(A Charm of Magpies 1)The Magpie Lord (2 page)

“What?”

Day grabbed Crane’s hand with both his gloved hands and stared at it. Crane pulled back angrily. Day kept his left-hand grip, but raised his right hand to his mouth, and dragged his glove off with his teeth. He spat it onto the floor, and said, “This will feel strange,” as he seized Crane’s hand with his bare skin.

“Christ!” yelped Crane, trying again to pull away, this time with alarm. Day’s grip tightened. Crane looked down with disbelief. Aside from a jagged scar running across his left knuckles, Day’s hands looked perfectly normal, if rather large for his small frame. Lightly dusted with dark hairs, gripping and turning Crane’s fingers, but everywhere Day’s skin touched his, he could feel a tingling flow, like a thousand tiny cold pinpricks, alive, electric, streaming into his blood. He gritted his teeth. Day’s thumb gently brushed over the inside of his wrist, and he felt the skin rise into goose pimples.

“What the
hell
is that?”

“Me.” Day released Crane’s right hand long enough to remove his second glove, also with his teeth, then grabbed it again. “Well, someone wants you dead. How long has this been going on?”

“About two months.” Crane didn’t bother to question what the man meant. The fizzing sensation was getting stronger, rising through his fingers into his wrists, prickling at the wound under the bandage.

“Two
months
? How many times have you attempted suicide?”

“Four,” said Crane. “Three times in the last fortnight. I think I’m going to succeed soon.”

“I’m amazed you’ve failed to date.” Day scowled. “Alright. I am going to deal with it, because I owe Mr. Rackham a favour, and because this is not something that should happen to anyone, even a Vaudrey. My fee is ten guineas—for you, twenty. Don’t argue it, because I would measure your remaining lifespan in hours rather than days right now. Don’t provoke me, because I will not need much provocation to walk away. You’ll need to answer my questions fully and frankly, and do what I tell you. Is that clear?”

Crane looked at the other man’s intent face. “Can you stop what’s happening to me?”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“Then I accept your terms,” said Crane. “Are you really a shaman?” The pulsing counsel of grey despair was beating at his mind, a large part of him wanted to kick the little swine downstairs, and the smaller man’s roiling anger did not inspire confidence in his goodwill, but Crane’s hand was electric with the current flowing through Day’s fingers, and those tawny irises were almost completely obliterated by huge black pupils. Crane had seen Yu Len’s eyes dilated in the same way, and a tendril of genuine, terrified hope was unfurling once more through the darkness.

“I don’t know what a shaman is.” Day looked Crane up and down, head slightly cocked, squinting. “Sit, and tell me about it.”

Crane sat. Day pulled up a footstool and knelt on it, looking intently at—through?—Crane’s head.

“I came back to England four months ago, after my father’s death,” Crane began.

Day’s eyes met his for a second. “Your father died two years ago.”

“Yes. I came back here four months ago. Spent the first couple of months ploughing through the mess my father made of his affairs. No problems.” He refrained with an effort from jerking his head back as Day put a hand up next to his face, fingers moving oddly. “I went down to Piper two months ago when I could no longer put it off. You’re acquainted with my family, do you know the house?”

“Not to visit.” Day’s gaze and tone were remote, and his fingers were twitching the air around Crane’s face, picking and flicking at nothing.

“Well. I was in the library at Piper, working on the account books, and I was overcome by this appalling sense of misery and shame and self-loathing. Horror. Despair. It was dreadful. But it stopped as abruptly as it started, and, since Piper is not a happy house, I put it down to a strange mood. And then the next night, I sat down with a whisky and a book, and the next thing I was fully aware of, Merrick, my man, was shouting at me because I’d tried to hang myself from the bell rope.” His voice was tight and unemotional. “I have no memory of doing that, just of Merrick dragging me down.”

Day’s eyes flicked up to Crane’s again. “Then?”

“I left,” Crane said with a sardonic twist of the lips. “Ran away back to London. And—it’s absurd, but I almost forgot about it. It seemed like something that happened to someone else. I was entirely myself again. Then I had to go back down to Piper a couple of weeks ago. The first two days were fine. But the next evening…same thing. I tried to cut my wrist that time.”

“Where?”

Crane indicated the point on his wrist. Day exhaled through his nostrils. “Where in the
house
?”

“Oh. The library.”

“Was the first time in the library as well?”

“Yes.”

“Has anything happened outside that room?”

“Not in Piper. But after we got back, last week, it began to happen here. I tried to cut my wrist six days ago, and again last night.”

“Location?”

“This room.”

Day sat back on his heels. “Do you recall the times of the episodes?”

“The evening, always. Time tends to feel a little vague.”

“Mmm. Now, I need you to think carefully about this. Have you, since your return from China, ever spent an evening in the library at Piper
without
one of these attacks?”

Crane considered. “I don’t think so,” he said finally.

“And before the first attack here, had you spent an evening in this room without an attack?”

“Yes, several.”

“And, after these episodes, did your mouth taste of ivy?”

Crane felt a cold prickle run down his spine. “Yes,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Or, at least, bitter green leaves. Strongly. And, ah…the very first time I felt it, the room smelled of the same thing. Stank of it.”

“Yes, it would. What did you bring back from Piper?”

“Bring back?”

“An object. A box. Furniture. A coat with something in its pockets. Something came from the library at Piper on or after your last visit and it is here now. What is it?”

Crane looked blankly around the room. The mansion flat was a self-contained set of rooms in one of the new buildings on the Strand. He, or rather Merrick, had hung the walls with scrolls and paintings brought back from China. But he’d had no furniture and, although he hadn’t been poor for years and was now very rich indeed, Piper was full of unused items, and careful habits were hard to break. The room was full of ancient dark wooden pieces, vaguely familiar, not worth noticing.

“Most of the furniture is from Piper,” he said. “The chests, the table—”

“Since your last visit down?” Day interrupted.

“Some of it, I think. I’m not sure. I don’t pay a lot of attention to these things. But I know a man who does. You might as well come in,” Crane went on without raising his voice.

Merrick opened the door with some dignity. “My lord,” he said. “We brought back a number of items on our most recent return, Mr. Day. That picture was, I believe, in the library at Piper.” Day leapt up to inspect it, running his fingers over the frame, ignoring the image. “There were also a number of books, sir. They have been placed on these shelves.”

“Together?” asked Day, staring at the crowded shelves that covered an entire wall.

“No, sir.”

“Blast.”

Day moved over to the shelf and spread his hands out over the spines of several books, fingers twitching slightly. “Nothing is leaping out at me. Lord Crane, I suggest you leave before it happens again and let me try to find it on my own.”

“Find
what
? Do you know what’s happening to me?”

“It’s a Judas jack.” Day turned a thick book over in his hands. “No question about that. We’re looking for something about the size of an apple. Wooden. You brought something back with this thing in it, and it’s in this room somewhere. Now, Mr. Merrick, please take Lord Crane out of this building, and keep him away for a couple of hours. He should not be here in the evening till I find this thing, and it’s nearly eight already.”

Crane and Merrick glanced automatically at the clock. Merrick said, hesitantly, “My lord, that ain’t the library clock from Piper, is it?”

Crane’s brows drew together. “It looks like it. Ugly thing. But you brought it, you should know.”

“I didn’t bring it. It turned up here. I thought you brought it.”

“No,” said Crane carefully. “No, I don’t recall doing that.”

Day looked at the carriage clock that stood on the mantelpiece. It showed one minute to eight. He flexed his hands before reaching out and picking it up.

“The back’s locked,” he observed. “It’s big enough. And…a clock, and it happens at the same time… Lord Crane, leave. Get out. Mr. Merrick, get rid of him
now
.”

“Yes, sir—oh shit,” said Merrick as the clock began to strike and Crane took a horrible, sucking breath.

Chapter Three

The greyness came on Crane harder and faster than before. He could taste the ivy in his mouth now, feel the assault on his mind, almost hear, somewhere outside hearing, a whispering of voices.

damned

worthless

die

He wasn’t aware he was going for a knife. He only vaguely heard Day bellow, “Hold him!” There was a pain, and for some reason his knees buckled, and some force was stopping him from getting the knife that meant sweet oblivion, release, the fresh flow of blood he owed. He thrashed and kicked, and heard the shouts and thumps as though they were happening a long way away, even the yell of alarm right in his ear, and suddenly the greyness receded, and he was face down on the drawing room rug, with both arms twisted behind his back and a heavy weight pinning him to the ground. The breathy flow of whispered Shanghainese obscenities identified his assailant as Merrick.

“I’m all right,” he said, muffled. “I’m all right. Get off me, you lump.”

“Don’t,” Day said from the end of the room. “Keep him down.”

Crane angled his neck uncomfortably. Day was also on the floor, kneeling by the fireplace. His left hand was held rigid, just above the floor, its fingers contorted into splayed claws. Under it was something Crane couldn’t quite see. Day had the abstracted look again, his lips were slightly drawn back from his teeth, and from where Crane lay, his eyes seemed to be pure darkness with a ring of white.

“Let me up,” Crane snapped.

“Don’t let him up,” Day repeated. “Don’t let him move. Break his arms if you have to.”

“
Day
—”

“I’m having a certain amount of trouble holding this thing.” Day’s voice had a slight tremor of tension to it. “And I need it held, but the nodes… I’m making this too complicated. This is craft. Wood, blood and birdspit. Where’s my bag?”

“By the door,” said Merrick.

Day looked over at the bag, several feet away, and let out a hiss of annoyance. He sat back slightly, stretching out his right hand, and something leapt from the bag, hit the ground with a clang and a rattle, and rolled towards the clerk-like man, stopping within his reach.

“Oh my Gawd,” said Merrick.

Day picked it up. It was a pack of metal knitting needles. He pulled one out with his mouth and discarded the pack, holding the long needle in his free hand. His face tightened, a man trying to work out an irritating puzzle.

He put the sharp end of the needle back between his lips, and pulled at the other end, and the metal stretched, elongating in sudden jerks, thinning like pulled toffee, twisting and writhing.

“
Tsaena
,” hissed Merrick and Crane, simultaneously obscene.

Day kept working, face intent, his other hand steady in its clawed position over the floor. Finally he took the distorted needle out of his mouth. It was bizarrely corkscrewed, and obviously sharply pointed.

“That’s iron,” whispered Merrick.

Day wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. There was a faint smell of scorched metal in the air. “Tin,” he said. “If I could do that with iron, it would be impressive. Right. I’m going to pull this thing’s teeth. It isn’t going to be pleasant.” He shifted position, and suddenly the feelings were back, pounding into Crane’s skull, waves of misery wracking his entire body. He wanted to curl up in a corner, howl, die.

“The thing is,” said Day in a hatefully calm voice, “I need to bring it closer to you to see what I’m doing, and take off the hold I’ve got on it. And that’s going to make it quite a lot worse. Can you bear it?”

Crane shut his eyes, bit at the carpet. No, he couldn’t. It couldn’t be worse. He would rather die than have it worse. He just wanted it all to be over.

“He can take it,” said Merrick.

Day hesitated.

“I know what he can take.” Merrick’s tone brooked no argument. “Do it. Now. Sir.”

“Get on with it, damn you,” Crane added violently, because he had to force the words out through the overwhelming misery that clogged his throat.

“Very well. Mr. Merrick, are you capable of holding him down?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Don’t let him move.” Day paused, and added stiffly, “You have my assurance that I will make this as quick as I can.”