“Watch my back,” I ordered it and strode on, seeking to wipe dust from my own eyes.
What had happened? Phineas spoke truth, if not all the truth. The dragon mechanism had run amok, puffing flames, waggling wings. I recalled it clattering as it charged some kind of automaton-doll puppet show… Suddenly I remembered more. The corpse smell, the iron grasp upon my throat. Black. Alderman Black had been here. Dead, perhaps; but laughing. Quite alive with hate.
Fine. My hate weighed the greater. Let Black rise as avenging spirit. I had more spirit, and more to avenge. A pleasure putting him down again. If it were possible... For God’s sake, I’d put dagger to his heart. He’d shrugged, knocked me flat. If not for the dragon rampage Black would have torn me as lion would lamb. Grinning his dusty teeth, his beetle shell eyes shining… I shivered.
A voice whispered in my head. Never believe the dead are stronger than the living. Comforting words, those. Same voice as the winged girl talking with the Raven. That at least had been dream. Bah. Too many voices in my skull, too many dreams. I whirled the lamp about. “Black!” I shouted. “Jeremiah Black! We’ve unfinished business.”
Echoes, no answer. I caught muttered words from the distant table. I walked on, shining the light into dark corners, daring the maze of boxes and sheets to rise up, fall upon me again. Stopped at a long narrow crate that might pass for a pharaoh’s sarcophagus. I heaved up the heavy lid, lamp high to shine within. Behold a dead knight.
At least, a knight’s armor. I hesitated to lift the helm, find whether a man waited within. Face cold and dead… My face, it’d be. Dream logic demanded it. This outer shell of a knight looked horrible enough. Ornate steel, but tarnished by blood, by fire, by battle. Helmet a black iron dragon’s mouth, teeth set to grin. Across the chest lay a sword dented and toothed, stained as Death’s scythe. It might pass for a giant’s butcher knife. I studied this construction. Had I not met this thing before? Impossible, I’d have nightmares. Granted I did have nightmares. But not of this ancient bloody hell armor. Best leave it to its dreams, lest it visit me in mine. I let the lid drop with a crash that echoed through the basement.
I stalked on, came to a path of trampled wonders, smashed shelves. Common sense said a dragon had passed this way. Following the destruction, at length I spied Fulgor’s bronze form. He stood victor upon a battle field of puppet bodies scattered in gruesome defeat. The fabulous Oriental Box stood innocently to the side. What had happened here?
The memory came slowly, unwilling. A dream-like play. Clockwork creatures moving of their own will, while Dealer’s head recited some mad tale forgot soon as heard. Dark figures perching on shelves for impromptu shadow audience. Till the draconis-ex-machina interrupted. I recalled Teufel upon its back, clock hat askew, pulling levers to make his dragon dance. How he’d grinned! Definitely a memory to cherish.
Pose that memory to the one of Jeremiah Black, mouth twisted in fury as he stamped a burning cloak. His face livid, spotted with rot. Withered lips revealing stone teeth, dry as bones in desert sun. Eyes sunken but shining. I searched among the slaughtered puppets, pulled up a dark cloak. It reeked of smoke and mold. I dropped it, wiping fingers in distaste.
I circled the dragon, stood before the magic box. Four gouges ran down the lacquered paneling. Claw of the rampaging machine, perhaps. Or the raging corpse. I tugged upon the handle. The door held fast closed. Locked from within.
My head ached. No doubt I struck it, in some fit triggered by the madness that haunted mind and mirror. Had I fled like a child into this box? How had I gotten out? Perhaps I hadn’t. Perhaps I still crouched in the box. Was not the world a box? And within the box, what dreams had come? That was the question. In the locked box waited the hole in memory and soul I could not fill.
Mist, I recalled, and a dark wood. Walking hand in hand with… someone. Chatting, laughing, gone. I turned to the only witness standing. Fulgor, the mechanical dragon. The bronze creature’s eyes slept dark and lifeless as red pebbles. One could wonder what he dreamt.
I studied him with my own stone eyes, recalling flames, Dealer’s head chattering, the undead Black cursing, shadow men prancing. The magic box thumping like a heart, the clockwork boy, the tower hat of Teufel at slant. Wonders all. The visions swirled like wind, gathering up all the scattered pieces. Hands, heads, boxes, puppet parts. Faces of the angry guilds, the rioting rallies. All the magic missing from the world, replaced by gray fog. The whirlwind circled within my head, till I must lean against the bronze dragon, clasp him laughing.
So we stood, man and dragon, two comrades still on our feet at battle’s end. Phineas and Teufel approached, lamps turning tinted lenses to demon eyes. They stopped a careful distance from sleeping dragon, from laughing spadassin.
“Master Gray,” Phineas attempted. “There is a matter you must be made aware of.”
“No,” I told him, embracing the dragon. “I am aware now. I have seen what is missing, and what is to be done.”
Phineas and Teufel went silent. Excellent. Everyone forever speechified at me. Finally I had my own lines to declaim. I spoke, measuring the words for sanity, for weight, for meaning.
“There are 612 members of the Alderman’s Council,” I declared. “321 upon the Magisterium. Twice now the two houses have voted down the New Charter. Yet the numbers were close. Near tipping the scale. Next week we bring it to motion again. Rejected a third time, by law it cannot be proposed again till a change of monarchs. More likely never.”
A head dangled from a dragon-spike. I plucked the gruesome trophy, considered it. A wooden hollow carved with mocking smile. Eyes masked with black cloth. A harlequin puppet head, meant to prance sly and sideways to the audience’s grin.
“In a few days we hold our final rally,” I informed the head. “In Echoing Commons. Our opponents plot to bring it to riot. If this last meeting turns to bloodshed, the Charter will be judged a thing of violence, not a work of liberty.”
I turned to Teufel and Phineas. My valet solemn faced as funeral lily. Teufel leaned casual against a shelf, clock tower hat at tilt. I threw the harlequin head at him. He caught it neat, with not a tremble to the tower. Neither man spoke. They thought me mad. Why not, I thought me mad. Certainly a fever seized me. A vision, perhaps. The pieces stumbled upon in dark and fog for weeks, now revealed their use, their connection. Perhaps even their meaning.
“Something is missing in the world. A sense of magic, of possibility. Yet the magic comes. The dying century feels the approaching storm. The Charter must be seen as the key to the magic of the new age. I must move friend and foe alike to see past blow for blow. Past the rally to the meaning of the rally. Past even the Charter, to the point of laws that open doors to freedom and possibility for all.”
I turned to Fulgor. “We shall not make our last rally a contest of shouts and fists. We shall make it a fair of wonders. We shall hold a gathering upon Echoing Common of visions that promise the coming century shall be an age of magic.”
I raised fist to give the dragon a dramatic thump, held back. Best not send it charging again. Turned fist to pointing finger, aimed at Teufel.
“I want to hire all your dragons. Bring forth your chess playing automatons and your clockwork dancers. Summon your puppet shows, magical boxes and automaton beasts.” I stared into his dark glass eyes. They said naught. But his smile was that of a man riding a dragon. An excellent grin. Behind him peeked the wild haired snake woman. Standing representative for wonders greater than mechanical monsters. I nodded to her.
“We must have fire-eaters and snake-charmers, jugglers and singers and dancers. We will hold our rally amidst people of impossible form and nature. Those who seem native to wonders and dreams, tricks and sciences, anything that astonishes. And so the New Charter shall be seen a member of the family of wonders.”
Zeit-Teufel rubbed chin in display of cautious consideration. “Expensive,” he judged. “And dangerous to me and mine. You would throw a grand party in what might become battlefield.�
��
“Expense can be met,” I affirmed. “Reasonable expense,” I corrected. I wasn’t entirely mad. “As for danger? What use are your wonders sleeping here, collecting dust? Bring them forth for the world to see. Else admit there lurks nothing here of future magic. Only relics of past humbug.”
Teufel nodded. He began rubbing hands together in universal sign of impending profit. But Phineas shifted weight from foot to foot. He made move to speak, to guide me with the leash of his servant’s wisdom. I forestalled this act.
“How did you find me here?” I demanded. “You didn’t follow and couldn’t have guessed.” He hesitated. I smiled triumphant. Ha! Conspiracy!
“Oh, I fetched him,” said a boy’s voice. Penn, who appeared on cue from behind Teufel. “You wanted to get to the Art Shoppe by bridge end. When you got knocked on the noggin, I figured your people’d be at the shop.”
I frowned. A logical explanation, entirely unsatisfying.
Teufel began pacing, declaiming to the gods of show and circus. “We shall disperse the exhibits to allow for large crowd.” Pulled off his hat, placed it solemnly atop the snake child’s head. She blinked, he nodded.
“We shall create the feel that the crowd itself is a part of the wonder! Masks, costumes, dances for all. Oh, and we will want our Montgolfiers, our wonderful Montgolfier castles so like cloud gods. We will want our Carriage of Steam Horses, stamping, rearing, prancing.” He raised arms high. “Call forth the dancing puppets, my wonderful, miraculous, sensuous dancing puppets!” He did a bit of dance to show us how they’d move. “Now summon the Bavarian windups!” He spun in circles of excitement.
Phineas looked from Teufel to me, back to Teufel. Face set to fire disapproval, but undecided of the target. Something troubled the man. I watched him fidget with his lenses, look away. Turn again, open mouth to speak, close it without word spoken. Gaze into shadows, gather breath for words. Breath gathered, words gathered, courage gathered… he turned away again. This grew dull.
“Oh hell, Mephisto, out with it.”
He nodded. “A lesser matter, and a greater.”
“The lesser first.”
“The late Master Endymion Daler, dealer of art, left all his worldly goods to you.”
I closed my eyes. Well, that was awkward. Endymion. I’d entirely forgot Dealer owned that art piece of a name.
“And the greater matter?”
“A visitor awaits you at the house.”
“Man, woman, angel, devil?” I asked. “Messenger from the baker? Footman for the King? Headsman for the Crown?”
“A woman, sir.”
I refused to take this as threat. “Pretty?”
“Quite striking, sir.”
Even better. “Married?”
Phineas ripped off spectacles. An act of emotion equal to prophet rending cloak. The man had eyes? I stared into them, astounded. They reminded of the crystal spheres of Penn. They blinked at me, boyish and worried.
“In marriage, sir, lies the delicate problem.”
“How so?”
“She says she is your wife.”
Chapter 12
Every Name must have a Face
I, Endymion Daler, being of sound mind and body, lacking cousin, wife or progeny, do hereby leave all my worldly possessions to my chief customer, fellow art enthusiast and friend, Master Rayne Gray. And I leave him both my thanks and a final charge.
First my gratitude, for that he hath spent coin in my shop as sailor home to shore, thirsting for the joy of things of beauty and grace. But far more than for his custom and coin, I thank him for the evenings spent in the joy of his quiet house, wherein master, servant and friend alike laughed, sharing wine and fireside, reading aloud lines of play, tale and poem. Those times I shall not forget, even in death. Though I now pass beyond a thousand loud dinners in houses far greater in wealth, far lesser in joy.
Second, I charge the aforementioned Gray with my last request; that he take the things of my shoppe and my home, and find some manner to share them with the world. Gray, you forever would harangue men, dogs and me with your pleas of freedom for the poor, the worker, the dogs. Well, let Art now have its chance to speak, and show its import to the world, the power of grace and joy to break chains!
Signed and witnessed this day,
Endymion Daler.
I sighed, folded away these last words from my dead friend. A friend I’d slain before he could shoot me. Dated two years before friendship’s breaking. But kept? Why not, he’d supposed me dead. But could he find none else to so gift? ’Lacking cousin, wife or progeny’... Poor Dealer. I had not seen how he felt himself near part of my household. Elspeth had. Thus her chiding me for mocking the fellow.
How had the man who wrote these words of friendship turned enemy? Simply because he adored my Elspeth? What harm there? She was art, he was connoisseur. No need for love to poison the heart, requited or no.
Perhaps his love had simply turned to greed. Was that not the vice of the collector? One begins with enthusiasm for the thing itself; and declines into lust for owning the thing. Perhaps Elspeth became a collector’s prize, not a person. And so came between us. How many hours did Dealer spend before Black’s damned portrait of a young Elspeth? Hell, he’d died before it, a martyr cut down at his altar of worship.
At some point Dealer had learned Elspeth spied for Black, been his mistress. What a fall that must have seemed to his purist’s eye. From chaste icon to traitor and whore. How did that change his view of our shared evenings? Perhaps for him the treasured moments turned at once to bad art, a façade hiding rot.
Dismal thoughts for the carriage ride to the man’s shop. I folded the letter away. My valet sat before me, tinted eyes gazing unto tinted infinity. I felt the urge to pick quarrel with him. I did not. I liked Phineas. He possessed humor and competence; and knew to play ironic foil to my rougher manner. He was not family as Stephano had been. Excellent. I no longer wished for family.
But his calm confidence mocked my quickening slide. A dead man’s head rolling at my heels was the least of it. What had happened today? What had been real? A foe in the fog, a mechanical boy, snake girls and puppet theatre. Dragons. Voices. Most disturbing of all, that dream-like sense of loss and sorrow…
And Black! How could he be risen from the grave? Simple answer. He was now a vampire. Mattered nothing that such creatures were mad belief. I was clearly mad. Fine. A week would see the Charter ascend to heaven, else descend to hell. I could last a week. I need only remain calm, ignoring voices and visions and vampires.
And returning wives. What new insanity was that? More likely some sly fraud. A besotted admirer, seeking the Seraph’s bed. Or fellow spadassin, bounty for my life in her purse. If so, she’d weep for aid, pressing bosom close. I’d hold her, first in comfort, then desire. Clothes and morals would fall like autumn leaves, we’d sink upon the couch… and as I gasped with pleasure she’d drive the dagger through my aching brain.
A consummation holding certain appeal. I felt a desire to leap from the carriage, run to the house to see this creature for myself. But first, Dealer’s shop.
* * *
A watchman awaited in the street before the door. He tapped cudgel on the window bars, playing rough tune while describing hordes of night ruffians who’d sought to enter since the owner’s death. All your locks draw ‘em like flies to gold, he assured me. Seemed likely. I sighed to Phineas. The two began negotiations to keep the shop un-looted by burglars or the man’s closer drinking friends.
I entered the shop. My shop now, I supposed. Ha, I’d become tradesman. I could run for Alderman. But the place saddened my spirit. It smelled of neglect. Dust and cobwebs where once sun’s beams gleamed. When had I last stood here? A year, almost. All had been bright, clean. Excepting me. I’d been burnt and bruised, on the run from hunters. Trusting that here at least I stood with a friend. And some beggar child who’d followed me in… I looked about now, half expecting to find her wandering about. Asleep on the P
ersian rug pile, perhaps. My head began to ache.
A lawyer waited within, contemplating a Goya. At my entrance the man turned from witches dancing, to begin a practiced examination of his watch. This to inform me how very late I was. I presented my apologies. He presented an inventory, and tax bills, and past debts. We stood at the counter, piling up sums, crossing off assets. Even before the excuse of death, Dealer had fallen behind on rent, on taxes, on all the various municipal bribes. I would complain to his head, when next it chatted from under the table.
At some point I felt a gaze upon me. A thing much argued in war and spadassin work. Can one sense the eyes of another? I was taught in France to look down when hiding, less passing enemy feel the touch of my eyes. I scoffed at the advice, gazed as I wished. I was a boy, proud of my manly scoff. In hindsight, it was a wonder I was not shot. By my fellow soldiers I mean, not the French.
I put down pen, yawned, stretched, looked about. Eyes everywhere, from portraits and statues, small figurines and life-sized busts of dead Caesars, forgotten courtesans. Objects now gravely considering their new owner.
I wandered to a corner where a packing crate lay open. Within the straw sat a throne, the statue of a man. Dark stone. This object de arte must have required a team to carry. The statue’s gaze felt tangible as a wind. Carved amber eyes centered with bright jet. The dark coloring of the stone gave the face a seeming of soot smear.
He posed leaning forwards, as though just about to leap up. In anger, said the form of his mouth, the angle of his face. One hand clasped a hammer, the other formed fist. A blacksmith deity, perhaps.
The Harlequin Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans Page 10