The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(43)

“This nastiness on your leg concerns me,” she said. “It is a jagged valley of tissue and blood. Does it burn?”

“Yes,” said X. “As if with white flames. And please do not describe it again.”

“My apologies,” said Ripper. “I fear it may be infected, though I am not a doctor, merely a murderess.”

X ground his teeth to distract himself from the discomfort, and looked up at Ripper. Her skin had hardly suffered from centuries in the Lowlands, and she was still beautiful by any measure. She had strong, clean features, a sturdy, dimpled chin, and ageless blue eyes. Because it had been decades since she had hunted a soul, even the bruises beneath her eyes had faded. Today, her dark hair was swept up in a knot atop her head, a single silver lock weaving through it like tinsel.

“Do you miss being a mother?” X asked her, after a time.

Conversation was a welcome relief, and he saw that he would have to feed it, as one feeds a fire.

Ripper nodded.

“I was a good one,” she said. “Alfie and Belinda were always rosy and plump. Unfortunately, one’s children grow distant after they’ve seen one bash a servant’s skull with a teakettle.”

X asked if she’d ever looked in on them—peeked in their windows, or stood across the road in disguise—when she had been out collecting souls.

Ripper shook her head wearily.

“I could not see my children without embracing them,” she said. “I could not have survived it.” For a moment, she was lost in thought. “A hundred years after I was brought here, another bounty hunter discovered for me what had become of my family. My husband took a new bride—an American, of all things—and they sailed for New England, like those ghastly pilgrims. When Alfie was eleven—”

Ripper stopped for a moment, deciding whether to continue.

“When Alfie was eleven,” she said, “he perished in a fire in a stable. He was trapped under a post or a beam or the like. Belinda tried to push it off his chest, but she was only nine and had not the strength for it. She never recovered from the grief, I was told. She was deposited in some asylum, because my husband’s new wife could not countenance her wailing.”

“Your husband,” said X. “Did you love him?”

The question seemed to break Ripper’s cloudy mood.

“Good god, no,” she said. “When he refrained from talking—and from putting his sweaty hands on me—he was an amiable enough companion. Yet I suppose a tall plant could have served the same purpose.”

X closed his eyes. He listened as she tore a length of bandage.

“I believe—” he began, but stopped when he felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

“Yes?” said Ripper. “What is it that you believe?”

“I believe that I … I believe that I may be in love,” he said.

If Ripper had laughed, or smirked, or even paused to let his words ring, he would have clamped his mouth shut.

She did neither.

“Yes, I thought it must be something like that,” she said. “Else you wouldn’t have broken so many of the laws I taught you. I half-expected the lords to punish me for your transgressions, you know. If they did not think me irretrievably mad, they might well have.”

“Even I have thought you mad,” said X.

“Yes, well, I nearly was for a time,” Ripper said. “After I learned of that fire in the stable, I mean. And in that interval I learned that the appearance of madness has its uses.”

She stood and, with a dramatic flourish, tossed the contents of the bowl into the corridor. The water splashed the prisoners down below, and there was a chorus of profanity, which caused Ripper to titter.

She sat beside X once more.

“Tell me about this girl you love,” she said. “Quickly now—before the guard comes to eject me.”

“Had you told me such a person existed,” he said, “I would have called you a liar.”

“Is that so?” said Ripper, arching an eyebrow. “Without pausing to think, tell me three things you especially love about this astounding creature.”

X thought for a moment.

“Without pausing to think,” said Ripper. “I should have thought the rules of this game were plain enough.”

“Her strength,” X began. “But three is too few—I cannot do her justice.”

“Oh, do stop your whinging,” said Ripper.

“Very well,” said X. “Her strength. Her blurting. Her face.”

“Her blurting?”

“I cannot describe it.”

“Please don’t,” said Ripper. “Yes, well, all that does indeed sound like love—at least as it was described to me once upon a time. As I have said, love was not a sea I myself ever swam in.”

A guard loped down the corridor now, rattling his club against the bars. Ripper readied her things to leave, and X rose up on his elbows to gaze around the cell.

The purple shirt with the wild white stitching had been returned to him. It lay folded on the ground by the door. He was shocked to see it again.

“A guard returned it while you slept,” said Ripper. “The fact that your mother was a lord is now a well-traveled secret.”

X lowered himself to the ground again. The footsteps outside grew louder. He knew, from the scrape of a dragging foot, that it was the Russian.