The Chimes Page 12
I walk by myself into the heart of the market. There is the smell of chestnuts, and the weird, dark scent of fresh-dyed wool. Under the arches, cooking smoke clouds the exit, and people are standing half in, half out on the street. The smells hit me hard today and are not quite pleasant. The noise is strange too. As well as the din of the guildtunes and vending songs, there are all sorts of odd echoes, clatters and hums. I take the north arcade, towards the artefact vendors.
Pacts are conspicuous. We are ragged and skinny, and we smell of the river. I catch the scent – mud and tea and green and dark – among the chestnut smoke and it makes a keening feel rise in me that helps me move faster. I walk past arches where families group around their livelihood. Bunches of woody asparagus, pig pickle, knitted blankets. They draw back a little. It’s fear of the unknown. Pactrunners are not easy to pigeonhole like prentisses, who have their guildsigns stitched on their chests and their clear place in the order.
I nearly bump into a cluster of moonies crosslegged at the entrance to the artefacts hall. There in a circle in their ragged white robes they rock forward and back with the high blank trance in their white-banded faces. As I pass, they make the sign in front of their faces: five-fingered starbursts where their eyes would be, and in front of their closed lips, speaking their dumb sacrifice in the only way they can.
They hear me coming and the leader’s hand darts out for the begging saucer of measly tokens and pulls it in under his cloak. They shuffle back under the green-painted wood arch, their hands starbursting their surrender. They make me angry. So deep in thrall to Chimes that they hold any other sense to be blasphony. A hot feeling like shame and I hiss as I pass them like the kids do, and spit to my side to get rid of the white cloud of salt that’s in my mouth.
And all the while I’m listening for a disturbance, a shift in the fabric, someone communicating they’re there by their absence, their silence. It’s illegal to carry the Lady except for trade. And as steady a current as the river, the channels of trade carry the Lady back up to the Order, to the Citadel. I keep Lucien’s face in my mind like a beacon.
All my senses are prickling and I walk on the very toes of my thin plimsolls, into the artefacts hall. The vendor and his prentiss there with a bunch of old electricks nobody has any use for. Only a dark-haired woman with a cloth board covered in spoons and jewellery is doing any trade. I am losing my focus and stop, allow myself to become invisible again.
He’s there. I can feel him waiting in the shadows about ten beats away before I see him. Nondescript. He’s wearing grey travelling clothes and he’s humming. It’s only if you’re listening for it that you hear the Lady’s interval in the tune.
He hasn’t heard or seen me, which is good. Trade goes better when you take the lead. I walk forward nonchalant, as if to inspect some of the electricks, until I’m standing direct in front of the dealer. This is how it’s done. No eyes, not until the end. I whistle the common tradesong, a comeallye that all the pacts know, rough and a bit crude, but effective. ‘You need. You want. You need. We’ve got,’ is what it says.
Around it I weave a few teases from our own comeallye. Not enough to give anything away but enough of a reminder that ours is the best run of the river. And in there too there’s the silvery interval, an answer to the dealer’s casual hum, and really the most important of all. The advertisement of our wares, the Pale Lady.
Ignoring me with disdain, the dealer continues humming to himself. But this is all part of the ritual. I know that he’s heard me because his melody shifts and beckons. And though I don’t remember his face, I know his song. Ellis uses a simple blue tune on the five-note scale that dealers favour. But he can’t seem to keep a weariness out of it. He’s uncomfortable – he thinks this work is beneath him, he’s past prentiss age, and he’s worried he’s missed a safer line of work.
Then, like that, the courtship is over. ‘How much do you have?’ Ellis asks, underbreath. I turn to see that he has pushed himself upright from the wall and stands with eyes eager. He has recognised me, but he seems confused. ‘Five Rover? Are you here alone?’
I ignore the question. ‘I’ve got five measures of solid,’ I say. ‘Two smaller pure nuggets.’ He is looking for Lucien, I think, and I tense.
‘Let’s see,’ he says, gesturing with impatience.
I glare blankly ahead. I need to take control. He wouldn’t hurry Lucien. I pull the pouch from my T-shirt and unloose it. Ellis reaches under his travelling cloak and offers a small wooden tray. I brush it clear of imaginary specks, blow in it twice. Then I balance the wooden tray with its blue field of velvet carefully and place each piece of palladium we’ve found this eightnoch. The pieces glow quietly. They seem hungry, each pulse taking in a gulp of silence. It’s like the feeling of water entering your ears – a bubble of air, a glotted stop.
Ellis doesn’t make any attempt to take the tray, just stands tacet. His hand plays over the ore as if he’s caressing the glow itself. The gesture reminds me of the moonies’ starburst eyeburst hands, and I hear a note of warning in my head: Get the trade done and get away.
Then Ellis looks from the Lady and into the far corner of the artefacts hall. My stomach hitches. ‘Hey,’ I hiss. ‘Do you want to deal or not? I can take this elsewhere, you know.’
Ellis shakes his head. I look past him. Who is standing there where I cannot see?
My heart starts up and I rake pieces of Pale.
‘That’s fine. Store’s shut. Moving on.’
Ellis snaps into focus. ‘No, no, no.’ He puts a hand over mine, turns it, studies the nugget.
‘The quality of the three-ounce nugget is pretty low. The others are median,’ he says, speaking presto. ‘The smaller are superfine, but they’re only a few grammes each. I’ll take the lot from you for forty tokens.’
I cough. Lucien said not to drive for more than twenty-five. Everything in me is saying to take the tokens and run. But I need to move careful. Like when you’re clearing snares. No sudden movements. ‘It’s not much debased,’ I say, keeping my voice calm. ‘I’d put it at 0.85 pure. And it’s rare to find nuggets that size now. They go for more if they’re whole like that. Forty-five, for all.’
‘Yes, then. Done.’ Ellis’s voice is clipped, scared.
I hold the tray and shift back and forth. He counts the tokens, leafing them out lento, and he takes a step nearer for the exchange. And then it’s been going on too long. I reach for the money presto and just as I do it, his hand shoots up and closes round my wrist. His grip cold but hard, and I feel the strength of his arm like a bar of mettle. Quick as a flash I bring my other arm up and I flick the tray high into the air. The Lady carves silver arcs of silence into the air so they seem to hang above us for a moment, and in that moment I twist out of his grip, turn heels, run.
I pull the whistle from my neck as I sprint down the hall. Blow a cooee for the others as I go. The crowds fold round me and I don’t look back to see if Ellis, or whoever gave him orders, is following. I pound it down through the market, people turning to watch me go, whooping and egging me on. It’s not till I get to the vegetable vendors at the entrance that I let myself stop, listen, breathe. Echoes of the Lady play through the market. I don’t wait to find whether it’s getting closer.
When I’m down by the railbridge with lungs and ears straining, I cooee again and at last there’s footfall behind me. White faces of Clare and Brennan. We beat back to Dog Isle presto, jogging all the way.
The white of the day has some pink in it as we enter the race, and the storehouse is there like an old friend waiting. We get inside and close up the door. Brennan hefts the heavy mettle bolt into place and it falls with a straining creak.
No one speaks as they lift market goods from their packs. To me, their movements seem wrong, behind the beat. My head is racing onward. Where is Lucien? Clare lifts out two rabbits, a string of sausages, pig’s dripping. Brennan unpacks white loaves, walnuts, sacks of flour, a stickwrap bag of apples, bunches of herbs
, carrots, potatoes.
We say nothing and we pack the things away into their places in the kitchen so that everything is square.
Night comes with no Lucien. I think of what he told me last night about Chimes taking memory. But if it does and is thus to be dreaded, why does he follow it so close with us, carving out Onestory each day? And his solfege for the changing chords of Vespers. How is it so clear and accurate that it’s like he sees the music almost before it comes?
Vespers sounds and we stay in the storehouse. I don’t know what else to do. I lead the solfege and the others follow. I am angry at the ease of their acceptance, the way a change slips in and they think it normal, their lack of questions. How long would it take to forget him? It makes me feel sick.
After the last chord has faded, the pact unfurl their legs and arms and bodies from their crouching bracing positions. A feeling in me like a bruise. I can see it in Clare’s eyes too. She rubs at them and presses them deep in their sockets – as if an ache will heal an ache. I look at them and wonder what has been lost.
As night comes in, Brennan begins to get edgy. No one is speaking. The time we would practise passes, but nobody moves. Clare won’t make eye contact with me and she goes to the cupboard and brings back four candles. She passes them round and we hold them, the dark sheltering round the light, which moves with our breath. If you keep staring at the flame, you see many colours. Red, orange, blue. Wet wood in the fire makes it green. The smell binds us to all the nights that went before, that will come. How many will there be?
Clare moves again, this time to fetch a blanket from her quarters and return to the fire. One by one we all follow suit. Do they know we have never done this before? That the vigil is not part of our routine, not part of bodymemory? I feel lonely and I miss the close body blindness of being one with the rest. The smell of damp heated wool is salt-humid and homely. Everyone’s hair is mottled by the fire, shined in it. Clare makes pictures with the shadows of her hands. After a while she turns to me. She scratches her arm through her shirt.
‘Where is he, Simon?’ she asks. And the others turn their faces also, quiet, expectant. A fear so grave it can’t be put into words and can only emerge in their expression as blank trust.
I don’t have anything else to tell them except the truth.
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
In the Under
I wake subito and I am swinging in the darkness. Something has moved. Lucien is standing over me.
‘Where did you go?’ I whisper. ‘I didn’t know what to tell the pact.’
‘I was in the under. I have to show you something. The last piece of the puzzle.’
‘The last piece?’
It doesn’t feel like the last piece to me. In my mind, whatever puzzle Lucien is making is half missing, half scattered. The pieces that are turned right way up seem to come from completely different pictures. I pull myself out of the hammock.
‘I promise to explain. I couldn’t show you before now.’
I stand there, waiting for more information, but it doesn’t come.
‘Bring your memories with you,’ says Lucien, and picks up my roughcloth bag and pushes it into my hands.
I am silent. I follow.
The night smells of fever and smoke from fires around the city. There’s a dull fog hanging close to the river.
We pass tacet under the huge shadows of the cranes. They stand there, judging perhaps. We jog down the empty race and the direction is the same as ever. We are heading east. East to Five Rover.
I follow two steps behind Lucien, through the cold dark. I want to be in my hammock, under the woolsmelling blanket. I want to wake into the same morning as always. The one where I watch Clare heat milk in the copper pan. The one where I help Abel turn the black earth in the polytubs ready for bulb planting. Where I walk the embankment at None and watch the long white sky up to Paul’s get pink. But instead, Lucien and I are out in this hard-edged morning. Later and earlier than ever.
‘Simon, what is the Lady?’ Lucien’s voice is piano in the cold air.
‘The Lady is mettle,’ I say.
‘She’s mettle, yes. But why is she so precious to the Order?’
‘Because palladium gets the clearest tones for the Carillon,’ I say.
Lucien leads us down the steps, taking them two at a time.
‘Doesn’t it strike you that they might have finished building the Carillon by now?’ We edge round the triprope and down to the strand. ‘What if there was another reason the Order needed palladium?’
‘Like what?’
‘Tell me again. What is the Lady?’
I sigh, prepare to start again from the beginning.
‘Let me put it another way,’ Lucien interrupts. ‘What is the Lady to you? When we’re in the under, how do you hear her?’
‘I don’t hear her,’ I say. ‘I hear what’s not there. The Lady is silence,’ I say. As soon as I say her, I see her. Calm and balm. Pulses of quiet in the rivermud.
‘Yes,’ says Lucien. ‘The Lady is music, but she is also silence. Remember that.’
We enter in the same place as usual. One second the night sky above, the sounds of the sleeping city extending farther than I can hear. The next, the world stretches as high only as the dome of brick and just the whisper of tunnels ahead.
The run starts straight away. No pause to set our tonic, to sing the comeallye and get bearings. Lucien takes one of the large tunnels that lead off the stormwater catchment, and he leads fast.
For a while I try to keep the map up in my head. We enter the stormwater and splash through several bends. We’re still close to the surface and there are thick glass tiles in the ceiling that let some light in, enough to see the patterned brick. Then a ladder of mettle rungs and a new tunnelmouth and a drier, echoing tunnel that pulls north. And the dark presses its hands on me. From where it’s been sitting tacet for so long, panic gets up, sets up knocking. And with that, I am blind. I must trust Lucien.
We run a long time, following twists and turns. Taking the different terrains of the under – mettle, drybrick, bilgewater, tile. Through tunnels tall and arched and ones tight and narrow as being born. We run until we are many miles from our territory.
Then in the middle of a clear straightaway, I hear Lucien stop. I hear his hands patting tunnelbrick and his whistle orient me to his whereabouts. Then he disappears into a tiny tunnelmouth. Through it where I follow there’s grit and concrete dust and it smells like cut bone or hair, something bodily and aloof but not unpleasant. Thin pipes run along the sides of the walls and press against my arms as we move through. Sparks of light cross my blinded vision.
I try to breathe shallow, save myself lungfuls of dust. But as we go, the dust gets thicker. Grit, then chunks of rubble, then broken pieces of concrete under my hands. Raw and snagging and a tear at my nails with a warm liquid trickle down my palms, though I can’t see the blackness my blood adds to the dark. Soon so little space that I cannot push aside the rubble as I crawl. My jeans tear at the knees.
Then, ahead, the sound of something heavy breaking and falling. I jump. The back of my skull hits domed tunnelmouth and I bite my tongue, the pain as bright as a flare in the black. And I am reminded that I have a body still. That I’m more than just a crawling, forgotten piece of darkness.
A cascade of smaller broken sounds further off, breaking and falling lento in the silence. In the dizzy groundlessness, the crash could have come from above me or even below. I wait until all sounds have stopped and I listen for Lucien’s presence. Nothing. The immense weight of the city above presses down on me.
Subito I am tired, so tired, and I want to lie down in the dust and concrete grit and rest. But from below then comes the comeallye, Lucien’s whistle. I feel forward with my hands. There is barely any crawlspace between the rubble and the roof. But I stomach it, pull forward with my forearms, feel the tug and snag of rock on shirt and skin. And my head meets wall. The way ahead finishes like a cut-off bre
ath. I lie there for a while, roll from back to stomach so the tunnelmouth is a bare few breaths from my face. Then I feel a current of cool air play across one hand.
Halfway down the rubble slope, in the wall of the tunnel, I find a small jagged hole broken in the brick. I work my legs back so my head is level with it and I whistle the first few bars of the comeallye and Lucien’s whistle floats back up. No other way but head first. I push the rubble clear of the gap and then worm my way backward so I can get my head and arms through. My shoulders barely fit. I stretch out far as I can and my hands swipe air.
‘Push through,’ says Lucien’s voice below. No traction behind, my feet scuffing in the cramped tunnel. Then one plimsoll finds solid wall and I push through until I’m half suspended. ‘Further,’ he says. I stretch and the bricks round the hole break a bit and my balance shifts. Down below, there is nothing, only panic and a drop without measure. Then Lucien’s hand grips mine.
‘Give me your weight,’ he says.
I push back again behind me, pray he’s strong enough to take it, and kick free. Then Lucien is gripping me by the chest and I’m half over his back and falling for a moment. Then I’m down and my feet on flat ground and I’m standing close to him, both of us breathing hard.
Something is different. In the air is a low and constant ringing, silver and steady. The Lady tells her presence in drops of silence. But this silence is a constant flow, sure and so loud it’s deafening. My whole body echoes to it. I start to speak, but Lucien is already off. The space lengthens as we run, a long tunnel that leads ahead wide and curving. Underfoot are narrow mettle tracks, shoulder-width apart, big enough for a trolley or a jigger. The silver silence seems to fill the tunnel, flowing down the tracks to me.
On the next turning, something strange happens. Like a magic trick, the silver ringing disappears. Normal echoes of brick and mettle, and the matter-of-fact light tread of Lucien’s feet ahead. I shake my head, as if this might clear my ears. I keep following. Large, wide tunnels, brick and tile, by their echo. Left, left, left, right. We are returning in the same direction. With the final turn and another five beats, it is back. A sustained, silent peal. I feel light-headed.