Cuckoo Song

by Frances Hardinge

The man opened his mouth, but only terrified gargling noises emerged.

  ‘Two score,’ answered his female companion.

  ‘And what purpose do these coats serve?’ asked the tailor.

  ‘We were all ordered to wear them.’ The female Besider seemed to be hypnotized by the scissors. ‘They baffle the eye and mind. They let the wearer pass without remark.’

  ‘And this home to which you are to be taken? Where is it?’

  ‘We do not know.’

  A small, swift jab of the scissors poked two holes in her consort’s coat, as easily as needles through cobweb. The man gave a howl of pain and terror.

  ‘We do not know!’ protested the Besider woman again, twisting her fingers so fiercely it seemed they might snap. ‘They told us we had to wait until now because . . . because the haven was not ready. But that is all we know! That is all!’

  Mr Grace considered for a moment, then gave a small sigh.

  ‘I believe you,’ he said simply. Then, with all his strength, he drove the scissors into the Besider man’s chest.

  Concealed in her doorway Trista gasped, feeling as if all the air had been sucked out of her. Beside her, Pen gave a muffled yelp, then stood with both hands over her own mouth as if she could still hold the sound in.

  There was no blood. The Besider man split like a cloud before the moon, and light spilled out, wet light that screamed as it came. His mouth opened wide and ghostly ribbons spiralled out into the air, chittering forgotten tales. As they pulled away from him and vanished, he seemed to unravel, twitching. Soon there was nothing left but a grey-brown coat slumping to the cobbles.

  The female Besider gave another of her soundless shrieks and flung herself wildly upon Charles. Her momentum bowled him over on to the brazier, where his coat caught fire and he flailed helplessly under her weight. Then Mr Grace thrust the scissors into her back. There was a leaping of silver flame, one last inaudible cry that seemed to shake the frame of the world, and she too was gone. Charles tumbled off the brazier, and Dot helped bat out the flames in his clothes.

  Trista squeezed Pen’s shoulder. The smaller girl still had her mouth covered, and was panting with shock.

  Mr Grace paused and looked up, staring out in the direction of the hidden girls. Perhaps he had heard Pen’s yelp.

  We could run. But then he would definitely hear us. And he could follow our tracks.

  I don’t want to fight you, Mr Grace, but if I have to I will. I will. I won’t let you hurt Pen.

  The tailor frowned a little, then turned his back on the shadows and hurried to Charles’s side. He winced as he examined the older man’s injuries.

  ‘Charles, old chap, you’re going to need a doctor,’ he said gently. ‘Dot – will you go with him? I don’t think the poor fellow can stand by himself.’

  ‘What about you?’ asked Dot, her face alight with concern.

  Mr Grace stooped and picked up one of the Besiders’ coats. It trembled and fluttered in his hand like a captive bird.

  ‘Forty Besiders have just arrived in Ellchester,’ he said grimly, ‘and it’s clear that they are setting up a stronghold in this city. I have to find out where it is, Dot. If we don’t locate it and destroy it, who knows how many more of the creatures will turn up here next week, or the week after?’

  ‘What are you planning to do?’ Dot helped Charles to his feet. Her face was a picture of anxiety, admiration and trust. Just for a fleeting moment, Trista’s mind seesawed, and she could almost see Mr Grace and the world as Dot saw them. The next instant Trista was back to her own perspective with a thud.

  Mr Grace slowly slipped on the coat. It brindled a couple of times, then settled. Occasionally it spasmed a little, its colour turning patchy like scuffed velvet.

  ‘You heard the creature, Dot. Some guides will be here soon, to lead forty newcomers to the Besider stronghold. Let’s hope they do not know the new arrivals by sight . . . and will simply be looking out for strangers in eye-baffling magical coats.’

  Chapter 40

  MIDNIGHT RIDE

  From the shadowed doorway, Trista and Pen watched as Dot helped Charles limp away. Mr Grace carefully smothered the brazier and then stalked away into the night in his twilight-coloured coat, his footprints neat and straight like a dotted line on a dress pattern.

  ‘I feel sick,’ said Pen in a tiny voice. ‘I think I might be sick.’

  Trista found her hands were pressed to her own chest, perhaps in search of scissor holes.

  ‘He just killed them.’ Her own voice sounded breathy and lost. ‘He didn’t have to kill them.’

  ‘I didn’t like them.’ Pen’s face made crumple-shapes and her eyes were shiny. ‘But . . . they were scared . . .’

  ‘. . . and they didn’t hurt anyone,’ finished Trista. ‘Not until everybody attacked them.’ Her mind was still playing the scene over and over. ‘Perhaps that old man did want to hurt Dot – Mr Grace seemed to think so. But sometimes Mr Grace is wrong. He was wrong about me.’

  ‘What do we do?’ whimpered Pen.

  Trista drew in a breath, then found she had no words to fill with it. What could they do?

  If she did nothing to stop Mr Grace, what would happen? If he succeeded in infiltrating the Besiders, and found his way to their haven, he would stop at nothing to destroy the stronghold and everyone in it. If she warned the Besiders about him, though, she would almost certainly be signing his death warrant. And how could she contact the Besiders without giving herself away to the Architect?

  ‘I don’t know, Pen,’ she answered faintly. ‘I don’t know.’

  Trista looked at her not-sister, at her small, round, crumpled face, the dusting of snow in her hair, her stocky legs trembling with the cold. Everything became a lot simpler.

  Maybe later I’ll end up choosing sides in the big fight, but saving people comes first. I have to free Sebastian’s soul and let it escape from the snows. And I have to save my other self.

  I have to save Triss.

  For Triss’s own sake, and for Piers’s and Celeste’s sake. For Violet’s sake, so she doesn’t get sent to prison for murder. For Pen’s sake too, or she’ll grow up knowing she caused her own sister’s death. And for my sake, so that – whatever happens – my life will have mattered.

  She closed her eyes, and focused on the thought of Triss’s fragile voice on the telephone. Triss, with her hints about the frog, her terror of being buried alive.

  Buried alive . . .

  Trista opened her eyes again and was dazzled by the excited whirling of the snow.

  ‘Pen – I know where the ride is heading! I know where the haven is, where the Architect is taking Triss!’

  ‘What?’ Pen’s curiosity burned through her misery. ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s not the Underbelly. You heard the Besider lady – it’s somewhere new, people have only just started moving in. It’s the new railway station. Of course it is – we’ve been so stupid! And that’s where the Architect is planning to bury Triss alive too.

  ‘It’s shaped like a pyramid, Pen. Pyramids are tombs. And tomorrow morning, your father will be in charge of the Capping Ceremony, lowering the point on to the pyramid and sealing Triss in.’ Trista’s blood throbbed with certainty. The Architect would not have been able to resist the twisted elegance and irony of that solution.

  In Pen’s dark, horrified eyes, Trista finally saw realization dawn. At long last, Triss was no longer the threat, the twist of conflict in Pen’s gut. Triss was the frog, hearing the deluge of earth on the lid of her box-coffin.

  ‘Pen,’ Trista said quickly, ‘I need you to do something for me. It’s difficult, but really important. You have to go home. You have to find your father, and tell him that the Architect is taking Triss to the station. If he doesn’t hear anything of her or me by tomorrow morning . . . then I’ve failed, and he needs to find a way to stop the ceremony. He could tell everyone . . . that the station caught fire, or there’s a dog trapped inside – anything to stop them lowerin
g the cap.’

  ‘But he never listens to me!’ protested Pen.

  ‘He will this time!’ insisted Trista. ‘Everybody else will try to calm you down, and take you to doctors, and give you Ovaltine and tell you to have a nice night’s sleep. But you must talk to your father, whatever happens.’

  Pen cast an open-mouthed glance over her shoulder at the snow-draped streets. She looked painfully small, and Trista felt a pang at sending her away through the city by herself at night. But the Old Docks were becoming more dangerous by the moment.

  ‘You could come with me!’ Pen exclaimed. ‘If we know where the Architect is taking Triss, you don’t need to chase them after all—’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Trista interrupted gently. ‘You saw how hard it was to get into the Underbelly! Once the Architect hides Triss in a secret part of the station, how would anybody ever find her? I have to try to rescue her before he can do that.’

  Trista pulled off her blanket and wrapped it around Pen’s head and shoulders, so that she looked like a small nativity-play figure.

  ‘If you get lost or scared, find a policeman, or tell somebody to hand you in for the reward,’ Trista advised. ‘I didn’t want to send you home before, in case Mr Grace hurt you – but right now he isn’t at your house. He’s here.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ said Pen with shaky ferocity, under her blanket robe. ‘I’m never scared.’

  ‘I know,’ said Trista. Their hug was quick, cold and damp. ‘Go on then! Quickly!’

  Of ran the short blanket shape, like a robust little ghost, feet slithering on the fresh snow.

  Goodbye, Pen.

  Trista was alone. She felt cold and strangely light, as if Pen’s presence had been a warming but heavy overcoat. She stepped out of her borrowed shoes without even thinking about it, and left them lying pigeon-toed in the alley.

  The snow burned her soles with its cold, and she was alive, alive, feeling every second. She opened her mouth and tasted the flakes, feeling her tongue tickle and her teeth ache.

  Now there’s nobody to judge me, to tell me about myself. Nobody to impress, nobody to disappoint. Now is the time I find out who I am.

  She searched the brazier for the Besider lady’s coat, just in case there was still enough of it for her to wear as a disguise. There was nothing left, however, except for some charred shreds and a smell of burnt feathers.

  She scaled the front of a boarding house, leaping up from sill to sill, and found a skulking point between the chimney stacks. The chimneys were hot with smoke, taking the edge off the chill, and she could watch the street without being silhouetted against the sky. There she settled to wait, crouched like a slender-limbed gargoyle, her damp hair feathered with falling snow.

  From her high vantage, the snow was a wide white shoal, ever changing, flickering with each shift of the wind. She watched as it relentlessly heaped on sills and doorsteps, weighing down gutterings with gentle malice until they threatened to crack.

  Now and then, Besiders would drift down this street or that in ones or twos. None of them seemed to notice her. Their prints in the snow were misshapen, some leaving double grooves like tracks left by deer, or score-marks from tails dragged across the snow’s crust.

  The human inhabitants withdrew, as if they sensed the strangers. Sound gradually died in the riverside public houses. No clatter of hoofs or stutter of engines interrupted the settling silence. The snow accepted its dominion.

  Distant church chimes announced the passing of time, but their voices sounded muffled and bewildered, like nightwatchmen who had lost their bearings in the blizzard.

  As the darkness deepened, other boats arrived at the jetties, the snow flurries parting for them like gauze curtains. There was a little ferry made of walnut shells, its cobweb sails almost tearing under the weight of the snowflakes. Next came a crooked white coracle, its rim jagged so that it looked like half a broken eggshell. Cold on their heels came a raft of painted poles, bound together with mouldering ribbons and crowded with grey-clad, silent children.

  Every time Trista blinked, there seemed to be more Besiders clustered in the street, mutely waiting in the cloud-coloured coats. Soon they were huddled along every jetty, the base of every wall, in every doorway. A few lighted easily on nearby rooftops, folding wings away like umbrellas or preening them with toothed beaks.

  When midnight approached, Trista could feel it. The snow whirled with its breath. The chill intensified as its shadow stretched long over the city. All over the Old Docks the Besiders raised their heads to stare into the darkness, and gave a long, drawn-out hiss of excitement.

  Elsewhere in the city, church bells released a muted jumble of chimes. Trista barely noticed them. Her gaze was upon the jet-black tram that had suddenly, impossibly, surged into view, gliding down the rail-less road.

  As it drew level with the jetties, it halted in a heartbeat without needing to slow. The twin trailer cars behind it came to the same unnatural stop without shunting each other.

  When they were not moving, they looked eerily ordinary. Both tram-car and trailer-cars had corkscrew steps at both front and back. Through the windows of the trailer cars, Trista could make out the usual wood trim and advertisements for hand soap. As with commonplace trams, they had open cabs at both front and back, so they could be driven from either end, and soulful, round headlights.

  No oilskin-clad driver stood braving the bitter wind, however. There was nobody manning the tram’s controls at all.

  Half of the Besiders poured on to the trailer cars, finding seats inside the lower saloons or scaling the spiral steps to the open air ‘balcony’ seating on the upper level. Others gathered around the doors, twitching with eagerness.

  The doors of the tram-car itself did not open, nor did anyone make a bid to board it. Just for the fleetest moment, Trista saw the Architect at one of the lower windows, waving a gloved hand with gracious regality. Beside him was a shorter figure, face pale under her hat . . .

  Ting, ting. The tram sounded its bell, a crystal note eerie in its mundanity.

  Without warning, the tram was in motion once more, snaking away through the docklands with dizzying speed. The Besiders who had not boarded the trailer cars surged after it, like a tide of grey-brown floodwater, bobbing and leaping. From all the surrounding rooftops figures took to the air, some spreading wings like ribbon-cloaks or skeleton leaves, others springing light as fleas from roof to roof.

  Taking a deep breath, Trista sprang from her hiding place and joined them.

  The first leap was nearly her last. She had not appreciated how treacherous the snow would make the roof slopes. The white layer slithered away under her weight, so that she lost her footing and nearly plunged to the cobbles below. A timely snatch at a chimney steadied her though, and she continued, landing on all fours each time so that her thorn claws could sink into thatch or the gaps between tiles.

  Ahead, the tram took a sharp right away from the river and directly towards a row of houses. Without effort, it ran up the front of the nearest house, drawing the trailer cars after it, then up on to the roof, leaving two frayed grooves in the snow. There the tram and cars changed course again, speeding away along the row of roofs, tilted sideways by the tiled slope. A grey, half-seen mass of figures followed them, like a fog of giant gnats.

  Trista gave chase, trusting to instinct, toe and claw. She felt her hair stream with each leap, the wind chilling her clenched teeth. Her heart beat hard but did not seem to matter, like a loose oddment rattling in a forgotten drawer.

  She barely saw the other members of the ride, but they were all around her. Their wings beat in her ears. Her feet scuffed their forked and twisted tracks across the rooftops. Occasionally she caught a flash of lichen-coloured eyes, or teeth bared in a grin of fellowship. She tasted snowflakes and realized that her mouth was open, that she was laughing.

  All at once it felt like a game. The tram weaved this way, that way, and she matched it, increasing her speed. She was a kitten chasi
ng a twisting piece of string. She focused all her energy and strength, and pounced.

  Trista leaped for the stepped boarding platform at the back of the rear trailer car. She judged the leap well, and knew that she would land safely. Her knees reflexively bent, ready to soften the impact, and her arm stretched out to grab the pole. Before her feet could touch down, however, the whole trailer car changed before her eyes.

  The engine thrum melted into a clatter of hoofs and the rattle of carriage wheels. Instead of landing feet first on a metal platform, Trista struck what felt like a slick wooden wall, jolting her jaw and knocking the breath out of her. She scrabbled for purchase, her claws leaving lean gouges in the black-painted wood, then lost her grip and fell.

  She hit the sloping house roof and rolled down it in a froth of snow, before tumbling off the edge.

  Only a last-minute snatch at the guttering with one hand stopped her plummeting to the street below.

  She hung there winded for a few seconds, her mouth dry. Below her she could see a few fragments of herself falling away, shocked loose by the impact and her exertion. Dead leaves, crumpled book pages, strands of hair . . . she did not have time to collect them.

  With her long toes she scrabbled at the brickwork and with difficulty hauled herself up on to the roof once more.

  Where was the trailer car turned black carriage? Where was its hissing, soaring entourage? Gone, swallowed by the blizzard. But on the roofs around her were tracks which even now the snow was trying to blot out. Fox-paws, child-like bare feet, long loping prints . . . and among them the grooves from wheels, and the crescent scoops of horses’ hoofs.

  Trista brushed the snow from her eyelashes, and set off in pursuit once more.

  She followed the tracks across the roofs of slum houses, then through the petite, well-groomed streets of the daintier shopping districts.

  Now and then a tug in her flank that told her she had lost a twig, a trinket, a twist of paper.

  There, ahead! Three black carriages raced over the roofs, amid a wider haze of flitting, leaping shapes.