Bringer of Dust, page 7
“According to the Agnoscenti chroniclers, long ago, in a place called the Grathyyl, ‘under the dish of the world,’ there was a gathering of the strongest talents. It was a place of power, a place where the worlds of the living an the dead met. Not an orsine, not a door between the worlds. No, the Grathyyl was something else. An in-between, a place neither wholly of one world nor of the other.
“It was a time of great upheaval. There were a struggle among talentkind, a struggle over how they ought to exist, whether to reveal their abilities and influence the world, for good or for ill, or to remain concealed. At the Grathyyl, five talents volunteered to go into the other world forever, as guards, to protect the gateways between the worlds. The orsines. There was one for each kind of talent: a caster, a clink, a turner, a dustworker, a glyphic. It would be their task to stop any evil from crossing back over to our world. An to prevent any talents from trying to break through from this side.”
Charlie looked sharply at her. “Like Dr. Berghast was doing. At Cairndale.”
The old woman rested her tired hand on the books.
“Is that how the drughr got loose?”
“No. Listen.” The old woman’s face was unreadable. “The five talents what volunteered needed to be altered, so as they could survive in that other world. You’ve seen it, Charlie, you’ve walked in it. You understand tis no place for the living. At the Grathyyl, their talents were … bent. Changed.” Mrs. Ficke gestured at the shining blue vial. “It were this substance what was used to do it. It comes from that place. The Grathyyl. And when they was all changed fully, they entered the world of the dead, and weren’t ever seen again. What happened to them, how they perished, no one knows. But there was one what did not perish. You’ve seen her.”
The darkness seemed to bend nearer.
“The drughr,” whispered Charlie.
Mrs. Ficke nodded. “Aye. What corrupted Jacob Marber, what fed on the littlest talents. But she weren’t nothing like the talent she’d once been, when first she entered the orsine to protect the gateways. Twisted, she was, by all her long years in that terrible world. It was said she could appear in the dreams of the living, taking on the resemblances of those she’d known. She could walk through walls, come an go at will. An she could cross between the worlds to pick apart the living, like a bit of cod on a plate. She’d become something else entirely, an was no longer human.
“This dust, Charlie, tis all that remains of her in this world. That were the drughr’s touch you felt, when your forehead healed. That were her.”
Charlie stared at the shining blue vial, feeling a sickening in his gut.
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
“It’s not that. I’ve … seen this, before. This kind of glowing. In Mar. He used to shine like this, too.”
Mrs. Ficke pursed her lips in a thin line. “The shining boy,” she murmured. “I had not thought of him. Alice spoke of him too, of course. Not like the rest of you, was he?”
Charlie didn’t tell her about what Jacob Marber had said, about the drughr being Marlowe’s mother. About the hunger that was in her, her terrible desire for Mar. The memory of it was murky and there were holes in it but he was sure of it all the same. He rubbed his face with his hands. He needed to think. “Miss Davenshaw never said what kind of a talent Mar was. But Ko and Ribs said he was … different.”
“We all of us heard stories about him, when he was a baby. How Jacob Marber tried to steal him away.”
“I heard those stories, too,” said Charlie. “He wasn’t like those stories. He was just … Mar.”
The old woman was looking at him strangely, her lined face grooved and etched in the lanternlight. “You miss him,” she said quietly.
Charlie swallowed back the lump in his throat. He passed his hand over the blue vial and the shine intensified, pulsed, faded. “It’s strange how it felt, having my talent back. Even if just for a moment. But it wasn’t real, was it?”
“Would you want it again, even so?”
Charlie shuddered. “It’s an evil thing. No. No, I wouldn’t.”
Mrs. Ficke seemed to relax. “Alice Quicke was right about you. She said you were stronger even than your own talent. She said the strength was inside you.”
Charlie felt the heat rise to his face. He wasn’t used to hearing such things. He turned to go and was already at the hidden door when Mrs. Ficke spoke again, stopping him.
“There is one thing else,” she said. “One thing important. The corrupted dust is still connected to the drughr, wherever she might be. And tis still powerful. The drughr might have lost her strength to Henry Berghast, but this dust would be a way for her to … reacquire it.”
Charlie shook his head, confused. “But Dr. Berghast destroyed the drughr. At the orsine. I was there, Mrs. Ficke. The drughr was dying, she had no power left. She took hold of Dr. Berghast, she dragged him under, but … she was dying. I could see it.”
“Think, now. Did you see the drughr die?”
Charlie hesitated.
The old woman raised her troubled eyes, the candlelight glinting in them like twin flames. But whatever she was thinking, she seemed to decide against it. “The drughr belongs to the world of the dead,” she said instead. “She’s existed at the edge of that world for centuries. Became what she was because of it. I don’t know what it would mean to say now: She is dead. She always was, Charlie. And she never can be.”
Charlie felt a coldness go through him. He was thinking of Marlowe, trapped in that other world. The shining blue vial pulsed brighter as he reached for it. “You’re saying this can bring the drughr … back?”
“I’m saying it is a possibility.”
“We should hide it, then,” he said, his voice hardening. “Or destroy it.”
The old woman smiled angrily. “Hide it? The drughr’s no police inspector, Charlie, fumbling about in the dark, taking breaks for her tea. She will smell out the dust, like a wolf. The two are connected. Where would you hide it? Nowhere is safe.”
“So we destroy it.”
“An how would you do that? Tis the very stuff of which the drughr is made. You cannot burn it, or break it, or drown it, or crush it. You cannot scatter it any more than you could scatter the drughr herself.”
Charlie felt his impatience boiling up. He thought of the drughr, still alive maybe. He knew Marlowe would not be safe, afraid and alone in that other world, not once the drughr returned to strength. Even if they could get him out, he’d not be safe.
“I don’t know how,” he said sharply, “but we have to try. There’s got to be a way.”
The old woman leaned back on her stool. When she spoke, her voice was deadly soft. “Even though it could make you a haelan, again? Even though it could bring back your talent?”
Charlie glared. “I don’t care about that.”
“No?”
“No.”
The old woman watched him, her expression lost in shadow.
Just then the cellar door beyond banged open, and Edward called down. He came stomping down the steps, heavy as a workhorse, and he was swinging his gloves and smiling, a great shaggy bear of a man.
It was like a spell broke then. Half a head again higher than any other man Charlie’d known, even than the flesh giant Lymenion, with a belly that overhung his waistline and a powerful neck that gave his shoulders a narrow look, Edward Ficke crowded the cellar until the very walls seemed to buckle. His beard smelled of the pickled onions he liked to eat. His nose was red and running from the cold and he was still dressed in his greatcoat and hat. He’d bartered away the dark Albany Chandlers carriage to a wainwright, he said, for a wagon and two horses.
“Come see, come see,” he said excitedly.
Charlie didn’t understand; and then, suddenly, he did. The wagon would be suitable for transporting the strange brood of children. As they followed him up, Charlie watched Mrs. Ficke’s face with apprehension but saw nothing in it. What Edward showed them, proudly, in the narrow mews behind the shop, was an ancient Burton wagon, with small wheels and a wooden roof, all of it painted in yellow and red stripes. It had been used by a menagerie showman’s family in days gone by. In fraying harness stood two bony and skittish horses, better suited for the tannery than the road. Charlie watched Mrs. Ficke walk the length of it, banging her hand in distraction against the rails, clearly unhappy with it. There was a patched and weather-faded awning over the driver’s bench, tied with different colors of rope, and when Charlie opened the little door in the back he saw loose slats and nails bent every which way and no seating to speak of. Mrs. Ficke was looking at her brother with a strange expression.
He just smiled happily. “It even come with extra nails,” he said, pulling out a long box from behind the driver’s seat. “And an oil slicker for when it rains. Do you like it?”
Mrs. Ficke sighed. Charlie suspected the value of the old carriage must have far exceeded this.
“Your nose is all adrip,” she said.
He ran his sleeve over his whiskers, his mouth half-open in anticipation.
She gave a tired smile. “You did good, Edward. It’s perfect.”
“Yeah,” he breathed. He moved behind Charlie to get a better look at the rickety wagon. Charlie could feel his hot breath on the top of his head, like a great horse.
“Yeah,” Edward said again.
Charlie was beginning to see that that was the thing about Edward. There was a clarity to him, a singleness of purpose to whatever he did. He did one thing, and then he did the next thing. He didn’t let himself get tangled up in fifty tasks and obligations, he didn’t let his mind run off in every direction at once. His thinking was like water running downhill, seeking its channel, following it down. Charlie bet most of Edward’s life people had treated him like he was stupid, but that wasn’t it, that wasn’t it at all.
“Now.” Mrs. Ficke turned to Charlie. “I’ve decided I’ll go with you to Agrigento,” she said. “But the children will come too. They ought to be with their own kind. But I must pass through London first; we can hire a vessel off Miller’s Wharf. There might be more information on the drughr’s dust at the institute’s old offices. I want to be sure of it. You are familiar with Margaret Harrogate’s residence? Her old offices?”
Charlie nodded, his relief giving way to unease. He’d hated Mrs. Harrogate’s row house; he’d been afraid there, and alone, attacked by a litch while sleeping, and barely surviving. Some nights he still had nightmares. But it was there he’d first met Mar, too, first felt that fierce protective love for him, first sensed what it was to maybe have a brother. He looked at Mrs. Ficke, and nodded.
She turned back to her brother. “Edward. Did you chance to see Deirdre this morning?”
Charlie remembered the glyph-twisted girl upstairs. He watched the concentration in Edward’s face as he thought about it. “Yes,” said Edward.
“What’s to be done?”
“She don’t want to go.” He shook his massive head. “She’s afeared of going. She wants to stay. They all do.”
Mrs. Ficke was frowning. Her arm was sore and she’d reached two fingers in to massage the cloth folded at the stump. She and her brother looked nothing alike, Charlie thought, and yet all their lives they must have had only each other. Now watching Edward’s aged face he saw suddenly that the gentle giant wasn’t just thinking about the girl, little Deirdre, he was thinking about himself, too, about how he would live and all his days to come with his sister far away, and Charlie felt again a sudden upwelling of sadness. It was his doing. He would have to live with it.
* * *
Caroline left Edward at the wagon, with the Ovid boy.
Back inside, along the ancient low stone corridor, into the shop with its tumble of packed trunks, cases, cloth-bundled goods for the journey. Up the rickety stairs, to see the girl.
A feeling was in her, a feeling of significance. Something was changing in all of their lives, never to be undone. The corrupted dust worried her; she knew it would be safest, perhaps, at the villa outside Agrigento; but she knew too that to carry it would bring other dangers, dangers she didn’t like to think too deeply on.
The children were in their rooms. Silent and curled into their stuffed toys or seated on the edge of their cots, peering down at their hands. She greeted each and refilled their glasses and brushed their leaves with her fingers, Wislawa and Brendan, Maddie, Chester. These were the glyph-twisted, grown treelike and stilled and no longer what they’d once been. In the eyes of any, they must seem horrors, mutated beyond all recognition. Berghast had done this, had tempted them into this change, desperate to make a new glyphic before the old one died, desperate to keep the orsine whole. He had failed; he was dead now; these poor children remained.
And this is what they did, how they lived. Locked inside their own silences, or humming through the hours, alive and separate and no longer like the children they had been. It broke Caroline’s old heart to see.
Deirdre, the second eldest, was not in her room. She frowned in the soft afternoon light. She found her in little Seamus’s room, running her fingers along his scalp, down his neck, soothing him. Deirdre was like that. Caroline stood at the door watching until she turned her small face. Caroline knew the abomination of the girl, the skin encrusted like bark, gleaming as if burnished by the light, the leafy twigs like spines sprouting from the backs of her arms, the one leg twisted already into solid wood, the roots pushing always against the floor as if seeking purchase. She knew this and yet saw none of it. What she saw was the shine in the girl’s eye, the eager sweet smile she turned upon her, slow as it was, the glow of recognition in her face. Caroline’s heart was a dark assistant to the task at hand: she knew she was not to have favorites, that all of them were darling in her eyes, and yet she could not help the smile that came to her face unbidden, whenever she saw young Deirdre.
But something was wrong with the girl, something was different.
The girl’s feet had always been twisted but now new knuckled tendrils of wood had spread across the floorboards, under the carpet, as if seeking purchase.
Caroline had never seen anything like it. It was this Edward had been trying to explain. She went in carefully and kneeled before the girl and little Seamus, feeling her old knees ache, and she ran her liver-spotted hand lightly over the spreading tendrils. It was, she thought in horror, as if the girl were sending out roots. She wondered what effect the corrupted dust might have on these little ones and then she stopped herself. She loved them as they were; they didn’t need any kind of changing.
“Was Seamus frightened, my little bird?” she murmured to Deirdre. “Did you come here to let him know he weren’t alone? It was good of you.”
The girl blinked her yellow eyes. Her head, creaking, nodded.
“Ah, Seamus, little one,” she said. “What is it, what’s all this? We’re to be goin in the morning, child. It won’t do to be so afraid, hm? There, now. You’re not alone; you’ll never be alone.”
The light came whitely in through the limed-over window. Caroline could feel the great stillness of the shop below, and was troubled. The corrupted dust would be a beacon of danger, to any who were near it. Yet somehow she must smuggle these strange, wonderful children south with her. They could not stay. There would be no safety here, not with her gone.
Safety. What a word it was.
Well, she thought. We build the door, but have no say in who will knock at it. All we can do is answer.
5
THE PRESENCE
“What are you?” Jeta asked the apparition, afraid. “Are you a … spirit?”
The institute was cold; an evil wind came in through the broken wall. Somewhere in the ruins Ruth would be picking through the debris, looking for traces of the corrupted dustworker.
The boy, flickering, watched her. A gauzy blue shine seemed to blow across his features, like cobwebs pulling apart. She saw no sign on his rags of the Cairndale crest and yet some part of her, somehow, understood that he was one of those who’d died in the fire. The spirit dead, they were called. She knew there had been an orsine on the island and she knew of its breaking and perhaps, she thought, the world of the living and the world of the dead had got tangled up in the process. Perhaps this poor boy had slipped through, or failed to. He was very young, even for a Cairndale ward. He kept parting his bloodless lips, as if to speak.
Where … am I? he said.
Jeta filled with a sudden pity. “You’re at Cairndale. What’s left of it.”
A shadow rippled across the shining boy’s face. He was so small. It seemed to be a terrible effort for him just to remain visible, to remain in front of her, the darkness eating away at his edges.
Cairndale…, he whispered. But it’s gone. It’s all gone. He raised his face and the darkness upon it seemed to recede, like a hood being drawn back. I have to find someone, he said. Jacob Marber. He will know what to do.
Jeta went still. “Marber. The dustworker?”
The apparition watched her.
Slowly, she shook her head. “Jacob Marber’s dead. He died here, in the fire.”
The apparition was quiet. Then he looked up. You’re a talent. I can feel it.
The flat midday light shifted, as if a great wing had passed overhead, and the wall was visible through the boy’s form. The wallpaper was scorched in a strange pattern, as if tendrils of fire had lashed across it. She should be angrier, or more afraid, she knew. But something in the boy’s words made her heart hurt in ways she hadn’t known for years. It made her remember the girl she had been in the orphanage, after Cairndale had refused her. The world of the dead and the world of the living were close here, where the orsine had been. There might be many dead within these walls.
You’ve come for it, too, the apparition said softly. He raised a flickering blue hand, very small. Don’t be afraid. You need the dust too, Jeta, don’t you? We can help each other—
