She is not in pain, my darling. The most humane way to kill an animal is by bleeding them out, her father in her mind told her.
Her heart had not the blood to pump, went into a fluttery tachycardia, and she imagined herself back in the moot of her third trial, the rebuilt royal Wharf and the test cubes all lined up with the thickest glass, each cube as thick as three encyclopedias bound together …
She forced herself back into the present, scared of drowning in the bituminous murk of time. If she disappeared, she would be gone forever.
Convince them, Arden. Convince them not to take this path …
If the patriarch would not speak, then maybe the woman who lingered nearby would.
‘Helena,’ Arden implored breathlessly, ‘tell him to stop.’
Helena, or the blurry shape that was most probably the Tallwater wife, waited for her expressionless father-in-law’s approval before saying apologetically, ‘We need to buy our way onto the Islands, Lightmistress. It is imperative we do this. A penny for the Old Guy. Your blood … They say a pint of incendiary ignis blood is worth its weight in gold. The Magistrate said so.’
‘But it won’t work. My blood … I’m malorum, not strong …’
Leyland did not pause in his work. ‘Helena,’ he warned. ‘Stop talking to her.’
Helena withdrew out of sight. ‘She’s dying, Leyland. It’s wrong to kill, even one of them.’
‘Do you think I care, woman?’ He tightened a belt at Arden’s bicep. ‘Here. It’s full. Put it with the others.’
Arden heard the scratch of a metal lid on a glass thread, saw in the vision-tunnel Helena Tallwater slide the mason jar into a crate of similarly filled containers. In a quirk of reasoning she counted a full crate. Three jars were already dark with congealing blood.
Arden gathered enough spit to say with all the corrosive effort she could muster, ‘Were your grandchildren’s bodies not enough for coin, Leyland Tallwater?’
Leyland glanced away. Oh, he had tried it, tried it! Had offered all three most probably, and in the Black Rosette they’d have cursed him, and kicked him out.
Then Mr Harrow would have come, pickled with revenge and grieving. ‘I have a solution for your problems. Take a boat to the lighthouse. A pint of sanguis blood will get you passage to the rockblood isles.’
‘You people with your contaminated blood, your sin, your cheap labour,’ Leyland Tallwater growled. ‘The sins of the world are upon you. It is a good thing, to allow you to die.’
He released the tourniquet. Her blood leapt into the jar.
No
No
No
She might as well have said no to death. The vision-tunnel closed. The pain left her. She was floating now, with the old devil, with death.
Death who smelled of salt and kraken oil, death who said her name through a cave of utter darkness, Arden, Arden, oh God.
No.
22
I saw him passing
death
Death, who scooped her up in his arms and took her into the storm.
death
Death, who took her to the water’s edge, yelling her name, telling her to wake, to wake, to stay awake by the devil and the deep blue sea.
death
This was not a watery hell, but a tempest surrounding her, this was the water come alive from the monstrous call of blood, this was the story they told of the Rivens on the promontory who were half-kraken, half-man, spawned in unholy congress with the monsters of the deep.
Save her, a voice screamed into the storm. Save her.
Mr Justinian saying, I’ve seen him take the corpses from the beach. Caught him in the act.
Her bloodied dress torn off by the ocean. A venom flowing into her, replacing what the Tallwaters had taken, filling her with a brutal vigour, not blood, but something else. She jerked and shuddered in the arms of Jonah Riven.
She gave herself over to wildness, was beset by a hunger that burned through her, and in the tempest of the storm she clawed open Mr Riven’s shirt, went to kiss him upon the sparse rough hair of his pale broad chest, the straining cords of his neck, the hollow of his throat, she wanted him with an urgency she had never wanted anything before.
‘Arden, it is the storm,’ he protested, but could he not feel it, could he not be a part of this terrible ritual that had yanked her back from the precipice of—
death?
And he could not contain himself for they were both awash in the surge and with a cry of despair he gave in to the moment. He returned Arden’s kisses with hard, angry, inexperienced kisses of his own, tore away the silk that bound her breasts and sucked electrical sparks of pleasure from her skin and nipples with a mouth that knew nothing of a woman’s body except what instinct gave him. They fell against the stony shore in a desperate embrace, riven by inhuman passions, raw ichor, blood and all the combined essence of the ungodly creatures summoned from the benthic horrors below.
Arden tore at the last of her undergarments before pushing down the kraken leather strides of Jonah Riven, clutched him close, ground her quim against the curled hair of him, dizzy with savagery. He was hot and proud, the thing that would bring her such relief, he slid reflexively along the channel of her thighs before pushing inside her with such a rush of sensation she cried out from it and he froze, said her name, his face with desolate surrender.
‘Gods, if you wish for me to stop, I will, I will …’
But she couldn’t stop. She wanted to speak. A small horrified part of her wanted to say, Jonah, you are right, this is not us, this is not me. But the monster he had summoned only wanted satiety, wanted the one who had called it from darkness, and he smelled so good and he smelled of blood and salt and skin, and she embraced him among the stones of the beach and each time he plunged into her body the storm-sea heaved about them in turn. He clung to her as a drowning man might fight an ocean for driftwood, thrust clumsily upwards again and again, following an instinct as old as time but no less terrible. His belly slapped against hers as his rhythm increased in urgency. She accepted him in all ways, inside her body, his chest rasping against her own, the heat of his exposed throat. Spent himself, hot, hot, into her cold body. The phosphorescence of the water around them became clear and he beheld her with such a vaulting, desperate emotion.
The moment passed in fits and starts. His strength left him he shuddered and fell away, still gasping for breath. She reached for his hand and he grasped hers.
They lay there in the cold lip of the shore as the rain fell upon their naked bodies and the monster, the old devil himself, withdrew, having done the thing the blood-bound man had asked of him and saved the woman he …
Book Three: Blood
23
Sing to me
Sing to me, love
Of all that was
When once we walked upon golden fields
Sing the sky, love
Sing down the stars
My virtue will be your reward.
Silly old song. Arden had never cared for it. The gramophone scratched as the record ended. She could hear it in the next room. A hand wound it up again, and another record of much the same kind of music began playing again.
But maybe Mr Riven considered the song a favourite. In which case, she did not mind. She hadn’t considered him romantic before. It didn’t quite fit with the brutish idea she had formed of him in those months separated. In a way, she rather welcomed this new material in her patchwork image of the man.
Shadows dabbled across Arden’s eyelids, sunlight hitting the surface of water. Through her closed eyelids she sensed dawn light, with all the colour of fire. She could smell kraken oil and aromatic ashes, a pleasant ambergris perfume not so far away, a more utilitarian soap, old wood, and her own body, a crust of blood and organic matter over smouldering embers.
Her senses were more alive then than they had ever been. Her legs slipped in a nightdress of silk, her feet in between cotton sheets. She rolled over and the hedonistic
warmth gave way to her injuries. Arden touched herself carefully, explored the abrasions between her legs and the tenderness between her thighs.
Well then, no fever-dream, what had happened the night before. The insides of her thighs smarted terribly, but not as much as the crook of her—
Arm
‘Devilment!’
Arden sat up with a gasp, clawing at her memory of tubing and touched nothing except the ghost of a bruise.
She had been deposited into the chintzy surrounds of an unfamiliar room. A feminine room, bedecked in creature comforts and faded pastel colours, patterns that were nearly white where the morning sunlight hit them day in and day out.
Bellis, Arden thought. She had stayed here once. Before that, another woman’s room, maybe generations of women, who had knitted the bed covers and crocheted the curtains, had embroidered a tapestry on the wall, where krakens and plesiosaur frolicked about an archipelago of islands.
The Sainted Isles. The birthplace of the Rivens.
The bed was narrow, befitting a girl and not a wife. A single bed, with a Stella Maris star above the plain bedhead. Upon the yellowing crochet of the side table, a Fiction Vulgate Bible bound in fish-skin. Her goose-down pillow still felt damp from the towel that must have bound up her salted hair. The simple nightdress clothed her inside out and back-to-front.
Wincing from her bruises she climbed out of bed and moved for the door.
The music came from behind it, and suddenly it made Arden nervous. She had shared something miraculous and dangerous with Jonah Riven. Had known him intimately.
‘Jo—’
The door opened, and the Harbourmistress’ son, David, stood there with a porcelain water-jug and a string bag full of clothes.
‘Oh … David,’ she corrected herself. ‘Mr Modhi. I thought Mr Riven would be the one to greet me.’
‘Goodness, Mx Beacon, Lightmistress,’ the Harbourmistress’ boy stammered, trying to avert his gaze, for the raw silk nightdress was threadbare and tight. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you up, Mr Riven said you would sleep more and that I should bring you some clothes and a jug of hot water to, um. To wash.’
‘Give it here,’ she said, her early-morning fancies dashed into reality.
‘Be careful of the jug, the water’s hot. I boiled it only a few minutes ago.’
‘I will be careful.’
‘There’s a bath, but Mr Riven says it takes a long time to stoke the boiler. You’ll need to make do with this for now. Call if you need more …’
Arden flashed him an impatient smile and closed the door.
She retreated into the room. Sure enough, a small, simple bathroom adjoined the bedroom. It had a claw-footed bath that – from the maker’s mark on the enamel – had long been appropriated from a much fancier Clay hotel. To top off the small luxuries there was even a halfway-modern water closet that actually flushed. Arden wanted to weep with the joy of facilities that were not in essence holes in the ground.
All this was here, and she had imagined Mr Riven living in a ruin!
She washed herself as best she could, the salt from under her arms, her throat and hair, between her breasts and legs, tried not to think of Jonah Riven there, his hands his mouth, his yearning body, and found no true pleasure in the thought, for his act wove a coarse thread through the warp and weft of the Tallwaters’ attack.
It is the remains of the night, she told herself. Whatever poison had brought me back from near death, it still courses through me.
Clean as she could possibly be in the circumstances, Arden emptied out the string bag on her bed.
A never-worn lady’s bloomers and chemise, slippery with salmon-coloured silk, still with faded Clay Capital shop-tags tied with string. Not her size, of course, they would fit tight rather than loose as intended. She wondered who they’d been bought for in the beginning? Maybe not Bellis, they seemed last century’s fashion. Another woman perhaps, one who had died.
The dress, though, belonged to Arden. The best blue one from her signal-keeper’s graduation, torn away by the sea on that day she had come to find Mr Riven with the plesiosaur child. She rubbed the broadcloth against her cheek, before sliding the dress over her head, fastening the release-panels back into their origami of folded fabric, and pulling on her borrowed shoes.
The rest of the lodge was constructed from the same basalt stone as the church ruins, and simple in its layout, so it took Arden very little time to locate Mr Riven in the stone kitchen, shirtless, back to her, trying to sew together a split eyebrow in a slice of morning sun. The piece of silvered mirror before him reflected his face back to her, but was too tarnished for him to see where he should go with the needle. His hands shook with exhaustion.
She considered the mottled skin of his half-tattooed back, the chevrons following his spine. Whatever healing had been done to her, it had taken a toll on him.
‘Do you want some help?’
He turned to Arden. Bruise popping in the hollow of his eye, one cheek hard and white.
Arden ran her hands nervously though her thick dark curls, suddenly aware how different she must be to Bellis Harrow, the dissonance she must present to Jonah Riven, and then hated that she should care.
‘I’m not being vain with such a tiny injury,’ he said, holding the offending needle in front of him. ‘I’ve decided I’d rather not be quite as fearsome as I’m made out.’
‘It would take more than a cut to make you fearsome, I’m afraid.’
He poked at his eye with the needle once again, and she sighed.
‘Oh, give it here. You’ll make yourself blind. I might be rubbish with a needle but at least I can see what I’m doing. Come, sit.’
He did so, and she laid her hand on his warm shoulder, and the night came back to her in flashes of lightning and breath. He trembled beneath her touch, the terror of a wild thing cornered.
‘Head back,’ she said. ‘Careful now, the iodine will sting.’
The crown of his head against her belly, and like it had been when she had tended the wounds at his chest, he did not wince at the needle’s entry. Older scars pocked his brow. His lost expression reminded her of a child, a pale craggy child, asleep to fever dreams. She would have caressed the bad thoughts away had their relationship followed such warm currents, but the union had been consummated in violence, and they were in the cool frost now.
A pair of neat stitches in his brow, and ends clipped with a small knife. A daub of antiseptic honey and brown paper.
‘There,’ she quipped with pathetic humour. ‘You are beautiful again.’
‘And you’ve recovered.’
‘David is alive too. It’s been a busy night for all of us.’
‘He’s tougher than he seems. From what he said the Tallwaters took both him and your stormbride from the harbour in your boat.’
‘Oh! Mr Riven, I didn’t realize. He never said …’
‘The lad’s modest, I’ll give him that. Escaped them and made his way onto shore to raise the alarm. He might not have blood talent, but he’s an excellent swimmer.’
‘And Chalice Quarry? They took her too?’
Mr Riven shook his head. ‘David says she jumped from the boat first. She was bound, hand and foot, and sunk like a stone. I’m sorry.’
Arden twined her fingers together and fought down a wave of anxious illness. Without Chalice she would be utterly alone. ‘Oh. Chalice. Oh.’
Upright, he pulled a bubbling kettle from the stove and poured tea into enamel cups. She smelled ginger and coast-sedge, the aroma of the saltwood shavings in the fireplace, and Mr Riven’s warm skin. Pleasant smells, yet with the probability of Chalice’s death they were perfumes of despair.
‘If it helps, when the tide turns Saudade will be free of the kraken dock. I can take you to Mx Modhi. I must return her son, anyway. If by chance your stormbride made …’ he drifted off, not wanting to give her false hope. ‘Whatever happened, we will find out for certain.’
‘Thank you.’ Sh
e heaved a breath, to calm herself so she might think usefully rather than all a-jangle. She took the offered cup of tea. ‘There’s a full story in last night, Mr Riven. They were stealing my blood.’
‘Penny for the Old Guy. Passage onto one of the islands.’
‘I don’t remember all of what they said, but it sounded … it sounded as if Mr Harrow had suggested it.’
Mr Riven would not meet her gaze. ‘Then it was not personal. He was trying to hurt me through you. The Tallwaters were merely an opportunity. Incendiary blood is worth more than kraken oil in some places.’
‘Not my dim blood. They’ll find that out soon enough.’ She paused. Gathered her thoughts and said shyly, ‘Then you put me in the water with the kraken. Or some … thing? I felt it. I felt myself dead, and coming back.’
A movement outside the bay window captured his attention more than anything in this kitchen. The delicate light made him fragile, fine-boned. His skin was pale as a cuttlefish skeleton, his body dreadfully vulnerable despite Mr Riven’s Fictish vigour and the terrifying ink. The memory of the night wrapped around them in Sargasso strands, strangling them, pulling them into dark, sunless places.
‘Aequor profundum. My mother called it the trick. She used it once, on my uncle when a bar fight nearly killed him, and I heard it rumoured … she brought my cousin Jeremiah back from the dead when he was attacked by a maris anguis on his initiation day. A sea-serpent bit him almost in half. Many a time I wished it had finished the job.’
Arden pondered on what he’s told her. ‘Healing someone from that bad an injury … it’s a sanguinity, Jonah!’
‘It’s a shadow sanguinity,’ he corrected her. ‘Monstercalling is our talent.’
‘Yes, but an endowment like that on top of what you already have … why, something like that would have the Eugenics Society all over it. They’d either collect everyone up to Lyonne or …’
She trailed off.
Monstrous Heart Page 25
