James Roy - The Gimlet Eye

Rendana looked down, his brow furrowed. Then he began to laugh. ‘Oh, yes, I see. That’s very good, isn’t it? Very realistic.’

‘Indeed,’ Fontagu replied, somewhat proudly. He withdrew the sword, and the blade returned to its original position. ‘See how it appears sharp at the tip, but in fact…’ He ran his thumb over the end. ‘Completely harmless.’

‘May I?’ Rendana took the stage sword from Fontagu and swung it about. Then, with a movement so fast that it had made Fontagu flinch and whimper, he buried it to the hilt in Fontagu’s belly. Then he pulled away and swung it around again, grinning like a schoolboy. ‘Yes, that should do nicely. Very good. Well, my actor friend, if you can follow the instructions Lord Janus has put in that script, I suspect that all will be well.’

That had been some time ago, and now, with opening night a mere matter of days away, Fontagu’s hives were starting to itch.

Were the actors ready? He certainly hoped so. He felt that he himself was ready, and he knew that the play was well written. At least it was well written with the exception of the pointless scene towards the end, where Florian would wander onto the stage, get in a meaningless duel with Robar, and die. Part of Fontagu wished he could use a real sword, but he pushed that thought away. He might have committed some bad deeds over the years, but murder wasn’t one of them.

Now, as he stood at the back of the New Paragon playhouse watching the final touches being put on the stage backdrop, he felt a warm tingle in his chest that had nothing to do with hives. He recognised it as the old familiar excitement that he’d not felt for so long. Nerves, but excitement as well.

He felt a warmth on his foot, and looked down. ‘Fargus,’ he said, bending down and picking up the little dog. ‘Are you going to behave on opening night?’

Fargus licked his chin.

‘You need to stay backstage and guard all the props,’ he said. ‘That’s going to be your job, my little friend.’ He scratched the dog’s belly. ‘I’m glad you’ve been around to keep me company. You’ve been the only other intelligent being in this entire catastrophe. Even without training you could have played the role of the dog better than that knucklehead I’ve got in the dog suit. Seriously, Fargus, what do they teach in acting school these days?’

Tab sighed, closed her book and laid it beside her bed. Then she wriggled about, making herself as comfortable as anyone could on a sack stuffed with straw. Opening night of the play was only one sleep away, and she’d finished reading the story just in time.

Oh, the ending! She hadn’t seen that coming at all. The lame carpenter, standing in the woods, hearing his dog going crazy and, knowing that the Gimlet Eye is close, reaching into his beltpouch and taking out his own gimlet. Holding it up as he hears the approaching footsteps of the beast, soft and delicate like a beautiful woman would walk. Seeing the tip of the gimlet sparkling in the moonlight, knowing that to turn around and see the creature would be to doom himself. Turning the point of his gimlet towards himself, directly at his face, and at his one good eye…

Tab shuddered. It was so horrible, and yet so brave, Robar and Fargus fighting the Gimlet Eye, with the blind carpenter following the sounds of his dog as it hung off the leg of the beast. Then she smiled at the memory of the monster falling, and Robar bringing a lock of its lush, wavy hair back to the village.

And finally, the satisfaction as he presented the lock of hair to his horrified wife, telling her that he’d blinded himself completely because he knew that she’d had eyes only for the hunter, but that he, the carpenter, only had eyes for her. That if he couldn’t look into her eyes and see love there, he would rather not see at all.

She sighed again. She really hoped that Fontagu would do the story justice. She felt confident that he would.

Tab awoke suddenly, breathing hard. Had it been a dream? She couldn’t remember dreaming. She’d been awake, thinking about the folk story, and the play, and Fontagu, then she’d been asleep, then… awake, breathless.

Perhaps there had been something more than the nothing of deep sleep. As she dug down into her mind she remembered something. A scream. It had been a scream so wild and full of terror that even the memory of its existence was enough to make her pull her blanket closer around her shoulders.

She played the tiny fragments of the scream over in her mind, again and again, despite how it made her feel. Was it just a scream? Was it simply a sound forced from a throat in a moment of panic or horror? No, as she replayed it she began to hear a name. Her name. ›››Tab! Ta-ab!

She suddenly sat up, straight as the masts that creaked above the city. Her eyes stared into the darkness. ‘Stelka!’

In the next stall, Freya made a sleepy moan of protest at the sudden sound of Tab’s voice.

‘Sorry, Freya,’ Tab whispered, her mind racing. How had Stelka called her? Had she found some way to reach back through the mind of the accommodating rat into Tab’s head? She had been the Chief Navigator – surely with time and effort a magician as good as she could unravel the strange magic of mind-melding and find her way into Tab’s consciousness.

Closing her eyes, she went reaching for the mind of Rat. Just as it usually did, the mind-chatter of others crowded around like voices in an adjoining room, but Rat’s was absent. She opened her eyes, shook her head to clear the whispering chatter, and tried again. Nothing. Rat was gone.

It had been such a dreadful scream, and now, as it bounced around in her memory like a blind man in a small room, it continued to horrify her.

She tried once more to access the mind of Rat, squeezing her eyes tightly closed and pushing past the murmurings and distractions. Then it was there. Except this time there was resistance as she squeezed into its mind, as if Rat was unfamiliar with the sensation of an intruding presence.

›››It’s just me

The mind clamped down around her. It was panicking.

›››It’s just me››I’m looking for my friend

The mind of the rat went suddenly limp, as if the experience was far too much for it to deal with. It was as if it had fainted from the effort of keeping her out. Then the view through the eyes of the rat appeared, like a candle flame catching onto the wick and beginning to burn properly.

Gently, as if this had never happened before, Tab coaxed Rat forward towards the half-moon of light.›››I won’t hurt you

The rat reached the end of the tunnel and poked its nose out into the light. For a moment Tab was disoriented. The rat in which her mind rode wasn’t inside Stelka’s cell, but outside, in the corridor, which took her by surprise. Through the bars she could see the crooked table, the low bench that they called a bed, the bucket in the corner, the tipped-over chair. But no Stelka.

›››Where’s Stelka?

›››I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you››You’re not usually this skittish

Eventually, and with much encouragement, she managed to turn Rat around. Back at the opening of the little tunnel, she gently prodded it forward onto the floor and over to the bars of the cell to have a proper look around.

The instant she screamed, she knew that this rat would never allow her back into its mind. For this rat wasn’t her rat. It wasn’t the rat. It wasn’t Rat. The body of her rat was on the floor near its little triangular tunnel, in a small pool of shiny darkness, with its head lying a good pace or more away. She’d seen it, registered what it meant, and reacted with a scream. And a fraction of a moment later the rat in which her mind was riding had squeezed and panicked and arched, and her mind had been ejected like a drunk from a chapel.