Monstrous Heart

by Claire McKenna

Or.

  She did not want to say it, because it was impossible. The or that had suddenly come to her was death. The or was an entire family killed in a night and the blame placed on a child meant to die in a Harbinger Bay hulk prison.

  But even that conclusion made no sense to her. A healing talent was harmless. Shadows and permutations were unwanted, but never engendered more than sterilization, at the most. Certainly, shadows spoiled the ledgers, interrupted the inheritance line, but the Eugenics Society were pragmatic about the necessity of evolution. If something new and useful were to appear in the sanguineous lineages, it would come first as a shadow. If it were dangerous in the way most useful talents were, then they’d find ways to manage the risk.

  She could think of nothing so hazardous that an entire bloodline should be wiped out.

  Mr Riven studied her. ‘You’re trying to find an excuse.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘An excuse, for what I did to them. When I killed my family. Hoping the blame is elsewhere, on Lyonne. But it’s not, Arden. The blame is mine. I was young, I had no control over my talent, and they all died. That is what I live with.’

  ‘I wasn’t …’ she started, then took a breath. ‘How often have you used this aequor profundum?’

  He frowned. ‘Not often. I never had a skill at it like Thalie did. The biggest thing was the plesiosaur pup.’

  ‘Yes, the pup! I saw it that day, on the beach when I had almost drowned.’

  A blush appeared on his neck and cheeks, as he remembered her in her gold silks. ‘I’m sorry, what I did last night. It was a violation. But it never felt so strong as last night, when I used it on you.’

  ‘Are you ashamed of saving my life?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Then why speak of it as sin and not miracle? What you did was miraculous, was epic and wonderful and incredible and can I not just thank you for that? Why must it be so difficult?’ She laid her hand on his. ‘Jonah, I want to thank you.’

  He took her hand and gently placed it away.

  ‘You are alive. I need no gratitude. But we cannot deceive ourselves by thinking there was any emotional truth in what happened when I brought you back.’

  The moment had passed. Mr Riven had thrown up a wall about himself, and busied himself with his shirt and his boots.

  Arden needed to get away. ‘I will wait at the dock for the tide to come up. It’s too stuffy in here.’

  ‘All right.’

  She pretended to leave casually, but once out in the quadrangle had to sit and gulp deep breaths. Was not love or desire that had moved Mr Riven to take her upon the beach, only an urge in his blood like Bellis towards her petrolactose islands, a deceptive instinct. He felt nothing towards Arden at all.

  The morning sun had been but a fleeting apparition of a pleasant day. Outside, the clouds returned in slabby formations, grey and formless as the rock of the promontory, and the wind blustered about with an old crone’s natter.

  Chief waddled up to her on arthritic legs, snuffling his grey snout at her skirt hem.

  ‘I have nothing for you, pup,’ she said. ‘If I had known, I’d have waited until your master cooked his breakfast before leaving.’

  ‘Ah, he’s already had a feed, the little reprobate.’

  She had not noticed David Modhi nearby. The youth wore some cast-off Riven clothes that dangled off his thin shoulders. Behind him, upon a washing line, the dress from last night hung on a recycled line of telegraph cable.

  ‘Earning your keep with the laundry, I see?’

  He gave a self-conscious gasp. ‘Oh Mx Beacon, I didn’t see you naked … in any disgraceful way. After Mr Riven took you off the beach he, um, tended you with the door shut.’

  ‘It is no concern. It really is not.’ She re-tied her belt, and gathered her strength for her conversation ahead. ‘So tell me. How did the Tallwaters come to have my boat?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘I saw them in the harbour. Just hanging about. I should have known some nefariousness was afoot earlier. I sometimes talk to Sean Ironcup on the eventide, and normally he is a fine conversationalist, but yesterday …’ David sighed and shrugged. ‘Sean seemed distracted. I would even say ashamed almost, as if he did not wish to be seen with me.

  ‘I could not find Mother anywhere, and at the time I was glad of it. She doesn’t trust the Tallwaters, and doesn’t like me talking to Sean.’

  ‘But she still must have impressed some suspicion on you, David.’

  ‘Yes. I saw the senior Tallwater and Captain Cormack speaking with each other. Deviously. Making a deal. I heard your name. I suspected they were up to no good.’ He dipped his head, blushed again. ‘I meddled with Captain Cormack’s ship. They were going to hire it and I scuppered the engine before anyone could be the wiser.’

  ‘Quick thinking, Mr Modhi.’

  ‘It didn’t work. I hadn’t thought it through. They saw Miss Quarry come into harbour and decided to take Fine Breeze instead. I can’t remember much of the rest, only waking in the bilge well of Fine Breeze, a prisoner, with Chalice. Sean made apologies, but he is in thrall to Leyland Tallwater. They all do what he says.’

  ‘And Chalice? What happened to her?’

  ‘Um.’ He frowned. ‘We listened to them talk for a while. They intended to exchange us for some payment in the Isles.’ David’s eyes shone. ‘Blood or enslavement, one or the other. Devils. Miss Quarry jumped into the water fully bound rather than contemplate such a thing as slavery. I was not brave enough at first. Afterwards Sean Ironcup retied my bonds loose enough to slip. I waited until we got close to the promontory shore before I bailed.’

  ‘You were still brave, lad. It is just as brave to wait and get a better sense of the situation. You are alive and Chalice is—’

  A ferocious clanging from the waterfront interrupted their talk, and Arden winced. Whatever could have made such an inopportune noise?

  A dark shape loomed through the sea-fog. The wrong shape for a boat, and yet familiar all the same.

  ‘What is that coming in to the pier, David Modhi? Even I can’t work it out.’

  David didn’t wait. He took off in a run. The fog congealed and shivered as Arden followed him down the rocky path to the promontory dock. The clanging grew louder, and now Arden could discern the distinct shape of a gable roof and a large whitewashed sign.

  A sign bearing the words VIGIL HARBOUR.

  David reached the dock first. He did not show the same surprise as Arden did, and watched with weary defeat as the entire harbourside of Vigil carved through the water towards the promontory shore.

  ‘Why, Master Modhi, is that your mother’s houseboat adrift with half the harbour with it?’

  A chorus of signal buoys clanged piteously, having been swept up along the unstoppable force of a hundred feet of pontoons, while decking and glass floaters and at least a dozen skiffs and dinghies dragged along behind in an ignominious bridal train.

  His upper lip and baby moustache trembled. ‘Mother has come.’

  ‘And she brought her responsibilities with her!’ Arden seized up a coil of rope. ‘Quick, David, help the juggernaut dock or it’ll overshoot us and head into the cliff.’

  David ran down the long length of the jetty, stopping only to make certain Arden could keep up, before sprinting off again. The fog came with them, turning the world white. The houseboat bell rang through the pea soup. Arden took the coil from David, tossing it out to the dark-hooded figure leaning out of the window of the houseboat.

  ‘Got it!’ a familiar voice barked. ‘We’re pulling her in.’

  Suddenly Arden saw the figure in the window, the red hair, the stout shoulders.

  ‘Chalice!’ Arden held out her hand, gasping, and the hood reappeared, with Chalice’s dear freckled face beneath it. Their fingers met and clasped.

  ‘You’re alive, Arden?’ Chalice could not have been more startled if a spectre had made an appearance on the dock. ‘Alive and not a ghost? Oh my,
I feared the worst!’

  ‘Mr Riven saved me!’

  ‘Ah now, that is good,’ she said somewhat uncertainly.

  Once David secured the houseboat, Mx Modhi came out of the wheelhouse in a flurry of denim, waxcloth and a sou’wester upon her frowsy grey hair. She grabbed her tall son’s head, clutched him down to her massive bosom to rub his back and murmur affectionate things, and David swooned in his mother’s love.

  ‘I didn’t know our house could move, Mama,’ he muffled into Mx Modhi’s breast.

  ‘Kraken oil will get anything moving,’ the Harbourmistress replied. ‘And those reprobates that kidnapped you would have experienced the full extent of my ire had I caught them! After all the liniment I wasted on that brother? Why, they even left their children behind in their rush to get to the Islands. Three little orphans now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about losing your boat, Arden,’ Chalice said as she climbed onto the pier. ‘I was rather outnumbered, so fell back on my one useful skill of slipping knots.’

  ‘Boats can be replaced. The priority is that we are all safe and well. And you, Chalice! I am pleased to see you, so very much!’

  ‘Darling, you are whole and untouched! I nearly had conniptions, hearing them talk,’ Chalice said. ‘How they intended to take your blood. All of it.’ Chalice took Arden’s shoulders and gazed upon her with such fiercely relieved emotion, in any other circumstances Arden would have thought Chalice in love. ‘I believed I would come here to find you dead and drained, and my heart was breaking. I didn’t know what to do. But look, not a scratch!’

  ‘Chalice, you find me more alive than ever.’

  ‘I’ve never been so happy to be wrong. By the devils, I hope the Tallwaters meet their maker with an eternal debt.’

  Arden shrugged. ‘Seems a Tallwater trait. Making bad decisions without thinking it through. Six pints they might have taken from me, but all they’ll get is some dim malorum blood that will barely feed a flame. The Old Guy won’t get a penny.’

  Chalice dropped her hands.

  ‘What?’

  Arden blinked. ‘Six pints … Or four. I can’t quite remember. It seems a lot, it does! But as I said, Mr Riven rescued me. Some … ah, local folk medicine.’ She declined to say more, as a protective feeling encouraged her to silence. ‘As much as it’s uncharitable to wish harm on those wretched fools, the Islanders will punish them well enough when they discover the rotten deal they’ve made.’

  Arden expected Chalice to nod with the same agreement and joy. In fact, she would have expected any other reaction except for Chalice to turn an odd shade of green, open then close her mouth speechlessly. When at last words came out she croaked, ‘Devils, did you say they took six pints?’

  ‘Chalice, whatever is the matter?’

  Chalice gave a grimace, too shocked to be entirely coherent. She grabbed Arden’s wrist, hard enough to hurt, and thrust up the sleeves on her dress. The needle marks were still there, faint from her impromptu miracle.

  ‘Oh no …’

  Arden yanked her arm away from the stormbride’s manhandling. ‘Stop it! This is most unpleasant.’

  Mx Modhi let out a rumble of disapproval. ‘The thieves bled her. Well, here is an unmitigated disaster.’

  ‘Why is it a disaster?’ Arden snapped. ‘It’s only malorum blood. It’s of no danger to anyone except the fools who want to trade it.’

  Chalice clutched the hair at her temples, shook out her hands, looked about as if the solution to her crisis could only come in the form of a miracle. ‘By God. By God. We should never have sent you here.’

  A familiar loom of disaster came upon Arden. All of a sudden she didn’t want to ask what it was that afflicted Chalice so. Her deep familial sense for trouble weighted like stones in her belly.

  Mx Modhi dug her pipe out of her dress pocket, packed the bowl with tobacco with the insouciant submission of a deckhand having been told that the ship is about to founder after he has spent the day being ignored about the leak.

  ‘Go on then, Quarry,’ the Harbourmistress drawled. ‘You might as well tell the woman. Mr Lindsay will tell her himself soon before he has to put his own head on the disciplinary chopping block.’

  ‘Tell me what? And how do you know Mr Lindsay, either of you?’

  Cornered now, Chalice reluctantly pulled the pewter Guild triangle from around her neck. The metal moved on a hinge. Her coin began as triangular locket, the symbol of her assistant profession.

  Once flipped about, the triangle became a rose crucified upon thorns.

  A rose on thorns, just like the pin Mr Lindsay wore. Just like the bands on the messenger pigeons in the roost. Symbol of the Lyonne Order and Nomenclatures, forever pruning, forever gardening.

  Arden recoiled from Chalice as if she’d been knocked sideways.

  ‘Chalice … you’re a Lion?’

  24

  Do they know

  Do they know how he healed me? was her first thought. Have I just said too much about him?

  ‘All right. I am a Lion. Mx Modhi is a local agent,’ Chalice said faintly, not that Arden was in a mood to appreciate the differences. ‘She’s been here a long time, keeping an eye on things for us.’

  ‘Oh, really now.’

  ‘And well,’ Chalice said, distraught and awkward at her sudden unveiling, ‘and well, this thing that has happened to you, this blood-theft, it’s quite unexpected. It wasn’t supposed to happen. We will handle it, of course. It can’t be helped. But your placement here is ended, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Excuse me, did you say ended?’

  ‘Yes, Mx Modi can take you back to Garfish Point. You can be on a train back to Clay tonight.’

  Arden reeled back, stunned from Chalice’s unveiling, and the urgency of her. ‘I’m not leaving, Chalice. The flame still needs me—’

  ‘It wasn’t for flame you were here! You completed your duty, but the blood … the missing blood is a complication we must deal with ourselves. It is safer for you to be home while we fix it up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You just are. Safer. Please darling, the more questions you ask, the more at risk you will be.’

  Arden’s chest squeezed painfully as if enclosed by a mighty fist, and her breath came out in a wheeze. Was this her own leash being tightened? She would not have it.

  ‘I’m not leaving just because you say so, Order Coin or not. The Order doesn’t control my lighthouse. It’s the Seamaster’s Guild who do that, and I see no Guildmaster here.’

  Harbourmistress Modhi chewed upon the goat-horn stem of her pipe as if in a pendulum swing between extremely bored and frightfully annoyed. ‘Huh, I knew this would happen, Quarry.’

  ‘What?’ Arden snapped at her.

  ‘Postmaster Harrow was in a state all day,’ the Harbourmistress said. ‘You must have riled him up good and proper with your lustful gallivanting with Mr Riven, for him to suggest that the Tallwaters do what they did. The worst possible scenario.’

  ‘Then have the Order send Mr Harrow away in punishment!’ Arden snapped at them. ‘Or does he control the Lions when it comes to murder just like he controlled them when it came to his daughter?’

  She pretended to brush a loose strand of hair from her face. Was in reality the tears of frustration and anger. She had probably just condemned Mr Riven to the Lions, all but confirming his shadow sympathies. They’d have him sent for a castration, have him returned to this coast neutered, like a show-dog born with a confirmation defect.

  She turned around and stomped away, unable to bear looking at her deceitful stormbride.

  Who was not a stormbride at all.

  Chalice ran after Arden, her Order medallion clinking around its hinge. ‘Arden! Please, darling, listen to me. I meant what I said. It’s all gone wrong, we should never have sent you here. But you were the only one who could perhaps break through Mr Riven’s defences around Bellis. Others have tried and failed, you were our final chance!’

  ‘You should have sen
t a whore!’ Arden shouted back. She tore off the krakenskin coat, threw it on the ground so the eyes winked up at her in the dull day. ‘Then Mr Justinian could gloat about two murdered whores!’

  Chalice stumbled behind in a punch-drunken trot. Arden moved too quickly up the slope to the lighthouse for Chalice to catch up. She remained outside while Arden made a deliberately slow and thorough check on the measuring instruments and the flame of her misbegotten tower, and shed angry tears all over the ledger paper, making the ink run where they fell.

  ‘Please, let me fully explain what is happening here,’ Chalice pleaded up the column from the doorway, her voice echoing off the walls.

  ‘You just wait your turn!’ Arden yelled back. ‘The Lyonne Order can just wait before they prostitute me out for another trick.’

  ‘They are not—’

  ‘Lies! Lies, Chalice, why the Order brought me here like bait-meat for my neighbour’s memory. It was worse that you lied about it yourself, for I trusted you!’

  ‘I didn’t know about that, darling! I didn’t know!’

  When Arden finished her duties and left her lighthouse, Chalice was not there.

  The tattered semaphore flags snapped in the wind. A chain rattled against the flagpole. Arden found her stormbride sitting miserably on the cement base, head in her hands, rocking in her ballooning waxed canvas skirts. Arden’s krakenskin lay across Chalice’s knees. Against her chalky-white face, Chalice’s hair had darkened with sea mist and sweat.

  She had cried enough. Only a slow exhaustion upon her, and the cold.

  Chalice held out the jacket. Arden put it back on.

  ‘I thought you’d go back to your Lion business,’ Arden grumped.

  ‘Go back to what? My heart is broken. I care for you very much.’

  ‘I wonder if you people really care, or just fret over the outcome of your conspiracy.’

  ‘My love, I honestly didn’t know what Mr Lindsay planned for you. All my orders were, look after the Lightmistress while she completes her task. You were at the gates of hell and harm here, and I was meant to keep you safe.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t do that very well, did you? I was attacked in my own lighthouse by people completely not Mr Riven, while you were entertaining Mr Sage and plucking herbs!’