The Last Suitor. A J McMahon
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hands outstretched high in the air at every street junction, laughing cheerfully every now and then for no reason at all that Ben could see, and so their journey continued. But it dawned on Ben after a while that Nicholas’s proposed route would take them through a part of town that Ben would prefer not to travel through this late at night, and it was now that Ben properly thought the matter through, and having done so Ben came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the road.
‘Mr Raspero,’ Ben said, ‘the route which you propose is inadvisable. It must be amended.’
‘And why so?’ Nicholas asked interestedly.
‘There are certain areas of New Landern that are best avoided at this time of night.’
‘And why’s that?’ Nicholas asked, still interested.
Ben sighed as if he was talking to an idiot. ‘They are best avoided, Mr Raspero. You are newly arrived in New Landern — trust me.’
‘But what are we talking about?’ Nicholas insisted on knowing. ‘Giant bears? Crocodiles? I mean, what is it we are avoiding?’
Ben took a very deep breath, sighed very loudly, took another very deep breath, and said, ‘Mr Raspero, New Landern is home to a wide variety of people, some of whom may as well be bears or crocodiles in human form; be that as it may, the route you have proposed passes directly through a part of New Landern which presents dangers that we will circumvent by adopting an alternate route. There are dark alleys on the route you have proposed that we should not walk through at this time of night.’
‘Do you know who you are, Ben?’ Nicholas asked.
‘We will go that way,’ Ben declared, pointing with his left forefinger to his left, ‘then past the Quella Monument, right onto Barclay Street and so on. Yes, that is by far the most sensible choice. It is the longer way, but much the safer.’
‘Your mother was Lena Raspero, granddaughter of the twenty-fourth Baron of Raspero,’ Mr Nicholas Raspero informed Mr Benjamin Clark. ‘There is Raspero blood in your veins, Ben, and that Raspero blood goes back to Daniel himself. For six centuries, the Rasperos have broken their enemies and left them in pieces on the ground, and now you are afraid to go into a dark alley! Think for a moment of how low you have fallen!’
‘It is not a matter of being afraid,’ Ben said sharply, ‘it is a matter of not being foolish.’
‘I’ll give you a choice, Ben,’ Nicholas said equally sharply, ‘you can come with me or go your way. It’s up to you.’ And with that he simply turned and set off without a backward glance. Ben hesitated and then followed him. Later in life, looking back on that moment, Ben wondered why he had after all followed Nicholas. He had every reason to go his own way, not least Nicholas’s open acknowledgement that he could, but he did not. He went Nicholas’s way, and it did not seem to him later that he had, in fact, made a choice at all. His feet, almost of their own accord, had taken the rest of his body with them as they went after his excitable country cousin. Perhaps it was that Nicholas had for the first time spoken sharply to him; perhaps without having realised it, he had fallen under the influence of Nicholas’s relentless friendliness, based as it was on something unconditional, a blood relationship that was neither deserved or earned but which simply existed. For whatever reason Ben followed Nicholas, his apprehensions growing with each street they walked along. Nicholas was as annoyingly cheerful as ever, directing their progress by raising his hands in the air at each street junction and pointing the way they would take with a laugh and by saying out loud the name of the street they were about to walk along.
Everything in general was becoming dirtier and less well-kept. Broken windows like missing teeth began to appear in the walls of the houses. There was a bundle of rags on a nearby street-corner that might have been the cloth wrappings of a human being, or might not have been. Passers-by looked at Ben as if it was obvious he did not belong here, but they did not look at Nicholas in the same way, Ben noted with a certain resentment. Nicholas had no fear of being there, and so his presence was ordinary and unremarked, but Ben’s fear was as obvious as a large red balloon in the hand of a child.
To Ben’s wide-eyed gaze the most innocent sight, such as a dog’s head looking out of a window, began to take on an air of malevolent unreality. The streets seemed to take on more than three dimensions in their journey through time as if shifting geometrically around a complicated axis. Weeds grew in holes where lamp-posts had once stood, taken away too long ago for their light to even be remembered now. The world itself was becoming darker than night.
The further they walked on their way, or Nicholas’s way to be more accurate, the more Ben’s apprehensions grew, but there was no backing out of anything now, and so it came to be that the two cousins turned down Octave Alley as they travelled together side by side through the dark heart of New Landern.
Octave Alley sloped downwards, its cobbled stones wet from a recent shower of rain. The eaves of the neighbouring houses stood over them as dark silhouettes against the nighttime sky. The bright moon, waxing in its second quarter, shone a silvery light over Octave Alley, forming numerous reflections like silver coins scattered here and there by a generous hand. The moonlit brightness of the centre of the alley, like a Milky Way all of its own, under the star-strewn dome of the nighttime sky arching above and the neighbouring inky darkness of the shadows of the houses lining the alley was a silver-splashed darkness which the two travellers passed through at that time.
Two men emerged from the shadows of a doorway to their left to stand in front of them. Ben’s heart leaped into his chest and he looked around, panicking and trying to decide how they could make a run for it.
‘Please help us, guvnor,’ one of them pleaded, in what might have been a poor attempt at pleading or a mocking pretence of pleading, ‘Me and me mate, we’re out of work see, we thought maybe a gent like you could help us out with a few spare strada, what you say, guv?’ He had a large scar on his left cheek that was so deep it twisted his face sideways and upwards.
It was certainly noticeable, despite their apparent pleading, that they did not have their hands outstretched like the beggars they claimed to be; far from it, they held their wands in their hands in combat readiness.
They were like figures in a nightmare to Ben, and just like in a real nightmare he couldn’t run, frozen to the spot by his desperate desire to get away.
‘What about your other three companions hiding over there?’ Nicholas asked with a vague wave of his left hand. ‘Do they need money also?’
There was a harsh laugh from the shadows to their right and three figures emerged, their wands in their hands pointing at Nicholas.
‘You’re a smart one, aren’t you?’ said the ringleader. ‘Now empty your pockets!’
Ben was trembling from head to foot but as he looked across at Nicholas he saw something so astonishing that his fear momentarily left him. Nicholas, his hand resting on the hilt of his wand, was actually smiling! He seemed to see nothing at all threatening in his current circumstances. It was as if he was in a perfectly ordinary, even amusing, situation which required only the most casual of attention, but even Ben, who was not well versed in such things, could see that his stance was the fighting stance of a wandfighter. ‘My pockets are already empty,’ Nicholas said calmly, ‘so how can they be emptied? I fail to see your logic.’
The ringleader was obviously an impatient man who required his commands to be carried out without delay, because on seeing Nicholas fail to comply with his earlier request he shouted, ‘Take them down!’ and the fight began.
Wandfighters wore bracelets called karns around their wrists and ankles; these karns were made of leather straps lined with magnetised metal; by use of their wands acting on these karns they could move their bodies through the air at astonishing speeds with enormous agility. They also had mobile karns, usually four each, which could be brought out and used against their enemies in a wandfight, as to fasten these karns onto your opponent’s body was to be able to move your opponent’s body wherever you chose. Furthermore, if a wandfighter could gain direct control of an opponent’s karns already fastened to their body the same result obviously