Somehow that vastness was easier to encompass than these narrow streets, and houses tacked onto other houses, tall and teetering. Thin curling streets gave out to broad squares, where you’d step from shadow to bright light in an instant, as though waking from a dream, and David’s life was becoming too dreamlike as it was.
But Mirrlees was gone now. He couldn’t go back, and soon this metropolis would be behind him too, if Buchan and Whig could get them moving again. All of a sudden he experienced a longing for another city, much more ancient and one that he would be going back to, even though he had never been there before. Tearwin Meet, the home of the Engine of the World. Not that he knew what he had to do beyond its high walls. The northern city remained a mystery to him.
A whistle blew in the distance, followed by others. Another body had been found. Guilt gripped him. While he did nothing, people died. He wasn’t Cadell; he never wanted that sort of guilt to consume him.
He turned from the window just as someone knocked at the door. Once again he swung the pen in front of him, mightier than the sword and all that.
“David,” came a soft voice.
Margaret.
“What do you want?” he asked, trying to inject more urgency into the request than the languid calm of Carnival would allow.
“You know.”
David looked at his watch. Midnight had died long ago.
“It’s late,” he said, trying to sound tired. “Tomorrow.”
Margaret sighed. “I’ve heard you pacing around in there. I know you’re as likely to find sleep as I am.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m in bed… you,” he yawned, “you just woke me.”
“Open this door, or I’ll kick it down.”
David walked to the door, hesitated, one hand reaching out towards the latch. He considered the veins, raised along his wrist, and the nails that he kept short with a pair of clippers that Mr Whig had provided. It was the arm of a gentleman, the son of a politician, a Carnival addict and a fugitive. His hand shook a little, and he steadied it, though all it did was seem to drive the shakes deeper into him, as though, at his core, all he contained was fear.
“Don’t just stand there,” Margaret said. “I’m not feeling patient today.”
When was she ever patient? She’d spent the last week arguing with Whig and Buchan, demanding why they hadn’t already set off into the north.
“You have a second, no more and then I-”
David opened the door because he knew that she would, and if she did it would be a damn sight harder to close again.
Margaret pushed past him, spun on her heel, in a movement as precise and swift as a dancer’s, and jabbed a pale finger into his chest. “You can hear them out there, can’t you? The whistles blowing?”
David considered her. Much paler than his brown skin, her hair a bone white that still surprised him a little when he saw her. She looked like she had been waiting for just this moment, to come springing from her bed, all accusation and sharp fingers. His jaw moved a little, but he found that he couldn’t quite manage to speak.
Margaret grimaced. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. David shook his head. “I’m tired. I’m just tired. I was ready to go to bed.”
And he realised that this time he wasn’t lying, he’d been sitting there with his pen in hand trying to think, just how to write what he had to write. Doubting the letter would even reach his Aunt Veronica.
“And sleep, eh. Rest for another day of doing nothing,” Margaret spat. She walked to the window and tapped the glass; more whistles blew, louder, closer together, beneath them David thought he could just make out shouts. “Waiting for another night of death.”
David felt sorry for her, almost as sorry as he felt for himself. “Another body will show up tomorrow.” said Margaret.
“I would say so,” David replied.
Margaret peered at him. “Are you all right? You really don’t look it.” David shrugged; honestly, he didn’t know. “What are you suggesting we do?”
“We both know it’s him,” Margaret said, turning from the window. “Don’t lie; I can see that you know. We need to find Cadell. Stop him before someone else dies.”
David nodded. “You’re right, of course. We need to hunt him down, and stop him. Absolutely.”
“Are you mocking me?” Margaret demanded. “Because I will not be mocked.”
“No,” David said, and so what if he was? “But it is too late tonight. I don’t think it would be good to find him in the darkness. But tomorrow, when the sun’s up, then we have a better chance.”
He smiled at her. “I’m surprised you haven’t gone off hunting him alone.”
Margaret shook her head. “I tried, I may as well have been hunting a ghost.”
David was shocked. How unlike her to admit a weakness, perhaps he wasn’t the only one changing. “And you think having me around with you will give you an advantage? Maybe you’re the one doing the mocking.”
“Once I’d have laughed at the thought of needing your help. But, David, you’re not yourself any more, you even move differently now.”
Really, David thought, do I? He came to the foot of the bed, and sat down.
Margaret’s eyes followed him intently, and not without a little suspicion. He grinned at her. Her lips thinned.
“Whatever Cadell did to you, it’s changed you. And not just because you’re wearing the Old Man’s Orbis.” She looked from the Orbis on his finger, to the pen that he still held in his hands, then over at the desk. “What have you been writing?”
“Nothing,” David said. Which was close enough to the truth. He’d tried to pen a letter to his Aunt Veronica and failed and failed and failed. All he’d ended up doing was scratching his name in the desk. Ten sheets of paper were scrunched up in the bin by the writing table, on two of them he’d written the word drown at least a hundred times. On another sheet he’d scrawled, Help. They’re coming. Hungry. He didn’t even remember writing the words, or whose words they were exactly. His psyche had become complicated of late. He was finding it harder and harder to tell just who he was.
David got to his feet. “You are right, we must do something. We must put an end to this, but we have to be careful. And you’re right, I think I can find him.”
He opened the door, gestured for her to go through it.
Margaret gave him a look that said, amongst other things, I’ve seen you tear iron ships out of the sky. You need fear nothing. But he did, that was exactly what he had to fear.
Instead, as she walked through the doorway, Margaret said, “So what is he, now?”
“He is what he always was,” David said. “An Old Man.”
“And what are you?”
He shut the door in her face.
The door jolted once, as though Margaret had struck it, or perhaps knocked her head against the wood. David jumped. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so rude. No, better she was angry than depressed.
Outside the whistles blew again, loud and shrill, and David could imagine he was home — where the Vergers’ whistling would echo like a threat through the dark, and where his father was still alive. And then he was remembering the shrill winds of the storms of Marger Pass, someone shouting at Cadell, and he knew again that his memory had become a chasm, far deeper than it should have ever been.
He slid a hand under the desk and pulled his Carnival from its hiding place.
Nothing better to paper over the abyss, he thought, and laughed.
CHAPTER 4
It was a period of great confusion. The Roil infiltrating cities with ease, and the Old Men bringing fairy tales to life with their murderous hungers. Stade had released them, and he knew what he was doing (how rarely he did
