The tea shop would be taken.
And Rupert would be alone.
Andnoneof it was fair.
And as he kicked at the nearby table, he remembered a conversation that Belchamber had had with him the night his mother had thrown him out for good.
‘Of course you deserved better, Master Rupert. However, the decisions you make every day hereafter cannot be dictated by that desperate want for compensation. Sadly, it often does not matter what isfair.’
And oh, Rupert had tried to argue, but the spirit had sat beside him in the courtyard and pressed on.
‘Do not mistake me,’ said Belchamber, ‘if I came across Mrs Armstrong at the markets, I might have a mind to share a few honest sentiments with her. I might be inclined to say some words that might surprise even our Theodora.’ The spirit smiled at him. ‘However, Master Rupert, you possess a retaliatory streak thatgives me pause. If I may be so bold to say: you have the disposition to deal out kindnesses as if you have invented your own private currency. I have spent a lot of time helping the wayward souls of this city, and I have seen the effects of this ethos.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rupert had asked. He had noticed the parental kindness in the little spirit’s eyes.
‘Miss Dorothy did notearnyour compassion from the first,’ said Belchamber. ‘She owedyou, in fact, because she took your room and apprenticeship, and so as compensation you were cold, and to your mind, that was fair. Miss Dorothy deserved your mistreatment even though she did not realise she had committed these crimes. You did not forgive her of your own accord; rather, through her actions, sheearnedthe right to your warmth.’
Rupert hung his head. The spirit had understood him precisely.
‘Many people live this way,’ Belchamber went on, ‘but there is no joy in that kind of transactory love. You’ve had a hard go of it, that is true, but I’m afraid the world will not reimburse you for your hardships or your heartbreaks. It is up to you to choose how you want to live and to decide what you want to learn.’
The little spirit patted him gently on the hand.
‘What do you want your life to be? A tragedy or a triumph?’
Lio was thrown out of a pub in Arranfol. He was barred from a restaurant in Beleust. He turned up in the library of his family estate in west Calléum, the enormous house located on the ancillary streets of Palé, an affluent town known for jewellery making and delicate pastries. The King summered two streets away; Lio’s parents had met him multiple times and were on first-name terms with his niece, Assandra.
‘Darling Robert,’ his father cried. ‘Whatever is the matter?’
Liutprand Lashkari Senior brought his son a large mug of black tea and brandy, and called the housekeeper for chicken and walnut sandwiches. Lio pretended to fall asleep on the sofa for several hours before finishing the bottle, scoffing some biscuits and disappearing once more.
He went back to Alliaster. He tried to make it into the studio of Justine Allonse. He would burn the sketches of Opal. He would destroy the whole bloody place, but when he broke the windows and found his way into the room, it was empty. He went to the factory. To the university. To the office of the Minister for Sorcerie and Magic. All traces of Theodora were gone.
He went back to his apartment in Kölldin, stood across the street and peered in, but another man lived there now.
He went back to the offices of the magazine where he had been an editor, but a young woman with red hair sat at his desk.
He bounced back and forth for an indiscriminate period until he collapsed on the grass at Penn Park. At last, he morosely moseyed along the Lourdes until the sun rose and he found himself shivering before the spires of Saint Penelope’s Cathedral.
Grow up, Dot!
Lio had watched each syllable slice her. It had felt good until it had felt despicable.
He took a seat on a bench beside a street vendor selling little pastries topped with pistachios and clotted cream. The wind was cold. Maple leaves dotted the pavement and were scuffled by the shoes of tourists, one or two of whom glanced cautiously at him. It was, perhaps, nine o’clock in the morning.
Lio’s eyes landed on a vendor across the way. A short woman tied an apron around her waist and propped up a weathered board advertising fried cockles for 75 coppers per stick.Seafarthing’s Best!read the sign, and in a rush of shame and inspiration, Lio thought:There, at least, is something I could do.
Lio closed his eyes, heart aching, and began to mutter in a dialect older than his own species. A warm wind tumbled in and so began the ringing of wind chimes and children’s chanting, and up kicked the smell of woodsmoke, incense, gunpowder and lime. A burst of light shot out and he was gone.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE
Dot was once again a resident of the cheapest hostel in the Alliaster guidebook. She had walked past Saint Penelope’s Cathedral that morning and gone in. She’d walked the same streets as when she first came to the city, the smells and the bluebells and the mushroom-coloured collies now quite normal. She ate the same oily eggs at the dingy café below the hostel, and she hated them. Belchamber and Lio, both, were better cooks.
It was now her third night in the hostel. She stared out at the city that she had once been so dazzled by. If she were truly honest with herself, she felt now that there was something of a betrayal behind that beauty. Those were not stars reflected on a vast ocean; they were just streetlamps.
Tomorrow, she promised herself,I will buy the ticket back to Seafarthing.
She slept on top of the covers, listening to the skittering of beetles and her neighbours’ lewd moaning, then sobbing, then moaning. From the opposite room came fierce laughter. From above, someone yelled into a telephone about striped paint. Dot lay with her eyes open until the sun was up.
