Silvertongue

by Charlie Fletcher

  Whatever it was he had wanted to say, she didn’t want to hear. He grinned ruefully and went with it. Like a good sport.

  “I don’t know. Be a bit cold . . .”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “Still, I like the sea. New tide every day, start fresh. Always wanted to live there.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  She turned to look at him, showing her own rueful grin.

  “’Cause I reckon you can only run away once. Once you’ve run away, there’s nowhere else to go. So it’s easier to stay put and know you always can go one day if it all gets too much or you need a special reason to escape. You feel less trapped.”

  “Doesn’t quite make sense,” he said.

  She smiled at herself. “I don’t make sense. Made wrong, see? I’m a loony,” she declared, crossing her eyes for a moment.

  “Yeah.”

  She picked up the empty bottle. And as she did so, Edie felt a surge of heat in her pocket. She reached in and pulled out her heart stone. It was blazing light, but only around the edges, outlining it. She felt it humming in her hand. Somehow she knew it wasn’t a warning sign. Then she looked at the glass bottle in her mother’s hand.

  “We should put a message in the bottle, send it out to sea,” she said, twirling it in the light from the passing cars on the bridge behind them.

  “Oh my God,” said Edie.

  “Got any paper?” said the man, patting his pockets.

  “What?” whispered the Gunner.

  “No,” said her mother.

  Edie just pointed. Outlined in light on the bottle was an identical shape to the irregular disc shape of the glass in her hand. Glass the exact same color as the bottle.

  “Bloody hell,” said the Gunner.

  Edie couldn’t speak. Her eyes were wet and wide in wonder. Her mother smiled too eagerly, too cheerfully at the man. He looked so sad. His eyes, Edie saw, were very nice when you looked closer. His trousers were flecked with different-colored paint, as were his hands. Maybe he was a house painter, she thought.

  “Then let’s make it an invisible message. What would you put in it if you could?” said her mother.

  “All the good stuff. Hope. Love.” He smiled sadly into her eyes.

  “And happiness,” she said, theatrically jamming the cork into the bottle. “And one day it’ll float up on a beach and someone will think it’s empty, and not realize it’s a magic bottle. And they’ll never know . . .”

  “Never know what?”

  “Never know why their life changes for the better.” She smiled and held out the bottle. He put his hand on it too.

  “Okay. God bless her. And all who sail with her,” he said, mock seriously.

  “And all who sail with her,” she echoed solemnly.

  There was a pulse in the bottle that only Edie saw, a low flash of light between the man’s hand and the woman’s. She felt an answering tingle in the glass in her hand. And then her mother took the bottle and launched it up and away and then down, tumbling through the night air to land with an inaudible splash in the river far below.

  “You’re weird,” the man said, looking at her as if he were taking a picture in his mind and trying to fix it before it faded away. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” she said, and reached up and kissed the side of his face, just once. He winced like it hurt.

  “Another life,” he said, and kissed the side of hers.

  “Yeah. Oh.” She reached into her pocket and handed him a key on a ring that had a sort of metal plane dangling from it. He nodded and put it in his pocket. She sketched a wave in the air and walked away. He watched her, the last of the light draining out of his eyes.

  “Hey,” he said, when she was fifty feet away.

  “Hey what?” she said, turning.

  “If you ever get to the sea one day, I hope you find your bottle.”

  She nodded.

  Said nothing.

  And walked off into the night. Edie watched her go.

  “She liked him,” she said as the Gunner led her off after the Raven, flapping across the bridge, heading south.

  “I reckon he liked her and all,” said the Gunner. “Just saw his duty calling in a different direction.”

  She took a deep breath and said it. “I thought he was going to be my . . .” she started and then stopped.

  “Did you?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “I thought that was why the Raven was showing me this moment. But it wasn’t that. It was the bottle. The bottle that made this.”

  She held up the sea-glass.

  “She sent this to me, even though she didn’t know what she was doing. Even though she didn’t know that I was going to be born. That’s something, eh?”

  “Yeah,” said the Gunner. “That’s something.”

  He said it like he meant it. But the way he watched Edie walking across the road to the Raven also said he wasn’t sure they were talking about the same something.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Lone Dragon

  The Railwayman led Dictionary around the edge of the church of St. Clement Danes. The spits who normally stood at the western end were gone, and the snow had piled up on the top of their vacated plinths.

  “Tell you what, Dictionary, it ain’t half lonely with all the other statues gone,” he said. “S’like a ghost town.”

  “Indeed it may be,” said the burly man, turning the awful scalloped wound in his fire-smelted face to the left and right. “But I fancy I can hear a great multitude behind us.”

  The Railwayman stopped moving, and they both listened.

  “Trafalgar Square, I’ll bet,” said the Railwayman. “Shall we go have a look-see?”

  “You go, my friend. Now I am so nearly back at my plinth I feel the need to rest and await whatever balm and cure turn o’day may bring me. I admit that this unheralded exertion has quite debilitated me.”

  The Railwayman led him on, a worried look on his face.

  “I’m not happy about leaving you alone here, whether it’s your home or not, tell you the truth,” he said. “Blinded and without a guard? Don’t seem too clever a plan, somehow. I think I’ll stick with you if you don’t mind the company.”

  “In any other circumstances I should welcome the society,” said Dictionary. “But if there is a battle to come, you would serve London better by joining our friends than playing nursemaid to an old word juggler. Besides . . .”

  Suddenly Hodge went rigid in his arms and hissed furiously at something to the east of them.

  “Bloody hell,” said the Railwayman, and hastily unshouldered his gun.

  “What is it?” said Dictionary.

  “It’s only the Temple Bar Dragon. And it’s looking at us like we’re lunch. . . .” said the Railwayman, cocking his gun.

  The dragon at Temple Bar was a different order of statue to the cruder mass-produced dragon statues that guarded the other entrances to the city. It was not painted the garish silver and red of the creatures the Railwayman and the Queen of America had killed earlier. It was thinner and spikier and much more dangerous-looking, lithe and sharp and deadly where the other dragons were more like blunt sledgehammers. And the sharpest thing about it was not its wicked fangs or its cruelly barbed whiplash tail; the sharpest thing about it were its eyes.

  It cocked its head and looked at them.

  It opened its mouth.

  “I’m going to drill the bug—” began the Railwayman.

  “Dictionary?” barked the Dragon, a voice as harsh as a shovelful of coals being thrown into a scuttle.

  “Wait,” said Dictionary, slapping a blind hand sideways and knocking the Railwayman’s weapon down.

  “Eyes. Dictionary. Happened. What?” snarled the Dragon. Its words didn’t quite join up with each other like normal speech.

  “It talks!” said the Railwayman, recovering his balance and aiming at its head.

  “Of course it talks,” said Dictionary. “But only when it has somethi
ng to say. I wonder why it has not joined the other dragons?”

  “Why don’t I shoot first and ask afterward, eh?” said the Railwayman.

  “No,” said Dictionary.

  The Dragon leaped forward off its high plinth. As it flew through the air, the Railwayman saw that one of its wings had an uneven rip in it, and when it landed thirty feet closer, it staggered, and when it straightened itself with a hiss of frustration, he saw that one of its ears was torn and hanging at an odd angle.

  “’E looks beaten up. Like he’s been through the wringer,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

  The Dragon walked forward.

  Hodge hissed and stiffened in Dictionary’s arms. The Railwayman kept his gun aimed at the taint’s chest, and his finger on the trigger. The Dragon ignored him and stopped ten feet away. It pointed a viciously curved talon at Dictionary’s face.

  “Who. This. Did?”

  “Dragons,” spat the Railwayman. “So you want to step back, eh?”

  The Dragon ignored him and stepped forward.

  “Dictionary?” said the Railwayman.

  “Leave him,” said the big man.

  The Dragon reached slowly forward and ran its talon delicately over the smooth concave wound that had erased Dictionary’s face above the nose.

  “Why?” it said quietly.

  “The dragon was trying to kill the boy. The maker you marked. I could not allow that to happen.”

  “Fight. You. Did?”

  “I interposed myself.”

  “Tchak! Happy. Not,” rasped the Dragon, flicking its tail in irritation. “Day. Bad. Time. Gone. Dark. Calling.”

  Dictionary coughed and spasmed involuntarily “Why have you not answered the call as the other taints have?”

  The Dragon leaned its face closer. “First. Dragon. Am. I.” Its eyes burned hotter. “To. Guard. City. Made.”

  It scowled in irritation, and all the spines on its body bristled as it drew itself to its full prideful height.

  “Not. Made. Answer. Call. One. Who. Enslave. City. Would,” it growled, and spat in contempt.

  The Railwayman stepped out of the way as a fizzing gout of multicolored wildfire hissed into the snow. “Steady,” he said. “What happened? You look like you been in the wars.”

  “Lesser. Dragons. Darkness. Answered,” it growled, a talon unconsciously trying to smooth its damaged and dangling ear back into place. “No. Slave. I. So. Fought. We.”

  “That’s one for the books,” whistled the Railwayman. “Taints fighting taints.”

  “There are bad spits too, no doubt,” said Dictionary.

  “Bad. darkness,” hissed the Dragon. “Not. Will. I. City. See. Destroyed. Guardian. Am. I.”

  Dictionary looked blindly for the Dragon’s face and spoke just three heartfelt words.

  “Then join us.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The Stone Corpse

  The streets were eerily quiet as George rode the chariot east along the south side of the river. He thought the Thames must be a barrier that the ice murk couldn’t cross, because he caught flashes of it every time he passed the end of a street heading north, at right angles to the river. If he’d been on the other side of the water, in the City, he would have been lost deep in the murk.

  He was a little lost on this side, he realized as he found himself hitting Borough High Street. It was an area he knew a bit, and he thought he must have overshot the road leading to the cathedral. He pulled left on the reins, and the horses leaped and kicked through the slightly thicker snow, heading toward the bridge.

  He was looking left for a way into the block in the center of which he knew the cathedral was, when a sign caught his eye.

  “Whoa,” he shouted, pulling back on the reins as he’d seen the Queen do. The horses slowed, and he took a left turn into the mouth of a covered stone walkway, leading into the market beyond. The horses stopped. He turned to see why, and then he noticed that though the chariot might just fit through, the scimitar blades sticking out from the wheels would jam it stuck.

  “Okay,” he said, climbing down and patting the closest horse’s flanks, his eyes returning to the street sign. “This is the place all right. The way of the dragon. Er, you stay here, okay?”

  He had no idea if the horses could understand him, and he wondered if he should tie them up somehow. He decided not to, and ran off down into Borough Market, as behind him the horses stood breathing hard beneath a street sign that read Green Dragon Court.

  The market stalls were locked away and the doors to the shops barred, but George still felt a rumble of hunger in his stomach as he hurried through the warren of alleys. This was where his dad used to come and buy things that smelled like a home George now only had in his memories: strong coffee, stronger cheeses, knobbly and delicious fruit, and luscious tomatoes exuding an odor of the sun itself. George ran past a shuttered barbecued-meat stall and wished he had Edie’s gift for conjuring the past out of the stone, because if he did, he knew he’d see his dad again, standing with a younger version of George beside him, breath pluming on a cold Sunday morning, ordering delicious roast pork and apple sauce rolls to eat as they walked home along the river.

  He banished the memory and angled sharply into the churchyard surrounding the cathedral.

  The spire was the only part of the roof that wasn’t covered in snow, its almost sheer sides too steep to get any purchase. Deep cornices of snow overhung the edge of the lower roof, and each buttress had its own cap of white perched on top of it.

  There were no footsteps in the virgin snow, so George had to toil through the thigh-deep drifts by force alone. He reached the door, knowing it was going to be locked, but he twisted the handle and found, to his surprise, that it swung open.

  A cleaner’s cart was angled in the entranceway, and a mop stood on its own like the frozen hand on a metronome. George realized a cleaner must have been in the middle of swabbing the floor when the clocks struck thirteen.

  He turned to look up the aisle, and froze as something jabbed warningly under his chin. He was pretty sure he went “ulp!” or “erk!” or made some other undignified noise, but he stopped worrying about it when he saw that the daunting figure blocking his way with a sword at his throat.

  A wooden sword. But a wooden sword can be almost as threatening as a real one when it’s being wielded by a large armored figure who is himself carved from the same wood.

  “Halt!” he said.

  “I’m halted,” said George. “And you’re the Knight of Wood.”

  “What manner of mortal are you that can see me?” said the Knight.

  “I’m a maker,” said George.” And I’m afraid I’m in too much of a hurry to explain.”

  “That is not for you to say,” said the Knight, jabbing the sword into his chest again.

  “Er, yes it is,” said George. “See this?” And with that he stripped off his two coats and opened his shirt, exposing the stone arm.

  The Knight took a step back. “What ails thee, child?”

  “Like I said, no time,” repeated George. “The Lionheart sent me. I’m looking for the dead tongue of stone, or the dead stone, or something. It’s important. You see what’s happening out there?” He pointed out of the bright windows.

  “We see and we feel,” said a gravelly voice from the shadows. “The ice storm shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow his secret place.”

  “Who’s that?” said George.

  “The Stone Corpse,” said the Knight. “One that used to be a monk.”

  “I need to see him,” said George, taking a deep breath and walking down the side aisle of the cathedral. The wall was covered in memorial plaques, and he could feel the eyes of other statues and bas-reliefs swiveling to look at him. What stopped him from taking too much notice of them was the figure slowly getting off a stone sarcophagus that was set in a long niche in the side of the wall.

  It wasn’t quite a skeleton, but the emaciated
figure wasn’t a healthy body by any stretch of the imagination. The stomach had withered down to nothing, making the rib cage stand out like the prow of a boat, and the legs and what remained of the arms were little more than bones with a skein of shrunken flesh wrapped tightly around them. One arm was missing below the elbow joint, giving the impression that it had rotted off, with more to follow.

  The head was hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked, and the mouth had the haggard lipless perma-grin of a skull. As the Stone Corpse stood and turned, George saw him shake loose a bunched shroud that had gathered around his head and shoulders, and which now fell over his body like a veil, mottled with cream and brown patches. Although it was stone, the veil was so thin that it both clung to the details of the corpse below, outlining the ribs and joints, and was translucent like alabaster.

  As the withered head turned to look down on him, George realized he didn’t quite know what he was meant to ask. He tried to keep his mind straight as he circled the Corpse warily.

  “What would you, boy maker?” wheezed the Corpse. “For what would you disturb my rest?”

  “I need your help. I think,” said George, trying not to notice the way the shroud billowed out from the face as the Corpse spoke. And as fast as he could, he outlined his predicament and the sudden harm the two dark powers were visiting on London. He didn’t dodge any of the hard facts, and made it clear that it all seemed to be his fault, stemming from his accidental act of vandalism in breaking the stone carving at the Natural History Museum.

  As he spoke he heard footsteps and shuffling in the gloom behind him, but he knew it was the other statues and effigies in the church coming closer to listen. All the time he spoke, the Stone Corpse just stood over him, the only movement being the regular in and out of the shroud as he breathed in a succession of flinty rattles.

  When George was done, the Corpse held out its one good hand.

  “And why should I help you? I have no fear of Judgment Day. The problems of the world are but transitory. . . .”