Breakfast was served, then cleared. The others variously read, watched, chatted, ordered coffees, drank them, and ordered more. The restaurant manager, who called himself Mr Felicity, was delighted to find in Tøssentern a foreigner who could speak fluent Ferent, including his childhood dialect. He presented Tøssentern with a glossy Order of Ceremony, declaring it would become a valuable souvenir. It certainly assisted in knowing what to expect as the day progressed, and provided a summary in grand, sweeping statements of what the Entente Ferende–Chinoise would bring to the people. Though not, as Nicholas discreetly pointed out, what it would take from them.
At eleven o’clock, the public tram service stopped. At twelve, a regiment of Palace guards marched down Ahorte and on to the pier, depositing members to each side at five-metre intervals all the way to the Gazebo. They were to stand at attention for another four hours.
It had rained in the night, but the sky was now clear. During the morning an atypical breeze started, which they first noticed when needing to batten down anything that could be blown from their table. Its effect was to make the bay choppy and the water look grey. Tøssentern and Anna were pleased to be wearing their Reckles hats.
The next spectacle was a military band, which they could hear on Ahorte before it came into view. It continued down the pier, taking up station at the Gazebo. At that distance, and with the breeze, Worse was thankful that their music hardly intruded on his thoughts.
Those thoughts were on Feng.
He had Feng’s satellite phone number, and if Spoiling’s representations came through, he could soon have transcripts from the Signals Directorate. He knew where Feng travelled, he had seen his face, he knew what his business was, he knew the identity of his closest criminal accomplice, Nefari. He had Nefari’s number, he knew where he lived, he knew where he travelled, he had spoken to him directly. And through Nefari he had baited Feng. The bait was Zheng.
What would Feng make of the words ‘met certain death’? The obtuseness would keep coming back to him, distract him, cause errors. It would eat away his certitude like a strong acid. And that acid Worse could replenish at will. Altogether, he felt very strategically placed.
Worse was convinced that this so-called Entente was in reality a business plan joining the corrupt Nefari to the criminal Feng. Without Feng, Nefari would fail. He had already lost Fiendisch and the whole extravagant scheme at the Humboldt. He would soon lose control of Banco Ferende as international regulators forced audit closures.
It didn’t matter, then, if the Entente were signed or not; without Feng, it would lose meaning. The inference comforted Worse. It removed an urgency to interfere in the day’s proceedings. Equally, it established Feng as the party to eliminate. And, for this, Worse had the means. It was just like Zheng’s.
While he was meditating on Feng, Worse had opened his laptop and was tracking the satellite phones. He expected that the two principals in this charade would remain readily contactable between themselves; that was a basic rule for colluding parties. He wasn’t surprised, therefore, to find Nefari’s moving slowly down Ahorte, and Feng’s out on the bay, where the destroyer was moored. This was consistent with information in the Order of Ceremony, where it was stated that Prince Nefari would take the royal tram to the ceremonial Gazebo, where he would receive the honourable Chinese Envoy, Admiral Feng, who would arrive by launch from the ‘Friend Ship’ moored in the bay.
Two minutes before Nefari’s carriage came into view, Worse informed his friends that the Prince would appear in two minutes. Nicholas and Millie showed no surprise at this precision forecast.
Nicholas had described the royal tram as opulent, and so it proved. Smaller than a public carriage, it was canopied at one end and open at the other. Prince Nefari was seated on an elevated golden throne at the open end, facing back toward the land. Beside him, on running boards, were footmen in gold, red and brilliant blue costume. The carriage was swathed in gold and silver, with richly coloured silks threaded with precious metals and gemstones. The Prince wore a white naval dress uniform encrusted with medals, over which was draped a long cape checked in two tones of royal blue, and edged in ermine. He might well have been a pharaoh. As the carriage progressed along the pier, the band played a procession piece that gradually built in volume and tempo to a royal fanfare audible well beyond Felicity’s.
The program given to Tøssentern described what was to happen next. Protocol required that the Prince be at the Gazebo first, facing the city, and that the supplicant Envoy then approach from the sea. He would be escorted from his launch to the foot of the throne, and the documents signed on a jewelled hand plate supported by Palace Secretaries.
Worse looked at the destroyer through binoculars. The ceremonial open launch was afloat under davits at the stern, and was soon underway. As it neared, he could make out a figure, dressed in naval uniform, standing on deck, using the bow rail for support. Worse glanced at his laptop screen; Feng was carrying his satellite phone. It was almost tempting to call him and mention Zheng.
The launch was now passing the pontoon tip of the pier on the west side, still tossing a little in the choppy water. Worse was scanning through binoculars from the pier to the launch when he heard Anna cry out, ‘Edvard, look.’
She was pointing outwards, upwards. Worse’s eye followed the line, but he saw nothing. Then he caught it; a transient patch of darkness in the sky, vanishing before he was sure it was real. There it was again, just for an instant, hundreds of metres on, higher. This time, the others all saw it. Anna sensed what it was. Tøssentern knew beyond doubt. He leaned in front of Anna to whisper to Worse.
‘Condor.’
Worse listened without taking his eyes off the scene; he was scanning the sky, ready for the next apparition. And when it came, it was very, very different. Far distant from the last appearance, completely out of nowhere, four enormous condors materialized in the sky high above the pontoons. First they flew upwards, catching the breeze, maintaining a perfect two-by-two formation as if joined in harness. From there they swept down westwards across the bay, gaining incredible speed in the dive, then pulled up to their previous height, repeating the manoeuvre eastwards.
The restaurant had fallen silent, the radio turned off. Worse briefly raised his binoculars to look at Nefari and Feng. Neither seemed aware of what was happening. He looked back at the condors. They were high in the air on the other side of the pier, turning. Even at the greater distance, they looked larger. Still in perfect formation, they dived. This time, it was a deeper, faster descent, and headed, it seemed, straight for the royal carriage. The Prince, oblivious, continued staring vacantly at his subjects on the land.
But the condors didn’t attack the Prince. Instead, they dived beneath the carriage, beneath the pier, vanishing from sight for just a moment. But what emerged from under the pier on their own side caused even Worse to catch his breath. Not four condors, but one. One gigantic bird that flapped its wings powerfully to pull up from the water, gaining height, retracing the path of the previous four.
It wasn’t clear if the Prince had caught sight of it, but several footmen on the pier were panicking, some running back toward land. Feng had certainly seen it, abandoning his sedate stance at the bow and gesticulating to his helmsman in the stern. Worse saw the launch begin to go about, its bow and stern waves whitening.
When that single monstrous condor had reached its chosen height it turned, wings spread. There was an instant when the sun caught its plumage at such an angle that to those in the restaurant it looked sheer gold, but in the dive the sinister, iridescent black returned. This time it was further out, sweeping across the pontoons to rise again high in the eastern sky.
It was almost possible to imagine its presence as benign. The great, mythical bird that lived in the Ferende unconscious coming out to celebrate, performing a people’s exhibition in the way an air-show flyover would serve in similar circumstances. But for those who had seen it from the pier, it was anything but propitiou
s. They were fleeing.
From the east it came, falling faster than seemed possible, headed for the pier. The Prince stood, turning to see what was disrupting the ceremony, why his guards, footmen and Secretaries, even his carriage driver, had sacrificed decorum and run to land. He found himself alone on the pier. He would have seen a fast-moving shadow on the water, then looked upwards for just a moment’s comprehension of its cause: the black, faceless messenger of Rep’husela streaking directly to him.
And suddenly that imperious, solitary figure, dressed lavishly in medallioned white, royal blue and silvered ermine, was blackened out of sight, enclosed in seething plumage with great wings beating on the side. The massive creature then half flew, half dragged itself from the carriage to the pier’s edge, plunging over, making flight just above the water.
The bay was glassy calm now, despite the breeze, and for a moment condor and reflection were almost joined in doubled size. It seemed to struggle there, low across the water, until it caught the wind for lift and pulled away, gaining height to the west. Prince Nefari the Beneficent was on his mythic journey to the Bergamot Sea.
Worse followed the condor’s flight for a few seconds, then lowered his glasses to Feng. The launch had failed to go about, and was now side-on to the shore, bow pointing to the empty throne, the sea churning off the stern. To Worse, it looked high in the water, and wasn’t making headway, as if fouled on some underwater snag. Feng was clearly shouting at the helmsman, raising his arms threateningly, striding the deck end to end. But when he next reached the bow, the vessel lurched stern up, as if extraordinarily unbalanced by his weight. The propeller was lifted half above the surface, raising a disc of sparkling water that drenched the sailor and spilled down the deck. Feng, imagining he could re-trim the boat, tried to make his way aft, clutching the handrail, but the combination of dress shoes and steep, slippery deck worked against him.
The boat was now pitched dangerously, the stern fully out of the water, the bow under. The helmsman could do nothing to regain control, and was hanging on for his life. Worse wondered why the boat wasn’t sinking: at that angle it should slip straight in. Perhaps the same snag was somehow supporting it. He lowered his glasses briefly to seek the opinion of Tøssentern, who was observing events through his own binoculars. At that very moment, Tøssentern spoke quietly to Anna, and Worse heard it.
‘Weaver fish.’
Behind Tøssentern stood Mr Felicity, ashen faced, staring out to sea and repeating softly, mantra-like, ‘Kenijo, kenijo.’
Worse looked back at the launch. The sailor aft was still clinging on. So was Feng, just forward of midships, but now he seemed to be dancing, skipping from foot to foot as if the deck were on fire.
Something else was happening. Worse adjusted focus carefully, but couldn’t improve the clarity. The gunwale beside Feng had lost definition, looking strangely glassy. Within another minute, the deck itself was out of focus. Feng stopped jumping, his once immaculate white trousers tinged with purple. One hand still grasped the rail, the other flicked wildly at his legs as a watery, refractive film seemed to cover him from below.
Worse strained to see. He steadied the binoculars with his elbows on the table, screwed the barrel back a fraction, and found the focal plane. The sea around the launch was carpeted with interlinking fish, almost invisible but for their movement as they organized. Towards the bow, where Feng was caught, that woven surface curved upwards, high above the deck. Weaver fish were joining at the base, insinuating themselves into a solid tapestry, widening it, strengthening it from beneath, pushing their woven tower upwards with amazing speed, now almost to a man’s height.
Feng’s last movement was to raise his second hand to grasp the rail beside the first. He was leaning over, staring at the land. Worse felt personally transfixed, as if some superhuman vision had locked their gaze once more. This, it seemed, was the bringing to account, and the coup de grâce would be Worse’s favourite—incomprehension.
‘Zheng,’ he mouthed beneath the binoculars, ‘Zheng met certain death.’
Feng’s countenance instantly changed, to hatred fixed on Worse. His mouth opened to form a curse. Before it could be voiced, the topmost weaver fish pushed higher, interlocking rapidly at their apex to envelop him entirely.
The genius of the structure was now more evident, how it was propagated upward, how it could be stable two metres above the water. To Worse, it was more intriguing than the sculpture in the Kardia. This was not assembled over months in a precision foundry, this was not the patient labour of a master craftsman. Here, the geometry was living, dynamic and imperfect, and its artistry and cleverness and orchestration belonged to the weaver fish alone.
And Feng, that figure fixed within, motionless, diffuse and indistinct as if set in aspic or imprisoned in Fitrina’s casting, continued looking at the land. The tapestry around his face first swelled with reinforcement, then tightened like a wringer. The man inside diminished, becoming faint and shrunken as his substance seemed to dissipate. Seconds later, the aspic curtain fell away, peeling downwards as the weaver fish retreated and slipped beneath the water.
For a moment Feng still stood, still grasped the rail, still stared at Worse. Then he toppled forward, rinlin face, rinlin hands, and crumpled Admiral’s suit, into the bay.
The carpet on the sea was gone, the former swell and chop returned, the deck and gunwale regained their natural sharpness, the bow lifted, and the hull set properly in the water. The sailor at the stern was spared.
The restaurant was deathly quiet. They had witnessed two grotesque, mythically charged attacks that, for the Ferende people, were surely not random. Mr Felicity began to speak, in Ferent, his voice picking up in volume and emotion.
‘It is a Ferende prayer, the Enorem; very ancient, catechismal,’ advised Tøssentern quietly. ‘Now he is asking Rep’husela to show mercy on Madregalo, to cleanse,’ he hesitated in translation, ‘more to bless, this bay. He is asking that the spirits of the Prince and the foreigner not inhabit the bay. And, believe it or not, that his business not suffer. Now he is asking everyone to leave. He is apologizing.’
Worse was the first to stand up, collecting his things, and leave payment. The others followed. As they made their way between the tables, Tøssentern approached Mr Felicity, who looked stricken, and quite solemnly offered his hand, speaking to him in Ferent. In return, Mr Felicity briefly hugged Tøssentern, and cried.
They felt rather stricken themselves. Worse glanced back at the pier as he led the way up Ahorte. The royal carriage, symbol of absolute rule only minutes before, looked shabby from this distance, like a fairground replica, its silks and canopy fluttering for attention. And that magnificent throne, more desolate than empty, lay fallow in its pointless ostentation, now projecting excess, absurdity, and downfall.
Worse wanted to find somewhere to regroup, away from the bay, where they could consult and process what they had seen. In the Kardia, he secured the same café table that Nicholas and he had occupied the previous day.
Customers were few, and waiters seemed reluctant to serve outside. Many shops, normally crowded with tourists, had hastily closed, and the Kardia was almost vacant, offering an uninterrupted view to the fountain. There were many more military uniforms in evidence than was usual. The ceremonial Palace guards in their brilliant blue capes, who had earlier lined the tramway, appeared to have lost all discipline and were standing around in agitated, talkative groups, their automatic weapons shouldered carelessly. News that there was no longer a monarch to protect seemed to have left them purposeless.
‘What do you think will happen, Nicholas?’ It was Anna who asked. She was looking up at the façade of the Palace, already flaunting its cosmetic radiance stolen from the afternoon light.
Nicholas had spent the walk up Ahorte considering that question, particularly the implications for their LDI station. He was optimistic.
‘I expect there will be a mixture of shock and celebration. The Prime Minister will decla
re a period of mourning. The constitution will require that Crown Prince Arnaba return from wherever he is. The induction of Secretaries is for the life of the monarch, so they should lose power. That means there is an opportunity, which won’t be lost on my Madregalo friends, to reassert the authority of Parliament. La Ferste will carry on as usual. And the Entente? Sunk without trace along with the Admiral, I would have thought. Feng Tong is decapitated; that will seriously impact on the northern exploitation. Remember, these were not ordinary deaths. These were totemic deaths. They’re loaded with significance that will work against Chinese interests for generations. You can be sure that any part the People’s Republic officially or unofficially played in the bogus pact will be hastily expunged from the record, the associations are so negative now.’
‘Quite the Entente Fatale, as it turned out,’ observed Tøssentern, who had otherwise been silent.
‘I think there’s something else we should talk about,’ continued Nicholas. ‘Our condor paper.’
‘Go on, Nicholas,’ said Tøssentern.
‘Well, after seeing what happened today, that apparent intentionality, its sentience as a bird, it seems to me that we know a lot about the aggregation of Phulex but nothing about the coherence, the emergent nature, of the condor that results. I just wonder, particularly given its cultural significance, how responsible it is to publish the first with no understanding of the second.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Tøssentern. ‘Anna? If Paulo and Walter agree, are we all happy for an indefinite stay of publication?’
While she was listening to Nicholas, Anna had been looking at Edvard. He had come back to the Ferendes with a purpose, in search of release and reintegration that no amount of therapy in Mingle Lane could provide. She had come to realize that the idea of locating Abel was only partly a quest for the weaver fish, about validating a passion that had nearly taken his life and left his psyche damaged.
The Weaver Fish Page 26