Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘And that back-stabbing little human brat, she’s gone now?’ asked the voice at the other end. His tone was bright, light and unpredictable, like the leaping of windswept washing on a sunlit line.

Trista stroked Pen’s head. When the younger girl looked up, cheeks damp and face still crumpled with distress, Trista gave her a small smile.

You can go if you want , she mouthed.

Trista had wondered whether Pen’s usual stubbornness would prevail. However, this time Pen gave a little nod, still biting both her lips in an effort not to cry. She slipped out through the door, leaving Trista alone with the telephone.

‘I’ve sent her away,’ Trista answered. As she did so, it occurred to her to wonder why she had sent Pen from the room. Had it really been to protect the younger girl? Yes, but only in part. The Architect had sounded pleased when he recognized her voice, and almost conspiratorial as he spoke of Pen. Something in her had responded to that. It was the part of her that was not, and never could have been, Theresa Crescent, the part of her that was the thorns and leaves, and that remembered the merciless laughter of ancient trees. She had felt a tingle of kinship, a sense that she could talk to this man, but in ways that Pen would not understand.

‘Good!’ the Architect declared briskly. ‘What a strident little bell she is! Someday I shall have to hunt her down and cut out her clapper. I’m surprised you haven’t already.’

‘She doesn’t trouble me any more,’ Trista said carefully.

‘Oh, you have her trained then, do you?’ The Architect sounded pleasantly surprised, and Trista was in no hurry to correct his misinterpretation. ‘I hear she has some fine new stripes on those annoyingly cherubic cheeks of hers. I thought that must be your handiwork. Yes, fear works pretty well for a while with her sort, but she’ll find a way to betray you sooner or later. That one couldn’t steer a straight course if you tied her behind a locomotive – and believe me, I have considered it.’

There was a pause, during which Trista thought fast. Should she go ahead with the original plan to try to broker a deal between the Architect and Piers Crescent? If the Architect had just refused to make a second bargain with Pen because she had broken the first, why would he have any more faith in Piers? If Trista tried the wrong gambit, she would waste this strange, uneasy moment of rapport.

A faint, dull clicking sound came from the other end, and Trista had a mental picture of the Architect idly tapping at his teeth. She wondered if they were human-looking teeth at the moment, or whether he was wearing another visage altogether.

‘So… you ran away,’ he said at last. ‘That wasn’t part of the plan.’ There was an unexpectedly hard edge to his voice.

‘Nobody explained the plan to me ,’ Trista answered sharply. The army of grievances in her mind roared and clashed their spears. This was the man who had thrown her into existence as casually as he might have tossed an apple core into a ditch, fully expecting her to wither away. This was the man responsible for all her trials, her confusion, her dangers…

…and her life.

But I hate him , she reminded herself. I’m just playing along.

‘No,’ said the Architect, sounding interested and surprised by the thought, ‘I suppose we didn’t. Still, it seems a little ungrateful, after we’d planted you in such a well-heeled family.’

‘They tried,’ Trista said through her sharpening teeth, ‘to throw me in the fire.’

‘Oh, did they?’ Now the Architect’s interest was clearly piqued. ‘Well, well. That old remedy. Why, I do believe the Crescents must have been talking to somebody. They would never have come up with that by themselves.’ There was now a hint of grim concern in his voice. ‘Think, my dear. Do you know who it might have been? I really cannot have people running around with that sort of knowledge.’

Without warning, Trista found herself trembling on the edge of a terrible temptation. Could she give the Architect the name of Mr Grace? Could she set her enemies against each other? Remembering the fate she had nearly suffered at the tailor’s hands, Trista felt her face grow hot again, but this time not from the blaze of a hearth. Setting the Architect on Mr Grace would be no worse than anything the tailor had tried to do to her. After all, Mr Grace knew about the Besiders, so he would be better forewarned than an innocent party. Surely it would be nothing but self-defence.

‘There was a man with them – and he did tell them to throw me on the fire,’ Trista conceded, then bit her lip. Much as she feared Mr Grace, she knew that he believed he was doing the right thing. Could she justify throwing him to the Architect? ‘If you found him… what would you do to him?’

‘Oh, terrible things, of course!’ the Architect hastened to reassure her. ‘Don’t worry, no swift or easy death. Perhaps I shall turn him into a string for a fiddle, that will be grated by a bow for a hundred years until it breaks. Perhaps I shall keep him in cage made of his family’s bones until he is so old and stooped you could use him as a croquet hoop. Or perhaps I shall have him slowly strangled by ivy. Maybe you have some better ideas.’

Trista’s heart was beating fast. When she remembered her own terror as the hearth was stoked to consume her, all these forms of revenge had a certain ghastly appeal.

‘Could you turn him into a loaf of bread and leave him in the park for the pigeons?’ she suggested, and was rewarded by a gust of laughter from the Architect. The wild leaves that made up her flesh and marrow were laughing too.

‘Of course!’

‘Then…’ Trista closed her eyes and resisted the temptation. ‘Then… I’ll try to remember whether anyone ever said his name. If I do, I will tell you.’

‘Good.’ The Architect did not sound completely satisfied, but did not push the matter. ‘Well, if you were in danger of being cooked, I suppose I cannot blame you for leaving. After all, you have done your job of distracting them far better on the run than you could have done in the cinder pan. But I do hope that you had the chance to cause them some heartache before you left!’

‘I nearly ate them out of house and home.’ Trista found herself matching the Architect’s tone. ‘My food, their food, even things that weren’t food at all.’ Remembering the Crescents’ aghast faces when they first saw her thorn-toothed aspect, she even felt a small, wicked cat’s tail of satisfaction curl in her belly. ‘I upset everything in Sebastian’s room, where nothing can ever be touched. I frightened them.’

‘Well, you will be glad to hear that their pain is only beginning,’ the Architect told her soothingly. ‘Fancy the cruelty of it, trying to cut short your seven little days of life! Well, keep ahead of them, my pet, and you may yet outlive your namesake. Will that not be a fine revenge?’

His words yanked at the fibres of Trista’s heart, and she realized that her feelings towards the real Triss were a strange and twisted tangle. Contempt. Resentment. Jealousy. Pity. Empathy. Kinship.

‘A very fine revenge!’ She tried to make her voice as gay and spirited as his. ‘Tell me, what will you do to her? Let me know the fun you are planning! Will you turn her into an apple and put her in a pie?’

‘Oh no, a better joke by far!’ The Architect was almost crowing now, and again Trista was jarred by the unpredictable childishness of his character. ‘There are certain things that I can do better than Mr Crescent, and he seems to have forgotten that. He always did lack imagination, and the ability to think round corners. For him, up is never down, and back is never forth, and in is always smaller than out.’ He laughed.