She left the pickled monster and returned to him.
‘Don’t change the subject, Vernon. You say Mr Riven’s wife was Postmaster Harrow’s daughter.’
‘Yes. Mr Harrow is a man grieving.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
‘He is a wellspring of bitterness. He is too keenly aware what lies in wait for you upon that promontory, having seen it up close, and to someone he loved.’ Mr Justinian poured himself a snifter of brandy, but did not offer the same to Arden. The liqueur left runnels upon the glass in the firelight. ‘We also must talk of what happened today, else it will always fester in our minds.’
Arden exhaled. ‘You were quite adamant I should not have the coat. Murdered whore, you said.’
‘I acknowledge that.’
‘Marrying a monster does not make one a harlot, Mr Justinian. If what you say is true, then it was her husband’s fault that she was trapped in the marriage, not hers. You disgrace the dead by your blame. What you said today towards me was unconscionable.’
Mr Justinian stared at his shoes, affected a hangdog expression. ‘It upset me to lose such a fine young lady to such a miserly end, that is all.’
‘So she is fine, now?’
‘She was beautiful, and fierce and somewhat intelligent in her own way, and did not deserve what became of her. Reduced from vibrancy to a shade. My guilt at not stepping up to save her, my cowardice, is constant. I chose the pejorative out of my own grief.’ He glanced about, clearly hoping a voice might pipe up and rescue him, as it usually did when the servants were about. ‘But Bellis made her decision to help her father by prostituting herself to Riven when there were other ways out of her predicament.’
‘Bellis Harrow,’ Arden said. ‘So she has a name of her own, then.’
The brandy displeased Mr Justinian. He threw the liquor into the fire, causing a blue spirit to rise from the coals. It reminded Arden of her own arcane fire, starving in its glass in a far lighthouse, waiting to be fed.
Mr Justinian spoke to the fire, and not to her.
‘A hundred years ago a family was procured from the Sainted Isles. The Rivens, they were called. Or at least they received the name because they were shorefolk, sea-savages, not sophisticated enough to understand the concept of familial lineage. It didn’t matter that they were brutes and inbreeds. Alexander Justinian, my great-grandfather, needed hands to process kraken-flesh and saurians in his factories upon the promontory. Who minded if the Rivens were illiterates and barely human? Thankfully they were not suited to the modicum of civilization Vigil provided and mostly remained upon the promontory, away from town. Within the span of a century the Rivens fought and sliced and incestually pared themselves down to one disgusting remnant individual.’
Mr Justinian made the sign of the krakenskin crucifix upon his chest before adding, ‘Your lighthouse neighbour. T’was he that killed his family in an orgy of ritual and violence nearly twenty years ago. Slaughtered every man, woman and child on that promontory in one night. His own blood, gone.’
‘I see,’ Arden said. ‘But if all this brutality did happen, shouldn’t he have been hanged in punishment?’
‘Oh, Riven was punished indeed. Charged and pleaded guilty to killing his family, sent away to the hulk prisons of Lyonne. Rotting boats on Harbinger Bay, converted to hold the worst reprobates and degenerates ever disinterred from the social sewage.
‘But then some syphilitic judge had a weak-minded moment, and over a decade later returned the animal to this town. That is not the tragedy. Fifteen years of imprisonment merely sharpened the criminal’s hunger, made his sexual urges tend to the obscene. Riven was ill-content in wallowing out on the promontory among his factory ruins. He came into town, forced a local girl to wife. Mr Harrow’s daughter.’
‘Forced?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now there,’ Arden said tartly. ‘There is the strange part. The heart wants what it wants and it takes two to marry. If he wanted to marry anyone, then they would have had to at some stage consent to it, to allow it. Before witnesses.’
‘Allow? Allow? You speak about request and consent upon this brutal shore?’ Mr Justinian laughed with an adult’s condescension towards a child. ‘The woman was stolen, just as you would steal a hog or an unsupervised cure of meat. Dragged her screaming to the Sainted Isles, where illegal unions can be effected as easily as an attack in the dead of night. She came back with both eyes blackened, and never spoke for nearly a year afterwards. Not even to her father.
‘Her last year alive she spent in abject horror and torment inside those factories and in his stinking bed. Escaped only once, whittled down to skin and bone and scar. Wanted an abortifacient for the monster curled in her womb, and Mr Sage gave her a tea that …’
‘I have had experience with such a tea,’ Arden snapped. ‘You do not need to explain in detail what Mrs Sage already has. Continue, if you decide this salacious horror is what I must hear to make my informed decision.’
‘Riven came back for Bellis that night, threatened Mr Harrow. Assaulted him, even as he tried to protect his daughter. A month later she was dead. All that was left was her coat, washed onto the beach. The Rector of our church was to make a statement to the magistrate about her death, for it was to him that she had confided. Our Rector himself went to Riven, to beg that he confess for the salvation of his holy soul. He never returned, his body was never found. Without evidence of death, the mongrel could not be charged or convicted. Two deaths within days. But let us merely agree as to who did both.’
‘Circumstantial, still …’
‘The Rector was your cousin, Arden Beacon. Rector John Stefan, the son of Jorgen Beacon, the Lightkeeper.’
Arden’s heartbeat quickened in her chest, the rush of panic that any thought of unfair violence brought. Her cousin she remembered only vaguely, for their meetings had been so long ago, a slender, dark youth with the same soft-smoky hair as Andrew and soulful eyes. He had been her age, Stefan Beacon, ungifted in blood but touched in other ways – deeply sensitive, accepted into a religious seminary and visiting his family in the North. Arden remembered more her step-mother’s exclamation. Stefan and Arden could have been brother and sister, how similar their looks!
Her cousin, murdered, along with the woman.
She needed to keep calm, for such tales were not just for her safety. Her fear was a coin that could buy Mr Justinian several more weeks of her time.
‘Surely such a performance as a literal kidnapping by the bogeyman of Vigil would have risen one or two men to heroics. You say all this happened to her, and to Mr Harrow, that you yourself stood by and watched?’
‘You don’t understand. Riven cannot be killed. The devils of the sea keep him safe, for all that he cut off his cock and fed it to them for his protection.’ In the candlelight Mr Justinian’s face darkened, and pearls of sweat sprang up from his brow. ‘And he makes money! Money for foreign businessmen who purchase his kraken hides and will not allow harm to come to him.’
He snatched at the mantelpiece, held himself there shaking, before the brandy decanter called to him once more. ‘I am sorry. For you. For her.’
‘Are we done in the telling? Is this all I must know?’
Mr Justinian nodded. ‘It is what you must know.’
‘Coastmaster, regardless of whatever went before you must sign my release papers. I must go to my lighthouse.’
‘You need not hurry. Mr Harris can—’
‘Mr Harris is not qualified to keep a lucent flame alive and the season of summer storms will be upon us. A perpetually burning flame is still vulnerable to going out, and a sanguis ignis needs to maintain the light.’
‘You cannot yet go,’ Mr Justinian insisted. ‘Not so soon. Not while Riven still lives out on that accursed promontory! He will come to you in the night, come prowling with lust in his black heart!’
Arden sniffed. ‘It will not be the first time I’ve been in situations with lustful men. Anyway, didn’t you say
he fed his manhood to the devils for his protection? What is he meant to do to me without it?’
He did not take her scoffing bait. ‘I cannot release you! My guilt over Bellis’ fate prevents me.’
Arden had one play left to her. Such a play could only be used but once, and she had to take a deep breath before she deployed it.
‘If you do not sign the papers, Mr Justinian, I will have no recourse but to return to Portside with your so-called essential list. I will present such evidence to the Seamaster’s Guild and there will be an investigation. They may do more than investigate me, and cast their eyes on other parts of your business. Good night to you.’
As she turned to leave, Mr Justinian grabbed her arm. His fingers dug hard into the muscle, with the clear intent of leaving an imprint of himself upon her.
‘It is not safe.’
‘Safer than here, perhaps.’ She pulled free. ‘You cannot keep me from my lighthouse.’
‘All right then, damn you.’
He strode to the desk, unlocked it and pulled out a sheaf of papers from a leather binder, the certificates that completed the Guild transfer. ‘I have tried to warn you of the creature who will be no further from your doorstep than the east wing of this Manse from the right. This thing I do will condemn you to danger.’
‘The danger is mine to face,’ Arden said. ‘Otherwise what good am I as a Lightkeeper anywhere?’
He met her steady gaze with something approaching panic. His nostrils flared like a horse sensing the harness.
She held the gaze, until he broke first, picked up his heavy fountain pen from the inkwell and signed both copies with such violence that Arden winced for the paper and the wood of the table beneath.
He held up the certificate. She held out her hand.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Perhaps she was too subtle. The certificate never went her way.
‘One condition.’
Arden frowned. ‘I am not happy with conditions.’
‘Allow me to court you.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I am a Coastmaster with a barony to my name. You are an interim member of the Seamaster’s Guild, the youngest ever. By winter you yourself would hold a full Guild degree, marry whom you wish. A good couple we would make. Our mating would be well-matched. The Eugenics Society will allow it, for we may yet breed some as yet unheard of talent.’
Unbidden, Richard Castile stepped into the halls of her mind. His smart uniform. His rakish cap. His handsome face taking her breath away with yearning. To touch him. To wrap herself up in a body that was not her own.
She shook her head firmly to rid herself of the association.
‘I have no interest in eugenics or breeding. Besides, in the interest of fleeting pleasure – which I am quite forbidden to pursue openly – I barely know you.’
‘Then come to know me. Allow me the chance to court you and present my case. The Society is favourable to a high lineage such as mine. You could receive a marriage dispensation at the very least. Non-breeding of course, but the operation to remove womb-horns is often quite successful.’
Arden exhaled. She shouldn’t shout. Would be unprofessional, but still, the gall of the man!
‘Mr …’
He moved to the fire, the certificate still in his hand. She saw the leaping flames, the devouring of her freedoms, the going home, the censure of the Guildmaster who might have to come out here and mediate this mess. Maybe even Mr Lindsay, whose owners even the Portmaster of Clay feared.
They would find in her favour, but the taint of being a Lightkeeper who could not handle their own business would remain. She would not keep her degree, not even the associate one. Her signal post had already been reassigned. She would be …
‘Stop!’
‘Well? What say you, Mx Beacon?’ He shook the paper. ‘I am a man alone in this cursed, misbegotten peninsula courtesy of my great-grandfather’s sentimentality. How am I to meet any woman of my equal among these inbreds of the coast? How will my family be redeemed if I marry into worthless muck?’
She wanted to say words in their defence, for the girls of the town were quite the hardworking, straight-talking type. She was no eugenicist, but something of the stoic Vigil seaworthiness in the Justinian line might be a bit more welcome than Mr Justinian thought.
The flames leapt, hungry for paper. She let out a sigh.
‘You may come to my lighthouse once a week and court me in the interests of social engagement,’ Arden said through gritted teeth. ‘I will need regular supplies brought to me anyhow. Your driver can make himself useful at least.’
‘Yes. Very good.’ Mr Justinian’s smile showed his incisors.
She wondered just what shame had sent him packing back here from Clay Portside, a cur with a tail between its legs. Arden reached for the paper again. He pulled the paper away, put the certificate back in the leather binder, then returned the binder to its locked drawer.
‘It is still much safer to keep items here,’ he said. ‘The tower structure is in poor condition. You would not want an inundation or damp to destroy your Certificate of Work. The best place for it is in the safety of the Coastmaster’s office. Any high-ranking Seamaster judge would agree with me, if there were ever – as you say – an investigation.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just make sure that I am paid on time. Certificates on fragile paper are one thing, but Djenne coins survive a sunken ship.’
With that, she swallowed her brandy-laced tea in one gulp, and stomped up the stairs to her room, and made damn sure she both locked the door and shoved a chair under the handle before retiring for the night.
5
Her uncle had left her a boat
Her uncle had left her a boat.
More correctly, Arden thought, putting her hands on her hips in unconscious imitation of her Portmaster father, he had left a boat to whomever the Guild appointed as Lightkeeper after him. No doubt the bad news would have sunk through the layers of missives and post-rumours, that Lucian Beacon’s eldest child was malorum and dim of blood.
Such a condition reflected badly on a family who made their name in fire. The great genetic and ancestral ledgers of the Eugenics Society would be opened in the inner sanctum of the legendary Clay Library. An accusing cross scrawled in blood-red ink next to the name of Beacon. Their partnerships and progeny would be scrutinized for generations to come. Jorgen would have suspected that no Beacon-born would follow after him.
Perhaps he’d made peace with the passing of the baton to a Pharos man, maybe accepted that a lesser Lumiere would take up the fire he had once tended. One of the other ignis-gifted families, just not a Beacon. Jorgen wouldn’t have ever thought little Arden here, even if he had still remembered her.
Oh, Uncle. If only I could tell you I made it. Like her cousin Stefan, Uncle Jorgen had appeared in her life only in blinks and snatches, a thin, slighter version of his four brothers, timid around adults, but with a rare patience when it came to children. She remembered his peculiarities most clearly, the shine of his nails, his moustache severely waxed at the ends, the precisely polished brass hobs in his shoes. His face was a smudge. They said that the Beacon brothers might have been handsome youths, but only Jorgen was beautiful.
She imagined he looked like her father.
An unspoken trouble had early on separated Jorgen from his Clay Portside brothers. For all that he had died only weeks ago, he had long since passed over in Arden’s life. He’d stopped making his annual pilgrimages. He’d refused contact with his family. He became a memory, and then a corpse.
And yet she wondered if he would have been pleased that his niece would be the one to have Fine Breeze. It was not the sort of craft she had expected her dour, exiled uncle to own. Instead of the faded blues and greens of those few fishing vessels that dotted the harbour, Fine Breeze was as red as a polished lacquer cabinet from the Middle Country.
‘Lightmaster Beacon loved that boat,’ the Harbourmistress said with a sour
expression, as if such an emotion were peculiar and unwelcome. Her accent was pure Lyonnian, as if she’d only come from Clay City yesterday.
Mx Modhi, the Harbourmistress of Vigil, if that was what one could call the position of watching over a miserly pier for most hours of the day, was a tall, stout woman of grandmasterly years and an ancestry that went beyond the small pale folk of Fiction. The shipyard domain she beheld and no doubt ruled, from a sturdy, leather-upholstered rocking chair in the primo position to watch all the comings and goings from the bay. She wore waxed canvas trousers, not a skirt, and her legs were as broad as ship-masts, and her arms suggested the same strength of clipper ship cross-beams. She still had in her oaken face the shades of the beauty she must have been when she was younger.
A curved pipe in her mouth bobbed as the Harbourmistress watched Arden gingerly put a foot out to test the red boat’s wallow. A city girl’s apprehension made for fine entertainment.
‘Don’t fall in,’ the Harbourmistress said. ‘I’ll not get out of this chair to rescue you.’
‘Jorgen couldn’t have had the boat built here.’
‘No, she belonged to a traveller through these parts. Lost her in a game of cards – Beggar’s Blight of all things. Ended up in Jorgen’s hands – your uncle might have been slight, but he was fiery. Would take on a shorefolk brawler twice his size if he felt an injustice had been done.’
Arden smiled. ‘Oh, he was definitely a Beacon, then. We are all about correctness and balance.’ She indicated her gloves. ‘But if there was fire in him, he kept it under a bushel for the most part. This boat is very unlike him.’
‘Sometimes the most austere folk will have a weakness for rare and beautiful things.’
With that said, Mx Modhi nodded at Arden’s blue-spotted coat and, grinning, puffed a smoke-halo from her plesiosaurivory pipe.
‘Well, beautiful things can be useful. And utility is beautiful too.’
‘And you’re off to the promontory now. Our sea-washed sunset gates.’
Monstrous Heart Page 5
