“How intriguing.” She leaned forward, fascinated.
“Far from it, because I cannot control my anxiety, my obsessions. And as these tend towards the calamitous...” He sat suddenly up. “The incident you refer to, when I nearly killed my brother Aarin. That was the result of this unfortunate confluence of gift and affliction. I stopped myself just in time. He bears the scar of my insanity, a blinded eye.”
He became thoughtful and stared into the fire. “It was then that I was forced to tell. I confessed all, mostly, in floods of tears to my father. What made it all the worse was that he was pleased that I had such power. Not troubled that I had maimed my brother. All he could see was the potential for the family’s advancement with a magister among its fold. Well, he was disappointed. The magisters judged me too dangerous for the college, and there are precious few masters of the old craft remaining in the world. My will is strong, but my volition not under my control. My mother would not have me sent off to prentice to some madman in a cave, although she endlessly raises the subject of the Magisterial University. My father was forced to pay for the binding of Tyn here to protect me and others from my madness. He disperses any ill effects from my anxieties before they can do real harm. You see, countess, I have the air of a sane man, but I am not. I am dangerous.”
Her next question surprised him. “What manner of thoughts do you suffer?”
He turned it over in his mind. Would he tell her of the endless parade of murders, rapes, mutilations, incest, and other vileness that tormented him when he was unsettled? No, he would not. “I will not tell you. I cannot. They are my shame alone.”
He was relieved when she let the matter drop.
“My father and I have not seen eye to eye for a long time. I am estranged from my family. And I am glad for it, for without me they are safe.”
“You do not wish them harm.”
“Of course not! But what I have created does.”
The atmosphere prickled, invested with an expectant will. Tyn shifted in his slumber.
Guis’s voice dropped. “I said that nothing pursued me to begin with, despite my fears. Alas, those fears bore fruit. All this worry has taken a form. I call it the Darkling. It comes when I am possessed by any of the less noble sentiments. I thought for a time that it was the ghost of my twin. Then I came to realise that my brother would not have begrudged me these years I have had and he has not. He was properly ghosted, in any case. Sadly, my dwelling upon this possibility gave my fears form. The thing is, I am sure, fashioned from guilt and fear that I will suffer his fate, from the happiness that I did not. It is every bad thing I have ever thought. I am, I think, a not entirely pleasant man. I suppose I should be thankful I have this problem, or I would have been a scourge on those around me. I came to realise that the dark thing in the night is not my dead brother, but the living me. This is my true burden.” He became grim. “I have worked hard to best it. I decided that if I conquered my anger, then I would conquer the world!” He smiled ironically.
“Is it working?”
“Somewhat. I have less to fear from my other half than I did. I see it now only at moments of extreme emotion.”
She fell silent, looked down. “Can I see it?”
“Are you serious?”
“The wine is within you. It will strengthen you. Bring it forth. Let me see.”
A suspicion hit Guis. “Did you bring me here for this? Has this been your intention all along?”
“I have shown you my work. Show me yours. Listen to your own words! You talk in this maudlin way, and yet here you are, a man on the brink of success won against the wishes of his father, a man who has bested tragedy. Why should you be afraid of a shadow?” She came to him, spread her skirts and knelt on the floor before him. “I speak in earnest, Guis.”
Guis was uneasy, but set his glass down nonetheless. “If you insist. Who am I to deny my hostess her pleasure?”
The countess poured wine into Guis’s glass and took it up herself.
“How do you begin?”
“I do not know. I have not attempted to do this before.”
“Truly?”
“I have thought to, but not dared. You provoke my courage.”
He held his hand out in front of him, and closed his eyes.
How had it come to him in past times? Encouraged by wrath, and envy, and lust, and shame. He put these things aside. He grasped the slippery surface of his will, that treacherous part of his mind that would not do his bidding. Tonight, he would make it obey. The regard of the countess encouraged him. He found her as repulsive as he did attractive. He would be roundly mocked if he bedded her, but he felt himself sliding toward that eventuality anyway. He realised he wanted it, he was letting it happen. He had positioned himself so that it would; a mere relinquishment of agency would see the mechanism of circumstance do its work. By doing so he could convince himself he was absolving himself of responsibility.
And so he let the Darkling happen.
He did not see it come, but the room grew hot and heavy and the countess drew in her breath. “A darkness, gathering in the corner. Does it arrive?”
“Yes,” he said. A tremor ran through the core of his being. It twisted, a thing alive, eager to be free. He would not relinquish his grasp. His hand out ahead of him was unneeded. The struggle was within, his heart was a door to places outwith. He groaned, and it was with elation. He was in control.
He dared open his eyes. The Darkling grew in the corner. Shadows rippled around it. The shape came quickly. What was visible of the walls through the murk of its birthing warped. The Darkling tossed its head and shrieked angrily.
Tyn awoke in a fury, and sharply yanked at Guis’s hair. “What are you doing? Send it away! It should not be called!”
Guis pulled his hair from the Tyn’s grasp. “You see he says I should send it away? He acknowledges I have some influence over it.” Triumph swelled his pride.
The Darkling throbbed, its shape distending. Long arms stretched, reaching for the countess and Guis. They curled back, foiled by an invisible barrier.
“Ha!” he shouted excitedly. “See Tyn, I have the measure of it. Look at it squirm!”
“Not enough, master! You call it with intent, and so I have little power over it. Send it away before it is too late!”
The Hag’s eyes sparkled. Her wine cup hovered just below her mouth, her lips were parted. Guis bathed in her fascination of him. He held the Darkling, ignoring the sweat pricking his skin.
“Is it oracular? Will it reveal things, the way the dead will to the Guiders. Or the demons of old did to the wild wizards in the days before Res Iapetus?”
“I don’t know, I have never tried.” He was becoming dizzy. The effort of holding the Darkling was growing.
“Do not talk to it! Do not! Do not!” squealed Tyn. It pawed at Guis’s face, scratching him.
“We should listen to him. We have to send it back.” He panted the words. This was harder than he had expected.
With an effort that threatened to burst his heart, he attempted to cast it back whence it came. “Begone!” he yelled. “Begone!”
The shadow being wavered. The countess stood.
“You are a magister indeed! Bravo!”
Guis’s face twisted. Something was going wrong. The Darkling pushed back. His breath came fast, he unconsciously clawed his outstretched hand. The corner of the room where the Darkling stood darkened, and it grew anew.
“Tyn,” he said. “Tyn!”
“Yeee! You cannot do it! And now I suffer for your foolishness. Curse the day I was ever made your slave.”
The Tyn’s eyes flashed bright. It ground its tiny teeth together. The iron collar at its neck spat sparks. Smoked wisped where it contacted Tyn’s skin.
“Out! Out! Out!” shrieked the Tyn. Guis redoubled his efforts. The countess remained watching, her interest untainted by fear.
A rending sounded, the grind of stone turning slowly on trapped flesh. The Darkling keened. T
he air changed density suddenly. Rapidly the Darkling shrank in upon itself, blinding light emanating from its centre. It folded into nothing with a deathly wail. Foul air blew over the countess and Guis, and it was gone.
Tyn pinched Guis’s cheek and pulled hard. “Foolish man! Playing with the dark. You could have died, and then what would poor Tyn do?”
Guis shook. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“Always sorry! Fool!” Tyn tugged at its collar. The thin chain rattled. “Were it not for this I would be gone, and then what would happen? One hundred and one years and a day. I await the day that time is done, so you will suffer as I do!”
Guis flinched. The burn around Tyn’s neck was raw and pink.
“I will not do it again.”
“Oh, it will happen again,” said Tyn, his voice becoming a feline growl. “You master your will, master, and that is a good thing. Maybe you cure your sickness of the mind. But you cannot, will not ever master that,” it said, pointing to the corner. “That is a sickness of your soul, and has no healing. Be fearful lest your arrogance bring you low. You have strengthened it. Fool!”
Tyn leaped from his shoulder and scampered along the sofa to where his box lay. He crawled inside, yanked his chain into its slot, and slammed the door.
The countess laid a hand on Guis’s. He felt his trembling as she lightly clasped his fingers. Her eyes were alight.
“That was a fine experience! I am going to ask you all about it, you realise. I want to know everything.”
“There’s not much I can tell,” he said. “I am not a magister nor a wild wizard or a practitioner of any sort. I do not know the theory, nor do I know the practice. It is a dangerous parlour trick.”
“You would be surprised how much I can glean from limited information.” She moved closer. Guis saw an animal hunger in her that quite surpassed her plainness. “But I will leave that for the morning.”
Her other hand slipped into his lap. His back stiffened as she worked at his trouser fastenings.
She looked up at him, her eyes asking if she should continue. Her eyes, he decided, were quite beautiful. They regarded each other with the utmost seriousness.
Mansanio shrank deeper into the shadows of the gallery above the fireplace. Unable to tear his eyes away from their kisses, he bit his lip until it bled, his fists shaking.
GUIS HELD THE countess close. Standing with her back to him, it was easy to put what others said about her out of his mind, and he was glad of the warmth of her proximity. But minute by minute, the aftermath of their lust drained away, and he became increasingly awkward about what he had done. She was unaware, and pressed into him languorously. They were in the observatory, looking out from the open shutters over the endless mud. The moons painted their long roads upon it, one pink, one silver. The stars were chips of ice. The Twin stood exactly over the turrets of Mogawn, distant that night.
“You should come back at a time of the Great Tide,” she sighed. “The castle rises up, up, like a kneeling giant standing. For a moment, the whole of Mogawn hangs on the face of a cliff of water, and then it is away under us, rolling toward the shore. A sheet of spray shoots skywards, white surf boils up through the cavities in the rock, over the lowest hills...” She made a happy noise. “I love it so. The power of the ocean is incomprehensible. When my father raged at me, I used to go to the gatehouse, to watch the sea burst over the jaws of Mogawn, and I would be glad. The sight made me understand that no matter what a tyrant a man might be, before the fury of the sea he is nothing. Your brother is a brave man.”
“Which one?” said Guis.
She slapped his arm playfully. “You know well which! I wish him godspeed over the ocean, but I fear for his chances.”
Guis had avoided thinking on Trassan, or Rel. Both of them were in peril. Dwelling overly long on it would conjure forth all manner of horrible fates for them and send him into a frenzy of endless preventative ritual, half-convinced his mere thinking of it would make it happen. He would curse himself for his repetitive touchings and steps, but still perform them, caught between anger and fear.
“I wish I had had siblings. Growing up here was a long and lonely process. You are not the only person with a harsh father. Mine was outraged at the aristocracy’s diminished status and his own dwindling fortune. It made him cruel.” She craned her neck to look him in the eye. “Everything goes around in cycles, Guis. My mother married outside Karsa to try to preserve her bloodline and keep Mogawn alive. But I shall never become a mother. The Mogawn line will die with me.” She said this with such steel that Guis released her. She turned to face him. Her father looked at Guis through her, still angry beyond death. She was so ugly. What was he thinking? She had used him, that was true, but she had opened her heart to him in return. All Guis could think of was what would happen if this dalliance became public.
He was disgusted with himself for thinking this.
He drew away nonetheless when she shivered and held up her arms for a return to embrace.
“It is cold,” she said softly.
“It is late,” said Guis weakly. “I should retire now. I must return in the morning.”
Her face hardened. “I see,” she said. The steel returned to her voice. “That is the way it is. I had hoped this would be different, for I hold you in affection. Very well, it is not to be.” She looked away to compose herself. “Before you are away to bed, there is one last thing that you must see.”
“I am very tired,” said Guis dismayed.
“You will see this,” said the countess. Her tone brooked no refusal. “You will see it now.”
Guis took an involuntary step forward. How his life was, pulled this way and that by things outside his control. His dismay grew.
“Look into the telescope.”
He did as he was ordered. The black surface of the Twin greeted him, a pit of hungry shadow. He was glad of the distance between him and it. “It is blurred.”
She leaned over him and adjusted something. The image leapt into sharp focus.
“What do you see now?”
“A lighter shade upon the black. Perhaps a cloud?”
“Not a cloud. Wait.”
“A flare! I see... fire?”
The countess ran her fingers down his back, he shuddered. Was it pleasure or repulsion? He could no longer tell them apart. “Fire upon the Twin. It grows in ferocity. Soon it will be visible to the naked eye. With each pass it draws closer, and closer, until it will be closer than it has been for four thousand years. Four thousand years ago, the Old Maceriyans fell from grace. Eight thousand years before that, the Morfaan’s power was broken, at some point in between the two they disappeared from the Earth but for their sorry ambassadors. I would bet Mogawn itself that it was eight thousand years before the present. Now disagree with me that things are not bound into endless cycles: the turning of the tides, the procession of the spheres, the track of the stars and seasons.” She leaned into his ear and whispered rancorously. “Lust, seduction, repulsion, regret, rejection. Over and over again, for all time. I welcome an end to it.” She pulled back. “So you see, my machine is not merely the plaything of a lonely woman, despised for her talents, mocked for her appearance. All things are cyclical. And I will prove it before the end.”
He cravenly kept his eye to the telescope’s eyepiece as she walked away from him. A second flare of bright orange burst on the black face of the Twin.
“Goodnight Guis, I trust you can find your own way back to your room. I will not see you away in the morning.”
Only when she was gone did he look up.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The Winter Riots
KATRIONA SAT UP late at home working. Her accounts were open before her, multiple volumes layered on top of each other. Tiredness was a sweet sensation, born from her diligence. Exhaustion won through hard work. She savoured it.
Her books were finally balancing. New procedures were being enacted across the site, and initial results were promising
. Soon she could think about bringing more of the factory sheds into use again, and expanding the workforce further.
The sense of satisfaction was sublime. She could see the glory days of Morthrocksey returning.
The Tyn worked hard. One more casting session, and she would have provided her brother with the full complement of fuel rods for the Prince Alfra. He had secured the money from their uncle. Everything proceeded smoothly. She thought several times about stopping for the night, but the minutiae of the business was so absorbing she could not tear herself away from it.
For one brief moment, she was happy. A hammering at the front door shattered it.
“Laisa! Get that would you?” she called for her maid. She turned her attention back to the books. Downstairs voices were raised. A clatter of boots on stairs approached her study. The door burst inwards at the hand of Jon Cullen, the head of the factory nightwatch.
“Jon?” she said. “What do you want? Is it the mill?”
Laisa came up behind. “He wouldn’t wait, Goodlady Katriona!”
“Is Goodfellow Morthrock here?” Cullen said.
“I told you he ain’t!” said the maid.
“Demion is out at cards. If it’s the mill, you know to address your concerns to me.”
Jon shook his head. “It’s the both of you, begging your pardon goodlady, that I was wanting. I’d send for him if I were you. And you better come quick. There’s trouble.”
A tense ride to the mill through dark streets. They were quickly away from the well-lit boulevards of the new town and into the dark industrial districts, where the mills stood as beacons amid dark formations of terraced housing. The few glimmer lamps buzzed and crackled.
“It started about half an hour ago,” said Cullen. “A load of them arrived, pushed their way past my lads. I mean, what were we going to do? These are their friends and relatives, not burglars sneaking in at night.”
“How many are there?”
“About three, maybe four hundred.”
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