by Alex Pheby
Was this Odeum another trick?
But it was not a trick. Nathan could feel it now, could see everything, the Spark burning away deceit. The figures on the stage would speak the truth, that was their function, the power that commanded them was his, from his blood, from a potency that predated the Master’s magic and that could still be tapped by blood sacrifice.
When he turned his attention around the room, he could feel the Master’s lies – there was something he was not telling him, some purpose for which he was being put, he could sense that much, but also he could sense the truth that the Master was telling him. He had not killed his father. He was not responsible for any of the things which had happened to Nathan’s family. There was something else, behind it all, and Nathan was filled with a righteous desire to understand what it was.
Gam and Prissy – had they betrayed him? What was their role? If they were his friends, wasn’t there some explanation? Could he find his way out, find his way back, return to his friends? Hadn’t he known some happiness there, in the cellars? And Padge, he was only a man, easily killed, or avoided… anything. But why did they stand there, weeping? And why did Gam look so aggrieved at Padge?
There were answers to be had and, as the heat from Nathan’s Spark dried brown the blood on the figures, he made his decision. He took the arrowhead and slit open his palm, cutting deep enough to make jagged lips, and when he pursed them, closing his hand into a fist, he let the blood drip, pour down onto the stage, until each of the little people was slick with it and it pooled at their feet and glistened blue.
‘The first time they spoke of me together,’ he whispered, and before the sound stopped echoing around the octagonal room, they moved.
Padge went to the doorway and picked at his nails with his teeth. Gam sat straight, as if there was a chair beneath him, and Prissy lay on a chaise longue, one leg dangling and swaying from beneath her skirts.
‘I’ve come across a rather juicy piece of information, Gam, which is why I’ve called you here today.’
Gam sat even straighter, like a boy does when he’s been called into the headmaster’s office and is determined by politeness, good posture and obedience to avoid a caning.
‘Yes, Mr Padge.’
‘Yes, Mr Padge. And you’ve been so kind as to bring one of the young ladies of your acquaintance.’
‘Prissy, Mr Padge.’
‘Really? I rather hope not, since that might pose a problem.’
‘That’s her name.’
‘I don’t need to know her name. A name on a certain class of girl, with the occupations she might be put to, is like a bow on a pig: neither necessary nor desirable. Girls with names need to be accounted for, which can be an awful inconvenience.’
‘What’s he saying?’
‘What I’m saying, Miss, is that the less I know about you the better.’
The clay Prissy raised her chin and sucked her teeth but made no reply.
‘What’s it all about then?’ said Gam.
‘It’s all about, as I’m sure you might have guessed, a nice little job.’
‘No problem. My gang are quick. You tell us what you want doing, and we’ll do it – in, out, all tidy and neat and no loose ends.’
‘Experience tells me otherwise, Gam, as it should tell you. Take a look in the mirror and we’ll see how reliable your gang are.’
By reflex, Gam put his hand to his empty eye socket. Then he drew it away slowly, fearful perhaps that he gave away weakness.
‘Quite,’ Padge continued. ‘In any case, this is a rather more long-term proposition. A slow boiler, if you wish, something that we can keep bubbling and that will act as a sign of your continuing good faith.’
‘You can count on that, Mr Padge…’
‘Hollow words, Gam. As hollow as that gap in your skull. I do not allow myself to be made a fool of twice. This piece of business will guarantee you know where your loyalties are. Do you understand me?’
‘I don’t, Mr Padge, but that’s not a problem. I’ll do it anyway.’
Padge laughed, despite himself.
‘I’m too kind, but you have a charm about you, child, that I think makes me soft. Regardless, this job gets done and you’ll earn my forgiveness and repay it. You know a Nathan Treeves, I think?’
‘Natty? Little runty so and so? Dad with the worms, working mum? I know him.’
‘Quite possibly. I have papers that… legal papers… that entitle him to money.’
‘Little Natty Treeves? You sure? He lives in the gap two mouldy pieces of plank make wedged up against the Sea Wall. His dad’s been no use for donkey’s and his mum’s been working herself bandy since as long as anyone can remember.’
‘Be that as it may, the papers are definite. He need only present himself with a token of his identity to the magistrates in the Merchant City and he will be whisked away to the protective custody of guardians, benefactors, and, most importantly for us, accountants.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s not up to you to believe it.’ Padge crossed the stage, raised the back of his hand.
Gam cowered, slinking back. ‘Sorry, Mr Padge.’
Padge straightened up and did his tie.
‘You, Gam, are to make sure we have this Treeves in our pockets. Do you understand me?’
‘You want me to march him up there, and when they dole out the moolah, pinch it and leg it back here?’
‘No. This, Gam, is why I am the man you see before you today, a man of influence and respect, while you are a piece of slum dirt. The moment Treeves makes himself known to the authorities, they will take him away and draw them unto their warm and welcoming bosom. At which point the “moolah”, as you put it, will be as good as lost. No. We must find a way in which we can syphon this capital out from its rightful place and back to us.’
Prissy stood up. ‘I’ll do it.’
Padge smiled and nodded.
‘Good girl. Very good…’
‘Do what?’ said Gam.
‘How much?’
‘One hundred,’ replied Padge.
‘Silver?’
‘Gold.’
Prissy whistled. ‘For one hundred gold, I’ll make him love me into the bargain.’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’
Nathan’s fist was so tight now that the blood stopped altogether, and with it the fuel that moved the clay. Prissy stood frozen, one hand on her hip and the other toying with her hair. It was longer than Nathan had made the figure’s, but it was recognisable nonetheless, beautiful probably. Treacherous, certainly. And now Nathan had in his mind’s eye not the figure on whose form his attention rested, but the girl herself. The real girl, soft to the touch, her arms around his neck, legs wrapped around his waist, her breath on his ear, and before, clinging to him as if he was the only safety in the world. Nathan rose to his feet, the wound on his hand drying into tackiness, the blood hardening into red glass, a shard that filled his fist.
The door to the outside was not locked and, beyond, the moon was high and silent, its light banishing the stars. The octagon garden glistened where it could, the one side of everything lit, as if something had halved every object it met. Nathan did not slow as he reached the wall that bordered the grass, jumping up on it instead so that now Mordew lay below him, that part of it that was not obscured by the tower: The Glass Road, the steeples of the forest, the Merchant City and there, in front of him, the lungs of the place, the Pleasaunce.
Can we go to see the animals, Nat? Please?
Nathan stepped off the wall. There was nothing between his feet and the ground but the windless air and images of things far below: streets and houses and stray dogs and carts with goods bound for the merchants’ tables.
He fell, but only for a little while.
Please, Nathan? They eat the carrots right from your hand.
He made no incantation with his lips, no sign of a spell or of magic summoned, he simply began to walk, and, rather
than let him fall, the air bore him forward, as if there could be nothing more natural. His steps were like the broad strides of a giant, eating up the distance between him and his destination.
He burned bright with a flame that shamed the moon, putting everything into light, so that the twin spires before him and the palaces and the grounds of the Pleasaunce as he approached were illuminated as if he could direct the sun’s gaze where he wished. When his feet eventually touched the ground, the grass scorched and the turf cracked and paled and he left in his wake scuffs of singed black that traced his path through the lawns and to the zoo.
LXIV
They sensed his coming: even before he shone his light on them, they were cowering like beaten curs in the far corner of their place, four knees bent, each behind the other and the bull male at the front. It is to his credit, this father to the alifonjers, that he advanced to meet Nathan in spite of his fear. His tusks were the thickness of a man’s waist, curved as scimitars, cream, mud-tipped from digging at the earth for roots.
He faced Nathan as he walked towards him, not letting the burning of everything around distract him from his duty. He set his legs and though he blanched at the light, his eyes shrinking into the folds of his flesh, becoming lost, he did not run.
If Nathan had been in his right mind, he would have seen this. It would have provoked his sympathies, perhaps. But he did not see it.
Take me to see the alifonjers, she had said, her arm on his.
All a plot. All a ploy.
His father dying and rotting for want of the medicine.
His mother taking them all to earn enough to buy bread.
The man with the birthmark.
Padge.
All of them a oneness.
The light was so bright now that the alifonjer was white in front of him, a blue albino, bleached of colour, its edges blurring into the others behind it.
Prissy.
Nathan took the tip of a tusk in each hand, and the creature whimpered. The scorched reek of burning hair filled the place and the creatures behind seemed to weep and sob, deep ragged breaths and strange wheezing whistles.
With no more effort than a man uses to peel fruit, or shuck peas, Nathan tore the bull alifonjer in two, ripping it down the centre line, cracking the skull first and then one half of the skeleton adhered to the left side – the left ribs and left leg bones – other bones to the right.
It did not call out; it was already dead. Soon even the bones were gone, burned away.
The creature’s wife was next, though Nathan was so hot that he never laid a finger on her; she burnt in front of him, her children behind her, so that they each contributed to the pile of ashes that remained.
They’ll take the carrots straight from you with their nose hands.
Liar.
Then there was a sound. He turned and behind him was another. The smallest one. It stood before him, not defiant, as his father had been, nor petrified, as the mother was, but unable to make any sense at all of what it saw. It raised its nose in a question mark so clear that Nathan couldn’t help but read it. It blinked and blinked at his light, not seeing, perhaps, the dust that he had made of the others. Nathan felt the desire to reach out for it, to take it, to save it as he had required saving, the little one, the youngest, but as he moved to do it, to take the thing in his arms, it backed away, fearful, realising that this was not a friend it saw.
Nathan stepped back, two or three paces, until he was amongst the charred remains and white ash. They piled at his feet like a snowdrift.
When he looked back, the youngest alifonjer was a pile of his own and all around the zoo animals were screaming.
LXV
‘That was quite a performance.’
Nathan did not look up. The desk before his eyes was too close to focus on, the grain of it, but he couldn’t raise his head.
‘They were the last of their kind,’ the Master said. ‘Were you aware of that?’
Nathan heard, but he didn’t shake his head. He felt it, the negation in his thoughts, but it did not translate itself to his body. There was too much resistance, too much heaviness in him to allow for that.
‘I have many skills, Nathan, and much power, but I can’t bring them back. Some of the old lore speaks of methods – if one has a bone, or an impression of a thing in rock – that could bring one up, from years of work, to the point at which another beast might birth a child of the same type. But for that one would need a bone…’
Even tears could not flow through the thickness of him, so dense had everything become.
‘Nothing left but dust. Still, they were only beasts, eh, Nathan? Nothing, really. Curiosities. Useless things. Bizarre remnants from a lost age. Was that your thinking, when you left my care and went down there?’
It was not. He hadn’t thought. He had only felt, seeing the treachery acted out.
‘There is some truth to it. Animals. What are they? They cannot speak, at least not without great expense and effort. They cannot think, at least not of anything of import. They cannot create something. Can they? Why should you resist, if you feel you wish to destroy them? Why should it be any concern of yours if they are now gone? Is it not the rule amongst animals that the weak perish at the hands of the strong? Perhaps. Perhaps.’
Footsteps, wood of a heel on the wood of the floor, away to the back of the room where the Master kept equipment under sheets of linen to protect it from the dust. Clinking of glass tubes, the squeak of an unoiled vice being turned, then the steps returning. ‘Quite a fuss. Quite a fuss. The merchants are up in arms. Valuable creatures. But what of that? If these fools had any idea how easy it is to produce the gold they crave. Simple process. I have a dozen engines in the Underneath that can do the job. Pounds of the stuff at a time. We know it though, don’t we? You know it. What concern is it of ours whether these people mourn for their lost value? We are beyond that. Are we not? You and I?’
Now he did not go away. He stood so close that Nathan could feel the warmth of the Master through his shirt. The breath ruffling the fluff on the back of his neck. Soft wet breaths. Nathan did not move his head up for fear of touching him.
‘You are special, Nathan. More so even than your father. But you must have felt this? Frustration at his small-mindedness? Isn’t that a sort of failure, the inability to act? I hesitate to say weakness. It was not weakness; we both know that. But not to have the strength to choose another way? Self-sacrifice is noble, we are told, but when it is unnecessary? When that sacrifice has effects on those around one? Then it is something else. There is a seduction in pain, as well as in pleasure, and if there is no need to suffer, can we not say that those who choose to do so, those who choose to make others suffer with them, have they not made a mistake? Or perhaps they do not have the perspicacity that would allow them to see other ways?’
He stepped back and with the pressure of his nearness gone, Nathan lifted his head. The day was clear and bright. He took a deep breath.
Some decisions are made with effort, others because the alternatives are unconscionable, but some decisions are easy to take. The world slips into patterns that make one way seem correct, one way congruent with things as they are, with oneself as it is. Nathan chose to follow one path. He chose to go forward, to see where that led him, not thinking what that place would be, or gainsaying any other path, but in the knowledge that to go back was pointless.
When he turned the Master was before him, in shirtsleeves, and he held out his hand.
When Nathan took it, the palm he felt was stiff with scar tissue, and his own wound Itched to feel it.
LXVI
That night, the cloud was low and dark, so close that Nathan stooped under it, as if it might come down further and crush them. There was no sign of the moon and the only light was that which leaked up from the Merchant City and which tinted the contours of the cloudscape with the faintest hint of orange.
The Master put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. It sat there like a perc
hed hunting bird, heavy and dangerous, but seemingly allied to him, at least for now. Over his other shoulder emerged the Master’s arm, pointing into the darkness.
‘That is the source of it all, Nathan. Can you see it?’
‘There’s nothing there.’
‘Oh, there is.’
The Master leant down and whispered something. Nathan could not hear what he said, or perhaps he could but his mind was unfamiliar with the words – they slipped away before he could understand them. Regardless of their meaning, their effect was obvious, immediate. It was as if the clouds drew aside and a lens was held in front of him. What was far away was suddenly as near as Nathan wished it to be. He needed only to concentrate his attention on something, and it was there before him, in every detail perfect.
‘Do you see it now?’
He did. The sea stretched on past the Sea Wall, a constant roiling mass, never still, until, leagues distant, it met white walls of chalk and past them, grey in the night but no less clear, endless fields of grass, borders of oaks and then a valley, sloping gently. Behind it all stood a great, ragged, untidy pyramid. It leaked an uneasy light that tainted the land but stood gold within it.
‘Malarkoi.’ The Master pulled back his arm, and when Nathan blinked the clouds returned and the weight of the night bore more heavily than ever. ‘We have power, you and I,’ the Master said. ‘She has it, too. In you, because it is unfettered, because you do not have the learning to control it, because your father denied you the adjuncts and machines of your birthright, it burns in your heart, in the sky, through your hands. My power is directed into the city you see around you, into the mechanisms of the Underneath, into the Glass Road, into the gill-men, into Bellows, into all the things of this place, every man and woman. Mostly this power is put to the defence of us all against the actions of the Mistress. The great part of my efforts is spent on this, nightly, daily, to the detriment of everyone and everything. To your detriment, Nathan.’
He came around to face him and Nathan felt a softness, a warmth, a nurturing desire that he had not felt before.
