Nightingale's Lament

  “Few of us are, boy.” Pew got to his feet and moved unerringly towards the shelves that held his stock. Pew might be blind, but he didn’t let it slow him down. He pottered back and forth along the wall, running his hands over the various objects, searching for something. I just hoped it wasn’t a knife. Or a scalpel. I could hear him muttering under his breath.

  “Wolfsbane, crows’ feet, holy water, mandrake root, silver knives, silver bullets, wooden stakes … could have sworn I still had some garlic … dowsing rods, pickled penis, dowsing rod made from a pickled penis, miller medallions … Ah!”

  Pew turned back to me, triumphantly holding up a small bottle of pale blue liquid. And then he stopped, his mouth twisted, and his other hand fell to the rosary of human fingerbones hanging from his belt. “How has it come to this? You, alone and helpless in my home, in my power … I should kill you, damnation’s child. Bane of all the chosen…”

  “I didn’t get to choose my parents,” I said. “And everyone said my father was a good man, in his day.”

  “Oh, he was,” Pew said unexpectedly. “Never worked with him myself, but I’ve heard the stories.”

  “Did you ever meet my mother?”

  “No,” said Pew. “But I have seen the auguries taken shortly after your birth. I wasn’t always blind, boy. I gave up my eyes in return for knowledge, and much good it’s done me. You will be the death of us all, John. But my foolish conscience won’t let me kill you in cold blood. Not when you come of your own free will, begging my help. It wouldn’t be … honourable.”

  He shook his great head slowly, came forward, and stopped just short of the table. He placed the phial of blue liquid on the table before me. I considered it, as he shuffled back to his chair. There was no identifying label on the phial, nothing to tell whether it was a cure or a poison or something else entirely. Pew collected all kinds of things on his travels.

  “Hard times are coming,” he said suddenly, as he sat down again. “The Nightside is very old, but it is not forever.”

  “You’ve been saying that for years, Pew.”

  “And it’s still true! I know things. I See more without my eyes than I ever did with them. But the further ahead I look, the more unclear things become. By saving you here today, I could be damning every other soul in the Nightside.”

  “No-one’s that important,” I said. “And especially not me. What’s in the phial, Pew?”

  He snorted. “Something that will taste quite appalling, but should heal all your injuries. Knock it back in one, and you can have a nice sweetie afterwards. But magic has its price, John, it always does. Drink that, and you’ll sleep for twenty-four hours. And when you wake up, all your injuries will be gone, but you’ll be a month older. The price you pay for such accelerated healing will be a life one month shorter than it would otherwise have been. Are you ready to give that up, just to get well in a hurry?”

  “I have to,” I said. “I’m in the middle of a case, and I think someone needs my help now, rather than later. And who knows, maybe I’ll find a way to get the lost month back again. Stranger things have happened, in the Nightside.” I paused and looked at Pew. “You didn’t have to help me. Thank you.”

  “Having a conscience can be a real bastard sometimes,” said Pew solemnly.

  I unscrewed the rusted metal cap on the phial and sniffed the thick blue liquid within. It smelled of violets, a sweet smell to cover something fouler. I tossed down the oily liquid in one and just had time to react to the truly awful taste before everything went black. I woke up lying on my back on the table. My first feeling was relief. Although I’d tried hard to sound confident, there was a real chance Pew might have decided to finish me off while he had the chance. He’d tried often enough in the past. I sat up slowly. I felt stiff, but there was no pain anywhere. Pew had taken off my trench coat and folded it up to make a pillow for my head. I swung my legs down over the side of the table and stretched slowly. I felt good. I felt fine. No pain, no fever, and even the taste of blood was gone from my mouth. I put my hand to my face and was startled to encounter a beard. A month of my life had flown by while I slept… I got to my feet, went over to the wall shelves, and scrabbled among Pew’s stock until I came up with a hand mirror. My reflection was a surprise, if not a shock. I had a heavy ragged beard, already showing touches of grey, and my hair was long and straggling. I looked … wild, uncivilised, intimidating. I didn’t like the new look. I didn’t like to think I could look like that. Like someone Pew would have a right to hunt down and kill.

  “Vanity, vanity,” said Pew, entering the room. “I knew that would be the first thing you’d do. Put the mirror back. They’re very expensive.”

  I held on to it. “I look a mess!”

  “You just be grateful I remembered to dust you once in a while.”

  “Have you got a razor, Pew? This beard has to go. It’s got grey in it. It makes me look my age, and I can’t have that.”

  Pew grinned nastily. “I have a straight razor. Want me to shave you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t trust anyone that close to my throat with a sharp blade.”

  He chuckled and handed me a pearl-handled straight razor. One dry shave later, with the help of the hand mirror, and I looked like myself again. It wasn’t a very good or even a very close shave, but I got tired of nicking myself. I handed back the razor, then did a few stretches and knee bends. I felt fit to take on the world again. Pew sat on his chair like a statue, ignoring me.

  “Once you leave here,” he said suddenly, “you’re fair game again.”

  “Of course, Pew. You wouldn’t want people to think you were getting soft.”

  “I will kill you one day, boy. The mark of the beast is upon your brow. I can See it.”

  “You know,” I said thoughtfully, changing the subject, “I could use one last piece of help…”

  “God save us all, haven’t I done enough? Out, out, before you ruin my reputation completely!”

  “I need a disguise,” I said firmly, not moving. “I have to get back on my case, and I can’t afford to be recognised. Come on, you must have something simple and temporary you can let me have…”

  Pew sniffed resignedly. “Let this be a lesson to me. Never help the stranger upon his way, because he’ll only take advantage, the bastard. Where is it you have to go next?”

  “A nightclub called Caliban’s Cavern.”

  “I know it. A den of iniquity, and the bar prices are an outrage. I’d better make you a Goth. There are so many of the grubby little heathens around that place, one more shouldn’t be noticed. I’ll put a seeming on you, a simple overlay illusion. It won’t last more than a couple of hours, and it certainly won’t fool anyone with the Sight…” He was pottering along the shelves again, picking things up and putting them down until finally he came up with an Australian pointing bone. He jabbed it twice in my direction, said something short and aboriginal, and put the bone back on the shelf again.

  “Is that it?” I said.

  Pew shrugged. “Well, you can have all the chanting and gesturing if you want, but I usually save that for the paying customers. It’s really nothing more than window dressing. When you get right down to it, magic’s never anything more than power and intent, no matter what the source. Look in the mirror.”

  I did so, and again someone else looked back at me. My face was entirely hidden under a series of swirling black tattoos, thick interlocking lines that made up a series of designs of ancient Maori origin. Along with the shaggy hair, the new look made me completely unrecognisable.

  “You’ll need another coat, too,” said Pew. “Your trench coat’s a mess.” He held up a battered black leather jacket with God Give Me Strength spelled out on the back with steel studs. “You can have this instead.”

  I tried on the jacket. It was a bit on the large side, but where I was going they wouldn’t care. I made my good-byes to Pew, and the parlour door opened before me, revealing a familiar blackness. I walked
into the dark, and immediately I was back in Uptown again, only a few minutes’ walk from Caliban’s Cavern. I heard the door close firmly behind me and knew it would be gone before I could turn to look. I smiled. Pew probably thought he’d put one over on me, by keeping my trench coat. A personal possession like that, liberally stained with my own blood, would make a marvelous targeting device for all kinds of magic. Certainly Pew could use it to send all kinds of nastiness my way. Which was why I’d taken out a little insurance long ago, in the form of a built-in destructive spell for the trench coat. Once I was more than an agreed distance away, the coat would automatically go up in flames. As Pew should be finding out, right about now.

  Of course, I’d been careful to transfer all my useful items from the coat to my nice new jacket before I left.

  Pew was good, but I was better.

  By the time I got back to Caliban’s Cavern, the queue was already forming for Rossignol’s next set. I’d never seen so many Goths in one place. All dark clothes and brooding faces, like a gathering of small thunderclouds. They were all talking nineteen to the dozen, filling the night with a clamour of anticipation and impatience. Every now and again someone would start chanting Rossignol’s name, and a dozen others would take it up until it died away naturally.

  Ticket touts swaggered up and down beside the queue, fighting each other to be the first to target latecomers, offering scalped tickets at outrageous prices. There was no shortage of takers. The growing crowd wasn’t just Goths. There were a number of celebrities, complete with their own entourages and hangers-on. You could always recognise celebrities from the way their heads swivelled restlessly back and forth, on the lookout for photographers. After all, what was the point of being somewhere fashionable if you weren’t seen being there?

  The queue stretched all the way down the block, but I didn’t let that bother me. I just walked to the very front and took up a position there like I had every right to be there. Nobody bothered me. You’d be amazed what you can get away with if you just exude confidence and glare ferociously at anyone who even looks like questioning your presence. One of the ticket touts was rude enough to make sneering comments about my tattoos, though, so I deliberately bumped into him and pickpocketed one of his best tickets. I like to think of myself sometimes as a karma mechanic.

  Caliban’s Cavern finally opened its doors, and the queue surged forward. The Cavendishes had hired a major security franchise, Hell’s Neanderthals, to man the door and police the crowd, but even they were having trouble handling the pressure of so many determined Rossignol fans. They pressed constantly forward, shouting and jostling, and the security Neanderthals quickly realised that this was the kind of crowd that could turn into an angry mob if its progress was thwarted. They were there to see Rossignol, and no-one was going to get in their way. So, the Hell’s Neanderthals settled for grabbing tickets and waving people through. I would have given them strict orders to frisk everyone for weapons and the like, but it was clear any attempt to slow the fans down now would have risked provoking a riot. The fans were close to their goal, their heroine, and they were hungry.

  Inside the club, all the tables and chairs had been taken out to make one great open space before the raised stage at the far end of the room. The crowd poured into it, gabbling excitedly, and quickly filled all the space available, packing the club from wall to wall. I was swept along and finally ended up right in front of the stage, with elbows digging into my sides, and someone’s hot breath panting excitedly on the back of my neck. The club was already overpoweringly hot and sweaty, and I looked longingly across at the bar, with its extra staff, but it would have taken me ages to fight my way through the tightly packed crowd. No-one else seemed interested in the bar. All the crowd cared about was Rossignol. Their diva of the dark.

  There were far too many people in the club, packed in like cattle in their stalls. It didn’t surprise me. The Cavendishes hadn’t struck me as the type to care about things like safety regulations and keeping fire exits clear. Not when there was serious money to be made.

  Set off by a single bright spotlight, a huge stylised black bird (presumably someone’s idea of a nightingale) covered most of the wall behind the stage. It looked threatening, wild, ominous. Looking around, I could see the design everywhere on the fans, on T-shirts, jackets, tattoos, and silver totems hanging on silver chains. I could also see the celebrities jammed in the crowd like everyone else, their hangers-on struggling to form protective circles around them. There were no real movers or shakers, but I could see famous faces here and there. Sebastian Stargrave, the Fractured Protagonist; Deliverance Wilde, fashion consultant to the Faerie; and Sandra Chance, the Consulting Necromancer. Also very much in evidence were the supergroup Nazgul, currently on a comeback tour of the Nightside with their new vocalist. They looked just as freaked and excited as everyone else.

  And yet, for all the excitement and passion in the air, the overall mood felt decidedly unhealthy. It was the wrong kind of anticipation, like the hunger of animals waiting for feeding time. The hot and sweaty air had the unwholesome feel of a crowd gathered at a car wreck, waiting for the injured to be brought out. These people weren’t just here to hear someone sing—this was a gathering throbbing with erotic Thanatos. The mood was magic. Dark, reverent magic, from all the wrong places of the heart.

  The crowd was actually quietening down, the chanting dying out, as the anticipation mounted. Even I wasn’t immune to it. Something was going to happen, and we could all feel it. Something big, something far out of the ordinary, and we all wanted it. We needed it. And whether what was coming would be good or bad didn’t matter a damn. We were a congregation, celebrating our goddess. The crowd fell utterly silent, all our eyes fixed on the stage, empty save for the waiting instruments and microphone stands. Waiting, waiting, and now we were all breathing in unison, like one great hungry creature, like lemmings drawn to a cliff edge by something they couldn’t name.

  Rossignol’s band came running onto the stage, smiling and waving, and the crowd went wild, waving and cheering and stamping their feet. The band took up the instruments waiting for them and started playing. No introductions, no warm-up, just straight in. Ian Auger, the cheerful hunchbacked roadie, played the drums. And the bass and the piano. There were three of him. I felt he might have mentioned it earlier. Next a quartet of backing singers came bounding onstage, wearing old-fashioned can-can outfits, with teased high hairstyles, beautiful and glamorous, with bright red lips and flashing eyes. They joined right in, belting out perfect harmonies to complement the music, stamping their feet and flashing their frills, singing up a storm. And then Rossignol came on, and the massed baying of the crowd briefly drowned out the music. She wore a chic little black number, with long black evening gloves that made her pale skin look even more funereal. Her mouth was dark, and so were her eyes, so that she seemed like some old black-and-white photograph. Her feet were bare, the toenails painted midnight black.

  She grabbed hold of the mike stand at the front of the stage with both hands and clung to it like it was the only thing holding her up. As the show progressed, she rarely let go of it, except to light a new cigarette. She stood where she was, her mouth pressed close to the mike like a lover, swaying from side to side. She had a cigarette in one corner of her dark mouth when she came on, and she chain-smoked in between and sometimes during her songs.

  The songs she sang were all her own material; “Blessed Losers,” “All the Pretty People,” and “Black Roses.” They had good strong tunes, played well and sung with professional class, but none of that mattered. It was her voice, her glorious suffering voice that cut at the audience like a knife. She sang of lost loves and last chances, of small lives in small rooms, of dreams betrayed and corrupted, and she sang it all with utter conviction, singing like she’d been there, like she’d known all the pain there ever was, all the darknesses of the human heart, of hope valued all the more because she knew it wasn’t real, that it wouldn’t help; and all the loss
and heartbreak there ever was filled her voice and gave it dominion over all who heard it.

  There were tears on many faces, including my own. Rossignol had got to me, too. I’d never heard, never felt, anything like her songs, her voice. In the Nightside it’s always three o’clock in the morning, the long dark hour of the soul—but only Rossignol could put it into words.

  And yet, despite all I was feeling, or was being made to feel, I never entirely lost control. Perhaps because I’m more used than most to the dark, or simply because I had a job to do. I tore my eyes away from Rossignol, reached inside my jacket pocket, and pulled out a miller medallion. It was designed to glow brightly in the presence of magical influence, but when I held it up to face Rossignol, there wasn’t even a glimmer of a glow. So Rossignol hadn’t been enchanted or possessed or even magically enhanced.

  Whatever she was doing, it came straight from her, and from her voice.

  The audience was utterly engrossed, still and rapt and silent, drinking their diva in with eyes and ears, immersing themselves in emotions so sharp and melancholy and compelling that they were helpless to do anything but stand there and soak it up. It was all they could do to come out of it to applaud her in between songs. The three Ian Augers and the quartet of backing singers were looking tired and drawn, faces wet with sweat as they struggled to keep up with Rossignol, but the crowd only had eyes for her. She hung on to her microphone stand as though it was a lifeline, smoking one cigarette after another, blasting out one song after another, as though it was all she lived to do.

  And then, as she paused at the end of one song to light up another cigarette, a man not far from me pressed right up against the edge of the stage, a man who’d been staring adoringly at Rossignol from the moment she first appeared, smiled at her with tears still wet on his cheeks and drew a gun. I could see it happening, but I was too far away to stop it. All I could do was watch as the man put the gun to his head and blew his brains out. All over Rossignol’s bare feet.