“Oh no,” smiled the Shee, nimbly ducking under an overhanging branch. “Beira was just silent. And watching. And it is not her who is gone under the hill …”
CHAPTER 36
THE OLD ENEMY AND A NEW RECRUIT
“This is a grotesquery,” said Sharp, looking around The Citizen’s rooms. “Saving your graces, Sara, but you don’t have to be a Glint to know that very bad things have happened here.”
Now the fighting and the adrenalin that went with it was over, he had lit candles and they’d been able to take a proper survey of the place. And when he looked closer, it was clear that the dead Wights and the blood sprayed on the ceiling and pooling treacherously on the floors was not the most horrific thing about it. The second tiled chamber was the worst thing, with the cages and the dissecting slab and the rows of shiny medical instruments and things that looked as if they would be more at home in a butcher’s shop.
“They have been experimenting on these creatures, and maybe worse,” said Hodge, who had been admitted by the back door. Archie and Jed had been sent to search the house and see if their noses could sense anything that might have been missed.
Hodge, perhaps because of his affinity with animals and the self-taught healer’s expertise gained by patching Jed up over the years, had immediately examined the Sluagh—whom he confirmed was insensible, possibly permanently—and then, very carefully and gently, had been trying unsuccessfully to look at the Green Man’s mouth. Amos stood by him, endeavouring to help by calming the terrified patient.
He just wants to see your mouth to free it.
Hodge smiled encouragingly and drew a small knife from his pocket, pointed at his mouth and used it to pantomime cutting the stitches.
The Green Man hunched his chin into his chest and shook his head wildly. Amos looked at Hodge.
He hurts. He wants to be in the open air. Away from all the buildings.
“I know fine what he wants and what he needs: he can find the wildwood and the deep green again, easy as pie,” said Hodge. “But with a mind shot like his, and his mouth sewn shut, he’ll starve in a week. I just want to cut the stitches for him.”
He just sees the blade.
Amos’s eyes travelled to the rack of surgical instruments.
I think he has seen too much of what blades do.
“It’s for his own good, and who are you exactly?” said Hodge, frustrated. Amos held out his badge.
“Templebane?” said Hodge. “What …?”
“Oh for goodness’ sake, we do not have time,” said Sara, who had regained control of herself and was compensating for having uncharacteristically lost that iron restraint by being brisker than usual. “The four of you take the Sluagh and the Green Man back to The Folley. Cook can care for them with Hodge, we can see if they have any information that would help us and you, Amos Templebane, can explain yourself later.”
She stepped across to the Green Man, took a deep breath and knelt by him, forcing herself to crouch closer and look in his eyes.
“I can do it,” said Sharp.
“Yes,” said Sara. “But I must.”
She held out her ring. By an act of sheer willpower, her hand no longer shook.
“By oak, ash and thorn, I ask this: you will look in my face. You will look in my face so that we can help you.”
Slowly, the head came up and their eyes locked. The Green Man’s seemed to fizz with tension. He flinched as Sara reached forward and placed the stamp of the seal firmly on his forehead, and then the eyes smoothed out as if going somewhere else for a while.
“And now by Lore and Law, you will sleep, and when you wake, you will be in a place of safety away from the city close by the free-flowing river and the woods. You will let yourself be helped and healed, if healing is possible. But now you will be calm and you will sleep and dream of the Greenwood.”
The Green Man nodded and kept nodding, slower each time, and then the wide staring eyes fluttered like moths, and his head dropped and he slept. Sara stepped back and looked at the others.
“I owe you all an apology,” she said. “The Green Man, this … being, this tortured creature, he surprised me and … well, if I had been born the boy my grandfather wanted so badly, I would say he unmanned me for a moment: I don’t know if you can be unwomanned, but the effect is the same, and I became what I was once. A child. When I was that child, my grandfather inadvertently let a Green Man who had run mad loose in the house. It chased me, and I have never, ever been so scared. And I shamefully panicked and I …”
She shrugged and took a deep breath.
“I think that after that event I decided to become what I am so I would never be that frightened little girl again. I thought if I looked into the shadows and faced what was lurking there, I would be able to stare down my fears. It turns out that I am not quite the woman I thought I’d become …”
“Nonsense,” said Sharp.
“It’s not nonsense, Jack,” said Sara. “And if I have an Achilles heel, at least I know where it is. Maybe that’s a little like facing down those things in the shadows. Anyway. I am ashamed to have shown that weakness, but I’m sure tomorrow, in the cold light of day …” She grinned and let Sharp pull her to her feet, squeezing his hand as she did so. He returned the pressure before releasing it. “ … I’ll be twice as embarrassed about it.” She looked at Hodge, who pretended that he and Jed hadn’t noticed the unaccustomedly intimate gesture at all.
“Can you take them back in the dog cart?”
“I don’t think the Sluagh’d normally let us take him over flowing water, but he’s out of it, so shouldn’t be a problem,” said Hodge.
“We could give him to the Sluagh waiting at the Gut,” said Sharp.
“You think that’s a good idea?” she said.
“An act of goodwill,” said Sharp. “Unless they take it the wrong way.”
“They’re Sluagh,” said Charlie. “The wrong way is how they do things.”
Sara nodded at Sharp.
“Just make it clear we did not do this, that we rescued … whatever is left of him.”
“I don’t know if there’s much left except a pulse,” said Hodge, pointing at the silver cannula in the tattooed arm. “Whatever the bastard who was keeping him in here was doing was bad enough, and then these blood thieves must have drained whatever was left. Don’t know how his heart’s still pumping, because there’s damn all blood in him. He’s dry as a stick of kindling.”
Sara beckoned Amos. He was looking almost as white-faced and drained as the Sluagh had been beneath the pale tattoos.
“You know. I cannot trust you.”
I know.
“What do you want from us?”
Sanctuary.
“We do not offer sanctuary,” said Sharp.
“But you acted selflessly in saving the Green Man,” said Sara. “It would be unbalanced if we were not to match that … kindness.”
“Sara—” said Sharp.
“Go with the others. We will give you food for the night and a safe place to sleep. And if you behave, we may talk in the cold light of day, when things are calmer,” she said, and nodded at Charlie.
Thank you.
Amos felt his eyes growing hot and moist again.
Thank you.
Sharp swallowed what he was clearly wanting to say, and he and Sara stood back as Hodge carried the Sluagh from the room. Charlie and Amos took the shoulders and feet of the snoring Green Man and followed him. Sara’s hand snaked out and stopped Ida, who had moved to follow them. They waited in silence until they heard the back door creak, and then Sara spoke.
“Tell Cook all he did, and that I glinted him killing another Templebane in their house. He’s capable of very fast violence, and I’m not sure if he can control it. But he takes no pleasure in it. Please ask her if she senses what I do in him.”
“Which is?” said Sharp.
“Which is that the Templebanes may have been raising a cuckoo in their nest,” she said. “He
may just be on the right side of things.”
“Or he may be a wonderfully gifted dissembler,” said Sharp.
“He may be,” said Sara. “But I cannot see why he’d risk his life to try and save a creature like that.”
“To make us think he was on your ‘right side of things’ perhaps,” said Sharp.
?“I think he’s damaged. But not bad,” said Ida with a shrug.
“Tell Cook to feed and water him and see what comes next,” said Sara. “And you and Charlie keep clear of the kitchen while she does it. She’ll work better undisturbed.”
“Work?” said Ida.
“Cook can tease things out in a way no one else can,” said Sara. “She can quiz people without them even noticing they’re being drained of all their secrets. She’ll get a measure of this youngster better than any of us.”
Ida nodded and flitted away.
Sharp and Sara went to work searching the chambers.
“It’s like a surgeon’s dissecting room back here,” said Sharp from the depths of the back room, eyeing the dissecting table and the cages as he ran his hand over the white tiled walls. He opened the door to a large incinerating stove set into the wall.
“Or a charnel house. I’d advise against touching these tiles with your bare hand. I think you’d see a lot of pain and blood.”
Sara nodded. She was crouched in front of the door to the mirrored cabinet, working the hinge, trying to see if the looking-glass back wall also opened, which it didn’t.
“So this is how the Wights got in,” she said. “It still makes me shudder to think of the world beyond this glass.”
Sharp joined her.
“Knowing what’s there does make me mistrust every mirror I pass these days,” he admitted. “Now I understand that they truly are looking-glasses, not because we look into them, but because all manner of malignity might be behind them, looking out at us.” He scowled at his own reflection. “For all we know, there’s another of those murderous black-toothed blood-stealers staring at us right now.”
“I know,” she said. “If we had time, it’d make your skin crawl to think of it, but we don’t have time. Look at how this thing is constructed: it’s like a Murano. Smaller, plainer, but the same principle: mirrored inside, glass held parallel when the door is closed, a sconce here for a light to preserve a reflection and a connection. I don’t know what the little bell on the spring is for, nor this clip …”
“Let us just be very clear and agreed on this one thing, Sara: we are absolutely not going in the mirrors again,” said Sharp. “Not without a get-you-home.”
“No,” she agreed, peeling off her glove. “No more mirrors.”
“Good,” he said, and before she could stop him, he had taken a knife from his belt and used the butt of the handle to smash the glass, clearly taking pleasure in the release the momentary violence gave him as he comprehensively disabled the cabinet. He stepped back and looked at the shards on the floor with a nod of satisfaction.
“Better?” she said.
“No,” he said, sheathing the weapon. “But if Mountfellon or the damned Citizen has been using this cabinet to come and go, as the Wights said, they can damn well stay gone.”
“I hope we don’t regret that,” she said, looking at the pieces of glass scattered on the floor.
“Well, we certainly do not have enough of us to just sit here, waiting to trap him as or if he comes back,” said Sharp. “So I’ll settle for disrupting him where we can, and if he stays lost in the mirrors as a result, well, I could not think of a more fitting end.”
Sara shrugged.
“Well. It is done. But I am still going to see what’s been happening in this house.”
He reached out and gently took her hand. The look she gave him was anything but gentle, but he kept his soft grip on her gloveless palm.
“I would not presume to tell you what to do, but I would point out you are exhausted, have not fully recovered from your previous ordeals, that glinting is a great drain on your vitality at the best of times and that, perilously reduced as our numbers are, we cannot afford another … indisposition.”
“We cannot afford not to know what’s been happening here,” she said.
“You yourself think you may collapse,” he replied, reaching for her arm. “It’s why you sent the others away. You didn’t want them to see you if that happened.”
“Well,” she said after a pause. “I let you stay.”
“Sara. You don’t have to do penance because the shock of the Green Man caught you at a low ebb and brought back the great distress of your childhood.”
“I am not doing penance,” she said, taking a step away from him. He kept his grip on her arm. “I am doing my job. I am going to touch the walls. You know I have trained myself to moderate my glinting and, to an extent, control it and direct it in search of memories trapped in the stones that are connected with my concerns. It is not an exact thing, but I can—if you will allow me to stay calm and focused and undisturbed—direct the inflow of the past and use it as an interrogatory tool.”
“That takes a great deal out of you,” he said. “That is—”
“That is why I would like to get this done while I still feel energetic. I will glint to see who has been here and what clues it may give us as to what is going on. I hope most strongly that the glinting spares me any flashes of what has been going on in that torture chamber behind us, but if not, it is most likely from past experience that I may reacquaint us with what I ate for supper,” she said. “So I apologise in advance for the indelicacy you may be about to witness, and would advise you to stand behind me while I do this, to spare your boots a spattering.”
“Sara—” he said quietly. She shook him off with a curt jerk of the head.
“If I fall, you may catch me,” she said. “But until then, be so kind as to unhand me and let me get to it.”
CHAPTER 37
THE TWIG AND THE RILL
Issachar Templebane walked in the moonlit orchard and listened to the distant church clock almost chime thirteen, it being a quirk of the mechanism that the striking train was poorly aligned and had a habit of letting the hammer come to rest just kissing the bells lightly at the end of each series of chimes, instead of being held clear, which meant there was always the ghost of an extra chime. It was a local quirk which everyone had ceased to notice, but Issachar always waited for it. In his mind the almost-sound was like the shadow of midnight. For him, it symbolised the added part of things, the dimension beyond the normal, the aspects of the world that others could not see or give credence to, but which he and his had always studied and traded upon.
“You’re not afraid,” said a patch of darkness by a gnarled tree trunk.
“Of course I’m afraid,” said Issachar, stopping. “So what? Only a fool would not be afraid of the dark.”
“And the things in it,” said the voice.
“Indeed,” said Issachar.
“And yet you have stopped walking with one or other of your sons keeping watch over you with a loaded gun,” said the Sluagh, detaching from the tree he had been leaning on. “You do not carry iron.”
“I do not wish my sons to know all my business, and I am aware you no longer feel the repulsive quality of cold iron. So why would I carry a protectant that no longer worked?”
“What business?” said the Sluagh. “We have no need of your business any more. The flag you tried to bargain with us for is gone. We are freed. We do not need you except for one thing—”
“Everyone needs an honest broker,” said Issachar. “I did not cheat you or mislead you.”
“You did not get us the flag,” said the Sluagh.
“That you took your own way to take it is not a fault of mine,” said Issachar. “I would have got it for you. I congratulate you on your success, but the truth remains the truth: I did not fail you, and in fact you prevented me from making good on our deal by jumping the gun.”
“Jumping the gun?” said the Sl
uagh. “We took what was ours!”
“And do you have Mountfellon?” said Issachar.
There was a short interlude of almost complete silence, then another patch of shadow stepped out and resolved itself into a Sluagh wearing a badger skull on its forehead.
“That is the one thing. What do you know of Mountfellon?”
“I know you destroyed his collection. That displayed a great rage. I saw the damage. I felt your anger.”
“He skinned one of us and hung his bone cage like an ornament,” spat Badger Skull. “We will be revenged on him.”
“Not if you can’t get to him,” said Issachar. “And you can’t.”
“He cannot hide behind iron bars any more,” said Badger Skull with a snarl.
“No,” said Issachar, stepping across the rill and snapping a twig from the apple tree. “Do you know what this is?”
“A twig.”
“What kind of twig?”
“A twig from an apple tree.”
“What else?”
“What else does it need to be?” said Badger Skull. “A twig is a twig.”
“The tree is Braddick’s Nonpareil. My brother Zebulon liked the apples; he used to say they were like biting into Old England itself,” said Issachar, twirling the twig between his fingers. “But then that was the kind of fanciful thing he would say occasionally, being the whimsical one of the family. They are certainly strong-tasting, sharp and a little like honey that has gone sour: not as bad a taste as you might think.”
“What do I care?” said Badger Skull tightly.
“You don’t,” said Issachar. “I’m just demonstrating that I know things that you do not.”
“Useless things that would only interest a light-grubbing bug like yourself,” said Badger Skull.
“Ah. But no knowledge is useless,” said Templebane. “All knowledge has value to someone, somewhere. And trading knowledge is what I do. What we always have done. Light-grubbing bugs we may be to your eyes, but the Templebanes have always traded with the Sluagh, knowledge for knowledge, aid for aid.”
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