Cuckoo Song (45 page)

The Architect’s gesture towards Mr Grace was so slight, so casual, he might have been tossing away an invisible cigarette butt.

As he did so, however, the tailor gave a gasp as if he had been punched, and doubled over. The scissors fell from his fingers and clattered to the floor. The feathers of his coat fluttered
madly, spirals ruffling and rippling through it like patterns in wind-flattened corn. He coughed, and each gasped breath filled the air with tiny dust-coloured feathers.

His dark hair was receding, receding, until it left only a greyish scalp. The panicky motions of his head became convulsive, rapid, bird-like twitches. From his collar, sleeves and the bottoms
of his trousers poured ash and fine grey feathers. Then even his head was dwindling in size, shrivelling to the size of a coconut, an apple, an egg . . .

‘Triss!’ hissed Trista, seeing her double gaping at the transformation. ‘Come out here! Quickly!’ She held open the door, and Triss made a dart for it.

Triss gasped as she emerged into the mouth of the wind and took in the vista of the rushing river. Trista snatched the coat, shoes and hat from her unresisting hand and quickly put them on.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Triss. ‘Where do we go?’

Trista’s heart stuck in her throat as she stared around her for inspiration. Any moment now, the Architect would notice Triss was missing.

‘I’ll show you,’ she said abruptly. ‘Come – stand here with me.’ She pulled Triss away from the saloon door, towards the edge of the boarding platform.

‘What is it?’ Triss asked, eyes watering. ‘What am I looking for?’ The tram was starting to veer towards the bank, the black edge of the New Docks closing in on their
right.

‘Sorry,’ murmured Trista, and as the tram skimmed over the shallows, she pushed her other self in the back with all her might. Unprepared, Triss pitched forward into space. The roar
of the air swallowed her startled yelp and the soft splash that followed.

She can swim
, Trista told herself as she leaned out, frantically scanning the dark water for signs of life.
I know she can. I remember learning to swim. And I dropped her in the
shallows . . .

Yes, there was splash of foam, a small head and a flailing of white limbs not far from the nearest jetty. Trista closed her eyes, as her mind flooded with relief.

A large hand was laid on Trista’s shoulder and firmly pulled her back from the edge.

‘Now what in the world were
you
planning?’ asked the Architect, his voice sleek with playful malice. ‘Were you thinking of jumping in the river? In
your
state
of health? Or were you perhaps hoping to call out to someone?’

Trista said nothing, but kept her face lowered as he led her back into the saloon and guided her to sit down on the green velvet seat. She twisted her hands in her lap, the way Triss had
done.

Something was flitting around the room, bumping against the lamps like a moth. It was a bird-thing, a large one, but getting smaller by the moment as it moulted feathers and ash.

‘Sciss-sciss-sciss-sciss!’ it hissed and buzzed, as it battered itself against walls and glass. Its tiny pale face was mad with hate. On the far side of the tram carriage lay a heap
of Mr Grace’s clothes. There was no other sign of the tailor.

‘Look at you now, with your wet hair,’ the Architect commented, as he sat down beside Trista. ‘You could catch your death, Miss Crescent.’

Trista’s heart beat wildly inside her chest, like the Mr-Grace-bird-thing battering the walls.

I couldn’t jump out with Triss. I couldn’t. He would have noticed she was missing, and gone back to find her.

Besides, I have to get that watch.

Chapter 42

Though Trista took pains to keep her head bowed, now and then she darted a look through the window. Ellchester tore past below, ghostly in its white garb. Lit windows flew by,
frail and tiny as fireflies.

Then the tram was dipping, descending. It touched down with a shudder, and Trista became aware of a new set of sounds. A steady, metallic scraping which rose in pitch each time they cornered,
and a
ker-thud ker-thud
like a heartbeat. It was the sort of noise heard on a train, the muffled jumping of the sleepers.

Seeing a level-crossing sign pass on one side, Trista realized that the tram must be running along the unfinished railway track that led to the new station. The view outside was replaced by
scaffolding, raised boards, rickety fences. Trista felt the tram slow and stop.

‘You really do not enjoy travel, do you, Miss Crescent?’ The Architect reached over and patted the back of her hand. ‘Do not worry – that was your last journey.’ He
took hold of her wrist, so tightly that Trista could see her fingers turning pink. She did not resist as he pulled her to her feet and led her to the saloon door. As they stepped off the tram, she
kept her gaze on the Architect’s wrist through the curtain of her hair. Under his crisp shirt cuff was a bulge of the right size to be a service watch.

The station loomed before her, its snow-covered slopes dimly luminous in the darkness. Its shape was blunted, the point missing from the top. It looked too mighty for its surrounding
scaffolding. Staring up at it, Trista could not imagine why nobody had realized that a vast spectral tomb was being built in the middle of Ellchester.

The other Besiders were pouring out of the trailer cars, and dropping from the sky, striking powder clouds of snow from the ground. They wasted no time, but seethed towards the station. Ignoring
all the obvious arches and entrances, they scrabbled, leaped and soared their way up the sloping sides of the pyramid.

The Architect led Trista to the base of the pyramid at a stately stride, and as they reached it a swarm of grey bird-things frothed in ahead of them and clustered to form a few rough, flickering
steps made of shifting, living forms. With utter unconcern the Architect began to climb these, forcing Trista to do the same. She could feel the bird-steps squirming and squealing under her weight.
As each step was left behind it dissolved with a flutter, the bird-things flitting up to provide the next step for the Architect’s ready foot.

And so they climbed the pyramid on bird-back steps, right up to the square, gaping hole at the top. There was a pause, and then the Architect toppled forward into the darkness, pulling Trista
with him. There was a plummeting sensation, and a moment where the world pulled itself inside out. When Trista’s head cleared, the two of them were still standing, but they were inside an
enclosed room where the angles seemed to be glaring at each other like affronted cats.

The torrent of other Besiders surged past them, disappearing through a torchlit archway into what looked like a cross between a banqueting hall and a jazz club. Candles glinted in chrome, wild
whinnies tangled with saxophone trills.

‘Oh, that place is not for
you
, my dear,’ murmured the Architect with quiet savagery. ‘All that light, all that sound! Think of your headaches. No, you need quiet and
dark.’

He reached out and opened another door she had not noticed, then dragged Trista into a narrow stone-walled corridor. Brackets in the walls oozed silver flame that moved sluggishly and barely
revealed the room, like a sad memory of fire rather than fire itself.

The corridor forked again and again. The Architect chose this turn, that turn with dizzying speed as he weaved through the labyrinth.

‘Faster! Exercise is good for young limbs.’ The Architect’s stride accelerated to a long-legged lope, then a run, almost dragging Trista off her feet as he pulled her through
antechambers, past walls carved with a hundred eyes, up and down twisting steps.

At last he burst into a large, domed room, whose floor sloped down to a round shaft in the centre. With a forward sweep of his arm, he flung his prisoner to the ground, so that the breath was
knocked out of her and her hat fell from her head.

‘Welcome to your new home.’ There was nothing smooth or debonair about the Architect now. He was seven foot of trembling malice, silver eyes brighter than the false torches.
‘
Your father
made it for you, and come the dawn he will seal you into it. By all means try to find your way out – you will fail. If you wish, you may sob here until you starve
or stifle. If you wish for a quicker death, throw yourself in that pit. The fall never ends, but you will. It will pull the screams out of you until you unravel, leaving nothing but the
screams.’

‘No!’ His captive flung herself at his feet, desperately clutching at his hand and arm. ‘Don’t leave me here! Please!’

For a few moments the Architect was content to let the girl sob and cling, but then he gave a noise of distaste and pushed her roughly away.

‘What a pitiable object you are,’ he muttered. Then his eyes fell to his hand, sticky with grey strands instead of tears, and his wrist, which was now bare of all but shirt cuff.

With astonishment and rage, his silver gaze flicked to his captive, and the scratched service watch gripped fiercely in her small, slim hands. The girl raised her head, and the Architect looked
into a smile full of thorns.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ said the Cuckoo.

The Architect’s shriek of rage was the fluting at the heart of a hurricane. The domed room shivered, cracks running across its paint-spiralled ceiling. He lunged at her, but she leaped out
of the way, landing on all fours with her thorn claws extended.

‘Where is she?’ he demanded.

‘Long gone,’ hissed the changeling. ‘Can you even guess how long? Can you guess how long I have been by your side, laughing at you?’

The Architect threw back his head and gave another terrible, infantile shriek, and the whole room tipped and swung like a bell, trying to hurl Trista towards the dark and gaping hole at its
heart. He came after her as she fought to keep her balance, as the slabs shifted and bucked under her bare hands and feet. He seemed larger than the room, darker than the twisted stem of a tornado.
And yet he was still man-shaped, with pale eyes that scorched and hands that snatched for her.

The room flung her this way and that, so that she was battered painfully against wall and floor. She felt her sides rip like cloth seams. She tumbled and sprawled, coughing up brooches and
thimbles. But always she found her feet again, just in time to dodge the Architect’s next grab. The watch never slipped from her grip.

This was one of the Architect’s places, where he had more control than in the wider world. And yet again and again his fingers raked empty air, for in this moment of rage the Architect was
not in control of himself.

But I’m weakening.
Every leap was taking more effort.
I’m getting slower. I’m running out of time . . .

One painful sprawl too many. She was too slow to rise. She felt strong fingers grasp a handful of her hair. She clawed at the Architect’s hand in vain as he dragged her relentlessly along
the ground towards the shaft . . .

. . . and then his grip loosened as the fistful of hair became a fistful of leaves. Trista sprang to her feet, unexpectedly finding herself directly behind her towering attacker. She hurled
herself against his back with all her might, and as the room lurched, the pair of them pitched forward. Trista landed on her belly, digging the claws of her fingers and toes into the floor cracks
to stop her sliding.

The Architect, however, tumbled on to his side and rolled, vanishing over the edge into the dark, abysmal shaft. His scream made her curl up and clutch her ears. It went on and on, thinning and
fading until there was nothing left but a tingle in the ear.

Trista lay sobbing for breath on the stone flags, looking at the watch still clutched in her shaking hand. She sat up slowly and painfully, hearing the rustle as straw seeped out of her
seams.

With her claws, she prised open the back of the watch. There, amid the works, was a small strand of faded brown hair. Carefully she prised it out, and as it finally pulled free the tiny
mechanism began to move.

She closed her eyes, and imagined a spirit slipping free of the imprisoning cogs, escaping the terrible weight of winter. She thought she heard the wind surge softly, as if in a sigh, and then
fall silent.

‘Goodbye, Sebastian,’ she whispered.

The Architect had enchanted the watch to be a master of time, instead of just a servant. Sebastian’s hair in the device had bound him to it, and when the watch was stopped, he had been
trapped between life and death. But the watch was not linked to Sebastian alone. Sebastian had left it to Violet, the woman he cared about more than any possession. So it had trapped her too,
binding her to an undying dead man and his unending winter.

The ticking of the watch was freedom for Sebastian, freedom for Violet. But now it was biting away the last seconds of Trista’s life.

I’m out of time
, she thought, as leaves fell past her face like confetti.
I’m out of time.

And then the Architect’s words forced their way into her mind once more.
A watch can be taught to be a master of time, not just a servant.

She stared at the watch, barely daring to understand her newest thought. She was running out of time, but in her hand lay something that perhaps could
stop
the inevitable. If she could
bind the watch to her . . . put something in the works that belonged to her . . .

But what did she have that was hers? Her hair was leaves, her body fragments of another’s life. Everything she had was borrowed, just as the Grimmer had said in her dream. She was litter
and leavings, not a person in her own right.

‘But I
am
a person!’ she wailed, the room throwing back derisive echoes. ‘I’m real! I am! I’ve got a name!’

A name.
Inspiration struck at last. With fingers that felt increasingly like twigs, she pulled off the bead necklace on which Pen had scrawled her new name. That at least had been given
to her, and her alone. As her eyes started to blur, Trista pushed a loop of the cotton into the works. The cogs bit the cotton, gently jammed and . . . stopped.