Abarat: Absolute Midnight

The Business of Empire

WITH THE MANY HUNDREDS of seamstresses Mater Motley trusted and considered most experienced out among the islands leading the Death Squads, their task of gathering up any troublesome individuals who might be using the chaos to work on chipping away at the foundations of her Empire, Mater Motley’s messenger of choice had become Maratien.

Twenty-two hours had now passed since the sacbrood had been released. In that time, Maratien had come to know the interior of the tower very well as she carried messages up and down its stairways. She had brought letters of supplication or surrender from those in power from across the Hours, all of whom had lately come to understand that they would forfeit both their territories and their lives if they did not pay their respects to the woman they’d once called the Mad Hag of Gorgossium.

Mater Motley made Maratien read the begging, self-serving missives aloud, but the Old Mother seldom had patience enough to hear more than a paragraph.

“Enough,” she’d say.

And Maratien would do precisely as her mistress instructed, letting go of the offending plea near one of the windows where a gust of wind could carry it away. There were a few occasions when Motley confiscated a letter herself. These were all from sorcerers and wizards who claimed to have had some romantic liaison with the Old Mother. They were treated with particular contempt, snatched from Maratien’s fingers and torn to shreds before the wind took them.

In the end, no claim—regal, religious, or sentimental—carried any weight.

There were only three letters that the Old Mother paid any attention to. The first was from one of the Old Mother’s loyal seamstresses, who wrote to inform her that she had heard rumors that somebody who closely resembled Mater Motley’s missing grandson, Christopher Carrion, had been seen on three islands: the Black Egg, Huffaker, and Ninnyhammer.

“I have heard, Lady Mother, that you believe your grandson may have left this world for that other at our soles. If you have proof that this is the case, then my information will be of little interest to you. But I offer it nevertheless . . .”

This letter Mater Motley kept for herself, making no comment upon its contents. She did the same with a letter from another of those seamstresses, whom she counted among her inner circle, who wrote to tell her she was optimistic that she would soon be able to report the arrest of the rebel, Candy Quackenbush, and asking whether, when that happened, was the girl to be brought to Gorgossium or taken to join the condemned souls in the camp on Scoriae? To this Mater Motley dictated a reply, which Maratien dispatched.

Mater Motley was of the opinion that when the criminal Candy Quackenbush was in custody, the girl was to be taken to Scoriae, treated like the common criminal she was, and executed as such.

The third letter, which the Old Mother studied very closely, was from the Captain of a squad of warrior stitchlings called skulliers. He was departing from the streets of Commexo City, where the skulliers, every one of them sewn up with war in its threads, were driving Commexo’s forces to a harrowing defeat. But, the Captain reported, the architect of Commexo City then threw on to the battlefield a force she had not known existed.

“He has legions of likenesses of that infernal child of his, the Commexo Kid. All of them are a perfect copy of the original (if indeed there ever was a living original, which I highly doubt). These legions came against us in swarms, with no weapons except their numbers, which I begin to fear are limitless. Knowing the importance with which you view the extinguishing of the city’s lights, I am writing in the hope that you may somehow lend your own powers to those of your faithful legions. I fear the victory that is your right will not come to pass until the balance of power is tipped in our favor, and I can think of no more certain way of making that a reality than by your personal intervention to turn the tide of this battle. I believe with your presence here the struggle to extinguish this city and to hang the architect, Rojo Pixler, from a lamppost, will be quickly realized.”

The letter moved the Old Mother to action on the instant. She wrote some fifty letters on the air, and conjuring for each a wind to bear it away, let them go their many ways. Then, ordering Maratien to accompany her, she called down the ethereal staircase that led from the mosaic-laden chamber up to the roof of the Needle Tower.

“Stay close to me, girl,” the Old Mother said. “I am about to let powers loose in whose path I would not want you to get caught.”

“They would harm me?”

“They would kill you, Maratien. Take the hem of my dress. Why do you hesitate?”

“The dolls, lady.”

“Souls. That’s all they are. Enemies of our mighty intent. They’re just afraid that you’re going to take them from me. Go, grip the gown tight. Tighter still. That’s it. Now don’t move.”

“I won’t.”

“Good. Trust me. You’re quite safe. Take the visions as they come.”

“I am ready, my lady.”

“You must be brave and drink in all the visions I am about to show us. They will exist but once. After my Midnight, they will be gone. For there has never been such a sight as this before, nor will ever be again.”

So saying she pulled the collar of her gown away from her neck, exposing her clavicle. There was precious little flesh upon her, and the finely curved bone stood clear of her skin, which had a jaundiced hue. With a sudden burst of speed, she reached into her own flesh and caught hold of the bone, snatching it out of her body, apparently without any pain. A metallic tang attended its revelation, a smell of magic, which drew countless blends of darkness out of air.

“What’s happening?” Maratien asked, her voice shaking, more with awe than with fear.

“I am calling together the nine parts of my beloved deathing ship, The Stormwalker, which was the labor of a hundred years and ten to build, all of it done in hiding.”

“Why so long?”

“That will be plain, when you have sight of it,” Mater Motley said. “Be patient, child. The pieces rise, even as we speak.”

She spoke the truth. As soon as she had raised her summoning clavicle into the air, and her orders had gone forth, in nine places around the islands, all of them wastelands or wildernesses where nothing lived to know the secret that lay hidden in the earth there. Now the buried mysteries rolled over in their tombs of dirt and stone so that the ground cracked and gaped. Nine vast implacable forms, none smaller than a cathedral (and most much larger), slowly rose up into the air.

Two of the nine parts of The Stormwalker moved toward each other as they had been programmed to do before they were buried, their massive forms tumbling over as they converged, meticulously aligning themselves so as to fit perfectly with the other, the two becoming one. The new singularity formed the vast engine of the machine, the thunder of which rolled around the sky. There would be lightning to accompany it in time, spat from the underbelly of what would be, upon completion, a vessel three-quarters of a mile long—the Stormwalker Christopher Carrion had spoken of—so called because it would stride on legs of lightning.

Mater Motley called forth visions of the remaining seven parts resurrecting themselves, throwing off their blankets of earth and rising to greet the first morning of the Night. She felt the profoundest pleasure to witness the approach of the nine parts of The Stormwalker. Only she knew the genius that had brought the vessel into being. Only she knew that the forges in which its many metals had been melted together, in an alloy so black it made Midnight look like a blaze of Noon, had not been fired up in the Abarat, nor ever could have been. Only she knew that the minds that had aided her in its design and construction had been those of beings more remote from the islands than the stars. They were the Nephauree. They were from a place, or state of mind, called the Zael Maz’yre. It, and they, existed behind the stars.

But nobody in this little Empire of hers needed to know about any of that now. Just as the time had finally come for her to pluck forth her clavicle and summon up her deathing ship, so the time would come when she would let her true allegiances be known. The alien intelligences that lived beyond the mausoleums of the real had trusted her with their knowledge so that she might lay a road of blood out for them, where they could sit enthroned and dictate the nature of magic from here to the end of the world.