Monstrous Heart

by Claire McKenna

His words should have been a delightful compliment, yet Arden felt herself wallow further into the pit of despair. Mr Lindsay had said much the same thing.

  ‘I was meant to remind you of her. To elevate your memory of her. It was my only purpose. Otherwise they’d have let the sanguine coldfire extinguish, and replaced the lighthouse with a common gas.’

  He was silent for a little while, before nodding.

  ‘Then thank you. For your honesty.’

  ‘Not much of a point in keeping it secret.’ She wrapped the coat tighter about her. ‘So are you going to go to her? If the Lions are saying she’s in danger, she may very well be.’

  A muscle in his jaw popped. ‘It would be against her explicit instructions. You see, when she left … she told me not to follow her, not until she called for me. It’s complicated. Hard to explain, but I’m more use to her hidden.’ He grimaced, as if a bad thought crossed his mind. ‘My name is shored up by the many men who once held it. Riven, the monster caller. Riven, who walked upon the islands and fought even the Deepwater King for His crown, and His Bride. You are right, about being fearsome. I’m more fear-inspiring as a myth than as a man. It keeps her alive. Keeps her protected. Even though Stefan Beacon, your cousin is with her, he’s not much of a fighter I’m afraid.’

  ‘Can I still be honest?’

  ‘Do. Please.’

  ‘Don’t go. Even if she is in danger. Stay here. We have dealings with the Order all the time in Lyonne. If the Lions are trying to move a minor chess piece on their board, it means they have decided to sacrifice it for the bigger play.’

  ‘You think me a minor chess piece?’

  She wondered if he was offended, and she stammered apologies, and he put his hand on hers, silencing her, and his touch seemed to bring a calmness over her all at once. She sought out his eyes in the darkness.

  ‘You are not minor,’ she said.

  ‘Coming from you, I believe it.’

  ‘But be careful, please. They dangle me as a bait for your wife’s memory, but I am the poison to make you obey, and they haven’t told me everything.’

  ‘What bait did they use to move you on the board, little rook?’

  ‘Only,’ she sighed, ‘only my deepest and most impossible dreams.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘Guild membership, and the return of a man I’d loved for a long time, who was forbidden to me, because I am sanguine, and he is not.’

  ‘Guild membership,’ he repeated. ‘Dreams. And love. All the treasures of the world.’

  ‘Yes.’

  His hand squeezed once, then withdrew. She felt the acknowledgement of her sacrifice in her words. Understood that he knew she could have stayed silent, and those promised rewards would have been secured.

  ‘Again, thank you, Lightmistress.’

  A strangeness stirred inside her, as she beheld his crookedly handsome face in the lantern light. What is this, she thought with alarm. Not affection, of course, she barely knew him. Barely. Barely. Her night-time fantasies of the brute who might ravish her against all the Society orders had passed away. Another man, another feeling had taken their place. An enigma and cipher, but no less attractive.

  She felt dazed by her epiphany. Chalice had been correct. Arden had been too long without desire in her life, and her body had, in starvation, reached greedily for the first bright and beautiful thing out of her reach. She had seen Mr Riven and his passion for his beloved, talented, troubled wife and now she yearned to have such a thing. I want that, I want that.

  When he spoke, he held a note of uncertainty. ‘Release me at the docks. I should get back to the lodge tonight.’

  ‘The lodge? On the promontory?’ Arden shook her head. ‘If I were the Justinian guardsmen, I’d have already deployed out there. If you trust me now, then you can trust me until morning. There is a bed available at the house of Fionna La Grange, I will be quite happy with a couch.’

  ‘Fionna La Grange?’

  ‘Well, of course. She is my stormbride’s friend.’ Arden noted then the tone of his question. ‘Have … have you met?’

  ‘In passing. She is the madam of the Black Rosette, a lady of the night.’

  Arden gasped. ‘Chalice never told me her profession!’

  ‘Don’t fret. It’s a good choice. She’s handy with bar-fight injuries.’ Mr Riven winced as he moved about. ‘Better her services than Mr Sage’s. His wife has not much time for me, and the man cannot keep his mouth shut.’

  After half an hour, the cab stopped at a small townhouse at the rear of the Black Rosette. The cobbles shone in the lamplight from the rank run-off from cesspits. A row of duckboards kept feet from the worst of the night-soil. A pair of drunks in an alley wrestled each other over the last few fingers in a bottle of potato liquor. Overhead, pigeons cooed in their roosts.

  From her own roost in a dimly lit doorway, a lady in shabby dress approached them. Her face had the powdery appearance of a moth, and the kohl around her eyes flaked, leaving black spots about her white cheeks. From her fingers a stiletto cigarette-holder dangled precariously.

  ‘Jonah?’ she asked in the breathless craquelure of age and lung disease. ‘Jonah, is that you?’

  ‘It is, Betsey.’

  She stopped short when he came into the lantern light. ‘By the devils, lad, but you are dressed in finery. Has the old man of the Manse relented and brought you home?’

  Arden sensed Mr Riven’s tension beside her. His origins were a secret he did not wish to share, and yet it seemed more people knew than he let on.

  ‘The night has demanded things of me, that is all.’

  Betsey sucked at the stiletto. A sweet smell of cigar smoke rose up in lazy curlicues, a pinch of morningflower with it. A subtle madness coiled about the woman, prophecies and spirits.

  ‘Demanded, as the night demands things of us all. Who is this beside you? Not Bellis. Too tall, too dark, and not a ghost.’ She sucked on her stiletto again. ‘No plain Fictish daisy. A fragile flower from the North, eh?’

  Arden spoke up. ‘I am a friend of Fionna’s.’

  A male voice called from the doorway, a plaintive wheedle, ‘Betsey, Betsey, come away, my sweet.’

  The woman waved towards an alley and the pink-hued light. ‘She’s in there. Up the stairs.’

  Betsey retreated, and they made their way across the duckboards.

  Arden turned to Mr Riven. Twice this night she had heard his name. ‘So, Jonah she calls you? The Dowager seems to know you with some intimacy.’

  ‘My mother, Thalie Riven, she worked in the Justinian Manse as one of the domestic staff. Betsey knew me as a child, as the Dowager knew me then too.’

  Hard to see him a child. She pondered over the scraps of his life, of the mother who had worked at the Manse, and the aristocratic elder who wore Mr Riven’s face. They added up to a great deal of inferred history.

  At the doorway to Fionna La Grange’s apartments, a red Arabesque lantern dangled high over the lintel as a symbol of her profession. The occupant, roused by Betsey’s voice, came out of her doorway clad only in a basque and semi-sheer black peignoir gown, the edges tatty with wilting black feathers. Both garments would have come from far and distant shores. Nothing so beautiful originated in Vigil, or Fiction.

  Neither, did it appear, did Miss La Grange. She presented as tall and slim, hair bobbed and as shiny as an oil slick.

  ‘Well then, Jonah Riven, I never thought I’d see you cleaned up and at my door any time soon.’ Fionna nodded at Arden. ‘About time too. He’d been too long pining over poor dead Bellis who loved the boy but never the man.’

  Mr Riven bristled and Arden stepped forward. ‘Thank you for taking us in, Miss La Grange.’

  The woman gave a knowing wink, as if Bellis’ mortal fate were not quite the secret the Lions thought. ‘Come forth, my dears. Chalice said you would be unaccompanied, Mx Beacon, but I am always prepared for any eventuality.’

  Fionna La Grange’s rooms were dressed in sateen an
d fraying trim, and the perfumes could not hide the musk of Miss La Grange’s profession. Sex and male sweat. The parlour had the chaos of a theatrical backstage, with haphazard stacks of gaudy showgirl clothing and room dividers, velvet ottomans, crystal-frilled lampshades.

  Mr Riven seemed both unconcerned and familiar with the surroundings. He collapsed into one of the ornate leather chairs with a grunt of exertion.

  They had arrived at the tail end of a client’s time. By the odd and possibly intentional placement of a mirror over the hearth, Arden’s line of sight went directly from the cluttered front room and into the equally busy pink-hued boudoir. A man, hairy as a bear from chest to groin, casually released a rag-paper note from a billfold and gave it to Fionna. They spoke in a friendly manner as he struggled back into his workday clothes, before Fionna kissed him on the cheek and sent him out through the rear door.

  ‘Gracious,’ Fionna exclaimed once he had left. ‘I thought Albert would never make his exit.’ She tossed a stray hair out of her face. ‘Now, Jonah, what have you done to yourself?’

  ‘Took a musket blast to my side. Coat stopped it.’

  ‘Yes, that glorious krakenskin coat. You should sell it, buy a ticket to Vinland. Less liable to get shot, there.’ As he opened his mouth to protest, she waved him to silence. ‘I know, I know. You cannot bear to leave your precious Darkling Sea, and are mourning Bel—’

  ‘Fionna, please look at my injuries,’ Mr Riven interrupted. He took off the jacket and shirt, showed his injury to Fionna, who touched him with a confident hand.

  ‘Ah, breathe in, and out, no ribs broken? May have a bruise in the muscle but you will live. Not the first injury you’ve had recently, either.’

  She thumbed the shiny scar where Arden had stitched him before returning to Arden.

  ‘I know you. You are the Lightmistress who replaced poor Jorgen,’ Fionna said at last. ‘My lovely Chalice tells me of you out there. Exiled on your promontory with only this gormless fellow for company.’

  Buffeted by the hormonal fug in the room, dizzy from her sharpened senses, Arden took a few seconds longer than necessary to reply. ‘It is a fine and temporary existence,’ she said. ‘The isolation strengthens spirits.’

  ‘And whets longings, I would say. People gossip that this poor boy killed his wife—’

  ‘Fionna—’ he protested.

  ‘They say it, but it is not true. She was a smart girl, much smarter than you, Jonah Riven, and her boat would not have overturned unless she told it to do so, ha!’ Miss La Grange gesticulated with a half-full wine glass. ‘Personally, Lightmistress, I don’t think she’s dead at all. Everything in its time and place for Miss Harrow. Even staying in Vigil and marrying Jonah here, when the Eugenics Society quite forbade such a thing. Having a Postmaster for a father would make her stubborn like that.’

  Mr Riven shared a glance with Arden, an odd, indecipherable expression. Reminding him of Bellis, she thought.

  After Miss La Grange applied upon Mr Riven an unguent meant for both bruises and showgirl-wrinkles, she deposited a carafe of cloudy wild-grape wine with two glasses upon a scrolled lacquer side table.

  ‘Now, you know your way around, Jonah, love. You may show Mx Beacon the facilities. Avail yourself of the wine. I understand you are not much of a drinker, but it may soothe inflamed muscles, help you sleep. I unfortunately must bathe and rest. The Manse and all her visitors have kept me busy this evening!’

  She nodded at Arden and gave Mr Riven a sly crimson grin.

  ‘Don’t make too much noise when you make love to the girl, dear. No wild howling. You’re not on the promontory and the neighbours will talk if she is too vocal in her delight.’

  ‘Um …?’ Arden started.

  ‘Darling, if you were drooling over your neighbour any more I’d need to get you a bib. I’m sure he will be gentle. Goodnight!’

  When she left, Mr Riven dropped his impassiveness and visibly blushed. ‘I’m sorry, she makes assumptions.’

  ‘Best be quiet about it, then.’

  ‘Huh.’ He huffed good-naturedly. ‘She suspects Bellis is still alive and I’m still married.’

  Of course Fionna La Grange knew. Love-struck fool.

  ‘Do many people know Bellis’ true fate?’

  ‘If they think she fled me with Rector John Stefan’s help,’ he replied, ‘then they keep their mouths shut.’

  As Mr Riven struggled with the unfamiliar buttons, Arden tried to put her mind off his proximity by examining the oddities of the parlour. The angled mirror and the position of the seats were clearly set up for seductive purposes, and a collection of garments in black patent leather lay draped across a side table. Over the cluttered mantelpiece, a row of glass phalluses marched like pink soldiers heading for battle.

  Arden went to touch the largest one, then caught herself at the last minute, for Mr Riven was watching her again.

  ‘Strange, seeing you wear that coat. Bellis last wore it during our wedding.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t realize,’ Arden said, burning with embarrassment for not realizing. She shrugged out of the leather. ‘It’s so fine I didn’t even feel myself getting too hot.’ She swallowed and said, ‘I suppose it’s strange seeing me wear it, and not Bellis.’

  Mr Riven gave an unexpected smile. ‘Although it was her wedding coat, Bellis never wore it much either. She was so little, she’d swim in it. No, that coat belonged to my mother.’ He nodded. ‘It did it’s duty as evidence of Bellis’ death, but she was never fond if the texture enough to make it a daily thing.’

  ‘It is an unusual feel,’ Arden agreed, quietly experiencing a stab of delight. ‘Your mother’s coat! Goodness.’

  Arden picked up a nearby matchbook instead of letting him see her dizzy grin. Not Bellis’ at all! She composed herself and returned to him. As a coincidence, a Justinian crest was embossed on the paper fold, and Arden remembered what he’d said about his mother’s background.

  ‘Since we are speaking of her, how long did your mother work at the Manse Justinian?’

  ‘A while. When the kraken got harder to hunt, Justinian money kept my family alive until some of us showed up with monstercalling talents.’

  Some of you. Until you killed them. The thought came like a contamination in her joy, and she worried at its source. Would they ever be able to talk about it? Looking at Mr Riven now, he could not have been anywhere near an adult when the crime happened. Younger than David Modhi, even. A child, accused of a massacre? It made no sense.

  Then she thought of the old Baron Alexander Justinian, whose face was so much like Mr Riven’s. ‘And your father? Who was he?’

  He shook his head. ‘My mother never said.’

  She did not pry further. It could not have been any more obvious that he was not altogether a deepwater man.

  ‘I never knew my birth mother long,’ Arden admitted. ‘She died when I could count four years old. Old enough to remember, and not completely forget.’

  ‘Was she a Lightmistress too?’

  ‘No. Had good neutral standing in the Eugenics ledger, good family, but my talent comes from the Beacon, the paternal, side. She was an airship pilot. The best that God could deliver without resorting to endowments, they used to say. Not good enough to survive a Vinland Crossing, though.’

  ‘I’ve been through a Vinland Crossing storm, on a convict ship. They are vicious.’

  ‘As are the pirates who patrol the air.’

  ‘Yes. Them too.’

  Arden poured the wine and took a huge gulp from her glass, needing the wine to still her nerves. ‘My father tried to keep the unfortunate details from me, but no storm brought down my mother’s craft. The crew made contact with a rogue inflatable corsair from the Summerlands. Her ship suffered a pirate seizure and … well. They tell me it was quick.’

  ‘Summerlanders are not known for taking prisoners. I met some during my time in bondage. They’d rather kill a man quickly than torment them. If it is any consolation, they have no pat
ience for torture.’

  ‘It is a consolation, in its own strange way.’

  They were quiet then. She wanted so much to interrogate Mr Riven about his history, about his time in the prison hulks, about his Lyonne accent and the people who gave him those rounded Northern vowels. About his journey, from child to man. He had travelled while in captivity. What had he come to know? Did he ever love before Bellis? Could there be love after? What did each scar mean, and when had he received each one? What was the taste of his skin, his response to a kiss?

  ‘You’d have liked her.’

  ‘Who?’

  But she knew who.

  The squeak of a gramophone winding came from Fionna’s room, and then the piano tinkle of a song popular twenty years ago slid out from under a gap in the door.

  ‘Mr Riven, Jonah.’ She lingered, not knowing quite how to put the words, but needed to say them. ‘Were you really married, or was it all an act to fool the Lyonne Order? Why did Bellis not take her golden talent and go to Lyonne and live like a Queen?’

  He winced, and Arden felt quite suddenly she had opened a wound.

  ‘We are married. It was no pretence.’

  Now it was her turn to sigh from disappointment, but he went on, ‘When I was released from my imprisonment, I had nowhere to go. I came back here. Stefan was a Rector in Garfish Point at the time, a hundred miles away and yet to take his post here. The only friend I had was Bellis. When I would have been flogged in the town square on my first day back, it was Bellis who stood in front of the crowd and stopped them. My best friend. The talent she had, it was a hard burden to carry. Sanguis petrae is a Sainted Isle trait, but she was not a Sainted Islander. Unless you’ve been there … it’s hard to explain what the Islands are like to an outsider. The rituals. The superstitions. The deepwater folk worship the monsters as kin, and gods.’

  ‘David told me about the Deepwater King,’ Arden said, and wished she had the little iron figurine upon his serpent with her, so then she could really see if David was right, if it did look like Mr Riven. ‘That he’s still worshipped. Like God.’

  ‘Yes, the one, who takes a wife and no man shall sunder them. His word is law.’ He looked down at his hands, and the scars across his knuckles. Sighed, and continued with his story. ‘So, four, five years ago, Bellis decides she’s going to escape the Order once and for all. Went out unprotected, and on her own. She thought that the deepwater folk might more likely accept her on the night of the King.’