CHAPTER 2
Lizanne
“Nothing at all?”
Sofiya Griffan shook her head, loose red tresses playing over the pale skin of her forehead. She had maintained a largely silent and downcast demeanour since the Profitable Venture sailed from Corvus, her inexperienced mind no doubt crowded with the horrors she had witnessed during the capital’s fall. However, now she seemed on the verge of some form of mental collapse, her husband reaching out to clasp her hands as they trembled in her lap.
“Nothing,” she said, eyes flashing at Lizanne in resentful accusation, as if this turn of events were somehow her contrivance. “Feros is silent. That . . . that has never happened before.”
“You have an alternative point of contact, do you not?” Director Thriftmor asked, the inevitable brandy glass in hand. “In Sanorah?”
Sofiya’s head moved in a sharp, nervous nod. “A scheduled emergency contact in Northern Fleet Headquarters. I tranced with them less than an hour ago. They’ve had no contact with Feros since yesterday, nor with any fleet units in the harbour. Blood . . .” She faltered, closing her eyes to stem an upsurge of tears before continuing, forcing the words out. “Blood-burning patrol-craft have been dispatched but it will be several days before they report in.”
Silence reigned in the ward-room as each person present digested the news and the Director took the opportunity to refresh his glass. It was Captain Verricks who broke the silence, his only evident sign of discomfort a slight twitch in the impressive grey whiskers that covered the lower regions of his craggy face. “My orders remain clear,” he said in a gruff tone that said much for his ability to convey a sense of unflappable authority even in times of great uncertainty. “The Profitable Venture is to transport Director Thriftmor and Miss Lethridge to Feros following the completion of their mission to the Corvantine Empire. I intend to fulfil these orders. Trance or not.”
“Feros has fallen,” Lizanne told Verricks, the certainty in her own voice more than a match for his. Her imagination had seen fit to crowd her mind with a plethora of dreadful visions concerning the likely fates of those she had left behind to pursue her Corvantine adventures. Aunt Pendilla, Jermayah, Father . . . Tekela. Guilt and self-reproach roiled in her breast as she met the captain’s gaze. I should have gotten them on the first ship to a Mandinorian port. But she had had no notion the White would be able to strike so far north so quickly, and Feros was one of the most well-defended ports in the world.
“My orders . . .” Captain Verricks began but she cut him off.
“Your orders came from a Board which is now most likely dead or enslaved.” The harshness in her tone drew a frightened sob from Sofiya, but Lizanne ignored her, stepping closer to Verricks to emphasise her point. “We should hope for the former, since I do not relish the prospect of our adversary learning their secrets, as it surely has if it captured any alive.”
Verricks blinked, his gaze switching back and forth between her and Thriftmor. “In that event,” he said, and Lizanne could see the distasteful curl of his lips beneath the whiskers, “Director Thriftmor would appear to be the sole remaining authority.”
Thriftmor’s brandy glass halted its progress towards his mouth as all eyes turned to him in expectation. Besides Lizanne, Verricks and the Griffans, the ship’s senior officers were also present at this conference. It was clear to Lizanne that Thriftmor didn’t enjoy the scrutiny of such a sizable audience.
“I . . . ah,” he said, lowering his brandy glass and inclining his head at Verricks. “I believe, in times of crisis, it is best to defer to military judgement.” He coughed and forced a tight smile in Verricks’s direction. “Your advice, Captain?”
A derisive scowl momentarily creased the captain’s forehead before he turned his gaze away from Thriftmor to address his officers. “It’s highly likely the Profitable is closer to Feros than any Protectorate patrol-craft. Our first duty must be to the Syndicate. We will approach in full battle order and endeavour to carry out a fulsome reconnaissance of the Tyrell Islands. Once the current situation at Feros has been established, Mrs. Griffan will convey the intelligence to Northern Fleet Headquarters with a request for further orders.”
Had Lizanne still held to her operating parameters as an Exceptional Initiatives agent she would have protested, perhaps even leveraged her status to force the captain to sail immediately for northern waters. She had endured weeks in the stink and danger of Scorazin, the Imperial Prison City, to free the Tinkerer and the precious knowledge he possessed. Then there had been the great tribulation of the revolution and the fall of Corus, all the time wondering when the Electress would choose to settle her score. All just to get the Tinkerer aboard this ship. Making for Feros threatened to rob them of whatever advantage his secrets might hold. But the guilt still roiled and she found she had to know what had befallen those she had left to face the storm. So, she stood and said nothing as Captain Verricks reeled off a string of orders to his officers.
“In the meantime, Miss Lethridge,” Verricks said to Lizanne when the room had cleared, “it might be best if you compiled whatever report Exceptional Initiatives is expecting of you. It can be communicated by Mrs. Griffan before we close on the Isles.”
“Sadly,” Lizanne replied with a sigh, making for the ward-room door and sparing a glance at Thriftmor now busily refreshing his brandy glass, “it’s not quite that easy.”
“You promised security,” Tinkerer said in his usual colourless voice. He glanced around at the spartan cabin he had been given and Lizanne wondered if he was pining for his books and diagrams. “This isn’t it.”
“I promised escape from Scorazin,” Lizanne returned. “And I delivered. My end of the bargain is fulfilled.” She held out a vial of Blue. “Now it’s time for yours, sir.”
“Bargains can be renegotiated,” he said, making no move to take the vial. “Especially when the value of the item under negotiation has increased . . .”
He fell to an abrupt silence as Lizanne took a revolver from the pocket of her skirt and levelled it at his head. The cylinder clicked as she cocked the hammer. “I am in no mood for your particular manners, sir,” she informed him in slow, unmistakable tones. “Up until this point have I given you any reason to doubt my word?”
His face remained impassive as he replied with a fractional shake of his head.
“Good. Then trust me when I say that you will either surrender your secrets now or I will decorate this cabin with your brains.” She held out the vial once more. “As I say, I am in no mood.”
He lifted one of his deft, slim-fingered hands and plucked the vial from her grasp. “One trance won’t be enough,” he cautioned her, removing the stopper and drinking half the contents. “The amount of information is considerable and complex.”
“Then it’s all the more important that we make a start,” Lizanne replied, retrieving the vial and drinking the remaining product. She lowered the revolver and they matched stares. For several seconds nothing happened, the expected trance failing to materialise. It occurred to her that Tinkerer’s singular personality might prohibit any trance connection, it required some form of emotional bond after all, however slight. But she recalled that he had made at least one friend in Scorazin, although even the unfortunately deceased Melina felt obliged to punch him in the face at one point.
“Perhaps a stronger dose,” she began, reaching for her wallet, but then Tinkerer blinked and the cabin disappeared.
The vision that greeted Lizanne was amazingly detailed, possessing a clarity and exactitude she had never before seen in a Blue-trance. Even the most vivid memory was inevitably altered by the mind that recalled it, insignificant elements rendered vague or omitted completely. For Tinkerer, however, it appeared nothing was insignificant. Every cobble of the street beneath their feet caught the dim sunlight peeking through the slowly drifting grey clouds above. Every brick, timber and pane of glass that formed the surrounding houses was fully present as was the tinge of horse-dung that combined with wood-smoke and a faint tang of salt to stain the air.
A port, Lizanne decided, trying vainly to conceal the sense of wonder that leeched from her mind as she surveyed her new surroundings. She spied a tall tower poking above the roof-tops to the south, a spire that closely resembled the oracular temple in the Morsvale park where she had hidden with Tekela and Major Arberus. Thoughts of Tekela immediately quelled her amazement. We have a task, she reminded herself, turning to Tinkerer who stood a few feet away, expression as blank as ever.
Where is this? she asked him.
Valazin, he replied. I was conceived here.
She had never been to this city but knew Valazin to be the largest port on the Corvantine Empire’s north-eastern coast. Once an independent city-state it had been incorporated into the Empire some six centuries ago. She remembered from her many briefings on Corvantine politics that the port had been the scene of some of the worst outrages of the Revolutionary Wars. The inhabitants had unwisely taken advantage of the chaos to resurrect archaic notions of reclaiming long-lost sovereignty. A series of brief battles and prolonged massacres, undertaken by the three now-extinct legions of the Household Division, had put paid to any such illusions. Judging by the fact that many of the houses in sight were of recent construction, and the numerous Imperial posters pasted onto the walls, she deduced they were viewing Valazin some years after its subjugation.
Tinkerer strode across the street and halted before a shop-window decorated with the words “Eskovin Toys & Trinkets—Finest Toymakers in Valazin Since 1209.” Lizanne moved to his side, peering through the glass at the interior where a diminutive figure could be seen at a work-bench. Peering closer, she saw that it was a woman, perhaps twenty years old, engaged in wrapping a small wooden box with brown paper. Lizanne took note of the woman’s bulging belly. Your mother.
Yes. This was my family’s shop. Grandfather taught Mother how to make the toys and Father took the shop over when he died.
If she had expected to see some flicker of affection as he gazed upon his mother she was to be disappointed. His face retained its usual impassivity as the woman finished wrapping the box, tying the covering in place with a length of string and a small knot. The woman placed the box under her arm and exited the shop, the bell above the door jingling as she stepped out onto the cobbles. Lizanne was struck by the resemblance to Tinkerer, her pale features a feminized mirror of the man standing next to her, and similarly vacant of expression. The emptiness to the woman’s gaze told of a failure to fully perceive the world, as if she were drugged. As the door swung closed Lizanne caught sight of a man’s body lying face-down next to the work-bench, a recent and broad patch of blood spreading across the tiled floor.
Father tried to stop her, Tinkerer explained. She stabbed him in the chest with a screwdriver.
She and Tinkerer followed the woman on a southward trek through winding streets and alleys. She moved with an automatic precision, turning this way and that without pause as if locked into a pre-set course. Eventually she emerged from a narrow walkway onto the broad wharf of the Valazin dockside. She side-stepped the many carts and barrows with unconscious ease, making for a large three-storey building Lizanne recognised as the port’s Custom House. Tinkerer’s mother walked up to the uniformed guard on the door and presented the box, Lizanne catching her soft precise tones as she said, “I was told to give you this.”
The guard’s face broke into a puzzled smile as he bent to accept the box. The expression abruptly turned to consternation when the woman turned on her heel and walked briskly away. The guard had time for a half-shouted command to stop before the box exploded. Lizanne was impressed by the woman’s skills, somehow managing to cram so powerful a device into such a small container. When the smoke cleared there was little left of the guard save a red smear surrounding the ruined Custom House door. Tinkerer’s mother stood a short distance from the carnage, hands folded over her fulsome belly and an oddly satisfied smile on her lips. When a squad of constables descended on her a few moments later she said, “Free Valazin, death to the Empire” with all the conviction of a child reciting a poorly remembered rhyme.
Why? Lizanne asked as the memory faded into a grey mist. She hardly seemed the radical type.
She was told to, Tinkerer answered as the surrounding mist formed into a more familiar scene.
Scorazin, Lizanne thought in sour recognition. This vision possessed the same clarity as the first memory, made all the more disconcerting by being an unwelcome reminder of her time within these walls. They looked out on the prison city through a part-shattered window, more roof-tops than she remembered just visible through the familiar haze of smoke fumes. Tinkerer had managed to perfectly capture the signature scent of sulphur, coal and death she had hoped would never again assail her nostrils.
She turned at the sound of a small plaintive cry behind her, seeing a man cradling an infant beside the bleach-faced body of a woman covered by a filthy blanket. Stepping closer, Lizanne confirmed her suspicion that it was Tinkerer’s mother, face even emptier now having been slackened by death.
They sent her here, Tinkerer said, moving to stand by the man with the infant. As he knew they would. Even a pregnant woman can expect no mercy if the crime is treason.
Lizanne looked closer at the crouching man, seeing a stocky, bald-headed fellow in his thirties, his face possessed of the sallow hardness that marked those who spend years within the walls. He stared down at the child in his arms with what appeared to Lizanne to be cold animosity, his face betraying not the slightest twitch as the baby raised a tiny hand to his unshaven cheek. Who is he? she asked.
You met him once before, Tinkerer said. But he was dead by then.
Lizanne recalled the chamber beneath Tinkerer’s quarters in the cinnabar mine, the fourteen corpses that had included the long-dead Artisan. He brought you here, she realised, her mind stumbling over the implications with unaccustomed confusion. How?
The trance, Tinkerer replied. He stepped back as the man got to his feet, moving with the infant to the window.
Lizanne frowned in consternation, this all being so far outside her experience. How could a man compel a non-Blessed soul to such extreme action via the trance? She remembered what Clay shared with her about Silverpin’s revelation when they discovered the White’s lair, about there being more to the trance than just shared memory. Blue is a remarkable product, your kind understands only the barest fraction of its power. Somehow the blade-hand had compelled the rest of the Longrifles to keep searching for the White long after it became obvious the most rational course would be to return to Carvenport. Also, she had been able to bind Clay somehow, forcing him to confront the sleeping White. But they had both been Blood-blessed whereas Tinkerer’s mother couldn’t have been.
He had the blessing, Lizanne said, nodding to the man who now stood cradling the infant as he stared out at the prison city. As do you. But your mother didn’t. The blessing is not hereditary.
What is the mind if not a means of controlling the body? Tinkerer said. To share a mind is to share control, or surrender it to a greater will. He had been searching for me for a long time, or one like me. Sending his mind out far and wide until he snared a Blood-blessed infant still nestling in its mother’s womb. The mind of an unborn child is blank, easily claimed, and through it, so is the mother. Later, he saw fit to share the memory of the act that had brought her here, the crime he had forced her to commit. I believe he hoped it would distress me. Instead I found it fascinating.
The man at the window spoke then, his voice low and croaking, the rasp of a guilty soul. “You poor little fucker,” he said as the child squirmed in his arms. “If I was any kind of a man I’d strangle you right now.”
The memory shifted again, swirling into another darker space. His home in the mine, Lizanne realised, looking around at the rough-hewn rock. Tinkerer was at least ten years old by now, though his slightness of frame may have made him seem younger. He sat on a stool next to a bed, holding a cup of water to the lips of a barely conscious older girl. Though apparently in her mid-teens the girl was so tall her bare, soot-covered feet protruded off the edge of the bed.
“Can’t stay,” a raspy voice said and Lizanne turned to see the man from the previous memory standing unsteadily in the chamber entrance. His countenance had become even more sallow and sunken in the intervening years and his eyes were dark reddish holes in his face. A half-empty bottle dangled from his hand and Lizanne could smell the acrid stain of whatever concoction it contained on the man’s breath. “Can’t have her here,” the man went on, voice loud and slurred as he waved the bottle about. “Shouldn’t’ve brought her.”
The young Tinkerer barely glanced at the man, continuing to hold the cup to the girl’s lips and speaking in a flat voice he would carry into adulthood. “I expected you to have expired by morning. Your organs must be close to failing by now.”
The man responded with a snarl which sounded somewhat half-hearted to Lizanne, as if he had long exhausted all anger for the boy he had condemned to this place. “Always the fuckin’ same,” he growled. “Ever since you were old enough to speak. There’s no soul in you, boy.” He took a long drink from the bottle, his throat working with greedy, desperate gulps that told Lizanne this was a man engaged in a protracted suicide attempt. “We’ll sell her to that bitch who took over the Miner’s Repose,” he added upon draining the bottle. “Once she’s healed up, and all.”
“No,” Tinkerer said, setting the cup aside. “You will be dead soon, and I require assistance.”
The girl on the bed groaned and shifted a little, Lizanne noting the marks of a recent and severe beating on her face. Despite the discolouration and the swelling, it was still possible to recognise Melina’s high cheek-bones and strong nose, although at this point she evidently retained possession of both eyes. Lizanne had liked her, as much as it had been possible to like any inmate of Scorazin. Melina, although brutalised by her years within the walls, had at least possessed a straightforward fairness and lack of duplicity that set her apart. Lizanne found she couldn’t suppress a twinge of guilt at the woman’s eventual fate, shot in the head during the first chaotic charge into the wreckage of the citadel, itself a spectacular distraction Lizanne had orchestrated to facilitate her own escape.
Your regret is misplaced, the older Tinkerer told her. She would certainly have killed you had she survived. Forgiveness was not a trait she possessed.
As interesting as this all is, Lizanne replied, you have yet to show me what became of the Artisan.
He became him. Tinkerer nodded at the sallow-faced drunkard, now glowering at the boy in impotent rage. In time, so did I.
Another shift in the vision, the setting switching to a much darker place. The young Tinkerer had sprouted several inches in height in the interval. He crouched at the drunkard’s side, holding up his ingenious lantern so the focused beam could fully illuminate the man’s face. The drunkard had lost much of his body-weight by now, his features gaunt and skin resembling old yellowed paper in the lamplight. It was clear to Lizanne he had only a small amount of life left to him. His eyes were half-closed and his lips moved in a faint murmur. The young Tinkerer leaned closer to catch the sibilant rasp, “You’re the last, y’know that?”
“The last of what?” the youth enquired, a rare frown of puzzlement on his brow.
“These . . .” The dying man’s hands jerked and Tinkerer turned the lamp to illuminate the bodies, thirteen in all and soon to be joined by one more. “All of these . . . lived wretched lives trapped in this place . . . just to bring you here.” He managed to lift a shaking hand and extend a finger, Tinkerer’s lamp following it to reveal the oldest corpse, the one chained to the wall. “That one . . . began it all. Fucker!” The man coughed out the insult and began to jerk spasmodically, breath catching. “Started it . . . Called the first one, found her in the womb . . . just like I found you.”
Tinkerer turned the lamplight back on the dying man, head angled in curiosity. “Why?”
The man fumbled for something in the pocket of his besmirched clothes, coming out with a small glass vial. “It’s time,” he rasped, holding the vial out to Tinkerer. “She’ll be coming . . . soon. Need to be ready.”
Tinkerer took the vial, Lizanne recognising the hue as he played the lamplight over it. Blue.
“Ready for what?” Tinkerer enquired, his voice betraying only mild interest, which Lizanne suspected concealed a raging curiosity.
The man grunted out a wheezing laugh, baring half-rotted teeth in what was probably his first smile in decades. “Escape . . . you little shit. What else?” He held out the vial. “Drink.”
Lizanne watched Tinkerer take the vial and lift it to his lips then hand it back to the dying man. “If you do happen to find the Artisan’s ghost one day,” he said, tipping the remaining Blue down his throat, “give them my undying hate.”
He leaned forward then, grunting with the effort, staring into Tinkerer’s eyes. The trance shifted again, the chamber fading into a black void, absent of light or sensation. Lizanne had experienced shallow minds before, mostly lacking in thought or imagination, but nothing as completely empty as this. She searched for Tinkerer but found nothing. Somehow, he had been removed from a memory in his trance. Then she saw something in the dark, a small bright glimmer in the void. It grew as she went to it and she saw it to be a metal box, spinning in the darkness, a box of gears and cogs that caught the non-existent light as it spun and spun. A box she had seen before. The solargraph-cum-music-box that had once belonged to Tekela’s father. The work of the Artisan’s very own hand that had set her and Clay on this path. The mystery they had spent many hours trying to unlock in Jermayah’s workshop.
The trance vanished. Lizanne found herself blinking into Tinkerer’s blank gaze. For a long moment neither of them said anything.
“Well?” Lizanne demanded as the silence stretched.
“That is all I can give you.”
“For your sake, I hope that is a lie.”
“I showed you all that I can.”
“There has to be more.”
“There is. But it is behind a lock I cannot undo. But now you know the key.”
The solargraph, she thought. The solargraph is the key. Everything always comes back to that damned box. “You know how it works?” she said, jaw clenched as she bit down on her frustration.
“No. But if you want the memories in my head, you will have to find it and make it work.”
Lizanne swallowed a hard, bitter laugh. “All those tales you had to tell me,” she said. “Of his days in Arradsia, his many discoveries. Of the women he loved and the men he hated. You don’t actually know any of it, do you?”
“No more than educated guesses.” He angled his head, frowning in marginal confusion. “I would have thought someone in your profession would appreciate creative dishonesty when demanded by necessity. You were always my only means of escape.”
She turned away from him, clenching her fists to stop herself reaching for her revolver. “You were expecting me,” she realised after taking a series of calming breaths. “That man, he said, ‘She’ll be coming soon.’ He was referring to me, wasn’t he?”
“I expect so. I believe it was a vision shared with him by his predecessor. But not one he chose to share with me. Out of spite, I suspect.” Tinkerer paused, raising his gaze to the cabin roof as a loud pealing cry sounded throughout the ship. “What is that?” he enquired.
“The ship’s siren,” Lizanne said, refusing to be distracted. “How could he possibly have known I would be there?”
Tinkerer’s eyes narrowed slightly in a gesture she had come to recognise as bemusement at the stupidity of others. “A question I pondered briefly until the answer became obvious, once all other possibilities had been discounted.”
Lizanne winced as the ship’s siren came again, three long blasts. He didn’t know, she thought, striving to concentrate. The Artisan knew, centuries ago . . . “The future,” she said as the answer came to her in a rush. “He saw the future.”
“Yes. Though quite how I do not know. I suspect the answer is locked away with the other memories.”
But she already knew the answer. White blood. Lizanne experienced a small moment of inner triumph stirred by at least knowing one thing he didn’t. The Artisan must have drunk White blood.
“That sounds urgent,” Tinkerer said as the siren sounded again.
“Stay here,” she said, rising from the bunk and moving to the door.
“What does it mean?” he enquired.
She paused to glance back at him, wondering if it might be better to get him to a life-boat whilst there was still time. But she knew it to be a desperate notion; they would scarcely be any safer adrift on the high seas than on a Protectorate battleship.
“Enemy in sight,” she replied. “If the guns start up, lie down on the deck. If the White’s forces seize the ship, I advise you to find the most efficient means of killing yourself.” With that she hauled the door closed and started off along the passageway at a run, making for the bridge.