Cold Angel Days (Dica Series Book 4) Read online

  “I’ll go find it.”

  Nephril looked out at the growing dusk as he took a piece of paper from his gown and a pencil from his pocket. He placed them on the sill and watched the lowering cloud, the spots of rain on the dome’s crystal and the rake of distant lightning high in the Gray Mountains. He looked out, yet clearly he looked within until he jumped at Penolith’s hissing voice.

  “Are you still there, my Dear?”

  “I am.”

  “Ready to scribe?”

  “Quickly, Penolith, the weather be changing.”

  A loud crackle overlaid the hissing as more lightning, somewhat nearer now, arced along the Strawbac Hills.

  “Death is carried abroad,” then a pause, “In cold angel days, comma,” and another pause, “Chasing aloft dawn’s ire. Are you getting this, Nephril?”

  “Aye, but be quick about it.”

  “As dusk’s inky choir, full stop. That’s the...”

  The opening in the box crackled and hissed alarmingly as both lightning and clouds interfered, a squall of rain soon blurring the view through the crystal.

  Not dusk but that false night when the level of black and rain-gorged clouds sits just at the height of the Star Tower’s dome. With luck, if the rain set in enough, the air would cool, the cloud drop and the foul weather be taken far enough below.

  The paper on the sill before him seemed to tempt the more now that the dull light made its few sparse lines so hard to read.

  Death is carried abroad

  In cold angel days,

  Chasing aloft dawn’s ire

  As dusk’s inky choir.

  Nephril bent over and peered at his own scrawl. “The writing of an old man!” he sighed. “There be an answer here, though, mine old friend, an answer rich in the knowing if only I could see it.”

  He scooped the paper up and slipped it back in his gown, the pencil left on the sill, lost until better daylight might one day point it out.

  The walk back became sporadically lit by lightning drawing nearer, its thunder grumbling through the crystal but not within the floor, where it could never reach.

  Instead of turning into his study, Nephril carried on to the Star Chamber, soon coming into its vast and unlit space where it opened out directly beneath the centre of the crystal dome. What should have been a rich panoply of stars above was now obscured by cloud.

  At the centre of the chamber, a thin shaft of pure, milky-white light rose from the floor, cutting vertically through the dome and into the swirling mass without. Nephril’s face filled with its white-reflected awe, as his gaze lovingly followed the rock-steady beam up into the racing vapour of cloud above.

  “All of mine own doing,” he marvelled, “but thank ‘ee kindly Steermaster Sconner, I am indebted, truly I am, for much hath come of thine own discoveries. But now another conundrum be brought before me, and this time by evidence of an ancient friend.”

  As the cloud began to break, now falling with the cooler evening air, a vast patch of stars punched their way through the dark blue sky above, hinting at the blackness to come.

  Nephril smiled up at them, slowly spun on one foot and shouted at the fast burgeoning points of light, “If this night sees more of thee then I must be wrong, and so all the world be well. But if not? Ah, well, if not, then truth it be that Cold Angel days are now upon us, and I must choose between an old friend’s life and all the lives of all true worlds.”

  21 The Restorative Power of Tea

  “Did you find Falmeard then?” Kirsten asked as she came into the kitchen, but then saw Prescinda’s face. “Oh dear! I’d say it wasn’t good news.”

  “Oh, no, no we found him alright,” Prescinda told her. “He’s in the bath right now. Grog’s helping him clean off all the shit.”

  Prescinda saw her sister’s shocked look and the stare she gave the clothes now hanging from the drying-rack above the stove, and hastened to add, “He’s ... he’s well enough. It’s just that he got a bit dirty that’s all, you know, scrambling through mud and the like.”

  “He’s alright, though?”

  Prescinda only nodded, her thoughts already elsewhere.

  “Any tea on the go?” No answer. “Presci?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Tea?”

  “Do you really take popig, you know, when you’re in Bazarral?”

  “Popig!” Shock flooded Kirsten’s face as quickly as embarrassment filled Prescinda’s. “I drive a coachbank service there and back ... twice a day! What makes you think it gives me time to go gadding around looking for stuff like that? Eh? I’m lucky if I get enough time to grab a bite to eat never mind... Look, Presci? What’s all this about?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m clutching at straws a bit ... sorry. I didn’t really think you ... well, that you ... you know.”

  “Bazarral ain’t the den of iniquity everyone makes it out to be, not by a long chalk. And anyway, what’s all this about straws?”

  A few large spots of rain splattered against the window, their lack of rhythm somehow more threatening. They both looked across the kitchen and caught the thud of yet more, the black of the cliff behind the house already gaining a tinge of green. As though their recognition were a signal, the heavens opened and the cliff soon vanished behind a wall of rain.

  “We got back just in time,” Prescinda noted as she turned up the lamp on the table.

  The door from the passageway opened and Geran slipped through, eyes rubbed red.

  “How you feeling, Sis?” Prescinda asked, but Geran only slumped to a chair, as heavily as the rain now fell outside.

  “I’ll make some tea then,” Kirsten announced and set to, leaving her sisters absently facing one another across the table.

  The room fell silent, other than the rain of course, and the kettle’s rap against a knocking tap, the lilting fall of leaves to a hollow pot, and other such accompaniments to the time-honoured tea brewer’s tune. All very homely and comforting, but alas, no denier of an unthinking Kirsten.

  “So, Geran? What the heck’s been happening between you two? Falmeard looks like you’ve worn the bollocks off ‘im.”

  Geran’s chair fell back with a crash as she began to flee in tears but Prescinda grabbed her arm and stayed her, her tear-stained face averted.

  “Kirsten!” Prescinda growled, “sometimes I could swing for you.”

  “Eh? Oh, sorry. Not my big mouth again was it?”

  Plenty of tears, hugs and sympathy - marked by quite a few more mugs of strong, hot tea - brought Kirsten absolution from Prescinda and forgiveness by a now less tearful Geran. In fact, it dawned on Prescinda how much more relaxed Geran had become since Kirsten seemed to have broken the ice that had kept them all on tiptoes.

  Nostalgia for their childhood together flooded Prescinda and warmed her heart, gave her new hope. How easy it was to forget what strength they’d had as one.

  She watched the joy return to Geran’s eyes, their gaze close-held to Kirsten’s babbling crimson lips. That girl could talk for Dica, Prescinda thought, and for once smiled more freely.

  What do we do, though? she wondered. How do we get back what Falmeard’s somehow lost?

  Prescinda could now hear the rain, even its easing. She could hear because her sisters had put their animation aside to stare at her in silence. Had she spoken her thoughts out loud or had their old close-cloistered habit of almost reading one another’s minds played a part once more? Eyes so alike it frightened her, to see oneself removed, yet also reassuring, comforting.

  “What?” she implored. “Why’re you both looking at me like that?” and then their smiles all lit in common, as of old.

  “Well,” Kirsten enthused, “why don’t we just go see that Nephril? He seemed a nice old gent. You obviously reckon he’s got a lot to do with it, Geran.”

  “No!” Prescinda barked. “No, sorry, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Oh come on, Presci, it’s a grand idea, and he were quite tasty I thoug
ht, in an old sort of way. Just ‘cos you think all men are bad. Anyhow, what other options have we got?”

  Prescinda sighed but allowed her unthinking sister a genuine smile. Bull in a bathhouse that girl, she thought, but then a bull that hadn’t heard what Dad had had to say the night before he died. “We can’t let Falmeard anywhere near the tower again. It’s obviously far too risky, and I don’t think you ought to go there either, Geran.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  For the first time in ages, Prescinda saw the old Geran, the confident yet quiet sister, the deep one, the one who’d always kept her hurts very much to herself - until Falmeard came along. He’d somehow brought her out of her shell.

  That morning when Geran and Falmeard had left for the Scarra came back to Prescinda, so long ago now it seemed. She remembered the desire she’d seen in her sister then. Something she’d never seen before, never thought to see - ever. The way Geran had slid her hand from his ... well, it had all seemed so innocent and fresh at the time, as though they were both still flushed with youth.

  “Do you really think the same could happen to me, Presci? Do you?” Geran asked, now sounding even more like a young maiden. “Do you honestly believe I could lose my mind too?”

  “Mind?” Prescinda said.

  “Yes. I don’t want the tower sucking me dry as well.”

  “Sucking dry! I wonder.”

  Prescinda took Geran by the arms and grinned broadly. “No, we certainly don’t want the risk of that, oh no. Whatever Falmeard’s imbued you with, my darling sister, we don’t want it sucking out, and certainly not by Lord Nephril.”

  “Lord Nephril?” Kirsten marvelled. “Lord? Bugger me! Missed a chance there.”

  “I don’t know about you missing a chance, Kirsten, but I do know where our best chance now lies.”

  “Where?” both sisters demanded.

  “And what kind of chance?” Kirsten added.

  “Maybe a chance to find people who will care about Falmeard, people who won’t just dismiss what’s happened to him as purely circumstantial.”

  Her sisters only stared at her, completely nonplussed, until she said something to make them stare at each other.

  “Maybe Galgaverre would like to know. The home of Leiyatel and the land of her own devoted keepers, where I’ve a suspicion a debt may be owed our Falmeard, and a pretty big one at that.”

  22 Clay-Cold Promise

  Although sleep had long since been of little use to Nephril, his night’s labours had unusually brought a fine grit to his eyes and made their lids quite heavy. Nothing a wash in cold water hadn’t put right, but the numb, doughy feel to his cheeks had long persisted, as had his worsened eyesight.

  “Wrought for virgin eyes,” he’d complained, the Star Tower’s close and narrow vantage having taken its toll. Discomfort, and even the immense disappointment he could tolerate, but not so the choice the latter now put before him, and what so keenly threatened to break his heart.

  “That will likely break mine heart!” he slowly, reluctantly but finally accepted.

  It looked warmer outside, the high cloud’s frayed edges softly glowing with the light of a salmon-pink sun. The dawn may have driven away the low rain, but this fresh, higher cloud had added its own opaque barrier. It had called a halt, along with the new day’s burgeoning light, curtailing creation’s acquisitive quest.

  The nighttime sky boasted no more stars at its end than its outset. No more holes pricked twixt sun’s stately setting and recent rise, for he now knew that the Cold Angel roamed abroad, a Cold Angel in the guise of an old and cherished but forgetful friend.

  Nephril once more craned his face to the sky, but this time with a low and painful lament.

  “Little did Leiyatel know

  What she did do,

  When an angel she drew through time,

  To bring forth cold light of day

  And so

  Thwart Nature’s own dark kind.”

  He breathed deeply, caught sight of a glimmer of the new moon - paler yet than the pale blue sky - and drew his robes about him. He looked down at his desk, at the new clay pipe now resting there, its bowl so tempting of his own cold hand.

  Carefully, he took it up and felt its chalky smoothness, the promise it gave of warmth and taste, yet did no more than tamp its charge of leaves.

  Only his gaze now held its stem, for its small but sensually parted lips themselves promised but a lethal kiss, one to make his fingers wary as they wrapped a cloth about the pipe. Nephril then slipped the bundle into a leather pouch, tied it and stored it safely in a waistcoat pocket. He finally turned, and with the heaviest of hearts, quietly set out upon his fateful task.

  23 An Inadvertent Distraction

  The rain had been swept out to sea by the time Prescinda and Geran braced themselves against the steep descent into Utter Shevling. Geran’s bag slid away from her, down beneath the coachbank’s seats. “Oh shit!” she screeched. A man a few rows ahead started as it accosted his leg, making him dip out of sight for a moment. He soon sat up and looked around, bag in hand. Geran smiled a little lamely, but he smiled back casually enough.

  Despite the difficulty of the slope, her bag returned - hand over hand of those between. She thanked them all most kindly.

  Now grasping her possessions tight to her lap, she watched blue smoke drift across the carriage as her nose began to twitch. “What’s that smell, Presci?”

  “The brakes.”

  “Brakes?”

  “What’s stopping us from careening off down this hill ... you know, slowing the wheels.”

  “Oh, you mean like the brake on the hay wain?”

  “That’s it, but it’s not just a length of leather-bound timber on this.”

  The port’s gate soon distracted Geran as it came into view, seen across the lower buildings fronting the steep, serpentine descent of Eastern Street. The Great Wall’s elegant but monumental curve around the cove - on its long march from Uttagate in the east to its turn south at Grayden in the west – here separated the harbour from its town.

  More an entrance to a tunnel than a gate, the steep slanting cut through the base of the wall ran for almost a hundred yards, and once out at its far end, Geran’s spirits lifted, adding a sparkle to her eyes.

  “How long have we got, Presci?”

  “A couple of hours at the most. If you want to get a few things you’ll have to be quick about it. Anything large you’d best get on the way back.”

  “It’s a shame it’s not market day.” The light in Geran’s eyes faded for a moment but soon shone back. “Will I have enough time to find that baccy shop?”

  “Baccy? Didn’t know you’d taken up smoking.”

  “Silly! Not for me, for Falmeard. He used to smoke a lot when we first...”

  The speed at which Geran’s face changed startled Prescinda, gave her a pang of sympathy for her sister that really did hurt. Her hand immediately shot out and enfolded Geran’s, but then the coachbank began juddering and screaming before tipping them both forward.

  A pig had squealed out in front of the coachbank, a young lad in hot pursuit; stick in hand, raised, threatening bacon. Everyone laughed but the driver, now too occupied cursing and dousing the brake, delaying them a few minutes.

  Geran always remembered the harbour in full sunlight, as though it was somehow graced with its own perpetual summer. It made the shrimp and crab pots, the folds and curtains of nets, the bunches of unused floats and the stacks of empty crates all seem more faded, their colours bleached by the sun and sea.

  Only the trawler-men, the crabbers and whelkers, the ferrymen, crafters and bowlegged seamen set any strong colour here on the quay, their lined faces dark red and brown and black beneath the sun. Even their teeth were yellow - the stain of tobacco and kippers.

  These days the coachbanks swept on by, down beside empty fish stalls with gutting sheds behind, past barrels of fish-oil and bony remains - cats a-loitering and licking their lips - and young lad
s kept chivvied at knife-sharpening wheels. On they’d sweep to a new yard beside and here quickly come to rest amongst their own carrying kind - coachbanks all as peas in a pod.

  As adamant as ever, Kirsten had, the previous night, insisted they’d make far better time going to Galgaverre by Uttagate, despite needing to change at Utter Shevling. The direct route, she’d maintained, would take an eternity, what with all the stops to be made.

  Firstly there’d be Bazarral harbour, then the market at Weysget, never mind the interminable run on Nordgang Road through Bazarral’s northern districts - all the way out to Eyesget. Only then would it be a quiet run south, down the last few miles on Weyswal Way to Galgaverre’s far distant gate.

  No, she’d expounded, change at Utter Shevling and then it’s a non-stop run right the way across Dica on Eastern Street, with only a single stop at Uttagate for the Eastern Gate traffic. After that, it was an uninterrupted run south, up and across the Scarra Face on the Aerie Way before the quiet drop down to the Esnadales, finally joining Weyswal Way for the last few miles. However, so far they’d managed no more than ten of those miles, but at least the day had promised to stay warm and dry.

  Even this early, the port’s packed streets already buzzed with brisk and tempting trade. The Ufflangcoss Ferry must have been in; builders and labourers swaggering from inn to inn, pockets stuffed with money for pies and beers, bellies long empty of decent fare.

  The sisters had wandered a fair way down the old port’s High Street before Geran spotted the tobacconist’s - nudging Prescinda and pointing. She was about to step out across the narrow street when a tavern door burst open, spilling a stew of labourers and seamen at their feet. Legs, arms, the odd head or two, all briefly jutted from the mass as it tumbled to the gutter, sluicing it with opprobrium and doubts about parentage.

  A shriek from Geran rose above it all and caught an ear amidst the brawl. Her cry drew the drunken eye of a man whose fist it stalled. He locked his blue-peaked gaze upon her face, his own blurred sideways within a spray of blood, to vanish back amongst the fray.