Pisces of Fate

by Pisces of Fate (retail) (epub)

  “Why would you need a secret door inside a secret room?” Ascott asked.

  “To keep something more secret than secret?” Ascott pulled the door open. “Whoa…” he said.

  “Fruity,” Shoal whispered with wide eyes.

  “Durnit. Toilet’s backed up.” Sam scowled.

  Beyond the secret door in the secret room was a wall of water. It pulsed and undulated gently, like the surface of the ocean turned on its side.

  Ascott reached out and carefully touched the shimmering curtain with his finger. The surface rippled and his finger came away wet. “The sea,” he said. “The bottom of the sea is behind this door.”

  “I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for this, too,” Shoal said with a grin. Ascott just turned and looked at her, a stunned expression on his face.

  “Sam, what is behind this wall?” Ascott asked.

  “Glyph Street,” Sam replied. “Flinty’s pub’s on t’other side o’ the road.”

  “Not the bottom of the ocean, then.” Ascott went back to peering into the clear water. “I can see fish,” he said.

  Shoal pressed up against the sea wall, staring through the water-door.

  “I wonder where this is,” Ascott said.

  “Only one way to find out,” Shoal replied. She took a deep breath and plunged through the doorway. Swimming in a slow circle, she waved to the startled Ascott before vanishing upwards in the night-dark water.

  “We have to help her! What if she can’t get back!” Ascott hesitated on the threshold.

  “Heh, that girl was born half-fish,” Sam scoffed. “She’s as likely to drown out there as you are in here.”

  Ascott stared into the dark water for a while. “Sam, can you get me parchment and a pencil? And if you found a map of the islands, that would help, too.”

  Sam grunted and shuffled off to see what could be scrounged. Ascott went through the boxes of papers, putting aside fish-skin sheets that caught his eye and dropping the rest in a growing pile on the floor.

  After several minutes Shoal reappeared. First her hand pushed through the water-door and then she pulled herself through, dripping wet and laughing.

  “It comes out near the Bilgepuppy,” she said. “The wreck’s just on the other side of that reef.”

  ”Tubule can’t have been living in a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea and then coming in here on a daily basis.” Ascott looked around the room, his sense of the rational crumbling.

  “Of course not, he were a man, not a fish,” Sam declared, returning with a carved stone mug packed with pencils and a rolled-up sheet of parchment. “B’sides, the fella hated water. Whoever put this door in, it weren’t him,” Sam said.

  “So…is this room in the Exco building, or is it at the bottom of the sea?” Ascott looked up at the ceiling, waiting for it to collapse and flood the entire island.

  “It’s both,” Shoal suggested.

  “Pencils and t’ chart. I found one of them tourist maps. Wouldn’t trust it to keep me off a reef at high tide,” Sam said, unburdening himself of the supplies. Ascott took a pencil and began to write a note on a parchment scrap.

  “Do you know why I burned the journal?” he asked Shoal as he scribbled.

  “Because you were trying to save our lives?”

  “Well, yes, but I saw something in it. Something that I didn’t want Kalim Aari to know about.”

  “Numbers?” Shoal asked, looking at the notation Ascott had copied out on the page.

  “Map numbers. If we lay a grid on a map, we can find a place by lining up the point in space with the numbers on the map.”

  “Why not just know where places are?” Shoal asked.

  “Because then you wouldn’t need a map,” Ascott said. Looking up, he added, “Do you know where Captain Aarrgh buried the Pisces of Fate?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “I do,” Ascott said. Unrolling the map he began to run his fingers over the faded blotches and lines that marked the thousand islands of the Aardvark Archipelago.

  “So where’s t’ bloody treasure?” Sam pushed past them and peered closely at the map.

  “Here…I think,” Ascott stabbed at the map with a finger.

  ““Tis nowt there,” Sam glowered.

  “Here…ish,” Ascott corrected.

  “No good to no un’ there,” Sam grumbled.

  “We can start looking there. The map…well, it might not be accurate. There are hundreds and thousands of islands in the archipelago. No one could have mapped them all.”

  “No, but people would know where every rock and one-tree island is. Especially someone old enough to have been sailing these waters for decades…” Shoal turned and regarded Sam with an eyebrow on the verge of rising.

  Sam scuffed a bare foot on the stone floor, “D’no nuffin,” he muttered.

  “Thanks, Sam. Mind if we borrow the map?” Ascott rolled everything up and headed for the exit. Shoal hesitated for just a moment, and then went after him.

  * * *

  * The cats of Montaban realised long ago that if a man is given a fish, he feeds you the scraps for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you get free fish for life. This was the basis of the master plan. Many generations later the cats agree all their hard work has been a resounding success and they deserve a nap for their cleverness.

  † The calculation can be expressed as: because cats and algebra are both inscrutably mysterious.

  Chapter 20

  “We have to hurry,” Ascott said, leading the way down the steps of the Exco building.

  “Why?” Shoal whispered, feeling very aware of the sleeping town around them.

  “Because if we don’t go now, someone else will find the treasure.”

  “No one’s found the treasure in well over a hundred years. There’s no rush.” Shoal stood her ground on the white-stone street. “Besides, it’s late, I’m really tired, and we will both think better if we tackle this in the morning.”

  Ascott hesitated, torn between his appetite for adventure and Shoal’s impenetrable stubbornness. In the end, of course, he had no choice; she made sense, even when he didn’t want her to. Ascott fell into step beside Shoal as she headed home. Only the cats watched them pass. Streaks of quicksilver, tabby, and ginger, fast as a lightning-strike, they flitted like ghosts in the corner of Ascott’s eye. The cats exchanged glances from the deeper shadows and then climbed upwards to the highest white cliffs to report to the council.

  The Smith house was quiet and dark, and only the sound of gentle snores echoed the crash of distant surf.

  Ascott stood in the lounge, feeling a discomfort verging on burglary. He waited while Shoal vanished into some other room of white stone walls until she returned with an armload of blankets and a pillow.

  “You should be fine on the couch,” she said, laying out the bedding.

  “Yeah, great, thanks,” Ascott replied in a stage whisper that sounded loud to his ears.

  He sat down on the couch, pulling his shoes off and trying not to look at Shoal, who stood watching him from the centre of the room.

  “Thank you,” she said suddenly.

  “What for?” Ascott felt an absurd stab of guilt.

  “You have restored my faith in things that I thought were lost.”

  “You mean the gods?” Ascott felt bad calling them that. Surely there was a rational explanation for what they had seen and spoken to and, well…Gods didn’t exist.

  “Yes. The ocean is so vast and so wonderful that it couldn’t possibly just be. Something greater than us has to come from it.”

  “Well, if you take into account evolution, everything came from the sea originally.” Ascott could feel the sands of reason eroding under his feet.

  “The gods didn’t evolve,” Shoal said with a sudden sharpness
to her tone.

  “Maybe they did.” Ascott mentally cast a line out into dark and treacherous waters, reeling in an idea and seeing if it would get a bite. “The woman—”

  “The Lady,” Shoal corrected.

  “The Lady said she was the personification of desire. If enough people believe something strongly enough, maybe that belief can take a physical form?”

  “Or maybe people believe in the Lady and the other gods because they are real?” Shoal turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

  Ascott lay on the couch and pulled the blanket over his head. The events of the last week—Kalim, the mysterious journal, the lost treasure of Captain Aarrgh—were all laid out in his mind like a deck of playing cards with too many Jokers.

  Sleep eluded him in much the same way that answers to the mysteries of the treasure and Tacus did. He could spend a lifetime searching every island of the Archipelago. On every atoll he would find answers to a lot of questions he didn’t even know to ask yet. Some answers to the big questions he had right now would be good. Maybe in the morning after Shoal had calmed down and forgiven him for being rational they could go together and find some.

  “Stop looking for answers, and focus on finding the questions.” The voice was so close to Ascott’s ear it sent him scrambling up the back of the couch in a tangled panic.

  “Whathafargleflange!?” Ascott’s muffled voice babbled under the blanket as he pulled himself free. “Drakeforth?” he managed a moment later.

  “Quite,” Drakeforth agreed.

  “But…I…there was…Oh.” Ascott’s questions jostled for priority at the front of his mind.

  “I come and go as needed. Yes, you have a lot to tell me. But there is plenty of time for that, although just when will remain to be seen. Yes, there was. Quite extraordinary, isn’t it? You should take a moment and gather your thoughts.” Drakeforth sat back on the coffee table, crossed his legs and folded his arms.

  “Drakeforth,” Ascott said again.

  “Unless you are suffering some kind of short-term memory loss, we did this already,” Drakeforth reminded him.

  Ascott decided on the most obvious question. “What is going on?”

  “Everything,” Drakeforth said. “Everything is always going on. Don’t hyperventilate—I know you are asking for specifics.”

  “I am?” Ascott asked, desperately trying to keep his footing in the conversation.

  “Yes. You want to know where the treasure is, how gods can exist in an evolving Universe, and how to save your sister from an unfortunate passing.”

  “I do? I do,” Ascott quickly corrected himself.

  “Yes.” Drakeforth stood up. “Well, now that we have cleared that up, I’d best be off.”

  “Wait.” Ascott struggled out of the blankets and stumbled to his feet. “What do you mean about asking more questions? I’ve done nothing but ask questions. I’m ready for some answers.”

  “So, start asking the right questions.” Drakeforth said with exaggerated slowness.

  “What…? No. Wait. Who…?” Ascott raised a hand in a gesture requesting a moment. After a few thoughtful seconds he said, “Why do you care?”

  “Gods are terribly nosey. We can’t help ourselves. We just want to get involved, stir things up and blame you lot when things go wrong.”

  “You’re a god.” Ascott sat down again on the couch.

  “Did I not mention that? I’m sure I mentioned that,” Drakeforth regarded him with a frown.

  “You did. You also said you were a gilded teapot salesman,” Ascott said.

  “No, I said I once knew a gelded teapot salesman. Interesting fellow, no interest in basic human attractions. Obsessed with tea.”

  “You’re Arthur. Which makes you the god of what, exactly?” Ascott lassoed his train of thought and reined it in.

  “Arthur is the god of the Arthurians. Or at least, I was. I retired.”

  “And your retirement plans were to walk the earth and get my sister killed?”

  Drakeforth’s eyes flashed. “Not at all. To walk the earth and do all the fun things I could never do while I was the patron deity of a very successful cult.”

  “I can save Charlotte,” Ascott insisted. “We found a pool on the Island of Saint Amoeba—it has healing properties.”

  Drakeforth sat on the edge of the small table and leaned forward. He put a hand on Ascott’s shoulder and regarded him steadily.

  “She, The Lady of the Sea, is the personification of a desire,” Drakeforth said.

  “Yes, and she can heal Charlotte. Tacus’ feathers grew back.”

  “Desire is a very personal thing. Tacus wanted very much to have his feathers restored. He desired it beyond anything else.”

  “Charlotte wants to be well—she must,” Ascott declared.

  “Or, she may have found in the certainty of her death a sense of purpose and a future that fulfils her greatest desire.”

  “How can being dead fulfil anyone’s greatest desire?”

  “Charlotte will still exist; her life-force, what some would call a soul, or the sum total of her experiences and thoughts and memories. She is going to abandon her physical form and take on one that is entirely different.”

  “What in the hyphen are you talking about?” Ascott’s face was wracked with confusion and grief.

  “Charlotte has decided to have the sum total of her empathic energy transferred into a building’s power system, where she will remain complete and eternal, aware in a way—and hyper-aware in others.”

  Ascott stared for a moment and then shook his head. “Fine. Don’t tell me the truth.”

  “It’s precisely because of this reaction that I don’t tell you the truth when we first meet,” Drakeforth replied.

  “Met,” Ascott corrected past-tensely.

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  Ascott steered the conversation back into more familiar waters. “We found a shipwreck and a secret door.”

  “The Bilgepuppy?”

  Ascott nodded. “I found the journal of Captain Aarrgh. It had some entries by Dentine Tubule, the ship’s surgeon. Old Sam at the Exco told us that Dentine was also the first manager of the Exco.”

  “Indeed he was,”

  “Did you build the secret room in the back of the Exco? The one with the undersea door?”

  ”Me? No.” Drakeforth looked intrigued. “A door to the bottom of the sea? In the Exco?”

  “Yes, it was in a secret room, behind a hidden door.”

  “Most secret rooms are behind hidden doors,” Drakeforth said.

  “I know, but this was a secret room with a hidden door inside.”

  “A secret door, behind a secret door? That seems a bit excess­ive,” Drakeforth said.

  “I know, so it must mean something, right?”

  “What was the first door like on the inside?” Drakeforth asked.

  “What?” Ascott frowned.

  “The door that led from the Exco side into the secret room. On the inside, what did the door look like?” Drakeforth explained with uncharacteristic patience.

  “It, uhh…I don’t think I paid much attention,” Ascott admitted.

  “If it looked like a door, we have a puzzle. If it looked like anything but a door, then we have a simple answer.”

  “It…looked like a wall, until we moved the Living Oak filing cabinet.”

  Drakeforth nodded. “And on the inside?”

  “Uhh…there were shelves. The back of the door was hidden by shelves.”

  “And the other door?”

  “Well.” Ascott strained his memory, “It was a wooden cabinet which opened up a much larger door when we tried to open it.”

  Drakeforth leaned in, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “What did the outside of the second door look like?”


  “It looked like a coral reef?” Ascott answered carefully.

  “And why are two doors that look nothing like doors important?” Drakeforth asked.

  “Someone really didn’t want anyone finding the room?” Ascott hazarded.

  “Exactly. More importantly, they didn’t want anyone to find the room from either side.”

  “Who didn’t?” Ascott asked, troubled that he might be losing the thread of the conversation.

  “Another excellent question. I would suggest that Dentine Tubule discovered the room and used it to his advantage. The Living Oak filing cabinet, with the right encouragement, would produce a morphic field of double-e flux that could easily disguise the door behind it as a wall. The secret door in the hidden room suggests that whoever built the room did not want it found by anyone. Including those who might approach it from the outside.”

  “Fish?” Ascott asked.

  “Maybe. Or the likes of Old Noodle-Nose, She, Captain Crab Hands, and even Hee.”

  “The old gods?” Ascott felt his mind twisting.

  “Some of them. Gods are funny things. They change with the people who worship them. Primordial nature spirits become primitive guardians of society and before you know it you have actual powerful entities.”

  “Is that where Arthur came from? Some proto-physicist wish­ing he could understand the true nature of the Universe?”

  “Arthur came to be by living exactly when he needed to, exactly where he needed to.” Drakeforth’s expression made it clear he would not be elaborating.

  “So why would someone worship all the gods, including you, and hide it all from everyone, including the gods themselves?” Ascott’s brain twitched.

  “If he had done something so terrible that it could never be forgiven. Yet at the same time he felt so bad about it, he tried to appease everyone. Without drawing attention to himself.”

  “You are actually suggesting that Dentine Tubule founded some kind of polytheist cult and then kept it secret from everyone, even the gods he was worshipping?” Ascott squeezed the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger.