Chapter Text
Sundown found Leonie and Cabal drinking tea in a belated sandwich bar by the train station. She had taken a pill for the pain - an aspirin, not the nameless pink tablet Cabal had offered once they were clear of the lair. He had not taken anything. They had emerged, astonishingly, into daylight; it felt like it should have been night by now, if not dawn. She had never been so happy to have the cold wet wind on her face or feel dewy grass on her ankles as they walked back to the road.
They faced each other over the table. Cabal’s plate was pushed neatly to the side, and Leonie was still making her way through half the menu. She was ravenous, and Cabal could raise an eyebrow if he liked. He didn’t. He had been unusually polite, which was to say silent on their walk here. She was tolerably certain he wasn't considering killing her.
The chill electric light showed up the bloodstains and stone dust. The hard-faced owner was uninquisitive, but Leonie felt conspicuous: scratched, torn, and alone with a man at night. She and Cabal had eventually fallen into talking: nothing about the last few days but about the wreck of the Princess Hortense and after. "Have you ever actually informed on me to the police, Miss Barrow?”
She looked up from her soup. "Once, after I was rescued in Senza. It was two or three days afterwards, in the hospital."
"Odd that it was never publicised."
She shrugged.
"And never here?”
"No.”
"Why not?”
She raised a hand, caught the sullen eye of the owner and ordered more tea with a polite smile. She was insatiably thirsty, and it might keep her awake until the train arrived. She examined an oyster cracker. "No-one ever asked, for one thing. And life at the university is uncomfortable enough without our acquaintance being public knowledge. It might have been different if I’d known where they could find you. Why do you ask?”
“Idle curiosity: one of my failings. Yes, Miss Barrow, it is far down the list, I know."
He was right about his curiosity. She practically had to drag him out of Twiccian’s rooms; he seemed prepared to fuss over the spilled supplies and bent instruments indefinitely. After a bracing little exchange of opinions, Cabal had agreed they were both in poor condition, and an exit from the chamber of horrors might be well-advised.
He had mixed a powerful bone solvent (a formula he had by memory, it seemed) which they had bottled and taken to the door where the skeleton snake waited. Opening the thick door they found it waiting stupidly for them, its skull pressed nearly against the wood. It was relatively simple to fling the fragile bottles at it and close the door as they shattered. They would wait in the library until the sounds of thrashing subsided and then repeat the procedure until it was done. Cabal inventoried the unpromising shelves while they waited and scornfully selected a few volumes to take back, more on general principle than because he wanted them.
Finally, they could pick their way through the hissing and stinking piles of bone to the labyrinth. Cabal led them out as unhesitatingly as he had led them in. The ascent up the rope was exquisitely painful for them both.
Leonie had been unsure even this unprepossessing restaurant would have them, but Cabal had walked to a table and installed himself, blandly oblivious to the antagonistic look the man behind the counter gave them. She had ordered in her most educated accent. “You’re going to go back, aren’t you?” she asked, pushing her soup bowl away and reaching for the roast beef sandwiches.
“Possibly. Twiccian owes me a book.”
“Do you think you can defeat the demon?”
“With foreknowledge and proper preparation, yes. Or I might be able to avoid triggering the ward.’ He finished his tea and didn’t find any more in his pot. The owner was avoiding Cabal’s summons. "How far did you get in tracing my home?”
Leonie finished her sandwich before replying. "Your letter, the one about my soul, had a postmark. You likely use a mail service, but it started me thinking. Your appearance at dad’s house in the summer suggested you don't live terribly far, given the state you were in. Yesterday you said something that suggested you don’t live near here. Then, when you left the hospital…’ she grimaced. "The ticket clerk was amenable to bribery and a portrayal of an anxious wife.' She caught the owner's eye. "Might we get some more tea for the gentleman, please? And lemon.” The grunt of assent suggested that tea and lemon would be provided for the scarlet hussy.
Cabal had spent time cultivating a subtle air of menace, purely as a practical measure. Being able to project a subliminal stink of violence and unpredictability smoothed paths and, among other things, meant he wasn't kept waiting for his tea. It wasn’t working today. He examined his watch. He could be home before dawn, check on the experiments, clean up, and sleep for a few hours before starting a day’s work.
Leonie raised a brow at the watch. “I’m going to start thinking you’re bored, Cabal. Is it the company?”
“I am estimating when I can be back at work."
"Dogs to feed? Cats to let in? A sinister monkey to oversee?"
He rubbed his forehead. “Everyone has to bring up Svensson and his monkey. No. Experiments to monitor. Books to read. A return visit to plan. My life is generally a quiet one."
A steel bowl of lemon slices clattered on the table. The owner wanted Cabal to know where he stood on the subject of suit-wearing arseholes who asked for Assam tea and sneered at his seafood salad sandwiches. And who was he to look all high and mighty, consorting as he was with a fast woman (who well-mannered as she may be, looked like she'd been dragged through the gutter) in a god-fearing town like Tedmoor.
The owner returned to his counter and pretended not to watch the young couple. They were failing to live up to his expectations for good-for-nothing, dancing, drinking young people. The man had a face like a wet Wednesday and watched the woman narrowly. She was pretty, but the owner rather thought she should have been wearing some sort of red frock instead of tweeds, and smoking a cigarette.
They were old enough that decent folk would have been married by their age, but neither wore a ring, and they were obviously not married to each other - no man had to look that hard at a woman he’d married, unless something had gone very wrong - but they were on good enough terms. Girls who came in with young men generally didn’t order a soup, a vegetable, two sandwiches, and an ice unless they wanted farmhand jokes, even with their brothers. And while the man had a filthy look for him whenever he walked by the table, when he looked at her it was careful, not nasty.
The owner washed his hands of it. He took up a broom and started to sweep the floor meaningfully. The man smiled at him. Whatever was going on between the two of them was very modern, and not welcome in his respectable sandwich bar. You get all sorts, he thought, by the train station.
***
They took the same train out of town. Cabal took a window seat and set himself to stare down every tree between the station and their destination. Leonie took the seat next to him, staring at the upholstery opposite. They were pressed into their seats as the train pulled away from the station, and they felt the soothing rhythm of wheels on tracks. For such a disaster, he thought, it had actually gone fairly well. He and Leonie had worked smoothly together. Indeed (he tried not to smile at the window) the demon hadn't quite known what hit it once she had taken charge of the situation. But he didn't like the idea of the demon continuing under Twiccian's control. And he owed Twiccian more than a raided library.
And what did he owe Miss Barrow? Nothing, perhaps. Gratitude, maybe, though it was not his forté. He had noted her change towards him. No threats, fewer insults. She had lost some of her untempered idealism, if not her goodness. Although it the idea seemed peculiar to him, he thought she might not hate him. But what could he do, invite her over for tea? Never mind the psychotic pixies, Leonie, and no, don’t look in the box on the mantlepiece, and how is your father? And was he to be distracted from his work for social reasons? It would never do. But something half-starved within him groaned, before he compressed it into silence.
Leonie drowsed, by degrees, and meditated on the subject of Johannes Cabal. She remembered him arriving, injured and hunted, at the Barrow threshold and the moment she had invited him in, and with him a world of danger for her and her father. She was tempted to make excuses for him now, but it would be the purest wishful thinking. Almost without intending it, she continued out loud. “It’s bothered me, you know, the way I ran you off last summer. I can’t imagine why, after you put us in danger without even asking. I’d do it again. But….”
Cowed trees whipped through Cabal’s line of sight. He said to the window, “it was justified.” She glanced at his profile, silhouetted against the dim glass. He was still wearing his tinted spectacles and the side-baffles hid his eyes in the evening light. He said nothing else. She pressed on; she felt like she was approaching a skittish cat, not a heavily-armed necromancer.
“If you ever changed your mind about my interviewing you, I would hide your identity. Or if you. If you wanted to talk, Johannes. You could write.”
"I do not recall giving you permission to use my given name, Miss Barrow.” And then, more honestly, "what do we have to discuss?”
“I would have thought we had more subject matter for conversation than most, Mr. Cabal. " But then, more kindly, "never mind.” The train carried them further into the dark until Cabal thought she had fallen asleep. He wished he had something other than rudeness to fall back upon. He had a natural aptitude for rudeness, found it pleasurable as well as useful in keeping the officious and stupid at bay. But now he wished he had something else with which to turn away Leonie Barrow.
Unexpectedly, she broke the long silence. "I don't really want to know where you live, Cabal. If I did, I might have to tell the police. But I wouldn't mind... I don't know what. Hearing from you. Knowing you're well. You're oddly restful company, when you aren’t being too much yourself.”
The faint breath from the window might have been a laugh.
Leonie huddled in her seat as if she was cold, though her coat was spread over her knees. His overcoat was slung over the seat across from him. He could put it over her. He looked out the window and watched the fields blankly. His soul ached these days, except when he was in his laboratory. It was like a weather-wise knee or the return of blood to hypothermic limbs.
April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers.
***
Cabal surmounted the cellar stairs and stared at his kitchen absently, as if he had forgotten what it was for. The past three days had been spent in recovering some of the time lost in his Tedmoor adventure. He had scarcely eaten or slept, but the hours had vanished in the lab. His head pounded from fumes and close study of bad type. Now he was starving, bristly, and exhausted. So. He bathed. He shaved. He catalogued the limited options in the pantry and reminded himself to add a grocer's order to his plans for the next day. While he ate his eggs and beans he thought of Twiccian's vast crates of tins. That would be convenie- no. No, no, no.
Something made him shiver. He looked at his footprints on the tile. There was a pathway from the cellar to the kitchen to the stairs which led to his bedchamber. The house was sullenly quiet, except for the dead things and the grandfather clock in the hall. An unnamed emotion seized him. There was dedication, he thought, and then there was mania. What had Twiccian been like, when he was only half-mad?
He could think up some pretext to see Parkin, he thought, and then rejected the idea with loathing. He would descend into dribbling dementia, he thought venomously, before he petitioned the village constable for companionship. Well, then what?
He had an idea. He dismissed it. He considered it, and dismissed it again. Then, while still pretending to himself that he had dismissed it, he went upstairs to Horst's old room.
It had been made over into a guest room after its occupant’s departure for university, but some of his possessions were still in the cupboard. Cabal ignored the skeleton on the bed (no relation), found a chess set, and brought it down to the table in the parlour. He set it up.
He sat in his chair by the fireplace, then he mentally placed Miss Barrow in the chair opposite. He considered his opponent. Her mind, her likely style of play. The box on the mantelpiece hummed something happily. In the dark, the garden fairies were whetting their tiny blades and singing about organ meats.
A short time later he sat at his father's desk in the library and took out a sheet of notepaper.
Miss Barrow;
Pawn to King’s four.
regards,
C.
He addressed the envelope to the women’s residence at the university. He would send it with the grocer’s boy the next day, who would dispatch it to his mail service. In two days, possibly three, he might hear back; the thought was soothing. He had enjoyed Leonie's theoretical presence. Tomorrow, he would start to plan his return to Twiccian's lair. Possibly with his bicycle and a small trunk. An unaccustomed peace settled over the house in the valley.