The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

After he was gone, Elizabeth couldn’t get back to sleep. The coffee had made her heart race. Their exchange had made it worse. She prowled the room, pacing at first, then searching her mother’s furniture again, as if each piece might contain a secret that could make the world right.

  That was what they were supposed to do, mothers: make things right. The woman she remembered holding her as a small child had filled that role. Warmth and food and soothing words, the soft pad of a thumb wiping away tears. Full lips placed gently to kiss away the sting of every bruise and scrape. Their mother had been the soother of hurts, the dispeller of arguments. How many times had they been enfolded together in that one embrace?

  Seeing her lost brother had shaken free memories of their shared childhood. At first the images had been indistinct. But with every day they were coming at her brighter and sharper. Some she could not have touched for many years. Now they flowed unbidden. In her mind, she caught a glimpse of rose-printed cotton and knew it was a blouse her mother used to wear.

  “Never fight each other,” their mother had said. “It must be us together. Always. Together we are strong.”

  Elizabeth could almost remember the scent of her. But when she tried to recall it, all she got was that sense of warmth and the softness of her mother’s chest.

  She pulled out the drawers of the writing desk, stacked them on the ground, lay down to reach inside the cavity, knocking on panels. She turned chairs and caskets upside down. It was a kind of madness. She had searched every part of the room already. Solitude and powerlessness had been gnawing at her for days. Her only agency had been to talk with a man who looked so like her that they might be mistaken, yet who thought so differently.

  And to creep out at night.

  The thoughts were tumbling in her head. She’d asked him if he’d seen their mother die. There’d been something wrong in the way he’d answered. A lack of sincerity. Then the second time she’d asked, he’d brushed the question away.

  She had reached the tool bench, now, pulling every chisel and saw from its slot. Every setsquare, ruler and pencil. She wasn’t even trying to hide the evidence of her search. Let him know. The chaos of the room would convey her feelings better than any words.

  She turned over the stack of timber, spilled bolts of canvas, threw paint brushes onto the floor. She unspooled rope from a drum, casting it haphazardly behind her, hardly noticing the noise she’d been making.

  And then to find herself standing in the midst of her own chaos, panting and sweating despite the cold air. And crying. For a long time, she stared at the destruction before stooping to right a work stool. She gathered the chisels and slotted them back, each into its place. Then, turn by turn she coiled the rope. But this, she did not replace.

  CHAPTER 28

  Even the hands of a king may be bound by law. If a crime is not worthy of death, a king cannot order an execution without being thought a tyrant. Thus the need for prisons, which can sometimes do the job of an executioner.

  On this second midnight visit, the guard was awake and standing in the corridor, lamp in hand, as if he’d been waiting for her. Or, rather, for Edwin. On seeing his light, Elizabeth opened her stride into that masculine gait and occupied the centre of the passageway with all the entitlement that she could muster.

  This time, he had the key ready, as if he’d been expecting her, and the deference had gone from his gaze. She was glad she didn’t need to speak. The click of the lock turning echoed around the stones.

  The wind hit her face as he opened the door: the scent of winter in the air. On stepping out, she looked up at the battlements. In such darkness, she couldn’t make out the window of the Room of Cabinets. The castle’s shadow would never let the moonlight touch that desolate place, she thought. Nor the sun. How cold it must be. How many prisoners survived a winter in one of those prison shacks?

  Letting the chain slip through her fingers she stepped along the walkway, feeling for the planks with her feet. The moon was lighting the other side of the Colombia River Valley, turning the hills to silver. The beauty of it felt sharp as a knife.

  “Mary? Mary Brackenstow?”

  “Did you think I might have run away?” The voice from below had a crackle to it that had not been there the previous day. As if the prisoner was suffering from a sore throat.

  “You might have been asleep.”

  “Daytime is for sleeping. If I slept at night… Well, I’d be afraid there might be no waking to follow.”

  “So you do want to live?”

  “I do.”

  “But not enough to lie to the king? You just have to say a few words. Tell him you believe in his magic. Tell him he’ll be victorious.”

  “If you’ve nothing more to offer, you may as well go back into the warm.”

  “I’ve something,” Elizabeth said.

  Feeling inside the coat, she brought out a chicken leg, wrapped in paper. She’d remembered to wear gloves this time. Kneeling, she slipped her arm between the planks of the walkway. It seemed impossible that Mary could have seen what she was doing, so deep were the shadows, yet the shingles slid and she felt a hand taking the roasted meat.

  Elizabeth sat with her back against the rock wall, listening for any sound that might suggest it was being eaten. All she could hear was the wind. At last she said: “What makes the lie impossible to say?”

  “The truth’s too important.”

  “Why?”

  “The world needs peace. We can’t build that by lying.”

  “Is building peace your job?”

  “Yes.”

  Elizabeth could hear no doubt in Mary’s voice. Perhaps this was the madness that her brother had spoken of. He must have had just such a conversation. But who is the greater fool, the madwoman or the ones who go to argue with her?

  “If you die of cold out here, you’ll be leaving your job unfinished.”

  “Peace will come. Killing me won’t stop it. Yet while I’m here, it’s my job.”

  “How do you claim to know the future?”

  There was a longer pause before Mary answered. “Order is more powerful than disorder. Peace is more powerful than war. It will gather what forces it needs: me, you perhaps, others. It will surely come.”

  “Not me.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  “Sure enough. I don’t believe what you’re saying. It takes fifteen years to raise a child. Twenty years. It’s never done. But I’ve seen hundreds killed. I’ve seen bodies maimed. Children and old men. A single bomb can do that. So much order destroyed in an instant.”

  The image of severed limbs lying on the smoking ground flashed in her mind again, bright and vivid as the day it happened. She breathed deeply trying to banish the nausea that followed.

  “I’m sorry,” Mary said.

  “Don’t be sorry for me.”

  “But I am. No one should see such things. I can understand why believing is difficult for you. But think of this – I’ve lived in the Gas-Lit Empire. I was born there. When I first came to the wilds, that’s all I found. Savagery and lawlessness. But all it takes is one small pocket of order for peace to take root. Yes, there are battles. And there are bombs. But in fifty years, in one hundred years, progress will always push forwards. Order will be established. Isn’t that what history teaches us? Families become tribes. Tribes create cities. Cities become nations. Nations group together. And one day – it will come – the world will be united.”

  “You believe this?”

  “I do.”

  “Then go to the king and tell him. This is the same thing that he believes. He wants to make the whole world into his kingdom. At peace.”

  In the cell below, suspended above that sheer drop, Mary laughed. It was an incongruous sound, joyful as a bubbling stream. Then she coughed, with a crackle that sounded bad. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful. But the king’s dream is just the same as the dream of every other king. None of them can achieve it. And even if such an empi
re could be built, it would just as quickly tear itself apart.”

  “You contradict yourself,” Elizabeth said. “A moment ago you told me it was inevitable and now you say the opposite.”

  “They are different things. The order that I am talking about will grow from the ground upwards. It will happen because people believe it will happen.”

  “Then it will not happen. People do not believe.”

  “I do. Others will. You cannot lock up an idea.”

  “What others? Name one of them.”

  “The king. He already believes. Otherwise why would he be so afraid of me that I have to be kept away from all other people, suspended over this chasm? Could I be so dangerous if what I’m saying were impossible? And I think you believe it too.”

  “I’ve told you I don’t. I can’t. Not after what I’ve seen.”

  “But you’d like to. Tell me this, do you believe in anything?”

  “Loyalty,” Elizabeth said.

  “To who?”

  “My friends.”

  “Do you believe that you can protect your friends and help them?”

  “Yes!”

  “Even though they might fall ill, or be attacked, or taken prisoner, or any one of a thousand things that you can’t do anything to stop?”

  “I know it’s not logical,” Elizabeth said. “But I have to think that I can protect them. Otherwise I’d just give up. And that would be the worse for them and for me.”

  “Then we’re not so different. It’s believing that makes us strong. It gives us a chance to make it happen. The only difference between us is that you’ve drawn the circle around yourself and your friends. But I’ve drawn it around the whole world.”

  “There’s another difference. You’re locked in a cell down there. I’m walking free.”

  “But which of us will make the greatest change?” Mary Brackenstow asked.

  “You can’t protect the whole world,” Elizabeth said.

  “If you really believed that, you’d be asleep in a warm bed. But here you are, come with gifts.”

  “I was trying to be kind.”

  “Well, thank you for that, magician. How many times is it you’ve come to me, asking these same questions?”

  Elizabeth got to her feet, with a queasy sense that she might have given away too much. “Why do you ask?”

  “If I had no power, you wouldn’t keep coming back. It’s eight times, by the way, if you’d lost count.”

  “I won’t be coming again,” Elizabeth said.

  She felt her way back along the planks, her hand slipping over the chain links. On the way out, the guard nodded, as if to say that he would see her again on the following night. She told herself that he was wrong. Mary Brackenstow’s dreams made no sense. She might as well have tied two sticks together with twine and called it a palace. Yet somehow a splinter of those dreams had caught under Elizabeth’s skin.

  The corridors were silent. Once out of sight of the guard, she turned down the wick of the lamp and closed the shutter, picking her way through the deepest of the shadows, one hand trailing the stones of the wall. She was becoming a ghost, her real self invisible even when she was seen.

  Perhaps it was to prove to herself that she had the power of choice, or perhaps to drive Mary’s words from her mind, but she took the stairs down to the courtyard, then followed the memory of the map her brother had sketched, entered the buildings again, climbed to the corridor in which Janus had his room. His door would be the third from the turn. She stood in shadow, staring at it. The man was Edwin’s enemy. But also the enemy of his plans to overthrow the Gas-Lit Empire. She listened, trying to hear something beyond the distant moan of the wind over the battlements. A man breathing, perhaps.

  There was nothing.

  At the door of the Room of Cabinets she un-shuttered her lantern and clicked over the tumblers. But as soon as the door opened a crack, she knew something was wrong. A bar of light shone out.

  “Where were you?” Edwin asked. He seemed almost frightened.

  “Walking,” she said. And then, angry with herself for feeling so guilty, “Why are you here?”

  “It’s my life you’re risking as well!”

  “You want to be safe from me?”

  “I want us both to be safe!”

  “Then show me how to get out of the castle. I’ll walk back to the Gas-Lit Empire. You can be safe from me!” She knew he was right. But that just made her angrier. With herself. With him.

  “I don’t want you to go,” he said.

  “I was alone all day. I can’t live like this. I have to do something.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I talked to your prisoner. What of it?”

  “She’s mad, Elizabeth.”

  “You talked to her! How many times was that?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It was six times!”

  They were staring each other down.

  “What are we doing?” he asked.

  The fatigue hit Elizabeth as her anger drained away. She unclenched her fists and rubbed her face. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Edwin sat himself on the floor, back resting against the wall. He seemed just as spent.

  Elizabeth stepped to her bed roll and lay down, looking up at the ceiling. “I know I’ve been stupid.”

  “It’s not your fault. I’d be the same if I were locked in here.”

  “Can you talk to me about the embassy? Consult with me. Give me something to think about that’s outside this room.”

  So he did, describing the people to her again, the things they’d said, the way they’d acted, the way he thought of Brandt and Red and Gilad.

  A memory was tickling somewhere at the back of her mind.

  “Why are you frowning?” her brother asked.

  “I’m trying to think where I heard that name – Gilad.” Then it came to her. She sat up, clutching her knees. “I think he’s the grandson of Patron Calvary – as was. But now, grandson to the king of Newfoundland.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The king had fallen into a foul mood and brooded through breakfast, cutting at his meat as if it were the flesh of a Newfie. Timon pronounced himself ready to challenge Brandt to single combat. For each insult, he would leave a separate scar. There had been nineteen of those, he said, as though counting were something he ever did. Janus was the mathematician, always keeping track, tallying deaths and bushels of grain with equal concern.

  “I will mark him!” Timon growled again. No one but Janus was listening. “I’ll send them back knowing the edge of my sword.”

  “What was the meaning of yesterday’s performance?” the king asked. “We invite these people to our hall so they can insult us?”

  “It won’t happen again, sire,” Edwin replied.

  “It cannot.”

  “Their culture is different.”

  “So different that we can never trust them.”

  “Trust may come.”

  “How?”

  “Through actions. Not words. Yet words will be the start of it.”

  “I won’t have them in my hall,” the king growled. “Not again.”

  “You’re wise, sire.”

  “Then you agree we send them back?”

  “Let them stay a few days more. Command me to talk with them. In private. If an agreement is possible, I’ll find it. If not, at least we’ll know it for sure.”

  “I don’t like it.” This the king said in a lowered voice, leaning in closer.

  “You won’t need to talk with them,” Edwin whispered back. “Not unless they see reason. And then it would be in good spirits – to celebrate.”

  “What might you say to them that could make a difference?”

  “If I could show them the Mark Three, they’d come to understand the power we’re offering. It could be the very thing to sway them.”

  The king chewed, his frown deep. “Shall we hear what your friend says on the matter? Mr Janus?”

&nb
sp; “Sire?”

  On the opposite side of the table, Janus turned his soft, attentive face towards the king, as if becoming aware of the conversation for the first time. Edwin’s stomach clenched.

  “My magician would give our guests a demonstration of the Mark Three. What do you say?”

  “It would be… unwise.”

  “Might it not win them over?”

  “Could anything do that? You are magnanimous, sire. But after their insults yesterday, such an act would be seen as weak. As if you were begging. They would leave with knowledge of our weapons. They would surely make copies.”

  The king turned back to Edwin. “His words make sense.”

  “They couldn’t copy from merely looking.”

  “Perhaps,” Janus said. “And yet how many times have you told us of their skill in arms?”

  Edwin could feel the argument slipping from him. “To use a sword isn’t the same skill as to design a gun.”

  But the king’s frown had changed from concentration to fatigue. He was done with them. “You will not show them the Mark Three,” he sighed. “Is that clear?”

  Edwin bowed, defeated.

  “Nor the other guns,” Janus cut in. “And I must be there with him when he negotiates.”

  Edwin’s heart tripped. His rival was overreaching again. “The king may wish me to go alone…” he said.

  “You must be watched.”

  “Enough, Mr Janus!” The king’s patience snapped. He pushed his plate away and stood. “My magician will talk with them alone.” Then he turned to wag his finger at Edwin. “But you will not show them my arsenal. And you will not claim to speak with my authority. Remember what happened to your mother!”

  The men of the embassy had gathered in Brandt’s apartment, most standing, arms folded. Their breakfast plates lay stacked on the table. Edwin knocked on the open door and waited, only stepping across the threshold when Brandt himself had beckoned.

  “Have you brought more food?”

  Edwin shook his head.

  “Then you’re here to beg on behalf of your king?”

  “No.”

  “Is it a conjuring trick you want to show us?”

  “Would that help?”