That night, hiding from view in a deep recess in the wall surrounding Temple University, I smoked a cigarette while waiting for Nel to show. Leaning against the locked side gate to the university grounds, I marvelled at the sky.
Since I could first remember, the night had filled me with awe. The twin moons were small and beaten, but their passage was fleeting and barely noticed because they were not Urdezha’s brightest celestial bodies. In high summer, the night could be almost as bright as the day, and so much more beautiful. In a terrible way.
A mighty swarm of ether orbited the world. Millions of crystals, some indistinguishable from the pinprick stars, others larger and closer than the moons, but each reflecting the light from the hidden sun with majestic glares of rose-tinted silver. Magical, invisible during the day, they were synchronised in their orbits and wondrous to behold; yet most would tell you that the swarm of ether crystals was Urdezha’s curse. A barricade. There was good reason, Eden had said, why our moons were called Fear and Panic.
So long ago now that nobody could be sure of exactly when any more, the Salahbeem had come. All over Urdezha, gateways had opened like rips in reality and these preternatural beings had stepped from their world into ours. The Gardeners, the bringers of magic – they came in peace and offered friendship. They wanted us to be travellers like them, and many of us had thought them gods. They gave us ether. They gave us technologies and secrets. The Salahbeem changed the face of Urdezha and showed us just how little we understood about the star-dotted void between the worlds. We welcomed them and their guidance at first, for a century, it was written. Then we threw it all back in their faces.
Ancient history was dogged by myths and legends, and the views of the Magicians and the Scientists differed on the truth behind our visitors; but it was said that Urdezha had been a lush and vibrant world when the Gardeners came – a paradise compared to what we had now – and on this beautiful world, the human race was ripe to reach the pinnacle of its growth. But we used everything the Salahbeem taught us to advance ourselves into ignorance. Not content with the gifts and wisdom our visitors freely offered, we tried to steal the secrets they hadn’t yet told us, not questioning whether or not we were ready for them but believing we had attained a state of rapid evolution that made us equal to our teachers. For many, the goal became to prove that the Salahbeem were not gods but as mortal as humans, and we succeeded in driving them away.
The Scientists would tell you that the Gardeners filled the sky with ether crystals because they feared our greatness and the retribution we would exact upon them if we could leave Urdezha. The Magicians would say that the barricade was to prevent any poor, unsuspecting traveller ever again discovering the inherent ignobility that matched anything good in our race. Sycamore would tell you that humans and the Salahbeem were as bad as each other.
The truth was lost to time and myth, but one thing was certain: when the Salahbeem fled Urdezha, their legacy proved how little we ever truly learned from them. Who would control the ether-growths that the Gardeners had abandoned and left behind beneath the world’s skin? The human race divided into opposing opinions. The Magicians believed that no one should control ether; let magic be wild and free for all, they said, let the world flourish and grow from its power. The Scientists had more selfish ideas. And so the Ether Wars began. Within just a handful of decades, it was written, we reduced Urdezha to the wasteland.
My cigarette died under my boot when I saw Nel approaching. Hands deep in her coat pockets, satchel hanging from her shoulder, she walked along the path that cut through the park outside Temple University. Stepping out of the recess, I waved, and she hurried towards me, eyes nervously scanning the area for anyone watching. Attired more for going out than breaking in, Nel’s hair was tied into a neat bun, and her make-up failed to hide the disdain on her face.
‘You look nice,’ I said.
‘Don’t be a smart arse, Wendal.’ She pulled from her satchel a small case containing her lock picks. ‘I’d really like to be somewhere else, so what do you need?’
I pointed at the side gate.
With a grumble, Nel shoved past me and inspected the gate’s lock. She wore a musky scent.
‘I take it you’re still planning to see Mutley tonight?’
‘Uh-huh. And I don’t want to be late, so let me concentrate.’
I kept watch while she worked.
In the army, Nel had been an engineer. She could fix almost anything, arm or disarm the most complicated of traps, and her understanding of magic was sufficient enough to concoct the nasty devices which had got us both out of one or two scrapes since we’d met each other, after I came back from the wasteland. Plus, she had a talent for getting into places that people didn’t want her getting into. After the war, Nel could’ve worked in a technology division for the Scientists, but that would have meant applying herself to something. It amused me to see her picking a lock while dressed so smartly.
‘Got it,’ Nel said. The lock clicked and the gate opened a crack with a small groan of unoiled hinges. ‘Be lucky, Wendal. I’ll see you later.’
‘You’re not finished yet.’
She glared at me.
‘Just two more locks, Nel. Promise. I think.’
‘If I end up spending the night in a cell, I’ll never forgive you, Wendal.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Am I putting you out?’
‘Just show me the fucking locks.’
I led the way, creeping through the darkness of the gardens beyond the gate, heading towards the main entrance.
I’d visited the university earlier in the day, to get the lay of the land. The library in the west tower was open to the public and had been filled by all those living people with whom Abdon Klyne supposedly didn’t like to mingle. At the end of the day, the university’s main entrance and the door to the library inside were locked for the night.
The main doors opened as we approached and we ducked into the cover of a statue’s huge square plinth. A night guard stepped out carrying a lantern in one hand and a baton in the other. He put the lantern down and locked the door. We waited for him to head off on a patrol of the grounds, and when his light disappeared around the side of the impressive university building, Nel released a breath and said, ‘I swear you’re doing this just to piss me off.’
‘Come on.’
Leaving cover, we approached the building. I checked through the window to ensure the security desk inside wasn’t manned by a second guard. ‘I reckon we have less than an hour before he comes back.’
Nel once again applied her skill and made short work of the lock, relocking the door once we were inside.
The reception area smelled dusty and old, dimly lit by a few candles burning in wall-mounted sconces behind the desk. Enough light for someone to read by, but not enough to lift the surrounding gloom.
Nel stuck close to me. ‘I don’t like the dark, Wendal.’
I took a candle from one of the sconces and, protecting its flame with my hand, led the way further into the university.
The hallways were flanked by closed doors to lecture rooms, the staircases wide and solid underfoot. Nel held on to the back of my jacket, and the shielded flame cut through the darkness with weak, sputtering light as we made our way to the west tower library.
The university was, of course, funded by the Scientists. I supposed that made it dangerous territory for me, and not just because I had broken in. Dyonne had set me off down this path, so I had no choice but to walk it, even if she and the old woman had sent me into the lair of the Magicians’ age-old enemy.
‘What was that?’ Nel whispered sharply.
She was jumping at every creak and groan the old building made. It was no laughing matter; Nel was terrified of the dark. That was how we met.
Not long after I’d started working for Dyonne, Nel moved into the lodgings above mine. She’d knocked on my door one night, asking if I had any spare candles. The clouds had been thick and black over Old Castle, blocking the light of the ether-filled sky, and the city was unnervingly dark. There weren’t many ether lamps on the streets or in buildings, and certainly not in the old western part of the city where we lived. Nel obviously needed company, was scared of facing the darkness beyond the flame of a candle by herself.
I wasn’t particularly sociable now, but I was even less so back then; I had been struggling to adapt in a strange and dangerous new life and just wanted Nel to go away, ignore me like the rest of my neighbours. Then she did something amazing. She made me laugh. As nervous and frightened of the dark as she was, she relaxed enough to joke, and I realised that I had made her feel safe. Which made me feel good about myself for the first time since returning from the war, and so I started talking. I opened up to Nel and told her about Eden, about my search for her spirit. And she listened. We talked and talked until the clouds cleared and the sun rose.
Nel had never known my wife, but she understood, without judgement, my drive and desire to find her. She helped me reconnect with the living, and from that dark night onwards we had been firm friends.
‘You’re such an arsehole, Wendal. Why do I let you drag me into shit like this?’
‘Because you’d be homeless without me.’ Conversation, I decided, was the best way to calm her nerves. ‘So tell me, has the Sharpened Card reopened yet?’
‘Yep – the day after you were there. The place is heaving. Packed every night so far.’
‘With criminals?’
‘Citizens, too, you judgemental bastard. Even seen a few Magicians there.’
I came to a halt and faced her. ‘No one good comes from Reaper Town, Nel.’
‘No? You should meet the strange fucker who lives below me.’ She stopped looking for monsters in the shadows. ‘What’s your problem, Wendal?’
‘You do remember how you met Mutley, right? We killed someone for her.’
Nel looked ready to punch me. ‘I don’t need another lecture. Let it go or I’m leaving.’
Irritation was better than fear, I supposed.
It wasn’t long before we reached the stairs that spiralled up around the inside of the west tower’s fat body, and we began the arduous climb to the library. We passed closed doors. Nel complained about the number of steps, and complained a lot. At the top, we came to the double doors of the library itself.
‘Give me some light,’ Nel said.
I moved the candle closer to the door as she inspected the lock.
I frowned as something Nel had said sank in. ‘Did you say you’ve seen Magicians at the Sharpened Card?’
‘I did.’
Gambling, openly visiting the establishments of criminals – the Magicians were far too clandestine for that kind of thing. Nel must have been talking about novices and apprentices, lackeys, but when I asked her, she said:
‘No, these seem to be full adepts. Only a couple of them, and they don’t gamble, as far as I can tell. There’s some shady business going on, but then’ – she flashed me a sharp look – ‘you probably know all about it already.’
I didn’t reply. Even if I did know of anything going on between the Magicians and Reaper Town, Nel knew I wouldn’t say. As it was, there was nothing I could say. The Magicians owned Sycamore, but his host wasn’t trusted enough to be counted as one of them.
‘Listen,’ Nel said as she fiddled with the lock, ‘I know you don’t approve, but I get on well with Mutley. She makes me happy and she has the most amazing chemicals.’
I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Chemicals?’
‘Those Magicians – they’re working for Mutley as apothecaries or something, and what they cook up is so much better than jenkem. Far too expensive for the likes of us.’ She looked up with a grin. ‘But my girlfriend likes to share with me. She’s good like that.’
Nel returned to the lock. My brain raised a question: Nel’s girlfriend is from Reaper Town, owns a gambling house, and she’s employing Magicians to manufacture chemicals? I searched the question but could find nothing in it that had a good answer.
I didn’t air my concerns, however, as the lock clicked and the doors opened. Nel moved aside and I took a peek into the library.
Books. Lots of books, crammed into shelves and cases that rose from floor to ceiling on every wall, where ladders led up to three tiers of balconies. The glow of the night sky spilled in through a huge skylight, pale and eerie, shining down onto a host of reading tables. At one table, a man sat by himself.
I ducked out and turned to Nel. ‘Can you see anyone in there?’
She gave me a troubled frown before peeking for herself. ‘No. Can you?’
I looked again. Ghosts only appeared if they wanted me to see them. With a curt gesture, the man at the reading table ordered me into the library.
‘What can you see, Wendal?’ Nel staved off my answer by waving a hand in the air. ‘Actually, after last time, I don’t want to know. Just … go and do your thing. I’m off.’
‘One more favour before you leave.’
She stared at me.
‘Please, Nel. I can’t get out without you, and I don’t know how long this will take. I need you to keep watch for the guard.’ She snatched the candle from me, spilling wax. ‘Wait here. I’ll be as quick as I can.’