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Drowned Country(4)
Author: Emily Tesh

“Mr Finch’s work,” said Mrs Silver.

Silver glanced at Tobias, surprised. He had never shown any signs of being artistically inclined in Silver’s company. He found his eyes straying to Tobias’s big hands, trying to imagine them holding anything as delicate as a pencil. “You have a gift, Mr Finch,” he said.

Tobias said nothing. Silver watched him a moment longer, hoping. No.

Be patient, he reminded himself.

“The picture is a copy,” said Mrs Silver, “of a portrait which hangs in the town hall. It supposedly shows a Mr Jameson Nigel, a gentleman of Rothport some fifty years ago. And this”—she moved the topmost sketch aside to reveal another, undoubtedly the same individual or a very close relative, though now he sported a powdered wig above the piercing black eyes and wore an embroidered doublet with a lace collar—“is a copy of an oil painting belonging to a local landowner, which he claims shows either a distant uncle or an old family friend of a distant uncle—he is not sure. Nor did he know a date, but by the clothing I imagine it must be two or three hundred years old. He gave the name as Sir Nigel Julian. And then this”—a third sketch, and here were the black eyes and hawk nose under a monk’s tonsure—“comes from the church on the hill; a fresco, supposedly showing one of the early Abbots of Rothling—Abbot Julius the Black.”

“An unsaintly looking fellow,” Silver managed after a moment. If this was really their vampire, that made him nine hundred years old at least. Older than Tobias, who had been the Hallow Wood’s servant for centuries before Silver took up its lordship. Older than anything Silver had ever met: unless you counted the Lord of Summer.

“Its looks are not my interest except insofar as they may help to identify the creature. Which brings us to tonight’s attempt,” said Mrs Silver. “We must locate the lair. If Maud Lindhurst is still alive, she is there. You, Henry—”

She explained. Silver reared back, affronted.

“You brought me here to be bait?” he said.

“Why else did you think I needed you?” said Mrs Silver. “The creature’s habits are well known in Rothport. I even interviewed some older fishermen who recalled meeting it in their youth. It has a history of accosting handsome young men.”

“But Maud Lindhurst—”

“—is a break in the pattern,” said Mrs Silver. She did not say anything else. Silver, who had been familiar with his mother’s profession since childhood, knew as well as she did that changes in a supernatural being’s habits seldom portended anything good. In the corner of his eye he saw that Tobias had his hands knotted together on the table and his head bowed over them. He knew it too.

Still. “I rather thought,” Silver said stiffly, “that you might need my help in some more worthwhile capacity, given my particular talents—”

“You are a capable researcher, but so am I,” Mrs Silver dismissed him. “And any business too physically demanding for my present condition can be managed by Mr Finch much more effectively than you.”

Silver had always striven to give his mother the impression that he was rather feeble, barely able in fact to lift anything heavier than a dictionary or perhaps his guitar, since he knew very well that otherwise he was likely to get dragged willy-nilly into activities involving a tiresome amount of running, fighting, and shooting. It was oddly irritating to find that he’d succeeded so well.

Not that Tobias wasn’t more capable than he was. But Silver was not quite a nonentity, whatever his mother thought.

“So,” he said, “I take it I am to stand around attractively all night, like a choice cut on display at the butcher’s—I hope you can provide me with a better coat for it? Or am I to wear only my nightshirt? And then hopefully our friendly nine-hundred-year-old man-eater will drag me to his lair, at which point the pair of you will track me down and rescue either myself and Maud Lindhurst, or myself and what is left of Maud Lindhurst, or quite possibly what is left of both of us—”

“You can defend yourself,” said Tobias softly.

Silver looked at him. Tobias’s head had come up and his eyes were fixed on Silver’s, for the first time in nearly two years. Silver had to suppress a shiver, an unaccountable sense that under the neat moustache and sideburns Tobias was still the same awesome and strange being whom Silver had first met. Nonsense. It was nonsense. Silver was awesome and strange; Tobias was a common mortal man. He was Mrs Silver’s employee. His serious look should not have such a cataclysmic effect on Silver’s composure.

“Will you provide me with a flint knife?” he managed, with rather weak sarcasm, hopefully fast enough that Tobias had not noticed his effect. Silver had no hope that he could keep it secret from his mother.

Tobias shook his head. “There’s more life in you than a vampire can bear,” was all he said. “The ones I met before, they couldn’t hurt me.”

“The few you met in your tenure as the Wild Man of Greenhollow were, I believe, considerably younger than this ancient,” Silver said. “Younger and weaker.”

“I’ll be there,” Tobias said seriously. He held Silver’s gaze. “He won’t have you long.”

Silver’s breath caught. After a moment he remembered to nod.

* * *

The sun was setting behind the hills. Eastward it was already dark; the low roar of the sea sounded out of black nothingness. Occasionally the sky spat out a few drops of rain and then changed its mind again. Silver had tried trading the shapeless tweed jacket that he had started wearing after Tobias left for a good broadcloth coat smelling faintly of mothballs which the Lindhurst parents had found on Mrs Silver’s command, but it fit so poorly that as vampire-bait it hardly made a difference.

And the jacket was warmer.

Mrs Silver was not with them. She had been to Hallerton and back in less than two days, and her leg ached; she had retired to bed early. Silver had not realised until then how very much easier it was to have her there. But he gathered his courage. To walk through Rothport with Tobias Finch alone was perhaps an opportunity.

While he was struggling to think of an opening that was suitably airy without being flippant, Tobias said, “Have you eaten?”

“I have not,” said Silver.

Tobias nodded and kept walking. His natural long stride was just slightly too fast to keep up with easily, but he adjusted quickly for Silver’s pace when he noticed. He must be used to it by now, Silver supposed, if he was always giving Mrs Silver his arm as she hobbled about. He set that thought aside quickly. He did not like how real his mother’s injury had suddenly become. He did not want to dwell on it.

Tobias led them down towards the pier. In a narrow and smoky shop on the waterfront he bought them each a slice of greasy fried fish wrapped in old news sheets. Silver watched him hand a couple of coins to the heavyset fellow behind the counter, determinedly not thinking of anything. They wandered down the pier—or Silver did, and Tobias followed him—to eat the fish. The heat of the double handful of newspaper kept Silver’s hands warm; he burned his tongue on the first hot mouthful. He had not tasted anything like it in years.

It was impossible to pretend Tobias was not there. He did not push himself on Silver’s attention, but he was simply too big to ignore. Silver half a dozen times nearly started to speak, but no line of conversation he could think of seemed right. In the end he made himself look out across the water awhile, as if he were meditating on the ocean’s glories. A part of him watched himself do it and wanted to laugh: Look at you, pretending to be so distant and unconcerned; the delightful young gentleman distracted by the splendours of Nature!

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