Vile

by Keith Crawford

  Nathaniel pulled on the coat as soon as Rees had left. He would go across the rooftops. But if the others were gathering in the courtyard, he would have to be quick. He took his supply bag and slung it over his shoulder. He picked up Great Military Failures, put it back down again, and pushed his rapier away. The Abbot would have the answers he needed. He would have been a poor Combat Magistrate, anyway. Fists are a poor appendage for thinking.

  He crept like a burglar from his chamber. The fastest way up to the rooftop was via the tower that joined the audience chamber. By now his father should be abed, but one never knew where the old man might creep, crawling and clambering about the webs he had spun throughout Shadowgate. Persephone would be with the guards; Anton in his smithy; if Nathaniel was quick, if he increased his pace to a run, slung the bag higher over his shoulder and ran up the tower, there would be nobody to stop him this time.

  “What are you doing up here?”

  Another Nathaniel sat on the steps above the door from the third level, the door that led out onto the roof. This Nathaniel grinned. His teeth flashed white, but the smile never reached his eyes—eyes that showed something oddly close to panic.

  “Am I your memory or are you mine?”

  “Tannyr is waiting for you, in the audience chamber.” The other Nathaniel hopped down the steps and out through the exact door Nathaniel had intended to take, the one out onto the rooftops, the best route by which he could sneak his way to the stables.

  Nathaniel sat on the stairs. His heart was racing. He had seen it. That meant he was close. He could hardly go across the roof now. Turn back, find a way through the tunnels under the keep? But the answers were here. And Elianor Paine. He had felt it, as soon as he saw her—her connection to this place, a connection that made no sense. He opened his emergency bag and rummaged through. He could have sworn he had packed food, spare clothes, water, oats for the horse. But inside there were only books. Another collection of books.

  Chapter 15

  The flights of stairs, the long corridors, the empty rooms abandoned by owners long dead; a route evidently intended to disorient and displace. But Elianor counted every step, every door, and every shadow. She counted every breath as it rattled from her aged guide. Shadowgate Castle was a repository for the unused, unwanted, and unwatched. Elianor would burn through it like a star.

  “You can leave your things in the trunk by the bed,” Lena said.

  At the centre of the square room was a four-poster bed dwarfed by unused space. They could have placed a brother and sister just like it, a twin to the heavy wooden dresser and cousins of the thick bearskin rug, all without blocking the view of the faded brown tapestries or the second door. Elianor unbuckled her swordbelt. Shadowgate was built for a thousand people; the two-dozen or so living here must float about like ghosts. Lena walked past an illuminated gas lamp to close the window and snap the shutters shut.

  “Sit,” Lena said as she went through the second door.

  Elianor hung her sword-belt and pistol on a rail by the entrance and tossed her satchel onto the bed. She limped across the room, reopened the shutter, and pushed the window open. Outside it was pitch-black. A handful of snowflakes flared white and fluttered into the room. Elianor still couldn’t see much outside. She leaned forward until she felt snow on the back of her head. The air bit her cheeks.

  Her chamber was in a tower jutting out of the mountain. The utter darkness was, in part, due to a blank mountain wall directly across from the room. The corridors and stairwells through which she had walked had been subterranean. Elianor tipped back her head. Clouds cloaked the highest points of the fortress, bringing new snow to Shadowgate. Finally, away to the right, torches above the main gate of the castle, like candles on a cake. Starting at the main gate, Elianor traced the route across a thatch of interwoven building tops, walls, stairways, structures, and superstructures until it turned out of sight above her head. The mountain and the castle, woven into one.

  From the next room, running water. Elianor pulled her head back inside and went to look. The side room was small and windowless. Lena had lit another wicked lamp on the wall and leaned over a cast-iron bathtub. It had chipped green paint on the outside and white inside. Normally a bathtub was portable, made to be dragged to the nearest fireplace, but this one was attached to the wall. A pair of metal pipes joined at a large faucet from which ran a stream of steaming hot water.

  Elianor had seen something similar in the capital’s public baths, but never in a private residence or so high in a building. The pipe climbed to a ventilation chimney in the corner. Steam gathered across the ceiling and wafted towards the vent. There was moisture on her eyelashes. Lena picked a leather case from the dresser.

  “I can’t look at your injuries if you don’t sit on the bed and take off your clothes.”

  Elianor looked at the curved knife at Lena’s side. Then she went to the bed, sat, unbuckled her own knife, and put it within easy reach. When she tried to take off her jacket, pain flared up her side and her arms refused to obey. Lena knelt by the bed.

  “Ready?” she said.

  Removing the oilskin restarted the bleeding. Elianor took a sharp breath. The impact of her fall from the bridge had driven the oilskin into her abdomen. But beneath all the blood, the wound was superficial. A surface layer of flesh scraped away but the muscle beneath sound. Lena pulled a white dressing from her case and pressed it to the wound. If she didn’t bleed to death, Elianor would be fine.

  “Hold that in place.”

  The white turned red.

  “Does this hurt?” she asked, gripping Elianor’s side and squeezing.

  “Yes.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  Lena walked over to the window and closed the shutters.

  “You’re lucky. Your ribs aren’t broken. Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll bring you food. Shut off the tap when the bath is full and leave your clothes by the bed. I will have them washed and returned to you in the morning. Keep the dressing in place while you are in the bath or you will pass out and bleed to death. There is a nightgown on the cabinet.”

  A nightgown, Elianor thought. Is she taking my clothes to keep me from wandering the halls? Fool.

  “Thank you.”

  “Ring the bell if you need anything. I’ll see to the cut on your face when I return.”

  Elianor waited until Lena left then finished undressing. She pulled off her boots. Blood soaked her thick socks, squeezed from the wool as she pulled them painfully from feet swollen by the climb. Long red scratches marked her left leg. A stretch along the left side of her ribs, above the skin ripped by the oilskin, was turning blue. She wondered how Lena could be sure nothing was broken. Elianor lifted her fingers to her cheek. There was a cut just beneath her eye.

  The bathroom had filled with steam. Elianor coughed as the hot, wet air entered her lungs. She turned the long handle of the faucet to stop the water and a rushing sound echoed through the pipes. How many pipes had Anton Vile built into the walls of Shadowgate? How far did they spread and how deep did they go? The water was hot, and her swollen toes throbbed. She lay back and bent her knees so she could submerge her head. Tendrils of blood snuck out from between the fingers pressed on the dressing. She ducked her head, closed her eyes, held her breath, and counted to ten.

  Elianor stood in her master’s chambers. Théophile Carada sat behind his desk, the sunlight over his shoulder and in her eyes.

  “Missing girls are being taken by Arbalest Vile,” Elianor read out loud. “…urgently request an investigation while there is still a chance to save lives.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Senator Carada said. “I have read the note.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  The Senator shrugged. “Lord Vile is far too important to allow whatever peccadilloes he has to interfere with his position. But, if there is some truth to it, then perhaps you might persuade him it is in his best interests to retu
rn to the capital…and to remember who his friends are.”

  “You want to send a Magistrate to blackmail a Senator?”

  Carada laughed.

  “My dear, I am sending you.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back from his desk. “You are too arrogant to be an effective Magistrate, but a trip to Shadowgate might teach you the humility I evidently cannot.”

  Elianor lifted her head. Water poured from her face and ears, then slopped up over the rim of the bath onto the stone floor. Someone had said, “I cannot,” or “I will not.” There was nobody else in the bathroom. She leaned and looked out through the door into the bedroom. Nobody there, either.

  “Hate! How trust to something!”

  The voice came from over her head, rounded by whatever amplified the sound. Hate, how trust to something? Wait, you must do something? She looked upwards. The voices were coming through the ventilation. She wobbled to her feet, still holding the dressing, and, mindful of slipping in the bathtub, leaned up towards the white-painted metal grill that covered the hole in the wall.

  “Tannyr, I don’t have time for this.”

  The second voice was Persephone Vile. A faint breath of air brushed past Elianor’s face as she leaned closer to the vent. From how far beneath were their voices transmitted?

  “Think, Persephone! He sent his own son to collect the Magistrate. Garn must be involved.”

  Persephone said something Elianor could not hear. She pressed her ear right up against the grill of the ventilation. Dust on the metal stuck to her wet skin. Tannyr had resumed his pleading.

  “…the goodwill of the mountain.”

  “You’re losing control. Anton won’t…”

  Elianor heard the main door opening too late. Lena came straight around the corner and stopped in the doorway. Elianor’s heart lurched like a child caught stealing sweets. She stumbled and almost fell. A great wave of water flooded across the floor and a shock of pain sprang from her wounded side. Lena looked Elianor up and down and then looked at the water on the floor. Neither of them said anything. Elianor put her hand on the wet wall tiles to keep her balance.

  Lena went back to the bedroom and sat on the bed, staring straight ahead. Elianor picked up the soap, crouched in the bath, and washed herself. She had passed through adolescence in the Academy. This was not the first time she had fronted off against a bully in a bathroom. Whatever remained of Persephone and Tannyr’s conversation had disappeared from hearing. Finally, Elianor wrapped the towel around herself and went to sit on the bed. Lena ceded her place and crouched in front of her.

  “Open the towel, please.”

  Lena took a small metal pot from inside her case. Elianor recognised the pot but couldn’t remember from where. The old lady unscrewed the lid and scooped out two fingers of black cream, which she spread on the bruises around Elianor’s ribs.

  “That’s…much better. What is it?”

  “A herbal remedy.”

  Elianor disliked the lie, but this was the sort of thing healers often said. Quicker than to explain a truth your patient would not understand. Still, Elianor eyed the cream suspiciously.

  “Is that your book of law there, in your satchel?” Lena said.

  The satchel had opened when Elianor threw it onto the bed. Her book of law, the letter, and her father’s report were in plain sight.

  “A summary of the legal axioms.”

  “Deontology?”

  Why had Vile taken the time to teach his servant a word like ‘deontology’?

  “An extension of policy by other means,” Elianor said, confident Lena would not understand the joke.

  Lena swapped the used dressing with a new one smothered in black cream. Blood, diluted by bathwater, spread on the towel. She pressed the dressing close and wound a long bandage around Elianor’s side, her face adjacent to Elianor’s chest.

  “I’ve waited a long time to meet you,” Lena said. “Your father must be so proud.”

  “You know my father?”

  “Is that his report on us? With your book of extended policy?”

  Maybe Lena did know what deontology meant. Did she also know Elianor’s father would be horrified by the suggestion that the axioms were anything less than an absolute truth, that the law was anything less than perfected in the word? To people like Sebaraton, the book of law was not a tool; it was a bible.

  “Do you want to read what he said about you?” Elianor said, and instantly regretted her temper. What if Lena said yes? Had the old woman just smirked?

  A scream rose from the courtyard, looking for someone.

  Lena flicked her eyes up behind Elianor’s shoulder and pulled her hand back as though it were a startled shellfish. A second scream, not a raw scream of terror but a woman shrieking “No!”, edged on hysteria.

  Elianor took the pot from Lena and put it on the bed next to her knife.

  “I can do the rest.” She walked over to the shutters and snapped them back open.

  A dozen guards gathered in the courtyard. From here they looked like dolls, their faces illuminated by the torches but their bodies tiny and fragile. At their centre, Captain Persephone was restraining one of her own guards, a woman whose fallen helmet revealed curly brown hair.

  “Begw,” Lena said.

  She had picked up her case and come to stand behind Elianor. Elianor leaned farther out of the window. Begw was one of the guards she had met at the base of the span, the one Nathaniel’s list identified as the sister of the missing woman Seren. It was unclear if Persephone was holding Begw back or holding her up. Anton had come out of his smithy and was talking, gesticulating with his uninjured right hand as Begw tried to turn her face away.

  “Anton! That’s enough!”

  Nathaniel must have shouted very loudly to be heard so clearly up here. He strode into view from behind the Manor, his hand on his sword. Anton looked like he would turn on his brother. Before either could do anything, Persephone released Begw and crashed her fist into the side of the startled guard’s head. She hit her again on the way down. A fight between Anton and Nathaniel was stopped before it began.

  “Does anybody else have any objections?” Persephone shouted.

  Nobody replied.

  “Right then, let’s go.”

  Persephone marched towards the main gate. Nathaniel fell in at her side, then the rest of the guards. The falling snow muffled the chugging sound of the gate mechanism.

  “I have other duties,” Lena said. “Somebody will be close should you need anything. Use as much cream as you like.”

  Anton still talked to Sergeant Rees as they walked to the gate. He put his hand on the Sergeant’s shoulder, but the Sergeant shrugged it off. Rees turned back into the castle and Anton stepped out into the darkness. The gate shuddered closed behind him.

  “Try to get some sleep,” Lena said. She had gathered up Elianor’s clothes in her arms and stood by the door. “Things will be worse tomorrow.”

  Chapter 16

  Elianor had to get to the guard called Begw before the search party returned. Nathaniel’s list had named Begw’s sister Seren as the most recent of the missing women. If Elianor could wring information from Begw, it might give her the leverage she needed with Senator Vile. So, she had no intention of sleeping, no intention of lying down, and no intention of staying in her room, nightdress or no.

  Lena’s comment that “someone will be close by should you need anything” had clearly been a threat. And Elianor wasn’t sure she could find her way back through the corridors of the castle. She turned down the gas lamp, in case Lena waited outside the door, and pulled the nightdress on over her head. The pain in her side made her sit, then lie, on the bed. The dressing held and the cream had a pleasant numbing effect.

  Elianor shook herself awake. Had she been dozing, or had she fallen asleep? For how long? She had to concentrate to get her boots back on, to strap the knife in place, to grab her cloak still hung from the door. Cold air blew through the window onto her fac
e. Genevieve Grime’s last wish had been that she perfect the revolution. Why waste time thinking?

  Elianor lifted herself up onto the windowsill, back to the drop. Ice fell on her shoulders and the nape of her neck. She reached up and grasped the roof in both hands. Her fingers cut into the snow and the cold into her fingers. Vertigo plied her brain as she lifted from the windowsill, but the dressing on her side held and there was little pain. In one swift, smooth movement, she climbed onto the roof of the tower.

  The exposed rooftop formed a narrow road that curved along the steep rock face. As Elianor expected, most of her chamber was inside the mountain. The rest of Shadowgate Castle spread out like tumbled dominoes, intertwined rooftops laced with winding staircases, stone walls that merged and became indistinguishable from the cliff face, as if blown down by a great wind then fixed into fossil.

  “Bloody nightdress,” she muttered as the wind blew up her skirt. The chill, the exposure, and the height turned her head and made uncertain the ground beneath her feet. She took a deep breath and ran, light on her toes and arms out for balance. It was hard to see the buildings against the mountain, between the shadows and the clouds, but at least the darkness would make her hard to spot. The rooftop was coming to an end. It overlapped another, a drop of about half her height. It would be sensible to stop, to lower herself down and slide off the edge.

  Elianor jumped, landing as lightly as she could manage and taking only a small stumble in the snow. It should have hurt more. What was in this cream that Lena had given her? She wiggled her fingers in front of her eyes. Was she stoned? Too inebriated to commit midnight burglary? She would find out if she fell. She clambered from rooftop to rooftop, across a flight of stairs, and up the inside of the battlements. From there it was a short hop across onto the top of the Manor hall. The cold made her eyes water. Her pulse pushed against her forehead. The hairs in her nose began to freeze; her teeth stung as the icy air penetrated her smile.

  She crouched and crept to the inside edge of the Manor, from where she could see into the main courtyard. She had descended about two-and-a-half stories, although the uneven architecture made it difficult to tell. The guardhouse was at the far end, opposite the main gate. It was probably the best place to look for Begw.