The Iron Ship (32 page)

Guis banged upon the roof of the cabin.

“Stop here!” he shouted.

“Goodfellow?” said the driver. The dogs barked as he reined them in. The coach stopped with a lurch.

“I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“As the goodfellow requests.”

Guis paid the man. “Leave swiftly.”

The driver cracked his reins. “Hup! Hup! Hup!” he hollered. The dogs bayed, went up the road, and came about. Guis drew himself into the side of the road. He waited until the coach had gone. Silence fell. A delivery wagon rolled by on the main street, the giant dogs harnessed to it with their heads down. Guis let it go. There were few people about. A typical weekday night in autumn.

Close by the arch, a natural crevice had been squared off to make a shallow alleyway. The stone had been carved to look as if it were made of blocks, but hints at its natural form persisted in unexpected undulations, some deep enough to preserve the stone’s original texture.

Dead leaves and street trash clogged the gutters. Guis looked over his shoulder. He held out his hand to a shadow in the wall, gritted his teeth and concentrated. The leaves blew around his feet, although the night was still.

“Master! Master! Do not be foolish!” hissed Tyn in his ear.

Guis did not listen. He was damned if he was going in the front door. He stared at the stone wall, and made himself see it as a door. This was the hardest for him, fighting off the slippery images that attempted to replace what he wanted to see, trying to make themselves real rather what he wanted made real.

But this simple act of magic he could manage without killing anyone.

His fingers crackled with painful energy. A long spark leapt from his hand. The tip of it crawled up and down the rock in a sinister semblance of life. It found what it sought, and straightened. Light played through the stone, glowing from within. The spark winked out.

Guis breathed raggedly, supporting himself on the wall. A tightness at the back of his head told him the Darkling was awake, and aware of him. Tyn muttered his cantrips in his ear.

Before them was a door, no bigger than waist high, large enough for a Greater Tyn. He pushed at the ancient grey wood. It swung open noiselessly. He crawled through and shut it behind him.

The door faded away into stone again.

Beyond the door was a low dark corridor that forced him to hunch. As he moved forward his shoulders brushed a shower of sharp-scented sand from the friable stone into his hair.

“No more magic! No more magic to light the way,” pleaded Tyn. “Please, please master!”

Guis fumbled in his pocket for a box of matches and a candle stub.

“Shut up!” said Guis. “I’m not a complete idiot.” He lit the candle, revealing rough stone walls that danced with shadow. Tyn whimpered at the dark. Guis paid him no heed. He was in no mood for the Darkling today, and that gave him strength to deal with it.

He went upwards, through tunnels that smelled faintly of broken drains. His feet found treacherous steps that led past bricked up doors of odd and various size. An iron grille barred the way at the top of the steps. He pulled out a key, hoping his father had not discovered his secret way. The key stuck in the gritty mechanism and he swore. He twisted hard, the metal digging into his fingers. Suddenly it turned, and he opened the gate with a ghostly squeal. Guis blew out his candle and waited with his breath held. No one came.

He lit his candle again, and passed into the cellars of Kressind Manse. He stole up stairs that led to a small door in the corner of the gardens. There was no way to check who was on the other side of this, and so he stepped out without pause. Better that than stop, dither, and flee.

Chill night air, frost on the lawns, silence. He had arrived without notice.

Guis padded through cold grass toward a walled section of the gardens. A faint glow shone through a new conservatory built onto a base of ancient brick.

One final door, and he was in his mother’s Moonflower garden.

The light of the flowers themselves lit the space, a square ten yards by ten yards. Paths paved with brick ran around the sides and crossed at the centre of the room. In the four smaller squares formed by the paths were large lead tubs, full of imported soil. These held the Moonflower plants, lambent as the White Moon, swaying hypnotically in their beds.

Footsteps. Guis watched from the shadows as his mother went about her garden. As she passed the plants the Moonflowers came alive, lifting up from their branches to fly across the narrow path, petal wings twirling. They sought out fresh branches, docking daintily. They crept on thread roots to positions agreeable to them, then pierced the thin bark of their hosts with the hollow thorns at the base of their stalks. Moorwena Kressinda trailed her fingers across the plants. She hummed a song she had sung Guis and his siblings as children before she had retreated from them. Luminous scales powdered her hands. The Moonflower plants shuddered. Moorwena encouraged them to fly with shooing motions, and soon the entire garden danced. She looked at peace, but she was not. Another lie, another secret. She wore long sleeves to cover the marks on her arms.

He felt sympathy and love for her. It was ruined as always by the thoughts that plagued him; these of forbidden sexual congress and matricide. These were the worst. He lived in terror that his body would respond. If it did, what would that make him?

Beneath his hair, Tyn stirred.

His mother frowned at a poor match between plants. She retrieved secateurs from her bench and returned.

A flower shrieked as she cut its stem. Thick amber sap spurted from its stalk. The wings shivered, locking position. His mother held the bloom up to her face and sniffed it.

“I know you are there, Guis,” she said. “The flowers know.”

Guis stepped out onto the path. The garden was awash with the chalky light of the blooms. It made Moorwena look like a ghost.

“That’s better.” She set the flower on a bench and went to Guis. She reached for his face with her hands dusted with flower scales and pollen. Guis flinched. She let one drop, let the other continue its course to rest upon his cheek.

“Thank you for coming Guis,” she said.

“Mother,” he said. “What do you want?”

“To see you of course!” she said. There was a tiredness inherent to everything she did or said. She had been beautiful once. She still was at first glance, before her insubstantiality became apparent. She was used up, wrung out by his father’s fury and his illness. If Guis hadn’t hated him before, he would have hated him for that alone. “That is why you came, to see me?”

Guis nodded. He dare not speak. He could not trust his thoughts.

“Then we are both happy. Come and sit with me for a while.”

“Father?”

“He is in his study. He has no idea you are here.” She took his hand and drew him after her to a bench. They sat.

She breathed out in contentment, and examined him. “How are things with my eldest son?”

“They go well.”

She looked at his clothes, the patching and holes. “Are you sure?”

“I am fine! My plays are performing well.” A half-truth. They were well received, they were not paying as well as he hoped. “This latest run in Stoncastrum should seal my fortunes for the next year or so.”

She sighed and looked at her hands in her lap.

“I wish you would not occupy yourself with something as tawdry as the theatre.”

“It is my choice, mother.”

“Matters would be helped considerably if you were to obey your father’s wishes.”

Guis suppressed a shudder. The backs of his legs tightened. “Whose matters? I will not subject myself to the attentions of the magisters. They can do nothing for me. We were told by the metaphysic and physic that the best I could hope for was a dulling of my wit. At worst, I would be rendered an imbecile. As much of an embarrassment to father as I am, I am sure he would not wish an idiot for an heir.”

“Don’t talk like that, Guis. He only wants what is best for you.”

“He wants what is best for himself,” said Guis. “He wants a magister who will carry his name forward. A magister, who would bend his talents to increasing the family fortune.”

“Many magisters do serve their families so.”

“And many do not, mother! Father never did have much imagination. Who would want to involve themselves with the mundanities of business when he could tame dracons or raise the very fires of the Earth?”

“You are talking of the old mages, not of reality.”

“The old mages are real, mother.”

“There is the matter of your safety.”

“Is there?” said Guis. “When I hurt Aarin, I told father first. I told him of the things that torture me, but he did not hear. I will not lie and say that there was no concern or fear on his face, but I will also not say that excitement and calculation did not outweigh his concern. I cannot be a magister or a mage, mother. My mind is broken. This gift I have is a curse.” Bitterness crept into his voice. She never noticed anything, not truly.

“You are too much like me,” she said softly.

“Perhaps. If I attempted to master my talent, I would become a monster,” he said, rising from the seat. “I was hoping we would not have this conversation. I should go.”

She looked up at him, her eyes as big as the moon her flowers were named for. “You should consider it, please. For me.”

“I have considered it. Over and over again.” Guis stepped in and kissed his mother’s forehead. “I will not do it. I am managing fine as I am.”

“For how long?” she said. “I do not wish to lose you. I cannot lose another.”

There, thought Guis. There it is. Six children ignored for one dead. She could not even bring herself to attend his sister’s wedding, but lingered here in her garden. She was broken by the loss of her child and the sickness of her husband. Broken, like him. But his sympathy for her was swallowed by his anger. No matter what afflicted her, he had needed her and she was not there for him. He fought his demons alone, and he was losing.

“You will not. I promise.”

“I am sure I taught you that you should not make promises you cannot keep,” she said sadly. Her eyes strayed to the flowers. She scratched her arm absentmindedly. She was a fine one to lecture him on promises.

“Father taught me one only should if the promise gained you what you wanted. Otherwise, they are not to be honoured.”

“Your father has his own opinions on promises.” She looked back to him, focused again. “What is it you want? Do you really have any idea? How long do you think you can continue on your current path?”

“As long as it takes, mother.”

“As long as what?”

“Until I am satisfied. I am going away. I have a residency at a theatre in Stoncastrum, not large, but not small either. Do not worry about me, I will not starve.”

“You need new clothes.”

“And I will buy them myself!” he said in exasperation.

“You are too proud.”

“I will not see you for a few months.”

“You will come to see me again?”

“I will. I promise. And that is one I can keep.”

She nodded, but he was losing her again. Her eyes returned to the flowers, and when he embraced her she was looking at them, he knew.

He took his leave. He looked back before departing. Already his mother had her sleeves rolled back, holding out her arms for the flowers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Second Queen of Morthrocksey Mill

B
REAKFAST AT THE
Morthrocks became less uncomfortable. There was little intimacy to it, but conversation was easier. Katriona made efforts with her appearance. Demion was a man, of course, and no more likely to comment on her appearance than notice it. But such things had a powerful effect on men that they were only dimly aware of, simple creatures that they were. Today she wore a high-necked gown, and anguillon rib stays that pulled her figure in, and sleeves that came to laced points looped over her index fingers. Her hair she had arranged every week by one of the best hairdressers in the upper Var-side Karsa. The effect upon Demion was subtle but pleasing. At first Katriona had pursued this course quite cynically, but lately she was not so sure, finding herself flattered by the compliments he paid her.

Demion spoke about this and that. Rarely about the business, but when he did Katriona made the odd comment, then the odd suggestion, then the odd insistence, until a habit of proper dialogue had become established regarding the mill. Initially reticent, she engaged more enthusiastically with him as he showed interest. Things were going better than anticipated.

That particular morning they discussed plans that Holdean had for expanding the manufacture of pots and pans—a very modest ambition, Katriona thought, but would not say. She must handle this carefully, she thought. Instead she made sensible, if equally modest, proposals.

“You are sharp!” said Demion.

Katriona stared at the food on her plate. She and Demion had been married nearly three months. She was delaying, she knew, in case he said no, and her life turned out to be exactly what her father had wanted it to be.

She could not abide that.

She came to a decision. If she did nothing, then she would never know.

“My father insisted that all his children had a solid grounding in all the necessary fields of learning so that any of us might run his business,” she ventured.

“A sensible man, a prudent one.”

“Then you will know that I have extensive instruction in bookkeeping?”

“Why, I suppose you must.”

Katriona felt belittled. His face held no trace of condescension, but her annoyance bloomed, she forced herself to speak calmly.

“I was wondering if I might take a look at the accounts? Holdean is awfully busy. I am sure I could be a great help to him.” She held her breath without intending to.

“Why do you want to see them?” he said. “They’re another thing I’m not very good at, I’m afraid. It’s my father’s misfortune I proved so useless.”

She hated this self pity. “You lived,” Katriona said.

“I did,” he said. He smiled, somewhat remorsefully.