• • •
Pip felt horribly exposed as she crouched at the third-floor landing of the building that held Hawberk’s shop . . . and the offices of the Repairer of Reputations. It was dark now, and stuffy up here, smelling of old wood and plaster and nameless forgotten things sold in shops, and the turned pine dowels of the railing she leaned against were rough and splintery against her shoulder. The turpentine smell of the disused artist’s studio they were hiding in once more was strong, and the stale catbox from Wilde’s rooms.
And there was a feeling of pressure, not quite like waiting for a ship-to-ship engagement or walking down a jungle trail waiting for a shower of blowgun darts or Iban headhunters trying to remove yours, but more like that than anything else she was familiar with. Something was going to happen, and soon.
I wish I could leave feelings like that to Deor. But considering where I am . . . for certain values of am and where . . . it’s not surprising.
And if Wilde opened his door . . .
Fortunately he didn’t seem to do that very often. From here she’d extended a mirror—bought as part of a local powder-puff arrangement— on a stick that gave her a good view down the stairwell. The outside doorbell jingled softly. Pip craned her neck, and saw the thin pale-faced form of Hildred Castaigne hesitate for an instant outside the door to Hawberk’s armory and then head for the stairs. She snaked backward across the worn boards, rising with swift economy to pad on stocking feet to the door of the old studio next to Wilde’s rooms.
“Hildred’s here,” she said softly.
Toa grunted. “Nobody out back,” he said.
Deor nodded and held up one of the wineglasses. Pip walked over to the wall and pressed the glass to it and her ear to the base, while Thora took her stance near the door and put a hand to the gun in her bag.
• • •
John read:
MR. WILDE,
REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS.
Third Bell.
As Hildred’s eyes flicked across it and his thumb came down on the button and a faint remnant of the chime reached him. The madman’s determination had settled into a focus like the edge of a knife. He could see Hawberk moving about in his shop, and he heard Constance’s voice in the parlor; John thought he could have learned more, if he’d been in control . . .
Of even my own eyeballs! Well, they’re not really mine, are they?
—but Hildred hurried up the trembling stairways to Mr. Wilde’s apartment, then knocked and entered without ceremony. John recognized the salt-iron-copper smell of blood, like metallic seawater, and so did Hildred and the other passenger in his mind. The sound of a man whimpering in pain was something they’d all heard before too.
Wilde lay groaning on the floor, his face covered with blood, his clothes torn to shreds. Drops of blood were scattered about over the carpet, which had also been ripped and frayed in the struggle. Judging from the fresh liquid look of the blood, it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.
“It’s that cursed cat,” Wilde said, panting quickly without moving anything but his colorless eyes to the newcomer. “She attacked me while I was asleep. I believe she will kill me yet.”
The anger in Hildred’s mind suddenly had a focus; setting down the case with the crown and robe, he went into the pantry—past a scuttling of cockroaches among the stale-smelling dishes stacked randomly—seized a hatchet and started searching. When he gave it up and came back to the parlor he found Mr. Wilde squatting on his high chair by the table. He had washed his face and changed his clothes. The great furrows which the cat’s claws had ploughed up in his face he had filled with collodion, and a rag hid the wound in his throat.
“I’ll kill that cat the moment I see it,” Hildred said.
Yes! Please! Before it sings to me again, please kill it! John thought, the force of the sudden passion astonishing him.
Wilde only shook his head and turned to the open ledger before him, reading off name after name. The sums startled Hildred, and some mental alchemy translated them into terms John could understand.
Enough to buy houses and land in a chartered city, or memberships in the guild-merchant in Astoria, he thought. Or ships . . .
Calculations of grazing-rights and cattle and horses and wool-clips moved through the back of his consciousness; that would be the Boisean.
“I put on the screws now and then,” Wilde explained. “A reputation I repair is one I can destroy, after all.”
“One day or other some of these people will assassinate you,” Hildred said.
“Do you think so?” Wilde said, rubbing his mutilated ears.
Hildred shrugged. John felt his own mind growing sharper, and as it did it occurred to him how odd the conversations between Wilde and the would-be king were. They seemed so wrapped up in themselves that often they weren’t conversing at all, as he used the term; it was more as if they were talking past each other, to fragments of their own minds. And they were close confederates in an enterprise both considered of transcendent importance . . . but each was utterly indifferent to the other as a human being.
Hildred took down the manuscript entitled The Imperial Dynasty of America. The Boisean recognized it, with a start of fear and guilt and blazing desire.
Wait a minute, John thought with newfound clarity. That means he read it somewhere else . . . in Boise? There’s a copy of this in Montival?
He read along with the madman whose trembling hands turned the pages. When Hildred had finished Wilde took the manuscript and, turning to the dark passage which led from his study to his bedchamber, called out in a loud voice:
“Vance.”
Then for the first time, Hildred noticed a man crouching there in the shadow.
How did he expect to catch a cat, if he couldn’t see a man? John thought, and the other presence concurred.
“Vance, come in,” cried Wilde in a flat harsh tone.
The figure rose and crept towards them. “Vance, this is Mr. Castaigne,” said Wilde.
Before he had finished speaking, the man threw himself on the ground before the table, crying and grasping at Hildred’s feet:
“Oh, God! Oh, my God! Help me! Forgive me! Oh, Mr. Castaigne, keep that man, that thing, away. You cannot, you cannot mean it! You are different—save me! I am broken down—I was in a madhouse and now—when all was coming right—when I had forgotten the King—the King in Yellow and—but I shall go mad again—I shall go mad—”
His voice died into a choking rattle, as Wilde leapt and his right hand encircled the man’s throat, clenching with brutal power. When Vance fell in a heap on the stained, faded carpet, coughing and retching, Mr. Wilde clambered nimbly into his chair again, and rubbing his mangled ears with the stump of his other hand, turned to Hildred.
“The ledger, please,” he said.
Castaigne took it down from the shelf, a little surprised at the weight of the heavy bond paper, and Wilde opened it. After a moment’s searching among the beautifully written pages, he coughed complacently, and pointed to the name Vance.
“Vance,” he read aloud. “Osgood Oswald Vance.”
At the sound of his name, the man on the floor raised his head and turned a convulsed face to Wilde. His eyes were suffused with blood, his lips swollen and bitten until they bled.
“Called April 28th,” continued Mr. Wilde. “Occupation, cashier in the Seaforth National Bank; has served a term for forgery at Sing Sing, from whence he was transferred to the Asylum for the Criminal Insane. Pardoned by the Governor of New York, and discharged from the Asylum, January 19, 1918. Reputation damaged at Sheepshead Bay. Rumors that he lives beyond his income. Reputation to be repaired at once. Retainer $1,500.”
Wilde’s cold voice took on a teasing note: “NB: Has embezzled sums amounting to $30,000 since March 20, 1919, excellent family, and secured present position through uncle’s influence. Father, Pre
sident of Seaforth Bank.”
Hildred Castaigne looked at the man on the floor with the same disinterested distaste that he had shown the cockroaches.
“Get up, Vance,” Wilde said with a purring, threatening gentleness.
Vance rose, his bloodshot eyes on Wilde, his long face doughy and expressionless, save for a thin trickle of drool from the corner of his mouth that he mopped at absently with the sleeve of his jacket.
“He will do as we suggest now,” observed Wilde. “I shall read him the history of the Imperial Dynasty.”
Hildred stood nodding approval. “Has he become half-witted?” he said. “His eyes are very blank.”
“It is of no consequence. Half his wits will suffice for the work we have for him.”
The Boisean was growing agitated as Wilde read; John tried to grasp the cause as Wilde’s voice came to him in fragments:
“Dynasty in Carcosa . . . the lakes from which power flows through Hastur . . . Aldebaran . . . the mystery of the Hyades . . . Cassilda and Camilla . . . what swims many-armed through the cloudy depths of Demhe . . . Lake of Hali . . .”
At that the other presence, the Boisean, writhed in anguish.
Wilde’s voice went on, merciless: “The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever. And the dynasty descends to Uoht and Thale, from Naotalba and the Phantom of Truth, to Aldones—”
Then he tossed aside his manuscript and notes. “Then came the Last King, to scourge clean the filth of—”
Castaigne wasn’t listening now; the story was graven in his mind in any case. Instead he watched as Wilde threw up his head, his long arms stretched out in a magnificent gesture of pride and power.
Oh, St. Michael protect me! John thought; he knew he was a reasonably brave man, but even in this disembodied state he felt raw terror. His eyes, they’re glowing now. They’re green and they’re glowing.
At last Wilde finished, and pointing to Hildred cried: “The cousin of the King!”
Castaigne’s head was up too. “I am alone worthy of the Imperial Crown of America. My cousin Louis is weak, and he has not received the Yellow Sign nor bowed in worship before Uoht or pledged himself to the King. He must go into exile and remain without an heir, or he must die! Above all, he must not marry Constance Hawberk, for she is the daughter of the Marquis of Avonshire and that would bring England into the question.”
“Yes . . . yes, I understand,” Vance said; a little blood mixed with the spittle on his chin, from his bitten tongue. “Command me!”
Castaigne took up another bound list, and fanned it open to display the long list of names.
“Each of these men has received the Yellow Sign, which no living human being dares disregard. The city, the state, the whole land, are ready to rise and tremble before the Pallid Mask! The time has come! The people shall know the son of Hastur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Carcosa!”
Vance leaned on the table, his head buried in his hands, sobbing dryly. Wilde drew a rough sketch on the margin of yesterday’s Herald with a bit of lead pencil. Hildred recognized it as a plan of Hawberk’s rooms. Then he wrote in his neat hand on a blank sheet of paper.
“This is an accredited warrant of death, from the Eternal Emperor’s own hand,” Wilde said solemnly, and brought out sealing-wax and seal.
Castaigne signed it with a shaking hand; John saw the scrawl as it appeared, but it took an instant for him to read the Latin because the man who wrote had his attention fixed elsewhere:
Hildred-Rex.
“My first writ of execution,” he said.
“But not the last,” Wilde said. “As Your Majesty said, a new broom sweeps clean.”
He clambered down from his high chair to the floor and unlocking the cabinet, took a long square box from the first shelf. A new knife lay in the tissue paper inside and Hildred picked it up, noticing the glyphs graven into the watermarked steel; one was the Yellow Sign, but the others were unfamiliar and writhed at the edges of his attention. He handed it to Vance, who jerked as if struck with a massive spark as his fingers touched the unpleasantly greasy-looking hilt of carved raw bone; then he handed him the death-writ and the plan of Hawberk’s apartment.
“You may go,” Wilde said, and Vance shambled out, lurching like a derelict from the Bowery.
The knife gleamed in his hand, but it was curiously hard to see, as if it misdirected the eye.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW
Deor jerked upright from where he had been leaning against the wall that separated them from Wilde’s chambers.
“What?” Thora said.
Pip and Toa waited wordless; Deor looked shaken, his narrow clever face staring and beaded with more sweat than the cool spring night could account for.
“Something has been unsheathed,” he said. “A weapon, malignant as Tyrfing. Quickly! We must stop it. The time of testing approaches.”
Pip ghosted to the door and looked out through a narrow crack, holding a hand out with fingers spread to check the others until she’d made sure of the way; they didn’t have any lights on inside, so the opening would be darkness within darkness, and her eyes perceived the dimly lit hallway as bright. A tall horse-faced man was shambling out of Wilde’s rooms.
Weapon? she thought. What weapon?
Then there was a glint of steel in his right hand, held down by the side of his leg. She blinked in surprise; yes, that was an inconspicuous location but surely she should have seen it at once? It wasn’t as if she was a virgin with respect to matters concerning sharp, pointy-stabby things.
“Man with a knife, heading downstairs,” Pip murmured.
“You follow him, I’ll take this side,” Toa said, climbing out the window above the alley, tossing his shovel onto something that made a dull thug and beginning to clamber down the pipes and iron brackets and folded-up staircases outside.
“I’ll lead,” Deor said. “It burns like a fire of skulls.”
Deor went out the door first; Thora came behind him, and Pip brought up the rear. The darkened hallway was full of shadows, their own monstrous on the stained plaster of the walls. They all moved with the slow tense grace of hunters, or cats; by contrast the blundering steps of Vance were thunder-loud. Deor’s stalk grew faster as their quarry almost ran, and Pip followed with an almost inaudible scuff of soft-soled shoes on leather. Both the Montivallans were heavier than she was, Thora by about fifteen pounds and Deor by twice that, but they made no more noise—something that might have annoyed her, if she wasn’t focused on the thought of violence to come.
Speaking of which, she thought.
She pulled the slingshot out of her bag and unfolded it with a shake and toss of the wrist that was completely automatic. A semicircular brace at the end of a light-alloy tube now rested against her left forearm, with the pistol-grip of the weapon in her hand and the U-fork for the rubber cords. Those rested under her thumb, and three of the steel ball-bearings were in the palm of her right hand.
She’d inherited the weapon—minus the cords, which had to be renewed periodically—from her mother, who’d also provided instruction in its use. Lady Julianne Balwyn-Abercrombie—Jules to a select few which didn’t include her daughter—had rarely raised her voice while doing that, but she had been a perfectionist who could quietly flay worse than any of the teachers at Rockhampton, or even her father’s roars and bellows.
Mummy fought her way in and out of half a dozen of the dead cities with this thing, and the kukris, Pip thought. I don’t think she’d think it had fallen into unworthy hands.
The damned brolly was over her back, stuck through the strap that carried her handbag. Vance hadn’t struck her as being any sort of a fighting man, but from what Deor had said he was carrying something like a napalm shell with a lighted fuse, and she’d always been properly cau
tious around those.
The stairs made one reversal halfway up each story, with a tiny wedge-shaped landing. Deor raised his hand with the fist clenched as he came to it, and then opened the hand and brought it down horizontal: the near-universal symbols for halt and down.
That brought them all together, close enough that their clean body odors were noticeable—Thora’s had a slightly mealy quality that Pip suspected might be some product of early pregnancy, which was odd when you thought about it, but her sense of smell seemed to be stronger in this not-really-a-place.
I’m being catty. Literally catty.
They crouched and peered through the balustrade of the staircase, reminding her of occasions when she’d sneaked downstairs through the hot frangipani-scented nights to peer like this at her parents wrapping presents in the big sitting room of the stationhouse on Tanumgera on Christmas Eve. Which of course was the hottest time of the year in Townsville, though some still made imitation snow out of cotton-bolls for decorations, which she’d always thought absurd.
Vance was hesitating, hidden in the used-bookstore’s entrance—there was a closed sign behind him, with an odd-looking three-armed sign in yellow on black beneath it. Vance’s doughy middle-aged face was gray in a way visible even in this light, and damp with flop-sweat. He looked at the Hawberks’ door; then his eyes darted around as if desperately looking for escape.
They fell on the closed sign, and for some reason he jerked back as if it were spitting red-hot embers. With three hesitant steps he crossed the hallway to the armorer’s front door, and reached for it.
Pip could feel Deor tense, and Thora’s hand came halfway out of her bag with the heavy pistol in it.
“Let me,” she said very softly. “Quiet.”
A steel ball went into the pouch of the slingshot, and she drew just enough to put tension on the rubber. She began to rise and do the quick smooth snatch-and-release that would drive the ball-bearing in a single blurred streak ending in Vance’s temple, when Vance pulled his hand back from the Hawberks’ door and dashed out into the street.
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