The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (12 page)

Her eyes bored into mine. For a moment I missed seeing her eyes stitched shut.

“I make my own decisions,” I said.

“For now. Yes. But you have tasted power.” She tilted her head, and continued to stare. “You have tasted more than power,” she said. “You have tasted blood.”

I pushed the memory of the Elf’s whispered name out of my mind.

She sighed, as if she saw even that.

“Do you know how I became a sorceress?” she asked.

“Mail order lessons?”

“I was a shepherdess,” she said, not smiling. “A child, one of nine. We were savages. We had little shelter, less food, no knowledge at all of the world beyond our valley. One day, I came upon a clear, still pool of water. I had never seen such a thing. Did not recognize my own reflection. I ran away, at first, only to come creeping back later.”

I tried and failed to picture the mighty Corpsemaster as a child in filthy rags.

“I spent hours at that pool, Captain. I began to ponder the nature of reality. How could I stand in one place, and yet see myself in another?”

“Squinting plays a role.”

“One day, my reflection spoke to me. Moved when I stood still. We began to converse.”

“That’s not typical behavior for a reflection,” I said.

“Nor were our conversations typical,” she said. “The child in the pool spoke to me of magic. Of sorcery. She didn’t use those terms, of course. But one day she showed me how to see behind shadows. It was such a simple thing, once I knew the way of it. From that moment, I was doomed.”

“I’m still trying to picture the mighty Corpsemaster as a shepherd child.”

“Once I learned to see through the dark, I discovered other wonders,” she said. “The girl in the pool was patient, always patient. Finally, I resolved to join this other self, in her realm. Being a child, I decided the most expedient stratagem was to simply leap into the water.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. I sank. Swimming was not among my skills. I drowned, Markhat. I felt water pour into my lungs. My world went black. But I wasn’t quite dead, and with my last bit of consciousness I reached out and I twisted the dark. When I regained my senses, some time later, I lay in a dry stone reflecting pool in a land far removed from my home.”

“You yanked yourself out of the water with magic.”

“Out of the water, indeed. I spent decades trying to locate my valley, trying to find anyone who shared my language. To this day, I have found neither. What I did find was this—once you make that intuitive leap, once you engage in the least act of sorcery, you leave your former home behind forever. Nothing will ever be the same.” She leaned forward, pointing. “
You
will never be the same.”

“So you’re saying I’m a sorcerer now? All I’m doing is dreaming. You showed me how.”

“I did not. I shared a dream with you, yes. But only someone already on the path could repeat the act, without assistance. Have a care, Markhat. Sorcery can consume you. It
will
consume you, if you allow it.”

It was my turn to stand and pace. “Bah. I’m a finder. Right now I’m trying to find a way to get Buttercup away from that carnival. If I can’t get her loose by throwing salt against the glass or rubbing it with a dried frog’s leg, I’ll have to try another approach. What would you do, ma’am? I’m open to suggestions.”

“If you cannot control the glass, you must instead coerce the one who can,” she said.

“One minute I had the carnival master Thorkel by the throat,” I said. “The next I had a pile of clothes and a dirty wig. I’m not sure who is what or what is who, come sundown at that place.”

“You must look behind appearances,” she said. “See past illusion.”

“Which means what, precisely?”

“If the carnival is your opponent, find its heart. Strike the heart, and you need strike only once.”

“I was hoping for something a little more tangible,” I replied.

“I was hoping to grow up and marry Fjalfi,” she said. She rose, and her staff turned black as midnight. “You must go. The guardian has located your essence. It comes. Flee.”

I looked around, saw nothing. “How in hell do I find a carnival’s heart? That doesn’t even make sense—”

I never finished my sentence. Stitches leaped to stand before me and shoved her fingers right into my eyes.

“Flee,” she screamed. I stumbled backward, tripped over what was probably her cot, and fell back into my sleeping body with a start.

Darla rolled over and caught me rubbing my eyes.

“What’s the matter, hon?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Go back to sleep. Love you.”

Darla slept. I didn’t.

I’d walked to the moon. The act hadn’t seemed significant while I engaged in it. Back safe in my borrowed bed, though, it was becoming clear I’d crossed a line.

“You will never be the same,”
Stitches had said.

I stared at the ceiling and listened to Darla breathe and heard Stitches’s words, over and over, until at last I slept.

Chapter Fourteen

If I dreamed at all, that awful fitful day, I don’t recall it.

A pair of Avalante day staff woke us in the afternoon. They brought coffee, bread, and a tray of cut meats. We ate quietly, bathed in a big white iron tub, and dressed ourselves in the same soft white bath-robes I’d seen Stitches wear on the moon.

I sat on the bed and pushed my feet into a pair of white slippers and realized the only clothes I still owned lay in a soiled heap at the foot of the bed.

In fact, they were all I owned. The rest was ashes.

Darla sat down beside me, smelling of soap. She put a sandwich in my hand and smiled.

“Eat it. We can’t pass up free food. We’re nearly broke, you know.”

I took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “Right you are, sunshine. But I’m a man with numerous prospects. We’ll have a new house in no time. A bigger house. One with battlements and crenellations.”

She snuggled up beside me and wiped away a tear. “I despise crenellations,” she said. “What are they, anyway? Some kind of duck?”

“Possibly. We’ll rebuild, hon. As soon as this is over. I promise you that.”

“I don’t want to rebuild,” she said. “I’ve been thinking. What if we don’t move back into a house at all?”

“Live off the land, you mean? Roam wild and free, amid Rannit’s vacant lots and numerous green spaces?”

“No, silly. I mean what if we buy a boat, and live on that?”

“A boat? One of those things with a hull and sails and able-bodied seamen running all over?” I put my hands on her head and began pushing my fingers gently through her hair.

She laughed. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for the bruise on your head,” I explained. “Surely you’ve been knocked senseless.”

She caught my hands. “I have. But hear me out. After the attack last year, someone bought up a few blocks along the Brown. They tore down the ruined warehouses and built wharfs and slips. It’s beautiful, hon. We could have our own houseboat, right there, right on the water. And if things get bad—” She paused and swallowed and I could see her fight back tears. “If things get bad, we can just throw off the lines and head downriver. Go anywhere we want. You and me and Cornbread. We can go where it’s safe. Go to the Sea, if we want. We can just
go.
”

I held both her hands. “What’s got you so spooked, hon?”

She hesitated. I watched her face as she weighed her words.

“A witch just burned my house down. Will you live on a boat with me, hon? Please say you will.”

“I’ll live with you in a tree, if that’s what you want. We can start building a boat tomorrow. I’ll ask Evis for some empty beer barrels, and maybe Mama has a big old steel tub we can use as a bedroom.”

She kissed me before I could elaborate on my plans to employ a hat-rack as a mast.

“I’ll always love you,” she said. “Always.”

“Naturally,” I replied. “My charm only grows more potent with age.”

“You’ll cut quite the romantic figure, as you stride the decks of the
Dasher,
” she said. “We’ll have to get you a Captain’s hat.”

“
Dasher?
You’ve already named our hypothetical houseboat?”

“Oh. Yes. Perhaps I forgot to mention it. I bought her two months ago.”

“You bought a boat?”

“I have money of my own, you know,” she replied, in a mock downtown accent. “One hardly needs to beg one’s spouse for every petty purchase.”

“Why in the world did you buy a boat?”

“It only seemed appropriate, given that I own half of the property that provides the slips and wharfs,” she said. “I was planning to surprise you with it this Yule.”

Wheels began to turn. “And the other half of this nautical enterprise?” I asked. “Would that perhaps be Gertriss and Evis?”

“Gertriss and Mama,” Darla said. “Evis isn’t involved. Just us girls. We call it Riverside Estates, and we plan to only admit the better class of people.” She looked me up and down. “Though we may on rare occasions make exceptions.”

I flopped flat on my back on the bed.

“So I live on a houseboat named
Dasher,
” I said. “Do we have a crew? Cannons? A full-time barkeep?”

She lay back and cuddled close. “No, no, and hell no,” she said. “But we have a steam engine, two full decks, hot and cold running water, a claw-footed brass tub, a kitchen, and a rail I painted white so it looks like a picket fence.”

“We’ll have to learn boat things,” I said. “Port and aft. Stern and abandon ship.”

“Hush,” she said.

“Hush,
Captain,
” I admonished.

A pillow struck my face. Other pillows flew. Sheets joined the fray. Neither of us heard the knocking at the door until it became a pounding.

I made sure my bath-robe was securely belted and opened the door. Jerle, Avalante’s dour day man, greeted me with a solemn nod.

“Mr. Prestley wishes to speak with you,” he said. “Clothing is being procured, and will arrive shortly.”

“Thanks, Jerle,” I said. Reading the man’s face was like trying to peer through the Brown’s muddy water all the way to the bottom. “Is he any better? Any worse?”

“Good day, sir,” he said, and closed the door.

Darla emerged from her cocoon of bed-linens. “That didn’t sound good,” she said.

“Jerle is professionally gloomy,” I replied. “Pay him no attention.”

I shaved and combed my hair. Having been procured, clothes arrived. They were more or less my size, and if I ever decided to enter the fascinating world of mortuary services I now had the perfect suit for the job.

They brought Darla a matching black outfit, with an ankle-length skirt instead of pants and a black pillbox hat draped with fine black lace. She was still changing when I left. Considering the shape we’d last seen Evis in, neither of us made any undertaker jokes out loud.

I made my way to Evis’s office alone. I fit right in with the halfdead I met in the halls. My new shoes surprised me by being quiet as I walked.

His door was shut, but before I could even raise my hand to knock I was invited inside. The voice wasn’t Evis’s, but it called me by name, so in I went.

“Damn,” I said, as my eyes adjusted to the dark.

“Damn,” I repeated, because no other word seemed to suffice.

Evis was laid in a steel-framed bed. The bed rested on wheels. Surrounding him was a bewildering variety of what I assumed was medical gear—there were bags of clear liquid draining into tubes and tubes draining into Evis. Devices glowed and chirped and clicked about him. A pair of white-coated human doctors paced to and fro, frowning at this or fiddling with that.

Evis was propped up in the bed, breathing slowly, his eyes covered with dark spectacles.

I moved toward him, keeping my hands well away from my pockets.

A pair of silent black shadows appeared at both my elbows.

“Easy, gents. I’m just concerned. Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”

A slim halfdead, shorter and slighter of build than even Evis, stepped out of the dark behind Evis’s desk.

“My name is Cord,” he said. His voice was soft and unhurried. I heard a faint accent, but it wasn’t one I could place. “I’ll be speaking on Mr. Prestley’s behalf, as he is unable to conduct extended conversations.”

One of the doctors held a long syringe up to the room’s only dim light.

“Is he dying? Evis, can you hear me?”

Evis stirred. He tried to speak, failed, and wound up giving me a weak thumbs-up before his arm fell limp across his chest.

“Sit, Mr. Markhat. Mr. Prestley has instructed me to explain his condition. To answer your question, at this moment we are cautiously optimistic that he will survive. Please. Sit.”

I sat. The halfdead who’d called himself Cord came around to the front of Evis’s desk and propped against it, facing me. Part of me was glad he hadn’t taken Evis’s seat at his desk.

“Ten weeks ago, Mr. Prestley began an experimental medical treatment designed to modify the condition you call vampirism. His state today is the result of this treatment.”

I cussed. I didn’t need Cord’s calm voice to explain why Evis had done such a damned fool thing. We’d all of us wondered how and when he and Gertriss would face the inescapable dilemma any half human, half vamp couple would face. Either one party turns, or the other party watches their love age and die.

“So Evis made himself a third option,” I muttered.

Cord just nodded, as if he heard my thoughts.

“Doesn’t look like the treatment is going well,” I said.

“On the contrary. His vital functions are returning to normal. Barring another setback, it appears he will recover.”

“Recover? As halfdead, or garden-variety working-class mortal?”

Cord smiled, keeping his lips closed over his sharp white teeth. “As neither,” he said. “His appearance will be nearly human. He will be able to tolerate sunlight without discomfort. He will retain much of his enhanced speed and agility. Most importantly, his lifespan will not only be maintained, but extended even further.”

I remember how warm Evis’s hand had been, when we’d shaken hands a few days prior.

He didn’t have a fever.

He was just regaining the warmth he’d been born with.

Cord let me think for a moment, before he continued.

“While I believe Mr. Prestley will recover, he has named you his executor, should events take an unseemly turn,” he said. He produced an envelope from his coat pocket, and handed it to me. “He wishes that this remain sealed, unless he perishes. Then its contents will be self-explanatory.”

I took the envelope. It was heavy and thick and I put it quickly away.

“I’ll do whatever you ask,” I said, loud enough that Evis could hear if he was conscious. “And I’ll do right by Gertriss. But you’d do much better by her, so don’t you dare die.”

I got no reply from Evis.

Cord adjusted his tie. “It is the matter of Miss Hog that concerns Mr. Prestley most,” he said. “She is only aware that Evis is ill. She knows nothing of the treatment, or its intent.”

I bit back a response. One thing I’ve learned about keeping secrets from the ones you love to protect them is this—don’t.

Lying by omission never ends well, even when it does.

“Mr. Prestley asks that you reveal nothing of this, unless his demise makes it necessary.”

“Mr. Prestley is a damned fool, but I knew that already. Fine. Mum’s the word, unless my hand is forced. Can I ask a question?”

“Certainly.”

“Did Evis start this treatment with the blessing of the House, or did he do it on his own?”

“Mr. Prestley showed his usual initiative.”

“Angels and Devils. How much trouble is he in, if he lives?”

“There will be consequences. But if the treatment is successful, the House will add a priceless medical miracle to its vaults.”

I whistled. They’d add more than that, I realized—Hell, they’d be able to offer something like immortality for sale.

My jaw went suddenly slack, when I realized who Evis intended to offer this new treatment to first.

Gertriss. Of course. If she were turned, and then treated, she and Evis could enjoy centuries of premarital bliss as more or less human rich folks.

“Mama Hog is going to explode,” I said.

Cord smiled. “Indubitably. Hence the need for discretion. Mr. Prestley regrets he will be unable to join you in your efforts against the carnival.”

“I hardly expect him to wheel that rolling bed into the woods,” I said. “Tell him thanks, when he wakes up. And tell him he owes me a beer. Again.”

“I will do so, sir. While I lack the authority to order the full force of the House to assist you, a small number of Mr. Prestley’s close associates have volunteered to see that Miss Hog remains safe during the conflict. I believe you know Victor and Sara?”

I nodded. I knew them, not well, but we’d fought together more than once, and I didn’t doubt for a moment their ferocious loyalty to Evis.

“A pair of rotary guns and a brace of experimental cannon await you as well. The wagon is at
The Cat and Fiddle
.” Cord straightened. “We have not met, sir, but any friend of Mr. Prestley is also a friend of mine. If there is any additional service I can render, you have but to ask.”

I rose. “Just get him up and griping,” I said. “Good to know he has friends here.”

Cord nodded curtly and glided away.

I let myself out, already building the lies I’d need to tell Gertriss.