by Dan Abnett
The staff were dour and unspeaking. We had no luggage. We were brought into a sitting room where a small and meagre fire had been grudgingly lit in a vast and ornate grate. More candles shone on us. Judika was helped into an armchair, and the servants went off, at Shadrake’s command, to fetch some food and something to drink.
Though grand, the room smelled of damp and coal tar. Like the hall we had passed through, the place was in a state of elegant decay. The carpets and rugs were faded and worn, and there were water stains coming through the once-polished floorboards. On the walls and ceiling, dark patches loomed beneath the pale plasterwork, like the shadows of submarine beasts passing close to the surface. All the furniture, though of good quality, was old and threadbare, with every joint and spell in need of gluing and knocking in.
I was worried about Judika. His cough was getting worse and he showed no signs of improvement. I had begun to realise that the scratchy quality to his recurring cough reminded me of the same catch in the Secretary’s throat. It seemed odd. The Secretary’s cough had been an affectation. Judika’s was the result of an illness or injury. I wanted to examine him, but he would not allow it. He was evidently suffering from some signal pain in his torso.
Lightburn paced. Lucrea sat down on a couch and snoozed. Shadrake finished his last bottle of amasec and started talking inanely as he waited for fresh supplies.
The servants were taking a long time. I went to the door and looked back into the hall. Though I was glad to be free of the clutches of the Blackwards, the Ecclesiarchy, and whomever else, I was not comfortable in this retreat. It smelled wrong.
Lucrea appeared at my side, yawning, and rubbing her eyes.
‘Is there food yet, Pad?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Have you been here before?’
She shook her head.
‘Only Shadrake comes here,’ she said. ‘This is an honour for us.’
‘I do not know who the Quatorze are,’ I said. ‘I thought I knew all the families and lines of Queen Mab.’
‘Padua!’ she cried with a laugh. ‘How could you possibly know all of them? No one could know all of them!’
I corrected myself. An unguarded slip.
‘I mean,’ I said, ‘I have not heard of them ever, not even from Shadrake.’
‘He’s known them for ages,’ Lucrea replied. ‘They like his work. His eye.’
Or what his glass shows his eye, I thought.
‘They do not think enough of him to hang his work, I see,’ I said.
She shook her head.
‘They have a special room for that,’ she told me. ‘Shadrake said so.’
I looked up at the family crest. The coat-of-arms motif appeared in the hall too, on several plaster shields and heraldic stemme made of gesso.
‘I do not know the arms,’ I said. ‘Nor do they seem to relate to any other arms of the city. Usually, one crest will show elements of another, to reveal how dynasties have mixed by marriage and accord.’
She sniffed and looked at the nearest crest herself.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, and did not seem to care.
Then, as an afterthought, she added, ‘But I do know that’s been repainted.’
‘The crest?’
‘All of them. You can tell by the colour and intensity of the blues and reds that have been layered on later. It was done some time ago, years I’d guess, but the design is not as old as the rest of the decoration.’
‘Someone has re-worked the crest?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘And you’d be sure of that?’
She grinned. Of course she was. She’d spent many of her few years in the pigment shops of the commune on Lycans Street. It was the one thing she had studied and worked at. Her stained fingers attested to her knowledge. She knew about paint: how it mixed, how it dried, how it wore and how it aged.
We went back into the room. Lucrea moved to warm herself at the ailing grate. Lightburn came to me and hissed, ‘I have a nasty sense of this place. I think that, as soon as it is light out, we should go.’
‘I think so too,’ I replied. ‘Shadrake won’t like it. And we must find a way to take Judika.’
He nodded. He still had his burden to deliver me safe to Mam Mordaunt, wherever she was, and, though that plan had been badly derailed, he was intent on completing it.
The servants suddenly returned with silver trays of food and drink. With them came Alace Quatorze.
It was our first sight of her.
She was of medium height for a woman, and had a slender build, which made her seem taller. Her black hair, too black for her bone age, was very short, like a boy’s. She was evidently ancient, but there was not a line upon her white skin. Her eyes were large and dark, like a cat’s. As I said, she was very beautiful, but she was not beautiful the way a woman is usually beautiful. She was beautiful like a star is beautiful, like a carnodon, like an ocean in a storm.
She wore a long, straight white dress that was very elegant, and looked as though she had been on her way to a great society ball when we arrived and forced her to change her plans.
‘Constant,’ she said. Her voice was like a woodland breeze.
‘My dear,’ he replied, bowing and fawning.
‘You’ve brought friends,’ she said.
‘With your permission,’ he said. ‘As I explained, there was some difficulty. Your help has been most appreciated. The use of your carriage, and allowing us to be guests here–’
‘We get very few visitors to Feverfugue,’ she said. ‘The climate does not agree with many. They find it dismal. But it can be a good place to hide, down here beyond Wastewater.’
She looked at Lucrea, who was standing in Shadrake’s shadow with her head humbly bowed.
‘Is this the girl?’ Alace Quatorze asked.
‘No, no!’ Shadrake laughed. He gestured towards me. ‘That is her. Padua.’
Alace Quatorze turned and regarded me with her extraordinary eyes.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I should have seen it. She is very lovely. Hello, Padua.’
‘Mamzel,’ I replied.
She came over to me.
‘Constant has told me very much about you,’ she said, ‘and I can see why. He finds you a most excellent and inspiring subject for his work. He has great skill, but only the very finest models bring out the best in his hand and eye.’
I did not know what to say.
‘He tells me you are a pariah,’ she said.
I started.
She quickly raised a soothing hand.
‘Now, now, no need to be alarmed,’ she said. ‘I know it’s a secret, but Shadrake has an eye for such things.’
‘A glass, rather,’ I said.
‘A glass indeed,’ Alace Quatorze said. ‘One that I gave him years ago, when he was a struggling artist whose potential was recognised by me and me alone.’
‘Did you see that through the glass too?’ I asked, perhaps snidely. She laughed, as if this was an entirely legitimate suggestion.
‘I did! I did!’ she admitted. ‘I saw him through it, and knew that he could do more good with it than me. He has painted for my delight ever since. I have several of his pieces, all commissions. You should see them.’
‘I should like to,’ I lied.
‘But of your state,’ she said, more serious and interested again. ‘I imagine you are limited?’
‘I am.’
‘How? A bracelet? A necklace? An implant?’
‘A cuff,’ I said. I hesitated, then raised my wrist to show her.
She nodded, fascinated.
‘You know a lot about… my kind,’ I said.
‘I have made a study,’ she said. ‘The subject interests me. It’s really only an amateur interest, but I’ve always wanted to meet one.’
‘There’s not a lot of material on the subject of… my kind,’ I said, ‘that is freely or publicly available. It is, for the most part, sequestered or restricted. Beings such as m
e do not officially exist.’
‘The rarest of all rare things.’ She smiled. ‘And to have two in one room.’
Again, I was startled by her perception. She was looking at Judika, huddled and forlorn in the chair. He barely noticed that eyes had turned to him.
‘I spotted his cuff too. You are friends. You came, perhaps, from the same school?’
‘School?’ I echoed.
Alace Quatorze smiled.
‘I know the school, Padua. Just as I know that Padua isn’t your real name. I know of the Maze Undue, my dear, and I know that it fell most tragically just a few nights ago, after a very long existence as a secret educator of the most special souls of all.’
‘Have you been there?’ I asked.
‘Never,’ she said, ‘but I have long been aware of it. I make it my business to know about this city. It was a resource I intended to use, and never got the chance to. Now it is gone, thanks to the brutal enemies of true mankind, but I have, perhaps as some small consolation, rescued two of its lost souls.’
‘And what do you want in return for that rescue?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she smiled, ‘or nothing much. I want to help mend your sick friend, who has been wounded by psychomagic.’
‘You know this?’
‘I have seen the effect before. I also want Constant to paint you.’
‘Paint me?’
‘Yes, here, at Feverfugue. I have supplies prepared. I want him to paint you for me. Paint you with your limiter off.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it would delight me to own so singular a work.’
‘And what else?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘Nothing else. Nothing. I want nothing else from you. If you choose to tell me your names, I will be honoured, but we can make do with pretend if you care not to. I would also very much like you to turn your limiter off for a moment, but whether you do so or not is up to you.’
I looked at her. There was nothing but friendship and openness in her large, remarkable eyes. Then I realised that there was perhaps simply nothing there at all.
‘Who do you work for?’ I asked.
‘Work for, my dear?’
‘Who do you represent?’
‘No one. Just my own family interests.’
‘Your family has changed its name and its arms, hasn’t it?’ I asked. ‘You have not always been Quatorze.’
‘We have not. I am the last of a much older line. My blood comes from off-world, and is intermixed with history. So much so, that it became prudent a while ago to change our identity to prevent… trouble from following us.’
‘You say “us”,’ I said, ‘but there is only you, isn’t there?’
She nodded. ‘I am the last.’
‘I will turn off my cuff for you,’ I said, ‘if you agree to tell me your family’s real name.’
She thought for a moment, smiled, and said, ‘I see no reason that can’t be agreeable to both of us.’
I held her look for a moment. Then I set my cuff to dead without ceremony. Judika did not react. Shadrake and Lightburn both took an uneasy step back. Lucrea recoiled in involuntary surprise.
‘Padua!’ she gasped. I could see her fear, how I suddenly repelled her.
Alace Quatorze simply smiled. She did not move back from me.
‘How delicious,’ she said. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘It is so wonderful when it all goes quiet,’ she said.
I turned my cuff back on. She opened her eyes and looked at me.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Now your turn,’ I replied.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Who do you think we are, Padua? You seem to have some suspicion and I would like to see if it is correct.’
‘Is your family’s real name… Chase?’ I asked. ‘Are you Lilean Chase?’
She looked genuinely surprised.
‘No, no!’ she laughed. ‘I am not her. You have made a mistake.’
‘Then who are you?’
She looked into my eyes again.
‘My family name is Glaw,’ she said.
I was disappointed. I had never heard the name before.
CHAPTER 32
Teke the Smiling One
Alace Quatorze invited us to join her in the dining room, where a meal was to be served. When it became plain that Judika was too sick to be moved, we made him comfortable on a couch with a rug over him.
‘I’ll have a bed chamber prepared for him,’ said Alace Quatorze.
‘He needs more than a bed,’ scoffed Renner Lightburn.
Alace Quatorze looked at him sharply.
‘You’re right, sir,’ she told him, relaxing slightly. I think she had baulked at insolence from such a common man. She told her servants to keep the meal hot but delay serving it.
‘I need to know what happened to him,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what happened to him,’ I replied.
‘Then tell me what you do know,’ she said.
I did so. I did so carefully, selectively. I explained that I had been taken by the agents of the Blackwards family while on the run. I said that they saw me as some kind of mercantile asset.
‘They see everything that way,’ Alace Quatorze replied. ‘Oh, the Blackwards. They are an old family, perhaps the oldest of all. The oldest in the sector, certainly. What is the name of the young, arrogant wretch who now heads the line?’
‘Balthus?’ I suggested.
She nodded. ‘I have no time for him. For the last eight centuries, our bloodlines have co-existed in the Helican Region. The Blackwards always excelled in service. They were providers and procurers, and could obtain the most extraordinary objects and items.’
She looked at me with her remarkable eyes.
‘I am not surprised they placed a significant value on you, my dear.’
I shrugged.
‘Back in the day,’ she continued, ‘the Blackwards served my family very well indeed.’
‘You mean the Glaws?’ I asked.
‘Yes. The Blackwards could always be relied upon to provide whatever my ancestors required, and deliver it anywhere in the three subs. But their attitude has changed. They no longer seem to be content to serve, nor content with a magnificent reputation for service. They want direct power for themselves, rather than indirect influence. They are developing the family business. I think it was when we first saw signs of this ambition that my family began to reduce the amount of business we did with the emporium.’
‘What sort of influence do they want?’ I asked.
‘There is only one kind, Padua,’ she replied.
She poured a glass of water from a crystal decanter on a side table and sipped.
‘Go on,’ she said to me.
I eyed my audience: Renner, by the fire, watching the flames and listening; Shadrake, drinking from a goblet and sketching me while I talked; Lucrea curled up on the settee beside him; Judika dead to the world.
I told her that Balthus Blackwards had brought me to the church with, as I saw it, the intention of selling me to the Ecclesiarchy. I did not tell them about the commonplace book of Lilean Chase, which I knew Lightburn still carried in his coat for me, nor did I mention the Ordos or the Cognitae. But I did, out of curiosity, mention ‘the King’ and ‘the Eight’ as they had been mentioned to me.
‘Blackwards’s man Lupan spoke of “the programme”,’ I said.
‘And these terms are unknown to you?’ Alace Quatorze asked.
‘I think they are unusual ways of referring to things that I am already familiar with,’ I said. ‘I think the programme refers to the ongoing work of the Maze Undue, and the production of very high-ability pariah field agents for the service of mankind.’
‘I believe you are correct,’ she said.
‘Which makes the King, and the Eight, part of the authority that controls the Maze Undue,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘These appellations are familia
r to you?’ I asked.
‘Orphaeus is the nomenclature of the King, also known as the King in Yellow, or Yellow King,’ she said. ‘It is an honorary and ritual title bestowed upon the senior controlling operative in the Angelus Subsector. There has been a Yellow King for as long as my family can remember. I doubt it has always been the same man.’
‘And the Eight?’ I asked.
‘His inner circle. The confidants of the King. His advisors. His familiars. His initiates. I don’t know how many of them there are.’
‘Eight, surely?’ I said.
She looked at me, slightly surprised, and then smiled as if charmed by something that had never occurred to her.
‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘That must be it.’
Though I was keen to be cautious, I could not resist asking another question.
‘When you say “senior controlling operative”, you mean the Inquisition, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘absolutely. Were you in any doubt?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Good.’
‘I also heard mention of the word “grael”,’ I said.
There was no reaction. She did not blink.
‘The grael is a concept,’ she said plainly. ‘In terms of the ancient esoteric tradition of mankind, it is simply a symbolic reference. A grael. A grail. Literally, a cup or chalice that contains some immutable or divine essence. In the early days of religion, in the Catheric Church, for example, the grail was a holy relic, but it was not literally a cup.’
‘You are referring to the dogmas and creeds before the rise of the Imperial Cult?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Before the cult, before the Ecclesiarchy, before the Lectitio Divinitatus. Indeed, before the war that united Terra and allowed for the Great Crusade. There were many faiths back then, and forms of the grail myth were common among them.’
‘So it’s symbolic?’ I asked.
She nodded, and took another sip of water.
‘It has been used as a cipher for many things. It was said to be the cup from which a proto-messianic figure drank at a ceremonial supper, and as such had life-giving properties. It was also said to be a receptacle that had caught drops of his blood at his death, and thus had been similarly blessed. Other creeds took this less literally: the grail contained his blood, in as much as it was a bloodline. The genetic bloodline of the same messiah. So, a person could be a grail.’
