Frontier, p.16
Frontier, page 16
On top of it all, in a high-backed velvet throne, was the Queen: reclining like a fat silkworm in a dress woven from the shards of a broken mirror. He was addressing one of his subjects, who was standing before him in a purplish suit, hands clasped tight behind their back.
‘You’re quite sure?’ The Queen sounded bored. ‘Not one note?’
‘As if I haven’t tried them all a hundred times!’ the subject burst out. ‘Again and again. I’m telling you, this is down here. We have been sabotaged.’
Excited murmuring from the onlookers. The Queen’s lip curled. ‘Don’t take that tone with me, child.’
‘I’ll take the tone till you take action.’ They stood tall, shoulders flung back, and aimed an arched finger up at the throne. ‘C’est faible!’
The Queen rolled his eyes. ‘Enough. Go to your rehearsal.’
‘With my throat cut?’ The subject threw their head back, barked out a single, bitter laugh. ‘Ha! I’ll try, your Majesty.’ They turned and stalked away, watched at all times by the crowds.
‘Now, Byker,’ the Queen said. ‘I see you’ve tracked down our little chute slug.’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’
‘Step forward then, o stealthy one. Tell me why you decided to come through from the body beyond, and make such a cacophony in my vents.’
Soft sniggering. The Guest looked back at Byker, who nodded, and whispered: ‘Make it good.’
The Guest stepped up onto the dais, feeling moon-eyes trained on her from all sides. This was beyond surreal, now; she wanted to slap herself, to get back to reality. But there could be no returning. She had no choice but to ride out the dream. The Queen gazed at her down the length of his nose. His eyes were heavy-lidded, painted in a thick, rainbow sheen.
‘Your Majesty,’ she said, smiling as broadly as her nerves would allow. ‘I’m – uh – I’m most grateful to you for agreeing to see me. I need to get to the communications tower on the top of the ship. I was told you have a way up. As I said to Byker, I’ll do—’
The Queen cut her off with a theatrical yawn. ‘I’m literally falling asleep. Look at me. I’m falling out of my throne.’
More sniggering. The Guest stuttered. ‘I-it’s—’
‘Child.’ The Queen gripped the side of his throne and leant down. ‘I don’t care where you’re going. Just tell me what it’s all for. Hunger? Greed? Rage?’ He raised a sculpted eyebrow. ‘Or even love?’
‘L-love.’ She shifted from one foot to the other, a live wire, buzzing with embarrassment. ‘It’s love, your Majesty.’
‘All for love.’ He sat back, dagger-long nails gliding over the soft folds of his chin. ‘True love?’
She nodded.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t believe that you’re in love. Convince me.’
Suddenly the Guest understood something of Earth’s religion. It was tempting to pray to the ground, please, please, swallow me up. Instead she asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’
The Queen sat in expectant silence.
The Guest pressed her lips together.
‘I knew—’
She took a deep breath.
‘I knew I was in love the first day we met,’ she started. ‘I saw her and I thought – oh, shit, not now…’ She trailed off. ‘But I couldn’t stop it. It had already happened.’
The Queen considered this.
‘We are dancing tonight. But our singer tells me the Throat is cut. We cannot dance without music. Go down the Throat. Undo the cut. If you make it out in time – passage is yours.’
She bowed her head. ‘Thank you.’
The Queen snorted. ‘Thank me when you’re back. Lover.’
Byker was tasked with sending her off, and did so with such a grim look that she almost had second thoughts. ‘You’ll need these.’ They passed her a thick-handled wrench and a torch. ‘Climb down the Throat. Look for a valve. Turn it. Once you’re sure it’s open, go up as fast as you can.’ As they spoke they mimed it fluidly, climbing, searching, wrenching.
She held the tools in each hand. They felt weighty. ‘How dangerous is this?’ she asked.
Byker shrugged. ‘The Queen has willed it.’
Hardly a comforting answer. In the hugeness of their pupils, the Guest noticed a diverted gaze. They were looking up, towards her hat. It was a distinctly covetous look.
‘Do you want this?’
Startled, a little flushed, they said: ‘I was thinking it is likely to fall off. That is all…’
She pulled the hat from her head, held it in both hands, looked at it. I’m giving away everything today, she thought. Then she handed it to them. ‘Here.’
Wordlessly, reverently, they took it, pinching the frayed lining of the brim.
Their business concluded, she stuck the wrench in the loop of her belt, gripped the torch with her teeth, and approached the rim of the Throat.
‘Wait—’
Byker’s shout was wince-inducingly loud after all the whispering. She turned to see them twisting and wriggling free of something.
‘I can’t take your shirt,’ she protested, but to no avail – Byker draped it around her shoulders like a wreath.
‘For your hands,’ they said, and then slipped away, leaving her alone at the side of the chasm.
She could see now how she’d been given the illusion of a meat-like surface. The interior of the Throat was lined with pipes – thick and thin, humming and still, overlapping one another like feral black ivy as they fed in and out of the body of the ship. As with the cavern above, there was no way of guessing the depth. She clicked the torch on with her tongue – a candle would have been less feeble, but never mind – and crouched on her haunches, feeling around until she found a pipe suspended low enough from the network to wrap both hands around.
She shuffled closer, and then slung herself over the edge, ignoring the vehement protesting from her aching midriff. Climbing was easier than she’d feared; the pipes were old and cased in grime, but solid enough, and her hands found joints easily in among the metalwork. When one clumsy foot slipped, it quickly found fresh purchase on some other outcropping. After a while the light of the chamber receded to a distant haze. Still the cavern beneath her showed no signs of ending. Her hands grew sore, and she forced herself to relax them. Torchlight wavered between her teeth.
Probing down for a foothold, she was surprised to find a solid surface. She released one hand, then the other, and finally stood, breathing, shining the light around.
The base of the Throat was a bowl. Pipes ran down from the walls, along the floor and into a malformed growth at the centre, an uneven dome perhaps half a metre high. All of them were connected to this one stem, miles of entrails flung out from a single body. There was a low door on one end – thick as a blast-shield, and locked, when she tried it.
‘Okay,’ she said, hoping that the sound of her own voice would lift the sense of being in a tomb. It didn’t.
She found the dome’s valve, a metal disc at the top, about as wide as her hand. It had been secured in place by a fresh plastic zip-tie. She remembered the cry of the singer: We have been sabotaged. They’d been right.
Beneath the valve was a faded yellow-black stencil of the word DANGER. Helpful, she thought. The Guest slid out the wrench and yanked at the zip-tie until it snapped. Immediately the valve started to waver and loosen; she turned it around with little effort, tugging until she heard a sinister hiss emitting from the centre of the dome.
Recalling Byker’s warning, she slipped the wrench back into her belt and started to climb again.
A few yards up, the Guest became aware of a warmth under her fingers. Nothing punishing; it was the pleasant temperature of fresh bread. But the pipes had been crevice-cool on the descent. She moved higher, and the heat relented. But as she stopped to get her bearings, she felt the temperature rising again. Not just in that pipe. In all of them.
Dread tightened around her chest.
She tried to climb faster, but she was awkward, laborious. It was becoming almost too hot to touch the metal. Heat was rising from directly below, from where she’d turned the valve. And still the exit was only a smudge.
Her palms tingled with the promise of pain.
But how to hold on?
Byker’s shirt. She’d forgotten she was wearing it. With teeth and fingers she ripped it in two, wrapping it around both palms as thick as it would go, and climbed onwards, feeling heat rise like an angry dragon. She knew the bowl-shaped floor would be throbbing with it by now. If she fell she’d be like a steak dropped on a sizzling pan from great height. But there was the light of the exit –
– how long till she let go?
There was no caution in how she moved. She just swung hand to hand, feet scrabbling, arms heavy and numb with exhaustion. A hole burned through Byker’s shirt, and the pain made her yelp and she dropped the torch. It pinged below from wall to wall.
– was that her skin that she could smell?
Then a new light filled her eyes, and someone grabbed her by either elbow and hauled her, shaking and panting like a reeled fish, over the lip and onto cooler ground. She spat out every curse she could think of, against the stars, against her ancestors, against the Emperor himself.
‘You’re back.’ It was Byker. They were wearing the new hat; it looked quite fetching.
She shot them a withering smile. ‘Surprised?’
They shook their head, then looked mutely down towards her hands. She looked as well. The rags of their shirt had cooked away to a shrivelled husk, her exposed fingertips shiny with blisters.
‘You did say anything.’
The Guest’s return was met with neither reverence nor gratitude, only muted surprise. On the balconies above they pointed down at her, digging into one another’s sides. The Queen, of course, was unimpressed.
‘Back by the skin of your teeth, mon amour,’ he said, slouched back, cheek resting softly on one fist. ‘Now, child, don’t give me that look. You’d have done it either way. I was only saving you some anxieties on the way down. Now, Byker…’
Byker had been standing to her side with the stance of a person waiting to be dismissed.
‘Well done. You may lead the dancing tonight.’
Byker’s whole body went rigid, hands slapping soldier-like to their sides. They radiated pure excitement from every pore. ‘I’ll send this ship soaring,’ they declared, quivering. ‘Dans le soleil. I’ll burn your eyebrows off.’
‘See that you do.’
The Queen fluttered his plump fingers, and Byker spirited away. Before they vanished the Guest saw them leap, spin in a full circle, and land again without breaking pace, fingers clutched tight on the brim of the ranger’s hat. Just for the thrill of it.
‘Now…’ The Queen swept gradually up to his feet, his dress glittering like a clear lake. ‘I’m a monarch of my word. You may follow me…’ A few members of the crowd stepped forward, but he held up a hand. ‘Stand down. Lovers are a danger only to themselves.’ He fixed her with a wry look. ‘Isn’t that right?’
She looked down at her hands, throbbing in time to her pulse, still burning away under the surface. She nodded.
‘Come on then. And don’t touch anything. I don’t want pus on my things.’
The Guest followed the Queen through an archway behind the throne, up a staircase, through a curtain of soft fabrics, and into his personal chambers. It had been an engineer’s office in a former life – one wall was taken up by a window of reinforced glass that looked down over the Mouth. There was also a sloped counter of buttons and dials and a dark glass monitor that, judging by the powders and brushes littered around the keyboard, had been repurposed into a cosmetics mirror. Strewn around on the floor were trunks overflowing with clothes, plastic shoes with screwdriver heels, slippers with soles of welded tin; a noticeboard with several dozen earrings tacked to the surface like the scales of some gigantic fish.
‘I hope you don’t consider me callous,’ said the Queen. He swept through the room, bending down over the monitor to admire his face from either side. ‘It’s a good thing to have the Throat clear. Those tasteless parasites in the Body beyond like to amuse themselves from time to time, trying to hurt us, trying to stop our music.’ He swabbed his pinkie in blue powder and dabbed it gently on the top of one eye. ‘When I was Byker’s age I lost a companion of mine to the Throat. And one does hate to see history repeat itself, ce n’est pas bon, not good for the humours. Now, where is it…’
He moved around the swathes of scarves and necklaces draped over the counter until he found, buried deep, a box glued all over with plastic jewels. From inside – he had to pinch it lengthways on account of his nails – he took out a white plastic card.
‘Here it is – the skeleton key. It is a gift from my ancestors, unfortunate people, they were…’ He looked down at the card, a nostalgic glaze to his heavy-lidded eyes. ‘I had a thought when I was younger that I would go up to the top and shoot the man that runs this place. But I was continually getting distracted, you know, keeping my little children in check, and before I knew it I had grown too old to be a martyr.’ He held it out to her. ‘You can go upstairs, mon amour, but be careful. Remember that it is always better to live…’
She took the key, squeezing it hard. ‘Thank you. I—’
There was movement in the chamber below, and the Queen turned his head sharply, looking down through the glass. Bodies were forming into rows. ‘Ah, they are getting ready to start. I must go. Without me presiding it will be chaos.’ He gestured to a second door, opposite the one they had entered from. ‘Keep going up and you will reach a lift. It will open to the card. That will take you to the uppermost levels.’
The Guest nodded, half listening, half entranced by the movements below.
‘Je suis désolé. It is not for outsiders to see.’
She nodded, struggling not to look again. As the Queen made his way to the exit she blurted out: ‘Why not?’
The Queen paused, one hand lifting the fabric curtain. ‘True beauty,’ he said, with a smile like a brush-stroke, ‘is a delicate thing.’
With that, he let the curtain drop.
The Guest longed to run to the window and watch the dancing, but she forced herself to leave. I’ll tell her about this someday, she thought.
The door led through to a walkway, another of the ring-shaped platforms that circled the chamber, connected at intervals by ladders. It was deserted. Everyone was at the dance.
Except –
Across the chamber, a flash of purple caught her eye. She recognised it as the one from before, the person called the singer. She could see the singer’s back only, that form-fitting velvet suit stretched taut over the shoulders. They were sitting in front of something – a machine? If that was the right word. It was as if a segment of the Throat had been cut away, revealing a cross-section of delicately fluted piping many yards wide and high. They spread like branches from something over which the singer was hunched, fiddling with something she couldn’t see.
Being a born performer, the singer had a sixth sense for a curious gaze, and they whipped around, fixing on her instantly. On seeing her face, they broke out into a grin that was almost manic, and clapped their hands together.
‘BRAVO!’ they yelled. Each clap boomed across the empty space. ‘BRAVO! Now go, lover, before we change our mind and SHOVE’ – they gestured brutally – ‘you back down our THROAT!’
There was no need to tell her twice. She hurried up the staircase two steps at a time, and the next, and the next, until her legs and lungs were burning. Each platform had its own clutter – bedrolls, boxes of clothes, food, scattered tools. Only when she was sure she was out of sight did she permit herself to look down.
The effect was like looking through a kaleidoscope. A mass of colour, specks of life swirling in perfect, ever-shifting coordination. Were they dancing yet? Or just assembling? It was too far to tell.
But still. The effect was mesmeric.
Reluctantly she resumed her climb, trying to fix her focus upwards, back to the goal that had been, for so long, the source of single-minded pursuit. She was almost close enough to permit wild fantasies – like what the message would say, if she was able to send one out: I’m here. I’m okay. Where are you? Are you okay?
Also, if she had the space: I love you.
Also: I miss you.
Also: The last time we said goodbye, I wish I’d held on just a little tighter. I wish I’d stayed there just another second. I wish I’d buried my face in your neck and told you how much I love you. I wish I wish I wish.
With each new level the circumference of the chamber shrank and shrank, until the platforms grew to cover the whole floor, connected by a spindly spiral staircase at the centre. The Guest paused again here, resting a hand on the rail and looking down at the layers of metal mesh and emptiness beneath her.
It started as a single note, delicate as an eggshell. Then another, firmer, richer, deeper. Then another. The scale trickled down, a melody that built momentum until it paused to touch the base of the octave. There was a pause like a breath. Then they came together and made a chord.
A chord!
So rich it turned her blood to wine, every hair lifted, skin going up in a wave of prickles – with so many disparate parts it shouldn’t have worked, but it did, somehow, like some strange animal lost to time. The chord sank into the minor like an exhale, an inversion that was also a perfect fit.
The strangest thing of all was that she wasn’t hearing it. Not really. It was physical music, reverberating through the ship and into her as if she was a human tuning fork. She touched both hands to the rail, and the effect was doubled. She laughed out loud, lit up by the pure joy of it.
All the ships she’d travelled on, and that was the first time she’d heard music in the hum.
Fifth Interlude
It was a worn and defeated Deputy Seawall who moved through the officer’s mess that afternoon. Everything slumped on his shoulders; weeks of travelling, a belligerent chewing-out from the old man, and the cock-up from the previous night, grievously stupid and mostly his own fault. Part of him still blamed the High Sheriff – ignorant to his plans, but still finding a way to ruin them. Hounding him on the communicator day and night as if he were still a little boy. Seawall belonged to a sad class of person, a phenomenon that has repeated since the first king was crowned: the embittered, ageing heir apparent.
‘You’re quite sure?’ The Queen sounded bored. ‘Not one note?’
‘As if I haven’t tried them all a hundred times!’ the subject burst out. ‘Again and again. I’m telling you, this is down here. We have been sabotaged.’
Excited murmuring from the onlookers. The Queen’s lip curled. ‘Don’t take that tone with me, child.’
‘I’ll take the tone till you take action.’ They stood tall, shoulders flung back, and aimed an arched finger up at the throne. ‘C’est faible!’
The Queen rolled his eyes. ‘Enough. Go to your rehearsal.’
‘With my throat cut?’ The subject threw their head back, barked out a single, bitter laugh. ‘Ha! I’ll try, your Majesty.’ They turned and stalked away, watched at all times by the crowds.
‘Now, Byker,’ the Queen said. ‘I see you’ve tracked down our little chute slug.’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’
‘Step forward then, o stealthy one. Tell me why you decided to come through from the body beyond, and make such a cacophony in my vents.’
Soft sniggering. The Guest looked back at Byker, who nodded, and whispered: ‘Make it good.’
The Guest stepped up onto the dais, feeling moon-eyes trained on her from all sides. This was beyond surreal, now; she wanted to slap herself, to get back to reality. But there could be no returning. She had no choice but to ride out the dream. The Queen gazed at her down the length of his nose. His eyes were heavy-lidded, painted in a thick, rainbow sheen.
‘Your Majesty,’ she said, smiling as broadly as her nerves would allow. ‘I’m – uh – I’m most grateful to you for agreeing to see me. I need to get to the communications tower on the top of the ship. I was told you have a way up. As I said to Byker, I’ll do—’
The Queen cut her off with a theatrical yawn. ‘I’m literally falling asleep. Look at me. I’m falling out of my throne.’
More sniggering. The Guest stuttered. ‘I-it’s—’
‘Child.’ The Queen gripped the side of his throne and leant down. ‘I don’t care where you’re going. Just tell me what it’s all for. Hunger? Greed? Rage?’ He raised a sculpted eyebrow. ‘Or even love?’
‘L-love.’ She shifted from one foot to the other, a live wire, buzzing with embarrassment. ‘It’s love, your Majesty.’
‘All for love.’ He sat back, dagger-long nails gliding over the soft folds of his chin. ‘True love?’
She nodded.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t believe that you’re in love. Convince me.’
Suddenly the Guest understood something of Earth’s religion. It was tempting to pray to the ground, please, please, swallow me up. Instead she asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’
The Queen sat in expectant silence.
The Guest pressed her lips together.
‘I knew—’
She took a deep breath.
‘I knew I was in love the first day we met,’ she started. ‘I saw her and I thought – oh, shit, not now…’ She trailed off. ‘But I couldn’t stop it. It had already happened.’
The Queen considered this.
‘We are dancing tonight. But our singer tells me the Throat is cut. We cannot dance without music. Go down the Throat. Undo the cut. If you make it out in time – passage is yours.’
She bowed her head. ‘Thank you.’
The Queen snorted. ‘Thank me when you’re back. Lover.’
Byker was tasked with sending her off, and did so with such a grim look that she almost had second thoughts. ‘You’ll need these.’ They passed her a thick-handled wrench and a torch. ‘Climb down the Throat. Look for a valve. Turn it. Once you’re sure it’s open, go up as fast as you can.’ As they spoke they mimed it fluidly, climbing, searching, wrenching.
She held the tools in each hand. They felt weighty. ‘How dangerous is this?’ she asked.
Byker shrugged. ‘The Queen has willed it.’
Hardly a comforting answer. In the hugeness of their pupils, the Guest noticed a diverted gaze. They were looking up, towards her hat. It was a distinctly covetous look.
‘Do you want this?’
Startled, a little flushed, they said: ‘I was thinking it is likely to fall off. That is all…’
She pulled the hat from her head, held it in both hands, looked at it. I’m giving away everything today, she thought. Then she handed it to them. ‘Here.’
Wordlessly, reverently, they took it, pinching the frayed lining of the brim.
Their business concluded, she stuck the wrench in the loop of her belt, gripped the torch with her teeth, and approached the rim of the Throat.
‘Wait—’
Byker’s shout was wince-inducingly loud after all the whispering. She turned to see them twisting and wriggling free of something.
‘I can’t take your shirt,’ she protested, but to no avail – Byker draped it around her shoulders like a wreath.
‘For your hands,’ they said, and then slipped away, leaving her alone at the side of the chasm.
She could see now how she’d been given the illusion of a meat-like surface. The interior of the Throat was lined with pipes – thick and thin, humming and still, overlapping one another like feral black ivy as they fed in and out of the body of the ship. As with the cavern above, there was no way of guessing the depth. She clicked the torch on with her tongue – a candle would have been less feeble, but never mind – and crouched on her haunches, feeling around until she found a pipe suspended low enough from the network to wrap both hands around.
She shuffled closer, and then slung herself over the edge, ignoring the vehement protesting from her aching midriff. Climbing was easier than she’d feared; the pipes were old and cased in grime, but solid enough, and her hands found joints easily in among the metalwork. When one clumsy foot slipped, it quickly found fresh purchase on some other outcropping. After a while the light of the chamber receded to a distant haze. Still the cavern beneath her showed no signs of ending. Her hands grew sore, and she forced herself to relax them. Torchlight wavered between her teeth.
Probing down for a foothold, she was surprised to find a solid surface. She released one hand, then the other, and finally stood, breathing, shining the light around.
The base of the Throat was a bowl. Pipes ran down from the walls, along the floor and into a malformed growth at the centre, an uneven dome perhaps half a metre high. All of them were connected to this one stem, miles of entrails flung out from a single body. There was a low door on one end – thick as a blast-shield, and locked, when she tried it.
‘Okay,’ she said, hoping that the sound of her own voice would lift the sense of being in a tomb. It didn’t.
She found the dome’s valve, a metal disc at the top, about as wide as her hand. It had been secured in place by a fresh plastic zip-tie. She remembered the cry of the singer: We have been sabotaged. They’d been right.
Beneath the valve was a faded yellow-black stencil of the word DANGER. Helpful, she thought. The Guest slid out the wrench and yanked at the zip-tie until it snapped. Immediately the valve started to waver and loosen; she turned it around with little effort, tugging until she heard a sinister hiss emitting from the centre of the dome.
Recalling Byker’s warning, she slipped the wrench back into her belt and started to climb again.
A few yards up, the Guest became aware of a warmth under her fingers. Nothing punishing; it was the pleasant temperature of fresh bread. But the pipes had been crevice-cool on the descent. She moved higher, and the heat relented. But as she stopped to get her bearings, she felt the temperature rising again. Not just in that pipe. In all of them.
Dread tightened around her chest.
She tried to climb faster, but she was awkward, laborious. It was becoming almost too hot to touch the metal. Heat was rising from directly below, from where she’d turned the valve. And still the exit was only a smudge.
Her palms tingled with the promise of pain.
But how to hold on?
Byker’s shirt. She’d forgotten she was wearing it. With teeth and fingers she ripped it in two, wrapping it around both palms as thick as it would go, and climbed onwards, feeling heat rise like an angry dragon. She knew the bowl-shaped floor would be throbbing with it by now. If she fell she’d be like a steak dropped on a sizzling pan from great height. But there was the light of the exit –
– how long till she let go?
There was no caution in how she moved. She just swung hand to hand, feet scrabbling, arms heavy and numb with exhaustion. A hole burned through Byker’s shirt, and the pain made her yelp and she dropped the torch. It pinged below from wall to wall.
– was that her skin that she could smell?
Then a new light filled her eyes, and someone grabbed her by either elbow and hauled her, shaking and panting like a reeled fish, over the lip and onto cooler ground. She spat out every curse she could think of, against the stars, against her ancestors, against the Emperor himself.
‘You’re back.’ It was Byker. They were wearing the new hat; it looked quite fetching.
She shot them a withering smile. ‘Surprised?’
They shook their head, then looked mutely down towards her hands. She looked as well. The rags of their shirt had cooked away to a shrivelled husk, her exposed fingertips shiny with blisters.
‘You did say anything.’
The Guest’s return was met with neither reverence nor gratitude, only muted surprise. On the balconies above they pointed down at her, digging into one another’s sides. The Queen, of course, was unimpressed.
‘Back by the skin of your teeth, mon amour,’ he said, slouched back, cheek resting softly on one fist. ‘Now, child, don’t give me that look. You’d have done it either way. I was only saving you some anxieties on the way down. Now, Byker…’
Byker had been standing to her side with the stance of a person waiting to be dismissed.
‘Well done. You may lead the dancing tonight.’
Byker’s whole body went rigid, hands slapping soldier-like to their sides. They radiated pure excitement from every pore. ‘I’ll send this ship soaring,’ they declared, quivering. ‘Dans le soleil. I’ll burn your eyebrows off.’
‘See that you do.’
The Queen fluttered his plump fingers, and Byker spirited away. Before they vanished the Guest saw them leap, spin in a full circle, and land again without breaking pace, fingers clutched tight on the brim of the ranger’s hat. Just for the thrill of it.
‘Now…’ The Queen swept gradually up to his feet, his dress glittering like a clear lake. ‘I’m a monarch of my word. You may follow me…’ A few members of the crowd stepped forward, but he held up a hand. ‘Stand down. Lovers are a danger only to themselves.’ He fixed her with a wry look. ‘Isn’t that right?’
She looked down at her hands, throbbing in time to her pulse, still burning away under the surface. She nodded.
‘Come on then. And don’t touch anything. I don’t want pus on my things.’
The Guest followed the Queen through an archway behind the throne, up a staircase, through a curtain of soft fabrics, and into his personal chambers. It had been an engineer’s office in a former life – one wall was taken up by a window of reinforced glass that looked down over the Mouth. There was also a sloped counter of buttons and dials and a dark glass monitor that, judging by the powders and brushes littered around the keyboard, had been repurposed into a cosmetics mirror. Strewn around on the floor were trunks overflowing with clothes, plastic shoes with screwdriver heels, slippers with soles of welded tin; a noticeboard with several dozen earrings tacked to the surface like the scales of some gigantic fish.
‘I hope you don’t consider me callous,’ said the Queen. He swept through the room, bending down over the monitor to admire his face from either side. ‘It’s a good thing to have the Throat clear. Those tasteless parasites in the Body beyond like to amuse themselves from time to time, trying to hurt us, trying to stop our music.’ He swabbed his pinkie in blue powder and dabbed it gently on the top of one eye. ‘When I was Byker’s age I lost a companion of mine to the Throat. And one does hate to see history repeat itself, ce n’est pas bon, not good for the humours. Now, where is it…’
He moved around the swathes of scarves and necklaces draped over the counter until he found, buried deep, a box glued all over with plastic jewels. From inside – he had to pinch it lengthways on account of his nails – he took out a white plastic card.
‘Here it is – the skeleton key. It is a gift from my ancestors, unfortunate people, they were…’ He looked down at the card, a nostalgic glaze to his heavy-lidded eyes. ‘I had a thought when I was younger that I would go up to the top and shoot the man that runs this place. But I was continually getting distracted, you know, keeping my little children in check, and before I knew it I had grown too old to be a martyr.’ He held it out to her. ‘You can go upstairs, mon amour, but be careful. Remember that it is always better to live…’
She took the key, squeezing it hard. ‘Thank you. I—’
There was movement in the chamber below, and the Queen turned his head sharply, looking down through the glass. Bodies were forming into rows. ‘Ah, they are getting ready to start. I must go. Without me presiding it will be chaos.’ He gestured to a second door, opposite the one they had entered from. ‘Keep going up and you will reach a lift. It will open to the card. That will take you to the uppermost levels.’
The Guest nodded, half listening, half entranced by the movements below.
‘Je suis désolé. It is not for outsiders to see.’
She nodded, struggling not to look again. As the Queen made his way to the exit she blurted out: ‘Why not?’
The Queen paused, one hand lifting the fabric curtain. ‘True beauty,’ he said, with a smile like a brush-stroke, ‘is a delicate thing.’
With that, he let the curtain drop.
The Guest longed to run to the window and watch the dancing, but she forced herself to leave. I’ll tell her about this someday, she thought.
The door led through to a walkway, another of the ring-shaped platforms that circled the chamber, connected at intervals by ladders. It was deserted. Everyone was at the dance.
Except –
Across the chamber, a flash of purple caught her eye. She recognised it as the one from before, the person called the singer. She could see the singer’s back only, that form-fitting velvet suit stretched taut over the shoulders. They were sitting in front of something – a machine? If that was the right word. It was as if a segment of the Throat had been cut away, revealing a cross-section of delicately fluted piping many yards wide and high. They spread like branches from something over which the singer was hunched, fiddling with something she couldn’t see.
Being a born performer, the singer had a sixth sense for a curious gaze, and they whipped around, fixing on her instantly. On seeing her face, they broke out into a grin that was almost manic, and clapped their hands together.
‘BRAVO!’ they yelled. Each clap boomed across the empty space. ‘BRAVO! Now go, lover, before we change our mind and SHOVE’ – they gestured brutally – ‘you back down our THROAT!’
There was no need to tell her twice. She hurried up the staircase two steps at a time, and the next, and the next, until her legs and lungs were burning. Each platform had its own clutter – bedrolls, boxes of clothes, food, scattered tools. Only when she was sure she was out of sight did she permit herself to look down.
The effect was like looking through a kaleidoscope. A mass of colour, specks of life swirling in perfect, ever-shifting coordination. Were they dancing yet? Or just assembling? It was too far to tell.
But still. The effect was mesmeric.
Reluctantly she resumed her climb, trying to fix her focus upwards, back to the goal that had been, for so long, the source of single-minded pursuit. She was almost close enough to permit wild fantasies – like what the message would say, if she was able to send one out: I’m here. I’m okay. Where are you? Are you okay?
Also, if she had the space: I love you.
Also: I miss you.
Also: The last time we said goodbye, I wish I’d held on just a little tighter. I wish I’d stayed there just another second. I wish I’d buried my face in your neck and told you how much I love you. I wish I wish I wish.
With each new level the circumference of the chamber shrank and shrank, until the platforms grew to cover the whole floor, connected by a spindly spiral staircase at the centre. The Guest paused again here, resting a hand on the rail and looking down at the layers of metal mesh and emptiness beneath her.
It started as a single note, delicate as an eggshell. Then another, firmer, richer, deeper. Then another. The scale trickled down, a melody that built momentum until it paused to touch the base of the octave. There was a pause like a breath. Then they came together and made a chord.
A chord!
So rich it turned her blood to wine, every hair lifted, skin going up in a wave of prickles – with so many disparate parts it shouldn’t have worked, but it did, somehow, like some strange animal lost to time. The chord sank into the minor like an exhale, an inversion that was also a perfect fit.
The strangest thing of all was that she wasn’t hearing it. Not really. It was physical music, reverberating through the ship and into her as if she was a human tuning fork. She touched both hands to the rail, and the effect was doubled. She laughed out loud, lit up by the pure joy of it.
All the ships she’d travelled on, and that was the first time she’d heard music in the hum.
Fifth Interlude
It was a worn and defeated Deputy Seawall who moved through the officer’s mess that afternoon. Everything slumped on his shoulders; weeks of travelling, a belligerent chewing-out from the old man, and the cock-up from the previous night, grievously stupid and mostly his own fault. Part of him still blamed the High Sheriff – ignorant to his plans, but still finding a way to ruin them. Hounding him on the communicator day and night as if he were still a little boy. Seawall belonged to a sad class of person, a phenomenon that has repeated since the first king was crowned: the embittered, ageing heir apparent.
