Imajica

  Her escape plan was simple. She forced the lock on her bedroom door with a knife unreturned after one of her meals—it wasn’t the lock that kept her from straying, it was Dowd’s warning that the mites which had murdered Clara were ready to claim her if she attempted to leave—and slipped out onto the landing. She’d deliberately waited until Oscar was home before she made the attempt, believing, perhaps naïvely, that despite his withdrawal of affection he’d protect her from Dowd if her life was threatened. She was sorely tempted to seek him out there and then. But perhaps it would be easier to treat with him when she was away from the house and felt more like a mistress of her own destiny. If, once she was safely away from the house, he chose to have no further contact with her, then her fear that Dowd had soured his feelings towards her permanently would be confirmed, and she would have to look for another way to get to Yzordderrex.

  She made her way down the stairs with the utmost caution and, hearing voices at the front of the house, decided to make her exit through the kitchen. The lights were burning everywhere, as usual. The kitchen was deserted. She crossed quickly to the door, which was bolted top and bottom, crouching to slide the lower bolt aside.

  As she stood up Dowd said, “You won’t get out that way.”

  She turned to see him standing at the kitchen table, bearing a tray of supper dishes. His laden condition gave her hope that she might yet outmaneuver him, and she made a dash for the hallway. But he was faster than she’d anticipated, setting down his burden and moving to stop her so quickly she had to retreat again, her hand catching one of the glasses on the table. It fell, smashing musically.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” he said, with what seemed to be genuine distress. He crossed to the shards and bent down to gather them up. “That glass had been in the family for generations. I’d have thought you’d have had some fellow feeling for it.”

  Though she was in no temper to talk about broken glasses, she replied nevertheless, knowing her only hope lay in alerting Godolphin to her presence.

  “Why should I give a damn about a glass?” she said.

  Dowd picked up a piece of the bowl, holding it to the light.

  “You’ve got so much in common, lovey,” he said. “Both made in ignorance of yourselves. Beautiful, but fragile.” He stood up. “You’ve always been beautiful. Fashions come and go, but Judith is always beautiful.”

  “You don’t know a damn thing about me,” she said.

  He put the shards on the table beside the rest of the dirty plates and cutlery. “Oh, but I do,” he said. “We’re more alike than you realize.”

  He’d kept a glittering fragment back, and as he spoke he put it to his wrist. She only just had time to register what he was about to do before he cut into his own flesh. She looked away, but then—hearing the piece of glass dropped among the litter—glanced back. The wound gaped, but there was no blood forthcoming, just an ooze of brackish sap. Nor was the expression on Dowd’s face pained. It was simply intent.

  “You have a piffling recall of the past,” he said; “I have too much. You have heat; I have none. You’re in love; I’ve never understood the word. But Judith: we are the same. Both slaves.”

  She looked from his face to the cut to his face to the cut to his face, and with every move of her pupils her panic increased. She didn’t want to hear any more from him. She despised him. She closed her eyes and conjured him at the voider’s pyre, and in the shadow of the tower, crawling with mites, but however many horrors she put between them his words won through. She’d given up attempting to solve the puzzle of herself a long time ago, but here he was, spilling pieces she couldn’t help but pick up.

  “Who are you?” she said to him.

  “More to the point, who are you?”

  “We’re not the same,” she said. “Not even a little. I bleed. You don’t. I’m human. You’re not.”

  “But is it your blood you bleed?” he said. “Ask yourself that.”

  “It comes out of my veins. Of course it’s mine.”

  “Then who are you?” he said.

  The inquiry was made without overt malice, but she didn’t doubt its subversive purpose. Somehow Dowd knew she was forgetful of her past and was pricking her to a confession.

  “I know what I’m not,” she said, earning herself the time to invent an answer. “I’m not a glass. I’m not fragile or ignorant. And I’m not—”

  What was the other quality he’d mentioned besides beauty and fragility? He’d been stopping to pick up the pieces of broken glass, and he described her some way or other.

  “You’re not what?” he said, watching her wrestle with her own reluctance to seize the memory.

  She pictured him crossing the kitchen. Now look what you’ve done, he’d said. Then he’d stooped (she saw him do so, in her mind’s eye) and as he’d begun to pick up the pieces, the words had come to his lips. And now to her memory too.

  “That glass had been in the family for generations,” he’d said. “I’d have thought you’d have had some fellow feeling for it.”

  “No,” she said aloud, shaking her head to keep the sense of this from congealing there. But the motion only shook up other memories: of her trip to the estate with Charlie, when that pleasurable sense of belonging had suffused her and voices had called her sweet names from the past; of meeting Oscar on the threshold of the Retreat and knowing instantly she belonged at his side, without question, or care to question; of the portrait above Oscar’s bed, gazing down on the bed with such a possessive stare he had turned off the light before they made love.

  As these thoughts came, the shaking of her head grew wilder, the motion possessing her like a fit. Tears spat from her eyes. Her hands went out for help even as the power to request it went from her throat. Through a blur of motion she was just able to see Dowd standing beside the table, his hand covering his wounded wrist, watching her impassively. She turned from him, terrified that she’d choke on her tongue or break her head open if she fell, and knowing he’d do nothing to help her. She wanted to cry out for Oscar, but all that came was a wretched gargling sound. She stumbled forward, her head still thrashing, and as she did so saw Oscar in the hallway, coming towards her. She pitched her arms in his direction and felt his hands upon her, to pull her up out of her collapse. He failed.

  II

  He was beside her when she woke. She wasn’t lying in the narrow bed she’d been consigned to for the last few nights but in the wide four-poster in Oscar’s room, the bed she’d come to think of as theirs. It wasn’t, of course. Its true owner was the man whose image in oils had come back to her in the throes of her fit: the Mad Lord Godolphin, hanging above the pillows on which she lay and sitting beside her in a later variation, caressing her hand and telling her how much he loved her. As soon as she came to consciousness and felt his touch, she withdrew from it.

  “I’m . . . not a pet,” she struggled to say. “You can’t just . . . stroke me when . . . it suits you.”

  He looked appalled. “I apologize unconditionally,” he said in his gravest manner. “I have no excuse. I let the Society’s business take precedence over understanding you and caring for you. That was unforgivable. Then Dowd, of course, whispering in my ear . . . Was he very cruel?”

  “You’re the one who’s been cruel.”

  “I’ve done nothing intentionally. Please believe that, at least.”

  “You’ve lied to me over and over again,” she said, struggling to sit up in bed. “You know things about me that I don’t. Why didn’t you share them with me? I’m not a child.”

  “You’ve just had a fit,” Oscar said. “Have you ever had a fit before?”

  “No.”

  “Some things are better left alone, you see.”

  “Too late,” she said. “I’ve had my fit, and I survived it. I’m ready to hear the secret, whatever it is.” She glanced up at Joshua. “It’s something to do with him, isn’t it? He’s got a hold on you.”

  “Not on me—”

/>   “You liar! You liar!” she said, throwing the sheets aside and getting onto her knees, so that she was face to face with the deceiver. “Why do you tell me you love me one moment and lie to me the next? Why don’t you trust me?”

  “I’ve told you more than I’ve ever told anybody. But then I find you’ve plotted against the Society.”

  “I’ve done more than plot,” she said, thinking of her journey into the cellars of the tower.

  Once again, she teetered on the edge of telling him what she’d seen, but Clara’s advice was there to keep her from falling. You can’t save Celestine and keep his affections, she’d said, you’re digging at the foundations of his family and his faith. It was true. She understood that more clearly than ever. And if she told him all she knew, pleasurable as that unburdening would be, could she be absolutely certain that he wouldn’t cleave to his history, at the last, and use what he knew against her? What would Clara’s death and Celestine’s suffering have been worth then? She was now their only agent in the living world, and she had no right to gamble with their sacrifices.

  “What have you done,” Oscar said, “besides plot? What have you done?”

  “You haven’t been honest with me,” she replied. “Why should I tell you anything?”

  “Because I can still take you to Yzordderrex,” he said.

  “Bribes now?”

  “Don’t you want to go any longer?”

  “I want to know the truth about myself more.”

  He looked faintly saddened by this. “Ah.” He sighed. “I’ve been lying for so long I’m not sure I’d know the truth if I tripped over it. Except . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “What we felt for each other,” he murmured, “at least, what I feel for you . . . that was true, wasn’t it?”

  “It can’t be much,” Jude said. “You locked me away. You left me to Dowd—”

  “I’ve already explained—”

  “Yes, you were distracted. You had other business. So you forgot me.”

  “No,” he protested, “I never forgot. Never, I swear.”

  “What then?”

  “I was afraid.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of everything. You, Dowd, the Society. I started to see plots everywhere. Suddenly the idea of your being in my bed seemed too much of a risk. I was afraid you’d smother me, or—”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? How can I be sure who you belong to?”

  “I belong to myself.”

  He shook his head, his gaze going from her face up to the painting of Joshua Godolphin that hung above the bed.

  “How can you know that?” he said. “How can you be certain that what you feel for me comes from your heart?”

  “What does it matter where it comes from? It’s there. Look at me.”

  He refused her demand, his eyes still fixed on the Mad Lord.

  “He’s dead,” she said.

  “But his legacy—”

  “Fuck his legacy!” she said, and suddenly got to her feet, taking hold of the portrait by its heavy, gilded frame and wrenching it from the wall.

  Oscar rose to protest, but her vehemence carried the day. The picture came from its hooks with a single pull, and she summarily pitched it across the room. Then she dropped back onto the bed in front of Oscar.

  “He’s dead and gone,” she said. “He can’t judge us. He can’t control us. Whatever it is we feel for each other—and I don’t pretend to know what it is—it’s ours.” She put her hands to his face, her fingers woven with his beard. “Let go of the fears,” she said. “Take hold of me instead.”

  He put his arms around her.

  “You’re going to take me to Yzordderrex, Oscar. Not in a week’s time, not in a few days: tomorrow. I want to go tomorrow. Or else”—her hands dropped from his face—“let me go now. Out of here. Out of your life. I won’t be your prisoner, Oscar. Maybe his mistresses put up with that, but I won’t. I’ll kill myself before I’ll let you lock me up again.”

  She said all of this dry-eyed. Simple sentiments, simply put. He took hold of her hands and raised them to his cheeks again, as if inviting her to possess him. His face was full of tiny creases she’d not seen before, and they were wet with tears.

  “We’ll go,” he said.

  III

  There was a balmy rain falling as they left London the next day, but by the time they’d reached the estate the sun was breaking through, and the parkland gleamed around them as they entered. They didn’t make any detours to the house but headed straight to the copse that concealed the Retreat. There was a breeze in the branches, and they flickered with light leaves. The smell of life was everywhere, stirring her blood for the journey ahead.

  Oscar had advised her to dress with an eye to practicality and warmth. The city, he said, was subject to rapid and radical shifts in temperature, depending on the direction of the wind. If it came off the desert, the heat in the streets could bake the flesh like unleavened bread. And if it swung and came off the ocean, it brought marrow-chilling fogs and sudden frosts. None of this daunted her, of course. She was ready for this adventure as for no other in her life.

  “I know I’ve gone on endlessly about how dangerous the city’s become,” Oscar said as they ducked beneath the low-slung branches, “and you’re tired of hearing about it, but this isn’t a civilized city, Judith. About the only man I trust there is Peccable. If for any reason we were to be separated—or if anything were to happen to me—you can rely upon him for help.”

  “I understand.”

  Oscar stopped to admire the pretty scene ahead, dappled sunlight falling on the pale walls and dome of the Retreat. “You know, I used only to come here at night,” he said. “I thought that was the sacred time, when magic had the strongest hold. But it’s not true. Midnight Mass and moonlight is fine, but miracles are here at noon as well; just as strong, just as strange.”

  He looked up at the canopy of trees.

  “Sometimes you have to go away from the world to see the world,” he said. “I went to Yzordderrex a few years back and stayed—oh, I don’t know, two months, maybe two and a half, and when I came back to the Fifth I saw it like a child. I swear, like a child. This trip won’t just show you other Dominions. If we get back safe and sound—”

  “We will.”

  “Such faith. If we do, this world will be different, too. Everything changes after this, because you’ll be changed.”

  “So be it,” she said.

  She took hold of his hand, and they started towards the Retreat. Something made her uneasy, however. Not his words—his talk of change had only excited her—but the hush between them, perhaps, which was suddenly deep.

  “Is there something wrong?” he said, feeling her grip tighten.

  “The silence. . . .”

  “There’s always an odd atmosphere here. I’ve felt it before. A lot of fine souls died here, of course.”

  “At the Reconciliation?”

  “You know about that, do you?”

  “From Clara. It was two hundred years ago this midsummer, she said. Perhaps the spirits are coming back to see if someone’s going to try again.”

  He stopped, tugging on her arm. “Don’t talk about it, even in jest. Please. There’ll be no Reconciliation, this summer or any other. The Maestros are dead. The whole thing’s—”

  “All right,” she said. “Calm down. I won’t mention it again.”

  “After this summer it’ll be academic anyway,” he said, with a feigned lightness, “at least for another couple of centuries. I’ll be dead and buried long before this hoopla starts again. I’ve got my plot, you know? I chose it with Peccable. It’s on the edge of the desert, with a fine view of Yzordderrex.”

  His nervous babble concealed the quiet until they reached the door; then he let it drop. She was glad he was silent. The place deserved reverence. Standing at the step, it wasn’t difficult to believe phantoms gathered here, the dead of centuries past mingling
with those she’d last seen living on this very spot: Charlie for one, of course, coaxing her inside, telling her with a smile that the place was nothing special, just stone; and the voiders too, one burned, one skinned, both haunting the threshold.

  “Unless you see any just impediment,” Oscar said, “I think we should do this.”

  He led her inside, to the middle of the mosaic.

  “When the time comes,” he said. “We have to hold on to each other. Even if you think there’s nothing to hold on to, there is; it’s just changed for a time. I don’t want to lose you between here and there. The In Ovo’s no place to go wandering.”

  “You won’t lose me,” she said.

  He went down on his haunches and dug into the mosaic, pulling from the pattern a dozen or so pieces of pyramidal stone the size of two fists, which had been so designed as to be virtually invisible when set in their places.

  “I don’t fully understand the mechanisms that carry us over,” he said as he worked. “I’m not sure anybody does completely. But according to Peccable there’s a sort of common language into which anybody can be translated. And all the processes of magic involve this translation.”

  He was laying the stones around the edge of the circle as he spoke, the arrangement seemingly arbitrary.