by Ben Galley
As ever, Lady Dizali’s eyes were wide but vacant. The maids had only just wiped her mouth and already there was a bead of saliva gathering there. Skeletal, were her limbs, the skin gaunt and a shade away from grey. He could see every bone in her face, and her hair … well. What had not fallen out was now tangled and lank, grey where it was once a flowing black. Dizali swore there and then that she would have the finest wig London had to offer when the time came.
There was a timid knock from the butler standing in the doorway. He had a white envelope in his hands. ‘A letter, my Lord. Just arrived.’
‘Give it here.’ The Prime Lord snapped his fingers. He snatched the letter and tore the corner. Blue paper greeted him underneath. ‘What time shall I have your carriage ready, Sir?’ the butler piped up. Dizali reached into his breast pocket to fish out his pocket-watch, a family heirloom, and grimaced at the time. He stuffed the letter into his coat pocket.
‘Ten minutes. Now away with you all. Get out.’
‘Yes, Milord,’ the servants chorused, swiftly vacating the small room.
Dizali waited for the door below him to click shut before he approached the bed. They had changed her sheets and nightdress, but still the odour of illness and years spent floating amongst the bedsheets remained. Dizali doubted whether it would ever vanish now.
‘Avalin, my dear.’ The Prime Lord’s voice was whisper-soft, a snake’s hiss. A far cry from the bellowing tone he used in the Emerald House. What they would say if, like flies on the wall, they could see me now? he inwardly grunted. As ever and always, she just breathed in, out, in aching slowness and feeble vigour. Dizali spoke to the shell, hoping the spark within her could still hear.
‘Today is the day,’ he said proudly. He reached to gently grasp her hand, as if she were paper-thin porcelain. She certainly had the colour. ‘You were right to push me, beloved. For all those years, you were the rock. And today I shall make myself the man you always knew I could be.’
Silence, save for breathing. Dizali perched on the edge of the bed to hold her skeletal hand on his lap. Though he usually could not stomach her empty stare, he wanted to see something, anything. He wanted to know she had heard him.
‘All has been arranged. One last piece remains, and then we shall have the Empire we dreamt of, my dear. That you dreamt of.’
A twitch? Or a foolish blink of his own? Dizali’s breath caught in his throat as he leant forwards to watch. There! There it was: a cautious tremor in the corner of her eye. The tiniest of movements, but for a woman who had not moved or uttered a word in three years, it was a dance. A cartwheel. A scream of joy.
Dizali squeezed her hand, feeling his ring clink against hers. ‘Sleep well, my dear Avalin,’ he echoed, allowing himself one of his most rare and private smiles, before sweeping from the bed and adjusting his coat.
‘And now, I must go and lie to a queen.’
*
The throne room was cold, inexplicably so, given the hot sunshine that was busy roasting the city of London alive. There was a musty smell in the air, one Dizali did not care for. He wrinkled his nose and checked his pocket-watch for a third time.
He had been kept waiting for half an hour now, left to sidle up and down the curtain, kicking at the floor and twiddling his thumbs. The queen was punishing him, he just knew it. Punishing him for his lack of contact. But he had much better things to do, Dizali smirked.
There came the thud of a door and a shuffling of cloth and skin against stone. The queen had arrived. Dizali stood tall and bowed as she took her place behind the curtain. Somehow she could always tell; an absent bow, a roll of the eyes, she always knew.
Victorious seemed out of breath, the tired panting loud even through the thick velvet. ‘Majesty,’ he greeted.
‘Prime Lord Dizali,’ she rasped. ‘Yet again I must summon you for a report. There are such things as messengers in this forsaken world.’
Dizali bowed again. ‘My apologies, My Queen. With the nature of what we’re attempting, I thought secrecy would be the best policy.’
‘There is secrecy and there is silence, Dizali!’
‘It will not happen again, Your Majesty.’
‘Spit it out then,’ she croaked.
‘Today is the day, My Queen. Now that Hark has been painted as a traitor, we have at last found the executor, Mr Witchazel. I have called a session of the Benches to witness your acceptance of the Hark estate, as you asked.’
‘Finally,’ came the hiss.
‘Finally indeed.’
‘My Presence will attend.’
Baited and hooked. Dizali nodded. ‘Of course, Majesty. And I am confident in saying that through my hard work and continued efforts, the whole Cobalt cabinet and most of the Benches are behind you. Support is strong, despite what the papers murmur. The Hark estate will be in royal hands before the end of the day.’
‘Surprisingly, you have proven yourself useful, Prime Lord Dizali.’
‘I’m honoured, Majesty.’
‘You may even prove worthy.’
‘Soon, I hope.’
‘And of the deeds?’
‘I have those in my custody.’ A lie, but necessary.
There was more shuffling. Dizali watched the shadow moving. ‘Good. It shall be a fine day. A fine day to start my wars. The Red Tzar and that western pretender shall rue the days of their birth.’
Dizali wanted to roll his eyes or laugh, but he held back. Suicide was not on his itinerary today. ‘But of course, Majesty.’
There was a silence, full of their breathing. One human, the other, well, not so human at all.
‘You are dismissed, Prime Lord.’
‘Thank you, Majesty,’ Dizali replied, bowing again. Just as he turned to leave he raised a finger. ‘I almost forgot, My Queen. Might I wish you a fine Bloodmoon, for tomorrow.’
‘Mmm,’ rumbled Victorious.
Dizali took his leave, heels clicking on the marble as he marched for the gilded door, a smile firmly affixed to his face.
*
Witchazel was abruptly and very painfully aware that he reeked. And after all the injustice that had been done to him, that fact stung him in a way he did not expect.
Sat there, wedged between the two mountains of Sven and Sval, perched on the plush interior of the carriage, with something now to compare his stench to, it bothered him immensely. Every rock and rattle of the carriage brought it wafting up to his blood-encrusted nose. He wore a permanent grimace, though, truth be told, two weeks’ worth of punches and pain will make anybody grimace like he did. The polished windows had shown him nothing but cuts, gashes, and a conquering smear of angry bruises, aubergine to stormy blue, bulging and aching.
Through the blinds, Witchazel tried to glimpse the city. It was now so close and touchable, and yet so very far. Between the manacles and the constant pressure of muscle on either side, all he could do was watch the buildings and streets rolling past, a tantalising zoetrope.
Witchazel kept his eyes peeled for landmarks, hoping to gauge where they were headed. Every time he leant forwards to catch a peek at the sky and its spires, Sven or Sval would nudge him backwards and deeper into the seat. He soon gave up, and settled for glowering at Fever Rowanstone instead, who was busy pruning his nails with a pair of tiny, curved scissors. It was troublesome work with all of the potholes and turns, and he wore an irritable frown.
‘Where are we going?’ Witchazel asked again.
‘To meet a friend,’ came the same old answer.
For the third time during that journey, Witchazel idly wondered if that friend was death. A set of heavy chains and an abandoned dock. Or some rope, a dark tunnel, and an innocent rumbleground train.
Witchazel decided to press him. ‘I find it hard to believe a person …’ he refrained from using the word ‘man’. Even ‘person’ sounded a stretch. ‘… such as yourself has friends.’
Fever just loured at him from underneath his eyebrows.
Witchazel settled for sitting b
ack and letting exhaustion whisk him off to somewhere meaningless, a blackness that rested him, even if only in brief snatches. The carriage’s suspension was not the softest, and the two Nords seemed to delight in digging their elbows into his cracked ribs.
The scent of pines in the air came floating through the cracked window. His head lolled on his chest, and through a half-closed eye he saw trees lining the road, swaying in the sunshine. Witchazel escaped to their dappled shade for a moment, before another elbow dragged him back to reality.
Even now, finally out of his cell, dressed in borrowed and chafing clothes, he was still handcuffed and leashed, the property of another, bent to their will. Powerless. Still the hell rolled on, like an endless plain.
Witchazel knew he could give it all up. He had built that choice into a bottomless hole in his mind, one he had dallied around the edges of since the hood had been dragged off his head. Constantly he tempted himself. Every stab of pain, every bite of fear, he sidled closer.
It was a game. The closer he came to tumbling, the smaller he imagined the hole, pushing it a little further. An hour, maybe a day … With each mark he dared himself to last longer, to make Karrigan that fraction prouder. Somehow, Witchazel knew the old Bulldog was watching.
Speaking of Karrigan, Witchazel flinched forwards towards the window. Before the twins dragged him back, he glimpsed a very familiar statue by the side of the road: a griffin, resting on a mighty broadsword. The Hark coat of arms.
‘We are going to Harker Sheer,’ Witchazel croaked.
Fever did not look the least bit impressed by the guess. ‘Yes indeed, Mr Witchazel. As I told you, we are off to see a friend. A long dead one of yours.’
Witchazel slouched between the rock-like arms of Sven and Sval. For the next half an hour he stewed in silence, enduring the digs and the nudges like a statue of himself. He left the bruised skin and broken muscle behind and crawled back into his tired mind. And there, he began to cocoon himself, eyeing that dark pit so very, very close.
For Dizali was running out of time, and Witchazel’s clock was inescapably entwined with his.
The lawyer winced as the carriage shifted. His meagre bandage had caught the rough, green shirt he had been gifted. There was blood leaking through, looking for all the world like the nipple he was missing. He grimaced and tried to ignore it.
Once the carriage had finished rattling across the gravel, Witchazel was poked out into the warm sunlight. Pushed and harried, he drank it in, savouring the heat of it, the glow. It was his first glimpse of sun in two weeks. If he had perished right there in that handful of seconds between the carriage and the mighty door, he would have died the happiest man that ever lived.
The door was smashed and broken. The windows too. Worse waited inside, where the bookcases and display cases had been toppled, mixing leather books in a sea of glass crystals. The tapestries and carpets were slashed, as was any piece of furniture that had dared to poke up its head. Witchazel’s fleeting mood was shattered.
‘You pack of monsters! Spineless burglars. Malicious, foul—!’
Fever flicked him on the cheek, leading them onwards. ‘That’s enough out of you, Mr Witchazel. There’s a good man.’
‘How dare you desecrate this home, Karrigan’s home! The boy’s home!’
‘I assure you, it wasn’t us,’ Fever replied nonchalantly. ‘We only dabble in information gathering. Torture, at its finest. This? No, it was a greedy Emerald Lord and some heavies from the factories, most likely.’
Witchazel blinked the sting out of his cheek as he gazed around. Anything of value had been stored away, thank the Almighty. Even so, the thieves had peeled away any scrap of gold leaf or silver trim their grubby hands had found.
It was a farce, of course. The key pointed the blame right at Dizali. He had come for the deeds, and found just a key. That was just the start of his problems. Witchazel smiled briefly, before letting it wither. Pushing powerful men into corners is never wise.
It took but a few minutes to reach the lower study, the Crystal Cavern as Karrigan had dubbed it, for its low ceiling and rounded walls, and for the marvellous chandelier that dominated the room.
‘Here we are,’ Fever announced at the door. It was slightly ajar.
‘You will pay for what you have done. You know it’s inevitable,’ he whispered.
Fever tutted. ‘I have no doubt of that, Mr Witchazel, but that bill lies with the Almighty, not with you.’
The lawyer glared. ‘Then may he judge you accordingly.’
‘In, Mr Witchazel,’ Fever prodded the door. ‘In.’
Unlike the rest of the manor, there was not a book out of place here, just a smattering of broken crystal in the centre of the study, sparkling in the noonday light that streamed through the huge wall of glass behind the desk. Witchazel wrinkled his nose at that, but for the most part the room was as he remembered. And he remembered well. Night after night he had spent here, in heated discussion, or wallowing in whisky, welcoming the morning in with murmured chit-chat. Karrigan had always been one for another glass.
‘Mr Witchazel,’ said the dark shape of a man standing against the windows. He had been examining their lead patterns, which wove a plethora of skinny diamonds in the glass. Dizali turned and folded his hands behind his back. ‘So glad you could join us.’
‘It was an invitation I could not resist,’ Witchazel sneered, flashing a look over his shoulder at his two bear-like escorts.
‘I’m tired, Witchazel,’ Dizali sighed mockingly, ‘of all these games. Back and forth, day after day. It’s time to do away with them. Starting now. If you have lied about this key,’ it was flourished in a hand, ‘and I do not find what I want here today, then the boy dies. Simple as that. You have a choice: show me the deeds and save Karrigan’s only remaining heir, or you can remain uncooperative and obtuse, and he can die like his father. Then we’ll come back to you, and see what else is surplus to requirements.’ Dizali waved a finger at his bloodstained chest. ‘Do we have an understanding?’
Witchazel stared flatly back at him. Here’s to hoping. ‘We do.’
Dizali rolled his eyes. ‘You could have saved yourself a lot of pain.’
‘Pain is often the cost of loyalty.’
‘So is being loyal to the wrong cause. Or the wrong man, in your case,’ Dizali corrected him. The Prime Lord strode forwards and kicked the crystal from under his black boots. He smoothed his beard in thought as he looked at the key, and the mesh of diamond shapes cut into its base.
‘Quite simple, really,’ Witchazel commented, as Dizali stared. ‘A child could have done it.’ And a child had. Merion, when he was young, though he had never realised its meaning. Just a pretty key to hold to the sunlight and match against the diamonds in the glass.
‘Indeed,’ Dizali shot him a murderous look before lifting the key up. He shut one eye and swivelled back and forth until he narrowed in. It took a steady hand, and even though Dizali was positively buzzing with energy, he did not shake. His arm was arrow-straight, and he held the key like a sword, its teeth biting into his palm.
The key and the window had been made by the same craftsmen. The diamonds were ever-so-slightly irregular, so that no square foot was exactly the same. To most it looked like a trick of the light, or a mistake, but it was all designed to pinpoint one particular spot in the Harker Sheer grounds. One spot that only the key could reveal, when you stood beneath the chandelier, where the marble swirled to a point. Witchazel himself had overseen the contracts for it. It was Karrigan’s oldest secret, the Bulldog’s dustiest skeleton. The lawyer felt himself sagging in the grip of the twins. It may have been part of his threadbare plan, but it was still painful to watch.
‘There,’ Dizali announced. ‘I see it.’ A finger jabbed the air. ‘Those steps, before the fountain.’
True enough. Dizali wasted no time. Lordsguards in black masks swarmed from the mansion and flooded the grounds. Their Prime Lord led them, the lawyer dragged behind him in the gri
p of the Nords, along with a huge figure at his side, loping under a dark-grey hood and cloak. Witchazel could feel its footfalls reverberating through the stone.
All eyes fell upon the faint brown stain splashed across the white marble steps, now gathering moss and dirt in the absence of a master. The rain had washed most of the blood away, but the rest had seeped into the hungry stone and dyed it a dusty pink. Even the dirt refused to hide it.
‘And here died the Bulldog of London,’ Dizali mused with one foot on the steps, leaning down to peer at the stain. In his other hand, the key roved back and forth, looking for an entrance.
‘A key without a lock is useless. Ah!’
And there it was: a small brass circle with an intricate mouth, black and thick with dust. Dizali knelt down and spun the key until it matched the uneven keyhole. With a click and a gentle twist, the key did its job.
Dizali hopped back as the stone beneath his boot began to shudder. They looked on as the steps slipped beneath their siblings, to the muffled clanking of cogs and gears and the slithering of dusty marble.
It took half a minute for the tunnel to yawn, a black maw reaching down beneath Harker Sheer. Dizali regarded Witchazel with a long and suspicious stare before taking the first step. Witchazel just flashed a polite smile and allowed himself to be led down the rearranged steps. His feet found them easily in the shadows. Practice always makes perfect.
‘Light!’ Dizali barked, and two men in bowler hats strode out of the ranks, rubbing their hands together. They flanked their lord as their skin began to glow a bright yellow-green. It bathed the small corridor in a sickly light.
From the bottom of the steps, a tunnel led barely fifty yards to a small hall that sat under the mansion, buried in darkness and dust. As they filed into it, one by one, the rushers raised their hands. The shadows shrank back, and they were greeted by Karrigan’s lair. There was a domed ceiling, though no chandelier, and neither windows nor skylights. Speckled marble lined every surface. There were bookshelves too, but no books graced them, just row after row of glass vials and tubes.