Wolf Tide Page 15

  ‘Ms Nolio, sorry to interrupt. The Patriarch wishes to speak with you.’

  Yanni, hugged her tight, and murmured a blessing in her ear. Then she set off with the beadle towards the Patriarch’s quarters.

  ‘I saw you both from my balcony,’ said the Patriarch. ‘Come and admire my view.’

  His view? What was going on? He led her through his apartment and opened the immense window on to the Appearance balcony. This was where the Prince Patriarchs had deigned to show themselves to the crowds on feast days, and scatter their commemorative pennies and lordly blessings.

  Anabara looked out across the empty square. There was Yanni, still sitting on the stone bench. He looked tiny and lost. Behind him rose the temple with its onion domes.

  ‘He’s the best brother in the world,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes. But in the end, even the most careful of brothers can’t keep his sister safe,’ said the Patriarch. ‘He knows he can’t keep her locked in a silver cage like a finch. Yet if something happens to her, he will always reproach himself.’

  He was talking about himself and her mother. Was he afraid that history was about to repeat itself? She opened her mouth to tell him everything, but he shook his head slightly. Then glanced towards the carved balustrade. It was a riot of fanciful masonry—vines and fruit and tiny birds. Listening charms? Her eyes widened.

  ‘This place embodies the pinnacle of the High Galen decorative art. Not a single square inch without its little embellishment. Utterly charming!’ Her heart jolted. ‘This happy thought struck me afresh since we last spoke together.’

  Her mind raced. Their last conversation had been monitored? He’d brought her out on to the balcony for a reason. Another jolt—vigilance charms inside? Well of course there were. Security for the Patriarch was always tight.

  ‘Charming, but a nightmare to dust it all,’ she said to fill the silence.

  ‘But I have lackeys for that!’ he laughed. ‘Why, I am surrounded by attentive staff!’

  Spied on by attentive staff. Carramans, she thought suddenly. It was only the library contract they’d lost. They still did all the maintenance work on the Patriarch’s Palace charms. Had they been listening in on her conversations with her uncle? She went cold. Quickly, sound relaxed: ‘Ha, ha! Lucky you, waited on hand and foot!’

  ‘Yes, what a lucky fellow I am!’ He hugged her close. She felt him slip something into her pocket. ‘Ah well! There are times when we must only receive.’

  ‘Only receive?’

  ‘Only receive and remain silent, as the Saint himself taught us. Learn from others, my child, even if their ways are at present hidden from you.’ He was acting like a caricature of a pious old fool.

  She nodded earnestly. ‘I will try to master this, uncle.’ Her hand crept into her pocket. A little book? No, it was glass. Suddenly she knew: it was that spooky writing tablet.

  ‘Few have this gift!’ he sighed. ‘But I suspect you will encounter one or two close to hand. Completely unexpectedly. Even the wise cannot say for sure who they are. So be alert, keep watch, pray. But come!’ He clapped his hands. ‘Enough sermonizing! Let’s take some tea and have a nice cozy chat.’

  It was several hours before she had chance to examine the strange writing tablet. Finally she was alone and safe, back in her house. She’d reported to Mooby, who, like the slave, had clenched a fist and punched the air. A detachment of Mainland Guards would be poised in the alley to intercept the next shipment of future slaves as they entered the Stacks at Wolf Tide. A raid on the Library would be timed to coincide with it. Thwyn’s body had been dug up and formally identified, some Tressy men and women from the Slackey had been taken in for questioning. Warrants for Golar’s arrest were being sought on the basis of Anabara’s and Loxi’s information. And now her role was over.

  Except it didn’t feel like that. That conversation with the Patriarch had shaken her. He’d been so unlike himself, so cautious and tricksy with his pompous old ass act, she didn’t know what to make of it. She’d pottered about the marketplace ‘acting normal’ as Mooby had recommended. She’d bought sweetmeats to take to her little cousins tomorrow. She’d handled a request for work from a wine merchant who suspected someone was pilfering from his cellar. But did he really want a fancy new charm on his cellar door, or had he been hired to lure Paran into a dark corner where he could be seized again? As she walked home down Skuller, every statue and bit of tracery concealed a vigilance charm, every friendly passerby was a double agent, every archway the mouth of a hidden tunnel.

  I can’t live like this, she thought. It’s like the worst of the Palatinate era. Poisoned rings, fratricide. The charms in her uncle’s apartment had been there ever since those treacherous times. Her suspicions about Carraman reared up again. Damn, she’d forgotten to mention them to Mooby. Maybe it was nothing. There was hardly a pie in Larridy that Carraman didn’t have five fingers in. Yet something had happened to trouble Uncle Téador, that was certain. The tablet?

  She put her shopping in the pantry, sat cross-legged in a chair and took out the curious slab. Only receive. Stay silent. Don’t attempt to send a message. That’s what he’d meant. Her breath misted the black glass. One or two people close at hand also had ‘this gift’. Presumably the prototypes which kept going missing from the University of Galencia. It struck her suddenly how useful this device would be to the criminal world. Her uncle must have been examining his when he stumbled upon some alarming exchange of messages. Messages about her? Had to be. Why else had he given her the tablet?

  There was nothing on the glassy surface now. She turned it over and looked at the back. It appeared to be some form of slate. The edges were bound in white steel. What was inside? Some densely compacted charmwork, thin as vellum. Rodania might know. She peered closely. Her breath misted the glass again. She wiped it with her sleeve, and as she did so, the tablet grew lighter, started to glow, almost as if it had woken up. Aha! Now what? She didn’t dare use the white-steel pen. Instead she ran her finger over it. And there! A message in Commons. It read: Good. C. Her fingers tingled. An answer to an earlier message she’d missed. But what? Who from? Who was this ‘C’?

  Carraman!

  Business links with Golar, access to the Patriarch’s private conversations—that was how he knew about her contract with the Library. Not Enobar blabbing to Toby Buttery after all. No, hang on. The break-in had happened before she’d told the Patriarch about the contract. She frowned. But Carraman could have heard her telling Uncle Téador she was going to buy a slave, though! Which meant there might not be traitor in Mooby’s squad after all. She rubbed the glass again. The word faded. Dammit, there must be some trick to it. But try as she might, the tablet wouldn’t yield up its secrets. After quarter of an hour she had to put the thing away before she started banging it on the table and screaming at it.

  But what if the message on the tablet was a ruse? After all, she knew nothing about how the thing worked or who might be manipulating it, planting false clues. If there was a traitor in the Guard—especially if it was a psych—what was to say he or she wasn’t trying to create a smoke screen? ‘C’ wasn’t much to go on, was it? Slow down, Ana. Leaping to conclusions here. If only she could get the device working properly.

  Paran would know how it operated. She felt a surge of fear and revulsion at the thought of him. What was his game, why was he here? Which side was he on? Damn, if only she’d paid attention in Fairy History. It was way too embarrassing to own up that she didn’t actually have a clue what her parents had given their lives for. Other than it was something to do with promoting amnesty, which was meant to be a way to break the political deadlock and stop centuries of vendettas. Anabara had forgotten which Fairy dynasties had favoured the idea, and which had hated it. Hated it so much they’d assassinated the human messengers.

  She had a vivid flashback to that history lesson. The mistress explaining how Uncle Téador had narrowly prevented the vendetta spilling over into the human realm. ‘By h
is Refusal to Exact Reprisals, boys and girls. Who knows what that means? Yes—forgiving people when they do something bad to us. I want you to remember that (eyeballing Anabara) next time you’re fighting in the playground!’ All the other kids had turned and stared at her. That was right after Uncle had been made Patriarch, so she’d have been about 6. She wondered again if Yanni was right and a ripple from history was reaching them at last. Was there some master-plan afoot?

  Yeah, right—one which involved Paran being enslaved. Some master-plan. What had Mooby said? ‘The unlucky ones, the friendless, powerless ones’—those were the ones who ended up enslaved. If he’d really was an elite mind warrior come to Larridy to protect her and Yanni and repay the debt, was it likely he’d end up as a ship’s Fay?

  He was probably upstairs now, perceiving her thoughts. God, was she destined to spend the rest of her life with a mind-reading murderer in her spare room? And all the time her credit would be sinking like sand in an hourglass—until finally it was all gone and he was permitted to turn on her.

  Outside the wind had picked up. The flutes howled at the waxing moon. One more night and it would be full. And this year, the astronomers were saying, the moon was closer to the earth than it had been for three hundred years. So this Wolf Tide would be the most spectacular in living memory, especially if the wind stayed in the same quarter and swelled the flood. The Gull communities were already tethering their boats firmly, and getting the saltings sheep up on to higher ground.

  She put the tablet back in her pocket and went to fetch herself some bread and cheese and milk. She’d just sat down again and started to eat, when a tremendous thump against the door startled her. Milk went everywhere. Fecking kids, playing Knock-a-door! There was a lull in the wind. Silence. She mopped up the milk. Then another sound made her pause. A tiny whimper. Like a kitten. There it was again.

  Curiosity got the better of her. If it was kids, they were going to get their backsides well and truly kicked. She opened the top half of the door and looked out on the street. It was deserted.

  Then she looked down. Oh dear God! A man, naked. Covered in blood. She wrenched the door fully open, fell to her knees and rolled him over. Face was battered, eyes swollen shut. Blood spilled from his mouth. No! Someone had taken a knife and carved on his chest: Molly.

  It was Loxi.

  CHAPTER 17

  The wind blew. Leaves scuttled over the cobbles. Someone was wailing, Loxi, Loxi, don’t die! It’s me, she realised. I’m howling. Then Paran was there. He scooped Loxi up and brought him inside.

  ‘Close the door,’ he said. ‘Quickly. And the shutters.’

  ‘Oh, God save us!’ She fumbled them all shut. He’d laid Loxi on the hearth rug. ‘Is he alive? The Infirmary, we must get him to the—’ Flames were snaking round the Fairy’s head. She cringed back. ‘What’s happening to you?’

  ‘Hold your tongue. Ask me nothing.’ His eyes glowed like coals in a grate. ‘I can call your cousin back and mend him—but I need your help. Don’t open the doors to anyone. Don’t break my concentration. Nod, if you understand.’

  She nodded. Fire writhed under his skin, dripped in runnels down him.

  ‘Afterwards my strength will be spent. You must give me food, or I will die. Will you do this, no matter what?’

  She nodded. Her teeth chattered. Fire, said her uncle’s voice. A pure-bred fire lord. These creatures are all fire. That’s it—that’s what I saw that night when we made the deal. Fire.

  ‘If you fail, you are foresworn. I repeat: do not ask me anything. There is no point, I will only wipe your memory.’

  Again she nodded.

  ‘Good. Sit at his feet, don’t move, watch for us both.’

  She obeyed.

  Paran knelt and took Loxi’s head on his lap. He raised his left hand. A slit of light appeared in the air in front of him, as if a thick curtain had been sliced. He slid his hand through and withdrew something. It glinted blinding white. She screamed in terror. A paran!

  ‘You’re an assassin!’ she cried. ‘Who’s your target?’

  ‘Don’t ask, you fool!’

  ‘Tell me! Why are you here? Who have you come here for?’

  Fire dripped like blood from his fangs. ‘The Patriarch.’

  ‘No! You can’t—’

  A spark leapt from the blade and snapped on her lips.

  She opened her mouth. No sound came.

  ‘You’re wasting time!’ hissed the Fairy. ‘If you love your cousin, watch and pray.’

  She closed her eyes. He’s going to kill my uncle! Oh what have I done? I wish I’d never freed him, never seen him! An after-image of the paran blazed, like the sun off glass. She could hear the Fairy murmuring. Everything was shrinking. Or ballooning out. The room was vast as a temple. No, she was a giant, a giant crammed into a doll’s house. Her head throbbed until she thought it would burst. Don’t let me throw up. Sweat trickled down her face. Fever. That’s what they all said it was like, going into Fairy. Few humans could endure it. The air reeked of gunpowder, of storms—the stench of deep charm-work.

  All the time the wind blew outside; the flutes howled. Feet passed the door. Shouts, in another kingdom far away. The Fairy’s murmuring rose and fell. Loxi’s body convulsed. She opened her eyes. The room was keeling and rolling like a ship in a gale. She saw the blade deep in Loxi’s stomach. The Fairy drew it slowly to the throat. He pulled the rib cage apart like a clam. And reached inside.

  His heart! He was going to eat his heart! She tried to scream.

  Paran raised his head, stared. Not human. Why had she ever trusted him? ‘Pray, you simpleton!’

  She shut her eyes again. Gabbled prayers. Pelago, don’t let him kill Loxi. Oh God, please, I’ll do anything you want. I’m sorry for everything. Don’t let him kill uncle. Save us, save us! Her body was drenched with sweat. But it was icy in here. Funeral drums boomed in her head. Agony. Round and round keeled the room. Her stomach heaved.

  What was he doing to him? She had to look. The yawning chest was closed. Paran slid the flat of the blade along the wound, wiping it out, vanishing it. As if time was running backwards and the evil was being unravelled. But Loxi still lay lifeless. Waxen. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  Now Paran bent his head towards the dead face. She watched him fasten his mouth on to Loxi’s, and exhale. The mended chest rose. Fell with a sigh. The Fairy breathed into him again. Again his chest rose. Fell. But now the livid flesh was tinged with colour. A third breath. And suddenly his heart stuttered awake.

  He was alive! Fresh tears poured from her eyes. She clutched Loxi’s ankles, pressed her face against his feet and wept on them. Thank you, thank you!

  When she looked up again Paran was sliding the blade over the hacked letters on Loxi’s chest. Erasing them one by one. M. O. The two L’s. The Y. Loxi moaned.

  His face, mend his poor face, begged Anabara.

  The Fairy nodded, set to work. The split lip, the fractured jaw. The swollen eyes—But then the blade winked out like a snuffed candle, vanished.

  ‘I’m done,’ he gasped. ‘Remember your promise.’ He sagged, then slumped unconscious.

  The room righted itself. Her head stopped pounding. Loxi moaned again. Suddenly it was real: her cousin, naked, bloody, on her hearth. Do something. She lurched to her feet, snatched up a blanket and covered him. Found a cushion. She stroked his head. They’d hacked his hair off, his beautiful hair.

  Beside him lay the Fairy. His eyes stared at the ceiling. As she watched, a haze crept over them, like the bloom on a black plum. Remember your promise. But he should remember his promise—not to harm any member of her family! She wrung her bloodstained hands. What should I do, saints in heaven, what should I do? I can’t fail him. He just saved Loxi, poured out his life force to save him. But if she revived him now, he would assassinate the Patriarch—and that would surely mean war. Let the creature die, said a voice, just let it die! Terror each way she turned: if she let him die, she’d be foresworn. Some ot
her fire assassin would hunt her down and kill her in retribution. Coward. Did she not have the courage to lay down her own life? For the sake of her uncle, for the sake of Larridy?

  Back and forth swerved her mind. She couldn’t understand. Paran knew the Patriarch was her kinsman. Then she saw: his orders from Fairy were in conflict with her own deal. He was in a double-bind. There would be another default penalty. Not a cut-off ear this time, but a death penalty. He would he assassinate the Patriarch, then come to her afterwards and offer her his paran. Like the two messengers had done all those years ago. He’d expect her to kill him, to right the balance.

  Then kill him now! urged the voice in her mind. Kill him now, and save your uncle, save Larridy from a war it cannot win! It was not just Larridy: if the Patriarch was assassinated the entire Mainland Federation would be sucked in. She saw the States, like beads on a string, slipping one after another over an abyss. Relentless, inevitable destruction. Then the Fays would break through and colonise our world, just like the racists always said they would.

  Look at him—for all his terrifying power, just lying there. It would be the work of a moment. Didn’t she know a dozen locks to break a neck, a score of strangles? Hell, she could probably stamp him to pieces like a dead spider, sweep the fragments out into the gutter. Or do nothing. Hide his empty shell in her cupboard and seal the door. Forget him.

  But she knew she was incapable of it. She wept in despair. This snarled-up tangle of obligations, there was no unpicking it. Where had it begun? With a wet rag pushed through the bars of a cage. A mouthful of water, a single act of kindness. How could she possibly end it now with an act of betrayal? Oh, but it shouldn’t be like this, the cost of kindness shouldn’t be this high. Uncle, I’m sorry. Whatever I choose—do this, do that, do nothing—it’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. I won’t even be able to warn you, because he’ll wipe away my memory.

  Unless…

  She leapt to her feet. The room rolled for a moment, steadied itself. She’d send a message. She rummaged in her desk for a scrap of parchment, took up a quill and scrawled her message. Quickly she read it over. It would have to do. She took a fresh sheet of blotting paper and pressed it to the ink, then folded the parchment. The sealing wax dripped like blood. She pressed her signet into it. Her mother’s. Galen ‘K’ for Kharis. Is this the right thing? Is this what you’d have done? Mum, help me. Please.