Weaveworld

IV

CONTACT

s Immacolata crossed the width of heat-raddled pavement between the steps of the hotel and the shaded interior of Shadwell’s Mercedes, she suddenly let out a cry. Her hand went to her head, the sunglasses she always wore in the Kingdom’s public places falling from her face.

Shadwell was swiftly out of the car, and opening the door, but his passenger shook her head.

‘Too bright,’ she murmured, and stumbled back through the swing-doors into the vestibule of the hotel. It was deserted. Shadwell came in swift pursuit, to find Immacolata standing as far from the door as her legs would carry her. The wraith-sisters were guarding her – their presences distressing the stale air – but he couldn’t prevent himself from snatching the opportunity, in the guise of legitimate concern, to reach and touch the woman. Such contact was anathema to her, and a joy to him made more potent because she forbade it. He was obliged therefore to exploit any occasion when he might pass such contact off as accidental.

The ghosts chilled his skin with their disapproval, but Immacolata was quite able to protect her inviolability. She turned, her eyes raging at his presumption. He immediately removed his hand from her arm, his fingers tingling. He would count the minutes until he had a private moment in which to put them to his lips.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was concerned.’

A voice intervened. The receptionist had emerged from his room, a copy of Sporting Life in hand.

‘Can I be of help?’ he offered.

‘No, no …’ said Shadwell.

The receptionist’s eyes were not on him, however, but on Immacolata.

‘Touch of heat stroke, is it?’ he said.

‘Maybe,’ said Shadwell. Immacolata had moved to the bottom of the stairs, out of the receptionist’s enquiring gaze. ‘Thank you for your concern –’

The receptionist made a face, and returned to his armchair. Shadwell went to Immacolata. She had found the shadows; or the shadows had found her.

‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Was it just the sun?’

She didn’t look at him, but she deigned to speak.

‘I felt the Fugue …’ she said, so softly he had to hold his breath to catch her words ‘… then something else.’

He waited for further news from her, but none came. Then, as he was about to break the silence, she said:

‘At the back of my throat …’ She swallowed, as if to dislodge some remembered bitterness ‘… the Scourge …’

The Scourge? Had he heard her correctly?

Either Immacolata sensed his doubt, or shared it, for she said:

‘It was there, Shadwell.’

and when she spoke even her extraordinary self-control couldn’t quite tame the flutter in her voice.

‘Surely you’re mistaken.’

She made a tiny shake of her head.

‘It’s dead and gone,’ he said.

Her face could have been chiselled from stone. Only her lips moved, and he longed for them, despite the thoughts they shaped.

‘A power like that doesn’t die.’ she said. ‘It can’t ever die. It sleeps. It waits.’

‘What for? Why?

‘Till the Fugue wakes, maybe,’ she said.

Her eyes had lost their gold; become silvery. Motes of the menstruum, turning like dust in a sun-beam, dropped from her lashes and evaporated inches from his face. He’d never seen her like this before, so close to exposing her feelings. The spectacle of her vulnerability aroused him beyond words. His prick was so hard it ached. She was apparently dead to his arousal however; or else chose to ignore it. The Magdalene, the blind sister, was not so indifferent. She, Shadwell knew, had an appetite for what a man might spill, and horrid purposes to put it to. Even now he saw her form coagulating in a recess in the wall, one hunger from scalp to sole.

‘I saw a wilderness,’ Immacolata said, calling Shadwell’s attention from the Magdalene’s advances. ‘Bright sun. Terrible sun. The emptiest place on earth.’

‘And that’s where the Scourge is now?’

She nodded. ‘It’s sleeping. I think … it’s forgotten itself.’

‘It’ll stay that way, then, won’t it?’ Shadwell replied. ‘Who the hell’s going to wake it?’

His words failed to convince even himself.

‘Look –’ he said, ‘ – we’ll find the Fugue and sell it before the Scourge can so much as roll over. We haven’t come so far to stop now.’

Immacolata said nothing. Her eyes were still fixed on that nowhere she’d sighted, or tasted – or both – minutes earlier.

Only very dimly did Shadwell comprehend what forces were at work here. Finally, he was only a Cuckoo – a human being – and that limited his vision; for which fact, as now, he was sometimes grateful.

One thing he did comprehend: the Fugue trailed legends. In the years of their search he’d heard it reported so many ways, from cradle-song to death-bed confession, and he’d long ago given up attempting to sort fact from fiction. All that mattered was that the many and the mighty longed for that place, spoke of it in their prayers, without knowing – most of them – that it was real; or had been. And what a profit he would turn when he had that dream on the block; there had never been a sale its like, or ever would be again. They could not give up now. Not for fear of something lost in time and sleep.

‘It knows. Shadwell,’ Immacolata said. ‘Even in its sleep, it knows.’

Had he had the words to persuade her from her fear she would have been contemptuous of them. Instead, he played the pragmatist.

‘The sooner we find the carpet and dispose of it the happier we’ll all be,’ he said.

The response seemed to stir her from the wilderness.

‘Maybe in a while,’ she replied, her eyes flickering towards him for the first time since they’d stepped off the street. ‘Maybe then we’ll go looking.’

All sign of the menstruum had abruptly vanished. The moment of doubt had passed, and the old certainty was back. She would pursue the Fugue to the end, he knew, as they had always planned. No rumour – even of the Scourge – would deflect her from her malice.

‘We may lose the trail if we don’t hurry.’

‘I doubt that,’ she said. ‘We’ll wait. Until the heat dies down.’

Ah, so this was to be his punishment for that ill-considered touch. It was his heat she made mocking reference to, not that of the city outside. He would be obliged to wait her pleasure, as he had waited before, and bear his stripes in silence. Not just because she alone could track the Fugue by the rhythm of its woven life, but because to wait another hour in her company, bathing in the scent of her breath, was an agony he would gladly endure.

For him it was a ritual of crime and punishment which would keep him hard for the rest of the day.

For her, the power his desire lent her remained a diverting curiosity. Furnaces, after all, grew cold if left unstoked. Even stars went out after a millennium. But the lust of Cuckoos, like so much else about that species, defied all the rules. The less it was fed, the hotter it became.