‘Whatever the reason for the delay, she is over sixteen years old when she tests positive for rockblood. Rockblood! Sanguinem petrae! A talent as golden as her hair! A goddess of the black liquor! Well, there is a commotion. Regardless of her rough Fictish heritage, such golden talents automatically make her eligible for a full degree and Master’s certification in the craft or trade Guild of her choosing – sight-unseen – as you are well aware.’
‘But she stayed here, though.’
‘Sadly, her father refused to let her go.’
‘Hmmm, he seemed like the sort of fellow who would welcome Industrialist money.’ Arden pretended with mild interest, even as talk of Bellis made her uneasy. This story was as relevant to her as the ships passing her lighthouse on the sea-road. But a Lion had come north and was pulling her into the lives of these troubled people.
Mr Lindsay shrugged. ‘The mother was poorly, and Bellis an only child. She was a good daughter. It was curious, but we don’t interfere.’
‘That’s not like Lions at all.’
‘Scoff all you like Mx Beacon, but talent can be ruined by too much meddling, and as you know, the Fiction-born sanguinem rarely survive long in Lyonne – the city disorients them, makes them vulnerable to misadventure and accidents.’
Like falling into Portside canals, Arden silently added.
Mr Lindsay made a moue of regret. ‘For a while all was at peace. She matured into a sweet young woman, no sanguis psychosis, no nervous conditions. Then all of a sudden, this beautiful, filial child abandons her Baron fiancé and marries Mr Jonah Riven, a criminal convicted of a heinous crime and recently returned to the coast. Marries, if one might say, under extreme duress in the Sainted Isles, where such unions can be coerced. A year later, she disappears, with only this krakenskin coat and a lock of her golden hair recovered.’
In the garden, a Middle Country firecracker went up, burst into the sky. Only a lone ordinance, a star-sparkling omen, and not a good one. It reflected as a smear upon the salt-scored glass.
‘Some believed in the forlorn tale of her death, for a while,’ Mr Lindsay said. ‘Me, I was rather baffled when I heard what came of her. Why all the degradation and despair? Bellis and Jonah were best childhood friends before he was sent away to Harbinger Bay for killing his family. She was a filial daughter to her father, why should she not be equally as devoted a wife to her husband? All extremely odd. Then all of a sudden the affair. Another old friend. A priest, as pious as they come.’
The answer arrived to Arden at once, for hadn’t she spent ten years planning and wishing for such a thing herself?
‘She escaped you!’ Arden drew a shuddering breath. Bellis Harrow, golden-talented and clever. Cleverer than the Lions themselves. Oh, Arden’s envy sharpened. That clever girl!
Mr Lindsay threw up his hands in gracious surrender.
‘You seem rather thrilled, Mx Beacon.’
‘I won’t lie to you, sir. There’s not a sanguinem alive who hasn’t dreamed of escaping the Eugenics Society and the Order, and leading their own lives.’
A nerve in his cheek jumped. One eye at a squint. ‘Yes, the three of them, Jonah Riven, Stefan Beacon and Bellis Harrow. Concocted a little ruse of a disastrous and violent marriage, an affair and a death. But let me tell you the truth of foolish, immature girls with golden talent who think they can run away from their own blood. There is no place for them outside of Clay Capital’s sanctuary. Fiction folk don’t know how to take care of its sanguineous, the attention and delicacy that must be taken. Your uncle Jorgen Beacon found that out in the hardest of ways, immolated by grief and despair. He had the psychosis. Became the extinguished flame, just like his talent.’
A starfield of rockets followed the first, and their pink-hued explosions cast garish lights across the Orangery glass. Some cheering in the distance. Arden’s hands hurt.
‘Mr Lindsay, why share the story of a stranger?’
‘Because Bellis Harrow-Riven disappeared and Riven refuses to confirm what happened. He’s impenetrable but for his weakness.’ Here the Lion smiled, ‘Love.’
‘It can be, if it seems the more gentle way. However Bellis Harrow-Riven still disappeared and Riven refuses to confirm what happened to her. He’s impenetrable. But his weakness is his love for the woman he married. Despite his tricky little theatre of sadism, we quickly found out what Bellis had done. Slipped her collar. Run out with a blood talent she had no training for. She’s in hiding, and Riven knows where she is.’
‘Oh, Mr Lindsay,’ she said, dripping scorn. ‘I’m not about to seduce Bellis’ whereabouts from him, I barely know the man.’
‘We would not ask such a thing of you.’
‘Then what will you ask?’
‘Your assistance. A different kind of labour, but labour all the same. You are to help Bellis survive this exile she has chosen until she is ready to return. We don’t want her back. She will come back when she is ready. A bird will always orient itself to home. And eventually she will come to Lyonne. That is a given. But if she has sought refuge among the indigenes of the Sainted Isles, because she is sanguineous and unsupported, then her existence is right now fraught and tenuous, and forever in danger.
‘You have always helped your fellow comrades on the wharves. You’ve had a sense of supportiveness about you, they say, a brace against bad accidents. Every sanguis pondus, transverto and vaporum who have ever worked under your instruction all tell us they trust you implicitly. They say they trust themselves more when their reliable sanguis ignis Arden Beacon is around. We need you to use that goodwill. Help her now, Mx Beacon. Help Bellis Riven survive, as you have helped those around you survive.’
His words were a cadence, a seductive song. She pressed her burning hands together. Trapped them between her knees. Why were they hurting so? There was no cold-flame lantern needing ignition, and even then her endowments were so dim the sense should have been little more than an itch.
‘I earned that trust, over years. I don’t know Bellis at all. Why would she be in any danger? She is sanguis petrae. She’ll be useful to Islanders. They can exploit her labour.’
‘The autochthonous Islanders worship strange gods, Mx Beacon, gods that pre-date the prospecting of rockblood. She will be anathema to them. A reminder of Northern conquerors and defeat has no place among those brutal shores. Bellis may be fine now, but at some stage she will require Jonah Riven to show his face, and protect her with his dreadful reputation.’
He made the sign of the circle upon his chest, the sea-serpent, and Arden recognized it at once for the blanket ring back at her lighthouse. The Deepwater King. The old religion of the Sainted Isles, and the Riven ancestral home.
He continued, ‘We cannot force Mr Riven to join his wife, but perhaps you can remind him of what he misses. The trust you engender in your associates? Foster the same in him. He may confide in you, Lightmistress, of his loneliness. From what my advisers tell me, you yourself know what it is to hold a torch for a love, for years and lonely years. Yes, Mx Arden Beacon knows what it is like they say, to grow old waiting while her friends marry, have children of their own. She may consider herself trapped by circumstance, but Mr Jonah Riven is not. Give him the permission of a woman with regrets, Arden my dear. Tell him not to end up lonely, and despairing. Tell him he can go to Bellis, and be blessed.’
Each of Mr Lindsay’s words lashed her heart with a switch of thornwood. Yes, she knew those shackles as a sanguinem under the rule of the Order. Yes, these were the freedoms she had wished for, and had them taken away.
Arden spoke through a throat tight with resentment.
‘This was your intent all along, for me to abandon my home and my family to come here? This is why you didn’t decommission the flame on the day Jorgen died?’
‘Is it a bad motive? You’re saving a woman’s life.’
Arden closed her eyes briefly, and let an old grief wash over her. A sanguinem was always a tool and conduit for greater powers, but this request ma
de her bereft of true meaning. The Guild had not wanted her here as Lightkeeper at all. The Lions had made them use Arden, not for the direction of her blood, but an entity to effect another purpose. Bellis Riven was the objective, and Arden was just a source of labour.
She said wearily, ‘I don’t feel right, instructing Mr Riven about his wife’s peril just so he can be beholden to you. He probably has his reasons to stay behind. I’m sorry. I can’t … I can’t impose myself on a private matter and do what you ask.’
Mr Lindsay rubbed his knees as if preparing to rise. ‘Oh, well. It’s a shame you are unable to help. That’s that, then. I’m sure you’ll encourage some other official to sign the Guild-membership form, of course.’
‘What?’ Arden exclaimed. ‘Is this you reneging on my contract?’
‘Well, your work contract implicitly stated you are required to carry out your duties as instructed before you can receive a full Guild degree,’ Mr Lindsay said with such a smugly genuine apology Arden almost wanted to slap him. He stood up with an old man’s effort despite the youth of his face. Offhandedly said, ‘Oh, and another thing. I was to advise you about a …’ He fetched a paper square from his waistcoat and opened it. ‘Captain Richard Castile? Yes, the Order tells me he has suffered quite a bit after you broke off your illicit relationship with him. Has lived quite the monkish existence since, grieving the woman he left in Lyonne.’
As he spoke he plucked the small orange he’d sniffed earlier, and peeled it with a sympathetic nonchalance. She glared at him, feeling the manipulations tighten furiously.
‘There’s no harm in delivering our message in the sweet requests of a lady.’
‘He’ll not listen to the sweet requests of a lady either, you fool!’ Arden scolded him. ‘If the folk down in that town were to give their opinions, Mr Riven is a lustful fiend more likely to forget his wife at once and have me take her place in squalor.’
‘Ah, rather than making him forget Bellis, you would elevate that memory, I think. I would posit that a strong woman up against the world would in fact be a powerful reminder of his woman over the waves.’
Mr Lindsay held out the peeled orange, and she slapped his hand away.
‘I don’t want it.’
‘But I know what you do want. Mr Castile waits for you.’ He leaned forward. ‘Give your service to Lyonne,’ he pressed. ‘Inform Mr Riven of his wife’s jeopardy, get him out to her and you may have the chance to have an independent life. You’ll still have partial Guild membership whether you assist us or not. This patriotic act would take you all the way there. Full degree. Permission to marry.’
With that, he popped the orange into his mouth, and chewed.
‘I have no reason to visit him,’ Arden said, low and mutinously. ‘We are not likely to share a cup of tea and a heart-to-heart soon. I posit you will be waiting a long time for our intimate conversation.’
‘Such was my thought at first. So we devised a meet, another message sent by my boy-cub to the Black Rosette tavern a mere hour ago. A message for a Mr Jonah Riven, who patronizes the merchants’ bar.’
Cold, invisible fingers pressed upon the back of Arden’s neck. ‘What sort of message?’
‘An urgent one, from Mx Arden Beacon, just like the one you received this evening, pleading that Mr Riven should come help his neighbour who is trapped in the guest house of the Manse Justinian.’
She gasped at Mr Lindsay’s forwardness and stood up. ‘He would not waste his time coming to rescue me!’
‘One would hope not, because the guest house is currently occupied by Mr Alasdair Harrow’s deputies, a pair who will have no compunction in …’ He lingered, savouring the moment. ‘Hurting Mr Riven if he were to stumble upon them.’
Arden ran from the Orangery, and in the dark stumbled towards the guest wing, a semi-detached building linked by stone colonnade. Mr Riven couldn’t be so foolish as to heed the boy’s message. Her dress snagged under her feet as she struggled up an incline in her ridiculous shoes.
‘Devilment!’ Frustration stung her eyes with hot, angry tears. She had fallen into the Lion’s den. Once their eyes were upon prey, there would be no escape.
Midway along a retaining wall, a pair of the Manse’s hired guards waved at her as she passed.
‘Hoy!’ one cried out.
She skidded to a stop. Beyond them, the leafy walkway beckoned, the doors of the guest house.
‘Gentlemen,’ Arden said breathlessly, and gave a high strangled laugh. ‘Can’t be late for the party!’
Her tardiness did not concern them, and they sauntered up, hands on muskets, their broadcloth uniform as dark as the night.
‘What brings you outside, Lightmistress?’
Devilment, they recognized her. A layer of sweat glossed her face and she was certain her carefully applied cosmetics would have now turned her face into a circus-tumbler’s mask.
‘Oh,’ she said with such forced gaiety that her voice came at a screech, ‘enjoying private company. You understand.’
With that she gave a suggestive wink. They did not smirk back.
‘Your friend, where is he now?’
‘A separate way. For the sake of his … standing.’
‘Best you enjoy such breaches of standing indoors, madam,’ the first guard gruffed. ‘There is an intruder afoot. The grounds are under alert until he is found.’
Arden had never fainted, but decided if she did, it might begin with a feeling very much like this: her blood rushing from her head, and her fingers tingling hot as if a match had been lit under each one.
‘Of course, of course. Best … best be getting back.’
With the gait of a wounded soldier she stumbled on to the guest wing, and entered through the side door, which she knew the Dowager Justinian often kept unlocked. Slid her way along the dim foyer and immediately realized she had arrived too late; a gross commotion echoed from deep within the bedroom, and a Middle Country porcelain pot lay strewn in pieces across the parquetry floor. A picture of the elderly patriarch Baron Alexander Justinian lay crossways over a chaise longue, a buffet was overturned, and the entire contents of the fireplace littered the rug.
A yelp of alarm, more grunting, and then a muffled bang which could only have been a silenced musket.
Terrified for Mr Riven, Arden picked up from the floor the only slightly wieldy thing in sight: a small paperweight bust of Sir Alexander Justinian the Elder. Small it might be, the bust was still a heavy chunk of bronze. She ran into the bedroom only to nearly trip over one fallen body. A deputy. The other one stood with his musket in hand, seemingly aimed at a third heap behind the bed.
She did not wait to see his reaction. With all her strength she swung the bust and caught the oafish fellow by the temple. The contact shock jolted up her elbow, twanging her tendons with electric pain. He collapsed like a felled log.
‘I’m sorry,’ she cried, ‘I’m sorry! Oh, heavens …’
A blow to the head could kill a man. What had she been thinking? She should have yelled at him, negotiated surrender. But the sight of Mr Riven, that foolish love-struck imbecile lying dead out of misbegotten heroics, had made her panic.
The deputy’s chest rose and fell. Thank all the sea gods, then, she’d merely stunned him. She ran over to Mr Riven, sprawled out across the coverlet of the bed. He appeared as if he had left the hot interior of the Black Rosette in some kind of a rush. Beneath his coat wore only his high-waisted trousers and suspenders.
‘Mr Riven?’ she ventured.
By his groaning, he was conscious. The musket shot, slowed by the silencing device, had slammed into the krakenskin coat hard but had not penetrated the leather.
She picked up the damaged wing of coat to push it aside. A bullet could still cause a man to bleed into his cavities, perhaps a more dangerous scenario than a penetrating wound. When he tried to slap her away, she seized a tiller-roughened hand.
‘I’ve seen you shirtless, fool,’ she hissed. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Oof. I’m not sure.’
‘Do I have your permission to find out?’
He opened the coat, and Arden prodded about at the bruises coming up on the serrations of his abdomen. His skin had rapidly discoloured from the force of the projectile but showed no break or blood. The scars of his Tallwater rescue attempts were flat pink marks across his broad chest, and a sharp want took her, to touch them, and him. Not in desire, not quite. But the need to touch capstones and cairns in places where great battles have been fought, to feel the history beneath and become a part of it somehow.
‘Where the hell were you?’ he gruffed as his breath returned. ‘That message said you were here …’
‘I never sent a message.’
‘Excuse me?’ He glared at her as if insulted.
She went to the window. Closed and double-glazed, and the curtains had been drawn. No light or sound to attract the guards. ‘I didn’t send that message, Mr Riven. It was meant to lure you here.’
‘Why?’
‘We have become ensnared in things bigger than us.’ She put her hands on her hips and looked at him as if he were the aftermath of a disaster that she would have to clean up. ‘You’ve been ensnared in this thing from the beginning, I think.’
Mr Riven sat up with a wince and surveyed the two fallen men. ‘I believe you, Lightmistress. As soon as I saw they were Mr Harrow’s lads, I knew the message was a lure. They intended this as a convenient killing.’
‘They don’t want you dead. Not while Bellis is alive.’
His terrible blue stare fell upon her then, questioning.
‘Bellis? How did you—’
Monstrous Heart Page 19