The Door in the Moon (21 page)

Venn snorted. “Not if I can help it, they're not.” He looked at Jake. “Where
is
Moll?”

“Looking for you. Or so I thought.”

Venn breathed out in frustration. But there was no more time to talk. The guards grabbed them and hauled them out; the roar and fury of the crowd exploded around them.

Jake was jostled and shoved. Ragged men and angry women jeered and spat and raged at him; it was a maelstrom of foreign words and raw hatred. He grabbed his father's arm and clung on tight because whatever happened, they wouldn't be separated now. Venn, already ahead, drew much of the crowd's fury because of his height and bearing and because he walked alert, oblivious of their noise, his keen eyes raking the ranks of faces.

Jake searched too. Where was Moll? Sarah? Surely they must be—

Then from up ahead came the sound that had haunted him since he first heard it. The sudden, terrifying
slice
of the descending blade.

He gripped David tight.

His father stumbled.

And as Jake turned to help him, he saw it.

Bizarrely, astonishingly familiar. A stillness in the frenzied crowd. A calm-faced man in Oriental costume, turbaned, sitting in a multicolored booth, a white-plumed pen in its hand.

The Scribe automaton.

He stared around, instantly, for Moll.

Instead he saw Gideon.

The changeling's silvery coat was ragged; he wore a tricolor sash draped over it at a rakish angle and was calling out. “Fortunes! Your fortunes told here! Find what your future holds!”

It wasn't French, but people seemed to understand; a small section of the crowd had gathered there, as if bored with the executions. The stall stood among others, a huddle of pie-sellers, women selling wine, sweetmeats, sausages, chairs, parasols.

Jake glanced around. He couldn't see Sarah. But at least he knew they were not alone.

The group halted. At that moment Gideon saw him, and yelled, “You! Young monsieur! A last request? Let my masterpiece tell us all your crimes!”

Jake managed one step toward him. The guard's pike flashed sideways.

The Scribe's face was calm, its eyes blue and sharp, fixed on him.

He looked down.

The Scribe's hand moved. It was white and delicate and he knew it was Sarah's. It wrote five careful words on the blank paper.

WHEN THE BELL RINGS BE READY.

Men were already dragging him away, but he had seen. He looked around. Venn had reached the foot of the scaffold. The terrible slice of the blade rang out again. He struggled close to his father.

“It's okay. Something's going to happen.”

“Then it had better be quick.” David was white with worry.

Even as he spoke, a sonorous clang rang out, urgent even over the tumult of the crowd. It rang again, and Jake knew it was a great bell and behind it was a smell of acrid scorching, a screech of alarm.

Thick and gray, from somewhere unseen, smoke was billowing.

He moved. He shoved the guard aside, punched him hard in the stomach. The man doubled with a gasp, his pike clattering to the floor. Jake dived for it, but a sword was shoved in his hand; Gideon was beside him with a pistol. “Let's go! Hurry!”

“Dad
.” He wasn't leaving without him. But Moll was tugging his other arm; she had come from nowhere.

“I'll get him, Jake. No worries.”

Before he could answer, she had darted into the panicking crowd. Gideon slashed the sword; the crowd scattered and he dragged Jake through, but Jake dug his heels in and turned.

“No!”

“She's got him! Look.”

It was true. Suddenly his father was there, breathless, Moll pointing a pistol in the face of anyone who even looked at her.

“What about Venn?” Sarah had squirmed out. Now she stared around. “Where is he?”

“We need to sort that,” Moll said. Venn was already at the scaffold.

“No!”
Sarah shoved past Jake, into the crowd.

“Sarah!”

“Get to safety! Get to the mirror!”

He wanted to grab her. But in seconds, she was lost to sight.

Moll adjusted the bracelet and grabbed his hand. “No time now, Jake. We need to go and find some time. Come on.”

Venn sensed the commotion, heard the clang of the bell. He turned at once with lithe speed, but two guards already had him; they hauled him up the steps and threw him onto his knees. The wooden platform was a bloody mess in front of him, red with the stench of horror.

He wanted to twist around and look up, but they held him down and he knew that only seconds of time were left to him.

He wanted to smile, but his mouth could only twist in bitter anger.

He wanted to say something memorable, but
“Leah”
was all he could whisper.

Moll and Jake materialized in a dark space still loud with the muffled yell of the crowd, as if they hadn't
journeyed
at all, and he gasped, “Moll!”

“Only ten minutes back, Jake. That's all. We're under the guillotine. Look there.”

He glanced up. Over his head was a bolted trapdoor.

“Give us a bunk,” she hissed. Before he could move she was on his back, reaching up, working the rusted bolt with vigor, trying to force it back.

“Hurry!”

“I am! But it's stiff.”

Suddenly a man ducked under the timbers and saw them. He opened his mouth to yell but Jake moved first. Dropping Moll, he had his sword out with one swift slash. The guard raised his own weapon. The steel met.

Dimly aware of Moll climbing hurriedly back up, Jake circled with the wary instinct of a fencer. But when the attack came it was ferocious and fierce; he fought calmly, coldly, every nerve tense, but this was a real fight, not some practice in the gym, and a stray whip of his opponent's blade stroked blood from his wrist with terrifying speed.

Sweat stung his eyes. He thrust, parried quarte, thrust again, ducked. The man crashed against him, grabbed at the hilt; Jake shoved him away, and they both toppled, awkward and locked together, back against the wooden frame, hitting it with a thud so hard that the whole structure shuddered.

Jake felt pain shoot down his back; then he was on his feet, looking down at the man's body.

The guard didn't move.

Moll leaped down. “Killed him, Jake?” She bent quickly. “Nope. He's just a bit stunned.” She grinned up at him. “Nice one, cully. And the bolt's loose. Let's go.”

She caught his arm and touched the bracelet in that odd way and they were back in the shouting crowd and his father's arm was on his as if that sudden and bewildering interlude of fear had never happened.

But there was a stinging cut on his wrist. And a puzzling, odd question ringing in his mind, that he couldn't quite grasp. He looked up.

No time to think about that now.

Venn was under the guillotine.

Trapped by the press of bodies, Sarah yelled, fought, kicked her way to the foot of the scaffold.

“Venn!” she screamed. Behind her Jake's voice rang somewhere in the din. The dripping blade was hauled up.

She stood still. The crowd went quiet.

She forgot to breathe, forgot to pray as the blade jerked, rattled.

And dropped.

And behold this is a mechanism to deprive death of its guilt. No man's hand is blooded. The killing is perform'd by earth's own power, and time's workings, relentless and implacable. We are not to blame. We cannot stop them even if we would.

Maxim Chevalin,
A History of the Late Revolution in France

V
ENN'S DREAM WAS
the last of all the dreams, and what else could it be but a dream?

Because above him the blade of the guillotine stopped.

Not with a shudder, or a jerk, or as if something had jammed in it, but impossibly. In mid-slice.

He twisted around, stared up at the red, honed edge; then, with his body's visceral terror tingling to a new alertness, he leaped back, pulled his head and shoulders out, and stood up.

Time had paused. That was his first thought. Time had somehow stopped, and the blade of the guillotine was held still, and all the crowd with it. In an eerie silence he looked down at them, and they were frozen in an instant of blood-lust and fury. It was a terrible sight. Their faces were contorted, their fists clenched. A woman's mouth was wide in mid-scream, a man was leaping up, both feet off the ground.

Venn stared around. He was the only thing here that moved. Birds hung in flight. A cloud half blurring the sun did not even make the slightest drift of shadow.

He rubbed a weary hand over his face. Then he walked to the edge of the filthy platform. There was Sarah, her face caught in terror, her arm flung out toward him.

Beyond, half lost in the still people, he could see David, twisting aside. Gideon was there with them, and a whole host of fairground sideshows and food stalls, stopped in mid-sizzle, the sausage flipped from the pan, the playing cards half rippled.

There was total silence.

It was the silence that scared him most.

Wanting to fill it with anything, he raged, “Summer! Is this your doing?”

No one answered. But somewhere out there, in that mass of bodies that hung and balanced at impossible angles, something glinted.

Tiny. Brief.

The flicker of sunlight on a shiny surface.

He held his breath, stared out. Every eye was on him, but none of them could see him anymore; as he scrambled away from the bloody blade, no gaze followed him. They were living, but lifeless, and for a moment he thought of them as a great mass of waxworks, as if the time-stop had changed them from humans to a tangle of beings neither dead nor alive.

Again.
A tiny sparkle.

Venn took a step to the rail. “Who are you? Who's out there?”

His voice was harsh with fear. He made himself stand firm, surveying the crowd one by one, face by hideous face.

Was he trapped in some timeless world forever, alone? Was there really anyone else here but him?

Then, unmistakably, he saw the light move. It reflected from a pair of round blue spectacles, covering the eyes of a man in the crowd. A man not frozen in some off-guard pose. A man standing casually, calm and interested, his arms folded, gazing up at Venn.

A man who was breathing.

Almost with relief, Venn's voice went steely. “So it's you.”

For a moment Janus did not answer. Then he nodded, and that movement was a shock in this timeless place. “Who else?”

Venn was suddenly furious. “How can you stop time! How the hell can you do that?”

Janus shrugged. He began to move carefully through the crowd, edging between the rigid bodies, ducking under the stiff punched fists. “I doubt that's what annoys you, Venn,” he said softly.

“What?”

“What annoys you is that by stopping time I have saved your life.” Janus reached the steps to the platform and climbed the first of them. He stood there, a small man in a gray uniform, leaning on the rail and gazing up. Venn caught the flash of the sun on the lenses that hid the man's eyes.

“And that must be so difficult for you.” Janus nodded, as if to himself. “Oberon Venn would probably have found it more heroic to go fearlessly to the guillotine than be saved by his enemy.”

Venn folded his arms. “If you think that, you don't know me.”

Janus smiled. And in his lapel, tucked in safely, Venn saw the purple flower.

He tried not to show by the least tightening of a muscle what it meant, but Janus smiled as if he had noticed. “Actually,” he said, “I just wanted to talk. I did try to come through to your Abbey, but . . .”

“I kept you out.”

“With such unnecessary dramatics. Besides, it was Maskelyne who barred my way.” He tapped a finger thoughtfully on the wooden rail. “What do you know about our friend with the scar, Venn? Very little, I expect.”

Venn frowned. That was true enough.

“For instance, did you know that he is a being who has lived many lifetimes? Beware of him. He worked with me, or will work with me, far in the future. Beware of the scarred man, Venn. He's there now, in your house, with the mirror, which is all he cares about. Can you trust him?”

“More than you,” Venn growled. “What do you want?”

This time Janus laughed. “We want the same thing, you and I. The safety of the mirror.”

Venn's eyes narrowed. “There's no way we're the same.”

“I think so.” Janus glanced over at Sarah, frozen in her fear. “And that girl . . . look, that escaped invisible girl of mine, she's the one who is our enemy.”

“No.”

“Yes.” The tyrant's voice was soft. “I need what she has, Venn.”

“Which is?”

“The coin.”

“The half coin?
Sarah's got it?
”

“She stole it from Summer. Didn't you know? The right side of the broken face of Zeus. Stole it and has been hiding it in your very house. What a treachery that is. Don't you think so? How it must upset you, to know that.”

They looked at each other for a moment, a moment open with strange possibilities.

Then Janus said, “We'll make an agreement here and now. I allow you to escape death. I allow you to complete your work, to rescue your beloved Leah. In return, when you have finished, you give me the broken coin.”

Venn stood still. His voice was flint hard. He said, “You really want it, don't you.
Anyone would think you know where the other half is.
”

A flicker of alarm passed over Janus's face like a ripple over the mirror, but Venn saw it, and it was more than alarm. It was fear. As if he had guessed right.

Fierce joy filled him, revenge warmed him. He snapped, “I don't make agreements with tyrants.”

Janus said nothing, but took the flower from his buttonhole. He twirled it in his fingers, the purple petals held in their undying beauty. “I was afraid you might say that. But you must remember that I still have this. Just imagine, Venn, if after your unfortunate death under the guillotine Summer and I should become allies. Imagine that!”

He didn't want to. “Summer is no one's ally.”

Janus shrugged, turned, began to descend. “Well, we'll see about that, shall we?”

Venn leaped after him, but even as he touched the ground a peculiar shiver moved among the still bodies as if a flame had run along a trail of gunpowder. Behind the crowd a creature like a wolf rose up, its pelt flame-red. It growled, alert, its eyes watching him, dark as coals.

Janus said, “Get the broken coin for me. In return I give your life. Agreed?”

Venn was silent.

He could say yes and then break his word. If he had Leah, what would he care anymore about the mirror? But he had promised Sarah she could do what she wanted with it. And besides, he loathed this small, sly man who seemed to hold all of the future in his hands. Centuries of Venn arrogance rose up inside him. He raised his head and stared Janus down.
“I told you. I don't make agreements with tyrants.”

Janus stepped onto the blood-soaked ground and sighed.

“I have to say I expected it. You are a very tiresome, and if I may say, ungrateful man. Good-bye, Venn.”

He lifted his hand.

Time jumped back.

The crowd exploded into screaming bedlam.

Before Venn had time to know he was back under the blade, it slammed down.

“Okay. So what's the plan? Do we storm the house?”

“You tell me. You're the sergeant major, mortal.”

Wharton frowned. It was true he had done ten years as an NCO, but in all that time he had never had to face an enemy as wispy and unpredictable as the Shee.

“Anyway,” Piers muttered, “just crashing in is too dangerous. It looks like the whole crazy Host is flitting around in there.”

They lay flat in the long grass of the overgrown lawn, watching the building.

Wintercombe Abbey was a riot of music and dance. Every window blazed light. Every door was wide. Inside, the Shee-songs echoed, far and sad and strange. Lights shimmered, purple and blue and green, glimpsed in tantalizing fragments through the smothered windows.

To Wharton the whole shape of the building had been lost; it was part of the Wood now, a green branching structure of leaves and moonlight.

“Maskelyne and Rebecca will be holding out,” he said

“Oh, let's hope so.” Piers sounded worried. “Because that lot must have crawled and flitted everywhere. Kitchens, corridors, cellars. The whole place is infested.”

Wharton let his eyes range across the dark ridges of roof and chimney, turret and towers. For a moment he thought he saw movement up there on the east wing, but then a cloud of bats rose in a silent swirl and he pulled a face and said, “Okay. Points of entry. Cloister door?”

“You must be joking!”

“Up the ivy into the attic.”

“No chance.”

“West wing coal chute.”

“If you want them to shovel you onto the fire.” Piers's voice was gloomy in the dimness.

Wharton twisted to look at him, irritated. “Look, you know this place. You're the goblin in the bloody cottage. Give me some help here!”

Piers sighed. He twisted over and lay flat on his back, staring up at the stars. Finally he said, “There's only one way you can get in and that's down the river.”

“The Wintercombe?”

“Where else? It's running water. They hate running water. Get in it and swim down the ravine, and you'll end up in the gorge below the Monk's Walk. Then it's a question of climbing up the cliff, and squeezing in through the old windows—only a few have any glass left in them.”

Wharton blew out his cheeks in dismay.

Piers grinned up at him. “Too much for a clapped-out old squaddy?”

Wharton thought maybe it was. But there was no way he'd say that to this little mocking creature. He shrugged. “Walk in the park, Piers. Walk in the bloody park.”

Moll's diary.

Of course I knew the old sod was never up to it.

I'd got him the bracelet and there was the mirror, but Lord what a palaver and a mess he made of it. Everything so careful, so scaredy-cat. And me with this plan growing in me like the beanstalk in the story; because he couldn't see what you could do.