Widdershins

by Alexander, Alex

‘They’ll hang him you know. Rufus. He’ll be hung. It’s high treason.’

  ‘Princess, there will be a trial and the best minds of the Empire will debate and pass verdict. If Rufus is innocent as you so claim, then he has nothing to hide.’

  ‘You think he did it don’t you?’

  ‘Come now, Cassandra, it doesn’t matter what I think.’

  ‘Everyone thinks he did it. Well I was there. I was in front of him. I could see his eyes. I spoke to him less than an hour before. I know he didn’t do it, I feel it.’

  ‘You feel it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going.’ Mr Eccleston stood, his tea hardly touched.

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘No, Cassandra. I am going to the City Library to find out what book you’ve been reading, it’s clearly had a negative effect on your ability to reason.’

  ‘Sit down, now.’

  ‘Good day.’

  Mr Eccleston packed his suitcase and left the library in a hurry. Cassandra chased after him.

  ‘Stop, come back.’

  ‘Everything ok?’ said Martha coming to see what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Martha,’ said Mr Eccleston. ‘I’m afraid you were right, she’s not up to it. The girl needs to rest. She’s clearly very shaken. I shall cancel this week’s lessons and return in a fortnight.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Eccleston, I’ll get your coat.’

  ‘Don’t you dare get his coat. He’s not going anywhere,’ Cassandra shouted.

  ‘Is her mother about?’ asked the tutor.

  ‘She’s out with the Lords and the Chief Inspector, sir. Not due back till the evening.’

  ‘I shall like to speak to her. Perhaps I could stop by in the morning.’

  ‘Of course, sir, I’ll let the Queen know you’re coming.’

  ‘I think it wise that we let the girl calm down a bit.’

  ‘I’m right here. Stop talking about me like I’m not here. I’m right here.’

  ‘Cassandra dear,’ said Martha, ‘why don’t you go and wait in your room, I’ll be up–’

  ‘You’re not my mother, Martha. You cannot send me to my room.’

  ‘Come now, dear, you’re causing a scene.’

  Indeed she was. The other servants were poking their heads out of the kitchen and the guards were shuffling their feet, trying to blend in like they weren’t there.

  ‘Rufus is innocent. He’d never hurt mother, you know it, Martha.’

  ‘I do, dear, but please, quiet down, you’re shouting.’

  ‘Good day, Cassandra, Martha.’ Mr Eccleston slipped into his coat, and went out the door.

  ‘You’re all mad. All of you. Everyone’s gone mad. Logicide. I want to see Rufus.’

  ‘Now, dear, that’s not going to happen we both know that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s not, dear, they won’t let you near him for your own safety.’

  ‘Safety? Safety?’ Cassandra couldn't take it anymore, she bubbled over with frustration, let out a shrill cry and stormed off upstairs.

  Martha watched her go with a worried frown. She heard the stamping along the corridor, then the door slam. Then the door slammed again, louder, just in case no one had heard it the first time.

  The maid looked around at all the pale faces looking back at her.

  ‘What are you all looking at? Back to work the lot o’ you!’

  ***

  Every Cause has its Effect. Every Effect has its Cause. Everything happens according to law. Nothing merely happens, there is no such thing as chance, only law unseen.

  ***

  The clock struck six.

  The Palace gates, mechanical in their design, rattled and ticked, huge golden cogs twirling around pulling the golden, engraved doors aside.

  A coach pulled by four black horses wheeled into the courtyard.

  Out stepped a man dressed in a crimson robe that draped all the way to the floor. At his neck was a tight fitting white slanted collar, and behind it hung a baggy crimson hood. His sleeves were long and hung in funnels from his hands, which were clasped together in front of his waist. His fingers were lustred with golden rings and sparkling rubies. His hair was greyed, textured like straw and simply cut, sitting over his lined forehead. His lips were thin and pale and his eye bags creased like prunes and his nose narrow and bony.

  Normally the Queen’s bodyguard would meet guests like this. In his absence, Martha was left to do the greeting.

  She stepped out into evening air and came to the steps as he was coming up.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said, charmingly.

  ‘Evening, sir,’ said Martha. ‘The Queen’s not here I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, it isn’t her I’ve come to see.’

  ‘Oh, and what’s your business here, sir, late in the evening like this?’

  The crimson man gave the maid a smug look: a look that said he didn’t have to explain.

  She wasn’t taking nothing for an answer.

  ‘May I inquire as to your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Martha, I’m the housekeeper.’

  ‘Martha, if I were you, I’d run along like a good dog and do the dishes.’

  Martha was trying to be brave. The man’s presence was one that struck fear into all people. He could make birds fall from trees just by looking at them.

  ‘There’s no need to be rude, sir. Now, I’ve told you, your business here can wait till the Queen returns.’

  ‘And when shall that be?’

  ‘You could come back in the morning, that’s to be expected of you.’

  The man took a moment to reflect on the hour, and the guards that stood around the courtyard.

  ‘No,’ he said, smiling, ‘I think I shall carry on. I do not require the Queen.’

  Martha stepped in his way.

  ‘I must refuse you, sir.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You can’t come in.’

  ‘Can’t I? You see this ring?’ he held up his bejewelled hand and out stretched his index finger. The signet ring was golden and engraved with the seal of logic: an owl perched upon an open book, enveloped by a laurel wreath.

  ‘This seal gives me the right of passage in all domains. No lord, no queen, least of all a servant shall stand in my way. Please, step aside.’

  Martha looked for help from the guards standing at their posts around her. They were Watchmen not Royal Guards and that meant that they were more inclined to take his side than hers.

  ‘Upon my honour, sir, you aren’t coming in.’

  ‘Your honour?’ asked the man, ‘or your freedom?’

  Suddenly Martha didn’t feel so brave.

  ‘To deny me the right of passage would be… illogical.’

  There it was. The buzzword. He may as well have said: “Open Sesame.”

  Martha stepped to one side.

  ‘There’s a good dog,’ said the man, bowing his head with a courteous smile.

  Cassandra was hiding in her room. She was too embarrassed to show herself. She was going to have to explain everything to her mother, and was working on how she’d start.

  She hadn’t been in the mood for the Zolnomicon. It sat on her desk, open to the page on Nero’s Charm. She wasn’t in the mood to read anything. She wasn’t even in the mood to eat. And she doubted she’d be able to get to sleep again, even though she’d been up far longer than she’d ever been up before. But it didn’t matter. What was that thing they said? There was plenty of time to sleep when you were dead. She’d have plenty of time to sleep when Rufus was proven innocent. But she had to think carefully. She was dealing with subjects that weren’t considered science. She’d have to make her case as clearly and as logically as she could.

  The last thing she wanted was a moth tapping against her window.

  It was a large moth and an unusual shade of grey. It pattered against the glass trying to get out.

  She opened the wind
ow and ushered it through. But it came flapping back, around her head, into her face and against the glass again.

  ‘Silly creature,’ she said. For some reason, whenever people tried to save things like moths, they’d always put up a fuss about it. You could open every window and doorway in a house and still the fly, or bee, or moth would flutter about helplessly trapped.

  ‘Go! Get out!’ she said.

  The moth flew across the room, over to the dresser, hovered above the Zolnomicon and then found a resting place in the desk’s candle flame.

  Cassandra lifted her hand to her mouth.

  Its wings burned instantly and the creature fell onto its back, its legs kicking frantically at the air. Then it stopped.

  Dead.

  The door knocked.

  Cassandra jumped.

  It wasn’t a Martha knock. It was hard, firm, someone who didn’t knock on doors regularly and didn’t quite understand the etiquette of it.

  ‘Martha?’

  The door opened.

  Cassandra would have rushed to cover the Zolnomicon or cast it under her bed, but she couldn’t move. The sight of the visitor had stiffened her joints and sent her heart racing.

  Her back pressed against the open window.

  An assassin? No. Her logical mind knew who he was and why he was there.

  The saliva in her mouth had been stripped away. She couldn’t speak.

  ‘Good evening, child,’ said the haunting man.

  She identified him by his crimson attire as a man of logic, one of the Academy’s inquisitors.

  If in all the Empire there is one thing that people fear more than cutthroats, highwaymen, diseased rats and the torturer in the basement of the Guard’s Tower, it is the Inquisition. To be face to face with one of them in her own room was more horrific than any nightmare she could imagine, especially as, across the room, nearer him than her, lay a book of a most forbidden sort.

  Her eyes tore away from it, but they had already betrayed her. The Inquisitor glanced over at the dresser.

  ‘Little birds tell me little things. And the little birds have been chirping about you today, Princess. Do you know what they’ve been chirping about?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Don’t be afraid, I mean you no harm,’ he said, darkly.

  ‘Martha,’ the Princess called.

  ‘Oh, the maid is quite busy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Where’s my mother.’

  ‘Out, it seems.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  The Inquisitor stepped closer. Cassandra had nowhere to back up to, except out the window.

  ‘The little birds tell me you’ve had quite an upset today. It’s to be understood, you’re under a lot of stress, emotions run high in such cases and sometimes they get the better of us.’

  The man constantly smiled. It was a forced smile. Cassandra knew a forced smile when she saw one.

  ‘And what’s this I see?’

  ‘Nothing…’ Cassandra flinched towards the dresser.

  It was too late.

  His hands browsed through the old, tea-stained pages.

  ‘Interesting. Most interesting.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for visitors don’t you think?’ said Cassandra.

  ‘Ah, but my visit is a matter of urgency.’

  ‘Urgency?’

  ‘Tell me, what is all this nonsense?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then why is it here, open?’

  ‘I was reading it, of course – only browsing. I was going to take it back to the library.’

  ‘You found it in the library?’ The man furrowed his silver brows.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Most interesting. Tell me, what does it say?’

  ‘I don’t really understand it… sort of like recipes and strange things. I think it could be alchemy maybe… or some old colonial text.’

  ‘Recipes you say?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Strange how you got all that from this. It’s not written in any language I know of. Looks like a child’s scribblings to me.’

  Cassandra leaned closer and looked at the pages. They were as they had been when she first found the book. A strange, runic language that wasn’t the slightest bit decipherable. All the titles and pictures were gone too. It was just gibberish now.

  ‘No… it was…’

  ‘It was what, Princess?’

  ‘It was… nothing.’

  The Inquisitor slammed the book shut. The thud shivered the candle and made Cassandra jolt.

  ‘I would recommend you come with me tonight.’

  ‘No,’ said Cassandra.

  ‘No? But Princess Cassandra, I don’t believe you’re very well. I believe you need our help.’

  ‘Help? I don’t need help? I’m perfectly fine, thank you very much.’

  ‘Fine? If you are fine, then come. We shall see how fine you are. And, if you are fine as you say, you will be back in time for supper tomorrow. What say you?’

  Cassandra thought about it. She didn't think about it very long or hard. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I will decline your offer. It’s very kind of you to check in on me. But I think I'd like to speak to my mother.’

  ‘She will be informed of what has transpired here when she returns.’

  ‘I told you, sir, I am not going with you, and I told you in a polite and dignified fashion. I am the Princess, and no means no.’

  ‘No one is above the Realm of Logic, child. You mistake my tone. If you are not able to make this choice yourself, I must commit you to my care.’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Lets not do it that way. You wouldn’t want to do it that way. Would you?’

  ‘I’ll call the guards.’

  ‘Guards? Which ones. The same ones who pledge allegiance to the Realm of Logic? Or some other ones?’

  ‘Get out of my room.’ Cassandra was trying desperately not to show the man how frightened she was.

  The Inquisitor remained calm, like ominous ocean, darkening before a storm. ‘Be logical, child,’ he said. ‘Think. Come with me and dispel the doubt in your reason. Any other choice is surely illogical?’

  Martha watched from the steps as Cassandra entered the Inquisitor’s coach.

  The Princess sat and looked around her at the claustrophobic design. The coach wasn’t like the ones she was used to travelling in. It was split into two compartments. Her side had no handle on the door. It was cramped, and the wooden interior was scratched with markings that looked like the claw marks of a wild animal. She ran her fingers over the scrapes and grooves, and saw that they more or less lined up with the shape and size of her fingernails.

  The dividing wall had a window, but it was barred with black iron rods.

  This is the right thing to do, she told herself. Once he sees that I’m perfectly normal, he’ll let me go as he’s promised.

  But as the coach pulled away, the uneasy feeling in her stomach turned into a maelstrom.

  ‘I’m sorry about the appearance of your transportation, child, they don’t make these things for royals you understand,’ said the Inquisitor, speaking through the bars.

  ‘Where are we going? The Academy?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Cassandra had only ever seen the Academy from the outside. It was a grand stone building at the heart of the Scholar Quarter. It was the centre of the logical world, where the Empire’s most revered scholars received their degrees and where all the laws, sciences and great ideas of intellectualism were established. If she hadn’t have been so afraid, she would have been excited to see inside it. Women were not permitted to enter, unless committed. It was one of the laws she had on the top of her list to change.

  ‘Princess, you say you found this book in the City Library?’ said the Inquisitor, whisking through the Zolnomicon on his lap.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the librarians were aware that you borrowed it?’

  ‘…Not exactly.’

  ‘What do you m
ean?’

  ‘I… There was a…’ She had to be careful. She knew she shouldn’t. She had to lie. But something about the man’s presence made it awfully hard to lie. His eyes sought out truth like magnifying glasses, and burnt away lies like ants.

  ‘Child, the more able you are to cooperate with us, the sooner you will be able to go back to your palace and forget about all this.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’

  Balthazar awoke.

  He leapt up from the damp towel on the end of the bed, bounded across the room and landed in a frantic skid on the windowsill.

  Niclas snored from the floor. He hadn’t yet mastered the bed and had developed the unfortunate habit of rolling out of it.

  ‘Wake up, boy. Boy, wake up!’

  ‘Fglfh…’

  ‘Niclas!’

  ‘Wot?’ Niclas awoke startled and hit his head on his way up.

  ‘Pack everything. Now.’

  ‘Wot? Wot time is it?’

  ‘I don’t have time to explain. Quickly. Wipe away the chalk, pack the reagents in the bag, the candles, everything.’

  Niclas rubbed his hypnopompic head and stood to his feet.

  ‘Quick!’

  ‘Alright, alright. Wot’s goin’ on?’

  ‘We’re in danger here, it’s time to go.’

  ‘Danger?’ Niclas looked around. The room wasn’t on fire, it hadn’t flooded whilst he’d been sleeping and there were no rats coming through the door. The way Balthazar was acting, you’d think the world was going to end.

  ‘Is it the rats, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then wot?’

  ‘Would you just pack.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  Balthazar was fixed to the window staring out into the street. Looking for something. Waiting for something.

  ‘Wot’s goin’ on, sir.’

  ‘It’s the girl. She knows you’re here.’

  ‘…’ Niclas rubbed his head again, he’d hit it pretty hard. ‘What girl?’

  ‘The girl from the library.’

  ‘Wot libra– Oooooh… ’er. Wot ’bout ’er?’

  ‘She knows you’re here.’

  ‘’Ow’d she know that?’

  ‘Well I suspect it’s because you told her you were here.’