Even so, Slew, like the Emperor Slaeke Sinistral, had a dark presence.
When he entered a room, heads turned. When he rose to leave it, conversation hushed and slowed, eyes following him curiously and sometimes hungrily. As if in hope that something of his charisma would become attached to themselves by the mere act of looking.
He was more than just tall and well made; he carried himself as the Emperor did, with natural grace. But he did not have the Emperor’s wit, and with that the ability to mask menace with charm.
Instead Slew had a feral menace that Slaeke Sinistral no longer had.
So heads turned when he had his summons to the Hall and the Emperor’s presence.
‘Come near, Slew,’ said Sinistral.
Slew came near.
‘Give it to me.’
Slew gave him the pouch.
‘It is inside, Lord, but . . . beware, it is heavy on the spirit.’
‘Come nearer still.’
Sinistral examined him.
‘You look worn, somewhat hollowed out. I take it then that you disobeyed me and looked at the gem?’
‘In taking it I could do nothing else . . .’
‘Tell me what happened. We can go to a lower level for privacy.’
Panic crossed Slew’s eye.
‘I prefer to have the Summer sun on my face. I knew too much darkness, Lord, in recovering the gem for you. I prefer the light up here.’
‘Then tell me here and now . . . speak low for I do not wish to have to clear the Court. And hold, your mother Leetha will want to hear.’
Another shadow in Slew’s face.
‘Lord, let me tell you the story by yourself.’
Sinistral grasped his arm and said with quiet anger, ‘You dawdled coming back, you kept me waiting, Leetha was sick with worry . . .’
‘And I was sick with the gem, Lord. Please, I do not wish to see my mother.’
‘The Master of Shadows fears his own mother?’
‘Were you never sick at heart, my Lord? Does sickness not make us stronger who survive it? My Mastership will be enhanced by this. But . . . I do not wish to see my mother.’
Sinistral saw the sense in that and yes he had been sick, deep down sick, when he first took possession of the gem of Summer from his mentor ã Faroün.
He saw in Slew an echo of himself and that the gems might be a bond between them.
‘Emperor . . . did you ever hear of a lutenist called ã Faroün?’
Sinistral sat back in his throne content. The question was a clever one, or showed luck of a kind worth investing in. He relented.
‘I shall see you without your mother. She has her flaws; mine was no better. Did the gem find you or you it?’
When Slew began to answer him Sinistral shook his head.
‘Later, outside, underneath the stars, we’ll sit and talk.’
‘Yes, Lord.’
‘And these Brethren of yours, the Order of the Sphere. Is that some kind of joke?’
‘It is. Yet people take us seriously. We are listened to, we are followed, people wish to be our followers, my words of unwisdom are written down, and females offer favours to delightfully corrupt us, seeing as we are celibate. Well, my fellow brothers are not, but I am for now.’
Sinistral laughed.
‘They’ll get tired of it; I did. By the way, Slew, did you manage to raise your gaze high enough on your journey back to notice anything odd about our Mother Earth?’
‘In Englalond there were earthquakes that we barely escaped. Humans died more than hydden did. Borkum Riff – he sends his compliments – fears what will happen when the tremors break the seabed open. In Frisia, where I was sick and lay abed and my companions took their pleasures, I had time to listen to the Earth. She is angry and getting more so. And here, in Bochum, in the tunnels, has She expressed Herself?’
Sinistral shook his head: ‘Not yet.’
‘Do you think she will?’
‘She must.’
Later, when he had gone, and the Hall was clear and there was nothing but the echoing fall of dust lit by the dying evening light, Sinistral said, ‘You can come out now.’
She slid out from the curtain behind the throne.
‘You heard?’
‘I did. So he is sick.’
‘Why so, Leetha? You understand such things.’
‘He knows I did not favour him when young but preferred his brother and mourned his loss. Like someone else I know, a longing unfulfilled makes him ill, which the gem’s light exacerbates. He gave it to you without a moment’s demur, Lord.’
‘He did, my beloved. Let us go and play with it a little.’
‘The Remnants will not like us doing so.’
‘They can go to hell,’ he said with sudden savagery. ‘I do not need them any more.’
She looked at him sideways-on, concerned. Such sudden displays of petulance and selfishness were one side-effect of misusing the gem’s power.
He looked well, healthy, but like the Earth, he trembled too. His head shook a little and occasionally his ‘s’s were hesitant and, for moments only, he lost the power of his right hand, until, grabbing it with the other, he brought it back to position and life.
His thoughts though were acute, his mind even more able to reach into hers.
‘I needed Spring and now I have it. Come, I have a rendezvous with your son and the stars but first . . . beloved . . . help me play.’
‘Blut won’t like it, Lord.’
Sinistral laughed.
‘Blut is already there, waiting, notebook in hand, a natural historian. He’ll like it very much.’
They went down to Level 18, where Blut was waiting, having arranged that the seals into the Chamber be undone.
Close-to, the gem of Spring looked at first like that of Summer but darker, duller. For a moment it did nothing, but then whoosh! The light came from it. They let it shine for seconds as it seemed.
‘That was fourteen minutes, Lord,’ said Blut, ‘by my chronometer.’
‘And I feel good,’ said Sinistral, ‘very, very good. Now—’
‘Time distorts itself around the gems,’ said Blut.
‘So does memory.’
That evening the Emperor sat with Slew toppermost, in the lee of a refuse tip over and through which rats scurried squeaking in the dark, on top of which gulls roosted. The feral dogs that roamed these parts might have been a danger but the area around them had been cleared and Fyrd stood discreet guard out of sight.
Above them, all the stars.
‘I have the cure for your sickness, Slew. Right here. In this pouch.’
‘Spring? I think not.’
‘No, no . . . Summer. Take it, hold it, open it, let it shine on you a second or two and it will give back what Spring took.’
There in the dark among the rats, Witold Slew let Summer briefly shine into his eyes.
Sinistral watched the stars and saw them shift, whoosh! Now here, now over there, splaying apart, the moon sliding off to the side.
Two seconds were nearly two hours, in which Slew, bathed in the gem’s alluring light, seemed now to find recovery.
‘Thank you, my Lord, your Master of Shadows is in good health once more. Tomorrow again perhaps?’
‘We’ll see,’ said his cruel Lord.
They sat, the stars above their heads, the Earth and the Universe very beautiful, all things bright, all things beautiful, laughing together by the tip, rats running riot.
‘Again, Slew?’
Again.
The stars slid, the moon shifted and Slew, sniffing at the pouch which held fires beyond imagining, said, ‘In Englalond I met a girl, who became a woman, who turned into an old lady who decayed into a crone. She made me sad.’
‘Where was she?’
‘In an embroidery.’
‘By ã Faroün?’
‘It nearly took me into its own story.’
‘Not nearly, Witold Slew, it did. Now . . . tell me, please, that
you brought it with you?’
‘I . . . no, Lord, I didn’t. I left it there.’
Sinistral rose, anger incarnate.
‘You may have left the greater prize,’ he hissed, his voice reverting briefly to what it was when he was decayed. ‘Because, you fool, the embroidery is a map to universal delights – and the other gems.’
Slew frowned. He had sensed something in the cloth but not quite that.
He felt nauseous.
‘You did not say . . .’
The Emperor’s mood swung the other way and he smiled. ‘I had quite forgotten that it existed until you mentioned it, but now you have . . . well . . . there is time . . . we shall get that too. It alone is reason enough to invade the city of my birth.’
He laughed at the thought.
A city destroyed to win a piece of cloth!
In the background, listening, Blut drew out his little book and made a note. A cloth embroidered. A map that might be a guide to the other gems. Delights. A crone. Blut’s eyes glistened as he too looked at stars.
36
VOWS
Cluckett approved of Jack the moment she met him.
And disapproved a short while later when she discovered that he was to take her Mister Stort away from her that very evening.
‘But he hasn’t even had time to rest his scholarly head upon the herbal pillow I have made for him,’ she said. ‘He needs rest and respite if he is to do his work.’
‘So do we all,’ said Jack, who was quickly getting the measure of her, ‘including myself. Now listen, Goodwife Cluckett—’
‘I prefer plain Cluckett, sir, but I am listening.’
She said this breathlessly, bosom heaving, feeling that though he might be the cause of Stort’s imminent departure there was in the service of Stort and his many friends an excitement and a testing of her wyfly mettle that she had never experienced while her husband was alive.
‘Cluckett then. I am tired, Mister Stort is tired, and I do not intend to waste valuable time discussing the finer points of Stort’s pillows. Nor have I the energy to discuss whether or not he should be coming now. He is essential to our secret mission . . .’
‘Secret, sir?’ she repeated with suppressed excitement, ‘I didn’t realize.’
‘Yes.’
‘And my master is essential?’
‘Absolutely. The future of Brum depends upon him.’
‘On Mister Stort?’ she said, beaming with pride.
‘It does, sort of. Therefore—’
‘Mister Stort is very wonderful is he not, and so often misunderstood?’
‘Therefore, Cluckett,’ Jack said very forcefully, ‘we do not need any further discussion now. What we need you to do while we are resting—’
‘Yes sir, that’s it, name it! I like a hydden who knows his mind and is masterful in explaining his needs to others, especially Cluckett.’
‘Good. Now, we will require such supplies as you judge will give us sustenance for at least three days to get us started. Water we’ll find, but a mead concentrate will be appreciated and some kind of biscuit and hard rations needing a minimum of preparation that will see us through the coming days until we are well on our way.’
‘That is easy, sir. Regard it as done. You’ll need medical supplies I daresay, toiletries, stout twine . . .’
‘Twine?’
‘For snares, sir. Knives, of course, and plastic bags, small but powerful torches . . .’
‘You have done this kind of thing before, I take it.’
‘The late Mister Cluckett was a dab hand at living rough and off the land. It goes without saying you’ll need a compass each and . . . lucifers and paper of the purpose of ablution.’
‘Cluckett, do it and let us sleep.’
‘Oh, sir, I shall,’ she cried happily as she set to. ‘I shall wake you at half past two and have both baths ready . . .’
‘Two baths?’
‘Rest, sir and don’t flurry your mind one second more,’ she said, adding in a tone as firm as Jack’s had been, though with a different bent: ‘Leave it to Cluckett!’
Jack rested better than he had for weeks and had been able, for the first time since Judith’s birth, to appreciate what parenthood had meant to Katherine and himself. His journey to Brum had been straightforward enough, but pressured by time. Even then, as the distance increased between himself and Woolstone, he had seen how lucky he was: Judith well and Katherine too. Now he knew he loved them both and was loved in return and lay on a palliasse in Stort’s room in a state of pleasurable half-sleep, enjoying these thoughts.
He had expressed some of them during the night to Stort, the two friends prone and in proximity as they had so often been under the night sky the previous Summer, their limbs and minds and spirits relaxed.
Jack fell asleep again, for longer than he thought, for when Stort woke him he was surprised to see he was already washed, brushed and dressed for travel.
‘It is nearly four in the afternoon,’ he explained, ‘but Cluckett advised me to let you sleep and I have done so. Food is ready, a briefing with the others at Festoon’s residence has been arranged for six, and no doubt we can make a decision then about when and how precisely we should leave Brum, secrecy being of the essence. Meanwhile, Cluckett has drawn a bath for you . . .’
Jack was up at once and into the small area at the far end of Stort’s kitchen that served as a washery.
A thin curtain offered privacy but Jack cared little for that.
‘Talk to me while I bathe,’ he said to Stort.
‘But Cluckett—’
‘She’s a goodwife, Stort, and I doubt she’s prudish. She’ll have seen naked flesh before I expect, though rarely any as scarred as mine . . .’
Jack stripped off and climbed into the hip bath she had prepared.
‘Goodness, sir,’ she said, unabashedly bringing him a hot drink as he soaked, ‘those must be the evidence of that grim accident that Mister Stort once told me about . . .’
‘They are,’ said Jack.
‘Let me take a look at your back and neck.’
‘There’s no more anyone can do,’ said Jack shortly.
‘There’s much that a trained goodwife can always do, if you please!’
She took a look, running her strong fingers gently over his neck and right shoulder.
‘You must know the meaning of pain,’ she said softly. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Well, I . . .’
‘A moment!’
She came back with an embrocation of her own devising, rubbed it on him after he had dried himself, and informed him that she had put a jar of it in his portersac.
‘Do these scars ever weep? When you are stressed perhaps? As now, for I presume from their state that you have been under some pressure of late?’
‘I have,’ said Jack gruffly, ‘and let’s leave it at that. But I thank you—’
‘Say no more, sir,’ she said. ‘Meanwhile, a robust tea will be served in the parlour where your guest awaits you.’
As Jack got dressed and Stort reappeared he whispered, ‘What guest could I possibly have?’
‘Come on, Jack, time’s limited and there’s much to do,’ said Stort, avoiding giving an answer. ‘Make yourself decent, she’s waiting.’
‘Who’s waiting?’ he asked, but Stort had wandered off again.
When Jack pushed the parlour door open he was overwhelmed by several potent scents – florid, robust and bold – as of a female no longer young who might on occasion like to be.
‘My dear Jack!’ Ma’Shuqa cried, enveloping him as she always had. ‘Welcome back!’
As he hugged her in return, his hands lost in the layered brocades and silks of her bilgesnipe dress, she added, ‘My, you’re bigger and stronger than you were. But that’s how our Stavemeister should be.’
Stort poked his head round the door, said he had already had tea, did not want more and would leave them to it.
‘To what?’ said Jack, but ag
ain Stort had gone.
‘So . . .’ he said cautiously as he tucked in to Cluckett’s sandwiches and cakes, ‘what’s this all about?’
Ma’Shuqa came straight to the point.
‘There be a matter touchy and hard on which it’s my duty as her adoptive Ma to talk plain and speak frank. You know my meaning I think?’
Jack had no idea what or who she was talking about.
‘The female whose life you’ve ruined!’
‘Me? What female?’
‘My sweet ward, poor Hais, who you traduced and laid waste on life’s hard road.’
‘Hais?’ said Jack, frowning. ‘The bilgesnipe girl who . . .’
It all came back and an odd memory it was. He had barely thought of her since the day he and Stort and the others had escaped from Brum with Festoon, at the time when Brunte’s insurrection was in full swing and they were in danger of their lives.
Jack had attended a betrothal lunch at which Hais, a friend of Katherine’s, was the bride-to-be. He might have forgotten the occasion entirely but for the fact that he unwittingly unloosed a knot – a Cunning Knot as the bilgesnipe called it – which by tradition meant that he became betrothed to Hais. It was so clearly an accident, and he was so obviously needed elsewhere, that he had apologized to the company and to Hais and left. It was true however that for a moment he and Hais had exchanged a glance of the kind that in other, better, circumstances might have led to love. But their wyrd took them separate ways, Jack and Katherine had gone theirs together, Judith had been born, and the matter was surely no more than an embarrassing memory in which no one did anything to regret.
But here was Ma’Shuqa on the warpath.
‘That be she I’ve on my mind, Jack, and have had since that sorry and difficult day you unloosed the Cunning Knot and with it a deal of trouble and tears.’
‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ he said, ‘it came loose in my hand.’
‘But now you’re spoused and with a babe.’
‘I’m settled yes . . .’ though ‘babe’ was not a word he could apply to Judith. She was about as baby-like as a summer storm.
Jack sensed trouble.
‘Ma’Shuqa,’ he said, ‘first, I don’t see how you fit into this . . . ’
She looked outraged.