The Deepwater Trilogy. Claire McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ I assume, given that he’s still living among you.’

      ‘Suspected.’ The Dowager nodded at the coat. ‘Because he can bring the giants to shore in the winter time.’

      ‘They’re worth covering up a murder?’

      ‘Krakenskin is precious. Not just for leather.’ The Dowager picked up the coat and stroked it reverently. ‘Keep the skin wet, put it on the deepest burn and there will be no scar. The ground-up beak is medicinal against all sorts of tumours and growths. Kraken eye-jelly dissolves cataracts, can make the blind see. The oil is health tonic for a heart, and fuel and perfume, and is far more expensive than either jasmine, civet or ambergris.’ She nodded. ‘The flesh makes for a fine meal, if the fishermen butcher it early enough.’ The Dowager counted the treasures off as if they were the accounts of a banker.

      ‘I heard the monsters are worshipped as gods, here.’

      ‘Yes. They once were. The old religion is gone now, but we still host many tourists in this Manse during Deepwater season, the winter time. There is even a masque on the longest night, where men dress up like a sea-serpent and rampage through the town until a king is crowned among them, for a day. More than one child owes their beginning to the Deepwater Night. More than one dispute finds its permanent end as well.’

      ‘It sounds very, ah … primitive.’

      ‘They love their brutalities, do our Vigil folk. And with its history, and that devotion, are you sure you want to keep that odd coat? It would fit no sea dog of course, but a good tailor could unpick the seams and marry the panels with a dress suit. I could get you an entire bonefish wardrobe for the price of the leather.’

      Arden shook her head. ‘I could never destroy such a beautiful thing. It would be a desecration. More to the point, this coat is equipment I need. I will be able to attend my duties at the lighthouse and relieve Mr Harris sooner, especially now that I don’t have to worry about freezing to death.’

      ‘I am surprised you are not out there already.’

      Arden bundled up the coat so that it might fit into the steamer trunk she kept under the bed.

      ‘Mr Justinian has such concern for my wellbeing, you see.’ Her irritation prickled her tongue. ‘He will not sign a certificate for the interim Lightkeeper’s release until he is certain I am ready. He has undertaken to prepare an extensive list of equipment.’

      She didn’t add that she’d never heard of a keeper charged with such a list, full of items not so easy to obtain and that required delivery via a postal network that worked only when certain people felt that it should. Poultices for exotic ailments and shipping encyclopaedias for irrelevantly distant shores. Hot-water heaters and a strange pachyderm-fibre blanket rather than the goat-hair one that suited just as well. Three kinds of leather shoe, the manufacture of which could be carried out only in Portside. An expensive coil of Mi’kmaq coal-ether rope, for no purpose whatsoever. What was wrong with Lyonne-laid coir?

      ‘My son has been a Vigil Coastmaster and proxy for the Lyonne Seamaster’s Guild for quite some time too, Mx Beacon. You have a dangerous position out there, literally between the devil and the deep blue sea. I’m sure he knows what he is doing.’

      ‘I need to start my job, Madame Justinian. Soon. The chemistry of the perpetual flame requires tending by a sanguinem, and if it goes out, the Lyonne Navy will be down here in a flash wondering why half their marine fleet is littering the rocks of the promontory.’ She widened her eyes for emphasis. ‘I can’t imagine what the Seamaster’s Guild will say if they start getting invoices for fuelling a regular lamp.’

      The Dowager muttered words in a Manhattanite tongue, gave a little hiss between her teeth. She frowned up at the dusty lamp-covers. ‘Ah, it reminds me. Best I light the house lamps for the night. It comes quickly on these shores.’

      Arden was being dismissed. The staff could very well have lit the fifty lamps within the Manse themselves and the Dowager could have made a promise to convince her son to hurry up and release Arden to her lighthouse. Instead, even the black-veiled woman seemed complicit in Arden’s extended stay.

      ‘I’ll give you time to freshen up,’ the Dowager concluded, as she lit the first lamp in Arden’s room. ‘Supper will be in an hour.’

      Arden waited impatiently until the Dowager was gone before she opened up the flame-embossed lid of her steamer trunk. Though Mr Justinian’s mother was harmless, she was just as guilty of familial designs as her son, and possibly just as curious as to what was stopping Arden from falling into Mr Justinian’s arms.

      Arden’s trunk was her life reduced to a painted tin box, four foot by two. It contained all the certificates of her career as a signaller, ten years as a Lady of the Lights upon the Clay Portside docks. It was an odd paradox that she was both nobility and labourer in a country where there was such a deep and unfathomable division between commonblood folk and the sanguinem with their precious and valuable labours.

      She paused before the trunk and studied her gloves before sliding one off. Her hands were strong as any common worker’s, with calluses from the endless winding mechanisms of signal-work and canal locks.

      But the new coins in her palms made her weak.

      A metal disk in the centre of each inflammed hand – a silver moon stitched in between the heart and head-line. They were protective grommets for the act of blood-spilling required to keep the lighthouse fire burning.

      The small fires of the signal lights she had tended before had needed far less blood. She hadn’t needed the disks before now.

      With a hiss of discomfort she pulled the gloves back on and shifted books and papers aside.

      ‘Only a few months,’ she said herself. ‘Then you’ll have everything you ever wanted.’ All her shuffling of the contents of the trunk to make way for the coat ended up uncovering a small trinket-chest carved of bone. A small noise escaped Arden’s throat.

      ‘Don’t open it,’ she said to herself sternly. ‘Don’t open it, Beacon.’

      But she couldn’t help herself. The enchantment within was too great. Love was venomous, its toxin poisoned you forever. Arden opened the box and the past fell out.

      A silver-print on paper floated onto the bedspread, no bigger than her palm. A clean-cut man in an airship officer’s uniform looked out at her, his black hair grown long from a military shave, rakishly tilted cap, twinkling, good-natured eyes.

      On the back, a blue-ink cursive. Thinking of you always – Richard.

      The regret hit her hard. A bitter memory came, of a stolen kiss at the Guild Ball a year before. I’ll come back for you, Richard Castile had said to her. I will be a Captain at last. We will be married in the winter. Wait for me.

      She had wanted to spirit him away to her apartments that night. But Richard had been evasive, preoccupied. Danced with other women. She’d tried not to be upset. Their love was forbidden, so of course he wouldn’t risk affections in public. He’d told her that he had already bought a ring for their upcoming elopement. All she had to do was wait. Fretting would only be foolish.

      The cracks in their relationship, so easily ignored, could not be ignored forever.

      That Guild Ball СКАЧАТЬ