In the Palace of Repose

by Holly Phillips

  The department had until the end of the year. Three days shy of a month. He and Brookland had that long until their office was turned over to the overcrowded Department of Interdepartmental Relations. The Minister went on with some hearty nonsense about fellowships and endowed chairs and sabbaticals, but Stonehouse managed to cut him short.

  “What about the Palace?”

  “Eh?” The Minister forced his frown to become a reassuring smile. “You needn’t trouble yourself on that score, Stonehouse. The entire maintenance budget will be folded into Historical Monuments. I assure you, their personnel and resources are more than up to the job.”

  “Yes, but—” The knowledge that it was hopeless weakened Stonehouse’s voice. “What about the King?”

  “Eh?” The frown reemerged.

  “What about the King? Are the people at Monuments prepared to keep him contained?”

  The Minister harrumphed. “You lot have been fussing over that hoary old legend for five hundred years—”

  “Rather closer to four, actually.”

  “—and what have we got to show for it? Eh? The cost of a monthly motorcar ride across the river and a damn library full of the florid accounts of sinecured historians playing at magic and giving themselves hallucinations! Utter rot! I’ve heard my grandsons play more rational games, and for a more rational purpose. Why the devil should the honest, hardworking taxpayers of this great nation pay you good money to pretend to be saving the modern world from a threat that has not so much as frightened a maidservant or lit the fire on the end of a match in five hundred years?”

  “I see.” Stonehouse almost let it go at that, but in all conscience he could not. “I’m sorry, sir, but I would be remiss in my duty—”

  The Minister snorted loudly.

  “I would be remiss in my duty if I did not point out that the reason the King has not threatened the security of his containment is that my department has worked for a very long time to prevent just that from happening.”

  “Nonsense. There’s been no threat because the only danger there ever was came from our own ancestors’ ignorance and superstition, which is now, thank you very much, entirely vanquished.” The Minister sat comfortably back in his chair. “Close the door on your way out, there’s a good chap.”

  When the train dove into a tunnel, Ivy gasped and clutched his wrist. When it rushed back into the day, a roaring demon-machine streaming banners of sparks and cinders, boiling smoke and billowing steam, its whistle wailing and its wheels shrieking on the rails—she laughed.

  Chesterford’s cottage on the fell was a longer walk from the town than Stonehouse remembered. The lane that crawled up out of the valley was steep, rutted, and patched with frozen mud, but it was the wind that nearly did him in. It poured down from the north like a river of ice and steel, cutting through layers of wool as if they were cobwebs. Stonehouse had dug out his army greatcoat from a trunk in the spare room of his flat, and a knitted hat and gloves smelling of mothballs, and a scarf with the colors of a college team he’d nearly forgotten playing for, and all of it was scarcely enough to keep his blood liquid on the way.

  Horrified at the cold, he tried to send Ivy back to the station inn, but she refused to turn back without him.

  “I like it,” she said. “It’s cold.”

  He was not equipped to argue with that. So they walked together out of the town and up onto the fell.

  The patches of white on the hillside which he had taken for snow turned out to be sheep frozen dead where they stood.

  Madness, he thought. Even if Chesterford had still been alive in the fall (for the former department head couldn’t be any younger than eighty) he was certain to have expired in that drafty stone cottage of his. Stonehouse was leading Ivy to Chesterford’s tomb, and likely theirs as well. He just wished she weren’t so damn cheerful about it.

  “But I’m so happy you asked me to come, Edmund. It’s a marvel to be outside after being shut in for so long.”

  Stonehouse knew she meant the boarding house, but he could not keep his mind from returning to his last visit to the Palace. Perhaps, compared to that stifling, deathly silence, this wind might indeed be called invigorating. He certainly preferred to blame his shivering on it, rather than on the memory of fear.

  Chesterford’s cottage leaned away from the wind, as if its fieldstone walls were preparing to surrender to a superior force, but a ragged stream of smoke spun out from its chimney as Stonehouse and Ivy approached the door. He began to shake in anticipation of warmth.

  The man who answered his clumsy knock surprised him, not with his age, but with his lack of it: Chesterford had hardly changed in the twenty years since they’d last spoken. He was still tall, stooped, beaky, and disinclined to entertain visitors.

  “Yes?” he said without moving out of the door. “What do you want?”

  “Chesterford,” Stonehouse said, pulling at the scarf around his lower face. “It’s muh-me. Stuh-Stonehouse. From the Muh-Ministry.”

  “I know perfectly well who you are, young Ned. No one else among my acquaintance is stupid enough to be walking on the fell in this sort of weather, for a start. Very well, come in, come in, before you freeze to death on my doorstep.” He moved back to make room, and then, apparently for the first time, noticed Stonehouse’s companion. Stonehouse, stepping aside for Ivy to precede him, had a good view of Chesterford’s face and was intrigued by the expression that passed across it, creasing the old man’s frown lines in new and surprising ways. Enlightenment? Surprise? Delight? Stonehouse wasn’t sure.

  “I beg your pardon for the rustic surroundings,” Chesterford said as he pried the door shut against the wind. “I so seldom receive visitors in the winter.”

  Stonehouse could only suppose he was speaking to Ivy, who looked around with interest and said nothing. In fact, the cottage was somewhat more welcoming than Stonehouse expected. The drafty walls were almost hidden behind glass-fronted bookcases, the floor was deep in rugs, and the cast iron range against the far wall of the main room radiated heat. Or perhaps it was simply that the last time he’d been here he hadn’t been cold enough to appreciate Chesterford’s meager comforts.

  “Come in and warm yourself, miss. The kettle’s hot, it won’t take more than a moment to brew a pot of tea.”

  Stonehouse unwound the team scarf from his face and said, “Chesterford, this is Ivy. Ivy, allow me to introduce Doctor Wallace Chesterford, the department’s last head. Or rather,” he added as he tugged at his gloves, “as it seems I am to be the department’s last head, the last-but-one.”

  Chesterford set the box of tea he’d just taken from a cupboard back on the shelf and turned around. “I see. So it’s finally come to that, is it?”

  “You were expecting it?”

  “Oblivious as ever to the ways of power. Really, Ned, I had hoped for better from you.”

  “Had you really?” Stonehouse took Ivy’s coat and his own and folded them over the back of a threadbare settee. Now that he was no longer in danger of freezing on his feet like the poor sheep, he was feeling remarkably fit and cheerful. Ivy smiled at him.

  “You weren’t entirely without promise,” Chesterford snapped. “I would never have recommended you as my replacement if you had been.” He returned to making tea.

  “I had always supposed you did that because there was no one else applying for the position.”

  “There was that blatherskite from Starling College.” Chesterford poured steaming water into a fat brown pot. “And I begin to think he couldn’t have done any worse than you have.” He clunked a pair of pottery mugs on the table and turned his scowl on Stonehouse, but it faded somewhat as his eye lit on Ivy, who was examining his books. He cleared his throat. “But I hope you didn’t bring the young lady all the way up here in this weather simply so that she could listen to us reminisce.”

  “No. No. I’m afraid I’ve come to ask you for advice.”

  “Too late to do any good,” Chesterford said, “if I
’m any judge.” And his frown settled back into its familiar grooves.

  Stonehouse cupped his warm mug between his hands and sighed. “I’ve always known most people consider us relics. I suspect even historians from the mainstream are dismissed as ivory tower eccentrics. It’s this modern obsession with progress, science, money, machines. And there is no escaping it, our specialty is somewhat arcane.”

  Chesterford snorted. “’Somewhat arcane.’ Ned, I despair, I really do. We aren’t fusty scholars fiddling about in the backwaters of an outdated field. We’re the last, the very last practitioners of the ancient art. We are the last bearers of the key to humanity’s truest connection to the fires of creation. We are the final link of the chain that binds our world to the divine. When you and I and that boy of yours are gone, the human race will be adrift, at the mercy of our desires, and our fears.”

  Stonehouse bowed his head.

  Ivy said, “You sound as if you believe that you have been protecting the King from the world, not the world from the King.”

  “Ah, well,” Chesterford said sarcastically.

  Stonehouse looked at her. “There was a time, you see, when the power the King embodies promised nothing but chaos. Our ancestors yearned so intensely for order, for peace, for understanding—”

  “For the lie of the absolute and the illusion that the ground beneath their feet was certain, eternal, and theirs to do with as they pleased,” Chesterford muttered.

  Stonehouse shook his head, though not entirely in disagreement.

  Ivy tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “I liked the train,” she said. “But I don’t understand how you can bring yourselves to use magic to keep Magic imprisoned and out of your world.”

  Chesterford was scowling at his tea, so the answer was left to Stonehouse.

  “The problem is, you see.” He sighed. “The problem is, there is nowhere else in our world where one can use magic for any purpose at all.”

  “Yes.” She gave him a sweet smile. “I thought you loved him, too.”

  It was far too cold to walk back to Marblepool in the dark. Chesterford gave up his tiny bedroom to Ivy, and after a plain supper of barley soup and bread she retired, leaving the two men alone. To Stonehouse’s surprise, Chesterford produced a bottle of good brandy and poured them both a generous dollop.

  “Go on, then,” the old man said. “Ask your question.”

  “I think you have already guessed what it is.”

  “How do you keep the bureaucrats and politicians from being absolute bloody fools. Answer: you can’t. You never can. You can merely keep to your corner and resign yourself to tidying up once the party is over.”

  Stonehouse smiled. “Actually, you’ll be pleased to know I have learned at least that much from my tenure as department head. No, I wanted to talk to you about something quite different.”

  “Ah.” Chesterford’s eyes gleamed within their web of wrinkles. “Go on, then. Ask your question.”

  When Stonehouse and Ivy returned to the city on the train, Chesterford went with them.

  “I admit that even a dedicated ascetic can experience a longing for a hot bath in an indecently heated bathroom,” he said. “Not to mention something to eat besides mutton and barley.”

  The cold was deeper than ever, despite the fact that the sky was clear and the sun shining for the first time in days. Particles of ice scintillated in the air.

  That evening, with Chesterford wallowing in his bathroom and Ivy back at her boarding house, Stonehouse was surprised to hear the doorbell ring. He found Brookland shivering on the doorstep, muffled to the eyes in wool.

  “Come in, man, come in,” he said.

  Brookland entered and began the process of unwrapping himself. “Sorry to bother you at home, sir. But I thought you might want to know what my cousin had to say.”

  Stonehouse had thought he’d detected a certain pub-like odor emerging from his junior’s clothes. “That was quick work. Come and have a seat.”

  “No, thank you, sir, I won’t stay. It’s not a long story to tell. My cousin says he went through the files on missing persons they compile at headquarters and there was no one answering to the description of our visitor.”

  “He’s certain?” Stonehouse said, though he wasn’t really surprised.

  “Young women with pale green eyes are a pretty rare phenomenon,” Brookland pointed out, rather wistfully. “My cousin said he looked back three years and there was no one who even came close.”

  Stonehouse lifted his eyebrows. “That was uncommonly thorough of him.”

  “He was raised on stories about the old days and the King, same as me. He said it was fun being connected to it all, even at third hand.”

  “Fun.”

  “Yes, sir.” Brookland smiled, but quickly sobered. “But listen, sir, if she isn’t a missing person—”

  “Just so.” Stonehouse hesitated. He could hear the gurgle of the draining tub. “Listen, Brookland, if you can stay for a moment, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  Brookland looked at him, and the blood slowly kindled in his face. “Yes, sir,” he said. “If you put it like that, I dare say I can spare you an hour or two.” And he grinned.

  Stonehouse didn’t want to risk alerting the Ministry, so instead of calling for a vehicle from the motor pool he and Chesterford took a taxicab as far as Ivy’s boarding house, and the three of them traveled the rest of the way by foot. It was another brilliant, bitter-cold day. The river was completely frozen over, but looking down from the bridge Stonehouse thought the water must still be flowing underneath, because the sunlight caused the ice to glow a pale, watery green.

  There was no one else on the streets. Even automobile traffic was negligible. The cabdriver had told them he was only able to start his motor that morning because he had had the foresight to keep a paraffin heater burning in his garage all night. Clearly, few people were willing to risk conflagration for the sake of mobility. Most of the businesses they passed were closed as well.

  Brookland had arrived at the Palace gate ahead of them and was jogging on the spot to keep his feet from freezing solid. His head was surrounded by a cloud of steam, but it couldn’t obscure the worry on his face. He came a little way down the street to meet them.

  “I was starting to wonder if you’d changed your mind, sir.”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Stonehouse said. “It took us longer than we’d anticipated to find a cab. I don’t think you’ve met Doctor Chesterford, have you?”

  “Sir.” Brookland gave a nod that was half a shudder.

  “Save the amenities for a more salubrious atmosphere,” Chesterford growled. “We’d best be getting on with it before we’re frozen in place.”

  Stonehouse nodded and groped in his greatcoat pocket for the gate key. He had to take his glove off to fit the key into the lock, and for a moment he thought his skin would freeze to the iron. Despite having been carried in his pocket, it was ice-cold. He was very careful not to brush the touchplate with his bare hand. The mechanism revolved with a stiff, grating clunk, releasing the gate, but when Stonehouse tried to remove the key it wouldn’t budge. He jiggled it and the haft broke off in his hand.

  “Well,” he said blankly.

  Chesterford snorted. “What did you expect?”

  Brookland said nothing, but his eyes were wide with excitement.

  Ivy watched them curiously.

  “Come on, come on,” Chesterford said. “I’m too old for all this standing around.”

  Stonehouse gave him an amused look and pushed at the gate. It resisted. He leaned his weight against it, and then Brookland did as well.

  “Hinges are frozen,” he puffed whitely.

  “Shall I help?” Ivy said. She set her shoulder next to Stonehouse’s and the gate groaned grudgingly open.

  In the shadow of the outer wall, the forecourt was blue-white with frost. The pattern that thousands of repetitions of the Ritual of Abrogation had left on
the worn cobblestones had been buried by the cold. It was like a smooth marble floor leading to the Palace’s door, with the sunlight streaming through the gate a carpet of gold.

  “I wish,” Ivy said, “that someone would tell me why we’re here.”

  The three men looked at her. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks pink, her autumn-grass hair burnished by the sun. She was the only one of them who wasn’t shivering.

  Finally Stonehouse said gently, “You really don’t know?”

  Eyes wide, she shook her head.

  Chesterford nodded. “He would have had to forget himself utterly for the transformation to be complete.”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “The King.” Stonehouse’s voice was kind. “He must not have known, you see, that his last warden was about to be relieved of duty. His only contact with the outer world was me, and I worked very hard indeed at being oblivious to the bureaucratic reality. If I’d been paying attention, I’m sure he would have taken from my mind the knowledge that his prison was soon to be left unguarded. I doubt it would have taken him long to undo the wards once we were no longer reinforcing them.”

  “A few decades at the most,” Chesterford agreed.

  “But—” Ivy began.

  “I’m suh-suh-sorry to interrupt, suh-suh-sirs,” Brookland stuttered. “Can we talk about this inside?”

  They started across the white courtyard.

  “The last time I was here,” Stonehouse continued, “I thought that what I was seeing was a dream of death. But eventually I realized it was actually a dream of abandonment. You see, just as I could not figure out how Ivy might have gotten inside the Palace, I could not understand how the King could dream his own death. I could not believe he could be gone with the dream still alive and the wards in place, yet I saw his corpse. Eventually I realized there was only one solution to all these questions: Ivy was the King, and the corpse I saw was really the empty husk of a cocoon. He had transformed himself—rebirthed himself, really—and I had, myself, escorted him out of the prison I was supposed to be guarding.”