‘As well as she can be,’ said Silas. ‘She is dead.’
The girl drifted back into the walls as Silas’ dark presence approached her, until the theatre’s glass door was empty once again. Edgar stared, unable to believe what he had just seen.
‘She was . . .’
‘You should not have been able seen her,’ said Silas. ‘This could be why people are fleeing the city and hiding in fear. They are not running from the wardens. They are running from the dead.’
Edgar glanced back at the theatre and saw the little girl’s face, just for a moment, before she dissipated again.
Silas soon caught up to the idling taxi carriage, which was standing at an empty crossroads. He grabbed the side of the driver’s chair and pulled himself up beside him. The man’s face crumpled with fear.
‘Do you know who I am?’
The man nodded silently. His hands, wrapped within the reins, were quivering.
Silas signalled for Edgar to climb into the back. ‘You will take us where I tell you. You will not stop unless I instruct you to do so.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Silas patted the man hard on the shoulder, making him wince with fright, then stepped down and entered the carriage, sitting with his back to the driver’s seat. He slid open the small hatch between him and driver and gave his orders. ‘The Museum of History,’ he said.
The driver kept his head down, and stirred his horse into action.
‘Why are we going there?’ asked Edgar.
‘Preparation, Mr Rill, is everything.’
As they drove, the streets they moved through gradually became more populated. Not everyone was ready to give up everything they had earned because stories were being told of the restless dead. Edgar tugged the short curtains closed on his side of the carriage, not wanting to be seen by anyone outside, but Silas kept his open. The people of Fume did not need to see him to know that he was there. His presence oozed from that carriage like oil across water. He had not been inside the city for some time. Now he was back, it would not take long for word to spread.
‘The wardens are going to find us,’ said Edgar, unable to hold his nerve with so many eyes upon the carriage. A cluster of paper notices were pinned to a panel behind his seat and he pulled one down, holding up a small wanted poster with drawings of Silas’ and Kate’s faces printed upon it. ‘People don’t ride straight through Fume when there is a price on their head.’
Silas did not look at the poster. ‘I do,’ he said.
When they arrived at the museum, Edgar stood looking up at the huge old building with its long windows of green glass while Silas spoke to their driver. Edgar was surprised that he and his horse did not just trundle away into the night the moment they stepped out. Whatever Silas had said to him, he waited there quietly while the two of them slipped inside.
The museum’s main hall was a cracked, dirty shell of what it had once been. Floorboards were torn up and cast against the walls. Bones from old exhibits were strewn across the floor, tangled in wires that had once suspended them from the ceiling, and in the centre of the floor was a listening circle: a carved ring of stone symbols left by the Skilled long before that abandoned place had ever been used as a museum.
Edgar had bad memories of that hall. Silas marched straight across it, heading for the winding corridors and the staircase leading to the floors below, while Edgar stayed close to the walls, still wary of the circle that he had once seen open up and reveal its true purpose as an active gateway into the half-life, letting him, Kate and Silas see deep into the realm of the restless dead.
Silas’ voice, calling him, echoed around the vast empty building and Edgar could not shake the feeling that there were eyes watching him from the high galleries above. He hurried after Silas, lit a candle from the wall and followed the voice down through numerous cellar floors, along into the deep part of the museum that Silas called his home.
‘Get yourself cleaned up.’ Silas stepped out of a room up ahead and threw a towel into Edgar’s hand. ‘There is running water in there. Clean clothes through the door opposite. You have ten minutes.’
Edgar’s clothes were filthy. The coat was not too bad, but the rest almost had to be peeled off his body, they were so engrained with mud, blood and sand. He washed quickly and was soon clean and dry. He scuffed his hair dry with the towel and sneaked into the second room.
The candle wavered in the doorway and Edgar wasted time just staring at a maze of garments hanging from slim wooden rails. He had the pick of anything from leather-strapped soldiers’ uniforms to robes belonging to past councilmen. Tempting as it was to choose one of the uniforms, Edgar settled on a black waistcoat with deep blue edges that hung down long at the back. The trousers he chose fit well enough, but he bulked out the waistcoat with a vest and two shirts layered on top of one another. It took a while to find boots that fitted, and he topped it all with a dark blue coat that reached to his knees. When he was ready, he stepped back into the corridor, where Silas was already waiting.
Gone were Silas’ bloodstained and travel-worn clothes. His dark hair was washed and loose. He wore a blood-red shirt, black trousers and polished boots, and had a short black coat with silver buttons sweeping from his right shoulder to the scabbard holding his black-bladed sword against his left hip. Edgar might have taken the opportunity to wear clothes fit for Fume’s upper classes, but Silas looked as though he were truly one of them.
‘The driver is waiting,’ said Silas, walking straight past him.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To help this city.’
True enough, the carriage driver was still waiting outside. When Silas appeared at the top of the museum steps, the thin man dropped from his seat and held the door open for them both to climb in. ‘Sirs,’ he said, with a nervous nod.
Edgar smiled awkwardly, but the driver dropped his eyes at once.
Silas did not have to give an order. The driver already knew where they were going, and the moment they were seated the carriage was on the move again. Edgar began to feel trussed up and uncomfortable in his unfamiliar clothes. The route the carriage followed, however, was all too familiar. As the gargoyle-guarded streets passed swiftly by, a knotted feeling of dread twisted in his stomach. He knew this route. He had travelled this way before.
‘I know where we’re going!’ he said suddenly. ‘We can’t go there. You have to stop the carriage.’ He leaned forward and shouted at the driver. ‘Stop the carriage!’
‘He will not listen to you.’
‘Then you should listen. This isn’t a plan. This is insane!’
‘Sit.’
At last the carriage stopped at the end of a long straight street leading to a place that Edgar knew well. The driver knocked open the little hatch behind Silas. ‘Are you sure about this, sir?’
‘Perfectly.’
The hatch clicked shut and the carriage continued on, climbing up a slight hill towards a collection of grand ancient buildings circled by an old iron fence. Edgar sank back in his seat as they stopped in front of a heavily guarded gate. Wardens converged upon the vehicle and Silas opened the window as a hooded man’s face filled the glass. The warden looked in at the two passengers and his eyes widened in surprise. For a second, Edgar thought he was going to order his men to attack, but instead he bowed slightly in Silas’ direction.
‘Officer. Open the gate,’ said Silas.
The warden stepped back and immediately raised a hand to his men. Two of them pushed the gates aside, opening up a clear path into the most protected part of Fume, the chambers of Albion’s High Council.
‘This has to be a trap,’ said Edgar. ‘They wouldn’t just let us in.’
The carriage horse walked slowly forward, and Edgar spotted three more wardens standing close by. The carriage rolled past their post, through an archway and across a courtyard, heading directly towards the chambers’ main door.
‘There’s still time to turn back,’ said Edgar. ‘The council wil
l set every warden they have on us the moment they see you.’
‘True loyalty does not die when it becomes inconvenient,’ said Silas. ‘Fume is under threat. This is where we must be.’
5
Silver & Dust
When Kate and Dalliah arrived at the city on horseback the disguised Blackwatch officers approached the gates first and spoke with two wardens standing on the other side. Dalliah had ordered Kate to keep her hood up once they were close to Fume and Kate peered out from behind it as the wardens signalled for the two of them to move forward. One of the men unlocked the great iron gates and pushed them open while the other bowed his head in greeting.
‘Lady Grey,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Fume.’
Kate thought there was something unusual about the man. His accent was softer than the sharp voices that were common across Albion.
‘The city is not as secure as its High Council believes,’ said Dalliah.
The warden smiled. ‘It never was.’ He handed Dalliah a cloth-wrapped package that was small and thin. They talked quietly for a short time, and Dalliah hooked the package on to her saddle.
The disguised officers stood alongside the wardens, and Kate overheard them giving the gate guards orders. She knew then that the latter were not wardens, but Blackwatch agents. Albion’s enemies had infiltrated beyond Fume’s gates.
‘We ride on,’ said Dalliah, taking the reins of Kate’s horse and leading it alongside her own.
The air trembled as the two women crossed the threshold of the city. Shades shifted in the shadows, filtered through the stones and mingled in the air, making the flames in the wardens’ lanterns shrink and fade back to the tiniest spark. A shiver of fear and expectation ran through every soul and every memory still locked within that place. Kate felt it as a chill colder than any winter wind, as if a door had opened to the coldest part of the world, letting freezing air blast against her skin. Fume’s streets were bare and ghostly. The grey and black buildings stood out sharply against a white sky and it felt as if the towers themselves were listening.
The Blackwatch remained with their associates at the gate. The city’s silence was disturbed by the screeching sound of metal hinges and Kate looked back to see the huge gates pulled shut. None of the wardens posted nearby had noticed the presence of intruders in their midst.
Since she had seen Silas, Kate’s memories had burned into clarity like flames spreading through a forest. She could remember everything that had happened in her life: the loss of her home to the wardens’ flames, the experiments conducted upon her by the High Council, and her trial at the hands of the Skilled who had rejected her even though she had gone to them for help. But worse than all the others, the one that made her wish she could forget everything all over again, was the memory of events that happened just before her journey across the sea.
She remembered Dalliah’s influence spreading around her, stifling her: Silas Dane, weakened and injured but never broken, and her best friend Edgar stabbed by a Blackwatch officer and left to die. Under Dalliah’s influence, Kate had walked away from both of them, leaving them there. She had seen the building they were trapped in burn and blaze, sending thick black smoke into the sky. Silas had survived, but she had seen no sign of Edgar in the village. She could not escape the guilt of leaving him behind. No matter what had happened, she would never forgive herself for that.
Kate’s hatred towards Dalliah seared inside her. She wanted to shout and rage at the woman who had torn Edgar away from her. She wanted to scream at her . . . make her pay for what she had done. But instead she stayed quiet. She had seen Dalliah’s cruelty at work and had already been overwhelmed by her once before. She needed to keep her mind clear. She needed to wait. If her time with Silas had taught her anything, it was patience.
Dalliah slowed the horses at the base of a memorial tower which looked very different from the dozens of others they had already passed. Its basic structure was much the same, rounded walls of black stone punctuated with small windows, but this tower’s stones looked as if they were veined with silver. Fragments of what could have been metal reflected the moonlight in thin trails across them, but as Kate looked closer she saw the truth. Ordinary people would never see anything unusual there. Those veins were threads of energy, invisible to all but the most Skilled of eyes. A dull ache of sadness permeated the air and Kate could feel the watching presence of at least two souls who were bound to that place, unable to leave.
Dalliah ordered Kate to dismount, and stood with her hand against the tower’s solid door. ‘It has been a long time since I was last here.’ The tower reacted immediately to her touch. The silvery glow faded back until it was barely visible at all, retreating from her hand like ripples on a lake.
Dalliah pulled a key from a pouch on her belt and slid it into the lock. The door was stiff and the air that belched from inside smelled dead and dry. Kate choked in the swirling dust, but Dalliah was unaffected. The two of them stepped into the forgotten building and then Kate heard the voice.
‘Do not go.’
Dalliah showed no sign of having heard it, but to Kate the voice was soft and clear.
‘Please.’
Inside the tower was unexpectedly bright. Light poured in through slit-like windows pierced into the walls alongside a curling staircase that rose from the vault below and led up to the levels above. Kate covered her nose with her sleeve to allow herself to breathe and spotted something slumped against the wall. It was a broken skeleton, its skull set crooked and empty eyed, its bony fingers hooked around the handle of a rusted blade.
‘Hello, Ravik,’ said Dalliah. She kicked the skeleton’s foot as she passed it, sending bones rattling across the floor. ‘You’ll be wanting this back, no doubt.’ She dropped the key between the skeleton’s ribs and something moved in the air above the steps. Kate looked just in time to see a pale apparition of a young man sinking into the wall.
‘Ignore him,’ said Dalliah. ‘He was useless in life, worthless in death.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A previous student of mine,’ said Dalliah. ‘He did not believe in what we are about to do. He made things difficult. He might have lived a little longer if he put his intelligence to better use.’
Dalliah crunched a loose bone beneath her boot as she followed the steps upwards. Kate hesitated, concerned that Dalliah had locked the door behind them, and the moment the woman was out of sight she crouched down, slid her fingers between the dead man’s ribs and hooked out the little key.
‘Do not go.’
The air chilled beside her, and she spotted something next to the old blade. Something had been scratched within the stone. She moved the dagger to one side and discovered a thread of spiked, thinly cut letters, etched to form a shaky word.
MIRROR
Kate’s fingers brushed gently against one of Ravik’s thigh bones as she stood up, and she saw the final moments of his life through his own eyes. Standing at a desk. An intruder behind him: heard, but not seen. A knife – like fire – plunging into his side. The attacker making his escape. Ravik’s bloodied hands staining the walls as he stumbled down the tower steps. The door . . . locked. Kate heard his weak cries for help as if she were making the sound herself, sharing his pain and desperation as he spent his last scrap of life scratching the message into the floor.
‘Kate.’ Dalliah’s voice carried around the curved staircase and she quickly moved her hand away from the bone. Ravik had not been surprised by the locked door in the memory. He had expected it: only half hoped that his attacker had forgotten to seal it again on the way out. Kate had noticed deep scratches around the lock where someone had tried to prise the door open from the inside. Whatever Ravik was doing in there, he had not been doing it by choice. He had been locked in that tower many years ago. He had been murdered there, and now his spirit could not leave it. Ravik moved through the walls, circling her, but staying out of sight.
‘Don’t let her find it. The message must be passed on
.’
Kate stood up, pocketed the key and read the scratched word once more. ‘I’ll try,’ she said, still not sure what it meant, and Ravik’s spirit passed invisibly beside her, leading her up the tower steps.
At the very top stood the room where Ravik spent his final days. Dalliah was standing to one side, next to an old bedframe, and there were low cupboards running around the rest of the curved wall, each one ravaged by damp that seeped in through narrow windows that looked out to the east and west. Every flat surface was covered with old bowls made of tarnished silver. A box filled with a variety of unusual tools stood propped against the wall, and a collection of knives had been stabbed into the cupboard tops, each one surrounded by deep welts where they had been forced into the wood over and over again.
‘Ravik was a troubled young man,’ said Dalliah.
‘People don’t like being locked away,’ said Kate.
‘Do not believe everything the dead tell you,’ said Dalliah. ‘Isolation was essential for his work.’
Kate touched the handle of one of the knives and saw an image of Ravik stabbing it into the cupboard, just for a second. ‘What was he doing here?’ she asked.
‘My ability to supervise work here in Fume was limited while I was on the Continent,’ said Dalliah. ‘In my absence, Ravik’s task was to test a theory of mine. The theory was correct, of course, but Ravik refused to see the procedure through to its natural end. We must complete what he began, and we must do it right first time, with no hesitation.’ Dalliah’s eyes filled with anticipation. ‘If the spirit in the wheel realises what we are doing, it will fight back.’
Dalliah dragged a mouldering cloth from the wall and exposed a small stone wheel hidden underneath. It was set deep into the wall and made up of a central circular tile – a few inches wider than an open hand – with smaller tiles arranged in a channel around its edge. Each tile carried a symbol and the stones themselves held an imprisoned soul that had been trapped inside for centuries. It looked well preserved, apart from one tile whose symbol had been scraped away leaving a well of deep scratches behind. Kate had seen wheels like that before and she knew enough to treat it with respect.
Wintercraft: Legacy Page 5