Cuckoo Song

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘He replaced the strap,’ came the answer. ‘It wasn’t black – it was blue.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right!’ exclaimed Pen.

  ‘Oh, and the time on it was wrong! It must have stopped, and he hadn’t wound it up again.’

  A strange, dark flower of an idea tried to bloom in Trista’s mind.

  ‘What time did it say?’ she asked.

  Pen crinkled her brow as she thought.

  ‘Teatime,’ she said, after a moment. ‘It was just after lunch, but the watch said it was half past four.’

  ‘Half past four.’ Jack repeated Pen’s words in little more than a whisper. Then he dropped his gaze and cleared his throat. ‘Violet,’ he said quietly, ‘half past four . . . That was the time when . . .’

  The sentence slipped into silence, like a hearse turning a corner in the street. Everybody knew where it was heading, however.

  That was the time when Sebastian died.

  ‘Was it . . . ?’ Violet stopped, wet her lips and continued. ‘Was the watch broken then, when . . . it happened?’

  The question made Trista feel sick. It changed Sebastian’s death into something real and physical. It wasn’t slipping away beyond a grey curtain; it was a bullet or an explosion or collapsing tunnels, something that could twist metal or shatter a clock’s innards.

  But Jack was shaking his head.

  ‘No. When I sent it back it was still working.’

  Trista remembered the way the Shrike had spoken of Sebastian.

  He is not gone, but he is not alive either.

  He is just . . . stopped.

  At half-past four, somewhere in the bleak and distant neverland of War, Sebastian had ‘stopped’. On the Architect’s wrist, Pen had seen a watch that had also stopped, at exactly the hour of Sebastian’s death. Trista did not believe this was a coincidence. She did not know how these two facts were connected, but she could sense the link between them swaying in the darkness, like a submerged mooring chain.

  Chapter 30

  WASTE, WITHER, WANT

  As hoped, Jack agreed to let the three fugitives stay at his place, a dark-bricked terrace building in a set of ‘back-to-backs’ within reach of the river’s reek. As it turned out, ‘his’ house also contained his mother, his three sisters, his brother-in-law, his aunt and his older sister’s flock of children. His father was absent, and this had apparently been the case for years. His sisters, aged about fourteen, sixteen and twenty-six, were dark-eyed and angular, with broad grins and voices that bounced around the faded walls, bruising some life into them.

  His mother did not seem particularly surprised to see him bringing home unannounced visitors.

  ‘I suppose they have something in their pockets?’ she asked. ‘Your sisters pay for their board – I told you, I won’t put up strangers for free.’ Violet placed money into her hand, and she counted it carefully, then nodded. ‘The attic room. No noise after ten o’clock.’ She looked Violet up and down, her expression carefully veiled. ‘I hear you were betrothed to one of Jack’s comrades?’

  ‘Yes,’ Violet’s expression was similarly mask-like. ‘He didn’t come home.’

  ‘He’s not the only one,’ said Jack’s mother flatly. Her gaze passed over her son smoothly and coolly, like fingers stroking the marble of a sepulchre.

  The house was in the throes of washday, steam and the smell of suds emanating from the kitchen. The yard and stairs were a maze of washing lines.

  The attic was reached by a ladder. It was musty and cool, its sloping walls slathered in whitewash. There were three mattresses covered in blankets and old coats.

  ‘We can’t stay too long,’ Violet said, once she was alone with Pen and Trista in the attic, ‘but we should be safe here for a day or two.’ She tossed Trista a much-patched dress in faded blue cotton. ‘I borrowed this from one of Jack’s nieces – it’s a family hand-me-down. If you wear it, you can keep Triss’s dress in a bundle, just in case you need to eat something. But . . . try to ration it, if you can.’

  She sat down on one of the mattresses, and let out a long breath. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, as though thinking aloud. ‘Why would your father give Sebastian’s watch to the Architect? Where does that leave us? What do we do now?’

  Trista and Pen exchanged glances.

  ‘We have a plan,’ said Trista. ‘And . . . I’m sorry, but we can’t tell you about it. We need to use a telephone.’

  ‘There’s one in the Eyelash Club,’ replied Violet doubtfully, ‘and the staff there know me well enough to let me use it. Who do you want to call?’

  ‘The Architect,’ answered Pen, with undue belligerence.

  ‘What?’

  Violet’s brow wrinkled as she looked from one face to the other. ‘Is that safe? Can he . . . do anything to you through the telephone? Could he get his magic operator to trace where you are?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Trista confessed. ‘It might be dangerous. But if we can talk to him, we might persuade him to give back Triss – maybe the service watch as well. And even if he won’t agree to that, we might find out something.’ As she spoke, Trista could not help wondering whether the Architect might also know some way to keep her alive. She felt a little thrill of hope at the idea.

  ‘Is there any way I can make the call, instead of either of you?’ Violet was clearly still wrestling with the idea.

  ‘No,’ Trista told, with a pang of sad gratitude. ‘You can’t even be there, or the magic promise will stop us talking. I’m sorry, but you don’t know the same secrets. It has to be us.’

  A little before ten o’clock at night, three fugitives drew up in front of the Eyelash Club.

  The club sounded and smelt as if it might be rather grand. Soft blue-tinted light seeped through its Venetian blinds into the darkness. The music from within was the polite, tamed jazz they had heard before, or ‘supper jazz’ as Violet contemptuously termed it. There was a handsome young doorman with gold buttons who winked at Violet when she asked to use the phone and ushered them in conspiratorially.

  The telephone had its own little room, with a heavy wooden door to allow it privacy. The walls were covered in red baize, and the little table on which the phone stood was chrome and glass.

  ‘Don’t take too long,’ Violet said. ‘I’ll be outside. As soon as you’ve finished, run out and jump into the sidecar. If we drive away fast, then even if the Architect can trace the call, he’ll only know where you’ve been, not where you are.’

  The door closed behind Violet with a firm but polite ‘whump’, crushing the sound from outside to a thin ribbon. Pen and Trista were alone with the telephone.

  ‘Are you ready?’ asked Trista. She could not help whispering, as if there was already a danger the Architect might overhear.

  Pen nodded.

  ‘. . . not afraid of anything . . .’ she muttered under her breath, and reached for the phone. It looked so large in her hands, the fingers of her left scarcely big enough to curl around its black stem. As Pen held the conical earpiece to her ear, Trista realized that she was trembling.

  ‘Waste, wither, want.’ As Pen said the words, it seemed to Trista that the black phone in her small hands bristled briefly, like a dog cocking its head. There was a pause, and then Trista could just make out a faint whispery sound seeping from the earpiece like smoke.

  ‘Penelope Crescent to talk to the Architect, please!’ Pen’s tone was too loud, too determined, and came out sounding shrill. Only then did Trista realize quite how terrified the smaller girl was.

  Pause. Pause. A faint buzz of a voice, too indistinct to make out.

  ‘That’s not fair!’ exploded Pen without warning. ‘You betrayed me ! You tricked me into going near the cinema screen! You wanted to trap me, just the way you trapped S—’

  Trista gave Pen a nudge in the ribs, not a moment too soon.

  ‘. . . the way you trapped Triss,’ continued Pen without even a hiccup’s worth of a pause. ‘But . . . I . . . wanted to talk to you
. I’m sorry I said I was going to tell everybody about our bargain. I . . . didn’t mean it. I want to make a new bargain now.’ Her eye slid towards Trista.

  ‘Pen!’ hissed Trista in alarm. There was an all too familiar combination of defiance and slyness in Pen’s eye. She was sliding off script again, and Trista had no idea in which direction.

  ‘I want you to make the new Triss stay alive,’ Pen declared, ignoring the nudges in her ribs. ‘And then I won’t chase you with cockerels, or tell the police.’

  Pause. A thin trickle of distilled voice.

  ‘What do you mean, I’m not trustworthy?’ exclaimed Pen. Pause. ‘No, you won’t, because you don’t know where I am!’ Pause. ‘Well, if you find me, you’ll be sorry! I’m not afraid – I don’t care what you “do to traitors”, I . . .’

  Pen trailed off. The tiny voice creeping from the earpiece went on and on, weaving a menacing ant-trail of sound. The colour drained from Pen’s face, taking her bravado with it. Her lower lip trembled, but she seemed to be transfixed, still gripping the telephone even as her hands shook. Her eyes became shiny, and suddenly she seemed very young.

  Trista could not bear it. She pulled the phone from Pen’s hands and put one arm around her, pulling the littler girl into a hug. Pen buried her face in Trista’s dress, breathing in quick, frightened little huffs.

  Trista was flooded with a feeling of pure, incandescent rage. And thus her mind was quite calm and unafraid when she lifted the telephone stand before her face and the earpiece to her ear.

  There was quiet at the other end. A couple of clicks. A few sounds of movement, translated into an electronic rasp by the intervening machine.

  ‘Hello?’ came a response at last. ‘Are you still there, Miss Crescent?’ The voice was unmistakable.

  ‘No,’ Trista answered, ‘she’s gone now. It’s just me here.’

  ‘Ah.’ A soft exclamation with a hint of warmth. ‘My little Cuckoo.’

  Chapter 31

  ECHOES

  ‘Yes, Mr Architect. It’s me.’

  Something strange had happened to the anger in Trista’s chest. It was still there, roiling away, but now it was mixed with an odd warmth. It was the way that the Architect had called her ‘my little Cuckoo’. It was the unexpectedness of being told that she belonged to somebody.

  ‘And that back-stabbing little human brat, she’s gone now?’ asked the voice at the other end. His tone was bright, light and unpredictable, like the leaping of windswept washing on a sunlit line.

  Trista stroked Pen’s head. When the younger girl looked up, cheeks damp and face still crumpled with distress, Trista gave her a small smile.

  You can go if you want, she mouthed.

  Trista had wondered whether Pen’s usual stubbornness would prevail. However, this time Pen gave a little nod, still biting both her lips in an effort not to cry. She slipped out through the door, leaving Trista alone with the telephone.

  ‘I’ve sent her away,’ Trista answered. As she did so, it occurred to her to wonder why she had sent Pen from the room. Had it really been to protect the younger girl? Yes, but only in part. The Architect had sounded pleased when he recognized her voice, and almost conspiratorial as he spoke of Pen. Something in her had responded to that. It was the part of her that was not, and never could have been, Theresa Crescent, the part of her that was the thorns and leaves, and that remembered the merciless laughter of ancient trees. She had felt a tingle of kinship, a sense that she could talk to this man, but in ways that Pen would not understand.

  ‘Good!’ the Architect declared briskly. ‘What a strident little bell she is! Someday I shall have to hunt her down and cut out her clapper. I’m surprised you haven’t already.’

  ‘She doesn’t trouble me any more,’ Trista said carefully.

  ‘Oh, you have her trained then, do you?’ The Architect sounded pleasantly surprised, and Trista was in no hurry to correct his misinterpretation. ‘I hear she has some fine new stripes on those annoyingly cherubic cheeks of hers. I thought that must be your handiwork. Yes, fear works pretty well for a while with her sort, but she’ll find a way to betray you sooner or later. That one couldn’t steer a straight course if you tied her behind a locomotive – and believe me, I have considered it.’

  There was a pause, during which Trista thought fast. Should she go ahead with the original plan to try to broker a deal between the Architect and Piers Crescent? If the Architect had just refused to make a second bargain with Pen because she had broken the first, why would he have any more faith in Piers? If Trista tried the wrong gambit, she would waste this strange, uneasy moment of rapport.

  A faint, dull clicking sound came from the other end, and Trista had a mental picture of the Architect idly tapping at his teeth. She wondered if they were human-looking teeth at the moment, or whether he was wearing another visage altogether.

  ‘So . . . you ran away,’ he said at last. ‘That wasn’t part of the plan.’ There was an unexpectedly hard edge to his voice.

  ‘Nobody explained the plan to me,’ Trista answered sharply. The army of grievances in her mind roared and clashed their spears. This was the man who had thrown her into existence as casually as he might have tossed an apple core into a ditch, fully expecting her to wither away. This was the man responsible for all her trials, her confusion, her dangers . . .

  . . . and her life.

  But I hate him, she reminded herself. I’m just playing along.

  ‘No,’ said the Architect, sounding interested and surprised by the thought, ‘I suppose we didn’t. Still, it seems a little ungrateful, after we’d planted you in such a well-heeled family.’

  ‘They tried,’ Trista said through her sharpening teeth, ‘to throw me in the fire.’

  ‘Oh, did they?’ Now the Architect’s interest was clearly piqued. ‘Well, well. That old remedy. Why, I do believe the Crescents must have been talking to somebody. They would never have come up with that by themselves.’ There was now a hint of grim concern in his voice. ‘Think, my dear. Do you know who it might have been? I really cannot have people running around with that sort of knowledge.’

  Without warning, Trista found herself trembling on the edge of a terrible temptation. Could she give the Architect the name of Mr Grace? Could she set her enemies against each other? Remembering the fate she had nearly suffered at the tailor’s hands, Trista felt her face grow hot again, but this time not from the blaze of a hearth. Setting the Architect on Mr Grace would be no worse than anything the tailor had tried to do to her. After all, Mr Grace knew about the Besiders, so he would be better forewarned than an innocent party. Surely it would be nothing but self-defence.

  ‘There was a man with them – and he did tell them to throw me on the fire,’ Trista conceded, then bit her lip. Much as she feared Mr Grace, she knew that he believed he was doing the right thing. Could she justify throwing him to the Architect? ‘If you found him . . . what would you do to him?’

  ‘Oh, terrible things, of course!’ the Architect hastened to reassure her. ‘Don’t worry, no swift or easy death. Perhaps I shall turn him into a string for a fiddle, that will be grated by a bow for a hundred years until it breaks. Perhaps I shall keep him in cage made of his family’s bones until he is so old and stooped you could use him as a croquet hoop. Or perhaps I shall have him slowly strangled by ivy. Maybe you have some better ideas.’

  Trista’s heart was beating fast. When she remembered her own terror as the hearth was stoked to consume her, all these forms of revenge had a certain ghastly appeal.

  ‘Could you turn him into a loaf of bread and leave him in the park for the pigeons?’ she suggested, and was rewarded by a gust of laughter from the Architect. The wild leaves that made up her flesh and marrow were laughing too.

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Then . . .’ Trista closed her eyes and resisted the temptation. ‘Then . . . I’ll try to remember whether anyone ever said his name. If I do, I will tell you.’

  ‘Good.’ The Archit
ect did not sound completely satisfied, but did not push the matter. ‘Well, if you were in danger of being cooked, I suppose I cannot blame you for leaving. After all, you have done your job of distracting them far better on the run than you could have done in the cinder pan. But I do hope that you had the chance to cause them some heartache before you left!’

  ‘I nearly ate them out of house and home.’ Trista found herself matching the Architect’s tone. ‘My food, their food, even things that weren’t food at all.’ Remembering the Crescents’ aghast faces when they first saw her thorn-toothed aspect, she even felt a small, wicked cat’s tail of satisfaction curl in her belly. ‘I upset everything in Sebastian’s room, where nothing can ever be touched. I frightened them.’

  ‘Well, you will be glad to hear that their pain is only beginning,’ the Architect told her soothingly. ‘Fancy the cruelty of it, trying to cut short your seven little days of life! Well, keep ahead of them, my pet, and you may yet outlive your namesake. Will that not be a fine revenge?’

  His words yanked at the fibres of Trista’s heart, and she realized that her feelings towards the real Triss were a strange and twisted tangle. Contempt. Resentment. Jealousy. Pity. Empathy. Kinship.

  ‘A very fine revenge!’ She tried to make her voice as gay and spirited as his. ‘Tell me, what will you do to her? Let me know the fun you are planning! Will you turn her into an apple and put her in a pie?’

  ‘Oh no, a better joke by far!’ The Architect was almost crowing now, and again Trista was jarred by the unpredictable childishness of his character. ‘There are certain things that I can do better than Mr Crescent, and he seems to have forgotten that. He always did lack imagination, and the ability to think round corners. For him, up is never down, and back is never forth, and in is always smaller than out.’ He laughed.

  ‘But how—’ Trista tried again.

  ‘You ask a lot of questions.’ The Architect’s voice was suddenly viper-intense, and vibrant with suspicion. Before Trista could come up with an answer, there was an explosion of laughter from the other end of the line. ‘Ah, if you could see Theresa’s face right now! What a miserable, puling little miss she is. How she whimpers when we go on our midnight rides! And yet her parents set such stock by her – I can see their love, tangling all around her like a cat’s cradle.’