The Midnight Charter

by David Whitley

  ‘Have you never seen one before?’ Lily said softly.

  ‘Of course I have, but…’ Mark paused, tracing the outline of the seal. ‘I used to ask when I’d get one. My brother and sister were both younger, so I think I knew that I’d be first. My dad told me to wait until I was grown up, said it would be a surprise. Mum always looked sad when she thought about it. She never said anything about title days… All her stories were about witches, and ghosts, and cities made of gold… nothing to do with the real world, but they always felt more real than anything I’d ever known. After a few stories, I always forgot what I’d been asking her about… I think that was the point…’

  Mark held it up to the firelight, then gingerly slipped it on to his ring finger. Lily couldn’t see his expression, but his voice was a whisper.

  ‘Dad kept his hidden in the blankets where he slept. Only brought it out when he was going to sell the catch. He was afraid the neighbours would steal it. “Steal your ring, steal your soul,” he used to say.’ Mark held out his hand. ‘Lily, how… how do you use it?’

  Lily considered for a moment. Mark needed to make his first trade and receive his title gift – even the basest beggar received something on their title day. But what would the doctor give him? He owned nothing but tools that Mark would need years of training before he could use. And then, almost without realizing it, her eyes drifted down to the book in her hands. She held it tighter. It was important to her, one of the few things that she had ever been able to call her own.

  But what was the point of a story you could not share?

  She picked up the candle.

  ‘I’ll show you. Wait here.’

  A few minutes of rummaging in a cupboard later, Lily returned with paper and a long, thin pen. It had once been a goose feather, but all remnants of fluff had been stripped from it and now it was a very simple means of moving ink from a copper pot to the paper. Carefully, she wrote, reading aloud as she did so:

  I, Lily, give to Mark, one book.

  In return, Mark gives nothing, for it is a title gift.

  Then she reached for the candle and, tilting it, let hot wax run down on to the contract.

  ‘Press it in, like this.’

  Fishing in her apron pocket, Lily pulled out her own signet ring, and pushed it down into the wax. As she pulled it back both saw the shape of a flower, a lily, growing out of an open book.

  ‘Now you.’

  His hand shaking, Mark pushed his seal down beside hers. The starfish seemed to grin up at him.

  ‘What now?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing. You own the book.’ Lily felt a twinge of sadness, but covered it with a sly smile. ‘Do you want to know how to read it? That’s extra.’

  ‘Not fair,’ Mark grumbled. ‘I can’t even use the present.’

  ‘You can look at the woodcut pictures,’ Lily replied, handing him the book. ‘Anyway, be grateful. My title gift was a cart ride.’

  ‘Where to?’

  Lily paused. Images of her few belongings being thrown into the mud rose up in her mind as she heard the doors of the bookbinder’s grinding shut. Inwardly, she shuddered.

  ‘Away,’ she said simply. ‘The bookbinders didn’t want to keep me once I had my signet ring. They didn’t own me any more, and they needed smaller fingers for the stitching. I was lucky. They let me stay on for a week, before I was –’ Lily gave a mirthless chuckle – ‘asked to leave. It feels like a lifetime ago.’

  Mark picked at the cover of the book awkwardly.

  ‘I suppose you get used to it,’ he said hopefully, ‘after a couple of years…’

  Lily gave a tight smile.

  ‘I probably will, but it still feels new to me.’ She folded her arms. ‘My title day was only two months ago, on Agora Day.’

  Mark looked up sharply, his surprise visible.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘I mean… not that you look much older than me… It’s just… the way you act and talk… you remind me of my mother sometimes.’

  Lily flinched.

  ‘Gosh, thanks,’ she said, a little more sharply than she had meant.

  Mark shrank back into his chair. ‘She used to be the one who explained things,’ he said quietly. ‘She was the one who told me stories, who kept all this stuff away from me. She… she made me feel safe.’

  Lily breathed out slowly, her annoyance fading away. Now she thought about it, it was strange to think how little time she had spent at the tower. It already felt as though she had been through its dull routines a thousand times. She pulled her chair closer to Mark’s.

  ‘I started work years ago, Mark. The orphanage sold me to the bookbinders when I had seen only six summers. I wasn’t even the youngest worker there.’ Lily bit her lip; she had never talked to anyone about this before. ‘I didn’t have a mother, or a father, just an orphanage matron who was so distant I never even knew her name.’ Lily shrugged. ‘I suppose that kind of life makes you grow up fast.’ She leaned forward. ‘I can tell you everything I’ve picked up, Mark, try to help as best I can. But I can’t be your mother and I wouldn’t want to be. She sounds special.’

  Mark looked away. ‘She was,’ he said.

  For a while they sat with their thoughts, Mark gazing at the signet ring and Lily at Mark. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  ‘So,’ Mark said at last, ‘the doctor doesn’t own me any more?’

  ‘He won’t in a week. They give you time to find someone new.’

  ‘And then you sell yourself?’

  ‘You sell your service. It’s all we have.’ Lily rolled up the contract. ‘There are no more gifts, Mark. Not ever.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Lily…’ he said. ‘What do we do?’ When he looked up at her, he suddenly seemed so lost.

  Lily took his hands in her own. ‘We survive, Mark. That’s the only thing we can do. We try to live, try to find somewhere we can call home.’ She saw her own dark eyes reflected in his grey ones. ‘We do what we can for ourselves.’ She squeezed his hands. ‘And for each other.’

  For a long moment they both turned away to look into the fire, but if there was a glimpse of the future in the flames, Lily could not see it. Then Mark took the cover of his new book and flipped it open.

  ‘Clean the kitchen for you in exchange for a reading lesson?’ he said.

  Lily smiled.

  ‘I’d say that’s worth a few hours.’

  Chapter Three

  THE DEAL

  It was a few months later that Mark discovered, to his astonishment, that he was happy. Or at least closer to happiness than he had expected to be.

  It wasn’t as if he had much to be happy about. At night, when he lay curled up against the tower’s many draughts, dark thoughts would come back to him. The face of his father would swim into view, stamping down a brass seal into wax, selling his dying son to a doctor for a few weeks of treatment. Then the same doctor would rouse him, announcing that they were setting off again to walk the streets.

  He was a different man out there. In the tower the doctor relaxed a little. He often apologized to Mark for the worst parts of their work – the dissection of corpses, the foul-smelling mixtures – but down in the basement, between the dry stones, it felt safe and secret. Mark could pretend to himself that it was nothing more than an intriguing game.

  But when they were on the streets, it became all too real. The doctor donned the mask of the reaper, the smooth white face and goggles of black. He made Mark wear a mask too; it would protect them from other diseases in the slums, he said, and it acted as a badge of office. Outside, Dr Theophilus walked swiftly and spoke as little as possible. Mark could see the tension in his hands as he handed over the instruments and bottles. He concentrated a lot on the doctor’s hands – it meant he didn’t have to look at the gasping, desperate faces around them.

  Mark couldn’t help it. He knew the doctor was right when he told him that it was impossible for him to catch the grey plague again. He didn’t und
erstand, of course, something to do with ‘the vile humours’ having been purged, but there could be no reason for his master to lie to him. However, when he was out there, on the streets…

  It was the smell. He was used to the smell of rot, of mouldering fish and foul river mud – the stench of the River Ora as it lapped against the banks of the Piscean slums – that had been with him his whole life. But by the river he could see the sky. Now, crushed into the alleyways in the depths of the Pisces District, far from the waterfront he had called home, it was as though the odours were being pushed into his nose and mouth, as though his head was swelling up in the rush of diseased air and clattering footsteps. He was shoved and jostled by a thousand rushing shadows. No one greeted each other as they rushed by.

  Sometimes he thought of going back, of seeing whether his father was still alive, but something always stopped him. He told Lily that it was the thought of the city, huge and imposing, stretching out between the tower and his old home, and she said she believed him. He was grateful for that, particularly as both of them knew it was not the only reason. If he went back he would find one of two things: a dead father, or the man who had sold him. The trouble was, he didn’t know which would be worse.

  He had learned to enjoy the atmosphere of the tower – dry, dusty and safe. The building had changed in his mind over the four months he had known it: once it had been terrifying, but now it seemed to stand out like a beacon, calling him home. No disease would survive long in a place so empty. When the time had come to sign his apprenticeship to the doctor, a week after his title day, he barely waited for the wax to drip on to the paper. The doctor’s signet had six stars on it, like his grandfather’s. But in addition there were two snakes twisted round a stick: the symbol of a healer.

  Having his own signet was also strangely comforting. Sometimes, lying in bed, he would keep his scrap of candle lit for a few minutes before he dropped off to sleep, so he could stare at the little brass ring. The starfish seemed to flex and move in the flickering light. It was like discovering a new part of himself, as if he had fallen asleep with just one name, like everyone else, and woken up with a hundred. He was no longer just Mark – he was Mr Mark of the starfish signet, apprentice to Dr Theophilus. He felt, for the first time, as if he really knew who he was.

  However, his life wasn’t perfect. He still had to hide whenever the Count’s bell rang. Never mind that the old man had not left his Observatory for years, new servants were not permitted, especially those who might be contaminated.

  When Mark had asked Lily how she came to be accepted as his servant, she had smiled wearily before replying.

  ‘I wrote to him, as soon as I knew the bookbinders wanted to get rid of me. Said I wanted to work for the great Count Stelli, that I’d read every one of his books.’ She had then given a rare chuckle. ‘Almost true actually. Not a lot that’s worth reading when you’re working in the astrology section. He replied the next day, sending me the contract, his seal already on it. I handed it to the receiver on the way to the tower.’ She had looked down for a moment before continuing. ‘I’ve never seen him in the light, barely spoken to him. He communicates in notes. First one said he wanted to put my literacy to the test.’

  Lily. He’d had to think again about her. She certainly wasn’t an angel; angels didn’t clean out the privies. But it was still as if she had stepped out of one of those stories his mother used to tell him. He’d known a few of the other kids on the waterfront – they used to throw mud at each other – but she was nothing like them. She seemed older, more serious, yet she could still be fun; in the evenings, when their work was done, she was always ready to talk, or they would explore the old dustsheet-covered rooms. If he managed to make her laugh, it was always a bonus. He had found that, with the assistance of a couple of dustsheets and a few improvised moans, he could pretend that the tower was haunted. This never failed to raise a giggle, although he was not quite sure whether she was laughing at the game or at how ridiculous he must look.

  But if he bumped into her during the day, when she was not expecting him, that was different. Just for a second, before she greeted him, she would stop what she was doing – cooking and cleaning mostly – and stare, as if she was coming back from thoughts far deeper than he had ever had. It was at times like these when he noticed her eyes. Dark eyes, just like her skin. He knew that she kept no secrets, she spoke frankly and simply, and Dr Theophilus thought her invaluable, but sometimes Mark found her unnerving. Once, his mum had told him of an ancient spirit who could draw your soul out with its gaze. It would have had eyes just like Lily’s.

  His mum’s stories had been nothing like those in Lily’s book. As the weeks passed, Lily continued Mark’s reading lessons, drawing their stools closer to the kitchen fire to stave off the winter’s cold. Under her guidance the letters, words and sentences began to make sense, but Mark found that there were no heroes or demons in what he read. In fact, for several days he laboured to understand a passage that eventually turned out to be about nothing more than making a mutton pie.

  ‘I thought you said this was a storybook,’ he grumbled, squinting up at her.

  Lily sighed. ‘It is. That pie’s important because the son had to steal the meat to make it, because otherwise his mother would have starved. That’s why the receivers come for them.’

  Mark shivered. ‘I prefer the old stories. They don’t have receivers in, only demons. You can trust demons.’

  He didn’t want to admit it, but the fact that there were no receivers here in the tower also made it feel safe. The receivers hadn’t come often to the slums, but when they had it was always to take someone away, someone who had failed to settle their debts or cheated or, worst of all, stolen. All the children would cry and dive for cover as the midnight-blue uniforms came into view, then watch in fascinated horror as another family was dragged apart by gloved hands, while an inspector looked on and wrote his report. Of course, adults dealt with the receivers all the time. Every contract was handed in to them for safe-keeping; as the representatives of the Directory of Receipts, they would even write contracts for those who could not do so themselves. Once sealed, the contracts were taken away, and in due course a receiver brought you an official receipt. One of them would knock on the tower door weekly to collect and deliver, but Mark always hid. He was perfectly legal, he had no debts, but… It was whispered that the receivers sold the debtors back to those they had wronged, in pieces if necessary, and the shrill whistles of their patrols made him tremble.

  Worse still, the most wretched of the debtors were said to be taken to the Director of Receipts, the ruler of Agora himself. Even the storytellers fell silent when they mentioned the Director. No one other than the highest in the city had ever seen him, or even knew precisely who he was, although several great families claimed him as one of their own. All anyone knew for certain was that those who entered the Directory vanished from the world. It was said that the Director held a great ledger with the name of every Agoran written in it. It was said that he could see each person’s life written in their name, and that if he erased the name, struck it out with a stroke of his pen, it would be as if that person had never existed – their life forgotten, their passing brushed away.

  Mark mentioned all this to Lily, who raised an eyebrow and said drily, ‘A lot of things scare you, don’t they?’

  After that, Mark’s fear was replaced with irritation for most of the rest of the day. He was only being sensible.

  In the meantime, he continued learning about the world’s dullest family in his book. Lily told him that his reading was improving far faster than she would ever have expected, but it still felt achingly slow to him.

  During one lesson, when the afternoons had begun to brighten with the approach of spring, Mark complained loudly, ‘Nothing happens! They don’t do anything except moan about their lives, then every so often someone dies or gets arrested for their debts. Aren’t there any other books? I’m cleaning the dining room for you for
this.’

  ‘Not unless you fancy reading about infections of the bowels in the doctor’s books or want to try stealing from the Count,’ Lily retorted, keeping her eyes fixed on the page. ‘Anyway, it’s about real people – people with fears and hopes. You’re not saying you never worry about the future?’

  ‘The only things that frighten me are things I’ve seen happen,’ Mark shot back, and was pleased to see Lily’s face soften. It was a victory of sorts.

  She pulled back her hair, bent over his shoulder and pointed to the next line. ‘What does it say?’ she said patiently.

  Mark frowned. ‘This is really going to help me?’ he asked.

  Lily nodded firmly, but kept her eyes fixed on the page.

  ‘It’s a huge city out there, Mark. How can we learn about it if we don’t let others do some of our seeing for us?’ She turned her head then, her gaze meeting his. ‘Don’t you want to think about other people? Do you want to stay in this tower and know nothing about the world outside?’

  Mark dropped his eyes. It was silly, but he didn’t want to look at her. He felt that she would extract his answer, which was that he had tried the world outside and didn’t much like it.

  ‘If I were them,’ Mark grumbled, closing the book, ‘I’d find a way to make the world work for me. I wouldn’t sit and wait for the next disaster. I wouldn’t be trampled on,’ he added fiercely.

  Lily gave him a look that he couldn’t read.

  ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lily said thoughtfully. ‘Except… so much of it wasn’t their fault. Don’t you feel sorry for them?’

  ‘It’s only a story,’ Mark grunted.

  Lily’s gaze was still on him.

  ‘That’s not an answer,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not how a real family would behave anyway. There definitely aren’t enough arguments…’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Lily said softly, ‘I wouldn’t know.’