Orelia felt a pang of disappointment. Academe had largely looked after its own. Strimmer had drawn first blood. The Thingamajig started to rotate gently on its central axis, not a phenomenon Boris’ grandfather had noted. The Understairs came next: a finely balanced contest between Orelia’s support from the disadvantaged, augmented by Aggs’ vigorous efforts, and Strimmer’s from the Apothecaries and those seduced by their addictive blend. Snorkel again trailed, his poison-pen mail of little effect – but Municipal, the constituency of Town Hall workers and Rotherweird’s establishment worthies, hauled the ex-Mayor back into contention. The overall position registered in three coloured columns on the machine’s chimney; it was still too close to call. All turned on the Oasis, home to a mishmash of different interests, including many shopkeepers and craftsmen.
Boris clasped Miss Trimble’s arm. The hull of The Thingamajig quivered as if in the grip of terminal fever. The gentle rotation turned jerky, moving now fast, now slow, as the sun succumbed to the encroaching clouds.
Darkness covered the face of the earth.
‘It’s the ballot stones,’ Boris yelled at Gorhambury’s staff. ‘We have to get her down—’
They looked blank. How could rock turn animate?
But The Thingamajig did not come down; it disintegrated, top and bottom prised apart, spraying ballot stones in all directions, a height and distance that defied the laws of gravity. A few unfortunates were struck, but shock proved the greater injury. The elements joined the fray, wind rising and sleet thickening into snow.
The ground juddered; feet slipped, slid and stumbled; some fell; children screamed. A cloud of dust swirled above the town.
An amplified voice rang out, an authoritative female voice: Estella Scry. She had prepared for victory or defeat, not a spoiled election, but the plan required little adjustment. ‘Citizens of Rotherweird, this moment is ordained. The Apothecaries will collect the ballot stones in due course. Everyone stays here until it is safe to return to town, when, for the public good, a curfew will be in place.’
Gorhambury strode forward and confronted Scry. ‘You have no authority to direct anyone to do anything.’
A knot of Apothecaries seized Gorhambury and removed his chain of office.
Jones burst through the press, but not to defend the Town Clerk. He whispered urgently to Orelia, ‘Look!’
Orelia focused first on the Apothecaries, deploying from the shoreline in an enclosing cordon, arcs of electricity running between their silver sticks – and then on a solitary figure, skating fast upriver.
‘After her or him,’ he added.
Orelia needed no further invitation. She discarded her bag, clasped her skates and followed Jones back through the crowd. He strode straight at the advancing line of Apothecaries. She had only seen him in action on the night of the fire, but now he showed balance, economy of movement, speed and accuracy. He ducked the first swinging stick, throwing its owner over his shoulder, and disarmed the next Apothecary, skilfully eluding the ribbons of electricity. The Apothecaries resumed their line like well-programmed automata and continued to close the net on everyone else, presumably under orders not to break ranks. Jones and Orelia sprinted to the shoreline, fixed their skates and set off in pursuit of the phantom skater, who had vanished.
‘Luck’s Landing,’ cried Jones into the wind and snow.
Orelia’s steel blades transmitted an unsettling movement in the ice despite its thickness and the lack of any visible disturbance. Jones crouched lower. He must be sensing it too, thought Orelia, the election now wholly out of mind.
Within two hundred yards of Luck’s Landing a deafening crack, as of a giant bone bent to breaking-point, rent the air, and a great shelf of ice reared in front of them. Jones swerved, then again, avoiding a second fracture, with Orelia close behind. No water surged through; the ice-dragon had done enough.
As the river transformed into a disturbed jigsaw, Jones moved along the eastern shore, jinking round the driftwood to the security of the Landing, only to hear a new sound, far deeper than the sundering ice: the voice of the earth. Instinctively they looked up. Columns of dust spiralled high above the town.
Orelia grabbed Jones’ arm for reassurance. She had not anticipated this.
The town’s skyline was on the move.
Tremor.
20
Straighten the Rope I
The quake tossed Finch off his feet. He had never felt so puny, a mote in the palm of Nature’s hand. He bounced off the tunnel wall, shielding his head before smacking into the stone floor. He spat out a mouthful of dust and blood and snorted his nostrils clear. Mercifully, the ceiling had held.
As the groan of ropes under strain, the squeal of gears engaging and disengaging and the rattle of hydraulics echoed down the tunnel, Finch retrieved his tube-light and ran towards the source. He emerged onto a vertiginous open balcony overhanging a deep pit. A cat’s cradle of chains, ropes, pulleys and counterweights had come to life and a tower was slowly rising. The sides and window frames were bedecked in carvings. An ornate window passed on its upward journey, almost in touching distance.
Finch fell to his knees, part in awe, part in shame. He had spectacularly underestimated the scale of the carver’s ambitions. Another pulley snapped into life and still the tower rose, storey by storey.
A new Age of the Eleusians dawned.
Straighten the Rope.
*
Morval Seer barred the outer doorway of the moleman’s quarters, pleading by expression with shaking head and open, outstretched palms: Stay, stay, stay—
The tope was pleading too – despite being an expert in subsidence, he could not track this quake to any particular source. Rotherweird’s rock strata moved from time to time, but lightly and only locally.
‘. . . a tower was slowly rising . . .’
A second tremor struck, longer and slower, yet more forceful, setting the decanter of Richter 5 bouncing on the tabletop. An unworldly scraping sound followed from the tunnel beyond, distant but distinct, like bricks rubbed together.
Fortemain ignored his companions and uncharacteristically barged past Morval with a self-congratulatory cry. ‘I knew it – I knew it! But we’ll stop the clever bastard.’
The tope could not unravel this enigmatic announcement; Fortemain had kept this to himself. Right about what? Stop whom? But Fortemain had seized the reins, and the tope could not check his companion’s headlong sprint.
Nimble and lithe, Morval would have caught him, had he not cuffed the ceiling and caused a minor cave-in to block the way. She pawed frantically at the cold, granular earth; breaking nails and grazing knuckles, hair matted with soil.
Could he not see what she now saw? Finch had been the unwitting bait to draw Fortemain out.
Fortemain bounded on, oblivious to risk and the tope’s calls for restraint. Now all made sense: the other place and Rotherweird Valley mirrored each other exactly, created by the same cosmic impact. The forces he had devoted centuries to calculating had opened the rock wall behind Finch’s cell, hence the grating sound. He had to get through before it closed – and before them. His private ambition for an observatory in the other place, his one preoccupation until now, receded into insignificance.
Wynter, Wynter, Wynter . . .
He knew how, and he knew where.
21
Straighten the Rope II
At Luck’s Landing Jones and Orelia unfastened their skates. Above them, the town’s profile disappeared in a fog of dust and thickening snow. The river looked like burned treacle.
‘We’re in the wrong place, Jones – Bole spoke of the Tower of the Winds.’
‘The wrong place can get you to the right place,’ he replied enigmatically, a man transformed, alert and certain. He picked up a pair of skates, abandoned in the frozen reeds, and pointed east. Their phantom skater, too far away
to identify, was nimbly traversing the marsh.
‘We’ll follow the tracks,’ Jones said. ‘There are stepping stones beneath – but you need to be exact. The ground is treacherous.’
Like free-stepping dancers, Jones and Roc set off in pursuit. When the mysterious skater vanished as if swallowed up by the marsh, Jones plunged on regardless. Orelia gathered the connections between the Rotherweird Valley and Lost Acre, formed by the same cosmic collision, open to similar cyclical disturbance under the comet’s dark influence, each with a river and island, joined by the tiles, identical in time and season. She added a shared geology . . . A shared—
‘Jones!’ she screamed through the blizzard, ‘I know – I know! I know what Bole is about.’
Jones did not respond until they reached Finch’s fastness, when he simply said, ‘Yes’ – a truly odd ‘yes’, neither question nor answer, more a declaration of shared understanding.
Orelia still felt compelled to say it out loud.
‘Rotherweird has a mixing-point too – that’s why the ancients enclosed it in earth. That’s why Wynter had himself disappeared. It’s virgin, unused. He’s here, waiting.’ She paused, overcome by nausea from the effort of the journey and the shock. ‘Jones, Straighten the Rope is bound in Wynter’s skin. They’ve taken it to resurrect him . . .’
Jones did not look remotely surprised. He stooped and lifted the doors to Finch’s cell and the narrow cave. He craned his neck into the latter. ‘The rock wall has opened. It’s responding to the same millennial forces. Question is, how long does it stay open?’
A plangent woman’s cry came from the other side. Anxiety creased Jones’ face. He moved from one shaft to the other, snared in a hideous dilemma: should he go to the unknown damsel in distress or guard a favourite damsel from danger?
Orelia decided for him. ‘We split up: you go there, I go here; you take the tube-light, I have the candle.’
Rescued from indecision, he could only stammer, ‘Devilry’s afoot, Miss Roc, devilry to the north and devilry to the south.’
He descended by his own rope, still firmly attached to the handle, into Finch’s cell and on into the moleman’s tunnel beyond. She used a second rope obligingly left by the phantom skater. The rock wall had divided with geometric precision, creating a doorway to a tunnel beyond. Torches with gnarled fingers, coated in a dark, resinous pitch and set in stone sconces, illuminated the way to the first bend, a sharp turn south. From the distance came the echo of two voices, one male and one female; the pitch of the former was mercifully too high to be Everthorne’s.
*
Jones adapted quickly, splaying his feet to minimise the need to crouch: ungainly, but effective. The tunnel surfaces, treacherously zigzagged by cracks, had been sealed by the cold. There had been the one cry, which disturbed him, for it suggested a final cry, a vain plea for help, as well as grief, rage, horror and pain . . .
Scouts, so often the first in, witness more than their share – massacre, the bodies of women with child, victims of torture and fire – but he had never seen a sight like this: a creature, man-sized but half-mole, half-man, had been lifted high into the air, impaled on vicious ribs of shining steel. One had pierced the neck, another had impaled the chest right through to the back. Beneath the disturbed earth Jones glimpsed a pressure plate. In death, the face wore an attitude of pained surprise. He held the tube-light close and recognised beneath the velvety hair and hybrid eyes the features of his old friend, Bolitho.
Only then did he see her, crouching at the edge of the tube-light’s arc: beauty ravaged by grief. Morval Seer. It could be nobody else.
Jones somehow found words.
‘We take him down. We wash him. We bury him with his face to the stars.’
*
The torch-lit tunnel had the feel of cliché – a thoroughfare for grave-robbers, a secret sold by traitors – and yet nobody had walked this way for a millennium despite the torches and carved sconces. This was old, old history.
Orelia ran, steeling herself for confrontation, as at Lost Acre’s mixing-point on Midsummer Day. Jones’ absence could only mean misfortune behind her too.
The bends had been signalled by flickering torches, but not this one: no torch, only spectral colours dancing in the air like a fine spray caught by the sun. She took the final torch from its sconce and walked into a cavern with glowing walls. The floor sloped down to a huge tree, its trunk as wide as the shop front at Baubles & Relics, bursting with leaves. Luminous moss clung to the bark, the branches kissed the cavern floor and the ceiling; roots dived, rose and dived again.
She looked up to an open space, a shimmering patch of air where no branch trespassed: unmistakably a mixing-point.
Above her she heard a rustle: Bole must be climbing up to the mixing-point with Straighten the Rope – the bole hiding Bole, the double entendre apposite for his protean nature.
Using the branches as a winding stair, she climbed with the torch held away from the trunk. She reached the edge of a wooden platform, greyed by age, with a jetty leading to the mixing-point. She hauled herself up.
To her horror, there stood Everthorne, book in hand. When he spoke, it was not as Everthorne, but in a high voice, an unsettling mix of the obsequious and the assertive.
‘Whom would you like to meet, Miss Roc? Which voice would you hear?’ Bole smiled, lifting the book, and this time she heard Vibes. ‘She’s not to be sold, shared or parted with. And take my bag – it’s immune to pox, water and sunshine.’
He changed again, a gentle voice suggestive of wisdom. ‘Mr Vere, I have an idea. London has a Royal Society – why not a Rotherweird Guild, with scientific purposes backed by proper beliefs; its Hall could be your home.’ Bole’s own high voice added, ‘That was your ancestor, Benedict Roc, a carver of wood beyond compare – with a little guidance from me.’ And finally, ‘Sum Ferox.’
Orelia could barely comprehend. ‘You murdered them all—’
‘I preserved them all, I absorbed them all,’ replied Bole. ‘As for the killing, Flask killed Ferox in Lost Acre, Ferox killed Vibes near Hoy, Vibes killed Everthorne, sketching near an alpine railway station. Guess who’s next?’
Bole has a weakness, Ferensen had said, he toys with his victims. ‘Let me speak to Everthorne,’ she begged. ‘Let me hear his voice.’
Bole pondered the request. ‘I might, if you tell me why I needed Everthorne.’
Loathing for Bole’s arrogance and cruelty revived Orelia. She must play along, wait for an opening. ‘You designed a sphere with very particular pieces, to move objects from Rotherweird to Lost Acre – buildings, to judge from my last sight of the town.’
‘But my sphere also opens the wall, Miss Roc; above all, it opens the wall.’
Orelia shuddered. They had been blindsided. Whatever Bole had done to the town was secondary, a diversion. Play for time. She continued, ‘You determined the shape of the sixteen pieces, but you had a problem fitting them together. As the carver, you chance on old Everthorne, an artist with exceptional spatial awareness. You show him your drawings and he paints two pictures which, taken together, show which piece to fit in which order. You gave him a carving of his treasured mouse in return. But the sequence alone might not be enough; I imagine there is twisting and turning – so you gambled on the grandson having the same gift. Next, you wanted an innocent custodian for the book – one who might fall for him, and you chose me. Meanwhile, you commission Miss Vine to make the pieces.’
As Orelia spoke, her analysis felt awry; a piece was missing. Bole as Everthorne could not have arranged all of this.
‘Not bad, Miss Roc, but I’m afraid Mr Everthorne can be most assertive. At this particular moment, I would be rash to give him his head. This is not his party.’
‘Let me kiss him, then.’
She had chosen skilfully. Refusal would mean a loss of face; acceptance might give Evertho
rne a moment of control. Bole dipped his head – and, as he did so, she seized the book and kicked him away. She raised the torch, screaming, ‘I’m not the fool you take me for!’
One sentence – ten seconds to utter – but the delay was fatal. She should have put the torch to the dead skin instantly. A scything blow from behind knocked her to the floor of the platform and sent the torch spinning from her grasp. She fought to stay conscious as her arms were bound behind her back. Struggling to see, she rolled onto her back – and caught sight of her assailant: the woman skater!
A face came in and out of focus – and she understood.
Madge Brown had alerted them to the Popular Choice Regulations and started the road to the election. Madge Brown had sent them to the Hoy Book Fair for Bole to hand over the book as Vibes, the true Vibes being already dead. Madge Brown, hearing Fanguin mention The Agonies on their visit to Gorhambury, had destroyed it and the changelings. Madge Brown had chaired the Liaison Committee, placing Everthorne on Oblong’s staircase so they would meet. Madge Brown had acquired the invisibility film and attacked Oblong after his enquiry about the Apothecaries. Madge Brown had attacked Everthorne on Aether’s Way, freeing the artist of suspicion. Madge Brown had visited her with the electoral form, checking the book’s presence and location.
Madge Brown, Assistant Head Librarian, of the mousey looks and retiring character, Madge Brown the leather-winged Fury, stared down at her.
‘Time to go, Potamus,’ she said.
Head throbbing, blood trickling down her cheek, Orelia could only watch.
With surgical precision Madge Brown stripped away the binding of Straighten the Rope with a stiletto and passed it to Bole.
Contrary emotions seized Orelia: had she made love to Everthorne alone, his true body and essence – or had Bole been there too, a manipulative voyeur, even a participant of sorts? Loathing and disgust at the violation was leavened by the hope that, if Everthorne’s body survived, she might reclaim him. She worked her hands; the knot was loosening, but not quite enough.
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