Voices in the Dark (11 page)

My heart hurt, and I tried to say something, but I couldn’t. We walked along an alley where the homeless
sat huddled around an old brazier. The wind was rising.

‘Spare any change?’ someone called, but I had nothing to give him.

‘Let’s go to the old house,’ said Michael.

We crossed the Royal Gardens, still divided by our silence. As we approached the fence, he caught my arm. ‘There!’ he said. ‘I told you there was a light. The other day, when we were here before.’We stepped closer to the fence. The light was flickering behind a ragged curtain on the first floor. ‘Come on,’ said Michael. ‘I want to see who it is. I can’t leave without knowing.’ He crawled along the fence to the gap in the barbed wire and began edging his way under it. I could hear shouts beginning close to the castle, but I did not want to go back yet. I followed him. We crossed the grounds at a run and stopped under the lighted window. ‘I can get up into one of these trees,’ he said.

‘You’ll break your neck,’ I said.

‘I won’t,’ he said.

He stopped ahead of me, staring up into a pine tree that stood close against the front wall. Its branches scratched the glass when the wind moved it. The lighted window was one of the only ones that had not had the panes shot out of it in the Liberation or been smashed by children’s stones. Michael began to climb, leaning precariously as he swung round the trunk from branch to branch. I waited, then grew sick of the dark and the silence and climbed up after him. It was not hard to do. I kept my eyes fixed on Michael above me and did not think about falling. He reached down and pulled me up onto a branch that was stronger than the rest. We sat there in the tree, with the wind howling around us, and looked at the lighted window. ‘Come on,’ Michael said
then. ‘I’m going across to the windowsill. And, Anselm, if I die, say a prayer for my soul.’

‘Don’t,’ I said, but he ignored me and edged out along the branch. ‘Michael, come back,’ I said. He turned and grinned at me. His eyes were steady, as though he didn’t know what danger was. The branch creaked and sighed. ‘Come back now,’ I said, and reached out my hand to him. ‘Michael, I’m not joking!’

The branch gave way as he caught my hand, and we both went down together.

It was not far to fall in the end, but it still knocked the breath out of my lungs. We lay for several long seconds without letting each other go. Then Michael said, ‘Anselm, are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and coughed.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Are you?’

‘I think so.’ He sat up. ‘I tell you, if these plants hadn’t been here …’There was a tangle of briars and thornbushes growing up against the wall, and they had broken our landing. I was still gasping for breath, so I lay where I was. The wind was rising all the time, and there was drizzle in it now. ‘Let’s go to the old carriage,’ he said. ‘Before it gets any worse. I’m sorry; I thought that branch would hold out.’

We were both limping when we stood up, and it made me laugh, though it was not really funny. We struggled to the old carriage, and Michael struck a match to light us up the steps. In the wavering flame, his face was paler and older. He blew out the match, and we could see faintly by the moonlight alone. Damp had eaten away the coach furnishings, but the leather seats were still intact in places. The wheels on one side were broken, making the coach
lean drunkenly, its two lamps out of line. The front window was cracked, and a light dusting of mould covered the cushion behind my head. We always kept candles here, under the coach seat. Michael reached for one of the lamps, took off the mildewed glass globe, put a new candle in, and lit it. The flame steadied and brightened. The sky outside turned to a deep indigo against the glass, a thousand miles wide. ‘Do you remember that summer when we came here every day?’ said Michael.

‘And the time when we came looking for ghouls.’

‘My God, I’ve never been so scared in my life.’ He shook his head. ‘Except maybe now.’

I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. ‘What are you scared of?’ I said.

‘I don’t know.’ He rested his cheek against the window and sighed. ‘Anselm, everything is wrong with the world. Our shop is finished. My family has been here for generations. What do we have now? My father says when the Alcyrians arrive, it will go hard for us, because he was in the resistance. He says it’s better to leave now with our dignity. But dignity doesn’t keep you safe. I wish I had something to believe in. And I keep thinking …’

‘What?’

‘Anselm, what if the Imperial Order does win? I don’t want to be fighting against the world all my life. But I don’t want to keep my head down.’

‘They can’t win,’ I said. ‘The king won’t let them. And Titanica is the strongest country on the continent, and they’ve already sent troops in.’

‘But it’s not just a country, the Imperial Order. It’s everywhere.’

As if in answer, there was a burst of gunfire. It had been
too much to hope that the rioting was over for good. ‘We

should get back,’ I said. But neither of us moved.

‘Anselm, look at this,’ said Michael.

He took a crumpled sheet of newspaper out of his pocket and put it into my hand. It was too dark to see it properly. ‘What is it?’ I said.

‘People are disappearing,’ he said. ‘Not just in Alcyria, but also here. A man who was with the resistance under Lucien’s government. A woman teacher who spoke out about the Imperial Order in her town. They can get you for anything. If you go to Mass when they have called a curfew, or come from the wrong country, or have powers, or if you fall in love with the wrong person. That’s two years in jail.’

The candle spluttered with a strange human sound and went out. I struck a match. Michael was sitting far away from me, his coat pulled up to his face, and shadows moved in his eyes. ‘Anselm, sooner or later, people who don’t agree with them will have to fight,’ he said. ‘And I’m scared to think of where it’s going to end.’

‘It might not come to that,’ I said. ‘In between his pessimistic moods, Mr Pascal is saying it might all blow over.’

‘But how can it? They have everything. They are building all kinds of new roads, and railroads too, with carriages powered by steam, and they have the best navy, the strongest army, all the money. Anselm, I swear I have to do something. I swear.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know.’

His voice was shaking with anger or fear; which it was, I could not tell. ‘Michael, listen,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘We’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘I know we will.’

‘Are you just saying that?’

‘Maybe.’

He laughed without mirth. I knew his face so well that looking at it was some reassurance, even in the dim light of the carriage, where I could hardly make it out. ‘I’ll miss you,’ I said, ‘when you go off south and leave this godforsaken city.’

A breeze troubled the match, and he raised his hand to shield it, but it fell from my fingers and our hands came together instead. His was cold. We sat there palm to palm as though we were divided by glass. The match on the floor was still burning, but the light barely reached our faces. ‘Anselm, this is why I’m angry,’ he said. ‘Because the whole world is against people like me.’

‘Then it’s against me too,’ I said. The wind howled around the abandoned carriage, but as he leaned forward, it seemed to falter.

‘Write to me,’ he said. ‘If you find out anything about Harold North or your real father. Write to me anyway. It won’t be the same, when I don’t see you all the time.’

‘I don’t have your address,’ I said.

‘I’ll send it to you,’ he said.

‘Do you promise?’

‘If I can.’

‘How will we ever see each other again, unless you do?’

‘We will,’ he said. ‘People find each other. And whatever happens, don’t forget me.’

‘I won’t.’

I could not help thinking of two years in jail for falling in love with the wrong person. ‘It’s not justice,’ I said, and he nodded, still shaking with anger, and kissed me.

* * *

I don’t know how long it took me to realize how I felt about Michael. It was not gradual; it was more like the twist of a knife. I woke one day and saw him differently, and after that my life grew harder, not easier. Real love is a fierce thing. It never lets you go, no matter how miserable it makes you, no matter how unforgivingly it sets you against the world. Two years in jail. You might as well imprison people for the turn of their accent or the colour of their eyes. That was what I thought. Because as surely as I knew, I was in love with the wrong person, and there was nothing I could do about it.

The next morning, the Barones closed up their shop, put the grilles on the windows, and left. And when we woke, the Imperial Order had declared war on us all. Posters had appeared on every wall of the city, with an eagle and a scythe and the Imperial Order’s crest. ‘We declare war,’ they proclaimed, ‘against the king and his government, the followers of religion, the resistance traitors, the Unacceptables, the homosexuals, the practitioners of magic arts.’

The day Michael left, Jasmine and I went together to meet my mother after work. A grey wind ran through the city, sending the Imperial Order’s posters spiraling along every street. No one seemed to want to remove them. Even the shopkeepers left them stuck to their front windows. Towards evening, the police came out and began to take them down.

We walked fast, towards the east of the city. Jasmine jogged beside me, in her last year’s winter boots; they were stretched out of shape with wearing them too long. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked me.

‘Nothing, really.’

‘Are you missing Michael?’

‘He has been gone only a few hours.’

I had not answered her question, and she knew it. There is no deceiving a magic child. ‘I miss him,’ she said. ‘Will he come back?’

‘Maybe when all this trouble is over.’

‘Does that mean never?’

‘I don’t know. I hope not.’

She tossed her hair impatiently and walked ahead of me, her faded shawl wrapped very tightly around her shoulders. She had to walk along every broken wall we passed; it was a kind of superstition with her. By the time we got to Regent’s Place on the east side of the city, the day had begun to lose its light. This was where all the rich of Malonia City lived. Dr Keller’s house was at the end of the row, and the merchant banker whose children my mother taught owned the tallest house in the middle. The window frames were painted in gaudy red and green, as though the family was too rich to take even their expensive house entirely seriously. There was a small brass sign under the upstairs window:
THE LORD RIGEL
,
REVOLUTIONARY HERO AND FORMER SECRET SERVICE LEADER
,
LIVED IN THIS PLACE
. I wondered if the family had known that when they bought the house, and whether it added to or diminished the value.

‘Anselm,’ Jasmine called. ‘Watch.’

I turned and my heart nearly choked me. She was walking along the top of the city wall, with the street on her right and the drop to the river on her left. I did not know how she had got up there; I had turned away for only a minute. ‘Jasmine, come down from there!’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Jasmine, in the name of—’

‘Don’t distract me, Anselm.’

She walked slowly, putting one foot in front of the other. The wind off the hills was fierce enough to unsettle her balance; every time she took a step, she swayed. I did not dare to move once she had told me not to. She kept walking until she reached the end. Then she launched herself into the air, and I ran forward and caught her.

‘Jasmine, what the hell did you think you were doing?’ I demanded.

‘Nothing. Put me down.’

‘Do you want to give me grey hairs like Leo’s? Honestly!’

‘I wasn’t going to fall.’

‘The wind could have knocked you off.’

‘It couldn’t. I knew. Put me down.’

I put her down but kept hold of her wrists. I could not argue; I knew from hard-won experience that it was pointless. But I kept hold of her hands tight enough that she could not break free. I almost hoped it would hurt her. ‘Let me go,’ she was whining, but I wouldn’t. I kept my hands closed around hers until we saw my mother coming down the steps of the house. ‘Mama!’ called Jasmine then, and broke away from me. My mother smiled and knelt down on the steps to put her arms around Jasmine. At the window of the house, I saw the curtain move. Those two rich children were very curious about us but were too shy to ever let us see them looking out.

Jasmine and my mother began talking at once. I walked behind them. My heart was still beating fast. Every few weeks, Jasmine did something like this, and ever since Aldebaran had died, she had been worse. My mother was
walking slower than usual; she kept shifting her handbag from her right hand to her left.

‘Let me carry that,’ I said.

‘You’re a prince, Anselm,’ she said. It was heavy with all the children’s schoolbooks.

‘How are the two little duchesses?’ I asked.

‘Oh, the same as ever. Juliana wanted to know today if there were really people who had babies without being married, so I told her certainly not.’

Jasmine choked with laughter and had to be hit on the back several times before she regained her composure. She saw it as a point of principle to look down on those two children, with their white dresses and their high-class manners.

‘Tell us about places you’ve been?’ asked Jasmine when she finished coughing.

‘Oh, I’m tired tonight,’ my mother said.

‘Please!’ said Jasmine. It was a favourite game of hers. As we walked through the city, my mother would point out each house she had danced at when she was a rich girl and every street she had visited with her well-to-do friends.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You see that chapel on the corner? It’s a private chapel that used to belong to the Marlazzis, and Agnes Jean was married there. They had seventeen bridesmaids, so many that the front of the procession finished before the end had even begun. I started laughing when I saw that, and my papa had to take me out. And the confetti was real gold leaf—’

‘Real gold leaf?’ said Jasmine, wrinkling her nose.