Voices in the Dark (9 page)

‘We will always be friends,’ he said. ‘Won’t we?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course we will.’

‘Because otherwise—’

But Mr Barone’s voice cut off whatever else he had
been going to say. I turned and went down the stairs and into the street, closing the front door behind me. The stars were shining over the castle, crossed by the last birds flying home. I glanced up at Michael’s window, but he had put out the light.

The next day, there were soldiers in the city, marching east. And Mr Barone was true to his word. Within a week, the Barones’ shop was sold.

A
fter I got to that point, I ran out of words. The dawn was rising white beyond the windows of the inn, extinguishing the lamps and creeping over the bleak snow outside. Mr Hardy sighed and stretched out his legs. We were old friends now, after sitting awake and talking all through the blackest hours and drinking his cheap spirits. He had told me a good deal about himself. He had once been a rich man and a scholar and had lost everything after Lucien took power. Since then, he had been wandering from place to place. He told me this with no trace of self-pity. It was as though he was sure that no one was to blame for it. And he listened very intently to my story. Every few minutes, he would question some detail or nod and cough and pour out another glass of spirits. ‘What I don’t understand,’ he said at last, ‘is how you ended up here.’

‘Here?’ I said, glancing around at the dingy front room of the inn.

‘I mean travelling like this – on your own, with no belongings, like you’re running away from something.’ He said it without any accusation.

‘I have some belongings,’ I said. It had become an important point to me. I turned out the contents of my pockets. But they looked a dismal array like that.

‘What are those papers you are carrying with you?’ said Mr Hardy.

‘Just a story.’

He poured out half an inch of spirits and sipped them thought-fully. ‘Talking of stories, did your father ever find out about Harlan Smith?’ he asked.

‘I was coming to that.’

‘Will you go on?’

I shook my head. I could not. He seemed to understand, because he said,‘Perhaps we should talk of something else. Tell me about this other story instead.’

‘That’s part of it too,’ I said.

‘I see.’

‘Read it if you like,’ I said. ‘I don’t really understand it myself.’

‘What’s it about?’ said Mr Hardy, turning over the pages.

‘Another country. Rigel. Nothing that relates to my life at all.’

‘Rigel who was head of the secret service? Rigel who disappeared?’

‘Yes.’

He studied the first page of the story. ‘I can’t make it out,’ he said. ‘My eyesight failed young, I’m afraid, and I can’t read in this dark.’

‘Then I’ll read it to you,’ I said. Talking was better than sitting there in silence, listening to the wind howling and shuddering at the walls. He nodded, and I picked up the stack of papers and began.

‘Once, many years ago,’ the lord Rigel began, ‘there was a boy who wanted more than anything to study magic.’

‘Where are we going, Papa?’ said Juliette. She was huddled opposite him on the carriage seat, wrapped in his overcoat with only her face showing.

‘Shh,’ said Rigel. ‘Just listen to the story.’

Juliette rested her face against the misted pane of the window. Outside, dawn held off a while longer, and
the countryside was outlined in dismal grey. A light snow drifted across the moorland. ‘When will we come back?’ said Juliette. ‘Will it be soon?’

‘I don’t know.’

A streak of dust lay across her face from the carriage window, and he reached across and brushed it away. His heart ached sometimes to look at her. She was still so small; her hand on his was no weight at all.

‘Go on with the story,’ she said.

‘This boy was born in Angel in the south,’ said Rigel. ‘His mother was a poor woman. She used to go out cleaning for wealthy people and washing the steps of their houses. She had worked for the great Markov family and other rich families. In the icy weather, she came back with her hands bleeding. It was hard, Juliette, very hard.’

‘Yes,’ said Juliette. ‘It must have been. And what about his father?’

‘Well, the boy’s father was a mystery,’ said Rigel. ‘A soldier who had come and gone without leaving even a name. The boy – Richard, I will call him – at first he did not think much about his father. But as Richard grew up, it became clear he had powers. He could perform strange feats that no one understood. He could guess what his mother was thinking without asking her, and he dreamed once about the future and saw himself in a cold northern city where people fought in the streets, and once he saw himself as a rich man in a tall white house. These dreams began to unnerve his mother. She believed that her son had been born into a family with powers, without either of them knowing it. Richard used to ask her again and again to tell him about his father.’

‘Did she know much about him?’ said Juliette.

Rigel turned to glance out the window, at the snow falling on the bleak moorland and the lights of the harbour ahead. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It was a cause of shame to her. She talked very little about him. But I always wondered, when I was growing up.’

‘Richard always wondered,’ Juliette corrected him.

‘Are you cold, Juliette?’ he said, reaching forward to grip her hands. ‘You are. Perhaps we should stop at an inn for half an hour.’

‘No. I’m not cold. Papa, where are we going?’

‘Let me go on with the story.’

‘I don’t want a story,’ said Juliette.

Rigel had been going to continue anyway, but her next question took the words away from him. ‘Is Mother going to be there?’

He had been planning to carry on the story over the miles of bleak moorland, spinning it out according to the length of the journey. He had been going to tell her about his mother’s death when he was still a young boy, and his troubles under Lucien’s government, and how he finally studied magic. But he could not tell it now. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, she’s not going to be there. You know that.’

‘Papa?’ said Juliette. ‘Do you still work for Mr Aldebaran?’

‘Yes, angel. He is going to come and see us off.’

‘Then why is he sending us away?’

‘He isn’t, Juliette. I was the one who suggested it.’

‘I don’t want to go away.’

Rigel wanted to say something, but a heavy silence was constricting his throat, and he could not speak. They were approaching the harbour now. Juliette traced a line in the window; it became a heart, then vanished. Through the clear
lines in the glass, Rigel could see the ships stretching out against their moorings and men unloading crates by torchlight. The flames leaped wildly in the wind.

‘Where are we going?’ Juliette asked.

‘Another city,’ said Rigel.

‘Papa, why are you crying?’

‘I’m not crying,’ said Rigel, but he was.

Juliette leaned forward carefully and touched his face. She traced the scar that ran from his mouth upwards across his cheekbone, then vanished against the line of his hair. Rigel could feel her fingers trembling with cold. The crying threatened to cut him in two; it rose so violently in his chest that he could not hold it back.

The whole tragedy of his life came over him like the crashing sea beyond the harbour wall. He saw himself, the brilliant and self-taught student of magic, the only pupil Aldebaran had ever taken, and the woman he fell in love with – Juliet Delmar, the only heroine of the resistance, a woman so bright to him that she made the stars look dim. This was the end of the story, Juliette’s favourite story, and it had turned bitter now. He had always been ambitious. Was that the fault that had brought them down? If he had not been the head of the secret service – if he had not been responsible for the imprisonment of half the leaders of the New Imperial Order – Juliette’s mother would still be alive. They had come to his door with guns, shouting for him, and the fearless Juliet Delmar sent the servants to the back of the house, hid Juliette in the cellar with the housekeeper, and went to answer it.

‘Juliette,’ said Rigel. ‘It’s all my fault.’

Juliette sat hunched in the seat opposite him and said nothing. The carriage had come to a halt now. The guards
were standing there waiting for him to get out. Rigel laid the fur rugs on the seat, pushed open the door, and lifted Juliette down, taking care not to hit her head against the door frame. In his other hand, he bundled up the few things he was taking with him – his books and papers that he needed to communicate with Aldebaran. But he did it carelessly. It did not matter any more.

Juliette pressed her face against Rigel’s overcoat, trying to block out the icy wind. Her nose dug into his shoulder. Aldebaran had been standing in the shadows of an outbuilding, but he came towards them now. ‘There you are,’ he said, and reached forward to grip Rigel’s hand. ‘You are certain about this—’

‘Yes,’ said Rigel.

‘And you will send me a message when you arrive?’

‘Of course.’

‘All the details are here. Plus enough money and a few things you can sell if you have trouble with the false account. There is nothing I can foresee, but—’

‘Very well,’ said Rigel, and took the black case that Aldebaran held out. ‘I have my books. I can send word to you straight away.’

‘Good,’ said Aldebaran, studying Rigel’s face. ‘That’s good.’

‘What is it?’ said Rigel.

‘It is so soon, Rigel,’ said Aldebaran. ‘That was all I was thinking.’

‘I need to go,’ said Rigel. ‘I need to be away from here.’

There seemed nothing else to say. The plan had been so carefully rehearsed that Rigel was already thinking of what came next, and he did not know how to bid Aldebaran farewell. So he gripped the old man’s hand again and turned.
He carried Juliette down the steps into a small boat and began to cast away the moorings. ‘Teacher?’ he said, pausing for a moment. ‘Why did you promote me over everyone else? Why did you always show me so much favour?’

He knew that he would not return to his country – he had decided it, in the bleak kind of calm that came over him in the days after his wife died – and now that he was leaving, he wanted to ask.

‘You were my pupil,’ said Aldebaran. ‘That’s why.’

‘You never taught anyone else. You said you would only ever teach a relative, and you took me as an apprentice.’

‘There are mysteries in my family,’ said Aldebaran. ‘In both of ours. I had a brother, Harold Field, who spent several years in England. He was a soldier and a very reckless man. After he came back from England, the year before you were born, he was on active service at the southern border, just outside Angel. And you told me much the same story about this father you never knew.’

Rigel had thought it was something like this and had long since dismissed it as arrogance on his part. ‘Teacher?’ he said again. The boat was pulling away from the quay, and the rope rattled through the ring and fell loose. They were out on the water now.

As the night divided them, Aldebaran said, so quietly that Juliette could not hear, ‘Listen, whatever comes into your head, Rigel, don’t let me down.’

Rigel raised his arm vaguely in a kind of wave that became a salute, then pushed off from the quayside and drove the boat round into the waves. The tide carried them, and there was no point in raising a sail in this storm, so they drifted instead.

‘Papa, I’m scared,’ said Juliette.

‘It’s not far. Just a few yards across the river mouth.’

‘Where are we going? Holy Island?’

‘Holy Island is far to the north of here, Juliette. No, we are going somewhere else.’

The waves surged and lifted them. ‘Papa!’ said Juliette.

‘What? Don’t be scared.’

‘What did Aldebaran say?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t expect it was anything important. Just goodbye.’

Rigel told himself the story again as he held the boat steady. It was something to fix his mind on, to keep it from rolling and plunging like the restless sea. What if now, after everything, they were both pitched overboard? But he could not think of that. The recklessness that had taken possession of his soul became a kind of bravery. The end of the story – the truth about Aldebaran – seemed to close the whole chapter of his life until now, and what lay ahead was uncertain. He glanced at Juliette. She was staring out into the driving snow, his overcoat pulled close around her shoulders. She made no sound; it seemed a point of honour with her. Perhaps Juliette had suffered too much already in her life, because no matter what he did, he could never make her spoiled. He almost wished she would cry and scream and demand to be taken back.

‘Are we going home ever?’ said Juliette.

‘No,’ said Rigel.

‘What – never?’

‘Never.’

Juliette started to cry then. ‘Hush now,’ said Rigel, regretting his honesty. ‘It’s for your own good, Juliette. You’ll be safe where we’re going.’

Juliette did not answer. Rigel ducked as the boat swung precariously. ‘There is the island,’ he said.

‘I can’t see it.’

‘Just ahead, not far,’ said Rigel, who could not see it either.

A tale came to him from a long way off about a magician and his daughter who were cast out on the heartless sea. An English story. He had always been drawn to that place. ‘This is a very important mission,’ said Rigel. ‘Magic is dying out, and Aldebaran is sending me to this other city to find all the people with powers who are living there, people who belonged to our country once, long ago. Someone has to teach them and pass on the skill so that it doesn’t die altogether.’