“Fine. Fine.” Qurion calmed, as if he were trying to rein back his anger. But then something snapped inside him. “I’ll be me, you be you. You miserable fuck. Just remember, when you’re wining and dining it up with the Hag, I got there first.”
Guis eyebrows went up.
“That’s right. At your sister’s wedding during the Revelry. I assume that makes that particular instance alright by you, being by custom and all? Yes? Oh good. Now, I was having fun. I won’t be seeing you around.” Qurion turned around and pushed his way back through the door.
“Wait!” called Guis but Qurion had already gone.
“Surely, master is the king of contrition,” said the box in Guis’s hands.
“Shut the fuck up Tyn.”
Guis stopped by a gin shop for a half pint of rough liquor on the way back. He wasn’t sure who he was most angry with. He came to the conclusion that whether it was himself or Qurion, both of them were arses. He found this hilarious for a while. Then fell into a depression where he fulminated on his own inadequacy, and on Qurion’s arrogance so much that the dangers posed by his broken mind were quite forgotten for one night. When he barged out of the gin shop and walked home, he did so without treading on the cobble cracks or scratching at the walls with his fingernails.
He lit a spirit lamp when he returned. He cast off his hat and was none too gentle with Tyn’s box when he set it down.
There were two more letters on the table by Rel’s. One was from the Hag. He drunkenly reread it, then screwed it up and tossed it onto the last embers of the fire. It flared up, and went to ash. He was angry with her for being what she was, angry with himself for not seeing past it. The persona he affected was not supposed to care about these things, but he did.
The last letter was from his mother. It had arrived yesterday, and he had avoided opening it. Now, slumped into the chair by the desk, he stared at it. The seal was in pale cream wax, elegant in design. Fine Tyn work.
He picked the letter up. He tapped it against his lips four times. The paper smelled of his mother’s perfume. He ran the paper under his fingernails sixteen times. He growled in irritation at this semi-conscious ritual, and threw it back onto the desk. Fear bloomed in him, urging him to run the paper round and round his hands again.
“Mother,” he said. It hit him then how drunk he was. He decided to read it. The seal cracked easily.
Dear Guis, it read. It is several months since you last paid a visit to me. I hear from your brothers that you are shortly to depart for Stoncastrum again. I would dearly like to see you. Please come at seven of the clock, Martday evening. I shall be in my garden. I will not tell your father, if that makes it any easier for you.
It was signed your loving mother in a series of loops. They spoke of a confidence she did not have.
He groaned and kneaded at his frown with the heel of one hand. Martday was tomorrow.
“Mother, mother, mother,” he said.
He sat there woozily for some time. He kept the fear of the Darkling at the back of his mind, behind the bars of this conundrum: To go or not to go?
He reached no decision. Ephemeral fears and vile fancies dogged his thoughts, but the Darkling did not come.
He roused himself and fell into bed as the first rays of the sun sparked hard, frosty highlights from the city rooftops.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Moorwena Kressinda
GUIS REPLIED TO the invitation first thing in the morning before his trepidation turned to procrastination, and thence to implicit refusal. Come the afternoon, he sent for a public dog coach of the better sort to meet him at the Parade near the Grand Illia hotel. The driver raised his eyebrows at Guis’s shabby dress. They cranked up a fraction higher when Guis told him he was bound for the Spires.
Feelings of inadequacy threatened to overwhelm him as the dog coach rattled up from the Var-side city centre into the Spires. The richest part of town was built on three ridges of soft sandstone that separated Karsa’s double shallow valleys. The whole area was riddled with caves. The cliffs of Karsa were of hard black rock, but their tops were covered in thick layers of soft clay broken through by the stone of the Spires. The lesser crags that had characterised the area in the time of King Brannon had gone elsewhere in the city, quarried and built over as the metropolis swelled. But nowhere was the soft rock more accessible than at the Spires, and nowhere did it go so deep. The very first Karsans had made their homes there, barbarian people who had dug out their dwellings before the coming of the first king.
Over time the caves had been lost in the cellars of the vast mansions raised on the Spires. But from time to time a cave might be uncovered to reveal the mundane evidence of past ages. The province of a minor branch of archaeology, these finds rarely drew attention. Bones spoons that crumbled to dust at a touch, or fragments of rough fabrics and patches of rust where iron tools might once have been laid down to rest for the final time seemed so paltry compared to the inexplicable machines of the greater eras.
There was a split among the older families as to how these finds were celebrated. Some took each artefact carefully from its resting place and displayed it as proof of long family histories. Others preferred not to dwell on these relics of the rude past. Those who rubbed shoulders with princes and other potentates took unkindly to reminders of their humble beginnings. Living in caves was the habit of animals and Wild Tyn, not cultured men.
However, as the older families had been displaced by the newer, the former opinion was growing in popularity. To an impoverished lord whose social position was under threat, the bone spoon of an unremembered ancestor took on far more importance than any number of gold ones.
Guis’s family was the newer sort of aristocracy, Gelbion Kressind buying the manse from a bankrupt baronet some thirty years back. If he had found such a cave on their property, no doubt he would have exhibited whatever was within gleefully, to show how humble the old families of Karsa City were in the beginning. His argument, often and vehemently aired, was that there was nothing special about the old money families. They had come from nothing, so why should they sneer at those newer to high rank who had come from nothing in their turn? Bone spoons, he was fond of saying, cut both ways.
The roads into the Spires split and wound round each rock like ferns uncurling in spring. The area wore its modern wealth openly. The soft stone lent itself equally to fantastical carving as it did to the construction of simple caves, and so the manses of the rich were a collection of glorious sculptures. The older were worn by the rain, but those of more recent vintage were lacquered with chemically activated resins. These gleamed as if perpetually wet. Another divider between the old and the new. Industrials, Wetrocks—Guis’s kind had many derogatory names among the older aristocracy of Karsa.
The dog coach turned off the main road, rattling under glimmer lamps wrought from silvered steel, multiple lights hanging as fruits from branches clashing in the wind. Hard granite hewn from the sea cliffs surfaced the roads, dark capillaries in the pale flesh of the spires. The coach took another turn, then another, whirling past a false castle upon whose peak crouched a roaring gorgon of stone. Guis had never liked it. Not so much for the design, which was vulgar by any standard of taste, but mostly for its function as a landmark that told him he was nearly home.
They went around a tight bend. The road climbed. All of the Var-side was below him, covered in a soupy smog. The moons shone from the tops of the cloud. The Spires were fanciful floatstone ships on a vapour sea. The image brought on a mild fit of vertigo. Guis turned to watch the rock wall blur past on the other side of the coach.
The wall gave out. Kressind Manse reared up suddenly in the dark. No fanciful carvings there. A tall house, stout as a tower, lacking even the modest decoration of the Maceriyan revivalist style. Small windows alive with yellow candleflame and blue glimmerlight, it appeared watchful rather than welcoming. Guis’s stomach lurched at the sight of it. Many of the mansions here had appurtenances that hearkened to t
he fortresses of the Long Dark Woe, but Kressind Manse actually looked like one. A defensive structure in the heart of the wealthiest city district. It spoke volumes as to Gelbion Kressind’s state of mind that he had chosen it as his home.
The coach entered a cut below the manse, a worn stone arch curved over the road, blocking out the house.
Guis banged upon the roof of the cabin.
“Stop here!” he shouted.
“Goodfellow?” said the driver. The dogs barked as he reined them in. The coach stopped with a lurch.
“I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
“As the goodfellow requests.”
Guis paid the man. “Leave swiftly.”
The driver cracked his reins. “Hup! Hup! Hup!” he hollered. The dogs bayed, went up the road, and came about. Guis drew himself into the side of the road. He waited until the coach had gone. Silence fell. A delivery wagon rolled by on the main street, the giant dogs harnessed to it with their heads down. Guis let it go. There were few people about. A typical weekday night in autumn.
Close by the arch, a natural crevice had been squared off to make a shallow alleyway. The stone had been carved to look as if it were made of blocks, but hints at its natural form persisted in unexpected undulations, some deep enough to preserve the stone’s original texture.
Dead leaves and street trash clogged the gutters. Guis looked over his shoulder. He held out his hand to a shadow in the wall, gritted his teeth and concentrated. The leaves blew around his feet, although the night was still.
“Master! Master! Do not be foolish!” hissed Tyn in his ear.
Guis did not listen. He was damned if he was going in the front door. He stared at the stone wall, and made himself see it as a door. This was the hardest for him, fighting off the slippery images that attempted to replace what he wanted to see, trying to make themselves real rather what he wanted made real.
But this simple act of magic he could manage without killing anyone.
His fingers crackled with painful energy. A long spark leapt from his hand. The tip of it crawled up and down the rock in a sinister semblance of life. It found what it sought, and straightened. Light played through the stone, glowing from within. The spark winked out.
Guis breathed raggedly, supporting himself on the wall. A tightness at the back of his head told him the Darkling was awake, and aware of him. Tyn muttered his cantrips in his ear.
Before them was a door, no bigger than waist high, large enough for a Greater Tyn. He pushed at the ancient grey wood. It swung open noiselessly. He crawled through and shut it behind him.
The door faded away into stone again.
Beyond the door was a low dark corridor that forced him to hunch. As he moved forward his shoulders brushed a shower of sharp-scented sand from the friable stone into his hair.
“No more magic! No more magic to light the way,” pleaded Tyn. “Please, please master!”
Guis fumbled in his pocket for a box of matches and a candle stub.
“Shut up!” said Guis. “I’m not a complete idiot.” He lit the candle, revealing rough stone walls that danced with shadow. Tyn whimpered at the dark. Guis paid him no heed. He was in no mood for the Darkling today, and that gave him strength to deal with it.
He went upwards, through tunnels that smelled faintly of broken drains. His feet found treacherous steps that led past bricked up doors of odd and various size. An iron grille barred the way at the top of the steps. He pulled out a key, hoping his father had not discovered his secret way. The key stuck in the gritty mechanism and he swore. He twisted hard, the metal digging into his fingers. Suddenly it turned, and he opened the gate with a ghostly squeal. Guis blew out his candle and waited with his breath held. No one came.
He lit his candle again, and passed into the cellars of Kressind Manse. He stole up stairs that led to a small door in the corner of the gardens. There was no way to check who was on the other side of this, and so he stepped out without pause. Better that than stop, dither, and flee.
Chill night air, frost on the lawns, silence. He had arrived without notice.
Guis padded through cold grass toward a walled section of the gardens. A faint glow shone through a new conservatory built onto a base of ancient brick.
One final door, and he was in his mother’s Moonflower garden.
The light of the flowers themselves lit the space, a square ten yards by ten yards. Paths paved with brick ran around the sides and crossed at the centre of the room. In the four smaller squares formed by the paths were large lead tubs, full of imported soil. These held the Moonflower plants, lambent as the White Moon, swaying hypnotically in their beds.
Footsteps. Guis watched from the shadows as his mother went about her garden. As she passed the plants the Moonflowers came alive, lifting up from their branches to fly across the narrow path, petal wings twirling. They sought out fresh branches, docking daintily. They crept on thread roots to positions agreeable to them, then pierced the thin bark of their hosts with the hollow thorns at the base of their stalks. Moorwena Kressinda trailed her fingers across the plants. She hummed a song she had sung Guis and his siblings as children before she had retreated from them. Luminous scales powdered her hands. The Moonflower plants shuddered. Moorwena encouraged them to fly with shooing motions, and soon the entire garden danced. She looked at peace, but she was not. Another lie, another secret. She wore long sleeves to cover the marks on her arms.
He felt sympathy and love for her. It was ruined as always by the thoughts that plagued him; these of forbidden sexual congress and matricide. These were the worst. He lived in terror that his body would respond. If it did, what would that make him?
Beneath his hair, Tyn stirred.
His mother frowned at a poor match between plants. She retrieved secateurs from her bench and returned.
A flower shrieked as she cut its stem. Thick amber sap spurted from its stalk. The wings shivered, locking position. His mother held the bloom up to her face and sniffed it.
“I know you are there, Guis,” she said. “The flowers know.”
Guis stepped out onto the path. The garden was awash with the chalky light of the blooms. It made Moorwena look like a ghost.
“That’s better.” She set the flower on a bench and went to Guis. She reached for his face with her hands dusted with flower scales and pollen. Guis flinched. She let one drop, let the other continue its course to rest upon his cheek.
“Thank you for coming Guis,” she said.
“Mother,” he said. “What do you want?”
“To see you of course!” she said. There was a tiredness inherent to everything she did or said. She had been beautiful once. She still was at first glance, before her insubstantiality became apparent. She was used up, wrung out by his father’s fury and his illness. If Guis hadn’t hated him before, he would have hated him for that alone. “That is why you came, to see me?”
Guis nodded. He dare not speak. He could not trust his thoughts.
“Then we are both happy. Come and sit with me for a while.”
“Father?”
“He is in his study. He has no idea you are here.” She took his hand and drew him after her to a bench. They sat.
She breathed out in contentment, and examined him. “How are things with my eldest son?”
“They go well.”
She looked at his clothes, the patching and holes. “Are you sure?”
“I am fine! My plays are performing well.” A half-truth. They were well received, they were not paying as well as he hoped. “This latest run in Stoncastrum should seal my fortunes for the next year or so.”
She sighed and looked at her hands in her lap.
“I wish you would not occupy yourself with something as tawdry as the theatre.”
“It is my choice, mother.”
“Matters would be helped considerably if you were to obey your father’s wishes.”
Guis suppressed a shudder. The backs of his legs tightened. “Whose matter
s? I will not subject myself to the attentions of the magisters. They can do nothing for me. We were told by the metaphysic and physic that the best I could hope for was a dulling of my wit. At worst, I would be rendered an imbecile. As much of an embarrassment to father as I am, I am sure he would not wish an idiot for an heir.”
“Don’t talk like that, Guis. He only wants what is best for you.”
“He wants what is best for himself,” said Guis. “He wants a magister who will carry his name forward. A magister, who would bend his talents to increasing the family fortune.”
“Many magisters do serve their families so.”
“And many do not, mother! Father never did have much imagination. Who would want to involve themselves with the mundanities of business when he could tame dracons or raise the very fires of the Earth?”
“You are talking of the old mages, not of reality.”
“The old mages are real, mother.”
“There is the matter of your safety.”
“Is there?” said Guis. “When I hurt Aarin, I told father first. I told him of the things that torture me, but he did not hear. I will not lie and say that there was no concern or fear on his face, but I will also not say that excitement and calculation did not outweigh his concern. I cannot be a magister or a mage, mother. My mind is broken. This gift I have is a curse.” Bitterness crept into his voice. She never noticed anything, not truly.
“You are too much like me,” she said softly.
“Perhaps. If I attempted to master my talent, I would become a monster,” he said, rising from the seat. “I was hoping we would not have this conversation. I should go.”
She looked up at him, her eyes as big as the moon her flowers were named for. “You should consider it, please. For me.”
“I have considered it. Over and over again.” Guis stepped in and kissed his mother’s forehead. “I will not do it. I am managing fine as I am.”
“For how long?” she said. “I do not wish to lose you. I cannot lose another.”
There, thought Guis. There it is. Six children ignored for one dead. She could not even bring herself to attend his sister’s wedding, but lingered here in her garden. She was broken by the loss of her child and the sickness of her husband. Broken, like him. But his sympathy for her was swallowed by his anger. No matter what afflicted her, he had needed her and she was not there for him. He fought his demons alone, and he was losing.
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