‘Sit down, Grayther,’ Rogibald said. His voice was worn and weary. Not at all the tone that Crake was used to hearing from him. ‘Everybody else, get back to your duties.’
One of the Shacklemores, a young fellow with a pencil moustache, seemed uncomfortable at the idea. ‘Sir, perhaps we should stay? To ensure that the fugitive doesn’t get out of hand.’
‘I have nothing to fear from my son,’ Rogibald snarled. ‘Get out!’
The butler opened the door and invited them to leave. They did so. The butler left with them, and closed the door behind him.
Crake sat down in the empty chair. His father was thinner than he remembered. He’d always been lean, but now the flesh was falling off his bones, and his once stern face was gaunt. He seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes, and there was the sour smell of the old about him. But for all that, he was still Rogibald Crake: solemn, erect, intimidating.
‘Hello, Father,’ said Crake.
Rogibald didn’t reply. He rarely indulged in pleasantries. He was a big believer in the idea that a man shouldn’t speak unless he had something worth saying.
Crake had never been able to suffer those silences for long. He needed something to fill up the space. ‘You have a new butler,’ he heard himself saying. ‘What happened to Charden?’
‘I got rid of him,’ Rogibald said. ‘I got rid of all the servants. Amantha insisted, after. .’ He waved a hand. ‘You know.’
Yes, thought Crake. I know perfectly. But neither of us can say it.
‘She used to fly into a rage at the sight of them,’ Rogibald said. ‘Blamed them for not seeing it coming, not watching Bessandra closely enough, not locking the doors, or some such thing. She cleared out her own household, then started on mine. I let them go, to keep the peace. But Charden. . that was hard. That man had been with me twenty years.’ He shifted in his chair and folded his legs. ‘She was insane,’ he said. ‘We just didn’t know it then.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘The sanatorium at Clock Shallows. We sent her there a year ago. I don’t think it’s made her any better, but she seems happy, at least. She has come to believe that Bessandra is there with her. Nobody is inclined to discourage the notion.’
Crake felt his throat close up. His brother’s wife in a sanatorium. His doing. He’d never liked her, but that hardly mattered. Her ruin lay at his feet.
‘Damnably difficult, keeping any servants these days,’ Rogibald went on. ‘They’re a superstitious lot. People in the village talk. The way they tell it, the manor is cursed and all of us with it. Not many servants stay long after they hear that.’ He sipped his brandy. ‘Superstitious lot,’ he said again.
Crake couldn’t bear listening to his father talk this way. He was usually so direct, a no-nonsense man who got to his point instantly. To hear him working up the courage to address the real subject was awful. Only then did Crake realise how much pain he’d inflicted on a man he’d thought incapable of feeling.
‘Father. I know there are no words that can-’
‘No,’ he said. ‘There aren’t.’
Crake shut up. All of a sudden, he wanted to cry; but that would never do. It was unthinkable to shed a tear in front of Rogibald. Condred had always followed their father in all things, but Grayther had been a disappointment. Rogibald had always said he’d bring shame on the family.
Well, at least he could take solace in the fact that he’d been proved right. For Rogibald, being right was everything.
Crake looked hard out the window, to gather himself. Trench-coated Shacklemores walked the lawns in the crisp morning light, or patrolled near the wall that surrounded the grounds. They carried shotguns. It seemed a lot of firepower for a single fugitive.
‘The bounty hunters?’ Crake asked, when he found his voice again.
Rogibald said nothing.
‘Father?’ he prompted.
‘I’m sorry, was that a question?’
Crake had forgotten how wilfully obtuse his father could be. When he wasn’t being infuriatingly literal, he was being pedantic. It was his way of maintaining superiority.
He tried again. ‘Why are there so many Shacklemores here?’
Rogibald’s jaw tightened at that. He stared into the fire. ‘The rabble hereabouts.’
‘The villagers? The farmers?’
‘All of them. The Awakeners have stirred up the countryside, Grayther. Turning the common folk against the gentry. If we don’t declare for their cause. . Well, I wouldn’t be the first to be strung up because I won’t bend the knee to their nonsense. Many of us have gone to the cities, but I’ll not cave in to ignorance.’ He turned to Crake, and there was a feverish anger in his eyes. ‘I won’t, you hear? No matter what the cost!’
Crake had the sense that there was some meaning to Rogibald’s words that he was missing. But he had other questions, and he couldn’t take the suspense any more. His father’s feelings be damned; he had to know.
‘Where is Condred, Father?’
Rogibald flinched as if struck. He seemed to diminish, and shrank back into his chair, where he took a swallow of brandy.
‘Father, where is he?’ Crake persisted. ‘He took the contract out on me, didn’t he? Why did they bring me to you and not him?’
‘Your brother. .’ said Rogibald, his voice heavy with a melancholy disgust. ‘He cancelled the contract two years ago.’
Crake just stared dumbly. Two years ago? All this time he’d been living under a shadow, and there was no contract on him? No wonder the Shacklemores hadn’t been on his back. He’d always thought it strange that they hadn’t been more persistent.
‘We kept the murder out of the courts, for the family’s sake,’ Rogibald said. ‘Condred wanted to deal with you himself. But after a year. . After Amantha. .’ The tiniest of frowns crossed his brow: a sign of what his next words cost him. ‘It would have been a hollow victory, he said. To exact vengeance on his brother. No matter what you did.’
Crake’s hands began to tremble. A torrent of muddled emotions threatened to overwhelm him. Relief and guilt came all together. Was he reprieved? Would he live after all? And if so, where was his justice, his retribution? He couldn’t believe that his brother would ever have forgiven him for what he did. And yet. .
‘If he cancelled the contract, why did the Shacklemores bring me here?’
‘Because I told them to,’ said Rogibald. He finished the last of his brandy, grimacing as if he’d swallowed something rank. Then, venomously:
‘Because I need your help.’
Pinn hurried across the clearing, his heart beating hard in his chest. The sun was low and yellow as it pushed through the swampy tangle at the clearing’s edge. Insects swam in clouds in the early evening swelter.
There were a few hundred people here, gathered round a haphazard collection of dirty tents. A couple of light cargo freighters, ugly Ludstrome craft, loomed in the background. From the tents, he could smell food cooking. A dozen voices sang tonelessly over the strumming of a stringed instrument and some clattering percussion. A small group had gathered outside an open tent painted with the Cipher on its side. Pinn headed for that one.
The Awakener base was spread out over many clearings, and beyond the central ‘town’ at its hub there were smaller gathering-places like this one. Pinn had tramped around plenty of them since he woke up. He was hot and bothered and his buttcrack was so sweaty that it bubbled whenever he farted. But none of that mattered now, because his search was at an end at last. Stumpy legs pumping, he hurried over to the tent and looked inside.
There she was. Young and pretty, her hair in a strawberry blonde bob, wearing a white Speaker cassock with red piping. A group of people were watching her, fascinated, as she held a needle to the upraised fingertip of an old woman. Beneath the woman’s hand was a pedestal, on which sat a wooden saucer to catch the blood. Her tattooed forehead was creased in concentration, her wide blue eyes intent as she aimed.