Mike Shevdon - The Eighth Court

“I came to see you because I dreamed again,” I said.

“That’s hardly a surprise.”

“I have a lot of the pieces now, and I know how some of it came to be. I just don’t know how to fit them together. I wanted to ask if you would help me.”

“Help you how?” she asked.

I paused for a moment to think how to put this to her. “I think you were right, this is important. Whatever this is that I’ve become involved in has an impact on all of us — it’s affected us all along. This isn’t new, it’s been going on for years. There are clues… some of this has been planned.”

“I don’t see what I can do,” she said.

“You can help me piece it together,” I said. “You’re the only other person that knows all this stuff. You gave me these memories — help me make sense of them.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“You must.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “I gave you the memories I had, but none of it made any sense to me. You say that you have pieces, and that’s good. I never had more than a jumble of tattered fragments with no order or sequence. You saw what I had; it was all over the walls of my office.”

“But you have the rest,” I said. “You have the missing pieces. Between the two of us we could put it all together.”

“You’re wrong. I don’t have anything. I only got any of this when I touched you in the cells under Porton Down.” She sounded angry now, and I couldn’t really understand why. “You infected me in a second with images I didn’t recognise, messages I couldn’t decipher, and memories that weren’t mine. None of this came from me, Niall. It came from you. Before I touched you I was fine. Afterwards… I couldn’t get any relief from it.”

“That’s how I feel,” I told her. “There must be more. Maybe if you stirred something into a drink?”

“I gave you everything. Your brain… it’s making the connections, do you see? All of this is related, and it comes back to you as a dream or a memory. You have all you need; you just need to tease it out.”

“No. There are things missing, I’m sure of it.”

“Then maybe those things were meant to be missing, or maybe they were never there in the first place. I don’t have anything else for you. You took it all.”

“So you won’t even try.”

“I can’t help you, Niall.” Her mouth was set in a determined line.

I stood up, disappointed by her reaction. “You did this to me,” I reminded her. “You share some of the responsibility.”

“You did it to yourself,” she said. “And to me.”

On an instinct, I reached out and grabbed her. The contact should have been shocking — an instant flash of mind-crushing recollection and foreign memories. Instead I felt my hand, tight around her arm. The muscle was warm under my hand, where I held her firmly. She looked at my hand, surprised by my sudden rush to touch her and then resentful at the liberty I’d taken.

“It would have served you right if you’d been a gibbering wreck on the floor,” she said.

“I’m not, though, am I?”

She plucked at my grip with her free hand and I released her. “What happened?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing happened. You have everything I can give you, there’s nothing else to take. I’d like you to leave now.”

“You know more than you’re letting on,” I accused her.

“What I know and what I feel are separate things,” she said. “You know what I know, but what I feel I’ll keep to myself. It can’t be taken from me, not even by you.”

I went to the door. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to try. You should understand that, at least.”

She stared at me for a long while. “It is by our choices that we know ourselves,” she said. “You could have asked.”

“You would have said no,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t give you the right to take that choice from me.”

I left her then, feeling that I’d made a mistake. I felt like I was being backed into a corner and that the choices that remained to me were limited and none of them were ideal. I went back towards the suite that Blackbird and I shared, wondering if there was some way I could make amends. Angela was right, I’d taken a liberty that was not mine to take, and it had got me nowhere.

As I emerged into the head of the stairs, Alex was coming the other way. “Dad! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. She’s going to kill him!”

“Who is? Kill who?” I asked.

“Fionh!” said Alex, as if I were stupid. “She’s going to kill Sparky.” She turned and headed through the door and down the corridor. Running after Alex, slowed down by the healing wound in my side, I followed Alex as she raced ahead. Sure now that I would follow, she guided me up through the house until we reached the room where Fellstamp lay.

Alex stepped into the room warily. “You’d better let him go now. Dad’s here.”

I moved into the doorway, unsure of what to expect. Fellstamp was as I’d left him, draped up to his shoulders with a white sheet. Towards the back of the room, the big French doors had been thrown open. Fionh stood, her back to the sky, outlined against the light. Beside her, Sparky was held by the hair, throat exposed while Fionh held a wickedly sharp blade under his chin. They were both standing on the balustrade over the three storey drop to the paving below.

“What’s going on, Fionh? What’s he done?” I asked her.

“Done?” she asked, as if it were a joke. “He doesn’t have to do anything.” There was a frayed edge to her voice that I didn’t like. Fionh was normally an island of still calm in a sea of trouble — this was not the Fionh I knew.

“Something’s happened,” I said. It was a statement, not a question.

“You’re not wrong,” she said. “Look at him.”

“I am looking at him. What’s he done?” I repeated.

“Not him, you idiot! Look at Fellstamp!”

I looked at the body on the table. His face was pinched. He didn’t look like he was in pain but he was even paler than before. It couldn’t last much longer. In its comatose state, his body was slowly consuming itself.

“What’s this about, Fionh?” I asked, stepping forward into the room.

“Stay there!” she warned. “You’re only bringing the inevitable closer.”

“What’s inevitable about it?” I asked. Alex moved to the other side.

“Stay back!” said Fionh. The edge of the blade held at Sparky’s throat left a red line at her warning. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tried to resist the urge to swallow. Behind them both, the sky darkened as the clouds gathered above the courts.

“I only want to help,” I said.

“Help yourself, you mean,” said Fionh. “You’re no better than the rest of them, stealing scraps from the plates of your betters. Pretending you’re part of something.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“You don’t even know not to lie,” said Fionh. “You’re like all the rest of them.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “The rest of what?”

“The rest of the mongrels,” said Garvin, standing in the doorway behind me. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it Fionh?” I glanced at him, taking my eyes momentarily off Fionh. He was entirely focused on her.

“You betrayed us,” said Fionh to Garvin.

Garvin shook his head. “I haven’t betrayed anyone,” he said.

“You led us down this path and now there’s no way back,” she accused.

“I’m not the one doing the betraying, though, am I?” he said. “I couldn’t figure it out. Our loyalty has never been in question — until now.”

“And it would have stayed that way,” she said.