and they’re so much harder to prove than you would expect that they sound fake, even to ‘experts’. But I don’t think it’s just about study. It’s about understanding what this stuff is, for the purposes of stopping it.” He met her gaze squarely, and she noticed a muscle in his jaw work briefly. “I just don’t know what we want to stop it for. And I’ve got a hunch that that depends on who we is.”

Over Tim’s shoulder, Gerard pursed his lips in a soundless whistle and nodded slowly. Gertrude kept her own expression neutral, but she, too, was impressed. “Broadly, yes, you are correct. Especially on that last point. Let’s start at the top. You’ve been studying Robert Smirke. What have you learned?”

“Plenty, but I’m not sure how much of it is useful,” Tim admitted. “He was an architect. One of the leaders of the Greek Revival school. Attached within the Office of Works, so he designed several major public buildings. A pioneer in the use of structural iron and concrete foundations. He had something of an interest in the esoteric and the paranormal, hence why we have books on him up in our library. One of his designs was the Millbank Prison complex, which I believe was somewhere around here?”

“Correct. The Institute is located more or less where the main building of the prison was.”

“I know he didn’t design this building, though.”

Gertrude lifted an eyebrow. “And how, precisely, do you know that?”

Tim shrugged and gave her a bit of a rueful grin, briefly. “I paced off the building a couple months back, right after I found that tidbit about Millbank—I wondered if the building that’s now the Institute might have been part of it, or if Smirke had designed something to take over the space. The interior’s been redone a time or two…I think…but the outside is more or less the original building. Found the cornerstone and everything. But it’s off. The windows on the courtyard side are two bricks further from the front of the building—and two bricks closer to the back—than they are on the other side, and the steps are just a little bit off-center. Smirke’s watchword was accuracy—precision, attention to detail. Balance. Even if he’d been on his deathbed, he never would have signed his name to a design plan that wasn’t going to be implemented exactly right, and he was in his prime when the Institute’s foundation was laid. He’d have been overseeing the process, and he would absolutely have nipped those flaws in the bud.” He paused, then added, “If they were flaws and not deliberate design features.”

Normally, Gertrude could keep the Ceaseless Watcher from imparting information to her without her express consent, but surprise at Tim’s analysis left enough of a chink in her armor that a few drops of it dribbled past. She blinked, once, as the Knowledge unfolded in her brain. Tim was one hundred percent correct.

Sudden misgiving seized her, and she did something she normally avoided at all costs—she reached for the Eye and drew on its strength. The power crackled in her voice. “How did you know they were deliberate?”

“I didn’t, it was just a guess,” Tim replied immediately. “But the ‘flaws’ are too precise to not be deliberate, really. It’s not obvious, just a niggling sense that something is off, until you start counting, and then you realize things like that the windows start exactly five bricks back and end one exactly one brick up from the back on one side and they’re exactly three bricks from either wall on the other, or that the front steps aren’t just askew, they’re precisely off-center—they’re wide enough that the edges should line up perfectly with the mortar on the row of bricks on either side, but they’re just about an inch offset. And then you go around again and realize things like all the measurements being odd numbers. And then you look at the carvings on the library doors and realize that even though there are twenty-eight angels carved on them, fifteen are on the left door and thirteen are on the right, and I’m pretty sure those might be original to the building. It’s like the whole place is one big subtle fuck you to Smirke.” He stopped and wrinkled his nose in evident embarrassment. “Um, sorry.”

Gertrude waved a hand. “Please, Tim, I’m hardly likely to care about a bit of foul language, for fuck’s sake.”

Gerard snorted and covered his mouth with his hand; Tim grinned a bit sheepishly. “I was more apologizing for rambling. You didn’t ask me all of that.”

For just a moment, Gertrude deliberated…but she had satisfied herself as to Tim’s honesty, and that he wasn’t already serving one of the other Fears and somehow hiding it from her. “Actually, to be strictly accurate…I did.”

Tim was an exceptionally good listener. She’d known that from the beginning, really, but this was the first time she had ever tried to explain something so serious, and his eyes never left hers as she laid out everything she knew, first about the Fourteen, then about the rituals.

“So you think that’s what I—what Danny stumbled on in the replica of the Covent Garden Theater,” he said quietly, interrupting for the first time as she neared the end of the explanation. “A test run for this—Unknowing thing.”

Gertrude hesitated. “Possibly. It’s also possible that it was simply a place of gathering power. I can’t Know anything for certain about another power, I’m afraid, not without a great deal of effort and risk.”

“Risk? Does it draw them to you?”

“Not exactly, but the more I call upon the Ceaseless Watcher, the more I bind myself to it.”

Tim nodded slowly. “Like taking money from the mafia. Or free samples from a drug dealer.”

Gertrude raised an eyebrow. “Speaking from experience?”

“Fortunately not the drug thing. Heard stories, though.” Tim twisted the ring he’d obtained at the Night Market around his finger. “The organized crime part—well, I had an uncle who thought he was helping the family vineyard get through a rough patch. Most of the time I was growing up I remember him promising Mum this is the last one, Lucia, I swear it on the grave of our mama, just this one last favor and then all debts are squared.” His voice took on a distinct Sicilian cadence as he repeated the phrase. “Died about ten years back. Don’t know the details, just that my mother was the only person in the family who hadn’t disowned him by then.”

Gertrude ruthlessly shoved back against the Ceaseless Watcher’s attempt to supply her with those details, but she got enough to have a sense of deja vu she was going to refuse to examine later. “She was the older sister, I assume.”

“Give the lady a cigar.” Tim smiled feebly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

Gertrude waved a hand. “Broadly speaking, I was finished. There are a few subtleties and nuances, the finer details, but you have the gist of it now.”

“Lucky me.” Tim sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “So what now?”

“Now?” Gertrude spread out her hands, palms up. “Now you know what we do here, and why we do it. You know the truth about the Fourteen and the rituals. You know what is at stake. And you are, I am afraid, in very real danger.”

Tim wrinkled his nose. “Pretty sure I was to begin with, boss. Knowing or not knowing doesn’t change that, does it?”

“It does,” Gerard said from behind him. “Knowledge is power. Your instincts are good, but now you have information to back them up. So you’ll be smart enough to stay away from those places that give you a bad feeling, because you know it’s not just a feeling.”

“Or more likely to charge in, now that you know you need to stop it,” Gertrude interjected.

“Or more likely to bring it to your attention, since you two know more about how to stop it,” Tim pointed out, sensibly. “It might change how I react to those situations, but it doesn’t change how much actual danger I’m in, as a baseline.”

Gertrude exchanged a glance with Gerard, who gave her a small, knowing smirk.

“No,” she allowed. “It doesn’t.”

“Okay.” Tim sat back with a sigh and repeated, “Okay. So what do we know about the Unknowing?”

Gertrude reached into her drawer and pulled out a file—the research Tim had done into the incident with the Mechanical Turk. “I believe this was the last attempt at performing it. This attempt is unlikely to be the same, but it at least gives us something to go off of.”

“Why do you—” Tim broke off and pursed his lips. “No, that’s a stupid question, isn’t it? This…Stranger…it wouldn’t do what you, what we, expect it to do. It’s all about the unfamiliar, the unpredictable.”

“Precisely. The framework, of course, will be the same, but in the details…”

“Like an art class. Everyone might be drawing off the same model or still life display, but no two pieces are going to be identical.” Tim stared vacantly at the file. “Is that why you sent me for that bird?”

“It was an artifact of the Stranger, but not one of the ones from the last attempt at the Unknowing,” Gertrude assured him. “I didn’t know about this statement when I obtained the information on that particular item. I admit I was worried that it could be useful in this attempt, but…”

“What bird?” Gerard asked.

“Ornate wire and enamel automaton bird, about so big.” Tim made a hoop with his thumbs and middle fingers. “Art Nouveau. I didn’t wind it up or anything, so I don’t know what it does, but…”

“It sings,” Gertrude said. “Most of the time. The tune is quite hypnotic. It reminds you of a song you swear you heard as a child but can’t quite recall. Eventually it lodges itself in your head. From what I’ve heard, finally you swear you hear someone whistling it on the street, go to find out if they can tell you something about the song, and are never heard of again.”

“Lovely,” Tim said dryly. “What does it do the rest of the time?”

Gertrude smirked. “Swears. Quite inventively, too.”

Gerard and Tim both laughed. Gertrude opened the file again and extracted the notes Tim had made on the layout of the original Court Theater in Buta. Sliding them over to Tim, she asked, “Is this at all similar to the layout of the Covent Garden Theater?”

Tim didn’t even glance at it. “To an extent, but it doesn’t matter. You’re right. They aren’t going to use it for the Unknowing.”

At that, Gerard came closer and peered over Tim’s shoulder. “How do you know?”

Tim looked up at him. “Too similar. Too predictable. Maybe they were testing it as a potential venue when Danny found it, but they won’t use it now. In the first place, it’s under the Royal Opera House—they wouldn’t want too close an association with royalty or nobility or the court or whatever, that would be too easy a connection to make.” Turning back to Gertrude, he added, “And you said you’d disrupted other rituals—they have to know you’re looking to disrupt this one, so they’re certainly not going to make it easy on us. And if they know I’m here, they know I’ve told you about Danny. They won’t go back to someplace the—what did you call it? It Knows You—well, if it does, they aren’t going to give it an invitation, for God’s sake.”

“Bet they’re going to feint it being there, though,” Gerard mused. “Because if they think you think it’s the most likely spot to be—well, they can, I don’t know, put something down there to tempt you, lure you in, and blow you up. Even if they don’t kill you, they can keep you distracted long enough to pull off their actual ritual.”

“Oh, they’ll let you live,” Tim said darkly. “What fun is it if the enemy doesn’t know they’re beaten? And I imagine as their mortal enemy, they’ll want you intact for the Stranger once it fully emerges, to take its revenge.”

“I’m not entirely sure I Do Not Know You thinks that far ahead.” Gerard put a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “But you’re right. They’d definitely want you to see the consequences of your failure.”

Gertrude realized, with considerable surprise, that she had unexpectedly stumbled upon exactly what she needed for this fight. Tim and Gerard were both skilled and competent in their own right, and they would both have been valuable assets individually. But when put together, they were capable of incredible reasoning and logic. They tempered one another’s worst impulses—she hoped—while encouraging their better ones, and as a pair could possibly mean the difference between success and defeat. With both Dekker and Salesa gone, she had lost several decades of experience to call upon, but there was something to be said for youth.

After all, she had been young once, too.

Tim tugged his ring off his finger, shook out his hand, and slid it back on, grimacing slightly as he forced it past the knuckle. “What’s our next step, boss?”

Gertrude considered. “We need to at least narrow down what part of the world the Unknowing will be taking place in. And that means looking into where the Stranger has been active in recent years. I can start looking through these statements—”

“But that only tells you about incidents that were reported to the Institute,” Gerard said with a nod.

“Which may or may not take place outside of England,” Tim completed. “Or even the greater London area. So we can’t be sure it’s not biased.”

“Precisely. Which means we will need to do some international research. News articles and the like.”

“Finding those in English are going to be difficult,” Gerard pointed out.

Tim shrugged. “There are a couple languages I can read, and a couple more I can get by in. And there are a few translation projects out there. I’m not saying it’ll be quick and easy, but I can at least get started.”

“What languages?” Gerard asked.

“Italian, German, and French—I don’t speak French well, but I can read it just fine. Basics of Russian and Spanish, and I’m learning Greek. Slowly.” Tim smirked. “And Latin, but you’re not going to find newspapers in that unless they’re church newsletters.” He paused. “Which might not be a bad place to start, actually. People who don’t put any truck in the supernatural but have encountered it are more likely to go to their priest, right?”

Gertrude thought of the statement she had taken from Father Edwin Burroughs some years back. “You may have a point there.”

“In that case, I know where to start.” Tim got to his feet. “I haven’t been to church in a while, but I’m still a member in good standing. I can probably get into some newspaper archives that way.”

“Online?”

“In person would be better.” Tim glanced at the clock on the wall. “Do you mind if I head out now? I may not be back today.”

Gertrude glanced at the clock as well. “It’s one in the afternoon.”

“I know, but I’m going to have to start with my own parish church, and they have mass at twelve-thirty during the week, then again at six-thirty. If I leave now, I can get there in between services and be sure to have time to talk with Father Ignatius.” Tim grimaced. “And I’m going to have to do some kind of goodwill gesture, like actually attending a service. Especially with tomorrow being Ash Wednesday.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Gerard offered. “At least as far as the nearest Tube stop. I want to go through some of the records at the shop from the last few years, see if we’ve had any sales that might be relevant.” He waggled his eyebrows. “And maybe we can…meet up later tonight.”

“Ignosce mihi, Pater, quia peccaturus sum,” Tim quipped. Gerard laughed again.

Gertrude decided, for her sanity, to ignore this entire exchange. “All right. Just be careful. I assume you’ll be late tomorrow?”

“Nah, I’ll go to the late service. Hopefully I’ll have something worth looking into.” Tim paused and looked at Gertrude seriously. “Thank you. For trusting me. I know that wasn’t easy.”

Gertrude returned his gaze with equal solemnity. “Thank you for being worthy of that trust.”

Tim nodded, then turned, linked his arm with Gerard’s, and headed out of her office.

Alone once more, Gertrude sighed and looked down at her desk, then tucked her notes back into the file. She needed to actually record this one, then she could burn the file and keep Elias, or anyone else, from ever accessing it. The Stranger must have ancestral memory…or whatever one would call it…but that didn’t mean she had to make it easy for them.

As if on cue, the phone on her desk rang. Gertrude glared at it. Only one person ever called that number. She considered ignoring it, then decided not to. The last thing she wanted was for him to come down to speak with her.

She picked up the phone. “Archives.”

“Ah, Gertrude, good afternoon.” Elias’ voice oozed charm and affability. “Would you send Tim to my office, please? It’s time for his six-month performance evaluation.”

“Tim has left for the day, I’m afraid,” Gertrude replied blandly. “Religious reasons. I’m sure you understand why I couldn’t deny him.”

“Religious reasons? Really, Gertrude—”

“Do check your calendar, Elias. I’ll wait.”

There was a short silence. Gertrude permitted herself a smirk before Elias came back. “Of course. Well, when he comes in tomorrow—he will be in tomorrow, won’t he?”

“He plans to be.” Gertrude was not thrilled about the idea of allowing her assistant to go to Elias’ office unaccompanied, but she couldn’t reasonably keep him out of it. “I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”

“Please do. Oh, and if you have any notes that might be useful for that evaluation, do give them to Rosie before you leave for the day.” Without another word, Elias hung up.

Allowing her guard to slip, even for a moment, was a truly terrible idea and could have all sorts of consequences. However, Gertrude was very good at what she did, so she allowed herself the small, malicious satisfaction of easing back on her wards long enough for Elias, should he be attempting to read her mind, to detect the incredibly rude words she was thinking about him before she closed them down and returned to her solitude, and to her archiving.

Much to do, and increasingly little time to do it. Best to get things moving.