fancy friends
It’s already Sixday. I wake up wondering about Zako again. Has he spent another night alone? Is he cold? Hungry? I feel well enough to work, if I’m honest, but I’m not telling Wagsen that.
Ruzi said I shouldn’t rush back. They have a temporary man helping, and I need to get well. They can have me back after the Endweek.
“Last night go okay?”
I’ve come round from the front and managed to sneak up on Kit for once.
“It was…” He sighs and looks at me with a little shake of his head.
“Did you tell her?”
He resumes scrubbing stubborn porridge from a pan.
“Mor, you nearly died a few days ago.” His tone is soft enough, but his expression’s hard as slate. “Can you concentrate on surviving for five minutes?” That gravel voice. He puts the pan aside and starts wiping the stove. “I meant to tell you,” he cuts in as I start sputtering a response. “I’ll have to go seeking your prayer grass in the wild. It’s in season now, but no one seems to have it… Not even the dried stuff.”
“Oh.” I def late a little. My lost memories are still off with the fairies and Felicity’s not come back. Every time I think of her, I feel afraid. But Kit knows this. He’s trying to change the subject.
“And you will tell Goldie Reedstone I’m in?”
We’re talking in Crozoni, but Gracie and Renny are here preparing pastries already. He tosses his cloth over one shoulder, and we sit in the courtyard.
“Do you have any idea how impossible this will be, Mora?”
“Not unless you tell me.”
“All right, I will. All I have to do is crawl around on the outside of Portcaye’s most impenetrable building, get a locked window open from the outside, evade four to six guards, bust open a vault, get the bloody Artist and myself back out of there without anyone noticing he’s gone and without being seen or falling to my death or killing anyone.”
“You draw the line at killing?”
“Course. Life is sacred.”
Shame the Skøl didn’t think that six years ago.
“And what are the Reedstones doing while you take all the risk?”
“They can’t do it. The vault lock – it has to be me.”
“Why?”
“I’m the only one who can open it.”
“But isn’t it a GR Locks lock? Didn’t they make it in the first place?”
“They did, but they can’t get round the trickiest bit.”
“Can’t you teach them?”
“Some things can’t be taught.”
I think of Ruzi and his sayings. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’m not at all sure I believe that, but Kit is adamant. I let it lie, studying my hands with their blunt, chewed nails and ever-present scrapes and callouses. “So … you need someone on the inside to open a window,” I muse. “A window on the third floor.”
“That’s right,” he says cautiously. “How did you—”
“I know the windows at the undercroft, ground and first two floors are barred. I’ve seen the Life Registry from the road enough times.”
“It’s not a memory game, Mora.” Kit pulls the dishcloth angrily off his shoulder. “I can’t keep you safe. I can’t catch you if you fall.”
“I know.” I know he thinks if he fights me every step of the way I’ll give up. I’ll get afraid. Well, of course I’m afraid. I’ve a hundred fears, orbiting me like little moons, pulling the tides of me this way and that. But how big and close one of those fears has grown. Fear of sitting here, wasting away doing nothing. Its tides are going to drown me.
“Tell them I’m doing it,” I say. I get up and return to the kitchen. Kit leans back against the tree, scrunching the cloth in one hand.
I don’t need his permission. And the thing is, I can already feel a plan growing.
I convince Renny she’d be doing me a favour, letting me sell pastries in her place. I tell her I’m curious to see inside the Registry, for nostalgia’s sake – because it used to be an important civic building for the Crozoni. If she thinks my request strange, she doesn’t say so. She must be used to looking the other way, with all of Kit’s odd comings and goings. Outside the Life Registry, Gracie adjusts her dress and pinches her cheeks. “Every little helps,” she quips.
“So what do we do? Wander around saying, Come and get it?”
“Sort of.”
I peer up at the towering stone building. As well as the two guards on the door, there’s a pair on part of the flat roof, idly patrolling, guns in arms.
“Is that normal?” I ask Gracie.
“Oh yes, they started having guards up there… When was it? Around when you were ill, actually. I don’t know why.”
It must be because they’ve moved the Artist here. Security’s stepped up.
“So do we go selling on every floor?”
“No need. We can sell out on the first two. Third and fourth aren’t worth the effort. Hardly ever open their doors. The higher-ups go out for lunch somewhere fancy like the Warbler.” As if on cue, a small group of senior clerks with expensive-looking watch chains begin to make their way down the steps. Lugger fare’s not for this lot.
I sling the basket rope around my neck and sway beside Gracie up the steps as the clerks sweep past us. How are they not too hot in those robes?
“First-and second-floor workers are the hungriest. It’s slower on the ground, but there’s a decent number of takers. Why don’t you take the ground?”
“What about the undercroft?”
“We can’t go in there. Whole floor’s off limits – vault and Records and that. Guard on the door – if he’s the skinny one with freckles – he’s partial to a jam one.”
The two guards out front beneath the Life Is Golden inscription aren’t friendly. They paw through the lunches before they let us pass.
The entrance foyer is not how I remember it from my childhood. They’ve stripped out the mosaic tiles, the red carpets on the stairs, painted over the classic Crozoni mural across the high ceiling featuring Thea – it’s all white now, white tiles, white-painted bare walls and ceiling, wooden stairs stained white. Only a few potted plants lend colour. Still, it’s louder and more chaotic than I expected.
Someone stops and thrusts a handful of coins at me. “I’ll take two.”
Gracie and I split up.
There’s plenty to see on the ground floor. The corridor to Venor’s personal office, the guards’ station, the library. I’ve sold about two-thirds of the lunches before I make my way calmly to the third floor. I think of sneaking with Ruzi over to see Zako in the Scarlets’ quarters. Of walking the streets past curfew. The trick is not to look furtive. Shoulders back, spine straight.
The first few doors I try are locked. My knocks go unanswered.
Finally, one propped ajar opens to a large room – three tall windows along the wall and four cluttered desks.
A clerk who must be boiling in his robes looks up from the only occupied desk and draws his hood back up with ink-stained fingers. He doesn’t say anything, just stares. I recognize his cold blue eyes and craggy face – the clerk who stopped to talk to Felicity on the way to the vigil for Fidelity Hemman. Alone working, all his fellows gone to lunch. Perhaps clerks who partake in vigils have their breaks curtailed.
One of the sash windows is wedged open with a book. It looks out over the front, towards the river.
“Hello? I’m selling lunches. Heard some were wanted here?”
“Who told you that?” he asks, quite rudely.
“Don’t know who she was.”
“I don’t think you’re allowed here,” he ventures. I realize he’s a bit scared.
“Sorry. Must have got the wrong place.” I turn to leave.
“I’ll buy one,” he says quickly, gesturing me over and fishing a few coins from a dish on his desk.
I leave the basket with him and pretend an interest in the view behind while he’s choosing.
“Could you see the new statues on the gates from here?” I sidle closer to the glass.
“Not sure,” he says. “What’s to see anyway? They’re just columns. I liked the mermen.”
No key locks to the windows, but the standard brass latches. They only open from the inside. They’ve also got stops about half a foot up. Not wide enough for someone to fall out. Or crawl in.
He’s still counting his coins. I lean against one of the stops and try to move it by hand. Not possible – it needs a wrench.
I gather my basket back up quickly and walk out. There’s still one more thing I want to check before I leave.
“What took you so long?” Gracie collars me back at the Lugger. Kit materializes instantly at her side. “You’ve been ages.”
“Sold them all, didn’t I?” I fish coins from my apron pocket.
“Kit’s been on at me for leaving you behind.” She shoots him a wounded look.
“Sorry,” Kit rumbles.
“He’s such a grump today.” I give him a playful prod in the chest. He scowls, then jerks his head towards the door. I collect my cloth bag from its hook and follow him through the courtyard to the stables in the alley beyond. One of the Lugger’s current guests came on his kine – a roan with a pretty belled harness. Mister S usually looks after the guest kine – he misses having his own – but Kit helps occasionally.
I came prepared this morning. I pull my drawing things out of the bag and start sketching while it’s all top of mind.
Kit pours oats into the trough, on to the kine’s nose as it tries to snap them out of the air. I refocus on the plan of the Life Registry sprouting under my pencil.
With what I saw inside, and what I know from walking round the outside enough times, I can draw the plans with almost architectural detail – the number of windows, the location of the doors and staircases and corridors inside. I label the water closets, the entrance foyer, the library. One page of the book per floor.
Kit comes to peer over my shoulder. I hear him make a small noise of surprise and feel a surge of pride. “What are those little crosses?” he asks.
“Potted plants.”
“You think we should rescue them too?”
I laugh. “Sorry. I got carried away.” Only the undercroft I’ve drawn remains vague. I’ve done what I can from observing the small windows outside, but it’s not much to go on.
“Third-floor window latches are standard,” I tell Kit. “I’d need a tool to take the stops out, but they’re simple enough … and all the doors in that corridor have the same kind of lock – like the one on your door upstairs. They probably lock them overnight, so you’ll need to teach this old dog a new trick—”
“Hang on—” Kit tries to interrupt, but I hold my pencil in front of his face.
“We can pick which window you need me to unlatch based on the outside climb. Which bits of guttering and that give you the best approach.”
“Back up a second.” He plucks my pencil out of my fingers. “This is useful,” he gestures, grudgingly, at my beautiful schematic. “If someone can get inside in the first place.”
“Oh, I know how to do that.”
He blinks at me.
“I can go in with pastries. Go in and hide and not come out again.”
“Hide where?”
“That would be telling.”
He leans towards me, mouth slightly ajar with the smile swooping past his lips. Canines sharp. “You know you want to tell me.” I can see him looking at my mouth.
I lean closer. “I want –” I breathe softly, so close to his lips I can feel their warmth – “to see your fancy friends.”