The Door in the Moon (17 page)

A tall and disdainful Shee had brought him to this bare clearing and left him here. No food. No chair. Nothing.

And when he'd finally said “Hello? Anyone?” nothing had happened. The moth-Shee and the others were nowhere to be seen.

At first he had been glad just to lie wearily on the grass and try to understand what had happened back there.
What the hell did Jake think he was doing?
And Venn—if the revolutionaries had him prisoner, the man was likely to end up on the guillotine. What a mess! And he, Wharton, the only one with any common sense, was stuck in here in this crazy forest and there was no one to— He stopped.

Sat up.

This was his chance.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he was on his feet.

The Wood was still. The faintest of warm breezes touched his cheek. Through gaps in the heavy foliage the midsummer stars glinted; the clearing was lit with the magical silvery sheen of moonlight.

A small thread of path led away between two trees.

He took a step toward it; no Shee appeared.

He reached the trees and peered around them. The path led downhill, the tree roots almost forming steps.

He started down.

His breathing was loud; his heart thumped in his chest.
Calm down, George!
he ordered himself, but halfway down the twisty steps he knew he felt only fear.

Every tree was a wizened being, every bole and hole a dark eye. Brambles scratched him. The soil was baked hard and thudded with his footsteps.

He reached the bottom panting for breath and found himself in a dank cleft under a darkness of clotted branches. Far off, one moonbeam gleamed.

Which way to the Abbey?

An owl hoot came from close by; he jumped, jerked about.

It came again, a soft savage message of intent, and he remembered how he had once seen Summer transform into that bird, break out in beak and claw under the great storm she had called down.

He started to run.

Maybe that was his mistake.

The thud of his feet became a thud in his head, and then a thud in the earth; it became a drum that someone was beating, an urgent rhythm.

When he stopped, it went on.

The Wood woke. Branches gusted and crackled. Leaves drifted down. A cloud masked the moon.

He ought to go back, play safe, but he wouldn't. Stubbornness burst out in him; he set his shoulders, lifted his chin. No one scared George Wharton, he thought.

Even as he thought it, a vibration gathered in the air, a swarm of something came out of the trees like a buzz of dusty bees and was all over him, their stings ferocious and real, and he was squirming, yelling, beating them off, until gasping, he whirled around.

And there was nothing there.

A branch snapped; a hare pelted out past him. He backed after it down the path.

The piping began then, haunting music, sweet and cheerful, but it filled him with dread. He knew this story. He knew what was coming.

He stood still. And looked up.

Through all the dark branches, their party clothes crackling to carapace and wing, their eyes unblinking, their silvery hair crisping to feathers, their fingers hooking to claw and talon, the Shee were gathering in their host, some as hounds, some as hawks, some as half-human runners, some riding silver horses with skeletal heads, galloping on cloud and branch and grass, swift as vengeance under the trees.

Wharton panicked. Even as he turned and fled he knew it was the worse thing he could do. The bray of a silvery horn rang out joyfully behind him. He leaped a fallen trunk and plunged into the Wood, running heedless, falling and picking himself up, thrashing through thicket and briar and sudden empty space. He gasped hard and breathless up a slope where thin young trees grew so close he had to duck and weave and squeeze between them, the ground all humped and hollowed with banks of decayed leaves, the hounds yelping so he could feel their teeth snapping at his ankles, at his heels, at his—

A hand shot up and grabbed him, yanked him down into a burrow of brown earth, clamped itself over his mouth.

A hand with dirty fingers as small as a rat's.

“Will you shut your noise!” a testy voice growled in his ear.

Wharton's eyes went wide. He rolled over.

“Piers?”
he whispered.

Many went to the scaffold with great bravery. Others wept and screamed. The crowd in the square became a many-headed beast that roared and slavered, an insatiable monster of vengeance, and in its voice I heard the centuries of disease and poverty and want.

So I too cried out.

Maxim Chevelin,
A History of the Late Revolution in France

V
ENN OPENED HIS
eyes, but that didn't help.

He was in a dark place and it was rocking under him. A great jolt shuddered through him. He tried to sit up, but felt at once that his hands were tied behind his back; he was lying, facedown, in a layer of mud in the bottom of some lurching vehicle.

The word
tumbril
came into his mind. He struggled harder.

Someone whispered, “Stay still, monsieur. Best to play dead.”

Venn's ribs ached. He had been beaten and kicked with some relish. He eased his head aside. “Where are they taking us?”

“We think to the Conciergerie.” The answer came from a young woman sitting above him. Her silk dress was bedraggled; her whisper showed her raw terror.

“And then, no doubt, an appointment with Madame Guillotine.” This speaker was a tall man, his powdered wig still on, his once beautiful coat torn, but he sat in the cart with great hauteur. “An appointment,
mes amis,
that I do not intend to keep.”

Venn realized that the cart was crowded with prisoners. The girl whispered, “Monsieur . . . how do you intend to escape?”

“Like this, mademoiselle. Boldly and openly, as befits a true son of France.” He stood up.
“Vive le roi!”
he cried. Then he leaped over the side of the open cart.

The girl gasped. Venn struggled up. They were crossing a high bridge over the Seine; he saw the moonlit rooftops of Paris, the rearing towers of Notre Dame. The prisoner had leaped up onto the palisade of the bridge, kicking away men that grabbed at his ankles.

One shot rang out, a musket crack. The air stank of cordite.

When the smoke cleared, the man was gone.

“
Mon Dieu
,” the girl whispered in horror. “Such a noble hero! And they killed him.”

Venn wasn't so sure. He thought maybe the man had jumped before the shot. But even so, his chances in the dark undertow of the river wouldn't be good.

He closed his eyes and, through the sickening pain in his head, thought of the despair that must have lain under that pride.

Not a solution he intended to try.

They rattled on, the prisoners silent. Venn worked at his bonds, managing to loosen them slightly. Dried blood was in his hair.

After a while he gave up and sank back

Anger was hot in him, anger at Jake and at Summer. And at himself. Because now Janus had the purple flower, had taken it before their eyes, and with it who knows how much power over Summer. The thought of Janus and Summer in some vengeful league turned him cold with fear.

Abrupt darkness closed over him.

The cart rumbled under an arch, bumped over cobbles, then stopped. “Out,” someone snarled. “All of you!”

Venn was last. He closed his eyes and deliberately hung limp, so they had to drag him and half carry him between two of them. If he had the least chance he would crack their heads together and run for it.

But the doors that slammed behind him were vast oaken barriers, and the men were armed, and his own sword was gone.

Then panic flashed through him.

The bracelet.

So far he had been lucky; it was jammed well up under his sleeve and his captors must not have noticed it. But as soon as they did they'd take it, and then he'd have to fight for his life and the whole future of the mirror.

He heard them unlock a heavy door. It grated on its hinges; a foul stench gusted out of the darkness inside.

They flung him in, facedown.

He made no sound, lay bruised on the stones, his face in musty straw that leaped with fleas.

Only when he was sure they were gone did he lift his head and sit up.

The gloom implied a small space, a high ceiling.

He said softly, “Is anyone here?”

No answer.

First he worked on the bonds. They had been hastily tied, and he finally managed to wrench them loose enough to slip them off. Rubbing his scorched skin, he tugged the bracelet down and examined it, holding it close to his eyes in the dark.

It seemed unharmed, though there was a slight dent in the silver head of the serpent. He flipped open the amber eye and touched the dark space where the tiny fossil had been, now lodged in the mirror frame. Twice before the mirror had shown them
journeymen
. Could Maskelyne see him now?

“Do you hear me?” he said quietly. “Anyone? It's me. Venn.”

Nothing.

He had no way of knowing if they heard him or not. Outside, in the corridor, heavy boots approached.

He shoved the silvery ring inside his shirt.

The footsteps passed.

Venn sat still, breathing out, making himself relax. And suddenly, quite out of nowhere, he thought of Leah.

Her face emerged from some locked and clotted place in his memory, as if at that moment a darkness had been stripped from it, some terrible clinging growths torn from it.

He sat amazed at his own folly.

How could he have forgotten her?
How had he let Summer beguile him? The time he had lost! He saw Leah's face, and she was smiling at him, but it was the painted face of the portrait in his room, and for a moment he had to struggle to remember the real, infuriating, careless woman, the woman who lay late in bed and read novels, who was always late, who knew how to mock him softly. The one he loved. The one he wanted back.

The thought of her made him curl his hands into knots. And yet even now, he knew there was a thin, cruel sliver of jealousy in him, sharp as a shard of glass, when he thought of Summer smiling, not at Wharton, who was no one, but at Janus.

He shook the thought away.
Leah
. Leah was all that mattered.

And escape.

“So where is it, this house of the Black Cat?”

Sarah said, “Somewhere near the Seine. Built out over the water.” She sat hugging her knees, with Gideon's silvery jacket draped over her maid's dress. Even in the steamy heat of the hothouse, she felt chilled and dispirited and unutterably weary.

They had hidden here as the château burned. It had been chaos back there—even now dark figures were running and piling up looted goods on the dark lawns. The destruction sickened her, because she recognized it. She had seen it in the End time.

Gideon said calmly, “Try not to get involved. We're only passing through.”

“That's a real Shee attitude.”

He tipped his head. “Mortal history seems to be full of terrible times.”

“And we walk straight into them.”

“At least we can walk out again.”

She looked up. “I really hope so. Because my fight is for the most terrible time of all.”

Gideon nodded, but her fierceness hurt him. He had thought she would be grateful to him for coming to find her, but she seemed to have forgotten that already.

She was such a mystery to him!

He stood up and rubbed another patch in the steamy glass and stared out. “When it gets light—which should be soon, because this is the shortest night—we should head for the city and find the mirror.”

Sarah rubbed her dark skirt. “Jake said Moll knew where his father was. Do you think that's true?”

Gideon considered, hands in pockets. “She seems a tricky creature.”

“Fond of Jake.”

“Maybe.” He turned. “But Jake promised to go back for her and never did. She must have waited years for him. What if this is some sort of revenge, Sarah? Paying him back for her lost hope with some of his own?”

She didn't like that idea at all. “She's just some little urchin. I really can't believe she'd do that.”

“You don't know her. None of us do. And believe me, waiting for rescue that never comes destroys anything human in you.”

He was talking about himself, she knew. She ran her hands through her hair, exasperated. One thing she didn't need was something else to worry about. She came and joined him at the window. “We have to believe Jake is in no danger. But Venn is.”

“Venn! Venn can look after himself.”

Sarah snorted. “Not from what I've seen. Summer almost owns him.”

Gideon slid her a green, sideways glance. Lowering his voice, he said, “You must be worried about the coin.”

That touched a nerve. She said, “The coin is safe. It's guarded.” Then her whole body stiffened. She leaned forward, stared out into the tumult on the lawns, then said, “Come on. Quickly!”

“What . . . ? Wait!”

But she was already gone, running across the grass, her shadow huge in the leaping flame light. “Sarah!” Gideon drew his sword and raced after her.

The night was an inferno. Sparks and scraps of burning cloth flew past him. The château was unbelievably brilliant, the flames reaching high, the stench almost too much for him.

He found Sarah at a pile of tumbled goods, among ragged men picking over the spoils. One of them glared at her; Gideon lifted the blade, wary.

“Here! Look!” She was kneeling by some contraption on its side, scorched but otherwise undamaged. It seemed to him like the statue of a masked figure holding a pen in one hand, some mortal mechanism.

“What is that?”

“One of the automata.” She pushed it upright with an effort. “It belonged to Moll.”

“What do we want with that?”

Sarah looked at him, direct, hard—what he thought of as her
metallic
look.

“It's given me an idea,” she said.

The carriage rattled swiftly over the bridge. The moon lay low on the Seine, a track of light leading to it.

Ahead, Jake saw the prison of the Conciergerie rising, a silhouette against the sky, its towers crowned with coned roofs, its barred windows dull with torchlight.

Panic and fierce excitement gripped him at the sight of it. “We must be mad.”

Moll patted his arm. “Trust me, Jake. We'll have your dad out of there as fast as an oyster from the shell.” As the carriage rolled to a stop at the gates she glared at the aristocrat. “Out please, monsieur. Come on, Jake.”

The small man breathed a prayer. Jake didn't move.

“Come on, cully!”

“I can't, Moll.”

“Can't?”

“I can't take this man into some dungeon and hand him over to people who'll cut his head off.”

She stared. “They'd have done that anyway, Jake.”

“Would they? How do we even know?”

“But . . . Lord, Jake, he's nothing to you. Some rich toff. And your dad—”

“My father wouldn't want me to do it.” His voice was low, fierce. He knew that now, knew it as if some voice had whispered it in his ear. “He'd be appalled, Moll, and he'd be furious. We don't need this man. We can do this on our own.”

She looked at him, her small heart-shaped face framed with its tangle of hair. Her look was unreadable, and for a moment he was afraid that she despised him now, but instead she shook her head and said slowly, “Lord luv you, Jake, I think you're barmy! I really do. Chucking out our best card. But it's your party.”

She leaned over, turned the handle, and threw open the carriage door.

“Get out, mate. Your lucky day.”

The vicomte stared. His handkerchief was a twisted rag in his hands. “You mean . . .”

Moll jerked her head. “Leg it. Before my friend changes his mind.”

He understood the gesture, if not the words. Awkwardly he grasped the carriage framework, lowered himself down. For a moment he looked back at the two of them, and his eyes were dark with fear in the warm Parisian night. “What do I do? Where do I go?”

“Can't help you there, luv,” Moll said sadly. “Bribe your way to England would be my advice.”