Miranda sighed. There was no point in lying to herself. The whole business on the beach was what troubled her. Not only what she felt about Edmund, but everything else that had happened. Mister Sutton had been far too excited about Bolb and that boat he had unearthed. Master Bolb’s behaviour had been beyond bizarre. She imagined what might have happened if she had allowed his magic to attack her and shuddered. Bolb had been doing something important. Determining exactly what, might win his support. Moreover, she hated not being in on a secret.
She picked out the grass-covered dune of their tryst from the hundreds that huddled together like the backs of beasts, and touched the sand where they had lain. It was cold where she remembered it warm. She dropped to her belly and tried to place where Bolb had been wading.
With the Convergence so near, it was easy to draw on its power. She weaved her hands in a pattern based on an ancient liturgy of Baphomet to which she had ascribed new meanings and felt the fire and spice of magic in her blood. Her pupils widened and the world was bathed in a shattered light.
She turned towards the Verge. It blazed in her mind like a roughly rented tear, through which a white sun dazzled. The black rocks of the island glowed like diamonds. Gossamer trails of magic drifted from its core and arced overhead to disappear into the distance.
Where Bolb had stood there was nothing. She rose and strolled towards the waves, casting her gaze all around. Nothing in the surf, nothing in the sea, apart from the faint glow of the magic invested in the Verge’s causeway. If there was anything to find, Bolb had been looking for it in the wrong place.
Inland then, to a higher place with a clear view.
Long grass gave way to clumps of gorse and dusty soil as she made her way up the hillock towards the funeral cross of the murdered censor. It glowered, as forbidding as a gallows. Her good ankle twisted twice on the ascent. The first time she merely winced, and was saved by the surety of her metal leg. The second time she swore like a drunken highwayman.
As she stood, something caught her eye and was gone as quickly. She lowered herself carefully and saw it again, this time clearly. Something magical was buried in the ground. She moved towards it, stooped low like a poacher stalking a grouse.
A rabbit hole? The dirt at its entrance was blackened. She rubbed some between her fingers and watched it turn red. Dried blood. The burrow’s mouth was cobwebbed, but the living power of the thing buried inside flickered in her mind. The magic was contained, shielded in some way, designed for stealth, but obviously powerful. It lay only an arm’s length inside.
Miranda flattened her dress and pressed against the ground. Her hand hesitated at the warren’s mouth as she fought against the notion that some adder, fox or vicious brock might lurk within, waiting to snap off her fingers. Loose earth crumbled between her groping fingers and then she found an edge of material, thick and strong. She pulled at it and was astonished as it pulled back. It was as if some small creature tugged against her, had grasped the other end of whatever she held between its teeth.
With all her strength and a determined twist of her body, she yanked her prize free in a shower of dirt.
A damp leather glove, with a hand still inside. It was horrible. Then she noticed the details. It was midnight blue, left-handed. The curving eye of He-who-sits-upon-the-mountain and his Thrice~Crossed Swords were stitched subtly into its back.
The gauntlet of a censor.
She looked over her shoulder at the funeral cross. Cold sweat prickled her brow.
Put it back, she thought and looked around for witnesses. A few distant fishing boats bobbed like seeds in the grey soup bowl of the bay. Some men, little more than dots from where she knelt, were tending horses in the stable yard. As far as she could tell, she was alone. She stared at the soiled blue leather. The glove was heavy, unyielding and unnatural, and there was something inside it. She brought it close to her nose and sniffed, expecting the distinctive odour of desiccated flesh.
Alive!
Blue fingers flailed at her face. Miranda flung the gauntlet away with a yelp and fell painfully on her backside. The five-fingered beast thudded to the ground, righted itself with a leap. For a second she thought it would crawl at her and she kicked herself backwards, but it turned and made a scuttling dash back towards the safety of the burrow.
“No you don’t!” Miranda dived for the hand, grabbed it by the wrist. It splayed and thrashed like a furious crab. She used her vision on it and saw the power of the thing. No longer subterranean, it shone like a star – its construct contained enough magic to power a battering ram. She inspected the silent fire coursing within its metal framework for the trigger that activated it and tapped its abdomen three times. The hand froze. Panting heavily, expecting a trick, she eyed it with suspicion.
What now?
For a moment, Miranda wondered whether the hand was what Bolb had sought, allowed herself to imagine that the discovery was a coincidence. That was a ridiculous self-deceit. Nobody would leave something that valuable just lying around. But if it was what Bolb sought, what about Edmund? What was his part in all of this? She looked at the hand more closely.
What was it? The magic in the hand was of the most serious kind.
She shook her head. I’m being an idiot; it’s none of my business. A sensible girl would walk away – consign the discovery to the wasteland of memory, leave it to someone else to find. Then she remembered watching Corbin read the past at the covered bridge. What would happen if he saw what she had done?
Miranda placed the hand in her picnic basket, covered it with a few handfuls of sea grass and some moribund flowers and started back towards the Convergence. Her mind skittered as she walked along the causeway, the choices still champing at her as she reached the tall teak gates. Her heart began to drum in fear. An inescapable feeling of guilt, that she would be discovered and punished, chilled her. The porters had never searched her before; why would they do so now? They would be loath to offend her, surely. She was practically a master already. Soon they would be answering to her commands.
She decided to take the hand to Corbin immediately. Would she be punished? Her heart froze. Maybe she should ask Gleame for his opinion first – defer the matter to his judgement. Not Gleame, Mother. Mother was a master of difficult situations. She would know exactly what to do.
Miranda realised that she had reached the door to her chambers, and that nobody had paid her a second glance.
It was impossible to know what to do with the hand without understanding what it was. She would examine it, briefly, and then rely on her own judgement. That would be best.
Breaking and entering
There was no way Daniel was going to bring a pistol inside the Masters’ Quarters. Even if he wanted to, there was no way to hide it in the waiter’s outfit he had stolen; the waistcoat was a size too small, maybe two, and the ends of the lock picks hidden in its pocket dug painfully into his stomach.
Daniel wended his way unchallenged and unquestioned through the forbidden corridors. The higher he ventured the older the Verge seemed to become. Panelled corridors furnished with glow-stones gave way to mazy colonnades and wall walks, open to the elements and illuminated only by the stars. He would have been lost after a few turns if not for Corbin’s map, which he had memorised to the smallest detail.
The entrance to Bolb’s chambers was a simple wooden gate.
Daniel wiped away his sweat. At this moment, if all had gone to plan, Bolb would be sweating too, in an interview room as Prosecutor Corbin bludgeoned him with an unceasing battery of questions. Maybe he would be asking about the coracle, of which Daniel had informed Corbin in a hastily written note.
He knocked and waited. There was no reply. He knocked again to be sure, rolled his shoulders, readied his picks, and prised the latch. It opened easily. Waiting behind was a monster.
Bolb’s inner door was a bewildering entanglement of plates
and catches, bars and bolts. There were at least a dozen keyholes and the metal portal was dotted with dark lenses and bright eyes carved from rubies, pearls, emeralds and other jewels he could not name. Daniel stared at one and it stared right back. It blinked. He spun away and stood trembling, his back pressed against the corridor’s cold wall. The Brotherhood’s most devious entry-man would not have known where to start. His lock picks wilted in his hand.
There was no other way in. Daniel looked to the end of the passageway where a staired turret overlooked the sea. It was rounded with oriel windows that were narrow but no more so than his hips. He went to one, strained his neck outside and looked sidelong. The pair of bastion windows that protruded from Bolb’s rooms glowed across the dark, their panes of leaded glass invitingly open.
The span to the closest was less than twenty yards. Daniel had spent his youth in a mill-house, riding sails and sliding on ropes; he had no fear of heights. Even so, the idea seemed more than a little crazy. The drop to the boulders that foamed in the waves below was five times that.
If I fall there won’t be a body to find, just food for fishes.
He looked across the sheer face of the Convergence and planned his crossing. Reaching out, he ran his hand across one of the cart-sized blocks of grey-green stone that formed the Verge’s wall. It was smooth and slick with seagull shit and lichen, treacherous. He shook his head in frustration. There had to be a way. He looked again. The wall was dry set. The gaps between the stones looked wide enough to accommodate a finger or a toe, and were close enough that he ought to be able to make use of both together, at a stretch. It was possible. The greatest danger would be at the start.
This is how you earn the Thrice~Crossed Swords, he told himself.
With a prayer to He-who-sails-the-wind, he slid his body out of the narrow window, grasped its surround with desperate fingers and pulled himself upright on its thin sill. He clung to the side of the Verge like a lizard, stretched tall, belly pressed flat against the stone. A gentle breeze ruffled his hair. Groping for purchase, he reached a leg down into the void, felt the thin gap and gradually let his toes take his weight.
He fixed his gaze intently on his grabbing point, swung free of the safety of the lintel and drove his fingers into the wall.
They held.
He took a moment to get his balance, and then began to ease his way, one hand or foot at a time, across the wall. His shirt grew cold and wet, and his cheek scraped across rock. He heard seagulls circling below, reminding him of the danger. He concentrated on his fingers and suppressed the instinct to hurry as he gained the measure of the movement.
Daniel placed his ear at the edge of Bolb’s window and listened for sounds behind the whistle of the sea breeze. He jumped and hooked the lintel with both hands. It shifted, loose in its mortar. His legs kicked in the air as gravel pattered his face, then his feet found the sill and he scrabbled inside, landing behind an ornate workbench littered with clamps, lathes, callipers and hammers.
The room’s odour was extraordinarily foul, a heady mix of blacksmith’s forge and sweaty stockings. The clicking and whirring of a hundred tiny clocks filled the room, making a sound like an orderly beehive. Daniel lifted his head above the furniture and surveyed the room he trespassed.
No sign of Bolb.
Stacks of devices, technical or wondrous, covered every inch of wall. Armillary spheres and clocks crowded with incomplete automatons. A half-faced fox sniffed the air with its bronze nose. A three-legged unicorn pawed at the ground with an ivory hoof. A knee-high harlequin balanced on one leg and played the flute. Birds made of leather and feathers flapped around a porcelain cloud that transported a troupe of cavorting nubiles. A bejewelled dragon, suspended from the ceiling, sent gouts of copper flame flashing from its mouth. Above them all, hung mobiles of the planets.
Problem is, Daniel thought, I’m not looking for marvels.
He spotted a corner shelf devoted to scrolls and books and scanned through them. Insanely complicated technical tracings, sketches of erotic frescoes, anatomies and bestiaries were all annotated in the same illegible handwriting. Daniel faced the dull realisation that he had absolutely no idea what he was looking for. He squeezed the bridge of his nose. If Bolb had something to hide, something that Daniel could take, where would he put it?
He hunted for containers.
Several ornate boxes with latched tops, each the size of a shoebox, lay on a small round table. He opened one and its contents sprang to life – a tiny theatre in which wooden figures performed the plays of the ever-living poet in endless repertoire. He wondered how much it was worth. The others were the same: dioramas of famous battles waged to the command of tiny trumpets, miniature orgies depicted with frightening accuracy.
A crystal carafe attempted to follow him into Bolb’s other room. It rocked back and forth on gilded chicken legs, searching for a glass in which to pour its long-evaporated contents. Daniel shooed it back into the workshop and closed the gate behind him.
The austerity of Bolb’s bedchamber was startling. It contained an iron candlestick, a single bed, a plain mannequin and a mirrored vanity. A garnet casket sat on the vanity, open and empty.
Bolb’s metal door looked just as imposing from the inside, and no more openable. Daniel realised that he was going to have to retrace his path across the Verge’s wall and cursed under his breath. Determined not to cross to that gulf empty-handed, he lifted Bolb’s mattress, the only hiding place he could imagine, and found nothing but dust.
Come on, Daniel. You fancy yourself a censor. Act like one.
He grabbed a stick of white greasepaint from the vanity and etched the Sigil of the Gods onto the base of the garnet casket that rested upon it. Kneeling, he held the casket high and closed his eyes.
He quelled his fear of being discovered and his impatience, forced the buzzing of Bolb’s devices from his mind and focused on the sound of his breathing and his heartbeat, steered himself into the gentle rocking rhythm of the meditation ritual. He felt the air about him become completely still and opened his eyes to a blurred world. The shock of his success nearly cost him the vision.
He supressed the emotion as his instructors had taught him and slowly untangled himself from the illusion of time, watched patiently as an indistinct spectre of Bolb ate, worked, sat and wrote all around him. Daniel’s ability was slight, so the after-images were very recent. Daniel watched Bolb pace, observed the master’s nervousness, his dread of meeting Corbin.
He felt a pain in his forehead, in the present. The effort was already taking its toll. Daniel reached further back in time, watched as Bolb’s movements became a haze that filled the room, looked for a pattern or exceptions to one. There were moments of stillness in the routine. With an effort that burnt his mind, Daniel concentrated on the hours of inaction and glimpsed Bolb sitting at his desk, scrawling into some kind of journal or ledger, almost motionless. When he had finished writing, he disappeared into a wall.
The vision broke, too hard to maintain, dumping Daniel back into the present. He grinned and tasted the blood dripping from his mouth; saw the small black puddle that had formed between his knees. The blood had already dried at the edges.
He had no idea how long his confession had taken. That was normal for the inexperienced, but it meant Bolb might return at any moment. He had to find the master’s book. He stood dizzily and searched the suspect wall for a lever or button, found a crevice just wide enough to admit his little finger. He did so and a section of wall slid smoothly aside to reveal a short staircase leading up to a chamber.
The smell of sex lay heavy in the windowless room. At its centre, a petite lady slouched in a low-sided velvet armchair. She wore a mother-of-pearl mask cast in a sluttish leer. Her long white gloves matched her stockings and an immodestly short gown. A soft lace garter stretched around one of her varnished thighs. The thing was a puppet, a life-sized doll made of wood a
nd bone. A mockery of a real woman. Daniel glimpsed white porcelain between her legs.
With a clank and whir, the automaton’s head flopped vaguely in Daniel’s direction. It beckoned him forward with the curl of a finger.
Daniel ignored the invitation and circled the room looking for a niche or alcove where Bolb’s mysterious tome might be hidden. A collection of masks and wigs hung on hooks on the back of the chair to which the mechanical madam was attached. There was a race and temper to suit every occasion. Nothing else. He tousled his hair and sat on his haunches, then circled the chair, his hands stroking its fabric for pockets and pouches. Still nothing. The puppet’s corset was fastened with whalebone buttons; the buttonholes were loose and worn.
Something hidden within the doll?
He knelt before the mechanical madam, stifled a laugh as it clasped an ankle in each hand and ratcheted its legs up and apart. Bolb’s a proper old pervert, Daniel thought, as he worked at the buttons.
The automaton whirred, crossed its legs behind his back in a love embrace and stroked its heels down the base of his spine. The clanking of the metal was ridiculous, but the movement was disturbingly real. Daniel marvelled at the perverted genius of it. The corset came undone, and Daniel peeled back the lace. A brass-edged book nestled neatly inside the doll’s iron frame. He grabbed it excitedly, failed to hear the faint click as it came free.
It was a diary like any other – page after page of braggadocio, misery and self-deceit. He flicked towards its end, caught glimpses of text.
…the death of the censor…
…Corbin arrives…
…evidence of my hand…
The fragments read like a litany of guilt. Daniel was thrilled. He tried to stand up and realised that he was trapped.
The womanly machine dropped one of its legs behind his rear, hooked and pulled. Daniel lurched forwards, his back arched in panic. He pushed against the doll’s perfect chest with all his might. Its gloved arms enfolded him; one slid across the curve of his back, the other pressed its thimble fingertips hard into the back of his head.
The Censor's Hand: Book One of the Thrice~Crossed Swords Trilogy Page 28
