The Ace of Skulls

Eighteen

Crake felt the dark pressing close at his shoulder. Beyond the light of the electric lamps lay ghosts and dreadful memories. No matter how he tried to shut them out, they whispered at him from the blackness.

He hunched over the tome on his desk, ran his finger across the formulae to fix them in his mind. Then he stood up and took a breath.

There’s nothing behind me.

He turned around. No phantoms waited there. Only his brother, clad in a red silk gown, lying still upon a bench.

The summoning circle was ready. The air was taut with the barely perceptible throb of the resonator masts that surrounded it, throwing out a cage of frequencies that a daemon couldn’t pass through. This time, he was determined that nothing would escape.

He checked his instruments meticulously. An oscillator sat in the centre of the circle: a plain metal hemisphere, wired to a trolley rack outside the circle that held a modulator, a pair of resonator boxes and an oscilloscope. He scanned the array of gauges and dials on their faces, then checked the backup generator was running properly in case the electricity failed. Lying next to the oscillator, attached by wires to the second resonator in the trolley rack, was an iron band about a foot in diameter. He checked it was properly connected.

Lastly he glanced at the echo chamber, the great riveted bathysphere that lurked at the edge of the light. He’d not be needing that, he thought. It would take a lot to make him turn that damned contraption on again.

They’d shut the cellar up after the tragedy, and left his belongings virtually untouched. The law hadn’t been informed. The affairs of the Crakes were kept within the family: Father’s business was too important for scandal. And so Bess’s death was reported as a tragic fall, and the cellar door was locked, and the Shacklemores employed, who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. The servants knew, of course, but no one would take their word over a powerful aristocrat like Rogibald Crake.

For almost three years the wine cellar lay undisturbed. Waiting like some malevolent creature, crouched and patient. Waiting for him.

‘Stop it,’ he said aloud to himself. His voice echoed around the pillars and came back hollow. He wouldn’t bow to terrors of the past. Bess was dead. He’d accepted that. All that remained here were memories.

It had taken him most of the night to prepare. He pored greedily through his old books, intoxicated by them. It was a store of knowledge that he’d thought he’d never lay hands on again. So engrossed was he that for a time he forgot why he was here, and when he remembered, he was ashamed. Once, the Art had been an all-consuming passion, and though he’d turned from it after the tragedy, it drew him back like a moth to a flame.

His preparations complete, he set to work at the dials, searching the frequencies of the aether. His formulae gave him a range to search in. His instincts would do the rest. This wasn’t a particularly tricky summoning, but he’d never attempted it before. Ridiculous of him, really. Of all the many uses a daemon could be put to, he’d never used one to heal.

The doctors were baffled by this strange disease that put people into a coma. But doctors didn’t have the tools he did.

The first stage was the easy part. He’d bring in a daemon to diagnose the patient. Theoretically, once it had had been introduced to Condred, it would provide him with a set of frequencies that would enable him to bring a more powerful daemon to bear, one targeted to the illness. With luck, it would cure whatever ailed his brother.

Daemonist lore had it that the most appalling wounds could be healed this way, and maladies of the brain and nervous system that were beyond medical science. A skilled practitioner might bring somebody back from the brink of death. That, at least, was the rumour, but confirmation was hard to come by in the secretive world of the daemonists.

If only he’d been that skilled, he might have saved Bess. But he could save Condred. Perhaps.

A hum began to build as he moved through the frequencies, probing, searching for a nibble from beyond. There! The needle of one of the high-end gauges jumped. He set about penning the daemon, setting up interference patterns round it so it couldn’t slip away from him. His concentration sharpened with the thrill of the chase. He’d become good at this. No longer did he clumsily fumble about the aether. He was deft and decisive, trammelling his quarry and then shrinking the cage until it had nowhere to run to. After that, he found its primary resonance and pinned it, spearing it with sonics. Then he set about matching its vibrations with those of the visible world, pulling it into phase with what most people called reality.

The familiar sense of paranoia and unease sank into his bones. It was expected: the presence of a daemon unsettled people on a primitive level. But here in the wine cellar where he’d killed his niece, the feeling was particularly sharp. Ghosts gathered in the dark. Sweat trickled through his hair as he fought the urge to look over his shoulder.

She’s not there. There’s nobody there.

The daemon began to take shape inside the summoning circle. It was a wisp, nothing more. A barely conscious thing like a smudge on the eye. It curled and billowed this way and that, but the resonator poles kept it from escaping. Once he was satisfied it was stable, Crake turned to the second resonator, and set about matching the vibration of the iron ring to the daemon. The wisp was pulled, gently at first and then insistently, tugged closer to the object until it was sucked inside and disappeared.

Crake eased off both resonators steadily, keeping the vibrations matched until he was sure the daemon was securely thralled to the iron band. The paranoia receded as he did so. Finally he powered down the resonators and with that, the first summoning was done.

He reached into the circle and picked up the iron band. It looked entirely normal, but his tuned senses detected the daemonic life within.

Well, that had gone well enough. But that was the easy part. He switched round some wires so that the iron band was connected to the oscilloscope and carried it over to where Condred lay. If things went to plan, the daemon in the band would feed back readings to the gauges that he could record.

He looked down at his brother’s face, and was assailed with sudden doubt. Did he really want to do this? Would it be better if Condred never woke, if he was spared the pain of seeing his daughter’s murderer again?

He shook his head angrily at himself. That was cowardice talking. He was merely afraid to face his brother’s justified wrath. He’d save his brother, and face his punishment. It was what a gentleman would do.

He lifted Condred’s head and placed the iron band on his brow. Then he retreated to stand before the trolley rack. The daemon would already be working. Invisible tendrils were spreading through Condred’s body, seeking out illness and corruption.

Crake waited. The only sounds were the soft hum of the resonator and the buzz of the electric lights that stood on poles around him. Beyond that lay the swarming dark of the cellar.

One of the lights crackled and stuttered. It flickered for a moment, stabilised again. Crake glanced over his shoulder and frowned, then returned to the oscilloscope. He should have been getting readings by now. The first hint of doubt crept into his mind. Had he performed the summoning properly? Everything had seemed to go right, but it was always hard to be sure.

The light fluttered again. He scowled at it. What was wrong with the electrics in this place? And why was it so damned cold in here?

When he turned back he saw that the gauges of the oscilloscope had come to life, needles swinging back and forth at random. He watched them with growing concern. Surely some malfunction? He tapped the side of the machine, but the needles kept swinging with no rhythm or sense to them.

Suddenly Condred bucked as if hit by an electric jolt. Crake looked up in alarm. His brother bucked again, his body jerking with the violence of it, and then went still.

Crake’s mouth dried up. No, no, this was wrong! There was nothing in the procedure that could possibly harm him. The daemon in the band was as mild as the one in the earcuffs the crew of the Ketty Jay wore. He hit the switch to kill the oscilloscope and hurried over to Condred.

‘Condred? Can you hear me?’

Abruptly Condred began to spasm. His limbs shook and juddered. His eyes flew open and his face contorted into an awful grimace. Spittle flew from his lips and his heels drummed on the bench.

Crake grabbed the iron band and pulled it off Condred’s head, but the spasms only grew more violent. Crake tried to restrain him, but even in the midst of crisis, something held him back and he didn’t apply all his strength. He and his brother never touched; it felt wrong.

Condred jerked and slipped off the bench. Crake only just managed to stop his head hitting the stone floor.

Spit and blood, not again! he thought as he clutched his brother helplessly. What have I done? What have I done?

The light that had been flickering blew out in a shower of sparks. His skin prickled with goose-bumps; fear crawled down his spine. He looked around desperately, as if there were somebody nearby that could help him. A small figure in a nightdress ran by, glimpsed at the edge of the light, gone in an instant.

His heart stopped in his chest. It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t.

Condred’s shuddering was becoming ever more violent. His fists clenched and unclenched and his eyes rolled up in his head. Crake searched his mind for anything of use but came up blank. He was no medical man. He didn’t know what to do.

A thin line of blood trickled from Condred’s nostril. He stared at it in horror.

From the dark came a wet clicking sound. He heard it distinctly. The sound a little girl fighting to draw breath into punctured lungs.

‘You’re not here!’ he screamed.

But this had happened before, and he was wise to the trick. He’d been tormented this way in the past. In another sanctum, beneath Plome’s house in Tarlock Cove. When he’d been trying to cage a daemon.

A daemon was here. Not that tiny spark that he’d brought from the aether. Something stronger, darker, worse. But where had it come from? It hadn’t been here before. Unless. .

He looked down at Condred, eyes wide with horrified realisation. His brother thrashed and twisted, gurning and mugging blindly.

Unless the daemon was inside Condred.

Another lamp blew out, showering him in glass. He felt a dozen tiny sharp bites across his cheek and nape and the back of his hand.

There was a daemon inside his brother. It had awoken at the presence of the new daemon Crake had introduced, risen up to defend its territory. And unless Crake stopped it, it would kill its host in its fury.

A movement in the dark. He looked up and saw a bloody face, slack with anguish. The face of a little girl, gone in a blink. Crake felt his throat seize tight. He wanted to scream again.

But he didn’t. He knew this game. He knew how daemons played on a man’s fears, dredging up his sins and teasing out the thing that frightened him most. For Crake, that was Bess. Always Bess. Except her memory didn’t have the power over him that it once had. He’d faced the truth of what he’d done. It couldn’t break him now.

Condred needed him. He had to get the daemon out.

He cast around the sanctum for an answer. The summoning circle? No time. He’d have to recalibrate all the resonator masts. Condred was bleeding freely from the nose, his back arching fit to snap. No time. So what else? What else?

The echo chamber.

As soon as he thought of it, he was on his way, rushing over to the control panel attached to the metal bathysphere. He threw the switch to activate it. A sinister drone of suppressed power grew out of the silence. He returned to Condred and reached down to lift him up. Just for a moment it was Bess there instead, her white nightdress reddened and pierced with many cuts.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Not here.

When he opened them, there was Condred again, his lips bloodied and his eyes roving like those of a frenzied horse. Crake slipped his arms beneath his brother’s, encircling his chest, and yanked him along the floor, haste making him rough.

‘It hurts so bad, Uncle Grayther,’ came a little girl’s voice from the dark. ‘Hurts so bad.’

A cry escaped his lips then, forcing its way out through gritted teeth. But he took that grief and used it, and it gave him strength. He hauled Condred towards the open door of the echo chamber, the same terrible portal through which he’d once put Condred’s daughter. Condred slipped and pushed this way and that, but Crake was relentless. A hand hit him across the nose, startling him with pain. He didn’t let go. Muscles straining, he manhandled his brother through the hatch. Once Condred was halfway in, he seized him by the hips and shoved his kicking legs in after.

‘Hurts so bad. .’

He slammed the hatch on his brother. A bloodied girl’s hand slapped against the inside of the porthole. Crake recoiled, frightened. Then his face reddened in anger, and he surged towards the control panel. He twisted the dials, not caring where they went, building a chord of appalling disharmony.

Tiny arms slipped round his leg, and a cold little body pressed against him.

‘Nice try,’ he said hatefully, and threw a switch.

The echo chamber blasted Condred with a sonic barrage, a mess of vibrations and harmonics that swooped and crossed and hammered. A shriek echoed through the wine cellar as the daemon was torn apart by the flux. It seemed to come from everywhere at once: from the walls, from the floor, from inside Crake’s head. It lasted a long time before it faded, receding to some unguessable distance as it did so.

He didn’t let off the assault until he was sure there was no little girl holding his leg any more. Only then did he dare to look down.

He wrenched the door of the echo chamber open. Condred was there, bundled and still, his eyes closed and his mouth and chin slicked red.

Dead?

‘You’re not dying on me!’ Crake said furiously. He reached in and pulled. He wouldn’t allow Condred to be dead. He’d make it unhappen through sheer force of will. He hadn’t half the affection for Condred as he’d had for Bess, but to kill them both in his sanctum would be more than he could take. It wouldn’t happen. No world could be so cruel.

It took all his strength to drag his brother out of the echo chamber. Condred’s bare feet slapped heavy and limp to the floor as the last of him emerged. Crake stumbled, borne down by the dead weight, and went down onto his arse. He sat there, with Condred’s head in his lap like a lover’s, searching that pale, slack face for a sign of life.

Condred’s eyes flew open, and he screamed.

‘No! Don’t! Don’t!’ he shouted, arms flailing as he fended off invisible enemies. He lurched away from Crake, rolled over and ended up on his side, hands held defensively in front of his face. Then a wary calm came over him, like a man woken from a nightmare.

‘Where is the man in black?’ he whispered hoarsely. He raised himself so that he was kneeling. ‘The intruder?’ His eyes went to Crake. ‘Is he gone?’

Crake’s heart darkened at his words. No wonder he’d sensed something sinister when he’d entered this house. One of them had been here. A man in black. An Imperator.

‘Yes, Condred,’ Crake said quietly. ‘He’s gone.’

Condred peered at him. ‘Grayther?’ he croaked.

Crake felt tears welling and fought them. ‘It’s me,’ he said.

Condred stared, his eyes widening in amazement. Then he lunged at Crake. Crake put his hands up, but he was too slow to stop Condred throwing his arms around his brother and hugging him tightly.

Crake did cry then. He couldn’t stop himself. He sobbed as he held his brother, the frail shell of the man he’d known, and despite all their animosity he clutched him like someone long-lost and dear. Of all the things he’d expected when the Shacklemores had caught up with him, he hadn’t expected this.

‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ said Condred over his shoulder. ‘Spit and blood, after all I’d lost, I thought I’d lost you too.’

‘Condred. .’ Crake said. ‘Condred, I’m so sorry. .’

Those words broke him, and his tears became hysterical, and he gripped his brother’s back with fingers like claws and knucklebones stark. But while Crake was wracked with grief, no tears fell from Condred. He breathed steadily, and held his brother and was silent.

Finally, Condred released him, and they sat facing each other on the stone floor amid the scattered apparatus of the sanctum. The shadows were deep in the grim electric light, and still the darkness lay beyond. Crake waited, half in hope and half in terror, for his brother to speak.

Condred wiped the blood away from his mouth with the sleeve of his nightshirt. He was weak, and his head was evidently causing him great pain, but he didn’t complain. That was his way. Their father had never liked a complainer.

‘Grayther,’ he said at last. ‘You don’t know what it means to lose a child and I pray you never do. If you had asked me before it happened, I would have said this: that I would hunt you to the ends of the earth and see you dead for what you did to Bess. But hate has a limit, at least for me, and I reached it long ago. When Bess was gone, when Amantha was. .’ he swallowed, ‘gone. . What was the point of revenge after that? To spite myself by killing the last person I loved?’

Crake felt a jab in his chest, a physical pain. To hear Condred say a thing like that. He’d never imagined Condred felt anything more than contempt for him. But hadn’t Condred taken him in when Crake needed a place to live, and made him part of the family, however reluctantly? Hadn’t he done what a brother should, even though every act came bundled in scorn?

‘I can’t explain it to you, Grayther,’ he murmured. ‘I just. . One day, I didn’t hate you any more. So I resolved to let you go. There had been enough suffering. Causing more wouldn’t undo a thing.’

He’d never heard Condred speak this way before. Crake didn’t know what to say in return. Words seemed a pitiful tool for the purpose.

‘It was an accident. .’ he said, and then stopped because it sounded pathetic.

‘I know,’ said Condred. ‘Of course I knew. You adored her. We all did.’

But Crake blundered on. If he didn’t get it out now, he feared he’d never get the chance. ‘It wasn’t. .’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me that did it, do you understand? There was a daemon in me. It was my fault, oh, spit, it was my fault but it wasn’t me in there, it wasn’t me that did that.’ He felt tears coming again. ‘I locked the door. I always locked the door. But maybe that time I didn’t. .’

‘You locked the door.’ Condred’s voice was weary, devoid of feeling. It was as if it had all been drained out of him. He was never an emotional man, at least not on the outside, and he must have cried all the tears he ever would over this. ‘I knew what you were doing down there.’

Crake looked up at him in surprise. Condred snorted. ‘Living under my roof, spending all your time in my wine cellar, pretending you were working on some grand invention? You think I’d let you build some scientific contraption without my knowing about it? I feared you’d blow the house up. There was always a second key, Grayther. So when you were away, I went down there.’

He sighed, and ran his hand over his forehead, pushing back his lifeless grey and white hair.

‘When I found out, I pitied you. Poor little brother with his wild ideas, never able to settle to business like I could, never able to find his place.’ He shifted position, sitting up against the echo chamber with a wince. ‘I thought daemonism was superstitious nonsense. I thought you’d grow out of it. But I was blind and careless, and one day I left the key out.’ He managed a small, bitter smile. ‘You remember how desperate Bess was to see your workshop? You told her you were making toys down there. Every so often you’d bring a toy from the city and tell her you made it. Well, she found that key. You locked the door, Grayther. It was my fault she got in.’

His head hung, though whether from exhaustion or grief Crake couldn’t tell. He stared at Condred, numbed by the moment, processing all that he’d been told. If not for Condred, Bess would never have been down in the sanctum that night. If not for him, she’d be alive. And his brother blamed himself for that.

‘The Awakeners did this to me,’ said Condred, raising his head. ‘I remember the man in my bedroom, the fear of him, how it crushed me. And then nothing.’ His eyes narrowed in concentration. ‘He was carrying something. . He held it out towards me. .’ Then he shook his head. The memory was gone.

‘Some thralled object, no doubt,’ said Crake, his voice firmer now they were on safer ground. ‘Perhaps a ring or a bracelet or a band. It contained the daemon that kept you unconscious. He put it on you after you were subdued, and the daemon passed into you.’ His voice became grave. ‘Others have fallen to this sickness. I’ll wager all of them are the sons and daughters of aristocrats who refused to bend the knee to the Awakener cause.’

‘Yes,’ said Condred. ‘I wonder if Father would have received some message eventually. Promising my recovery if he would lend his resources and support.’

Crake thought back on his conversation with his father. ‘Perhaps he already did,’ he said.

There was silence between them at that.

‘They want the rural areas,’ said Condred at last. ‘That’s where they’re strongest. They’ll get the country folk on their side, trap the Coalition in the cities, cut off their supplies.’

Crake was about to agree, but then he heard a faint sound from outside the cellar. A sound that had become familiar to him over these past years. He scrambled to his feet as he heard another, and another and another.

Condred pricked up his ears. ‘What is it?’

‘Gunfire,’ said Crake. ‘It’s gunfire!’