by Tim Clare
The gatehouse was open. She walked beneath the portcullis. She glanced up and saw gull chicks sleeping in a nest of matted seaweed woven over the rafters.
In the courtyard, a young man – really a boy – glanced up from his digging. He was shirtless and had red hair. Hagar averted her eyes, but he seemed unashamed.
‘All right,’ he said.
The entire courtyard had been divided into plots of soil, from which various green shoots and knuckled buds were emerging. From somewhere deep inside the old jail came a steady purr.
Hagar spoke with a palm shielding her face. ‘Is she—’
‘Upstairs.’ Through her fingers she could see the boy leaning on his spade. ‘She’s expecting you.’
He went back to his digging. Hagar could see the links of his spine through his pale freckled skin.
She stepped through a low doorway into the south wing. Since her last visit, more contraband paintings had appeared in the stairway, hanging from heavy steel pins driven into the stone. They were buckled and yellow with water damage, curling at the corners, held flat by their frames. Some were shockingly indecent. One showed a beaming woman with golden-brown hair in nothing but pink underwear, her arms raised towards the sun. There was writing on the picture: LET YOUR BODY BREATHE. Achieve LISSOM GRACE and PERFECT HEALTH in AERTEX CORSETRY. The newest, heavily creased with a diagonal tear, was teal and red and navy blue. It showed the head and shoulders of a dour man with thick eyebrows, above a single word: HOPE.
Little indulgences from sympathisers were proper for a resident of this stature, decades of house arrest representing, in perpetuum terms, no more than a dignified sabbatical. She gazed upon the strange artefacts with their cryptic messages. She had visited England, years ago – many times, in fact. That particular threshold had been destroyed, of course. Where these tatty curios were coming from she did not much care. She could not understand the pull some felt towards the old world. It was a drab and fallen place.
Stairs wound up into the tower and down into the dungeons. Hagar headed up.
The purring grew louder.
Through corroded iron bars, she glimpsed fishing junks in the bay, the busy quayside, the northern lighthouse glinting on its narrow hook of land. From this height, the sea looked glassy, green and calm; she could imagine swimming back to shore. Such was the allure of the material world – a trap designed to look beautiful from Heaven.
With the final steps Hagar found herself leaning into each stride, huffing. Her legs quivered. She passed an oval looking-glass nailed to the bare stone wall and, for an instant, was sure someone was watching her.
She froze, her whole body tingling with the instinct she had cultivated over decades during her time with the order. Foolishness, of course. She had merely glimpsed her reflection. Her nostrils twitched at the familiar scent of incense.
At the top of the tower, she emerged in a round room. A woman was sitting in a wicker chair beside the window, looking out to sea.
Her blond hair flowed into a long Dutch braid, winding twice round her torso, hip to shoulder like a sash, before trailing over the back of the chair, almost to the floor. She wore a white cotton dress that came down to her ankles. The chair creaked as she turned.
‘Back so soon?’ she said. Her right arm was swaddled in linen.
‘Hello, Patience.’
A circular blue rug edged with tassels covered most of the floor. Spilling from a set of oak bookshelves, volumes lay eccentrically catalogued in ones and pairs and stacks around the room. More were piled up on a writing desk, bookmarked with strips of paper or ribbons or string. In the centre of the desk was an intricate, insectile device comprised of metal and levers, fronted with tiers of black teeth, like tiny organ keys with letters on them. It was a sort of miniature printing press.
The purring had become a steady buzz reverberating through the ceiling.
Patience DeGroot stepped from the chair and padded, barefoot, onto the rug’s thick pile. ‘I don’t suppose you brought me the newspapers?’
She meant contraband ones: the New York Times, Le Monde, the Telegraph. Dispatches from Patience’s old home. Chronicles of strange, unhappy people in strange, unhappy clothes, who believed they were utterly alone in the universe, who thought their petty disputes the central business of existence. Hagar shook her head.
Patience’s shoulders sank, but she kept her pinched smile. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you made it.’ She stopped in the middle of the carpet, her covered arm swinging at her side. ‘And that is something.’
Around the room, incense smoked in small bronze braziers. There were far more chairs than one person needed.
‘So,’ said Patience. ‘Two visits in as many weeks.’
Hagar prodded the front of her palate with her tongue, tracing the ridged capillaries. There was something guarded in Patience’s manner – a wariness she was trying her best to disguise.
‘It’s been three weeks.’
‘Ah.’ A book lay open, facedown, on the carpet: A Brief History of Time. Patience nudged it with her toe. ‘Time flows a little differently here on Elba.’
Hagar did not correct her on the island’s name. Patience always talked in these half-riddles, wandering in and out of lucidity. Probably the isolation. Or homesickness.
‘Did you kill him?’
Patience flinched. ‘Who?’
Hagar could not help but smile. That there might be more than one answer was telling.
‘The doctor who died in the high town last night.’
Her human hand smoothed the white folds of her linen-bound angel-arm. ‘You’re very direct.’
‘When expedient. Lying is a kind of violence to progress, don’t you agree?’
‘If we’re going to joust can we at least do it in the sunshine?’ Patience gestured towards a final flight of stone steps. ‘After you.’
Hagar climbed, opened a hatch and emerged into the heat of the midday sun. Encircled by the rough-hewn battlements, two canvas-backed chairs sat on either side of a box covered with a sheet. The source of the snarling noise was an odd little engine, puttering inside a red metal frame on wheels. A dirty white cord snaked from its rear, leading to a glass cube lit from within. Hagar bristled with discomfort. More contraband from across the threshold.
Patience appeared beside her. She was about Hagar’s height, and the sudden proximity of her face made Hagar’s neck hair stand endwise.
‘When I heard you were coming, I put the icebox on.’ Patience had to raise her voice to be heard over the motor. ‘Are you thirsty?’
‘Mm.’
Patience walked to the engine and pressed something. The snarl dropped off and it stopped shuddering.
‘It runs on corn oil. Powers our little heater come winter.’ She patted the handle. ‘Now, I was saving this for a special occasion.’ She knelt at the icebox and opened the glass door with her human hand. The sides of the box were badly scuffed and faded, but Hagar could make out the remains of some heraldic design – two bulls’ heads clashing against a yellow sun. She thought they might be supporters from the coat of arms of the defunct eastern harka dynasty, Haus Rinderpest. Patience took out a ribbed glass bottle full of black liquid.
Hagar started. Bottled godstuff? To drink the very substance of the thresholds was worse than a mere peccadillo. Then it caught the light and she saw how the liquid turned burnt copper, how thin it was.
Patience took two glass tumblers from the icebox and placed them on the box table. She held a bent piece of metal between her teeth and used it to uncap the bottle. The bottle hissed. She poured measures into each tumbler, the liquid foaming. A brown scum formed on the top of the drinks, then gradually evaporated. Patience added liquid to the tumblers until the bottle was empty. When she put it down, Hagar noticed it was crimped at the middle, like a godfly.
Patience picked up one of the tumblers and held it out for Hagar. ‘Here. Don’t worry – it’s not booze. Sorry it’s not as cold as I’d hoped.’
; Hagar took the drink. It fizzled and spat in her hands. She followed Patience to the battlements and they looked through an embrasure, back towards Fat Maw. As you looked south, the buildings grew bigger and sturdier, until the stilt city merged with the industrial district and the low town. Behind smokeries, slaughterhouses and brickworks, the high town rose in a mazy snarl of white render and terracotta eaves, its summit capped with the thin silver stiletto of Mitta’s Spire.
‘I don’t know any doctor,’ said Patience, pausing to sip, ‘and it wouldn’t matter if I did, because I haven’t murdered anyone.’
Hagar stared down into her drink. She lifted it towards her lips and a perfume of cold needling droplets ghosted her nose.
‘That’s a shame.’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
‘That’s what I mean. If you had killed this doctor to settle some personal score, or to stir up mischief on behalf of a clique, or out of sheer boredom, I’d consider his death just. Frankly, I’d be relieved.’
‘Tell me more,’ said Patience. ‘Perhaps something will come back to me.’
Hagar took a sip of her drink. It burned. Stinging cascaded down her throat and pushed up through her sinuses like a mustard rush. She coughed and winced and her eyes watered.
‘Villa in the high town. Man locked himself in a cellar. As far as the Sheriff knows he was no one of consequence, but any death of a clique member, this close to the vote . . . You understand, of course. We found him this morning, stripped to a skeleton. No way in or out.’
‘Ah. This is why I’m a suspect.’
‘Isn’t it true you can reach through walls?’
Patience gave her wrapped angel-arm a squeeze. ‘Theoretically, yes. But I can only reach for things I can see.’
‘You can see the high town from this tower.’
Patience thinned her lips, as if she thought Hagar was being fatuous. ‘Well, yes, in the broadest sense that’s true. But I believe you said your murder took place in a cellar. I haven’t got x-ray vision.’
Hagar tried another sip of the queer acidic drink. This time, the shock was less pronounced. Behind the prickling pangs, she tasted an intense, cloying sweetness. Her jaw clenched.
‘What about your valet?’
‘Reggie?’
‘Can you reach for things he sees?’
Patience sighed. ‘What difference would it make? Neither of us are allowed to leave the island. And I can’t deposit things or people. Only retrieve them.’
Centuries of watching her speech for falsehoods had made Hagar unusually alert to them, and she fancied she sensed one now, or at least an evasion.
‘Is he your only servant?’
‘He’s not my servant.’ Patience rolled her eyes. ‘And I didn’t kill your doctor.’
There it was again.
‘Perhaps you’re not as limited as you would have me believe.’
Patience laughed, throwing her head back. ‘Limited? Limited?’ She raised her angel-arm and its linen bindings unravelled. The flesh beneath was rippling, expanding. Creamy-mauve filaments twisted from the pulsing mass, flowing upwards as if through invisible tubes. Hagar backed up against the battlements. Thickening strands helixed around a central column. The arm mushroomed ten feet, twenty. Taut webs of tendon-like matter anchored themselves to the floor and battlements. Blood vessels bulged and branched, burrowing fat blue counter patterns. White lymph wept from the mouths of yawning fistulae. An elaborate basketwork of cartilage was expanding, jawing open like a terrible flower.
It held there, swaying – a great thornbush of living flesh some thirty feet high, spinnakers of skin bellying in the breeze.
Hagar gripped her tumbler, white finger-links flattening and swelling against the glass. The meat tree hung over her, held in place by guy ropes of sinew, sweating. Patience looked at her sidelong.
With a snap, the flesh retracted. The tower was empty.
When Hagar looked, Patience stood with her right arm clenched into a perfectly human fist.
‘I’ve had decades of solitude to explore just how limited I am.’
She let the arm drop. The fingers lost their shape and fused. The palm smoothed. In moments, it was a featureless fleshy club.
She picked up her black drink and drained the glass.
‘I know why you and your master spared me, when I arrived in Avalonia, all those years ago,’ she said. She steadied herself on the crate. ‘It’s the same reason the perpetuum has a taboo against female peers taking male helpers. Don’t try to deny it. I’ve had plenty of time to study my history. Anwen was right. They’re terrified of us. It’s the antipeer, isn’t it?’ Hagar felt herself flinch at the forbidden word. ‘If a peer and her valet conceive. That’s who Anwen’s daughter was. She had some kind of power you’re all scared of.’ Hagar tried to hide her shock. Anwen was the one who had given Patience her powers. Had she told Patience about Sarai’s likely talents, too? Surely Patience was guessing.
‘But Reggie and I aren’t . . .’ Patience took a moment to compose herself, straightening her hair. ‘Tell him. Tell Morgellon. There’s no chance of our producing what he seeks.’ Her expression hardened. ‘Why do you serve him, Hagar? After all this time? Why do you fawn when he despises you so much?’
Hagar closed her eyes. She knew the answer. It was the same one Mr Loosley had given her, not so far from here, a human lifetime ago.
She looked up. ‘When you lived in England, did you know a girl called Delphine?’
A flinch. The reaction lasted a split-second – Patience was clearly accustomed to masking her feelings – then she recovered, and a moment later she was making a show of looking puzzled.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Before you received the honours and came to Avalonia. Did you know anyone by the name of Delphine?’
Patience dipped her head. She sighed – a deliberate, theatrical sigh. An attempt to misdirect.
‘That was a long, long time ago.’
‘What can you tell me about her?’
Another micro-expression, the briefest hint of discomfort. ‘I don’t remember much. What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
Patience looked up, perhaps judging how much she should disclose. She took a deep breath.
‘She was the daughter of an artist called Gideon Venner. He came to us at Alderberen Hall in 1935.’
‘Us?’
‘Spim. The Society for the Perpetual Improvement of Man. He joined us because he was ill. Mentally, I mean. Used to spend all his time painting in the stables or sitting in our little meetings looking like this.’ She pushed out her bottom jaw and pantomimed a glower. ‘To be honest, I didn’t see much of her. She was only a child. Always hanging around with the groundsman. Henry, I think his name was? She found out about the threshold, in the end. Stood up to Anwen. The last time I saw her, she shot me in the face.’
Hagar nodded. That was a detail she could believe.
‘She didn’t like you?’
Patience rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t think she meant it as a compliment. Anyway, she must be dead now. Guess that’s true of everyone I knew on Earth.’ She laughed unconvincingly. ‘Anyway . . . where did you hear that name? In an old newspaper or something?’ She was trying to make the question sound offhand, but her whole body language screamed avoidance, fear.
Hagar hesitated. There was something more here – not just uncomfortable memories. A thread to be pulled. Something hidden.
From the cliffs below came the faint, dissonant clang of a bell.
Patience held herself tight, alert. ‘Oh. That’s time, I guess.’
Hagar almost lingered. But she knew the consequences of violating the terms of Patience’s house arrest. Even as a member of the palace, she could be locked up or ejected from the city. Shot, even. Kenner was itching for an excuse.
Besides, she had an appointment to make.
On her way back towards her lodging house, Hagar noticed three human men following he
r. She slipped into an alley. Two more were waiting for her.
They were big, with scarves pulled up over their faces. Hagar turned and the other three had cut off her exit.
The alley was cramped but she supposed she ought to give a convincing account of herself.
‘Hello, gentlemen,’ she said, reaching slowly for her blade. ‘I take it you’ve heard stories of my cruelty?’
The men drew leather saps and billy clubs.
Hagar sprinted and launched herself off the wall, dropping her heel onto the bridge of the first man’s nose. She felt the crunch. Blood splattered down his white tunic. He recoiled, hollering.
The man behind him swung with his sap. Hagar ducked, sidestepped the tediously inevitable backfist, then drove the point of her knife into his windpipe. A shadow fell over her from behind.
She threw herself flat against the wall. The first blow swished through air. A club thumped into her hip. She dropped into a simple but superficially impressive stance from the theodic kata: the fool’s pact. The thug behind her pounded his sap into her shoulder.
They had adapted, abandoning attempts at a big, knockout blow in favour of quick strikes to her limbs that reduced her mobility. Clever. She shimmied from side to side, ripening bruises taking the edge off her form. She had not gone down easily. That was the main thing.
The next blow dropped her to her knees. Strong damp hands twisted her arms behind her back. A leather hood fell over her head. The drawstring pulled tight, cutting off her prayers at the throat.
CHAPTER 3
WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES
Meshes of light scrolled across the mask, growing brighter, distorting.
For an instant, she saw it all: the high golden cheekbones; the leering, merry mouth; the semicircular eye sockets. The van rocked gently as the car passed, the interior falling into near-blackness.
Delphine listened to the car fade. Her heart was pounding. The back of the van smelt of mud and motor oil. Rain drummed the roof. The driver was doing a steady forty or fifty on winding country roads. Her shoulder blades compressed against the plywood panelling as the van took a corner.