Full Fathom Five (12 page)

As she climbed, buildings receded from the road and trees advanced to compensate. Spreading palm fronds’ needled shadows crosshatched streetlamp light on the sidewalk. Right foot, cane, left. Breeze blew against her neck, and leaves scraped leaves above. Bay windows shone like Penitents’ eyes in a small pink house set back from the road. A backlit figure stood in one window, a shadow playing a fiddle. The music was faint and foreign, an air from northern Camlaan. Claude had said once that Camlaan fiddlers used a different mode for their songs than other Old World musicians. She had not asked him to explain, because the thought frightened her. Music, she’d always thought, was music. But if music was only a convention, if notes were games of symbol, then music could lie, like words, like numbers, like the Craft itself.

The island is our prison.

For Margot, maybe. Not for Kai. Born here, raised here, in one of the few places on the planet where she could be herself. Even if more mainlanders moved here every year. Even if traditional dress robes gave way to suits and ties. Even if only a handful of priests had remade their bodies in the pool since Kai, even if those who should know better met their transformation with silence and suspicion.

Poor fiddler. Kai left him, or her, standing at her (or his) window, playing the sad song he (or she) might not even hear as sad, and climbed on. In reverie she’d covered more distance than she thought: ten blocks left to home. She walked in triple time away from the music.

12

Edmond Margot stepped for the third time that evening into the spotlight, and tried to summon his voice.

Behind him on the stage, drums drummed low. A trumpet pealed one long, slow, high note, and sank to silence. The spotlight seared his eyes with dancing sparks. Faces hovered beyond the light, out there in the audience, watchers and waiters. He saw only suggestions of their presence: curve of cheek, jut of chin, black wells where eyes should be. In with the breath, then force it out.

Twice before he’d entered this burning light and each time recited old poems, picking at scabs and prying open scars for the crowd’s amusement. Each time they applauded. A woman even came to compliment him, to mock him.

Familiar, she had been, so familiar, a vision of vanished voices risen to taunt him with unanswerable questions.

His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. The room was hot, but his sweat was cold. Fear sweat, nerve sweat. Fine vintage.

Head up. Shoulders back. You may be broken, but don’t let them see you breaking. They knew his poems and liked them. Would applaud, even if he recited only his old lines from now ’til the world drowned.

Eve swayed toward him out of the shadows, all silk and slink and smile. He’d never seen her wear a low-cut dress, wondered again as ever on this island whether she really was a woman. Pressed the thought down, aside. Didn’t matter. His voice mattered, his voice long lost.

Eve drew near enough to whisper through her smile. “Do you have one more in you?”

“No,” he said through tight dry lips. “But I’ll do it anyway.”

Her nod was all the grace in the world, and when she rounded away from him to the stage’s edge, he followed her body with his eyes. Fear had helped him find his voice before fear and pain honed away his lesser elements until he became a single sound. Where could he find that fear again? In the spotlight. In the heat. In standing blank minded onstage. In the sway of Eve’s hip.

“Back again by popular demand,” Eve announced, her voice big, one arm raised like a torchbearer, “for the third time tonight, let’s hear it for Edmond Margot!”

Applause. He stepped forward, and the spotlight followed him to the edge of the stage. Eve vanished into the wings.

He opened his mouth. Opened his heart.

Nothing.

His scuffed leather shoes jutted over the edge of the stage. Below, the spotlight lit bare sand.

Inhale, deeply.

He closed his eyes.

Nothing new in his mind, nothing new in the whole vast world.

He sighed, summoned another old poem—strange that a poem written two months back could count as old already—

And screamed.

The world tilted sideways. His throat closed, strangling his cry. He hovered weightless before the stage. Images axed through his skull: a surging twisting cobbled street. A Penitent’s great stone hand held him, crushing out his breath. A squat watch station in West Claw, a smeared reflection in a dark window, a girl’s face that was also his. Breath ragged in his ears.

And underneath that breath, that fear … Underneath, he heard the voice of fire. The voice of the long nights of his soul. The voice that was not his, but spoke to him.

But tonight the voice bore no poetry, offered no divine inspiration, no holy dread. A word sliced bleeding letters into his mindflesh.

Help.

Then he hit the ground.

Awareness returned slowly. Torches blazed. A weight pressed against his shoulders. He realized after a second’s confusion that the weight was his own head. He breathed through heavy lips and a swollen nose. Eve crouched over him, shaking him by the lapels of his coat. “Margot? Edmond? Say something.” Behind her a circle of concerned faces and staring eyes limned the board roof of the Rest. He sat up so fast he hit Eve’s forehead with his own. His mouth was full of sand, more sand sweat-plastered to the right side of his face. He hurt. Running one hand down his body he found new rips in the shirt, blissfully hidden by jacket and vest. Eve pointed to someone out of his field of vision and snapped a finger. A waiter thrust a glass of water into Margot’s face. He took it, swished a mouthful in his mouth, spit onto the sand, coughed, and this time drank.

“Are you okay?” Eve again.

“I have to go,” he said, and lurched to his feet.

She held out a hand to stop him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I will.” He laughed when he realized what he was about to say. “I must find my Lady.”

She reached for his arm, but he pulled back. No one else tried to stop him as he forced through the staring crowd, away from the spotlight and the man-shaped depression in the sand where he’d fallen, out into the dark, questing. Eve watched him go. He glanced back over his shoulder once, when he reached the edge of the torchlight. She stood still, a vision in black—then waved the audience back to their seats. On with the show.

Margot stumbled into the night. His ankle hurt, but still he walked, drawn like a filing to a magnet by the voice he’d lost.

13

A waist-high bamboo fence surrounded Kai’s yard. Across the quarter-acre of grass and behind a row of palm trees stood her bungalow, pink walled and slope roofed, a clever investment in a criminal real estate auction; after a few years’ occupancy and regular cleaning, it no longer stank of weed. A dog barked down the street. A carriage rolled past, bearing passengers to revelry and the shore.

She opened the gate and stepped inside. Wards prickled over her skin, recognizing her. She swayed up the steps and leaned against the wall as she searched her purse for her keys and unlocked the door. After a slow count of ten she pushed herself off the wall, turned the knob, and lurched into her dark living room. She swung the door shut behind her, dropped her keys in the wood bowl on the table by the entrance, set her hand on the table, sagged.

Thorns scraped her wrist. She screamed and lashed out with the cane, hitting the wall. Dizzy, and without the cane’s support, she crashed back into the door. Her hand flailed for balance and struck the coatrack, which toppled onto her. She fell in an avalanche of jackets and old hats.

Lights clicked on, and the coatrack rose of its own accord. Kai blinked brilliance from her eyes. The living room resolved: white shag carpet left over from the dope-peddling former owners, ghostlights recessed into the ceiling, leather chairs and cheap tables. And Claude, standing over her, setting the coatrack on its feet. She recognized the curve of his thigh under his khaki pants, and the spread of his hips, and the swell of his forearms and his once-delicate hands, knuckles swollen by a hundred fights. He wore his uniform shirt, navy blue and short sleeved.

“What the hell.” She was panting. She hoped he didn’t mistake it for desire. She wondered what she looked like, then decided she’d rather not know. Hair stuck to her face, eyes wide.

“It’s just me,” he said, and offered her a hand, which she ignored. “Sorry I startled you.”

“I felt thorns.” She found the cane where she’d dropped it, and pulled herself into a crouch. “Something grabbed my wrist.”

Claude ran one hand through his cropped hair, and grinned. He had a broad face, with large front teeth. She’d loved his grin, once. She followed the direction of his eyes, and saw, on the table by the door, a dozen roses bound in purple crepe paper. “Oh, hells.” A sweater remained on the floor. She bent, cursing from the pain, picked the sweater up, and hung it on the rack.

“Jace told me you’d be back tonight.”

“Did he.”

“I thought I’d come, you know, say hi. Welcome home.”

“This is my house. You don’t get to welcome me back here.”

“You were hurt. I thought you could use a friendly face.”

“And you think you qualify?”

“We were friends, once. I thought, even after everything…” He stopped. “I’m sorry. It was a bad idea.” As if he’d just realized this.

She considered keeping her back to him, but felt like a punished child staring into the corner of her own living room. With the lights on, she saw more signs of his presence. His jacket, folded over the arm of the recliner he liked, the one she’d planned to sell since he moved out. A cup of coffee, a quarter full, occupied a coaster on the table. Aside from these, the table was bare, as was the rest of the living room. She knew how she’d left the place, and expected used water glasses and books facedown and splayed to hold her place, crumb-strewn plates covered in mold that would by now be halfway through the Bronze Age. Though there wasn’t much bronze around Kai’s living room; any prospective mold-civilizations would be out of luck. “You cleaned.”

“Most of it was done already. I put bookmarks in the books. They’re upstairs, by the bed.”

Violation. Presumption. “Thank you.” She turned a slow circle. “You get off shift early for this?”

“Something like that. My schedule’s changed a little.” A pendant hung around his neck; he dug it out from beneath his shirt. Ghostlight flashed off gold.

“Promotion. Nice. See how well you do when I’m not around to distract you.”

“That’s unfair.”

“You don’t live here anymore. I don’t have to be fair.” No malice there, or not much. She was too tired for malice. Or for manners. She sank into his armchair—no. Not his armchair, just the armchair he liked. “I saw one of your boys grab a pickpocket on the street as I was walking up here. Broke the cobblestones.”

“Public works will send a zombie crew in the morning.”

“Probably cause as much damage with Penitents as you stop.”

“Penitents are a deterrent. They don’t tire, they can’t be bribed, and they’re intimidating as all hells. Plus, they rehabilitate criminals. Not pretty, but it works as well as anything they use mainland.”

“Did it work for you?”

A cheap blow, but it didn’t seem to hurt, or else he hid it well. “You remember me when I was a kid. I was a punk. Penitence hurt, but I’m a better person now. We both are.”

She ignored that. “I saw a four-ton super-powered statue chase down a hungry girl who stole a purse from some mainlander who thinks pink is a color leather should be. Isn’t that overkill?”

“Best kind of kill.”

“So now you’re cribbing comic book one-liners.”

He started for the armchair, realized she was sitting in it already, and stopped. “You don’t see what’s out there. Kavekana’ai’s far above the docks. There’s war on the street. Always some local god from the Southern Gleb who thinks he’ll catch like wildfire here. Sailors bring in strong stuff from the New World. Even the drugs are getting worse: not just plants anymore, new compounds refined with Craft. I saved a kid from flying the other night. He’d taken some Rush, you know, lets you soar for a while, knocks you out for three days after. Problem is, the comedown’s fast. We found two guys last week in cane fields on the north slope, broken as if they’d fallen from a height only there wasn’t anywhere around to fall from. Some water rat sold it, sailed off on his ship, and left us to pick up the mess.”

“What’d you do with the kid?”

“Tied him to a bed. He hovered a few inches off the surface, but a fall from that height onto a mattress wouldn’t hurt.” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t come here to talk about work.”

“Why did you come?”

“To see you.”

“Here I am.” She held out her arms. “All my bits fit together, at least according to the doctors.”

“And to ask how you’re doing.”

“Fine.”

“And if there’s anything I can do for you.”

“No.” She liked that silence. Claude was the man with answers. Ask him any question, and he had a reasonable reply. That wasn’t why their fights began, but it didn’t help once they did.

“Four weeks,” he said, wondering.

“They wanted me kept for observation.”

“All on the mountain, though. They didn’t move you down to Sisters?”

“They had reasons for keeping me out of the hospital. Nothing serious.”

He sat on the couch. His feet rested next to hers on the carpet. Creases in the shiny black patent leather of his shoes distorted their reflection. “Kai, how can I help?”

She tried to remember how their last fight started. Her hours, maybe, or his, or else something they’d tried to do in bed, and that stupid seed grew into further foolishness until voices rose and words sharpened and a glass broke and the small house gaped empty and hungry around them. “You can leave,” she said.

“You’re hurt. You’re tired. Jace said you pushed yourself so far there was little the doctors could do for you. I know I haven’t been good to you, but I want to help and the least you can do is trust me.”

“That’s not how it works. And Jace shouldn’t have told you whatever. I’m tired. I’ve had a hell of a month. And us, we’re done. If you wanted to help, you shouldn’t have broken into my house. What did you expect, surprising me with roses in my living room my first day home from hospital, as if everything’s okay between us?”