Monstrous Heart

by Claire McKenna

  To Arden’s further surprise, Chalice nodded. ‘Not positive, but some latencies for trace minerals. The salt of the ocean appeals to my sense of sodium chloride, but that’s about it.’

  ‘Oh, what a shame, to not have a talent.’

  ‘Trust me darling, I wouldn’t wish to be sanguine. Far too much trouble, and the Society breathing down your neck like an overly invested uncle during St Stephens dinner? Ugh, not for me.’

  Over the bubbling kettle Arden admitted her own failings, of her late blooming at seventeen rather than eleven, of a half-brother with sanguis ferro talent. ‘Between me and him, our family is not particularly healthy in the eyes of the eugenicists right now. Our ledger page is all red crosses and angry notations.’

  She waited for Chalice to enquire incredulously how, with all that against her, Arden had managed such an important signal post.

  To her credit, the stormbride kept her counsel and only said with genuine feeling, ‘Then I hope this small sojourn to these shores works out well for you, Arden Beacon.’

  ‘Thank you. I do hope it works out.’

  ‘What happens once you are done here?’

  ‘Home awaits. I’ll have a full Guild membership then and dispensation to—’ she faded off, worrying she might be too personal with this woman she’d only just met.

  ‘Dispensation?’ Chalice said with a chortle. ‘To marry, you mean?’ Her eyes sparkled wickedly.

  Arden’s cheeks grew hot. ‘It would be nice, I suppose.’

  Chalice wagged a finger at Arden. ‘Then make this time quick, and marry your fellow. It will make a fitting end.’

  ‘What do you mean, a fitting end?’

  ‘This is the last of the blood-kept lights, and the Guild has decided to keep it no more. The light will be de-registered at your departure, and I will return to Clay and take another posting.’ She picked up the triangular Guild assistant coin from about her neck and kissed it. ‘God willing it be an easy one this time.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Arden said, crestfallen. She couldn’t bear thinking of her uncle’s light extinguished like the beet-farmer’s lanterns. A Beacon could not let a fire lapse, it was against their code.

  ‘It’s politics darling. The Fiction Guild folk would prefer one of their own in this tower. And since they don’t lean to blood, its only fair this should be a common fire.’

  Then another worrisome thought came over her, and it showed on her face long enough for Chalice to ask, ‘What troubles you?’

  ‘I think it is peculiar.’

  ‘Losing a lighthouse?’

  ‘No, that the Fiction Seamaster’s Guild should wait until winter to decommission the light. it would have been better to replace the lamp now, when the days are long.’

  Chalice silently stirred the pot until the tools clunked, and Arden felt bad for dumping her cares upon a stormbride whom she’d decided was quite nice after all.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind me, Chalice. I’m just glad for the opportunity. I’d never have gotten this chance in Lyonne. Maybe they’re even expecting a sanguinem ignis from Fiction? Maybe that is the delay.’

  An odd expression made Chalice’s freckles wrinkle. ‘Darling, there hasn’t been a Fiction-born sanguinem for … goodness, well over a decade.’

  ‘Who was the last?’ Arden asked, wondering if she should know of a foreign-born sanguinem in the academies. The ladies of the Guild would have talked forever and a day of such a person.

  Chalice seemed to pause, as if deciding whether or not to tell Arden, then pointed her chin down the promontory.

  ‘His wife, for one.’

  Mr Justinian’s voice hissed in her mind, as it always did, as if he had infected her with a hateful memory. Murdered whore, he’d said.

  ‘Bellis Riven? Chalice, I don’t remember her being in the Clay Academies at all.’

  ‘She never went to Clay,’ Chalice continued, ‘She was tested positive for sanguinity, but stayed at home.’

  ‘And the Eugenics Society let her?’

  ‘They did indeed. Looks like our over-invested Society is capable of some empathy. Bellis had a sick mother. A father with connections. You know that tale, how it goes.’

  ‘Goodness. Well, then. I would be curious to know of her endowment, if you remember so well.’

  Chalice Quarry checked for the unlikely eavesdroppers on this desolate promontory, then leaned in close.

  ‘When the test masters applied the assessment, her blood drew powerfully to the black oil from the Islands,’ Chalice replied with a fine hint of condescension sprinkled with the slightest salt of jealousy.

  ‘Rockblood? Sanguinem petrae? But, Chalice, a petroleum symmetry is a golden talent!’

  Chalice sat back, still as nonplussed by the fact of Bellis’ result as she must have been the first time she heard it. ‘Gold, and old! The petrolactose bloodline is almost extinct! Every big-city technical academy and Guild tower clamoured for her presence. She chose to stay here.’

  ‘Chalice, come now. The Eugenics Society would not have allowed her to stay here. Much less the Lions.’

  ‘They may not allow it, but this is Fiction, not Lyonne. There are no Lions here. Wished only to stay with her loving father, her poorly mother. Be a dutiful daughter, unlike all the other greedy little shits who run away to Lyonne at their first chance at a golden dollar and sanguis coins.’ Chalice clasped her hands dramatically to her breast and affected a swoon. ‘Poor Bellis. So they let her.’

  ‘Put me in the camp of undutiful peasant then,’ Arden sighed, twitching with envy. ‘My father wasn’t too pleased at my coming to Vigil. We had quite a row over it.’

  ‘Quite frankly, the rockblood talent was wasted on her. What’s a little innocent creature like Bellis going to do with sanguinem petrae anyway? Go out to the Sainted Isles and start digging around for old pipes so the prospectors can bunker them? Live with the machines? I think not.’

  With that, Chalice gave the steaming kettle a kick, and they retrieved the now passably clean blood apparatus from the bowl. Arden wrapped the copper parts up into one of Dowager Justinian’s towels, and they headed up – gingerly on account of the corroding staircase – to the lamp room.

  Chalice watched with interest as Arden reaffixed all the bloodletting devices to the fading flame wick. When it came to Uncle Jorgen’s knife, she declined the uneven blade and pulled from one of her corset-bones a small stiletto knife. It made a fine cut in the centre of the button, and the blood welled up like a cabochon ruby.

  ‘Like stigmata,’ Chalice opined, which prompted a huff from Arden.

  ‘Coins,’ she corrected.

  At the touch of the blood, the white flame kicked and roared up, making both women stand back with a gasp.

  ‘Ah, so bright!’ Chalice exclaimed, her hand over her eyes. Then she put her hand in the fire and waved her fingers about so that the blue flame hissed through her fingers. ‘So bright and so cold. I’ll never get over how strange a sanguine flame is.’

  Arden nodded. ‘Of course it will be brighter than usual. The ratio hasn’t been correct for a long time.’ She wound the wick down and closed the fresnel lenses. ‘My uncle suffered illness long before he came out here, I think. His blood was fading. My blood is hardly strong, either. Like I said, I came into it too late.’

  ‘Would it have been different if you had come into your talent earlier?’

  ‘Very much. You should have seen my Uncle Nicolai’s blood-light, Chalice. You could wear welder’s goggles with your eyes shut, and you would still see the flame though your eyelids. I used to love going to the Clay Mouth signal tower, helping him on my vacation days.’ She stood back and sighed. ‘I never thought I’d have a signal tower. It’s almost a dream too good to be true.’

  Chalice pressed her palms to the lens and fussed over the cold light. Arden was pleased that her stormbride had not been fearful. Hard enough to convince any commonfolk with little experience that the sanguis talents were not always dangerous, and al
most never if one took the proper precautions.

  Arden finished the rest of her light business, lowering the mantle so the flame burned incandescent against the knitted hood, and wound the revolving mechanica to last the night. Chalice made her final observations for the journal. They descended the spiral stairs, and Arden decided that she would like this Chalice Quarry. The woman was clearly a little older than her, past thirty years at least. Had an easy experience about her, as if she were a sturdy, trustworthy boat, unlikely to sink.

  Chalice put a kettle upon the coals outside. ‘You are a hard worker, and helpful,’ she acknowledged Arden with grudging good humour. ‘Not like Lightkeeper Pharos in my previous posting, who could barely raise a fork to his lips if he thought I could be around to do it for him!’

  ‘I think we will make a good team,’ Arden replied, shy with her new friendship. ‘My light and your—’

  ‘Well, I’m no witch, but with my chemical latencies I can make a very good medicinal tea. Come sit now, Lightmistress, and you may show yourself as better company than Mr Harris.’

  Arden sat inside the rowboat and watched Chalice work her botanical magicks. When the steeped brew came to her she clutched the enamel mug of tea for warmth.

  The setting sun skimmed the grey sea with a scar of gold. Chalice pointed towards the horizon. A plume of luminous smoke rose against a backdrop of red sky. This time it was not a sainted flotilla, but a boat Arden knew only too well, having survived those chopping wheels the day before.

  ‘Mr Riven’s heading out to sea,’ Chalice said. ‘Thank the Redeemer, we won’t have to think of him prowling around tonight.’

  ‘He prowls?’

  Chalice shrugged. ‘Personally, I don’t think he cares about us one whit. He wants to know what’s happening on the promontory though. Most fishermen keep stock of their surroundings, and he does the same.’

  ‘I came to discover what manner of man Mr Riven is this afternoon,’ Arden said darkly. ‘I had Mr Quill stop his car so I might make my acquaintance and beg of him not to come kill us in the night.’ Arden dry-laughed without humour at her own joke, which was not amusing, was true and terrifying.

  ‘And? Was he monstrous? Did he have giant eyes on the side of his head and the arms of a squid and a cuttlefish beak between his legs?’

  Arden tsked at Chalice’s bleak wit. ‘A tattoo of that, perhaps. I could not look. He had his kill in his arms. A baby plesiosaur, a little helpless thing torn from its mother’s body. I came upon him laying it out upon his slaughter table.’

  ‘The devil’s damnation, then. The sea will not forgive such a travesty.’ Chalice studied the tea leaves skimming the top of her mug. ‘Hunting plesiosaur is illegal in spawning waters. The locals say bad luck follows anyone harming an unborn pup. Once they get word of it you know there’ll be misfortune upon the waters. Perhaps you could advise the Captain of the Coast, who I understand you have spent a month with …?’

  ‘Ha!’ Arden cried. ‘And who then will Mr Riven have to blame for the accusation? The one person who saw him in the act! If Postmaster Harrow and Coastmaster Justinian could not protect a man’s own daughter, what chance do I have?’

  Chalice shrugged, topped up the tea, put a third mug aside for the Old Guy – a wharf superstition that had made its way from lighthouses and docks and to the edges of the world – before joining Arden in her rowboat throne.

  ‘People in these parts had many envies in their hearts towards pretty little Bellis Harrow with her rockblood talent, Arden, but marrying a man who slaughters monsters, being forced into sexual slavery, neither of those was bloody one of them. Forget about what you saw in those factories. Every place needs a monster, and you won’t do anybody any favours by trying to find anything redeemable in Vigil’s own.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to redeem him …’ Arden protested, burning with that furious heat of shame because she had been, in a way, wanting to prove Mr Justinian wrong.

  ‘You went to his doorstep, did you not? What did you think, that by your gracious, unprejudiced Clay Capital ways and your generosities and over-bred face you might tame Mr Riven the way Biblical Daniel tamed the Lions?’ Chalice then softened, knowing her words harsh. ‘I don’t intend cruelty. Mr Riven has been implacable since the day he returned from his captivity in the worst Lyonne prison hulks the Parliament administers. Arden, you remember my posting before this one?’

  ‘Mr Harris said it was the Harbinger Bay lighthouse.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve seen the degradations these men are put through on those floating hell-ships, what scarred abominations it creates of them. Why, the Harbinger hulks make the Sainted Isles a paradise in comparison.’

  ‘I can’t listen to the opinions of others,’ Arden protested, ‘I needed to confirm this for myself. Not from Mr Justinian, who has been controlling every whisper and conversation since I arrived here last month. From people I trust. From my own eyes.’

  ‘And you found out. Congratulations, you’re still alive. Now leave Mr Riven be and maybe he’ll leave us.’

  Dejected by the failures of the day, Arden carried the last of her belongings into the lighthouse. She rolled out a Mi’kmaq mat – repurposed from airship battens and lighter than a mattress – on the stone floor, and finished it with a cosy mammoth-wool blanket. The set-up made Chalice’s eyes widen appreciatively, and Arden decided she would give the bed to the woman as a present once she left.

  The appreciation did not extend to the krakenskin coat.

  ‘I know it’s hers,’ Arden said after Chalice had another round of conniptions over the death-shawl of Bellis Riven so obviously on display. ‘But I hadn’t the heart to let it be picked apart for rags, and Mr Riven gave me his blessing.’ She paused. ‘Or something similar to one.’

  ‘So who is the favourite one now? I wouldn’t give you a blessing. Regardless of whose fault, it must be a dreadful thing to see again, and to remember.’

  Arden thought about Mr Riven trying to run the Breeze down. Perhaps she was being foolish, taunting him with his wife’s coat. Foolish, and cruel, and deserving of any misfortune that came in return.

  9

  When she’d first met

  When she’d first met Mr Richard Castile they had both been young. He had just joined the Friesland Corps as an air cadet, and it was in uniform that she’d noticed him, standing near a rainbow buffet of shaved-ice sorbets. She remembered the epaulets winking gold at his shoulders, his black hair glistening in bud-lights, as beautiful as a dream. Arden had failed two testmoots by then and was unlikely to make her third, so she’d been invited to the Guild Ball only out of her father’s influence. For that she was in her secret heart not at all upset. Life as a sanguinem was a roster of proscribed affection and arranged marriages and she was glad to escape such boundaries. She had made commonblood friends, and had not begrudged her old companions from her potential days, so she walked the world a popular girl without too many cares, and a curiously protected future.

  Until that night.

  They grew them handsome and dashing out on the north Summerland seas, and the night Arden saw Mr Castile was the moment she fell in love. Until then she had not quite known if her desires would be towards either men or women, or both, or neither, for at such an age one was little different from the other. But Mr Castile in his navy blue dress uniform and tilted sky-pilot cap could have been a character lifted out of a penny-printed chapbook. She remembered his hair black as a raven’s wing, nestled under her chin after they had shared a kiss. Up close his eyes were an impish hazel, and there was a sweet curl to his full lips that would have suited a stage player of Arabian princes. Language danced easy upon his tongue, jokes and stories. Women loved him, men enjoyed his company, and then, for nearly ten years on and off, each meeting achingly brief and deeply regretful, he had been Arden’s lover.

  Lover. How small a word for all the importance of him.

  For all that she promised to forget Richard each time he sailed away, Arden lost her
senses upon each return to Clay, and maybe for the most fleeting of moments he had done the same, for there had been a time when he had spun tales of their escape by land and air and sea, away from the Guilds and the Eugenics Society and on to lands where sanguinity meant no more than a name.

  But always, the sense of something between them, for each time he put off their escape for another year an invisible hand reached up and lay upon the back of her neck, said: this man does not have the strength to fight Lions.

  Her blood was not her own. Its labour belonged to the Seamaster’s Guild, and its inheritance to the Eugenics Society, and very quietly, her body to the Lyonne Order and Nomenclatures. She would always do what they told her to do.

  So she had waited for Richard Castile to become strong. Not always in celibacy, for sometimes the nights grew hot, and the yearnings fierce, and there were always others with coins in their hands and regret in their words who might tangle in darkness for a few hours. Make her forget that once she loved a man, and once a man loved her back.

  The months became years, and Richard could never commit to taking a chance. His fear of discovery tangled up about his affections like a choking vine. Her love ossified into a quiet despair. Their reunions were punctuated by her doubts. Until it had all become too much, and he’d flown away for good.

  Tonight the winds brought back his memory. She recalled the same sharp pangs of excitement as Mr Castile made love to her, the old familiar way her heart overflowed as he shuddered and spent. The soft kisses from his sweet lips afterwards.

  Arden sat up, blinking in the half-light. Her breath made steaming curlicues in the lantern’s gleam.

  My heart, she thought. Why are you awake? Why are you hungering now, when you have been asleep for so long?

  Arden greeted the late morning with a stiff back, a stiff neck, and a vague ache in her lower belly, as if she had been aroused by passion in remembering her intimate moments, then left hanging in a confusing state of demi-desire.

  In the manner of any good stormbride, Chalice had risen early to stoke the outside fire in the misty drizzle. The smoke from the wet logs had a slithering, seething quality, the kind witches loved.