Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1

by Angela Slatter

  ‘Surely you can peer at some entrails and put her mind to rest on that score?’

  ‘She won’t listen. We’ve been at this so long we’ve forgotten who lies and who doesn’t.’ She smiled briefly.

  Norns with Alzheimer’s? I shook off the distracting concept. ‘Theo told you about the golem?’

  ‘And the sirens. And the baby. And Aspasia told me about the Winemaker – and everyone else told me how you dealt with her. Very summarily.’

  ‘It’s not like she was an innocent, Thaïs. She was a murderer – and she was also Magda Nadasy.’

  She looked as though she’d been slapped. Ah: the satisfaction of knowing something a Norn didn’t was rare and wonderful. Magda had kept herself very secret indeed if not even Thaïs was aware she’d returned. I wondered if the Norns had tried to dig for details back when Sally Crown had first offered wine made from children’s tears and come up against a brick wall.

  I continued, ‘As I’ve explained to your Sisters, anything that risks exposing this community to the gaze of panicky Normals – anything that exposes panicky Normals to the threat of flesh-hungry Weyrd – needs to be dealt with quickly.’

  While most Weyrd acknowledged the requirement for policing their interactions with Normals, and while they knew people like me and Bela and Ziggi were the thin line between them and danger, they still resented it. Normals might have all the high technology of a geek’s wet dream at our fingertips, but essentially, humanity reverted to its strike-out-at-anything-different mentality at a moment’s notice. That was knowledge all Weyrd shared.

  ‘So: we’ve got the golem – who is Nadasy’s grandson, by the way – attacking Normals, and any Council member he can get his hands on. And there are the sirens, who are being murdered wholesale. There’s the exile, Ligeia, who may or may not be protecting the siren’s child and, just to complicate things further, there is now an Archangel over Brisbane leading a posse of lesser angels in a crusade of some description. Know anything about any of that?’

  ‘Sounds like you know a whole lot,’ she mused.

  ‘Nope,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve got bits of a broken mirror that I’m trying to put back together, and the edges are very sharp. The glass is smudged, and slippery to boot.’

  ‘Ooo-kaay.’

  ‘Nothing is fitting together properly, and the Arch particularly is bothering me.’

  ‘Me, too,’ she admitted. ‘Brisbane really isn’t the kind of city one of them visits, not without a good reason.’

  ‘Someone – and let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s an angel – is taking out sirens at a rate of knots. Last night, the first Normal victim was claimed – you might have appreciated Mrs Tinkler’s taste in clothes,’ I added as an aside, ‘which means it’s a real problem. Fixing it is now my problem, and if it’s my problem—’

  ‘It’s going to be everyone’s problem until you get answers. I know how you operate, Fassbinder.’ She paused, considering, then said, ‘Bottom drawer on your side, far right.’

  The bowl was a flat-bottomed shallow brass thing. Its rim was sharp and I cut a finger dragging it out; fat droplets of my blood spattered into the base. Frowning, I rested it in the middle of the table.

  Thaïs handed me a matching brass ewer, carved with snakes and branches, and pointed me towards the bathroom, which turned out to be magnificent and pristine: white marble, fluffy towels, scented soaps, one wall mirrored, the others covered in a lavishly tiled design of girls jumping over bulls. Even the loo looked majestic. I filled the jug, then washed my bleeding digit and wrapped a piece of toilet tissue around it. When I returned, I noticed Thaïs hadn’t cleaned the vessel of the red droplets. She impatiently took the water, noticed the direction of my glare and said, ‘You know nothing comes for free.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I brought these.’ I struggled to get the two large bars of Valrhona dark chocolate from my inside pocket, where they’d been slowly melting. Thaïs eyed them greedily, then snatched the booty away.

  Muttering, ‘Better than ichor,’ she filled the basin. I watched the fluid swirl and circle and settle, relieved the blood was so diluted; that was the only reason I didn’t kick up more of a fuss. In that state it would be no use to anyone afterwards. Thaïs sprinkled a handful of what I suspected was grave dust over the surface and it slowly dissolved and sank. When the liquid had turned an impenetrable charcoal, we both leaned forward.

  All I saw was a great big mish-mash of white wings, spinning garbage, the Winemaker’s press, large pale hands with neat nails tearing at equally white feathers, and an empty cradle. Oh, and the stern of a long thin dark boat piloted by a figure in a dead brown cloak. It meant nothing to me, other than flashes of the past, but I wasn’t a scryer, nor an interpreter.

  Thaïs eyed me. ‘Anything you’re not telling me?’

  I took a gamble and reached down to slide the knife from the sheath, carefully placing it on the table between us. Air hissed out of her, not in an angry way, but more in a surprised loss of steam way. It was a relief to think someone might know exactly what the thing was.

  ‘The Boatman gave it to me. Along with some cryptic wording about someone wanting to break the sky. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it, but I found out purely by happy accident that the golem doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Naughty Boatman.’ She didn’t touch it; she reached out and wiggled her fingers in its direction, but didn’t make contact. ‘It’s the Dagger of Wilusa, which was a Bronze Age settlement sometimes mistaken for Troy. The dagger is older, but that’s where it was found once, then lost again. It’s also known as the God-slayer. Some say it was what Zeus used to kill Kronos. Abraham used it on his son – oh, yes, there was a sacrifice, no matter what the Biblical press release says. Others insist it belonged to the Amazon queens of old. There are lots of stories, not many of them written down, certainly not in schoolbooks. Whatever it is, it’s got some power in it.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with it? Any ideas?’ She shook her head slowly, and I thought it was looking like my very expensive chocolate investment was a bad one, but I waited. Maybe she was picking through what to tell me, which meant I might need to shake information from her sooner or later. Preferably sooner.

  Impatiently I said, ‘Look, anything you’ve got. Anything that might help me find the baby? Find the golem? Stop the angels?’

  ‘I don’t think the baby’s dead. I can tell you don’t trust the old siren and you’re probably right on a lot of issues, but the little girl’s not as helpless as she may seem.’ She rubbed her chin and sighed. ‘Look, leave this with me. I need to do some reading. I’ll call if I find anything.’

  ‘That’s what Theo said and I didn’t hear from her.’

  ‘That’s because she likes you to have to come here and see her.’

  I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  ‘And, Fassbinder, keep that close. It might be the only thing between you and pushing up daisies.’

  ‘This has not been reassuring.’

  ‘It seldom is. I promise I will contact you, little strangeling.’

  ‘I hate it when you call me that.’

  ‘I know.’ I rose, but her voice stopped me at the door. ‘The Archangel, he’s searching, that’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘I figure he’s searching for the baby.’

  ‘Better hope he doesn’t find her,’ she said, and would say no more.

  *

  It was one in the morning when the phone rang again. Though Lizzie, Tobit and David had gone to bed ages ago, I wasn’t asleep. I’d just finished talking to Ziggi, whose mate on the Sovereign Islands had reported that Baker’s house was deserted. It had been ransacked and its occupant-of-interest was gone. Ziggi could barely cover his relief that he didn’t have to drive down there again.

  On the first ring I thought it might have been him again, that he’d forgotten something, but the voice was coarse, sick-sounding. ‘Fassbinder?’

  ‘Yes. Rhonda, what’s
up?’

  ‘St Stephen’s.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You might find one of those angels you’re looking for.’ She gave a laugh bereft of humor, then clicked off before I could ask who’d seen them and how she knew, or indeed mention that the location of at least one angel was already known to me. Her phone went straight to voicemail and I left a terse message, then pulled on my coat. I stuck an explanatory-but-hopefully unnecessary Post-it note on the fridge for anyone who might look for me and snuck out of the house.

  I took pity on Ziggi and got a ‘real’ cab. I wasn’t planning for it to become a habit, because I didn’t much like the Normal drivers. Too talkative, too opinionated, too sleazy, too creepy. That night I got Barry, who loved cricket, football and beer, and was passionate about the world, but hated everyone in it who wasn’t white. In the end, I had him drop me on the corner of Elizabeth and George Streets because I couldn’t stand to listen to him a second longer. Music spewed forth from the nightclubs and gambling dens of the Treasury Casino. I paced along the mostly empty streets towards the cathedral, which was currently hidden by the high-rises. I kept my head down, the low level burr of minimal traffic the only sound as distance drained the music away.

  I walked on the opposite side of the road, but as I came alongside St Stephen’s, I ran into something: a large, invisible something. If it hadn’t been for the steel grip clamping around my upper arm, I’d have bounced to the pavement. Being half-dragged across the street, then up stone steps, was disconcerting, but I was smart enough not to struggle. Anyway, this was what I’d been looking for, although probably with less of me being frog-marched. The precinct, bordered by Elizabeth, Edward and Charlotte Streets, contained a small but neat cathedral with an even smaller chapel to the south, the old school-now-admin building and another larger structure where more administrivia was conducted.

  In between was a green space, empty for a while, and then much less so when five angels, in addition to the one holding me, shimmered into view. No jeans and T-shirts for these – they all wore white chitons, short enough to show off muscular legs that ended in lace-up booties, all very Greek, and about their torsos were wrapped worked silver breastplates. Each cuirass boasted a bas-relief heart surrounded by flames, a little off-centre, right where I assumed the angels’ own hearts were situated, and set in the middle of each was a different coloured precious stone. All wore thick silver rings on their index fingers, and I stared at the one on the hand around my arm: the cut-out detail showed a quadrate cross. They were, without exception, male, very tall, beautiful, and with red hair that shone like something in a TV advert. The one sporting a ruby demanded, ‘Where is it?’

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘Ginger Liberation Front Annual General Meeting?’

  That earned me a good shaking from Sapphire. Ruby didn’t bother to answer, just glared as if he could make me shut up by thinking about it. The air around us was thick with a sickly-sweet odour; too many angels in one area apparently makes the place smell like a badly ventilated florist’s shop. I was beginning to feel a bit faint.

  ‘Where is it?’ asked another, Emerald.

  ‘You’re going to have to be more specific. I’m looking for quite a few things at this point in time. How about a hint.’

  ‘The double-winged.’

  I paused; that was a new one on me. ‘Yep, looking for a lot of things, me, but that’s not one of them.’

  Again with the shaking, and this time I cried, ‘Honestly, I don’t know!’ Although I was beginning to have a suspicion; I just wanted them to say it. ‘What is the double-winged? And use small words.’

  ‘The child. The child of an angel and a wingèd whore.’

  ‘That’s very judgemental.’ I lifted a finger to my minder. ‘And do not shake me again. It’s lost its appeal.’

  ‘They speak of you – the tribes here. They say you keep the peace, keep a vigil.’

  Keep the peace seemed like a bit of a stretch, but my current lack of sleep could very well be translated into a vigil. ‘Sure, why not?

  ‘They say you find lost things.’

  ‘Don’t believe everything you hear. Half the time I can’t find a matching pair of socks.’ I surveyed the wall of cold beauty towering above me. They were near identical, and I didn’t imagine the Arch would want to look like one of the herd. ‘Where’s your leader?’

  ‘The Archangel will not show himself to the likes of you,’ Amethyst boomed.

  ‘But he’s around.’ I smiled, trying to pick out a spot where the air shifted and broke a little, a sign of something standing just on the other side of perception. ‘I bet he is, but he prefers to send his lackeys.’

  ‘The Archangel will not speak to you,’ said Topaz.

  ‘You are beneath us,’ said Amethyst.

  ‘Which one’s the local boy?’ I hoped fervently that they couldn’t smell Tobit on me. We’d been in the same house for more than twenty-four hours and I wondered how much might have rubbed off. I had no idea how keen an angel’s sense of smell might be.

  The one who still held me lifted his chin in the slightest acknowledgement.

  ‘Shame on you,’ I said, ‘getting dazzled by these new kids. Turning on your city as if it hasn’t fed you, nurtured you, for all these years.’

  ‘The Arch will bring us home,’ he said, but there was a faint blush on his marble-perfect cheek.

  ‘At what cost?’

  And he turned away. He might feel guilty, but he was beyond caring; whatever loyalty he’d had to Brisneyland was gone. They were all lonely and heartsick and lost without their parent; they wanted to find him, no matter what. Everyone and anything else was just collateral damage.

  On a hunch I said, ‘You’re planning to break the sky?’

  To a man – to an angel – they looked shocked. They were so used to being the bringers of tidings that they hadn’t considered that others might know what was going on. Not that I really did, but I was doing my best to work it out on the fly. Did Tobit know what they were planning? Did he know more than he’d told me, or was he just afraid they were hunting his daughter to wipe her out? I had him down for a wimp, but I didn’t think he was like these things.

  ‘The Arch will open the way and take us home. The double-winged is the doorway,’ said the Emerald angel, then corrected himself. ‘The key. We will bask in the glory of His face once more.’

  I didn’t like the sound of that, even though I didn’t feel any more illuminated. ‘You killed the sirens because you’re looking for your key? Which one of you did it?’

  ‘We all had that honour,’ said Ruby.

  I felt ill at the idea of those large hands tearing at Teles and Raidne, ripping feathers and flesh and wings. I thought of Serena, her heart stopped in her chest, then thrown off a building like so much rubbish, all because these guys were homesick.

  ‘Honour?’ I struggled, and the Brisbane angel let me go. I didn’t kid myself it was because of my strength, just that he’d lost interest in hanging onto me. ‘Break the sky? What will that do to the world? You want to go back to the Mothership and you don’t care what happens to the rest of Creation? How pleased do you think your Boss is going to be when He sees you’ve let His goldfish die?’

  ‘There will be a Darkness,’ said Emerald, as if it was nothing to him.

  ‘We were created first and best,’ chimed Topaz. ‘He will rejoice to see us.’

  ‘Here’s a thought: if He was that fond of you, He wouldn’t have left you behind.’ In my imagination David was launching into the ‘Why Baiting a Flock of Angels Is a Bad Idea’ lecture. ‘And what about Mrs Tinkler? Why kill her?’

  They gave me blank looks until Emerald’s face cleared and he said, ‘The fat woman.’

  She was an old bat, but she still didn’t deserve to be treated as though her death was inconsequential. And she certainly didn’t deserve to be shredded. ‘Why her?’

  ‘She was unhelpful,’ said Amethyst. ‘She fought.’

  And I
could see that therein lay the sin: she’d rebelled. My rage blossomed and I clenched my fists, contemplating whether I was strong enough to actually break an angelic neck. The increase in their number must have been stretching the city’s faith thin; none of these creatures would have had a decent feed in a couple of weeks so they wouldn’t be at their best, their peak.

  In my head, David’s voice said, They’re freaking angels. I swallowed my fury.

  Sapphire frowned, mystified. ‘She fought so, yet she knew nothing.’

  All those millennia watching humans, dealing with them, and it was apparent these creatures had not a clue about what made us tick, how we would fight in the face of hopelessness, refuse to be pushed around, even if we had no information to give. They didn’t know that many of us would refuse to beg; that not all of us would cower. I felt a headache coming on – or I thought it was a headache, then I realised it was more like someone simultaneously drilling a hole in my skull and ransacking inside.

  I glared at Ruby. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  Sapphire replied, ‘What you will not give, the Arch must take. If you have knowledge of the prophecy, we will have it.’

  I screamed, trying to block the intrusion, trying to keep all my thoughts – all of myself – together, like someone juggling too many parcels. It felt . . . it felt as if my recollections were being randomly pulled from the shelves like library books – as each came out, the memory flashed. Luckily, I didn’t know much. I mean, I knew a lot, just not a lot that was connected or coherent. The lack of order was enough to cause whoever was paddling around in there to hesitate, only for a moment, and that was enough: I pulled down the shades, imagined the intruder gone and my mind locked up like Fort Knox. Get out! The effort left a dull thud in my brain and a trickle of blood from my nostrils, but no unwanted guest.

  A deafening silence fell, then a voice came thrumming from the air with no discernable source. ‘She knows nothing of the double-winged.’

  I fell, proud of myself for managing not to vomit, and lay curled on the grass until the worst of the pain had subsided. When I opened my eyes I was alone. Though I might not have known anything about the double-winged, I knew where Tobit was, which meant his brethren did too. They’d left me alive, and I could only imagine it was because, like the rest of my kind, they thought me no threat. I also took it as hard-won proof that I wasn’t as annoying as others claimed.