“Peablossom’s no Sea Fae,” scoffed Emily. “She’s a wood nymph with a bucket of brine poured upon her empty head.” That got laugh from Edgar, twitch of smile from Lalena.
“Silence!” shouted Kariel. “You mad idiot things!” She stamped foot, waved gun. “Who cares for your idiot gossip, your fool dances?”
“Not you,” snipped Emily. “You lack the legs for dancing beneath the waves. Or under the sheets.” Kariel hissed. Em cared naught. “Ha!” she waved, near cutting her own nose off with the knife. “You’ll pledge troth when your love gives over being all he is? That’s not love. ‘Tis greed.”
“Greed?” shrieked Kariel. Her wings rushed open, filling the hall. Chatterton and I backed aside. “I want him to be more than a murdering mad thing like to you.”
“Exact so,” sniffed Emily. “You demand all to your liking before giving your precious self. Greedy, that is.”
“The lamp is brightening,” observed Chatterton. I looked to the two lamps. They now poured out light as though burning a night’s worth of oil in a minute. Every shadow became sharp as surgeon’s knife. Of a sudden the air tasted… strange. We breathed something cold and still, clear as polished glass. Not a speck of dust floating in the golden light, in the stone stillness. Beneath our feet, the boom of a subterranean vault-door faded to echoing chime. A vibration so high it became mere unease to the ear, the hairs of the arm.
With no sign nor warning, Ed stepped back, Em stepped back. I slashed where Edgar no longer stood, taken by surprise. They darted to the automaton monster Lalena abandoned. Leaped aboard.
“Which lever sets it going?” asked Ed.
“Try the red handle,” suggested Lalena. Not a bit concerned. She pulled me towards retreat. I resisted, not wanting the lunatics running us down upon such a creature. I gave a pleading look to Chatterton. He and I could defeat his mad cousins. Who could count it crime when they’d declared intent to murder us?
Chatterton shook head, not wanting to gain his life and lose his love. But would it? Kariel seemed ready to join the Espada family rites herself. She waved gun at the bronze monster, unsure which of five heads to target. Chatterton put hand to her shoulder, spoke words I did not hear. Words not meant for me, nor you either. She shook his hand away, but lowered the gun. Her wings drooped, twitching. Poor Kariel; a creature made for light and wind, laughter and serious quiet. Violence in dark places was not her realm.
Lalena kept pulling me down the hall. I yielded. This was not my battlefield. It was her family theatre, and their metaphysics ruled. Kariel and Chatterton followed. We skirted round the headless spider centaur. Behind us the bronze Cerberus clanged and clattered into motion. Emily giving a whoop of joy.
We four ran. Doors now opening to either side, inviting us to dart within, leave this mad hall. If only one knew where and when they led. But each portal we passed held equal threat and promise. Too many days in a spadassin’s life he’d not choose to visit again. Or a baker’s life, I suppose. To dart into a random doorway was a leap into the unknown, sure as opening the puzzle box that first set us running down this hall.
Behind, the jaws of the mechanical dogs tore into the headless spider centaur’s cog-wheel corpse. They’d dig past it soon. Then we’d have to make a stand, else choose a door. But what we fled became of a sudden far less than what we approached. The new source of light. We stopped some fifty paces away, blinking. About us the subtle chiming vibration came stronger, till my teeth ached.
A man sat in a chair before us, blocking the way, making us blink. Not God on his throne, nor ticket-taker for the circus. Behold a soot-faced workman, holding hammer. No war hammer, more a tool for making tables and boots. I laughed in recognition.
“It’s just a statue from Dealer’s shop,” I declared.
The man in the chair cocked head at that. Then stood, stretched, grown weary of sitting. He wore a stained leather coat with a hundred pockets. Eyes were amber suns considering us.
“No, my mistake,” I corrected.
The man began walking forwards, tapping the hammer upon his palm, counting thoughts out careful as coins to a banker. As he stepped, he changed.
I have seen a proud fellow become a wolf in stately stride across a room. Now I watched a thoughtful man become… a dragon. First the wings sprouting behind, leathery and green, rippling like fresh-raised sails. The face lengthening, shoulders widening, arms stretching. The man’s body rippled as though we beheld it through thick glass. In five steps we faced a creature upon four crocodilian legs, still expanding, still stepping quietly towards us. Yet now so large it must crouch to pass through the hall.
At ten steps we faced a great head of scales and teeth, bejeweled with one living eye, one glittering crystal eye. Both lit within by amber fire. Machine parts completed some pieces; a bronze foot, the faceted eye, the jagged steel teeth. A dim sea-green glow shone from the creature, a conflagration of phosphorescent fox fire rot. And I understood what approached was not a living thing, though it moved sinuous and sly as serpent upon a bird’s nest.
I raised sword to defy it. Blue fire now played along my blade, in welcome to the storm creature before us. Lalena gave this glance, gave me glance, then turned to the dragon.
“Lord Fulgurous,” she nodded, making quick curtsy. Then grabbed me as I would a child, flung us both through the nearest dark doorway.
Chapter 18
Spyings, Beddings and Letters in Cypher
Time is a mocker. He turns a straight hall into a maze of choices. Then transforms a circle of twelve arcs into an infinite line where the mind flees forwards while the hounds of memory chase behind. The japester Time takes flat mirror and twists till our features warp like wrinkled cloth, leaving us staring at ancients with familiar faces. Then grins, twists the glass again, stretching the children at our sides to tall strangers.
And Time’s bells chivy us to the appointed places where he plans all his finest japes. Sounding over the hills, under the sea, within our heads. Chiming, tolling, foretelling some moment of significance. Time’s knell summons us… but to what? Perhaps a wedding, perhaps a fire, perhaps a funeral.
* * *
Lalena and I were home. We might go to bed, an’ we wished. A bit of a problem with that easy ending: an earlier Rayne Gray held our bed. Sipping my whiskey, leaning on my pillows, reading my favorite books. My beloved first editions, heretics destined for the coming flames.
Meanwhile Lalena and I shivered in the cold night. Side by side on the stone garden bench. The great oak spread its ancient branches over us, shadowing the courtyard, hiding the sky. Lights shone from the house windows, revealing the warm world within.
“That’s my bedroom,” I pointed, as one might share some interesting sight from a carriage.
“La, and there is your beloved shadow passing by,” remarked Lalena. “Are we going to see you and the housemaid make lewd silhouettes?”
A blur of entangled acts and positions came to memory. If shadows re-enacted them before us I’d close my eyes. Or gouge them out. But I did not admit this.
“For sure the shadows shall,” I predicted. “And I shall narrate as they perform. Mind you take notes.” An unkind thing to say to one’s present love. But I sulked. The present love had seen her man raise sword to a dragon, and judged him fool for the act. A hero’s wife should applaud bold suicidal urges, not heave him to safety like a sack of flour.
So I sat in the cold past, a resentful sack of flour. Staring up at the warm house containing all my old life. I searched windows for a glimpse of El’s shade. Not lust-tangling with mine. Just a moment’s hint of her straightening hair, washing dishes. Any of the thousand steps that once enacted the daily dance. Even Stephano’s shadow would please. I imagined him passing the window. Just a bit hunched, arms forwards, an old pirate busying about the ship of the house. How strange, to sit in the dark and gaze into one’s old life.
“How does the magic work?” I demanded. “We wait for the next door to appear?”
“So I’ve found,” she answered. “One needs the key to begin, and to end. Between that one wanders in and out, as the doors find you, as you find them.”
“Why the key to end?”
“Time is a maze, my love, for all it seems straight line. Once you’ve entered, you must wander till you find your way out. At the last door you use the key to return to your proper time. Else you never leave at all.”
Said thus, it had a certain balance. “Suppose one were to simply decide to stay in some time that pleased?”
Lalena shook head. “Time and doors won’t cease opening, for all your fond wishing. Soon enough you’d walk into the kitchen and find yourself elsewhere, elsewhen. In your childhood home, like enough.” She shivered at thought of returning to her father’s dark house. “Perhaps a battle field, if the life were such as yours.”
I sat reviewing pages of my existence I never wished to read again. Places that’d chivy a man towards battle, screaming for clean death. If I’d known the dark doorways might return me to such, I’d not dared cross threshold. And yet… what of the bedchamber with three nameless children? That was magic to make the soul shiver, longing to return, to stay forever.
“What we see through the doors,” I asked. “Is it certain? Is it real?”
“I’ve no answer,” replied Lalena, turning eyes upon me. Wondering what I’d seen. As I wondered what she’d seen. From where came the scratch across the cheek?
“Is the past certain?” she asked. “Is the present real?” She gestured at the warm house raised from ashes, destined to return to ashes. “Best ask Cousin Zee, or the Glocken. For all that neither knows which shoe to put on second, still less what is real.”
What a tribe of philosophical lunatics, I thought. A sulking sort of thought. I reviewed Lalena heaving me to safety. Not a point in my life I wished to visit again. Nor even this cold moment. Shivering, so safe and married. While my bachelor self sat in his unmarried bed, sipping his bachelor whiskey. Bah.
I’d have attacked the dragon’s eyes, I decided. Yes. That’d be the weakness. For all the head had been near large as a carriage. A flick of rapier, and the beast would have staggered blind, howled for mercy.
Lalena, heaver of husbands, fidgeted, yawned, stretched. This waiting did not suit her restless nature. She reached, scooped a handful of pebbles. I wondered if she’d toss them at the window, drawing out the Rayne Gray within. He’d put down the whiskey, take up a pistol, lean out the window. Peer down astounded. She’d invite him down to join us. A jealous heat set the pulse beating in my ears. Suppose she preferred that carefree bachelor to her dour husband?
But no, she did not target the window. She tossed a pebble at the stone lion. It went ping against the creature’s head.
“How oft we’ve met in this courtyard,” she observed. “Sat on this bench, wondering at the world. By moon and fog, by fire and dream, and now by magic key. Did the fountain ever work?”
I shook head. “Pipes always clog. Previous owner declared it destiny.”
She tossed another pebble. Ping.
“How did you ever afford this great house on a soldier’s pay?”
I scowled to recall. “My aunts inherited from my father. I inherited from them.”
“But they disowned you,” she reminded. Ping. “I remember calling you ‘poor child’, pressed you close to breast as you recounted.” She patted my poor child’s shoulder. Mocking? No. She wanted me to laugh, cease sulking. Press myself to her breast. Which angered me the more. As though I were a child to be humored at her tit after rescue from dragons or aunts.
“Oh, they disowned,” I spat. “But their idea of the word meant never mentioning my name. Even to their lawyers. I ceased to exist in my aunts’ vocabulary. But not their will, nor the Law’s eyes. If the Law has eyes.”
“Blind, they say.” Ping.
We sat and listened to the wind in the oak branches. I considered that beneath its roots waited the puzzle box full of time’s trash. Absurd thing; yet dangerous. A dragon’s egg placed centuries past. Waiting, waiting till fire should take the tree.
“That night we met,” I asked. “Something high in the oak killed four of the men I fought. Hung their bodies in the branches. Was that you?” Not that I’d resent her rescuing me then. Would be childish to feel so.
“Wasn’t me,” said Lalena. “’Twas some Scalen, like to cousin Dema. All sorts of family busybodies followed Uncle and me about thenadays, as we followed Chatterton. The clans were ever so fascinated with our last Espada. Till you took their fancy.”
A Scalen. I pictured a serpentine woman in the tree branches, writhing, wriggling, giggling for the mischief of murdering men.
“I sat watching from yonder roof edge” recalled Lalena. Voice gone dreamy. A pleasant recollection of her maidenhood, for all the fire and blood. Could she want to return to that strange night? Why? “Watching you go round and round with a host of foes, shouting of tigers in the night. I’m sure you charmed the Scalen till she took your part.” She hesitated, then added, “God’s truth, you charmed my sad heart.”
And there was my error. I should have turned at her words, kissed her hand, spoke of my love. For all the cold night, we’d have made our own fire. I did not. I sat, sulked. So she tossed another pebble. Ping.
Then a light glimmered in the study. Someone moved about with shielded candle. If my earlier self lounged upstairs, it could only be one of two souls. I trembled. Not out of fear, nor sorrow, nor anger. But of a sudden I understood why the doors to past and future were locked by magic keys, guarded by monsters. To sit outside your house, watching your world as play on a stage... it threatened mind and soul.
I stood, edged close to the house. The figure sat at my desk, shuffling through drawers. A woman. I watched as she opened the hidden compartment easy as kitchen cabinet. Extracted my appointment book, took paper and pen, began to copy out items of interest.
They’d be names of important people hiring the Seraph for his spadassin skills. Bankers, generals, Aldermen and Magisters. With brief description of assignment. Ah, I should have writ them in cypher. Generally I just wrote something like ‘Steal Bishop B’s letter Tues. for Prince E’.
I watched Elspeth O’Claire, housemaid, finish her spying, tidy up. She stretched, put the rolled paper into a purse, and hurried out the room, taking the light. I counted to five, went to the door, gently pulled. Unlocked, there being no exit from the courtyard.
Only then did I turn to Lalena. Rather, turn to where she’d sat. Gone. Annoyed, I went to the fountain, whispered her name. Gone. Cursed, searched all the way round the tree. Wondering if she circled as I did, playing hide and seek. Gone. Had she darted into a magic portal without me? Gone. I stared up at the ivy trellis. Perhaps she’d climbed to the roof. She could, quick and easy as the stairs of our house. But why?
For the theatre of a dramatic disappearance, of course. Bah to that. I returned to the study door, slipped inside. I needed to follow Elspeth, see with my own eyes what she did. Prove that I’d been blind to who she truly was. And by implication, been blind to who I’d been.
Passing through the house returned me to the self of years past. I stopped before the portrait in the hall. Admired my image on a battle horse. Damned fine thing, to center such a painting. Would I could take it with me. Impractical. But I reached up to the crystal bauble that centered the chandelier. The touch set all the crystals swinging, faintly chiming. A thought occurred. I reached into pocket, pulled forth the crystal given by the Glocken. They were the same as any two faceted pieces of glass. I put it back. A second thought occurred. I searched pockets. No magic key, though I’d put the one from the Porcelain Doll safe away. In the inner pocket of my coat. And where was the coat? A clockwork man wore it now, staggering through eternity.
“Madness,” I whispered, and resigned myself to wandering lost in the maze. The Gray upon the horse in the painting waved sword to wave me on to victory. Idiot.
I tiptoed to the kit
chen, watched El remove a pie from the oven. My mouth watered. Then she threw cloak about her, departed by the kitchen door. I waited till she reached the street, mightily resisting the siren aroma of the pie. Then I followed after her, keeping to shadows. Past several crossings, blocks of shuttered houses, shadowed alleys. I frowned. A girl innocent and shy as El shouldn’t be out at night alone. She’d chase a stray kitten, wander into a thieves’ den.
A carriage waited at a corner. She spoke to the driver, then climbed within. I hurried after, recalling words her ghost confessed upon my wedding night.
“I was a house girl caught up in lords’ affairs. Spyings and beddings, and promises of a glorious future, with threats of a dreadful end. I lived in more fear and shame in a week, man, than you did in a year of war. And giddy dreams, too, for I was just a servant-maid, and yet I rode in secret carriages, bore letters in cypher, spoke to personages whose cooks would not have let me pass their kitchen door.”
In daytime I’d have little trouble keeping along. At night the streets waited empty, and the driver whipped the horses. Had they gone far I’d have given up. As is, I trotted scarce half a mile. I tried to guess by the air, the feel of the street what year this was. Spring, I decided. Perhaps a year before the house burning.
We reached an inn by the river. No plebian dockside tavern such as Keeper’s. This kept lights bright, a guard at the door. Servants to take horse and gratuity. Large windows displayed the candlelit warmth within. Revealed various revelers. Dancers, musicians, gentlemen dandies, genteel whores. An old man slumped at a table in the corner, bald head resting on his arm. The damned Glocken again, following me through time’s doors. Top hat resting for a dark tower.
I considered walking in, shaking him awake. No more mocking me in dreams. Where would we be then? No telling. I watched Elspeth speak to a servant, be escorted upstairs.
I knew the place, disliked it. The wine was watered, the cards marked and the staff obsequious. The rooms upstairs were for rendezvous of genteel fornication. To my egalitarian soul, silk and crystal makes illicit copulation crasser than honest wood and cotton fucking.
The Clockwork Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans Page 13