Yet even with the goldware and the glistening food, and the candles and the lanterns and the gas lamps turned to full, a dour cast fell about the Justinian residence, for the surroundings were bleached of contrast and colour. A desperate undercurrent flowed through the conversations, and it did not take too many minutes of eavesdropping upon small-talk for Arden to work out that they were talking of Clay Portside.
‘Trouble on the docks in Lyonne,’ said the one wharfmaster from Garfish Point she managed to capture in a proper conversation. ‘Talk of commonfolk unions and other nonsense.’
Another young man, Fiction-pale, dark hair and craggy, weatherworn features, wore fingerless gloves upon his hands the same as Arden. ‘I myself have narrowly escaped their acts of violence and sabotage. They attacked me at my very post, not more than two months ago. Called me a scab, an affront to good morals, a stealer of food from the mouths of children. Can you believe it? I’m like them, I have to work off my employment fees too. It’s not as if I’m getting showered in banknotes. I’m paid just the same.’ He held his fingers in such a way they suggested an encroaching paralysis. ‘I was glad to get a post at Garfish Point,’ he concluded. ‘I only hope I can get my coins changed soon.’
Nervously, Arden touched her own gloves. He saw her action, and nodded. He wore a pin upon his lapel, the shape of a box. Had it in him, the pin suggested, to divest some mass from an object to make it more easily manoeuvrable. Perhaps not sanguis pondus, a manipulator of inert mass, but something adjacent. A useful skill on the wharves, though not so useful that he’d been carted off to Fiction.
‘Many a commonblood family had their fortunes increased when a member tested positive for endowments,’ Arden said. ‘But there are jobs that require no sanguis talent at all. So even though I have these,’ she held up her gloves, ‘I can understand a mature worker’s concern. How would you like it, sirs, to be replaced by a child thirty years your junior, purely due to an inferred and irrelevant skill?’
‘Oh, you sound like a unionist,’ the wharfmaster guffawed. Unlike his companion, the wharfmaster was physically impressive, a tall, heavy fellow of elderly years with an abundant grey beard made yellow with pipe-smoke. ‘Malcontents and the like. Sanguine folk enable trade. The commonbloods should be happy enough with a job, and not starving in the hills or shoring up the Sainted Isles.’ He nodded knowingly at Arden. ‘Men chance the attention of Lions if they knock heads with industrial progress.’
Arden looked down at her near-empty wine glass, and debated another. This night would be less annoying if she saw it to the end in a drunken haze.
Before the others could ask further of her opinions, a hand came from nowhere, seized her elbow and whisked her away.
‘No need to speak to them, Lightmistress. The anti-unionists drink to excess and make up stories of persecutions that are only the push and shove of a busy city.’
‘Mr Justinian,’ Arden said, nonplussed. ‘I’m certain I could have worked that out for myself without having a sudden rescue.’
‘You don’t want sudden rescues, huh? I’ll have to remember that.’ His gaze scraped her up and down. He was quicksilver. ‘See, the dress makes you attractive for a plain girl.’
So, all his promises of restraint upon the cliffside had indeed flittered away. She bit back the sharp retort on her tongue. Concentrate on the signature for your Guild degree, Arden. Make that the goal you must endure trials to achieve.
A pair of Morningvale Guilders passed them, smiling. They’d never been this far South before, and though he couldn’t sense their veiled derision of his rotting house and his poorly chosen décor that was a shade too gauche, Mr Justinian still greeted them with such oily charisma he practically gleamed. With the practice born of a thousand false relationships, he introduced Arden to most of the room, spoke of her highly, made the subtlest insinuations that he was physically intimate with her on a regular basis.
The social gauntlet never showed an end, and Arden became a mess, internally quivering with a breathless rage, her hands balled into sweaty fists. She could reveal no outward sign of her distress, and that perhaps was the worst pain of all.
At last the great room cleared for dancing. Mr Justinian took her by waist and hand. She wanted to shy away from his touch. A death-moth’s poisonous dust could be no less welcome than the scrape of his fingers. Her stomach churned. The wine spritzer bubbled into the back of her throat.
‘Dance with me,’ he said. ‘It is the Guild Dance. They are expecting the Coastmaster and the Lightmistress of Vigil to lead the waltz.’
‘I am not much of a dancer.’
‘I insist. Just follow my lead.’
Halfway mortified by circumstance, she allowed him to take her out onto the floor while the string quartet played a lively Lyonnese Waltz, with its racing fiddle and steps that were complicated enough that Mr Justinian stood on her feet more than twice despite him claiming to know these moves. Arden began to suspect he was doing it on purpose.
‘Yes, you are not quite so unattractive in this light.’ Mr Justinian shuffled closer, until his hot breath steamed on her forehead. With a thumping shock she realized that it was not a belt buckle but the covert press of his erection into her lower stomach. His cologne had a noxiousness about it, a too-strong mix of civet and ambergris, but without the pleasing ratio of either.
I shall either faint or purge, she thought.
‘I shall make love to you tonight,’ Mr Justinian murmured in her ear. ‘You have teased me long enough.’
She could have pulled away then. Should have, only they were waltzing in the centre of the crowd and all the Guildmasters were smiling and clapping and watching. Devilment, she thought again. Devilment! If she were to pull away and leave him obviously aroused, it would be a most embarrassing situation. Better she should let him extricate himself in relative dignity against a wall at least, before slapping him in private.
‘What say you, Lightmistress? After this dance ends?’
‘Is this your blackmail attempt?’
His unctuous voice in her ear. The bulge in his crotch grazed her hip as she attempted to thwart his unsophisticated flirtation. ‘You will never be a true guildswoman let alone a Master degree-holder, Arden Beacon. Your blood is as weak as pisswater and you have no real endowment to speak of. I know you are not allowed Lyonne lovers because your dirty blood will despoil the line of sanguis ignis. I may be the only man you are allowed. Conversely, there are some who say I should not sign your Guild form because of your genetic failures. I am in a bind. I need convincing, you see.’
‘May the devils fuck you, Mr Justinian.’
He tightened his hands on hers. Hard, and the coin beneath snagged hot against the skin.
‘No, I don’t think they will, tonight. But you shall certainly do so …’
He pressed closer, reeking of civet-glands and ammoniac soap. She despaired that in her isolation she might have once thought him passably handsome, for up close he was tiny-eyed and snivelly-chinned and stank with bitterness. She stared at an ill thread on his suit, swallowed the urge to scream.
‘We were interrupted by the sea-waves, before. But the sea cannot extend so far. What say you? I can release you right now, Arden my dear. Just say the word.’
What would Chalice have advised, or any of her Clay Portside friends? Their ghosts whispered their practical advice. A cock in and of itself was a minor thing, despite the pronouncements of men who talked about their lances and swords and weapons.
The music slowed down to a more traditional waltz of the Vinland style, a dance slow and seductive. Others came onto the ballroom floor. Just as Mr Justinian pulled her towards the door, a plainly dressed boy ran up to them, bearing a folded parchment envelope affixed with a candlewax seal.
‘Lightmistress,’ the boy said, ‘I have a message. It’s quite urgent.’
‘Get away from here,’ Mr Justinian rasped. ‘What kind of fool are you, boy?’
The boy ignored Mr Justinian’s
anger. ‘It’s urgent, Mistress.’ The boy pulled a chain of tarnished brass from about his neck, and showed a small golden coin.
Arden could not make out the markings upon the coin’s surface, but Mr Justinian may as well have been struck across the cheek with it. Instantly his awakening drained out of him as effectively as a slap.
‘You little shit,’ he said. ‘You little disgraceful shit. Give her your message, cub, and be quick about it.’
Both the reprieve and the lingering after-effects of the wine conspired to make her dizzy again. With mounting unease Arden took the envelope and edged away from Mr Justinian. She need not have worried about him, for he stalked off, adjusting the buttons of his fly with angry yanks.
‘Who sent you?’ she asked the boy. He was a child from town, obviously. A gold coin could buy any sort of labour, especially a pretty gold coin on a chain. She saw it close now, and the stamping had the appearance of a flower. A rose, crossed with thorns.
‘He said you were a friend of his.’
Curious to see what had occasioned this reversal of fortune, Arden tore open the envelope and read the message quickly. The penmanship was neat, but severe.
If you wish to save Mr Riven, follow the boy.
She glared at him. The youth only stared back at her with his guileless child’s eyes.
‘No friend of mine gave you this.’
‘He is a Lyonne guildsman, Lightmistress,’ the boy said. ‘You are to come with me to the Orangery.’
A Lyonne Guildsman? There were many here, but none that should have had the necessity to be calling her away in the night using the name of her neighbour. A cold feeling touched her neck, a whisper of angel’s caution. Arden glanced about her. Nobody watched this little drama, or appeared inquisitive about this sudden interruption of ceremonies. Mr Justinian had since retired to a place to lick his wounds, a corner conveniently adjacent to the liquor cabinet. He poured a dark splash the colour of treacle into a crystal glass as a pasty young lady sidled towards him, her tongue painting a wet, hungry trail about her lips at the thought of having the Coastmaster of Vigil all to herself.
‘A Guildsman, you say? Who?’
The boy only thrust the rose-coin forward again.
A rose upon thorns, she thought. You know this symbol. You’ve seen it before.
The child only shrugged, knowing she would get nothing out of him. Arden nodded.
‘I’ll come with you, lad. Just let me get my coat.’
17
The night took on a different feeling
The night took on a different feeling upon the Manse’s uplands than it did closer to the water. For all that Fiction bunkered in the southern chill from low latitudes, the coastal climate remained blunted by the great temperate sink of the nearby ocean.
But in the higher altitudes of the Justinian property the air sharpened, and Arden was glad to have her krakenskin coat. Still unsteady from the wine, she paused at the mud room to light one of the spare oil lamps before following the boy down the gravel boulevard of the mansion grounds.
A coin, the boy had shown Mr Justinian. A rose with a thorned cross. She recognized the symbol, but its meaning fluttered out of reach.
Instead of taking her outside the walls, the child led her further into the gardens. They hurried past the dry Poseidon fountain with sea-horse hippocampi and once-naked gods sporting their new clothing – a dark mossy verdigris that would one day smother them – through the domed grottoes and overgrown night gardens to where a cast-iron and glass conservatory stood among the shadows of unkempt box hedges and overgrown bougainvillea.
The moonlight sheened off the conservatory glass, made the walls white. The boy gestured to the door.
‘In there, Lightmistress.’
Another light source shone inside the leafy bowers. A cold yellow glow, from that new power of electrification.
‘Mr Riven wanted to meet me here?’
The child only gave a vacant, angelic smile, made his gesture again.
Her better sense would have told her to leave, but then again, her better sense would have told her not to come to Fiction in the first place. She slowed her racing heart with a deep breath, then with a ginger caution stepped into the fecund warmth.
The Orangery in the night was as gloomy as the day, same smell of moss and dirt, perfume of camellias, and a tart citrus rot from the few runty orange trees that still grew from the planting of nearly a century before.
She winced at the light. Almost as bright as coldfire, the glow came from an unfamiliar pear-shaped tube as round as her head. A yellow arc light too bright to properly look at. Electric light was rare in Lyonne, especially when a few members from the Lumiere ignis family could blood-light a whole city with their delicate talents. The charged atoms in the globe made her hands itch.
‘The former Baron had the sodium lamp installed to show off to his friends.’
Arden turned at the familiar voice. A figure stepped out from shadows where he had been waiting. Short and slender, a pretty face with the stillness of a wax figurine, gold spectacles as round as marbles, and a gold pocket-watch chain hanging from his waistcoat.
‘Do you remember me? Three months can seem like three years in this country.’
She swallowed as the wine threatened to rise in her throat. It was the Guildsman who had given Arden her coins and her instructions to come to Fiction.
‘Mr Lindsay? What are you doing here?’
‘Working, same as you.’
The small man’s beautiful smile was duplicitous, as only a man who has turned up unexpectedly in a different country can be. He wore the same suit as he had in her father’s Portside offices, a dull camel woven through with emerald threads. In the orange light, they glittered with a strange enchantment.
Lastly upon his lapel, the same image that had been on the boy’s coin. A rose, and black enamel thorns. Arden felt her strength leave her as she realized at last what it meant. The Eugenics Society rose, and the controlling thorns of the Lyonne Order. Symbol of the garden, forever tended and protected from the weeds that might encroach upon it.
Mr Lindsay had come to give her the coin of instruction. This was the thing she had been dreading for months, the truth of her coming here.
It is not for Fire they want you.
‘Excuse me.’ Mr Lindsay stretched up to the electric tube. ‘Let me turn this off. I assume your body can sense the charged atoms in the atmosphere. Electrical fields create quite a physical reaction for the blood-endowed, I am told.’
With a twist, the light was gone. Green afterimages jumped behind Arden’s eyes. Her hands still ached. The man’s cunning attention never left her.
No, decided Arden. Not a man. Lyonne Order and Nomenclatures. A Lion.
Have the Lions followed you here, Mx Beacon?
‘Now then,’ Mr Lindsay continued, ‘my boy tells me that Mr Justinian is being difficult with endorsing your final degree. Well, if he does not sign the forms, there are other options.’
‘You come all this way and through all this covert behaviour just to tell me this?’ Arden pressed her still-cramping wrists against her cormorant-feathered hips. ‘If you required a private meeting, not a soul would have seen you upon the promontory.’
Mr Lindsay held his hand out towards her oil lantern. ‘More light, please. My eyes are not as dark-keen as yours.’ Upon receiving the handle, he turned the wick up and gestured towards a marble bench. ‘I apologize for being so clandestine. I assure you, there are reasons. Come, sit.’
Though her entire instinct protested, she gathered up krakenhide and silks, and sat beside him.
‘So, what more is required of me?’
‘What makes you think more is required?’ Mr Lindsay asked, his eyes amiably perplexed past his spectacles.
‘You are Lyonne Order and Nomenclatures. My father saw it instantly, the moment you stepped into his offices.’
‘A perceptive man, Lucian Beacon. He always had a special sense, one mi
ght say. His daughter too.’
‘All right, sir. Enough banter. I am here, and minding my uncle’s light, as I agreed. What is this note about helping Mr Riven?’
‘I hear you had some meetings with the man.’
She frowned. What business was her neighbour to the Lion? ‘We have had occasion to meet, certainly.’
‘And he was proper to you?’
The words were loaded. She chose her reply with care. ‘I did not intend to come here to fight with my neighbours, and that is exactly what I haven’t done.’
‘No,’ he mused. ‘You have not fought with him at all.’ He took his spectacles off his face, polished each lens slowly and deliberately with a silk handkerchief. ‘How close are you to Riven, Mx Beacon? Close enough to leave a warm house in the middle of the night and flee to his assistance, certainly.’
‘I would have run from that disgusting lech in that decayed mansion on the flimsiest excuse. Even to save you, if it were your life in danger.’
‘Yet still. You came for an ex-convict with a history of kidnapping and murder, and rape-within-marriage, that most grievous sin?’
‘I understand what has been said about him, sir.’
‘And you do not believe? Such accusations are not made lightly.’
She took her breath and prepared for a speech. ‘Mr Lindsay, all my life I have grown up and worked on the docks as a minor sanguis lanternkeeper. I saw more of human existence by my tenth birthday than many a person at the prime of their life. My senses do not recoil from him as they would …’ She clenched her teeth. ‘You, perhaps. Or Mr Justinian. I suspect that far too much energy has been spent on cultivating an overt brand of monstrosity in him without him taking on a monstrous charisma in return.’
‘Yes, true evil is seductive, and beautiful.’
The Lion rose, went to one of the oranges still on the tree, brought the wrinkled fruit to his nose but did not pluck it.
‘I share your suspicion,’ he continued. ‘Let me tell another story, Mx Beacon, an inverse of the one more familiar to you. It is of a girl named Bellis Harrow, a pretty and outwardly unremarkable girl born in a far-flung fishing village whose only importance is illegal plesiosaur trade and a promontory known for shipwrecks. The lass is testmooted late, as many of her generation are on this coast where talent is faded and the moots may only happen once every five years. Children mature slowly here, the genes are dim, and the tests are limited to those laborious endowments more useful to us in the North.
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