by Rod Duncan
“Freedom from the tyranny of the Gas-Lit Empire. Freedom from the Patent Office. Freedom to be…”
The sentence was never finished. Edwin scrambled to his feet. He was looking past her to the bolted door of the room. And then she caught it too: the sound that had alarmed him, footsteps in the passageway outside. They weren’t nearly ready to deal with a search. They weren’t even dressed the same, so no trickery would be possible.
The footsteps had stopped. Elizabeth lifted the lid of the ottoman. There’d be just room enough to curl herself into it, though anyone looking might think it too small to hold a person.
A fist knocked on the door.
She climbed inside, knelt, breathing out as she folded herself down, lowering the lid. It wasn’t as dark as the cabinet. Cracks of light showed up the joins in the wood panels. The smell of dank earth made her want to gag. She forced her stomach muscles to go slack.
Faintly, she heard the door opening.
Then Edwin’s voice, surprised. “My lady?”
A woman replied, “May we enter?”
A hesitation. Then her brother’s reply: “Yes. Of course.”
The door closed again. Footsteps approached: two women to judge by the sound, one delicate like the hooves of a deer, one heavier and with a slight unevenness of gait. Edwin had spoken of the consort. There was surely no other woman in the court that he’d invite into that room. A shadow crossed the cracks in the wood near Elizabeth’s face.
Then a creaking. Someone was sitting on the ottoman. It would be her brother, she thought, preventing them from looking inside. But then the woman’s voice came again, very close above her.
“You’ve always been kind to me,” the woman said.
“Thank you.”
“And I’ve done my best to give you protection.”
“We’ve looked after each other, my lady.”
“That’s why I’m here. You’ve been hiding yourself away. I don’t know what it is you do in this room.”
“Magic,” he said.
“Yes… well… you should spend more time at court. There’s more people to win over than just the king and Mr Janus.”
“Who?”
“Timon. Zanar. The Master of Horse. And… well… no one notices, but I also have thoughts in my head. Just as much as any of the men. More than some. And yet all I’m seen to be is this…”
She would be touching her belly, Elizabeth thought. The pregnancy that so dominated the hopes of the castle.
“I understand.” Edwin’s voice had taken on a softer lilt.
“You do not! You weren’t born a girl. You don’t know how they’ve always looked at me – like I was a pot waiting to be filled. And now here it is. He’s done his work and this thing’s growing inside me. And there’s nothing I can do or say that will make me any more than a kitchen pot.”
Elizabeth’s legs were folded so tight that her toes had started to go numb. She wanted to move. She wanted to breathe away from that ill-smelling dankness. The ottoman creaked. The shadows shifted across the cracks of light. The consort had stood.
“Why did you come here?” Her brother’s voice. Quiet now. Her words would have hurt him.
“Climb the tower,” she said. “Look east. See the mountain.”
Then footsteps. The clack of the door bolts. The door closing.
She waited, though her limbs were screaming at her to move. A sudden light as the lid of the ottoman opened above.
She tried to lift herself, but her left leg was numb to the thigh. She stumbled and would have fallen, but he caught her. As he helped her out, she leaned against him, allowing herself to feel the comfort of that small physical contact. He was trembling.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“The mountain… Mount Hood… Wait here…”
Edwin walked, though his heart was pumping blood enough for him to have sprinted the passage all the way to the tower and climbed the stairs three at a time. But to run would have been to reveal his weakness. His fear.
The consort had chosen to come to him. That was the thing he should hold onto. But his mind was snared in the sting of her insults. Her mockery.
“She came to me.” He whispered the words. “She gave a warning.” However much she might despise him, that proved she was still on his side.
Half a turn around the spiral of the stairs, beyond view of the passageway, he allowed himself to accelerate. Narrow windows came in succession, one to a turn. Then two to a turn as he climbed clear of the battlements, ascending the tower. Views opened to north and south, but not to the east. His thighs were burning with the effort of the climb. Another turn. Then another. There was daylight above, and moss in cracks between the stones.
Two lookouts would be stationed at the top. They’d think him deranged if he blundered up there red faced and gasping. He should stop. He knew it. He should get his breath under control. A few seconds would make no difference, but his feet carried him on.
The wind caught his hair as he emerged, cold and from the north. He was dimly aware of the lookouts staring at him as he staggered to the eastern parapet.
One narrow strip of blue sky lay between the distant hills and a slab of grey cloud above. In shadow, the land seemed almost purple. Behind those hills reared the peak of Mount Hood: a triangle bathed in sunlight. A snow storm must have passed in the night. The king of mountains bore its blanket of white from slope to slope.
CHAPTER 23
Janus was not in the Great Hall, nor the consort’s apartments, nor the Morning Room. He was not in the Marshalling Yard. In the workshops Edwin found three technicians bolting a heavy steel leg to a bulky contraption of some kind. It took him a moment to recognise it as a gun mount, upside down. It had to be several times the weight of the one they’d been using with the Mark Three.
He waited till they had it securely in place, then asked, “Have you seen Mr Janus?”
One of them, who had a dark grease smear down his forearm, said, “He’s hunting.”
“Janus hunting?” It seemed unlikely.
“Not like that,” said the technician. “A man sneaked into the castle. Another magician. Mr Janus is going to have him. And then…” He patted the gun mount.
The others nodded, faces grave.
Edwin found a window that he could look out from unobserved. Janus stood in the open below, hands clasped behind him, the soft clay of his face showing the mildest of frowns. From inside the stables came the sounds of men working: the clank of tools and buckets, the scrape and thud of hay bales being dragged and turned.
Janus possessed a dangerous mix of patience and clear thought. He had begun his search in a place where he knew the forbidden magician would not be found. He would continue in that manner, no doubt placing a guard in each building as it was cleared. It would be a huge task to search the entire sprawl of buildings that made up the castle. But whilst it was going on, Janus would have command of the garrison. He’d also be able to leave informants everywhere. In a few days, he’d be able to track Edwin’s movements throughout the castle. Only when every other hiding place had been searched would he turn to the Room of Cabinets.
Edwin cast his mind around the wings and buildings of the castle, trying to work out how long it might take for the job to be done. Four days. Three perhaps. He would need to be ready before that time, in any case.
One thing was good, though. With his focus on the stables, Janus had yet to realise that snow now blanketed the slopes of Mount Hood. It might win another few hours of grace.
Back in the Room of Cabinets, he explained the new dangers to his sister. She sat on the wicker ottoman, listening while he paced, trying to contain the energy of his panic.
She asked, “How long before he hears about the snow?”
“Not long.”
“And how many days will it take to get the army ready?”
“Four or less. The preparation’s been done for weeks. And the planning. They need only muster.”
“Then you still have that time. And the days till his search reaches us.”
“It’s not enough. The embassy from Newfoundland…”
“They will be travelling,” she said, her voice level, her expression earnest. “Of course they will. They knew the snows would come. They would have set out early enough in the year to make the journey. Talk costs nothing for a new king. He’s wise enough to know that.”
“What if they’ve been waylaid?” he asked. It was the thought that had been gnawing at him since he heard of the Bartholomew gang. If Janus had men out there, they’d surely be looking for a party of Newfies on the road, ready to cut them down.
“They’re warriors,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve been there, remember? I’ve seen them. Born and raised for battle. They’ll get through.”
But her eyes were on the floor, her face grim. He waited, watching her turmoil, wanting to go and sit next to her, to comfort her, but holding himself back, just as she’d been doing. They were dancers, he thought. Each the mirror of the other, as they must have been in the womb. But their mother had set the steps for them. And their father. Now they circled. When Elizabeth stepped right, he stepped left. And if they closed for a moment, it was always to pull away again.
When Elizabeth raised her eyes, he guessed what was coming.
“If you succeed,” she said, “then the Gas-Lit Empire will fall.”
“It’s what our mother wanted.”
“But not our father.”
“The Gas-Lit Empire has held us back for centuries.”
“It’s given us peace,” she said. “Through all that time. It’s stopped new weapons being made.”
“Do you really call it peace? Servitude, I’d say. It’s not just the machines that have been held back. They’ve stopped everything. All through history, there’s been change. New ideas. New ways of dressing. New understanding about what it means to be a woman or a man, married or single. Politics, art, philosophy, sex – everything changes. But two hundred years ago, a handful of men in a room somewhere – men, yes – take it on themselves to decide for the rest of us that progress is going to stop.”
“They did it for our sakes,” his sister said, sounding oh-so-reasonable. “If they hadn’t held things back, there would have been a race to make new weapons. The moment the powers fell out of balance, there would have been war. Do you really want those unseemly sciences?”
“We were never given the choice. They made their decision. They imposed their design on the world.” His words were coming sharp, now. “And if they were so set on peace, how come they used force of arms to make the other nations join? They did it for power. That’s the truth. Their own power!”
In the silence that followed, he knew he’d vented too much anger. Elizabeth’s eyes were wide with shock. But the stress had been building up in him for months. Seeing the mountain now covered in snow had cracked his mask. Bitterness was flooding out of him.
“The Gas-Lit Empire isn’t a thing,” she said. “Don’t you know that? It’s an idea. There never was an emperor. Nor a single government. No great army. And it wasn’t just a few men in a room. The nations agreed. More nations joined, because they understood what peace might bring them. It’s been almost two hundred years and there’s been no bloodshed in the civilised world.”
“The civilised world?” Her words tasted bitter as he spoke them. “What’s so civilised about being bound up with laws? You can’t even design a machine without their agents swooping in. They police your thoughts.”
“They don’t throw people from battlements!” she snapped back.
That stung him. And it seemed to have stung her to say it. She put a hand over her mouth, as if to stop more words from spilling out.
He put his own hands up between them, calling a halt to the battle. Or dance. Or whatever it was.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. But the way we think… It’s so different. It’s like we’re talking about two different worlds. Perhaps if our parents had stayed together…”
“They didn’t.”
“But if they had, wouldn’t we be able to see both sides? You’d have been taught about the Great Accord, about everything it’s achieved.”
“I know about it already,” he said. “And the Patent Office. I know the history of the whole thing. Our mother taught me. I know that peace has a cost.”
“Then is it war you want?”
“No. Never! But peace should come from inside.” He put a hand to his chest, over his heart. “If it must be forced on us, then it’s no peace at all. Do you deny that the International Patent Office exists?”
“Why should I?”
“Or that it has spies and agents in great number? And it has prisons, yes?”
“As must any system of law.”
“Then they must have lawyers also? And constables. And jailers.”
“I suppose.”
“How many jails have they built?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many people have they locked away?”
“Doesn’t your king have prisons?” she asked.
“As we have criminals, yes. But how many do the Patent Office execute in one year? And that isn’t even a fraction of the cost. They’ve got into your minds. They’ve tied up your thoughts.”
Elizabeth got stiffly to her feet and stepped away towards the window as if she’d had enough. There was no point to the argument. He knew it too. It was damaging the fragile connections that held them together. It could serve no good purpose. But halfway across the room, she wheeled and started back towards him. “Tell me of your prisons,” she said.
His mouth felt dry. “Murderers must be punished.”
“You lock up no others? Are there no criminals of thought?”
He couldn’t hold her gaze. Those dark eyes staring so intently at him, reading him just as surely as he was reading her. How could they have so much in common and yet find themselves set against each other?
“We have only one,” he said, knowing he must sound like a hypocrite.
“What was his crime?”
“Her crime,” Edwin said. “She doesn’t believe in magic.”
“Nor does Janus. Nor do you or I.”
“But she… well, she wouldn’t keep quiet about it. It’s a kind of madness. She stood in the castle courtyard and told her views to everyone who would listen. And people did listen. That’s the problem. The king would let her leave if she’d just retract. It’s her choice.”
“I’d like to meet her,” Elizabeth said. “What’s her name?”
“Mary Brackenstow. But you wouldn’t like to meet her. Believe me.”
“You’re judging the Gas-Lit Empire by its prisons,” she said. “It seems only fair I turn the mirror on you.”
“Don’t joke. She’s stubborn and dangerous. Mule stubborn. So there she sits. Not recanting. Trying to die so she can become some sort of martyr saint. It’s an illness. But none of this makes any difference. It’s out of our hands. The snows have come to Mount Hood. The army will march. I will lose my place by the king’s side. Janus will have the whip hand.”
And yet, there was something in his sister’s face that said otherwise. All through their argument, she’d seemed as conflicted as he had felt. But now he saw a tinge of guilt in her eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“We can’t stop them searching the castle. But I do know how to stop the army marching.” She said it so quietly that at first he thought he’d misheard.
“How?”
“The king needs to believe the embassy is on its way. If someone sent you a message saying they’ve been seen on the road, then wouldn’t the king delay?”
“He might. But who would send it?”
“You. Send it to yourself. Who knows if a pigeon’s flown a hundred miles or if you’ve just released it from the window. Write the message as if it’s come from one of your spies out there. They can say the embassy will soon arrive.”
The idea was so simple. He couldn’t decide whether it was brilliant or stupidly naive.
“If the embassy never comes, the king will know he’s been tricked.”
“They’ll come,” she said.
“Why are you helping me?”
She said, “I don’t know.” And then, “You’re my brother. How could I think it and not tell you?”
She was right. Of course she was. They could disagree. But they had to be honest.
“I told you about Mary Brackenstow,” he said. “If you look out from this window, you’ll see where she’s kept. Just look down. I hate what we’re doing to her.”
A truth for a truth. If they started with that, they might build trust. And then, who knew? Perhaps a way to agree.
When he was gone, Elizabeth found herself crying. She had escaped from the agents of the Patent Office, leaving Julia and Tinker. She ached to be so far from them. And leaving John Farthing as well: the man who had allowed her to love herself – or at least one facet of who she was – in a way that no one ever had before. She felt incomplete without him. She had travelled thousands of miles in deep disguise, illegally crossed the border, abandoning the safety of the Gas-Lit Empire. All this to be reunited with her brother.
But how cruel the fates: to find the missing part of her life so set against her present will. Elizabeth caught herself thinking that perhaps she’d forgotten her mother on purpose, to banish the memory of her parents’ conflict. For years she’d assumed her mother had abandoned her. But now, illogically, it felt the other way about. And how terrible the irony, that reunion with her brother had summoned that old argument, bringing it back to life.
She loved this man, Edwin, though they were strangers. She’d felt it from the first moment she saw him approaching the cairn. Even though he was little more than a silhouette against the stars. It was as if a secret part of her mind had always known that something was missing and he perfectly fitted that void.
Stepping to the window, she knelt on the seat and eased open the glass. Chill air breathed into the room, more winter than autumn. With the window swung out to its maximum there was just enough gap to squeeze her shoulders through. Stretching, she managed to get her head clear of the wall.