Turning Darkness into Light

by Marie Brennan

  “Is there anyone who can confirm that you were there?”

  Unease began to grow inside me. “Yes, lots. My houseguest Kudshayn, and all the staff. I went to bed early—you heard about the bombing of the Tomphries annex a few days ago?” I gestured at my face, wishing for once that I were pale enough for the scalding to really be seen. “I was in the building during the fire, and haven’t fully recovered. What is all this about?”

  He consulted his notes, which I think was just for show. “You broke into the Selwright Hotel last Messis, didn’t you?”

  My thoughts finally wrenched themselves off their original track. The Selwright: Aaron Mornett. My heart leapt into a much faster tempo. “I can hardly deny it. Does this have something to do with that? It was months ago.”

  The constable had a much better poker face than I do. He met my gaze levelly and said, “Mr. Grance, the manager of the Selwright, has accused you of breaking in again last night.”

  “He—” Shock, confusion, and outrage conspired to rob me briefly of my words. “As if I could set foot inside his hotel without someone recognizing me! Not to mention that I have absolutely no interest in seeing Mr. Aaron Mornett ever again.”

  “Didn’t you leave a message for him earlier in the day? Under the name . . .” This time I believe he really did need the help of his notes. “Belilushtar.”

  I just barely managed to swallow the question of how they’d figured out that was me. “Yes, I did, because I didn’t think they would deliver the message if I left my real name. I have no interest in seeing Mr. Mornett, but I believe he’s in possession of some information I need. That is why I telephoned. But he hasn’t rung me back.”

  Constable Corran sat quietly for a moment, studying me. I swallowed hard and did my best not to look guilty—only the moment someone gives you that kind of look, every mannerism under the sun starts to seem like it will make you look guilty, including attempting to look innocent.

  Then he said, “Aaron Mornett is unlikely to ring you back. He’s gone missing.”

  Those three words hit me like a blow to the stomach. Almost soundlessly, I repeated, “Missing?”

  Whatever Constable Corran saw in my eyes, he must have believed it, because he relaxed ever so faintly, becoming more of a human being and less of a stone wall. “His room was ransacked last night, and there is some sign of a struggle. Mr. Grance accused you, owing to your prior encounter—but I confess, I have a hard time believing you could overpower Mr. Mornett, even if you weren’t suffering the after-effects of a fire.”

  Even in my dazed state, I knew that was not the right moment to tell him Papa’s old suffragette friends trained me in jujutsu. But such thoughts were easier to hold on to than what he had just said: room ransacked. Aaron missing.

  I’d congratulated myself on keeping such a straight face when Gleinleigh said the real ending had been destroyed. But maybe I didn’t do so well as I’d thought.

  Which means that whatever has happened . . . might be my fault.

  There was no way Corran could have known that. My voice still unsteady, I said, “Then why did you call me in here?”

  “Because of this.” He took out a piece of paper and slid it across the table to me.

  For one delirious instant, I thought it might be the missing text from the epic. But although the writing was unmistakably Ancient Draconean—and in Aaron’s hand—the lines were far too few for that.

  Corran said, “I’m given to understand that you are an expert in such things. Can you read what it says?”

  My eyes did not want to focus, but put any kind of writing in front of me and I will try to read it out of sheer reflex. I said, “It is definitely Ancient Draconean. I would say it is a poem of some kind—possibly a copy made from a tablet.” The pencilled shapes were simply writing, not an attempt to accurately represent the specific marks pressed into clay, but for translation purposes it would suffice.

  And if it were copied from a tablet . . . whoever ransacked his room probably grabbed anything clay with Draconean writing on it, in case it was the missing ending.

  “There are more,” Corran said. From his folder he drew out another half-dozen sheets, all on the Selwright’s letterhead. The rest were shorter—incomplete, I realized, and not quite the same as the first example. Then I realized why, and I felt like the Tomphries fire had seared my face all over again.

  “Miss Camherst?”

  “It is not a copy,” I said, my shoulders hunching with embarrassment. “It is . . . I believe he was attempting to compose an original poem.” Honesty forced me to add: “For me.”

  Corran’s eyebrows rose.

  I indicated the top line. “Here, where it says ‘The wings that span the sky of day, the wings that span the sky of night’—that was an epithet used for Beliluštar, the ancient queen whose name I gave when I left my message. Mr. Mornett used that name as an endearment for me, some years ago.”

  “You two were in a relationship.”

  “Before we fell out,” I said, taking refuge in acid worthy of Grandmama herself. “Recent events have made it clear that Mr. Mornett still has feelings for me—feelings I do not reciprocate. I believe this is his way of . . .”

  Mercifully, Corran allowed me to leave that sentence unfinished. Bad enough that I was sitting there holding Aaron Mornett’s declaration of love. A declaration rendered in the language that had brought us together; the same language he had used to commit intellectual fraud of unforgivable magnitude. For all I knew, he had been composing it even as I discovered his forgery.

  I desperately want to tell him what I think of that. But before I can, he has to be found.

  “Do you have any idea of where he might be?” Corran asked.

  Why he’s gone, yes; where he’s gone, no. And the leads I have aren’t the kind of thing I can follow up on, unless I’m going to break into Mrs. Kefford’s townhouse. I’ve come to my senses enough to know that isn’t a good idea.

  But I was sitting with a police constable. Following up on leads is exactly the kind of thing they’re supposed to do.

  “It might have to do with a man named Joseph Dorak,” I said. “He is a smuggler, a dealer in black-market antiquities—including Draconean materials. I have reason to believe Mr. Mornett is involved with him somehow. It may be that the two of them have fallen out for some reason.”

  Like, for example, Aaron’s failure to destroy the epic’s true ending.

  Constable Corran scribbled this down in his notebook. “Thank you. Do you have any more information? When you say they are ‘involved somehow,’ what do you mean?”

  I hesitated. I’d mentioned Dorak first because unfortunately, there’s a kernel of truth in Gleinleigh’s posturing: sharing what I knew would mean accusing some very important people. While Grandmama might be important in her own way, she isn’t here right now, and the rest of us are not fully grown dragons.

  They’ll still help me out, though, if I need it. And more to the point, I think this is the kind of recklessness I do have to embrace. The kind where it’s too important for me to let go of it.

  So I told the constable everything. It took me half the day and made his hand cramp from writing so much, and I think I confused him quite a bit at several points, because he isn’t the kind of man who understands why anybody would bother forging an ancient document—much less why it offends me to the core of my soul. But I stressed the political implications, and since I get the impression the entire Falchester police force has been preparing for the congress and its attendant troubles, that part made sense to him.

  It’s a tremendous relief, knowing that someone else is looking into Gleinleigh and Mrs. Kefford and Dorak. Because honestly, what else can I do? Go camp outside Gleinleigh’s townhouse, or Mrs. Kefford’s, and follow them wherever they go, hoping they’ll lead me to Aaron? I proved at Chiston that I’m not very good at shadowing. As for Kudshayn—he might as well fly a flag advertising his presence. He’s barely left the townhouse since we a
rrived in Falchester, except for the gala, because of the crowd he attracts wherever he goes.

  Tremendous relief. I wrote those words just a few seconds ago, and I meant them at the time, but now I’m not so sure. It comes and goes in waves, one moment me thinking that everything is out of my hands now and good riddance, the next feeling like it’s all spiraling out of control and I have to stop it myself. All well and good to send them after Dorak, but the man’s been known as a smuggler for years, and no one has been able to shut him down; he’s too crafty about hiding his illicit shipments. And Gleinleigh and Mrs. Kefford are not easy targets.

  I shouldn’t have let myself translate Aaron’s poem. It would be uncomfortable to read on any day, but right now it makes me worry even more about what has happened to him.

  To Beliluštar

  by Aaron Mornett trans. by Audrey Camherst

  The wings that span the sky of day,

  the wings that span the sky of night:

  these are the glory of the world,

  without equal in heaven or earth.

  On the banks of the twinned river

  her treasure-house lies,

  filled with all the riches of the past,

  bright gold, emerald, lapis, jet;

  with wisdom is her treasure-house filled,

  and all the knowledge of the past.

  The gate of bone cannot bar her way;

  the road of bone will form her path,

  lifting her to the greatest height,

  reigning over the depths below.

  Then darkness will part before her,

  and light will shed its blessing upon her,

  and the doors of her treasure-house

  will be thrown open for all to share.

  But I will stand alone,

  outside the shelter of her wings,

  in the penumbra of the light

  cast by her most radiant mind.

  WITNESS STATEMENT OF AUDREY CAMHERST

  West New Central Police Station, 5 Acinis

  I, Audrey Isabella Mahira Adiaratou Camherst, philologist, of #3 Clarton Square, Falchester, NOC 681, state:

  On the morning of 4 Acinis I was summoned to the Western New Central Police Station in response to an accusation that I had broken into and ransacked a room at the Selwright Hotel, rented out to Mr. Aaron Mornett. I gave testimony then about events that I believed Mrs. Kefford and others to be involved in, which took me much of the day. Once I was finished there, I went to the offices of Carrigdon and Rudge in an attempt to stop the publication of a work I have been involved with for nearly a year, which I now believe to be partially fraudulent. I remained there until their offices closed, at which point I returned home to Clarton Square.

  At approximately eight thirty that evening I received a telephone call requesting that I come to the city morgue on Cressy Street to identify a dead body that had been found floating in the Twisel. My friend Kudshayn, a visiting Draconean scholar, insisted on accompanying me—first because he was worried for my safety, because Mr. Mornett had gone missing, and second because we both immediately leapt to the possibility that the body in question was Mr. Mornett’s. We took a private cab to the morgue, but did not arrive there until nearly nine thirty, because we had difficulty finding a cab driver willing to take on a Draconean as a passenger.

  Constable Corran was waiting for me at the morgue. Before we went in, he cautioned me, because I have never seen a dead body before. “He was in the river for some hours before anyone found him,” the constable said, “and that has some effects. But the doctor will only pull back the sheet from his face, where there are no marks of violence. Only if you need to see more will you have to look at anything worse.”

  My queasiness was not because of the prospect of seeing a body, though. It was because I feared I had gotten Aaron Mornett killed. I do not quite remember what I said, but it was along the lines of, “If I cannot recognize him from his face, then pulling back the sheet more will not help, because I never saw any other part of him”—which is not strictly true; I think I could recognize his hands. But that, I think, was not what Constable Corran had in mind.

  Then he took me and Kudshayn in to see the body. The doctor waited until I said I was ready, then drew the sheet down.

  I got very faint—but again, not because of the body itself. Kudshayn supported me, and I heard him tell the doctor and the constable, “That is not Aaron Mornett.”

  “No,” I said, still holding on to Kudshayn. “It’s Zachary Hallman.”

  Even with his face cold and blue, I knew him. And it’s terrible to admit this, but I’d gone faint with relief—because I’d been bracing myself so hard for someone else. And while I would have preferred to see Hallman stand trial for his bigotry and his crimes, I can’t say I shed a tear to see him on that slab.

  Constable Corran knew about Hallman from my testimony earlier that day. He took me into a separate room and questioned me some more, along with Kudshayn, about the last time we had seen Hallman (not since the riot at Alterbury) and our conviction that he was involved with the bombing of the Tomphries annex. When he asked how Hallman might have wound up shot and in the river, I was still so dizzy with shock and relief that I said exactly what I was thinking: “If Mrs. Kefford hired him for the bombing, I bet she was worried that it would be traced back to her.”

  That made Corran stop writing and stare at me. “You think the wife of the Dissenting Speaker shot him?”

  “Not herself, no,” I said, feeling very cold inside. “But she might have asked someone else to . . . take care of him.”

  Corran put his pen down. “Miss Camherst,” he said, quiet and firm. “Please consider what you are doing. I recognize that you have many suspicions—and you may be correct. But without any proof, you’re putting yourself very much at risk for a lawsuit from Mrs. Kefford later on. Any accusation against her could be considered defamation of her husband as well.”

  He was right, of course. But all I could think was that Hallman was dead and Aaron was missing; would he be the next one found in the river? For all my problems with the man, I didn’t want him to die. “Then don’t write it down,” I said furiously, standing up. “But don’t you dare leave her out of your investigation just because you’re afraid. There’s more at stake here than one murder, or even two; the future of the Draconean people may depend, not just on our finding out the truth, but proving it.”

  Then I stormed out. Which wasn’t smart, for a whole host of reasons: I didn’t look where I was going, so I wound up heading the wrong direction for catching another cab, and I managed to set off a coughing fit to boot. I fetched up against the low stone wall along the bank of the Twisel and stayed there for a while, doing my best to hack up a lung. Kudshayn followed me and stood with one of his wings sheltering my back, offering silent comfort.

  When I could finally speak again, I said, “I have to find him.”

  Kudshayn knew whom I meant. He said, “Perhaps he fled before they came—whoever they were. Is there anywhere he might have gone?”

  “He grew up in Yarstow,” I said. “But he hated it there; I can’t imagine he’d go back, even to hide.” Was there anywhere else? I stared into the Twisel, trying not to imagine his body floating cold and limp in its waters.

  And then it came to me: the Twisel.

  No one else, I think, could have figured it out. The worst thing about Aaron Mornett is that he and I are, in some senses, perfectly matched: we share the same knowledge, the same passions, at least up to a point. And so that paper he had left in his hotel room was a love poem, as I had assumed . . . but it was also a clue.

  “The Twisel,” I said to Kudshayn, staring fixedly at the water—but for different reasons now. “Its name is an Old Scirling word for ‘forked’ or ‘twinned.’ On the banks of the twinned river, her treasure-house lies . . .”

  Kudshayn was understandably confused. “What treasure-house?”

  I whirled to face him. “Some place Aaron wanted me to kn
ow about. The poem I mentioned to you, the one he wrote—it’s a message to me. One no one else would recognize, because they would need to know I’m Beliluštar, that ‘wings that span the sky of day’ is one of her epithets—” I stopped dead. “They would need to know the epic. Gold, emerald, lapis, jet—”

  “The colours of the four siblings,” Kudshayn said. His wings flicked with sudden life. “Is he telling you where the missing tablets are hidden?”

  “Maybe. Yes? I don’t know.” It was incomprehensible to me that he might give up that information, after everything that had happened. But why else allude to them in such a fashion? “The question is, where is he sending me? The Twisel is the longest river in Scirland.”

  “He would not go that far,” Kudshayn said. “Somewhere in the city.”

  That was still a great deal of riverbank to search. “The rest of the poem,” I said. Closing my eyes, I made myself breathe slowly and carefully, suppressing the coughs that wanted to rise. I needed to remember, not start hacking again. I recited the poem for Kudshayn, one line at a time, then opened my eyes to see what he thought.

  “The heights over the depths,” he said immediately. “The Crown of the Abyss?”

  If the tone of the poem had been less intimate, I might have wondered if Aaron was telling me to go to hell. “The gate of bone. Bone, bound with skin—that is the gate through which the sisters entered the underworld, and Ektabr when he was in female guise. Some place only for women? No.” I dismissed that with a cut of my hand. “He would not have been able to hide them there.”

  “The gate cannot bar your way,” Kudshayn reminded me. “And then the poem changes the image, saying the road of bone will form your path.”

  “Some street named for a bone?” I said dubiously. “Skull Street, Femur Street, Clavicle Street . . .” It all sounded very gruesome and unlikely. But not for nothing do I have a natural historian for a grandmother—and at the thought of her, it all clicked into place. The bone she broke during the disaster that brought her to Kudshayn’s people. “Fibula Street!” (Named for the style of brooch, not the leg bone, but such is poetic license.)