The Prince of Lies: Night's Masque - Book 3 (12 page)

The front door had fallen in and its remnants rotted in the damp upland climate. Within, broken bricks and roof-tiles covered the floor in a thick layer, and a damp, mushroomy smell filled the air. Mal cast about him, all senses alert, but saw no sign of devourers.

They explored the rest of the manorhouse, but found only rot and destruction giving way to nature.

“Shawe,” Mal muttered under his breath. “I know that name. John Shawe? Robert Shawe? Richard? William? Thomas?”

He ran through all the names he could think of, until–

“Matthew Shawe.” That was it. Northumberland’s protégé, friend of the astronomer Thomas Harriot. He beckoned Sandy over. “I know the son of the man who owned this house.”

“You’re sure?”

“He would have been but a child when the place was abandoned, but yes, I would wager good money on it. He is an alchemist; a pursuit he picked up from his father, perhaps?”

“Our people have knowledge far beyond that of Christian scholars. Though how alchemy relates to what happened in the dreamlands…” Sandy looked thoughtful. “There should be traces here.”

“Can you not feel them?”

“I can try.”

“Do it. I’ll keep watch, just in case.”

Sandy crouched in the rubble with his back against one of the crumbling walls and closed his eyes. Long minutes passed, and eventually Sandy’s eyes began to move under their lids. He was dreaming. Mal waited impatiently, half an eye on the sun sinking behind the far wall. They had to leave soon, or–

A sharp intake of breath made him whirl, blade at the ready. Sandy was staring up at him.

“It’s close. I felt…” He pointed towards the rear of the building. “There.”

Mal held out a hand and hauled his brother to his feet, and they made their way quickly through the ruins. At the far end of a group of outbuildings stood one that had remained surprisingly intact.

“Of course,” Mal said. “They would have kept it away from the main house. Too much risk of fire.”

He heaved open the damp-swollen door. The dank air smelt faintly of charcoal and something else, bitter and metallic, but nothing could be seen within. Mal took out his flint and tinder, and improvised a torch from a piece of scrap timber that was drier than the rest. Holding his rapier in a middle guard to defend against an attack from any quarter, he advanced slowly over the threshold.

The building was a workshop of some kind, with thick walls and a hearth at the far end, and wooden shelving along each long wall. Most of the shelves had collapsed, leaving heaps of broken glass and earthenware at their feet, held together by a sticky mass that sprouted clumps of pale fungi. A table in the centre of the workshop had also collapsed in on itself. Mal crunched across the floor to the fireplace, and noted the oven-like structure to one side, its bronze door crusted with verdigris. Sandy stooped and picked something out of the rubble.

“Look at this.” He held it out to Mal.

Torchlight glinted on a glass rod with vivid blue crystals fused to one end.

“Alchemy indeed,” Mal said softly.

“But to what end?” Sandy replied. “Alchemy has many uses, but it cannot affect the dreamlands.”

“Iron can. It cuts off our souls from that place, after all.”

“You think they were searching for a way around that?”

“Perhaps,” Mal said. “That could explain how the devourers got through. Though if the alchemist succeeded, why didn’t Selby use his magic to escape, or at least call upon his friends for aid?”

“Maybe he did and they failed to get there in time. Or perhaps Shawe is still searching.”

Mal wrapped the glass rod in his handkerchief and stowed it inside his doublet.

“Whatever happened, I need to get back to London and find out more.”

Before Mal could make preparations to leave Rushdale, snow fell again, sealing them in for the best part of a month. The delay irked him, but he forced himself to at least appear cheerful, for his wife’s sake as well as Kit’s. The boy was growing fast, and revelled in the combined attention of his father and uncle. He clearly preferred the latter, but so far that was the only sign that the soul within him was Kiiren’s. Mal had been worried that Kit might start babbling in Vinlandic or the ancient skrayling tongue before he learned English, and frighten the servants into thinking him a changeling, but Sandy assured him that it would be some years before Kiiren’s memories started to assert themselves.

“It won’t take as long as it did with me, thank goodness,” Sandy said one afternoon, as they sat by the fire watching Kit and Susanna playing peekaboo over the back of a dining chair. “His soul is strong, and his death was less horrible than ours.”

“It was horrible enough,” Mal said, trying to banish the image of Kiiren screaming as the devourer tore out his guts.

“But we were there with him, at the end. That makes a big difference.”

“If you say so.”

It was hard to reconcile this merry child with the solemn ambassador he had known. There were times he almost forgot that Kit was not his own son, so natural did he seem with his adoptive mother. He wondered how deeply Coby would mourn – how they both would – when Kit grew up and left them, as he must do eventually. For all Grey’s congratulations, they did not truly have a son and heir, not yet. Mal only hoped he had managed to get her with child this winter. She had not said anything so far, but perhaps she would not want to tell him until she was certain herself, and such things took time. Or so he had been led to believe. That was women’s business, and he had only the haziest of ideas how things went once the man’s part was done.

Thoughts of his wife sent him in search of her. With this break in the weather he had no more excuses to delay his journey south, and good reason to go. Food supplies were running low, and every ounce of flour and cheese and bacon had to be accounted for if they were not to starve before spring. The sooner he left, the sooner he would cease to be a burden on the household.

He found her in the kitchen, supervising the cooking of supper. Coby wiped her hands on her apron and left the cook to finish making the pastry.

“Can I help you, my lord?”

He smiled; ever the model of a dutiful wife in the servants’ presence. If only they knew what mischief the two of them had wrought together in the past! He led her through the servants’ hall and into the dining parlour, where they would not be overheard.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he told her. “The road is as clear as it’s likely to get this side of Easter, and it’s bound to be fairer going once I get out of the Peaklands.”

“Must you?” She slid her arms about his waist and laid her head upon his chest. “It feels like only a moment since you arrived.”

“You know I have to,” he replied, embracing her.

She looked up at him, her grey eyes bright with unshed tears. “Then we shall come with you. Kit’s old enough now that no one is likely to question the exact month of his birth.”

“I have to be sure it’s safe first. Our enemies could still be waiting for me.”

“But you’ll write, won’t you? I shan’t sleep for worrying that you’ve been arrested, or worse.”

“I promise,” Mal said, and sealed the vow with a kiss. “And I’ll send for you all as soon as I can. Better in Southwark under the eye of the skraylings, than a week’s ride away.”

The journey back to London took rather longer than a week, on roads thick with mud and slush and pocked with holes big enough to swallow horse and rider both. When Mal finally saw the smoke of the capital rising above the trees, relief threatened to overwhelm caution, and it took all his willpower not to urge Hector into a canter down the last stretch towards Bishopsgate.

Getting into the city was not the immediate problem, he reassured himself. Even if his description had been circulated after the Marshalsea incident, surely after six months the guards would have forgotten it? In any case, he was so bedaubed with mud that even his friends might not recognise him. No matter; there were plenty of bath-houses in Bankside where he might steam away the filth from his skin and the chill from his bones.

He guided Hector through traffic that rapidly thickened as it was funnelled into the suburb that lay outside the walls, past taverns and shops and the forbidding bulk of Bedlam. This close to the gate, he felt less certain of anonymity. He had travelled through here often when Sandy was locked up in the hospital, and long-serving guards might just remember his face, even if it took a while to attach a name to it. He pulled his cap down lower and slumped in his saddle, trying to look inconsequential but not furtive.

“You there!”

Mal’s heart twisted against his ribs for a second, but he willed himself not to give any outward sign of alarm. A glance from under the brim of his hat revealed that the object of the gatekeepers’ attention was a merchant whose wagon was scoring deep ruts in the mud.

“Got something extra in there, have you?” one of the men asked, lifting the canvas sheet lashed over a stack of barrels.

“Have you seen the shitty state of these cobbles?” the merchant replied, brandishing his hat. “It’s a wonder I haven’t lost a wheel. What do I pay my tolls for, if the parish doesn’t maintain the road?”

“Then you won’t mind paying double to help fund the next work crew, will you, sir?”

Mal left them to their arguing and slipped past, tossing a coin into the toll-collector’s box. One line of defences breached; now there was just the rest of the city between himself and the relative safety of Southwark.

He half-expected the Sign of the Parley to be burnt down or damaged, but apart from the crude boarding-up of the shop windows on the ground floor, the building was much as he had left it. He let himself into the house. Dear God but it was a dreary place without his friends and family to brighten his homecoming! The kitchen stank of vinegar where the beer barrel had leaked and dripped its contents on the floor, and the upstairs rooms were hardly any better. He went into his bedchamber and pulled back the sheets on the bed, wrinkling his nose at the damp, mouldy linen. He would have to hire a maid to clean and air the place if his family were to live here.

He deposited his saddlebags and rapier on the chest at the foot of the bed, retrieved the package containing the alchemist’s rod, then set off for the skrayling camp on foot. The bath-house would have to wait. After a week on the road with nothing to do but think over what he and Sandy had found, he was eager to move on with his investigations.

It began to rain as he walked along St Olave’s Street, and by the time he reached Horseydown his hat and cloak were heavy with moisture. He was glad therefore to find Adjaan back in her cabin with the doors closed and a brazier warming the air. The outspeaker looked a little plumper than he remembered, with a distinct swell to her formerly flat bosom. Was this some masquerade to make herself look more human?

“Catlyn-
tuur
. Please, come in.”

Mal kicked off his muddy boots and stepped over the threshold. As the outspeaker turned to let him pass, Mal could not help but stare at her bulging belly. Adjaan laughed and stroked the broad curve stretching her tunic.

“Have you never seen a woman with child before?”

“Forgive me, honoured one. I am still getting accustomed to seeing a woman here at all.”

“As are my menfolk,” she said with a sigh, and knelt by the brazier.

Mal hung up his hat and cloak and joined her.

“What brings you back to us?” she asked. “I heard from your theatre friends that you had fled the city.”

“You know Shakespeare?”

“I like to acquaint myself with all your storytellers.”

Mal drew forth the package of waxed cloth tied with string and laid it on the matting between them. Adjaan cocked her head on one side.

“A gift?”

“Not exactly. Please, open it, and tell me what you think.”

Adjaan did so, revealing the crumpled handkerchief still wrapped around the glass rod. She peeled the fine linen away and held the rod up before her eyes. The deep blue crystals caught the light of the hanging lamps, seeming to glow from within like lightwater exposed to air. Adjaan sniffed delicately at the encrusted end.

“
Siiluhlankaar
. Interesting.”

“What is it?”

“I do not know the English name. We call it ‘sacred poison stone’, because its making from ore gives off deadly fumes, but its colour makes it precious to us. Where did you find it?”

Mal told her about the alchemical workshop. She nodded thoughtfully.

“
Siiluhlankaar
has an interesting nature; it behaves a little like iron, even though it contains none.”

“Like iron, but not iron? That explains a lot.”

“It does?”

“My brother has an idea that the guisers may be trying to counteract the effect of iron on dreamwalking.”

Adjaan’s eyes widened, and she laid a hand on her belly in instinctive protection. “Do you think so?”

“I really don’t know, honoured one. But I mean to find out.”

“I will do whatever I can to help, of course, though alchemy is not my field of study.”

“May I ask what is?”

“Language, of course. That is why I asked to come here to be my clan’s outspeaker, against all our traditions. I wanted to learn your languages and discover if they are related to our own.”

“And are they?”

“Alas, no. Not that I can discover. Everything about them is different.”

She fell silent, stroking her belly. Mal wondered if the child within was a reincarnated skrayling, or waiting to be the vessel for one. Was that why she was really here? If one of the elders was too infirm to travel across the ocean, this might be his only alternative to extinction. And if more skrayling women came, might that not also be a solution to Sandy and Kit’s problem one day? He dragged his thoughts back to the present. It would be many years before either of them was ready to reincarnate.

“Fascinating as such a subject is, honoured one, I am more interested in the
siiluhlankaar
.” Mal held out his hand for the glass rod and Adjaan passed it back to him. “Do you know anyone who could tell me more about it?”