They tap away at tables of letters and avoid my gaze entranced by the glowing windows. Clerks in a counting house.
I try to avoid causing them offence as I am sure I look terrible after all these years and I have a desperate need for allies until I can find my feet. Many of our greatest minds have perished after a sojourn into the nothing followed by a terminal misunderstanding of the significance of a tube pointed at them by some human in theatrical garb.
A little further through my canvas haunted journey and I am led into an office of some kind. The marks of rank upon it.
The walls are a little more permanent, less pavilion and more hunting lodge. I take another breath in preparation to speak to whoever awaits me but the air here is, if anything, dustier than my erstwhile tomb and I break out into a minor fit of coughing, my underused bronchial tubes twisting in my shell.
The air has the taste of sulphur and brimstone. It irritates the dry lining of my mouth and the distraction causes me to miss my host’s greeting.
“Master Albrecht! I apologise profusely on behalf of the New Families for the circumstances of your awakening! Please...”
A noble-visaged dark-skinned man rises from another of the interminable metal chairs, set behind yet another desk and letter plate. Besides him on the floor is a large pan of ice that projects cold through a grill. A strange choice given the circumstances, the office is not warm. He has heavy shoulders and is muscular for a deskman.
Stepping out from beside him, a thrall in cotton-grey offers me the prescribed cups, bronze and green with Verdigris.
Tradition at last!
I perfunctorily cleanse my eyes with lukewarm water from the first cup, and surreptitiously clean the back of my neck. A little break from tradition to reflect the reality of my grimy situation. The chill from the cold projector tingles against the water in a delightfully refreshing manner.
After the limited ablutions I take the second cup and drink a little, enjoying the warm richness of the blood. It tastes good, the iron sting and the rich smoothness as it goes down, which at my age is what really matters. I am an epicurean connoisseur not a gluttonous child and I take no more than I need to slake my centuries long hunger.
I hand back the cup to the servant who presents it to my host.
“Your eternal health Master Albrecht.” English rather than French. That’s a change for the better.
“And yours my good fellow. I take it I am in the Family's good graces once more?”
The man takes a perfunctory sip and grimaces. The cup is not to his tastes it would seem. “You were never truly out of them. Your incarceration was an overreaction and once sanity prevailed, the survivors realised our mistake. We spent many years trying to find where you were buried.”
I sigh. “Records lost?”
“Records lost. Records purposefully destroyed. A lot has happened.” He offers his hand, moving closer. “A lot has happened. And I would offer my sincere gratitude to you for your gracious attitude in this unfortunate situation, I can assure that you will be fully compensated for what you have suffered during this travesty.”
“You would be surprised how often I hear that.” I think of my friends down below. I fear they are beyond compensation. There is no happy afterlife awaiting the dead, no hell for the wicked of which I know. Dissolution back into the sea of potential. That is all. That and who they were in life., that doesn’t change.
My host pauses and gestures to clear the room. The servants and the thrall-guards leave and we are alone.
The door closes and locks.
“I’m Master Johnson. And you should take a seat. Take the weight off.”
I chuckle. “I may stand for a while to stretch the old limbs Johnson! My tendons could do with some elongation, they still feel circumscribed by my incarceration but I’m sure I’ll feel much better soon after such a kind oblation.”
“Oblation. As you wish.” Johnson transforms a wince to a smile, bright teeth, well cared for, and settles back into his own chair.
He starts tapping away at his letter pad. “A moment please.”
“But of course.”
I take the opportunity to examine the room in more detail. A glance here, a prod there. My mind’s eye is still closed but twisting in its sleep, pushing towards waking and I plan to investigate this place and its inhabitants most thoroughly once I am in full possession of my facilities.
The enclosure is a thing of wood and metal, iron specifically, a half dozen brilliant flameless standing torches in rows affixed to the walls. They glow with a cold blue light that is unfamiliar but which I guess to be some trick of caged-lightning. Mundane and mechanical rather than mystical and metaphysical. Something of a theme of this modern world.
My dear Helene would have been delighted. She took an all pervasive joy in the march of the material arts, no matter the complications it added to our task of guiding our progenitors to a sensible, prosperous future. Man and his toys, always turned towards destruction.
It was from her I learnt and expanded on the cycle of advance I have previously described after long nights of pleasant discussion and reverie in the halls below the Club. She was my muse, codifying my thoughts into the pattern of that scientific and curious age.
Johnson continues his finger dance. The rhythm of taps and gaps speaks words.
I feel her watching from below me, drinking in the new world. The shadow of who she was, or echoes of her thoughts I carry within me. A face in the fabric of the floor hiding amongst the fibres.
Or is that merely a side effect of long incarceration? Know thyself Albrecht. Perhaps I need to examine my own mind before I examine the nature of this new world and its denizens? It is a burden to hold on to memory after so much time. I go through the motions but I do not know the dance.
And yet. Curiosity pulls at me and the past is replaced by the present. There is so much more to the room. Another of those lenses on the central strut. And another covering the locked door. An oddity. Eyes looking within rather than looking out. Who is watching whom?
Whoever has adapted this place to its current use is afraid of what it contains. Clerks, Master Johnson, the mechanical items. Me.
And behind the door at least two of the armed thralls keeping watch which strengthens my impression. Do we have enemies near, darling Helene? Does Master Johnson still hear the echoes of the accusations of my opponents within the Council?
I keep my counsel and the tapping behind me ceases.
“You’re older than you look Master Albrecht.”
I feign astonishment as I turn. I am something of a thespian and have been since creation. “Have my years of incarceration been so unkind to my appearance that a fellow Master would say such a thing?”
Johnson’s face shifts for a moment into a tight grin then back to the serious formal expression that seems to be his default.
“Yes. New clothes and a shower are in order. Though I’m guessing you’re exaggerating for effect. Your records suggest you’ve always been quite the joker. Something of a surprise. Humour rarely survives transformation. Experience would suggest that those aspects of our nature would be strongest in you. Given you are the the oldest of us, animate.”
“Hobbling.” I wince thinking on the pull of my poor tendons.
“Hobbling is a kind of animation.” Johnson taps away again. Index finger, index finger, index finger and so on. Pecking like a raven at an eye.
“Humour is not one of your boons, Master Johnson?”
“No. I have followed a particular path for long enough that all that is left is duty.” His tapping stops and he looks back up. He really is a very intense fellow, his eyes are gimlets.
“This is strange for both of us, Master Albrecht. You have been buried, and we have sought you. Now you are here I suggest we move past that strangeness and towards a better understanding of our mutual positions.”
“Eminent good sense, Johnson. Eminent.”
“And in that spirit, would you mind answer
ing a few of my questions and maybe grant me a minor boon? In acknowledgment of the um.. oblation.”
“Of course, Master Johnson. As it has always been written. As my restorer you have your privileges. Though a little assistance would be appreciated in return.”
An emphatic nod to mark the point. A quirk of our kind, stillness and then an exaggerated action that is almost a pastiche. An obsession with contract and agreement to the letter. A factor in our mutual dislike with the Fae Matriachy.
“Thank you.” Some of the tension drops from the man’s shoulders. I really must have a reputation in the present day. “You’re the guest. First dibs. Ask away.”
I pause to collect my thoughts but they scatter like cats. Dibs? I chase them as I speak and pin them in place. “I will be asking what that tapping thing you are doing is at some point. It looks intriguing. Something to do with type setting? But let me come back to that.”
“Not a bad guess,” Johnson’s eyes bore into everything they pass over. I suspect there are hidden depths to the dear man which merit investigation, what do you think darling Helene?
A dozen points are staked out before me. My questions are ready. “My first two inquiries are simple, I hope. The first is a question of calendars. What is the year? And what starting point do you use? From the advances in technology, I have slept too long. My guess? A matter of a century and a half at least based on my preferred theories and reasoned estimation. Are you aware of my theory of societal modulation?”
“No.”
“A shame. I’m sure it has been overtaken in these days of wonders. The second is a question of geography. Where is this place? My original journey here was not in the best of circumstances and involved a molten lead mask and a modicum of unpleasantness...”
Johnson face is a cave of many shadows as he looks up from the glow of the assembly before him. “I’ll use the old terms for places as things have changed a great deal since you were gone.” I nod my thanks. “You are in Ireland, a republic at the time of the Catastrophe, near the ruins of the Dubh-Lin. The year is 2075 by the calendar which is unchanged from your own. Our estimation is that you’ve been buried here for a little over two hundred years.”
“Goodness.” I observe. “A recession of technology at some point then. That would throw out the estimation. How fine must have been the summit this fine civilisation achieved?”
A disappointed moan from the carpet.
“It was different. And better. There’s a reason we call it the Catastrophe” Johnson confirms. “In all honesty it was a matter of luck we found you at all, there are new powers in this world. We were hunting the agents of a particular enemy of ours. A cult of which we … strongly disapprove. They beat us here and were trying to wake you before our team drove them away.”
“They eluded your grasp?”
“Yes. They have resources we refuse to use.” He shrugs. “You might say it’s a disagreement about fundamentals that goes back to the start. Not that it matters Not now we’re found you.”
Lies are dancing through the room. A shame, but Johnson’s pleasure in my discovery is clear as the sun at mid-summer.
“A third question then.” I wrack my memory of the ritual that imprisoned me, cutting away from the scene the screams of my friends, as have never been one to torture myself. Even then I cannot see my captors. “My defeat in the previous cycle of our politics is self-evident. Could you inform me which of the Masters supported my incarceration?”
Johnson settles back, with a wince. “What good would that do you, Master Albrecht? It was a long time ago.”
“A matter of principle. Section and party have always been one of our vices and it is a weakness of mine that I like to understand where I went wrong in my estimations of our colleagues and with whom. Without such knowledge I could make the same mistakes again and others might suffer.”
He shakes his handsome bullet of a head. Hair cropped short like the thralls who brought me here. I prefer my locks to flow so I may have to adopt a hat to blend here.
“I understand. In principles. Politics never gets cleaner does it? But I’m not sure I can help. The records of that period are sketchy at best. Or beyond our reach.”
“You wouldn’t mind…” I mime out the finger-pecks. “Tap-tappity-tap?”
A pause. “I can try. I don’t think it will do you any good though. There has been some turnover in the ranks since your day. Give me some names. I’ll see what I can do.”
I snort. A habit I’ve never been able to lose even after I stopped breathing, the same stink of brimstone and pumice tickles my nose. Oh the Council and its malcontents.
“Names, I can give you names Master Johnson. Count Perkinas I am sure of. Toothy little scofflaw with his draughty castle fetish. Not Carlos. He was bordering on imaginative. Maybe Lao Shi, she was always an antiquarian and the punishment was antediluvian if you forgive the pun…” Johnson is taking notes as I speak, scribbling names on paper. “Do you think you might pass on their whereabouts? You mention a turnover in the ranks? Am I to take it that were I inclined that way, my revenge list would be quite short? Adam would have recorded the names. If you need the name of the Clerk at the time?”
I pause. In all honesty I’m not sure I even know all the names, the lower echelons, the up and comers of the Family council were beneath my notice. A mistake maybe, given they could vote. What do you think Helene?
She does not speak.
“Adam, you say?” Johnson’s pen is poised. “An important member of your Council?”
Master Serah’s secretary, Adam kept the Council records and he avoided me like the plague, keeping to his day job at the Imperial Institute of Languages and Scripts in between the meetings I studiously avoided. Too much talk, a side effect of those I’d chosen for the first generation of Masters when I came into my own.
Poets and architects, creatives who would keep the light of art burning through the darkest of dark ages. Push back the shadows into the antediluvian tenebrous forests of yore.
Admirable Adam, a paragon in his own way. He was the only person I knew (at second hand as we entered into lengthy correspondence on a variety of matters) who could out compose me in Akkadian poetry and a dab hand in the Sumerian epics to boot.
Good with an agenda too, all hidden significance and points of order, must have been all the practice from those silly king lists.
My miscalculation manifests in my current situation though. Had I been as connected as I thought I was I would not have ended up where I did. There has always been a modicum of resistance to my views.
That’s a clear sign you’re on the right path which a people as hidebound as my family.
I think fast. A moment has passed since I last spoke. Why is it so easy for our kind to sink into these depths? Adam important or no? How to respond to Johnson?
I choose to dissemble. “Not for these purposes. He wasn’t one of us, and I’m really only interested in the votes. He would have recorded them faithfully enough, and time alone would have done for him by now so any conscious involvement he had is long forgiven.”
Johnson doesn’t appear to have noticed my lie and smiles wider than before showing a flash of those well cared for teeth. “I can tell you where the others ended up. That’s information I have.”
“Those of us who are still animate, are we still based in Paris?” I disliked the city intensely, but it had made sense as our centre at the time.
Another shake of the head followed by more tapping. “Scattered across Europe. The library is still there though.” A construct of light coalesces before me and I laugh in delight at the way it seems to hang in the air, projected from a crystal matrix.”
“That’s the catacombs”
“Yes. Turning to your original query as to the nature of this machine,” gestures to the device before him, “this is an information repository which I can interrogate and find you any answers you might wish to know...”
My mind lights up as the map rotates in pla
ce. “Any possibility that I could take a turn, Master Johnson, I believe I could pick up the basics of such a clever device very quickly given a chance?”
“Soon enough, Master Albrecht. There are protocols…”
“Ah yes. Protocols.” I can’t hide the sneer in my voice. Adam would have loved this place. He loved his rule books. “We can hardly move quickly can we?”
“I believe it’s my turn to ask a question, Master Albrecht.”
What a shame. I had hoped to get a little further along the road to enlightenment before we reached this place. “Oh, I think you’re asking a fair number, Master Johnson, though you hide them most prettily.”
Silence descends. The atmosphere loses it joviality seeping away in a moment.
Johnson wipes a bead of sweat away from his brow. “They keep these places too damn warm. It’s the secretarial staff in those woollen suits. Always complaining about the cold.”
I give him a sad smile as his eyes flicker towards the ice tub at his side. I have sharper teeth than him even when I’m not smiling and I do not feel like smiling now.
“Johnson, I hate to suggest this as I find you to be a civilised man, but I’m not sure we’re on the same page here. I have the feeling that you may not be quite who you claim to be.”
To his credit he takes the hint, if he hasn’t already picked up on it. “I think you may have a point there, Albrecht.” A hard-double tap on the table. “I warned them this was a waste of time. Your kind are arrogant, but not stupid. They wouldn’t listen though, political expediency and stupidity. Politicians are like cockroaches, they’re the one thing that survives the process and they like to remind us who’s in charge.”
“The one becomes the other, but much of the essence remains.”
He touches his forehead and looks at his fingers. “Was it the sweat?”
I sigh. No reason to hold back. I can hear the guards from the other side of the door behind me enter the room at some unseen signal, followed by others of their kind stalking down corridors, moving with purpose, they even run in a marching step.
Master In His Tomb Page 2
