got the sense, the awful sense, that I was wrong about him; that he’s a villain after all.’
‘Is he here?’ she said. ‘Crosbie. Is he in Hokitika?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ said Staines.
Her hands had moved to her belly. ‘You don’t need to tell me where he is,’ she said. ‘But I need you to take him a message. An important message—from me.’
THE ASCENDANT
In which Te Rau Tauwhare declines to mention Francis Carver’s name to Crosbie Wells, much less to describe the circumstances of their brief interaction one month prior, an omission that owes in equal parts to a deeply private nature and to a certain cunning when it comes to financial profit; the next time he sees Francis Carver, Tauwhare thinks, he will make an easy shilling, perhaps more.
Crosbie Wells had bought four panes of glass for a quartered window, but he had yet to cut the hole, and set the sill; for the moment, the panes were propped against the wall, reflecting, faintly, the flickering lamplight, and the square grating of the stove.
‘I knew a man who lost an arm in the floods at Dunstan,’ Wells was saying. He was lying on his bolster, a bottle of spirits on his chest; Tauwhare sat opposite, nursing a bottle of his own. ‘Got caught in a rapid, you see, and his arm got trapped, and they couldn’t save it. He had a plain name. Smith or Stone or something like that. Anyway—the point is—he talked of it afterwards, the incident, and his real sorrow, he said, was that the arm he’d lost had been tattooed. A full-rigged ship was the picture—a present to himself, after coming round the Horn—and it bothered him extremely that he’d lost it. For some reason it stayed with me—that story. Losing a tattoo. I asked him if he mightn’t just tattoo the other arm, but he was strange about it. I’ll never do that, he said. I’ll never do it.’
‘It is painful,’ said Tauwhare. ‘
Wells looked over at him. ‘Is it sometimes a shock,’ he said, ‘to see yourself? After you haven’t been near a looking glass in a while, I mean. Do you forget?’
‘No,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Never.’ His face was shadowed; the lamplight accented the lines around his mouth, giving his expression a hawkish, solemn look.
‘I think I would.’
‘We have a saying,’ Tauwhare said. ‘
‘I cut a man’s face with a knife,’ Wells said, still staring at him. ‘Gave him a scar. Right here. Eye to mouth. It bled like anything. Did yours bleed like anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever killed a man, Tauwhare?’
‘No.’
‘No,’ said Wells, turning back to his bottle. ‘Nor have I.’
PART EIGHT
The Truth About Aurora
SATURN IN VIRGO
In which Quee Long brings a complaint before the law, and George Shepard, whose personal hatred of Sook Yongsheng has grown, over time, to include all Chinese men, declines to honour it, an injustice for which he does not, either then, or afterwards, feel any compunction.
‘I do not understand what you are saying.’
Ah Quee sighed. He pointed a third time to his certificate of indenture, which lay between them on Shepard’s desk. In the box marked ‘present site of employment’ was written the word
‘Duffer,’ he explained. ‘Aurora is duffer claim.’
‘The Aurora is a duffer claim, and you work the Aurora, yes. That much I understand.’
‘Mannering,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Mannering make duffer
‘Mannering make duffer not duffer,’ Shepard repeated.
‘Very good,’ said Ah Quee, nodding. ‘Very bad man.’
‘Which is he—very good or very bad?’
Ah Quee frowned; then he said, ‘Very bad man.’
‘How does he make the duffer not a duffer? How?
Ah Quee took his purse and held it up. Moving very deliberately, so that the action would not be lost on Shepard, he extracted a silver penny, which he then transferred to his left pocket. He waited a moment, and then he took the penny from his pocket, and returned it to his purse, as before.
Shepard sighed. ‘Mr. Quee,’ he said. ‘I see that the term of your indenture will not expire for some years; the term of my patience, however, reached its expiration some minutes ago. I have neither the resources nor the inclination to launch an investigation into Mr. Mannering’s finances on the strength of a half-articulated tip. I suggest you return to the Aurora, and count yourself lucky that you have any kind of work at all.’
JUPITER IN SAGITTARIUS
In which Alistair Lauderback, having now officially announced his intention to run for the Westland seat in the Fourth New Zealand Parliament, an ambition that, in addition to furthering his already illustrious political career, will take him over the Alps to Westland proper in the coming months, thus granting the interview his bastard brother has so long desired, now turns his mind to practical matters, or, more accurately, entreats an old associate to turn his mind to practical matters on his, Lauderback’s, behalf.
