by Prue Batten
She found herself swallowed again by his eyes and she glanced away but seeing his hands, almost felt as if she craved his touch. He is mesmering me.
‘Lalita, I’m not trying to entrap you. I can see it in your eyes, so much doubt. What I wanted to say was coincidence is a wonderful thing but in truth I would say that Fate wrote our futures, yours and mine, as we were born.’
She shook her head, a head full of denial and profound anger. ‘Rubbish. What you say is absolute rubbish. This is a coincidence, nothing more or less. I won’t believe anything else.’
He raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘The chances of you the sister, and I the brother meeting fortuituously and that we both seek the same thing… yes, I seek the paperweights… a coincidence? I think not.’
‘What else should I think? You are a fool if you believe such things.’ She turned from him and then added as an afterthought. ‘Besides, why do you want the paperweights? I asked you before.’
Finnian continued unfazed. ‘Later, I shall tell you later. As to Fate, I have most recently been told our destiny is set as we are born and lately I have had reason to believe that every time one veers from the path set down for one, then there is an intrusion of some sort, a gentle push or in some cases a really hard shove back to that fateful path.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lalita refused to believe he was right. He couldn’t be. How heartless that made life. How pointless the struggle for good.
‘Events, occasions, even dreams.’
Lalita started, remembering not just the events of her life, but the dream of last night, still fresh in its gold and silver and midnight blue. She shook her head and felt for the paperweight in her pocket with one hand whilst touching the locket at her neck with the other. ‘I don’t believe you. Why should I? You’re Færan, hardly the most trusty of Others and you search for the paperweights. This could just be a ploy to get your hands on them.’
Finnian gave a dry laugh. ‘It could be. But in truth Lalita, I could mesmer anything from your fingers right now but I don’t choose to. I think you will have to trust me and believe me when I say I tell you the truth.’
Lalita sat silent, her stomach heavy as lead. Her grip tightened over the paperweight and only its coldness jerked her back to the moment. ‘Anyone would think I had strings that were being pulled. Any minute my leg will move, or my head to turn here, there. My mind to think this, that, as though I am being manipulated by some invisible puppet master.’
Finnian’s eyebrow cocked. ‘Perhaps you are. Maybe we both are. I never believed in Fate. I believed in right person, right place, right time. Coincidence. But then there was Curiosa and the paperweights and I knew it would be difficult to deny Fate.’ Almost whispering, he added, ‘I want to as much as you but I think it’s beyond us both.’
Lalita vaguely heard him underneath the memory of Rajeeb’s voice – ‘Fate has brought you to this point’. She jumped up. ‘I must get out of here, I have to get away.’
But his hand grabbed her. ‘You can’t, not like that.’ He waved his hand in front of her and she felt nothing but impatience as he held her back. Then he did the same to himself and she watched with amazement as his hair turned grey, wrinkles incising themselves over his face, his body bending like a pepper tree to stoop over a stick. As she stepped away from his grasp, she limped and realized she too had aged.
‘I shall come with you.’ Finnian’s voice was as gruff and coarse as an elder’s.
‘Where?’ Her own trembled like an ancient’s.
‘Somewhere safe where you can tell me your story and where we can plan.’
Her anger flared, she didn’t want him with her. Why on earth would she? Her equilibrium tipped in his presence and she felt as transparent as gauze silk under his scrutiny.
‘Come on, old woman,’ he muttered, the grizzled picture of a fractious old man as he led her into the crowd in the alley. ‘We must find lodgings.
***
Their venerable age gave them leeway as people stepped out of their path. The sounds of sitar and tabla hovered above the souks like a flock of birds whilst merchants invited shoppers to buy, their calls made in high-pitched, lilting voices, as one attempted to outdo the other. Silks, satins and cottons fluttered on the breeze and leather sandals and shoes spilled onto the narrow alleys. Brass and bright yellow gold glowed in the sunlight and the odour of cumin, turmeric, garlic and onions wafted under noses. Chappatis, dhal and saffron rice were piled high on banana leaves and fragrant curries simmered on portable braziers at street corners.
‘Come on, old woman,’ Finnian played his part to perfection, ‘I’m tired and must find a bed. Hey you!’ He spied a young man in neat dark green tunic and trousers, with round spectacles on his nose and oiled hair that had been parted and flattened hard against his oval skull. He peered at the old folk with myopic concentration.
‘Yes? What can I do for you, respected sir?’ He flicked at his forehead, his chest and bowed over an upturned palm.
‘I need rooms for my wife and myself. We have just traveled from the Kosi-Kamali and I am as dry as an old oasis.’
‘Ah. Let me s…’
‘Come on, man. I haven’t enough years left for you to waste time getting your jellied brains into action. I could die in a moment and it would be your fault!’ Finnian heaved a sputum filled cough and the unfortunate clerk cringed.
‘Sir, I only wish to name the most perfect place for a venerable such as yourself. And I know the place: the Inn of Two Doves is but a street away on the edge of the souk and you will find it if you follow that alley.’ He touched his forehead and his chest again.
Finnian shuffled away with no gratitude of a mannered or moneyed kind, dragging Lalita behind as though she were an ancient dog, his grip far stronger than such a debilitated elder should have.
The Inn of the Two Doves perched in the middle of a dusty square like a grey bird and vibrant orange and pink bougainvillea twisted and twined to form the nest of shade in which it sat. A pergola fringed the front and old men reclined, playing shatranj, puffing on hookahs, drinking coffee in brass cups and ignoring the aged arrivals. In a matter of moments, the innkeeper pocketed a handful of gelt and had shown them to a clean room. Commodious and with fresh water in a jug, there was a heavy white ceramic bowl for washing and towels that were neither thin nor scratchy. The carved door shut behind the host and Finnian pushed at the louvred shutters, opening the room to the peace of the back courtyard. The space vibrated with soothing sound – the buzz of bees, the comfortable coo of a pair of doves and the tinkling trickle of a pretty fountain.
‘Change me back,’ Lalita arched her back with a groan. ‘I ache in every corner. If this is old age, I hope I die young.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Finnian snapped as he returned her to herself, ‘you tempt Fate.’
‘I thought you said my Fate was set in stone at my birth.’ Sarcasm rang around the room. ‘What does a mere wish matter?’ Lalita went to the window to sit at a tiny table as he mesmered her appearance, her head bent as she rubbed her neck. Finnian’s breath caught and he wished he could watch her all day, so perfectly did she embody his illustrated scrap. Her grey tunic fell away from narrow trousers and light from outside shone on the ebony of her hair. He turned away, mesmering himself, vanity creeping in as he changed his common clothes to a black jacket with a high collar and knife-creased, narrow-legged trousers. He wanted to impress her, to dent the cold imperiousness of this little scribe’s manner. The cuffs of his tunic were subtly embroidered in metal thread and the smell of sandalwood and lemons filled the room.
Lalita looked up. ‘How convenient for you that you should improve yourself in the changing. I see you leave me in my identifiable artisan’s robes however.’ There was nothing in her eyes of admiration or attraction, merely a distance, as though he looked at a far off grey ridge on the Goti Range. He walked over and led her to the mirror, relishing the feel of her hand in his, wanting to turn it over and kiss the tender palm.
She still wore grey but it was as dark as a stormy day, the silk full of lustre with an organza scarf that draped backward over her shoulders, its graceful folds hiding the locket. The silk had been embroidered in white Raji threads, a design of flowers and vines and tiny doves with miniscule seed pearls spattered across the work. Her hair was folded, and in her ears hung dark grey pearls that trembled as she looked at herself. She blushed, her eyes catching his in the mirror and as she looked down, the shadow of the black lashes cast seductive feathers across her face. He longed to stroke the softness of her cheek.
‘Thank you.’ The deliberate remove of her words betrayed no such thought however. ‘That was kind and I am grateful. Grateful for the clothes and for the protection you have provided.’ She seemed about to say something else and changed her mind. ‘Can you magick food as well?’
They sat together eating curry and then sucking on pink watermelon the colour of the royal seraglio walls. Neither said a word but Finnian felt caught between a boulder and a fakir’s bed as he thought of time passing – of Isolde levering herself from her sick-bed and beginning the chase. At the same time he couldn’t leave this woman’s side. He broke the silence that sat between them like a wall.
‘What was you brother like?’
‘Kholi?’ The glacier melted, Lalita’s eyes glistening with vibrant memory. ‘He was simply the best.’
‘How so?’
‘Kind, brave, loyal, literate, handsome.’
‘A scion.’
But she ignored his tone and added, ‘He loved his sister.’ Her mouth set in a line and she shook her head. ‘And yours?’ she said eventually.
Finnian sat silent – what could he say?
‘Finnian?’
He detected curiosity but was there anything else? ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean? A brother is a brother.’
‘Yes, but I never knew him. We were parted at birth. I imagined him or at the very least, I thought I did. But now I think on it I realize I was feeling what he felt and I believe we had this enigmatic connection.’ The yardstick inveigled itself into his mind, his brother’s brief journey into love and the strength of his emotion – the strength by which he could measure his own. ‘As a boy I would hide in the library and imagine him lying next to me gazing at books, and I would revel in the pretended company.’ He stood and walked to the window, staring out into the courtyard where the dusking created violet shadows and round paper lanterns were being lit in the acacias in the garden. ‘I wish I had known him.’ He spoke softly, the words swallowed by crickets that shrilled for a moment and the trill of caged birds so popular with the old men of the town singing a chorus to bed the sun.
‘I might be able to tell you what little I know.’ Momentarily her voice had the gentleness of care and he could imagine her fingers on his arm, even though she sat on the other side of the room. He nodded his head, too afraid to turn and face solicitousness. He didn’t want her pity, he wanted her attention and he wanted to know what she knew.
Thus she told him of Liam, Ana, Adelina and Kholi. Of Severine di Accia and the soul-syphon. He added each piece of knowledge, word by descriptive word, to his own precious, rare but infinitely small pile of memories. Silence again filled the room, the poignancy of a potential never realised.
‘How do you know this?’ He had returned to her side and sat slumped, his hands lying on a flat belly.
She didn’t answer immediately, as though she was sunk deep in the memory room of her own mind. Her hands clasped tight and bone white as she took a breath to speak and then stopped as though she had decided not to tell him. Finally she said, ‘Uncle Imran told me. The royal harem allowed me ten minutes with him on my eighteenth birthday and there is not a lot you can say in ten minutes. It was told in the context of Kholi, and my uncle is now dead as I said. It was during that same ten minute meeting that he gave me my paperweight.’
He sat up, memories slammed into a drawer. All day he had skirted around the curved edges of the paperweights, knowing that the matter would have to be discussed, not wanting to broach it for fear of disturbing this tentative intimacy with her. She had already made her case. Strongly and without any chance of change. She didn’t want him around and whilst he wanted her, the imperative he had set upon himself – to secure all the paperweights – invited no companion, for to threaten Isolde meant to invite death.
‘Indeed?’ He tried to gentle her, to encourage her. She was like a wild animal needing to be coaxed because she no more trusted him than he would himself. Trust flowed through the story of mortal lives like an artery carrying blood. If they didn’t have it, they fell apart. ‘But then again,’ a tiny piece of his conscience reared up and tapped him on the shoulder, ‘do you really deserve to be trusted?’ She would think him a man with such sick proclivities. How could I ever expect her to trust me? ‘Tell me’ he asked carefully. ‘Why does it really matter so much that you seek the paperweights?’
‘I have my reasons, obscure as they are. I have told you.’
‘And I don’t think I believe you.’ He became more impassioned. ‘Lalita, this is life-threatening. Don’t you see? Curiosa is after you now and if you are caught you will either lose your hands or your life. Probably the latter as you have also escaped from the royal harem, a treasonable offence. Do you crave your demise?’
She said nothing, closing in upon herself.
‘Will you not give me what you have?’
‘No.’
He stood and walked to the shutters, slamming them shut. ‘Aine, you have no idea what you play with here. No idea at all.’ He shook his head trying to push away the anger. He could mesmer the charms from her in an instant if he wanted, his fingers aching with the effort to hold them still. He wanted to shake her – rattle her cool complacency down into her very toes. He cursed her, images of Poli’s demise bleeding across his mind. ‘You are making the biggest mistake of your life. I wish you could see.’
‘Well I cannot,’ she raged. ‘And since I have two of the paperweights and will not give them up and since I plan to keep searching for the others, even if I must to go back to Curiosa’s and steal again, I suggest you cease asking me.’
Before he throttled her he turned through the door, slamming it so hard behind him, he heard something crash to the floor. Stupid, stupid woman. But as he thought, so his hand sought the parchment within his pocket.
He hurried through the streets and folk glanced at him but as he passed, memory of him passed because he contrived it to be so. He strode into the maze of the souk and headed anywhere and nowhere, walking off his temper.
He could have mesmered her and had her paperweights by now. He stopped, breathing hard. So what is the problem? He thought about it. I don’t do it because I don’t want to disillusion her or distance her. I want her to give me the paperweights of her own volition because it will show she trusts me, maybe even likes me. Just a little. He could hear Isolde’s voice. ‘Desperate.’
A picture opened up in his mind. The scribe got up out of her chair and smiled, walking toward him through an open door into the street. As she took a step to stand in front of him she stumbled and fell forward as if struck forcefully from behind. He caught her as her eyes opened wide with pain, a sharp cry cracking the air. Then she was lifeless.
In his imagination he looked up and saw his grandmother watching the tragic scene. In one claw-like hand fluttered a washi strip with Færan script littering it. He stood holding the scribe’s limp body in his arms, despairing as he saw every single person around him was also dead. Animals were prostrate, birds fell from the sky and a black poisonous cloud hovered over the death scene. Isolde laughed. ‘Two words, Finnian.’ She waved the strip again.
The shriek of a bat flying over the streets jerked him from such fatal thoughts. He glanced around and noticed the entrance to the alley that led to the coffeeshop and Curiosa’s. The blithe crowd flowed around him as he made his decision, reasoning the antiquarian would be
trading even at this hour. The end of the week brought people out in droves at night and the merchant would want to pick up a piece of the trade if there was gelt to be had. Finnian’s feet turned in the direction of emporium, anger shelved, legitimate fear in its place. He must find the other two paperweights – before Isolde, before Lalita. As paltry as the words might sound, this was a life and death struggle.
Perhaps Curiosa told an untruth, perhaps he did in fact have the rest of the paperweights. Time passed Finnian by and he knew with certainty that with each tick of every clock in Eirie, Isolde was a step closer. He had no time for Curiosa’s fabrications, he had no time for Lalita’s obstinacy. He walked swiftly and with purpose to the antiquarian’s.
Chapter Fifteen
He decided to play the game with Curiosa as it unfolded. Play it hard, play to win. Lamps lit the alleys and people passed him in good humour – joking, eating, calling. Such artless and easy levity. Not for these mortals the thoughts that if the charms weren’t found, their world would be under a threat such as they could never imagine. Two words, that’s all it will take.
He turned the corner into Curiosa’s deserted alley. The shop glowed in subtle glory. Unwilling to admit it, he nevertheless knew the man had an eye. The collection was craftily arranged and lamps within the shop threw facets of light over all that was valuable and elegant from Eirish society. In addition, the heavy door with its studs and mouldings and with torchères on either side smacked of wealth that the other traders in the souk could never hope to match. Perhaps then not such a surprise to find the alley quiet because who could afford the treasure from Curiosa’s?
Finnian stood at the entrance examining the collection but surreptitiously sizing up his opponent. The man stood angular and lean at a desk, raising a cut-crystal goblet to his lips and swallowing the red wine in one mouthful. He poured another from a decanter and the crystal edges collided in a crunch that Finnian swore would have goblet and flask on the ground in shards. Fortuitously, the man’s precious Venichese crystal survived and as he went to swallow again, Finnian stepped into the shop – polished and moneyed.
