The Emperor of All Things

17

The Song of the Hunter



LONGINUS ASKED NO more questions but drew his grey scarf over his mouth and nose. It was astonishing how the man vanished behind the mask; Quare could not have guessed, had he not already known, the age or even the sex of the person who stood before him. Longinus was gone: there was only Grimalkin, a lithe, shadowy figure exuding quietly coiled menace. As Quare drew his own mask into place, he wondered if he presented a similarly forbidding aspect.

Now, from one of the pouches at his belt, Longinus produced a glass vial whose contents were aglow with the same greenish light that emanated from the powder coating the unconscious Morecockneyans cap-a-pie. He gave this a shake, at which the light brightened; holding it upraised before him, he set off down the passage. From Quare’s perspective, trailing close behind, it was as if they were being led by a flitting firefly, or perhaps a fairy.

The latter association seemed all the more fitting in that the call of the hunter continued to beckon him onwards, or rather upwards, growing clearer and more enticing with every step, so that he had to keep himself from rushing ahead. The song was like no music he had ever heard; it was closer to birdsong, he decided, in that it seemed the spontaneous expression of a nature shaped to give voice to just that sound and no other; there was joy in it, a wild and carefree delight in being that lifted his heart on echoing swells, but there was also urgency, as if the watch were calling out for something needful, whose lack left it incomplete.

He recalled the words of Tiamat: It is just what you have called it: a hunter. It hunts. Was it hunting him? And, if so, for what purpose? It will answer to you now, the dragon had said, protect you … but do not imagine yourself its master. It is a weapon, a very great weapon – too great to be left in the hands of men. But was there ever a weapon that sang so sweetly?

He would not have stopped or turned back now even if it had been possible, impelled as much by his own curiosity as by any geis laid upon him by Tiamat or the hunter. Anticipation grew in him with every step. He felt that he was advancing to meet his destiny. I am coming, he thought, wondering if the hunter could hear him or sense his approach somehow. Perhaps his thoughts, too, made a kind of music.

At last, after a steady but not precipitous upwards climb, they reached a solid wall of packed stones. Longinus put his ear to the wall and listened. Then, satisfied, he set the glowing vial upon the ground to one side and began to prise out certain of the stones. Though they had appeared to be tightly wedged together, the stones slid out with ease, and soon there was room enough for the two men to crawl through, which they wasted no time in doing, Longinus still leading the way, the vial once again held before him.

The passage on the far side of the barrier looked no different than it had before, yet Quare sensed they had entered the precincts of the guild hall. The oppressive atmosphere lifted; it was as if they’d left a dense and gloom-ridden forest behind and, though still among the trees, had reached the outskirts of civilization. Perhaps, he thought, it was a subtle change in the hunter’s song that communicated this knowledge to him; he could not say for certain, but he did feel that the song, though wordless, had meaning … just as birdsong had its own meaning, hidden as it might be to human ears.

Longinus set a faster pace now, though he continued to move with the stealth and silence of his feline namesake. Quare, try as he might, could not match him in either respect, and he winced more than once as an errant footfall broadcast his presence. But no voices were raised in challenge, and he saw no glimmer of torchlight from ahead, just the lambent glow from the vial, preceding them like a will-o’-the-wisp.

The rough stone of the passage gave way to cut stone, and then to the long corridor of cells he’d last visited little more than a day ago – it seemed another lifetime! The corridor, too, was lightless, nor was there any hint of illumination behind any of the cell doors. He wondered if Longinus meant to make use of the same stair-master by which the two of them had escaped to the rooftop, but it appeared not, as the man passed cell after cell and made straight for the doorway at the end of the corridor.

‘Hsst! Who goes there?’ came a quavering voice from the last cell on the left.

Quare froze, as did Longinus; the green light winked out in an instant.

‘Who’s there?’ the shaky voice repeated from out of the dark. It was a voice Quare recognized but had not thought ever to hear again.

Receiving no reply, the voice grew louder, edged with panic. ‘For God’s sake, say something! Stop this damned torture and show yourself!’

Quare kept silent, following Longinus’s lead. But questions were swirling through his brain, clamouring to be asked.

‘Answer me, damn you!’ the voice cried angrily. ‘If you mean to kill me, come and try, you damned cowardly curs!’

At this, Longinus spoke at last. ‘Hsst! Quiet, man. I have no interest in killing you. I have no interest in you at all.’

Quare did not recognize this voice: a deep, intimidating growl. The voice of Grimalkin.

It did not intimidate the prisoner, however. ‘You’re not one of the Old Wolf’s gang, are you? Listen, if you get me out of here, I swear I won’t betray you!’

‘I could be a French assassin for all you know, come to murder your grandmaster.’

‘I don’t give a fig if you are! The bloody bastard means to murder me!’

‘You say you would not betray me, yet already you have offered to betray your country.’

‘This is not my country! I wasn’t born here, and I have no desire to die here. Let me out, damn you, or I’ll bring the whole nest down on your heads, I swear it!’

‘These walls are thick. No one will hear your cries.’

‘Let us put it to the test, shall we?’ And he began to scream: ‘Help! Murder! Help! Treason!’

‘Quiet!’ Longinus said. ‘Very well, I will see what I can do. Step away from the door.’

‘Gladly,’ said the voice.

The green light rekindled; by its glow, Quare saw Longinus approach the door of the cell. He hurried towards him. Longinus glanced at him and motioned for him to stay put. But he stepped close and laid a restraining hand on Longinus’s arm.

‘I know this man,’ he whispered. ‘It’s—’

‘Yes, there is no mistaking that uncouth accent,’ Longinus whispered back.

‘What do you mean to do to him?’

‘I’ll put him to sleep, as I did the Morecockneyans.’

‘We must question him first,’ Quare said.

‘There is no time.’

‘What’s going on out there?’ the voice demanded. ‘How many of you are there?’

‘I told you to step away,’ Longinus replied in the stentorian tones of Grimalkin. Reaching into another of the pouches at his waist, he produced an iron key and fitted it to the lock. There was a dull clank of tumblers turning. Then, after replacing the key, he drew his dagger. Quare drew his own. Stepping back, Longinus gestured for Quare to open the door.

The heavy door swung inwards; both men tensed, as if expecting the prisoner to hurl himself upon them, but no one emerged. Cautiously, the glowing vial held before him like a shield, dagger at the ready, Longinus stepped into the room; Quare followed, swinging the door shut behind him.

There, blinking in the weak light, stood Gerald Pickens.

Though Quare had recognized the voice and its bland American accent, seeing the man in the flesh was a shock. He had thought Pickens dead, murdered by Aylesford along with Mansfield and Farthingale that horrible night at the Pig and Rooster. But here he stood, very much alive – though the worse for wear. His once-fine clothes were torn and stained with what looked to be blood, and his once-handsome face bore the marks of a thorough beating. His left arm hung useless in a sling; the other was upraised as if to fend off a killing blow.

‘Who are you people?’ he asked now. ‘Why are you wearing those masks?’

‘You wound me, sir,’ growled Longinus. ‘Have you not heard of Grimalkin?’

‘I have … But I had not heard there were two of him!’

‘Who is to say there are not three, four, a hundred Grimalkins? But we mean you no harm,’ Longinus continued. ‘Who are you, and how did you come to be here?’

‘I’m Gerald Pickens, a journeyman of this company. As to how I came to be here, why, I scarcely know myself! But it seems I am a pawn in a larger game – a pawn about to be sacrificed.’

‘What do you mean? Quickly, now!’

‘Have you not heard of the foul murders that have set the whole city on edge? You called me traitor, but the real traitor is still at large somewhere in London!’

‘You mean Aylesford,’ said Longinus.

‘Aylesford?’ Pickens shook his head. ‘He is dead, another victim of the traitor, or so I am told.’

‘What traitor?’

‘Why, the infamous Quare, of course.’

‘What?’ The word burst from Quare before he could help himself.

‘Another journeyman of this company,’ Pickens explained. ‘A friend – or so I thought. But would you believe it, in the pay of the French all along. It was he who murdered Aylesford and the rest – including poor Master Magnus, God rest his soul. Only, don’t you see, the man has fled. To where, who can say? Back to his masters, no doubt. But now, with the city in an uproar, the powers that be require a scapegoat. You are looking at that unfortunate man. Quare attacked me at the Pig and Rooster – from behind, the blackguard! – and left me for dead, but I was only stunned. I survived. And this is my reward! I am to hang for the crimes of another man. My name is to be blackened, my family dishonoured. So much for the king’s justice!’

‘This is intolerable,’ Quare said.

‘There is naught to be done about it now,’ Longinus said.

‘Take me with you!’ Pickens cried. ‘I won’t give you away – I swear it! And I can help you navigate the twists and turns of this infernal labyrinth of a guild hall! I must be free to clear my name – to find Quare and bring him to justice.’

‘You have found him,’ said Quare, and pulled down his mask even as Longinus called out ‘No!’

Pickens sagged back as though struck a blow. Then, gathering his courage, he said, ‘So, traitor, have you come to finish the job?’

‘I am as innocent as you are,’ Quare said. ‘I, too, was meant to be a scapegoat for these heinous crimes, but I escaped … with the help of Grimalkin here – the real Grimalkin.’

‘Why would a thief help you escape?’

‘He is no thief, any more than I am a murderer.’

‘Then who …?’

‘Aylesford,’ Quare said. ‘He confessed as much to me across swords, but I was unable to dispatch him. He is the traitor – a Scottish loyalist in the pay of the French.’

‘Can you prove this?’ Pickens demanded.

‘Alas, no,’ Quare said. ‘I cannot yet clear my name – or yours, for that matter. The conspiracy against us goes beyond the Old Wolf, all the way to Mr Pitt … or so I am reliably informed.’

‘It is true,’ Longinus said. ‘It may well be that His Majesty himself, misled by others, has ordered your sacrifice, Mr Pickens.’

‘Then why have you come here,’ Pickens asked, ‘if not to clear your name? Do you mean to kill the Old Wolf after all?’

‘To answer that would be to unfold a story we do not have the time to tell – nor would you be likely to believe it in any case,’ Quare said.

‘The question is, rather, what shall we do with you, Mr Pickens?’ asked Longinus. ‘We cannot simply render you unconscious, as I had planned, since Mr Quare has revealed himself to you, and you would surely, whether willingly or not, reveal this in turn to the Old Wolf under questioning.’

‘You cannot mean …’

‘I should hate to murder a man in cold blood, especially an innocent man. But I will do so if there is no alternative.’

‘Take me with you,’ Pickens implored. ‘I may be injured, but I can still be of help. I dare say I know the guild hall as well if not better than Quare does, and if it comes to a fight, why, I am right-handed and not unskilled with a blade. I am – or, rather, was, as I have now been expelled from the Most Secret and Exalted Order – a regulator. I suppose it can do me no harm to confess that now.’

‘I, too, was a member of that order!’ Quare said. ‘Master Magnus, God rest his soul, recruited me.’

‘As he did me,’ Pickens said with a grin rendered ghastly by the green light and the bruises covering his face. ‘I know I used to tease you about being a regulator, Quare, but I swear it was only as a joke, to deflect any suspicion from myself! I had no inkling that you might really be one!’

‘Nor I you,’ said Quare, grinning himself.

‘Enough,’ Longinus interjected in Grimalkin’s growl. ‘There may be a way. But know this, Mr Pickens: if you betray us by word or deed – or even by thought – I shall know it, and I shall know how to repay it. In that case, you will be the first to die.’

‘I shall give you no cause to doubt me, I swear it,’ said Pickens.

‘We are about the business of the kingdom this night, Mr Quare and I, and the fate of crown and country may well hinge upon our success,’ Longinus said. ‘If you would aid us, then you must swear to obey me without question or hesitation, on your honour as a journeyman of this company, by the oath you swore to be true to His Majesty, so help you God.’

‘I swear it. So help me God.’

‘Very well.’ Longinus put up his dagger and made his way to the back of the cell. There he paused, examining the wall, though Quare could see nothing of note there, just blocks of heavy stone mortared into place. This cell was both smaller and less well appointed than the one in which he had been held: there was no desk, no pallet, no fireplace. Clearly, after his escape, the Old Wolf had intended to take no chances with Pickens.

‘I say, Quare, is it really the fabled Grimalkin?’ Pickens asked him meanwhile in a whisper.

‘None other,’ Quare said.

‘Who is he behind that mask?’

‘I cannot say,’ Quare replied. ‘He is a man of unexpected talents. A regulator, in fact, if you can believe it.’

‘I … scarcely know what to believe any more.’

‘I know the feeling.’

‘Ah, here it is.’ Longinus’s gloved fingers moved over the wall; with a sudden grinding sound that made Quare start, a single block of stone, at chest height, slid into the wall, leaving a hollow space. ‘Mr Quare, Mr Pickens, if you please, gentlemen.’

The two men glanced at each other and then approached Longinus.

‘I am no stranger to this place,’ he said, addressing Pickens. ‘As Mr Quare has told you, I, too, have been a regulator in my time, recruited, like yourself, by Master Magnus.’ As he spoke, he reached into the hollow, then withdrew his hand.

Pickens stepped back with a cry as a narrow section of wall, extending from floor to ceiling, pivoted in silence, like a door swinging on oiled hinges, to produce an opening where none had been before. Quare, who had by now almost come to expect such surprises where Longinus was concerned, looked on with curiosity. Was this another stair-master?

‘Every cell has its secrets,’ said Longinus. ‘The guild hall is riddled with hidden rooms and passages added piecemeal over the centuries by men whose names have been as thoroughly forgotten as their constructs – but not by me. Thus I have prepared these cells against the eventuality of my ever being imprisoned here.’ He stepped into the opening, taking the wan light with him, which dwindled and then winked out altogether.

Pickens’s voice wavered out of the dark. ‘Where has he gone, Quare? What the devil is he up to? Does he mean to abandon us?’

Grimalkin’s gruff voice replied from within the wall before Quare could answer. ‘Quiet, Mr Pickens. From this moment, you will say nothing unless it is in reply to a question I have asked you.’

The light reappeared, a distant, solitary star whose shine increased until Longinus emerged back into the cell. In his arms he carried a dark bundle. ‘Mr Quare, you will help Mr Pickens into these clothes.’

Pickens looked somewhat sceptical at this but did not protest or speak a word as, with Quare’s help, he dressed himself in the clothing provided. His torn and bloodstained clothes he handed to Longinus, who, pinching them between his fingers with evident distaste, flung them into the opening, where they vanished as if into an abyss.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Longinus when at last Pickens was fully dressed, ‘your masks, if you please.’

Quare tugged his mask into place; Pickens did likewise; and suddenly three Grimalkins stood in the cell where only two had entered.

Longinus studied Pickens thoughtfully. ‘You’ll do, Mr Pickens. I do not trust you sufficiently to provide you with a weapon, but if all goes well you shall not need one, and if things go badly the lack is not likely to matter much. Now, sir, have you heard or seen aught of an unusual watch in the possession of the Old Wolf – a hunter, in point of fact?’

‘N-no,’ stammered Pickens.

‘That watch is our objective,’ Longinus said. ‘It will likely be hidden, in which case an extra pair of eyes will not go amiss.’

‘What does it look like?’

‘Mr Quare?’ Longinus invited.

‘It appears at first to be an ordinary pocket watch,’ Quare said. ‘Its casing is of silver, but without outward embellishment or ornamentation. Yet two peculiarities are evident upon closer inspection. First, the watch is unusually thin. Second, it lacks a stem or indeed any winding mechanism. Should you find it, do not open it for anything.’

‘If you find it, Mr Pickens, you are to alert Mr Quare or me at once,’ Longinus added. ‘Is that clear?’

‘Absolutely … and yet not at all. What is the significance of this watch? Does it hold some secret message?’

‘Perhaps we shall take you more deeply into our confidence once you have proved yourself worthy of it. But that is all you need to know at present. And now, gentlemen, let us return to the matter at hand. I will take the lead; Mr Pickens, you will follow; Mr Quare, you will bring up the rear. Remember: not a word, not a sound. You will keep your dagger to hand, Mr Quare, and if it seems to you that Mr Pickens is about to betray us in any way, you will use it at once, without hesitation.’

‘I won’t,’ Pickens said.

Quare nodded, his mouth dry.

Longinus stepped past them, to the door of the cell, where he listened for a moment before opening it and slipping out into the hallway. Pickens followed, then Quare, who closed the door behind him. Regarding the grey shape before him, Quare drew his dagger, wondering if he could really stab the man in the back should it prove necessary. He hoped he would not have to find out.

Longinus led them to the end of the corridor, where a large, heavy door blocked their passage. He put his ear to it, and, after a moment, satisfied, produced the key that had opened the door to Pickens’s cell; it proved effective here as well. They passed through in single file, Quare again bringing up the rear and closing the door behind him.

In the excitement of finding Pickens, the song of the hunter had faded to the back of Quare’s mind. Now it surged forward again, louder and more insistent, as if some fresh urgency had arisen. He did not know how to communicate this to Longinus without speaking, and yet he did not dare say a word; they had entered a more frequently travelled area of the guild hall, one lit by candles burning in sconces, though this passage was deserted now. Ancient oil paintings and tapestries decorated the walls, their subjects faded to mere suggestions of shape and colour.

Longinus glided like a fog across the floor. Pickens could not match him but acquitted himself well enough, as did Quare, whose attention was divided between the summons only he could hear and the back of the man he might at any moment be called upon to murder.

They traversed one corridor, then another, then climbed a flight of stairs, all without encountering a soul. But just as they reached the top of the stairs and entered another candlelit hallway, this one lined with doors, a man came around the far corner, short and rotund, waddling with haste. It was Master Malrubius, the Old Wolf’s sycophant and shadow.

Malrubius stopped short at the sight of them, as did the armed servant who stepped into view beside him an instant later. Quare and Pickens also froze, but Longinus accelerated.

Quick as lightning, two blurs shot down the corridor; each found its mark, and the two men stiffened and collapsed before they could cry out a warning or indeed make any sound at all. By the time they hit the floor, Longinus was kneeling beside them to retrieve what he had thrown. He glanced up as Quare and Pickens arrived at a run, putting a finger to his mask for silence.

‘Have you killed them?’ Pickens demanded in a breathless whisper.

‘They are merely unconscious,’ said Longinus.

‘Good.’ With no more warning than that, Pickens drew back his boot and delivered a vicious kick to the unprotected face of Master Malrubius. And then another. Quare heard the crack of the man’s nose breaking. By which time he had resheathed his blade and locked his arms about Pickens from behind, pinning his arms to his chest and hauling him back.

‘Let me go!’ Pickens said, still whispering, though he did not struggle to free himself. ‘My arm—’

He fell silent as Longinus, who had risen to his feet, stepped up and laid the edge of a dagger against his throat.

‘You are making me regret my decision, Mr Pickens,’ he said.

‘You saw what that swine did to me,’ Pickens gasped out in reply. ‘He doesn’t deserve to live. Give me a dagger and I’ll finish the job.’

‘We have not come here to murder anyone if we can help it,’ Longinus said. ‘Personal vendettas have no place in our mission. If you cannot restrain your temper, I shall have no choice but to give you the same treatment I have already administered to these gentlemen.’

It was a moment before Pickens replied. He sighed, and Quare felt the tension drain from his body. ‘Very well, Grimalkin. I’ll put vengeance aside … for now.’

‘Let him go, Mr Quare,’ Longinus said. Quare did so. Yet Longinus had not removed his dagger, and thus Pickens did not dare to so much as twitch.

‘This is the last interruption I will countenance,’ Longinus said, gazing into the other man’s eyes. ‘You will follow my commands with alacrity, keep silent, and otherwise give me no cause to employ this dagger, for I assure you, Mr Pickens, I will not hesitate to use it, and you will not receive another warning before I do. The substance coating this blade will put you to sleep in an instant, and we will leave you behind, to the tender mercies of Master Malrubius, which you are already so well acquainted with. Is that clear?’

‘Quite.’

Longinus put up his dagger. ‘Very well. I think it time that we take a less public route. Mr Pickens, you will keep watch. Mr Quare, if you would assist me …’

Longinus unlocked one of the doors off the hall and pushed it open; then he and Quare, with some difficulty in the case of Malrubius, dragged the two bodies into what, it became evident, by the greenish light of Longinus’s vial, was an old and disused storeroom containing oak barrels caked with dust and rat droppings. Malrubius left a trail of blood across the stones of the floor, but there was nothing to be done about it now, Quare supposed. Pickens, meanwhile, looked on from behind his mask, dividing his attention between them and the empty hallway.

‘Come along, Mr Pickens,’ Longinus said at last from inside the room.

Pickens stepped forward but balked at entering the storeroom, as if afraid that Longinus meant to leave him there after all, slumbering alongside Malrubius and the guardsman. Nor, Quare reflected, was that fear unfounded, for the room had no other visible exit. But he had experienced enough of Longinus’s surprises to feel confident another was imminent.

‘It’s all right, Pickens,’ Quare said. ‘One thing I’ve learned about Grimalkin: he always leaves himself a way out.’

‘Mr Pickens, if you please,’ Longinus said.

Pickens entered the room. Longinus nodded to Quare, who closed the door behind him. They stood uncomfortably close in the small, ill-lit space, the two unconscious men sprawled at their feet.

The guardsman was quiet as a corpse, but Malrubius was making small sounds of distress, rather like a piglet rooting in the ground; Quare thought his breathing must be impeded by his broken nose, or perhaps by blood draining into his throat. He had no more love for Malrubius than Pickens did, but neither did he care to stand by while the man choked to death. Kneeling, he repositioned the head so as to improve the man’s air flow.

Longinus, meanwhile, had turned to rummage behind a stack of barrels that reached from floor to ceiling. A sharp clicking sound, and the front of the stack slid into the back, exposing a half tube, like a chimney, that rose into darkness. ‘Now we ascend,’ Longinus said. ‘I will go first. Then Mr Pickens. Mr Quare, you will bring up the rear.’

Quare glanced up at this. ‘Shall we not first bind and gag your latest victims?’

‘No need,’ Longinus said with a shake of his head. ‘They will not wake for hours, and our own time grows most pressing; the bulk of the night is already behind us. Take this, Mr Quare.’ He passed over the glowing vial, which Quare, standing, accepted. ‘Gentlemen, I will await you above.’ With that, Longinus stepped into the half tube and turned to face them, arms at his sides. There was another clicking sound, and suddenly, to the accompaniment of rattling gears, he was rising, borne swiftly out of sight.

‘What wizardry is this!’ exclaimed Pickens.

‘No wizardry,’ Quare replied with a chuckle. ‘Merely common horological principles applied on a grander scale.’ Though saying that did not diminish the wonder he too felt.

‘Who built this mechanism?’ Pickens demanded. ‘And how is it that Grimalkin should know of it?’

Quare shrugged. ‘I cannot say.’

‘I thought I knew the guild hall as well as anyone,’ Pickens said. ‘I see now that I was mistaken. About that … and other things.’

As he spoke, the rattling sound returned, bringing with it the platform, empty now.

‘You next,’ Quare told him.

‘Is it quite safe?’

‘Grimalkin did not hesitate.’

‘That is far from reassuring. The man is rash and impulsive.’

‘He is also our only chance to get through this in one piece.’

‘Good point.’ Pickens stepped into the half tube just as Longinus had done. And was carried as quickly aloft.

As he waited for the platform to return, Quare focused again on the song of the hunter. Its urgency was unabated, as was its beauty. How the music was made, how it reached him, and him alone, were mysteries he could not unravel; he knew only that the watch was a mechanism that made Magnus’s marvels seem crude by comparison. He had examined it, seen its workings stir inexplicably to life, experienced, for the briefest instant, the release of its uncanny destructive power – which, despite everything, he could not help thinking had been merely a fraction of what it was capable of, under the right conditions … whatever they might be. He imagined whole armies laid to waste in the blink of an eye, proud cities reduced to rubble. And here he was now, closer than ever to claiming it for himself … or, rather, he reminded himself with a sinking heart, for a creature of the Otherwhere, whose unwilling agent he had become. Like it or not, when he finally held the hunter in his hands, he would call for Tiamat … and he had no doubt that the dragon would come to claim its prize.

The rattle of the returning platform roused him. He stepped in, then turned to face outwards, arms at his sides. He heard a click, followed by the ratcheting of gears, and felt the gathering force of the mechanism an instant before it engaged and lifted him more smoothly than he would have thought possible. The pallid green light of the vial he clutched in one hand slid upwards along with him like sap rising in the trunk of a tree.

Then the platform slowed and halted, and there was Longinus, pulling him into a storeroom the twin of the one he had left behind, save that this one was lit by a solitary candle set in an iron brace upon one wall. Quare, standing beside Pickens, watched as Longinus reached behind the stack of barrels from whose hollow insides he had just emerged; another click, and the missing front of the stack swivelled around and back into place.

Longinus turned to them, his eyes hard and glittering as chips of flint. ‘Here is where it gets interesting, gentlemen,’ he whispered. ‘I regret to say that there is no secret entrance to the Old Wolf’s den. Or, if there is, even I do not know of it. Nor will my key unlock that door. I must pick the lock. While I am doing so, we will be at our most vulnerable. If we are discovered, and an alarm is raised, we shall have no recourse but to fight our way back out. I do not rate our chances highly in that regard. Thus, it is essential that anyone who stumbles upon us be silenced before they can give warning. As I will be otherwise occupied, and Mr Pickens is unarmed, that duty falls to you, Mr Quare.’

He nodded.

Longinus produced a watch from within the folds of his cloak. ‘It is almost three o’clock. I do not think we can safely tarry more than an hour.’

‘But what if the hunter we seek is not here?’ Pickens asked. ‘What if the Old Wolf has taken it to his chambers for the night?’

‘It is here,’ Quare said before Longinus could reply.

Pickens threw him a sharp glance. ‘How can you know that?’

‘Let’s just say I have a feeling. A very strong feeling.’

‘But—’

‘Enough,’ interjected Longinus. ‘Let us be about our business, gentlemen.’

He listened for a moment at the door of the storeroom before cracking it open and slipping out. Pickens followed, and Quare came after, emerging into an empty hallway. The candles in their sconces had been extinguished for the night, and the greenish light of the vial in his hand gave everything a murky, underwater glow. Pickens and Longinus held vials of their own. Longinus was already halfway down the corridor, heading for the door of the Old Wolf’s den, Pickens as close behind him as a shadow. Quare made to draw his blade, then, reconsidering, unslung his crossbow instead, armed it, and hastened after them, his heart keeping time with the song of the hunter, which had, once again, ratcheted up its intensity, as if sensing his approach.

Longinus reached the door and knelt before it. Pickens stood at his back, holding his vial up to illuminate the lock while glancing up and down the corridor, though little was visible beyond the nimbus of their chemically generated lights.

Quare’s skin prickled with the sense of unseen eyes upon him. He had always felt this way in the guild hall – and not without reason. But there was no obvious sign of observation now. The doors on either side of the corridor, as far as he could tell, remained closed, and no sound intruded on the hush of the great house or the music of the hunter that only he seemed able to hear. Luck, it appeared, was with them.

A faint click from the door announced Longinus’s success. He stood, tucking his lockpick away and then drawing his sword. He locked eyes with Quare and Pickens in turn. Then, with a nod, he cracked the Old Wolf’s door open just wide enough to slip through. Pickens pushed in after him, and Quare followed, once again shutting the door behind him.

The instant he did so, sparks flared out of the darkness. Suddenly torches were ablaze, revealing perhaps a dozen guardsmen with pikes – and, in some cases, pistols – pointed in their direction. Revealed as well was the Old Wolf, who regarded them from behind his desk with a smile of predatory satisfaction on his fleshy, florid face.

Quare took this in through senses dulled by the wild din of the hunter; its song had skidded into a shrill caterwauling that had him pressing the hand that held the vial to the side of his head as if its light might somehow penetrate and soothe his skull. It occurred to him that perhaps the hunter hadn’t been calling to him at all. Perhaps it had been warning him away.

Pickens cursed, at which the Old Wolf heaved himself erect.

‘Drop your weapons, gentlemen. I shall not ask twice.’

Longinus seemed to consider his chances for a moment, then complied with the command. Quare followed his lead, lowering the crossbow to the floor.

Grandmaster Wolfe’s smile widened, and he leaned forward over the wooden desk, his large hands, with their glittering rings, laid flat on its surface. ‘I had hoped my little trap might snare the great Grimalkin, but I did not think to catch three. How positively profligate! Is this all of you, or should I be expecting more?’

No one answered.

‘Remove your masks,’ the Old Wolf said. ‘I would see your faces.’ After a moment, he added: ‘Do it, or I will have it done, and none too gently.’

‘You mean to kill us in any case,’ said Longinus in the gruff voice of Grimalkin.

‘Of course. But not before you are put to the question. A good deal of unpleasantness lies ahead for you, I’m afraid. A good deal of pain and suffering. But it need not begin now.’

Longinus pulled off his mask and flung it defiantly to the floor.

‘Lord Wichcote,’ said the Old Wolf without batting an eyelid. ‘I cannot say I am surprised. Your involvement in this affair has been most suspicious from the start. You should have stayed ensconced behind the walls of your estate, my lord. Your title will not protect you here, nor will His Majesty intervene.’

It struck Quare that the grandmaster had not recognized Longinus, the servant, but saw only the lord. Class, it seemed, could be a more effective disguise than any mask.

When Longinus did not reply, the Old Wolf shifted his gaze to Quare and Pickens. ‘And what of these two? Who else have we caught in our web? Shall I guess? Nay, it is no guess. If Wichcote is here, Quare cannot be far behind.’

Quare tugged his own mask down.

‘The prodigal returns. Alas, I’m afraid I cannot welcome you with open arms, Mr Quare. No fatted calf for you. But never fear: you shall receive the welcome you deserve.’ He looked to Pickens. ‘And you, sir? I confess, I cannot imagine who you might be. The servant who spirited Mr Quare away? Or the real Grimalkin, perhaps?’

The mask came off.

‘Mr Pickens,’ said the Old Wolf, straightening up and seeming surprised for once. ‘I am disappointed to find you in such disreputable company. For all your protestations of innocence, it would seem you are a traitor after all.’

‘It is you who are the traitor,’ Pickens shot back.

‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, sir,’ the grandmaster growled, ‘or I shall keep it for you – in a jar.’ He addressed Longinus. ‘What game are you playing, my lord? Coming here dressed as Grimalkin like some urchin on Gunpowder Night! I suppose Mr Quare must have brought you.’

‘I am playing no game, I assure you.’

The Old Wolf chuckled, a phlegmy rumble. ‘Why, am I to believe that you are Grimalkin? A man of sixty or more? It is absurd on its face, quite apart from the fact that Grimalkin – the real Grimalkin – stole the very watch from you that you have come here to reclaim. Or was that theft a charade? Are you, perhaps, in league with Grimalkin? Is he likely to join us after all?’

Longinus shrugged but said nothing.

‘I have set guards outside this door, my lord. No one will be getting in – or out – unless I give the word.’ As he spoke, he gestured to one of the guardsmen, who began to move about the room, lighting candles from his torch; when he had finished, he extinguished that torch, as well as the others, so that the garish illumination was replaced by a more mellow flickering of light and shadow.

‘You will answer my questions truthfully,’ the Old Wolf said meanwhile. ‘If not here and now, then later, in circumstances much less pleasant … for you.’

‘Your threats do not frighten me,’ Longinus rejoined. ‘I have faced far worse in my time. It is you, Sir Thaddeus, who should be afraid.’

This elicited another chuckle. ‘What, of a toothpick like you? Why, I could snap you in half with my bare hands! As for your associates’ – he gestured to the guards – ‘I think I may rely on these gentlemen to protect me.’

‘I am speaking of the watch,’ Longinus answered. ‘The hunter.’

‘Yes, the watch. A most intriguing timepiece. I confess I have been unable to unlock its secrets.’

‘Then you should count yourself most fortunate,’ said Longinus. ‘Be wise as well, Sir Thaddeus, and return the watch to me. It is my property, after all. No real harm has yet been done. Let me take it back and keep it safe.’

‘I think not,’ the Old Wolf said. ‘If the watch is a weapon, as Mr Quare avers, and as I do believe, then it belongs to England, especially now, in her hour of need. If you were a patriot, my lord, you would see that and help me discover how to use it.’

‘It is because I am a patriot that I do not.’

‘Bah. I do not think you know the first thing about this watch, despite having had it in your possession. I think it defeated you as much as it does me. But it did not defeat Magnus, did it?’

‘No.’ Quare spoke up now, ignoring the clamour in his head. ‘It killed him.’

‘But not, I suspect, before he communicated the secret of its operation to you.’ He nodded, and six guardsmen stepped forward as one to take hold of Quare, Longinus and Pickens while the remainder of their brethren kept pistols aimed at them. Pickens struggled, to no avail, as did Quare, though Longinus offered no resistance. Grandmaster Wolfe, meanwhile, opened a drawer of his desk and produced a small leather-bound tool kit. He laid this out on the surface of the desk and then stepped to one side, nodding again to the guardsmen. ‘Bring him,’ he said.

The pair of guardsmen who had taken charge of Quare frogmarched him around the desk and pushed him down into the Old Wolf’s voluminous chair. They remained standing to either side of him. Longinus and Pickens were similarly flanked.

‘Now, Mr Quare,’ the grandmaster said, stepping forward again. ‘I find I have been too lenient with you in the past. I shall be taking a firmer hand now.’ As he spoke, he took a pocket watch – the pocket watch, as Quare saw at once – from his waistcoat and turned it in his pudgy fingers, the silver casing winking like a coin. ‘Strange to think that such a small thing could possess power enough to win a war. I have examined this watch most thoroughly, and a more curious and confounding timepiece I have never encountered. It appears to be nothing more than a child’s toy. It lacks a winding mechanism. It has no recognizable numbers painted upon its face, only sigils of arcane significance. My finest tools could not prise open its casing – yet behold how that same casing springs open of itself when the hour and minute hands are properly aligned.’

Quare looked on with a sense of mounting dismay as the Old Wolf manipulated the hands of the watch just as he himself had done in Master Magnus’s study … and with the same result. The fact that those hands were carved in the semblance of a wingless dragon had taken on a new and decidedly sinister significance, reminding him – were any reminder necessary – of Tiamat.

Another nod from the grandmaster, and each of the two guards flanking him grabbed one of Quare’s arms, lifted it over the top of the desk and slammed it down, then held it there in a grip of iron. The Old Wolf set the opened watch face-down on the table before him, between his arms. ‘Let us begin with the workings. Of what are they made, sir? Wood? Bone? Some new substance heretofore unknown to science? I confess I cannot say.’

‘No more can I,’ Quare answered, shuddering at the sight of the gears, wheels and pinions packed so elegantly into the tight interior of the hunter, all of a silver so pale as to be almost translucent. He recalled all too well how his blood had made the inert workings bloom with fiery incandescence and take on for a brief moment a sickening semblance of life. Yet at the same time, he felt the sovereign pull of the timepiece, and he knew that if his hands had not been immobilized, he would have snatched it up. The roaring in his head grew louder.

‘Thus far I have come, but no further,’ the Old Wolf said. ‘I have searched Master Magnus’s notes in vain for the means of powering the watch. Yet I know – we both know, Mr Quare, do we not? – that such a means exists. What is it? Tell me.’

‘No.’

Grandmaster Wolfe nodded, as if he had expected no other reply. He leaned forward and calmly opened the tool kit he had placed upon the table. Within were not implements of the horologist’s art, as Quare had expected, but the shining, sharp-edged tools of a surgeon. Quare’s eyes widened; he felt his heart quail.

‘I am going to ask you again, Mr Quare,’ the Old Wolf said as he removed a scalpel from the kit. ‘Each time you refuse to answer, or respond with a lie, I will remove one of your fingers.’

Quare struggled to rise from the chair, but the grip of the guards was unbreakable. Now a third guard came over and forced his left hand open, until his fingers were splayed upon the table, his palm pressed down against the wood.

‘You call yourself a man of science?’ interjected Longinus from across the room. ‘You’re nothing but a butcher! Courage, Mr Quare. Tell him nothing. Remember what is at stake! Re—’ He broke off as one of the guards punched him in the face.

‘Yes, remember, Mr Quare,’ said the Old Wolf. ‘Remember that you are an Englishman, a journeyman of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers who has sworn a solemn oath to our Sovereign Lord the King’s Majesty. Why would any loyal Englishman, having the means to spare king and country the grievous losses of a war whose outcome is, to say the least, uncertain, withhold it? He would not. If you would show yourself loyal, speak now. Share your knowledge of this watch – or weapon, rather.’

Quare could not concentrate for the roaring between his ears. His skull rang with it. How was it the others could not hear? He shook his head to clear it, but the noise intensified, bringing tears to his eyes.

‘What, do you weep already?’ demanded the Old Wolf in a scornful voice. ‘I will give you something to weep about!’ And without hesitation, as if this were not the first time he had performed such an action, he sliced through the little finger of Quare’s left hand.

The blade passed cleanly through the middle joint of his finger. It happened so fast that he felt no pain at first, just the scalpel gliding through his skin and an unpleasant popping sensation as the ligaments holding the phalanges together were severed. Then the top of his finger lay upon the table like a white grub. Blood welled from the stump, shockingly red in the candlelight.

‘Ready to answer, Mr Quare?’ the Old Wolf inquired.

Quare moaned as pain throbbed into his awareness, carried along on the beating of his heart. Feeling his gorge rise, he glanced away from the ruin of his hand. Pickens looked pale as a ghost, slumping in the grasp of his captors as if about to faint, while Longinus, a bruise already blooming below his right eye, was staring at the table with an expression of horror that seemed to transcend any physical cause. Horror … but also a hunger terrible to see.

It was that which recalled Quare to his senses. That and the gasp of surprise from Grandmaster Wolfe. Looking down, he saw that the flow of blood from his hand was streaming to the hunter as if following a groove cut into the table. As he had witnessed before, the watch drank the liquid, absorbing it. It began to glow like a hot coal. At the same time, the works leapt into motion, gears whirring in a silent crimson blur.

‘What in God’s name …’ The scalpel dropped from the Old Wolf’s fingers to clatter upon the desktop, and he took a step back.

At the same time, the three guards attending to Quare recoiled as one, releasing him in their instinctive retreat from the engorged timepiece.

Quare’s maimed hand moved of its own accord to claim the watch. The instant he touched it, a powerful shock reverberated through his body and across his whole awareness. A black wave rolled in from one side and swept him along with it. It seemed to carry him not just out of the room but out of himself.

All was darkness. He floated in it, suspended. The words of Genesis flashed into his mind: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep …

He felt that he had come to such a place. Nothing existed here: all was potential, emptiness fraught with what could be, lacking only the spark of creation to make the immanent real. Yet he also felt, with a certainty he did not question, that something needful was lacking for that spark to be struck. This was not the Otherwhere, of that he had no doubt. It was something else, something more primal still.

He realized then that he was no longer hearing the song of the hunter. There was no sound at all. Or, rather, only a silence so deep it was itself a kind of sound – a sound that passed beyond the audible and into the realm of the tangible. He felt it all around him, this pregnant silence; it was the darkness in which he floated; it coursed about him like a playful ocean; its currents caressed him with velveteen softness, batting him about. It swarmed him.

It purred.

And suddenly Quare knew, again without question, what had happened to the cats in Master Magnus’s study. They were here. Just as the watch had absorbed his blood, so had it absorbed their furry essences, sucking the spirits from their bodies and leaving only empty husks behind. And that meant …

I am inside the watch, he realized.

He, too, had been absorbed. Was he dead then? His body lying slumped over the Old Wolf’s desk? Was he – his spirit, rather – trapped here now, a prisoner of the watch? Had the hunter captured its prey?

Panic and terror rose up in him, but he had no way to express them. He had no body here: no limbs to lash out with, no mouth with which to scream. He floated in the dark … yet was himself a thing of darkness. Would he, in time, flow into the surrounding dark, disperse into it, forget himself entirely? Even if he could have cried out, called on Tiamat, he did not think the dragon could hear him – or, if it did hear, breach the walls of this prison. The geis laid upon him had no power here. There would be no rescue. No escape.

He found himself thinking of Master Magnus, who had set all this in motion by sending him to steal the timepiece from Lord Wichcote … and then given the watch a taste of his blood. Had he known somehow that this would be the result? Had he intended for it to happen?

Quare understood with dawning dismay that his mission on that moonlit night had been very different from what he had been told. Why had he not seen it sooner? He had been too busy running for his life, from one dire mishap to another. But now that there was no place left to run, the logic of it unfolded to him. Lord Wichcote – that is to say, Longinus – must have been in on it as well. Perhaps part of whatever had really been going on had been, as Longinus claimed, a trap laid to catch the false Grimalkin, the young woman he had overpowered upon the rooftop. But there was more to it than that. There had to be. The trap, Quare felt, had been laid for him as well. But why? To what purpose?

He had mourned Master Magnus’s death. Now he cursed his name. For lying to him. Using him. Leaving him with questions that had no answers, and an eternity in which to ask them. Why, this is hell, he thought with a flicker of hysteria like the first hint of a madness that would engulf him whether he resisted it or not. And why should he resist? Better to surrender. Perhaps that was the only escape possible.

A ragged giggle issued from out of the dark. Or, no, it was the darkness itself that laughed. A terrible sound, like sanity ripping. Then it spoke, which was far, far worse.

‘Well, well. Look what the cats dragged in.’

The words came from everywhere at once – including, it seemed, from inside him … to the extent he still had an inside. Was this his own voice that addressed him, a voice spun out of the threads of his unravelled reason? Quare was losing his sense of separateness, of self.

‘You wound me, Mr Quare. Do you not recognize my voice?’

And with that, he did. It was not precisely the voice he remembered but instead a close facsimile, as if whatever addressed him now lacked the equipment for human speech and had been forced to make do with materials unsuited to the task. Even so, there was no mistaking the voice of his late master, Theophilus Magnus.