by Ben Peek
“Difficult,” he replied, his voice carrying a hint of weariness. “A lot more difficult than I had imagined.”
“Is it impossible?” I asked, unable to keep my concern from showing. “If it is impossible, please tell me. We will find other means.”
Jonas’ long fingers wrapped around the glass lightly, tapping against the clean surface with his black nails. “No, it’s not impossible. Just difficult. I’ve never had to find a clean body before. I’ve found men and women in new bodies, and I’ve found marked bodies. There’s a reason behind both of those—a set of rules I can follow to find each. The Returned go back to their families, their old routines, for a while at least, and marked bodies are stolen to change histories, to be taken to another Mortician who is willing to rewrite the original inks for God. Clean bodies are rare. Rarely buried, rarely stolen. Still, I found a Surgeon who was willing to help us.”
“He was sympathetic?”
“No,” Jonas said shortly.
I had no reply, so he continued speaking: “The Surgeon was a woman who operates a small but expensive theatre on the edge of Ledornn. When I first approached it, I didn’t think of it as anything special. From the outside it was a small, white walled building with a bronze, mechanical garden to keep it clean. Dull flowers shined and tarnished dots slipped from leaf to leaf. One of the first creations of a Surgeon, as you know, and hardly an indication of success. On the inside, however, the floors and walls were polished wood, and there was an elaborate pond set into the far left of the floor. Fat silver and bronze mechanics swam in it. A young Returned sat to the right at a desk, waiting for patients.”
“How did you pass him?”
“I am, as you say, a violent man.” Jonas’ fingers tightened around the glass. “Since it was early and no one else was in the clinic, I found the Surgeon in a workshop out the back. Her name was Catherine. She was a large, clean skinned woman with blonde hair and was not surprised when I entered. She continued her work, soldering wires into the bones of the glass-plated hand before her. As I approached, she explained that the hand was nothing more than a fashion piece—something a client wanted to wear at functions. ‘An expensive accessory,’ she said.
“‘You’re fairly calm,’ I told her. ‘Most Surgeons aren’t around me.’
“‘You’ve made quite the impression on my colleagues in the last few hours. Most were quite terrified to find a Mortician standing in their workshops, having broken through doors and destroyed mechanical eyes. News like that passes around. It passes quicker when it’s reported that you’re looking for a clean body. A young woman’s clean body, at that.’
“‘Do you have it?’
“‘No.’ She withdrew the soldering needle and blew dirt from the end. There was the smell of burnt bone in the room. ‘No, I’m too small a clinic for her.’
“‘But you know her?’
“‘I know the body.’ She placed the needle down on the table, and it let out a small hiss as it touched the wooden stand. ‘A man approached me three, four days ago. He was a young man who wanted the body of a girl who had died of the wasting disease—the same girl you are looking for, I imagine. He had the location of the grave and burial time noted. There was quite a lot of money offered for the body, but it was beyond me in this clinic. I would need another five bodies of the same age to replenish what had been damaged in her death, at the very least, and the equipment to return the skin to a healthy cleanness—I don’t have that equipment. I told him so.’”
“Who was he?” I interrupted.
“She wasn’t given his name.” Jonas finished his glass of water, placed it down, refilled. “Since she didn’t ask my name, I’m inclined to believe her. Besides which, she gave me the name of the snatcher who had been responsible for stealing the body.”
“How did she know him?”
Jonas shrugged. “News travels, I suppose.”
“You don’t think it’s a lie?”
“No. I know him.”
I hesitated, then said, “When are you going to find him?”
“After this.”
“I want to go with you.”
He shook his head, said, “It’s better not to know.”
“I must.” I leaned forward and touched his hand—a calculated gesture, a piece of forced intimacy.
Jonas jerked away.
“I must know,” I said quietly.
“It’ll do you no good.”
“I must know—please.” The desperation in my voice was quite real. “This cannot be kept from me!”
“You will regret it,” he said.
“There’s nothing I don’t regret already.” My hands fell into my lap, heavy and useless weights. “Nothing.”
5.
“Look at the sky,” he cried out from within his tent. “See its colour? It is the sign that we have been abandoned by that which loved us. That we have been left to rot in the dirt.”
Jonas and I left The Baroque Moon and headed into the slums of Ledornn. The streets that we walked shrank and the buildings shuffled closer together, a mouth filled with too many discoloured teeth, with each tooth overlapping another. Lines were strung out between each building, leaving a network of coloured washing and sun faded banners hanging limply over us. The deeper we went, the more the noise of the city increased, with people shouting from windows and children running through the streets. There was a marionette play on one corner. The painted background was of an elaborate building on fire and the sky a slow red stain. On the ground stood The First Surgeon: he held broken bones and rotten meat and tried, desperately, to mash the two together, while telling the crowd in a stuttering voice that they need not fear death, that they need not fear anything anymore.
I was self-conscious as I walked down the streets, aware that my skin was too clean for the neighbourhood, and that I had progressed further into the slums of Ledornn than ever before. Jonas had always lived on the edge, the border where people with money and people without could reach him equally. I had naively believed that it would be no different here than there. Still, I had to know who the man was that was looking for Fiona. I trusted no repetition of the words. The memory of my father’s mechanical heart, her disgust with her body, and the self abuse that she put herself through due to our mother’s words . . . all of this weighed on her when men made advances. And while she had not been unattractive when she was healthy, the wasting of her body did not add to the complexion.
Following Jonas, I walked down narrow alleys, through a small market filled with the sound of voices and cooking meat and the air was saturated in a mix of food and spices. As we continued walking, the spices that I could at first identify disappeared, lost beneath others as we passed new stalls and vendors. Finally, Jonas stopped outside a large hotel made from yellow bricks. It was called Black Rock, and was covered in thick, heavy black soot blemishes like dirty handprints. It had a paint-peeling veranda attached to the front that was occupied by three elderly men, each with faded tattoos of blue, black and red that ran up and down their bare arms and around their necks. The strongest patterns ran across their faces and skulls.
The inside of the building was defined by a low wooden ceiling. Beneath it were a dozen round tables, half of them full, and there was a long bar on the far wall. A tall woman with red hair and red and black tattooed hands stood behind it. When she met my gaze, she did so with a hint of curiosity, but it did not linger. It drifted to Jonas, and she nodded respectfully at him. He spoke to her quietly—I stood in the doorway, feeling uninvited, the gaze of every figure in the room on me—and she responded with nods and points and by placing an item in his hand. After that, he turned and motioned for me to follow him up the stairs.
The hallway we entered was narrow and stained with shadows. Jonas indicated that I should be silent as he made his way to the door numbered 6. Gently, he inserted the key into the lock and pushed it open. A tiny room lay behind, b
arely big enough for the narrow double bed and the chest of drawers next to it, much less for the large man that lay on his back on the bed. He was dressed in thick brown pants and a white shirt, and his feet, which stuck out, were covered in blue and black patterns. His tattoos ran across his thick neck and left cheek in flowing script, and though I could read only little of what was recorded, it suggested that for a middle-aged man he had lived interestingly.
With a swift movement, Jonas stepped up onto the bed. Curiously, the man did not stir. Reaching beneath his shirt, Jonas pulled out a thin bladed knife and then dropped into a crouch above the man, the blade held outwards and pressing lightly against his throat. Still, the man did not stir.
Jonas whispered, “Wake up, Ves.”
The man’s eyes shot open and his body tensed, hands curling into fists, feet digging into the mattress for grip . . . but he did not attack. Slowly, his mouth working around the two syllables of the name, he said, “Jonas.”
“Yes. Close the door, William.”
Gently, I eased the door shut.
“You’re on me,” Ves said. “Why you on me? There’s no need for the knife.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you.”
A tiny smile stole across Jonas’ face.
“I wouldn’t,” Ves repeated.
“You’ve been stealing bodies.” The knife pressed against his throat, enough to crease the skin. In response, I pressed myself against the wall, though I doubted that either man knew I was in the room anymore. “You’ve been working for Surgeons. I told you that it was unacceptable to do their work, didn’t I?”
“Ye—yeah.” Quiet. Barely audible. “But I—but I haven’t been—”
“Don’t lie.” Jonas’ voice remained at a whisper. “I know you stole a body last night.”
“It weren’t marked.”
“So?”
“So?”
“So I told you no more.”
“You.” Ves’ voice cracked. He swallowed against the knife’s blade. “You can’t tell me how to live. I just took the body. Unmarked body. I left everything that was buried with her. You ain’t got no right to punish me for this.”
“The dead are sacred, Ves.”
The man was silent.
“I told you if you did this again, I would stop marking you.”
The man didn’t respond.
“Ves?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want that?”
“God’ll not judge me proper, Jonas.”
A thin bead of blood ran down the blade. “Who paid you?”
“A—a Surgeon from the Academy on Baker Street.” Ves’ dark eyes began to water. “It was just money for a clean girl. I didn’t see no harm in it.”
“Who’s the Surgeon?”
“Frances Dillon.”
“Why does he want the body?”
“He said it was a job. Payment.” The blood slipped off the edge of the blade, stronger now. “I—I won’t ever do it again.”
I opened my mouth, ready to press for more details, but Jonas’ free hand shot up, palm flat, stopping me before I could speak. His gaze, however, never left the man beneath him. “There are no more warnings, Ves. If I hear that you have snatched another body, your history will end. God will judge you on the recorded mess of life. There is no more patience in me for you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” The knife slipped away. “Thank you.”
Jonas rose above him, a tall, cold man who, given his position, could easily have been flung to the side and attacked. But Ves didn’t react. The man above him had marked his skin, had inherited the job from his Father and would pass him to his apprentice, and no one other than those three would mark him. Ves, his body limp, the life drained out of it, knew this; knew the threat, felt it more keenly than I could ever imagine. It was a threat against the soul. To do anything but agree to Jonas’ demands would be to damn himself.
6.
“I have come today to show you life that makes us equal,” the Surgeon said. “I have come to show you that you need not fear a thing.”
Outside the hotel, Jonas said that he needed to sleep. I wanted to go straight to the Academy, but he told me, rightly, that it would be easier to find Fiona, or the Surgeon, Dillon, without crowds. We wouldn’t be able to take her body out of the grounds in the middle of the day, he said, and added that I should also rest if I wished to come in the evening.
At Mother’s house, the inside was still, the air stale. I found Ellie in the kitchen, standing in the open back door. I asked her why the house was so closed.
“Your mother told me to shut everything,” she said, without turning to face me. The red sky stretched out beneath her gaze. “She grows frail, William. She turns the house into a coffin.”
I could not argue. Instead, I turned and made my way through the stuffy rooms to Mother. Her room smelled of apple, but too thickly, and she lay on her back, her breathing shallow. Quietly, I walked to the window, but she stopped me before I could open it.
“It is not good for you,” I said.
“Nothing is good for me. Not anymore.”
“That’s not true.” I sat on the edge of her bed. “You must look after yourself.”
“I am damaged.” Her pale blue eyes opened. “You know that. I am damaged and have damaged everything around me.”
“Mother—”
“I damaged what he loved!” The strain on her vocal cords sent her into a coughing fit, rolling onto her side. I poured her a glass of the pale orange water, and she drank it down quickly. Once she had finished, she sighed deeply, and sank into the bed. “He loved her,” she whispered. “He loved her more than me.”
“Mother—”
“Go.” Her hand lifted, fell down. “Please. Go.”
Frustrated, unable to find any words to explain how important she was, how I needed her to be strong, I did as she asked. In my own room, I dug through my drawer of pills and vials until I found a bottle of sleeping pills. They were white, not orange, and I wondered what Mother was taking. Did it matter? Sighing, I washed down two pills and fell asleep beneath the afternoon’s red sky.
7.
He revealed a tiny cage with a mouse in it. It was a brown mouse, docile as he took it in his hands, docile as the Surgeon suffocated it. Then, after showing it to us to prove that it was dead, the Surgeon lifted a small metal box up. Wires fell from its sides and, efficiently, he hooked them to the mouse’s body. Then there was a hum, a shock, a second shock, and the mouse twitched and returned to life.
“William.”
I had bought the sleeping pills from Jonas. Drugs were how I was introduced to him, originally. It was through a friend, a simple exchange of cash for pleasure. Just another way to pass the time. It wasn’t uncommon work for Morticians, and Jonas made the various pills and powers and fluids that he sold in his workshop, mixing the chemicals next to the pots that he mixed the ink he used to mark men and women with history for God. In my childhood, a lean, grey haired Mortician would visit Mother; I still had memories of his long hands pouring dark blue ink into glass vials, and the red cuts those needles made in my Mother . . . but after Father’s second death, she stopped having herself inked. Her history, she said, was finished. God could judge her on the fact that she had brought herself out of poverty, married well, and had three children. We nodded, humoured her, but didn’t understand it fully. In the years after, her faith returned in parts—a response to her own sickness—but no needle ever pierced her skin again.
“William.”
Jonas’ voice.
“Wake up, William.”
My eyes opened slowly. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to find you.” His hand was resting heavily on my chest, a familiar weight, a comfortable one, a weight that, despite myself, I missed. “The door was open,” he continued.
“I came in. I’m sorry, William, something has happened downstairs.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head gently. “Get dressed first.”
The pressure of his hand lifted and, immediately after, I felt its absence most keenly. But then Jonas’ words returned to me, spoken in a soft, gentle tone, a tone I had never heard, not even when I had laid beside him. The door was open. It was never open. Mother made the servants lock it. She made her children lock it. If the door was open then—then what? My thoughts were blocked. The reality would be much worse. Quickly, I pulled on a pair of pants and, shirtless and bootless, stepped out of my room.
Jonas was waiting for me on the balcony. In the white tiling of Mother’s house, his brown and red colouring cast him as an intrusion, a stain; with that thought in my mind, his strong, patterned hand pulled me to the railing. His face, usually so cold, so impersonal, was etched with sympathy like lines of silvered age.
I looked down:
And in the middle of the white tiles, my brother lay face first, the back of his skull broken open. The blood around him had spilled into an anonymous pattern, his body having expelled all that it wished to signal his end. It was such a trifle amount, in consideration.
“He has been dead for about two hours,” Jonas said. “Stiffness has begun to set into the joints. His skin is changing. The blood does not flow.”
No. It was dark and still.
“There is another body in the kitchen.”
Around him were dry, blood stained footsteps.
“Mother?” I asked hoarsely.
“No. Ellie.”
Was that relief? It was difficult to know staring at Henry.
Quietly, Jonas added, “I was marking her. She was one of mine.”
I faced him. “Where’s my mother?”