Chapter Text
Jowd only raised his head when the Chief entered because it was the Chief’s second visit.
“How is he?” he asked. “Any change?” He drooped when the Chief only shook his head, mouth pressed into a grim line.
“I can’t stay long,” the Chief said. He had hardly dared leave Cabanela the first time, to tell Jowd what had befallen him, and felt no easier about it now. “Are you well?”
Jowd gestured to Rindge, who was working still on the ice long frozen over the narrow entrance to the Hole In The Wall.
“Ah,” the Chief said quietly. Not much had changed here, either.
“Ha!” Rindge gave a sudden cry of triumph, drowned out by a sound like shattering glass. A pile of ice was at his feet, spilling inwards from the exit, through which a fresh chill wind was blowing in.
Rindge ran over to Jowd, careless of the ghosts hurrying out of his way. “Let’s get out of here! Oh, Chief, hi. Come on!” Rindge was prepared to haul Jowd over his shoulder, if need be, and Jowd’s knees did creak threateningly when he was pulled to his feet—he hadn’t gotten up in…he hadn’t kept track.
Lethargy dragged at Jowd as Rindge pulled hard enough for him to take a step. What difference would it make if he just sat here until the wood rotted out from under him?
“Go,” the Chief urged him, “go! I’ll tell Cabanela you’re all right. Go back and tell Alma what happened.”
Jowd wanted to see Alma again. He took another step forward.
The cold, stinging air was so welcome after being stuck inside the musty Castle walls that Rindge risked loosening the hood of his cloak. After the first Custodian Guard they had to duck behind an overflowing trash bin to avoid, he took the plunge and took his hat off, stuffing it into his pocket. The wind immediately sent his hair streaming out behind him.
Rindge had gone to some pains over the years to grow out his hair, as he felt it was more feminine, and since he hadn’t bothered changing much else about himself—or indeed stopped calling himself ‘he’—he felt he ought to do something noticeable. It was down to his waist on a windless day, and he was prouder of it than nearly anything else in his life. Only work obliged him to keep it up so it wouldn’t get tangled in the drawbridge chains, but he’d been fired from the Gate, hadn’t he?
“Where’s your boat?” Rindge whispered. Jowd had said he’d sailed back to the Castle.
“Raven’s Rock,” Jowd said succinctly, not so much whispering as not bothering to raise his voice.
That would be tricky. Not to mention the Moat and the river would still be full of ice. But first things first: they had to get out of the Castle without being seen.
Rindge took a step and immediately tripped over a cat.
“MOW,” said the little black cat in offense, but then said “MOW!” again, insistently, when Rindge had gotten to his feet and dusted himself off, wet snow stains already clinging to his clothes.
“Sorry,” Rindge said.
“MOWWWW.” The cat stalked away, turned back to look at him, and then came tapping back over. “Mrroow!”
“It wants you to follow it,” Jowd said.
“What? How do you know?”
Jowd shrugged. “Cats and dogs aren’t that dissimilar.” Only this cat wasn’t dancing back and forth on his paws in excitement and panting, like Missile would have.
The cat made a hacking hairball noise, eyed Jowd with disdain, and padded away again. He sat down at the corner of the alley and looked back over his shoulder; Rindge could imagine exactly how the cat was saying Well, are you coming?
“Following a cat,” Jowd said, like it was a grand joke. “What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like we have any better ideas.”
They didn’t, but that didn’t mean Rindge liked a stupid idea. Still…something about the cat was prickling at his barely tuned (indeed barely used yet) Magykal senses. There was something about him…
“Okay,” said Rindge. “I trust your judgement.”
The cat “Prrup!”ed in satisfaction when Rindge started to walk after him, and set a slow pace through the piles of dirty snow slumped against every wall. Woodsmoke was nearly as thick in the air as the scent of frost, and the steady icy crunch underfoot told Rindge that Jowd was following him.
The cat stopped at random turnings and intersections, huddling to hide, unerringly right before a guardsman rounded the corner. It was enough warning for Rindge and Jowd to get out of sight. Without ever being spotted, even by the busy and more numerous than ever guards, the cat led Rindge and Jowd unerringly to a completely unremarkable stoop halfway down a side street off the Main Way.
Rindge sighed. The cat threw himself across his feet, purring in satisfaction.
“And we’re nowhere near the South Gate,” Rindge muttered, worrying at his hat in his pocket, wanting to put it back on. The cat ignored him to drop down and wiggle through a small hole in the snow, large enough to have been dug by a cat, and disappear under the porch. “Thanks for that, cat.” He knew Jowd’s judgement was all out of order right now, and yet he still trusted the man.
“We can’t stay here,” Rindge muttered, looking around the street. He might as well have been talking to himself; Jowd didn’t answer.
A pair of Custodian Guards turned the corner, ornamented with double-crossed red sashes.
“Special Inspection!” One guard shouted down the street. Wide-eyed faces jerked away from windows where they had been watching the new arrivals; curtains slammed shut. The other guard was already striding towards the first house’s door. “In the name of the Supreme Custodian, open up!”
The door of the stoop they were standing on flew open, and Rindge and Jowd were yanked inside.
“Were they after you?” panted the youth who had yanked them. They were panting mostly from the effort of having yanked Jowd, who required considerable leverage.
“They would have been,” Rindge said, before he could think it was a bad idea to be so honest. The stranger was already ducking around him to throw the door shut again. “I—I don’t think they saw us.”
“Good. Now get out of sight; they’re coming down the street.”
Rindge found himself and Jowd shoved into a side room, where the curtains were already shut. There was an old man with a blanket over his lap in an armchair that was leaking stuffing, and Rindge flinched at the sight of him, then chastised himself for flinching. The man’s face was half covered in old burn scars.
“Looks nasty, doesn’t it?” the old man said, a smile tugging at his mouth. “The only way to look nastier would be to dress in navy and red.”
“Uncle, keep it down,” the youth at the door said. “Remember, you’re alone in there!”
“Right.” The old man slumped down in his chair as if unable to hold himself up properly. Rindge pressed himself and Jowd against the wall, out of sight of anyone standing at the door.
The knock of the Special Inspection guard came banging hard against the door. They had barged in on many a house over the years, on any pretense to haul away “contraband” or throw someone who had offended a particular guard in the lock-up for a few nights. The youth faked some soft and then loud stomps on the floorboards, mimicking walking in from another room like they hadn’t been standing there waiting, and then cracked the door open. Rindge heard a chain jangle as the door was caught before the Guard could push it all the way open.
“Open up,” the guard barked.
“Oh! But I can’t,” the youth said in a higher pitch, voice quavering. Were they a little muffled? “The doctor said we’re supposed to be under quarantine until my Uncle gets well.” The old man in the chair, who had been breathing loudly, let out a wheeze.
“That’s no excuse to—gods in heaven.” Apparently the chain was just lax enough to give anyone at the door a view to the old man’s chair.
“He has a terrible skin condition,” the youth explained, still using that hesitant, overawed voice. “It’s incurable, and the doctor says it’s reached his lungs. There’s not much to be done except make him comfortable. But if you really have to come in, you can have some of these cloths to tie over your mouth, so you don’t breathe in any of the dead skin and get infected. It starts with a rash in, um, delicate places. Did you know,” they said, perking up as if called to share a particular fascination, “most household dust is made up of dirt shed from human skin?”
“I didn’t,” another voice said, sounding nauseous.
“Shut up,” hissed the first guard. Through the door again, he ordered, “Show us your papers.”
Papers were shown, and rifled through hurriedly. They had hardly been shoved back at the young man with a quick “All in order, then,” before the guards were yanking the door shut. Footsteps rushed away from the door.
The old man stopped wheezing and sat up. “Are they gone, Kay?”
“Hee hee,” Kay said. A drawer slammed shut with another rustle of papers. “Couldn’t be away fast enough, those two. Bet they’re gonna be checking their butts for rashes for weeks. I love when we get new guards on Special Inspection duty.” Kay came into the side room, untying a cotton cloth from around the lower half of their face.
“That wasn’t true?” Rindge asked in relief, ceasing to hold his breath.
“The only skin condition I have is age,” the old man said. “Which is indeed incurable, but I’m afraid you’ve already been infected.”
“Miw!” The same black cat from before came trotting up the hall, leaving wet pawprints on the carpet.
“Did you bring them here?” Kay asked, and the cat purred. “Well, if Sissel vouches for you, I guess you two are all right. He doesn’t go out of his way to see us very often.”
Rindge noted the cat was named after the old Queen with surprise. If the pair were monarchists, that explained why they’d been so ready to foil the Custodian Guard. And if this kind of thing had happened to them before…
“Have you seen Memry?” Rindge blurted. “The girl who works at the Chicken Kitchen?”
Kay’s face filled with sympathy. They, like everyone else, had heard about the restaurant burning down just before the Big Freeze. “She hasn’t passed through here,” they said. “Sorry. Do you know her?”
“I’ve been looking for her,” Rindge said disconsolately. “As much as I can.”
“Maybe she’ll turn up. The SC’s still looking for her, yeah? People start to move again once the Thaw’s let them come out of their hidey-holes. Like water melting back into motion.”
Rindge’s heart lifted to imagine Memry simply holed up somewhere, like he had been. “Would she come here?”
“If she passes the sniff test.” Kay knelt to scratch under the cat Sissel’s chin. “You keep an eye out for our girl, yeah? Let her know she should come here if she needs help. Her friends’ll be waiting.”
“Miw!”
Relieved at the indirect invitation to stay and wait for her, Rindge sat down and allowed himself to take his hat back out. He wound his hair up one-handed, with practice, to settle it in place underneath.
“Oh!” Kay said as Rindge tugged his brim down. “You’re the Gatekeeper! I didn’t recognize you at all.”
“Most people don’t,” Rindge said, drooping at the reminder of his now former job. He went out with his hat off rarely, and among a select group of people in the Castle. Most people had never seen him without it on.
“Well, you look great.”
Rindge flushed at the unexpected compliment, and tugged his brim lower over his eyes, running a hand over the nape of his neck to check for stray hairs. “Thanks.” Gods, he’d missed company, stuck in that ghostly tavern.
“Probably better to keep that hat on for now, though,” Kay said, and flicked a finger to point under the brim. “Your eyes are starting to go green.”
Emma had Seen Jowd at a kitchen table with a hot drink, though she hadn’t been able to See the people around him; the spell was focused on Jowd, not his companions. Alma had begged her to try Cabanela next, but Emma had overextended herself trying to See a second person on the same night with the same thin moon, and gotten a splitting migraine for her trouble. Witches’ Sight was not always able to be so purposefully focused; it more often came uncalled-for.
Emma had retired to bed with an elixir Gomez made up for her, and with little else to do, the rest of them had followed suit.
Lynne was lying awake, wondering where Jowd was, and who was taking care of him.
Alma had extinguished their few candles when they went to bed (Gomez allowed them only a few; he had a horror of fire catching and kept buckets full of sand in every corner, where they put what had been swept up that morning). The only other source of light was the odd blue keystone of the arch over the doors Gomez told them not to touch, which glowed in the dark.
When Lynne saw the flicker of firelight, she sat up, sure that someone else was sneaking around with a candle to go do something that would maybe take her mind off Jowd if she went with them.
Under the threshold of the unbroken doors at the far end of the Great Chamber, there was the shadow of someone standing, waiting with a light.
Well, that was something.
Lynne got up. She meant to get on her stomach and look under the doors, seeing what she could through the gap at the threshold. But when she got within a pace of them, the golden statues unsheathed their golden swords, holding the points so they hovered an inch in front of her throat. She backed away hurriedly, and the swords went back into their sheaths, the golden armor going immobile again.
Gomez hadn’t said anything about them being Enchanted suits of armor. Lynne rubbed her throat. There wasn’t any chance of getting past the knights to the door.
What was Gomez doing with a huge pair of doors that he said went nowhere, anyway? They couldn’t be just for showing off if there was something—someone—on the other side. And they were all fancy, with elaborate Alchemical symbols hammered into the gold, even one that was split down the middle by the seam where the doors met, a palm-sized circle with seven stars and…hey, wait a second.
The metallic slide of the swords into their sheaths had woken Missile, who raised his head, snuffling, to see Lynne walking away. Lynne saw him jump up and hastily said “Missile, shhhh!”
Missile knew what “shhh” meant, even though everyone thought he didn’t. It wasn’t that he was a bad boy who couldn’t listen; it was just so much more important to say hello to everyone, even when he’d said hello to them before! They had to be welcomed home! Or warned off, if he was finding weird scent trails on the Marshes!
But it was dark and everyone else was asleep right there next to him. Missile bravely swallowed his urge and did not say Hi!! or Good morning!! He did follow Lynne out, like a good boy who knew his job was to help everyone stay safe.
“Gomez!”
Gomez had been alone too long to keep in practice at not being startled. He flinched and nearly dropped the vial he was holding when Lynne barged into the room, accompanied by a flurry of excited barking.
“Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” he demanded. “I could have been holding a vial of acid!”
Lynne went bug-eyed at the stain now decorating the front of his tunic. “Were you??”
“No.” He was experimenting with antifreeze; the walls got damper and icier every year as the Freeze from the Ice Tunnels leached through.
“Oh.” Lynne switched tracks back to her original goal. “It’s important! Missile, shhh. I need your pendant.”
Gomez’s hand went involuntarily to the lump under his shirt. The round gold Keye hung heavily on its chain. “No, you don’t.”
“What? Yes, I do! There’s someone stuck on the other side of those doors you said were a dead end. I think they’re trying to get through. Also, your armor tried to stab me.”
“The armor’s supposed to do that. It keeps people away from the doors.”
Annoyed at Gomez’s cavalier treatment of her near-death experience (okay, almost near-death, what if she hadn’t stopped in time and walked right into the sword point?), Lynne grew more stubborn. “But I’ve gotta get them open right now.”
“No,” Gomez said, “you don’t. There is nothing for you on the other side.”
“Yes, there is,” Lynne said impatiently. “I saw them, there’s a person’s shadow under the doors like someone holding a light and standing there.”
“I know what you saw. You don’t need to tell me.”
Lynne scooted around Gomez, getting in between him and the rag he was reaching for to mop up the spill. “You know already? So who is it?”
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“Tell me,” Lynne persisted. “What if it’s someone who could help? Do you know them? What if it’s Jowd.”
“It is not Jowd,” Gomez said. He sighed. “It’s me.”
“What’s you?”
“On the other side of the doors. I built those to lock away the Great Glass of Time, so no fool could Go Through without me knowing. The only person on the other side is myself, waiting for me to open the Doors of Time for him.”
Shocked, Lynne said, “But…if it’s you, then why don’t you open them?”
Gomez said, “He’ll learn why when he grows up to be me.” He reached around Lynne for the rag. “Go back to sleep. It will stop by morning.”
Lynne stayed up, Missile in her lap, and watched the shadow pace back and forth on the other side of the Doors of Time for hours before the light finally went dark.