Nieve

by Terry Griggs

  “Lirk, have you been fiddling with the temperature?” she heard Murdeth say. “It’s gotten wretchedly hot in here.”

  “Nay.”

  A change in the temperature? It was freezing! The man was totally insensitive. She switched her attention to them. From the sound of their voices, Nieve judged that she was situated in the centre of a large room. It was a relief to discover that they weren’t too near.

  “Get these sorted then. Lumber at the far end, we’ll have to stack them, no choice, and changelings by my desk, ready for realignment and shipping. Recognizable troublemakers off to Bone House, as usual. And Lirk, no funny business. I haven’t lost my touch, you know.”

  Lirk said nothing, and presumably got straight to work.

  What exactly that work was, Nieve couldn’t guess. Nothing she’d heard made sense (outside of Murdeth’s threat, which was clear enough). But . . . lumber? Changelings? Bone House? All she could hear were swishing and rattling noises. If she didn’t look she’d never find out – or find out too late.

  Tentatively, she raised the sheet and peeked out. What she saw were bodies, also on gurneys, row after row of them, a staggering number. The room itself was cavernous, but it wasn’t a morgue, not a hospital morgue, because it was too cluttered and dirty . . . and far too weird. Amid drifts of hair on the floor, entangled with butcher’s string and skeins of dust, were stained piles of hospital gowns, balled-up paper bags, toppled rubber boots, drifting feathers, and loose hanks of fur. Inching the sheet up, she took in more of it. Archaic instruments dangled from the ceiling – heavy iron tools, lead bodysuits encrusted with spikes, axes, scythes, shackles, thumbscrews. The shelves on one wall were filled with skulls in a range of sizes, small to extra-large, and on another, as neatly arranged as preserves in a pantry, were jars crammed full of ears and fingers and teeth. Thick rusted chains and fat coils of rope were piled on the floor, and in one corner stood a cluster of wide-mouthed buckets, all filled to the brim with a greasy unidentifiable substance out of which spiraled coils of smoke.

  A skinny rat poked its nose out from between one of these buckets, then fled under the nearest gurney in a swift, skittering motion.

  The rat was the least alarming thing she’d seen so far. A real morgue would have been far less terrifying.

  Murdeth stood beside a massive stone block at the far end of the room, his desk presumably, for on it rested a tall stack of paper, a pile of musty old books, a black rotary-dial telephone, and a stuffed crocodile. Beside the desk, sat the shopping cart full of babies that they had seen earlier. Nieve watched as he reached in and yanked one out roughly, as if he were grabbing a sack of potatoes. Holding the baby in one long-fingered hand, he began poking at it with the other. He twisted its nose, pinched its cheeks, tugged at its ears. He was treating it as if it were a machine that needed adjusting, or a hunk of unmolded plasticine.

  Stop it!

  Murdeth paused, then dropped the baby, as if it had given him an electric shock. It bounced off the desk and tumbled to the floor, where it landed on a pillowy mound of oily rags. He looked at his hands in surprise, then glared at the baby. Nudging it with the toe of his shoe, he sneered, “A born troublemaker.” He snapped his fingers at Lirk. “Get rid of it.”

  As Lirk hurried over, Murdeth turned his back and snatched up the phone. Lirk tucked the baby under his arm and carried it off through an archway to another part of the room obscured to Nieve. When he returned, he resumed his duties, which involved pulling sheets off the bodies, giving them a quick once-over, then hauling them off and dumping them onto piles of other bodies of similar shape and size.

  The spectacle was appalling enough without realizing that Lirk was working his way steadily toward them.

  “Nieve.”

  Lias, behind her, gave her gurney a tug. While she’d been surveying the room, he’d been silently – and invisibly – active.

  “I’m using the fern seed again,” he whispered. “When Lirk’s not looking, I’ll move you closer to the door. Tell you when we’re near enough to make a break for it.”

  “A word with her, yes, and make it snappy, will you.” Murdeth had the phone’s receiver clamped fast against his ear. “The situation here is intolerable, absolute stacks of them. The sooner they’re fully processed the better. Human resources, I ask you, more trouble than they’re worth! Additionally, I require another order of that serum from Wormius and Ashe, most of the so-called doctors in this institution don’t know what . . . what? What was that you said?”

  “Now,” said Lias.

  Lirk was struggling with a tubby body four times his size, grunting as he wrestled it onto a pile of equally tubby ones.

  Nieve let the sheet fall back over her face and lay rigid while Lias pulled the gurney toward the door, creeping along as he piloted them through the crowded room. She itched to make a run for it, although knew that the longer they remained undiscovered the better.

  Murdeth slammed the receiver down and Lias immediately stopped.

  “Lirk,” Murdeth growled. “Apparently that filthy little megrim is on the loose. I’d better notify the Impress. I want every new arrival here checked at once. You hear me, right now. ”

  Murdeth snatched up the phone again, and Lias whispered, “Lirk’s bolting the door, we’ll have to–”

  Then she heard nothing. She had no idea what was going on, until she realized that Lirk was standing beside her gurney, breathing close to her ear, his nose making a funny whistling sound. Slowly, he raised the sheet and stared at her with his cold eyes.

  Nieve stared right back. Playing dead wasn’t going to help now. Of course he recognized her.

  “Thought something was fishy here,” he said in his harsh scraping voice. “A hag always smells off.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “One way to fix that.” He held up a small vial filled with an acid-green liquid, which, when he gave it a shake, began to bubble and hiss. “This’ll clean you right up.”

  Nieve didn’t respond, only continued to stare at him, his wrenched mouth, his squashed nose, his misaligned eyes. She thought of Murdeth tinkering with the baby’s features, and wondered at the destructive sort of “touch” he was capable of. Lirk wasn’t big – together, she and Lias could jump him – but he was tough, and wouldn’t hesitate to douse her with whatever bone-dissolving stuff the vial contained.

  “Let me go,” she said quietly. “And you’ll have your revenge on Murdeth. What he’s done to you, it’s vicious, undeserved.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t trust a megrim.”

  “I can help. Ask my, um . . . my familiar. Familiar, answer!”

  “Mistress?” Lias said, uncertainly.

  Lirk eyed the empty space behind her head, unable to hide a glimmer of interest.

  “Familiar my fanny,” he said. “That’s nowt but a thieving taran. Got his hands on a tricksy device, eh? Some charm.”

  Murdeth was murmuring into the phone, on the defensive this time, his bullying surliness reduced to a sycophant’s cringing whine.

  “A charm, yeah. I’ll let you have it,” Nieve said quickly. “Think what you could do.”

  Lirk stole a glance at Murdeth. “I’ll have it anyway.” He swished the vial in front of her eyes.

  “No you won’t,” Nieve retorted. “You have no idea what I can do.”

  Neither did she, but the threat gave Lirk pause. He glanced at Murdeth once again, then gave a curt nod. “Off then!” his words sandpapered to a rough hiss. “And give it.”

  “Okay, Lias.” Nieve rolled onto her side and slid off the gurney, then hunkered down, keeping close to the floor.

  He sighed in exasperation, but his left hand appeared nonetheless, the silver canister held lightly between thumb and forefinger. Lirk snatched it away greedily.

  Crouching low, dodging among the gurneys, Nieve skittered toward the door, as warily and anxiously as that rat she’d seen. Lias arrived at the same time, both hands now visible and easing back the bolt.

 
But fortunately not visible to Murdeth, who’d become too distracted to notice.

  As they snuck out, Nieve heard him shouting, “Lirk, you hideous malformed freak, get over here! We’ve got to find her! D’you hear me? It’s . . . she’s . . . Lirk? Lirk! Where the deuce are you?!”

  –Twenty-One–

  Down Under

  “Take the stairs.” Nieve tore past the elevators, one of which was rapidly descending. The flashing lights on the panel above the door indicated its non-stop plunge past the second floor, first floor . . . .

  “Whatever you say mistress.”

  She thought he was teasing, but casting a sidelong glance at him as she ran, saw that he was put-out. Really put-out.

  “I wasn’t serious, you know? About that familiar business.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “The fern seed? I had to think of something. He was going to dump that acid stuff on me.”

  “Not that, either. But I can see why your gran entrusted them to me.”

  The elevator sounded a soft ding as it arrived. They had put some distance between themselves and the elevators, although not enough. No place to hide, the best they could do was press themselves up against the wall of the corridor. When the door slid open, Mortimer Twisden’s fiancée, Sarah, stepped out, unaccompanied, and marched toward Murdeth’s office. Luckily, she was intent on her errand and didn’t glance their way. Her brisk walk, heels clacking on the tiled floor, reminded Nieve of her mother leaving the house to attend the wake. She felt a stab of anxiety, as if she’d been poked in the stomach with a sharp stick. Why was Sophie mixed up in all this? It was bewildering. She hadn’t looked at all comfortable sitting in the operating theatre, but she had been there, in bad company, closely observing that odious operation. Was her mother going to start experimenting on people, too? Quickly, Nieve squelched the thought. It wouldn’t help.

  “So what’s the problem?” she said to Lias. “How did I mess up?”

  “You spoke my name. With all those dead to hear it. They’ll call to me now, they’ll come for me.”

  She gaped at him. “Dead people can’t hear. Or speak.”

  “They can.”

  “News to me. Anyway, those people aren’t dead.”

  “They are.”

  “Not.”

  “What are they then?”

  “Don’t know. Haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “You’re daft.”

  “Yeah? And you’re a taran, whatever that is. Not the sharpest tool, would be my guess.”

  “’Tis a spirit.” He spoke softly and in all seriousness.

  She gave him a shrewd look, then stuck out a finger and prodded him in the ribs, sharply. “You feel pretty solid to me.”

  “Ow, get away! I’m a failed spirit.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s go. If we don’t get out of here soon you might just have some success at it.”

  When they arrived at the stairwell, they found the entrance boarded-up. The thick sheet of plywood nailed over it was covered with graffiti, the usual crazy and rude slogans, among which, painted in puffy red and black lettering, was: SEPTICLOPS RULE!!!

  “Septiclops are too goamless to rule,” Lias said.

  “No such thing. It’ll be some soccer team with a dumb name.”

  “Aye, and they’ll use a head for a ball.”

  As they hurried toward the only other exit, a door at the far end of the corridor, she said, “This has got to lead to the underground parking. There’ll be more stairs, another elevator. Once we’re back in the main part of the hospital we can go for help, tell them what’s going on. Julie will back us up. Not all of the doctors and nurses have been . . . whatever’s been done to them.”

  “Overtaken,” said Lias softly, hanging back a little as they arrived at the door and Nieve pushed through.

  She stepped out cautiously and scanned the area, mindful of any lurking dangers in the parking garage.

  Except that there was no parking garage.

  What she saw was a street, a long street with ancient-looking houses lining both sides, wonky houses, scrunched together and leaning into one another like a mouthful of crooked, snaggled teeth. The top floors of the houses leaned so far over the street that they touched the ones leaning over on the other side, creating an unusual, cloistered archway. In the moonlight, or rather with her moon-bright vision, dimmer but still in force, the houses seemed to waver as if they weren’t quite solid enough.

  “Every one of them haunted, too,” said Lias, coming up beside her.

  “You should feel right at home then.” She tried to sound jokey, but the unexpected sight had unsettled her. “This must be an old part of the city I’ve never heard about. So we’re not underground after all.”

  “We are. That’s where the Black City begins. Under, always under. And then it creeps out.”

  “Lias–” She was going to tell him to stop creeping her out, but he’d grabbed her arm and shook his head to silence her.

  “Listen.”

  Something was moving along the street toward them, making a rumbling, creaking noise, faint at first, but growing louder as it neared.

  “Over here.” Still holding onto her arm, he tugged her toward the closest house.

  Nieve balked, casting around for a better place to take cover. It’s not that she believed him when he told her the houses were haunted; she just didn’t like the look of them. Flimsy and jerry-built, they didn’t appear safe – the slightest disturbance might make them collapse into a heap of rubble.

  Lias’ hand trembled as he clutched her arm, but he clutched it firmly enough to pull her up the front steps toward an entrance that was nothing more than a black gap, the door itself missing. He clearly didn’t relish the idea of going in, either, but there was nowhere else to hide. No bushes, no fences, no outdoor ornaments. The area fronting the houses was barren, and their backyards, if they had them, inaccessible.

  They paused briefly on the threshold as the rumbling grew louder and a bulky silhouette came into view at the end of the street. There was nothing for it – they plunged in.

  A narrow, gloomy vestibule led into an old-fashioned sitting room, long-abandoned. The chairs and sofas, the rickety little tables, the gewgaws on the mantel, the rugs and paintings and mirrors, hadn’t been cleaned in years. Stepping over to the front window, they broke through spider’s silk as resistant as mesh and their feet sank into dust as deep as a layer of freshly fallen snow. But fresh it wasn’t. The air in the place was cloying and damp, almost palpable, seeming to press in on them.

  The window glass was cracked and covered in an oily grime. Nieve considered cleaning off a patch with her sleeve, but didn’t in case the whole thing shattered at her touch. She had to settle for a muzzy and somewhat distorted view, which made what was to come even more unbelievable.

  Crouching below the window and peering over the ledge, they watched as a wooden cart with huge wobbly wheels appeared. The cart was being pulled, not by horses or oxen, but by people, four in all, three men and one woman. All were barefoot, but otherwise dressed as they might be for a day at the office, the men in suits and ties and the woman in a pantsuit. But their clothing was in rough shape – rumpled, torn, filthy – and so were they. They were covered in cuts and bruises, struggling on, exhausted. They appeared to be in shock, too, and no wonder, Nieve thought ruefully. To go from pushing a pen in an office tower up among the clouds, to pulling a cart like peasants through some sort of grim, shadowy underworld. Not everyone ended up in Murdeth’s nightmarish room, then? There were other kinds of nightmare to be had here as well.

  Lumbering along beside the cart were a pair of thick-bodied guards, much taller than their captives, with overlarge heads covered in stiff bristles, like the ones on push-brooms. Their sullen, purplish faces were covered in boils and scars, and ranged across their brows, like marbles randomly scattered and embedded in mud, were eyes, lots of eyes. She counted them, astonished, then counted them again. Each
guard had seven eyes . . . eyes that seemed to look here, there, every which way!

  “Goamless,” Lias murmured.

  The office workers struggled ahead with the cart, dragging it up to the hospital door. As soon as they arrived, the door opened and two deilers emerged. Behind them stumbled a group of people, half-asleep, or drugged, and barely able to stand. The deilers herded this docile, unresisting group to the back of cart, where the guards seized each of them roughly by an arm or a leg, or by the seat of the pants, and tossed them on.

  Three in the group were children not much older than Nieve. One child, the last in line, took a half-hearted swing at the guards. This earned him a clout on the head which sent him with a muted cry to his knees. A guard then grabbed him by the hair, yanked him to his feet, and flung him on top of the others.

  It was Malcolm.

  Nieve rubbed her eyes. It was Malcolm.

  “My friend.” She jumped up.

  “Wait,” said Lias. “Get down! Before they see you. That’s the one thing they’re good at.”

  Nieve slipped back into a crouch, fuming. They were pretty good at savagery, too. Noting that one had a whip slung like a coil of rope around his shoulder, and the other a bulbous club rammed into his belt, she more than ever regretted the loss of the fern seeds.

  When the deilers returned to the hospital, the guards barked out some commands – along with a few kicks – to get the office workers moving again. They dragged the wagon around in a half-circle and started off down the street, groaning and struggling even more under the added weight. The guard with the whip snapped it once in the air and the groaning stopped, if not the struggling.

  As soon as they were gone, Lias was on his feet. “That’s it.” He bounded out of the room, cobwebs streaming behind and raising a flurry of dust. He couldn’t get out of the creepy, airless house fast enough. Neither could Nieve – she had to save Malcolm! She might have even beat Lias to the open doorway if something hadn’t caught her eye.