She shook her head. ‘No time to explain. I must get you out of here first. Damn it. There’s guards all over the Manse tonight.’
‘I will go out the way I came.’ He nodded towards the window, and the wall beyond.
‘You can’t do that either. Mr Justinian’s security detail saw you come in, you enormous fool. The grounds are lousy with staff and mercenaries.’
One of the deputies let out a groan, fighting his unconsciousness. He would not be indisposed for long.
Mr Riven dragged a hand over his rough head. ‘They might not want me dead, but they’ll kill me if I stay here.’ He tried to stand up and only ended up rattling the bedside bureau, overturning the porcelain toilette bottles and hairbrushes. Somebody so completely out of place among the frills and fripperies of the guest room would be equally incongruous outside it. As far as concealing him beyond these walls, it would be easier to hide an elephant that had wandered into the town square. Mr Riven was no stranger to the people of Vigil.
‘Wait now,’ Arden said. ‘We’ll make these goons sleep a little longer.’
The adjoining bathroom was, as she had earlier discovered in previous sorties of the Manse, stocked with all kinds of chemicals and potions. Clearly the deputies had noticed this too. Open bottles and pillboxes lay scattered across the dresser: laudanum, the cocaine drops, the heroin tinctures, the opium tobacco and the ergotine.
Mr Riven must have stumbled in while they were both as mad as hatters. They would not remember much of this night.
She found what she wanted, a bottle of ether, and with a handkerchief and an averted head, managed to roll the pair on their sides and send them into a deeper sleep.
‘They’ll be asleep for a good few minutes,’ she said, and pointed at the scars on Mr Riven’s chest with a broken, wry smile. ‘I was always better at administering sleep-ether than I was at stitching when I completed my minor surgeon’s certificate.’
Mr Riven watched her warily. ‘Why treat them with such kindness?’
‘These men are addled with pharmaceuticals. If we are fortunate, they may awaken to think they themselves caused this situation. But you, sir. You are my biggest problem.’
‘Let me pass, and I will be a problem no longer.’
‘No longer?’ she retorted. ‘Mr Riven, have you heard of Lions?’
He snorted at her question. ‘The animals or the Investigatory Order of Lyonne? I have dealt with both.’
‘The worst of the two have their eyes on you, sir, and now on me. Our problems are entwined. With Bellis at its centre.’
Under the wiry fur of his face she saw wretched hope and concern spring forth. A familiar envy moved in her heart, to see a man with such naked affection for his beloved. No Clay detachment. No cool appraisals. This was a man who loved fiercely.
‘What has happened with Bellis?’ he demanded. ‘Why are they circling her now? She’s gone. From them, from this country altogether!’
‘There’s no time to explain. We need to hide your escape.’
Arden quickly took stock of the guest-house room. Even an elephant might be disguised, given enough of a garment. She settled on the patriarch’s painting. Take away his finery, and the elder Justinian had a hard and angular Fictish face that his three scions, in their unions with soft Northern women, had not managed to keep.
She went to the wardrobe and threw open the doors. The miasma of cedarwood and camphor swelled into the room. Those garments within, completely the wrong size for Mr Justinian and therefore unworn, showed themselves untouched by moth or beetle, fabric as intact as if they were new.
‘Get out of your clothes,’ she said to Mr Riven.
‘Excuse me?’
‘The party. There are hundreds of people here, and nobody can possibly know every guest. We can get out through the Manse. There is transport waiting in the forecourt. I already have my exit strategy from this place taken care of, so to speak.’
She pulled a suit from the closet. Its dull faded colours made it seem conservative in aspect, the sort of thing old money might wear. Fashions did not change much among the rich.
‘You call me fool, but this is a foolish idea.’
‘Your coming here was a foolish idea, Mr Riven, so that makes two!’
‘I came for you, neighbour.’ He reached for the suit. She pulled it out of his reach and sighed.
‘Thank you for your chivalry, sir. Now get the beard off your face. Make it so you belong among those people.’ She frowned. ‘Do you even know how to groom?’
‘I am not fully a barbarian,’ Mr Riven countered. He yanked off his shirt and alarmingly was already freeing himself of his trousers as he went into the bathroom. The tattoos on his back dipped into his sacrum and the curve of his buttocks.
He closed the door. She heard the water run. She paced the room, casting worried glances at both the sleeping men and the foyer.
Whatever experience of Mr Riven’s past had taught him quick grooming, it worked upon him now. Within ten minutes of the mantel clock, the door opened.
A sorcery, perhaps. She had sent Mr Riven in there, but a much younger man than him stepped out. A stranger, with an unevenly handsome face that still needed another decade to settle into mature nobility, the pale Fictish features softened by a cautious, almost shy expression. He might have turned into a creature shorn of his fearsome mane, but something more interesting lay beneath. A bed sheet about his waist gave him the appearance of a statue from antiquity.
In silence, she handed him the clothes of the patriarch, and he let the sheet drop as he began to dress. She kept her eyes low.
He had seen her entire, so perhaps they no longer required false modesty, she thought, and then stole another glance before she could stop herself. His maleness nestled in russet curls, and he unselfconsciously tucked himself into the mossy green of Sir Alexander Justinian’s trousers. Despite the urgency of the moment, her cheeks flamed.
Dressed, he could have passed for any low-bred noble master. The tawny suit fitted him perfectly. The boots still held their shine. The narrow waist accentuated the hard work that had formed the clay of Mr Riven into flesh. Only his hair was shorter than fashionable. Hard to disguise the fisherman’s habit of cutting a lock from his scalp every time he wished to bless the catch, giving sacraments, the way the sanguis did with their blood.
‘It will do,’ Arden said, and wondered why her mouth was dry. ‘But quick.’ She swept a pomade off the dresser. ‘Fix your head.’
He beheld the pomade tin the same way a scholar might, if faced with a Sumerian tablet written with indecipherable code. Mr Riven may not have been a barbarian, but he was not entirely tamed, either. With a tsk of impatience she scooped out a wad of cream and ran it over his hair, tried not to think about the mind that lay beyond the assorted lumps and bumps on the skull beneath her hand. The skull of a life hard-lived. He smelled of kraken oil, far too fresh and deeply luxurious for comfort. The higher-priced dock girls used the essential ingredient in their alluring scents, to woo potential customers from the decks of their ships. The smell always had a sense of illicitness about it.
He pulled away sharply.
‘My coat.’
She wiped her hand on a towel, mortified that she had allowed herself such a distraction.
‘The coat is the most obvious part of you, sir. If you wish to take it, it must be smuggled.’
Grateful for the diversion, she rummaged in the cedar wardrobe, retrieved a carpet bag that wasn’t too shabby, and stuffed Mr Riven’s krakenskin coat into the satin-lined depths.
The two deputies started to stir. No choice but to leave now. She took Mr Riven’s elbow and dragged him through the litter of the guest-house foyer.
Perhaps the enormous import of what had happened here had struck him insensibly mute. Especially since now he was not fighting for his life. He became passive in his caution, Well, so should he be. Mr Jonah Riven would have to trust a Beacon now, put his safety in her hands.
Out
in the cool colonnade that connected the house to the Manse she grasped his elbow to her side, forced him to slow down to saunter, an arm-in-arm-with-a-lady kind of stroll, and not fleeing-the-scene-of-the-crime kind of stroll. Her heart beat far too fast. Ahead of them, another pair of hired guards moved into position. They were not the first she had seen.
‘Calm yourself,’ she murmured, ‘or they’ll know something is afoot.’
‘I am calm. You’re the one shaking.’
Small candles lit each column, put in place by the staff to ensure an atmosphere of romance, but instead it had the air of a prison walk. Mr Riven’s arm went about her waist and propped her upright to stop her stumbling. The guardians ignored the two lovebirds as they passed. One pulled out a pipe and spoke to the other in a Low Fictish dialect. Arden held her breath so fiercely, her vision started to tunnel.
Once in the portico, a butler opened the door, and they stepped into the Manse. The dull lights, that previous irritation, were now a blessing. She hurried Mr Riven through the dusky rooms, getting closer and closer to the entry foyer until—
‘Mx Beacon?’
Arden froze, then turned about with a fixed rictus of a smile.
The Dowager Justinian stood there, in one of the drawing rooms, a glass of sherry in her hand. She had clearly had one too many, and she came up from the chaise longue on unsteady feet.
‘Were you leaving? I thought you would want to stay in the guest house.’
‘I have an apartment in town.’
‘Nonsense. There are no apartments in town, only hovels and front rooms for the harlots.’
The Dowager turned her attention to Mr Riven. ‘You,’ the Dowager said faintly. ‘You wear a familiar face. The old Baron’s face, and yet you are young. How can that be so?’
In all her fussing Arden had not seen what she should have seen from the outset. The old man who graced all the paintings about the Manse had been young once. For a reason unknown, they’d confined the patriarch’s youthful image to the drawing room of the women – a delicate floral abode in the daytime, but in the night all the crochets and doilies turned to spider webs and crypt moulder.
That youth, Alexander Justinian. The first Baron who had taken the Rivens from their ancestral home in the Sainted Isles and put them to work in his factory. As she glanced up at Mr Riven it became clear to her that Alexander Justinian had taken more than labour from the family, perhaps. Replaced a genetic line with one of his own.
‘My dear Dowager Justinian, this is Mr Castile,’ Arden said desperately. ‘An old friend from Clay.’
Mr Riven dipped his head, and if Arden had not held his muscular arm close, he would have retreated into the gloom.
The Dowager frowned. ‘And what do you do, Mr Castile?’
‘I work leather and bone.’
Dowager Justinian darted forward, seized his arm and turned it, revealing the scars of rope-work on the palm and knife-work upon the meat below his thumb. ‘It is dangerous to cut there.’ She threw the hand down in disgust. ‘You are sanguis.’
‘Somewhat,’ he said, yearning towards the door.
The woman wouldn’t let them go. ‘Alexander and his son were stormtellers. Common enough round these parts once, but bred out of their line, thank the Lord. My son doesn’t have a modicum of that heinous trait. Good memory for figures, and his blood clean. He is human.’
Arden gently patted the woman’s arm in an anxious farewell. ‘Dowager Justinian, I must leave, my ride is waiting for me.’
The Dowager grabbed Arden’s wrist, hard, and peered into her face.
‘My son will miss you in his bed tonight. He hasn’t quite been the same after he lost Bellis to the monster on the promontory. She was much prettier than you though,’ Dowager Justinian slurred, the sherry at last taking hold. ‘Fairer of skin and face. Wheaten hair, as straight as a waterfall. Don’t trust Bellis, I said to my boy. Don’t trust anyone who cleaves to the dank emissions of the underworld. These are sinful things, sin …’
Her hand released. She fell off the precipice of consciousness, slid back against the wall and sank into dark, morphiated sleep.
Mr Riven stared down at the Dowager. Her words had enchanted the will out of him entirely.
‘Mr Riven,’ Arden said. ‘She’s had too much to drink.’
‘She is more than just drunk,’ Mr Riven said. ‘She never has more than a sherry-glass on an evening. There is something else going on here tonight.’
‘Drugged?’
‘Absolutely.’
Arden thought of the Lion, Mr Lindsay, making certain all the pieces were in their place. Making sure they were not disturbed. ‘There always has been something going on, Jonah Riven, since your wife went to the Sainted Isles and disappeared.’
He turned his attention to Arden, bewildered and angry. ‘You must explain what this has to do with me. With Bellis.’
‘I have no idea if what the Lion says is true,’ she said, tugging him towards the exit. ‘But we must go at once or we could find out in the worst of ways.’
18
Half an hour I waited in this freezing cold
‘Half an hour I waited in this freezing cold,’ the buggyman grumbled. ‘Was told ten o’clock. Specifically ten o’clock. I could have had other passengers.’
He huffed and tutted at the two bodies who had climbed in his little coach, expecting them to give him the same drunken noise as his previous customers, perhaps offer him a penny or two extra with a slap on the back and a chortle about needing to attend a bed post-haste.
Instead, a pall of deep disquiet bound them.
The pale Fictish man had the fine, raw bearing that would have garnered the attention of any lady, but the guildswoman barely gave him an inch of her attention. She had the cast of severe and purposeful breeding about her, from her diluted features, jet eyes and indifferent curls pinned upon her head. She wore a krakenskin coat, something he’d only seen the wealthiest office-holders wear. She must be a woman of some standing indeed. She couldn’t have been unattractive to her companion, but he sat stiffly in his preoccupation, arms folded, head turned to the coach glass.
Fair enough, the buggyman thought. This night brought quarrels too. He did not continue to debate the mysteries of his passengers long, and tsked the horses down the pebbled curve of the driveway and out upon the crushed-rock road.
A deep, uncomfortable silence filled the coach. A boundary had been crossed in their relationship. An irrevocable binding between two strangers with nothing in common.
Mr Riven spoke first.
‘She lied back there,’ Mr Riven said, as they left the gates of the Manse. The lantern swung shadows into the cabin. ‘The Dowager.’
‘About sanguinity being sinful? Of course, it’s just the sherry and the drugs speaking.’
‘No. About Bellis being prettier than you.’
Surprised, Arden snorted a short laugh. A quick, wretched feeling akin to embarrassment came over her. She didn’t need mollifying with faint praise. She knew Bellis had been extraordinary.
‘Anyone can appreciate beauty. It is the most common of denominators.’
‘So, Mr Justinian is your lover. I think he suits.’
‘Heavens, does everybody conspire for me to have relations with this man? I have no interest in Mr Justinian. I have no interest in anyone! The only thing I need to do is navigate the terrible hand tonight has dealt. The Lyonne Order has me in their employ now, body and blood!’
Mr Riven sat like a wraith in the dark seat, with the look of a cur-dog kicked to the gutter. By the way his arms wrapped about his stomach, the bruise about his midsection troubled him. She breathed and tempered her words. He’d proven himself a gentleman.
‘Still, thank you for coming to my rescue, false as it was,’ she added ruefully.
‘So. Tell me why we are here, together like this.’
‘I—’ she started, and he interrupted her again.
‘If you intend to lie to me, say nothing.
Look out the window and hold your tongue. I am not interested in a story.’
She looked into the darkness, not knowing what she should reveal, and what she should keep.
‘All right then. The truth. In the early summer the Seamaster’s Guild invited me to manage my uncle’s lighthouse. Because I was malorum, and dim of blood, I’d never ever have such an opportunity. I jumped too quickly at the chance. I didn’t think about who else might be involved. Tonight they came to me, and spoke of you.’
Mr Riven’s breath fogged up the cabin glass.
‘Not about me. They came about Bellis. It’s always been about her. The Lions have been watching Bellis since she broke a rockblood glass during a testmoot,’ Mr Riven said quietly. ‘Sanguis petrae.’
‘They are concerned for her safety in her Island exile. The Lyonne Order even desire her fearsome husband to go back out there and protect her, and I must be the one to relay the instruction. All this, for a girl with sanguis petrae! I mean, certainly it’s a golden talent, but why all this fuss over rockblood? We have several sanguis petrae members in Lyonne. It’s rare, but not exceptional.’
She stopped her rant as she saw his pained expression. ‘I’m sorry,’ she concluded miserably. ‘It’s been quite a night. I just found out my true value. I am not a Lightkeeper to them, just sanguis malorum. I am a puppet, a pawn in their game. It was not for Fire they wanted me, and I’m a fool for even entertaining that they did.’
He returned to the window, and there was such a deep, infinite sadness in him she wanted to lean across and take him in her arms and say, I am sorry she left you, Mr Riven. I’m sorry for all this, and what was done.
‘You think me fearsome?’
‘You must be to someone.’
‘Then they are wrong. Bellis doesn’t need me. She thrives out there, she has a strength and a will …’ He stole a look at Arden, as if it had only just occurred to him. ‘As much as you remind me of Stefan, Bellis is like you, Lightmistress. Very much so. Strong and gentle at once. I never thought so much and so often of Bellis since I saw you on the beach that day, in gold sea-silk.’
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