The Poison Master

by Liz Williams

  All of the books had been published by Officina Plantiniana, Antwerp's foremost printing house. If the Steganographia was to be found anywhere, Dee believed, it would be here. And once he had found it, he could begin the work that would open up the spheres to his view: the summoning of angels. He slept, dreaming an uneasy dream that a star-demon had sailed down from the moon and was talking to him in a voice he did not understand.

  Next day, the rain turned to snow and Dee went with Ortelius to meet the Familists, crunching through the drifts to the east of the city to where a member of the sect had rented a tall house. A wind was blowing from the sea, full of salt and heralding further cold. Members of the sect were clustered around a fire. Dee saw a tall man, with a pale, drawn face and a spark of fervor in his eyes, accompanied by two youths, another man of middle age and unremarkable appearance, and a third man who was clearly a Moor. Dee noted the dark, impassive countenance and saw, too, the man's stillness. Here was someone, it seemed to Dee, who would not easily be swayed by fools. Ortelius introduced them all: the tall man was Hendrick Niclaes, the founder of the sect. The Moor's name was Nabil. He inclined his head to Dee, but did not speak.

  “Welcome,” Niclaes said. He had a curious, flustered manner, quite unlike the smooth charlatans to whom Dee had become accustomed in London. “I am most glad to see that you have braved the snow. It is quite an honor, to have the famous Dr. Dee visit us.”

  “The honor, sir, is mine. My friend here has told me something of you; I am eager to learn more.”

  “Then sit.” Niclaes fussed around him, drawing a chair closer to the fire and calling for wine. Not a sect of absteemers, then, thought Dee with secret approval, and some relief. Niclaes thrust a book into his hands.

  “It is my own. It will tell you what we are about.” The others stood about him, conversing in low voices about a manner of everyday subjects, while Dee perused the volume: An Introduction to the Holy Understanding of the Glass of Righteousness. The “glass,” it seemed, was the spirit of Christ. The doctrine that Niclaes proposed was philanthropic, pantheistic, and antinomian. Members of the sect were baptized into it. It was, to Dee's mind, both open and tolerant, though somewhat eclectic.

  This would suit his own purposes well, however. The commune-based hierarchy suggested by Niclaes was based upon the Catholic Church, but the doctrinal aspect of the work appeared to follow certain of the German mystics and placed the principles of divine love above all texts, including the Bible itself. The German element suggested to Dee that Niclaes and his followers were likely to be versed already in alchemical knowledge: that would make his work a little easier. He was interested to note that the doctrine of claimed impeccability was suggested, for both Niclaes and the hierarchy. Rendering oneself exempt from sinning was, Dee considered, a practical element of any religious practice, but he could not help wondering what Niclaes had in mind. Again, the doctrine could suit Dee's own purposes admirably.

  “The principle of love, then, is foremost in your doctrines?” he said aloud.

  “Indeed. We hold that it lies above all and that it is to be adhered to absolutely.”

  “Even if the rule beneath which one finds oneself proves cruel?” Once a man had come close to the pyres of heresy, they singed him forever.

  “Even in the face of oppression, one must remain peaceful.”

  Perhaps not the most realistic notion, Dee thought, but there was little doubt that Niclaes was sincere.

  “The inward light cannot be extinguished by persecution,” Niclaes hastened to explain. “It can only be put out by the actions of the self against love.” He paused. “We permit ourselves to recant when faced with persecution, but we hold to our opinions.”

  So they were not so impractical, after all. There was a certain slipperiness there that made Dee smile.

  “Tell me,” he said. “What else do you believe?”

  “That men and women might recapture on Earth the state of innocence which existed before the Fall. Our enemies say we claim to attain Christ's own perfection, but this is not so. We hold our property in common, believe that all things come by nature.”

  “A pretty doctrine,” Dee said. “But a subtle one, that it is this life which is to be infused by spirit, and not a slavish adherence to the life to come.”

  “You understand perfectly.” It was clear from the expression on Niclaes' face that he felt a need for a kindred spirit: this was not a man who sought unquestioning subservience from colleagues and followers, as did so many of the sect leaders with whom Dee had come into contact. Hendrick Niclaes sought soul mates.

  “Tell me,” said Dee, stretching his chilblained feet to the fire and taking another sip of wine, “you who know so much of the inner light—what do you know of alchemy?”

  That night, in the cold, cheerless room of the Golden Angel, Dee sat staring into the snowy dark beyond the window and knew that he had found the people who would be his fellow travelers. He had made an arrangement with Niclaes to meet on the following day, this time without the company of Ortelius. Despite his convictions, Dee knew that this was not yet the time to broach the subject of the Meta Incognita, the colony of another world, with the leader of the Family of Love; nonetheless, that time was not far away. Niclaes was coming to England, to London itself, and it would be London, Dee knew, that would prove the cradle of the new movement: not a sect, but an expedition, into the realms of the stars.

  Chapter II

  TOWER OF THE POISONERS, HATHES

  That night, in her silk-sheeted bed in the Tower of the Poisoners, Alivet dreamed. She was standing by the window, looking out over the panorama of Ukesh, but now the towers gleamed in a stormy sunlight and the windows were wide open, letting in winds that were alternatively scorching and frosty. Someone came up behind her and put two hands on her shoulders.

  “Well?” a warm voice said in her ear. “Shall we fly?”

  “Yes,” Alivet said, gladness singing through her at the thought that Ghairen had come to seek her out. “I've always wanted to do that.”

  “Then take my hands and hold tight,” the voice said. Alivet did so, and they soared out through the window and high above the city. The canals glittered in the light; Alivet tasted snow on the wind.

  “Where are we going?” she cried. The wind snatched the words out of her mouth, but the voice in her ear replied, “To the portal, of course. You must know where it is, if you're ever going to come and visit me.” Then they were sailing down toward the ziggurat that Alivet had seen on her arrival, that Ghairen had told her was called the parc-verticale. She could see the forests encased within its transparent walls and she closed her eyes as they hurtled toward the glass, but then the walls of the ziggurat parted and they were through.

  Alivet's bare feet sank into moss. She breathed in the smells of mud and river and green growing things: honeysuckle and lilies, lotus and a drift of roses. The parc-verticale smelled of summer and heat, as if the world that it contained lay a thousand miles away from cold Hathes, and Alivet basked in the warmth.

  “Where are you?” she called.

  “Why, over here,” the familiar voice said. Alivet looked up and saw that it was not Ari Ghairen at all, but a woman sitting among the creepers. Her flesh, mottled silver striped with dark bands, appeared slightly transparent. Alivet could see the shadow of bones beneath the skin. Her eyes were the color of jade and dark hair streamed down her back.

  “Who are you?” Alivet asked, though she felt that she should know the answer to this question. The woman smiled.

  “My name is Gulzhur Elaniel. One day, you're going to come and visit me.”

  “Do you live here?” Alivet asked, assailed by the logic of dreams.

  “Oh no. Hathes is too cold a place for my kind, so formal, don't you think? All about the head, and not a scrap left for the heart or the body. No, I am from sweet Nethes.”

  “Where's that?” Alivet asked.

  “You'll find out in time,” the woman said. “The portal
lies that way, in the great temple. See?” She pointed through the wall of the ziggurat. The distance seemed to close up, so that the city lay spread at Alivet's feet like a map. She saw two great pillars and a long sequence of steps leading up from a canal.

  “Remember the way,” the woman said. “You wouldn't want to get lost. You'd never find your way out of the woods.”

  Alivet opened her mouth to ask the woman what she was talking about, but at that moment she came abruptly awake. The room was filled with an uncertain light. Ari Ghairen was leaning over her, holding a metal cup.

  “Alivet? Good morning. I'm glad to see you've been sleeping so well.”

  Alivet, pushing aside the sheets, realized that she was still fully dressed. The memory of the previous day and the threat of poison rushed back to meet her, like a cold tide.

  “I'll leave the tea here. Don't be too long. Breakfast first, and then I think we'd best begin work. After all, it isn't as though we have all the time in the world, is it?”

  When he had gone, Alivet sipped the tea and struggled out of her clothes in order to wash, fumbling at the hooks and buttons. The morning light brought no new comfort; the Atoront Tower seemed even more fortresslike than it had on the previous evening. Castles and turrets of frost formed a lacy border around the windows and Alivet's breath steamed the pane, but inside the room it was still warm. She looked out over fresh snowfall, covering the ground around the towers so that the spires resembled dragons sleeping beneath the drifts.

  She still felt besieged by her dream, which wrapped itself around her in psychic tatters. The woman had seemed as real as Ghairen himself. And it was embarrassing to remember how, in her dream, she had welcomed Ghairen and his touch. Thoughtfully, Alivet dressed once more, picked up the teacup and tried to open the door. It was still locked. Alivet rapped on the door until it opened.

  Ghairen was waiting in the hallway, looking elegant and precise in his dark robes. He was presumably unwilling to let Alivet wander around on her own. She had no chance of finding Iraguila Ust, she thought, if Ghairen kept her continually under his eye. Today, the doors that led from the hallway were all closed. There was no sound from any of the rooms and the place felt empty. Ghairen took her through into a room with a long table, on which sat fruit and bread.

  “I don't really know what you like,” he said, apologetically. “Perhaps if you could give me some ideas?”

  “Don't worry about making me feel at home,” Alivet told him grimly, adding before she could stop herself, “I'm hardly likely to do that.”

  Ghairen gave her a thoughtful glance. “I suppose not. But one might as well make the best of things. After all, we are trying to help one other, aren't we?”

  Alivet chewed some of the bread and pushed the rest away. Ghairen said nothing. When she had finished a second cup of the thin, fragrant tea, he gestured toward the door.

  “Shall we? Only if you're ready, of course.”

  “Let's get on with it,” Alivet said.

  The substances in the athanor had annealed well. Alivet removed them and prepared the workbench for a range of tests. Later, she told herself, she would go exploring. Perhaps if she could find Ghairen's own supplies… Surely he would have antidotes on the premises. And there must be a way of finding out whether she had been poisoned or not, some test she could run. She did not trust the word of Iraguila Ust, and she did not trust Ghairen, either.

  The problem gnawed at her until it became a distraction, so Alivet set it firmly aside and concentrated on her tests. The world contracted down to the basic stages of the alchemical sequence: dissolution, evaporation, crystallization. Alivet lost track of the time, until Ghairen reappeared.

  “I know you're busy and you want to get on, but would you like something to eat? I've asked the servants to prepare something.”

  Hungry though she was, Alivet would have preferred food to be brought into the alchematorium, but it was the first time that Ghairen had mentioned servants, and her interest was immediately engaged. Where there was an underclass— as she knew all too well—there were resentments, and those could be exploited.

  “Very well,” she said, and followed Ghairen out of the alchematorium and back down to the main rooms. The acid light of Hathes flooded through the dining room window, casting silvery shadows across the floor. Ghairen held out a chair for Alivet at the head of the long table. He spoke, but she did not understand him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Ghairen inclined his head in acknowledgment and spoke again. The language was sibilant and hissing, at first nothing more than a jumble of speech, until Alivet realized that fragments and odd words were known to her. Gradually, the confusion resolved.

  “… takes a little while before your linguistic implant starts to work,” Ghairen said. “But my daughter, obviously, was not raised to speak your language.”

  “The voices in the elevator,” Alivet said. “You told me they gave me language. Is that what this is?” She frowned. “But I'm speaking my own tongue.”

  “We will be able to understand one another,” Ghairen assured her. “My eldest will be joining us—Celana, whom you saw last night. My other daughters, Ryma and Ladeiné, are elsewhere.” Turning to the door, he nodded sharply to someone unseen. Two women entered the dining room. The youngest—evidently Celana—was tall and slender. She looked nothing like her father. The dark eyes were heavily lidded, provocative above the demure high collar and the long skirts, but her mouth was tight. It was a small, closed face. Beneath the long sleeves, her wrists were painfully thin, and the knuckles of her long fingers—she had evidently inherited her hands from her father—seemed to stretch the skin. She barely glanced at Alivet, but scraped a chair out from the table and slid into it.

  “Hello,” Alivet said encouragingly. The girl mumbled something in reply.

  Alivet turned to the second woman and nearly gasped aloud. The woman's face was half hidden by a mask, reaching from cheeks to hairline. Her eyes were hidden behind black lenses, extending from her face like binoculars. At first Alivet thought of the Unpriests, but the mask was etched with a delicate pattern of leaves. The woman wore a stiff rubber bodice from hips to chin; silk sleeves fell past her wrists.

  “Celana's governess,” Ghairen explained. “Semilay, this is my guest, Alivet Dee.”

  “Welcome to Ukesh, Sister Dee,” the woman murmured, and as soon as she spoke, Alivet recognized her. It was Iraguila Ust. Well, that was one problem solved, and a hundred gained.

  Iraguila's face was impassive as she took her seat at the table. Ghairen struck a small bell and a creature glided through the door, carrying a platter. Alivet saw a narrow, bald head with eyes like ball bearings and small scaled hands. The thing was the size of a ten-year-old child. It moved as though it ran on wheels, its legs concealed beneath a long, drifting dress.

  “A shiffrey,” Ghairen explained. “Native to Hathes. They're analogous to your anubes.”

  “Are they all servants?” Alivet asked.

  “By no means. Some are farmers; they own smallholdings in the hills beyond the towers. The land may look barren, but it's amazing what they manage to produce from it. These salty tubers, for instance, and the small green fruit by the side of your plate.”

  The shiffrey glided away. Celana stared after it, her face creased with resentment. The household seemed to seethe with tensions of which Alivet had no understanding. She did not dare look at Iraguila Ust, who was engaged in serving the food brought in by the shiffrey. Later, Alivet decided, she would seek the woman out. Hopefully, Ghairen would leave her alone in the afternoon and then perhaps she could find a way to get out of the alchematorium. She watched as Ust's gloved hands sliced the thick bread, diced fruit, and poured a glistening wine into frosted glasses.

  Alivet immediately noticed that Ust sampled a portion of each type of food before passing the plates; the woman was a taster as well as a governess. The thought of placing someone else in such danger horrified Alivet, who had been raised to
believe that one should run the risks of one's profession oneself. How long had Ust been in this position? And why, if she was the household's taster, had she not simply found a way to poison Ghairen herself and exact her revenge? Perhaps that vengeance was aimed at Celana, to deprive Ghairen of his daughter just as Ust's father had been taken from her.

  Alivet glanced at the girl and saw that she was staring sulkily into her plate. Celana had barely touched her food. Occasionally she gave it a disdainful push with the end of her fork. Alivet could see that growing up in a poisoner's household might have a less than encouraging effect on the appetite and Celana did indeed seem very thin. The girl looked up, as if conscious of Alivet's scrutiny. Alivet smiled. Celana gave her an impassive stare, as though Alivet were some form of insect life that had disgraced itself upon the tablecloth.

  Alivet restrained the impulse to lean across the table and give the girl a good sharp smack. She looked at the uncharacteristically silent Ghairen and saw that he was busying himself with his wineglass. She wondered whether he had witnessed her exchange with his daughter, whether he was subtly encouraging the tensions that ebbed and flowed around the dining table.

  Finally the strained silence grew too much for Alivet. Turning back to Celana, she said, “Tell me about your studies, Celana. What is your governess teaching you?” She did not want to refer to the woman directly, in case she stumbled over Ust's assumed name. Celana's mouth grew even thinner. She stared at her plate and did not answer.