Their ship drew away from the Sea Wall Gate, its red sail barely bulging, and a flotilla of nobles came after in merchant ships of their own. The waters of the harbour required no great force to traverse, but once they were out to sea they had to sail away from the breach in the Sea Wall which was dragging everything and anything into it.
From here the extent of the smoke cloud that grew up from the city from the fires burning in every quarter was appalling. Sirius sat beside Nathan, and Anaximander was by his mother.
‘It’s going to be alright, Gam.’ Prissy went over to him and Gam looked up at her but said nothing.
Now Prissy turned to Nathan and she looked him in the eyes, studiously avoiding Dashini’s. Nathan could barely meet her gaze, but there was something in her expression that he had seen before.
‘Before you go bed, make one up for Nathan,’ Dashini said, ‘He will die without rest, regardless of what his mother thinks.’ Her tone was that which a merchant’s wife would take with a skivvy, or a patron of the Temple would use on an Athanasian. Prissy recognised it, denied it, but when her eyes fell back on Gam, she bowed her head regardless.
‘You know what to do?’ said Gam, and Prissy nodded. She put her hand on her friend’s shoulder, squeezed it, and went down below, where the galley and the crew’s chambers were.
In the west now, as the boat followed the winds east, the Manse billowed smoke.
‘Will he recover, I wonder?’ Dashini said.
Nathan’s mother stepped in front of her so that she could no longer look into the distance, and her dog came with her. She wore an expression that spoke of something dark, and also of the woman’s hatred, her poor opinion of the girl who stood before her. ‘And if he does not?’ she said to Dashini. ‘Is that what you hope for? What then?’
Dashini had hatred of her own, and derision too, and she turned from his mother and faced Nathan. She stood before him, rigid like a whip handle, and seemed ever taller to him, so tall that she blocked out the sky.
‘He must sleep,’ Dashini said. ‘Gam, will you take him below… Gam?’
Gam did not reply, but someone did. ‘Perhaps there will be time later for him to rest, Madame, Mademoiselle.’
Nathan recognised the voice instantly – how could he fail to, having heard it lecturing him for all that time in the Manse? It was as familiar as any voice. Sirius growled – there was Bellows on the deck of the ship.
Beside him were gill-men, twenty at least, and now, sliding up beside them, emerging from the water to drip and flounder like landed fish, more of them. Nathan grabbed Sirius’s collar, and though he had no strength to restrain his creature, it obeyed his intentions, nevertheless.
‘Young Nathan. The Master returns and you must too. Your coming back into the fold will be as the wayward child’s, and penitent, I hope. You will receive punishment, of that there is no doubt, but the Master is not cruel: whatever your fate, it will be done in the spirit of rehabilitation; I have no doubt of that.’ Bellows did not seem angry, but his gill-men could scarcely conceal their disgust, which was visible in the twisting of their long fingers and the gaping at their necks.
Dashini put herself, knife drawn, between Nathan and his enemies. ‘Your Master is finished,’ she hissed.
Bellows flinched, not just at the words, though these clearly hurt him, but also at Dashini, whose existence had brought about this terrible situation. ‘She-child, your bile is not required. Whatever pain you seek to inflict on me is nothing compared to that which I already suffer on your account, so much that I do not notice it and will not, no matter how much you intend to provoke me.’ Bellows gestured to the gill-men and they moved like the encroaching tide, coming forward in slow and partial surges.
Sirius growled and so did Anaximander, and they looked to their service-pledges for permission to attack, but neither gave any.
Dashini, though, needed no permission and she stepped forward, but then, from the galley, there was a scream – Prissy – and then here was Padge, one arm crimson and limp but with the other around Prissy’s neck, a knife angled to stab down into the base of the damsel’s throat.
‘Mr Padge,’ said Bellows, ordering his gill-men to stop with a gesture, ‘your presence here is not at all welcome.’
‘So I am told. Yet here I am.’ In Padge’s pocket was the scroll with which he had proved his right to travel, as an inheritor of wealth, but Padge paid it no attention now.
‘Oh help… Oh my… Oh Lord…’ Prissy cried.
Nathan moved, but the pain was too much. Bellows spared him only a little attention, Padge spared him none.
‘What do you with the girl-child? This is no time for your usual business.’
‘I do not intend to carry out my “usual business”. I need only ensure my safe passage until I can be put off. I intend to do that by holding this child hostage, knowing she is a favourite of our new Master.’
The boat tossed and lurched in the waves, and if Padge thought he was sure-footed enough to avoid slitting Prissy’s throat, even by accident, then it did not look like that. Prissy put her hand to her forehead as if she might complicate matters by swooning.
Bellows took a step forward. ‘You are mistaken if you believe Mastery of Mordew has passed to a successor. The Master returns and then we will see justice done.’
Padge pressed the knife almost into Prissy’s windpipe and tottered forward, closer to where Nathan lay prone, and now Sirius did not know who to growl at.
‘I’ll come back with you, Bellows,’ Nathan said, ‘I promise. Just don’t let him hurt anyone. They’re innocent. All of them.’ His voice was barely audible, nothing in the wind, but Bellows understood Nathan’s words by their smell.
Dashini lurched, but Nathan’s mother held her wrist.
‘That is a bargain, Nathan,’ Bellows said. ‘You will come, and we can fix what you have broken.’ Bellows turned to Padge and advanced, the gill-men coming beside him. ‘The Master trusts me with his most puissant spells. I need only utter what he has taught me, and my enemies will be destroyed.’ Bellows took from his pocket a tube, very simple, like a telescope. ‘I need only direct this at the object of my ire, the Master says, and say the word, and all I desire death for will die.’ He continued towards Padge, but it was clear he was hesitating, as if he was reluctant to destroy him, as if he could have scruples about such a thing. ‘I must be strong, the Master says. There is a first time for everything.’
He pointed the tube forward, and before Padge could stab into Prissy’s throat, Bellows uttered the activating word.
Red light issued, crackling through the air, sending magic death to Padge, sparing Prissy.
But Padge was not killed. Rather, he laughed and advanced, and as he did so the red light was reflected from him. Padge’s ire was much greater than Bellows’s was, the range of his enemies broader, and the red light burned until it illuminated Bellows and his Gill-men, shining its light on and through them, so that they shone and shone, and shone so hard that they burned, their skins blistering and curling and turning altogether to nothing.
In their places were boys, frail and thin, small creatures, curled on their sides as if they were sleeping, even Bellows.
Padge leant over Bellows as he lay on the deck, and the desire to gloat was too much for him. ‘You are not the only one with magic toys.’ He took from his coat his mirror, the one in which he habitually and neurotically coiffured his hair. ‘Look! You fool. Protection of the highest order. The Mistress’s best. Capable of reflecting anything.’ He knelt to show Bellows the object, which had looked no different to any other mirror used when combing hair or checking the lay of a jacket in the rear but which now shimmered with power. ‘Did you think I go around without protection? You’re a fool. Die, you pompous idiot!’
While his attention was turned entirely on Bellows, and at the urgent and irritated ushering forward of Prissy, Gam came up to him from his hiding place behind a barrel where Prissy had directed him to wait for just such an opportunity. The False Damsel was her con, and she’d always played it flawlessly – whether it was against Nathan, the haberdasher or anyone else – and Padge didn’t even twig.
Now Gam, easy as anything, stabbed Padge in the back with Joes’s stiletto. The dull, ordinary, black blade slid straight between Padge’s ribs where they met his spine. From behind, this is the best way to reach a man’s heart, and Padge’s, pierced, promptly stopped beating.
‘Magic mirrors not much use against knives though, eh, Mr Padge?’ Gam said. Whether Padge lived long enough to hear Gam deliver these words, it is impossible to tell. But, before Gam returned the stiletto to his boot, he wiped his blade on Padge’s velvet trousers where they bulged across the buttocks, just for good measure.