House of Sand and Secrets (17 page)

With a loud sigh, I throw the cover off, march over to the door and jerk it open. “What?”

The Hob looks startled, possibly at my state of undress, and the fact that I appear to have spent the night in the Pelim offices after rolling about in a cooking pit. As if I care what he thinks.

He raises an eyebrow and holds out a white envelope. “Message for the boss,” he says then squeezes his eyes briefly shut. “Er, your ladyship?” he says hopefully, feeling his way around the social niceties he thinks are expected of him. “Only I mean, not for you, for the other boss – the vamp.”

“Oh give it here.” I snap the letter away.

“It’s important, like,” adds the Hob. “Messenger said.”

“And I’ll see he gets it.”

“It’s not like she has far to walk,” says Jannik from the couch.

“Oh, Gris.” I slam the door in the Hob’s grinning face. “You couldn’t have kept your mouth shut?”

He’s sitting up now, feeling for his stockings and shoes under the couch. “What for?” he says. “Ah, you beasts, wandering off in the night.” Jannik glances up at me. “Do you think you’ve offended his delicate sensibilities by spending a night with your husband?”

“In the office! On a couch!” I wave the letter at him. “And we’re not exactly–”

“What does the letter say?”

I pause in my rant, and take a deep breath. Jannik’s name is on the front, written in a hand I don’t recognize. On the other side is a far more familiar seal. House Guyin. “It’s for you.” I throw the letter at him. “From your friend. Obviously he didn’t get the same message from Harun that I did.”

Jannik catches the letter, flips it over, and frowns at the hand-writing. “Isidro.”

My dress is hung over a stack of silks, and I rip it down and give it a quick, hard shake as if that will somehow restore it. “Would you like some privacy while you read your poetry?” I say acidly. I am so angry, but it’s not for this. This is just an easier target to fire my useless rage against.

He’s already torn the top of the envelope and withdrawn a single piece of paper. Jannik reads it, frowning, then holds it out to me.

“I was never one for verse,” I say.

“And I know that, Felicita. Read the damn thing.”

Isidro’s handwriting is a barely legible scrawl, the ink blotted and thick. The salutation includes my name. I glance up, and catch Jannik’s eyes. He nods at me to continue.

“Why is Isidro begging us to come urgently to House Guyin?” Something must have happened to Harun last night. A tremor flutters under my breastbone. Perhaps ours was not the only house targeted. And perhaps Guyin was not as lucky as we. That black future he saw looming in his dreams. “You don’t think?”

“Get dressed,” Jannik says. “I’ll have a carriage prepared.”

SEVEN-FOLD FUTURES

The house on
Ivy is still standing.

“Well that’s a good sign.” I look up at the wide, darkened windows. “I suppose.”

Jannik gives me a dubious glance before climbing the wide stairs and rapping the brass knocker several times. The thuds have barely died away when Isidro opens for us.

He looks dreadful – panicked and sweaty, and even his cold beauty can’t hold up under his obvious fear. While he’s not spent the night putting out the flames on his own home, he somehow manages to look worse than Jannik and I combined. His flawless mask finally crumbling.

“What’s going on?” Jannik asks as he pushes quickly inside. I follow on his heels.

Isidro closes the door on us and fumbles with the key, locking out the last of the afternoon sun. “Harun.” His voice is thick, raw.

Unwanted pity clouds me before I can shake it off. Whatever is going on, it doesn’t change the fact that Isidro is not someone I like. I breathe deeply, taste citrus in the back of my throat, and my heart hammers faster.

From the first sitting room comes a slurred bellow. “Isidro, who’ve you let in to the house? I told you I didn’t need a physician.”

Jannik and I exchange looks, and Jannik gnaws at his lower lip. He grabs Isidro’s arm and pulls him closer. “What,” he whispers again, “is going on?”

“Scriv,” I say.

Both of them freeze. Isidro swallows. “How–”

“The smell.” The house reeks of it, and it’s growing stronger as I stand here. It pulls at me, vile as it is, taunting me with the memory of what I could be. Why did I even stop – it’s not as if Jannik and I are physically close. I could take it again and it would do him no harm. I would be powerful. Dash is dead, and that day on the Casabi is just another horrible memory in a long string of horrible memories.
Stop it, Felicita.

“Harun?” I call out. “Are you well?” Isidro dogs me as I make my way through to the sitting room. Might as well see what he can tell me. “I thought he no longer used-”

“He’s trying for a seven-fold reading,” Isidro interrupts.

No. Only an utter fool- I jerk still as I process this unlikely statement, then dash through to the room. The smell of citrus here is so strong it makes me dizzy, nauseated. Desperate. It shoves all thoughts of the dead out of my mind, fills me up with need instead.

On the tea-table is a beautiful formal scriv-silver – a mirror with markings for readings and equivalent dosage measurements. It’s empty but for a residue of powder so faint it does nothing more than haze the scriv-silver’s surface. “Seven?” I yell at Harun, who is lying on the floor, on his back, his arms stretched out and his knees drawn up. “Are you out of your pathetic little mind?” I think of the family histories I had to memorize as a child, and the names with the small black circle beneath them – dead from overdose.

“Done it before,” he slurs. His eyes are vacant; seeing a room, a time, that is not this one.

The other two have entered and they block the door, watching me as I crouch next to Harun’s prone figure. He’s breathing erratically, his chest jerking. His eyes have rolled up so that all I can see is the whites, and it is so eerily vampire-like it turns my stomach. “Harun?” I press my hand to his neck; feel the pulse thrumming like an insect’s wing.

He’s not answering me now – too far gone into whatever future he’s trying for. Gris-damn Saints and their delusions. He should have stuck with nightmares. A seven-fold reading can kill – no one risks it. Seven lines of scriv, each taken at a minute interval. Not only is it a costly endeavour, there’s also a chance that survivors could suffer mental and physical damage.

“This wasn’t what I meant, you fool,” I whisper to him. I told him to take scriv but I hardly thought that he would. It was a throw-away comment, meant to needle, not to stab. He could die. He will die, unless he is luckier than I have ever imagined. My throat fills with bile. This cannot be happening, not after the horror of last night. I am dressed in my own loss, and now
this
.

Gently, I shake at Harun’s shoulder, but there’s no response. “Isidro.” I force the name out, still not wanting to deal with his claim on Jannik. “He says he’s done this before?”

The vampire shakes his head. “He never told me anything about it.”

“Secrets all round, then?” I say archly. It’s the only way I can stop myself from collapsing, by resorting to these little farces and social games. “Help me move him.”

Jannik also comes forward, and together we manoeuvre Harun off the floor and onto the longest of the couches. Just as we set him down, Harun gasps, his eyes rolling back into place. He grabs at Isidro, catching his collar.

Isidro goes still, waiting.

We all do.

Harun’s eyes are wide black pits, staring into Isidro’s face.

We need to stay calm around him, I don’t want anything to trigger a fit. “What do you see?” I ask Harun quietly.

When he answers, his voice is soft. He sounds more like he’s mulling over some puzzle than actually answering my question. “A small room,” he says. “A tower room, eight-sided, with narrow windows. It’s empty except for a desk. On the desk is a leather-bound book, like a ledger. Instead of words, the book is filled with keys. A woman in red is dangling a baby – her own, I think – over the ledger, she’s holding it by one ankle and shaking it. With each shake, it spits copper coins over the pages and the room is beginning to fill with money-”

Isidro pulls out of his grasp, shaking. “Is there a way to break him out of it?”

“No. We wait, and we hope.”

“A war,” Harun says then shakes his head viciously. “No, no, no – jumped too far ahead. I’ve seen this. I want where it starts.”

“He’s not making any sense,” Isidro says.

“More fool you for expecting anything else from a Saint.”

“Send a message to a physician then.” He looks past me, at Jannik. “Please.”

I want to tell Isidro that a doctor will make no difference, but the words are jammed up so tight I can’t even swallow. Jannik touches my shoulder, urging me to follow him out.

As soon as we’re alone in the next room with the doors shut behind us, I turn on Jannik. “There’s no point.”

“Why didn’t you tell him that?”

“Do you think he wanted to hear it? Harun will live or he will die, and no practitioner of medical alchemy is going to change that.”

A shout interrupts our whispered argument. We turn as one, running back into the room.

Harun is standing, swaying drunkenly, his eyes filled with rage. Whatever he saw it didn’t bode well for Isidro, who is pressed against the wall, one hand at his cheek. A weal of blisters spreads across his skin. A single strike, and there was enough scriv in Harun’s veins that it could affect Isidro so badly.

The vampire’s breath is whistling and laboured. There is danger in this room. Not just the threat of Harun’s overdose, but that he could do real damage to Jannik too if he wanted to. If he saw something he didn’t like.

I drag Isidro away from the wall and shove him toward the door. “Get him out of here,” I say to Jannik. “Upstairs, see if you can find something to treat the blisters.”

“And you–”

“I’ll be fine. Oddly, I’m not allergic to scriv,” I say. Fear is making me acid.
Get out of the room
, I want to scream, but I don’t have to. Jannik understands.

When the two of them are gone, I close the door that leads to the rest of the house and make me way slowly toward Harun. He’s hanging onto the mantelpiece now, barely able to keep himself upright. “Lie down,” I tell him. “Or fall down, whatever suits you. One’s bound to be less painful.”

“And you care about my well-being?” He laughs hollowly.

I’ve never dealt with someone who has taken this much scriv before. My childhood best-friend was a Saint, but like all women, she was restricted in her consumption of the drug. But I have heard enough gossip to know that an overdose is ugly and painful and protracted. “Not particularly, but I’ve no desire to mop up the blood when you crack open your skull.” It will do no good to worry Harun unduly with my fears.

He lets go and crumples to his knees, then wavers there a moment before collapsing gracelessly.

I watch him for a while, but he shows no sign of moving. Not even to roll away from the mess of ash and soot from the dead hearth. “Harun?”

He says nothing, and I lift my skirts and step up alongside him before crouching. At least he’s still breathing. Carefully, I turn his head to the side. Harun’s eyes are wide-open, glazed and unfocused. I snap my fingers, and he blinks, the pupils going pin-point sharp.

“What?” he manages groggily.

“Still alive, and still capable of speech,” I say. “That’s almost more than you can ask for.”

“Where’s–” he stumbles over the words, like his tongue has forgotten how to shape the name he wants to say.

“Gone.” I feel a momentary burst of pity for the bedraggled and pathetic figure before me. “Jannik’s taken him somewhere.”
Somewhere safe. Away from you. Away from both of us.

“Is this before the war,” Harun says. “Or after?” He struggles to sit, clutching painfully at my arm for support. “Am I now?”

“I suppose so.” He needs to relax or he’ll set off some kind of fit, burst his brain. “There’s no war.” Even just saying it out loud makes me shiver. I hate the idea that there’s one in our future. Possibly. If the path Harun’s seen is a true one. And from the amount of scriv he’s taken, it more than likely is. What kind of war will it be?

Before I can ask him, he lunges forward and makes a grab for my throat. “You’re a fool,” he says, just as I manage to dive out of his way. He catches the crook of my shoulder instead, and digs his fingers in deep, pinning me in place.

I hold myself absolutely still and swallow thickly. “Care to tell me why?” The ease with which I manage this is at odds with the thrumming of my heart, and he must know.

“They all die,” he tells me.

My breath stutters. “Jannik?”

But he doesn’t hear me. “It’s always the same, Felicita. Every time. I don’t know why you keep doing this, it just hurts him. And it hurts you.”

I relax in his grip. I do not think we are in this Now, but another. “And what is it I’ve done this time?” I whisper back.

“You’ll lose it, when we need you most.” He pinches harder, his thumb sliding up into the hollow of my throat and half-throttling me. “Don’t do this to yourself. I know you think you want children–”

Children. Oh sweet Gris, he’s talking about children. I wrench out of his grasp and crawl backward, away from him. “Shut up!”

He doesn’t listen. He keeps talking, telling me a future I don’t want to hear, of the deaths of children I have not yet borne. All I can do is escape, run away from his words. The door slams behind me, cutting off Harun’s ceaseless jabbering.

“And?” Isidro is standing in the shadows, pinched up tight around himself like he’s trying to make himself thinner, and his face is creased with pain. Jannik is holding him by one arm, just above the elbow. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be support or to hold him back. Isidro uncrosses his tightly folded arms. “What?”

“I–” I glance back at the solid blackwood door, then take a deep breath. “Don’t go in there. Not yet.”

“He’s going to live?”

I nod. Isidro needs to be distracted. I hate looking at him, but I can’t help the little spark of pity I feel when I see how the mark of the scriv has spread across his face like drops of blood. “Bring him some water, he’ll need plenty of it. And blankets. Seven-fold Visions can bring on fevers.” That’s not saying everything. I’ve never seen the aftermath of a seven-fold myself, but I have read enough accounts. They are part of our history, after all. My own line, while not noted for Saints, has had its share of precognisants. We’ve lost people.