Catherine Fisher - The Slanted Worlds

Who signed himself JANUS .

He read the last one.

I HAVE SENT YOU MY CHILDREN.

Piers put his lips into a whistle shape but no sound came.

“Oh that’s bad,” he whispered instead.

David sat on the narrow bed, the baby in his arms. He said, “There was a woman. She was pretty and young and . . . we started as friends. She was . . . the only one I felt safe with. Then . . .”

“I don’t want to hear the whole sordid story,” Jake growled.

He had gone back to the window and was standing in the shade. Gazing out.

Rebecca said, “Jake.”

“Stay out of this. This is not your business.”

His arrogance infuriated her, but she could hear the raw pain too, so she just reached out to David. After a moment he handed her the baby; she was surprised at his warm weight. Then he went over to Jake and stood behind him.

“Don’t hate me, son.”

“I don’t hate you. But . . .”

“It just happened. She told me she was pregnant. We got married.”

“You’re already married! You’re married to my mother!”

“She’s a thousand years in the future in a country not even discovered yet.” He tried to smile. “She never need know.”

Jake spun. “This is not some joke!”

“No.” His father’s tired eyes held him. “No. It’s not. Not when Gabriella was carried home from the market and I saw the first black lesion on her neck. Twenty-four hours, Jake, that’s all it took. Twenty-four hours of agony from a healthy woman to a corpse suppurating with dark sores.”

He gripped Jake’s arms. “I couldn’t save her.”

Jake said, “The mirror. You could have . . .”

“And spread the pestilence to some other age? Not even for her.”

They were silent. Outside, a church bell began to clang for Mass, somewhere far across the city.

Rebecca shifted the weight in her arms; the baby made a small contented noise.

Jake took a step back. He said, “Okay. Look. Whatever happened. Whatever you did, doesn’t matter. We have to go. Now.”

“The baby comes. He has no one else.”

They stared at him; Rebecca said, “Can we . . . ?”

“Two bracelets. Together. We can try.”

Jake breathed out, hard. Then he nodded. “Right. All right. Let’s go.”

Ten minutes later they raced down the stairs. David had replaced his doctor’s mask, Jake wore an old apprentice robe. Rebecca had a cloak swathed around her and the baby was tied in it. “You’ll have to carry him,” David had breathed, fastening the swaddling. “It will look more natural.”

“Will it?”

She had felt ridiculous, but as if he knew, he said, “You would have been married here for years, Becky. You’d almost be old.”

It scared her now. Running down the dark stairs, she wanted to flee, suddenly afraid that the life she had always thought was in front of her was over. The thought of that other girl, who had gone from beauty to corruption in a day, terrified her.

At the street door, David peered out. Then he said, “Walk behind me. Close. Don’t speak. Put your arm around her, Jake, as if she’s sick. Everyone will stay clear.”

The streets were deserted. They hurried, but the heat was like a great hand on their chests, a film of sweat on their faces.

Above them the narrow tawny buildings rose, castellated houses and towers, each with a barred wooden door at the base, the windows fixed tight against contagion. The city stank of its own dying, as if it was already a silent graveyard. With a sudden shock Jake recognized it—these were the scribbled towers on the manuscript Sarah had brought—turning a corner he came face-to-face with a statue of a man on horseback.

“Dee,” he whispered

Rebecca was desperately trying to remember all she could about the disease that had wiped out a third of the population of Europe. Had it been spread by fleas? She held the baby tight and slipped between the pools of ordure and tried not even to breathe.

Like a knife-edge of darkness, the shade ended. They came to a small piazza, shimmering in the heat. Opposite it was a gray stone building with a narrow tower. It looked ominous and heavy. Two guards leaned wearily at its single door.

David glanced out, then drew back.

“That’s it. The Bargello. Town prison. Take a look up there.”

Jake looked. Two masses of bone and clothing that might once have been bodies hung from a window on the second floor. They turned, slowly, in the rancid air.

“God,” he muttered.

“Il signore’s holed up here while the plague is running.” David wiped sweat from his face. He managed a weak grin. “Visited it in 1986 on holiday once. Had an ice cream in a café just about here.” For a moment bewilderment seemed to flicker through him as if he no longer knew where he was. Then he turned back, and stepped out.

They climbed the steps slowly. The guards straightened. “Dottore . . . ?”

“New patient.” He waved at them. “Stand back, well back.”

They couldn’t do it fast enough.

Jake, his arms around Becky and the baby, hurried past. He had hoped it would be cooler inside, but the stone chamber led to an open courtyard, with a stair running up the side. David puffed up. “First floor. Hurry.”

They pattered around an open loggia stacked with stores and chests, as if the signore had had all his riches dragged in here too. Ignoring them, David ran into a stone flagged hall, its high windows wide so that the sun made slants of burning molten light across the floor.

“There,” he gasped.

At first Jake didn’t see it. Only sculptures. Gods and angels. Great painted chests. A table laden with an unfinished meal.

Then, in a shadowy corner against the marble wall, it leaned like a dark doorway.

The obsidian mirror.

The bird was a speck. It grew slowly, circling toward her, and when it came out with a rush of speed, she drew back with a gasp.

In its beak it held the broken coin.

Sarah held out her hand. The coin was in her palm.

“Now,” the bird said, “don’t make the mistake of running off with that. All I have to do is screech and the whole host of the Shee will come crashing in down the chimney and through the walls. I wouldn’t like to think what will happen to you afterward.”

She swallowed. “So you threaten as well.”

“If I need to.” It preened a small yellow feather back into place.

Sarah looked at the broken coin. The halved face of the Greek god stared out past her, and she felt a stab of guilt, because she was forgetting them, forgetting the whole horror of that distant bleak future, all that the group had planned, all their sworn friendship, forgetting Cara and Max.

“You’re not crying, are you?” the bird said. Its head tipped, sidelong.

“No,” she lied. “Look . . . I have to take this. It belonged to me—I gave it to Summer . . .”

“Oh, don’t say her name.” The bird seemed to shrink; at once it was tiny, a shiny miniature. “She’ll hear!”

“Now I’m taking it back. It’s vital. I can’t explain why. But . . .”

“Are you one of the Venns?”

She didn’t know what was best to say, so she nodded.

The bird whirled on its axis with an agitated rattle. Then it grew, just a little, and said, “I’ve seen him, you know, Oisin Venn. A handsome man. She torments him wonderfully.”