by Alex Pheby
He reached into his jacket. ‘I have something for you. I think, probably, I could kill you with it. Or you could kill me. But I promised your mother I’d give it to you. That was the bargain, anyway.’
‘Let me see.’
He handed it to her. ‘She called it the Nathan Knife. She made it from bits of me. I used it to kill her.’
Dashini turned it in her hands, raised it to her eye, looked down its length. She put it to her tongue. When she was done, she smiled. ‘This, Nathan, is going to prove very useful.’
Nathan told Dashini everything, and she listened, nodding mostly, raising her eyebrows now and then. Dashini returned the favour. She told him about her mother, about Malarkoi, about the Master’s endless assaults on the city – plagues, earthquakes, droughts. She told him how the persistent rains that poured on Mordew were a side effect of the Master’s efforts to dry Malarkoi’s crops by drawing the water to him, even the sea. She told of the sacrifices her mother made to the all gods to ensure the harvests, and the toll it took on the people. She told of the Master’s blockade, the mercenary ships he hired with fabricated gold to prevent Malarkoi’s trade with the distant lands. She told Nathan everything he asked. Except when he asked about Adam, and then she changed the subject.
Whatever the topic, there was no hint in her words or in her demeanour that she hated Nathan for killing her mother. She did not seem to want revenge, which Nathan found strange and disturbing. If it had not been for her good cheer and enthusiasm Nathan would have dwelled on this, mulled it over until it brought him down. Instead she pulled him away from his introspection, lightened the room with her friendliness. She treated Nathan in a way he could never remember being treated – as if it was a pleasure to be around him. She was always smiling, rushing from one idea to the next, touching his hand, his shoulder, nudging him with her elbow, each act of contact a way of taking him with her wherever she went.
As she spoke, Nathan thought less and less of the knife driving up into her mother’s throat, feared less and less of the knife repaying the favour in his, and more and more of the world as Dashini was describing it. Whatever her captivity had achieved, it was not the dulling of her spirit – everything she turned her words to shone in the light of her attention, whether it was the routine of the Manse, the conditions of her quarantine, her plans for escape. Moreover, each sentence she spoke was like an invitation, an opportunity for Nathan to join her.
When Bellows came to take Nathan back, he was surprised, it seemed to Nathan, to see them speaking so cordially to each other. The day had passed and whatever reason they had been introduced should have come to fruition, yet here the two were with nothing apparently altered in the state of things, except that there was, perhaps, a burgeoning friendship.
Bellows stood in the doorway, handkerchief over his nose. He gestured that Nathan should come. ‘The stench is appalling, and now you must leave.’
Dashini got up and wafted her hands towards Bellows. ‘Watch out, Mr Bellows, here comes my oestrus.’ She lifted her leg, directed her hindquarters at Bellows. He turned away, appalled, and Dashini thrust a package into Nathan’s hands. ‘Tonight,’ she whispered, ‘we play Masks and Marionettes!’
LXXVIII
Dinner passed in a strained silence. It was obvious that Bellows was trying to reconcile contradictions – Nathan was a hero, yet the Master seemed to want him dead; the Master wanted Nathan dead, yet he still lived; the enemy’s daughter and the Master’s hero were now friends – but there was also something else.
When his potatoes and gravy were finished, Bellows rose from the table and took his plate to Cook. ‘Nathan,’ he said when he returned, ‘tonight the Master has asked that I accompany him to Malarkoi. Since you were unable to find Adam, He has determined to go Himself.’
Nathan finished his meal and stood. ‘I’m going to be left alone?’
Bellows nodded his head.
Nathan gave his plate to Cook, who was now wiping their table with a wet rag.
‘Be a good boy while we are away. If you require anything, then you need only ask Cook or Caretaker. There will be an extra contingent of gill-men for your protection, and the Master’s usual securities will be doubled. Who knows what vengeance parties sympathetic to the Mistress might attempt?’
When he left, Nathan bolted back to his room, his running making the portraits rattle on the picture wire as he passed.
The package Dashini had given him was hidden between the mattress and the bed frame. Nathan reached for it.
Rather than paper, it was wrapped in a silk shirt with ink stains on the sleeves and several buttons missing. Nathan undid the string, put it in his pocket and laid the contents on the bed, hiding the shirt in his wardrobe. It wasn’t clear at first what the thing was – it was pale and flexible, gelatinous like a jellyfish dropped from the Sea Wall by a careless gull. Nathan picked it up with his fingertips, gingerly, letting it hang. As it twisted, he saw suddenly what it was – a face, hairless, eyeless, but a face nonetheless. He threw it back onto the bed in disgust.
He stepped back and watched it from a distance. Surely Dashini hadn’t skinned a person? Removed their face? No. It wasn’t skin. He’d seen things like it rise from the Living Mud – boneless flukes resembling, say, a dog, but incapable of maintaining their shape, slumping back under the surface immediately – but this was different. More like the aspic surrounding the meat in the pies Cook made. He prodded it and it wobbled. It was more like lemon jelly.
When he picked it up again, he opened his fingers out behind the face, to give it a scaffold. Then, in just the right light, as he held it to the lamp, he could see it. Caretaker. It was the face of Caretaker – the old man who tightened screws and fixed loose panelling, the old man who had brought him his mirror back when Nathan first arrived.
The was a knock at the door and Nathan stuffed Caretaker’s face under the pillow.
He straightened his clothes and, opening the door a crack, peeked round. He had expected to find Bellows, but it was Cook, his long hair greasily lank beside his bald pate, his bare arms limp at his sides.
‘Let me in, then,’ Cook said, despite the fact that he had previously been mute. The old man barged past him. When he was in, he started overturning everything in the room. ‘It’s me, Dashini. Where is it?’
‘You look just like him,’ Nathan said.
Cook pursed his lips. ‘Look like him? I am him. This is Masks and Marionettes, not fancy dress. Where’s the other mask?’
Nathan got it out from under the pillow, handed it to her.
Cook tutted, held it up to the light, picked off bits of fluff and dangling threads. ‘Can be very uncomfortable if you leave dirt on them – that’s why I wrapped it in silk. Didn’t you notice?’
Nathan shook his head. Then something occurred to him. ‘How did you get past the quarantine?’
Cook frowned. ‘I didn’t. I’m still in my room. Come on, put on the mask. It’s easier to show you than tell you. Come back here straight away; there’s no time to waste.’
Cook grabbed Nathan by the shoulder and slipped the mask over his face.
Immediately, Nathan was in a small, cramped room, hunched over in front of a window. There was a table in front of him and on it was a quartered apple on a plate. He was peeling one of the quarters with a fruit knife. All around were brooms and saws and nails in stacked trays and tins of oil and cogs and nuts and a thousand things Nathan didn’t know the names of. He sat up in shock, his back protesting with the sudden movement, and there was Caretaker reflected in the window.
Nathan stood, knocking the chair back so that it fell clattering into the things gathered behind it. Once up, his knees throbbed and the arches of his feet ached. He squinted and blinked to no effect: everything was blurred and misty. He could hear a high-pitched squeal that no amount of putting his fingers in his ears could do anything about, and his limbs were so heavy that when he tried to move them the effort barely registered. And he was dizzy, so d
izzy that he felt that he might be sick.
He shook his head, pulled at his cheeks, rubbed his back. Nothing made any difference.
Then he remembered what Dashini had said – come back, no time to waste. He made his way to the door as quickly as he could, but that was very slowly it turned out, and it was all he could do to keep upright and not send himself tumbling into the crowded mess.
His lungs were gritty, the air scratching through them as he breathed; his joints were the same, grinding against themselves, resisting his efforts to move them; his flesh was heavy and pendulous, hanging and swaying and exhaustingly slack. When his hand met the doorknob, it pained him to twist it, and when it eventually snicked open it was with a sense of relief Nathan could scarcely credit.
He put one hand to his forehead, wiped back a lock of greasy hair that had stuck to the sweat on his forehead, the range of movement in his shoulder so much more limited than he expected. How did Caretaker manage? Dashini was right – this was nothing like dressing up.
LXXIX
The corridors were always murky, the gas turned low as if the Master kept it on a ration, or Bellows feared that harsh light would blanch the portraits that lined the walls. But today seemed murkier still, and everything around him was a hazard, waiting to send him sprawling on the floor. Even rugs, something Nathan had never paid much attention to, kept catching as he dragged Caretaker’s feet over them, the frilly edges getting under his boots, making him slip. He had to peer constantly at the ground to ensure he could maintain his balance.
Caretaker’s room was over near the library where Nathan had his lessons, and now that long corridor, paintings either side, seemed longer still and the portraits were nothing but blurs when Nathan could lift Caretaker’s head to see them.
There was a sound up ahead, but by the time Nathan had managed to straighten up enough to see what it was, Bellows was on him. ‘Where are you going, Caretaker? Surely your duties are over for the day? No matter, I was coming to see you. The Master and I are leaving on business and will not return until tomorrow. In our absence the gill-men will be on double duty. Consequently, the doors to the lower vats must remain unlocked. Is that clear?’
Nathan nodded, slowly, so that the bones in the Caretaker’s neck did not crack.
‘Very good.’ Bellows marched off back the way he came. When he reached the junction, what seemed like miles ahead, he turned to the right, away from Nathan’s room.
Nathan took a deep breath, ignored the tickle in Caretaker’s lungs, and continued on.
‘You took your time,’ Cook said, pulling Caretaker in through Nathan’s bedroom door.
‘I don’t know how he does anything. His body’s a wreck.’
Dashini opened the door again, peered through. ‘I have stimulants in my room which might help, but there’s no way of getting them. Anyway, there’s no time. Let’s go!’
Nathan sighed. All he wanted was to rest. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To do some mischief.’ She pulled Nathan by the arm.
‘Wait!’
‘What is it?’
‘Bellows and the Master are leaving for Malarkoi tonight. He told me at dinner.’
Dashini thought for a moment, shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter – if it’s a trap, we’re already trapped. We can’t get any more trapped.’
Nathan hadn’t considered the idea that it was a trap – he had only thought it might give them more time – but now the idea nagged at him.
Dashini went regardless and Nathan followed. Soon the two old men were rattling down the corridor at a speed that, to an observer, was scarcely faster than a standstill, but which, to Nathan at least, seemed recklessly quick.
Now, up ahead, was a patrol of gill-men, a pair of them, coming from where Caretaker’s room was.
‘They know,’ Nathan said.
‘They can’t,’ Dashini replied. She put her fingers to her lips, reminding Nathan she wasn’t supposed to speak.
The gill-men slid over to where they stood. The slits on their faces opened and closed, drawing in their scents.
Nathan made Caretaker touch his forelock. ‘Evening,’ he said.
One put its hand on his face, the other came very close. Nathan couldn’t tell what they were looking for, what they could sense, but whatever it was they found it, or didn’t, and then they passed by without turning back.
Cook squeezed Caretaker’s hand and they took the corridor down to the playroom, crawling on all fours when the ceiling became too low.
‘I don’t have the key,’ Caretaker said.
‘Check your pockets,’ Cook replied.
She was right – in Caretaker’s overalls pocket there was a bunch of keys and one of them – it was easy to spot – was the key to the playroom. He handed it over, and Cook turned it in the lock.
‘It’s stuck.’
‘Lift it and jiggle.’
The door opened and they squeezed in.
‘Right,’ Cook said. ‘Time’s wasting.’ Dashini moved Cook through the room, gathering most of the toys into a pile – seemingly useless things like the Ark of Noah and the Perpetuum Mobile – and occasionally putting others – the bow, the armour, anything sharp – into another. Nathan took Caretaker into the garden, where the hand-axe was embedded in a target by the wall. Dashini followed with the pile of useless toys.
Without hesitation she took one pile to the edge of the battlements and threw it off. The toys fell, bouncing off the wall, until they disappeared from sight.
‘Why did you do that?’ Caretaker cried, as if the old man was somehow attached to the things.
‘Why not? They’re his, Nathan. All of this is his.’ She went back in and came out with the bow and loosed arrows at every window she could see. Despite Cook’s withered arms, she was a good enough shot to smash a few of them. Then she took the hand-axe from Nathan and chopped at the trunk of the tree.
Caretaker was too weak to stop her, but Nathan wanted to. When it became obvious that the tree wouldn’t fall, she chopped at the branches instead. When these didn’t sever – it’s hard to chop wood, especially for an old man – she hacked at the turf.
In the pond, the carp gaped, as if in surprise and horror.
‘These too – they’re all his.’ She went over and tried to grab the fish, but Cook’s reflexes were too slow, his hands too feeble. ‘There’s nothing here that isn’t perverted by him.’
Caretaker made his way slowly over to where she sat, and kneeled. It was agonising, but he twisted and got down beside Cook. ‘I know. How long have we got?’
‘The masks dissolve – they’re sensitive to warmth. Probably an hour. Maybe two.’
Nathan smiled and Caretaker’s blackened teeth showed. ‘I know where we can get some magic books.’
LXXX
The library was as they had left it at the end of their most recent lesson; the maps and charts and various instructional texts were laid out on the table. When Caretaker and Cook entered the room, a single lamp between them, it smelled, as it always did, of old leather, cloves, and of the raindrops that fell through the glass ceiling. Bellows’s lectern was unmanned, and the only occupants were the books, hundreds of them, waiting on their shelves dutifully for when they would next be conscripted into service.
Caretaker led Cook past the chair where Nathan habitually sat, and across that short distance along which his eye was often drawn – towards the glass cabinet in which the magic books reclined.
Dashini raced over as quickly as Cook’s body allowed, and put her hands on the glass. ‘I recognise some of these. That is a Compendium of Minor Trickeries, that’s a Langerman’s Primer, and that is a Manual of Spatio-Temporal Manipulation.’
‘Any use?’
‘Well, if you want to make someone’s breeches fall down from a distance or turn a bird into a bat they’re invaluable.’
‘What about that one?’ Nathan pointed to the bottle-green book that had always attracted him during lessons. It had unread
able red lettering and was unremarkable except that the air around it seemed to buckle and twist while he watched.
‘Yes. That’s an artefact from the Seventh Atheistic Crusade. It does one thing, and one thing only. It summons.’
‘What does it summon?’
Cook turned to Caretaker and even through Cook’s face, and even with Caretaker’s weak and rheumy eyes, Nathan could see the mischief in Dashini’s heart. ‘That depends entirely on who does the summoning. Help me get it out.’ Dashini searched for the latch or the keyhole, but there was nothing. From Cook’s apron she pulled the hand-axe.
Nathan shook Caretaker’s head. ‘That won’t work. It’s protected by the Master’s Law. Bellows said so.’
Cook shook his head, ‘We’ll see about that.’ He held Caretaker’s hand, muttered an incantation that caused the glass on the cabinet to vibrate and shimmer, and swung the axe. As it hit, Nathan felt himself drain, as if Caretaker’s life was leached from him. The glass shattered as easily as any glass shatters when struck with an axe, and the draining feeling passed.
‘Some “laws” are quite easily broken.’ Dashini reached Cook’s hand through the glass and took the books. ‘With the Primer, we could fill this place with hornets, with the Compendium we could infect the gill-men with boils.’ She held up the green book. ‘With this, we could do some real damage.’
Cook swept the table clear and placed the book in the centre of it. ‘Don’t make a sound and do exactly what I say. Is that clear, Nathan?’
Caretaker nodded his head.
Cook put the hand-axe down on the table and opened the book. The pages were ordinary enough – vellum covered with crabbed symbols and words Nathan couldn’t read. Cook flicked forwards and back until Dashini found whatever it was that she was looking for. ‘Right. Lean forward a bit, so you can see the pages. I’ll need you to look closely.’