The Song of the Sycamore, page 8
I spent the rest of the afternoon riding the under-rail. For two bits, you could buy a ticket that permitted travel for the entire day. There were twenty stations in Old Castle. Alighting at any of them would usually place you within ten minutes’ walk of where you needed to be. But I didn’t get off. I rode around beneath the city, the sound of wheels tick-tacking over tracks and the sway of the carriage like a metronomic rhythm keeping my concentration in time with the scratches of my pencil on the pages of my journal.
Barely noticing the comings and goings of other passengers, even when they crowded me at busy stations, I stayed in my seat, writing word after word.
I had filled several journals over the past few months, each recording the leads and dead ends I had encountered so far. The trouble was, every person I’d met along the way – living or dead – had been filtered through Dyonne, and I’d had no choice but to accept that Dyonne was in no rush to help me find Eden, even if she denied it.
Why did Dyonne Obor do anything? She was selective with her information, her reasons clandestine, utterly devoted to the Grand Adepts of the Salem. It was impossible to tell when her words could be trusted or not. The only thing I had worked out for certain was that a ghoul had to meet certain criteria before it gained access to Sycamore, and the specifics were known only to the Salem, or so Dyonne said. While the jobs she gave me benefitted the Magicians in some way, she had no impetus to fulfil her side of our bargain. I sometimes wondered if she had ever intended to, back when it was first struck. She had put me on a leash, and on the one occasion we’d clashed over it, things hadn’t ended well for me.
About six weeks, maybe two months ago, no closer to finding Eden, sick of the self-loathing I felt each time Sycamore used my hands to destroy life, I had confronted Dyonne at the nameless tavern where we always met.
‘I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do,’ I said bitterly. ‘It’s about time you did something for me.’
‘Time?’ Dyonne sounded genuinely perplexed. ‘I wasn’t aware that the clock was ticking on our arrangement.’
She had already paid me for the bounty from the latest kill, and we had been discussing the newest dead end she had led me to in my search: a blind beggar from the shanties who had been more skilled at filling his wooden bowl with bits than telling the truth.
‘You owe me, Dyonne.’
She regarded me with an expression of curiosity. ‘Have I lied to you in some way? Have I not been fulfilling my promise?’
‘You could have done more.’
‘Wendal, it is not my fault—’
‘Yes, it is!’ I snapped. ‘You keep me running in circles that only ever bring me back to you!’
And it was true. I had tried to make my own contacts, find my own way in the search, but through a mixture of magic and a fierce reputation, Dyonne had rendered me off-limits to a network of people who might’ve been able to help unless she allowed them to gain access to me.
‘You’re a cheat and a liar, Dyonne.’
Her curiosity became a hard glare. ‘Careful, Wendal.’
‘You told me you’d find Eden.’
‘No, I said that I would help you find Eden for yourself.’
I banged a fist on the table. ‘Where is she?’
Behind Dyonne, the ever-present Tamara stiffened, coiled, ready for the order that would at long last give him the chance to exact revenge for his thumb.
Dyonne raised a hand, staying her bodyguard. ‘You’re upset, so I will let your disrespect pass unadmonished. But please remember – Eden is not my responsibility. You and Sycamore, however, are. To forget that it is you who works for me is a dangerous thing to do.’
Perhaps I had started believing in the power of Sycamore, his brutal efficiency in the art of murder, or maybe I was just that fucking tired of what I was seeing as a fool’s quest; either way, I asked, ‘Do you think I’m no threat to you?’
‘I think you should watch your mouth and leave while you still can.’ Dyonne’s pupils dilated, on the cusp of channelling magic. ‘You can’t comprehend what serves as a threat to me.’
‘You’re scared. You need me as much as I need you.’ The bitterness in my voice had been matched by my confidence. I honestly thought that some part of Dyonne had to be frightened of me. Perhaps I was right, because when I added, ‘Maybe I’ll ask the Scientists for a better deal,’ Dyonne said, ‘Tamara, hold him,’ before casting her magic.
I had intended to defend myself, but Tamara was quick for a big man and frighteningly strong. He took no risks with his digits this time, holding me down in my chair, gripping me painfully under the chin so my teeth could get nowhere near him.
Heat pressed on my face. A drone filled the air like a bee buzzing.
The bullet from the ancient weapon hadn’t materialised since the day Dyonne fired it. I had come to suspect that it wasn’t real; that it was an illusion to control me, as baseless as the leads Dyonne kept giving me. I was wrong. She summoned the bullet then, spinning, no more than two inches from my forehead, and Tamara forced me to face it.
My stalker, my reaper, my moment of death.
Beyond it, Dyonne’s predatory eyes bored into mine.
‘Let me remind you,’ she growled. ‘I decide how you live. I decide how you die. If you doubt this, perhaps we should end our relationship now. What do you say, Wendal Finn?’
Of course I had relented, and I never doubted the bullet’s existence again. The Song of Always, a powerful spell usually reserved for the Grand Adepts of the Salem. Only they were skilled enough to cast it, and they used it to preserve their moments of death and attain perversely long lives. The Salem had conjured the Song of Always to protect Sycamore, and they had given it to Dyonne and allowed her to cast it upon me. Harsh experience had since taught me that this spell truly was my moment of death. It seemed that I could die by no other method. Should Sycamore ever escape, the Song of Always would keep me upright and alive, staving off Nothing, but only for as long as Dyonne and the Salem allowed it.
So what chance did I stand without Dyonne Obor? She was my custodian and had been permitted the use of magic greater than her own to control me. If I acted against the Salem, her cherished masters, she would summon the bullet, and everything I had ever been would blow away like dust on the wasteland. This life was all I got. I needed Eden to come back, remember me, answer my questions, just … talk to me like she used to. And then I could face Nothing without regret.
I was a Magician’s fool, the Salem’s perfect assassin, with no choice but to accept my place in their games, while praying all the while that Dyonne would one day give me something genuine to go on. I wondered, with my pencil poised over the page, if Dyonne had finally deigned to show me the right direction by sending me to the elderly woman in the Garden.
I looked up, thinking, as the train stopped at Under Park Station to let a sizeable cluster of citizens disembark and leave the carriage mostly empty. After a brief tattoo of doors slamming shut, an unseen conductor blew a whistle and we trundled off again.
The old woman knowing about the wedding bands was a small detail but enough to hook me. Eden had indeed worn her ring on a chain around her neck because she said wearing it on her finger hindered the casting of magic. The metal heated up, had even burned her once. The night before I’d gone to war, Eden had taken my ring from me and put it on the chain next to hers – for safekeeping, she’d said, to keep me close.
Was it possible that the old woman could know about the rings without information garnered from the spirit world? For all I knew, it might’ve been common practice among Magicians. I’d certainly never noticed Dyonne wearing rings on her fingers, or any other kind of jewellery, but then it wasn’t as if I was allowed access to other Magicians who I could ask.
I thought long and hard but couldn’t remember ever telling anyone about Eden’s ring – not Nel, not Dyonne, nor any other acquaintance. The old woman claimed she had come by the information from her friend, this ghost called Abdon Klyne, and if that was true then was it likely that Eden had told him herself?
My thoughts remained on Klyne as I disembarked at Tinman Station and made my way home. The sun was low in the sky and night was falling. In the distance, the fiery storm continued to brood over Alexria. It was definitely moving, spreading. Watching Old Castle?
I kept my head down, flicking back through the pages of my journal as I walked. Not one of the charlatans, dabblers and deluded idiots I’d encountered so far had ever mentioned the Scientists before. Most had been dedicated to showing me how bad they were at using magic or just plain lying. The old woman in the Garden was an anomaly.
The Scientists and the Magicians were always at odds – that much had never been a secret in Old Castle, or any city on Urdezha, I would’ve thought – and the jobs that Dyonne had given Sycamore had been related to this ongoing feud, some more obviously than others. But this was the first time anyone had brought the Scientists up in specific relation to Eden. Considering how unfavourably she’d viewed them, I found it doubtful that she would make friends with someone who had spent his life working for them.
The Scientists were up to something with the dead, and I was looking for Eden in the wrong places. According to a deceased archaeologist. According to a stranger in a Garden. According to Dyonne’s latest lead.
I decided to go through my other journals when I got home, check for any references to the Scientists that I might’ve forgotten. I already knew, however, that I would be going to Temple University to see if the ghost of Abdon Klyne was real. There was too much here to ignore. No stone unturned.
However, when I arrived home, I discovered a visitor waiting for me.
Chapter Sixteen
A bitter smell laced the air. A cake of jenkem smouldered in a burner beneath the closed window. A thin line of smoke ghosted up and dispersed in dreamy puffs as it hit the ceiling. I breathed in a lungful and felt its intoxicating effects tingle upon the periphery of my perception.
A pair of boots had been placed on the only chair in my lodgings. On the small table next to it, a city watch uniform had been neatly folded – a sergeant’s uniform.
Lana Khem lay in my bed, a single sheet clinging to her naked body. Her usually neat and tied-up hair hung in loose curls. Her brown eyes were glazed, looking in my general direction but struggling to find me. Her face searched for an expression. She smiled lazily and whispered a single word through the jenkem smoke.
‘Wendal.’
I wondered what else Lana could see besides me. Jenkem first relaxed the body and calmed the mind before anaesthetising all cares and inhibitions and inducing rich, vivid dreams. Just for a while. I remained by the door, breathing in more smoke in the hope of hurrying its effect.
‘How was your day?’
I shrugged.
‘Have you eaten?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘What do you feel like doing tonight?’
It was like listening to bad acting in an amateur stage production of a relationship. I hated hearing it.
‘You must be tired.’ Lana stretched beneath the sheet, content and drowsy.
I should have told her to return the key to my lodgings, to leave and never come back. I should’ve told her that weeks ago.
Slipping off my jacket and hanging it on the back of the door, I said, ‘How are you, Lana?’ Saying anything felt better than staying mute.
‘Some old, same old,’ she said, sighing. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘I’ve missed you, too.’ Hollow, perfunctory words, spoken limply.
‘Come to bed.’
Lana watched me undress. She took in my naked body, seemed pleased by what she saw. She never mentioned how thin I looked, never mentioned the words of magic on my stomach and back, the red stains of the spells which kept a spirit of vengeance trapped inside me. Nor was she put off by the old scars beneath them, the remnants of burn wounds suffered during my last days of fighting in the war. Lana pulled back the sheet, as though to reveal a secret. She had scars of her own.
When I lay down beside her, she wrapped the sheet around us and I fell into her embrace. Her muscles were toned and her skin was rough. Her dusty hair smelled of Old Castle’s streets.
It was hard enough dealing with my own afflictions, let alone Lana Khem’s. Perhaps she was addicted to me, or was it obsession born from a quirked sense of guilt?
Lana had been the city watch officer who had dealt with Eden’s suicide, who had found her dead body in this very room. My wife had pressed a hand-held ether-cannon to her chest, over her heart. At point-blank range, the blast had torn a hole right through her. Lana hadn’t wanted to tell me that, but I had made her.
Not long after I became the Salem’s pet, Lana began visiting me. At first, it was to return the last of Eden’s effects. I’d already reclaimed our wedding rings – I sometimes think it was the shock and emotion of seeing them that finally weakened my defences enough for Sycamore to take control of me and set us off on our murderous spree. Lana had brought the last remnants of Eden’s life, including the notice announcing my status as missing in action – apparently my wife had carried it around with her. But afterwards, Lana kept on visiting me. To see how I was coping, she said, to give me any help I needed, and somehow we ended up like this.
Lana pressed her mouth to mine, eyes closed as if she was thinking of someone else. Her fingers trailed over my scars.
I should have told her to stop. But I never did.
Back then, I’d thought it was only a matter of time before Lana arrested me; that she had to find out about my deal with Dyonne and what I was doing for the Salem. In retrospect, I think she had been, and still was, looking for forgiveness. She considered Eden’s suicide as her failing somehow. In a way that I didn’t understand, Lana blamed herself and felt the need to make up for her misplaced guilt, and she did so by filling a void in my life, replacing some of what I’d lost. So she could help me feel normal? Not so abandoned?
Lana straddled me and I groaned – as much from intoxication as from how good she felt. She bit my earlobe, whispering, ‘I love you,’ but it was the jenkem talking.
We never met in mundane circumstances. There were never any meals, no theatre trips – nothing approaching a normal relationship. I could count the proper conversations we’d had on one hand. We enjoyed each other while intoxicated. Because jenkem eradicated the need for reason. It was the unspoken agreement between us, the barrier that spared us from ever getting to know each other at all.
Lana ground against me and I held her tight, close. Her lips parted mine and our tongues met. Reality started to blur, and when I closed my eyes it was Eden’s face I saw, her body pressed against mine, slick now with sweat.
I’d never told Lana that I didn’t blame her. I’d never said that it wasn’t her fault. Perhaps I thought that if she knew, she wouldn’t come back, and these strange moments where she played surrogate wife to a widower would end. She helped me to remember how Eden had felt, tasted.
I rolled on top of her, keeping my eyes closed to savour the image of a different face. The bed complained and Lana moaned as she built to orgasm. Passion rose, our teeth clashed, and Lana spat curses as she climaxed. I quickly followed, with her fingernails adding marks to my back.
After, we lay embraced, breathing heavily into each other’s ears. By the time I rolled away, Lana was already asleep, slipping peacefully into whatever visions jenkem had brought her.
On the cusp of slipping away myself, my tenuous link to reality was preserved by something stirring in the corner of the room. My gaze drifted to the words of magic seared into the wall next to the door. Above them, a ghoul bubbled like boiling pitch.
‘I’ve been dreaming again, Sycamore.’ A female voice, always sad. ‘Did you know the dead could dream?’
‘Go away, Itch.’ This ghoul, my Itch – even Sycamore could not sate her cravings. She was a thorn in my side, the one haunting that couldn’t be stopped. ‘Just … go away.’
‘I travel the wasteland.’ Itch shifted her form, but I couldn’t focus enough to see what shape she had taken. ‘I live wild with the clansfolk, seeing things that you wouldn’t dare to imagine, sparkling and pure.’
‘You’re full of shit,’ I mumbled. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘But I don’t want to dream. I don’t want to go back.’ She wept with a sound that hurt my ears. ‘I want to be free.’
‘Fuck off, Itch.’ I started laughing.
‘Sycamore! Give me justice!’
And I was still laughing when the jenkem finally snatched me away. Behind my eyelids, Eden was waiting …
A lake filled the width of the valley floor, flanked by high, sheer walls of rusty rock. Its surface was smooth and glassy, glistening beneath the sun, clear all the way down to its bottom. The water looked pure enough to drink, inviting enough for a cool swim. But the lake was toxic, capable of melting flesh from bones in minutes; and hiding down below in underwater caves, monsters waited for their meals.
This was the wasteland.
‘Urdezha is covered in scabs,’ Eden said.
She stood on the lake’s shore, staring out at a bed that floated like a raft, carrying the sleeping form of Lana Khem. I stood next to Eden, smiling.
‘If the Scientists aren’t careful,’ she continued, ‘they’ll drill so deep into the wasteland that they’ll reach Urdezha’s skin. And that will be the day when they find so many festering wounds that they’ll have to admit how they ruined the world.’
