That rhyme was back? She still couldn’t grasp the meaning of the words. It was like an itch in the back of her brain, or the sight of a smell, or something, to that effect, but she couldn’t quite articulate what it meant. Besides, the pub was burning down around her.
“What kind of idiot builds a pub with no back door?” she accused yelled at Talbot.
“What kind of idiot sets fire to a pub while still being in it?” he screamed back at her, almost weeping. The tears were welling up in his eyes.
Tears and tears, tears and tears, but which is which?
She shook her head again to clear it. Tears and tears was more annoying than the coercion spell, at least that was a constant dull thump. This new intrusion was a hijacking of her whole thought process. She had to focus right now.
“So, the only way out is through the front door—past the Ega?”
The faun nodded at her.
We’re dead, said Conscience, helpfully.
There was a shout of utter unspeakable rage from outside.
“Lucy Gayle! You are mine!” shouted the Ega as he strode in through the bat-wing doors and over the flames.
His eyes told the world he was on the kitten strangling side of sane. There was froth on his lips, and his leather coat was on fire.
He raised his crossbow to his eye. Flame licked up and down him.
Lucy could feel her whole world ending in one dry click of a crossbow.
Then, the floor gave out underneath the Ega, and he fell. It happened so fast it wasn’t even dramatic. One moment he was in front of them about to deal death. The next moment, there was a large hole through the floor and a crossbow bolt quivering in the ceiling.
“Time to move.” Lucy grabbed hold of Talbot’s arm, dashing past the hole and out into the street. The pair stumbled out of the building, coughing and spluttering. When they rested for a moment, hands-on knees, sucking in great gulps of clean fresh air Lucy noticed a large crowd had gathered.
Dry cracking sounds of burning timber came from The Water Clock Inn as the flames devoured the second storey. The gawping crowd simply stood and looked in open mouthed horror as the fire ate away at the building. There was one last loud crack as the supports gave in. The clock face fell backwards, and the structure fell in on itself like collapsing matchsticks.
Talbot punched Lucy hard and square in the shoulder.
“You burned the pub down!” he said.
“I saved your life!”
“Yes,” he conceded, suddenly realising he was on wobbly ground, “but, you burned the pub down.”
“You got drunk!” she shouted in exasperation.
“True, but you still burned the pub down,” he replied, with the air of one who’s brought a knife to gun fight and suspects it might also be a butter knife.
There was a polite cough, the sort of polite cough that immediately alarms people, even innocent people, not just people who have recently committed arson. The kind of cough that is usually followed by questions asked, statements taken, cell doors locked and judges contacted.
Talbot’s eyes made a quick dart from side to side in the universal code for “let’s scarper.”
They scarpered at a dead run.
Lucy didn’t even turn to see if the guards were chasing them or not.
Talbot was ahead of her, aiming for a corner between two of the larger buildings. At the last second, Lucy spotted that there was a narrow alley between the buildings. The faun ducked down it as Lucy heard the hard footfalls of officers chasing them.
Her heart thumped fast, the blood boiling in her ears. The coercion spell in her chest pounded on, happy she was moving again.
The sound of the guards drew closer.
The box with the key inside it dug into her spine as it jolted in her backpack. She ducked into the alley. A large wooden fence eight feet tall half-way down blocked the way.
Talbot was already at the top of it and climbing down the other side.
She would have called for him to help her over, but she was too out of breath. As she ran, she slid her backpack off and threw it over the fence, possibly at the faun, she hadn’t decided yet. This lightened her, maybe just enough for her to jump eight feet into the air, scramble over the fence and get away. She had to get away. The guards not only would be annoyed at the pub’s burning; they would also be the Dimn’s men. If they caught her, he caught her. She knew what would happen then. The torturer’s memory came bobbing back into her mind like a corpse floating to the top of a river. She had to get away.
She jumped, hit the fence and slid down it. Her fingernails scrambled at the wooden slats, but it was no good. She couldn’t find a purchase.
Through a tiny crack, she could see Talbot on the other side. He was running, but he had picked up her backpack. At least there was that, even if she was caught, the key had escaped. That gave her a small glimmer of comfort as the guard’s hand closed over her shoulder.
She was caught.
Chapter 17 Locked Away
“There is only one certainty in this world. None of us will make it to the next life without scars.”
General Thrax, Year After Ice 11946
Conscience was not happy, not happy at all. He stood upon his starship’s bridge and worried, gnawing at the problem like a rat at a bit of wood.
Lucy had gone, and he was left alone. Luckily, there wasn’t much of a call for walking or talking as she was in prison. He didn’t fancy having another go at walking in Lucy’s shoes. The last attempt nearly destroyed the ship’s bridge. He was still worried though—where did she go? She thought she was in a hospital but at the same time in the Dimn’s dungeons. Could she be in those two places at once and still be here? Could she, in fact, be split into three: in her world, in the Dimn’s world and in this world? That was a worrying prospect—tortured, healed and left alone all at once.
This kind of hopping from one body to another can’t be doing much for her sanity, he said.
“No, Captain, it can’t,” said Miss Pride, her eyebrow slightly raised.
What do you think is going on? he asked.
“I think the same thing as the ship Lucy. I am part of her, so my thoughts are the same as hers. You are the independent thing on this ship. It is you who have an opinion.”
That doesn’t help at all.
Conscience just couldn’t make up his mind about what it all meant. Was it a story, or was it real? And, most importantly, who in the heck was Ravi? That one really bothered him.
Miss Pride, check the databanks again for any mention of Ravi.
Ravi was important. He could feel it. Ravi must mean something, otherwise Lucy wouldn’t have hidden him. It was so annoying. It meant Conscience didn’t have all the information. Without that, how could he tell what was going on? He only had his own interpretation of an incomplete data set. It just wasn’t enough information to decide on what was happening to Lucy and to himself.
There was also the matter of the box’s riddle. Lucy should have been able to solve that riddle. As he had pointed out, it was the thing she did, so why couldn’t she even come up with a plausible answer? Her own idea of needing someone else to solve the riddle wasn’t a very good explanation. That implied the world was a story, and Conscience just couldn’t accept that idea. If this wasn’t a story, then why couldn’t she solve the riddle? It was infuriating. Pride had already checked the databanks four times for a mention of Ravi, but each attempt came up blank. The screen that Pride typed at blinked red: data not found.
It was so frustrating. Why wasn’t Ravi in the computer system? The system was just an interface with Lucy, so why wasn’t Ravi in there? Why wasn’t the answer to the riddle in the system? There was only one conclusion.
There’s something wrong with the databanks, Miss Pride. I’ll go down and check them manually. You have the bridge until I return.
Conscience carefully got out of his revolving chair and went to the turbo lift as Pride termed it. The doors hissed closed, which didn�
��t help his claustrophobia one little bit, and he began to sweat. His eyes were drawn to the numbers on the control panel—there was something wrong.
Deck 9, Deck 8, Deck 6. Surely, there should be a Deck 7?
Conscience pressed the button for Deck 6 and counted the distances between the floors as the lift descended, two seconds between decks 11 and 10, two seconds between 10 and 9, another two seconds between 9 and 8. He held his breath, four seconds between 8 and 6. There was a whole floor which the lift didn’t open on. No wonder there was stuff missing from the databank. It had to be whatever was on that floor. Lucy was keeping things from him, storing them in a cubbyhole called Deck 7.
He had to get at that floor. He had to see what it was she was hiding from him. Conscience stalked Deck 6 looking for some stairs.
~
Lucy had her own problems. She didn’t stay in her body very long once she’d been arrested. She remembered a hasty walk through the town with a heavy hand upon her shoulder, making sure of her all the way. Next, she’d been thrown into the jail cell and spent a few minutes pacing up and down, thinking. She did have some consolations.
Of course, Talbot was still free and so was the box with the key. At least the Dimn didn’t have them, even if he did have her.
No doubt the faun would be planning a rescue. She hoped he was, anyway. What if he wasn’t? She had, after all, burned his pub to the ground. Flip-it all, she was important to his world and therefore, needed rescuing. Even if she had burned down his pub. As she thought and paced, she slipped out of that world and back into the hospital world.
That was a problem for Lucy. There were three worlds: the world of Ravi, the world of Talbot and the world of the Dimn. Could she be in all three at once?
Grandpa Will would have been able to solve this problem. He was good at thinking logically about illogical things. He always had creative solutions for any problem she brought to him. But he wasn’t here to help with this tangled mess. It made her head hurt just trying to think about it logically because it was not logical.
How could she be in three places at once? It would mean having three bodies. What were the other two doing whilst she was with this one? Questions piled up in her mind like drift wood on a shoreline. It was all so confusing. How could she tell what was going on? Was she now in the hospital with Ravi’s father, Dr. Bhat? Or was she trapped in the Dimn’s dungeons with the torturer? Was she in the jail cell with Talbot coming to rescue her? Was she in all three at once? What was real, and what was an illusion? Could it all be an illusion produced by the author? But, if that was true, then what about the hospital? Was that part of a story too?
She didn’t want that to be the truth. If the hospital was part of a story, then she would have to give up on Ravi being real too. She needed that; she wanted him to be there for her. It was crazy but true. She had never even spoken to him, and yet, she needed him to care for her. It burned inside her like a little coal in the embers of a dying fire. It was just about all she held on to.
Ha, said her own dark voice as it resurfaced in her brain, it wasn’t Ravi who had you.
You again?
I will always be here. To remind you of the blood and the pain, and the hot sour breath, and the gravel as it dug into your knees. The alley, the alley, the alley, oh my!
What are you talking about? she asked her dark-self.
It was at the beginning, but it’s not time for an explanation. Not now. Not yet, came its reply.
All these thoughts raced through her head as she lay on the plush couch. The small, oppressive room, she might or might not be in, was Dr. Bhat’s office. It was festooned with awards and medical citations, leaving no wall uncovered by either bookcases or papers in frames.
Dr. Bhat was seated in an armchair at the couch’s foot. He had a small notebook in one hand and a pencil poised in the other. A dainty cup of tea rested on an easily reached table; the scent of jasmine filled the room along with the hot smell of the leather couch she was on.
“Do you feel better today?” Dr. Bhat asked, slowly. His accent was faintly Indian but only on his t’s. They were harsher than the rest of his speech, which sounded so calm and cool.
Lucy sighed.
“Calmer, you seem calmer today than you have been,” he continued.
This was calmer? Her mind was racing with questions, but they were not questions to be answered by a man who might not be real.
Dr. Bhat’s pudgy fingers closed upon the cup handle, and he raised it to his lips. He slurped slightly as he drank some of his tea. He replaced the cup on its side table, ran his fingers through his thick, black hair and returned his glacial blue eyes to Lucy.
She couldn’t talk. She didn’t know how to start, didn’t know if she should. Her mind was racing even as her body relaxed in the doctor’s calming presence. Could he be real? Could she be in the psychiatric hospital?
“You seem a lot more focused than in our last few sessions.”
Last few sessions? She tried to remember, but she couldn’t. She had never seen this room before, but the doctor was telling her she’d been in here earlier—they’d had sessions.
“I don’t remember those sessions,” she said. As an opening statement she thought it was fairly non-committal.
She tried to turn her mind to the left as she had done before. She tried to detect if the torturer was behind the doctor’s mask. She couldn’t see him. Could this really be Dr. Bhat?
Questions, questions, questions: it was all questions. Last time she had been with the doctor he transformed into the Dimn’s torturer. She still remembered his glowing red eyes and his vast hairy belly. Now, he seemed to be a mild-mannered psychiatrist, but she couldn’t be sure. Was he Dr. Bhat or the torturer? Questions and riddles seemed to be all there was. Riddles, riddles, riddles in the dark.
Her mind squirmed like a stabbed snake lashing and rearing at the thoughts streaking through it. Clouds in a hurricane. She just couldn’t make her mind focus. That was what she had to do, focus. She had to deal with one situation at a time. It really didn’t matter where she was. She simply had to do whatever it was that needed doing. She was a doer.
It didn’t matter if Dr. Bhat was a psychiatrist or a torturer. He would ask questions, and her answers would have to be evasive in either respect, lest she give away the quest or be thought mad.
Dr. Bhat had been talking, and she hadn’t been listening.
“What was that, doctor?” she asked, rearing her head to look into his eyes, which she noticed, although glacial blue, were very slightly red-rimmed.
“It was not important, Lucy. How are you? That is the important question.” He smiled. His words were calm. They felt like sand falling down a dune.
“I don’t know, doctor. Fine, I guess.” Lucy paused. “No, that’s not true. I’m confused. I don’t understand. What is happening?”
Dr. Bhat looked at her with his red-rimmed eyes, sighed and said, “You are having a psychotic break from reality. You’re still having it now. You’re seeing things that aren’t there. I want to know how it started. Can you tell me?”
Started? How had it all started? With Bechet, that’s how it started.
“You want to know about Bechet?” she asked.
“Bechet? Yes, tell me about him,” said the doctor, scribbling a note.
“I’m not sure I should.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed in magic, and she was certain that a psychiatrist wouldn’t. If this was real, then she would be mad to talk about wizards and magic.
“Why can’t you tell me?”
He’d think she was mad, that’s why.
“You wouldn’t understand it. You’ll get angry.”
“I won’t get angry. You’re among friends here, Lucy,” said Dr Bhat.
Lucy rolled onto her side, away from him. How exactly did you say to someone you weren’t convinced they existed? That you believed that they might be an agent for a superhuman ruler of a world you arrived at by magic? The only thing
she was sure about was that she wasn’t sure about anything. How could you explain that to a psychiatrist? Especially if he didn’t exist? It made her head hurt trying to think of it. She wanted to weep. She just couldn’t tell.
Tears and tears, tears and tears, but which is which?
Damn it all, it was that tears and tears thing again. What did that mean?
“Lucy?” There was concern in Dr. Bhat’s voice now.
He sat up in his armchair and was bright and alert. His eyes sparkled with an inner fire behind their glacial colour. “Who is this Bechet?”
“He’s…” She paused. What could she say about Bechet? He was the person who’d virtually kidnapped her, forcing her onto the quest. However, she also thought he did it for the best of reasons, to save his world. How could she describe the wizard to this man who might be an enemy? “He’s a friend.”
In the alley, the alley, the alley, oh my! Among the vagrants, and street people, and tramps, oh my! sang her dark voice.
It was very hard to concentrate, like the few minutes before sleep. Her eyes were heavy, and the world was fuzzy round the edges. The aroma of damp, mould and the cold scent of acrid air filled her nostrils. There was a steady drip, drip of water hitting a stone floor. She could feel the freeze of the uninsulated quarried walls.
“Lucy? Lucy, focus on me. This is the real world, and we need some real answers. Who was he?”
“Who was who?” she said dreamily at to the doctor.
The world was darker now. The office with its myriad of books was fading into the grey walls of a prison cell.
“We don’t have time. This isn’t standard practice, but, I’m going to have to tell you the truth. You have syphilis. The spirochaetes are in your brain and causing delusions. Nevertheless, I think there’s a root cause to the delusions as well: an underlying condition. The delusions started too quickly to be just the spirochaetes. Who was the man you were with? I need to know.”
Ha, ha! Do you remember his eyes, his touch, his breath, oh my! sang her dark voice.
These were delusions? Could that be real? How could she know? If this was the real world, then the world of Talbot and Bechet was false. If so, then Ravi might be true, she held onto that like a life preserver in a storm.
Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy Page 20
