"You know," I told him, "sometimes boring is good." But I knew what he meant. There was a thick atmosphere of stupefying wealth and conformity and safety that hung in the streets like damp, soaking even into your brain. I would rather have lived here than Citadel Street-of course-but you"d never feel alive. I did not believe in the people who lived in these perfect houses. Living here, you"d wake in the morning and wonder if your feeble heart had faded in the night, never having anything to beat against. That was what I thought. And then I thought about the hot water and the carpets in the bedrooms and the streets empty of soldiers and was not certain. We had lived like this once, and I still remembered faintly.
Suddenly, abruptly, we came to the city wall. It continued this way all around the city island, lower than Stirling"s height and two feet thick, no more. The city needed no defense beyond the river. The wind lifted over the wall and caught us face on as we approached.
We strolled over and leaned against the wall, looking out into the hills over the wide gulf of the river. "It"s nice," I said indifferently. "I would not mind living here." But really, I could have stood there forever.
The houses behind us looked as if they should face others on the opposite side of an ordinary street. But instead, across the cobbled road there was only the wall, and beyond that, s.p.a.ce. The whole street was built of clean gray stone, leaning out like the side of a ship. The buildings here were not old; the oldest in the city were made from the volcanic rock of the island itself.
I leaned over to look down into the gulf, and Stirling caught my arm, exclaiming, "Be careful, Leo!" The river was at least sixty feet below. The dirty water flowed fast, darkened by the shadow and the red reflection of the cliffs. But there was a beauty in the volume and power of the water foaming over rocks as it ran southward.
Stirling was still tugging my arm. "Leo, stop leaning over like that," he said. I stopped and looked out over the sunlit eastern country instead. On the other side of the gulf, lower than the city, ran the Circle Road. Four soldiers on horseback were cantering around it toward the north end of the city. We could see the Northeast Road from here, a straight line drawn across patchy farmland. Just before it slipped into white mist, I thought I could see Ositha, the halfway point between Kalitzstad and Romeira. And to the east were the hills, fresh with their new coat of summer gra.s.s and spotted with white flowers. The sun spread from behind us, over our heads, out across the country, and flushed the distant Eastern Mountains with lilac.
"It was all right to come here without Maria, wasn"t it?" said Stirling.
"Yes. I mean, we"ve seen it before."
"But I didn"t remember it as beautiful as this."
"She will not mind. The hills are different when you"re in them, and we won"t go into them until Sat.u.r.day."
"Are we going to Aldebaran"s grave, then?" asked Stirling. "I think we should go before it gets late. If you still want to."
I rose from the wall, where I had been leaning, and we turned to walk toward the graveyard.
I was watching the water flowing past us when Stirling jogged my arm. "What?" I asked, looking up. The door of one of the houses slammed shut ahead of us, and looking to the sound, I saw a familiar figure jogging down the steps.
"It is Sergeant Markey," I said.
"Yes. Can you believe he lives here?" said Stirling.
"Oh, I can well believe it."
"He is coming this way," said Stirling through the side of his mouth.
Sergeant Markey marched briskly toward us, and when he looked as if he recognized us, Stirling said politely, "Good afternoon, sir." We both nodded to him. He gave the briefest hint of a nod, so small that we could have imagined it, and quickened his pace as he pa.s.sed us, looking away.
"How impolite!" said Stirling in mock indignation when he had pa.s.sed. And then he said again, "Can you believe he lives here?"
"I always a.s.sumed that he was poor, for some reason."
"Me also. Most of the teachers aren"t rich."
"Well, they"re not this rich. That"s probably why he"s so mean and irritable at school. He probably can"t bear to be away from his perfect house with its perfect street and its perfect view. He probably can"t bear to see all the ugly streets and shabby kids when he"s used to this."
"You shouldn"t be jealous, Leo."
"I"m not jealous. I"m just saying that it explains a lot."
The street sloped shallowly downward. Soon we saw that there was a dead end ahead, cut off after a house by railings and then a sheer drop, and we turned off to the right.
As we walked south we reached a street I remembered. We were out of the wealthy area, without having noticed where it had ended, and back among the familiar drab houses. We had to walk slowly, jarring our legs, this road was so steep. At the school I used to go to when I was a little boy, before the military schools were opened, they had taught us that the streets here sloped so sharply because this was the point where, thousands of years ago, the volcanic rock had slumped. I told Stirling that as we walked.
At the bottom of the street was the huge building of Zenithar Armaments. I think it used to be a hospital. There was a triangular s.p.a.ce of mud in front of it, gouged with the tracks of many heavy carts. "Left here," I said. Industrious metallic sounds seeped out from it as we pa.s.sed. Not long after they had died away behind us, we reached the bridge.
There were five bridges from Kalitzstad. Lucien renamed four when he took over: the North, South, Northwest, and Southwest bridges. The one that we came to now remained the Victoire Bridge, named after the man who designed it; it was the only name that had not had royal connotations. It was the bridge that Lucien"s troops entered the city by when they took power.
This bridge had stood for over two hundred years, but I still wondered if it was safe as we crossed it. There was so much empty air between the bridge and the water. The old saying used to go that the city was built on willpower alone, because of the long tradition of training in magic here, and because of that gravity-defying bridge, and the castle on its rock, and the harbor that was hollowed out of the west side of the island, an enormous cave under the edge of the city.
We entered the graveyard through the stone archway at the end of the bridge and were instantly among the graves. Most on the perimeter were new, sunk from the settling of the earth or mounded up still too high, and marked only with small wooden crosses. A short way to our left was an empty grave, newly dug. Stirling glanced at it as we pa.s.sed.
The graves were arranged traditionally, in circles. In the center of the middle circle, a long way away from where we stood now, there was a large monument-a stone cross with the figure of Christ on it, surrounded by a circle of trees. Nearest to it were the graves of the royal family, going back about four centuries, and a lot of empty gra.s.s, which had been left for the rest of them for a long time to come. It would have been strange to be a young prince or princess in those days and walk up here and see, to the nearest foot or two, where you would lie until you returned to dust.
"I can"t remember where the grave is," Stirling said. "It"s all changed."
"I know it was over this way," I said, weaving in and out of the headstones. I glanced at the nearest one. "A long way further in. These are only dated about a year ago."
"I think it was in that direction," Stirling said, pointing.
"Here, we are getting close. Read the dates."
"I can"t."
"I forgot. I will find it; we are near to it now." We were about fifteen rings in toward the center. "It"s in this circle, for sure," I told Stirling. "It"s around here." He jogged over, and we both peered at the headstones. It was like a macabre sort of treasure hunt, and we were taking a strange delight in it.
"Is this it?" He pointed.
I looked. "Yes, I think so."
"A-L-D ...," he spelled. I let him. "A-L-D-E-B-A-R-A-N. Aldebaran, that says. It is his grave."
It was an ordinary cross, blotched with mustard-colored lichen, bearing only his name and the dates of his birth and death. "How old does that say he lived to?" asked Stirling.
I worked it out. "Sixty."
"Younger than Grandmother," said Stirling. "So how old is he now?"
"He would have been seventy."
"Would have been? If he was alive, you mean?" He looked at me steadily. "I still think he is."
"Perhaps." I shrugged.
Stirling began to stamp on the grave. "What are you doing?" I demanded.
"Testing if I can hear a coffin echoing."
"How would you know if coffins echo? And it would have rotted by now."
"Oh." He stopped stamping.
Now that we were here, it seemed stupid. How would we ever know if the grave was real just by looking at it or stamping on it? Or even digging it up? If people want to lie, they can lie, and you never know if they"re telling the truth.
"Do you know what?" Stirling said, casting his eyes about the graveyard.
"No, what?"
"Their heads are far apart, but their feet are all nearly touching."
"Whose?"
"The bodies in the graves. That"s the problem with putting them in a circle."
"Stirling! What a thing to think of! I must be a bad influence on you!"
"You sound like Grandmother!" he told me, and I laughed but hushed quickly. It was like laughing in a church. Even if you are quite alone, the spirits in the air tell you that you should not do it. "I don"t mean to be disrespectful," he said. "They"re not really here."
An urgent breeze snagged in the branches of the trees. The sun had lost its warmth without our noticing it, and the rays were casting long shadows behind the gravestones. The dark stone angels on the royal graves twitched. "Come on," I told Stirling, shivering. "Let"s go home."
"Are you scared?" he asked me.
"No-just cold. Come, we should be getting back."
He followed me in and out of the gravestones. But before we reached the gateway, a figure emerged through it toward us-a somber, cloaked figure.
It was a priest. Behind him came four men bearing a small coffin-a child"s-about the height of Stirling. A young couple pressed close behind it, and a small family group a little way behind them. The man was wearing a soldier"s uniform. They were both crying and made no attempt to hide it. There should have been no one here to see.
I stood still, guilty because my laughter was still fading from the air, and Stirling stopped beside me. The people went and gathered around that open grave, and as soon as we could, we slipped past them toward the bridge. As we went, the man broke away from the group and staggered back to the gateway. He leaned there as though he could not support himself, sobbing openly, his hands over his face. Stirling glanced at me, and we edged past him. He did not even look up.
We walked back in silence. The child must have died from some infectious illness; that was the reason for burial so late in the day. It was the tradition to bury people in the morning, so that they would rise with the sun. But it was the law to bury people after five o"clock and before sunrise if they had died of an infectious disease. Some people thought that just before dawn was closer to sunrise. Some people thought that the last light of the afternoon was. But the thing is neither of them is actually sunrise.
I had half expected Grandmother to be angry that we were late back, but she was not. We told her we had been for a walk, and she did not question it. "I"m glad that you were not kept in after school again" was all she said. Then she and Stirling went out to church.
I could not settle to anything. I wandered around the apartment, thinking about Aldebaran"s grave and whether it could be fake, as Stirling said. It had looked the same as all the others. Just the fact that he had a gravestone had always made me believe that he was dead for certain. But I was not certain anymore.
I began looking for that black book. Several days had pa.s.sed since the last writing had appeared, and I wanted to check it again. I thought I had put it back in the windowsill chest, but it was not there. I searched the room. I found it eventually, under the mattress on my bed. That was strange, because I knew I had not put it there. And when I opened it, there was more writing in it.
I was less unnerved by the book than I had been at first, but I still hesitated before reading it. Not only was writing appearing in it, someone was moving it too. But what harm could it do just to read the next section? I flipped the next blank pages over, found the writing and began before I could change my mind.
"Field," said Raymond, looking up from his newspaper. He found it increasingly hard to read, but he could make out most of the headlines. "Field, you know that gardening is not the butler"s job."
"Sorry, sir," said the butler, wiping the lawn mower oil from his hands. "The gra.s.s needed cutting."
"How many times have I had to tell you, Field?" said Raymond. "You needn"t work so hard. You aren"t a slave."
"It is no trouble, sir. Hard work is good for me."
Several years had pa.s.sed, and the butler had not aged. "Maybe that"s true," said Raymond, chuckling.
"Well, I have always been accustomed to it."
"I suppose the army was very tough physical work."
"The army? Yes, of course."
"I would not have managed," said Raymond. "I"ve never been healthy. Look at me now: I"m barely seventy and I"m at death"s door."
"I wouldn"t say that, sir. A heart attack takes some getting over, but I would not say you are at ... death"s door, as you put it." But Raymond shook his head.
The butler knelt and lit the fire. The swords, in their cases, glimmered in the falling dusk. "Field, would you pa.s.s me the envelope from the top drawer of my desk?" Raymond said then. "The brown one."
The butler fetched the envelope and handed it to him. "I"ve asked my lawyers to come by this evening," Raymond said, taking out a few papers. "I needed to set some things in order." At that moment the doorbell rang. "Show them in, Field, if you will. You don"t need to stay. I"ll call you if I need you."
"Very good, sir."
As soon as the butler reached his room, he went to the cupboard. He got the book out, sighing in exasperation when he saw that there was still no more writing than his own unanswered messages. He began scrawling into it furiously, the ink spurting sharply from the pen with the force that he exerted on the nib. The twentieth of August, in the twelfth year of the reign of King Ca.s.sius II The twentieth of August, in the twelfth year of the reign of King Ca.s.sius II, he wrote. Talitha. Talitha.
I started and held the book closer to my eyes, reading that one name. Talitha-I had not misread it; that was what it said. Talitha, Lucien"s closest advisor, the one who had killed the king and the queen and exiled Aldebaran and the prince. This man was not a stranger after all. And the date he had written-the twentieth of August in the twelfth year of the reign of King Ca.s.sius II-that date was three days before the Liberation. I read on quickly.
Talitha, it has been two months since you replied to me, and yet I know you are in no danger. Cannot you even write me one word?
From what I can see of the country, which is not much, I can tell something is about to happen. But my attempts to see are being blocked. Could you investigate this? I fear there are traitors among us. Be careful. If a rebellion is stirring, I am sure it is the Kalitz family on Holy Island that is behind it. Could you not get someone to watch them? I suspect Lucien Kalitz. I know that you say this is unfounded, but please, check again before you cast aside my concerns so quickly.
Measures need to be taken. And from what I can see, nothing has been done. Of course, I leave the protection of Malonia to your far superior judgment, but can you tell me what you are planning to do about this? Please reply, Talitha-I am worried. If there is any risk of an attempt at revolution, we ought to move first and tighten security. You have not seen these English weapons. Willpower is nothing against them. We must be absolutely certain that someone is not ma.s.s-producing rifles to equip a rebel force. These are not impractical firearms like those that are beginning to be developed in Malonia. These are highly effective machines.
I beg you once again to reply to me. Your servant, A.F.
After scratching in his initials, the butler pushed the book back into the cupboard and began to pace about the room, flexing his fingers so as to loosen them from their grip on the pen. He rubbed at his head; he was tired from the effort of trying to see into Malonia. Why could not Talitha reply?
Two days later a message appeared, scribbled hastily in slanting lines across the page. A.F., Situation under control. Do not attempt to communicate with me again-I cannot be sure that you are not being watched. No one is plotting a revolution, least of all the Kalitz family. I know you bear a grudge against them, but kindly keep it out of these matters of state. Do not reply. Talitha. A.F., Situation under control. Do not attempt to communicate with me again-I cannot be sure that you are not being watched. No one is plotting a revolution, least of all the Kalitz family. I know you bear a grudge against them, but kindly keep it out of these matters of state. Do not reply. Talitha.
Arthur Field slammed the book shut and frowned into the darkness outside the window. He respected Talitha less and less every day. But she was his superior in every way; what right had he to accuse her of failing to do enough? She had not time or strength to spare to communicate with him constantly, after all. He watched the lake growing darker under the fading sky and ground his teeth together absently, digging his fingernails into the cover of the book. "Talitha," he said then, addressing the darkness. "Talitha, answer me." He closed his eyes and spoke louder. "Answer me."
The darkness remained silent. Talitha, if she had heard him, chose not to reply.
And then I realized who the man was-the butler, Arthur Field. I felt as though I knew what was going to happen next, as if I had witnessed it long ago and almost but not quite forgotten. I stared at the page. The writing had grown more sloping and uneven, scratched deep into the old paper, since the story began. And this was the end.
I was distracted the whole of that evening, still thinking about the book. Lying in bed that night, staring out at the stars between the curtains, I was still confused. If the butler was Aldebaran, which was what I was beginning to believe, and if this story was true, then he had been alive in England just before the Liberation ten years ago. And if he had been alive at that time, why would he have been writing to Talitha? Could she have tricked him into believing she was on the side of the king, as she had tricked others? I was not sure. But if anyone could have tricked the great Aldebaran, it would have been her.
Then another thought made me sit up in the darkness. If those trained in magic could communicate through a book, perhaps that was what this book was too, the book that I had found. And if so, did that make it dangerous? Maybe I should never have picked it up. How did I know it was not the property of someone great and powerful, someone who could be watching me now as I turned the pages?
I did not sleep until the clock in the city had struck two. Lying there, I was wondering uneasily whose writing I had intercepted-and whether they knew that I was reading it.
The lamp gutters and goes out altogether. I sit for a while in darkness, then cross the balcony and look out over the city. I can hear the music still rising from the rooms of the castle, the notes faster and wilder now that it is late. The church clock, away across the roofs below, is chiming twelve. I used to hear the clock chiming in those days too, those days when I sat up at nights reading the book.