The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  Afsana, with an angry glance at Tom, said, “But how can you do that? Yount has never advertised its existence to Karket-soom.”

  “Very true,” said the Cretched Man, as Isaak swiped his fingers with one whisker. “That is why we must speak with the Queen. She is a Proclaimer at heart. She might be persuaded that the time has come for Yount to end its centuries of secretiveness. Though I realize doing so would weaken her vis-à-vis the Arch-Bishop and his faction.”

  Isaak put her nose against the Cretched Man’s fingers for one moment, like the hummingbird in the Winter Garden touching a flower. Sally saw, deep in the Cretched Man’s eyes, far beyond stratagems for war and questions of policy, a rivulet of joy. She watched the tiny freshet as it coursed over alabaster dunes, banks so long dry that the shock was almost painful. Jambres shut his eyes.

  “Jambres?” said Tom.

  The Cretched Man opened his eyes and said, “Forgive me. I lost my part in the discussion, for a short instant.” He slowly flexed his fingers and looked at Isaak out of the corner of his eye. Isaak was sniffing at a red pant leg.

  “Do you have time to gather the army you would send against the Ornish?” said Sally. “All the way to Karket-soom and back?”

  “I do not know,” said Jambres. “But I will make time work for us, if I must. There are roads we might take. . . .”

  Tom thought of what Tat’head said the night before and he blanched. Not that way, he whispered to himself, not that way.

  “The war cannot be won by defending Yount Major,” said Afsana. “We must attack the Coerceries. That requires more ships. Where will you find ships and sailors for your fine army?”

  “Ships we can build at Sanctuary, the place Thomas has been to. As for sailors, I already have some of the best in two worlds. I can get more all too easily, if I recruit instead of waiting for strays to find me. You see, the sailors are Yountians, all former enslaved who have run away or been rescued from Orn. The only destination beyond the reach of the Ornish is Sanctuary but most enslaved think it legendary, a whispered rumour late in the night, and the road thence is beset with incredible dangers. I will bring word to the enslaved and make a straight road for them to Sanctuary.”

  Sally watched Isaak the entire time Jambres talked. Isaak sat at the Cretched Man’s feet, facing him without moving. As he spoke, Jambres steadily moved his right hand towards the top of Isaak’s head.

  “Why do you offer this?” said Sanford. “As gatekeeper you are barred from interfering, are you not?”

  Jambres said, “Yes but no. I am willing to intervene because slavery must be eradicated or else Yount will have no freedom. I have observed for centuries but can do so no longer. I will answer elsewhere if I overstep my authority.”

  Sanford considered this, then said, “If you are to maintain at least the pretence of minding the gate to Yount, shouldn’t you possess the key? After all, it’s what brought us here in the first place.”

  “Yes, if only — as you say — for the pretence. My time as gatekeeper is nearly at an end, no matter what happens. They sent me back for one final attempt, with certain . . . warnings . . . stitched into my new raiment. So, yes, I must ask the Queen for the key.”

  The Cretched Man’s hand touched the top of Isaak’s head very lightly. She did not move away. His eyes glistened as he said, “I believe the war is a final test for Yount. Should slavery continue here, if only in Orn, Yount will not simply have its sentence prolonged. I fear a worse retribution. Do you remember the silent cities on Supply Island? ‘How those cities sit now solitary that once brimmed with people!’ You know those words. ‘They are become widows that weep sorely in the night.’ That is the fate I fear for Yount if Orn prevails.”

  Jambres stroked Isaak’s head as he said this. Isaak stood more still than the statues of Bast in ancient Egypt. So they sat for a minute or two, each considering the others’ words. All that broke the silence was a small sound of purring. Jambres’s hand trembled as he pet Isaak.

  Sally said, “Let us find the Queen.”

  The Queen met them in the small reception room, alone but for the Lord-Chancellor. The Cretched Man had walked through the Palace so that none except the McDoons could see him. The Queen and the Lord-Chancellor recoiled as he revealed himself to them: they were face to face with a nightmare.

  “Your Highness Queen Zinnamoussea, respected Lord-Chancellor, I beg you hear me out,” said Jambres. “I must be swift. The Learned Doctors suspect my presence here.”

  With shaking hand, the Queen bid the Cretched Man to sit. Sally brought Isaak out on the table. Isaak made her customary rounds, rubbing and sniffing at the Queen’s hands and those of the Lord-Chancellor. The Queen did not hide her astonishment when Isaak proceeded to the Cretched Man and did the same.

  “We live in a time of wonders and miracles,” the Queen said. “Does the osprey really try to save the tern? Or am I deceived?”

  Tom put his three-fingered hand on the table and said, “Your Highness, we who wished ourselves to come to Yount understand your amazement. We were equally amazed in our turn. But we believe you should entertain the Cretched Man’s idea.”

  Listening as ones caught in the webs of sorcery, the Queen and the Lord-Chancellor heard the Cretched Man’s plan. The McDoons supplied additional details. The fraulein clutched her hands but said nothing. The Queen agreed only that Yount Major needed allies but did not see how an untrained army of Karket-soom’s poor and dispossessed could be helpful.

  “They will only get themselves killed in a world not their own,” the Queen said.

  The Lord-Chancellor said, “Besides, the Arch-Bishop will never tolerate any of this. We mean no disrespect but I do not think we can give you the key.”

  Jambres exclaimed, “Think upon my proposal. I have no more time today. The Sacerdotes are on their way . . . the Arch-Bishop himself! Thomas knows how to summon me. Now I must away.”

  Only Isaak and Tom seemed unfazed when Jambres walked through the closed door. A minute later a knock came on the same door. The Lord-Chancellor opened it to the Arch-Bishop. The conversation between them was very short and even less pleasant. He looked over her shoulder, registered the presence of the McDoons, smiled nastily, and departed. They knew they had only small time left.

  Time got smaller on the morrow. A steam-driven frigate from Yount Major on patrol south of the Fief-Lands had seen a large Ornish fleet on the eastern horizon and made hard for Yount Great-Port with the news. The Ornish were heading for Yount Major itself. The main Yount Major battle fleet was in the waters between Yount Major and Orn, squarely in the path of the oncoming Ornish fleet. Yount Great-Port girded for battle.

  The weather turned warm with winds out of the southeast. Everyone in Yount Great-Port, some two hundred thousand souls, strained their ears for any sound of battle brought by the winds. Every rooftop had watchers looking to the east. From the Signal Tower the observers could just see through their spy-glasses the dark line of Yount Major’s battle fleet strung out like a curtain of thorns on the horizon. Recking nothing of the coming conflict, the ospreys took off from their harbour poles and the cormorants sat drying their wings on the breakwater. But the dolphins understood that something was amiss; they chattered in agitation and leaped back and forth. No one sighted any whales. Companies of Marines were on every street, the harbour promenade had cannon placed every twenty paces, the batteries at Signal Tower and the Fort and the Customs House were all trained eastwards. The wind blew and blew. Every gust brought the Ornish invaders closer.

  Under the looming threat, the Chamber of Optimates asked the Queen to appear before them. The Arch-Bishop let others question the Queen and her government, but few doubted the ultimate source of the questions. The tone was strained from the outset. Led by Optimates known for their friendship and sympathy with the House of Loositage, the enquiry into the state of war preparedness and the conduct of current operations pushed the Queen into a corner. One Optimate made a seemingly off-hand remark about
the Queen attending a play after the war began. Insinuations were made about the botched attempt to open the Door at the Temple and about the government’s close ties to the Karket-soomi. Thinly veiled allegations of sedition were dropped into questions.

  During the debate, Sally sat in her room, not wanting to see the Arch-Bishop or think about the war. Sehnsucht is a deceiver, she said to herself. The truest falsehood, honey that evaporates before you can free it from the comb. There-Away and Over-the-Hill become Here with all the grease and glaucoma, flatulence and ragged trousers of the place you left. Yount too has giants in the earth that once knew the world and spoke to its people but who have now fled or been submerged. Once upon a time music was the language everyone spoke here but they cut open the nightingale to discover how he sang.

  Isaak jumped up into her lap.

  “Our tes muddry,” Sally said, rubbing Isaak’s head. “The Yountians yearn to be elsewhere just as I wished myself to come. Well, Isaak, they and we will just have to find our Hyperborea, together.”

  Isaak curled up for a nap.

  “Fraulein always cautioned me against the fate of the Pease-Princess or of the Ashen-Gretha’s sisters. Oh, I do wish I could speak to Mrs. Sedgewick and the Mejuffrouw. I would give anything to be in the kitchen at Mincing Lane, listening to the cook mardling with the maid. Or at the Last Cosy House, where nothing bad ever happened. Ah, no, bad things did happen, even there . . . oh, not you James Kidlington, not you.”

  Sally stopped petting Isaak and reached to her neck for a locket that was no longer there. As she did every evening just before falling asleep, Sally “glassed off” the thought of James Kidlington, making him a memory she could see but not feel or touch.

  Her gaze opened out, fell upon one of the dolphins leaping frantically in the harbour. Watching his powerful but erratic motions, Sally glimpsed again in her mind the outlines of a plan that had been growing over the past few weeks.

  “Fulgination”, she murmured. “Fulgination is the . . . key. The key is a fulginating device!”

  This insight made her sit straight up, disturbing Isaak.

  Only we do not know how the key fulginates within the lock. No one even speaks in those terms. The dolphins and the albatrosses fulginate but we do not know how. The music from the Mother, the notes I sang to defeat the silence and to rebuff the Owl, they are akin to the melody — only no one calls it that — of the Fulginator. There is also a melody in the starlines, the dance of the Three Torches with Sirius, Orion, and Aldebaran . . . and the Maiden-Star’s dialogue with the Mother-Star. I think perhaps Dorentius would understand.

  She had another thought, one which repelled and fascinated her: The Cretched Man fulginates too, or something very like it.

  Someone knocked on the door, making Sally jump. She went to the door and asked, “Tom? Reglum?”

  “No, another,” replied a perfect voice. “Less welcome, I suppose, but I have urgent need to speak with you.”

  Sally debated with herself, opened the door, and swiftly stood back. The Cretched Man walked in, shut the door, and took off his top hat.

  “Sarah,” said the Cretched Man. “I know how little you trust me, and how much less you like being in my presence, but there is much we could do to help Yount, all Yount, if we worked together. Please, I have some time while the Arch-Bishop is preoccupied with questioning the Queen, but not so much time that we can waste it.”

  Sally motioned him to a chair. She sat down at the other end of the room, and said, “I saw you and your men, far off across the cold wastelands heading towards the Wurm-Owl.”

  “Yes, the Tyton Ophis, Pechael, sitting on a pillar at the head of the Watchers.”

  “All the pillar-creatures were watching. Who are they?”

  “The Half-Fallen, the Watchers, set to guard and punish. They have many names.”

  “I could not see beyond the Watchers. What lies that way? What was your business there?”

  The Cretched Man said after a pause, “I told your brother what is necessary to know. Sarah, you do not want to know more. It is a school with a taloned curriculum. The Prefects are stern. They are the Authades, the Phtheiros — they too have many names. Mastema is the Head-Master. The Tailors sew for us our gowns upon graduation, as part of our ongoing education, a constant reminder of the lessons imparted. You saw the names of the pupils inscribed on the pillars: Belikra the Samaritan, Ahab son of Kolaiah, Zedekiah, Shemaiah the Nehelmite, Simon Magus, the sons of Joatham the priest, Philetus and Hymenaeus, so many others. I am an alumnus of the institution.”

  “I saw bones at the foot of the pillars.”

  “The remains of those who, in pride or folly, sought to evade or flee their prescribed instruction. Some even manage to elude the Watchers for a century or two, but that is nothing to those who pursue them. The Watchers pick their teeth with the ribs of those they catch, stamp the residue with their iron feet. In the end the devouring is slow, followed by . . . no, I will not say.”

  Sally heard in her mind the wailing of the interstitial lands, forced herself to close off the memory. One more thing she had to know about the pillar upon which the Wurm-Owl sat: “Words were on the capital at the top of the pillar but they were in shadow.”

  “‘Righteousness,’ ‘Judgement,’ ‘Forgiveness,’ and ‘Salvation,’” said the Cretched Man. “The same words stand over all the doorways in that place. Look closely at my coat and now my trousers too — the words are woven into the fabric. I tried to show this to you the day you dozed in dream in your uncle’s study, but you were too scared to see it.”

  Sally looked at his coat. Slowly a pattern emerged in the seething of the materials and she could make out the words Jambres had used. The words moved from Hebrew (“tsedaqah,” “mishpat,” “selichot,” “yesha”) into Greek and then into Latin and into dozens of other tongues, but always she understood. With each beat of Jambres’s heart, the words flowed afresh. She turned away, trying to breathe. In the midst of her horror, Sally began to understand the Cretched Man. She reached for Isaak but Isaak was sitting next to Jambres, and looking back at Sally.

  Jambres lowered his eyes and, having long since lost the ability to shed tears for himself, said, “‘My flesh is unsound, filled with loathsome disease. My bones have no rest. My heart groans in anguish.’ So was it written long ago, and so is it now with me.”

  Sally understood more than she wanted to. She said, “Why have you come?”

  “To seek your redoubled aid in convincing the Queen of my proposal. She will not be persuaded by such as me, Sarah. She trusts you McDoons. She will listen to you. I need to send Billy Sea-Hen to preach the word in London but want the rest of my crew to stay here so they could fight and prove to the Queen their loyalty. If the Seek-by-Night stays, then Billy’s only transportation will be on a tough ship. Sarah, you alone can convince the Queen to send another tough ship and allow Billy to be on it.”

  “I have it in mind already,” she said, hesitantly for fear of divulging too much, “to ask the Queen to outfit one more tough ship. She will find it difficult to divert resources as the Ornish bear down upon us. Sending one unproven man to London on the Cretched Man’s say so will not suffice as a reason. But she might be willing if we . . .”

  Slowly, and saying only as much as she thought was needed, Sally spoke of her half-formed plan. The Cretched Man sat very still as he listened, except when he stroked Isaak.

  When Sally finished, he said, “What you propose — and I sense that you hold much back from me — is either unrivalled lunacy or a degree above genius.”

  Isaak moved away from Jambres, hopped up on the windowsill.

  Jambres said, “Even if what you suggest is possible, in the sense of technology and budget, you would stir the wrath of the Wurm and all his tribe. Would you dare that?”

  Sally did not respond at once. Only the tramp of booted feet on the promenade below was heard, and the faint creaking of gun caissons.

  At last she said, “Yes, I
would. But not alone.”

  “Who would be with you?”

  “We are four now,” said Sally. “We need five, I think.”

  “Not five,” said Jambres. “More.”

  “Five I thought, one for each of the Trees.”

  “Yes, but you know we are part of the Grand Story, where one always needs seven for the kind of enterprise you propose. Think, Sarah, the Lamb has seven horns and seven eyes, Wisdom has seven pillars. . . .”

  Sally nodded slowly, saying, “Of course! Seven-league boots and the seven tasks of the woodcutter who lost his children. Palmerin had to answer the seven riddles posed by the crone at the well beyond the world. The seventh star has a story written in the night skies. The seven liberal arts and the seven mechanical arts. One then for the Moon, that would be six . . . and one for the Mother who sleeps, that would be seven — that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Jambres. “So you lack three.”

  Sally said, “I am at a loss.”

  “I have searched for many years,” said Jambres. “Sometimes I found three or four together, but never more. You McDoons are the last, best hope.”

  Sally said, “I have always wondered who opened the first lock in the Moon.”

  “Clever, Sarah, I knew you would ask eventually. The first Key-bearer who succeeded was Matthias Laufer, the young Pietist who came a century ago. He succeeded but died early as a result of his exertions.”

  Sally said, “Is there more to the story?”

  “Of course, there is always more in adventures like this. You know his grand-niece.”

  Sally smiled, and said, “The fraulein is good with a proverb, and capable with a pistol as it turns out, but she is no singer. She is not one of the seven, much as I regret that.”

  “No,” said Jambres. “But the fraulein is not his only grandniece.”