The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle) Read online

  Lyle glanced up, then down at the blade again, running his fingers over it with a more intense expression. ‘Good grief,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t tell me it’s magnetic?’

  ‘This is hyresium, the stone that the Tseiqin once knew how to manipulate, when they were a great people and mankind was still learning how to light its own fires. The knowledge is now dead, but some of the artefacts they forged live on. The Fuyun Plate was one, until it was destroyed. This is another. It is suggested . . .’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘Suggested that?’

  ‘Supposition . . . suggests that Selene was once Tseiqin, once had the green eyes that could burn through a mind. But for some crime against her own people she was banished, lost her power, and took with her into exile only this blade. Lingdao xiansheng does not hold with the theory, but I myself have always had an affection for it.’

  Lyle sighed and put the blade down gently, as if afraid of either touching it or breaking it. ‘Just what I needed for a logical and rational lifestyle. Another scientifically uncertain object of implausible power. I assume it’s the kind of thing we can’t let fall into the wrong hands?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Typical,’ muttered Lyle, slumping down in an armchair.

  Feng sat down opposite Lyle, and said nothing. The grandfather clock ticked on. Lyle stared up at the ceiling, brooding.

  Finally, ‘Tell me about yourself, Feng Darin.’

  Feng hesitated, looking across the cluttered sitting room as Lyle prodded the fire. All sense of time had dissolved after the rush through the night; the room had the comfortable feel of a place ready for supper, not early-morning breakfast.

  ‘I . . . cannot, Horatio.’

  Lyle shrugged, and stretched, from toes to fingertips. Washed, in a clean shirt and trousers, he looked like a more acceptable member of society, but washing had also unveiled the bruises and cuts that clung to his face and hands, one of which Feng noticed was tightly bandaged. Lyle saw his eyes lingering on the bandage, smiled and said, ‘Never cling too tightly to a rapidly oxidizing magnesium compound. The reaction, you discover, is distinctly exothermic.’

  Feng raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

  ‘Things get hot,’ translated Lyle, and then in the same breath, ‘Who do you work for?’

  Instant reaction. ‘The Emperor.’

  Lyle grinned. ‘That’s a bit of a fib, isn’t it?’

  Feng shifted uncomfortably. ‘I am . . . forbidden. Knowledge may prove dangerous.’ He saw Lyle’s expression, sighed and leant forward, fingers interlaced, shoulders hunched like a tiger ready to spring. ‘Have you ever . . . no, that isn’t how to begin. Do you believe that there are forces beyond man’s control, Horatio?’

  ‘Yes. But not necessarily beyond man’s explanation.’

  ‘How rational of you,’ said Feng, smiling faintly. ‘Let me put it another way. There are forces beyond . . . at least most men’s . . . control. Everyone has a different way of calling it; some say fate, some magic, some God, some luck. No one really knows what it really is. To know what “it” is, this inexplicable force that pushes us towards change, from the past and into the future, is to be suddenly beyond its influence. Once you know what “it” is, you can control it; it cannot control you.’

  ‘And you know what “it” is?’

  ‘I am simply a servant of a greater plan, of a force pushing us towards the future. I have been so all my life. I was born a peasant boy in the mountains of Tibet. The Chinese took me, showed me the possibilities of science, of progress: things you would appreciate, I feel. They taught me . . . but that is not for now. I am a servant of my Emperor, and of a future which, when I was just a boy in the mountains, I could not have begun to understand. I will die for this future, Horatio. Would you do such a thing?’

  Lyle almost laughed. ‘Die? For something intangible, for something that I cannot see, taste, feel, measure? Die for someone else’s dream taught to you when you were probably too young even to understand the lines between which the real text was drawn? Absolutely not. I am a firm believer in keeping all my limbs attached, thank you kindly. And you talk, Feng Darin, as a man having a religious experience.’

  Leaning forward he added, in a conspiratorial tone, ‘Religious experiences, I find, can lead to irrational thought. Now’ - reaching down to a table - ‘what do you make of these?’

  He tossed a wrapped bundle of papers at Feng, who caught them instinctively and opened them out. Feng leafed through the pages, eyebrows drawing together. ‘These are . . . just maps.’

  ‘They’re not just maps. They’re maps that Teresa stole from Ignatius Caryway last night, from out of his bedroom, no less. They’re drawn by Sir Christopher Wren, the man commissioned to rebuild London after the Great Fire, almost two hundred years ago. He was going to build a dream city out of stone, with broad streets and absolutely no flammable bakeries in strategic positions. He designed St Paul’s Cathedral and many of the more luxurious houses you see along the river. Sadly, his plans didn’t get much past Trafalgar Square before the city’s own natural growth and practical demands caught up with him, and here we are now.’

  ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Lyle with a little shrug. ‘But to confirm it I really need to talk to a man in the grip of a mad religious experience.’

  There was a hammering on the door, so loud and sudden it made even Feng Darin jerk in his seat, his hand darting towards his coat pocket.

  Lyle sighed. ‘Just a moment.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’

  ‘Could it get worse?’

  Lyle sauntered out of the room. Feng waited, heard the sound of the door opening, followed almost immediately by a thud. He heard Lyle’s indignant exclamation. ‘Oh, good grief.’

  ‘What is it?’ Feng glanced round the door.

  With a cautious toe, Lyle prodded the body that had fallen at his feet. The shape groaned and twitched. ‘The heavens seem to be prompt in answering my call today,’ he sighed. And bent down over the unconscious shape of Father Ignatius Caryway.

  CHAPTER 23

  Blade

  They put Ignatius on the smallest, dingiest spare bed Lyle had, in the dustiest, greyest part of the attic. Feng leant over him, and slapped him gently a couple of times round the face. The priest groaned, but didn’t move. His skin was bright red and unpleasantly hot to the touch, his face was a mass of bruises, and a number of his fingers looked bent at an odd angle. Lyle examined the bruises with the dispassion of a geologist examining a sample. ‘He’s been hit a few times by a very strong right-handed man with a fist like stone,’ he announced coldly. ‘He’s running a high fever, probably the result of too much running round in cold weather without suitable clothing.’

  Lyle thought, seemed to reach a conclusion, then disappeared from the room. A few seconds later, he reappeared, carrying a bowl of water with a thin layer of ice on its surface. He tapped the ice to break it and tipped the water over Ignatius.

  The man’s eyes flew open. The pupils were wide, and slightly out of focus. Blood vessels stood out, alarming and ugly, around the rims of his eyes, which swivelled in terror and confusion. He wore the drained, watery aspect of a man who’d looked his nightmare in the face and been swallowed whole. He saw Lyle and whimpered. His voice was barely above a whisper. ‘I am the vessel of the Lord thy God, I am the . . .’

  ‘I am on the edge of asking Feng Darin to shoot you,’ said Lyle. ‘Are you Ignatius Caryway?’

  The man nodded quickly. ‘I . . . I have . . . it is . . .’

  ‘Did you bring Sasso here?’

  ‘I am the vessel, I am the way, I am . . .’

  Lyle’s hand shot out so suddenly that even Feng looked surprised. He grabbed Ignatius by the ear like a disobedient puppy and twisted it sharply. ‘Mr Caryway,’ he hissed, ‘I am so close to committing an immoral act that I can practically feel my immortal soul counting its assets and preparing to pack up shop. Did you bring
Sasso here?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I was -’

  ‘You paid Captain Fabrio to collect Sasso from the island of Isalia?’

  ‘Yes, I . . .’

  ‘You arranged with the abbot to release Sasso, and leave him in a sealed stone coffin on the beach?’

  ‘Only one of the faith, a servant of the Lord, can communicate with Isalia. I am a servant of the Lord, I am a vessel of . . .’

  Lyle twisted his ear harder. Ignatius’s words drained away into a gurgle. ‘You stood by while he murdered Fabrio and Stanlaw?’

  For the first time, Ignatius’s eyes managed to find Lyle’s and stay. In the cold air and grey light his face was glistening unpleasantly with sweat. He smelt of disease and sickly convictions. ‘They were in the way, sacrifices to the cause . . .’

  ‘And what is the cause? Tell me. What are the maps about? Why did you bring him here?’

  For a second, Ignatius was silent, hands shaking, eyes fixed on Lyle’s, though not necessarily seeing what he looked at. Then his eyes narrowed, and his voice changed, ringing out with fervour. ‘This city . . .’ The words almost seemed to choke him, twist him round a sudden fit of coughing, which he forced his way through in a rush. ‘. . . is a slaughterhouse, a den of sin. Black, the fires of hell burn constantly in every house, every factory, on every porch. Smells of filth and mould and smoke and fire and refuse and despair and hunger and craving and desire and anger and hatred. The poor sleep next door to the rich, fifty to a bed in a house made of crumbling wood where the worms feast richer than the children who die in the mud of a cellar, and they hate, hate the man in the house next door who lies luxuriously pillowed in a cushioned bed. Throw every creature, every sinner and every saint together, and to survive in the black streets between the Church and the factory the good man must learn the ways of the bad, learn how to live the evil lives of the twisting alleys and the broken windows. The city makes you evil, makes its people part of the filth, until all that you know, all that the people of this place can see, is the dirt and the squalor in which they live, and that constitutes home. Hell that I was sent to change! The city makes the man, it is a force so powerful it cannot be denied.’

  He swivelled, grabbing Lyle’s wrist, trying to pull himself up. His voice dropped to a hiss. ‘Sasso will change your city, Lyle. If the city is clean and pure, the people will change; it is inevitable. I brought him here to destroy the old and make the new, a new city, a new place, a new people.’

  His strength failed him and he fell back, coughing, his face twisting in pain. Lyle stood, looking coldly down at him. ‘You were going to re-make the city? Using the old designs and Sasso’s power over stone; make a city that had never been?’

  Ignatius, too lost to answer, managed a nod.

  ‘What about Mrs Milner and Edgar? Did you stand by while they died?’ Lyle’s shout sent dust drifting down from the low rafters.

  The question, and Lyle’s rage, seemed to take Ignatius by surprise. ‘I don’t know them,’ he whispered. ‘I never sent anyone . . . no one . . .’

  Doubt flickered in Lyle’s eyes, but was quickly gone. ‘What about Lady Diane Lumire?’ he asked, quieter, hardly able to look at Ignatius for fear of his own anger. ‘What’s her part in this?’

  ‘Lumire?’ Ignatius almost spat the word. ‘A fool! A weakling! She serves the true faith, so she will not burn when you do, but she is virtuous only in much money and little perception! A servant of the Lord . . . and an unwitting one, as so many are.’

  ‘You used her?’

  A hesitation, then a short, almost defiant nod. Lyle ran his hands through his hair, across his eyes, and let out a long, calming breath. ‘And why have you come here now?’

  Panic flared in Ignatius’s eyes. His lips began to move, though only the faintest whisper came out. ‘I shall fear no evil . . .’

  Lyle leant forward, grabbed Ignatius’s ear again, and yanked on it sharply. ‘Enough! Tell me now, or I swear I’m going to develop such an interest in anatomy you’ll wish you’d been born clumsy in a butcher’s yard!’

  Ignatius’s hands shook, his eyes grew wild once more, a little bead of salty sweat ran down the side of his face. ‘Sasso sent me. He’s . . . he’s a devil. I thought . . . I could control him but I let him out and now he speaks of destroying and revenging and trembling and dying . . . and he talks of a woman called Selene, of a blade. I thought I could tame him, and now he’s the Devil, a creature of sin and darkness, a—’

  ‘Enough!’

  ‘A message . . . he has a message . . . in my coat . . .’

  Instantly Feng was digging through Ignatius’s coat, coming out a second later with a sheet of folded paper. Lyle took it, opened it carefully, sniffing it first and holding it up to the light as if afraid it might contain a small army, and read it slowly out loud, for Feng to hear.

  ‘“You used her blade to escape me, but I am the city and I am the stones. You will bring me the blade, alone, tonight on Westminster Bridge, and I will not shake the city to dust. If you doubt my power then . . .”’

  Lyle’s voice trailed off. He dropped the paper and was running out of the door, coat flapping behind him, before it even hit the ground.

  A voyage through the city, for as long as it will remain the city.

  Fires burn constantly in every house, every factory, on every porch, trying and failing to burn their way through the darkness of the thick green fog and the falling heavy snow that hisses and splutters in the fires, trying to extinguish them but not quite managing to kill the last, hellish red glow of the embers.

  In Lyle’s house, two children sleep, deep, peaceful sleep, and dream of nursery rhymes sung in a more innocent time, and not of stones that watch you as you pass, and whisper underfoot.

  And here comes the tremor: very, very slight, hardly audible except in the chinking of glasses and the gentle, sucking slosh of water trapped under the ice of puddles, trying to resonate in time to the land.

  Lyle burst through the door to Tess’s room, calling her name. She sat up blearily, blinking in the grey light, and mumbled, ‘It ain’t lunch already?’

  Lyle didn’t answer, but darted out of her room and into the room next to it, slamming the door back against the wall, calling out Thomas’s name, and recoiled sharply, hand in front of his eyes and arm across his mouth.

  The stone dust, picked up from a dozen masons’ yards and crumbling walls, and forming a mass so thick and seething it was practically solid and alive again, made a noise like bluebottles as it flew round the room in a grey cloud too dense to see through, stinging the eyes and choking the throat, drying up every drop of moisture in the air and stinging against the skin like a million needles.

  Lyle screamed out, ‘Thomas!’ and half-imagined through the horrific, deafening roar that he heard someone answer back, faintly, calling out his name in a dry, terrified voice that immediately disappeared into a suffocated cough. Feng tried to hold Lyle back, but was shaken off as Lyle threw his arms up in front of his face and dived blindly into the cloud. He navigated by guesswork and memory, eyes shut, until he stumbled into the bed, tripping over it.

  Thomas was curled up into a tiny ball, head buried against his knees, hands over his head. The skin of his hands and the back of his neck was red and raw, as if sandpaper had been dragged across them, and his clothes were torn from the abrasive dust. Lyle threw himself over the boy, cradling him in his arms as the storm knocked them this way and that, tearing at him with a million tiny nails. Dust filled his mouth even as he screamed, ‘I’ll do it! I’ll do whatever you want! Let him alone!’

  Still the storm raged, if anything harder, forming a veritable tornado that tried to pull Lyle’s hair out by the roots. ‘I’ll give you what you want!’ he screamed, almost unable to speak for the dust that burnt his throat. ‘Do you hear me? I’ll give you Selene’s blade!’

  And abruptly, the storm was over. Dust fell to the ground in a thick grey drift, with a little patter like the lightest drizzle when it f
irst bounces on a roof. It fell on Thomas and Lyle, turning them both grey from top to toe. Lyle sat back slowly, stunned and shaken. At the door, Tess and Feng stood and watched in silence.

  Thomas looked up into Lyle’s face, the picture of his own - grey with dust and too numb to assume any expression other than dumb shock. Thomas’s lips shook, as did his hands, but he tried to stand anyway, feet crunching in the dust as he put each one carefully down on the floor. He took a few uncertain steps; then his knees buckled and he twisted, grabbing at the bed. Lyle caught him under the arms and held him up, half-carried him to the door. Thomas buried his head in Lyle’s shoulder and - not because he must, not because he was going to all along, but because for the moment he was safe and unseen, and it was expected, and it was all right and not weak, as he had always been taught - he cried, in silence, and without moving, except for where the salt water tickled as it passed through the dust clinging to the end of his nose.

  Feng stared at Lyle as he emerged from the room. When he spoke, it was quickly, as if not sure that he should. ‘Horatio . . .’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘If you give him the blade . . .’

  ‘Not a word!’

  ‘You cannot give him Selene’s blade! If he gets power over that element, over the first element, the one the Tseiqin revered, then . . .’

  ‘Feng Darin,’ snapped Lyle, ‘If you have any respect and faith in me, then you’ll stop talking right now.’

  Feng hesitated, then closed his mouth and slowly folded his arms.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lyle. ‘Now, we have maybe twelve hours. Tess, Thomas, get your clothes. I’m putting you on the first train out of the city.’

  Tess folded her arms. ‘You ain’t.’