Mordew

by Alex Pheby

  Nathan stood. ‘The City of Malarkoi,’ he shouted, so that all could hear him, ‘now belongs to the Master of Mordew. Anyone trespassing will pay with their life, and I’ll collect the debt.’

  The crew made as if they could not hear him, or were not interested, busying themselves with the untying of the knots on the boat and guiding it into the water.

  When they were done, the Captain threw a ladder over the side and beckoned with her head for him to leave.

  ‘Tell the Master that the Muirchú will not be running these routes again. We leave now for the south, where there is decent work to be had, and we will not return.’

  LXXVI

  Bellows was waiting for Nathan on the dockside and the moment he caught sight of him he gestured for a dozen gill-men of the Port Watch. They emerged from the shadows, uniformed in white, and slipped into the water, their coats glistening in the sunlight as they swam, sinuous and silent, out to greet him. Each took a space around the boat, some beneath and some above the water, their long-clawed fingers scratching at the wood, and they swam him to shore. Nathan lay the oars in the boat and Bellows waved him in as if he was a returning hero.

  ‘My boy! My boy!’ he cried, as Nathan stepped ashore. ‘A great day. Come. Receive your reward. You shall be to the Master as a son now; do you see? So great are the things you have done for Him, such that they make poor Bellows seem as nothing. And for myself? So glad. That you have avenged my brother, and to know that I had some part in it, however small, I cannot say how much it pleases me.’

  Bellows seemed to be weeping. It might have been sea spray, or the remnants of rain, but as Bellows embraced Nathan the side of his nose was red and wet, and he was shaking as if sobbing.

  ‘Come. The Master has directed me to bring you to Him the moment you return, regardless of His work, and to His private chamber, where I have never been. Oh, child. Imagine now what might be done without the yoke of war. Mordew will blossom and grow and all will receive the marvellous bounty that I have received: that part of the Master’s attention that can be spared for them. And all because of you. I am barely able to contain myself.’ Bellows opened the lower door and made not for the route they had taken down, but for another way. ‘The Master has directed me to use His private stair, another wonderful break with tradition. We saw it all – mind your step, the staircase moves by an unseen mechanism; we have something similar in the kitchens, for the movement of soiled dishes through a tub of hot soapy water – we saw it all from the High Balcony, the servants and I, using a spyglass the Master provided, while He watched from the tower. We passed it between us, each rationing ourselves to a few moments only, and we saw the fire burning in the distance, blue as noon though the skies were full of clouds. A great cheer went up, though, I’m sure, only I knew the true significance, the others being kept from the Master’s confidences as befits their rank, which is, after all, very lowly. But they celebrated as best they could. We have been waiting on tenterhooks for your return. I will, with the Master’s permission, commission a great feast.’

  Bellows was so excited that he entirely missed the top of the stair and stumbled over onto his knees. He struggled to right himself, legs as gangly as a crane fly’s, arms so thin they seemed unable to support his weight. When he eventually straightened up, he was face to face with the Master. He sank directly back to his knees.

  ‘There will be no feast, Bellows, old man.’

  The Master stood at the top of the stairs, far enough back so that Nathan could not reach him, but not by much, and the corridor that led to his private chamber was closed by magic, a mesh of invisible wires like that which protected the antechamber.

  So long ago that seemed.

  ‘Welcome back, Nathan,’ he said. His hands were behind his back. There was nothing odd in the posture, many men stand that way, shoulders straight, jutting forward their chins, but the muscles of the Master’s arms were flexing.

  ‘Bellows,’ the Master said, ‘does he have the book on his person?’

  Bellows raised his head a little and sniffed.

  ‘I believe so, sir.’

  ‘I believe so too; it just seemed prudent to check.’

  Nathan nodded. And if he hadn’t?

  The Master stepped forwards, but Nathan stepped back, and the Master stopped. He appeared to think for a moment and come to a conclusion. ‘Thank you for your work, Nathan. Bellows thanks you too.’

  Nathan stepped back again, and now the steps clipped his heels as they rose and met the floor. Could he run? Could he dispose of the book and fight? He had destroyed one of them already. He had done something the Master could not do. He had killed her, and if that had been in the Master’s power, wouldn’t he have done it?

  ‘Did she have anything to say?’ the Master asked. ‘Anything to tell? Or perhaps you did not give her the choice. Perhaps…’

  Nathan held up his hand, as if he had heard enough. The Master stopped as he was bid.

  ‘Where is her daughter?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t try to lie to me. I know it’s true. I can feel her – Dashini. She’s somewhere nearby.’

  ‘Child. There are no girl children in the Manse. The female energies are incompatible with…’

  The Master shook his head, and Bellows returned his face to the ground. ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘Answer my question.’

  The Master raised his eyebrows, but he replied, ‘Come with me, and I’ll show you.’

  He took one hand from behind his back and offered it to Nathan. It hovered in the air like a hummingbird. Nathan reached into his sailor’s shirt and took out the book.

  ‘I know this book is how you control me. It told me, but I already knew. You use it to damp my Spark, or make it burn. You used it to make me kill her, and all her people. I don’t think she was the terrible thing you want me to think that she was. If I throw this book down the stairs, I think I will be able to burn this place to the ground, and everyone in it.’ Nathan held it between the tips of his fingers. ‘I think I might do that. I think that you killed my dad. I think that you killed Bellows’s brother. I think you will kill me, if you can.’ Nathan dangled the book in front of him, and he looked from Bellows to the Master.

  The Master breathed deeply one or twice. ‘Nathan,’ he said, ‘you are both right and wrong, but it would take so long to explain in what ways you are right and wrong that I fear you would lose patience before I could get to the end of it. I can tell you a few things, though, that are clear, or at least clear to me.

  ‘I did not kill your father. Moreover, I would not have seen him die at all. I loved your father. Your mother killed your father, once the lungworms had weakened him enough so that she could do it.’

  Nathan shook his head, went to throw the book.

  ‘Wait. He wanted her to kill him, to stop his agonies. I could tell you why it had to be her, but it’s a long tale. If you intend to burn me for that crime, though, it would be a mistake. It would be a mistake, too, if you burned down this place, because, as you rightly suggest, there are other people of note in it, Dashini included. I keep them here for all our protection. Bellows’s brother is none of your concern, and I will speak to Bellows about that in due course.

  ‘Your decision, Nathan, is your own, and, as you say, without the book you might be able to kill me. But, equally, I might be forced to kill you. I am not without resources and you come to me in my own place. It might be you that dies.

  ‘And all for nothing. You do not understand it, and perhaps you will never understand it, but I don’t want to hurt you, Nathan.’

  ‘You say that, but I don’t believe you. You’re hiding something behind your back. Show me.’

  The Master smiled. ‘Show you? Why? You already know what it is, Nathan. I’ll make a bargain with you. Let me put the Interdicting Finger back around your neck, wear the locket again, and I’ll take you to Dashini.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘Well, then
I will have to make you wear it, Nathan, and if you resist then who knows what will happen? I can guarantee one thing, though. If I die, then this place will die with me. It is sustained by my magic, which is its bricks and its mortar. It grew with me and it will rot with me, and when it goes you and Bellows and all the boys and the servants will go with it. And so will Dashini. It will all crumble into the dirt and the Sea Wall will fail and we will drown together, all of Mordew, Gam and Prissy, and Padge, and your mother, regardless of your Spark.

  ‘So be a good boy, Nathan, and put the Finger on.’

  The Master took the other hand from behind his back and in it was his mother’s locket within which his father’s severed finger had been placed. Around it buzzed spells that accentuated its natural abilities, charms of control, wards of mind-reading, fluences.

  Nathan’s throat constricted and he blinked – he couldn’t help it: a boy must blink eventually – and while his eyelids were closed, that fraction of a moment, the Master come close to him and slipped the locket over his shoulders. He arranged it, carefully and delicately, so that the locket hung over Nathan’s heart.

  ‘That’s it.’

  Nathan looked down at it hanging there.

  ‘One more thing.’ The Master tapped the locket and it passed through Nathan’s shirt without making a hole, and through his skin without making a wound, and through his ribs without cracking them, and lodged inside the chambers of his heart. Here it sat and the blood flowed around it, filtered, neutered, powerless. The chain remained around his neck, disappearing into him.

  ‘Bellows, clean him up for dinner. Dashini will be entertaining him this evening.’ The Master turned and left as if there was nothing more to interest him there.

  LXXVII

  His room seemed odd – though it wasn’t visibly unclean, it looked dirty, as if colonies of diseases were growing beneath his ability to see them. He ran his fingers across the surfaces – they were not dusty, but his fingers felt grit, like sand. When he wiped his hands there was no residue on his handkerchief.

  The book was heavy at his chest, so he took it and put it in the only place he couldn’t access it easily – the top of the wardrobe – and once it was out of sight, he felt a little better, a little freer. Sometimes a person senses they are being watched, and then they close the curtains and are less constrained in the darkness, more themselves. This Nathan felt once the book was hidden, though he struggled to remember why. He pulled gently at the chain of his locket and it tugged at the skin above his ribs.

  After a short period sitting on his bed, Nathan was visited by Bellows and they went to where Dashini was kept.

  ‘Dangerous animals are separated from the objects of their predation – sometimes they are caged and sometimes they are killed – but the good keeper always makes sure to cause the beast no unnecessary suffering. The Master is the best keeper, and His husbandry is unmatched, providing security for us all and a pleasant environment in which his dangerous charge may live in comfort. Here!’ Bellows stopped in the middle of a hallway. It was unremarkable, being just like the hallway below off which Nathan’s room was to be found, but Bellows raised his bramble-arm. ‘Observe.’ Bellows reached forward and tapped, and a rainbow of colour rippled out from where his finger met the air. With it came a pure ringing tone. ‘While there is nothing visible between us and the rest of the corridor, in the invisible world there is a thickness of magical glass, like that which makes up the road to this Manse. It is stronger than the strongest steel, and it may not be passed except by the Master’s will. Nathan, please avert your eyes.’

  Nathan did as Bellows asked and listened as he pulled something out from his jacket and used it. The barrier rang again, and now there was a glass passageway, several feet thick, leading down the hallway.

  ‘You shall enter, and I will close the way. Farewell, Nathan,’ Bellows said, with a certain reluctance in his tone, but then he ushered Nathan in through the barrier and closed it behind him.

  The door to Dashini’s room was open when Nathan arrived. It was just like his: the same brass handle, the same panels, the same lack of a lock, the bolts at the top and bottom. Through the slit between the door and the frame yellow light leaked dimly, flickering as a candle does in a draught. Nathan could hear her rustling amongst the things of the room. Something clicked like a mechanism in a clock ticks as it winds down. Then there was a bang, a hand slammed down on the table, and the clicking stopped.

  ‘Is that you, Nathan?’ Her voice was light, melodic, like the high strings on a violin when the bow is properly rosined. ‘Come in, then.’

  The door flew open and she stood in the rectangle it made, framed by candlelight on all sides.

  She was the same as the Mistress, only smaller, and her hair was not quills or spines but feathers, iridescent as a raven’s. Her eyes were the same, wide and so dark that the pupils were almost invisible in the low light. Only the intensity of her glare, glittering as if through tears, betrayed that he was the focus of her attention, every inch of him. ‘Dear me! You must have been hard at work – I can almost see straight through you.’ She stood with her hands clasped and she worked the fingers of one hand with the other until her knuckles cracked. Her skin was like burnished copper, soft against the depth of the blue of her dress, and around her waist she wore a silver belt. ‘So, you are Nathan Treeves.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Nathan the Great. I am very pleased to meet you. I’ve been waiting for this for such a long time. Did you get my messages? I’ve been trying out something with morphic resonance.’ She reached forward and grabbed him by the wrist. Though she seemed to want to bring him in to her room, there was something else. Her fingers were both urgent and wary and they explored tiny areas of his flesh as if searching for something. When she found it, she stepped back, letting his arm drop, retreating to the safe territory between her bed and desk.

  Her room was the same as his – the same bed, the same wardrobe, the same bathroom – but hers was full of things, strewn everywhere: clothes in heaps, books open on top of them; half-finished sketches on thick, ragged sheets of paper; glasses filled to different levels with varicoloured liquids; carvings, knives and piles of wood shavings; tubes of paint, squeezed carelessly in the middle.

  ‘Sit,’ she said. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

  Nathan looked around but there wasn’t a surface he could sit on, let alone comfortably.

  Dashini picked up the corners of the quilt on her bed and gathered them all in, capturing everything in a jumble which she dragged off and threw into a corner.

  ‘That’s better.’ She sat on the bed, patted the space beside her, and Nathan went and sat with her.

  They sat in silence for a while, both staring forwards.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nathan said.

  Dashini jumped up. ‘No need to be. It wasn’t your fault. Would you like to see something amazing?’ Before he could answer she ran to her wardrobe, opened it, riffled around in the shambles of clothes inside, and came back with a pouch. Her smile split her face as she opened it up, filled her hand and then threw dust up over her head. The dust settled, drawn to her somehow, and she completely disappeared.

  Before Nathan even had to time to be shocked, her voice spoke from where she’d been standing. ‘Prism powder. I made it myself, not long after I first arrived. Each tiny grain is a glass prism, charged with an attractant, keyed to my energy. They stick to my surface, the light hits the prisms, and they direct the light around me and out, as if I wasn’t here. Renders me invisible. Ingenious, right? Also completely useless. Bellows and the gill-men can smell my “oestrus”, as they so delightfully call it.’ She snapped back into visibility in a cloud of interference. ‘I reverse their charge and they dissipate. The room will look a little odd for an hour or two, but otherwise everything is fine.’ She ran to the bed, pulled a box out from underneath it. ‘Put your hand in here.’

  The box was just the right size for someone to slip their hand into.
Nathan looked at it suspiciously.

  ‘It won’t hurt you; I promise.’

  Her face was clear and so enthusiastic that Nathan believed her. He put his hand in the box and it went immediately cold. There was wind blowing on it, water dripping.

  ‘Your hand is outside. It’s about a hundred yards to your left. Come to the window.’ Dashini dragged him by his free hand until he could see out. ‘There,’ she said, pointing into the near distance. It was his hand, like a wingless, featherless bird, hovering in mid-air. He waggled his fingers and the bird waggled its. ‘Useless, again. I could never get the box any bigger than that. Anyway, if I’d crawled into it, I’d have fallen to my death on the rocks.’ She pulled the box from his hand, ran to the bathroom, returned.

  ‘This.’ It was a tube, or a pipe, about six inches long and one inch in diameter. ‘Extend!’ she said, and the pipe’s length increased threefold towards Nathan. On the end was a mechanical eye. ‘Inserted into the tap hole of the bath, this allowed me to search through the plumbing system, looking for the hot water boiler. My aim was to make it explode, that kind of thing. Useless – the pipework has no logic to it, everywhere is a dead end. I suspect it may be operated by magic.’

  Dashini dropped the pipe on the floor and returned to the bed. ‘I could go on, Nathan. I’ve been here for some years, always looking for a way out, or ways to make a nuisance of myself, but it’s never been much use. Now my mother is dead – and I inherit her power – and the Master sends me you. What are we to make of it?’

  ‘I think he hopes you’ll kill me. In revenge. Perhaps I will kill you, to defend myself. Whichever one wins, he’ll pick them off.’

  Dashini nodded. ‘Possibly. I could kill you, definitely.’ She gestured to a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. ‘Under there, somewhere, is a poison so powerful it could kill the Master himself, turning every cell in his body into ten cells, then a thousand, then, exponentially… you get the idea. He never comes in here, though, and the quarantine keeps me from him. I could certainly use it on you. Force you to drink it. Trick you.’ Dashini put her hand on his knee. ‘But it strikes me, Nathan the Great, that we might be best avoiding what the Master wants us to do, don’t you think?’ She turned to him, and she was so close he could see deeply into her black eyes. She seemed kind.