Monstrous Heart

by Claire McKenna

  ‘I rescued you,’ he said once he had been given grudging allowance to sit beside her on the wrought-iron garden chair. ‘That tugboat of Mr Riven’s was floating out past the edge of the world and would have kept going had I not sent out a flotilla to search when it was discovered.’

  ‘You have my appreciation,’ she said, suspecting Mx Gertrude Modhi had actually gathered the party together not long after they’d left Vigil. A mother would not give up on her son.

  ‘Your stormbride, your Madame Quarry. She said Mr Riven is dead?’

  The rush of grief startled Arden at hearing his name aloud, after keeping it at bay for so long. The air sucked out of her lungs. She could not take a breath. Mr Justinian took her silence as agreement.

  ‘A shame. I know you pitied him and dallied with him. It behoves you well to lean tenderly towards the lesser among us. It is a virtue after all.’

  Emboldened, he continued. ‘We the nobility have our right as patriarchs of these folk to take whatever minor pleasures they can give us, but one must move on from fripperies and think seriously about the unions that will benefit us.’ He sidled close. ‘I have made overtures to the Eugenics Society to make an honest woman of you, so your mark of genetic shame is removed.’

  His words cut through the numbness with breathless horror. ‘You mean marry you, Vernon?’

  ‘I have received a letter back from the Council today. An enthusiastic permission.’

  Without warning, Mr Justinian was on his knees in front of her, and had snapped the top off a velvet box so she might see a big, antique diamond ring with a band scratched and thinned from all the women who had worn it before.

  Arden fumed. There was audacity, and then there was just ambushed rudeness. Behind Mr Justinian’s head a thin-faced statue peered out from the bushes. The stone and shadows were familiar. Alexander Justinian, the old baron. There were ghosts all around.

  ‘Was Jonah Riven your brother, Mr Justinian?’

  Mr Justinian paled. He stepped back. ‘Whatever makes you think that?’

  ‘No. Not a brother,’ Arden said. ‘A half-uncle, or a half-great-uncle? His mother worked in this house for your great-grandfather, Alexander Justinian, while the old man was still alive, did she not? It’s not uncommon, for the lords of such estates to assault and demean those in their employ. I don’t suppose there are many civilizing laws here in Fiction to protect a simple serving woman.’

  Mr Justinian’s eyes popped, and he made weak, mewling noises. ‘My great-grandfather Alexander would nev …’ He stopped. Started again. ‘We don’t entertain bastard claims here.’

  Arden shook her head. ‘In Clay Capital, it is genetics and the laws of eugenics, not marriage, that outline the terms of inheritance. Would be an interesting claim for a Riven to make, that the Manse is his.’

  ‘Riven is dead!’

  ‘Allegedly.’

  Mr Justinian grabbed her arm, squeezed hard, and spittle flecked his lips. ‘Don’t think I can’t tell that you have let the brute despoil you utterly, Arden Beacon. I know he spilled his seed inside you and that you may now carry his child.’

  He was wrong, of course. She knew her own body and her monthlies had come while she lay recovering Arden tried to pull away, but he hung on with grim determination, intent on having her confess.

  The moment became fraught with all the bad luck and poor decisions possible for a man to make. She was weakened from her illness. He could make it so that she never screamed again, and claim that ichor meritis had taken her life. Anything could happen.

  Then he let her go, blushing furiously.

  ‘I know what the Lions are capable of.’

  ‘Yes, and they will test whatever issue comes from me. Landed titles are granted by Lyonne laws, not Fictish ones, and Lyonne inheritance is through genetics alone. If there’s any dispute in ownership the legal vultures will come calling, and your title claim as Lord of the Justinian manse will become very, very weak.’

  He backed away. A sneer on his lips. ‘You think you have won both child and Lordship, Arden Beacon? Then I’ll tell you what that thing in my father’s glass jar really was. The cryptid in the study, the bell-jar you were so very much drawn to? That thing in the jar was the twin that exited from the Riven woman first, when she birthed your lover. Was the eight-legged monster, the snake-coils in her belly that first tumbled out of her and into the world. A monster twin coiled in the womb. That mutancy lies coiled up in your dear dead Mr. Riven, and who knows if it yet sets root and grows within you. Perhaps this is the real thing the Lions wished to have come about.’

  Arden viewed Mr Justinian with pity, and no tenderness. Perhaps he did or did not tell the truth about the creature in the jar.

  So what, if Mr Riven had been birthed with a poor, sea-creature twin? The Eugenicists of Clay Capital would have considered that a fair sacrifice for the endowment of blood. Mr Justinian had been away from Clay too long. Otherwise he’d have known that—just as the Order had decided with Bellis Harrow—it was considered better to be birthed monstrous than birthed without talent at all.

  She squared her shoulders. Faced him with a gaze both limpid in its nonchalance and loathing.

  ‘You do not scare me, Vernon. Give your mother my thanks for her hospitality, but when her duty is done to the Seamaster’s Guild I will be on my way.’

  37

  Mr Justinian had the last word

  Mr Justinian had the last word. He would not give her permission to return to her lighthouse on the edge of the Darkling Sea. Another girl took her place at the lighthouse now, a bride from the South, someone who could run a lighthouse on her until the Guild decommissioned the flame.

  But Arden, of course, had not yet been given orders to leave. For now, she was effectively homeless, and without employment. Since their last conversation, Chalice had been sent back to Lyonne in disgrace in the dead of night. Without the chance to say goodbye.

  In the face of her loss, the loss of Jonah, those blows were inconsequential.

  A day later, the Dowager arrived in the guest house foyer as Arden was packing to leave, her hands bound up in an agitated tangle.

  ‘A visitor for you,’ she said, a thin note of fear in her announcement. This was not the same disapproving voice that she had used when Chalice had come to visit. The caller’s importance was not lost upon the Lady of the Manse. ‘He says it is most urgent.’

  Mr Lindsay stood behind the Dowager’s black-crêpe shadow, bowler hat in one hand, briefcase in the other. His face was guileless as a child’s. Arden nodded her permission. He waited until the mistress of the house was gone and the doors firmly shut before speaking.

  ‘Such a shame you did not find her son worthy of a match,’ he said. ‘We could have used you in domesticating our young Coastmaster. His family name is still starred in our ledger through his great-grandfather. It was a great loss that we could not keep the bloodline strong.’

  ‘I have no emotion for him one way or another.’

  ‘Of course. But I’m certain he’ll work on that for as long as Mx Arden Beacon lives in this house, won’t he?’

  ‘What do you want, Mr Lindsay?’ Arden asked, and did not bother to hide her annoyance.

  He sat upon the edge of the daybed, fingered the crochet throw as if admiring the stitch work. He found the small bust of Baron Justinian, picked it up, studied the bronze handiwork. Perhaps he mused upon the likeness between the bust and the man who had lived upon the promontory.

  ‘Miss Quarry also tells me there was an … ah … interesting electrical phenomenon that led to your being found. The search party saw the glow in the water and naturally came to your assistance.’

  ‘That is correct.’ Arden pressed her lips together firmly before speaking. ‘A glow. A sea monster glow.’

  ‘Not something else?’ He looked at her, sly and knowing. ‘Not something that the Order has long hypothesized but has never seen replicated in any individual?’

  She took the bust out of hi
s hands and placed it back on the marble side table. ‘Tell me why I am entertaining your presence, sir?’

  A smile split his thin cheeks. ‘Well, you see, after his dereliction of Magistrate duties, Mr Alasdair Harrow has been escorted to Clay City. I thought you would like to be informed.’

  ‘You’re going to kill him?’

  Mr Lindsay shook his head, as if puzzled. ‘For questioning, no more. If you are wanting someone punished, that other criminal, that Sean Ironcup, will find himself collected by the Constables at the end of the month. It was him that bled you.’

  ‘Was Mr Harrow’s idea.’

  ‘Yes it was, and we can’t have Order assets be flung about to the wolves without proper advice now, can we? As much as it would have been amusing to see what his fully empowered daughter could do, I fear she would not have shown the correct restraint at finding herself so potent.’

  ‘Not without Jonah strong enough to tighten the leash on your behalf.’

  ‘We’d hoped you could have assisted in that regard.’

  Arden gave him a long, venomous silence before closing the shipping trunk. ‘Well, I couldn’t assist. So this little exercise in deception has turned out to be a complete waste of our time.’

  ‘On the contrary. You brought back precious information our spy had so carefully curated for years. Riven may not be able to fully leash his wife, but he can certainly keep her attention focused. With those two in union, the balance of power in that rebellious region will change. Bellis Riven will soon rule the Isles. And though she doesn’t know it, Lyonne rules her. Your assistance will not be forgotten.’

  She did not trust herself to speak, otherwise she would shout at him to leave. Bellis and Jonah were not in union, no more than a broken horse was in union to the brutal owner who wielded the whip.

  She will kill him, you little fool, Mr Lindsay. Jonah has no influence over Bellis. Nobody controls a sanguis orientis, and one day you’ll find this out the worst of ways.

  She could not say it. And not saying it made her dizzy with vexation. Mr Lindsay only saw her reeling from her fierce, unspoken emotion, thought it her illness.

  ‘My dear, you are faint. Sit, sit.’

  Mr Lindsay fetched Arden a chair. She wanted to recoil from his unctuous touch.

  When at last she could govern her tongue, Arden spoke through a strangled throat. ‘What happens to me now?’

  He made a gesture of surrender. ‘Mx Beacon, I know it must have been painful to strike up a friendship with such a dreadfully lonely, long-suffering creature as Jonah Riven. To perhaps … come to care for him? And we are not oblivious to what sort of woman Bellis has become. How it must have affected you, to meet her. I can only offer apologies that we could not supply you all the reasons, and give this humble restitution.’

  He clipped open the brass hinges of the business satchel, and brought out an oxblood leather diploma roll. A golden tassel swung on the end.

  He held the diploma roll out to her.

  ‘Take it.’

  She frowned. She had seen such a thing in her father’s study, behind glass. The most precious thing he owned. All his status and his professional standing, bound up in whale vellum and a Guild seal stamped in wax.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Sanguine Order, Fourth Degree,’ he continued. ‘Master of Light. Higher than Portmaster, even. Higher than your father could ever hope to attain. You can return to Lyonne, join a lodge and after initiation receive the colours of your Guild Order. You will be Maria of the Unquenched Flame.’

  The tassel swung, the golden glints catching the sunlight through the high windows. She shook her head, appalled at the offer. ‘Mr Lindsay, a false membership to the associate order is one thing, but if I took that, it would make a lie of what the degree represented. I am not so powerful.’

  Mr Lindsay came close. With his short stature, he was eye to eye with her as she sat in the chair. His voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘You and I both know that it is no lie, Arden Beacon. You are to return to the city with full honours. No cramped night train for our newest Guildmistress. You will put this time behind you. You shall live in Clay Capital in luxury for the rest of your life and your family’s honour will be restored. Your father may regain his status in the Eugenics ledger, the very thing he lost when your ignis talent presented so … poorly.’

  Mr Lindsay’s eyes glittered like the tassel. He knew what she was capable of. No stories of quenching fires or sudden salty sanguinities for him. She had been brought to Vigil for a reason, and that reason was bordered on all four sides by Bellis Harrow.

  Arden instinctively wrapped her hands over her grommets as he spoke, his words tying her up in chains of honour and filial piety.

  ‘The Coastmaster Justinian still holds my leash,’ she said. ‘Despite your Lion friends and all the laws of Lyonne, that office is still his and he won’t let me go so easily. There is no Master of Blood to replace a lighthouse keeper.’

  ‘Perhaps there will be. No doubt you have heard of the testmoot slated for Garfish Point at this month’s end, ten days from now. Those charged with tracing the genetics of Fiction say that a sanguis ignis is long overdue.’

  ‘You cannot be certain.’

  ‘Mx Beacon, when it comes to sanguinities, we are always certain.’

  He paused, and smiled, as louche and conniving as ever. ‘Oh, and before I forget. Something else for you.’

  Mr Lindsay took from his pocket a thin rice paper envelope. Arden’s name on the front, in a hand whose familiarity stabbed her with a hot spike of surprise. The wax seal was of the Airshipman’s Guild. The postmark was Frieslandish.

  ‘Since you are a guildswoman in full, you may make your own decisions about with whom you may consort. Perhaps even a certain Richard Castile. In fact, he was advised of your new position a week ago, and immediately made his way to Clay Capital.’

  ‘Richard’s in Clay?’

  Mr Lindsay nodded. ‘He composed a letter to you, which I now have pride in delivering. Take it.’ He shook his offering as one might try to convince a shy bird to the snare. ‘Go on.’

  Arden took the envelope. It felt dry and brittle under her fingertips, the way of a newspaper left too long in the sun.

  ‘He misses you, and seeks a reconnection,’ Mr Lindsay said with affectionate magnanimity. ‘You can reunite with your first love, now. Come. You have earned this.’

  When it became clear that she would not open the letter in front of him and satisfy his curiosity about the letter’s contents – contents he perhaps had a hand in dictating himself – Mr Lindsay shrugged, and touched the brim of his hat.

  ‘Whenever you are ready, then. We will meet again, one week from now, Guildswoman. Remember me on your wedding day.’

  The document roll might as well have been dipped in blood. The envelope mocked her with deceit. Richard Castile had not written to her since his departure of the last winter. Would not be writing letters to her now unless he’d been forced to do so.

  As soon as Mr Lindsay was gone she screwed both desecrated objects up in her hands and shoved them into the deepest recesses of her coat pocket.

  38

  She could not bear to stay

  She could not bear to stay in the guest house. Arden rented some rooms above Mr and Mrs Sage’s shop, an apartment that was small but clean. Word had crept out, as all gossip did, that Arden Beacon had suffered trauma at the hands of Mr Riven. Something that had rendered her close to mute and perhaps had put to rest any chances of matrimonial happiness with the handsome young Baron who had once courted her.

  Tall tales whispered lasciviously, just as they had done with Bellis.

  Mrs Sage, her warnings vindicated, spent the first day fussing about Arden. She was charitable in her pity. Was not Arden’s fault she had been harmed so, merely that of the men that had put her upon a rocky promontory with a fiend so close by. Besides, Mr Riven was gone now, no chance of him returning to wreak more damage.
She took Arden’s silence both as an after-effect of her ordeal and shame that she had not listened to Mrs Sage when they had met all those weeks before.

  Arden could not be bothered changing the Vigil woman’s mind. What a far more delightful story for a Fictioner to tell, of the ignorant Lyonne guildswoman who had wandered into a monster’s lair.

  Her life had begun to throw up its walls. The lid was about to close upon her freedom. Mr Lindsay inquired with her every afternoon. If she had dallied with the idea of staying in Vigil, waiting in case Jonah managed to get away from Bellis’ clutches and return.

  Each day was one more where he did not.

  But Saudade did return.

  She was battered by abandonment and weeks in the Tempest, her central axle broken beyond repair. A fisherman towed her in for the price of a whiskey fifth. As Harbourmistress, Mx Modhi had jurisdiction over who managed the promontory assets while Mr Riven was absent. Some previous instruction of Mr Riven’s had granted the craft to David on his death, but since Mr Riven was not confirmed dead, she gave the boat to Arden.

  ‘The salvage is yours to deal with, for now,’ Mx Modhi said bitterly on the morning she passed the boat along. ‘I don’t want my child anywhere near that cursed vessel.’

  ‘It belongs to your son, though.’

  ‘Oh? Only upon Riven’s confirmed death, and who knows in what form that monster might come back.’

  They both knew. There would be nothing left of Mr Riven left to come back, nothing save what Bellis wanted to preserve. If anything, the petrochemical Queen would keep Jonah alive to punish Arden, so that even over the greatest distance she would remember.

  Someone suffers in your stead.

  Arden walked through the black mangrove boat with her heart in her mouth, bleeding memories. Jonah had had a soldier-prisoner’s neatness and austerity about him, all items of necessity stacked and stored with rigid military precision. Being alone in the ship had an intimacy she doubted he would have been comfortable with, were he still here.