Monstrous Heart

by Claire McKenna

  Then he was gone, down the stairs in a rush, snatched up his coat and slammed the door as he left.

  It is sin.

  The terrible compulsion drained from Arden, leaving her wrung-out and weak. What demon had compelled her to such disrespect? She returned to the lamp room, pressed her cheek to the salt-crusted span of glass. In the dreary afternoon light watched Mr Riven’s small, distant figure exit the lighthouse, throwing the coat over his bare torso before striding down the old coast road.

  Until he came to the cenotaph of Bellis Riven and Stefan Beacon.

  There he knelt by the cairn, placed a stone upon its peak, but not before he’d pressed his lips to the stone with all the tenderness of one whose beloved is before him. Arden knew him weeping then, this scraggled, tattooed man beaten by sand and storm, mourning a woman gone from him.

  Oh, to be loved and missed so. Arden had experience aplenty with family and the embraces of itinerant lovers, wisps of passions. She considered them only temporary. When they left, she did not mourn them. Nor they, her. Not even Richard. She’d made her peace with the transitory and shallow nature of the love she inspired.

  This, though. This made the bitter demon of Envy stir in her breast. She had invoked spells against loneliness with the garments of both this man and his wife, and she was now tied to them in primitive, hungry ways.

  That. Give me the kind of love they had.

  In her whirl of emotions, a more sensible self whispered in her ear.

  Calm yourself, it said in the voice of an old signal instructor whose name she had forgotten. You are tired and traumatized from the night and the rescue. This widowed husband might pay all the respects to the wife now, but acts in grief and regret never mirror the treatment of a real flesh and blood woman. Witnesses called him cruel. Bellis is still dead.

  I love her and love her still.

  The tenses he used. He had not spoken of the past. No stumble of words, no excuse or explanation for a dead wife.

  What truth is it? she wondered. Who did Bellis marry, a monster or a man? Had the Justinians and the Harrows spread a twisted story as false as the one with the plesiosaur game hunters? Had Bellis just sailed off and fallen afoul of the weather, died by accident, an adulteress punished by God?

  There was nobody who could say for certain. Except him. Still shaken by the ghastliness of her body’s lunge towards defilement, she watched Mr Riven place one more kiss upon the stone, then set off down the coast road in the waning afternoon sun, back to his decaying house and stained mattress, his krakenskin coat-tails snapping in the wind like bronze wings.

  Book Two: The Lion

  16

  The invitation came

  The invitation came on one of David Modhi’s deliveries on the day of autumn equinox, a time when the migratory seabirds became restless from their nesting, and the fluffy chicks shed the last of their down, leaving a storm of white fluff blowing out across the sedge-grass and catching in any exposed laundry as if it were thistle seeds.

  At once she saw that she had not received an onionskin letter from Lyonne, but a missive of an entirely different sort.

  Arden rubbed the ivory card with its edges of gold scallop. The neat cursive hand requested that the Lightmistress of Vigil join an assortment of Guildsmen and Allied Persons for an evening at Manse Justinian.

  She flipped the card back and forth, barely trusting the date, the words. Intellectually she had known it a year since the last Guild Ball, and that Fiction would have a ball just as its northern counterpart did, but it had not felt like a year. More like a deep geological moment, her life changed so utterly from that moment to this.

  ‘I’m not going.’

  ‘Say what, darling?’ Chalice asked when she snatched the letter out of Arden’s grasp. The delivery had come at that brief window when they were both awake, otherwise Arden would have fed the invite to the brazier’s belly.

  ‘Oh, Chalice, I’m not interested in going to a Guildmaster’s Ball.’

  ‘A ball? This is a surprise! It’s not always the young David brings us anything except sausages and evaporated milk, now.’

  Chalice read the invitation aloud in her most toffee-nosed Lyonne accent: ‘The Masters of Fiction Annual Ball will be held at the Manse Justinian two weeks from now, and the combined Guilds of Fiction and Lyonne request your presence.’

  ‘A request,’ Arden repeated. ‘Not an order. I don’t need to go. Besides, the last one in Lyonne was such a disaster I’ve sworn off the things altogether.’

  The stormbride gave Arden a snagging grin. ‘Our servant of the flame gets to go to the Guild Ball. A real Guild Ball, not one of those piddling cattle-calls they hold in Portside. You know who will be there, don’t you?’

  Arden snorted. ‘Mr Justinian.’

  Chalice slapped Arden’s hand with the paper. ‘We know that useless heel will be creeping about his mouldering old mansion. I mean men! Real live men. Unmarried Lyonnian bachelors with their names in the Eugenics Society’s ledgers, signed and underlined.’

  At the mention of men, David Modhi swayed from one gangly foot to the other and blushed mightily.

  Arden batted her away. ‘I told you, I’ve put that idea aside, Chalice. I only have, oh, less than three months left of my time here.’

  ‘Three months! Why, you’ve gone spare enough in the first two!’

  ‘Look, I’ll say I never got the invitation. Mr Modhi will dissemble for me.’

  ‘Uhh …’ David Modhi started.

  Chalice mock-slapped her again. ‘Fool! You know what I mean. You’ve been moping and pining about, and even Mr Riven is starting to look good.’

  Arden’s cheeks grew hot. Had Chalice suspected the methods in which her mind betrayed her in the deep night? Since she had carried out the small intimate act of tending to Mr Riven’s wounds, she had tried and failed not to linger upon her neighbour. Cast away the thought of that abraded, tattooed body forcing itself upon her, and inside her. A mere interaction would not have been enough, anyway.

  No, when Arden invented Mr Riven with her, she experienced an inexplicable act of transference. She became Bellis Harrow, taken away to the Sainted Isles to marry the Deepwater King. In her conjurations Arden was swept away by a power stronger than she could articulate, wrapped up in her own obsessions of class betrayal and self-immolation. Had concocted a fantasy that could not possibly be true, but she wanted to be true, for it filled her with a forbidden delight.

  In that miserable matrimonial year that followed their elopement, Bellis had not left her husband, though all the others in her life had clamoured to help.

  Only one reason could fully explain why the two had stayed together. Bellis had loved Mr Riven back. Somehow she must have had to, to stay with him. In the dark, secret ways she must have loved her husband. Yearned for what he gave her, be it wrapped up in jealousy or sexual violence, or the brutishness of a man obsessed.

  Such a terrible, fearful thing. It should have repelled Arden, but she was not repelled, only drawn towards it as if an inevitable outcome.

  The King has seen your face.

  Arden, bound to fire and light, could not comprehend such an affection, but wanted it for herself all the same. Chalice is right. I am jealous, and I am glad she is dead.

  Alarmed that her vices should be so obvious to Chalice, Arden protested with a croak. ‘That is so unfair, and a smite on my preferences. He appeals to me less than … less than Mr Justinian.’

  ‘Come on now. It has been weeks since we rescued those miserable Tallwaters and not a day has passed when you don’t watch entirely the wrong section of coast and bite your fingernails down to rags. You still haven’t brought back the jumper to him.’ Chalice’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t think I haven’t seen you wadding it up and cradling it to your heart. You intend to make a pillow for a man’s head.’

  ‘I haven’t had the chance to return it! I appreciate nice woollen things, ever since I was a child. Allow me some credit for taking simple pl
easures.’

  ‘Empty sweaters and make-believe are not a man. What you need is a friendly gentleman who will – without commitments – ease the aches and pains of solitude. Must I explain that in detail as well?’

  David Modhi had not moved from his spot at the doorway where he had delivered his message, and after a confused silence at the back-and-forth argument of these older women, brightened up. ‘My mother has a good liniment for removing aches and pains. She’s been testing it on Sean Ironcup, the man we rescued last month.’

  ‘I’m not talking about those pains, lad,’ Chalice said airily. ‘Women’s pains, which are never spoken aloud because we are far too high on our perfect pedestals, aren’t we? Anyhow, were you being a sneak, David Modhi? It hasn’t escaped my notice the envelope to our Lightmistress’ fairy-tale ball found itself opened upon your delivery.’

  ‘Mr Harrow gave it to me opened.’

  ‘Of course he did,’ Arden snapped. ‘He opens everything of mine.’

  With a snatch she retrieved the letter from David and the card from Chalice. ‘Check the date. It came to Vigil a fortnight ago. Let me add the corollary to all fairy-tale gatherings. I am unprepared, I have nothing to wear. Will you be the godmother to force me into something from Mrs Sage’s rag-table then?’

  ‘Goodness, no. But wear your waxen keeper’s uniform, love, because if you need something solid to weather a storm, you’ll be needing it on that night.’

  Another letter came one day before the Master’s Ball, this time a missive from the Coastmaster. Mr Justinian grandly proposed that Mr Quill would collect her upon sundown on the day of the ball, and that she would be welcome to stay in the guest room overnight. There was something else too. A package wrapped in brown paper, with a shape and give so obvious Arden knew exactly what it was.

  This letter ended up finding itself shoved into the brazier’s belly, and the package would have too, had Chalice, awakened by the noise of Arden’s exclamation of offence, snatched it out of her hands.

  ‘Oh Chalice, could you stop doing that? Is anything I own not sacred to you?’

  ‘Darling, if I didn’t, you’d never allow me to read anything. I am your stormbride and protector, and you are my little innocent babe who has received—’

  She ripped the paper and gasped. ‘A dress! Oh Arden, the most beautiful dress!’

  Arden averted her head from a billow of peacock blue. ‘I shan’t look at it.’

  ‘Your fairy godmother has indeed come. Did she mention a pumpkin too?’

  ‘She … wants me to stay in his damned house on the night of the ball.’

  ‘Well, why not? A lady can’t possibly sleep on the streets, and there is no way you could pilot Fine Breeze home on a bellyful of wine and a half-moon night. You’d end up whisked into the Tempest in an instant.’

  Arden paced the tower’s base, before sitting on her bed as she did as a child in a temper, confined to her room and with nowhere else to go. ‘He’s still trying to seduce me in exchange for signing the damned Guild degree document. I might as well offer myself up on a plate.’

  ‘I thought you told me he’s made a vow of celibacy? On his knees, you said he was. You’ll stay in Vigil overnight,’ Chalice said firmly. ‘You’re not coming back here.’

  Arden glared in mock-horror at Chalice.

  Chalice tsked. ‘I meant overnight in general, not the Manse overnight specific, sweetheart. Let me send one of my pigeons to the Black Rosette. I have an acquaintance there, Fionna La Grange, whom I used to know from my posting at Harbinger Bay.’

  ‘A lady at the Black Rosette? Dare I suppose that my stormbride has a lover?’

  Chalice rolled her eyes, then returned the smirk, for what could she hide?

  ‘We are intimate occasionally, yes, but friends more, having weathered historical storms of the human kind. Miss La Grange has an apartment behind the tavern. There is a chaise longue in her front room which does solid work as an emergency bed. Now, let’s look at your dress.’

  She led it up to the coldflame lantern. Blue silk, the colour of a summer’s sky at the highest point, a shade so deep that to Arden’s eyes it became almost violet. Seed-pearl fronds across the waist and under the bust, flowing in tendrils. A peplum of cormorant feathers, and the rest of the dress subtly hooped so it did not fall straight down but billowed as if caught by a stray breeze.

  In the glittering lights of a Clay Capital soiree the dress would be beautiful, if one were hoping to win the attention of several suitors. But for a professional gathering in the cold recesses of Vigil? Beyond inappropriate.

  ‘So, the Baron has sent you his message,’ Chalice said. ‘His enforced celibacy is over.’

  ‘I’ll refuse to wear it.’

  Chalice shook her head. ‘That kind of principle works well in story books, but rarely in practice. Just go, get it over and done with, Arden. Turn up to the stupid ball. Be as ungainly in that dress as if Mr Justinian had clad a bearded wharfman in spider silks, and you will never be asked to wear such things again.’

  Unfortunately, when Arden put on the flowing layers of fabric the next day, they had the opposite effect to the one she hoped for. The dress wrapped her up in an illusion of pearls and iridescence, and her bare skin was so warmed with those adjacent hues that she might have been as beautiful as a spice-island princess. Each time she moved, the faceted glass beads on her shoulders caught the sunlight, cast rainbows on the opposite wall.

  ‘Heavens, this is not me at all,’ Arden said weakly as her chest threatened to fall out of the neckline of the dress. ‘I’m a ham dressed for a Yuletide dinner.’

  ‘I’m certain that is the point.’

  She rubbed the fabric between her fingers and thought wistfully of the kraken coat – warm and protecting. She thought of Mr Justinian’s hissed murdered whore’s garment. This dress seemed a more likely clothing for bad decisions and unfortunate trades.

  ‘Yes, but I would rather it not be.’

  ‘Just make sure he signs your document first,’ Chalice said. ‘I have not had much use for a man, but Fionna tells me it’s much easier if one is drunk.’

  ‘Chalice!’

  ‘All right. I take it back.’

  ‘Now what other wicked magicks does my fairy godmother have for me? My glass slippers? My pumpkin coach that doesn’t involve Mr Quill driving? A silver hatpin to prick him if Mr Justinian comes too close?’

  ‘The slippers I cannot do. The hatpin you’ll have to supply yourself. But the coach, well, let’s just say there will be some mode of transport outside the Manse this evening at the stroke of midnight.’

  ‘Make it ten o’clock,’ Arden said. ‘I don’t intend to stick around for the sorry end of this little enchantment.’

  The evening came upon Vigil with the sea-fog, and the Manse turned on its lights for the two hundred guests that descended upon the granite doorstep.

  In Fiction’s harsh austerity, there were very few opportunities for the few aristocrats of the country to show off. Arden quickly decided that the Guild had not been aiming low when they sent the invitations for a ball at the Manse. There were at least fifty North Fictish and South Lyonnian here of sanguis endowment, and three hundred of non-blood Grandmaster degree. She could smell the blood-endowed in the mingling crowd, taste metal on her tongue. The people wore garments that might have seemed restrained and severe were they at a Clay Capital ball, the men’s dinner coats never moving from tones of gorse-brown and stone, their shirts plain and unruffled.

  Dowager Justinian greeted her warmly. ‘It’s been a pleasure, and a long time,’ she said, grasping at Arden’s hands so hard that her coins twanged in discomfort. ‘I had rather hoped you would visit more.’

  ‘I am kept busy enough at the flame. The weather seems to change every hour – I do believe I spend more time running between the window and the record ledger than I do going outside.’

  ‘It is the autumn, come hard winter, every day will be dreary. Let me take your coat.’
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  Arden didn’t particularly want to pass over her krakenskin coat, but truth to tell, if the men were drab then the women exhibited for both, were unrestrained in their chiffons, their silks and satins. Arden’s blue-sky dress didn’t seem so outrageous in their company.

  She handed the coat over to a wait-servant she did not recognize – one of the new young men from the coast, still gauche in unfamiliar fine clothes – and accepted a tall glass of champagne. Divested of her travelling garments, she headed for the ballroom, where she might hide in the crowd from the mansion’s owner.

  If she were eager to leave, the others were not. The guests had gathered with a view to eat and drink as merrily as they could, given that the other days of the year rarely provided opportunities for either. Rows of tables at either end of the room were illuminated with one hundred branching candlesticks and piled with food expressly bought from the far ports of Lyonne and Vinland. Candied plums dripping with cinnamon paste, plates of artichokes and marinated octopus arranged in swirls, breadsticks cradling dodo-liver pâté, messenger pigeons baked in holy-land clay and stuffed with alpine pine seeds from Gaul and Lebanon. Shrimp crusted with sourdough breadcrumbs, cannabis-infused chocolates rolled in gold leaf, gelatine squares soaked in sugarcane brandy, a roasted boar still bearing a ridge of bristles, the crisped skin glistening with an oily craquelure, potatoes dusted with sumac-spice …

  Arden had not seen such a feast since her father had brought her to a Guild event in Clay Portside. She could hardly have pictured that the Manse, with all its frowsy, hard-worn appearance and that low-lying detergent smell, could have put on such a civilized cloak and attain such a sense of opulence.

  To add to the air of decadent consumption, more wine than was strictly required for a professional gathering flowed from the great demijohns of sparkling Clay Riverina cuvée. The waitstaff pushed glass upon glass of spritzing sweet liquor at her. She thought them innocuous and realized at her third glass that they were anything but. Her head spun. Another one would only make her intoxicated.