The sky was ink-dark by the time they left the flickering candlelight in the anchorite, where they’d huddled together in the confines of those narrow stone walls, sharing secrets, whispering lies. All of Ari’s were to assure June that there was a way back. There must be a way back.
Her lies and Percy’s words clung to her, slick-black and biting-cold, like the night. The book. Taken from a man in search of immortality. Have you heard of Cain? Yes, and though he’d never defeated death, he’d dealt it all too well.
Tilly rushed towards her as she approached, her crystalised breath lit up by the eerie red glow from Heart Pond, a smile etched on her face.
‘Look what I made!’ It was a little horse, crudely shaped from clay. Its body looked like a sphere, but its eyes were twinkling. ‘The others didn’t work so well, but I didn’t give up!’
‘That’s amazing!’ Ari gushed. ‘It’s a horse!’
‘I know! I actually made something, and it wasn’t an earthquake!’
There was a hole in the earth where she’d played.
‘Um. Do we need to fill that in?’ Ari whispered to Hesperus.
‘It’s within the confines of Lady Una’s magic, my lady,’ he replied, pointing to the blood-red lake, glowing brighter even as she stared into its depths, not a trace of its daytime crystal-blue to be seen. ‘That’s why we only used the earth that neighboured the sand. Everything will return to as it was by the morning.’
Ari nodded, trying to look as if self-healing earth was part of her everyday knowledge. ‘I thank you for staying here with Tilly. I hear that you have been very busy of late, and we have taken up a whole day of your time.’ Sir Edwin and Master Keating, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen.
‘Not at all, my lady. I had promised Finn a full day of fun after… some recent events. Tilly’s company has been more than welcome. I must say, she is going to be a force to be reckoned with. She has both overwhelming power, much like yourself, and exceptional control. I can see why you have decided to sponsor her education.’
‘Out of my household’s budget,’ Claribel said gently. ‘She shall stay at the Academy until she graduates, or until she decides to leave, no matter what her ranking may be.’
Hesperus nodded and crouched down at Tilly’s side. ‘The Academy is a great place to study. You’ll be very happy there. If I don’t see you again before you become a great mage, here’s a good luck charm.’
He tapped the clay horse’s eyes with a dab of sand, and they blazed blue until a layer of glass firmed over two living dots of blue flame.
‘Ooh, can you do that for my toys too?’ cried Finn.
‘Yours are carved out of wood. It can’t contain fire magic the same way that mage-shaped earth can. Come now. Let us head home. Tell you what. Lady Oriana has acquired a new gown of late, much inspired by fashion from Jumont. I’ll make a version for your warrior,’ he said, leading them back along the Long Wall, to where her carriage and his wagon sat waiting.
The mildness of the winter’s day had slipped away as the sun slipped under the horizon. Ari shivered under her cloak, made for daytime.
Hesperus unclasped his own cloak at once, and swirled it over Finn’s shoulders.
‘But… Hes! You’ll be cold!’ cried the boy.
‘That would make me a poor fire mage,’ said Hesperus, with a flash of a wry smile that melted into the night: Max’s smile, which no one else had a right to possess. He bent down and rolled the top of the cloak three times, until the bottom no longer dragged along the ground, then fumbled with his plain wooden clasp that struggled thrice to pin through the thicker fold of fabric.
Under the distant light of the stars, with a nod that shouldn’t have reminded her so much of Max, with a wave that could almost make her forget mistaken past tenses, Hesperus bid her a peaceful night.
*
He must have cursed her night. An unpainted carriage awaited her at the gates of Wingshill House, and if Ari hadn’t felt apprehensive about it before, she did when Claribel used the name of the Fated One in vain.
~I might be wrong. As you say, it is unmarked. Let us occupy our minds with something more pleasant. You do still have to answer the letter to Isabel.~
~Isabel, 8, from the House of Giving.~
Ari cursed, not at the little girl; she might be a monster, but she wasn’t that kind of a monster. Also, what could be worse than letting a child down and telling her that the dead stayed dead, love and tears be damned?
Duke Aquilon strode towards her, flanked by Sir Beren and, thanks to Claribel’s reminder, Hubert the Steward.
‘It’s him’, said Duke Aquilon, as if that explained everything. ‘Are you ready to be the bishop?’
~He doesn’t mean a real bishop. It’s just a thing we do. Bishop and bandit. The bandit acts mean and the bishop acts friendly.~
That. Good that her whole life had been good cop, bad cop. How she’d loved Mrs Hart. Ari had learned to play the part too, and though she wasn’t in the habit of playing the good cop, new world, new role. But…
~The Guildmaster.~
~Not my guildmaster. The Barber’s guildmaster. Master Ambris. I really shouldn’t have asked for help from his guild for distributing those flatbreads. I just didn’t think he’d still be trying to recruit me into his schemes...~
‘He has been waiting in your solar,’ said Hubert. ‘I have served him five pots of tea already, and assured him that you will be home very late, but he is insistent that he must have an audience with both you and His Grace, my lady.’
‘Five pots of tea and no trips to the privy,’ said Sir Beren, dazzling her with his moonlit smile, outshone only by the spun silver that was Duke Aquilon’s hair. ‘Hubert kindly disclosed that there may be dead body parts in the solar, but he remained undeterred. Hubert even got Sir Dagon to keep him company, whetting his longsword. Poor old Dagon had to endure a lecture on the quality of whetstones, and a rundown of every single store in Eirene with a grindstone. At least we know where to go now to get our blades sharpened, sharp enough for my knight’s sword to give a man a clean shave before I slice off his head.’
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~Most likely… Cardinal Octavus.~
~… I wish that was the extent of it.~
‘My deepest apologies, my lady,’ said Hubert. ‘I know the past few days have been difficult, yet I have not been able to improve the situation, even when it comes to this visit.’
‘This was of my making. I engaged with his guild yesterday. Please don’t place the blame on yourself. There are things you can help me with. While I meet with Master Ambris, would you check with…’
~Quarrin,~ offered Claribel.
‘…Quarrin if he can train one of my hounds to bark at the presence of human blood? I wish to help Sir Edwin with his investigations. Also, there is a musician named Zarto. I hear that he is a talented composer. Please arrange for him to pay me a visit soon. I can do with some light entertainment.’
‘Ah. Zarto! Of course! Lady Proserpina’s steward speaks very highly of him. He likes to invite lords and ladies to his manor to view his various inventions, but I am sure he will be delighted to visit you here.’
‘I can visit him at his manor. Arrange it as you see fit,’ said Ari, wondering, apart from music, what else Zarto had imported from their home world.
*
Indeed, Master Ambris looked like a man who’d be undeterred by dead body parts, because he looked close to death himself. His cheeks were all bones, much like his fingers, yet he did not let his scarlet, fur-lined robes wear him through the sheer sharpness of his ice blue eyes.
His triple gold chain ended on a circular pendant engraved with a half-folded barber’s knife, and he drummed an idle finger against it as he said, ‘Your Grace, my lady,’ with an almost imperceptible dip of his head.
‘Master Ambris, you are a guildmaster, and I am a lower warden. Please address me as Master Claribel.’
‘Not at all. I am here to see Lady Claribel, the main alms-provider to the Cathedral of Eirene, and if you wish to take up the mantle of Master, then that is but a welcome addition to my main purpose. That young knight is quite unnecessary. What am I going to do? Endanger your life in the presence of the man who is unquestionably the greatest knight of our time, who also happens to be your father? The only part of a man I have ever cut is his hair, whether it be atop his head, beneath his chin or within his nostrils.’
‘Sir Beren shall accompany us today,’ said Duke Aquilon, flatly. ‘We wouldn’t want a poor welcome for an esteemed guildmaster like yourself.’
‘I see. Though I do appreciate that some rooms require tasteful décor. The young knight goes quite well with the planetarium you have on display. An exquisite piece of engineering. Master Northill’s handiwork, if I am not mistaken?’
‘You have a good eye for clockwork.’
‘For more than clockwork.’ Master Ambris patted her hand, and Claribel held her back from slicing it clean off. ‘I wanted to speak with you, Lady Claribel, because you also have a good eye for all kinds of matters. Your tea is top quality, as are your knights, much thanks to you, Your Grace. All hand-trained for a year, sometimes more, before the Duchess would allow them to bear the mark of the raven. Quite a time to train your fighting men, isn’t it?’
Duke Aquilon’s knuckles grew pale: an unintentional bandit to her failing bishop. ‘The Duchess believes that it should take more than money for a horse and a suit of armour to call yourself a knight.’
‘A disciplined force that is immensely loyal to you… What a rare find nowadays, outside of the embrace of the Church.’
‘What are you getting at?’ Duke Aquilon leaned into his glare, but Master Ambris merely smiled back, all gums, no teeth.
‘The burnings. They need to stop. The Church needs to be stopped.’
She looked at Duke Aquilon, who looked back, and found Sir Beren looking, slack-mouthed, at them both.
‘What are you suggesting?’ Ari said at length, letting her voice rise above the strange buzzing in her head. Burn. Burn. Burn. ‘Heresy?’
‘No, my lady. I am merely conveying my understanding of history, and, forgive me, I have a more intimate knowledge of it, due to having lived through some of what you may call history already. Before the Church became what it is now, people buried their dead and believed that it was nothing except a way for the living to grief. We allowed bodies to return to dust in its own time. We allowed trees to feed on the remains of our beloved. We felt no shame in donating the most precious of our possessions to the earth. There was no destruction by fire, of living or dead. There was also an understanding that the bodies of the dead may still save those who are living. Men and women would donate the parts that the Fated One had no need to reclaim to my guild.’
‘You want dead bodies,’ said Duke Aquilon, ‘for what?’
‘Your Grace... You often say you merely married into the Aquilon family, and your roots are common, like mine. Even so, you must be familiar with Lord Clarus, who ruled over Aquilon near the end of the Age of Heros. Clarus the Seer. My lady here is named after him, is she not? Aquilon became enlightened during his rule. The drawings that we and the physicians work from are the fruits of his enlightenment. When I was just a boy, I saw how they saved a man with acute stomach pains in the Jumont Empire. They put a man to sleep and opened his insides to cut out a small part of his guts, thin and withered like a worm. The skills that they displayed put us to shame. And now, forty years later, all that has changed is the aching in my bones. I dreamed of saving a man in the same way, but now, my hands shake day and night. Even if my dreams cannot come true, there are other boys like the one I once was. Please, I implore you, Your Grace, we must not go back in time. We must not shame the men we once were. I know I came here with an unreasonable request, but I know that you and your children are unreasonable, just like I am. It is easy to give in to the raging of the sea. It is unreasonable to keep constructing polders and waging war on the rising waters, like your beloved Lord Marinell does.’
Before Duke Aquilon could press back Master Ambris’s insidious attack, the throbbing between Ari’s brows and the buzzing in her head finally took shape. ‘Fire,’ she said. ‘When did…’
As if uttering the word gave power to the web of voices, memories that she shouldn’t have, couldn’t have flooded her mind.
A hundred fragments of a man shrouded in shadows…
…hands dripping with blood…
…hands ripping pages from a book…
…hands gripping hers…
Bowing his head, he said…
…Prometheus…
…Māui…
…the Raven…
They stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. With fire, men learned to cook food, banish darkness, forge weapons. Still, man could not truly challenge the power of the gods. Was fire truly not the key, not worth punishment by eternal torture, or…
…did we not understand its true significance?
But your dusk is falling. The eagles have finished feasting. It is time to reset.
Goodbye.
Goodnight.
I am not your Heracles.
‘When did… the Church start burning the dead? Cremation is harder than digging a hole in the ground. Why bring fire into it?’
‘Just over a hundred… a hundred and fifty years ago, I’d say,’ said Master Ambris. ‘Now that you mention it, an obsession with burning has been spreading, even among priests and priestesses of the Children. The Temple of Merta has started to request that all their sacrificial lambs should be burned, not left to bleed on the altar.’
They stewed in the significance of his words: a significance that Ari could feel, but could not understand. If her world and Claribel’s were somehow linked by fire, by the flickers of Miri’s candlelight, by the flames in the Chief’s sealed room, then wouldn’t the timeline be a matter of a handful of years?
Unless there was no link.
Unless others had travelled into this world a long, long time ago.
Unless time didn’t line up between her world and the new one.
Unless the first to burn down the barriers between their worlds was someone from the other side.
‘Anyhow, I had to come tonight, because you are due to visit Cardinal Octavus on the morrow. He is a good man, but he will not meet with me. There. I’ve said my piece.’ He wobbled to his feet. Sir Beren offered an arm, and he took it with a nod, saying, ‘As for the rest… Neither me nor the Cardinal are getting younger. Neither are the others. As you well know, the Stationers stand with us. The Mages, as you know even better, are silent, but still, I live in hope that Master Malote will see the light. We did not have courage in our youth, but perhaps it was not completely wasted. We have chains around our necks and rings around our fingers. That counts for something, does it not? Now, why don’t this nice young sir see me out?’
‘May your blades remain sharp,’ said Claribel. ~His guild’s motto.~
Master Ambris studied her face for a breath too long, and said, ‘May you defy the possible.’
~Mine.~