by Tim Clare
Waves lapped over the platform, washing round Delphine’s ankles. ‘What do you mean, “use” him?’
‘Poor Giddy suffers more than most. He burns.’
She winced at the memory of her father’s flesh shrivelling and blackening, chunks dropping from his jaw. The thought of that agony persisting for seven decades.
‘You did this to him.’ Her voice was cracking. ‘You drove him mad.’
Arthur closed his eyes. ‘Oh, he’s not mad. Quite the reverse. Giddy’s problem is he’s too awake. He feels God tearing at his heart.’
Delphine tried to suppress her rage and think. Waves slapped the stone pilings, sea spray cresting over Arthur, turning to ice dust.
‘Listen,’ he said, turning aside and running a fingertip down the bridge of his nose, ‘a great change is coming to the world. I want you to live to see it. Gideon helps Auntie create paradise. It gives all his suffering meaning, you see. You wouldn’t deny him that, would you?’
‘How can you just use him? If you love him so much, why don’t you bloody save him?’
Arthur gazed at her sadly, his margins fraying and collapsing. ‘This is me trying to save him.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
His narrowing eyes blurred like a long-exposure photograph. ‘I think you do, Delphine. You don’t want to give me the satisfaction of saying so, but you do.’
She shrieked and lashed at him, again and again. ‘Give him back! Give him back!’
Arthur’s body withdrew effortlessly. Her foot slipped; she dropped to her hands and knees.
‘It’s taken such a lot of puff to get me here.’ His voice was steady in her ears. ‘Let me say my piece.’
She glared at the frozen boards, at her shivering pale hands.
‘Turn back, Delphine. If you interfere things will end badly for you.’
She glanced up. ‘Is that a threat?’
A wave broke with a crump against the lee of the platform, framing him with spume. ‘What could I possibly do to you? I’m just a shade.’ Froth crashed through his body and pelted her. ‘But I’ve touched the god beyond time and I remember pieces of things yet to come. You can’t save your father – you’ll only add to his burden. And if you oppose us, when the Grand-Duc arrives, the city will burn.’
Her wet hair whipped the sides of her face as she shook it. ‘How can you be so fucking calm?’
Rain began pounding the boards and roofs above. Rumbling spread like thousands of boots stamping.
‘What would anguish achieve?’ His voice cut through the thunder. ‘You think I don’t care?’
‘I think you’re just like your grandmother. It’s all a bloody put-on. You don’t care who dies as long as you’re at the centre of things.’
Arthur slipped a hand into his pocket. ‘She cared when you killed Grandpapa.’
The jibe entered so cleanly it took her a moment to feel it. She saw Anwen standing over Mr Cox’s body, saying his name over and over: Rutherford. Rutherford. Rutherford.
She dipped her head. When she looked up, he had vanished.
‘Hey!’ She stood, casting round for him. ‘Hey!’ Rain streamed through gaps in the boards above. Everything was drumming, thundering.
Oh God. She had to get back to the others. She had to warn them.
A swell was rolling down the undercity towards her. It drove a gondola into one of the pilings with a booming crash, blasting it to matchwood. She jumped just as the wave reached her. The cold shock of immersion. The wave lifted her up and back; her head went under. She surfaced a few yards from the platform, treading water.
‘Hey!’
He was gone.
She made for a stone piling with a vigorous front crawl. Without Arthur’s light it was difficult to see. The current sucked at her legs. Fighting against the waves, she managed to reach the base. Rungs led up towards the rafters. The bottom few were slimy with seaweed. She hauled herself up out of the water, nearly losing her grip, and climbed. Her injured shoulder smarted something rotten.
There was a hatch in the roof. It took a couple of slaps to work out which end had the hinges. She shoved. Instantly rain was pelting her face and the howl of the storm filled her ears.
Grimacing, she hauled herself out onto a narrow side street between two single-storey houses. It was blocked at one end by an upended canoe, rain hammering off the prow and wooden outriggers. Netting hung overhead, threaded with vines on which pebble-sized yellow fruits danced as water pelted them.
The sky was roiling with thick dark clouds limned with moonlight. She crept to the end of the side street and looked out across an empty boulevard. Edges blurred in the rain. The wind lifted panels off roofs, tarpaulins snapping.
She recognised nothing, but the wind was coming in off the ocean, so she turned into the storm and started up the street, towards the wharf. There, she could get her bearings and find the meeting spot Butler had described to her.
A shape flashed out of the rain. She dropped behind a barrel. Christ. Christ. Christ. She was full of adrenaline. Her machine pistol had taken a drenching. She ejected the empty magazine and slotted a new one in.
Maybe she had imagined it. She couldn’t go firing blindly. She clicked the safety onto semi-auto, counted down from three.
She rose and turned.
The street was empty.
A shadow slipped from behind a tumbrel blown over by the wind. It was the girl who had stabbed her. The girl feinted left; Delphine fired and missed. The girl covered the open ground between them in a few strides, lifting her knife.
A figure dropped from a roof and clattered into the girl, sending them both tumbling across the boardwalk. The girl rolled clear quickly and was back on her feet. The figure rose, spreading his wings. Butler! The girl flung her knife and hit him in the throat.
Delphine tried to back away. The girl charged her, dropping her shoulder and tumbling so Delphine’s second shot blew splinters out of the boardwalk. The girl jumped. A roundhouse kick cracked Delphine across the jaw, throwing her head left. The girl tripped her. She landed heavily.
When she looked up, the girl was standing over her, rain drumming the brim of her black hat.
‘I don’t want to hurt you, Delphine,’ she said. ‘I just want to know why you’re—’
A fist connected with the girl’s head. An instant later someone dived on her in a flurry of blows and curses.
Alice.
Delphine rolled onto her front. The girl had Alice pinned prone against the floor and was pressing her face into a puddle. Delphine raised her gun; the girl kicked it from her hands.
Out of the rain burst Butler, vapour streaming from his hand. The girl saw him too late; he slapped a palm on the back of her scalp and she dropped, slack.
Alice hauled herself up, hacking and spluttering. She scrambled over to Delphine’s side.
‘Are you okay?’
Delphine let Alice help her sit up against the wall of a building. ‘Oh, bloody . . . peaches and cream.’ Her shoulder throbbed with her hammering pulse.
Butler tugged the knife from his neck and gazed down at the unconscious girl.
‘Ah, Miss Ingery,’ he said. ‘Not a second time.’
Delphine followed Butler as he carried Hagar back to the wharf. Alice helped Delphine walk – now the adrenaline was tailing off she realised she was in quite a lot of pain. Her wound burned on the surface and ached inside. They moved under porches and awnings. The rain was easing to a steady shower.
‘I wonder if it would’ve been kinder to take all her memories,’ said Butler. He was cradling Hagar like a baby, her head tipped back in the crook of his arm, straggly wet hair hanging down to his knees. Her hat rested on her stomach.
When they got to the wharf he laid her down on the boardwalk. He wiped her knife with a rag and slotted it into her boot.
He stayed at her side for a few moments.
‘I’ve washed her memory of the last ten minutes or so,’ he said. ‘That’s about right,
isn’t it?’
Delphine nodded.
Alice picked something up off the boardwalk. ‘What’s this?’ She held out a leather notebook, dripping from the rain.
‘Oh God.’ Delphine grabbed it from her. The book. The notes from the advocate’s chamber. In all the havoc she had forgotten about them. Thank God she had dropped them. She pressed them to her chest. ‘This is what we were looking for. I . . .’ She glanced at the prone girl. ‘We have to get back.’
Butler held a palm over the girl’s head. He kept it there for a while. No glow emanated from his fingertips. He just looked at her. Then he nodded. He stood.
‘Right,’ he said.
Delphine held up the book. ‘I got the—’
‘I know. I heard you. Come on. Let’s go before she wakes up.’ He glanced down at his soaked, stained clothes. ‘Another outfit ruined.’
CHAPTER 16
THE END OF THE WAR
IN HEAVEN
Two hundred and seventy-eight years before the inauguration
Hagar stood on Fat Maw harbour and watched the smooth sculling of softshell turtles big as hayricks. Beyond the shadow of the hill, dawn light danced on the water in blazing golden sickles.
Her cowl was soft and warm. Every so often, she stole glances at the young man beside her, who stood with his cloak unfastened and his head tipped back, inhaling long draughts of sea air. His eyes were closed. He was smiling.
She could not recall ever feeling so happy.
‘It’s a miracle,’ said Mitta.
‘It is.’
‘We’re on the brink of a new age.’ They spoke in Masillian French, with its softened consonants and proliferation of loan words. A breeze caught his hair and pushed it back from his brow. He looked vulnerable and awed.
‘I’m not sure I believe it.’
‘Believe it. Lord Cambridge arrived yesterday morning. Parmaran Koi and her retinue have taken up all three floors of the Korppi Inn. This city is full of old enemies, ready to make peace. The War in Heaven is over.’ He turned to her, beaming. ‘And tonight, at the ball, you and I shall dance.’
Hagar dropped her gaze, feeling her cheeks colour. Schools of black fish darted through the clear water.
‘All our vanities will dissolve in the tide,’ he said. ‘You know, before the perpetuum’s founding, peers lived two centuries then voluntarily gave themselves back to the source. Imagine.’ He shook his head. ‘Relinquishing this. How well they must have lived, knowing their time was short.’
She loved Mitta when he held forth like this, all wild poetic rapture, his eyes bright as flames. She had never heard of this ‘source’ he spoke of – he had served Morgellon far longer than she, and knew much she did not. How odd, to claim to love the world, yet advocate letting it go.
‘How can mystics struggle to hear messages from the creator? Listen, Hagar!’ Mitta laughed and spread his arms. ‘God’s singing to us!’ He clapped and danced on the quay. Hagar shrugged down into her robes. She felt shy and unworthy of his joy. ‘Come on,’ he chided, capering to her side. ‘What if today were our last together? What would you do?’
He reached under her hood and ruffled her hair. She winced, pulled away, but a warmth spread through her scalp, her shoulders, her whole body.
A flock of pink birds flew across the bay, like blossom caught by the wind. Round the mouth of the river, fishing boats sat waiting for the tide to fill their nets.
Mitta was right. This day was a miracle. Everything would be transformed.
Back in her little chamber in the east wing of the summer palace, Hagar took a box from beneath her bed. Her hands were trembling. Mitta had been joking about the dance. Hadn’t he? What would she do, if she knew she would never see him again? The skin on her crown was still tingling from where his palm had brushed her scar.
She felt drunk with anticipation. After over a century of internecine strife between the great immortal powers of the perpetuum, a truce had been brokered. That evening, the peers would come together to celebrate the new peace. She was worldly enough to recognise that, for all the talk of harmony, this reconciliation had been brought about by the war with Hilanta and a succession of bad harvests – but if pragmatic self-interest succeeded where high ideals had failed, she was all for it. There would be uprisings, certainly – small pockets of resistance unable to relinquish blood feuds generations in the making – but the very real prospect of Hilantian invasion would soon unite former foes under that most stirring of banners, self-preservation.
Hagar sloughed off her robes. She took the gown Morgellon had chosen for her and laid it out on the bed. It was a modest, rather functional garment of light grey that fastened up the back with three hooks. The skirts were ankle-length and finely pleated, and a small spidersilk peony was stitched into the left shoulder.
She checked that her door was locked, then rotated the looking-glass on her dresser so it faced into the room. She pulled the dress on over her shoulders. The material felt funny against her skin – tickly and cold. She looked at herself in the mirror. Still the same callow child, skinny, shapeless. She tugged at parts of the dress, trying to get it to look right on her undeveloped body.
She examined her face. She pressed her top lip where the eye tooth was missing, watched flesh collapse into the socket. She practised smiling without opening her mouth. No, she mustn’t thin her lips – that was a sneer. She compressed her mouth into a little rosebud. Now she looked like a pouting child. She let her mouth relax into a neutral line. There. That was the least ugly option.
Hagar tilted her head forward and examined her bald patch – a raw pink scar against her sandy hair. She opened the box. Inside, on a lining of red felt, was a long-toothed rosewood comb. It was perfectly symmetrical, with smooth curved edges and a handle that extended from the centre, tapering to a sharp point. She had spent weeks rubbing oil into it and the wood had a subtle dewy sheen. Gingerly, she lifted the comb from its box. It gave off a fragrance of autumn forests: rain and sap and leaves.
She had never bought herself something like this before – Morgellon gave her a small clothing allowance, but she always spent it on functional or ceremonial wear – her librarian’s gown, her surgeon’s gloves and apron. In the last few years, the young ladies of his court had started wearing combs – more ostentatious than hers, made of jade or ivory, studded with gems. She had seen the way Mitta’s gaze lingered on such women, how they pretended not to notice.
As she had practised, Hagar folded her hair sideways over her scar, fixing it in place with the comb. She studied herself in the mirror.
The comb held her usually draggled hair in a controlled, flowing sweep. It complemented the silk peony just below it, accentuating a pleasing, even provocative asymmetry. Tingling spread down the nape of her neck. How utterly odd. She looked almost becoming.
She turned this way and that, sure it was a trick, frightened by her rising feeling of hope. Might Mitta be as surprised as she was? She knew he could never look at her in that way, that, in her perpetually arrested body, the strange violent appetites of adulthood would remain forever a mystery to her, but might he not one day feel a brotherly fondness so very far from romantic love?
Hagar watched her reflection, tried to see herself as others did. The ball was still six hours away. Her face looked like a word she had reread over and over, until it seemed misspelt, an error.
Guards stood either side of tall, curving sandstone pillars, dressed in ceremonial full-face helms, single-breasted green coats with silver buttons, white cuffs and collars and white leather crossbelts. Each carried an elaborate cavalry sword in a scabbard at their hip – silver ball pommel, spiral basketwork and a cartouche incised on the hand-guard depicting the Jejunus crest: a wheatsheaf surmounted by a marten courant. The blade itself was long and curved with a sawback edge terminating in a wicked barbed fluke. As Hagar understood it – from her studies of military manuals – the standard-issue version of these swords was less about stabbing, more about
slashing, rending and bludgeoning. The hooked tip was intended for disarming an opponent or snagging their clothing and dragging them from their mount.
Their nation’s military paradigm had grown out of civil war and assumed humanoid opponents with similar tactics and weapons. In her darkest moments, she worried whether their generals were prepared for the Hilanta. Perhaps she was being silly. Morgellon knew best.
Hagar pictured the notched steel ripping someone’s throat and gagged. She had cut flesh living and dead during her training at the École, had witnessed the terrible diversity of mortal ruin while practising field medicine during the Atmanloka campaign, but the idea of striking to maim, to kill? What horror.
As she walked between the guards, she shivered. Perhaps one day, swords would exist only as odd relics of a crueller time.
As she stepped into the courtyard she heard the keening, watery strains of lantian flussmusik.
The courtyard was broken up into small terraces of different heights, with canals and ornamental bridges. The effect was of a grand, surreal vista of mountains and valleys. White marble fountains sprayed over gleaming rockeries. Guests in their feathered short capes, tightly-laced gowns and cinched silk trousers were enjoying the disorientation as they negotiated the maze, stepping on and off gondolas poled by veiled servants and waving to one another with tasselled fans from opposing terraces.
She kept to the courtyard’s perimeter, following a veranda lined with smooth stone archways. They were lit by jars of luminous blue algae harvested off the Sinpanese coast. Waiters sashayed past with wine, spiced rum, nectar (a disgusting, mildly alcoholic slop of Avalonian provenance), soused decapus hearts, ganu-ganu cakes, little fish and crustacean medleys on wooden skewers, ripe Nautican cheeses and roasted chubmice stuffed with cherries. Several waiters gave her curious half-glances. Most ignored her.
She took a shortcut, ducking through a service door. A stone corridor led past a series of storage rooms. Light streamed through slatted windows. In the cool, dim passage, she felt calmer. She hated the pomp and subtle knifing guile of social occasions. People’s motivations were alien to her, their tastes unfathomable. She only felt like herself when she was alone, free from the disfiguring influence of strangers.
