The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,181

in the guild and the wider world. Yet it was also Magnus who had set him in pursuit of the hunter, who had pricked his finger and used his blood to bring the watch to life, or a semblance of life, who had, in short, embarked him down the perilous road whose twists and turns had brought him to this place, this moment. Could he not thereby infer that Magnus, too, had been either an active agent of some greater power or, like himself, its helpless tool? He shrugged the question aside. What did it matter now?

The stair-master came to a halt. The door slid open, revealing a corridor lit by candles burning in bronze sconces upon the wall. Longinus gestured for Quare to step out. He did so, and his host came out behind him.

‘Follow me, Mr Quare,’ he said. ‘I am about to show you something no one else has ever seen.’ The corridor was lined with doors on both sides; a hodge-podge of timepieces cluttered the walls, gleaming in the candlelight. The corridor ended in another door, which Longinus opened with a key produced from a pocket in his robe. Quare, looking over Longinus’s shoulder, saw the vague outlines of a room but could make out nothing of its dimensions or contents in the wavering light from behind. Then, plucking a candle from one of the sconces, Longinus entered the room, where he lit other candles, revealing all.

‘Behold Grimalkin’s lair,’ he said with a theatrical flourish.

The room was smaller than his room at Mrs Puddinge’s establishment but far more luxurious in its appointments. Yet it was not the furnishings that left him most amazed. A veritable armoury covered one wall: swords and daggers, crossbows, pistols, and other, less ordinary weapons: a pair of sticks joined by a chain; a sharply hooked, flat but wide wooden blade something like the hands of a clock frozen at the hour of three; a flute-like instrument with tiny feathered darts alongside; small, thin silver discs like gears with teeth as cruel as a shark’s. Everything was immaculate: the metal shone, the wood gleamed. On the adjoining wall, to Quare’s right, hung items of clothing – breeches, shirts, boots, cloaks, hoods, kerchiefs … all in the same shade of ash grey. A long table of dark wood against the wall to his left displayed as many glass vials and clay pots as an apothecary’s shop or an alchemist’s laboratory. Interspersed with everything on the walls were still more clocks, all of them ticking busily, none of them showing the same time.

‘Come, sir,’ said Longinus. ‘Let us dress and arm ourselves. Then we shall be off!’

Quare stepped into the room. ‘So it’s true,’ he said. ‘You really are Grimalkin.’ He had not entirely believed it until now.

‘Was,’ Longinus corrected. ‘And will be again, for tonight, at least. As will you; we shall both be garbed as Grimalkin, the better to— Why, what is so amusing?’

For Quare had begun to chuckle. ‘How strange!’ he said. ‘When I told Master Magnus of my rooftop encounter, and revealed that the great Grimalkin, as I thought then, was a woman, he advanced a hypothesis I considered most unlikely – so unlikely that I argued against it … with as little success as, knowing him, you may imagine.’

‘What was this hypothesis?’ inquired Longinus with an expression of interest.

‘Magnus believed you had been confronted by not one but two Grimalkins. The real one and a disguised confederate, the object being to sow confusion and apprehension in their target – that is, in you. And now here we are, adopting the very strategy ourselves!’

Longinus did not appear to share Quare’s amusement. ‘A coincidence, no more. Or less even than that, for two generals, after all, may employ the same means to achieve an objective; it is the circumstances that dictate a particular tactical approach. Magnus may have been wrong in his hypothesis – though strictly speaking he was not, for there were two Grimalkins in the attic that night: myself and the imposter! – but the logic behind his reasoning was sound. Grimalkin has a fearsome reputation, as you know. He is rumoured to be a ghost, a devil. No walls can keep him out; no weapons, it is said, can harm him. That reputation will aid us, giving us an advantage over our adversaries, even if it is only a matter of seconds. In such situations as we are about to enter, Mr Quare, life or death, success or