The Ice House

by Tim Clare

  Hagar leaned in. She could feel dozens of pairs of eyes upon her. Shards of comb slipped in her sweaty fingers. Her resolve weakened. What if the news broke his spirit? What if she ruined his speech, shattered the accord?

  ‘Uncle.’ Her throat was scratchy and dry. ‘I’ve found a body.’

  Morgellon was silent for several seconds. She sensed him stiffening, the way he did before he flew into one of his rages. He dug a manicured nail deep into his palm. She winced at the pain he did not feel.

  ‘An unwelcome development.’ Wine was heavy on his breath. ‘Please – we are being watched. Maintain an easy smile and tell me more.’

  As best she could, she let her jaw relax, and murmured to him where she had found the corpse, the nature of the injuries, the estimated time of death. All the while, she smiled, and Morgellon nodded, occasionally chuckling as if she had whispered an amusing morsel of gossip.

  He patted her heavily on the shoulder and said, loud enough that the guests around them could hear: ‘Wise words indeed. I’ll see to it that your wishes are honoured, little one.’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle,’ she said, unsure if she understood.

  ‘Now, will you do me a favour in return?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Retire to your chamber and sleep, bichette.’

  ‘But your speech—’

  ‘Is nothing but a bit of dry politicking!’ He swatted a palm at her and laughed. ‘The work is already over. Please. You look exhausted.’

  He was right. She felt bitterly fatigued.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I relieve you of all duties until further notice. Take to your bed, and rest assured I’ll deal with your request.’ His stare hardened for a moment.

  She bowed deeply and began to retreat. ‘Of course, Uncle.’ Mitta had already slipped away. She glanced around the pavilion. Lord Cambridge was reclining on a low-backed chair while two slender vesperi dressed in half-capes contorted before him, performing a rapid and elaborate sword dance. His valet, Kizo, was nowhere to be seen, which Hagar thought odd given the proximity of the peer to several gleaming butterfly swords.

  The gongs crashed again. Ushers urged guests down the steps into the huge empty pool, ready for Morgellon’s historic declaration of peace. Hagar turned and pushed against the crowd, heading for the exit. Her heart felt crushed and small. The new age would start without her.

  Hagar trudged through a cool, empty hall, her soles ringing on the marble floor. She still felt uneasy, but Morgellon was right. She should rest.

  He would have this small calamity discreetly dealt with. The pressures on palace staff over the past few weeks had been considerable. She could very well imagine an argument escalating to something graver.

  Life had taught her that peace was illusory. Perhaps that was why, now peace had arrived, it felt unreal. On the battlefield, silence was ominous.

  She still had the broken comb clutched in her palm. She looked at it. Her fingers were tacky with black blood.

  She followed a corridor to the eastern guest comfort rooms. Behind a tall door with woven rush panels was a softly-lit room containing a lavatory, basin, a fur rug, a selection of soaps, perfumes and pomades, and a dish-shaped mobile hanging from the door, laden with bells and glass chimes, that could be operated via a clockwork motor attached to the wall. When the motor was activated, the mobile turned and let out pleasant, melodic music, masking any noise made by the occupant. It was a fashion that had started in the upper-class bathhouses and arenas of the capital, where space was at a premium and elite members of society conspired in the mutual fiction that they did not defecate.

  The water from the pitcher was silky and cold. She lathered up soap and washed her hands, over and over, lacing her fingers, scrubbing under the chipped nails. She rinsed them off, pulled the plug and watched blood drain over speckled volcanic stone. The whirlpool made her think of the great sluices in the pavilion. Her skin was raw from scrubbing. All our vanities shall dissolve in the tide. As the last of the water swirled away, she felt a sinking sensation in her belly.

  She stared into the basin. She thought of all those dignitaries, paraministers, servants and peers descending into the empty swimming pool, filling it with bodies. The idea of being crammed in there with them made her shudder. No wonder Kizo was casting round for threats – that many people in one place was enough to make anyone edgy. As the last of the water belched down the pipe beneath her, she caught a burning whiff of Ado’s Salts.

  She glanced up into the mirror. Revelation hit her.

  She ran.

  In a low-ceilinged room, a figure in green garde du corps uniform emptied the last sack of Ado’s Salts into a water tank sunken into the floor. Crystals sizzled as they dissolved, giving off a ghostly white vapour. The figure kept a wet cloth pressed to his face. The air was thick with acrid fumes that caught in the throat. A slatted window in the corner provided the only light and ventilation.

  The figure took a heavy leg of mutton filched from the kitchens, and held it out above the water. His gloved fingers relaxed.

  The mutton struck the clear water with a plop, then a fizz, white froth encasing the raw, marbled meat as it sank. Halfway down it simply sloughed away into nothing – even the bone dissolved.

  Test complete, the figure moved to a huge pipe topped with an iron wheel valve. The pipe ran from the tank, through the wall, down to the sluices in the pavilion. Opening the valve would flood the empty swimming pool. The figure grasped the wheel, and threw his shoulders into turning it.

  Hagar saw all this from her vantage point at the partially shuttered window. Her eyes streamed from the fumes. A guard’s corpse lay slumped beside the hatch in the floor that allowed access to the pumphouse. A length of lead pipe was wedged under the handle, holding it shut. A dozen sacks lay empty. The figure had their back to her now, straining to turn the wheel.

  She eased open the shutter, and slid, feet first, through the narrow gap. There was a six-foot drop to the floor. Holding her breath, she dropped.

  Her shoes rang against the tiles. The figure spun round.

  He whipped a dagger from his belt and flung it at her. Hagar threw herself aside; the blade clanged off the whitewashed wall and skidded into the water, where it immediately began to fizz.

  She staggered to her feet. The figure was watching her, panting, a damp rag clamped over his face. He peeled it away.

  Hagar squinted. Her vision was blurred, his features dim and indistinct.

  No.

  ‘Hagar?’

  That voice. She hacked as fumes hit the back of her throat.

  ‘Mitta?’

  Tears streamed from his eyes. ‘Get out of here!’

  She took a step forward, taking shallow breaths. ‘How could you?’ She had expected Kizo, Lord Cambridge’s retainer. ‘Peace, you said!’ She tasted blood. ‘A new age.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mitta held the rag to his mouth. ‘Born from . . . death.’

  ‘No!’ She could barely see. Her skin was tingling. ‘Morgellon . . . trusted you.’

  Mitta grimaced. His eyes were red and weeping.

  ‘You. Don’t. Understand.’ He grabbed the wheel valve with both hands.

  She lunged at him. His elbow smashed into her jaw. Ceiling tiles flashed past. Her head hit the floor.

  The pain in her jaw was intense. Her throat and sinuses burned. He had struck her. The wheel valve squeaked as it began to yield.

  Mitta was not going to listen. He had lost his reason. She staggered to her feet.

  Hagar thought of her training in the École. She took a moment to appraise his body from an anatomical perspective, picturing the radius of each limb, the position of organs. This time, as she dived at him, she anticipated the blow, dodged just out of reach. His elbow swung through air. She punched him in the kidney with her non-dominant hand. The strike was weak, but enough to make him retaliate. He spun round, flailing at her. Hagar staggered back.

  ‘Stop.’ He stopped to hack up a string of bloody
sputum. ‘I. Don’t. Want. To. Hurt. You.’ His hand went to the sword at his hip.

  She glanced at the sword, then into his raw and streaming eyes. ‘You already have.’

  ‘Join. Us.’

  She edged back, seething water an inch to her left. What could she do? She had no hope of overpowering him.

  ‘Why?’ Her exposed skin stung as it began to blister. ‘Mitta!’

  A sudden sharp sting in her left palm. It repeated twice more, three brief, piercing jabs. Mitta winced too – which meant the sensation must not be hers, but Morgellon’s.

  ‘Hey!’ she yelled. Mitta’s image blurred and separated. She was going to pass out. ‘Answer me! Does Morgellon’s love mean nothing to you?’

  He drew his sword.

  ‘It. Means. Everything.’

  He raised the serrated blade high above his head.

  She stamped on an empty sack and kicked sharply sideways. It slid from under him. He stumbled. She ran and shoved him square in the chest. He threw his arms out for balance, dropping the sword. An instant later, he lunged forward and clamped his hands round her throat.

  He bore her up off her feet and thumped her into the wall. His thumbs crushed her windpipe. She sucked for breath but her throat was shut. She pounded on his ringed fingers, kicked him in the stomach. He held on. He was far stronger.

  He gritted his teeth. ‘Close. Your. Eyes.’

  Air would not come. Her lips worked uselessly. Her vision narrowed.

  ‘Sister.’ His voice seemed far away. ‘Say . . . you renounce . . . the world.’ He dissolved into another fit of coughing.

  Her slick fingers fumbled for something tucked into the hooks on the back of her dress. Her palms were tingly. She could not feel her fingertips.

  His grip tightened still further. ‘Please. Let. Go. Willingly.’

  Through gummy membranes of rheum, she saw his face, almost touching hers. She laid a palm upon the warm hands locked around her throat. She stroked her thumb across his knuckles. His breath felt hot against her lips. She tilted her brow till it came to rest on his.

  With her free hand, she drove the spiked handle of the comb into his neck.

  His head jerked back. He let go of her and she dropped to the floor. Mitta clutched at the comb, coughing, rasping. She punched him hard in the groin. He buckled. She shoulder-barged him. His head clanged off the valve wheel. He dropped to one knee, his eyes unfocused. He toppled towards the pool.

  She caught him. His head lolled inches above the water. She had him by the collar. Her fingers trembled. She could not bear his weight.

  ‘Mitta!’ Her throat was burning. ‘I can’t . . . hold . . . you.’

  He hacked up a grot of blood. It rolled from the corner of his mouth and dropped into the pool, where it fizzed and dissolved.

  ‘Please!’ Her tears hit the smoking water. ‘Help me . . . pull you up.’

  She was burning all over. Her ears were aflame. Her nostrils were aflame. Her tongue was aflame. Her body was aflame. The world was aflame.

  Mitta twitched. His swollen eyes focused on her. He grinned, blood on his teeth, and took a deep breath.

  He dunked his skull back into the pool.

  She cried out. She tried to haul him back in, grasping at his cross-belt, his soft dark hair. The pool scalded the backs of her palms. She smelt her flesh burning. She did not care. She dragged and pulled and with a final broken shriek, swung his limp body onto the tiled floor.

  ‘Mitta . . .’ Already the name was bitter in her mouth, drowning in blood and bile. She choked it out. ‘Mitta . . . Mitta . . .’

  The body convulsed beneath her. Brain matter oozed from the smoking hole in the back of the skull. She pressed her face to the still-warm chest.

  Together, they danced.

  CHAPTER 17

  LABYRINTH

  Back in the old jail, Delphine told them everything she could remember about what Arthur had said. She described his appearance, the freezing pain when his fingers passed through her, the way his voice seemed to come from inside her head. She told Butler where she knew Arthur from, and a little of his background.

  ‘He said my father’s in the summer palace.’

  Butler glanced up from his notebook. ‘Well, that can’t be true.’

  Delphine inhaled sharply as Martha dabbed at her puncture wound with cotton wool dipped in alcohol. ‘Why?’

  ‘Morgellon had it buried nearly three hundred years ago. His valet died after an accident there. I suppose the memory was just too much. Always had an eye for the tragic, Morgellon.’ He took a slug of a cloudy white beverage from a large mug. ‘The spire’s what’s left.’

  ‘You mean it’s here, in the city?’

  Butler hissed peevishly and turned a page. ‘It was. Unless your Arthur’s being deliberately obfuscatory the only place he could be referring to is the Grand-Duc’s old summer palace.’

  ‘Maybe he is, then,’ said Patience.

  ‘How?’ said Butler, his eyes bulging with annoyance. ‘I just told you, it’s gone.’

  ‘I was very interested in civic history once upon a time. I’ve collected a lot of maps over the years. Maybe we should investigate for ourselves.’

  Up in Patience’s library they took a huge book down from the shelf. It contained street maps of the high town drawn on thin onionskin paper with the houses and roads on one sheet and the sewer system on another so you could overlay them and see how they matched up.

  ‘This is from around twenty-five years ago,’ she said, smoothing the page down with her human hand, ‘so I don’t know how . . . ah, see here.’ The paper crackled as she pointed to an open rectangle. ‘This is the top of the high town. That’s Mitta’s Spire in the centre of the esplanade there.’ She lifted the page to show a blocky rectangular area plotted underneath, more or less conforming to the dimensions of the esplanade. ‘Could this be part of the palace? It’s just marked here as . . .’ She squinted at a tiny marginal annotation. ‘“Subterranean structure”.’

  ‘Let me look at that.’ Butler shoved in beside her and started scrutinising the page. ‘Hmm . . . I mean it could be anything. Let’s see – what’s the page reference here . . .’ He flipped between leaves and spent some time comparing sections of map. He snapped his fingers. ‘Pencil.’ Patience rolled her eyes but got him one anyway. He spent the next couple of minutes jotting things down.

  Delphine sagged into a deep rattan chair. She sipped at the cup of heady dark liquor Patience had poured for her. Aah, that was good. The funny thing about getting stabbed was it still felt better than rheumatoid arthritis. Nothing worse than that gnawing ache, deep inside your bones. Being old was like getting beaten up every day of your life. Mugged by time. Christ’s sweet tree. She cackled quietly to herself, a little manic from fatigue. Perhaps a little drunk.

  Butler got up and paced the library, scanning the shelves. He took down a book with a partially disintegrated spine, set it down on the desk. He pumped his wings to blow away the dust, and flipped through until he found a page that unfolded once, twice, into a floorplan.

  ‘Here it is.’ He tapped the page with the back of the pencil. ‘Look.’

  Delphine hauled herself out of the chair to come and see what he was referring to. Patience stood alongside her. Butler laid the map and the foldout floorplan side by side.

  ‘This is the design for the summer palace.’ He pointed to the floorplan. After so many years folded up, the page resisted lying flat, and he had to put candlesticks and an ashtray at the corners to weigh it down. He ran an index finger down a key at the top right, written in the same foreign alphabet Delphine had seen round the city. ‘“Steam Chamber East”, “Fencing Court”, “Royal Canal South”. Hm! It’s all coming back to me.’

  ‘You’ve been there before?’

  ‘Naturally. Before it was buried, of course. But look.’ He pointed to corresponding sections of the two maps. ‘The references here match up.’ He flipped between several pages of the big city maps, poi
nting out further undefined structures on the underground layers. Their shapes corresponded to the plans in the second book. ‘The spire’s part of the old pavilion. It looks like they’ve preserved the internal structure. It’s been sealed up, like a tomb.’ He flipped between pages. ‘It would have to be heavily reinforced, what with the weight of earth and buildings. These tunnels look like passageways linking sections across what would have been open courtyards. And here.’ He perched a cigarette in his mouth and indicated a series of linked concentric circles on the city map. ‘The spillways from his stupid canals run down into these old smugglers’ tunnels that go right through the hill. Which in turn,’ he turned to another sheet of paper, ‘should be accessible where the high town sewers meet the undercity.’

  ‘So we can get in?’ said Delphine.

  Butler unscrewed the glass mantle of an oil lamp and lit his cigarette off the flame. ‘In theory.’

  ‘Right.’ She stood. She felt a twinge in her shoulder, tried not to let it show on her face. ‘Let’s tool up.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘He’s my father. He’s in pain.’

  ‘A fellow appeared to you and claimed to have seen the future.’ Butler sat back and blew a plume of smoke. ‘And you’re just going to take him at his word?’

  ‘He was warning me off. So I’m going to do the bloody opposite.’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait. What was the part about an “auntie”?’

  ‘He meant Anwen. Lady Dellapeste.’

  ‘No, she was his grandmother. His auntie would be Anwen’s daughter.’ He looked at Delphine. ‘She and her valet conceived a child. But then the baby was kidnapped. No one knows what happened to her.’

  Delphine shivered. ‘She came to England. I knew her.’

  Butler’s eyes widened. ‘Goodness.’ He tapped three fingers on the cover of the notebook Delphine had recovered from the advocate’s chambers. ‘I need more time with this. He uses a lot of abbreviations, words that are probably personal idiom or codenames. In places the handwriting is almost illegible, but . . .’ He curled the fingers of his right hand into a fist, rested his noseleaf against his knuckles. ‘A large portion of it is given over to a subject S. It’s more like a personal diary than scientific notes. She was held in some sort of testing facility. And she could shape her surroundings just by willing it.’ Butler opened the book and flipped through some pages. ‘Some of the later entries are utterly deranged. He starts suspecting she’s feeding off his emotions, claims he’s losing the capacity for grief or regret.’