At the Edge of Waking (17 page)

“Breadon How. The Cold Hounds. I thought . . . ”

“Yes?”

“I thought I . . . ”

“You thought you could oppose me. You thought you could raise up some power I have kept buried for nine hundred years.”

“No.” Lucy’s tears caught the light like the steel. “But I thought I had to try.”

“Ah.” It sounded oddly like satisfaction. He turned the blade in his hand as if he too wanted to see the candlelight run off its edge. “You aren’t the first to think that.”

“I know.”

“The others all failed.”

She knew.

He lifted the sword, a man in modern dress playing with an archaic toy—but he did not look ridiculous. He looked like himself. He looked like death.

“Does your heart pain you?”

“Yes.” The pain
was
her heart, condensed into a pulsing star lodged against her spine.

“You might have succeeded at Breadon How, Miss Donne, although I think you would not have found the Cold Hounds comfortable allies. But you might well have awakened them. I believed it after dreaming your dream, and I think it even more likely now. But you are wrong about one thing, and your heart, Miss Donne, is wiser than you. Your heart, so full of life, knows that I am not magic. I am the antithesis, Miss Donne. I am exactly what you called me: a tombstone. For I promise you, Miss Donne, if I had one glimmer of magic in me, I would have ended this curse of a life the instant I knew my emperor was dead.”

“But you killed him?”

“My emperor, the last emperor. Yes, I killed him, but it was treachery, Miss Donne, not magic. And it was not life that he would have summoned if I had not stopped him, very far from life, that magic he would have raised. Oh, I won’t call it death. Not life, not death: a denial of both. But you do not understand me.”

“I want to. Tell me . . . ” But the pain clenched, her pulse stumbled, racing at the edge of a fall.

“Ah, but it is not your understanding that I need. Put out your hand.”

Lucy was aware of the sword he held as she was aware of her exhausted heart, her stuttering blood, but she had come too far for petty defiance. She held out her shaking hand and he pressed the sword’s hilt against her palm.

“Take it,” he said. “Hold hard.”

Her hand clenched in instinctual response as he let go, so she did not drop it, but the point chimed when it struck the floor. The blade was heavy, the leather-wrapped grip warmer than her own chilled flesh.

The Marshal of Kallisfane knelt on the floor and began to unbutton his shirt.

“No,” Lucy said.

He ignored this so completely the word might have been a burning wick, a drop of wax. He took the neck of his undershirt in both hands and tore it to bare his chest. He seemed to diminish at every stage, smaller and smaller, now showing bone as well as muscle beneath the pale skin.

“Just here,” he said, pointing, as if she might have missed it, to the thick crosshatch of scars between his nipple and his breastbone.

Lucy used the sword’s weight to drag herself away from the supporting wall, though her heart beat like a bird crushed between icy hands. Pain tasted like a new penny on her tongue.

“How many times . . . ?”

“Oh, many.” He spoke as if he still stood over her, as if he were not half-naked on his knees. “Not always in search of death. Men have needed to test me, to be sure of who or what I am.”

“And you want this?” The point of the sword jittered across a memorial stone, struck a spark from a date of birth.

“Call this,” he said, “my test of you.”

She put her free hand to her own breast, as though the pain she felt there was the pain of those terrible scars.

“Here,” he said, and he lifted the sword, cutting his fingers on the edge as he aimed the point at his heart. “Lean your weight against the hilt, it needs no more than that.”

The star behind Lucy’s own heart bloomed in sympathy. She let go the hilt, and though he tried to hold the blade, it pulled itself out of his grasp, cutting his palm, ringing like a bell on the floor. Lucy fell to her knees. Her hand traveled the distance between her heart and his. She felt his scars, his warm and living skin.

“I pass your test,” she whispered on the last of her breath. “I am not you.”

Then there was no more light, no more air.

No more pain.

The envelope containing a left-luggage claim check was collected from the mailbox in the train station not long after the Palton train pulled away from the platform. It was sorted that day and delivered to Graham’s flat the next morning at 10:12. Graham, however, was not there to receive it. He had interviews to conduct, an article to write, and an argument to have with his editor after he handed in his copy. He stopped for a drink and a bite to eat with some of his colleagues, and finally reached his flat around 9—early for him, but after the argument he was in an unsociable mood. So an early night for once, and for once, only the one drink. He unlocked the street door, fished his mail out of its box, and sorted through it as he climbed the stairs.

Lucy’s handwriting stopped him cold three stairs below the landing.

Lucy, Lucy. He hadn’t thought about her all day, and yet here she was. A drink of beer, a touch, a kiss. He could feel her mouth against the corner of his mouth, her lips warm and mobile, as if they shaped a thought even as she kissed him.

Graham shook himself, finished the climb to his flat and let himself inside. With Lucy’s letter in his hand, he saw the place as he would if she were here: dusty, not too untidy, but uncared-for, unloved. Somehow all his things acquired a sepia tone, regardless of their original colors, as if a couch or a lampshade could fade like a plant for lack of attention. He turned on the desk lamp, which at least afforded kinder shadows, leaving the letters on the desk while he shed his coat and tie, pulled on a sweater, poured himself a drink. Only two for the night, so he was still ahead. Finally he sat, his desk chair creaking as he leaned back against the spring, and picked up her letter again. Her handwriting, elegant but hard to decipher, reminded him of her gestures, her hands.

He realized he was reluctant to open the letter. Love note, brush off, the research notes he was waiting for? He turned the envelope in his hands. Cheap, mass-produced, a far cry from the heavy rag of her usual stationary. He tapped it edge-on against his desk, feeling the shift of several folded sheets inside. Research notes, he decided, and did not know if he was relieved or—Well, but he did know, didn’t he? Because he didn’t believe in the love note, kiss or no kiss. He wasn’t sure he believed in the kiss.

He took a drink, tore the envelope, shook out the letter and a claim check, a rectangle of red pasteboard that lay on his inky blotter, the only spot of color in the room. He let it lie, unfolded pages.

My hero, here is the story no one wants to know . . .

He read it once distractedly, remembering their conversation in the pub. His scorn, he remembered that, and her face, delicate and tired. He remembered that better than he remembered her words.
Proof,
she had said, and,
I can prove it.

He threw the letter down, poured himself more whiskey, paced, muttering, around the room.

Then he read the letter again, forcing his attention onto the points that could be verified: parish records, newspapers, police reports.

He paced again, glass in hand. “I don’t believe it.” And, “Come on, Lucy! Magic isn’t
news.
”

An imagined Lucy said, “The systematic murder of university professors isn’t news? The manipulation of the Crown to the detriment of rural villages isn’t news?”

“I don’t believe it. Not a word, Lucy. I don’t.”

But it could be checked. Some of it could be. University records, harbormaster’s logs. He emptied his glass and started for the drinks cabinet, then changed course for the desk.

“What bloody train? Where the hell did you go?”

The claim check stared up at him. Left Luggage. Skillyham Station. Hours: 6 a.m.—Midnight.

He glanced at his watch, snatched up his coat and his keys.

Whirr, whirr, click.

“Benbury oh-oh-nine-three.”

“Could I speak with Miss Lucy Donne?”

There was a pause, a most definite pause, and a deepening chill. “Who is calling, please?”

Something was wrong. “A colleague at the national library. We were doing some research together and she has some materials I need. If I could speak with Miss Donne . . . I know it’s early . . . you can assure her I will be brief if she is otherwise engaged . . . ”

Another pause. Then, ominously, another voice. “Sir, Miss Donne is not available. If you give me your name and a telephone number and address where you can be reached I will be sure to pass the message along.”

Graham hung the receiver gently on its hook, breaking the connection. Then he set the telephone on the floor, where it kept company with his typewriter, his dictionary, his mug full of pencils. Lucy’s papers covered his desk, sheet after sheet of foolscap, typewriter bond, notepaper and envelopes and scraps, a drifting sea of her handwriting that threatened to drown the desk. She kept meticulous record of her researches, but it was in no sort of order at all. And yet the sheer mass of it was compelling. Whatever one thought of old wives tales, the whispered glories of the magical past—and he had stored up a far-ranging argument on that score—it was difficult to deny that the Marshal of Kallisfane was actively at large in the world, working toward some goal.

Or did he have a goal? Could all of this be, what? The senile boredom of a very old man? The directed service of an agent of the Crown?

There were more possibilities the farther away he looked from Lucy’s obsession with magic, but he couldn’t deny the weight of her research. He wanted to argue it out with her. He wanted her to lead him through the chaos, form an argument, defend her conclusions—
convince
him if that was what was in the cards—but most of all he wanted her to be here. After a night of reading about death, disappearance, suppression, manipulation, he was all too ready to read bad news into that brief conversation with whomever it was that answered the telephone at Lucy’s house. Especially that second voice asking his name, his telephone number, his address. Why his address, when there he was talking on the telephone? Was it because, with the newly automated exchanges, it was more difficult to trace a call? And do upper servants really “pass messages along”?

My train is leaving, I must fly—

Fly where, Lucy, damn you? And why?

Oh, Lucy, Lucy. What the hell am I supposed to do with all this?

What do you do if you have a story no one will believe?

The answer did not come so glibly this time. He sat with his elbows holding down a drift of paper and his hands clenched before his mouth. What do you do if you have a story you don’t dare to tell?

“Because if you’re right, Lucy . . . ” If you’re right about even half of this—forgetting the magic for a minute—don’t you see what you have here? Not just the Revenant, but the police, the army, the church, the very Crown! And even if you ducked the whole boiling lot of them, who the hell else is there left to tell? The common people? The general public who go to church, who believe the police keep good citizens safe, who would be scared pissless if you told them you were bringing magic back into the world? The truth is, Lucy, you could publish a book and give it away on the street corners, and if the king said it was all for the good of the bloody realm, they’d believe him. They would say, thank you, Mister Revenant, sir, and toss the book on the fire, and you could kiss your hand to whatever it is you’re looking for, justice or the cure for moral outrage, because you know what, Lucy?
They might be right.

If magic is real. And if that’s what the Marshal of Kallisfane has been doing: keeping magic out of the world all these years.

And if you’re not just being a coward, Graham Isles, Mister Newspaperman.

My hero, here is the story that will destroy your life, your career, your every cherished illusion about yourself . . .

He bundled her papers back into the portfolio. Shaved, changed his shirt. Went to work.

He was not surprised to find a message waiting for him, directing him to his editor’s office. Even if last night’s dispute had not spawned fresh points of attack, he was late. He
was
surprised to find one of the crime reporters lying in ambush outside the editor’s door.

“Just remember, Isles, you talk to me before you go anywhere.”

“What?” Graham’s attention was still more on Lucy than the world. “Go where?”

“Nowhere, until you talk to me.”

Graham shut the office door in the man’s anxious face.

“You took your time,” his editor said. “Drowning your sorrows?”

“Research,” Graham said shortly.

“Well, I’ve a bit more for you to do. Lucy Donne. You’ve heard, I suppose?”

Graham experienced the curious sensation of blood leaving his face as he went pale. A tightening, a cooling. “Heard what?”

“She went missing two nights ago. The family was keeping it quiet, figuring she’d turn up on her own, I suppose, but now the police have issued a bulletin. We’ve got a friend in CID who will tell us what comes of it—a dog’s breakfast of bus conductors and ticket sellers so far—but no one’s getting in to see the family. But you worked with her quite a bit, didn’t you? Something in the way of being friends?”

“Something in the way.” Graham worked his tongue in his dry mouth. “Do they think . . . What do they think?”

“Reserving their opinions for the moment, but you can suppose they lie somewhere between scandalous and dead. What do
you
think? You know her. Inside information will win your employer’s approval, affection, and possibly a wee bonus on the side.”

Graham saw that last scribbled line.
My train is leaving, I must fly—
Had she just played into the Revenant’s hands, leaving everyone a trail that went nowhere? Or had she successfully escaped his notice—and gone where?