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‘But she was only one of several Custodians. The only woman; the only one with any human blood too, if I remember rightly.’
‘We had to have at least one Custodian who knew the Kingdom, who would seem perfectly unremarkable. That way we hoped we’d be ignored, and finally forgotten.’
‘All this … just to hide from Humankind?’ said Suzanna.
‘Oh no,’ said Freddy. ‘We might have continued to live as we had, on the margins of the Kingdom … but things changed.’
‘I can’t remember the year it began –’ said Apolline.
‘1896.’ said Lilia. ‘It was 1896, the year of the first fatalities.’
‘What happened?’ said Cal.
‘To this day nobody’s certain. But something appeared out of the blue, some creature with only one ambition. To wipe us out.’
‘What sort of creature?’
Lilia shrugged. ‘Nobody ever saw its face and survived.’
‘Human?’ said Cal.
‘No. It wasn’t blind, the way the Cuckoos are blind. It could sniff us out. Even our most vivid raptures couldn’t deceive it for long. And when it had passed by it would be as if those it had looked on had never existed.’
‘We were trapped,’ said Jerichau. ‘On one side, Humankind, growing more ambitious for territory by the day, ’til we had scarcely a place left to hide; and on the other, the Scourge, as we called it, whose sole intention seemed to be genocide. We knew it could only be a matter of time before we were extinct.’
‘Which would have been a pity,’ said Freddy, drily.
‘It wasn’t all gloom and doom,’ said Apolline. ‘Seems odd to say it but I had a fine time those last years. Desperation, you know; it’s the best aphrodisiac,’ she grinned. ‘And we found one or two places where we were safe awhile, where the Scourge never sniffed us out.’
‘I don’t remember being happy,’ said Lilia. ‘I just remember the nightmares.’
‘What about the hill?’ said Apolline, ‘what was it called? The hill where we stayed, the last summer. I remember that as if it was yesterday’
‘Rayment’s Hill.’
‘That’s right. Rayment’s Hill. I was happy there.’
‘But how long would it have lasted?’ said Jerichau. ‘Sooner or later, the Scourge would have found us.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Apolline.
‘We had no choice,’ said Lilia. ‘We needed a hiding place. Somewhere the Scourge would never look for us. Where we could sleep awhile, until we’d been forgotten.’
‘The carpet,’ said Cal.
‘Yes,’ said Lilia. That was the refuge the Council chose.’
‘After endless debate,’ said Freddy. ‘During which time hundreds more died. That final year, when the Loom was at work, there were fresh massacres every week. Terrible stories. Terrible.’
‘We were vulnerable of course.’ said Lilia. ‘Because there were refugees coming from all over … some of them bringing fragments of their territories … things that had survived the onslaught … all converging on this country in the hope of finding a place in the carpet for their properties.’
‘Like what?’
‘Houses. Pieces of land. Usually they’d get a good Babu in, who could put the field or the house or whatever it was, into a screed. That way it could be carried, you see –’
‘No. I don’t see,’ said Cal. ‘Explain.’
‘It’s your Family,’ said Lilia to Jerichau. ‘You explain.’
‘We Babus can make hieroglyphs,’ Jerichau said, ‘and carry them in our heads. A great technician, like my master, Quekett … he could make a screed that could carry a small city, I swear he could, and speak it out again perfect down to the last tile.’ Describing this, his long face brightened. Then a memory brought his joy down. ‘My master was in the Low Countries when the Scourge found him,’ he said. ‘Gone.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Like that.’
‘Why’d you all gather in England?’ Suzanna wanted to know.
‘It was the safest country in the world. And the Cuckoos of course, were busy with Empire. We could get lost in the crowd, while the Fugue was woven into the carpet.’
‘What is the Fugue?’ said Cal.
‘It’s everything we could save from destruction. Pieces of the Kingdom that the Cuckoos had never truly seen, and so wouldn’t miss when they were gone. A forest, a lake or two, a bend of one river, the delta of another. Some houses, which we’d occupied; some city squares, even a street or two. We put them together, in a township of sorts.’
‘Nonesuch, they called it,’ said Apolline. ‘Damn fool name.’
‘At first there was an attempt to put all this property into some kind of order,’ said Freddy. ‘But that soon fell by the wayside, as refugees kept arriving with more to be woven into the carpel. More every day. There’d be people waiting outside Capra’s House for nights on end, with some little niche they wanted kept from the Scourge.’
‘That’s why it took so long,’ said Lilia.
‘But nobody was turned away,’ said Jerichau. ‘That was understood from the beginning. Anyone who wanted a place in the Weave would be granted it.’
‘Even us,’ said Apolline, ‘who weren’t exactly lily-whites. We were granted our places.’
‘But why a carpet?’ said Suzanna.
‘What’s more easily overlooked than the thing you’re standing on?’ said Lilia. ‘Besides, the craft was one we knew.’
‘Everything has its pattern,’ Freddy put in. ‘If you find it, the great can be contained within the small.’
‘Not everyone wanted to go into the Weave, of course,’ said Lilia. ‘Some decided to stay amongst the Cuckoos, and take their chance. But most went.’
‘And what was it like?’
‘Like sleep. Like dreamless sleep. We didn’t age. We didn’t hunger. We just waited until the Custodians judged that it was safe to wake us again.’
‘What about the birds?’ said Cal.
‘Oh, there’s no end of flora and fauna, woven in –’
‘I don’t mean in the Fugue itself. I mean my pigeons.’
‘What have your pigeons got to do with this?’ said Apolline.
Cal gave them a brief summary of how he’d first come to discover the carpet.
‘That’s the Gyre’s influence,’ said Jerichau.
‘The Gyre?’
‘When you had your glimpse of the Fugue,’ said Apolline. ‘You remember the clouds in its heart? That’s the Gyre. It’s where the Loom’s housed.’
‘How can a carpet contain the Loom it was woven on?’ said Suzanna.
‘The Loom isn’t a machine,’ said Jerichau. ‘It’s a state of making. It drew the elements of the Fugue into a rapture which resembles a common-place carpet. But there’s a good deal there that denies your human assumptions, and the closer you get to the Gyre, the stranger things become. There are places there in which ghosts of the future and past are at play –’
‘We shouldn’t talk about it,’ said Lilia, ‘it’s bad luck.’
‘How much worse can our luck become?’ Freddy observed. ‘So few of us …’
‘We’ll wake the Families, as soon as we recover the carpet,’ said Jerichau. ‘The Gyre must be getting restless, or else how did this man get a look? The Weave can’t hold forever –’
‘He’s right,’ said Apolline. ‘I suppose we’re obliged to do something about it.’
‘But it isn’t safe.’ said Suzanna.
‘Safe for what?’
‘Out here. I mean, in the world. In England.’
‘The Scourge must have given up –’ said Freddy, ‘– after all these years.’
‘So why didn’t Mimi wake you?’
Freddy pulled a face. ‘Maybe she forgot about us.’
‘Forgot?’ said Cal, ‘impossible.’
‘Easy to say,’ Apolline replied. ‘But you have to be strong to resist the Kingdom. Get in too deep and next thing you can’t even remember your name.’
‘I don’t believe she forgot,’ said Cal.
‘Our first priority,’ said Jerichau, ignoring Cal’s protest, ‘is to retrieve the carpet. Then we get out of this city, and find a place where Immacolata will never come looking.’
‘What about us?’ said Cal.
‘What about you?’
‘Don’t we get to see?’
‘See what?’
‘The Fugue, damn you!’ Cal said, infuriated by the lack of anything approaching courtesy or gratitude from these people.
‘It’s not your concern now,’ said Freddy.
‘It damn well is!’ he said, ‘I saw it. Almost got killed for it.’
‘Better you stay away then,’ said Jerichau. ‘If you’re so concerned for your breath.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Cal,’ said Suzanna, putting her hand on his arm.
Her attempt to calm him merely inflamed him further.
‘Don’t side with them,’ he said.
‘It’s not a question of sides –’ she began, but he wasn’t about to be placated.
‘It’s easy for you,’ he said. ‘You’ve got connections –’
‘That’s not fair –’
‘– and the menstruum –’
‘What?’ said Apolline, her voice silencing Cal. ‘You?’
‘Apparently,’ Suzanna said.
‘And it didn’t dissolve the flesh off your bones?’
‘Why should it do that?’
‘Not in front of him,’ said Lilia, looking at Cal.
That was the limit.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to talk in front of me, that’s fine. You can all go fuck yourselves.’
He started towards the door, ignoring Suzanna’s attempts to call him back. Behind him, Nimrod was tittering.
‘And you can shut the fuck up,’ he told the child, and left the room to its usurpers.
IV
NIGHT TERRORS
1
It wasn’t, oddly enough, a dream of profit. Money had become an irrelevancy since he’d stumbled upon Immacolata, who could conjure all they needed from thin air. No, the dream was one of power, he, the owner of the goods that people were bleeding to buy, standing back from the crowd and smiling his charismatic smile.
But suddenly he was awake, the clamour of customers was fading, and he heard the sound of breathing in the darkened room.
He sat up, the sweat of his enthusiasm chilling on his brow.
‘Immacolata?’
She was there, standing against the far wall, her palms seeking some hold in the plaster. Her eyes were wide, but she saw nothing. At least, nothing that Shadwell could share. He’d known her like this before – most recently two or three days ago, in the foyer of this very hotel.
He got out of bed, and put on his dressing gown. Sensing his presence, she murmured his name.
‘I’m here,’ he replied.
‘Again,’ she said. ‘I felt it again.’
‘The Scourge?’ he said, his voice grey.
‘Of course. We have to sell the carpet, and be done with it.’
‘We will. We will,’ he said, slowly approaching her. ‘The arrangements are underway, you know that.’
He spoke evenly, to calm her. She was dangerous at the best of times; but these moods scared him more than most.
‘The calls have been made,’ he said. ‘The buyers’ll come. They’ve been waiting for this. They’ll come and we’ll make our sale, and it’ll all be over with.’
‘I saw the place it lives,’ she went on. ‘There were walls; huge walls. And sand, inside and out. Like the end of the world.’
Now her eyes found him, and the hold this vision had on her seemed to deteriorate.
‘When, Shadwell?’ she said.
‘When what?’
‘The Auction.’
‘The day after tomorrow. As we arranged.’
She nodded. ‘Strange,’ she said, her tone suddenly conversational. The speed with which her moods changed always caught him unawares. ‘Strange, to have these nightmares after so long.’
‘It’s seeing the carpet,’ said Shadwell. ‘It reminds you.’
‘It’s more than that,’ she said.
She went to the door that led through to the rest of Shadwell’s suite, and opened it. The furniture had been pushed to the edges of the large room beyond, so that their prize, the Weaveworld, could be laid out. She stood on the threshold, staring at the carpet.
She didn’t set her bare soles on it – some superstition kept her from that trespass – but paced along the border, scrutinizing every inch.
Half way along the far edge, she stopped.
‘There,’ she said, and pointed down at the Weave.
Shadwell went to where she stood.
‘What is it?’
‘A piece missing.’
He followed her gaze. The woman was right. A small portion of the carpet had been torn away; in the struggle at the warehouse, most likely.
‘Nothing significant,’ he commented. ‘It won’t bother our buyers, believe me.’
‘I don’t care about the value.’ she said.
‘What then?’
‘Use your eyes, Shadwell. Every one of those motifs is one of the Seerkind.’
He went down on his haunches, and examined the markings in the border. They were scarcely recognizable as human; more like commas with eyes.
‘These are people?’ he said.
‘Oh yes. Riff-raff; the lowest of the low. That’s why they’re at the edge. They’re vulnerable there. But they’re also useful.’
‘For what?’
‘As a first defence,’ Immacolata replied, her eyes fixed on the tear in the carpet. ‘The first to be threatened, the first –’
‘To wake,’ said Shadwell.
‘– to wake.’
‘You think they’re out there now?’ he said. His gaze went to the window. They’d closed the curtains, to keep anyone from spying on their treasure, but he could picture the benighted city beyond. The thought that there might be magic loose out there brought an unexpected charge.
‘Yes,’ the Incantatrix said. ‘I think they’re awake. And the Scourge smells them in its sleep. It knows, Shadwell.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘We find them, before they attract any more attention. The Scourge may be ancient. May be slow and forgetful. But its power …’ Her voice faded away, as though words were valueless in the face of such terrors. She drew a deep breath before beginning again. ‘A day’s scarcely gone by,’ she said, ‘when I haven’t watched the menstruum for a sign of it coming. And it’ll come. Shadwell. Not tonight maybe. But it’ll come. And on that day there’ll be an end to all magic.’
‘Even to you?’
‘Even to me.’
‘So we have to find them,’ said Shadwell.
‘Not we,’ said Immacolata. ‘We needn’t dirty our hands.’ She started to walk back towards Shadwell’s bedroom. ‘They can’t have gone far,’ she said as she went. ‘They’re strangers here.’
At the door she stopped, and turned to him.
‘On no account leave this room until we call you.’ she said. ‘I’m going to summon someone to be our assassin.’
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