The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle)

by Webb, Catherine

  And Horatio Lyle understood what he’d always known, deep, deep down throughout his entire life. Horatio Lyle understood that the city was alive, and it was as much a part of him as he was a part of it, and whatever happened, whenever it happened, a tiny bit of him would live, stamped on to the city that he called home.

  He opened his eyes and met Lucan Sasso’s gaze. For a second, neither moved, neither spoke. It was, thought Lyle, something inexpressible, unutterable. Almost . . . perfect.

  And then the cry rang out. ‘Sasso! I am for you!’

  In a moment Sasso spun, dragging Lyle with him, who flopped in his grip, half-dead already. Feng Darin stood on the bridge, and raised Selene’s blade. Oh, good grief, thought a vague, slurred voice in Lyle’s mind that might once have been his, what now?

  And Sasso laughed, the hollow laugh of a broken man. ‘What will you do with that, little mortal? I will break you before you move!’ His voice was rising in pain and despair. Lyle flinched from it, shuddering, wishing he could struggle but unable to move.

  Feng Darin stared at Sasso a long while, then at Lyle, who shook his head feebly, fingers opening and closing in pain. Their eyes met.

  Feng Darin smiled.

  Feng Darin raised the blade.

  Lyle understood Feng Darin, and it was his turn to scream out in despair and fury.

  ‘Darin!’

  Feng Darin turned the blade with ease and grace, brought it down, and . . .

  Lyle closed his eyes. He felt the hand that held him let go, opening in surprise, and flopped like a fish on to the bridge, not even bothering to break his own fall. He buried his head in his hands.

  The city was suddenly quiet. All eyes that could see had turned to the bridge. Only the gentle wheezing of Icarus, high overhead, broke the silence. Then footsteps, the sharp, heavy steps of Sasso as he advanced towards the shape of Feng Darin. Blood pooled around the fallen man, seeping through the snow. Lyle raised his head and saw Sasso bend down and pull the blade easily from Feng’s lifeless fingers, then, with a thoughtful expression, prod the man with a toe. Feng didn’t move. Sasso turned back towards Lyle, holding up the blade, the better to catch the light, and saw Lyle’s burning eyes fixed on him. He lowered the blade again, surprised.

  ‘Are you alive, little man? Shall I break your heart with the blade, as your friend’s heart is broken?’

  Lyle dragged himself up, clinging to the parapet of the bridge, which seemed oddly warm under his fingers. He looked down at the cobbles. Water was running away; the snow seemed to be dissolving beneath his feet. He looked up at the sky. Black clouds were racing in from the horizon, as if they’d only just heard about the excitement and wanted to have a look.

  ‘Lucan Sasso was, in his time, a remarkable man,’ hissed Lyle, staggering a pace, half-falling, and clinging still to the bridge for support. ‘Honoured for his skills and bravery in battle. He was a poet too, a man of culture, and passion. At the time when he was still a young man, there was a lady. Some said she was an Austrian princess, some said she had come even from the realms of the Ottoman, some that she was a Spanish beauty raised in the south by Moors. Her name was Selene.’

  Lyle’s voice was the only sound in the darkness. He reached a lamp post and used it to pull himself up straighter, feeling the warmth from the light that burned above it. Below, ice began to creak. There was a slow, sucking sound, the gentle hiss of boats slipping out of the melting ice and dipping back into water, the thud of drifting hulls banging against each other, the plop of masonry slipping under the waves.

  Lyle’s voice grew louder, drowning out another sound, caught by a wind that rose from the river and the streets and seemed to bring with it a strange smell, salty, as if it had blown up from the Atlantic Ocean, and come many miles carrying a new message from another land with it.

  ‘Lucan Sasso met Selene in Rome, and was struck with her instantly. He followed her to Vienna, to Paris, protesting his love for her. She left him a blade, made of a very special stone. He swore he would kill himself with it rather than be parted from her, but she left that night. The same night, on Westminster Bridge, he stabbed himself through the heart with the stone blade. Here.’

  Sasso was frozen in place, eyes fixed on Lyle, even as the wind rose and gusted the snow off the rooftops, as the water rushed through the river and the darkness seemed to close in around him. Lyle was almost shouting over the wind, tiny flecks of ice flying from his hair, which clattered as it was dragged in the wind.

  ‘Something took hold of Lucan Sasso. He is stone. His heart is an empty space under his skin, his skin is hard, smooth marble, his eyes do not dilate in bright light, the moonlight and the sunlight burn away the illusion of life that is half-real, half-imagined by all who see him, and reveal him for what he really is. Do you know what you really are, Lucan Sasso?’

  Sasso half-opened his mouth, then hesitated, the blade hanging, forgotten at his side. Lyle smiled, even as tears stung his eyes, and his voice was hollow with despair, ‘You are a statue, Lucan Sasso. You never were real.’

  ‘I . . .’ The wind snatched his words away. Louder, raising his voice. ‘I . . . am a god! You cannot tame me . . . I . . . I am for ever . . . I am . . . you cannot tame me!’

  Behind, him, Feng Darin rose up from the shadows and said, very quietly, ‘I can.’

  And Sasso turned, and saw Feng Darin, the blood still running from where the knife had entered his heart, but slowing now, like clay, and whispered, ‘Surely you cannot have wanted to die?’

  Feng Darin merely smiled, and raised his hand, palms up, towards the sky. Around him, the stones of the bridge rumbled, growled, roared and exploded, drops showering down around. They rose up so tall, a huge stone neck that extended from one end of the bridge to the other to join in an arch across the length of the road and still rose, nearly clipping Icarus as the ship circled overhead; the stones rose up and twisted into new and alien shapes, something coming out of the neck even as the cobbles fractured and tore, ripped out of stone to slide together into a clattering mass, and still the shape kept building into . . . a face. Long and thin, trailing sharp points and jagged, scaled lines. Eyes opened in its depths, peered round, peered down, followed Feng Darin’s gaze, his mind. Teeth of jagged stone grew from its mouth, its nostrils flared, spouting dust. The dragon looked down, and saw Sasso standing small and alone, far, far below, and opened a jaw so wide and so long, it looked as if it could eat Nelson’s Column like a piece of spaghetti.

  And here now was Feng Darin, in the city’s head.

  Hark . . .

  Hark . . .

  The dragon considered the tiny shapes, tiny Lucan Sasso and tiny Feng Darin, far, far below it, thought about it, opened its jaws, and dived down to meet them.

  Feng Darin closed his eyes, and the city closed its own in response.

  He remembered the wind across the steppes, the free run, the innocent time, the endless sky overhead and the mountains in the distance. He remembered the day he saw the city, and wondered that it took him so long to understand.

  As the dragon closed its jaws, Feng Darin smiled, and welcomed it.

  It was simply . . . perfect.

  CHAPTER 29

  Thaw

  London, at the end of winter.

  Icicles drip half-heartedly into the gutters, waiting for the moment when they can crash off the pipe and call it a day. Meltwater runs down the centre of the streets, sweeping away the dirt before it, and revealing anew the old dirt which had been frozen under the snows. In Heron Quays the coal-carrier looks up as he carries the last sack of black, lumped will-be-soot up from the base of the barge, just a small shape in a city of ships clinging to the side of the river, and sees a hole opening up in the clouds, and wonders whether it isn’t time to take the heavy hat and scarf back to the pawnbroker’s and redeem the claim on those old waterproofs instead.

  In St Mary’s Church, Cheapside, the apprentices, knowing a good deal when they see it, scrub away at the old brass bell of th
e tower, kicking away the last few shards of ice which cling to it, sending them over the side of the tower to crash down into the street below, while next to them the bell hums a gentle sleepy tune that is picked up by the bells of St Paul’s and St Pancras, who whisper to each other,

  Blacks and bays,

  Dapples and greys . . .

  The costermongers calling out in Brick Lane and Chapel Market and Whitecross Street and along Poultry and down Maiden Lane still wear two pairs of woollens apiece, and argue with each other about which is worse - having water coming up through your worn boots that have trodden every cobble in London, or having ice freeze your boots tight shut around your numbed feet. It is an argument that will last until summer burns it all away, in a long time to come.

  The drizzle, smelling of salt from the Atlantic that has come a long way with a special message, falls gently outside a tall window, through which warm yellow light spills, eclipsed only by the black outline of a man. For a second the yellow light warming the snow turns red as it catches a glass of port, swirled absently in a crystal glass, and the glass hums in sympathy to the voice that says, in tones of weary resignation, ‘Were you aware that Her Majesty’s Government funded a reconstruction of Westminster Bridge last year?’

  Mr Lingdao relights his pipe and puffs. ‘You might almost think the city were deliberately trying to upset you, my lord.’

  The drizzle falls on a shed in Hampstead Heath, then runs through its roof. Four shapes sit under the shelter of a wing, eating suet pudding.

  Finally one voice says, ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What happened, back there?’

  ‘Back where, Teresa?’

  ‘With the water and the big dragon thing an’ how it ate up the evil bigwig an’ that?’

  ‘Ah. Back there.’

  ‘You ain’t tellin’, are you?’

  ‘Feng Darin worked out something he could do with Selene’s blade. Something very clever, that none of us had really . . . considered. ’

  Thomas looks up sharply from his helping of suet pudding, and wonders why Lyle isn’t meeting anyone’s eyes.

  ‘What’d he do?’

  ‘Well . . . it turns out that the blade had this . . . thing,’ Lyle waves a fork, uncomfortably, ‘which let Feng do . . . things . . . about the city . . . All very unscientific, I grant you, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation involving . . . oh, I don’t know, electromagnetic repulsion and spontaneous ionization in the presence of a magnetic field or . . . something along those lines - not really my field at all - anyway, which allowed Feng to beat the evil bigwig.’

  ‘Ain’t it you what beat the evil bigwig?’

  ‘No. Just his maker.’

  The four go on eating.

  Down in Cheapside, a bell begins to ring, proclaiming the hour. A bit to the south, rolling past Blackfriars and on towards Westminster Bridge, the river hesitates for a moment, as if listening to the bell, counting the strokes to make sure it is on time for a vital appointment it can’t afford to miss and, realizing that it is running late, lingers for a second more to wait for the echoes, then turns and races straight back the way it has come.

  The bells ring on, whispering the old, familiar tales to each other.

  Hark, hark, the dogs do bark . . .

  The turning tide catches a number of ships out in the reeds near the estuary, and pushes them along for a while, towards the wider sea, each carrying a tiny bit of the city in its hull, in the minds of its passengers, who stand on the deck and watch the black smoke of London fading behind them, as they head towards the dawn.

  The bells ring on.

  London’s burning, London’s burning . . .

  In the high, ancient stones of the Tower of London a door opens and closes. A tremulous voice emerges from the darkness. ‘You can’t do this to me! I’m an American!’

  Lord Lincoln strikes a match off one of the hard, rough stones, and raises it, to cast a yellow flame round the prison cell. He looks down at Ignatius Caryway, curled up in a corner, and sighs. ‘Mr Caryway,’ he says wearily, ‘no city in the world will want you to be a part of it.’

  London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down . . .

  The match gutters out, letting the darkness and the sound of bells flood back in, like the changing of the tide.

  Build it up with iron and steel, my fair lady . . .

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Lingdao?’

  ‘Lyle has proven an asset again.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Some are asking whether he might be more of an asset if he were part of our cause.’

  ‘Horatio Lyle is very useful. But I fear I have doubts regarding his loyalty.’

  ‘How so, my lord?’

  Lord Lincoln sighs, holding up one hand to scratch his chin. The iron ring with two cogs counting down the seconds to midnight, or possibly noon, briefly catches the light on his finger.

  Iron and steel will bend and break, bend and break, bend and break . . .

  ‘He suffers from . . .’ Lord Lincoln’s fingers idly trace a pattern in the air, trying to pluck from it the right word. ‘. . . morality?’

  The tide rushes on, busy, busy, busy, places to go, people to see, carrying away the smell and the taste of London, dragging the last sound of the bells with it, which catches at the sails of a ship, sitting far out of the city by the reeds. An alien ship, unusual in these ports, indeed in this climate.

  ‘Xiansheng!’ barks the first mate to the captain, who nods once.

  ‘Hao.’

  The ship raises its sails, and it too drifts east, carrying with it, as all things do which have entered the city, a tiny piece of London.

  And deep down in its hold, there is a stone coffin, sealed with the sign of a double cog, counting down the seconds to midnight, or noonday, and inside it, something that was once someone thinks:Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,

  Go to sleep, my little angel.

  Blacks and bays,

  Dapples and greys,

  Coach and six of little horses.

  And smiles, though it cannot quite remember why.

  ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Yes, Teresa?’

  ‘Where’d Mr Feng go?’

  ‘Back to China.’

  ‘Why? Why ain’t he said goodbye?’

  ‘He has many, many clever ideas to have, Teresa.’

  And Thomas looks up at Lyle, and for a second meets his eyes, and in his own, small, uncertain way, thinks he begins to understand.

  Mister Lyle smiles and finishes his last piece of pudding. He stands up, claps his hands together and says brightly, ‘Right! How do we all feel about an investigation of the rate of change of omega with a fixed radius inside a polarized magnetic field when mass “M” is affected not only by inward acceleration “A” but also by changing charges Q positive and Q negative and mass “M” is of a soft ferrous or magnetic material?’

  Thomas leaps up, smiling brightly. Tess sighs, finishes her last piece of pudding, licks up the crumbs carefully, because you never know when these little things might count, stands up, and goes to Meet Their Destiny. She doesn’t know what it is, but at least, for today, it can’t be all bad.

  And the tide carries the songs that the bells of London sing to each other, when all else is asleep, out to sea.

  ‘Oranges and lemons,’ say the bells of St Clement’s . . .

  It carries a wide variety of other things too, mostly too unhygienic to bear prolonged exploration. Flotsam from a raft that has hunted for eels and found only stones. A little coal that has spilt from the sacks that colliers carried up from the docks. A few papers that a lawyer has decided really should disappear soon, if trouble isn’t to follow. A surprisingly large collection of shattered stone fragments that drift in the dirt along the bottom of the river, nudged this way and that by the turning of the tide. A stone talon. A stone wing. A stone halo, broken forever from the head it should encircle
. An arm with cracks down every surface that still clings to the broken and twisted remnants of a black stone blade.

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed . . .

  Does the city, the eyes and ears and minds and senses and hearts that have made the city and are made anew by it every day, watch the remnants of Lucan Sasso drift out to sea, shattered into a hundred pieces by the force of the city that has risen up to consume him?

  Here comes a chopper to chop off your head . . .

  Probably not.

  It isn’t important.

  It is said that, when everything else is sleeping, the stones of London Town whisper to each other. The old cobbles of Aldgate murmur to the new of Commercial Road, telling them what a world they have inherited, what a place, what a hunger, pouring out their history, whispering with the changing tide as the Thames rolls gently from here to there and back again, bringing with it little pieces of the world outside, which are quickly lost and consumed in the city.

  It is simply . . . perfect.