Jones fumbled awkwardly with a kettle, water, the teapot, tea caddy, and spoon as if they were an advanced alchemy set and she had never used such things until yesterday. Her clumsiness stood in stark contrast to the slick expertise she'd had aboard that ugly ship in the Void, he thought, and her soldier's toughness in her camp. She was like a shell of herself. It was hard to watch and not try to help but he sat on his hands. Eventually she managed to get things in some kind of order and turned around, leaning heavily on the range, the oven door bar clutched in both red-knuckled hands. "You might as well have 'em," she said, still in a whisper. "No use to me anymore. I liked keeping a secret from you. It felt like fun. A bit of fun. But ..." She hesitated, took a breath, and fought some inner impulse that he could see wanted her to turn away and run. He waited. He knew when to wait.
"That thing is the Admiral's Octant. Actually it's more of a ninesided thing, but you know, I don't know the right words, the lingo for that kind of stuff. It's what he used to navigate. Without it the lead ship don't know where to go, can't reliably get anywhere. Lost at sea. And the rest follow it or the Admiral's orders. So nothing's goin' anywhere without it. Understand?"
Malachi nodded. Jones flexed her hands on the bar, gripping it as if it were a weapon. Her breathing was light and fast, her gaze darted everywhere, like a rat leaping from stanchion to stanchion of a sinking vessel. "It was good. Your faery money. It was good. They let me back. Sort of. We spent it all on gear and supplies. We found out lots of stuff, Malachi! Lots of good stuff!" She tapped the side of her head. "Like the ghosts are made in zones that spontaneously occur in the Void, always at coordinates that only make sense in planar metaphysics." She paused and swallowed a self-aware giggle. "You'll have to look that up, Malachi, it's not faery stuff. But they're made by thinking, made by minds, moments of focus, of longing and all that goes through a place that's always and everywhere, like the planes, a plane nobody talks of much, you know, like it was unpopular or not necessary or something. So we discovered it, kind of, we described it, we fitted it into the mathematics, Mal, and then of course I had to walk there!" She paused, alight with the pleasure and joy, the raw thrill of the memory, as if her adventure were happening now. He was infected by the feeling, but the light in her eyes warned him not to give her pause.
"So I went," she said, and waved her hands, shivering them like butterfly wings. "I went to the edge, out there, in the void, where they come from, I stood on the edge and I walked it and looked over into ... but I couldn't go there. I was stopped."
"Thanatos?" Malachi asked, unable to stop himself.
She shook her head no, her mouth open with slack wonder. "No no. I said a new place. No dead people there, well, not exactly. No, you are there now, the part of your spirit that lives there, the part that is most upper and least lower. It is a place"-she paused, searching for words"of dreaming. Close to Zoomenon, it is. Close. Closer than your own blood to you but you're never never able to cross over until you lose your mind. Do you see?"
"Sleep?"
But she wasn't listening to him; she was lost in her reverie. The kettle began to steam and simmer. "The ghosts were dreams that had been dreamed so much they were taking up spirit of their own, from the glimmer, the golden fields. Yes. They were hungry, empty things but with the chance to become. In the void they were strong enough to take on matter out of the nothing, blurts of quantum particles, you would say in human foolery, yes. Enough to be form. Then lose themselves again if there was no interest, nobody, nobody to see them, Mal. And I went there and I saw ..."
But as she reached this part of her speech he was just for a fraction of a second ahead of her, and if she hadn't stopped his hands were ready to stop her somehow because she was about to say something dreadful. He found himself staring at her, his arms out before him bursting the seams of his linen jacket, hands become the grasping claws of a giant cat. Jones was staring back, slack mouthed, her eyes as round as saucers, but she was laughing, in a mostly silent, gasping kind of way.
"You know what I mean," she breathed, struggling to hold onto the bar, her hands reclenching. "Yes, you do. So, I saw them, and Mal ..." She paused like a child about to deliver the punch line, longing not to tell, not to have the delicious suspense and control be over and done. "They ate me all up."
The kettle began to whistle, faintly at first, then louder and more stridently. Jones was grinning at him, at his horror and his inability to conceal it. "Choo choo!" she sounded softly, pumping her arm. She laughed and, using the bar like a rail, swung herself around and lifted the kettle off the hotplate. For a few moments she fought once again with the teapot, the spoon, the teapot lid. Finally she was done. Shaking as if she had the DTs she turned back. "Four minutes," she said to herself. "Four minutes."
Malachi had brought his paws down and let them rest in his lap as if they were his hands. Jones seemed lighter now, as if she had released something that had been pressing on her a long time. She fixed him with a more rational stare.
"That isn't all. Why I took the octo-thing. I got aboard the Fleet after a time, to find my way out. I knew I could ride it. If it manifested I could get out of there before it was too late...." She glared into his eyes as if to dare him to contradict her, but he knew she was literally correct. The half-formed things and all her own potential would be stripped out in that place, mined like a seam of precious ore by the rapacious foment of that which strove to become real. "So I got to the Fleet and I found the ship. Temeraire. Yes. I got aboard her, stowed away. I saw the Admiral-a boy, Mal, imagine it! A boy with ragged trousers. He is hungry! They all were. So very hungry. But I was lasting. Only down there, in the hold, in the dark, there was something else. Not a dream. Not a ghost." She fought to speak as if the words had to be dragged up from below. "Not me."
Malachi could not move, dared not, in case he broke her fragile control. She looked as if at any second she would shatter into pieces.
"He said I would die there." She kept gripping, working the warm bar of the oven door. "But he didn't know I could be so quick. Didn't know I was a walker. I tried to get out but ... I was lost. I hid in the rigging. I saw him go into the Admiral's cabin. He took him prisoner. He took the Fleet. He took it, Mal. And they all obeyed him. And he set sail. He was so glad. He had a chart. I stole a look. I saw what he wanted. And he saw me. I picked up the octant. It was just there, just lying there. He thought I'd gone but I was there. I got it and I ran and we were close to the edge and I jumped, Malachi, I jumped like I never jumped before and all my light ... everything ... I made it over. But he was after me. He saw me, Mal. He knew me. He came after with the whole Fleet, like a storm, like death. He wanted it. I didn't know where to go so I came to you-you're the only one I know, only one and you could have kept it, I thought maybe-so I came here and I dropped it and ran thinking he'd follow." She stopped abruptly. "Four minutes," she said and turned around to pour her tea, a little ritual of cup, pot, jug, spoon that took her another four minutes to accomplish while Malachi let his hairs subside.
"He came," she said, holding the stove. "But he couldn't cross. I don't know why. Some of the Fleet were too slow to stop. They crashed here. After me. They came too. He was strong enough to send them. But not strong enough to catch me. Not that way. Except he has caught me, Mal." And at this last her voice weakened and became a sob of rage. "He has a hook in me, a claw, and it is scraping, scratching me away to nothing. He can't come here, but I can't get rid of his grip. He is eating me. They are. The Fleet will have me because he is its captain." She paused and took a drink. It steadied her. She put the cup to her forehead, to her lips, back on the stovetop. "But I'll have a hand in getting him," she said, more steadily now. She turned, cup in hand, and sat down, for all the world like a normal woman, if an ill and sickly one.
"Understand he isn't human-he's something like a demon. Very old, very cunning. He is strong. Stronger than you. He is like death; I think perhaps he walks that path. His chart was of the Black, Malachi. Do y
ou know that? Of the Darkness Before and After, as if it was a place and in dream it is a place, of course it is, could be, might be ... understand? He wanted to sail there. But he had other things, other servants with him. Many. Very very many. I think he had been there a long time and made and mastered things. Nasty things. They are like this claw in me. Anyway, without his compasses he cannot sail true. He will look for them if he can't make another. So his servants will be on their way. If not here already. I'm sorry for that. But don't let him have it. Don't make it easy."
Malachi shook his head, agreement. "But who-"
"If I say it I make it more true," she said, pleading with him to jump to an understanding. "Do you see? If I tell you then the idea spreads, becomes more real. It helps him to bring it to be. He is more likely to succeed."
He knew this was true. "If you don't tell me then I can't do anything."
"I don't think you can do anything anyway, except run," she said. She sipped the tea and rubbed her thin, hollow chest with the flat of her hand. "All right. Shit to him. All right. But not in a way that helps. He has this thing about the will to power. I'll call it that. I did philosophy, you know. Read it. Nietzsche. But he's like that, like that idea, something like that he's trying to do, but as far as he can go. He would do anything. What he can't steal he will borrow and what can't be borrowed he'll barter for or trick, and things that must be borne or suffered he will do all. He was looking for the first impulse. There. Do you know what I mean? What came before all the rest. What was first in the order and has been forgot so long nobody ever thinks of it anymore. Before the Titans. Older. Oldest. He thought it was real and even if it wasn't, angel, he was making it so with his map and his search. He will open a way. Do you see?"
Malachi did know what this meant. "But that's crazy," he said, almost ready to laugh. The Titans were demigods, the stuff of childhood fancy, of legend. Nobody even in Under believed such things existed now, and maybe never had. It was from a time when everything was in a state of much more profound unbeing, chaos and creativity in the fundamental states of aether and matter. It was the equivalent of the first moments of the universe. You might argue and calculate about it from the ancient radiation of those moments as it propagated steadily through life and limb, but you didn't know for sure. The Titans were guesses, faces put on forces that he doubted had anything as sophisticated as a spirit of their own. Or they were all spirit. He hadn't cared to pay attention in metaphysics, but he understood the path Jones was pointing at. Force of will dreamed, dreams took on spirit, spirit moved them to seek material form and articulate, actualisation occurred. Ghosts were the accidental by-product of this; snippets, by blows. There was a thing that apparently dreamed itself, however, was will first without mind. He knew about them and avoided them, like he tried to avoid the Sisters. Dragons. Before the Titans meant dragons-one in particular. The first one. The Dreamer. Night.
"It is," Jones said, crouching with her tea, inhaling the steam from her cup. "This was his dream. I saw it. And he saw me. The fucker."
Malachi was so surprised. "But what for? Why would he want ... ?"
"Becoming," Jones said into her cup. "Power. Absolute creative authority to manifest ... anything."
By now his hands had returned to their apparent human form and the holes in his sleeves no longer bulged with unsightly fur. He checked his nails but they were smooth. Jones was shivering compulsively. Her state made him afraid deep down, but here, in the house, amid the mess and ordinary disgust of neglected things without power, he was able to master it. He thought Jones was saying that this creature somehow wanted to become Night. That was not possible. There were lesser options, however. A servant of it? No. It had none. A channeler of it, perhaps, a conduit for it. That was possible. But at what cost? He could only speculate wildly. And then he looked at Jones again.
She smiled the smile that lies about all right and says not to worry, because there isn't any point. Sadness overpowered him.
"Jones," he said, remembering the tough, arrogant, defiant girl who had always played him to the hilt and taken everything like a greedy thief. The one who would never stop or slow down for anyone.
She clutched her cup but spilled the liquid anyway, smacking at the drops as they fell on her filthy clothes. "I'm done," she said, looking at her hand tremble. "Funny. Not to mind though. I did it. I found out about ghosts, how it all fits, what's made in the Void. I found it. But"-she looked up at him, fever bright-"I never wrote it down, Mal. I'm not good at writing. I never learned it. Isn't time now. And Azevedo can't. She isn't anywhere long enough. Too much trouble for her. Could ... I mean would ..."
"Yes," he said, leaning forward and taking her free, tea-wetted hand in his own two. He held it tightly but the shake went all the way to the bone and it couldn't be stopped. "I will. I'll make sure everybody knows about it, and that it was you who found it."
She looked at his hands as if she were puzzling what they were. Her face reddened slightly and she pulled away. He resisted for a second, then let her go.
"Can't I get you a healer? There's a place in the country. People like you there. Nice people. Half-fey. Chosen. They might ..."
"Too late," she said. "Anyway. You know me. Don't like to hang around. You should go. They're coming. They mustn't find that compass. I 'spect they will find it, but they should have to wait. Make them wait. I want him to wait on my account." She was suddenly urging him to go; he felt it like a push in the chest.
He stood up. "Do you need money?" It was such a crass thing to offer, but he couldn't think of anything else.
"No, I'm fine," she said, nodding to herself, leaning on the stove once more, her eyes half shut. "You go. I'll see ya."
He nodded. "See you."
Her eyes closed all the way and she began to rock gently. Malachi slipped out silently and closed the doors after him. In the car he sat without starting it and glanced down towards the beach. The wreckage of the Void ship was breaking up and crumbling, its attempt to be metal failing under the ruthless scrutiny of the sun, wind, and waves. He laid his forehead on the wheel for a moment, holding to it like Jones held her bar. He felt time slipping away, sliding, hurtling him towards unseen vertices, separating him from her forever. It wasn't as if they'd been close. He didn't know why he was crying.
After a second he made himself sit up, turn the key, and drive. From the dappled shadows of the woods things half-unmade stopped and watched him passing. He couldn't help but see them from the corners of his eyes. Their gaze was cold, silent, more still than that of living things.
Lila considered the situation. Teazle was stuck in the dreamworld, with a good chance of dying before long, if the other statues here were anything to go by. But if she pursued him there was no guarantee she wouldn't suffer the same fate. Maybe the mirror was only one way. Or there could be a million other factors. No, it would be stupid to plunge in. Possibly, she thought, without her spirit her body might do all right on its own. She was capable of being a self-sustaining machine that didn't require aetherial presence of any sort. She was sufficiently remade to be sure that she could activate the Al to replicate her personality choices and run the show so that most people would never be the wiser. It was an odd thought. If she became a ghost, the machine could run itself. She didn't dwell on it.
Teazle could not have got here the same way she had, she was sure of it. Madame had already gone, and the combination lock showed no signs of use prior to her appearance, nor any trace of Teazle's DNA on it, or she would have found it. He might have searched the house briefly and left the feather as a sign of his presence, or even by accident, although it seemed unlikely it would fall to a place like that by acci dent. It was peculiar to think of him having the foresight, or the lack of certainty about his future, that he would leave a sign for her. In fact, it was so unlike him she felt it must have been prompted by an exterior source, that which would have convinced him he was heading into a possible trap. What could that be?
She ma
de a more thorough search of his person and found that his right hand was clutching something very tightly. It was a parchment, a folded one, very old judging by the degradation of the cells that made it up. She tried to prise his clawed fingers open but they were absolutely rigid. If she persisted she'd break his hand. A few tugs on the thing and she was sure it would tear long before she could free it. Then she'd have to guess it was what led him here, a map or a letter. From the house above? There were too many unanswerable questions. One thing, however, she was sure about. Nobody in Bathshebat knew of the existence of this labyrinth-at least no one who wasn't already here. Teazle had teleported in, not walked, only she could be followed, though her threats must hold good for a while yet, even if she didn't come back. She betted it would take time to follow her. And what at the end of it? Without foreknowledge you would enter the room, look at the mirror, and be lost. Clearly Teazle had not known about the mirror. Therefore, with the small caveat that the mirror seemed to promise death by its own devices, he was as safe as he could possibly be from all harm. She could leave him here and return.
It was quite a caveat. She stood with her hand on Teazle's warm back and looked at him in the green simulation of her infrared vision, taken by her skin and not by eye. Her feelings for him were warm, but were they love? Of a kind, she thought. But she would not die if he was lost. She could survive it. He wouldn't blame her; he knew the truth better than she did. She liked his affections, she loved his allegiance, but in the end that didn't amount to soul partners. It seemed mean indeed to think so at this moment, when he had only come here in service of their deal, to find a way to find Zal.
And was this it? She stared at the black void of the mirror. Was the answer in there? Had he finally found it? If she didn't follow what was she going to do instead?
Chasing the Dragon Page 29