Between Two Thorns (31 page)

 

32

 

Cathy woke early and lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the Rosas. Like everyone else, she’d watched as the collectors had marched in and dragged the Gallicas out. Horatio tried to fight but they Dolled him before he could even draw his sword and was carried out, stiff as a lamp-post on their shoulders. She could still hear his mother’s wailing and didn’t think she would ever forget that sound.

The Censor sent everyone home soon after and she’d stayed silent in the carriage as her parents discussed the events. Her uncle looked as if he’d been tortured, her father had said. She wondered how he would know.

Elizabeth delighted in the fact that William had saved the Albas and speculated that his feelings for Amelia in particular must have motivated his chivalry. Cathy did her best to ignore her sister. She didn’t care whether Amelia was set up in a distant country house to be his mistress. William could do what he liked. After the success he’d so readily claimed the credit for, the Sorcerer would have to make good on his word and she would find a way to earn a boon from him to cash in as an escape from the Nether. She planned to be away and protected from anything remotely Fae long before their wedding. Whilst she had no idea how she was going to do it, at least there was hope again. Not even Lord Poppy could work around sorcerous magic.

The gentle knock at the door and the key turning in the lock made her sit up in bed. The maid came in with fresh water for the washbowl, locking the door behind her. “Time to dress, I’m afraid, miss. Sorry it’s so early, but the dressmaker is here to do a fitting.”

“Now?”

“The mistress said I was to ready you right away. I’m sorry. I brought warm water.”

“Clare, how did you come to be in the Agency?”

“I was born into it, miss,” she replied as she pulled Cathy’s nightgown over her head.

“Do you ever want to… leave?”

“Leave, miss? Where would I go?”

“Into Mundanus.”

“You say the strangest things, miss. Why would I ever want to live there?”

“Never mind.” Cathy allowed her to work uninterrupted.

She was escorted to her mother’s dressing room, dressed in her undergarments and a long dressing gown, just like all the other fittings she’d had. Her mother was waiting, and the dressmaker was unwrapping the dress on the other side of the room. She slipped off the robe and waited until she was asked to raise her hands for the dress to be dropped over her.

It wasn’t until it was being settled about her waist that she realised it was white.

“This isn’t my wedding dress, is it?” she asked, feeling an awful bubble of nausea rise up from her gullet.

The dressmaker laughed and glanced at Cathy’s mother whose stern face sobered her. “Yes, miss,” she said.

Cathy resorted to deep breaths to keep the contents of her stomach, which thankfully were only a glass of water. She watched the dressmaker pin the hem and edges of the sleeves. It was beautiful, although too full in the skirt for her liking, reminding her of a princess in one of the books she’d been given as a child. The bodice was delicately beaded and it was very flattering, but it didn’t change the fact it was for her wedding.

She stayed silent, sensing a tension from her mother that made it more likely that anything she said would be wrong. The dressmaker worked fast and soon it was being unlaced and lifted off again.

“I’ll be sure to have it ready on time, Ma’am,” she said and bobbed a swift curtsy to her mother before hastily wrapping the dress.

Cathy put her dressing gown back on and her mother escorted her to the bedroom where a breakfast tray had been left. “Isn’t it too soon to do the final fitting?” she asked.

“Sit down, Catherine,” Mother said, pouring her a cup of tea. “And drink this, you’re rather pale.”

Cathy gulped down the tea to relieve her parched mouth. “What if I lose more weight before the wedding?”

“That won’t be a problem, Catherine. The wedding is tomorrow.”

“What!” Cathy dumped the cup and was on her feet in a moment.

“William Iris pressed for it to be sooner and, after what was said about you at the ball, we all felt it better to marry you quickly before the Rosa storm is old news. Then when people remember what was said about you, you’ll be safely married and it will blow over.”

“But… tomorrow?” Cathy’s chest felt like it was being crushed. “You can’t mean that!”

“I can and I do. Which you had better practise saying, Catherine, and you’ll have plenty of time to prepare. You’re not leaving this room until the carriage arrives tomorrow morning to collect you.”

Cathy’s ears started to ring, her toes and fingers became numb and her mother grasped her arms to ease her back down onto the bed. “You didn’t put something in the…”

“Tea?” her mother completed the sentence for her. “Just a little something to keep you relaxed. I suggest you use your last day as a single woman and the bane of our lives wisely, and think about how you will best please your husband.”

 

His duties discharged regarding Lady Rose, and the all-clear given by Ekstrand, Max and the gargoyle stood in the Nether, outside the cloister. The fortified exterior looked the same as it had through the scrying glass. Max looked at the gargoyle. “Are you sure you want to come inside?”

“I need to see it.”

“But you know what’s in there, you must do.”

“I know they’re all dead, I know some of the injuries, I know about the thorns. But… that’s up here.” It tapped its forehead with a stone claw. “It’s… detached. I need to experience it.”

Max shrugged. “All right. Whatever you think you need.”

“It’s what
we
need.”

Max didn’t reply, but instead set off with the walking stick on the approach to the doors.

The two bodies were still in the entrance; in the Nether their bodies wouldn’t decay as they would in Mundanus. Once he was finished with the investigation they would have the task of clearing and disposing of the corpses. He decided the gargoyle shouldn’t be involved in that. It would only get more upset.

“That’s Jackson,” said the gargoyle, pointing at the closest body. It’d stopped in the doorway, its frown so intense Max could barely see the stone eyes beneath the brow.

Max went closer to the body, taking care not to step in the pooled blood. He could see a set of red dots leading out of it from where the artefact’s legs had been coated and left tracks. He lifted the clothing, saw the knife wound. “Looks like he was stabbed in the back,” he said and peered over him to the other body, the knife still in the dead man’s hand.

“If Lewis killed Jackson,” said the gargoyle, taking a couple of steps closer to the bodies, “who killed Lewis?”

Max went to the second body, saw that his throat had been slit. “Whoever it was must have killed him after Jackson was stabbed, then went back into the cloister. Come on.”

There was a pause but the gargoyle eventually came through the arch and into the cloister. It looked at the bodies and the blood. The rasping came from deep in its throat again, the same sound it made when Ekstrand first told it about the deaths.

“How could anyone do this?” it asked. “They weren’t even Arbiters, they were just researchers… just staff.”

“We need to find the Arbiters,” Max said, making his way carefully, taking in as many details as he could as he progressed further along the passageway. “There are two unaccounted for.”

Pieces of paper, pencils and smashed glass littered the floor. The staff seemed to have literally dropped what they were doing and started to kill each other. Most appeared to be victims of strangulation or creative uses of whatever had been near to hand. One body had a pencil sticking out of an eye. There were more knife wounds than visible weapons could account for, so Max kept an eye out for any members of kitchen staff with knives who’d probably rampaged through the cloister more effectively than those unarmed.

Here and there the stems of roses could be seen, but no blooms, only thorns. Most were growing out of mouths, some reaching across to others and piercing their skin, without any discernible pattern. Keeping the quad on his left, Max went to the door of the tower in the right hand corner, the one that contained his room. He didn’t have any personal effects to retrieve; he’d lost any sentimentality when his soul was dislocated. He just wanted to see if it had been searched and whether the other Arbiters had been killed in their rooms or elsewhere in the cloister.

The stone steps of the tower were free of bodies. Max climbed slowly, relying heavily on the walking stick and hand rope as the gargoyle whimpered behind him. His room was the first off the stairwell and it appeared undisturbed. He climbed to the room above. It was empty. He expected the room at the top to be empty too; even if an Arbiter had been asleep the noise of everyone suddenly going mad would have been enough to wake him. The bodies were probably elsewhere.

He’d been wrong. The Arbiter, a man called Winston, was in his bed and the sheets were soaked in his blood. There were punctures in the cotton above his stomach – Max counted four stabs – and the knife was missing.

“Bloody hell,” the gargoyle muttered.

“Almost literally,” Max replied.

“That’s not funny.” The gargoyle left the room and clunked down the stairs.

“I wasn’t trying to be funny.” Max followed it down. “We need to keep looking for the other Arbiters. You can wait outside if you want.”

“You think if I wait outside it will make this any easier?” The gargoyle rounded on him at the bottom of the steps. “I’m not being overly emotional –
we’re
upset by this, you just don’t feel it.”

“That’s the point.” Max moved forwards to descend the last step, but the gargoyle wouldn’t budge. He put a hand on its shoulder to try and push it out of the way and felt a surge of discomfort rise up from his stomach into his chest. He moved back and broke contact. “I don’t understand what you want.”

The gargoyle looked like it was about to say something but didn’t manage to put it into words. It stepped aside.

Max searched room after room throughout the building, the gargoyle following silently. Everyone was dead, either strangled or stabbed. When they came across Max’s former mentor slumped against a wall in a pool of his own blood the gargoyle rushed out into the centre of the quad and wailed up at the silver sky. Max watched it through the open doorway, deciding to wait for the worst to be over before moving on.

The gargoyle regained its composure and made its way back. Max met it at one of the openings onto the quad. “There’s something not right about this,” it said.

“What do you mean?”

“Something… I don’t know. Something isn’t right.”

Max scanned the bodies. He knew the gargoyle meant more than just being surrounded by all the death. “I know what you mean. Let’s find where they kept the soul vessels. The Chapter Master is probably there.”

“He’ll be dead,” the gargoyle replied.

Max nodded and went to the doorway that led to the second quad. He hadn’t been in there for years; everything he needed, such as the briefing room and dining room, was in the quad they’d already searched.

The other Arbiter was the first they found, lying face-down on the other side of the door. Max stepped over him and looked through each room in turn, not knowing where the soul vessels were kept. Eventually he came to a doorway leading down into a cellar space. There was a heavily fortified door that was open, a body lying across the threshold and the now familiar sticky blood around it. All but two of the oil lanterns had run dry but there was still enough light to see a desk and chair, the body slumped in it, and another member of staff lying nearby. The Chapter Master was near the door, his neck broken.

The far wall was dominated by a thick shelf the width of the room, upon which sat several large clay jars, all smashed. On the larger pieces Max could still make out sorcerous runes and noted the thick chunks of wax seal clinging to chunks of broken rims.

“These must be the soul vessels,” he said, and the gargoyle went inside to look.

“A jar? I lived in a bloody jar all that time?”

“Not like you are now,” Max said. “You never complained before, when I made a connection.”

“No… I suppose not. It just seems… demeaning.” It sniffed around the chunks of earthenware as Max went to the desk, intrigued by a length of chain left dangling from a corner. The man slumped in the chair had a pen in his lap, and the ink had soaked into his trousers.

“He must have taken notes,” Max said. “The Roses must have taken the book he was writing in. Makes sense, I suppose.”

“Something’s not right,” the gargoyle said.

“How did they get the messages I sent?” Max asked, looking at the broken jars.

“I don’t know,” the gargoyle replied. “Something to do with him, probably, why else would he be in here?” It pointed a claw at the one lying on the floor near where the jars were. “I don’t like it down here. Let’s go.”

They went back up the stairs, looked through the last rooms and found more of the same. The gargoyle wandered off, muttering to itself. Max shared its sense of missing something. He thought back to when he saw the first body on the scrying glass. The sense of something being wrong began as early as then. “Let’s go back to near the entrance,” he said.

He found the woman with the thorn through her lower lip. She was called Carrie and she was one of the best liaison officers there. He remembered her thorough briefings before going into the field. It looked like she too had been strangled. He struggled to bend over to look at the marks on her neck more carefully.

The skin was only slightly discoloured. Now he was seeing it with his own eyes and not enlarged on a huge scrying glass he appreciated how light the bruising was. He inspected her fingernails, hands and wrists, then went back to the abrasion on her throat. The skin was damaged, like something rough had been pressed against it.