Winter Tide Page 20

  When at last I came down to breakfast, Trumbull had covered half the table with syllabi and lesson plans. “The library is a chaos of forgetful students and teaching assistants waiting to use the mimeograph machines. They all smell like chewing gum. The department can’t spare an assistant for me, of course.”

  Her mundane exasperation startled a laugh from me, and eased the fog of fatigue. It was hard to hold on to my revulsion. Neko handed me a plate of fried eggs and a cup of tea. She sat beside Audrey, who’d finished her own breakfast and was reading the Sunday paper with pursed lips.

  “Perhaps this isn’t a good day to brave the stacks,” I suggested. “Or will it be that bad all the time, now that the students have returned?”

  “Last semester the bedlam was confined to their first day back,” said Trumbull. “If that’s typical, tomorrow should be safer.”

  So, she’d arrived last summer. In four years or so, I’d need to come back to the university and see if I couldn’t help the real Trumbull through the shock of her return. For now, I needed to be on this Trumbull’s good side if I was to follow up on Caleb’s suggestion. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “If you’d asked earlier, I might have made you brave the crawling crowd. At this point, I just need to look over my notes, and do a last check for anachronistic insights. The same horrible low-level classes every semester—the price one pays for access to the university resources, and I gather the other professors feel much the same.”

  “Ah.” I peered over her notes, sideways, but the last of my mathematics had been the most basic of algebra, two decades past.

  Trumbull tapped her pencil on the table. “Well? Whatever you want to ask, it will at least be a distraction.”

  I glanced at Neko and Audrey—but my desires here were a secret from neither. “We’re still discussing what to do about the spawning grounds, but Caleb and I thought—that is, we hoped you might be willing to help us retrieve our books. You’re as frustrated with the limited access as we are. Your people must have places where you store records in this era. Followers who help out when you want to do something authorities might not like.”

  She snorted. “Certainly we have places to store temporary records. We call the local one Miskatonic University.”

  I dropped my eyes. “Oh. But still…”

  “Despite its inconveniences, we have long cultivated this place as a shelter and way station for knowledge worthy of preservation. One of our architects helped design the library. Our cultists, we choose primarily for tractability. They don’t know the first thing about even primitive archival technique. I have no interest in exposing your texts to the vagaries of amateur storage. And I think perhaps you underestimate the size of the collection.”

  I let it lie, and wished I hadn’t spoken at all. The elders, if willing, could offer gold and magical support—but Trumbull’s resources were more suited to quietly moving well-guarded records. Or to keeping records well-guarded. Now that I’d mentioned it, she might well wield those resources against us. Even given a new spawning ground to support, the elders might not dare to gainsay her.

  Someone knocked on the door, and Neko went to answer it. Trumbull didn’t even begin to rise. Had she ever actually received visitors, before we arrived?

  Spector stomped snow off his boots before entering. Charlie followed.

  “Where’s Caleb?” I asked.

  “He’ll be along,” said Charlie. He eyed Trumbull. “Said he had someone to talk to.”

  “Oh, good.” I hoped Dawson would listen—but was glad either way that Caleb had done so.

  “George’s people are off the gate,” said Spector. He shrugged out of his coat. “That’s good, except that I don’t know where they are now. Best I could tell from last night’s dinner, they’re after something besides the obvious, but George didn’t drink enough to do more than hint.”

  “Did he, perhaps, apologize?” I asked.

  “George, apologize? Only if you count insinuations about what rock I turned over to find the lot of you. Begging your pardons.”

  Trumbull shrugged. “You may assure him the low opinion is mutual.”

  “Oh, I think he knows. Is that more tea? Wonderful—thank you, Miss Koto. I’m feeling a bit under the weather this morning.”

  Spector reached past me to take the tea. Beneath his familiar lemon-and-soap, and the clean smell of snow still melting in his hair, I caught another odor startling in its greater familiarity: Charlie’s scent mixed with his. I frowned. Had Charlie fallen again, or needed help along the walks? But this smelled like a lengthier exposure, and less recent.

  Charlie still struggled with his coat and cane, and I went over to help him. I inhaled deeply and found lemon and soap tangled in his hair, and a male arousal not his own. The fear, though—that was entirely Charlie.

  “Come outside,” I said, abruptly changing course on his coat. “I need to talk.”

  As soon as the door shut behind us, I put a hand on his arm. “Are you hurt?”

  “What?” He jerked back. “No, I’m fine, why?”

  More gently, I asked, “Did Spector hurt you?” He seemed disinclined to answer. “I can smell where he touched you.”

  Charlie’s face reddened, and he lowered his voice. “Miss Marsh, you can’t just—say these things—in public.”

  Scattered masses of students passed on the other side of the street, but none ventured across to the faculty row. “No one’s in earshot, unless they have ears as good as mine. I just want to know whether you’re all right.”

  He swallowed visibly. “Yes. I’m all right. Yesterday was … a long day. He offered to share his scotch, and we got to talking, and—I’m sorry.”

  “For what? I suppose I could fault your choice of lovers—” I paused and considered Spector. What did I hold against him? That he’d attempted to recruit me, and backed off when he realized the insult. That he made use of me, in ways that benefited both of us. That he worked for a state that had hurt me, and done his best to ease that hurt and to ensure it wouldn’t be repeated. “But I don’t. He makes me uncomfortable, but he’s working, harder than most ever bother, to be a good person.”

  He looked directly at me for the first time all morning. His cheeks were still flushed, and every muscle drawn tense. “Things must be very different among your people.”

  Of course the Christian world’s disapproval must weigh heavy on his mind, as it did for Leroy and Jesse. I shrugged. “Priests of the air can be hypocrites for fifty years about things that can’t be ignored for fifty thousand. We wed in order to breed on land”—and here I swallowed—“but for some, water lovers are a different matter. Of course people of the air can’t simply wait.”

  The color in his cheeks deepened. “You realize we could go to jail. If there were even rumors, Ron—Mr. Spector—could lose his job.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. “You know I won’t risk you going through any such thing.”

  He ducked his head. “Caleb was staring at me this morning. I thought he was just in a poor mood, but…”

  “I’ll speak with him.” I paused, still thinking of my own people’s strictures. “I wonder if we ought to do as Grandfather suggested after all. Before, I assumed you’d eventually want to take a wife of your own people. You still might, I suppose.”

  He shook his head violently—and then more so. “Miss Marsh! Your grandfather … I couldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you. I can’t believe he made that suggestion.”

  I shrugged. “He’s right that I’ll mourn you. Having a child—and perhaps mourning them as well—frightens me terribly, and I’m beginning to believe I must. But I won’t press; I didn’t mean to offend you.” Now I could feel myself flushing. With a little effort, I could have forced my capillaries to dilate, and looked perfectly calm. That seemed a poor idea. “Your own family must expect children, though?”

  He winced. “My family also expects me to move back to L.A. and join my dad’s insurance business. I’
m used to disappointing them.”

  “Ah.” Snow stuck in clumps to the juniper bushes beside Trumbull’s front step. I ran my finger through the greenery, examined the crystals as they melted against my skin. “You were angry at my family, yesterday.”

  “They expect too much from you.”

  “Caleb and I are all they have left on land.” The snow soothed, melting to clean cold water against the lines of my palm. “If that’s a lot of weight to bear, it’s no flaw or malice on their part.”

  He adjusted his feet around the cane, and I knew we ought to go back inside and find him a seat. But I didn’t want to break the conversation.

  He said: “You told your grandfather and your priest, plain as day, that you didn’t appreciate them trying to matchmake. And they kept at it anyway.”

  I shrugged. “They’re right that I have an obligation. I didn’t want to admit it, but I also—it’s not reasonable; it can’t be entirely Caleb’s and my choice whether there will ever be more of our people. I don’t blame them for having opinions—or for how they expressed those opinions—when they’d just learned we were still alive.”

  He caught his breath. “I hadn’t thought about that part. I suppose if my grandparents believed I was dead, I might forgive whatever they said when they found me.”

  “All the elders on that beach had just learned, too, who they had lost. Children, grandchildren, friends, husbands—we’re all they have left. That matters, even if I don’t like the weight.” For a moment, the image of life without that burden washed over me. I pictured an Innsmouth never raided. A husband of my own people, children preparing to come of age. There might still be heartache in such a world: a friend lost to a storm, a child stillborn. “The universe is what it is.”

  He opened his hand, tilted it as if letting something fall. “I’ll do what I can to help.” Then he blushed. He’d already said he wouldn’t—though I couldn’t hold it against him. “Are you certain you’re the last? Did all your people stay so close to home?”

  It was a fair question. “The soldiers came in the middle of winter, and the boats were all at dock. We had people away at school—but most were brought to the camp in the weeks after the raid. We assumed those who didn’t appear hadn’t been taken alive. Any survivors would have sought out the elders, if they could. And there are lost children, of course, mist-bloods. Most in whom our blood ran true must have gone into the water long ago, but I suppose it’s possible that the youngest are still on land. And those with weak blood might still come together, and have children who can change as their parents cannot. It happens; usually they’re impossible to find before their metamorphosis. And then they make their own way home.”

  “You could look.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t hopeful, but I thought of the stolen child that Chulzh’th had been unable to track, and wondered if he’d ever made it into the water. If not, he’d be old now, but his offspring would still carry strength in their blood. A mist-blooded man could give me children I’d be less likely to lose. “I’ll ask the elders if they know of anywhere to look.”

  Trumbull hadn’t so much as gathered wood for her hearth, but the radiators kept her house warm. I found it stifling, though the others seemed comfortable enough.

  “Everything okay?” asked Audrey, and I nodded.

  The small crowd around the dining room table felt uneasy, interactions edged with sandpaper. Everyone still trod cautiously around Trumbull—Charlie in particular. With luck I was the only one who noticed how he and Spector had grown formal. I ought to try and ease the tensions, as Neko did, but I wished only to run back to the ice and snow.

  “Audrey,” I said, and she looked up. “You’re the … sneakiest person here.”

  She nodded cheerfully. Spector raised his eyebrows and pointed at himself in exaggerated fashion, and she pouted.

  I continued over their byplay: “I hope Barlow’s people have given up on guarding the gate, but I don’t want to count on it. Can you show me how you got onto the campus?”

  She shrugged. “Sure.” She finished her tea in a gulp, and stood. “Lead on. Or let me lead, since I know where we’re going.”

  Outside, she bumped against me, a moment’s comforting touch. “Something’s eating you.”

  “Yith. Or perhaps government agents eager to arrest us? I just felt closed in, honestly—thanks for helping out.”

  “No problem. I’m feeling a little twitchy myself. And you ought to learn how to sneak, anyway.”

  “Do you need to get back to Hall?” I asked.

  “Eventually. I’ve missed morning chapel, though—so either I’m already in trouble, or they think I’m at the hospital with Sally. Either way, it can wait.”

  The faculty row stood on the opposite side of campus from the main gate. Audrey strode confidently through the grounds. I tried to emulate her, but felt terribly exposed. We were the only women in sight—elsewhere there must be secretaries, maids, others who filled the gaps left open by the school’s aristocracy, but this morning the quads were full of faculty and students, and of scattered handymen clearing paths through the snow. Some of the boys whistled or called out, and Audrey nodded regally as if they had knelt before her. The difference in our dress made me even more self-conscious: Audrey all fashion in her knee-length blue skirt and a hat that was mostly an excuse for its feather, me in my sedate mourning dress that met neither my own standards nor those of the folk around me. I am a Marsh, I thought, and tried to move like a queen rather than like prey.

  As promised, we saw no sign of intruders either in the depths of campus or at the entrance. I wished I could believe they’d stay away. From the gate, we followed the winding path that shadowed the fence posts. Well-tended near the facades of the History and Biology departments, elsewhere it grew wild with pine and winter-bare bramble. In these areas the crowd thinned, and those who remained kept their heads down.

  “Here we are,” said Audrey. We abandoned the main path for a little curve hidden by juniper hedges. A fountain nestled in their arch: a long-dry mermaid spilled nothing from her conch shell. Ivy half-drowned her tail and splashed across her chest and shoulders. Someone had crowned her with a handwoven wreath of vines, long since turned brown.

  “Meet Chastity,” Audrey said. She laughed. “People bring her offerings when they haven’t been living up to her name. See?” She waded the ivy-filled basin, held up a few coins, and tossed them back.

  “Do people come here often?”

  “Not on a Sunday morning. But she’s conveniently located on the way to and from the opportunity for sin.”

  As promised, an oak spread over the mermaid’s nook. She was an old archpriest of a tree, full of twists and splits, bark rich with folds. One branch dipped low over a marble bench, and standing on tiptoe Audrey pulled herself up.

  “It’s not dignified,” she called. “But it’s not a bad climb.”

  I hadn’t climbed a tree in twenty years, and even then Caleb had been better. But my new-grown strength proved useful as I grasped the handholds Audrey showed me, and got my feet into the branch’s saddle. I grimaced as twigs tugged my skirt, but moved carefully and did not tear it. Audrey showed me where to place each step. Her route was well-practiced, and I watched carefully to mimic the little shifts of balance that passed beneath her notice.

  From the ground Chastity had been a smooth-skinned and well-proportioned woman of the air, only her tail betraying her disinterest in admirers. From above, I could see that her thick marble hair grew from a scaled scalp, and tiny snakes twined within. One pointed ear poked above the tilted wreath of vines.

  We crept to the central trunk. Here, where there might otherwise have been an awkward breach in the aerial passage, some thoughtful student had long ago nailed a wooden block as a much-needed foothold. The bark curved out around it; in another fifty years it would be only an indented scar. I clenched my fingers tightly above as I stepped from branch to block to branch again. Audrey dropped to all fours and peered cautio
usly over the fence. She pulled her head back and put a finger to her lips.

  Over the whisper of wind I heard voices on the street beyond. Two voices, familiar: they’d made a strong impression while I was blindfolded. I shrunk away and clung to the damp bark. If I moved forward a little, I might be able to understand more clearly, but I was reluctant to take the risk. Words drifted up in isolation: “Doubt … ask … students … stupid to…” And then they passed beyond our overlook.

  Audrey inched back. “We’d better leave off for now,” she murmured. “Normally Garrison Street is pretty deserted.”

  Back on the ground, I did my best to brush off my skirt and blouse. Audrey picked a few pieces of wet bark from my hair.

  “That was them,” I whispered. “George Barlow, and one of the soldiers who arrested us yesterday. Peters, I think.”

  She dropped a dead leaf into the ivy, paused. “Did you hear what they were saying?”

  “I couldn’t catch it. Something about students and stupidity.”

  She snorted, and started for the fence. I grabbed her arm and drew her back. “Don’t, they’re dangerous. And if I couldn’t hear them, you won’t be able to.”

  “How d’you know? I might have secret rock powers.” She pulled away—I didn’t hold tightly enough to stop her—and headed back toward the fence. It was thoroughly draped with ivy: someone on the other side might be able to see through, but only if they pressed close to look. I thought of what they might say, unheard, and went after her.

  We followed the path, pausing as I tried to pick out voices across the sounds of wind and wildlife and the more distant babble of conversation within the campus grounds. After a couple of hundred feet I caught their cadences again. But off the path, the snow hid a crackling of dry leaves and twigs. Every time I tried to get closer, I rustled one thing or snapped another. Audrey moved lightly: she occasionally tested before putting her weight down, but more often picked the silent spots by eye and captured them in short, swift steps like a stalking heron. At last she crouched beside the curtain of vines. I watched anxiously, hearing the voices rise and fall. Their location seemed to change, and I thought that Barlow might be pacing.