“Yes, I did, Miss Skeptic. Now come take it or I’ll toss it in the canal and you can do for yourself.”
I swung over the rail and stepped onto the towpath to take the bag from him. He didn’t look any better in the daylight than he had in the dimness of the Underground or the screaming ghost-light of the graveyard. His pallor was more obvious with the morning sun on him—the color of someone who’s been very ill for a long time—and the scars around his eye sockets were livid and sickening, stretching into his hair and down his cheek on one side as if made with filthy claws. I couldn’t look at his face without considering the state of mind that would allow him to deal himself such damage. I felt queasy at the thought. I wondered for a moment why it hadn’t happened to me. Even in the best light, my dad had been a bit over the edge, and Marsden had apparently gone several miles into insanity before he’d come back out. If he had.
With the sack in my arms, I climbed back onto the narrow boat. Marsden followed, wary of every step. I couldn’t decide if it was the motion or the mere fact that it was a boat that upset him.
Michael stuck his tousled head out of the hatch. “What’s going on? Oh. You’re back,” he added in a cold voice when he saw Marsden.
“And bearing gifts,” Marsden replied. “So shut it if you want brekkie.”
Michael drew his head back in, muttering, “You’re a cranky old bastard in the morning. ”
“I am a cranky old bastard all the time, boy. As would you be were you a hundred and fifty,” Marsden added.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you a day over a hundred and twelve,” Michael snarked back.
I followed them down into the cabin and through to the kitchen—galley, whatever—to unpack the bag on the counter. Among the assorted largesse I found coffee and bacon, though I couldn’t say it looked like any bacon I’d ever had—more like a thinly sliced section of a large, boneless pork chop. But it tasted delicious once Michael had cooked it up with a half dozen eggs.
Michael withheld Marsden’s plate. “A hundred and fifty, huh?”
“Give or take a few decades.”
“Don’t look it.”
Marsden turned his head without raising his face toward the younger man. “Time moves very slowly when you’re spendin’ it in the comp’ny of the livin’ dead.”
“You mean vampires?”
“I mean all of ’em. Ghosts, vampires, lyches, banshees, wights, zombies, darkwalkers—things what ain’t quite dead but ought to be.”
Michael sent a skittish glance at me, and while he looked away, Marsden snatched the plate from his hands and cackled in horrible glee.
“Hey!”
“It’s unwise to get between a cunning man and his breakfast, boy.”
“A cunning man? Isn’t that another word for warlock?” Michael shot back.
“Hardly,” Marsden replied around a mouthful of food. “Warlock means ‘oath breaker.’ That I am not. Nor any sort of mage—which is what the cunning folk are. Mind your terminology or you’re likely to bollocks up our job today. The sisters are empty heads, but if you give offense they’re as like as any to trap up and turn a cold shoulder. So guard your mouth.”
“Just who are these sisters?” Michael demanded.
“Oh, you shall see. ”
“How do we know this isn’t some trap or game of yours?” the boy snapped.
I rolled my eyes. “How ’bout you both shut up and eat? I want to get this over with as quickly as possible. I assume you guys do, too.”
Michael looked abashed while Marsden just kept his face down over his food. I didn’t think the other Greywalker was embarrassed; he just didn’t care. I wondered if he really was as old as he claimed.
Once we were done eating and had started walking under his directions, I asked him.
“I’ve given up countin’,” he answered. “I meant what I told the lad, though—time’s different when you walk in the Grey. When you’re in the thick, y’don’t age like normal. After a while, people start to notice you ain’t as old as y’ought to be. Had to leave me village and come here to the Smoke when they noticed. Hadn’t given it any heed till then—couldn’t see me own face anyhow.” He made a dismissive hacking sound in the back of his throat and went on. “You’d ha’ thought they’d take more umbrage at my going mad and tearing me eyes out, but that they took in stride. That I wasn’t as old as what I ought to be frightened ’em more than all the raving I’d ever done about the things in the fen and the battalions of dead tommies. There’s more ghosts and creatures of the Grey here, but at least they ain’t no one I knew.” His face had gone hard, the expression rigid as a wall to hide behind.
I broke his mood by scoffing. “You’re saying we’re immortal?” “Not a bit. We age and we die, but time does what it pleases round us and we’ve very little say in it. More I don’t know, but I know that bloody well.”
I thought a moment. “You said you were gifted with premonition—”
“Cursed with it. No sort of bloody gift. All me life. When it began to get worse—when it all started coming clear rather than hintin’ and dreamin’ and disappearin’ when I reached for it—that’s when the worst started.”
“That’s a function of time, though, isn’t it? Premonition? A glimpse forward.”
“Perhaps.”
“And you have a way with the temporaclines that I certainly don’t. Maybe it’s the same thing. Maybe your. curse isn’t premonition, but something to do with time in the Grey. That’s why you look. seventy or so, not however old you really are.”
He grunted and walked on. Michael shot a curious glance at me and started to say something. I put a finger over my lips, shook my head, and caught up to Marsden again.
“I take it back,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“You might actually be clever enough to trip up that white-scaled bastard.”
“Who?” I wasn’t on board the same train of thought, apparently.
“Wygan. You might do very well after all.”
“So you’re glad you didn’t shove me into that tree?”
“We’ll have to see. You’re still too naive by half. Still. ” he added, but said no more, shrugging one shoulder and continuing in silence.
Now I got it: Marsden was as bad at saying he was sorry as I was. The food and this odd admission were as close to an apology as I was likely to get. I wasn’t sure what to think of it. I still wasn’t sure how much I trusted him, though it might have been a bit more than I had the night before.
I could tell Michael wanted to ask what was going on, what we’d been talking about, but he took a good look at my face and kept his mouth shut. He was dealing with these inflections of strangeness much better than his brother ever had. I hoped Will was all right, wherever he was. And Quinton, too. My sense of impending crisis was growing.
We crossed a road and passed by a large terra-cotta-colored building that turned out to be part of the British Library, according to the sign. It wasn’t what I’d have expected, except for a glimpse of a much older building through the straight angles of the gate and the big red building. A little farther on, we crossed the large street we’d been following that ran from King’s Cross past Euston Station. I could see the big war memorials and remains of the first train station’s driveway just across the road as Marsden came to a stop in front of a wrought iron fence that stretched the whole block. A discreet sign mounted on the fence noted that the building’s architectural details were under renovation, and thanked some public trust and a list of donors in the name of the St. Pancras parish for their generosity. I guessed this must be the new St. Pancras church, though it certainly wasn’t less than two hundred years old to my eyes.
“Here they are.” Marsden waved at the soot-streaked building on the other side of the fence. A long, tall wall of once-white stone pushed up from the lawn around the building. Greek revival and very Georgian in design. A couple of bright red doors punctuated the wall. The nearest was just in front of us in a jutting corner under a sort of porch roof that was held up by three Grecian-style statues and one lump swathed in white Tyvek instead of pillars.