The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (15 page)

On the evening of the day that Sanford and Reglum left London for the West Country, Salmius Nalmius Nax and Noreous Minicate had an errand at the Piebald Swan. As they approached the Yountish pied-a-terre in Wapping, two figures appeared in the dusk before them—slouchy, rangy persons, spiderish-limber with snouty faces and elongated teeth, dressed in long grey coats and fashionable hats.

“Make way there, good fellows, we have no meeting with you,” said Salmius. He could see the Piebald Swan over the heads of the two in front of him.

“Actually, you do,” said one of the men. “That is, if your names are Salmius Nalmius Nax and Noreous Minicate.”

Salmius felt a shiver; no one in London knew him by that name, except the McDoons. Here he was the merchant Oliveira de Sousa.

“If we in fact answered to such names, what appointment would you have with us?” said Salmius.

“Our master insists that the coffeehouse you run here be closed,” one of the strangers indicated the Piebald Swan with a jerk of a thumb over his shoulder.

Salmius and Noreous reached for the pistols they carried under their coats.

Their interceptors smiled toothily in the gloom.

“Two pursers caught in a purse,” said one.

Noreous said, “
Kaskas selwish pishpaweem
, dear Mother protect us.”

Salmius said, “Amen, and remember the
Lanner
.”

The Yountians fought as ferociously as lanners, and inflicted great harm upon their attackers but their weapons and their strength could not match those of said attackers, who were spirits from elsewhere.

Salmius and Noreous, rent in a dozen places, fell side by side.

Snarling, staunching their own copious outflow of blood, the two attackers put torch to the Piebald Swan and slid off into the night.

Neighbours and the watch arrived shortly thereafter, re-sponding to the shots of the Yountian pistols and the geysers of flame consuming the coffeehouse.

Examining the corpses and pools of blood, and the charred destruction that had been the Piebald Swan, many were confused because they could not recall a coffeehouse being at that place. No one had ever been inside the house, yet here was indubitable proof of its existence, at least in the form of ashes and blackened timbers. Many crossed themselves and attributed the uncanniness to the eldritch weather, which must surely draw forth both hidden places and stealthy hunters in the dark.

The merchant de Sousa had been widely known and beloved, so his funeral was very well-attended. The burial for Noreous was very small, since he had only a handful of connections in London, but it was no less emotional for that.

Dorentius and Reglum said little but held fire in their eyes. Sanford sent word to Barnabas in Edinburgh, urging him to come home straight away.

Cook sat with her niece in the kitchen. Maggie was with them, and Sally too, together with Isaak.

“Girls, this is a wicked, ettry time,” said Cook. “The awl-rawnies are about again, paddin’ ’round us, snuffing out lives, lookin’ for a way in to us. As we used to say when I was a girl, back in Norfolk, we must tine up the hedge, make it tight, and put the gaffles on the heels of the fighting cock, make ready to defend ourselves.”

Sally and Maggie nodded at the same time in response, and—without realizing it—drew closer together. Isaak arched her back and displayed her own “gaffles.”

“That’s the spirit, little tiger,” said Cook.

Two nights after the were-molures murdered Salmius and Noreous, Mrs. Sedgewick fell into a trance in her bedroom.

The Owl walked through her window, ushered in by a wind that roared only in Mrs. Sedgewick’s head. He floated in his man-form a foot or so over the floor, staring at her with his infinite eyes.

“Shawdelia Sedgewick,” he hoomed so only she could hear.

Mrs. Sedgewick could not move, could not speak.

“You know who I am,” said the Wurm. “You’ve seen me in your dreams before. I was not really interested in you then—but now I am. I come to find out from you all you know about two women, you know who I mean: the Maggie and the Sally, the Sally and the Maggie.”

Mrs. Sedgewick tried to shake her head but his gaze pinioned her.

The Owl paused. He felt the Mother Goddess stir in her moon-fathomed sleep, stretch out a tendril of her drowsy thought towards him, one tine on her vast harrow. He shuddered, rolled his shoulders.

The moment passed. The Mother continued her slumbers.

The Owl pressed forward.

“All you know, do you understand?” he said, floating towards her but otherwise motionless. “All. Now.”

Mrs. Sedgewick had no defenses for an onslaught such as this. Mrs. Sedgewick was not a Singer, nor was she protected in the house of a Singer.

The Wurm penetrated and stripped her mind, like an owl piercing and eviscerating a rabbit.

The next morning, the maid fled screaming from the room, bringing Mr. Sedgewick on the run, his rotund self flying up the stairs, his slippers flying off in his haste.

“Shawdelia! Shawdelia!” he cried, rushing to her crumpled form.

Mrs. Sedgewick lay curled up like a baby in the corner by her bed. She had urinated on herself. Her nightgown was half off. Her lip was bruised from a self-inflicted bite.

Mr. Sedgewick embraced his wife, as carefully as one cradles an egg yet as fiercely as one grips an anchor (hauling it up from the mud). He covered her nakedness. He cleaned off the blood, dabbing it away with an edge of his nightshirt. He dabbed also at the urine-soaked hem of Mrs. Sedgewick’s gown.

She looked at him with blank eyes, but she held on to him like a drowning person grasping a bit of flotsam providentially sent her way.

Rocking her steadily, he cried out once—“Dear wife, dear wife!”—and said no more until the maids cautiously approached and offered help.

In the days to come, Mrs. Sedgewick lay in bed, barely eating, eyes shut. She said nothing, no matter how much her husband tried to coax her, except three words, which she repeated over and over again.

“Strix,” she said. “Strix, Maggie, Strix, Sally, Strix, Strix, Strix.”

Mr. Sedgewick would never forget that word: “Strix.” He turned his formidable intellect to understanding what it might mean. When Barnabas—just returned with all speed from Edinburgh—called him to a special meeting at Mincing Lane, Sedgewick came with equal speed.

“Strix,” he said. “Maggie. Sally.”

“We are under siege,” said Barnabas, on a rainy fall afternoon the week following the attacks on the Yountians and Mrs. Sedgewick. “Consider this a council of war.”

The partners' room at Mincing Lane was packed. Sally sat next to Maggie, with Isaak commuting between them. Sanford, Dorentius and Reglum were there, as well as Billy Sea-Hen and the three other remaining Minders (Brasser, Tat’head, and Old Lobster), plus Mr. Fletcher. Present too were Mr. Sedgewick, the two principals of Matchett & Frew, and . . . James Kidlington.

(The Cook and her niece were not invited—primarily to spare them a burden of knowledge—but Barnabas half-acknowledged that they would be eavesdropping.)

Even Yikes sensed the importance of the meeting. He actually sat up for a few minutes at its start, before (presumably having reassured himself that destruction and death were not imminent, at least not before dinner time) resuming his usual posture by the fire-fender. He could be seen to open one eye from time to time, whenever the discussion rose to periodic heights, or perhaps just when a particularly large and agile spark landed on his back.

“Most of you know what I will be talking about,” continued Barnabas. “As for those of you who are not yet fully aware: Sanford and I invited you here because you are already in danger without knowing it. You have a right to know what this danger is and then decide for yourselves whether or not to persist with us in our efforts.”

Sanford added, “Much of what we tell you will be hard to credit, as flying in the face of reason and sobriety, yet we speculate—on pretty firm grounds—that you already know much of this story, even if it has not been fully detailed for you before.”

Barnabas stood very straight, stroked his vest (a deep-blue picotte design with checks of vermilion), put his hand up in his “clarifying” stance, and said, “To start at a beginning: there is a place called Yount, and there is a being called Strix . . .”

Before he could finish, Sedgewick, Maggie and James began talking at once, and Matchett & Frew broke out laughing (“we knew it, we knew it,” the latter exclaimed).

Maggie’s voice cut across the rest until she was the only one speaking.

“I know this,” she said. “I know the Owl, I have sung a wall against him, and aim to sing the fight to him, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” said Barnabas, “Beans and bacon, I do.”

“I have a plan for us,” said Maggie, who then outlined her work and calculations to date.

Sally gasped, “Why, that is
my
concept! That’s the Project we are already engaged in!”

Maggie said, “
Mine
has been long in the devising. I lack only the resources to perfect it.”

To his own surprise, as much as Maggie’s, Sedgewick said, “I can vouchsafe this. I have seen this girl’s work myself—it is a potent thing, a metaphysical engine, buttressed by mathematics.”

“So is mine, so is mine,” cried Sally. Sally described
her
design for the Great Fulginator.

“Your schema lacks the coordinates to entrain the rhythm, and specifically you miss Euler’s “i” in your extraction of roots,” said Maggie.

“Not so, not so,” countered Sally. Isaak darted under the table.

Discussion became debate, lasting some time. Dorentius and Reglum contributed many comments, now siding with Sally, now with Maggie.

“The steam-driven engine will be the determinant of success,” declared Dorentius. “Without it, we cannot amplify the effects of the Fulginator to a volume necessary to accomplish the task . . . of moving an entire world.”

“True enough,” said Sally. “Which is why
my
plan includes a juncture for the steam to impress upon the lusitropic substrates . . .”

“Yes, but, in
my
treatment you can clearly see how the virgulic escapements will channel the steam’s force most effectively . . .” said Maggie.

In the end, all the men agreed that Sally and Maggie needed to pool their ideas. Maggie and Sally looked less certain, but—eying each other warily—consented to their newfound partnership.

“Well, figs and footrails, I am glad we have
that
settled now,” said Barnabas, shaking his head. “And all that commotion just describes the work on the Fulginator alone, mind you. More slowly still proceeds the work on the design for the ship itself,
The Indigo Pheasant
.”

“Sally, Maggie, we need you not only to combine your drafts for the Fulginator,” intoned Sanford. “But we need you to collaborate with Mr. Gandy, the master-designer and architect for the vessel.”

“A very rum sort, that Mr. Gandy,” said Barnabas.

“The hoop calls the ball round,” stage-whispered Matchett to Frew.

“. . . and with the craftsmen at Blackwall’s yard; time is—as Sedgewick will tell us in his lawyer’s way—of the essence,” said Sanford.

“My vision requires resources,” said Maggie.

“
Our
vision,” murmured Sally.

“Ah, beyond doubt,” said Barnabas. “There’s challenges to be surmounted there.”

Barnabas and Sanford explained the poor state of the fundraising. Many financial schemes, suggestions, stratagems and ploys were debated, as Cook brought in tea for all.

“The firm of Coppelius, Prinn & Goethals (Widow) looks ever more the saviour, given their strong interest and the correspondingly weak responses from just about every other quarter . . . present company excluded, of course, dear Matchett & Frew,” said Barnabas.

“Thank you, Barnabas, we are ever friends of your house, you know that,” said Matchett. “And it may astonish you to discover that we have long half-known of Yount and the Owl Strix and surmised that your recent escapades had something to do with that land of fable and its fearsome warden.”

“Always knew you two kept strange company,” said Sanford. “Now we do too.”