Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

Wounded as he was, he would be even less of a match for the man now. He had to get away before Grimalkin regained consciousness. Or, no … Quare drew a deep breath and mastered his emotions. He knew his duty and would not shirk it, however unpleasant.

Quare shifted his legs beneath him – grimacing as the movement aggravated his wound – and pushed himself to his knees. Grimalkin had fallen onto his back and lay as if peacefully sleeping, one arm flung over his head, the other draped across his chest. All that Quare could see of the man’s face between his grey hood and mask were his eyes, and even they were closed. He drew his dagger, then hesitated.

What was he doing? He was about to murder a man who was at his mercy. Surely what was wanted now was questioning, not killing. Here was an opportunity to learn not only Grimalkin’s identity but that of his masters.

Setting down the clock, Quare used his dagger to cut lengths from the coiled rope he carried, then bound Grimalkin’s wrists and ankles. All the while, Grimalkin lay motionless, though his light eyelashes fluttered and a faint moan escaped his lips, as if he were coming round.

Quare reached out to remove the grey mask covering the lower half of the man’s face. It was not only curiosity that impelled him; should the rogue awaken and begin shouting for help, he could use the mask as a gag. But it was fastened tightly and would not come away, so he began to tug it down instead, past the nose, the lips …

Quare rocked back on his heels. Disbelieving, he yanked the hood away … and saw a luxuriant coil of blonde hair silvered in moonlight.

Grimalkin – renowned spy, deadly fighter, consummate thief – was a woman.

A SECTION OF panelling scythed inwards, and a liveried servant glided into the room like a spectre. Quare, who had just lowered himself gingerly onto the settee – his leg was troubling him – sprang up with an oath upon catching sight of the man.

‘For God’s sake,’ he cried in irritation, ‘must you skulk about like some damned red Indian?’ No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he regretted them; the real source of his anger was the Old Wolf, not this blameless – and to all appearances bloodless – factotum … but it was too late now; he would not apologize to a servant.

‘Very good, sir,’ the man intoned as if incapable of taking offence. He inclined his head towards the open door through which he had entered the room. ‘Master Magnus will see you now.’

Quare strode past him into a closet bare of all amenities save a thin wooden railing that circled the enclosed space at waist height, two wall sconces with burning candles caged in glass, and a tasselled bell pull hanging in one corner, beside the door. He did not understand why the master would want to meet him in such close confines. Mystified, he turned to address the servant, who, meanwhile, had stepped in behind him and pulled the door shut. Before Quare could get a word out, the man, with no warning or explanation, tugged the bell pull.

The closet jerked and slid sideways, throwing Quare into the servant. Almost immediately, it changed direction like a swerving carriage, and he was flung away, his shoulder striking hard against the opposite wall. ‘What in God’s name …!’

‘Your pardon, sir.’

‘The room is moving!’

‘Indeed, sir.’

Grasping the railing with both hands, Quare shot the imperturbable servant an exasperated glance but knew better than to press him further: the guild hall servants could make life miserable for journeymen if they chose – as, no doubt, he was being reminded after his impolitic outburst of a moment ago. Nor, to be honest, was he capable of speech. Indeed, it was all he could do to keep from screaming, for the closet now abandoned the horizontal for the vertical, dropping like a stone.

It was a common conceit among the journeymen of the Worshipful Company that the guild hall was itself a great clock, and that to step through its doors was not merely to enter into its workings but to become a part of them, incorporated into a vast and intricate – if maddeningly obscure – design; Quare suddenly felt that this was no mere metaphor but the literal truth, and that he stood now inside the plunging weight of what must be the guild hall’s remontoir. Though he was well acquainted with the functioning of this device, which provided motive force to the escapement of a timepiece, his mechanical knowledge was no comfort. On the contrary, as in a nightmare, the familiar was turned strange and inimical. His heart was racing, his reason overcome by a vertiginous terror that shamed him but could not be dispelled by any appeal to reason. The tight dimensions of the closet only made things worse, as if he had been locked, still alive, in a coffin that devils were dragging down to hell. Quare squeezed his eyes shut and glued his hands to the railing.

At last there came a loud clicking noise, followed by a drawn-out growl that made him wince and brace in expectation of a shattering impact. The closet began to shudder, but it also began to slow, and the more it slowed, the less it shuddered, until, mercifully, it came to rest. Quare let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding and dared to open his eyes.

The door through which he had entered the closet was open again, and beyond it, like a vision of some dishevelled paradise, lay the private study of Master Magnus, though there was no sign of the master himself. Nor did Quare wait for one. He bolted from the room like a prisoner escaping his cell. Once outside, he turned to examine the torture chamber that had conveyed him here, but the servant was already pulling the door closed.

‘Wait, damn you—’

Too late; the door snicked shut, fitting so snugly into the wall that there was no sign of its ever having been there at all; nor was there a knob or handle of any sort to pull it open again.

Quare laid his hand against the wall. He felt a steady vibration through his palm, an industrious humming that suggested a hive of bees. Intrigued, he placed his ear where his hand had been and heard the muted music of gears and pulleys – a pleasing harmony nothing at all like the cacophony of screeches and rattles that had attended his arrival. Why, the impudent rogue , Quare thought, straightening up. The servant had interfered somehow with the proper working of this device, whatever it was, in order to teach him a lesson. Such cavalier treatment went well beyond the pale; he would have to devise a suitable revenge.

But this was not the time. Sighing, he turned about. As ever, Master Magnus’s study was in a state of disorder bordering on chaos. Books and papers covered every available surface, including the floor and the tiled fireplace across the room, in whose capacious interior bound volumes and loose papers were piled as if in readiness for an auto-da-fé. In fact, with candles as likely to be found balanced on stacks of manuscripts as stowed in sconces and candelabra, it was a wonder the master hadn’t burned the entire guild hall to the ground by now. On one wall, behind the mound of debris that Quare knew from previous visits marked the master’s desk, was a map of Europe reflecting the boundaries drawn in the second Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which had ended the War of the Austrian Succession ten years before, in 1748 – boundaries the current conflict had rendered irrelevant. The map’s surface bristled with pins that had variously coloured ribbons attached, giving the appearance of a half-unravelled tapestry; these indicated the locations of regulators dispatched across the Channel as well as other spies and agents in the master’s wide-flung network of informants. The wall opposite was given over to bookshelves that stretched from floor to ceiling; so packed were the books in this space that Quare doubted a mouse could have wriggled between them. Master Magnus had charge of the guild library, and he treated its contents as his personal property. Though the other masters grumbled at this presumption, the Old Wolf tolerated it for reasons beyond Quare’s understanding.