The Book of Dead Days (12 page)

Valerian stood staring at the nonsense on the floor and on the wall in front of them, and would say no more.

Willow sat down and put her head in her hands. She had been carried into something she did not understand. It was easy to be swept along by Valerian when he was strong, but now he was weak and broken. He needed Willow, but she had no strength left. It was she who needed someone to guide her, and her only friend was running about the City miles away, on another crazy errand for his master.

They sat in the gloom of the cellar until finally the clocks in the house began to chime midnight.

As the chimes died away one by one, Willow looked up at Valerian, who shook his head slowly.

“December twenty-eight is done,” he said.

They sat in the Tower, drinking tea and brandy, chewing on stale bread. All three were lost in their own thoughts, and the mood was grim.

It had been about two o’clock in the morning when Valerian and Willow got home. Boy, who had been back for hours, practically throttled Willow when he saw her. Hugging her hard, he hadn’t let go of her until she’d made a small squeaking sound.

“How touching.” Valerian had said.

He looked terrible, and as far as Boy could tell, nothing had been done to his arm.

“Wasn’t Kepler there?” Boy had asked.

Neither Willow nor Valerian replied, and that was answer enough.

“Did you succeed, Boy?” Valerian replied.

Boy’s face fell. He stared at the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“What?” spluttered Valerian.

“I couldn’t even get past the door.”

“And you told them my name?” Valerian thundered.

“I said, I couldn’t even get past the woman at the door.”

“Damnation!” shouted Valerian, and strode away across the room, kicking over a pile of books, heedless of his damaged arm. He stood with his back to them, his shoulders rising and falling, staring at the floor. Finally he turned round, but he was no longer angry.

“Well, it was Childermass,” he said.

They looked at him blankly.

“The unluckiest day of the year.”

They thought about the graveyard, and the burial, and Valerian’s arm and their fruitless trips across the City, and despite themselves, they all smiled.

“Fetch us food and drink,” Valerian had said, and Boy had found what he could, and taken it up to the other two in the Tower room.

When he got there he found Valerian and Willow standing by the table, above which was suspended the camera obscura.

“Come and look at this,” whispered Willow.

Valerian turned to him. “Haven’t you seen this before?”

“No,” he said. “You’ve never shown me what it does.”

“Come and see,” Valerian said.

There were two parts to it. On the floor of the room stood a round table with a clear white circle set in its surface. Above it hung some large pieces of equipment, made up of wooden boxes and tubes of brass.

On the white surface of the table was an image of the City immediately outside the house. It was as if viewed from the very summit of the Tower, but slightly distorted; lines that should have been straight, like the sides of buildings, were gently curved, warped by the seeing-eye of the camera. But nevertheless it was an extraordinary image of the world outside, viewed from within.

And it was a moving image.

Boy watched, his mouth open, as they saw lights flickering in windows along the street, and smoke whispering out of chimneys and up into the night sky.

There was a long wooden lever that seemed to control the camera, and as Valerian moved it, the picture swung so that a different view from the roof of the house was shown on the tabletop. They watched tiny figures scurry across the white circle like ants.

“It’s so…,” said Boy.

“Isn’t it,” said Valerian, nearly smiling. “Unfortunately, despite its beauty, it illustrates the precarious nature of my current predicament.”

“What?” asked Boy, not really listening. He gazed at the moving picture in front of him, trying hard to tell himself it was real, that it truly was what was happening that very moment down in the streets beneath the Tower. As Boy watched the ant-people hurry along, he felt a sense of power.

“I had it built to see danger,” Valerian said. “I keep watch here, night after night.”

Boy looked up. Valerian’s fear was there between them, almost tangible.

“What for?” asked Boy. “What are you watching
for
?”

Valerian’s voice was clear and calm and full of the promise of death.

“The end,” he said. “Him. It. Kepler said I was stupid to have this built. That it would do me no good even if I
did
see something coming for me. Maybe he was right, but at least this way I might get a little warning.”

Willow and Boy moved closer together and stared at Valerian, who turned his gaze back to the table. He moved the handle this way and that with his good arm, until he had scanned right around the Yellow House, checking all the streets and alleys.

Finally he pulled his eyes away.

“Did you find some food, Boy?” he asked.

They sat down to eat and the camera kept playing its dim but very real image of the outside world into the inner space of the Tower.

Valerian ate just a few mouthfuls and then fell silent, brooding in his great leather chair.

Boy looked at his master.

“You must eat,” said Willow, following Boy’s gaze.

So should we,
thought Boy. Valerian said nothing.

“How’s your arm?” asked Boy. Then, getting no answer, “You didn’t tell me. What happened? Where’s Dr. Kepler?”

When Valerian still showed no sign of talking, Boy looked at Willow.

“Willow,” he said, “where is Kepler?”

“I-he-” began Willow, glancing at Valerian. “It seems-”

“It seems!” cried Valerian. “It appears! No! It
is
the case that Kepler has disappeared, and from the peculiar rantings in his cellar I think he has probably gone mad. My arm grows more painful, and I am running out of these.”

He waved a nearly empty vial at them.

“And then?” he barked, leaping to his feet. “And then? Who knows! By the new year I shall be pieces of flesh strewn around this room!”

He stopped, aware that he was shouting. Boy and Willow stared at him, clinging to each other.

Boy felt panic slip up his back and squeeze his throat. He wanted to be sick.

But Valerian had regained his composure and sat back down, as if resolved to his fate.

From his pocket he pulled another bottle of the drug. As he did so, a piece of paper fell to the floor. It was the paper that Willow had seen Valerian take from Kepler’s study.

Boy looked at Willow, her eyes wide. Valerian took a long swig of his drug, then rinsed it down with a few mouthfuls of brandy. It was early morning, and as he slumped back in his seat he immediately fell fast asleep, snoring like an old, old man.

At dawn the camera played them a beautiful vision of the waking winter city, but they were all asleep, and the vision went unseen. Across the roofs and towers flooded a soft pink light that presaged snow, without doubt. Yet still it would not come and the City froze in its filth.

The Tower room had grown cold, and Willow lifted her head from the cushion on the floor. Her movement woke Boy. It was very early still, but they were soon wide awake. Boy felt awful. His arms were like wires, his legs like metal trunks, his neck like an iron bar. All he did was live, it seemed-live like one of Valerian’s machines, with a heart-machine that pushed acid round his veins until they screamed in fear of what might be.

Boy had not slept well. Nightmares had ridden through his mind while he lay huddled on the floor. Unwanted thoughts returned to him again; those questions that Willow had been asking nagged at him. Who were his parents? Maybe it
was
important to know. Did he need to know, to know who he himself was? He was no longer sure.

He got up and walked around the room, stretching his legs. He found himself standing by the camera obscura table, staring at the moving image of the City waking up, coming to life.

Seeing that Valerian was still asleep, he dared to touch the handle that rotated the image. Willow came to stand by him and watched as Boy moved the lens around to view different scenes.

As he did so, a patch of light moved from the table and fell on the floor, illuminating the paper that Valerian had dropped.

Willow picked up the paper.

“What is it?” asked Boy.

Willow shook her head. “I don’t know. Look.”

She held it for him to see.

Boy was not very good at reading, and the paper was covered in many symbols and signs that he knew were not words or letters at all.

But there was one word at the top of the paper that he could easily read.

Valerian began to stir. Boy dropped the paper onto the table.

“We cannot stay here long,” Valerian said, rubbing his eyes with his good hand. That same hand began to search impatiently for another of the little bottles that took away his pain. “The Watchmen will be looking for you. I have no doubt. Perhaps we should move to Kepler’s house-it may be a little safer there…”

“But there was something,” said Boy.

“What?” said Willow.

“Why I couldn’t get to see the Master of Burials.”

“Oh, spare us!” snorted Valerian. He crossed the room and began to fiddle with some bits of the camera, cursing occasionally when he couldn’t manage with only one hand.

“I thought you might be interested,” Boy said to Valerian’s back. “What you said about him doing some strange studying and so on.”

Valerian ignored him.

“Tell me,” said Willow to Boy. “What was it?”

“Well, I got talking to this woman at the gate. It seems he’s obsessed with some animals he owns. It’s all he spends his time doing. He’s got this collection of animals, but they’re all strange-he’s got bird-headed snakes and dogs with cats’ heads. There’s cats with wings, and Willow, he’s got dragons! They’re tiny, but I saw them all!”

Willow stared at him in wonder.

“You’re sure?” she said.

“I saw them with my own eyes. Snakes with birds’ heads. Fish with a head at each end. And the dragons! But the thing is, they’re all dead. I think he wants to make them live. I don’t think he’s doing his real job at all-he just spends all his time in this huge room under the glass dome, working on them.”

Willow shook her head.

“Dragons? Real dragons?”

“Yes,” said Boy. “They’re small, but-”

“Poppycock!” said Valerian. Neither of them had noticed that he had been listening. “There are no such things.”

“I saw them.”

“Tell me,” Valerian said. “What exactly did you see?”

Boy looked at Valerian and suddenly he hated him. Why did he have to treat him so badly all the time? Boy did his best, he always did what he was told, he worked hard, and yet all the man ever did was snipe and bark and criticize. Valerian looked at him now, and Boy expected his face to be full of scorn, but as he held Valerian’s gaze, Boy saw that he was earnest, even interested. He was listening.

“What did you see?” asked Willow in a reassuring voice.

“Animals,” said Boy. “And there were lots of them. And they were all weird. None of them looked like anything I’ve ever seen, or seen pictures of, or even heard of. They were all lying on his great table. On marble slabs.”

Boy paused. He pulled a face.

“Oh! There was so much blood.”

“Blood?” asked Valerian, with real interest.

Heartened, Boy went on.

“Yes, blood, and… things, from taking them apart.”

“The animals?” Valerian asked.

Boy nodded and scratched his nose.

“So he is dissecting them?” Valerian said.

“He’s taking them apart,” said Boy. “To see why they won’t live, I suppose.”

“These animals,” said Valerian, “all of them are strange, perverse things? Like nothing you have seen before?”

Boy nodded.

“And you think he’s trying to make them live?”

Boy nodded.

“And he’s taking them apart to see why they don’t?”

Boy nodded.

Valerian shook his head.

“No,” he said gently, “he’s not taking them apart, he’s trying to put them together.”

Boy tried to remember exactly what he had seen.

“Could it be that?” Valerian asked.

Boy nodded.

“I think,” said Valerian, “I think we should pay another visit to the Master of Burials. We’ll get the name of the cemetery where Gad Beebe is buried yet!”

He began to rummage all around the Tower room, pulling out various peculiar devices and equipment.

“But, Valerian,” said Willow. “Valerian!”

“What is it?” he shouted back. “We don’t have the time!”

“You were going to tell us. About what’s happening to you.”

“Yes,” he snapped, “I’ll tell you on the way. Here, Boy, take this. It’s delicate. Be careful! And, Willow, this bag, if you please. Very good.”

Having checked around the outside of the building using the camera, they hurried from the Yellow House. As they went, Boy saw the paper with his name on it on the table and snatched it up, unseen. If Valerian didn’t want it, then
he
did. It had his name on it after all-and Boy reasoned therefore that it belonged to him.

But Valerian did not tell them on the way. He did not tell them about the approaching horror, about the road that Fate was leading him down.

Instead he instructed them as they walked in the use of the pieces of apparatus they were carrying, repeating himself until they understood.