Black House (Page 165)

"All right, Jack," Parkus says, and cocks his head up at the sky.

Okay, what have we got here? Jack thinks. We’ve got a valuable little boy, and the Fisherman knows he’s valuable. But this Mr. Munshun doesn’t have him yet, or Speedy wouldn’t be here. Deduction?

Sophie, looking at him anxiously. Parkus, still looking up into the blameless blue sky above this borderland between the Territories — what Judy Marshall calls Faraway — and the Whatever Comes Next. Jack’s mind is ticking faster now, picking up speed like an express train leaving the station. He is aware that the black man with the bald head is watching the sky for a certain malevolent crow. He is aware that the fair-skinned woman beside him is looking at him with the sort of fascination that could become love, given world enough and time. Mostly, though, he’s lost in his own thoughts. They are the thoughts of a coppiceman.

Now Bierstone’s Burnside, and he’s old. Old and not doing so well in the cognition department these days. I think maybe he’s gotten caught between what he wants, which is to keep Tyler for himself, and what he’s promised this Munshun guy. Somewhere there’s a fuddled, creaky, dangerous mind trying to make itself up. If he decides to kill Tyler and stick him in the stewpot like the witch in "Hansel and Gretel," that’s bad for Judy and Fred. Not to mention Tyler, who may already have seen things that would drive a Marine combat vet insane. If the Fisherman turns the boy over to Mr. Munshun, it’s bad for everyone in creation. No wonder Speedy said time was blowing in our teeth.

"You knew this was coming, didn’t you?" he says. "Both of you. You must have. Because Judy knew. She’s been weird for months, long before the murders started."

Parkus shifts and looks away, uncomfortable. "I knew something was coming, yes — there have been great disruptions on this side — but I was on other business. And Sophie can’t cross. She came here with the flying men and will go back the same way when our palaver’s done."

Jack turns to her. "You are who my mother once was. I’m sure of it." He supposes he isn’t being entirely clear about this, but he can’t help it; his mind is trying to go in too many directions at once. "You’re Laura DeLoessian’s successor. The Queen of this world."

Now Sophie is the one who looks uncomfortable. "I was nobody in the great scheme of things, really I wasn’t, and that was the way I liked it. What I did mostly was write letters of commendation and thank people for coming to see me . . . only in my official capacity, I always said ‘us.’ I enjoyed walking, and sketching flowers, and cataloging them. I enjoyed hunting. Then, due to bad luck, bad times, and bad behavior, I found myself the last of the royal line. Queen of this world, as you say. Married once, to a good and simple man, but my Fred Marshall died and left me alone. Sophie the Barren."

"Don’t," Jack says. He is surprised at how deeply it hurts him to hear her refer to herself in this bitter, joking way.

"Were you not single-natured, Jack, your Twinner would be my cousin."

She turns her slim fingers so that now she is gripping him instead of the other way around. When she speaks again, her voice is low and passionate. "Put all the great matters aside. All I know is that Tyler Marshall is Judy’s child, that I love her, that I’d not see her hurt for all the worlds that are. He’s the closest thing to a child of my own that I’ll ever have. These things I know, and one other: that you’re the only one who can save him."

"Why?" He has sensed this, of course — why else in God’s name is he here? — but that doesn’t lessen his bewilderment. "Why me?"

"Because you touched the Talisman. And although some of its power has left you over the years, much still remains."

Jack thinks of the lilies Speedy left for him in Dale’s bathroom. How the smell lingered on his hands even after he had given the bouquet itself to Tansy. And he remembers how the Talisman looked in the murmuring darkness of the Queen’s Pavilion, rising brightly, changing everything before it finally vanished.

He thinks: It’s still changing everything.

"Parkus." Is it the first time he’s called the other man — the other coppiceman — by that name? He doesn’t know for sure, but he thinks it may be.

"Yes, Jack."

"What’s left of the Talisman — is it enough? Enough for me to take on this Crimson King?"

Parkus looks shocked in spite of himself. "Never in your life, Jack. Never in any life. The abbalah would blow you out like a candle. But it may be enough for you to take on Mr. Munshun — to go into the furnace-lands and bring Tyler out."

"There are machines," Sophie says. She looks caught in some dark and unhappy dream. "Red machines and black machines, all lost in smoke. There are great belts and children without number upon them. They trudge and trudge, turning the belts that turn the machines. Down in the foxholes. Down in the ratholes where the sun never shines. Down in the great caverns where the furnace-lands lie."

Jack is shaken to the bottom of his mind and spirit. He finds himself thinking of Dickens — not Bleak House but Oliver Twist. And, of course he thinks of his conversation with Transy Freneau. At least Irma’s not there, he thinks. Not in the furnace-lands, not she. She got dead, and a mean old man ate her leg. Tyler, though . . . Tyler . . .

"They trudge until their feet bleed," he mutters. "And the way there . . . ?"

"I think you know it," Parkus says. "When you find Black House, you’ll find your way to the furnace-lands . . . the machines . . . Mr. Munshun . . . and Tyler."

"The boy is alive. You’re sure of that."

"Yes." Parkus and Sophie speak together.