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Marchant mostly slept the next day. He’d drunk a cup of sweet tea and eaten half a slice of toast, then they’d manhandled him back up the stairs into bed and the doctor...Sylvia...had taken her leave in her little car after the three of them had consumed a respectable amount of bread, cheese, and fruitcake.
“I’m going to leave him to your tender mercies, Mr Curland,” she had said to Rob, rinsing out her blood transfusion equipment in the sink as she prepared to leave. Matty had gone to bring her car round to the front of the house from the yard. “You broke him. You can fix him.” She shot him a sidelong glance as he flinched. “Joking, Robert. I was joking.” She put the glass vessel on the wet draining board and turned toward him, reaching across him to get the tea-towel from where it hung on the rail in front of the range. There was a short silence as she dried off her paraphernalia and tucked it neatly in the wooden box next to him on the table.
He watched her hands as she packed it all away. Short, blunt competent fingers that soothed and healed and repaired. Unlike his own, laid on the table palm down before him. His were used more for destroying and killing now.
She shut the case and latched it shut with a little huff of satisfaction and then turned the chair next to him, so it faced him and sat down on it. She reached out one of her healing hands and placed it over his killing one. “Robert,” she said, quietly. “Look at me.”
He did as she asked. He didn’t have much option really. She was so stubborn she’d simply sit there until he did as she asked.
Her eyes were dark with sympathy. “Rob,” she said. “I think you need to let it go.”
He swallowed. “Not sure I can,” he said. He didn’t bother to dissemble and ask what she meant. “I cut the man’s throat, Sylvia.”
“And extremely cleanly, too,” she said, patting his hand as if congratulating him. “If you’d made a messier job of it, he’d be dead. It was clinically neat.” She patted his hand again. “A mercy blow, if you like.”
“Sylvia...” He swallowed.
“You were trying to save Matthew’s life. Marchant gave you permission to do it. Begged you, as I understand it.” She paused a moment to allow him to cast his mind back. “It wasn’t much of a choice now, was it?”
He shook his head dumbly.
“Kill the man asking you for a mercy blow in order to save the man you...” Her voice trailed off. “That’s not a choice, Robert. That’s no choice at all.”
She left her hand where it was for a little while. It was warm and reassuring and he took comfort from it.
“I know,” he said, finally. And after a while, “I’d do anything for Matty.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “It’s easy to see, if you know.” She patted his hand again. “Don’t worry, Rob. I would bet a considerable amount that Marchant is going to be fine, particularly if he can stay here for a bit and be looked after. And I think you’ve done him a favour by bringing him back from wherever he was. The Outlands, he called it?”
Rob nodded. “Yes, that’s what they call it.”
“He didn’t seem to like it much,” she said. “From the little he said before he needed to rest.”
“He was a prisoner,” Rob said.
“Well then,” she said, practically. “You helped him as well. I’ll try not to make jokes about it from now on, though.” She patted his hand and withdrew her own as she spoke.
“I’d appreciate it,” he said. “I would really appreciate it.” He stood as she rose and hefted her case. “Let me take that,” he offered.
She smiled and passed it to him. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check on him. You should get the telephone out here, you know. It would have saved you running all that way. Although why you didn’t take the car I don’t know.”
“I forgot,” he said. “I plain forgot that we have it. I’m a fool in more ways than one.”
She looked at him shrewdly. “I don’t think so, Robert. I don’t think so at all.” She patted his arm reassuringly. “There’s Matthew with the car. Come on.”
* * * *
IT WAS ABOUT SIX IN the evening on Christmas Day when Marchant decided he’d had enough and took himself back to bed. He’d spent the day before mostly asleep.
Sylvia had come and checked on him at dinner time—and had joined them at the table in the kitchen when she saw Mrs Beelock serving thick slices of home-cured ham with kale and boiled potatoes. “Just in time!” she’d declared happily before sitting down arms akimbo as if she hadn’t eaten for a week. “I always forget what a good table you keep, Annie!”
Annie Beelock harrumphed a little at her. “You’re a flatterer, Sylvia Marks, and you always have been. Here.” She put a filled plate down in front of her. “And you might as well come to dinner tomorrow as well if you’ve got nowhere else to go. I’m serving up and then going home to Bert and you can help them wash up.” She was smiling when she turned back toward the range to pick up another warm plate to fill.
“I’d be delighted, thank you so much for the invitation.” She smiled at Matty. “It’s extremely kind of you, Matthew!”
Matty laughed. “You’re always welcome, Sylvia. Come after church.”
Marchant was still worryingly weak, but he’d made it downstairs to join them for Christmas dinner, although he hadn’t eaten much. Then he’d laid on the settee in the sitting room and dozed on and off whilst the three of them sat and reminisced in front of the fire, nursing glasses of brandy. Naturally the talk turned to Arthur and the books. It was hard to get away from them...they were stacked up in piles all around the room.
“Are you going to keep doing it?” Sylvia asked Rob at one point. “Are you going to teach yourself more?”
Rob hesitated. “Part of me wants to,” he answered. “I’d like to learn more about it. But it seems like it’s very easy to get it wrong. Fatally.”
Marchant stirred where he was lying under the rug and joined in the conversation. “It is singularly easy to get it wrong,” he said. He hadn’t spoken much during dinner. He’d eaten some of the goose and a few sprouts and then given his apologies, saying that was all he could manage. But he hadn’t wanted to go back to bed yet and Rob had handed him in here to rest.
The three of them looked over at him. He didn’t sit up, but he turned on his side so he could see them. “Arthur got it really wrong,” he said. “And on the other side...they’re dangerous people. You met one, didn’t you?” He looked from Matty to Rob.
Matty blushed and Rob found his own face heating. They hadn’t told Sylvia much about Lin.
“Yes,” Rob admitted. “Lin. Of the Frem. How did you know?”
“He was...not a friend exactly. But friendly. As much as he could be.” He brushed a hand over his face, shutting his eyes briefly. “He said that he’d been here, that you’d helped him shut a gate someone had opened in the shimmer.”
Sylvia’s eyes were wide. “A gate?”
“Yes.” Matty was matter of fact. “Behind the barn. It’s gone now. Whatever Lin did, it disappeared, and we’re damned sure it didn’t come back. We keep checking. There were...things. Carnas, he called them. Screaming.”
“Carnas,” Marchant confirmed. “They call them carnas. They use them to police the shimmer and make sure it stands between their world and ours. They’re...” He shuddered and looked a bit sick. “Absolutely vile-looking. And dangerous.” He pushed himself up to sitting and wrapped his arms around his drawn-up legs, leaning against the back of the wide settee and rearranging the blanket to his satisfaction, addressing his words to his knees.
“If you pull too much energy from the shimmer as you’re working, it thins, and they can get through. I don’t really understand it. They didn’t tell me much about the mechanics of it. But it’s definitely dangerous. Using kias...that’s what they call it...is dangerous.” Matty nodded in agreement. “I can do a bit. They had me shut in a room by myself a lot of the time. I didn’t have much else to do.” He pulled a face. “I’m not sure I’d like to do it here, though. Not without one of them around to back me up.” He looked at them. “They’re a lot more powerful than they look. They’re strong physically, but that’s not all there is to them—they’re supremely powerful workers. They have much more innate kias than most humans. Lin and I talked about it a bit.”
He brushed he hands over his face again. “I’m getting tired. I need to go back to bed I think.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” Rob said. “Come on.” He rose to help him, and Sylvia Marks rose too.
“Let’s have a look at that dressing once you’re upstairs, Mr Marchant. It looked like it was healing up well yesterday, but it won’t hurt to check.”
She had pronounced herself satisfied and departed soon after. He and Matty had taken station in the sitting room again with a large pot of tea accompanying goose and stuffing sandwiches, with cold roast potatoes.
This time they arranged themselves on the sofa where Marchant had been lying, and after they’d eaten they ended up with Rob sitting up, legs stretched out on to the footstool and Matty sprawled along the settee with his head in his lap.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to need to eat again,” Matty said, after a while. He had his cup and saucer of tea balanced precariously on his middle and had been attempting to drink from it without having to sit up.
“If you spill tea all over my leg like you did the last time you tried that, I’ll not be very happy, my lad,” Rob warned him. “I’ll make sure you won’t have the opportunity to eat anything. I can’t move away from you if you try it, either, because I’m as stuffed as you are.”
Matty finally managed to make the lip of the cup meet his mouth without any disaster and emptied it. “There!” he said triumphantly. “I knew I could do it! Here, put the cup on the floor for me, would you?”
Rob did as he was bid. He was half a second from dozing off, warm and comfortable and trapped under the man he’d been in love with for years.
“So, is that it, then?” Matty asked, after a while. “We tidy the books up nicely, keep them dusted, and forget about it all?”
They sat for a while, watching the fire dance, pondering. Rob found himself absently pushing his fingers through Matty’s hair. He didn’t have brilliantine on it today and it was soft and fine, falling over his eyes and tangling in his lashes.
Rob didn’t, honestly, want to pursue the path he’d started on. His motivation to learn had been to help Matty, rather than to become a user of the power for its own sake. The kias, he corrected himself.
“I think...” he said, hesitantly “...I think I’d like to do just that, if that’s all right with you, love. I don’t need to do any more with it. We’ve stopped what was happening to you. And that meant we got Marchant home, without ever knowing he was there. I’m happy with that. It feels like a good place to leave it. And the end of a year feels like a good time to let it rest.
“You and Marchant are both safe. Arthur...he was a fool, Matty. A dangerous fool. I know he was your brother. But still. It’s the truth.”
Matty nodded in agreement. “I loved him. But yes, in this he was. Like Sylvia said, he wasn’t well in his mind.”
“A lot of people aren’t well in their minds these days...the war has done that to millions, one way or another. And the influenza hasn’t helped.” His watched his fingers, stroking, stroking, stroking through Matty’s hair in the quiet firelight. “I don’t want to go that way. I want to live here, with you. A normal life. I want a normal life with you. A get-up-have-breakfast-feed-the-cows sort of life. I’m not keen on being a magician.”
Matty gave a small, huffing chuckle. “I’m not exactly keen on it either, if I’m honest. Part of me would like to know more. But...we’ve been through all these books again and again and we’ve made as much sense as we can of it all. Perhaps Marchant could make more of them, if he wants to. I agree with you. I want a quiet life. I want to be able to spend my days and nights with you, Rob. We’ve waited a long time for this. And the last five years have been hell. Let’s let it settle. Put the books on the shelf and let it all settle down.”
He reached a hand up and cupped Rob’s cheek, bringing him down for a brief, soft kiss that Rob couldn’t hold for long, not being able to fold himself in half. “If in twelve months you’re bored and you decide you do want to learn how to be a magician, maybe Marchant will give you a hand.”
It was Rob’s turn to laugh. “I think Marchant might be done with it too,” he said. “He got thoroughly caught up in it and he knows first-hand how dangerous it is. Another world, though...beyond ours. Imagine!”
“I know,” Matty said. “But let’s make the most of this one for a bit, shall we?” He pushed himself up on to his elbows, so Rob was able to properly reach his mouth and they let the conversation lapse in favour of quiet, intense kisses in the light of the fire.
THE END
