They were so dazzled by this and the odd fact that ice could be so hot and not boil that they only slowly saw what it was that they really did see, which was not ice at all, but the semblance of it.
‘Surely it’s a film, or the illusion of one!’ whispered Bohr to Ingrid.
‘And what is more,’ said Stort, ‘if we look there . . . yes . . . to the left . . . yes . . . Can you not see through the smoke, some kind of ashy green . . . ?’
‘And above it, my dear chap,’ cried Festoon, ‘I would say that looks like sky . . .’
‘But surely . . .’
‘There cannot be . . .’
But there were!
There were people on the frozen green pasture in the fire as it seemed, people near an icy river flowing, people blotted out by the wild returning blizzard and . . .
Bohr peered more closely.
What was it that loomed now out of the blizzard?
‘Is it a white horse?’ he asked. ‘And an aged rider . . . there . . . look!’
A face, a hunched form, a cry of despair which was surely just the fire wheezing and exploding; the blizzard blowing, which it felt as if it might very soon, all around them.
Stort stood up and backed away from the image and the fire that held it in its flames. Then he turned to see where the stavermen who were feeding the fire had come from and came from still.
‘Oh, look what they bring, my Lord Festoon, look what we burn!’ he cried in horror and despair.
They had been taking material from the ruins of Festoon’s official residence and what they had found, and Stort now recognized, were the last remaining strands and tatters of the painted panels from what had once been the Chamber of Seasons.
‘No!’ cried Stort. ‘Not that . . . put it back . . . back . . .’
It was too late.
Nothing was left, and they had made of ã Faroün’s fabled creation, lost and ruined in the debris of the official residence, no more than a brief conflagration by which to take tea and toast crumpets and make speculative conversation about the end of all things.
‘Yet what did we see while it burnt?’ said Stort, when he was a little recovered and back to being curious as ever, convinced that in what had been seen and was now finally burnt away there was a meaning or message he must try to understand.
‘We saw Winter,’ said Blut.
‘And we saw the Shield Maiden in old age,’ said Stort.
‘And we saw Waseley Hill, Stort, and the White Horse,’ added Barklice, ‘just as you saw it before.’
Stort shook his head, not yet convinced.
‘And I felt pain,’ he said, ‘here in my stomach, the pain of sickness and a loss, a loss in a blizzard greater than I could bear.’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Barklice, ‘this was most unfortunate. If only we had known, we could have kept those scraps of the Winter painting and perhaps used them to help us find a way onward from here.’
Again the scrivener shook his head.
‘No, dear Barklice, it was necessary. We saw what we needed to see, just as that great fraudster and genius ã Faroün, who created these images, no doubt intended. So, what did you see, Lord Festoon?’
‘A blizzard.’
‘And you, my Lord Emperor Blut?’
‘Ice, grass, people trekking.’
‘And you?’ asked Stort, turning to Pike.
‘A chase, a killer, someone there who . . . who . . .’
‘Bohr?’
‘An icy death I think.’
‘And you, youngish madam?’
Ingrid replied, her voice breaking, ‘I saw love found and lost.’
Silence then, the fire a little less than it had been.
‘I saw,’ said Jack, who had joined the company then, ‘a henge, a grey, cold henge of what seemed to be stone.’
‘Stonehenge?’ suggested one of them.
‘Maybe,’ said Jack.
‘I saw it too,’ said Katherine.
Silence again, the fire dying now.
‘And you, Barklice, what did you see?’ asked Jack.
The verderer stood up and turned about, restless and unhappy.
‘I saw something I did not understand. I tried to but I couldn’t. It . . . it shone like the flames, it rose like the flames, it was ice perhaps, just ice. Ice and fire. Maybe that’s what I saw but . . . I . . . don’t . . . know.’
He looked so unhappy and frustrated not to be able to work out what he had seen that he turned away from them and paced about in the shadows beyond the circle of flame.
‘Well, then,’ said Stort very confidently, ‘we have all seen what we needed to see, or were most able to see. As for myself, I saw illusion. I saw reflection. I saw no more than what the Mirror shows. I saw an ending and a beginning, which may be found in all these things we saw, separately and together.’
He paused, thinking.
‘And I saw an answer, or the beginnings of one, to that great question we asked of Doctor Bohr: is the End of Days reversible?’
Again he paused and Jack, always impatient with Stort’s convolutions and stoppages, said, ‘Well? What is the answer?’
They laughed sympathetically, for how could there be an answer to such a conundrum?’
But Stort did not laugh, he rarely did.
‘Yes, Jack, there is a way, I believe there is. I felt it, as surely as I feel that impossible love for Judith the Shield Maiden, right here in my gut where I felt that pain. In that answer lies another to a different question: will we find the gem of Winter? Well then, well then . . . I believe we will! It is simply a matter of replacing one reflection with another!
‘Meaning?’ said the ever-persistent Jack.
‘Yes, meaning?’ challenged Katherine.
‘I have no idea,’ said Stort, exasperated. ‘You always want specifics and they rarely exist until they’re really needed. Now, I hate to break our party up, but I do believe we are all imminently expected at a Bilgesnipe spousal!’
Indeed, they were, consisting as they did of as fine a company of the great and the good of Brum as ever assembled in the Main Square, with new friends thrown in for good measure and stavermen all about, keeping an eye on things as Mister Pike had very carefully instructed.
Off they began to go, the warmth of the fire still within them, as they trekked through the cold, dark, broken streets down towards Deritend and from there into Digbeth.
‘Do you know where we are going?’ asked Erich Bohr and Ingrid.
‘To the Muggy Duck,’ they all replied.
But Jack stayed back for a moment, keeping Katherine with him.
‘Pike is not going with the crowd,’ he said quietly, pointing to where the Chief Staverman was talking with people whose faces he could not see, in the shadows of the square. There’s something going on and I intend to find out what it is.’
She nodded.
‘I noticed that too. It may be nothing much but we can’t both not make an appearance at the start of Arnold’s spousal. One of us needs to make an excuse for the other and you are the Stavemeister . . .’
Reluctantly it was agreed that she would go on to the wedding while he stayed behind to see if he could find out what else might be going on.
‘I don’t pretend I like it, Jack. Brum’s not a place to stay in for very long just now. If only Stort could work out what we should do and where we should go to find the gem.’
Katherine had changed in recent weeks and months. Their journeying, their violent confrontation with both Fyrd and humans, her learning how to use a crossbow, which she now carried on her belt, had turned her into a fighter. She was no good with a stave, never had been, but in all else where an enemy or difficult situation was concerned she was cool, calm and decisive.
They embraced fiercely neither wanting to let the other go.
‘Jack,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve not felt good about things since Pendower Beach. We got sucked into doing things the way humans do . . .’
He nodded and
they kissed again, feeling bleak and unhappy, not with each other but with the times.
‘Didn’t Sinistral tell us once that taking a life is the thin end of the wedge? It may be justified or seem so but it eats into you . . .’
‘It’s eaten into me and yet I know I’d kill to save your life.’
‘Me too, the same,’ he said. ‘But maybe we should have walked away at Pendower . . .’
‘If we had we might have felt just as bad. Whatever happens now, take care, my love,’ she said finally, their fingers entwined and lingering.
Then she was gone as Jack set off to talk with Pike.
37
CIVIC PRIDE
When Jack caught up with Mister Pike he was involved in a discussion with the Lords Blut and Festoon which appeared to be turning into an argument. The normally calm Pike looked flushed; the usually cheerful Festoon was frowning. As for Blut, a master of negotiation and compromise, his face was set and his arms folded across his chest.
For a moment Jack felt inclined to retreat and choose his moment better. But, as Katherine had said, he was Stavemeister of Brum, and in a city for which time seemed to be running out, there might never be a better moment.
‘So . . . what’s going on?’ he said coolly.
They turned to him irritably.
‘The situation’s under control, Jack,’ said Pike tersely.
‘Well! I am very glad to hear that!’ he responded. ‘You three were having a conversation which is obviously important; Marshal Brunte is nowhere to be seen, and there are a lot of stavermen posted about the place who look to me as if they are on high alert . . . Added to all of that . . .’
He brought his great stave down on the cobbles in front of him, stern and straight.
‘Added to that, gentlemen, my stave is feeling restive and troubled.’
The truth was that the role of the Stavemeister was an uncertain and undefined one. Under Chief Librarian Master Brief, its previous incumbent, it had been largely ceremonial, though once or twice he had felt it necessary to wield his ancient stave of office for real.
After Brief’s death Jack had taken over the position and worked well with the city elders and officers on assignments of great importance which required individual courage and initiative. From these Jack had emerged, along with the fabled and magical stave that went with the office, as one of the greatest fighters in Brum – and perhaps outside it too.
‘This great and ancient stave, which I verily believe was once Beornamund’s own,’ Brief had once told him, ‘is loyal only to the Stavemeister and reflects in its actions and powers what he is, what he can be and what he dares become.’
As he stood there that evening Jack found himself reflecting on what service he might perform as Stavemeister that was most valuable to Brum. The answer was suddenly very clear.
They stared at him in silence, awed by the glints and silvery shadows, ominous and forbidding, that emanated from the carvings of his stave.
‘Right now,’ he declared, ‘the first and most important task of my office is to ensure the safety of Bedwyn Stort and those around him, who, together, might help him find the gem of Winter. Which being so, I demand to know what it is that troubles you all.’
Festoon broke the silence.
‘He’s right, Pike, he needs to know, even if there’s nothing more to be done by any of us just now.’
‘What do I need to know?’ said Jack very firmly.
Pike signalled them all to move into the shadows and to his stavermen to keep special watch. Two stavermen lingered behind the four, another in front.
‘Some days ago,’ began Pike, ‘my stavermen discovered four humans hiding at the north end of Park Street Gardens, which is . . .’
‘Not very far from where we now stand,’ said Jack.
‘Exactly. They were in rainwater sewers near Masshouse Lane and had established themselves very cleverly. They were well equipped and, as humans go, quite skilled in hyddening.’
‘But not so skilled that your people were unable to find them?’
‘They are humans,’ said Pike dismissively, ‘and therefore made mistakes. They gave themselves away by urinating into the water that flows south-westward from that point and which we monitor. We tracked them back to where they were and observed them. They also had some fearsome-looking weapons . . .’
‘Machine pistols, explosives . . . ?’ murmured Jack.
‘That sort of thing. They also had cameras and listening equipment which they had begun to install in Old and New Brum. Again, they did it cleverly. In fact, we had found some of those earlier and first thought they were left behind two months ago after the period of civil strife when human fought human and then Fyrd as well and Brum was largely destroyed. But when new equipment appeared we realized that some humans were still here. As I say, it did not take long to find them. We thought it sensible to make ourselves obvious and mislead them into thinking we had no idea they were here.’
‘And why do you think they were?’
‘It seemed plain enough they wanted to observe us and perhaps even attack us, but . . .’
‘Did you see any nets or suchlike?’
Pike grimaced.
‘We not only saw them, two of our people were caught in them . . . but more of that in a moment. Marshal Brunte and I brought the matter to the attention of the Emperor here and my Lord Festoon. We pointed out, that, in addition to the cameras, they were beginning to distribute and plant explosive devices of the devastating kind we saw here in November, and we felt they should be stopped. The decision was taken, but only after a difficult debate . . .’ Pike hesitated.
‘It was decided that we should kill them,’ said Niklas Blut, his spectacles flashing. ‘Once you let humans through the door they do not go back out of it. Their nature is destructive. It is what they do. We felt it best to eliminate them while we could for Brum’s sake. We . . .’
Festoon continued, making clear the decision was a shared one: ‘We felt that, if they were allowed to spread explosives in Brum, even if we found most of them, we would never be sure there weren’t more we had missed. Have you seen the effects of explosives on hydden, Jack?’
‘No.’
‘Well we have; some days ago we saw what happened when the humans deployed such weapons on the Fyrd. That was the reason they fled Brum so soon after taking it over. Please, carry on, Pike.’
Jack did not like the sound of this at all. It meant that the city he and the others had returned to with such difficulty was effectively still under siege. Worse, he had not been fully briefed, with the result that Katherine and Stort were now in personal danger.
‘We therefore attacked the four humans and inflicted damage on them in our legitimate defence, some of it brutal,’ said Pike. ‘That was not so difficult. Surprise is everything. But . . . it is difficult to live with the kind of carnage that human weapons can inflict. Hard to get out of one’s mind the people you kill, whether human or not.’
Jack nodded. ‘Katherine and I know the truth of that. We killed humans to save life on Pendower Beach and we have not recovered either. I doubt we ever will. Killing others may be justified in self-defence or in defence of others, but even that I begin to doubt . . . So, you killed some but not all of them?’
‘How did you know that?’ asked Pike.
‘Because you’re still looking over your collective shoulders. What went wrong? What happened?’
‘We made a mistake, a very serious one: we underestimated them,’ continued Pike, his face now very grim. ‘The decision having been made, I led seven stavermen in to kill the four humans. One went down immediately but the others fought back with such overwhelming fire power that we lost three of our force in moments.’
‘Three?’ repeated Jack, appalled.
Pike looked grimmer still.
‘We retreated momentarily and then came in from a different angle, a tactic that worked well against the Fyrd. It worked again. We got two more before the remaining
one brought his weapon to bear on us. And then . . . disaster. I knew we had lost three but only as we retreated did I see we had lost one more, shot from behind our position . . .’
‘You mean there was a fifth human?’
Pike nodded.
‘We had missed him completely and nor did we see him then at all. Our retreat was difficult and I lost two more, by which time I was by myself and outnumbered, with the last one of the four we attacked still firing, though wounded, and the one I could not locate. It was a rout. I was lucky to get out alive and in some ways I wish . . .’
Jack raised a hand. There were some things best left unsaid.
Pike’s face and eyes expressed his terrible despair and guilt. It was obvious that he wished he had been one of those killed.
‘What weapons did you have?’
‘My stave, my crossbow, my dirk . . .’
‘Against human weapons,’ said Jack softly, ‘the outcome is no surprise.’
‘It was a decision born of ignorance.’
‘You said two of your stavermen had been netted,’ observed Jack.
‘They were. We got to them before the humans did and were able to set them free.’
‘And the remaining humans?’
‘The one we wounded has died today. The one we never saw we think we may have wounded too and have been following a blood trail in and around the sidings and footings of Moor Street Station.’
A staverman emerged from the darkness and whispered in Pike’s ear. He asked a question in a low voice, got the answer and then turned to them.