‘Yes,’ Will said.
‘But …’ Kay paused. ‘If you could use the plotting board to find me here, why can’t Ghast use it to find the two of us here?’
Will’s reply was immediate. ‘Ghast and most of his trusted servants are hopeless with plotting boards. They can’t use them well. Anyway, your path through the Quarries was unusual, random, unpredictable. That kind of chaotic improvisation makes plotting difficult for anyone but the best.’ She could almost feel him winking in the darkness. ‘If Ghast tried to plot this now, he would probably think we were still down there. And it’s not as if he plots everything.’
‘Why can’t we just use the plotting board to find out what Ghast is doing with Ell? Why can’t we use it to get her back?’
‘Too much, too far in advance. A plotting board is excellent for movement, but poor on intentions. It can give us a good idea of where someone will be, especially soon, but it doesn’t tell us a lot about what they mean to do. So I was pretty sure – I knew – you would be on the other side of that door, but I didn’t know how you would feel about seeing us.’
It was almost like an apology. Or it was an apology. In the trunk Kay took Will’s hand and squeezed it. Will seemed almost embarrassed.
‘And I am pretty sure Ghast will be here, in the library, in a few seconds. And so we wait.’
‘No,’ Kay said. The word just flooded out of her. ‘No, that’s wrong.’
‘What is?’
‘We’re not waiting for him. He’s waiting for us.’ All over her head Kay’s hair pricked and stood up, like a wave sweeping back from her eyes, across her scalp and down her neck. In her mind, she backed away from herself.
‘Kay, what are you –?’
‘I think I dreamed it.’
There was just enough light in the trunk for Kay to see Will staring at her, to see his mouth opening in puzzlement – but just then a loud, low hiss came from across the room. Kay’s eye shot back up to the crack to find that Flip hadn’t moved – he was still hunched over, one arm laid loosely on his pile of papers, apparently hard at work.
‘It’s time, Kay,’ Will said. ‘Stay absolutely still.’
There was an abrupt and sharp noise, as of a latch being lifted, that echoed through the library. A confused number of footsteps, heavy and light, sounded around the vast space. Kay could make out very little, save for the dim suggestion of forms moving down below, mere snatches of dark and light shuffling through an opening in the stonework of the balcony.
Flip had got to his feet.
‘It’s you.’ That, she knew with conviction, was Ghast’s voice calling. She hadn’t forgotten his scornful, raspy bass.
From the edge of the stone balustrade Flip looked down, his silver hair catching the light. ‘I’m going through the receipts of dispersals, Sergeant Ghast, as you instructed at our return yesterday. So far everything seems to be in order.’
‘I trust you dispatched the papers for the criminal More this morning?’
From below Kay heard the sound of metal scraping on stone, and a low, moaning sort of grunt. She pushed at the heavy lid of the trunk with her shoulder, widening the crack, and tried to peer through the stonework to the right of Flip’s leg. Try as she might, she couldn’t get an angle – all she could make out was the warty crown of Ghast’s head.
‘Well?’ The head hardly moved, but the voice had hardened in anger.
‘I did as I was ordered,’ came Flip’s curt reply.
‘Such a pity you had to lie to the girl. Well, weave the thread, weave the thread,’ Ghast said, his tone heavy with sarcasm. ‘Foliot will attend to his unravelling. For now, I have another dispersal to enrol. Firedrake.’
Firedrake passed in front of Ghast. His long, limber form towered over his master, and Kay had for a moment a clear view of his sharp, set features. He looked mean, harder and more evil than any wraith she had yet seen. Remember this, she told herself. Whatever happens, he is an enemy – an enemy to anything good.
Flip looked to his left as Firedrake’s footsteps sounded on the tight circular stairs that led up from the library floor. Kay shifted again in the trunk, propping the lid open a little further than before. She felt Will’s hand grasp and squeeze her shoulder, though he didn’t dare speak. But she would not hold back.
‘I think you will find this dispersal, too, has been duly registered,’ Ghast said.
Firedrake was now only a few metres away. He stopped. Nothing happened.
‘May I ask by what authority this thread is to be cut?’ Flip had not taken the piece of paper. It didn’t look as if he had even acknowledged Firedrake; instead, his hands were firmly planted on the stone ledge before him. ‘As Clerk of Dispersals, I usually expect notification and the customary consultation period before a formal consent can be taken. This is the thread.’
Ghast’s reply was immediate, as if he had been waiting for this objection. His tone was suddenly almost jocular. ‘Oh, read it. Read it – it will amuse you. I wrote it myself.’
Firedrake stepped forward and handed the piece of paper to Flip. ‘Read it aloud,’ Ghast said. ‘It will give me pleasure.’
Flip took a deep breath and then began.
‘Sergeant Ghast, Steward Controller of the House of Bithynia, Master Extraordinary of the Weave and Chief Clerk of the Bindery, to all wraiths and phantasms, greeting. Whereas it has ever been our confirmed power to act summarily in cases of extreme danger to the Honourable Society, whether present or forecast; and whereas such summary power has been severally exercised in times past by three of our immediate predecessors in the office of Steward Controller, outside the normal course of the thread; and whereas the Steward Controller is bound by oath to defend the Honourable Society from perils present and to come by oath and by duty, regardless of interest or consequence; remembering always both the responsibility of and respect for the office; it is now our grave and careful burden to command the summary dispersal of Eloise Worth-More, author, daughter of the silkrunner and enemy of the Honourable Society, Edward More, called the Builder; whose thread will within these twelve nights by agents deputed be measured, cut and undone in the normal way, and its several remains littered in the corners of the earth. By me this twenty-fifth day, etc.’
It was all Kay could do to stop herself from screaming as Flip finished intoning the words in a dispassionate, clerk-like voice. Her chest tightened like a limpet on a rock, and her head surged. Ell. No. No.
‘On what grounds do you invoke the summary power of the office?’
‘The child is an author,’ Ghast said, ‘and the daughter of our greatest enemy these two thousand years. The mere coincidence of danger and power is enough to license my action. Firedrake will carry out the dispersal. You and your disgraced friend will see that the other child is disposed of. She is worth nothing. I do not greatly care where you lose her.’
Despair. Anger. Fear. Sorrow. Shock. Disgust. Bitterness. Kay didn’t know what she felt. The pain in her coiled body seemed to be a kind of cavern into which she could cram them all. As she started to stand up – just as the tension and tightness began to flex in her legs – Will gripped her shoulders with both hands. Those hands, always holding me. He hardly moved, and she realized that he must have been waiting for this, waiting for her to try to explode. Always holding me.
‘Not now,’ he whispered – so low, so close, that no one could have heard them. Even Firedrake, not three metres away. ‘Trust me. You can’t do anything for her if he finds you.’
Flip had still said nothing. Kay watched his back, willing him to shout, to defy Ghast, to do anything, to do something.
Firedrake went down the stairs. Below, where Ghast stood with his acolytes, there was no sound.
Don’t accept it, Kay thought. Throw it all back in his face. Tear it up.
‘I will enrol the dispersal,’ said Flip.
No. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No. No. No.’ Thick sobs surged up from her chest, and she choked them back as best she could,
whispering ‘No’ to every tear that ran down her clammy cheek.
‘Firedrake. The staff.’
From beneath the lid of the chest Kay saw Firedrake hand Ghast what looked like a long metal rod – the height of a tall man at least, and clearly heavy. Moving stiffly, Ghast seemed to insert it into a hole in the floor, so that it stood erect. He stepped back and paused, regarding it, then placed his hands securely on it, palm over palm, and bowed his head briefly in a gesture that suggested prayer.
‘Your little trinket,’ he called out to Flip. He was beaming. ‘We haven’t used this contraption in some time, have we.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘It’s the great wheel,’ Will whispered. ‘From the Shuttle Hall. We used to turn it to mark the nights of the Weave during the revels of the twelve knights. When we left Bithynia, we took it with us and had it set into the floor of the library. Kay, he won’t dare – it’s sacred …’ The urgency of Will’s whispering simply dissipated, like lingering leaves blasted away by a gale.
Ghast was straining against the rod, pushing it. With an enormous effort he seemed to shift it to the right. A rasp as of metal on stone filled the library, and then a sharp rap or clack echoed its report as the rod settled. Ghast pushed again, and again with great effort shifted the rod, turning something on the floor until it slotted into place with a shudder.
‘There,’ said Ghast. ‘A new kind of festival. One night is already gone. See that the dispersal is properly enrolled. On the twelfth night, it will be performed.’
Down the stairs, the door to the library suddenly opened again. Kay heard footsteps.
‘Ah,’ said Ghast with cheerful brio. ‘Foliot. And our little friend.’
He must have turned. He had turned. Again Kay pushed at the lid of the trunk, which creaked slightly as she wedged it open. She now had an unimpeded view of the little group in the centre of the library, in among the long, lighted tables. Two hooded figures, Firedrake, Ghast – and, on the floor beside Ghast, a kind of huge bundle of rags or cloths. What was that?
‘Greet your daughter, silkrunner,’ said Ghast, and he hauled with both fists on a rope.
The bundle of rags jerked into life. It raised its head. It said nothing. Kay stared at the head, willing it to turn towards her, willing it to recognize her. And then, as if by a kind of magic, it did: slowly the chin turned on the neck, and the face lifted, and the blank eyes met hers, and she knew that – even concealed, at a height, in the trunk, through the railing – those eyes saw her. And yet they did not know her.
There was a scream. The room screamed. It went on; it went on. It deafened her, split her, cut her ears and rived at her heart like an axe. Kay felt herself juddering, felt the trunk juddering with her, felt Will rising, enclosing her huddled and broken form in his arms. Those hands.
Her father. That pile of rags. Her father. Those hands. Her sister. Her father. My father.
The scream, Ell’s scream, went on. Within its awful clamour no one could hear Kay’s own sobs, no one noticed the commotion of her spasms or the gentle ministrations of the soothing wraith who held her, whispering to her, ‘We will save her. We will save her. I will save her. My dear child, we will save her. We will do everything.’
They must have dragged Ell out of the library, for the rising, hysterical notes faded, the door was shut upon them, and then they disappeared entirely. Kay shook still, but shook silently. Will clasped her as tightly as he could, all pretence of concealment gone. But Ghast wasn’t looking up any longer. They were safe.
‘That,’ said the voice she hated, ‘was very satisfactory. Firedrake, see to this dog. And you, Philip,’ said Ghast without looking up even as he left the room, ‘take care of the rest. Perhaps a cliff would be convenient. I will have more orders for you before long.’
Kay started to rise. Flip thrust out his palm, flat to the ground: Stop, it said.
But she wouldn’t. She stood. She took the stone balustrade in her hands. She closed her eyes, inclined her head, opened them again – and watched as Firedrake dragged her father from the room by a rope. He scrabbled along the floor like a dog, repeatedly falling to one side, then lurching up again as the wraith jerked at his collar. Had Flip not covered her mouth with his hand, she would have called out to him, or cried, or screamed, or all at once.
The far door closed behind Firedrake. Kay slumped in a chair.
For a long time all three of them sat in silence. Kay kept her eyes closed. She concentrated on her breathing and tried to allow all the other thoughts to fall away, or to settle in the steady rise and fall of her chest. It was hard to let them go: again and again they reared and pinched her – her father, her sister – and again and again she let them fall. At last she opened her eyes.
The others were looking at her. Their eyes were steady, their faces kind.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Is that dispersal? Is what they did to him dispersal? Why would they do that to him? What do they want with him? What has he done to them?’
‘Yes,’ said Flip. ‘Dispersal. That is how it begins.’
‘And what is this place?’
‘It’s the Dispersals Room, where the records of all removals and dispersals are kept. We chronicle here a sort of unofficial history of the great creative minds in human history.’
‘You mean the most creative people always get removed and dispersed? Like Orpheus?’ Kay was silent for a moment. ‘Is that why Ghast – my father – because he’s clever? I don’t understand; why do you do this?’
‘It doesn’t make much sense to me, either,’ Will replied. ‘When I was Clerk of the Bindery, we – well, things were different then. In those days we only removed real criminals; the kind of people whose stories might actually hurt someone.’ He sighed. ‘Or a lot of people sometimes. But in those days we hardly ever went so far as dispersal. It’s much better just to put them in the mines –’
‘Will.’
‘The mines?’ Kay felt suddenly alert, again on edge.
‘The river,’ Will said, hobbled by Flip’s warning. He gestured towards the rear door, the door through which Kay had come in. ‘It goes down – where we mined for metals and gems – in the mountain.’
‘It’s a kind of prison,’ finished Flip. ‘Only for the worst. Real criminals – not just Ghast’s enemies.’
‘And my sister?’ Kay said. She couldn’t even say it. The author. Ell. The author, Eloise Worth-More.
‘Probably,’ answered Flip. He couldn’t say it, either. ‘Will, we were wrong – about the – Did you hear him?’
‘I heard him,’ Will said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
Kay looked from one face to the other, knowing that both wraiths were evenly balanced between a desire to explain everything and a need to keep her ignorant. This was a balance with which she was growing ever more frustrated. She held her head as high as she could.
‘I know I’m not one of you. I know I’m a child. I know I’m not my father.’ She looked hard at them, willing them to see her seriousness, her sharpness, her weight and determination. She tried to pinch a furrow in her forehead. ‘But you have to tell me what’s going on. I heard Ghast say that Ell is an author, like me. You have to tell me what this means. And you lied to me. I need to know how to stop Ell from being dispersed. I heard him say it. Twelve nights. I need to get to her.’ Time is running out.
Flip stared hard at Will, who was about to speak. He stopped. Flip took over.
‘An author is someone born with the ability to receive the highest skills in narrative; it’s not a power, but a readiness to acquire a power. An author is the kind of person who somehow already knows all the stories there are – as if they don’t even have to make them up, but just remember them. It is rare: neither Will nor I have seen an author in a great many years. Not a real one. This doesn’t mean that they don’t exist – it’s just that we don’t always know where they are. They must exist; they always have. We were authors once.’ Flip paused, looking into Kay’s eyes almost bashfully,
apologizing. ‘All wraiths were once authors. And we can find new authors with plotting boards, if we have time, a lot of time – but there are so many people in the world, and so much to plot: we’d need centuries to search a single country. More often, in the past, they just appeared, as if by chance; and if we knew about them, it was only after they’d passed away. Sometimes great authors don’t become known as such until centuries after their deaths. And so we don’t get to them in time.’ Flip stopped.
Will started to speak again, but Flip motioned to him to be silent, and then continued himself.
‘We thought – on the inventory it said – that the daughter of Edward More was an author. We thought it was you, because you could see us.’
‘But we were wrong,’ Will cut in. ‘It was Eloise.’
Kay suddenly knew that she had been surviving on little more than a hopeful sort of self-importance. Now she felt her expectation collapse like a flimsy box crumpling under the heel of Ghast’s boot. Ghast’s words rang in her head. She is worth nothing. I do not greatly care where you lose her. She gasped for breath, and her head lolled to the left. She stared at the oversize plotting stone that was the handle of the room’s rear door. ‘So you,’ she said, ‘you were authors, and now you’re you.’ Her hands, normally so expressive, dangled limply at her sides. ‘Then what am I?’
Will brightened. ‘You – you are just something we haven’t quite figured out yet.’
‘But how can I help her if I – if I can’t – can’t –’ Kay simply came to a stop. Her face was blank.
‘You can if I come with you,’ Will said.
‘Will. Not a good idea.’ Flip sat down suddenly at the large table, as if he had just been handed an enormous and insupportable weight. ‘Ghast, Foliot, earlier, outside – they were talking about more than just a dispersal. They’re going to summon a Weave on Twelfth Night. You need to be here.’
Will did not hesitate. ‘There’s no point in my being here, Weave or no Weave. I lost the thread a long time ago, and I’m not going to get it back now, Flip, and you know it. If I can do some good here, then, by the muses, I’m going.’
Twelve Nights Page 10