“Mr. Ned,” I said in amazement, watching the crowd scatter with much good-natured laughing and chatter, “you have a remarkable voice.”
“Och, I was town crier in Sowter’s Circle for many a year till I retired, and I still win the barony hollering contests, let me tell you.”
I started sneezing, and barely managed to form the words to thank them again before being firmly pointed inside. There I discovered that my sneezing was not only due to the magic surely surrounding Miss Shipston, but also to the much more ordinary cause of multiple immersions in cold water.
The innwife—from a sign above the parlour bar I saw that the innkeepers were the Callouns—was nowhere to be seen, but Mr. Calloun came out immediately. “My word,” he said, “you’d think my wife had never seen a woman in trousers before, she was that taken by the lady, and clear forgot that you’d be chilled through from your ducking as well. Now then, Mr. Greenwing, you have this pot of wine, and take it with you to the back room where the fire’s good and hot, and get yourself out of your wet clothes while I send the girl for a change.”
***
Dry, warm, and in clothes that were—well, dry and warm, and never once fashionable in all their years of sturdy existence—I made my way back into the front parlour to find Violet coming down in a thick woollen dress, well cinched in at her waist with a sash, that had been modelled on a style once fashionable, in the last years before the Fall. It was a washy blue that looked just fine with her complexion. She pirouetted on seeing me, short corkscrew curls bouncing about her cheeks. “Well, Mr. Greenwing?”
“Well, Miss Redshank,” I said, with as courtly a bow as I could invent—and I did take the hand she’d extended for balance and give it a kiss, much to the snickering amusement of the youth who’d been sent as a runner.
Then I dropped her hand, remembering. Her face fell.
“Gents f’r you,” the boy said laconically, and took himself off at a cry of “Nedling!” from what I took to be the kitchen. Violet and I went back outside to where Mrs. Etaris, Mr. Dart, and Mr. Shipston were now standing with the Callouns and the fishermen. Miss Shipston had not yet, it appeared, been willing to leave her hiding place.
Mrs. Etaris turned. “Mr. Greenwing, Miss Redshank, I am very glad to see you well. Now—”
“Jemis, you idiot!” interrupted Mr. Dart, hitting me on the shoulder. “What made you run into a house on fire?”
“There was someone inside,” Violet said. “What would you have us do, abandon her?”
“Not kill yourselves! And then you jumped in a flooding river! Where you might easily have drowned!”
I remembered abruptly that Mr. Dart’s mother had drowned during the Interim, and I forestalled Violet’s next retort by saying, “You’re right, it was a bit stupid. Although, we did have a mermaid with us by the time we got into the river.”
“A … mermaid?” said Mr. Dart, and we all turned to the water.
Mr. Shipston suddenly teetered, and Mr. Clegger helped him sit down on the bench that ran along the edge of the dock for the convenience of boaters. I looked at Mrs. Etaris, who was frowning at the river.
Violet caught my eye as I looked around helplessly. “Miss Shipston?” she called. “Will you come out to talk to us?”
There was a moment’s silence. Mrs. Calloun shook her head briskly and said to her husband, “I should go in and see to the meat. You bring them in for hot wine afterwards!” She frowned at me. “Especially the two young’uns who went in.”
“I’m not that young,” I said, but not very loudly, so only Mrs. Etaris, who was standing close, heard; she smiled but didn’t say anything, for as Mrs. Calloun stumped up the stairs to the inn, the vines parted and the sleek damp head of Miranda Shipston peeked out at us.
Chapter Eighteen
“I am an abomination.”
She said it plainly, as a fact, as something she had mostly come to terms with. Mr. Shipston moved his head, bringing his neckerchief up to cover his mouth. He looked old, tired, worried, but there was an edge of relief to his bearing. Not having to hide, I thought. His safe house had burned down, and yet … his secret was uncovered.
“I was not always this way. I was never beautiful, but I was human, and I had a good dowry.” She looked at her brother. “I married the year of the Fall. His name was Deinge.” She paused, the water swirling about her, her hands clutching tight to the edge of the dock. The next words came out in a fierce burst. “I do not go by his name. It was his doing I am this way.”
“What happened?” Mrs. Etaris asked, her voice gentle. She leaned slightly forward, but did not step closer, I saw.
“We had hoped for a child … He had yearned for a child. I had wanted one, terribly had I wanted a child of my own, but in the Interim … I do not know how it was here in Fiellan. In Ghilousette when the lights went out …”
I looked around. Mr. Shipston had his eyes closed, his face grey. Mr. Dart was stroking his stone hand, frowning, his eyes on the river, and I thought he must be remembering, as I was, when the lights went out. We had been very lucky in Fiellan. The roads failed, the magic failed, the lights went out—and yet. Our food had spoiled, but the crops when we planted them grew into the things we expected. All livestock and human births failed at first, but when later infants had come they were what they were supposed to be.
I had studied enough History of Magic at Morrowlea to know this had not been the case in other lands. In the Farry Marches people had in desperation turned to the Good Neighbours; in Ghilousette they had forbidden magic. There were no mages left in Hastowel, it was said, because at the Fall each had caught fire and burned for a year and a day, a living flame, and after the first child born with magic afterwards had done the same at puberty, anyone born with magic was killed before they met that fate. In the Lesser Arcady, all were born with magic; but the orders of living creatures had blended, and those born were only half human. Half tree, half bird, half horse, half goat. Sometimes it was not physically evident which half was which.
Mrs. Etaris’ face was set, her posture as erect as ever, her eyes on the distant horizon. Mr. Calloun was rubbing his moustache, trying not to look at where the water around Miss Shipston was bubbling as if her tail was thrashing in agony. Violet’s face was completely blank, and I realized again I did not know where she came from, what horrors she might have seen.
I deliberately looked straight at Miss Shipston, and for the rest of the conversation she stared at me, and I couldn’t see anyone else’s reaction. Her eyes were pale blue and small and moved restlessly, but always back to me. I couldn’t bear to look away from the pain and the fear and the self-loathing in them.
“In Ghilousette we had delighted in the contrivances one can make with hands. Cogswork and steam—fire and steel were our loves, as a people. Even before the Fall we did not look much to magic, except that we used it, as all the Empire used it. When the lights went out we did not look to our witches to save us.
“But when I could not bear a child … my husband, he was not the only one to be a little … unhinged, by what happened. We had delighted in our contrivances. We did not use witches, we of Ghilousette! In the city of Newbury, we said, there were no witches! The Astandalan wizards set up their anchor stones and their leys, and our engineers turned their magic into steel, into fire, into steam, into built things.
“In the Interim, the magic left the buildings and entered people. The dreams … We no longer desire to dream, in Ghilousette. We do not speak of such things. We turned outside. When you cut the bread and it screams, when you draw the water and it is blood, when you must wrestle with the wood to give it to the fire—when the world is mad, a madman seems sane.”
She laughed, high and wild, and I remembered how in Ghilousette this summer no one had spoken of art, of music, of poetry. I had asked why there was no music, and been told it had gone from the fashion. No one spoke of anything but money, or the newest contrivance, or the doings of the Ducal court, or the new play from Ki
ngsford that was safely historical.
I had been so heartbroken and so miserably sick that I had thought this more appropriate than strange. Been so overwhelmingly revolted by the endless enthusiasm for Three Years Gone I’d been pathetically grateful the Ghilousetten audience had been so focused on the lead actor’s looks and figure they’d barely mentioned the plot.
“Slowly things settled down, and the engineers wrested sanity into the world. The lights came on—candles and lanterns now. Magic no longer. Never magic. We had already rejected all magic when the Duke banned it officially. I do not even like to say the word,” she added, her mouth twisting, her eyes twisting into me. “It is an obscenity. But I am an abomination, and the defilement of my mouth does not matter.”
She knocked a piece of wood away from her, with a rough awkward gesture that nearly sent her spinning out into the river. As she clawed back to her hold on the dock, I saw her tail break the surface, silvery scales flashing like the herring.
“My husband was convinced we were due a child. That was how he talked. He spoke as if we had missed a package in the post, that the delivery had gone astray during the Interim. It was a monomania for him. After the Interim, we were well-off—he was a builder of clocks, and once they worked again, he was in demand. There are many other things requiring such cogswork. But he could not rest, he would wind the clocks, and he would say: It is late, it is late, it is late. Over and over. Late. Late. Late.”
Her voice rose up again. From the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Shipston shaking, and I wondered how many times he had heard that high wail from his sister.
“I thought it too late. I did not want to bring a child into a world that was broken. He wore me down. Over and over again. When will he come? He is late. He was sure we were due a son. Perhaps he had dreams. We all had dreams.”
We were all silent, and I did not want to look at anyone, especially not her. I closed my eyes. We might have been spared much, but in Fiellan all of us had had dreams, too. Mr. Dart’s mother had run into the river at Dartington in the grip of one of the dreams, crying that she could see her dead family floating down, screaming that the dead were coming down the river, that we had to save them. I had dreamed … well. One had come true.
“He found one of the old witches in the country. She claimed that because she followed the old ways, she had not lost her magic like the scholar wizards had. She claimed she could do the old magic. He took me to her. I did not want to go. I never liked magic, even before. And the old ways were banned long before. Dead, I thought. But my husband insisted, he was so certain our son was waiting to be summoned, had been misplaced, had not been able to find us because of the Interim. He begged me. I relented.
“The witch was very old. She said the old ways demanded a price, not in coin like the honest wizards before the Fall, but in blood and promises. She said that the old ways are strongest when they deal in birth and in death, but that the prices then are highest. My husband offered her gold, iron, steel. She took the money for herself, but said no, for the magic to work, the sacrifice had to be worth the asking. The Dark Kings would do the choosing, if we did the asking.”
I thought Mrs. Etaris made a movement, like shaking her head, but when I broke Miss Shipston’s intense gaze for a moment to look, she was standing very still, and her face was sober and serious.
“I did not understand. My husband did not, either. He said of course, we were there to ask for a son. We would give anything for a son, he said. The old witch said, good, and—”
Miss Shipston broke off suddenly, made a high cry of agony like I heard her make in terror of the fire. I jumped, and saw that Mr. Dart tried to cover his ears, his right hand falling heavily and hitting the bollard behind him with an audible clunk. I bit my lip and Miss Shipston again held my gaze with her pale eyes.
“She put me naked in a circle. Lit the blue fire around. Put horrible things in the cauldron. Sacrificed a white cock and a black hen and a silver-laced capon. Performed the old sacrifices. The old ways! She poured the blood over me, and made my husband take me there like an animal. And an animal I became for the abomination of our deed. The Dark Kings did not come, or if they came they did not answer, or if they answered they did not care. We did not know. We paid our promises and our gold to the old witch, and when we came back to the city we thought we were done.”
She kept her voice from trailing up into hysteria again, but her breath came fast and short. I wondered if Mr. Dart was hearing the drums as I was, seeing the naked people dancing in their blood and fire, summoning the Dark Kings for power. He had picked up his right hand with his left and stuck it carefully into his waistcoat pocket, so it looked nearly normal. Miss Shipston’s eyes looked totally mad.
“I grew sick. We thought with child, and my husband rejoiced. He did not care about my sickness, only the son that was coming. I did not think it odd, he had been so strange, it was all so strange. I found myself forgetting things. Little things at first, like where I had left a book or where my latch-key was. Then bigger things. My way about the city. Where my brother lived. Things I had studied. How to read.”
We were all dead silent. Every Alinorel child learns to read; it is our pride, even in the Interim no one would have let that requirement go. Mr. Kim the fishmonger’s barrow-boy read travellers’ tales from the southern reaches. Garsom the town fool asked for his picture-books on holidays. To lose the ability to read? I shuddered.
Her voice was flat now. “My husband lost other things. His love of me, for one. His patience. His clocks. All he cared about was our son, our son, our son. I grew bigger. The witch had ordered us to return to her for the birth, because the Dark Kings come for birth and death, she said. I did not want to go. I wanted to stay in the city, with the physickers, with my brother who would know best. My husband did not care, he cared only that his son be born. We went back to the secret place where the witch met us.
“She said that the child was breech within me, that we would have to offer more to the Dark Kings for the child to be born safely. My husband did not care, he said all that mattered was his son be born. He promised whatever they asked. I was terrified, but the pains were so great that I said I would give anything so long as it stopped hurting and I forgot nothing more.
“The child was born: a boy, red-haired as a Colquine, his father’s delight. For a moment I was able to rejoice: and then my husband looked at me and recoiled, tore my son from my arms, and backed away in horror. I did not know what to do, cried out, sobbed to him to come back, but he covered our son’s eyes that he would not see me. I called to him that I was his wife, even if he had not loved me, and he shook his head and said, I do not know you, I do not know your name, you are nothing to me. I said, I am the mother of your son! And he said, No, and he ran. I tried to stand to follow, and that was when I realized I was … changed.”
She curved her tail out of the water briefly, and shuddered with horror at herself. “I demanded redress from the old witch, but she just laughed and laughed and laughed, and said the old gods took what they willed as payment for what was asked. No more would I hurt below, she said, no more forget, as I had asked. She left me there, in the middle of the woods, alone. I do not forget. I remember that night, and every night since.
“Two days I lay there. I did not know where we were. I had come in the carriage with the curtains drawn. I wanted to die. Then—”
Her voice softened for the first time, only a very small amount, but enough that I was able to take a deep breath. I felt as if I had been holding it for the whole length of her speech, as if I were the one drowning in pain and grief and bitter, bitter anger.
“Two days later my brother came. He told me he had gone to see my husband, been rebuffed from seeing me. Been told I was no more my husband’s wife. Been told I had died. Gone mad. Been put away. Different stories, they made no sense to him. My husband was not a good liar, but he was wealthy, and hired people to keep my brother away from the house. My brother was a physicker, h
e knew people in the city, he asked.
“Finally my husband’s coachman came to him, he was uneasy in himself. My husband had first told him I was to stay with the witch to heal, that I had wanted to stay, and then the next day he told the coachman to go pick me up and take me to the Knockermanstone, because the Silent Council knew about the business in the woods. The coachman did not want party to that abomination, he came to my brother, they rescued me.
“We could not go back to Newbury, not with the Silent Council, nor go to our family in Ghilousette if the Knockermen were alerted, so my brother fled with me here to Fiellan, and here we have stayed. Until we were marked by the Grey Ones, and the fire sent at last to cleanse me.”
She looked fiercely at me. “You should have let me die. I would be cleansed. I would be clean. I would be clean.”
Chapter Nineteen
Miss Shipston finally looked away from me, slipping back under the vines, as if she couldn’t bear to let us see her any longer.
I started sneezing.
“Oh, Jemis.”
“It’s—not—on—purpose—Violet.”
Mrs. Etaris walked over to the bank and knelt beside the tangled growth. “Miss Shipston, thank you for telling us your story. It must have been very difficult for you.”
There was silence. Mr. Shipston made a moaning noise. We looked at him; he was shaking. “What am I to do? My poor Miranda, and my house is destroyed. Where can we go? What can we do? What is there to do?”
Mr. Dart looked suddenly round at me, touched my arm. I let him push me a few steps away, trying not to sniffle too loudly. “The Lady,” he whispered.
I stopped sneezing and coughed instead. “I’m still not convinced that was the Lady.”
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