Her sister glanced up and smiled. “We heard a scream,” she said.
“Yes, so did I,” Prescinda lied. “What’s happened?”
The steward groaned as he tried to sit up. “I think I must have slipped or something,” he strained to say through his obvious pain. “Not ... not for the first time,” he admitted as he grimaced. “This damned marble floor gets so dangerous when it’s wet.”
“I can’t see any water,” said the enger at Prescinda’s elbow.
“It’ll be t’worn leather o’ thee’s soles,” the other one said, peering closely at the steward’s feet. “Gets very shiny leather does. You ought to rub it rough wi’ a file or summat.”
Prescinda squatted down opposite Geran and beside Melkin, noting how clear his eyes now seemed. No hint of a shadow, she thought. He looked stunned, clearly, and more so than a simple slip and a fall would warrant.
“Here,” she offered and placed her hand around his arm, her other reaching behind his back. “Let’s get you up,” and between them they got him onto his feet, although none too steady nor straight.
“We’d best get you back to your office,” she offered but Melkin would have none of it. He was adamant he’d be all right, even apologising for now not feeling quite up to listening to whatever it was she’d wanted to tell him.
“Never mind, Steward. It wasn’t important. Another time maybe.”
He nodded back but then stared into her eyes for a moment, as though something had struck him.
“A few fingers of rum and a bowl of tobacco, that’s what I’d prescribe,” she said, and he smiled before nodding again.
Melkin managed the steps to the first floor landing after finally accepting help from the two engers, and it wasn’t long before they vanished from sight into the corridor that led to his office.
Prescinda turned to Geran and grinned, relief flooding her face, her legs now quite shaky. “Geran, my dear sweet sister, you were right, thank Leiyatel.”
“What is going on?” Nephril asked, suspicion in his eyes.
Prescinda looked around. “Not here,” she whispered, and so they followed on after Melkin, at least as far as the first landing from where they made their way to Nephril’s own office.
“Did it go as we’d hoped?” Geran asked Prescinda as Nephril closed the door behind them.
“You could say it worked like a dream.”
“It worked?” but now Nephril and Falmeard pressed her with their own questions.
“I think I need a cup of tea,” she said in answer and flopped down on one of the sofas.
“I’ll go make you one,” Falmeard offered.
“In the white cup, mind,” to which he briefly blinked back as he went through to the kitchen.
It was now all catching up with Prescinda, making her realise just how weary she felt, and so she sat up straighter, breathed in deeply and looked into Nephril’s flummoxed face.
“Thou never came back to use the monacild and clearly the steward still lives, but the two of thee behave as though thou hath done well. As though Nature no longer be at large within Dica’s walls.”
“The poison would never have worked,” Prescinda told him, “and if it had then it would certainly have been his death.” She collected her thoughts. “Which I suppose is exactly why it would never have worked.”
“But if thou had no intention of using it, why pretend thou did?”
“Because you’re an artefact, Nephril. Like Falmeard. One or both of you would’ve had to have intervened. To save Melkin. It’s in your natures after all. I would never have got the poison into him.”
Nephril narrowed his eyes, but a narrower grin grew along the taut line of his mouth. “So, why pretend to us, Prescinda? Why fool Falmeard and I?”
She stared at him for a moment. “To keep the two of you out of the way of course.”
“Out of the way? Of what?”
“Last night, Geran said she’d never heard of any human ever having been killed, not in living memory, whether by an artefact or another human. I had to agree. I hadn’t either. That got us both thinking, Nephril. Then I remembered the last time you’d asked a favour of me.”
He frowned, but then Falmeard came in with her tea - in the blue mug. She looked up at him and slowly shook her head then raised her brows questioningly at Nephril. He assured her it would still be unsullied so she bent and sipped at the brew.
“Ah. That’s better.”
“I suppose thou refer to mine request of thee last year?” Nephril said. “In regards to Falmeard here?”
“The very occasion, Nephril. When you asked if I’d scare him almost to death. To force Leiyatel to send him back through time, you’d said, and so rid Dica of the Cold Angel he’d become.”
“Ah, I see. So, thou hast somehow managed to do something of the same with Melkin? Is that it?”
“Leiyatel could not let the steward die, despite what hid within him, but Nature didn’t know that. Like Leiyatel, Nature couldn’t have a part of herself destroyed, taken away into the molten bowels of the earth as she believed was about to happen. So, she just withdrew her agent, Nephril. Just like that.”
“The bowels of the earth? Now I be completely confused, mine dear. We be nowhere near the Farewell Gap.”
“Ah, well. There you have me, Nephril. Quite honestly, though, I’m just too knackered to work it out. I’ve not the foggiest idea how a faint pattern wrought into a marble floor, one only visible from the dome’s gallery, could suddenly appear so vivid and real.”
She sipped more of her tea.
“But it did, Nephril. And clearly far more so in Melkin’s eyes.”
“Come on,” Geran interrupted. “You look just about done in. It’s time you got some shut-eye, my gal. I put a bottle in your bed a while ago, but it should still be warm,” and she took Prescinda’s tea from her and helped her up.
For a moment, Prescinda stood before Nephril and looked down upon his face, seeing something of a dark cloud within it, despite their success.
“Do you remember the star you created for me, Nephril, the one we named after Geran?”
“That day in the Star Tower? Yes, mine dear, I remember it well. Why?”
“In which case, my own beloved artefact, you just think on, eh? Wasn’t it your own observation that brought it into being?”
He nodded.
“Then clearly, over the course of a hundred and sixty thousand years something’s come about that’s made your own kind far more than mere artefacts.”
Slowly, he smiled, a smile he took great pleasure in beaming at Falmeard.
It softened Prescinda’s weary face as she too gazed upon Geran’s own sweetheart. “And maybe,” she softly said to him, “the same has happened to other such artefacts as well. Hmm?”
The sisters left the two men now beaming at one another as Geran closed the door behind them. The dimly lit corridor creaked underfoot as they made their way to Prescinda’s room.
Before long she was in bed, the curtains drawn and the bottle at her feet, beside which Geran now quietly sat.
“Are you sure the steward’s unhurt?” she soon asked. “It’s a long way to fall, even when cushioned by Leiyatel.”
“He’s fine, Geran. Don’t worry. Although how Leiyatel did it I’ll never know.” She smiled at her sister. “He thinks he slipped on the marble floor. I suggest we don’t disabuse him of the notion.”
“And you’re sure he’s no longer...”
“I saw it in his eyes, Geran. I saw the lost little boy he’d once been. Nothing more. No dark shadow lurking there, using his human magic on the poor, unsuspecting Bazarran and their guilds.”
“I hope so, Little Sis, because Dica’s gone too far awry already, what with all the steward’s mechanicking and meddling.”
“You’re right, it has, but Melkin Mudark doesn’t have it in him anymore,” and she laughed. “Quite literally.”
They were silent for a while until Prescinda jerked at the very edge
of sleep. “But everything ... everything’s changed, and a change too far by half,” she managed to say. “It won’t go back to how it was you know,” and she yawned. “Not now the genie’s out of the bottle.”
“Maybe so, but you’ve done your part. Time others did their share.”
“I’m not so sure,” Prescinda said, stifling another yawn. “There’s still so much to do to safeguard Dica from another incursion by Nature. She’ll keep trying. You do know that, don’t you?”
Thinking of the steward brought Hawesdale back to mind, and its magnificent waterfall. Prescinda vowed to herself that she’d go again, but this time she’d get up near and simply enjoy the sight. Although she had to admit it would have to be after another visit to Lady Charlotte.
“There’s a wound there that needs healing,” she startled Geran by saying, before mumbling, “to stop it getting infected again.”
“A wound?”
“Oh. Sorry, Big Sis. My mind was wandering, but it has, strangely enough, brought me back here.” She tried to open her eyes but their lids were by now far too heavy.
Almost as breath alone, she said, “The other day, I saw something important happening between you and Falmeard. Do you know that, Sis? Something ... something that might just make all the difference in ... in the world.”
Sleep drew her softly into its gentle arms, a peaceful smile resting lightly upon her lips.
Geran carefully tucked her in, leant to her cheek and there placed a tender kiss. “Perhaps so,” she whispered, “perhaps you did.”
She froze for a moment, her hand held briefly at her belly, but it soon passed and she smiled.
“But did you feel the tiny kicks as I did, eh, my sister, my love? Did you? I think not. So, you see, your hopes are bound to tarry behind my own. It’s only natural after all.”
Stroking her sister’s sleeping face, Geran quietly told the silence, “Drawn from afar, let minder enlist another reborn,” upon the tail of which she gently hummed a soft and simple lullaby.
About the Author
Clive Johnson was born in the mid-1950's in Bradford, in what was then the West Riding of the English county of Yorkshire. Mid-way through the 1970s, he found himself lured away by the bright lights of Manchester to attend Salford University.
In addition to getting a degree in electronics, he also had the good fortune of meeting Maureen (Kit) Medley - subsequently his partner and recent Editor. Manchester retained its lure and has thereafter been his hometown.
Torn between the arts (a natural and easy artist) and the sciences (struggled with maths), youthful rationality favoured science as a living, leaving art as a pastime pleasure. Consequently, after graduation, twenty years were spent implementing technologies for mainframe computer design and manufacture, and being a Group IT Manager for an international print company.
The catalyst of a corporate takeover led to a change of career, and the opportunity to return to the arts. The unearthing of a late seventies manuscript - during loft improvements - resurrected an interest in storytelling, and one thing led to another. A naïve and inexpert seed finally received benefit of mature loam, and from it his first novel - Leiyatel's Embrace - soon blossomed.
Find my website at http://www.flyingferrets.com
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An Artist's Eye (Dica Series Book 5) Page 28
