Winter Tide Page 7
His face darkened, and I thought for a moment that his grasp of the tongue was too meager and too distant. But then he nodded fractionally. Neko, of course, caught the nuances if not the words, and let us go off on our own. I would talk with Charlie later.
Crowds of young men passed us, boisterous in the cold night. To my relief, they gave us a wide berth.
“We need to get our books back,” he told me once the others were out of sight. He pulled out his cigarette pack. I kept my reaction in check.
“I know,” I said. “This agreement where they ration them out … but I don’t have a good idea for how to get them back. I don’t think Miskatonic would take payment, even if we had it, and there’s no trade I’m willing to offer that they’d be interested in.”
“Payment! We should take the books—it’s no crime to steal from a thief.”
“Keep your voice down. It’s no crime, but they’d lock us up all the same. And we’d get Professor Trumbull in trouble for giving us access in the first place.”
He waved long fingers dismissively. “We’d be careful. And what of it if she gets in trouble? She’s just a mortal, and a rude one at that.”
I started to answer, took a deep breath, saw the steeple peeking from behind a low brick building. “Let’s talk inside.”
We made our way to the church. From the outside it was Christian in its entirety, though very gothic. It was not suited to its own scale, but looked rather like the childhood form of a cathedral. The doors, solidly built from plain dark wood, were closed against the cold but unlocked.
We slipped in. I kept a wary eye out for priests who might waylay visitors, but the interior was still, lit only by flickering gas lamps. Columns like great petrified trees lined the center aisle, branches entwined in the shadows above. Above the altar hung a grotesque statue of their god, bleeding. Caleb stared at it a long moment, expression unreadable.
At the outskirts of the room, we found the shrines: alcoves filled with saints and mythic images. Some appeared to be perishing in worrisomely imaginative ways, but others laid gentle hands on sick supplicants, or stood alone against soldiers and monsters. Winged figures hovered over all, bearing silent witness.
As promised, one shrine was more discreet. A stone altar stood empty except for a single candle. If I let my eyes unfocus, the half-abstract carvings resolved into great tentacles reaching from the altar to enfold the little grotto. The artist, I realized, had placed those who knelt there within the god’s embrace, while making the god invisible to any who did not know to look.
I settled before the altar. I wanted to compose myself, as I might before ritual. But Caleb hovered at the edge of the space, a lightning jag of impatience at the edge of my attention.
“Aphra, if you came here to beg favors of the void, I don’t want to watch.”
I turned with a sigh. “I’m not begging anything of anyone. I’m trying to calm myself. It would do you some good as well.”
“I have reason enough to be angry.”
When I found myself endlessly circling my own bitterness, the old litanies and prayers still brought me comfort. They were stark reminders of entropy’s even hand. But Caleb had given them up long ago. “You can be angry. You should be angry. I’m angry. But I think we’ll do better by being angry and patient, and calm enough to plan. Please sit.”
He sat, leaning against the organic curve of the wall. He looked at me narrow-eyed. “Do you want to plan, or do you want to avoid upsetting your government friend?”
I took deep breaths, several of them. “Do you want to plan, or do you want to mock me for every choice I’ve made in the past two years?”
He turned his head, giving that same doubtful and disappointed gaze to the altar. “I want our books back.”
I let out a breath that turned into a cough. Caleb waited unmoving while I recovered. “Good,” I said when I could talk again. “So do I. But I also want to protect the Kotos. And yes, Trumbull. It’s not right to speak as you did out there, to dismiss someone’s pain just because it’s briefer than ours. We’re mortal too.”
“I never dismissed the Kotos.” His shoulders slumped. “You know I love them. But they can’t understand, they haven’t lost as much as we have—”
“They lost what they had to lose. You just did exactly what I said. You think the gods are judging some contest of loss?”
“If they existed, I doubt they’d care. No one cares but us!”
Footsteps cut through our rising voices, and we both stilled. I pushed myself, silently, to the shrine’s edge. I balanced, half kneeling, on the balls of my feet, ready to attack or flee as our tracker’s identity dictated.
A querulous, half-familiar tenor called, “Miss Marsh, is that you?” I said nothing.
A young man came into sight, tall and thin and well-dressed. After a moment, I recognized Jesse Sadler from the bookstore. He spotted me and smiled. “Hey. I’ve been looking around for you, since you said you were doing research at the library. This is a great spot, isn’t it? You seemed like someone who didn’t just study the old ways.”
I stood and pulled away from the wall, hoping he hadn’t seen us prepared for a fight. “Mr. Sadler. Hello.”
I had been about to introduce Caleb, when Sadler saw him and blinked. He stuck out his hand. “Hello. Are you Miss Marsh’s, um, fiancé?”
Caleb ignored the hand. “Sister dear, have you become engaged without telling me?”
I gave him what our mother would have called a fish-eye. “Caleb, allow me to introduce Jesse Sadler. We met in town earlier. Mr. Sadler, my brother, Caleb Marsh.”
“Ah.” He let his hand drop, as Caleb still had not taken it. “Pleasure to meet you.” He glanced between us. Clearly he had expected to find me alone, if he found me at all, and I wondered what he’d hoped to gain from the encounter.
“Were you seeking me for some particular reason?”
He eyed Caleb again. Caleb turned and knelt before the altar. Sadler continued to watch his back for a moment, then forced his attention back to me. “No particular reason. I just—” He gestured at our surroundings. “Not many people actually use the temple. I come here sometimes, to think more carefully about the things I’ve been studying, to try and understand them.”
“I see. Are you planning on joining that expedition that your friends were discussing earlier?”
“Sure. If you want to come along—”
“I do not. If you will please excuse us, my brother and I were in the middle of a private conversation.” I touched Caleb’s shoulder. “Brother, dear, let’s go.”
Outside, Caleb sang out, “Sister dear!” I punched his arm, but I was shaking.
“I don’t like walking away,” I said.
He glanced behind, but Sadler had apparently stayed in the church as requested. “From what? I could tell he displeased you from the start. Did he insult you, this morning?”
“After a fashion. He was with the group of students in the bookstore, talking about magic—or what they think of as magic. They’re organizing an expedition to Innsmouth. Supposed to be haunted, you know.”
He tensed beside me. “We ought to go down there and talk to our grandparents. Give them a haunting, if that’s what they’re looking for.”
“You haven’t yet, have you? Talked with them, I mean.”
He shook his head silently.
“Caleb—Professor Trumbull.”
“Leave be! Haven’t we had enough rude mortals for the night?”
I looked up, but winter clouds obscured the stars. I would have liked to see where we stood in the cosmos. “She’s not mortal. She’s one of the Great Race. We talked last night.”
“How do you know?”
I was surprised at the doubt in his voice. “The usual ways, I suppose. I asked the right question, and she gave the right answer. She knew more about us than I expected. I think she pushed the librarian, mentally, to make him give in about our books.”
He shook his head. “She
may know enough magic and lore to do those things. That doesn’t make her an ancient, all-remembering intelligence.”
I had been worried for Caleb’s well-being. Now, I worried for his sanity and his own memories. “Doubt the gods as much as you please. People do. But to start doubting things that our people have seen throughout history, and recorded in those books you want to rescue … you have to believe in us, even if you don’t believe in anything else.”
When he turned to me, I saw in his eyes both the bitter man and the frightened boy. “I haven’t forgotten our history, I promise. But trust me, it’s better for Trumbull if I think her an arrogant mortal, rather than something that might have real answers.”
I thought of my own conversation with her, and how he might react to the story of Beneer. And I let it lie.
CHAPTER 7
The next morning, Spector insisted on stopping at Dean Skinner’s house before we left for Hall. His black government car waited in the drive while Trumbull idled behind in her own older model.
“We need to borrow Miss Dawson for the day,” Spector informed the man with a cheer that bordered on malicious. Skinner blustered, and eventually disappeared into the house without inviting us in. A few minutes later the maid appeared, demure in a blue day dress and matching hat that set off her dark skin.
“This had better be worth it,” she told Spector after the door closed. “The dean doesn’t like to be reminded about my other duties.”
“We’ve got a lead,” he said. “We may need you to look at some notes.”
She looked back at the house. “Well, it’s a day off. Later’s later.”
“What’s she doing here?” asked Caleb. I glared at him—I’d been wondering the same thing, but hadn’t been about to ask.
She looked him up and down. “Vy govorite po-russki?”
He blinked, and suddenly grinned. “Cru, Vharlh nge R’lyehn. Th’dyn Zhucht.”
She said something else in the other language—I presumed Russian—and he laughed. It was astounding to see Caleb laugh at his own ignorance, though I supposed this was an easier lack to swallow than most. They continued to trade phrases as we walked back toward the cars, and I realized that we were now two seats short in the original vehicle rather than one.
“I’ll ride with Professor Trumbull,” I said, because the thought of anyone else doing so unnerved me.
“I’ll go as well,” said Charlie. “There’s no reason to be crowded in.”
The others agreed, and before I could come up with an objection, we were standing alone on the icy walk while Trumbull tapped the steering wheel in annoyance. Charlie rubbed his knee as he eased into the front passenger seat, and it occurred to me that he might have physical as well as curmudgeonly reasons to prefer some space. I joined him, taking the seat behind Trumbull.
She seemed to feel no pressing need to fill the drive with chatter. We passed quickly down the streets that had made a comfortingly long walk. The sun broke through the winter haze, and houses and yards that had been picturesque white were now pocked with slushy gray and the black residue of exhaust.
“I miss California,” said Charlie.
“So does Neko,” I said.
“You don’t?”
“I do. I miss the store. I miss the rain and the fog. I miss Mama Rei and Anna and Kevin. But I’ve missed snow, too.”
He glanced at Trumbull, clearly waiting for her to throw in some comment about the virtues of Massachusetts, or the weather. This didn’t seem like the appropriate place to explain her reticence, though holding back closed off many things we might otherwise have discussed.
We drove around the outskirts of Kingsport, a kaleidoscope of buildings from every era since the colonial, winding up toward the distant central hill with its sprawling hospital. The Hall School lay at the town’s southwestern tip: a series of low-slung brick buildings with none of Miskatonic’s flourishes. Bare-branched oaks and spreading pines lined the walkways, sheltering the girls who hurried between classes. Their semester apparently started earlier than Miskatonic’s. Black and red uniforms peeked from under heavy coats.
We pulled up in front of the library—considerably smaller than the Crowther. Trumbull stepped out with alacrity, tilting her head with the slightly-less-distant interest that she turned on most things scholarly.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
Trumbull wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps they got lost on the way. It is quite a distance.”
Charlie hugged himself; even with the sun out the day was chilly. “Shall we go inside? I’m sure that once they find the building, they can figure out the rest.”
Nervous of our reception, I would have been just as pleased to wait outside. Nevertheless, I followed. I trod carefully on the ice and slush, testing each step for a steady landing.
I was right to be cautious: Charlie yelped as his bad knee went out from under him. I rushed to help. He pushed himself up slowly, cursing. I checked his head, but he waved me off.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I landed on my arm. I’ll have a hell of a bruise. Excuse me. Ow.” In spite of his protests, I steadied him as he got slowly to his feet. He grimaced as he put weight again on the knee, and glared at Trumbull. “Let’s get inside.”
With me steadying his elbow, we managed the path without further incident—though another spotter would not have been amiss.
Trumbull waited inside. I found myself shivering, unsteady, not from cold but from instinct.
“Not a very social people, are you?” I asked. She raised an eyebrow, and jerked her chin at the librarians behind the information desk, the students wandering among the shelves. I was not being sufficiently discreet.
Charlie seemed distracted by his knee. I found him a chair, saw him settled and comfortable, and went to find a reference librarian. Trumbull could follow, or not, as she saw fit.
The librarian, shockingly, was entirely cooperative. I explained that we were looking for Barinov’s donated notes, probably from a year or two ago, and she told me that they would take a few minutes to track down. She scurried off with the pleased air of a woman on a quest.
I returned to find Spector kneeling by Charlie’s chair, palpating his knee. He glanced up as I arrived. “Don’t tell me. Dawson and I are the only people here who know first aid.”
“Where would I have learned?” I asked lightly, but saw it hit home.
“I’m fine,” said Charlie again. With a look of apology in my direction, he took out his pipe.
“I suppose you can afford the pride,” said Spector. “Don’t need your legs much, running a bookstore.”
Dawson said, “I’ll find something to wrap it properly.”
“No, you won’t.” Spector smiled wryly. “You read Russian; I’m just here to look useful. I’ll find what we need.”
“Do we have something to read in Russian?” she asked me.
“In a few minutes,” I said. At Caleb’s look of surprise, I added, “One could get to like the Hall School.”
“Shall I at least get some snow?” asked Dawson. Spector nodded, and they both left on their own missions.
“Practical woman,” said Caleb approvingly.
Dawson returned shortly afterward with snow packed into a scavenged bag, which she made Charlie hold against his knee. A few girls looked at her oddly, but she ignored them. Or rather, she drew herself straighter, held her neck proud and tense, and did not look.
“I’m sorry,” I told her.
“For what?”
I looked down. “For what they’re making you do. For what you did to get us into the university.”
Her expression became bland. “It was nothing.”
Fortunately, the librarian returned before I could say anything to worsen the insult. “I have a room set up for you. This way, please.”
Charlie put out his pipe, and leaned on my arm as we followed her into a back room. The logistics of helping him gave me an excellent excuse to avoid looking at Dawson. I imagined apologiz
ing to Anna the same way, and felt my face flush. She would not have appreciated it either.
Charlie must have mistaken my blush, for he tried to draw away. “I can make it on my own.”
“Mr. Day,” I said, keeping firm hold of his arm. “I assure you I can take the weight. In spite of which I don’t intend to carry every book box that comes into the store for the next several years; please listen to Mr. Spector on this one.” He subsided reluctantly.
Thankfully the room to which the librarian led us was not far: one of a row behind the reference section, each with a long reading table and several chairs. Three neat piles of books awaited us, along with an intriguing stack of black leather-bound notebooks.
“These are all the notes, and the books cited most often in them according to our record. If you need to see other books, or the cross-reference list, find me and I’ll track them down.”
“Thank you.” I was too startled to say anything else. Trumbull nodded at her with what might have been respect. She sat down immediately and claimed the top notebook.
I took a moment longer to ensure Charlie’s comfort, and both the cold pack’s survival and its distance from any materials vulnerable to the melting ice. When I finished, I saw the librarian still hovering by the doorway, watching me nervously. My stomach felt hollow; clearly this had been too simple. I went to her side.
“Is there some difficulty?” I asked quietly.
“No! I’m sorry, miss, I…” To my surprise, she blushed. I’ve never been good at judging ages outside of Innsmouth, but with her gray-specked hair and skin beginning to wrinkle and thin, embarrassment looked incongruous on her. “May I ask—I know it’s a strange question but—are you a Waite?”
I blinked. My lids felt tight and painful over my eyes. “Marsh, actually. But the families are related.”
She smiled, a little sadly. “I thought you might be. You look so much like Asenath.”
I blinked again. “You knew Asenath Waite?” I could not put a face to the woman who had left town when I was still a babe in arms, but her fate had been the subject of much dark rumor.