The Choir Boats (47 page)

As he walked upstairs for bed, Tom could not rid himself of the
idea of raiders boarding the embassy frigate. Lost in this gloomy
thought, he turned the key to his room, opened the door, and in
the thin gaslight saw figures within. Gasping, he started to pull the
door to, but several hands caught it and pulled the door inwards and
Tom with it.

Loositage!
Tom thought.
Sacerdotal Guards!

He flung himself on the lead figure. He and the man fell to the
floor grappling one another. Tom pinned the man down and was
about to hit him with his good fist, when he realized these weren’t
Sacerdotal Guards.

A familiar voice said, “Well now, Tommy Two-Fingers, my lad,
this is not exactly the warm welcome we were expecting — or rather
it is too warm, you might say!”

Tom gaped at Billy Sea-Hen on the floor beneath him. With one
easy motion, Billy extricated himself from Tom’s grasp and stood
up. Tat’head and the other Minders were all around him, laughing
softly. In the corner sat Jambres.

“Like that old dumbledore, didn’t I say that?” said Billy, nudging
Tom’s shoulder. Tom picked himself up off his knees, shaking his
head. Tat’head made a soft buzzing sound.

Tom found his tongue at last. “But . . . how did you . . . ?”

Billy jerked his head in Jambres’s direction and said, “His Grace
can find hidden paths, you know that. We walked a piece on one, and
here we are.”

“But we cannot stay long,” said Jambres. “The Learned Doctors
have ways to detect such comings and goings and will discover us
shortly. That would be infelicitous.”

Tom focussed on the Cretched Man. Even in the dim light
something looked strange about him. With a lurch in his stomach,
Tom knew what it was: Jambres had on new clothes. Instead of
the great-coat from the advent of George III’s reign, Jambres had
a cutaway frock-coat. His tricorne was gone in favour of a top hat,
his breeches were replaced with trim trousers that strapped under
each foot and tucked into his shoes. The materials and the cut were
exquisite: Jambres would not have been out of place among the
fashionable ton strolling in Mayfair or Belgravia in London. Except
perhaps that his coat and pants were the colour of blood, and they
rippled at the seams and stitching.

Before Jambres could speak, Billy said, “We were all to be fitted
for new clothes, all of us, but His Grace would not allow it. He argued
with the Tailors, made ’em keep their needles and scissors away
from our flesh. Only there was a price he had to pay, something he
had to barter to make full weight on the Tailors’ bill, and we don’t
know how we can ever make it square with him for his paying it on
our behalf.”

Jambres shook his head and said, “There is no need to speak of
repayment, William.”

Billy looked grim. “Well, governor, someone’s got to pay, to make
right your sacrifice, that’s all I got to say.”

Tom stared at Jambres and realized what price the Cretched Man
had paid. Jambres was no longer just the man in the coat, but the
man in the coat
and
trousers. Tom felt sick.

Jambres said, “William, all of you, ’tis I who should repay you.
You came with me when you did not have to, and you too have
incurred a cost in doing so.”

Tom looked carefully at the Minders’ clothes but confirmed that
they were ordinary in every detail. He asked Billy what the Cretched
Man meant.

Billy said, “You know how slaves get thumbs or noses cut off or
are hamstrung or gelded?”

“Oh no!” cried Tom.

“Rest easy,” said Billy. “We all have the parts we were born with —
everything, if you catch my drift. But they cut us all the same, just
not so’s you could see it, deep in our minds. With ghostly blades. Oh
yes, they made a little cut but they couldn’t reach the deepest places
in our minds. We protected ourselves. They did not hurt us like they
wanted to.”

Billy fell silent. Tom thought again that Billy looked like somebody
he had met in London, only now, if Tom ever met whoever it might
be in London, Tom would think that person looked like Billy and not
the other way around.

Tom gripped Billy’s arm and said, “I would have gone with you,
Billy, you know that. I wanted to go with you.”

Billy smiled, they all did, and said, “Of course, Tommy boy. We
knows that, no one more than me. But you weren’t supposed to go,
that wasn’t the way of it. Your place was here, not there.”

Tom released his grip and said, “Where
did
you go?”

No one spoke until at last Tat’head said, “His Grace knows for
certain. All I can say is that we went very far, to a place you never
want to come to Tommy, never.”

Billy said, “The Owl took the Cretched Man in his beak and he
took all five of us others by his claws. We dangled like throstle-birds
on a wire, heads flopping, as the Owl flew away with us. We flew
and flew into bitter cold night, with just the moon for company, only
there wasn’t much to see except a grey desert beneath us. The Owl
flew a very long time.”

Again everyone fell silent until Tat’head said, “Funny thing about
the place, Tommy, is that time was all slant-wise and unstilted. We
have talked amongst ourselves about it and can’t agree how long we
were gone, only that it was a long time, and for certain not the same
as how the clock runs in England or in Yount.”

Jambres stood up, joined the circle, and said, “As William says,
it is cold there, a lunar cold. High flew the Owl over the frozen
grey wastes. Wastelands but there are roads there, oh yes, many
roads lead to the place we were going — many, many roads so every
soul can find a well-trodden path. We flew over the ranks of the
Watchers, who guard the outermost perimeter, far beneath us, so
far that they looked no larger than the heads of pins, though they
are huge as they squat on their pillars in eternal vigilance. Finally
we approached the first circle and began to descend. From our great
height we just caught a glimpse of what lies beyond, as far from us
as we had already travelled, but it was enough.”

The Minders stared at the wall, seeing again what Jambres
described.

Tom said, “What did you see?”

Without moving, Jambres said, “What Uriel and Raphael showed
Enoch. On the very edge of sight the teterrimous mountains, huge,
made of brass, scaling the dark heavens, rimmed with blue flames.
At their base, the lake of living ice in which the nine stars are
chained for their sins. On the plain, the prisons for the angels who
have fallen. In the mounting hills, etched by white fire unquenched,
the hollows that will be the tribunals at the end of time.”

Tom wished he had not asked, but now it was too late.

Jambres continued. “Down we descended in the dark. The Owl
left us at the ante-buildings and others came out to take us within.
The ante-buildings are vast beyond your imagining, full of chambers
and endless corridors and stairways that run very deep, yet they are
only the least of all the edifices in that place. We passed through the
House of Triangulation and the House of Truncation and the House
of Transection, in all of which ageless practitioners have perfected
their arts, where they will carefully work trenchant attitudes upon
you. At last we were brought to the hall of the Tailors where I was
fitted, sutured, and brailed, as you now see me.”

Tom wished to hear no more.

“There is little more to tell,” said Jambres, with a brittle laugh.
“I am to resume my duties as gatekeeper and warden to Yount. They
sent me back in my newly bespoke suit. They made us walk the long
road over the cold desert. That’s where you saw us in your dream,
Thomas. And then slowly we made our way to Sanctuary, by roads
that crossed out of the dark place, ones that only someone with my
skills could find.”

Tom said, “Where is the
Seek-by-Night
?”

“Still in Sanctuary with her crew,” said Jambres. “We did not
think it prudent to sail into Yount Great-Port, so we slipped in by a
quieter door!”

For the next hour, they spoke of recent events in Yount and the
reason for the Cretched Man’s return. Jambres said he needed to
see the Queen as soon as possible. Tom said the Queen had already
agreed. All that remained was to select a time for the meeting.

“This very day, if it can be arranged,” urged Jambres. “We can
return here at immediate notice. Speak everything in your power,
Thomas, to make this happen. Much depends on it!”

“How will I send word?” said Tom.

Jambres handed Tom a bronze token, the size of a fifty-pence
coin, with a circle of sable glass inset in the middle, and said, “Focus
on the glass lunette, think of me until you can see me in its smoky
depths. Shout with your mind, as hard as you can, and I will hear
you.”

As he said that, Jambres turned his head slightly as if he had
caught a faint sound that was not there earlier. He held up one hand
in his elegant coat. No one spoke.

“Hmmm,” he said. “We have been found out. Come, we must
depart. There is yet a few minutes. The Doctors have clumsy
equipment and will not be able to locate us with accuracy, but they
know I am here.”

The Minders made ready to leave. Jambres bowed to Tom, turned,
made a small motion and said something in a language unknown to
Tom. The gaslight faded until only a small, ruddy glow remained at
the tip of the hissing nozzle. In the near-dark, Tom could not see
clearly but it appeared that Jambres and the Minders walked into a
corner of the room — and vanished. The last to leave was Billy, who
nudged Tom in the shoulder on his way past.

“Good to see you, Tommy,” said Billy. “Time’s comin’ now for the
fight.”

Tom saw a last rustle of movement in the corner, and out of the
darkness he caught Billy’s rapidly fading voice saying, “A respiration
of angels, Tommy, a glory of seraphim.”

The next morning Tom summoned Jambres to meet first with the
other McDoons, and Jambres came. The McDoons gasped. Jambres
sat in the chair in the corner at the far end of Tom’s room. He was
white as ivory. His suit was immaculate. He wore no expression but
he sat as if he were a violin string that had been tightened to the
breaking point. Afsana said something in Hindi. Sally saw, for one
second, the image of a shrike, its cold eye staring at her above a bill
polished and cruelly curved. She had a cribbling sensation along
her neck and shuddered down her spine. She regretted her decision
to allow the Cretched Man here. Isaak hissed, her tail twice its
normal size, her back a ridge of golden fur. At the sight of Isaak, the
Cretched Man’s face betrayed emotion, a flicker of sadness, a shiver
of desperation.

Jambres slowly reached his right hand out and said to Isaak,
“Please, do not be frightened. Come to me, little Bast.”

Isaak stopped hissing but did not advance. Jambres said, “In my
country of origin, back before Moses and Aaron, we held cats in the
highest esteem. We built shrines to your kind, little one; we sent you
to the Otherworld when you died. Come now, I will not harm you.”

Isaak paced forward, not quite stalking but placing each paw
with enormous precision. She did not take her green eyes off the
Cretched Man.

Jambres said, “Does the small lion have a name?”

Against her will, but knowing that Tom would say if she did not,
Sally said, “Isaak.”

Jambres smiled and said, “Isaac. Very good. Behold, here am I.”

Isaak came to within six inches of the Cretched Man’s outstretched fingers. Isaak stopped and sniffed. Slowly her tail
resumed its normal size, the fur on her back lay down. Isaak walked
with exaggerated deliberation along the perimeter in front of the
Cretched Man. She did not come fully to him, but neither did she
flee. Jambres put his hand palm up on his knee, letting his fingers
hang limply over his kneecap, very white against the red trousers.

Looking up at the McDoons, the Cretched Man said, “I know
what you see in me: ‘dreams, magical terrors, lying signs, a witch, a
night spectre, Thessalonian wonders.’ Am I as you see me? I come to
offer what aid I can. Thomas can vouch for me.”

Barnabas thrust out his arm and said, “I do not know what to
make of you; you play tricks on us. You kidnapped our Tom!”

Fraulein Reimer held Tom’s arm, said something harsh in
German, looked as if she might spit.

Afsana broke the silence. “Your very name is reviled in Yount.
The only matter upon which the Ornish and those of Yount Major
can agree is that you are the devil himself.”

Before Jambres could answer, Tom said, “Unfair, cousin! Fraulein,
I beg you! You leap to a conclusion before you have heard the facts!
The Yountians know Jambres not, or not as he could be.”

Sally looked at Jambres, but avoided the eyes that had almost
snared her in her dream in the Mincing Lane partners’ office.

She said, “You are here solely because Tom has spoken for you. I
am still not inclined to put my trust in you.”

Jambres bowed his head slightly and said, “To this I am
accustomed. I come because I see a great danger threatening Yount
Major, and because this war will decide the fate of all Yount for a
long time to come.”

Isaak came fractionally closer to the Cretched Man’s extended
fingers. Jambres affected not to notice.

“The Ornish have prepared for many years, waiting for just such
a pretext as Sarah and Afsana gave them,” he said. “Not wholly a
pretext — they genuinely wonder if Sarah is the Saviour and fight
in part to seize her. Regardless, they make war with a power and
ferocity that Yount Major, for all its efforts, cannot meet.”

The McDoons digested this. The fraulein shook her head, said
something about the King of Wrens. Tom said, “But what about
the others? The Land of the Painted Gate and the Free City of
Iquajorance?”

“Place little hope there,” said Jambres, as Isaak edged a little
closer. “Murximrash-manwa, The Land of the Painted Gate, has
little incentive to join with Yount Major this time, such are the
blandishments made by the Ornish. And the Free City is a city of
financiers, counting profit only, seeing profit whoever wins. It has
been neutral in all disputes for centuries. Look not to it.”