Mr Absalom pushed back his chair and prepared to rise.
Through a throat choked tight with an invisible hand Arden said, ‘Wait.’
‘Time runs short, Mx Beacon.’ He tilted his head to the riot threatening to breach the stairwell. ‘Speak quickly.’
‘You have my promise. What is your guarantee that you intend to do as you say?’
‘The guarantee is that you know me as a brother of Lyonne and those fellows down there do not. Even an incautious whisper in this place could be the absolute end of me. For my own protection I will act with honour and receive it in return, I hope.’
With that, he gave a nod and adjusted the brocade of his vest before sliding back into his behemoth-leather coat.
With no small measure of huffing Chalice let the Lion spy go, before turning back to Arden.
‘What a show-off. Don’t let him forget that you were already headed home. I’ll not have him stealing my thunder just because he’s enacted a rescue.’
Arden quickly kissed Chalice on the cheek, too overwhelmed and overjoyed to do much else. Even the shouts and ruckus from below could not put a dent on her whirling elation.
‘Oh Chalice, is it not a miracle? He’s alive! He’s alive!’ The coins in her hands pinched and snagged. Her blood belonged to another heartbeat. Jonah was alive, and alive, and alive.
He would come home with her. He would be safe in Clay, with Bellis far away. And the sea was not so far from the city, the Clay river mouth spilled onto oceanic estuaries where the shorefolk made their lives. He could be happy there. They could be happy together.
‘I could find a salve for those,’ Chalice said, peering down at Arden’s gloves as she helped her up from the table. ‘To keep the infection from spreading while we wait for Mr Absalom to return.’
Arden smiled, tremulous and almost fainting with joy. ‘A salve would be nice. Yes.’
The creaking and crashing of the mezzanine’s staircase failing under the load of hunger-crazed insurgents put a bookend to their conversation. A fight was spilling over into other fights, and now the eyes were turning upwards. The time for leaving had come.
Chalice took Arden’s elbow as if she was an impossibly delicate thing, but her fingers held on tight, and hard.
‘Let’s go.’
As if the riot had summoned up the strange demons, nightfall brought rain upon Burden Town. Under the cold rockblood streetlamps, the aqueducts rose up brimful with yellow water, spilled their banks along with the discarded rubbish of a year. The devilfish of the river underwent a metamorphosis, and in the space of hours grew rudimental legs to drag their silvered bellies along the alleys and streets, looking for food.
All through the long night and into the sodden morning Lord Abaddon’s helpmen patrolled the edge of the veranda. Every once in a while they would poke the risen water with sticks as a demonic imago chanced the oily wood.
Safe and dry, Arden could not sleep, and paced the sheltered walkway like a prisoner along the perimeter of their cell. By morning, she was exhausted. She could not escape the primacy of rockblood here, the suffocating feeling of it.
Arden’s high view from the veranda included the wasteland boundary beyond the city and the true species of an automated island. Through the grey rain, a gargantuan wheeled dredger crawled along on wheels higher than a watch-house. Animated by old sanguis mandatum-orientis instructions, it shared a ghastly affinity with the lich-ships travelling from Equus to the Fiction refineries. Smoke wreathed the rusted funnel, a clawed bucket dangled upon an articulated arm. The petrichor of disturbed dirt wafted in the air.
The waiting had dulled Arden’s initial excitement of discovering that Jonah was alive. Now other worries slipped past her defences. It did not help that when she thought of Jonah, Miah’s face and body seemed to slide over his image, like a ghostly projection. It was as if the memory of the deepwater man sought to dominate Jonah even when they were separated by years and miles.
At the chiming of the clocks for the daylight hours, Chalice joined Arden upon the veranda. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘The rain has slowed. It’s time. Mr Absalom will be at the market harbour.’
She blinked out of her imaginings, and gave Chalice a weary smile. ‘Wait, let me talk to David Modhi first.’
Madame Lion gave an aggrieved mutter and fastened her rain bonnet under her chin. ‘Don’t take too long. Another deluge will close off our route to the port.’
Arden went to locate David, and found him with Malachi. They were both in the boudoir, dressing for wet weather. Lord Abaddon had made himself absent. It had only taken a sharp word from Chalice for him to withdraw, in high dudgeon, to the safety of his own quarters.
‘Leaving already, Mr Modhi?’
The boy – a man now, she reminded herself – stopped buttoning up his oilcoat and took Arden into a hug. She hugged him back.
‘I will miss you, Mx Beacon.’ He glanced sideways at Malachi, who nodded, and moved away so they might have some privacy.
‘So, you took up on their offer, I see.’
‘Sean was a quick thinker to make the deal. He’s really smart, Mx Beacon, he is. My mother always used to say that Hillsiders were foolish and clumsy, but that’s not been the case at all.’
‘Well, he is a credit to his people,’ Arden said kindly, even though her heart pained her, seeing David look so happy in the face of such an uncertain future. ‘But I would be remiss not to ask – can you reconsider coming with me? There’s still a place in Clay. They’ll treat a sanguis ignis well. It can be a constrained life, but for some it can be a long one.’
David shook his head with a gentle regret, gestured to Malachi, inviting him back into the conversation.
‘David is strong enough to withstand an initiation,’ Malachi said, knowing what exactly they’d spoken of. ‘My people will accept him in time. Maybe they’ll give him captaincy of Saudade.’
‘Well now, don’t cut all your parts off,’ Arden said faintly, wanting to feel happiness for the lad but finding the emotion abut hard and painful against her own cautions. She would have to tell Jonah about Saudade’s loss. ‘The tip of a finger will be fine.’
‘This is not a parting, Mx Beacon,’ David said. ‘And tell Mr Riven I will see him again one day. I am certain of it.’
Malachi lingered, waiting for them to finish. At last he cleared his throat with a polite cough. ‘This is no ordinary storm. We must get along.’
After her goodbyes, Arden put on her krakenskin and joined Chalice at the wide cedar overhang of Lord Abaddon’s mansion.
The rain had slowed. Curtains of water still sheeted off the cornices, and the two menservants in the foyer battled with a four-legged monstrosity not willing to die from its double impalement upon boat-hooks. It was somewhat a cross between a lizard and a dog, with a translucent membrane between its front and back legs. The creature snarled and hissed every time one of the men poked it with a hook, dribbled venom from its inverted snout.
Arden wanted all of a sudden to tell them to stop and let the animal go. She couldn’t bear to see a cruelty on the hour of her reunion with Jonah. It didn’t fit right.
Chalice took Arden’s hand, and patted the numb parts with attendant care. ‘All good, darling? There’s a bit of a walk ahead of us.’
Arden turned away from the pitiful scene. The creature let out a ferocious, cackling slather of rage as Chalice passed, but after an equal riot of venomous hissing, ignored Arden completely once she put on her krakenskin coat.
‘I’m good. I only feel a little strange. I never expected to find Jonah so suddenly and so unharmed. I expected it would be different.’ She clasped her damp gloves together and willed more feeling into her hands. ‘Even in my most impossible dreams I expected some level of damage. And sacrifice.’
‘Isn’t that what that alley-priest said you would need?’ Chalice asked, curt with sympathetic disapproval. ‘I completely own and condemn his foolishness. He’d have you thinking you’d need to cut out y
our heart to win Jonah back. Bloody deepwater nonsense. My fault for even taking you to him.’
‘I must admit, he was very convincing.’
Chalice stuck her hand out from the veranda, then withdrew it with a disappointed smacking of lips. ‘If one were drunk with religious puffery in a place like this, one could make anything believable. Thank goodness some good sense has made a reappearance, Arden. By this night we’ll be heading home, all will be right with the world.’
‘Oh. I can barely imagine what I’ll say to Mr Riven when I see him again.’ Arden put her hand on her stomach. ‘I have such butterflies.’
‘Don’t fuss too much. Tell him he needs to appreciate the hard work we’ve all put into this rescue of his.’
‘I barely did anything.’
‘Apart from nearly turning into serpent food with that little jaunt upriver,’ Chalice tutted. ‘Or, heavens, nearly getting mauled by some tattooed savage who has never seen a soap-washed Lyonnian in his life. Chin up.’
Chalice leaned over and properly fastened the hood to Arden’s krakenskin, before retying her own bonnet mummy-tight.
‘I’m only glad it’s over,’ Chalice continued. ‘By the week’s end I expect to see myself sunning myself on a Clay City balcony with a medallion on my chest, and that will be the fitting finale to my career with the Order. I’m quite done with all the gallivanting.’
Arden thought of some likewise good thing and dared not even chance either God or the devil with it yet.
Like any stormbride used to hard weather Chalice knew when the rain clearing was as good as it was ever going to get, and they ran out into the streets at her command. Arden grabbed her skirt hem and knotted the fabric high over her kidskin under-trousers. Ended up getting all her layers wet all the same.
Luck continued its unlikely companionship. Their run to the docks was unimpeded by soul or devil. The poisoned sky remained bilious overhead but did not break apart from a few fat drops of water. The docks were close. Arden’s feet ran beyond her head, and Chalice grabbed her waist when her travelling shoes slipped about on the stone.
‘Don’t rush.’
‘I need to see him.’
‘He’s not going anywhere.’
Then the rain began to fall again, and the spilling river rose once more. The previously chaotic markets at the wharfside lay empty and sodden, an ankle-deep sheet of floodwater moved between the trestle tables. Huddles of bodies stayed in the eaves of the buildings, watching.
‘Hoy!’ cried a voice. ‘Hoy.’
Through the intermittent sheets of lightning they could see the figure of a man, upright and aristocratic, with a Djenne shawl across one shoulder and a monocle like a third eye about his neck. Mr Absalom, at one of the private docks. An iron ship listed at the main harbour, lurking in the water, its stack warmed up and belching bunker-oil fumes. The rest of the harbour had been rendered deserted by the weather and the devilfish, and an eerie abandonment echoed along the wet moorings.
‘Hoy,’ Chalice cried through the rain. ‘We’re here.’
‘And not yet devoured!’ Mr Absalom replied cheerily. ‘Quick, our gangway is about to float off.’
Chalice had Arden’s hand tight, tugging her towards Mr Absalom, towards the iron boat, and her way home, but something felt wrong, something …
‘This is a bloodworked storm?’ Arden asked as they approached. She recalled Mr Stone’s pathetic attempt at holding back a thunderstorm. This storm had the clean edges of Lyonne training.
‘Is the storm that obvious?’ Mr Absalom looked about himself. ‘I thought it rather natural myself.’
‘I can smell it. I didn’t think there was a decent stormcaller on Equus.’
Mr Absalom gave a great proud smile despite his drenching. ‘Mx Greenwing is from Morningvale. This is her boat that I have requisitioned, along with her blood. Welcome aboard, Lightmistress Beacon, and on behalf of the Order, welcome home.’
A smartly dressed woman in a Lyonne Seamaster’s uniform nodded from the deck. She had the look of a sanguinem, down to the gloves and the exhausted expression of letting too much blood go.
Arden dug her heels in. ‘Wait. No. Where’s Mr Riven?’
‘Inside. Come. He cannot show his face on this island.’ Mr Absalom now spoke with a touch of irritation. His impatience only compounded Arden’s hesitation. Surely he could spend a few seconds alleviating her worries?
‘If I don’t see him – I’m concerned, Mr Absalom. I don’t know who to trust.’
Mr Absalom nodded. ‘I understand. I’ll have him come out. Only for a moment, mind – he still suffered a great deal in the hands of his wife, and he does not like the open air.’
He signalled to another man on the deck. The rain fell harder, hurting her, the storm fighting with Arden’s natural lightkeeper abilities, making her eyesight falter, her danger-sense overflow.
Someone said Arden’s name. In the gloom, a figure stepped from the ship’s low doorway. Her name said again in a Fiction accent softened by Lyonne vowels. He wore a coat of bronze krakenskin, darkly metallic in the rain, rimed in blue.
A coat torn below the shoulder, where a crossbow bolt had gone through.
The coat Jonah had been wearing when he’d had it torn off him upon Sehnsucht …
Dizzy, she said, ‘Jonah?’
The figure spoke again. ‘Arden. Come inside please.’
He beckoned her towards him.
Just a little way. Up the gangplank … that’s all she had to do …
Then stopped as her foot touched the gangplank. A wave of doubt. She backed up onto the dock.
‘Strange …’ she found herself saying. ‘I never heard of a stormcaller called Mx Greenwing in Morningvale.’
Mr Absalom stilled. ‘She has strayed from the Order and works freelance.’
‘Nobody strays far from the Order. Chalice, this doesn’t feel right.’
Chalice did not even have time to protest her innocence, for everything happened all at once. A pair of hands threw themselves around Arden’s shoulders, pinning her hard and lifting her feet so she kicked only air.
In a jumble of arms and limbs and breaths the so-called Mr Riven came at a run down the gangplank …
… it wasn’t Mr Riven, but a stranger wearing Mr Riven’s coat. Arden lashed out with her foot, landing squarely on the inside of his thigh, folded him over with a hoof of pain.
The commotion drew out the locals, locals who had not left Lyonne on the best of terms and were touchy about foreigners making a drama of their docks. Mr Absalom whistled to his cronies. ‘Quick, release the hawsers!’
Arden wedged her boot hard into a bollard. ‘Put … me … down …’
Only by sheer luck did her thrashing connect the back of her head with a too-close nose. A crunch and shout of agony, and her captor flung her upon the cobbles with such rage it winded her.
Another ruffian darted behind Arden’s back, to snatch her shoulders. He kept a firm grip on her arm.
Chalice ran to Arden, her traitorous face going double and triple in Arden’s vision. She seized up Arden’s hands at once, endured being slapped away, and pulled them up again.
‘You’re dying, Arden. Dying from the coins in your hands! Please get on the boat!’
‘And you’re despicable, Chalice Quarry!’
Face a ghostly circle surrounded by dark oilskin. Face pale with distress and grief and yes, even stubbornness.
‘Arden,’ Chalice implored, close to tears. ‘Come with us now and survive this.’
She was imprisoned. She had lost. No Jonah. No Saudade funeral boat or Deepwater prayer. No sacrifice, only an empty few days on this cursed island where she had achieved nothing.
Was my fault I trusted a Lion again, Chalice. Was my fault for being that fool again.
Mr Absalom waved off the concerned bystanders, and stood next to the two men Arden had disabled. He raised an eyebrow in appreciation at the damage she had wrought, even though Arden would have rather sp
at at him than take his compliment.
He gestured for her captor to release Arden a little, then nudged the fallen Riven-impostor with his toe.
‘Sorry, Enoch.’ He spoke to the man in Jonah’s coat. ‘That coat belongs to the lady. I have to give her some recompense for her feelings at this moment. Take it off.’
The man cursed, and once on his feet was glad to rid himself of the bronze leather.
Mr Absalom folded it over his arm and offered it to Arden with a gesture of apology.
Arden glared at him before snatching the coat. ‘May the devils eat your liver, Mr Absalom.’
‘Please don’t think too badly of me,’ Mr Absalom said. ‘As it is always, I am under greater instruction.’
She darted a loathing glance at the weeping Chalice.
‘So, since I am a prisoner, why doesn’t one of you tell me the truth. What did happen to Jonah Riven after I left him on Sehnsucht?’
Mr Absalom shrugged, though not dismissively. Regret in those broad, noble features of his, one could almost believe he’d actually wished the best for them.
‘Jonah still took breath when I left Maris two days ago, and that I can confirm. But he was not long for the world.’
Arden’s lungs were squeezed with invisible fists. ‘What does that mean? Is he alive or dead now?’
‘I left him in chains upon the main island of Maris and Bellis was building a pyre for him. A flaming execution to the sea. Two days ago. He has been in her captivity for almost a full season, and she has taken her revenge all that time.’
Arden swallowed the bile in her throat, the anger that tasted like blood and metal. ‘He was alive, and you left him there!’
‘Believe me, Bellis would have put me on that pyre just as quickly. There was nothing I could have done. My duty was over.’
‘If I’d been told earlier I could have saved him! I could have taken my boat straight to Maris and saved him!’
‘Would have made it worse. All your evalescendi talent can do is make Bellis Harrow stronger in her own bloodwork … and her madness. You know this to be true, Arden Beacon. This journey of yours was only ever a grieving woman’s folly.’
Deepwater King Page 16