The Bone Magician (18 page)

Pin was thoroughly confused. He knew he wasn’t awake, but neither was he asleep. He knew he had fallen into the
Foedus, but he wasn’t wet. In fact, he was as warm as a toasted heel. He decided he must be in heaven and had no desire to return from this peaceful world wherein he lay. But those voices, those harsh voices, persisted. He wanted them to go away,
but they carried on like a shower of pebbles against a window pane.

‘Can’t you do something? I thought you were a corpse raiser,’ said one.

‘I deal with dead bodies. This one is still alive,’ said another.

‘But he’s not moving,’ a third voice came into the conversation.

‘Perhaps he’s just asleep.’

‘Why don’t we try a sharp needle in his foot? Isn’t that what he does for Mr Gaufridus?’

‘I’m
sure he said something about a quill up the right nostril. That might bring him round.’

‘Where else could we stick something sharp? How about—’

‘Juno, don’t you have something in that room of yours that’d help? I know you’ve got herbs up there.
I’ve smelled ’em enough times, burning at night.’

‘I . . . I might have something. I’ll go to look.’

Ah, peace again. Pin savoured it, but it was short-lived. The voices started up again and his head was beginning to ache.

‘What have you got there?’

‘It’s a sort of potion. It might help.’

Pin felt something cold under his nose and then he was subject to a vicious aromatic assault. He was brought round with a violent jolt
and a cough and a sneeze and the next thing he knew he was awake and upright and surrounded by four relieved faces. Each had a hand over his or her mouth and nose.

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ said Mrs Hoadswood through her hanky. ‘Well done, Juno.’

‘What was that stuff?’ asked Beag.

‘It’s
Foedus water,’ said Pin, still choking. ‘It’d wake the dead, all right.’

A little while later, Pin was sitting in front of the kitchen fire supping warm soup. His head was throbbing, but if he
kept his brown eye closed it seemed to bring some relief. With his green eye he saw Juno standing in front of him. Her lips were drained of colour and she was shaking.

‘Where on earth did you get to?’ she asked crossly. ‘One minute you were there and the next you were
gone.’

‘You disappeared too,’ said Pin indignantly. ‘How did you get back?

Juno looked repentant. ‘I’m sorry. When I couldn’t find you I just kept walking and by sheer luck I ended up in
Squid’s Gate Alley.’

Mrs Hoadswood tutted. ‘You don’t know just how lucky you are,’ she said. ‘These fogs aren’t to be taken
lightly.’

‘She’s a devil, all right,’ said Beag grimly, interrupting.

‘Who is?’ asked Pin and Juno in unison.

‘The river. She can whip up a fog in the space of a
minute. The whole city was thick with it.
There’s a song about her, you know. It’s called
She Sucked Him Under
.’

Before anyone could stop him Beag drew a deep breath and launched, with great enthusiasm, into the first verse:

‘Old Johnny Samson,

By the river did wander,

The very next minute

She sucked him under,

She sucked him—’

‘Yes, thank you, Beag,’ interrupted Mrs Hoadswood. ‘Perhaps later.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Pin. ‘I thought I went in the river and yet I’m not wet.’

‘She’s frozen over,’ said Beag.

‘What?’

‘The Foedus. Covered in a sheet of ice two feet thick. It’s what saved you. You didn’t go under. You just landed on
top of it.’

‘So that’s why my head hurts.’

Aluph laughed. ‘I bet the other fellow’s does too.’

‘Who?’

‘The chap who knocked you over the wall,’ said Juno. ‘Beag threw one of his potatoes at
him.’

‘Caught him smack on the side of the head,’ said Beag proudly. ‘My best shot ever, I should say.’

Pin began to laugh but winced.

‘Can you tell us what happened?’ asked Mrs Hoadswood as she ladled more soup into Pin’s bowl.

‘Well,’ began Pin. It was all coming back now. ‘After I lost Juno I was caught by a gang of beggars. They were going
to roast me for their dinner but a stranger, it must be the man you saw, came after me and saved me by poking Zeke, the ringleader, with a stick. It made him fall over. The fellow who saved me asked if I had seen the Beast and as soon as we reached the
Foedus he poked
me
with the stick. The next thing I knew I was falling over the wall.’

‘A stick that makes you jump?’ Beag raised his eyebrows.

‘I can’t describe it,’ said Pin. ‘There was a whirring sound and when the stick touched me I got the most
tremendous shock and it knocked me off my feet.’

Beag was not convinced. ‘Are you sure? Perhaps the bump on your head has confused you.’

‘No,’ said Pin firmly. ‘I know it sounds strange, but that
is what happened.
Look, there’s a mark where the stick poked me.’

He pointed to the front of his shirt and there was indeed a dark brown stain about chest high.

‘Hmm,’ said Aluph, and he stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘Looks like a burn to me.’

‘Can you remember anything about this man?’ asked Beag.

Pin frowned. ‘Not really. It was so foggy I didn’t get a clear look at him. I do remember that he tried to pick my pocket
just before I fell.’

‘Interesting,’ said Aluph thoughtfully. ‘But I don’t think that’s what he was doing.’

‘Then what?’ asked Pin.

‘I think,’ said Aluph slowly, reaching into Pin’s coat pocket, ‘
he was
putting something in it
.’ And with a flourish he withdrew a silver apple.

‘Well, strike me down with a peacock’s plume!’ gasped Mrs Hoadswood. ‘Pin escaped the Silver Apple
Killer!’

Deodonatus
laid his quill on the table and sat back in his chair. He frowned and sneered at the same time, which required
significant concentration. The idea that women couldn’t be cruel? How ridiculous. It almost made him laugh, and he would have except for the pain that shot through his scarred heart when he thought of his own mother. His father had beaten him, for
no reason other than the fact that his son’s face reminded him of his own shortcomings. But it was his mother who had the greatest effect on him. Her torture was different. It wasn’t physical – there were no obvious signs of it –
its legacy was deep inside. She had persecuted him day and night with her poisonous looks and barbed comments. He remembered the last time he saw them both. His father standing in the doorway with that grin on his face and the full purse in his hand. And
his mother, saliva glistening on her top lip as she spoke her last words to him. Had he really expected anything different?

‘You wretch,’ she spat. ‘You twisted wretch. Good riddance.’

Without even knowing he was doing it, Deodonatus wiped at his cheek where all those years ago her venomous
spit had landed on his skin. He picked up the quill and started to write again.

I hardly need tell you who I think is responsible for this violence. I have long held the belief that the Silver
Apple Killer and the fugitive Oscar Carpue are one and the same. It is not beyond the bounds of belief for a man enraged by grief (at the loss of a wife) to suffer a mental turn and to become, quite simply, a complete lunatic. Thus could he melt into the
crowd, invisible to us all, for Lord knows there is no shortage of madmen in this city.

As to his motive, well, insanity is motive enough. But to my mind, whether he is completely mad or not, what is more important is
that we discover why these killings are taking place. To do this we must try to understand him better. He is trying to tell us something. At the very least the silver apple must show us that.

It has been suggested to me that perhaps he considers he is doing society a service, ridding the streets of those whom he considers
undesirable. But so far his victims have been simple citizens. The first was a
washerwoman, the second a chimney sweep, the third a street sweeper, the fourth a coal seller, the fifth a housemaid, the sixth a gin
pedlar, the seventh a peruke maker and the eighth, the most recent, who exploded, a man of no note whatsoever.

As far as I can work out, our constable, the estimable George Coggley, considers that the murders are random, no more than a matter
of bad luck on the part of the victim, and he has not yet made any connection between the eight victims. I, however, suggest to you that there must be a link. And I will go so far as to say, if we find this missing link, then we can put a stop to these
dreadful acts of violence.

My question is this. Are these people unknowingly doing something to offend the killer? Are they unwittingly bringing about their
own tragic ends? Let me, in fact, be absolutely blunt. Is their fate actually
their own fault
?

I finish with some surprising news. I have heard through one of my sources that two nights ago the Silver Apple Killer was
thwarted. The victim, a young lad, was actually in the killer’s clutches. He was pushed into the river and doubtless his final thoughts were
flashing across his mind’s eye as he fell and braced himself for
the fatal dipping. But Lady Luck, as fickle a mistress as ever did live, was with him for the boy landed not in the water but on the newly formed ice. Who would have thought that at the exact moment the ice closed over the river’s surface a boy
should fall on it? Seconds earlier he would have been trapped beneath it. What could so easily have been the instrument of his end became his saviour. One man’s soup is another man’s poison. And if luck was with the boy, then what contrary
force was with the killer? It’s an ill wind, as they say.

Until next time, Deodonatus Snoad

Deodonatus Snoad

Deodonatus rubbed his head. He was weary these days, weary in body and soul. He took the two sheets of paper and went
to the fire. He poured himself a mug of ale from a small flagon he kept beside the hearth and sat down with a contemplative look on his ugly face. Urbs Umida. He had made the City his home and it had served him well. But for all that, he scorned her
people, each and every one, because no matter what they said or did, he knew that if
they, his ‘Dear Readers’, saw him they would recoil from him in the same way as everyone else had done all his life.

‘They deserve the Silver Apple Killer,’ he said with measured malevolence.

Deodonatus shook his head violently, as if to rid himself of such thoughts, but he achieved little more than to exacerbate the
throbbing in his skull. He sighed and looked at the pages he had just written. As he read through them a strange look crossed his face, as if something very obvious had just occurred to him.

‘They will never learn,’ he muttered. ‘
Ears had they and heard not
.’
It was as true today as in the century when Aeschylus had first put the words down on paper.

Deodonatus drained his ale and gave his room a perfunctory tidy in the course of which he knocked over a small pot on his desk. He
cursed the spill and made only a rudimentary effort to mop it up. Then he sat down again and took his timepiece from his pocket and noted the hour. ‘Hmm,’ he mused. ‘Not long now.’

He reached up and took from the mantel his copy of
Houndsecker’s Tales of Faeries and Blythe Spirits
. The book fell open on a much-read page:

‘There was once a beautiful princess who had everything a princess could wish for . . .’