What happened next, of course, was that I came down with the same fever that had just finished off Miljus, and of the next week or more on the Island I can tell you very little. I took scant heed of my surroundings and had nothing intelligent to say. At the beginning and at the close of my invalidity I was hot and cold all over, shivering, coughing, cramped in my lungs and my bowels. In the middle I was oblivious to my pains as I was to the rest of the world. From one perspective it might be called the most peaceful time I ever spent at the Island.
Perhaps I should go straight to the moment when I finally recognised a human face again, although since that face was Lucian’s it hardly seems worth it. Instead, I will try to give an account of the things that I saw around me in the throes of the fever. My mind has imbued them with a spurious significance, and this is my account.
I was playing chess. At the beginning I was back in the prison boat, facing across from Peter Drachmar, and everything was as I remembered it. I recall that the throb of the engine changed as we played, so that it became more and more like a heartbeat. Peter noticed nothing but I could see the metal walls of the room suddenly flushed rust-red with blood. They sucked in and bulged out with the rhythm of the cardiac engine, and I knew that if the boat felt us within it, it would vomit us out into the toxic river.
I faded out from this scene of game-playing many times, but always returned to it across the days of my fever. As the illness grew more intense, the room in which we sat changed in bizarre ways. The walls receded, leaving us stranded at the tiny table in a vast and vaulted hall, baroque with carvings, all of it worked from the rusted, rivet-pocked metal. The worse my condition became, the larger and more byzantine the room, until I was surrounded by an artificial forest, insanely detailed and intricate, where the gaps between figures opened onto further halls that were darker and more detailed still. Of all the things that I saw in my delirium, that cathedral-like place was not stolen from any memory of mine, and I cannot tell from where I might have drawn it.
My opponent changed too. From Peter, the shadows drew other faces. The fever tried on the shapes of fellow prisoners, but Lucian, Onager, even Shon were not credible behind a chessboard. Instead the sickness delved deep into my mind to find others, and those others brought their contexts with them. In my weakened state I was swept along by a tide of memories run mad. I played chess across from Jon de Baron, my old Academy friend, and then I was running through the streets of Shadrapar trying to save him, even as the crowd roared and the Angels loaded their weapons. Poor Jon: wit, socialite and wastrel who never deserved what happened to him. Then I was running, not towards, but away. The white sand of the desert was beneath my heels and I could feel the vast, deceptive footfalls of the Macathar as it bore down on me. Its shadow blotted out the sun as its house-sized body loomed above me.
Then the chessboard was back, and the fever tried to show me the face of my beloved Rosanna, but it was too painful and I refused to play until she was taken away. The fever took me away instead, back to the city, in the shadow of the Weapon, desperate to tell her something but never able to find her. There were others, some close, some that I had barely known, all sitting in sequence across that chessboard from me. Even the Lord President, Harweg, although I would barely recognise the man in waking hours. The game unfolded, and I felt that it was getting away from me. The pieces seemed to have their own agendas. I was losing control of the game.
I began to play against people I had known in the Underworld, my ragged compatriots in hiding. There were friends at first, the cartographer, the bibliophile, even the creature known as Faith, but the dreams took me inevitably to the Transforming Man, and again I tried to turn away. This must have been close to the height of my fever. He hunched across and around the chessboard as horribly as he had ever held court back beneath the city.
Some time later, I was trying to play against Gaki and losing horribly, and I began to realise that if I lost the game then I would never see the sun again, never even see the Island’s walls. I tried to understand what was happening on the board, and the silent, cold-eyed Gaki moved his pieces like clockwork. In time he was gone within the darkness of a cowled cloak, as the game reached its most desperate point. I avoided that hooded visage for fear that I should catch sight of it and find it to be Valentin Miljus, personifying death by fever. I would rather have seen a naked skull than his genteel, wasted features.
I must have begun to pull out of the fever at that point, because the game turned around and I started to win for a change. The shadow of death retreated from my opponent, who tried on other faces from my past, each less painful than the last. At the end I recall playing against Peter again in the prison boat cabin, just as we had in real life. In the dream, though, I beat him. I never did in waking games. After that it was only a brief step to recovery.
I have Lucian to thank for keeping me alive, or so he told me. He made sure that I ate and drank when I was able, and he probably talked to me as well, although thankfully I heard none of it. All I know is that one day the game was gone, and I was awake in the cell, surrounded by fading pieces of my past.
The next day, on the basis that I was well enough to recognise my own name, I was set to work. I tried to take things as easily as I could, terrified of the kind of fatal relapse that had claimed Valentin Miljus. In going slowly I was nearly whipped for slacking, which would have finished me off. Father Sulplice was out of the prison, apparently, mending a boat that had become stranded. It was the first time I realised that the prisoners were let out of the cage. Even though I had been told of the chemical harvesting expeditions, I had not thought that we, the inmates, would be the harvesters. Wardens accompanied each boat with orders to kill at the first sign of a mutiny but, as always, where was there to go? The swamp had a hundred ways of killing a lone man, and very few of feeding and sheltering him. Besides, there were worse things than beasts out there. I still recalled the mysterious web-children and wondered. I would know soon enough.
I spent most of the day cleaning floors. I learned that chemical spills do not come out of wood, and neither does blood unless you reach it very quickly. There followed a meagre supper of marsh weed and pond insects, after which a Warden turned up at our cell and shouted out, “Advani!”
I went through the usual palaver about being executed on the spot, and then noticed that the caller was Peter. He let me out, and I was marched off away from my fellows as though death awaited. Instead, though, our path led gradually upwards, through a maze of hanging, latticed corridors, until something unfamiliar opened before me. It was the sky.
I think I might have fallen to my knees. Perhaps I wept. I saw the sky for the first time in what seemed like forever, and it was sunset, the clouds all bruised purples and fierce reds. It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. I actually dashed outside to find myself on that selfsame square that the boat had docked at. Peter stepped out after me and waited for me to calm down.
The first part of our conversation was a welter of thanks from me: for saving me from the snake, for not having Shon beaten, for placing me with Father Sulplice and especially, over and over, for letting me see the sky again. When all that had dragged out, I was left feeling slightly embarrassed. “So,” I said at last. “How about you?”
He shrugged, uncharacteristically quiet, or perhaps I had monopolised all the talk there was to be had. He stepped over and stared out across the bloody water of the lake.
“Is it how you expected?” I pressed. “Are you regretting choosing to work here?”
He looked back at me and there was something in his eyes that alarmed me.
“You didn’t choose it,” I decided. “You had to come here. Like Midds. Why?”
“Just a love of adventure,” he said. It rang hollow. “This is the great frontier, isn’t it? Fortunes and reputations for the taking. They say the same thing about the deserts, don’t they? Ever been there?”
I had, which surprised him. “I’d rather the deserts than this place,” he said. “I was there five days and never saw a Macathar, or any of the other stuff.”
“The expedition I was on was a shambles,” I told him. “And believe me, I saw a Macathar. I’d rather be whipped by the Marshal every day than go back. Everything people say about them is true.”
He shrugged. “I might be up for a game of chess later on,” he suggested.
I felt that I had been getting more than my share of chess, but I had to keep on his good side and told him that chess sounded great. “You played a lot of chess back home, then, to get so good.” A little toadying is never amiss, and then, “How have you settled in?” as though I was his mother.
Something reared up, near the edge of the lake. I thought it might be one of the eyeless monsters, and shuddered. A similar shudder went through Peter and did not stop when the creature submerged once again.
“The punch in the gut kind of prepared me for the way things are around here,” he told me flatly. “After you lot got herded down below, I got the Marshal all to myself. ‘That’s your first lesson,’ he said to me. ‘I rule here. I rule under the Governor, but he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, so I rule here. Got that?’
“I told him that he and I saw eye to eye, and he told me that no, we didn’t, and as far as he was concerned I was just one rung up from the prisoners. He took me to where the Wardens live, and it isn’t much better than you get.”
I must have been unable to keep my scepticism silent, because he round on me.
“Don’t forget that you were condemned to this, but I’m staff. I thought that I’d be doing better. I get a room the size of your cell, and the only privacy’s from these rotting curtains, crawling with bugs. You can hear everything the other Wardens are doing, and some of them are doing some revolting things, I can tell you.
“The next thing the Marshal showed me was a head, or it had been somebody’s head once. The Wardens have a common room, and the head’s over the door, looking down. ‘This,’ says the Marshal, ‘is your second lesson. Guess what he did.’”
I guessed that he had mutinied or something, and I guessed wrong.
“‘He got himself captured by the enemy,’ the Marshal told me. ‘He got himself held for ransom by some new boy who didn’t know the rules. You get yourself in a compromising position with a prisoner and this is what happens to you. You lose your privileges. You become one with the scum. I killed him. I killed the man who was holding him. I killed that man’s cell mates. It’s the only way to deal with them. They aren’t human. If they put one foot out of line, you go straight ahead and whip the life out of them, or you get them moved down Below. If they put two feet out of line, if they answer you back or show any signs of defiance, then kill them flat out. They are here to work and obey. If they fail on either count then they are better dead than alive and causing trouble. Understand me, Drachmar?’”
“I bet the other Wardens all hate his guts, though,” I put in.
“Yeah, right, camaraderie of my fellows,” Peter spat. “No such luck. We should have been thick as thieves, but you get extra rations and a real pat on the head if you inform on someone. The only way to stop a guy ratting on you’s to kick hell out of them. Fighting’s common enough there’s a rota, and the rest take bets. I’ve spent a week here laying into pretty much anyone who looked funny at me, broke a really big man’s jaw and after that they left me alone a bit.”
“But after that…” I couldn’t imagine.
“There’s no friends where any day the Marshal could be looking for a scapegoat. When we’re not punching each other, it’s civil, careful between us. Most of ’em just have something they do, with the time. Some have religion, and one watches birds. He actually looks out and watches different kinds of birds. Beats the hell out of me. So I beat the hell out of him, same thing in the end. Just because you like birds doesn’t mean you’re a soft touch.”
He sank into silence then, and I tried to enjoy the sky, but the great hulk below us had hooks in my mind. How long before we go back down below? “What will you tell them, about this, about me? What will they think, if it’s like that?”
He gave me a look, eyebrows raised, a bit of a smile at last. “They’ll think you’re my catamite. Don’t tell me a Warden’s not picked you up yet, nice-looking Academy boy like you?” and, while I stammered that I was yet to have that pleasure, “Hey, you know the Governor?”
“We’ve not been introduced.”
“Weirdest little thing I ever saw. But someone said – what was it? Do you do something that’s called Old School Shorthand? That sounds like educated stuff to me.”
Yes, I was familiar with Old School Shorthand. No, I had not expected anybody to enquire about it since my being exiled from civilisation.
Peter bobbed his head. “Might have something for you. No promises. Back to me, anyway, just to put you in the frame. Soon after I found my feet here, I made the great decision to help you and your mate out in the machine room. Turns out I should have beaten all hell out of you two for busting the sack. I should have let the snake have you. Marshal had me whipped. Nine lashes, which may not sound much, but just you try it. He did it himself. He enjoyed it.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t find any more to say than that.
“I just want to tell you that I really doubt that I’ll be doing that again any time soon, so you look after yourself. You hear me?”
His gaze returned to the water, which still held the last traces of the sunset. Some noisy leviathan bellowed furiously out there amidst the eyeless monsters and the web-children and whatever other horrors the place held. The thought of the Marshal’s blind hatred was far more frightening, and I wanted more of the sun. Father Sulplice had spoken of the boats that put out to harvest the swamp waters and I determined that I would find a place on one sooner or later. Death by monster was better than rotting in darkness. It was an uncharacteristically adventurous resolution.
Peter and I played a few desultory games of chess then, which he won without really trying. For me, it was all too close to the fever dreams. I kept looking at the walls and wondering whether they were moving outwards. I couldn’t concentrate.
“Your game has gone all to hell,” Peter remarked after his second victory. He must have seen in my face the fear that he would go off and get another opponent, because he followed it up with, “You should practise more. I’ll try to come by more often.”
There was a meditative pause as we set the board up for another game. It was the same set that we had used aboard ship, ergo Peter’s own.
“You’ve found any decent sorts amongst the inmates?” he asked casually.
“A few,” I thought, thinking of Shon and Father Sulplice, even of Lucian. “A mixed bag, really.”
“Then you’re doing a whole lot better than I am,” Peter admitted. “You’re the only person in this whole place that I can talk to. Who’s the prisoner, then?”