“You’ve got no eyebrows,” said Aldo.
That’s the first thing my brother said to me in fourteen months. I’d like you to know that. I’d pictured it a lot. Not once had I pictured that.
“You’ve got a beard,” I said.
“It’s not a beard.”
“It’s a beard, Aldo.”
“It’s fourteen months.”
Then the door banged shut behind me and the bar went across it, and I was over there, and he had hold of me, and I’m not going to tell you about that bit. It’s mine.
Here’s what the cell was. A room cut in the rock, the size of Hettie’s pantry, with a lamp outside the bars that put stripes across the floor. A bucket, which I’m also not going to tell you about. A blanket. A ring in the wall with a chain on it, and the chain went to Aldo’s ankle, and had been there long enough that there was a groove in the stone where it dragged. It ended in a small iron padlock, the size of a walnut, with a keyhole you could have fitted a little three-toothed key into, if you’d ever seen one of those, and if you hadn’t given it to an otter. I’d told him it didn’t fit anything.
Nobody had searched me, by the way. Nobody had needed to. There was nothing on me that opened anything.
And Aldo.
He was taller. That’s a stupid thing to notice, but he was. Thin as a net-pole, with his hair down to his shoulders and the not-a-beard, and his hands were the same. Still bossy hands. He held me off by the shoulders and looked at me up and down like he was checking a net for holes.
“You’re bigger.”
“You’re thinner.”
“You’re filthy.”
“I’ve been in a badger hole.”
“Course you have.” He let go, and sat down against the wall with the chain clanking, like his legs had decided for him. “I told you to go home.”
“You told me in a code I had to dig out of the mud.”
“I said it on a wall.”
“A wall’s not a face. You say it to my face, I might listen.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“No,” I said. “But you’d have said it.”
He laughed. It came out of him like a cough, the way mine had in the yard with Ilsa, like something he hadn’t done in a while and wasn’t sure he still could.
“Did you bring food?”
“No.”
“Fourteen months,” said Aldo, to the ceiling. “And he doesn’t bring food.”
The walls were his.
I saw it when my eyes got used to the stripes. Scratches, all over the rock, at the height of a sitting man. Notches. Rows and rows of them, in fives, going right round the cell and starting again higher up. Hundreds. I didn’t count them. He’d stopped, somewhere on the third wall, and I didn’t want to know which day.
And by the door, at the height of my head, where I’d see it first:
~ x
Here. Danger.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Felt I should.”
I sat down next to him with my back to the rock and the chain between us, and I told him. All of it. Quick, the way you tell things in the dark. The post, the tin, the lantern going out, the dogs. Ilsa. Skritch and the Low Streets and the song. The ferry, the eel, the wolves, the tree. The stag. The stair and the stone man and the bowls. He listened with his eyes shut and his mouth going at the corners, and when I got to the bowls he said, “You did steam? For the cloud?” and I said yes, and he said, “I used a rain-charm and a light-jar and a lamp. Took me nine goes,” and I felt about ten feet tall.
And then I told him about the camp. The morning. The old man on the rock, and the four watchmen, and the salve.
His eyes opened.
“What old man.”
“The Professor. From the Library. He came after us, he brought the watch, he says Vosk was his assistant and he’s—”
“Describe him.”
I stopped. Something in Aldo’s voice had gone very still.
“Old. Thin. White hair everywhere. Black coat with big pockets. He coughs. He’s got a tin of—”
“Peppermints.”
The cell was very quiet. Outside the bars, the lamp hissed.
“Wicky,” said my brother. “That’s him. That’s the client.”
I’m not going to pretend it came slowly. It didn’t. It came all at once, the way the sparks come when you reach, everything pouring into one place and the cold going up after it.
I told you to watch. Keep your hands to yourself. He’d been talking about me. He’d been talking about me, to Vosk, in his library, with me lying on a shelf over his head, and then he’d walked to the third case without counting and given me a sweet.
Boots over the badger hole, in the night, walking slow through a place they knew. He’d been in the woods before we’d got there. He’d been in the woods while the stag was at the hole, and he’d walked past. Skritch smelled that man before. In the dark.
And a line in pencil on a wall, that I’d read three times, that said he coughs, he smells of peppermint, and I’d stood in front of it and said Vosk so fast and so loud that nobody had had a chance to say anything else. Vosk, who hated them. Vosk, who said they stank. Aldo had written that too. I’d read it. I’d decided it meant Vosk anyway, because Vosk was down a hole with a mask on and the other one had bacon.
I put my head on my knees.
“He fixed my hands,” I said, into my knees. “He put salve on them.”
“He needs them, Wicky.”
“I slept. I went to sleep next to him. I—” I couldn’t finish it. “Skritch told me. Skritch told me, and I patted him on the head.”
Aldo didn’t say I told you so. He had every right to. It was in a tin, under three hands of mud. He just put his bossy hand on the back of my neck and left it there, and we sat.
“How long has he been looking?” I said, after a while.
“He told me forty years.”
I haven’t been down this hill in forty years. He’d come down it a year ago, to look at my brother in the dark with a lamp behind him. He just hadn’t counted that. He didn’t count things.
“He hired the crew through Vosk. Vosk doesn’t know what’s behind it and doesn’t care, he’s paid. The old man knows. There’s a book that says the Deep Door only turns for two of one blood, and he’s been sitting on top of Saltmire for forty years waiting for someone like us to walk under his window.” Aldo pulled the chain across his lap. “And I did. I walked in his front door and asked him for a map of the Thornwood. I asked him.”
“What’s behind it?”
“The Quiet.”
“I know the Quiet. What does he want with—”
“They don’t die.” He said it flat. “That’s what the book says. The old people opened the doors because they wanted to live forever, and the Quiet came out and drank them, and he’s read all that, and he still thinks he’s cleverer. He’s got a year, maybe. Less. And he’d rather be cold forever than be dead in a year.” Aldo shrugged. “He’s not mad, Wicky. I wish he was. He’s just old, and he’s scared, and he’s had a long time to think about it.” He was quiet for a second. “They don’t touch him, Wicky. The Quiet. He walks through them with his lamp like they’re fog. Vosk’s lot won’t go out after dark. He does.”
“And he needs us to hold hands.”
“They put mine on it. First day down here. Vosk held my wrist and pressed my palm flat on the stone and nothing happened. Not a flicker.” He looked at his hand. “It’s not a key. You don’t just press it. You have to mean it.”
I thought about a flame set down on my palm by a river, warm as tea. I didn’t know why I thought about it. I didn’t have time to.
Because out on the stair, slow and careful, somebody was coming down with a stick.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
And a cough.
He had a stool. Vosk carried it down behind him and set it outside the bars, and the Professor lowered himself onto it with both hands on his stick, and the lamp outside put stripes across his face, and he looked at me.
He didn’t gloat. I want to be clear. I’d have liked him to gloat. It would have made it easier.
“I’m sorry, Wick,” he said. “I truly am.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t trust what would come out.
“I didn’t want it like this. I want you to know that. I wanted you to come to it. I did tell you to stay at the top. I knew you wouldn’t. I thought, if the boy sees it, if he walks down and sees it, the way I saw it in a book when I was younger than your brother is now, he’ll understand.”
“Understand what? That you want to let them out?”
“That they’re coming out anyway.” He said it so gently. “Your lantern went out, Wick. A hundred years, and it went out. The warren’s sung every night since the sunken city and the dim comes every night regardless. The door is thin. It’ll open in ten years or in fifty, on its own, with nobody at it who’s thought about it for a moment. Better it’s opened by someone who’s thought of nothing else for forty.” He coughed, and waited for it, and folded the handkerchief. “I’ve read everything. Every book in that building. And there’s one more thing I’d like to read, and it’s on the other side of that stone, and I haven’t got the time to wait for it to come to me.”
“You’ll be cold,” I said. “Forever.”
“I’ve been cold for years.” He smiled. The lines all went the same way they always had. “What’s a little more.”
His hand went to his pocket, the way it did. It came out with the paper twist. Then he looked at it, and looked at me, and put it back.
“No,” he said. “Not now.”
“I won’t do it.”
“You will.” Not a threat. He said it like he was sorry about it, like it was weather. “Not for me. I know that. I’m not a fool, I’ve not been a fool since I was your brother’s age.” He reached into his coat, and what he brought out this time wasn’t a twist of paper.
It was a sleeve. Brown. Burnt at the cuff. Torn off at the shoulder.
“The girl and the otter were taken at the river gate,” he said. “Vosk’s men know the river better than an otter. I’m afraid that’s the truth of the morning. They’re not hurt. They won’t be. That’s not the kind of man I am, and I’ve told Vosk so twice, once in my library and once an hour ago.” He looked at Vosk when he said it, and Vosk looked at the wall. “But I have them, Wick. And I have your brother. And in the morning you’ll stand at that stone and put your hand in his and turn it, because they’ll be standing behind you, and you’ll do it.”
He stood up. It took him two goes.
“You’ll do it, Wick. You love them. That’s not a flaw. It’s the best thing about you.” He put the sleeve down on the stool, where I could see it. “It’s why I liked you. I did like you. I’d like that remembered.”
Tap. Tap. Tap. Up the stair, slow, and the cough going up with him, and Vosk going after with the lamp, and then just the one lamp outside the bars, and the stripes, and a burnt sleeve on a stool.
Neither of us said anything for a long time.
“He’s right,” said Aldo, finally. “Isn’t he.”
“Shut up.”
“You’d do it. For them.”
“I said shut up.”
“I’d do it too,” said my brother. “That’s all I’m saying. For you. I’d have done it a year ago if he’d had you then. So don’t go thinking you’re the weak one.” The chain clanked. “He said dawn. He said he’d come for us at dawn.”
I looked at the sleeve. The burnt cuff. I’d watched it come off in a man’s hand at the gate with the river roaring, and I’d thought she’s through, she’s through, and I’d been wrong about everything else that morning, so why not that.
They had her. They had Skritch. They had Aldo, and they had me, and they had the sleeve on a stool where I could see it all night.
“Dawn,” I said.
I didn’t count. There wasn’t any point.