‘And you won’t?’
‘That is your fourth question. I could answer and put you in my debt. But to show my good faith, I will answer freely one last time. I have no intention of using the hunter. On the contrary, I mean to destroy it.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Quare said.
‘It is too dangerous to use. To dangerous to keep. It was a mistake to make it. It must be unmade. That is why I have come to you, Daniel Quare.’
‘Why me? Why not Longinus?’
‘Because you understand that it must be destroyed, while he does not. And that answer I do not give freely. You have incurred a debt.’
‘No,’ Quare said. Truly, he had not meant to ask another question. It had just slipped out. Unless the dragon had coerced him somehow …
‘You should have kept better count,’ Tiamat said, and its grin grew wider still, as though to devour him. ‘By ancient compact, I have the right to lay a geis – a fateful compulsion – upon you. And this right I do hereby invoke. Seek out the hunter. It has tasted your blood and will tug at you no matter where it may be. Once you have it, call to me and I will come.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You will,’ the dragon said. ‘Whether you fight it or not, whether you believe it or not, you answer to me now.’
Before Quare could reply, the dragon flexed its muscular coils, and there was something irresistible in the movement, a sovereign directive that sank deeper than reason, right into the animal heart of him. Suddenly he was ejaculating with a force that nearly bent him over in the bath, wringing him like a sponge. There was nothing remotely sensual about it; it seemed more like an act of rape.
The next instant, Quare jerked upright, shivering in water that had grown ice cold. The Chinese screen stood where it had always stood; of Tiamat, there was no sign. Someone was knocking at the door to his room.
16
A Whole Different Order of Drowning
QUARE LOST NO time in rising from the bath. He wrapped himself in a towel and called to whoever was knocking at the door. A liveried servant entered the room.
‘His lordship requests that you join him downstairs,’ the man said.
‘I’ll not be long,’ Quare said.
‘If I may assist,’ the man began.
But Quare interrupted. ‘I’m capable of dressing myself. If you wait in the hall, I’ll be out directly.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said the man, and left a bow.
Quare rubbed himself dry, his thoughts racing. If anyone had told him that he would one day converse with a dragon, he would have called that person a lunatic, yet he did not for a second doubt what had just occurred. The experience had left him drained in every way. His hands trembled, and his legs felt boneless as he stumbled to a nearby chair and collapsed into it. The only illumination in the room was from burning candles; the windows had gone dark behind their curtains; it appeared that he had been in the bath for some hours, though it had not seemed longer than a few minutes.
The dragon – Tiamat – had said that the hunter had marked him. There was a small cut on his finger, where Master Magnus had jabbed him, spilling his blood, but he did not think that was the mark Tiamat had been referring to. No, the dragon had been speaking of a deeper marking , a connection binding him to the watch, and the watch to him.
It has tasted your blood and will tug at you no matter where it may be , the dragon had said. It will answer to you now, protect you … but do not imagine yourself its master .
He closed his eyes and tried to feel that connection. But, as with the link that Grimalkin had mentioned, he detected no tug, no hint of a presence pulling at him the way a lodestone might pull at a nail, or as the house had pulled at him when he’d stepped from the rooftop back into the Otherwhere. No, what he felt was weak. Empty. And afraid.
Whether you fight it or not, whether you believe it or not, you answer to me now .
And as if to prove that claim, Tiamat had demonstrated just how little Quare controlled his own body. What if, when the moment came – if it came – and he held the hunter in his hand, a similarly irresistible compulsion took hold of him, and, despite his intent, he called out to Tiamat, summoned the dragon to him and gave up the watch? He did not believe that the dragon intended to destroy so powerful a weapon. Nor was he at all convinced that the creature was not one of Doppler’s minions.
He was in over his head. That much was plain. Had been for some time now. But this was a whole different order of drowning. He was used to the idea that he could not trust anyone else. But now it seemed he could no longer trust himself. He had to tell Longinus. Explain that he could not accompany him back to the guild hall. It was too dangerous. Too risky. They could recover the watch only to lose it again, and everything with it.
He dressed and belted on his sword. The servant led him down to the same room in which he and Longinus had breakfasted that morning. As before, enough food for a feast had been laid out. There, too, his host was waiting.
‘Ah, Mr Quare,’ Longinus said as he was ushered into the room, which was ablaze with light from a chandelier that bristled with creamy white candles. ‘I trust you had a good rest?’
It certainly appeared that Longinus had. The man – who had been sitting at the table, a plate of roasted chicken and a glass of red wine before him – rose to greet Quare energetically. He was wearing a bright green robe de chambre with a red cap that stood up like the crest of a bird, and beneath the gown a ruffled white shirt, forest green breeches, and white stockings. The beauty mark that had been on his left cheek earlier in the day had migrated to the other side of his face.
‘Actually,’ Quare began … but got no further.
‘Capital,’ Longinus said. ‘Capital.’ He dismissed the servant with a gesture as he advanced to take Quare by the arm and guide him to a sideboard loaded with dishes of food: there were meats and pies, cheeses, soups, and pastries. ‘Refresh yourself, sir.’
‘I-I’m not hungry,’ Quare said.
‘Nevertheless, eat,’ Longinus directed. ‘You will be glad of it later, I assure you. We shall need all our strength.’ As he spoke, he prepared a plate of roast chicken for Quare.
Quare had no appetite; indeed, the sight of so much food, along with its attendant odours, was making him queasy. Yet even more unsettling was the fact that he had not succeeded in broaching the subject of the dragon. And not for lack of trying. From the point Longinus had dismissed the servant, leaving the two of them alone in the room, Quare had been attempting to tell his host about his monstrous visitor and what had passed between them. At first it had seemed that what prevented him was the difficulty of framing the event intelligibly, of finding the right words. But it soon became obvious that he could not speak of it at all. His will was not his own.
You answer to me now …
He clenched his fists at his sides, struggling to break free of the dragon’s influence, the geis laid upon him.
‘Are you well, Mr Quare?’ his host inquired with curiosity and concern.
I have just been visited by a dragon called Tiamat , he said … but only in his mind.
I am ill; I fear I cannot accompany you tonight , he tried to say … but again, the words remained unspoken.
‘I … did not get much rest,’ he forced out at last.
Longinus nodded and steered him back towards the table. ‘I was the same when I first began my career as a regulator. Too anxious to eat or sleep before a mission. But I learned better, and so will you.’ He set the plate upon the table and guided Quare to a seat, then returned to his own place, where he tucked into his meal with relish.
Quare watched glumly.
‘Wine?’ Longinus inquired, his mouth full.
Quare shook his head. If he could not speak openly about the dragon, or refuse the mission outright, perhaps he could accomplish both aims in a more oblique fashion. ‘Ever since I spoke with Grimalkin,’ he said, trying to hurry the words past whatever internal censor the dragon had set up in
his mind; and, indeed, the strategy seemed to work, for nothing impeded him now, ‘or, rather, the woman who went by that name, I have wondered about the business of three questions. Is that something you encountered in Märchen?’
‘I had remarked on that aspect of your tale as well,’ Longinus said and took a thoughtful sip of wine. ‘I confess I did not experience any such thing in my time there. It is most curious. She mentioned an ancient compact, did she not?’
‘Yes,’ Quare affirmed. And attempted again to evade the censor – again with success. ‘The Law of Threes.’
‘I have heard of no such law,’ Longinus said. He paused, then continued: ‘Yet it strikes me that the number three is ubiquitous in the world. In religion, we have the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and this threefold divinity is repeated in pagan systems as well: the three Fates, for instance. In natural science, Newton’s three laws of motion are paramount, and there are as well the three states of matter: gas, liquid, and solid. In alchemy, the Emerald Tablets of Toth at once elucidate and obfuscate the esoteric mysteries of that number. And in fairy tales there are three wishes – indeed, there is something very like a fairy tale about your encounter with this imposter. It may be that such old tales, passed on by word of mouth, preserve an ancient wisdom civilized man has long forgotten. They are ripe, I have often thought, for systematic scientific study, as opposed to the purely literary approach of Monsieur Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, and their imitators. Much might thereby be revealed. But as to the compact of which the imposter spoke, I must confess ignorance. Only, I do wonder at one thing.’
‘What is that?’
‘With whom was this compact entered into?’
‘Why, surely with us – that is, with human beings.’
‘Perhaps. Yet why should creatures of the Otherwhere deign to bargain with us? What could compel them to lower themselves so? Surely nothing in our power. Is it not more likely that the compact, though it may include us in its terms, is not really about us at all – that we are, as it were, incidental to it?’
‘But if not us, who is the other party?’
‘You have put your finger on it, Mr Quare. Until now, I have conceived of the struggle in binary terms, with Doppler and his risen angels on one side and the rebels whom Corinna sought to join on the other. But what if there is a third party in this war? Indeed, the Law of Threes, whatever it may be, would at least seem to imply the involvement of another power. And is that not the case in our earthly war, which, as we have both been told, mirrors the war in heaven? England and her allies fight against France and her proxies, but on the outside, waiting its opportunity, sits Russia.’
‘But who, then, would this third power be?’
‘That I do not know. But if my experiences in Märchen are any indication, Doppler, if he was ever a party to this compact, feels no need to comply with it now. That the false Grimalkin behaved otherwise with you suggests that the unknown third power remains a factor – that she, or, rather, whoever it is she represents, either the rebels or this third party itself, still consider themselves bound by the compact. More than that, I do not think we can infer. And even this much, frankly, seems speculative. Yet it would explain much.’
On this point, Quare could not agree. Rather than simplifying matters, it seemed to complicate them. Who – or what – was this mysterious third power? Had Tiamat been its representative? Grimalkin? Even more disturbing was the idea that now came to him: namely, that he had not, after all, managed to sneak his question past Tiamat’s internal guard or geis but, rather, had been compelled, not so much against his will as beneath his very notice, to ask it. If that were true, then Tiamat had encouraged these speculations – if speculations they were. For what if Longinus, whether he knew it or not, was also subject to a geis and was acting as Tiamat’s agent – or even Doppler’s? Perhaps in grafting the unnatural foot upon him, Immelman – Wachter, rather – had also grafted something less visible, a mechanism purely interior, which Longinus remained unaware of … even as he conformed in word and action, in thought itself, to whatever strictures that interior grafting imposed. Indeed, for all he knew, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Longinus could be as artificial in his whole person as he was in the matter of his foot. Yet if that were the case, and the man sitting opposite him at the table, eating with every appearance of an appetite, and seeming to savour every sip of wine, was not a being of flesh and blood but rather some kind of automaton – which seemed ridiculous, but not quite as ridiculous as he would have thought a few days or even hours ago – then how could he be sure of anyone else? The servants, for instance. Or Master Magnus, whose dead body he had never seen.
Or, for that matter, himself. For was he not still alive – at any rate, continuing to function – despite a wound that would have proved fatal to any living person? And now Quare recalled something else the dragon had told him. When he had asked how he could have survived such a mortal injury, Tiamat had replied, All men die. That is their nature, and the nature of all time-bound things .
He had interpreted this as a confirmation of his death – an indication that, as Longinus had suggested, it was only the mysterious blood-engendered power of the hunter that was keeping him alive. Yet now Quare realized that there was another interpretation. All men die – did that not imply, since he had not died, that he was not a man? That he was not, in the dragon’s suggestive phrase, ‘a time-bound thing’?
The notion shook Quare to his very core. A ball rolling down a slope was subject to absolute laws whose operation continued in effect regardless of whether or not the ball had a destination in mind, knew that it was rolling, or even conceived of itself as a ball: Newton’s law of threes! Wasn’t he, too, in motion, subject to the same or similar laws? He could no more halt his descent than could the ball, of its own accord, decide to stop rolling downhill or reverse its course and roll back up the slope.
This was a disheartening realization, to be sure, as if he were a pendulum in a clock. Yet it was also liberating. Quare felt a kind of peace settle over him, a despairing yet nonetheless welcome numbness as soothing to his distressed mind as it was to his weary body and anguished heart. He need not fight, need not worry, need do nothing at all. Far from shameful, this surrender seemed like the beginning of a hard-earned wisdom. It was, he realized, an embrace of a sort of faith … though one that rejected reason as much as it did religion. This was a new faith, a faith without hope of redemption or resurrection, yet without fear of damnation, too. It was a clockwork kind of faith.
Longinus, meanwhile, glanced at one of his assortment of pocket watches and declared that it was time to get started.
‘So, at least one of your timepieces keeps the correct hour,’ Quare observed.
‘Only one,’ Longinus answered with the ghost of a smile as he pushed his chair back from the table and stood. ‘And of course no hour can be in and of itself correct, but merely in greater or lesser accord with a measurement arbitrarily fixed and agreed to by others. As the Bard wrote, “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come – the readiness is all.”’
Longinus did not lead him out of the room but instead to a wall where, with a touch to the moulding, he caused a hidden door to spring open, revealing a small candlelit chamber that Quare recognized at once as a stair-master.
He entered at Longinus’s invitation. ‘Will this take us back to the guild hall?’
Longinus stepped in behind him, closed the door, and tugged at the bell pull. The chamber gave a shudder and began to glide sideways. ‘The mechanism does not extend so far as that,’ Longinus said. ‘Though Magnus spoke of one day establishing a network of stair-masters linking disparate parts of the city. Imagine the ease and comfort of travelling from one end of London to the other without ever setting foot upon a crowded, filthy street!’
‘But where would this network run?’
‘Why, below the streets, of course, in rooms much l
arger than this one – big enough to accommodate dozens or even hundreds of people. Magnus even had a name for this interior network of his: the internet.’ As Longinus spoke, the stair-master shifted course from the horizontal to the vertical, dropping smoothly but with a speed that left Quare’s stomach aflutter. ‘Alas,’ his host continued without missing a beat, ‘I doubt we shall see the internet implemented now – not without the force of Magnus’s genius and personality behind it. Such a project could only be brought to fruition by the government – no private fortune, even one so large as mine, could accomplish it. I covered the costs of installing the system in the guild hall, and here, in my own home, but nowhere else. Perhaps some day Magnus’s dream will be realized, but I dare say not for many years yet, until another such outsized intellect emerges.’
Quare’s grieving was twofold. First, for the death of the man who had been friend and mentor, albeit distant and stern, and second for loss of a mind whose quicksilver workings he had observed with awe and envy. Though he had, on occasion, mocked to himself the impracticality or sheer eccentricity of Magnus’s ideas, he had far more often found himself inspired by their example to greater efforts of his own. It was Magnus who had first recognized his potential and encouraged it, Magnus who had pulled him from obscurity and brought him to London, providing him with the opportunity to better himself and advance his position in the guild and the wider world. Yet it was also Magnus who had set him in pursuit of the hunter, who had pricked his finger and used his blood to bring the watch to life, or a semblance of life, who had, in short, embarked him down the perilous road whose twists and turns had brought him to this place, this moment. Could he not thereby infer that Magnus, too, had been either an active agent of some greater power or, like himself, its helpless tool? He shrugged the question aside. What did it matter now?
The Emperor of all Things Page 41
