The Artisans

by J G Alva

  She opened the door to reveal a tall man standing silhouetted in the sunlight. They exchanged a few words, and then Dot led him toward them, into the kitchen.

  Toby knew him.

  In the Cult, he had been known as Priatt.

  With alarm, he looked at Aimee.

  Aimee saw his look and shook her head: its fine.

  What did that mean? He had been in the Cult, but he could be trusted?

  “This is Sutton Mills,” Aimee said, indicating the man in the kitchen doorway. “He’s the one who got you out of the Cult.”

  Toby stared at the man. He was tall enough, and big enough, to be a little scary. Or maybe he made Toby nervous because of his time on the farm; back then, Priatt had been uncommunicative and sullen, and everyone in the Cult had treated him with kid gloves. There was an air of violence about him, unsettling in its own way as Bellafont’s stare was in his.

  So…this was the man his father had used to bring him home. That made sense. He looked capable of the task.

  “Alright,” Toby said.

  Aimee asked Sutton, “so what did Alfred say?”

  At the mention of the name, a look came over Sutton’s features that was unmistakable; Toby had seen it only moments ago on Aimee’s face when he had asked her about his father.

  Alfred was dead.

  Sutton looked between the two of them and said, “it’s worse than we thought.”

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 12

  “He’s an artist, I think,” the man said.

  He was tall, overweight, with a wild flick of dark hair styled back from his forehead, and a beard so large and dark it looked unreal. He wore an earring in one ear, and a thick white vest that did nothing to hide a large distended stomach.

  He stood in the doorway, looking at everything in the hall except Clive.

  “Although I haven’t seen him for a while,” the man continued. “He keeps to himself. The only time I ever really see him is when he’s running. He likes to run a lot, around the docks.”

  The man made a vague circling motion with his hand.

  “Okay, thanks,” Clive said. “Maybe I’ll come back.”

  The man shrugged and then shut the door. He didn’t care.

  Then again, who in this modern and disturbing society did?

  Clive rejoined the other two upstairs. They were standing on either side of the door on the small landing.

  “He’s not here,” he said. “Kick it in.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Sit there,” she directed.

  Pat looked at the folding plastic chair dubiously. It was too small to accommodate his larger frame.

  “Mrs Board-“

  “Audrey. Please. Are you going to sit?”

  She smiled. She was a short thin woman with glasses and short curly hair. The ghost of her son floated in her features behind a layer of years.

  She sat on the sofa opposite him and said, “I’m new at this, so I’ll just do a three card spread. But it’s great to have somebody new to do it with. I’m not going to get any better if I don’t have people to do it on.”

  Pat debated, and then sat.

  “As I said, we’re considering Darren, your son, for promotion, and I just wanted to get a sense of what that would mean to him. How it would affect his life.”

  “Of course,” she said. “And he’s going to be so excited when I tell him-“

  “You can’t tell him,” Pat said sharply.

  Her face fell.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because he’s still under review,” he said, floundering. He hoped she wouldn’t notice, but he was making this up as he went along. “That’s why I’m here. So, does he have any outside interests? Something that might affect his willingness to be promoted?”

  “Who, Darren?” Audrey picked up the cards and began shuffling them. The room was dark, not due to inadequate lighting, but because of the dark colours of the furniture and fixtures: a dark brown sofa, a dark brown carpet, cream wallpaper with dark flower patterns, dark brown curtains. “No. He lives for his work. He loves it. Always has. He wanted to be in the police since he was about six, can you believe it? I’m so proud of him. And to think, he is being considered for promotion to Detective Inspector, and at such a young age…”

  “He doesn’t have any hobbies?”

  “He reads,” Audrey said, nodding. “He reads a lot. He’s always got his head in a book. Gets it from his grandfather – he was a big reader.”

  Audrey put the cards on the table.

  “Did you see that?” She said. “I shuffled the cards eight times, as directed. Now. You have to cut it twice, so we have three piles: past, present, and future.”

  Pat hesitated.

  “I really don’t believe in this sort of thing,” he said, cutting the Tarot cards into three piles.

  “Neither did I,” Audrey confessed, in a conspiring tone, “but then I saw this woman two months ago, and it was so accurate, everything the cards revealed…well, I knew I had to learn about it. But, like I said, I am a beginner. Or a beginner’s beginner. So bear with me.”

  “What does he read?”

  “Darren?” She was focusing on the cards, and answered in a distracted tone. “I have no idea. I’m going to turn over the present card first. Because this is the card that has all the power. What you are doing now.”

  She selected the middle pile, and revealed the card: it was the Queen of Wands. A woman sat on a throne, holding a staff and a sunflower. A cat was on the floor at her feet.

  Pat had absolutely no idea what that meant.

  “Does Darren have a girlfriend?”

  “No. Not since Linda…three years ago now. During the “bad time”.” Audrey stared at the card, and then her eyes flicked suspiciously to Pat. “Do you have a new lady friend yourself?”

  “What? Me? You’re joking.”

  “The cards say you do.”

  “Well, the cards are wrong.”

  “Hm.”

  “Does Darren still go to AA?”

  “No,” Audrey said, staring at the Queen of Wands as if trying to find something new. “It didn’t work for him, he said. So he gave it up.”

  “He’s not been drinking?”

  “No.” Now her eyes were on him, not the card. “And I’d know. I’d smell it on him. It’s fine. He doesn’t have a problem, not really. It was just because of his brother. Because of what happened.” She returned to the cards. “Have you come into some money recently?”

  Pat shook his head.

  “No.”

  Audrey made a disappointed clucking sound.

  “Alright,” she said. “Shall we try the future card next?”

  “I really don’t believe-“

  “Here you go. Strength. Now. That’s a card from the Greater Arcana. It’s power and it’s courage and it’s action. All of which I can see in you.”

  The card showed a maiden or princess fondling petting a lion.

  “Well…”

  “Past next,” Audrey pronounced, her hand hovering over the card. “I have to tell you that the past can be more than just one thing, more than just something that’s happened to you: it can also still be happening, in your head, and determining the direction of your life now. Does that make sense?”

  Pat nodded, but in truth, none of it was making any sense to him.

  “Past,” Audrey said importantly, and then turned over the top card on the last pile.

  By her face alone, he could tell it wasn’t a very important card.

  “What is it?” He asked, more curious about her reaction than the card itself.

  The picture on the card showed a man in a robe, turned away, with what could have been either three poles or three trees beside him.

  “The Three of Wands,” she said. “Uh…”

  “What?”

  “I’m not really sure what that means.” She smiled sheepishly. “I told you I was a beginner.”

  “That’s alright,”
he said, looking down at the cards. “It’s been very…illuminating.”

  She smiled, but it was perfunctory.

  “This new job,” she said. “Will it be more stress, do you think?”

  Pat frowned, but said, “more than likely. Why? Is Darren stressed?”

  “Not normally,” she said, bringing the Tarot cards together to pack them away. “But he seems to be more stressed lately.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know. But…I hear him talking to himself sometimes. In his room.”

  “He’s not just on his mobile?”

  She shook her head.

  “No. He leaves his mobile in here. I sometimes think…that he’s talking to his brother. He used to do it, just after he died, but that was years ago…it worries me, that he’s started to do it again.” She smiled, but there was hurt there, and she looked close to tears. “That’s why I thought the cards could help. Silly, I suppose…” She shook herself, gathering up the cards…and then accidentally dropping some back on the table. She stared at them a moment, as if they had betrayed her, and once again began to gather them up. “I’ll keep at it,” she said. “I’ll learn. It’s just interpreting the cards correctly. And that takes time…”

  A card had landed on Pat’s side of the table, the Past card that Audrey had flipped over for him: the Three of Wands.

  He stared at the picture again.

  Did he…was the character on the card leaning on the trees for support?

  Pat felt a chill.

  His back.

  The past…

  Almost as if on cue, it started to ache.

  But he didn’t believe in this nonsense.

  Still, he felt a cold ripple of fear pass over his skin.

  ◆◆◆

  Sutton Mills led a reasonably simple life, if the interior of his flat was a yardstick for such things.

  There were an array of gym machines in the second bedroom, but other than that it might have been the home of any man in his mid-thirties: a small bookshelf filled mostly with tomes on Bristol and Art; a dark sofa facing a television on a stand in the corner; a locked filing cabinet that, when opened, contained a series of preliminary drawings, mostly of women, some of them nude. He had some talent. Briefly, he wondered who the women were…conquests perhaps. He had the air of an alpha male, and an alpha male needed his trophies. There was an easel in the corner, covered by a thin layer of dust. Other than that, it was non-descript, generic, and unilluminating. They were no closer to finding out who he truly was.

  Clive was surprised not to find a computer. Was that telling in itself? A man, born into the wrong time…as all the Artisans were.

  Clive’s mission was to find out things about Sutton Mills, things they could use. The Purge was usually effective enough in ascertaining a person’s true mantle…but Sutton had held something back. Clive had discounted it at the time as personal bias – after all, not many people could endure the Purge and keep secrets – but it was obvious now that Sutton had been successful in keeping some things close to his chest. That feat alone singled him out as unusual. There were layers to the man, and they had not seen them all. Not yet.

  But there was nothing here to tell them any more about the man himself. The Art – in the filing cabinet and mounted on the walls – they already knew about. Jeb and Dook were tearing apart the other rooms, but it didn’t appear as if they had found anything. At least, not until Dook called out, “safe.”

  Clive went to look.

  It was only about the size of a suitcase, but it was mechanical combination lock type; impossible to crack without the appropriate tools. These models were meant to be fireproof as well; nothing short of a bomb blast would dent it.

  “What do you think?” Dook asked him.

  Clive debated.

  “We’ll take it with us.”

  Jeb and Dook continue to trawl through the minutiae of his life, but in the end they could find nothing more to unravel who he truly was.

  So Clive had to question what few peculiarities there were:

  Why did Sutton feel the need to maintain his physical fitness?

  What was also intriguing was the absence of those items that Clive would have expected to find in the flat of your average city dwelling male:

  Why did he not own a computer?

  Why did he not have any photographs?

  Maybe the safe would yield some answers, once they managed to get it open, but even though in the end the flat had been disappointing, they could still use it to find him.

  “Burn it,” Clive said to the two young men. “The whole place. I want its light to be so bright it reaches out into the world. And when they come – and they will come – you will both be here. Watching. Waiting.”

  Clive spent a moment watching as Jeb and Dook took the safe out to the landing, and then returned and began breaking up the more flammable items of furniture. They piled them in the centre of the living room; they hummed and laughed; they were Soldiers happy in their work.

  Clive left them to it.

  ◆◆◆

  Aimee listened as Sutton told them what he had found at Alfred Alger’s house.

  She couldn’t quite believe it. The Cult – which had seemed small, ineffective and disorganised – was now coming into focus as a powerhouse. Its tentacles seemed to be in everything. It had begun to look – at least from her perspective – like they weren’t going to escape.

  Sutton had asked a question, which she had missed.

  “What?” She said, coming back to the here and now.

  “I said, what do you want to do?”

  Aimee looked over at Toby.

  He seemed wan, and afraid.

  “Oh God, I don’t know,” she said. “What are the options?”

  Sutton gave her a small half-shrug.

  “The same as they always are in situations like this,” he said. “Fight, or flight.”

  “But it’s not our fight,” Aimee protested. “It’s the police’s.”

  “I know. But we can’t trust them.”

  “But there must be somebody in the police – somebody else – who can help us…”

  “I agree. But we don’t know who to trust. So that option doesn’t help.”

  Aimee shook her head. She looked at Toby again.

  “Why can’t the Cult just let you go? Why do they want you so badly?”

  Toby shook his head; he looked clueless.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did you and Bellafont talk about?” Sutton asked. “During your little soirees.”

  Toby shook his head but said, “not much. Just his experiences, his life. His parents.” He shrugged.

  “What about them?” Sutton asked, interested.

  “His father was a toolmaker, I think,” Toby said. “An honest man, he told me. A simple man, who never amounted to anything.”

  “And his mother?”

  “Very religious.” Toby added, “and always ill.”

  “What else did you talk about?”

  “Nothing, really,” Toby said. He looked past Aimee, toward the back of the kitchen…searching his memory. “I’m a fan of American poets. You know: Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference. I told him about my mother and father. What happened to her. How it affected him…and me. How I couldn’t live in that house…not without beginning to wish him dead. I-“ Toby shook his head. “Oh God,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t.” His eyes beseeched them. “It’s just…just angst. Self-absorption. The worst about being a man of feeling…That’s what Bellafont said. Those were the sort of things he used to say. The worst thing about being a man of feeling, is suffering for everyone else’s mistakes. That you can’t understand people who don’t feel as much as you do…and as a consequence they can’t be as real to you.”

  “Solipsism,” Sutton remarked.

  “Yes,
but…more than that. Or not quite that. The problem was, I couldn’t relate to my father. He couldn’t understand who I was, why I liked the things I did – my books, my poetry – and as a consequence everything I felt wasn’t real to him. That’s why I joined the Cult in the first place…or at least that’s part of the reason: to show him that my feelings were real, that they could change things, that they could motivate me to give up society…to turn my back on everything my father knew and loved. Bellafont understood that. He was perhaps the only person who did. I know it sounds strange, talking this way about the man who is after us, who killed my father, an obviously evil man, but it felt like we were…I don’t know. Kindred spirits. We’d spend hours just talking. About everything: his thoughts on society, my thoughts on human relationships, how the world could be a better place, with just a few changes.” Toby almost managed to smile. “I think we saved the world a dozen times over, just with those conversations. Well…if we were Schrodinger’s Cat maybe. Or observing the Double-Slit experiment.”

  “What does that mean?” Aimee asked.

  He turned to her, his eyes alight with some inner fire.

  “The act of creating a new world, even if only with words, might very well have altered the reality of this one. A consciousness can look at something and change it, simply by the fact that it was observed.”

  Aimee felt a chill. It was the kind of talk she would expect to hear from a member of the Cult…but of course he was a member of the Cult. Or had been. She had to remember he had not left the Cult willingly, and that some part of it might linger.

  “It sounds to me like Bellafont’s in love with you,” Sutton said.

  Aimee turned to him, to see if he was joking…but from his expression he so obviously wasn’t.

  “What?” She said.

  “No,” Toby said, shaking his head. “No. That’s…no.”

  Sutton indicated Toby.

  “Long talks into the night,” he said. “Kindred spirits…your words, mind. You might only have seen it as kinship, but Bellafont has something of a chequered past when it comes to sexual relationships. And you’re a good looking kid. Intelligent. Saved from the technological elite. I’d be surprised if he didn’t fall in love with you.”