by Alex Pheby
‘This is why I have not been able to attend to your education myself. I am stretched, Nathan. Ah, but you will see.’
The Master turned to face Malarkoi, invisible but solid in the distance, weighing on the world. Nathan looked where the Master looked and concentrated, but saw nothing.
‘They are coming,’ he said, and was that fear in his voice? Hidden, but not quite well enough?
Nathan heard them before he saw them.
‘What do you see?’
‘Nothing. But I hear wings.’
‘Yes. I will let them draw near, so you can see them, though it is dangerous to do so. They mean to destroy my work. They will assault the city and attempt to destroy the people. Do you see them now?’
‘No.’
The beating of wings was like the wind, like the crashing of the waves on the Sea Wall. He had heard it before, under the static and the pounding of storms on the stones as he lay in the hovel, between the coughing of his father and the creaking panting of his mother’s bed. He had never thought to separate it out from the other sounds, it was one meaningless noise among the others. But there was danger in it.
‘Do you see them now?’
‘No.’
Except what was that? A redness in the clouds like at sunset, a wash of blood, dilute and pale, but growing, deepening.
‘I would not let them come so close before beginning the defence, but you must understand, Nathan. They would destroy it all. You, too.’
‘I see them!’
Their approach was sudden. They fluttered and whirled in and out amongst themselves like a flock of giant red starlings in murmuration, firebirds with feathers and wings, arms thin and black, hands clawed and reaching. Their eyes were dead and locked with a purpose on the Master, so that even as they flocked one way and another, the mass of them acting in concert, moving almost randomly as if to prevent retaliation, they never took their attention from him.
The beating of their wings was filled with hatred.
‘There are thousands of them,’ Nathan cried.
‘Tens of thousands. Far more than ever reach the Sea Wall. Where I turn myself to the common weal of Mordew, she makes these things, and others much worse, to harass us.’
Inside him the Spark Itched. It was very clear now.
‘They are close, Nathan. Too close.’
The flock flew low, down to the wave tops, so low that the crests would take one now and then, so that it rose in a gout of steam, falling back black and thrashing into the water.
They were approaching the Sea Wall.
‘Do you understand now, Nathan, what it is that you must do?’
The sea was blood red with them, and a thick mist followed, boiling in their wake. The firebirds charged the ancient stonework, trying to do what the sea could never achieve, to breach the barrier with fire.
‘I understand.’
Before the sound had left his lips, the Master was at his shoulder.
‘Take this.’ He slipped a dagger into the palm of Nathan’s hand, pressed it into his wound, and made a fist of Nathan’s hand around it. ‘This weapon was your father’s. He made it in his youth. It contains the spell “Rebuttal in Ice”. Only you may use it.’
Nathan looked down at the knife. The hilt was ornate, decorated in runes and fragments of sapphires, crushed and laid in mosaic patterns, but the blade was dull and pitted. Nathan’s mind felt nothing on seeing it, but his wound wanted it, the Itch knew it, and the Spark felt a glee that shook Nathan’s teeth and made pain in his guts that built until he could no longer draw breath.
‘They are on the Wall.’
As they collided with the Sea Wall, Nathan could give them scale. They were huge, the size of horses, thirty hands high, with wings like the canopy of a merchant’s tent, burning.
Those first collisions could have been nothing, accidents, but as it went on, as the pain inside him rose, as his teeth chattered and the glee became unbearable, more and more of them made for the same spot. The firebirds were attacking the seam lines between stones, burning and cracking the mortar, letting the water fill the cracks and boiling it off as they hit, smashing it again, and burning it away. Those that fell into the water were killed, but those that could grabbed the Sea Wall and clawed at the breaches, screeching as the waves came in.
‘Nathan!’
He needn’t have called out. The Itch and the Spark wanted to do the work. The wound wanted it, and who was Nathan to turn them down? Even if he had not wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to stop it. But he did want to. He wanted it, now, more than anything. The alifonjers wanted him to do it. To make it right.
Down deep from within him he felt power, clean and pure, inside coming out, all of it, without holding back, without reticence, without inhibition, without being forbidden, and it came. He held the dagger in front of him and that was all that was required. An oily, refractive, dizzying stream of ice magic left in an impossibly straight line from the tip of the blade down to the enemy.
At the Sea Wall the first firebird struck by the ice shattered into embers and snow in equal measure, and then another, and another until as many who met the Rebuttal felt its power. A great blossom of snow and embers floated up into the air. Those that clawed at the Sea Wall froze in place when the waves froze around them, but soon the force of the ice was enough to send them shattering and Nathan pointed the ice at the approaching flock and there was nothing to see but fire and snow and the coruscating aura of his weapon. When the wind blew, the snow fell on Mordew, on the damp slums, and the embers fell too, lighting fires in the Merchant City.
Wave after wave of the firebirds came and Nathan froze them all.
The Master put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder when it was done. Not a single firebird was left alive and none had fled back to the Mistress. ‘Good boy,’ the Master said. ‘Now what shall we send her in return?’
Nathan looked at the dagger, his blood solid on the hilt. ‘Send her me,’ he replied.
LXVII
Nathan stood straight and still, and Bellows adjusted his sleeves.
‘Posture, Nathan, posture. Your right shoulder droops forward, an indication of a lack of confidence. Push your chest up and out. Each breath should fill you, and each exhalation should empty you out.’
Nathan breathed until he was full. Bellows tugged his sleeve down an inch and now it was perfect. Bellows raised his nose high and when he sucked air in he made a low note, like a tuba.
‘It is quite the day, dear child, when a boy finishes his formal education. Swell with pride, in the knowledge that the Master has overseen your learning and now pronounces Himself satisfied. To think that such a man should take notice of you at all, let alone pay close attention, let alone still find Himself satisfied, He who is above us all in understanding, wisdom, and nicety of appreciation. A wonderful day.’ Bellows’s great nose sniffed for dust on his jacket, sniffed the straightness of its cut, sniffed the protrusion of his shirt collars. ‘And might Bellows take some pride in his role? He might, I think.’ Bellows reached for Nathan’s shoulders and gripped him tightly. ‘For I am proud. And perhaps a little melancholy. You go forth into the world to do the work that the Master has prepared you for, as my brother did. And if you fail, you will fail in his footsteps, and I will find no shame in you for that. Yet, if you succeed, shall I not then feel a lessening in my opinion of my brother, who I currently hold in such high esteem? I do not know.’
On a table beside them there was a tray onto which had been arranged a corsage. It was made of three types of flowers: a bunch of violets, a lily and a rose. Bellows picked it up.
‘You might think this is an object of power, that these flowers have been infused with some magic? Perhaps you imagine them to have some protective effect? That they might rouse you to a great victory in the face of your perils? Perhaps they will, but if it is so it is by a magic far older than any of which I am aware. The Master bid me prepare these colours for you, knowing that the ancients would
wear them into battle, each party having their own combination, and each being inspired to die for them, if that became necessary. Their precise significance is not known, unless it is information the Master chooses to keep from me, but there must be a power in them, of sorts, if He wishes you to wear them. Perhaps, through force of association and repetition, the deeds done under these colours exercise a fluence on the weft of the world, so that their existence is bound up with great deeds, and the presence of one insists on the presence of the other, so fundamental is their interconnectedness.’ Bellows took a pin from his sleeve, where he had placed it earlier, and used it to secure the stems of the flowers to the lapel of Nathan’s jacket. Then he stood aside. Behind him was a mirror and in it was Nathan’s reflection. ‘See yourself, then, as we see you, Nathan.’
He was upright now, his head level with the line of Bellows’s shoulder, and broad. He puffed out his chest and there was no sign of the stooped and sorrowful whelp he had once been. To imagine this boy weeping in the Fetch’s cart was impossible: he was strong, and clean, and his hair was cropped short behind his ears. His hands did not fidget and wipe the thighs of his trousers, but were gathered in fists and held tight against his sides.
Nathan swallowed, but this mirror child, this mirror man, did not swallow; he met Nathan’s gaze with a resolute and justifiable sense of his own authority. He grit his teeth and the muscles at this boy’s jaws flexed and set his face against the tasks that were at hand.
Bellows smelled the last rogue speck of dust, or microscopic length of fibre, and picked it off the jacket.
‘Come then. We will enter the Underneath and go from there to the docks.’
‘Won’t he see me off?’
‘He is engaged with His works. You need no further reassurances. He has expressed His opinion, and that must be enough for you. If you are not yet convinced of His infallibility in matters of judgement, a reiteration is unlikely to convince you now. Follow me.’
Nathan walked behind him, careful to keep only a few spaces back, and never so close that they might collide. The corridors were unaccountably narrow today, and the servants smaller, thinner, older. The ornaments and furnishings of the place seemed trivial, somehow, as if their heaviness and formality was already undermined by his superior purpose. The Master had chosen him for this work, and what work were these other things allotted? Lesser work, surely.
He strode past, and if a vase rattled on its stand, or stoppers chinked in bottles at his passing, what concern was that of his? If they fell and broke, who would take the punishment? If he seized a painting from the wall and threw it down so that the frame cracked and the glass shattered, what of it? He breathed in and did not think to breathe out until he was full. He pulled at his own sleeves, to ensure they were level.
The door to the Underneath was inconspicuous, but he was surprised not to have noticed it before. Perhaps there was a guise on it, because it seemed that Bellows had difficulty identifying the keyhole, poking the shaft of a key from his bunch into the wood three or four times until he found the space, and then turning it left and right. When he eventually opened the door, he did so with a sigh and then, as if countering his wariness, he walked in with a purpose.
Inside there were women, and when they met Nathan’s gaze they looked down, muttering apologies and whispering to each other. Was there awe in their tones? Or was it surprise? Or was it anger? Nathan could not tell, and when he felt anxiety at it he became annoyed at himself. What difference was there between these women and the objects upstairs? They were less even, living their lives and fulfilling their purposes in a place where he need not even deign to go, unless he wished to.
The Underneath was darker than above, and perhaps it was the light that they muttered at.
Bellows went ahead. ‘This is the way.’
Down a flight of stairs, the normal sounds of people and works done on a human scale dwindled. In their place was the pounding boom of machinery, notes so deep that they shook the air in Nathan’s lungs and made his marrow tremble.
The deeper they travelled, the louder the noise, always through locked doors and shuttered pathways. Bellows’s huge bunch of keys jangled constantly as he prepared each new set. Everything was metalwork and stone, rustier, wetter, danker the lower and noisier things were.
Then a door opened and they were outside, by the sea.
Though he had felt it so constantly since his birth that he had assumed the air was always thick with spray, and salted, filled with the surging static of waves breaking, he had never seen the shoreline before him, had never properly understood that there was an edge to it as it met the ground.
Bellows gestured towards the gate in the Sea Wall which surrounded the harbour. The Master allowed merchants to use it for their convenience, and through it was coming a ship escorted by the white tugs of the Port Guard.
‘Muirchú, she is called, and her captain will take you to the shores of Malarkoi and return you to us when your work is done.’
Bellows stood still for a moment and seemed to be staring intently at Nathan, as if there was something in him of great significance. ‘Good luck,’ he said, but quietly. Before the words had left the air, he had returned inside and closed the door behind him.
LXVIII
Before the lungworms took hold, almost back as far as Nathan could remember, his father had made him a ship. Its hull was half a small barrel, the iron hoops bent across to form the scaffolding for the deck which was a piece of packing crate bound by the irregularities in the wood with rough twine. He’d tarred it with Living Mud and treacle, and the mast was an arrow shaft, snapped before they found it but with a flight of firebird feathers which went where a flag should go. The skeleton on which the sails were hung was made of cat bones, but the sails were the finest cotton, thick and dense and clean. Though his mother was furious when she found one of the last handkerchiefs ruined, the wind caught it. The ship surged out into the river of rainwater that ran through the slum. It coasted over the dead-life, and Nathan had to run half a mile before he could grab it. When he came back, flushed and smiling, his father smiled too.
This ship was as much like that one as his dying father was like the one in his memory – they were recognisably the same species of object, but there the differences overwrote anything familiar. The Muirchú had no mast, and it flew no flag as if it had lost the pride necessary to dress and announce itself to the world. The hull was cracked and warped and inverted, turned on its back, and the crew crawled here and there, like parasites on a crab shell, gripping the wet wood with clawed boots and finding purchase in the gaps.
It was massive, heavy, and seemed to force its way in lurches through the water.
When it reached the dock, five of the crew took a gangplank and raised it high into the air, as if they had remembered the need for a mast and now had brought one out, but then they let it fall again. It smacked the ground at Nathan’s feet, splashing at the sea foam that gathered at the dockside. He turned back to the door, but it was closed, the Port Guard gill-men standing, arms crossed, in front of it. The crew gestured and called that he should come aboard.
When he didn’t immediately do as he was told they cried more urgently, beckoning him towards them.
What was holding him back?
At his chest the book was a comforting brick, held in by the tight buttoning of his jacket, and at his back were white gill-men. He had no choice.
Halfway to the ship, Nathan’s weight made the plank dip, and it rose in response so far that it seemed as if it must snap or throw him off the edge. Every swell of the waves was amplified so that it was all Nathan could do to remain standing. This was much to the amusement of the crew. One of them, a wiry woman with thin damp curls and limbs long, muscular and marked with lines of faded blue ink, came and met him in the middle. She smiled and pulled his hand and he went with her. ‘The fish is restless,’ she said. ‘We’ve slaked her, ready to go, and now she can’t bear to be still. Look! See her writhing.
’
There was a gap between the planks that made the hull, and through it there was something dull and black, slick where the water covered it but drying the moment it hit the air. It was in constant motion, rippling and undulating, and Nathan couldn’t make out anything he recognised.
‘When we raise the anchor, she’ll be off quicker than spit. She hates this place, though these waters are where she finds her food. Tiller-man has to spike her double to make her come to harbour.’
Nathan didn’t care. His only concern was to make it to the deck, which, fragile as it was, seemed less treacherous than the gangplank.
The wiry woman pushed him forward and Nathan was face to face with another woman, this time in an elaborate hat. He reached out his hand, half in greeting, half that she might save him from falling, but she ignored it. ‘She’s going to dip! Raise the anchor.’
The deck lurched, one end rising out of the water, sending whatever wasn’t lashed down creaking and grinding towards the gangplank. Nathan fell to his knees, the fresh leather of his new boots slipping on the wet wood. The captain looked down at him. She was standing like a mountain goat. ‘You either get onto this ship now, or drown in the water. Your choice.’
LXIX
On deck the planks rattled and vibrated as if the ship wanted to tear itself into pieces. The nuts and bolts that secured one object to another shifted in their boreholes and loosed. The crew ran around, tightening whatever could be tightened and wedging whatever could be wedged into the cracks the vibrations made. Down in the bowels of the ship there was a pained, mournful, angry growl, which ate at the ear.
‘What’s the matter with her, Captain?’
The Captain never broke Nathan’s gaze. She was old, and pierced, and her eyes betrayed her thoughts, which tended to hatred. One hand was on her pistol grip, the other at her sword. ‘I’ve seen it before,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing new. She can’t stand his sort.’ She nodded at Nathan. ‘Your heat burns her skin worse than the slake.’ She ran to the prow and barked orders down. ‘Turn her around! We need to make open water so she can swim this off.’
