by Joe Ducie
I nodded. “Aye, me too. Clare, we manipulate time when we dive into a book. Sometimes hours out here don’t match hours in Forget.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever heard of anyone diving into a book and emerging earlier than when they left? You know, technically travelling back in time.”
“No. No I haven’t. Surely that’s not possible. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Apparently I did it—will do it.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
Ah, well. “Lessons to be learned, sweet thing. Hey, did you hear I could’ve been a king?”
Clare shook her head. “I’ve got to be going. But I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
We lay in silence on my bed, wrapped in each other’s arms for long, real minutes. “Take cake, okay?”
That was an old joke.
“Don’t you mean take care?” she asked.
“That too.”
“You just mind your books, Declan Hale. Mind them well.”
CHAPTER SIX
Ships in the Night
So, the High Lord and King of the Knights Infernal, Jon Faraday, was up to something, of that I could be sure. No other reason to send Clare back to me. Besides pouring salt on an open wound, but even he wasn’t that vindictive. No, there was more to the game that I failed to see.
I could consider his sending her as an act of kindness, if I didn’t know the son-of-a-bitch so well. I had to add the Renegade attack and my untimely, still unexplained, future death to the equation… The game was afoot, but I was several steps behind the leader, which was unacceptable. Perhaps if I just avoided wearing my favorite grey waistcoat I could fight the future and live to see my twenty-fifth birthday.
“You have that air about you, Declan,” Roper said. He scratched at the fierce scar that cut down his face and into the corner of his mouth. For a madman’s illusion, he was remarkably well detailed. “You’ve met a woman.”
“It was Clare, Rope. Clare came to see me.”
Roper’s grin disappeared. He was sitting only half visible, almost transparent, on my leather cushions in the dull light. “Ah, well. She was always a fiery one.”
“You don’t approve?”
I kept a steady beat on my typewriter, churning out fresh pages for the manuscript. One school of thought suggested getting it all done and dusted before editing, but there was no rhyme to that reason. None that I could see, anyway. Three or four thousand words a day was plenty.
“I just remember the last time you two were together,” Roper said. “Entire worlds went spinning into the abyss. Lord Oblivion ate well that day.”
“Sold my shadow to that guy, once upon a time.” Atlantis was a wonderful nightmare. “You’re thinking of Tal, who came after Clare, but thanks for bringing it up, either way.”
“It is not something you should have forgotten, my friend.”
My fingers slipped on the keys, turning desert into desertyu. “Do I look like I have forgotten the Reach for one minute?” My voice was closed, careful. I needed a tight rein on wild rage. “Bow-chicka-bow-wow, Rope. You’re face to face with the man who sold the world. You best not forget that.”
Roper scoffed. “Commander of the Forgetful Word. The Exiled King. The Never-Was Emperor… Shadowless Arbiter. The Renegades and Knights have given you so many names—and none of them even come close, do they? No, no.” Roper stood up to leave, as much as an impossible construct of Forget-gone-mad, of Degradation, could leave. “Declan Hale, the man who ran. Hero turned fool. Conqueror turned coward.”
I steepled my fingers beneath my chin. “Better a coward than a killer, good buddy.”
“Aye, tell that to all who will die because of your inaction.”
“I did act, Hartley. I acted when no one else would, or dared. You want a taste of the old times? My old self? Eight million people lived in the Reach. They do not live there now… is that what you want?”
Roper tilted his head and appraised me in the dusty candlelight. “Huh,” he said. “You’ve been using your gift, haven’t you? What else could stoke the fires of your heart into such raw anger? Perhaps Clare is good for you, after all is said and done.”
I would have responded with one helluva scathing reply, but at that moment the entire shop started shaking. Stacks of books tumbled onto the floor, and a quiet, subtle vibration ached through the wooden shelves. Together, Roper and I glanced up at the ceiling and the second floor.
“Is that what I think it is, Hale?”
I sighed and went back to tapping away at the typewriter. The words came easy, one after the other. Another shock rattled the glass in the windowpanes.
“Declan.”
There was something fundamentally pleasing about using a typewriter, though finding ribbon for the darn thing was becoming difficult and expensive, too, but money wasn’t an issue. Curls of dust settled on the table, shaken from the books and the tops of the cases. A low groan, almost below hearing, echoed from upstairs.
“Declan.”
“I know, Rope.” I removed my glasses and polished the lenses on my waistcoat. “I like to keep it waiting.”
“Spitting in the eye of Oblivion, huh?”
“It’s been five years since Atlantis and the Degradation. If he could do anything but piss and moan from the other side of the mirror he would have.”
“How sure are you about that?”
“As sixpence.”
Roper nodded, saluted me quickly, and disappeared. A snap of air filled the space he’d occupied. I ran my fingers along the dull keys of the typewriter and stood.
Upstairs, I paused before the bathroom door, my hand on the brass handle. Was the sound just in my head, or could I hear laughter behind the door? Blood on the air, and that wasn’t my imagination. I could taste the degraded Will on my tongue.
I let myself into the spare bathroom, a space I never used, and beheld the terrible mirror on the far wall, the Black Mirror, forged in a rusted cast-iron frame in the mountains just outside of Ascension City. The glass was tomb-dark and networks of deep cracks ran along the wall behind the mirror. The paint had peeled from the plaster and had gathered in small piles along the floorboards.
The mirror hung on nothing but air and only appeared to hang on the wall.
I had sold my shadow for this mirror, a lifetime ago.
I couldn’t decide if I was brave or just stupid. I stepped across the room and gazed into the abyss. The glass rippled as if I’d cast a pebble on still waters. My reflection came into awful focus.
I raised my hand and so did the reflection. I looked pale, drawn. My brown hair hung in the cold sweat across my forehead, above dull blue eyes marred with black rings. I laughed.
My reflection didn’t.
A dark, fetid oil spilled across the cracks in the wall. The substance was not-light, part of the ascending oils at the heart of the universe, the Will of the World, some might say. The oil ran along the cracks and bled down the wall. My reflection smiled and offered me a sly wink.
“Would you keep it down, please. I’m trying to write downstairs.”
That wiped the smile from my face. My not-face made of not-light.
A hand came down on my shoulder and I turned to see all six and a half feet of the English detective staring down at me, chewing on his worn pipe. He regarded the mirror and the bleeding walls with a frown, a hint of disapproval creasing his face.
“Best you fix this, Hale,” he said. “Best you fix this soon.”
“I’d throw the darn thing into the fires of Mount Doom if I thought it would do any good, mate.”
The old detective tilted his head as my dark reflection turned and walked away, back beneath the shadows of the Void, into the everlasting, forgotten sadness. A prime directive of chaos existed down there, of that I was sure.
“I fear your Will has weakened, my friend. I fear you are not what you once were.” He shook his head and squeezed my shoulder. “Dark roads ahead, yes?”
“It seems likely.”
Spirals of smoke drifted up toward the ceiling. “Then take this, Arbiter. You will have need of it.”
He handed me his ear-flapped travelling cap, a tartan deerstalker.
“Excellent,” I said.
“Elementary,” said he.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Atlantis in the Sand
“So, latest news. I’m pregnant.”
I dropped my red pen and took a quick step back. “Oh, oh wow.”
“You don’t have to stand aside. I’m not going to shatter, Declan.”
Shatter… whispered Jon Faraday. The shop seemed to darken as the light was absorbed by some unseen chaos before it could breach the windows. I tried to keep my eyes from darting in rabid panic into the lengthened shadows and unknown corners of the shop—or worse, to the Black Mirror upstairs. I had a hunch it could sense my gaze.
“Declan, you’re as pale as a ghost. Does the thought of a pregnant woman frighten you that much?”
The shop wasn’t safe, had never been safe. “Emily… let’s go down the road for a drink.”
“You mean leave the shop? In two years I’ve never seen you set foot—”
Something fell a few stacks away, in the darkness, and hit the floor with a solid thump—a heavy hardback, unless I missed my guess. The characters in the Infernal Works only ever appeared to me, but did that make them any less real, here in the real world? I didn’t know, and that scared me.
“—and in my delicate condition I can’t be drinking alcohol.”
“No?” I took Emily’s hand and led her outside as fast as I dared, slamming the door behind us and rattling the square glass panes.
“Aren’t you going to lock up?”
I could feel literary nightmares emerging from their worded prisons. The smell of dust and mildew. Two wars and five years of bad karma seemed to be catching up to me all at once.
“No,” I said.
“But someone could rob you.”
“If they can haul a quarter million books away before I get back they deserve to have them.”
Emily’s sandals clapped against the cobblestones as we walked down the road. A warm breeze wafted the taste and scent of fried hotdogs and kebabs from Christo’s across the plaza. A weight lifted from my shoulders as the smell of old books dissipated.
“So,” I said, letting out a long, slow breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Who’s the baby’s daddy?”
Emily blushed. “I’m not… precisely sure.”
“Oh? You sultry vixen, you.”
“Well, it may have been Raphael in Provence, or possibly Damien in London.”
“Wasn’t there a chap in Singapore? Tall-with-great-hair guy?”
“Harry? I’ve not seen Harry in five or six months.”
“Poor Harry.”
Emily swatted my arm. We walked with our arms linked down Sugar Lane. The cobblestones were wet and glistening in the sun. I felt my books getting further and further away, and the distance was a knife to my heart.
“What a lovely day. I can’t believe you’re outside in sunlight, Declan.”
“Have I tarnished my reclusive persona?”
“Quite tarnished, yes.”
I snapped my fingers. “Blast.” We fell into a companionable silence as we rounded the bend in the lane toward Paddy’s. If I remembered correctly, the special on a Wednesday was the scotch fillet. “I should have guessed you were pregnant, Emily.”
She raised a perfect auburn eyebrow. “Is that so? I’ve put on a little weight, sure, but not that much…”
“Heh. No. No. I didn’t mean that.” I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Emily was soft and warm and tasted like peaches. “Sweetheart, you’re glowing.”
She seemed quite satisfied with that. The day was nice. Sometimes, it was hard to remember the world outside the shop which was always there and very real, sure, but a thousand more just like this one were within arm’s reach of my writing alcove. Still, perhaps I didn’t want a scotch and steak.
“Let’s walk down to the beach,” Emily said, almost reading my mind.
I nodded.
The coast road was a five-minute walk down the street. Emily and I chatted about nothing, I felt nearly blissful. She was the only friend I had in the world that didn’t belong, in some way, to Forget. She had no Will, no sordid past. I loved Emily for that. We crossed the road and headed into the dunes, along the winding sandy path that cut to the shoreline. The sound of waves crashing and the taste of salt on the air refreshed me, especially after a morning spent in the dark, dank smoky shop.
“You keep stroking your stomach,” I said. “How far along are you?”
“Not long. Eight weeks, maybe.”
“What do you think? Boy or girl?”
“Boy.” Emily gave me a look of the utmost seriousness. “Most definitely a boy.”
“So sure?”
“Women in my family always know, Declan.”
I guess if I could dive in and out of fantasy worlds, and use my Will to violate the known laws of physics, then I could believe her certainty.
We kept to the hard sand just on the edge of the tide-line, a meter or so away from the swash. Emily’s bright red toenails were encased in a pair of woven sandals which were more suited to walking in the sand than my black leather shoes. I undid the buttons on my waistcoat. The day was warm.
“Are you going to take some time off work?” I asked.
“Not for a few months, at the very least. We’ve got an important acquisition coming up soon. Lives on the line and all that nonsense.”
“So you could be around more often after that? No more jet-setting off to exotic locations to meet with foreign gentlemen?”
Emily grinned. Her teeth were very white in the sun. “Declan, do you miss me when I’m gone?”
“Nope.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
A woman walking a golden Labrador offered a greeting as we rounded a curve following the surf. The day had taken a turn toward pleasant, and I didn’t want to go back just yet. Lucky for me, the coastline ran for a good twenty-five thousand more kilometers before we’d be back to the start.
“You seem happier than usual, Declan.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. One would think you may have had good news while I was away in Hong Kong.”
Good news? Not so much, really. I was still no closer to figuring out how and when I was going to die, or what the Renegades and Faraday were up to. No one knew about the Mirror, save my merry band of illusions and Tal. None of them were going to be spilling secrets any time soon. The appearance of Clare was good news. Clare was great news.
“I saw an old friend. Someone I haven’t seen in about five years.”
“An old girlfriend?”
“Can you read my mind or something?”
Emily laughed. “Sweetheart, you’re glowing.”
A pod of dolphins breached the surface of the dark blue waters a quarter-mile offshore. Hand-in-hand, Emily and I watched them for a few minutes. I savored the silence.
“Look at this,” Emily said. “There’s a book half-buried in the sand. One of yours that got away?”
I knelt on my haunches and brushed some wet sand off a soggy and faded paperback. I pulled it out of the surf and turned it over in my hands, as if I’d uncovered some long lost buried treasure. In a way, I had. A poisoned chalice.
“Tales of Atlantis,” Emily read over my shoulder.
It was on the list of books Thou Shalt Not Dive.
Hell, the book was the reason the list existed in the first place. The Knights did not make a habit of burning books. It was sacrilege—a heresy. But this book was one of the few exceptions that proved the rule, especially since the damage done because of the Degradation. What was it doing here? Right in my path? I looked up and out at the ocean, back around and along the beach up to the sand dunes. Was I being followed?
“Time to head back, I think.”
&n
bsp; “So soon?” Emily pouted. “I was enjoying seeing you in natural light.”
“Would you have dinner with me tonight, Em?”
Her smile didn’t ease the worry I felt about happening across a copy of Tales of Atlantis, but it didn’t hurt either. “So long as you take me somewhere nice.”
I tossed the book from one hand to the other and felt as though I were touching a live snake coated in pond scum—dangerous and altogether unpleasant. Only twice in my life before today had I ever held this book. The pages were soaked in enough blood to dye the Indian Ocean crimson.
“You, me and the scotch fillet special at Paddy’s make three.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Declan Hale, heartbreaker.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Declan Dances
I let myself back into the shop after kissing Emily on the cheek and promising to meet her at Paddy’s around seven.
I kept my wits about me as I moved through the stacks, mindful that I had left the shop unguarded for the best part of an hour. Anyone or anything could be waiting to tear out my throat through my ass—
“And just what in hell were you thinking?” Marcus said, sitting in the window alcove with his arms resting on his knees. He looked furious.
“Pardon me?”
“You are not pardoned, Hale.” The immense ex-Knight hauled himself up, knocked over his favorite champagne flute, and advanced toward me with clenched fists.
I held my ground. There were perhaps five people in the world that I would never raise a hand against. Marcus was two of them, despite what my dead self had alleged those few short nights ago.
“She was here, I know she was. I can taste her on the air, Declan. Like a battery on my tongue. She has a Will that is hard to forget, no?”
I often forgot that Marc and Clare had been more than Knights before my exile. “Oh, yes. Faraday sent her to investigate the Renegade attack. She—”
“You went diving. What in the seven hells were you thinking?”
It also paid well to remember that Marc was most sensitive to ripples of Will and cords of power use. When he said taste, he meant it. He could taste an invocation—smell the spell. Helluva talent. “I was thinking that I tire of this exile, Marc. That I hadn’t seen Clare in five years, and she was like a breath of fresh air. Broken quill, she was lovely.”