Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
The varieties of thanaturgic thread are many, one of the strongest and rarest being Orcus thread, spun from the tendrils of soul that trail a semblance’s arrival into the Endless Dark. It is also illegal.
—Seamster guidebook
In the shadows of Flitcroft alley, we stood face-to-face with the woman in the tricorn hat and the man with the crazy red hair.
The man had the inverted Y neck tattoo I’d seen on the others; her neck was hidden beneath a scarlet infinity scarf.
My heart raced. I tried raising my knife, but my arm locked.
I realized the ward must be preventing me from trying to fight.
The woman’s belt hung with a long black knife and spools of twine, as did the man’s.
But she left them alone and raised her lantern between us.
The lantern itself looked like an hourglass with a shining stone at the center and three metal rods connecting its top and base.
The lantern had a looping wire handle, but she was holding it by a pistol grip set into one of the metal rods.
The man raised his lantern, too, its glass protected by a cage of tarnished steel. He whispered, “Burn,” and the stone inside his lantern rose to a bright shine.
Together they seemed to scan my friends’ shadows. Then the woman drew her bow across one of her lantern’s rods. The stone flared and the bow sang another brassy note. She and the man looked down this time at my shadow, then up at each other, and frowned.
I didn’t know what they saw there, but I suddenly wished I could somehow prevent them from seeing it.
All I could think to do was look back at their shadows—crisp and dark grey and rimmed in gold.
There were black spots, too, inside broad patterns of pulsing lights.
I’d never imagined a shadow could hold so much inside it, and it scared me that I was seeing it at all now.
Church stepped between us. “You’ve no authority here.”
Cassius stepped up next to him. Blood coated his neck and shoulder, running down his arm and dripping from his knuckles past his lowered sword.
The man uttered a soft word, and his lantern faded, returning us to deep shadows.
Lady pointed her baton toward Henry’s flat. “Has something happened to Mr. Wilkinson?”
The woman smiled. “We’re investigating the events of the evening.
Perhaps you’d like to join us, offer what help you can?” No one moved or spoke.
“Hide behind your ward then,” said the woman. “Soon enough it will tighten around your lovely throats. Until then . . .”
“I should rather imagine,” added the man, looking directly at me, “that you’ll find yourself flushed out in order to account for whatever misfortune has befallen your friend.”
Church patted his satchel. “We welcome any opportunity to account for ourselves. Be sure you’re ready to do the same.”
The man looked from me to Cassius to Cassius’s bindings. Then he and the woman turned, stepped back through the barrier, and continued toward Henry’s flat.
“London has crazy amounts of CCTV,” Chuey said. “And AI-assisted facial recognition software.” He always kept up on the latest tech. “We’ll just tell the cops to check it for these Ren-faire rejects.”
“They’ll never see them for what they are,” said Church.
“Let’s talk about it back at the Horse.” Lady put an arm around Cassius and started down Flitcroft in the other direction.
We followed her back to the pub, where she helped Cassius onto a cot and drew a small, red first aid kit from her bag. She wiped his nasty wound clean with alcohol and set to stitching it.
Chuey shut the door behind us. He pulled down the old-fashioned crossbar, sat near the door, and pulled his rosary from his pocket.
Church slid in at his table, placed his satchel beside him on the bench, and reassembled his cane.
I dumped my knife in the bar sink and slipped in opposite Church.
“Okay, what the hell is going on? Someone needs to talk to me.”
Church fetched his cigar from his inner jacket pocket. “First things first, Jack. Let’s have a look at your chest.”
I lifted my torn shirt. “How does anyone survive a point-blank shot from an S&W 500?”
“You’re sure it was a gun?” Church asked.
“I grew up around guns. And Dad took me to the range most Saturdays.” Chuey came over and poked my sternum. “I think you’re in shock, man. Or you hit your head when you fell. There’s a little blood, but you’re clean, bro.”
“I felt that ghost-faced mother shoot me right here.” I tapped my chest. “You’ll begin to understand it all better, Jack, if you first trust what you can see.” Lady nodded at the floor, then continued her suturing.
I looked down at the shadows of my friends thrown by all the candles burning on the tables.
Church’s and Lady’s shadows were like Cassius’s, faint and blurred at the edges.
But in the candlelight, they shimmered like ripples on a moonlit lake.
In this light, Cassius’s shadow did the same.
Their shadows were lighter than the lantern-bearers’ had been, but like theirs, dark spots interrupted the patterns of shimmering light.
The shapes of some of the spots reminded me of the wine-splash birthmark on the back of my neck.
More than that, the spots and patterns seemed to have a kind of flow, though I couldn’t quite make sense of them until I began to see the rhythmic pulses of light like gleaming musical notes. They were as distinctive to me as fingerprints might be to a detective.
Lady’s pattern lit up with the lovely three-beat cadence of a waltz.
The light of Church’s pattern didn’t oscillate as much, moving back and forth between a pair of gleam notes the way most Johnny Cash songs did.
Cassius’s pattern pulsed in tight formations, like the close-set minor notes of Wagner’s Ring Cycle funeral march.
Their spots obscured some of the gleam notes in the songs of them, but that also made them easier to see.
I pointed at Lady’s shadow. “You’re a . . .” Lady rolled her eyes sidelong toward Chuey. “Chuey and I don’t have secrets,” I told her.
“The proper term is vestige.” She pulled another stitch in Cassius’s neck. “A vestige is a semblance that has been bound to a body. A semblance is a soul that hasn’t moved on after death.”
Cassius had said something about that. “And the one who binds them is a thanatist?”
“Just so,” said Church.
“What’s a thanatist?” Chuey asked. “Like a necromancer,” I said.
“Again,” Cassius called from the corner, “be careful with whom you use that term. And even then it describes only a small portion of what a thanatist can do.”
Chuey muttered something I couldn’t quite hear and trudged back to his stool to work his rosary.
I could have used some loud music just then, to help me think. I took a breath, trying to slow things down. “So, I wasn’t able to see you for who you are until I came back.”
Church smiled. “Oh, Jack. Don’t tell me you don’t know us for who we are.”
My first night in London, I’d wandered into the Iron Horse.
No connections in the city. No place to crash.
I was scared, and the old pressure had been tearing away at my insides, even though I’d tried to run five thousand miles away from it.
Church and Lady had invited me to sit with them, no questions about my lost-in-the-city look.
They dragged me into a hilarious debate over which Deep Purple vocalist was the best, like I’d been there every night for years, and used my name as comfortably as they used each other’s.
“You’re right,” I said. “And you do look the same . . . but also different.” “It’s called the Enigma Covenant,” said Church. He held out one hand and used the other to trace some gilded stitching just inside his shirt cuff. I could see a faint glow inside them, like Cassius’s bindings.
“Thanatists weave a special thread known as ‘bunda’ into wristbands, bracelets, necklaces, and even clothing”—Church tapped his cuff—“which can then bind a semblance to a body. To the mortal mind, this thread can also disguise the thanaturgic reality, usually suggesting only an approximation of the truth.” He pointed to a symbol in his cuff—thread woven into the shape of a theater mask.
I studied the design of it. “Cassius has a symbol like this in his threads, too.” “Most vestiges do.” Church called over to Chuey. “Chuey, what do you see when you look at Lady’s patient?”
Chuey glanced at Cassius. “Guy looks like a linebacker in old military fatigues.”
“You see, Jack,” said Church, “the thread allows the thanaturgic world to hide in plain sight, thus avoiding human interference.”
“That why London’s CCTV won’t be any help identifying those Ren-faire thugs?” I asked.
“The vestiges, yes,” said Church. “Thanatists themselves, though, come by their camouflage naturally, so to speak. As for Lady and me, we don’t appear as drastically different because we’ve acclimated to our environment, its fashions, and more importantly, we’ve fallen in love with the music.”
Chuey tapped the chest of his tight Kamelot band T-shirt. “So, you’re not totally insane.”
Chuey’s shadow, lying on the entry rug behind him, had the dark shimmer of the lantern-bearers, but with a crisp black outline and fewer spots. And its sequence of gleam notes had a jazzy groove.
I looked back at Church’s shirt cuff. “There are a lot of symbols on your bindings.”
“That is a lengthy topic,” said Church. “And one I think best taken another time.”
“Fair enough.” I pointed at the floor. “But what about the patterns and spots I see in your shadows?”
Lady smiled. “The patterns are the unique expressions of who we are.
And the spots are wounds of the heart—some given, some received.”
I nodded, though I didn’t truly understand. “Lady, you’re actually a doctor, then?”