Wolfhound Century

by Peter Higgins

  The nearest Fransa port to Mirgorod was Koromants. Maroussia had seen a photograph once of the seafront there: a wide boulevard of coffee shops and konditorei looking out over clear dark waters, and behind it, rising against the sky, the sheer jagged mountains of the Koromants Massif. There, she had decided, that was where she would go, when the time came. Though how she would get there she didn’t know.

  Maroussia decided not to take her identity card. It would be no help where she was going. She placed it carefully on the table in clear view, for the police to find when they came. It was time. She had delayed too long.

  She turned towards the doorway and saw the figure of madness and death standing there, regarding her with shadowed fathomless eyes.

  ‘Maroussia?’ it said. ‘Maroussia. Are you ready?’

  The paluba’s voice was thin and quiet in the room, a breeze among distant trees. The air was filled with the scent of pine resin and damp earth. Flimsy brown garments shifted about the creature, stirring on a gentle wind. There was a mouth-shape in the hooded shadows that moved as it spoke.

  The creature stepped forward across the threshold. Only it wasn’t a step. The thing seemed to fall slowly forward and jerk itself backwards and upright at the tipping point. It appeared flimsy, held together by fragile joints. Its limbs were articulated strangely. Behind the creature another one came, its follower, its companion double, more shadowy, more shapeless, more airy, more… nothing. Just a shadow, waiting.

  ‘What are you?’ said Maroussia, at the ragged edge of panic. And hope.

  ‘I can smell wounds here,’ the paluba said. ‘You’re bleeding. You’ve been hurt.’

  ‘Who are you?’ said Maroussia again. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘You don’t have to be frightened,’ the voice said. ‘I am your friend. Your mother’s friend. But your mother wouldn’t listen to me. Did she tell you nothing?’

  ‘She’s gone now. She’s dead. The police killed her.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a moment’s stillness in the shadow where the paluba’s face was suggested. Maroussia thought she could hear grieving in its voice. ‘She took what we left for her. Did she give it to you?’

  ‘No. She gave me nothing.’

  ‘It was an invitation. A key. Your father sent it.’

  ‘I never had a father.’

  ‘Of course you did. Everyone does.’

  ‘My father was a lie. I come from nothing.’

  ‘Did she tell you that? Poor darling, it wasn’t so. Do you want to know?’

  ‘Know what?

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The paluba reached up and pushed back her thin hood, showing her beautiful, terrible face. Her waiting mouth

  ‘Kiss me, Maroussia.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kiss me.’ In the shadow the companion stirred. ‘Kiss me.’

  Maroussia stepped forward and rested her hand on the paluba’s slender shoulders. Sweet air was drifting out of its upturned mouth. It tasted of autumn. Maroussia put her own dry mouth against it, slightly open, and drank.

  In the paluba’s kiss there were trees, beautiful complex trees, higher and older than any trees grew, and everything was connected.

  Maroussia was walking among them. She placed her hand on the silent living bark and felt her skin, her very flesh, become transparent. She became aware of the articulation of her bones, sheathed in their muscle and tendon. Eyes, heart and lungs, liver and brain, nested like birds in a walking tree of bone. A weave of veins and arteries and streaming nerves that flickered with gentle electricity.

  She heard the leaves and branches of the trees moving. Whispers filling the air with rich smells. The trees reached their roots down into the earth like arms, and she reached down with them, extending filament fingers, pushing, sliding insistently, down through crevices in the rock itself.

  And breaking through.

  The buried chamber of the wild sleeping god was furled up tight but immense beyond measuring. The restless sleeping god, burdened with tumultuous dreams, had extended himself outwards and inwards and downwards, carving out an endless warren, an intricate dark hollowing. Its whorls and chambers ramified in all directions, turning and twisting and burrowing, spiral shadow tunnellings of limitless extent, unlit by the absent sun but warmed by the heart of the earth. It was all rootwork: the roots of the rock and the roots of the trees. It was matrix and web. Fibrous roots of air, filaments of energy and space, knitted everything to everything else in the chamber of the sleeping god’s dream.

  He was lying on his back and great taproots drove down through his ribs. A tree limb speared up out of his groin. Water trickled over him. Rootlets slipped down, fingering his pinioned body, brushing and touching gently. The roots of the great trees drank from the buried god as their leaves drank the sun.

  Up in the light the trees mingled their crowns in one great leafhead and exhaled the good, living air of the world. The air she drank on the paluba’s breath.

  And there was a man walking there among the trees. She knew that he was her father and he knew that she was there, and he greeted her, and she understood why her mother had loved him and why she had to leave and how the leaving had been her death.

  48

  Lom sat bolt upright in his seat on the tram. The file! Chazia would come for it, and she would find Vishnik. Maroussia.

  He had to do something. Now.

  The tram had stopped. An anonymous place somewhere away from the centre of the city. Across the street was a hotel, a telephone cable running to it from a pole in the centre of the square. Lom ran across. THE GRAND PENSION CHESMA. Wet zinc tables under a dripping wrought iron veranda. Steep marble steps up to a chipped, discoloured portico. A handwritten card propped in a small side window: Closed For Winter. Lom hammered on the door.

  ‘Open up! Police!’

  The paint on the door was peeling, revealing sinewy bleached grey wood. There was an ivory button in a verdigrised surround. BELL, it said. PORTER. He pressed it, more in hope than expectation, and kicked at the door.

  ‘Police! Open or I break it down.’

  There was a noise of bolts being pulled back. The door opened. A porter in sabots and a brown overall eyed him warily.

  ‘You don’t look like police.’ We wouldn’t take you as a guest.

  Lom shoved the door open and shouldered his way past the porter into the dim hall. A suggestion of wing-backed chairs and ottomans draped with grey sheets. A smell of old cooking and older carpets. Dampness, dust and the sea. Lom unbuttoned his cloak.

  ‘This is a uniform,’ he said. ‘And this is a gun. I need to telephone. Now.’

  The porter led him into a back room. There was a phone on the desk. The porter lingered uneasily.

  ‘Don’t stand there gawking. I’m hungry. Get me some sausage. And a mug of tea.’

  It took Lom for ever to negotiate his way past a series of operators, getting through first to the Lodka and then to Krogh’s office. The private secretary’s voice came on the line.

  ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Lom. I need to speak to him. Now.’

  ‘Ah. Investigator Lom. The Under Secretary was beginning to wonder whether you might not have taken a train back to Podchornok. You haven’t, have you? Where exactly is it you are calling from?’

  ‘Just put me through to him.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s not available at the moment. His diary is very full. If you’ll tell me where you are, or give me the number, I’ll arrange for him to return your call some time this afternoon. Unless you’d like me to make you an appointment to see him. I’m sure he would be most—’

  ‘Stop pissing me about and put me through.’

  There was a hiss of indrawn breath and the line went dead. Fuck.

  He was about to hang up when he heard the tired dry voice of Krogh.

  ‘Yes, Investigator. Something to report?’

  ‘Can I speak?’

&
nbsp; ‘Of course.’

  ‘I mean, this call is private? Bag carrier not listening?’

  ‘Just give me your report, Lom. I was playing this game when you were at school.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re getting complacent. Are you sure you’re secure?’

  ‘Of course I am, man. There are systems. Arrangements.’

  ‘That’s what Chazia thought, but she was stupid. She relied on the systems because she’d made them, but getting in wasn’t even hard.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Maybe she’s listening now.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. You’re hysterical. Perhaps I made a mistake about you.’

  ‘If she is, it doesn’t matter. I’m not saying anything she doesn’t already know I know.’

  ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  ‘Kantor isn’t the story. Kantor’s an agent. Chazia’s agent. Chazia’s the one moving all the pieces.’

  ‘Can you prove it? Are you sure?’ Lom listened for indignation. Disbelief. But there was only guarded interest in Krogh’s voice. ‘Is there proof, Lom? Certain proof I can take to the Novozhd?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Lom. ‘I’ve got a bag full of proof. Her own files. Her own handwriting all over them. But she knows I’ve got them.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And if she is listening to your calls — and if I were you I wouldn’t bet my life she’s not — she knows I’ve told you. Of course, even if she doesn’t listen to your calls, she’ll assume I’ve told you anyway.’

  ‘Ah. I see. Yes.’ Pause. ‘And how did you come by these sensitive papers?’

  ‘I broke into her private archive and took them.’

  ‘Did you, indeed? You’ve exceeded my expectations, Investigator.’

  ‘And now you know, and she knows you know. So you have to do something about it. Action this day, Under Secretary. Action this hour.’

  ‘What exactly did you have in mind?’

  ‘You’re her boss. Roll her up. Reel her in. Have her killed. I don’t know — it doesn’t matter — just get her, and do it now. Get her and you get Kantor too.’

  ‘I’ll need the proof. I’ll need the papers.’

  ‘There’s no time for that. You need to move now. And I’d take care of your private secretary as well, if I were you.’

  ‘That’s wild talk, Lom.’

  ‘Chazia had my personal file, Krogh. She had it from your office less than an hour after we met. Referred to her by your private secretary. He even signed the fucking thing out to her. They’re running rings round you. They’re so confident they don’t even try to hide their tracks.’

  ‘I still need to show the Novozhd the proof.’

  Krogh sounded old and tired. The fatigue was seeping down the line. Lom remembered the big office. The plain neat desk. The windows. Quiet traffic noise. Long corridors. This wasn’t going to work.

  ‘I’ll get the files to you, Krogh. But you can’t wait for that. You need to act.’

  ‘When can you bring me the files?’

  ‘Soon. Soon. I’m not saying any more on this line.’

  ‘Investigator Lom. Be calm. You’re asking me to risk a huge amount — everything — on—’

  ‘A telephone call from a junior policeman from Podchornok. Your rules, Under Secretary. You got me into this.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Oh, and there’s one other thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s an angel in the forest somewhere beyond Vig. It’s alive.’

  ‘That’s preposterous.’

  ‘Chazia and Kantor — mainly Kantor, I think — are in communication with it. I just thought you should know.’

  Lom hung up.

  The porter brought a tray with a glass of black tea, a plate of rye bread and a length of dark purple sausage.

  ‘The dining room is closed. You can take it here. Or there is the garden.’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Lom. ‘You have it.’

  There was half an hour yet till the tram to Pelican Quay. Back at the tram halt, Lom sat alone under the canopy, sick and dispirited. His clothes and skin stank of hopelessness and self-disgust and other people’s blood.

  Image: Safran killing the old woman in the street.

  Image: Maroussia Shaumian walking away alone. Pistol shots. Three.

  Image: Chazia overturning Vishnik’s flat and finding the file. Image: Vishnik dead.

  All caused by him. His responsibility. His fault. Because every step he’d taken had been wrong. Because he’d been a blundering, halfhearted, self-indulgent, piss-poor idea of a detective, and now he wasn’t even that. He was loose. He was alone.

  It would take him hours to retrieve the file and get it to Krogh, even if it was still there. He had no confidence that Krogh would move against Chazia before he had the file in his hands, or even when he did have it. Lom had done what he could, but it hadn’t been good enough. It hadn’t been good at all. It had been shit.

  The sky had grown dark and livid. Fat cold drops of rain began to explode on the ground, bursting at first like fallen overripe fruits but then like bullets from a mitrailleuse, rapid and hard and shattering, mixed with shards of ice. Over the sea a storm was coming.

  Out in the Sound a high tide had been building. The two broken fragments of moon tugged at the weight of water, dragging its dark bulk shouldering against the land. A twisting black surge of foam-flecked ocean forced its way in through the Seagate towards the city, scouring the foundations of the Halsesond martello forts as it came. The rivers and canals of Mirgorod were already high and swollen, pregnant with weeks of rain and snow. Inside Cold Amber Strand the column of brackish tidal waters confronted and commingled with the rivers in flood. In Mirgorod the waters rose quickly when they came.

  49

  The rain pounded the city and darkened the sky. Soaked, Vishnik stepped out of the shabby crowded street and closed the louvred door behind him, and the House on the Purfas enfolded him in its familiar melancholy civilised quietness. The entrance hall was faded, airy, spacious. Empty but for dust motes, pools of shadow and the sweetness of wax polish and age. Grey window-light and the sound of rain. Somewhere a clock was ticking slowly. Doorways and corridors opened in all directions, and a wide staircase climbed upwards into indistinctness.

  Now, the House on the Purfas was home to the Lezarye Government in Exile Within, but once it had been the Sheremetsny Dom, a low expansive sprawl of wood and brick, skirted with peeling loggias and leaking conservatories. The country estate for which it was built had disappeared long ago under the tenements and courtyards of the expanding city, but for Vishnik the corridors of the House on the Purfas led away into the lost domain of his childhood. If he could go deeper into the house, he felt, he would be back among it all. Back in his own boundless childhood house at Vyra, with its world of passages and stairs. Daylight slanted in through high narrow windows panelled with stained glass, splashing lozenges of colour across dusty floorboards and threadbare rugs. The tall furniture and heavy fabrics of drawing rooms, salons, dining rooms, bedrooms, box rooms and attics. The strange devices and spiced air of kitchens, pantries and sculleries. If he went to a window in the House on the Purfas and looked out, he was sure he would see, not the Moyka Strel, but balustraded pathways, formal parterres, weathered statuary, great heaps and mounds of foliage overgrowing walls of old brick and, in the furthest distance, a slope of wooded hills.

  There was a brass hand-bell on a side table. Vishnik picked it up and rang it. A woman in a black dress and a white cape came.

  ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Sir?’

  A domestic servant. Another dizzying time-tumble. The whole place was a museum. A case of butterfly specimens, dried out and pinned; their dusty wings spread under glass in a parody of summer flight, but if you opened the glass and picked one up it would crunch and collapse between your fingers.

  In the centuries after the coming of the Founder, the people
of Lezarye had learned to accept the end of their annual migrations and settle into the static life of the Vlast. The elder families had absorbed the ways of the aristocrats, a choice that was only the latest in the long history of tragic turns and counter-turns that left them with nowhere to go when the Novozhd gripped power and the aristocrats fell.

  ‘I need to see Teslom,’ said Vishnik to the woman.

  ‘What name shall I say?’

  ‘Prince Raku ter-Fallin Mozhno Shirin-Vilichov Vishnik.’

  ‘Will you wait in the library, please, Excellency.’

  Teslom was the Curator of Lezarye. He kept the records of the old families and tended the artefacts, regalia and memories that survived from their proud ancient days of hunting and herding, and the long slow rhythms of their decline: the systole of assimilation, the diastole of segregation and pogrom. Although Vishnik had visited the House on the Purfas to consult Teslom several times before, he had never been admitted to the Curator’s collection. No one who was not born into the long families ever was. The exclusion irked him. Lezarye had few enough friends in Mirgorod.

  The room he was put in to wait was not part of the Collection, it was only the Secular Library. It was a dim quiet place of heavy bookcases shut away behind glass doors and curtains. Vishnik opened one of the cases and looked at the spines of the books. The ones here were merely miscellanea, marginal outriders of the true library, but still there were some things here that could be found nowhere else in the Vlast.

  Lyrics From The Moth Border

  Hunting Cold Beasts

  Peace Of Mind Among Cold Beasts

  Pigments, Tints

  Life On The Water Ways

  The Geometry Of Clouds, Steams and Vapours

  Jurisprudence In The Archipelago

  Vishnik took a book from a shelf, carried it across to a table and opened it. Shaw’s Atlas of the Archipelago. It contained page after page of maps in muted colours and a gazetteer of place names: a world, but not his; other countries, other islands, strung out across the face of the blue, with vertebrae and ribs of snow-capped mountains. The poetry of unfamiliar shorelines. A great bridge had been built across the sea to join them, thousands of miles long, but it was broken in several places. The orthography of the place names was familiar, but the names themselves… He didn’t recognise them — they were strange and wonderful. Morthern. Foerd. Mier. Gealm. The Warth. Horrow. Sarshalls. It was an atlas of elsewhere.