The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(112)

Mal walked back to the ambassador's quarters the long way round, more shaken by the encounter with Wheeler than he cared to admit. Try as he might to deny it, there was something unholy going on here, and he could not say for certain that his own soul was not destined for damnation.

Coby sat at table in the ambassador's quarters, staring sightlessly at the congealing supper on her plate. She knew Master Catlyn's anger over the day's events were not directed at her, but that had not made their discussion any pleasanter. Now he had gone to question Wheeler. She did not envy the man, though she could not pity him either.

She looked round sharply as the front door opened. Master Catlyn stepped through the tiny vestibule into the dining chamber, his face hard as stone. He shook his head in response to her enquiring look, then sat down, poured a goblet of wine and drained it.

"Wheeler knows nothing," he said at last.

"But I thought–"

"Oh, he was behind the attacks on the theatre. But the other business… no."

She reached out a hand, placed it over his.

"You should tell the ambassador," she said. "About your brother, I mean."

"No." He glanced about the dining room. The skrayling guards had finished eating and were gathered round the other end of the table, watching four of their fellows play Five Beans. He refilled his goblet then stood up. "Come."

They went through into the small parlour between the dining room and the ambassador's bedchamber. The door of the latter was closed. He gestured for her to sit down on the bench set against the panelled wall, and sat down next to her.

"He is very afraid," Coby said, inclining her head towards the door.

"It is one thing to know you are going into danger," Master Catlyn said. "Quite another to look Death in the face."

She saw again Master Naismith lying bloody at her feet, and her throat tightened.

"They won," she whispered. "I tried to stop them, but they, they destroyed everything–"

He put an arm around her shoulder. Her last defences melted away and she began to weep, great sobs that tore at her throat and wounded side. He held her, saying nothing. At last she could cry no more, her ribs ached too much. She groped in her pocket for a handkerchief and found the handful of torn paper. The trapdoor. The cannon. Fresh tears welled in her eyes and she gasped for breath.

"Here."

Something hard and metallic was pressed into her hand. A pewter goblet. She sipped the wine, wiped her nose on her cuff, and drank again. The sweet spiced liquid burned a path to her stomach and out into her veins.

"Better?"

She nodded and handed the wine back to him, found the handkerchief in her other pocket and blew her nose. She dared not look up at him, not with her face all swollen and blotchy from crying, as she knew it must be. She picked at the hem on her handkerchief and wished she had brought her sewing basket with her.

"You should sleep," he said. "It's been a long day."

She began to protest, but he was right. The day's exertions had turned her limbs to lead, and her head ached from weeping. He led her through into the small bedchamber where she had slept before. A greenish-blue lamp stood on a chest against the right hand wall, casting a sickly corpselight over the room. The square panes of the window glowed deep violet in the gathering dusk, and shadows thickened in the corners of the room and under the curtained canopy of the bed. Coby shivered, wishing she were back home in Thames Street.

"Wheeler and his friends may have won their battle," Master Catlyn said softly, staring out across the river, "but the war is not over."

She joined him at the window. The sun was sinking, somewhere to their right, gilding the dark waters of the Thames. Wherries hung with lanterns plied their way between the city and Southwark, taking revellers home. The skraylings' encampment was dark for once, a huddled mass of domed tents silhouetted against the fading sky. Had they doused their magical lamps out of respect for the dead?

"You have to tell him," she said again.

He made no reply. Coby wondered what had passed between the ambassador and his bodyguard whilst she was in Thames Street. Did Lord Kiiren blame Master Catlyn for seating them so near the cannon? None of them could have known. If it was anyone's fault, it was her own for not checking the flash-powder in daylight before using it.

"Did you know," he said at last, "the skraylings believe they are reborn into new bodies when they die?"

"No. I… I always wondered if they had a faith of their own, though. They resist the message of Christ so strongly."

"But none of them has spoken to you about it."

"No." She lifted her hand towards the cross hidden under her doublet, uncomfortable with this heretical turn of the conversation. "It's not something that comes up in business dealings. Anyway, what has that to do with your brother?"

"It's not only skrayling bodies they can take."

She stared at him. "No. That's…"

"Possession?" He turned towards her, dark eyes glinting in his shadowed face. "How else do you explain my brother's madness?"

"No."

"He – the ambassador – sought me out." His voice was low, urgent. "Why? Because he knew one of his kinfolk had been murdered near my father's lands, and a boy born there soon afterwards. What he does not, I think, know is that there were two of us."