Derek Landy – Bedlam (страница 8)
But there was no denying it: Caisson was an oddball.
She couldn’t blame him, of course. He’d been tortured pretty much non-stop for ninety years. That would lead anyone to hop on an imaginary plane and take a sojourn from reality. His flesh was scarred, his silver hair – so like his mother’s – grew only in clumps from a damaged scalp, and his eyes always seemed to be focused on something not quite in front of him, and not quite in the distance.
The fact was, though, he could have been a lot worse. According to Caisson, this was all down to his jailer, Serafina. She knew that if he retreated deep enough into his mind there wouldn’t be much point in torturing his body. So, every few weeks Caisson would be given the chance to recover, to get strong … and then it would happen all over again.
The whole thing was just so delightfully sadistic. Razzia hoped one day to meet Serafina. She’d been hitched to that Mevolent fella from ages ago, the one who’d caused all that bother with the war and all. Razzia reckoned she could learn a thing or two from someone like that.
Abyssinia sighed. “What do you think?”
Razzia blinked at her in the mirror. Abyssinia clearly wasn’t asking about her hair, because it was the same as it always was – long and silver. The red bodysuit, maybe? Abyssinia’s recently regrown body was still pretty new, and the suit did a lot to keep it maintained, but she’d been wearing variations of it for months and so Razzia didn’t think she had chosen now to ask how she looked.
Must be Caisson again.
“Well,” Razzia said, “the real question here, Abyssinia, is what do
Abyssinia exhaled. “I think we press ahead.”
“Yeah,” said Razzia. “Me too.”
“This is what we’ve been working towards, and I shouldn’t let new developments derail us from our goals. I’ve been promising you a new world for years, and I’m not going to abandon you, not when the end is finally in sight.”
“Good to hear.”
“But I just don’t know what to do about the Darkly thing.”
Razzia did her best to look concerned. She did this by pursing her lips and frowning at the ground. She didn’t see what the problem was. The Darkly Prophecy foretold a battle between the King of the Darklands and the Chosen One, Auger Darkly, when the boy was seventeen years old. That was still something like two years away. Plenty of time to kill the Darkly kid before he could kill Caisson. It all seemed simple enough to Razzia.
Abyssinia, like most people, had a tendency to overthink things.
“Prophecies are dodgy,” Razzia said, applying a bit of Redrum lipstick. “If a prophecy foretells what happens in the future, if nothing changes from this point onwards, then all you have to do to avert that prophecy is not do what you otherwise would have done.
Abyssinia frowned. “I don’t think that’s entirely true, though.”
“What do I know?” Razzia asked, shrugging. With the back of her hand, she smudged the lipstick to one side, then down to her chin.
Valkyrie let herself into her parents’ house, went straight to the kitchen and found her mother reading at the table.
“Oh, good God!” Melissa Edgley said, jerking upright.
Valkyrie laughed. “Sorry. Thought you’d heard me.”
Melissa got up, hugged her. “You don’t make a sound when you walk. I suppose that’s all your ninja training.”
“I don’t have ninja training.”
“Sorry,” her mum said. “Your secret ninja training.”
Valkyrie grinned, and eyed the notebook on the table. “What are you reading that has you so engrossed?”
“This,” said Melissa, “is your great-grandfather’s diary. One of several, in fact. Your dad found them in the attic, packed away with a load of junk.”
“Ah, diaries,” said Valkyrie. “The selfies of days gone by. What are they like?”
“They’re beautiful, actually. Beautiful handwriting and beautiful writing.”
“So that’s where Gordon got his talent from.”
“Well, he didn’t lick it off a stone.” Melissa hesitated, then looked up. “Your dad’s in the other room. He’s, uh … not in the best of moods.”
“What’s wrong?”
Melissa waved the diary. “He’s flicked through a few of these. Your great-granddad was a firm believer in the legend that the Edgleys are descended from the Ancient Ones.”
“The Last of the Ancients,” Valkyrie corrected. “But why does that make him grumpy? He knows it’s all true now.”
“And that,” her mother said, “is the problem.”
Valkyrie took a moment. “Ah,” she said. “Maybe I should talk to him.”
“That might help.”
Valkyrie walked into the living room. Desmond was sitting in his usual chair. The cricket was on.
“Hello, Father,” she said.
“Hello, Daughter,” he responded, not taking his eyes off the screen.
She sat on the couch. “Enjoying this, are you?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Who’s playing?”
Desmond nodded at the TV. “They are.”
“Good game?”
“Not sure.”
“Who’s winning?”
“Don’t know.”
“What are the rules?”
“No idea.”
“I didn’t know you even liked cricket.”
He sat up straighter. “This is cricket?”
She settled back. “Mum told me about the diaries.”
Desmond muted the TV. “My granddad had the best stories,” he said. “The three of us would sit round his armchair and he’d just … I don’t know. Regale us, I suppose. Regale us with family legends about magic men and women, doing all these crazy things, all because we were descended from the Last of the Ancients. But my father, well … he’d grown up with those stories and he was sick of them. He suffered from a, I suppose you’d call it a deficit of imagination. And he used to ridicule the old man, every chance he got. In front of us. I didn’t like that.”
“Right,” said Valkyrie.
“And Fergus followed suit. Turned his back on granddad and his stories. He’d always needed our father’s approval more than Gordon or me, so siding with him against what they both saw as nonsense and fairy stories was one way of building a bond Fergus felt he was missing. I wonder what he’d say now if we told him the truth. I don’t think I could do that to him.”
Valkyrie didn’t say anything to that. It wasn’t her place.
“Me, I loved the stories,” Desmond continued. “They meant something. They meant there was more to life than what I could see around me. They meant I could be more than what I was. Because of my granddad, I wasn’t restricted like my friends were. I had, I suppose, a purpose, if I wanted to seize it.”
“So you believed him,” said Valkyrie.
“I did,” Desmond said. “For a few years. When I was a kid. But I got to age ten, I think, and my dad sat me down and told me there were no such things as wizards and monsters. How wrong he was, eh?” Desmond smiled. “Gordon was the troublesome one. Always had been. Even his name rankled our dad. Fergus and I had good strong Irish names – but Gordon … ha. My mother insisted on naming him after the doctor who delivered him. It was her first pregnancy and there were complications, but that doctor worked a miracle, and the future best-selling author came into the world and brightened it with every moment he was here. Our granddad passed all those stories, all that wonder, down to Gordon, and he just absorbed it. He believed, like I did, but unlike me he never allowed our father to trample that belief. That’s what he had that I didn’t, I suppose. A strength.” Desmond shifted in his chair. “All those stories, they’re in the diaries. You should read them.”
“I will,” said Valkyrie.
Desmond took in a breath. It was shaky. He expelled it slowly, and looked at her. “I’m glad we know about the magic,” he said. “It’s terrifying, knowing that you’re out there, endangering your life, and it makes the world a scarier place, but I’m glad nonetheless. I wish I’d kept believing when I was younger, I really do. Still, I’m thankful Gordon did. Our granddad needed
Valkyrie didn’t know what to say, so she got up and hugged her dad. He hugged her back, and then shrugged himself out of his bad mood and turned off the TV.
“Cricket is a silly game,” he said, “and none of it makes any sense. Where’s your mum?”
“Kitchen,” she said, and followed him out.