Mordant

Chapter Eight: The Drowned City

Linus wrote back to Tom Riddle on the following day, asking him what he was doing these days, where he lived, and what exactly was the nature of his proposal. Riddle’s reply was, to say the least, evasive. It concluded:

... My organisation is an international one, and it would be most convenient for you to meet with one of my representatives at the Café Lanval in the City of Ys, on the fifth of February or as soon thereafter as you find yourself sufficiently recovered to make the journey. All of your questions will be answered at that time.

I await your reply with eagerness.

T. M. R.

The City of Ys lay off the coast of Brittany – not on an island, but actually under the sea. It was inhabited only by wizards, and survived in the memories of local Muggles only as a dim legend of the past.

Celia frowned slightly when Linus told her about the proposed meeting. “Rather a long way for you to travel, so soon after the full moon. Do you know anyone you could stay with?”

Linus shook his head. “I told Remus I was thinking of traveling to Brittany – I didn’t go into detail about why – and he gave me the address of another werewolf who lives in Ys. The name was something like Bis... Bisclarvaux, I think ...”

“Oh yes, Giles Bisclavret. He was an old friend of my husband’s. I think you’ll like him.”

“To tell you the truth, I wasn’t planning to look him up. I mean, I barely speak the language, and it’s awkward trying to make polite conversation with somebody just because you both happen to be werewolves. ‘So tell me, do you like to transform with your clothes on or off, and by the way, where were you on the night I was bitten?’ It just doesn’t make for good small talk.”

 “I see what you mean.” Celia still looked concerned.

“Honestly, Celia, I’ll be fine. If I’m not feeling up to the journey home, I’ll get a room at an inn or something.”

“Do you know, I haven’t seen Giles in years. I think I just might go with you.”

Linus wasn’t quite sure whether Celia meant she was in the mood for a romantic getaway or whether she thought he might need backup, but either way, he was pleased.

 

                                                            *          *          *

The duty of brewing Remus’ Wolfsbane Potion was shared among the handful of Order members who were capable of it, in a loose sort of rota. At the end of January, it was Severus Snape’s turn, a ritual which Remus always dreaded.

While Kingsley and Tonks generally signed the Ministry witness forms automatically and allowed him to take the potion in the privacy of his own room, Snape insisted on standing in the doorway and watching every swallow. Remus couldn’t very well object – it was the law – but he always felt a bit like an exhibit at a zoo. He tried offering his former colleague tea, partly because it would seem less awkward if they were both sitting at the table with something to sip, and partly because his mother had instilled him with a vague but unshakeable conviction that most problems got better if you offered people tea.

“No, thank you,” said Snape. “It isn’t your tea to give away, is it? I shouldn’t like to get you in trouble with your very ... charitable host. After all, I don’t imagine you have anywhere else to go.”

Remus eyed the stone jug that stood at the end of the sideboard. If his aim was good enough, Snape would never know what hit him...

He firmly dismissed the thought and reminded himself that he was at least better off than Linus, waiting in the St. Mungo’s queue for hours. The chances that Snape would be willing to brew an additional dose of potion for him were slim to none, but Remus resolved to ask Kingsley, who would be taking his turn next month, if he’d mind preparing a little extra.

The tension in the room grew palpable when Sirius entered. Predictably, he and Snape bristled at each other for a minute or two; Remus kept one hand on his wand in case he needed to separate them by force; and at last the Potions Master suddenly remembered an urgent appointment and Disapparated.

Remus immediately allowed the vein of sarcasm he’d been suppressing while Snape was present to find release. “Would anybody else like to watch me take my potion?” he inquired of the ceiling. “Should I start selling tickets?”

“Bit snippy today, aren’t you, mate? This is my kitchen, you know.”

Remus let out a long, slow breath. “I’m sorry. Just feeling a bit out of sorts, and it doesn’t exactly help that Snape keeps watching me as if he thinks I’m going to pour the Wolfsbane down the drain if he blinks for an instant.”

“I wish I could do that for you,” said Sirius after a moment.

“I know. So do I.”

“I could have, you know. Your dad always used to say I could have a career in Potions if I liked. I would have done, too, if it hadn’t been for the war and that bloody rat.” He reached for the bottle of Ogden’s Old Single Malt and poured a generous amount of it into a glass, slopping some of it onto the counter, as usual. “Can’t even fix myself a drink, these days. Damn tremors.”

But, Remus knew, his friend’s shaking hands weren’t really the problem. If you spilled a cauldron of potion or added too much of an ingredient, you could always throw it out and start again; he’d seen Tonks do it all the time. But if your concentration lapsed, you were sunk – you could never be sure whether a given batch of potion was safe or not. And Sirius, since Azkaban, was prone to unexpected blackouts.

“Would you like one? It’ll take the curse off the Wolfsbane.”

“All right,” said Remus after a moment’s hesitation. Technically, he shouldn’t drink so soon after taking his potion; but he’d done it before and his liver hadn’t actually fallen apart yet, and Sirius really shouldn’t be drinking alone.

“Cheers, old mate.”

“Cheers.”

Sirius took a sip of the firewhiskey and stared into space with a puzzled frown. “Was something I meant to tell you. It’s gone, now.”

He reached for the paper and began solving the crossword. He had not been having one of his good days, and Remus wondered if this was really the best idea. Even if you were entirely in your right mind, the Daily Prophet’s cryptic crossword tended to make you feel as if you weren’t. It was the three-dimensional kind, and the clues liked to skip from page to page and play hide-and-seek with the solver.

“Thirteen Forward,” he said after a moment, fraying the feathers on his quill impatiently. ‘British king turns Spanish sovereign head-over-ears,’ four letters. Does that mean anything to you?”

Remus considered this. “Lear?” he suggested.

“Mmm. Then that would make L the last letter of Eight Down ... let’s see ...” Sirius speared a clue that had been wriggling its merry way through the society pages with the tip of his quill. “‘Desire a testament.’ Four letters.”

“Will,” said Remus after half a second’s thought, trying not to think about the fact that it had been an easy clue. Very easy, and Sirius had not even attempted it.

“That’s what I was going to tell you. I’ve been making a new will. Old one was a joke, dated from ‘78 when we first joined the Order, and it left half my worldly goods to the rat.” He put the paper aside and looked as if he were struggling to find words. “I’d like to name you Harry’s legal guardian, in case I’m pushing up daisies before he comes of age. Or worse.”

Remus’ hand tightened around his glass. “Whatever do you mean?” he asked in a voice that sounded a great deal less offhand than he’d meant it to.

“In case I’m not as immune to the Azkaban flu as we thought. You know.”

“You’re not going mad, Sirius!”

Sirius let out a raw, mirthless laugh. “On the contrary. I think we both know there’s a better than even chance I’m going to be a gibbering wreck in a few years. If not sooner.”

Remus fought to suppress a growing sense of panic. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t even think like that. It’s nonsense.”

They stared at each other across the table with wide frightened eyes.

Sirius spoke first. “Look at us, will you? A pair of brave Gryffindors and we can’t even face up to a few simple truths. Old Godric would be so proud.”

Remus didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

“Anyway. Harry. Will you, or won’t you? I could ask the Weasleys if they’ll take him in, but I’d rather it be you. You’ll teach him how to be a man, not treat him like a child.”

“I’ll think about it. But I hope there’s no need for it.”

“So do I.” But a note in Sirius’ voice suggested that he thought it was a vain hope.

Remus paced to the window and gazed out over the rain-soaked street. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and the sky was as dark as lead. The winter had gone on too long already, he thought. Too much rain, too much darkness. Anybody would be depressed.

He knelt by the hearth and poked a splint of wood into the fire. When it burst into flame he stood up and began to light the candles one by one.

He must have lit two dozen or more before a sharp bark of laughter interrupted him. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing? This is like living inside a Christmas wreath.”

“Bringing on spring.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

As he waited for the Wolfsbane potion at St. Mungo’s that week, Linus noticed that the old man in the queue seemed to be growing frailer and frailer. On the day before the full moon he collapsed.

Linus rushed forward, as did the young, unshaven wizard with the smoking habit. Together they propped up the old man and attempted to revive him while one of the women in the queue tried to flag down a Healer; but before she returned, his breath rattled in his chest, grew slower, and finally stopped altogether.

“He’s gone,” said Linus, after feeling for a pulse.

“Maybe the best thing for him,” murmured a middle-aged witch with a careworn face. “He wouldn’t have survived another transformation, not the way he was looking.”

They stood silent, in scattered groups of three or four, gazing on the still and terrible face of death. Millennium’s approaching. Et in Arcadia ego.

Linus shook himself. The light in the corridor was harsh and the tiled floor institutionally clean. This wasn’t Arcadia; and already two of the Healers had come to carry the old man away to a pauper’s burial.

 

                                                            *          *          *

A few days after the full moon, Linus and Celia traveled to Brittany.

Linus was still feeling too drained from his transformation to Apparate, and Floo Powder was not suitable for travel across water, so they went to the Office of International Magical Travel and took a Portkey to Ys. It was just as well, Linus thought, that the Ministry would have some record of their journey. For some reason he felt uneasy.

The streets of Ys were sleepy and cobblestoned. High city walls and sophisticated charm-work kept the sea at bay, and the sand-colored buildings shone with an unearthly light that seemed to come from nowhere in particular. They had a flat look, as if cut from paper. When you looked up, you saw rippling blue water and the underbellies of fish instead of sky and clouds.

They stepped into the Église St-Blaise to see the famous enchanted stained glass windows made by some nameless medieval artisan. The maker must have been a Muggle-born, Linus thought, or someone else with a foot in both worlds; he had been as skilled with lead and glass as with the charms that had brought the windows to life. Angels beat their shimmering wings under the roofbeams; in the great window at the end of one transept, the serpent writhed beneath the rustling trees of Eden and Eve wound her shining hair about her; on the opposite side of the church, earth and hell heaved up their dead under the roiling clouds of the Day of Judgment.

It was like no church that Linus had ever seen. Even after being filtered through the windows, the light that stained the floor had a certain otherworldly quality, almost unholy in its intensity. A gargoyle stuck his tongue out at them as they passed.

The bells in the church tower were tolling the noon hour as they walked out into the street; and far, far above them came the faint echo of answering bells on the mainland. No breezes stirred, and even the shouts of children playing pickup Quidditch in the town square seemed muffled.

“It’s a beautiful city,” Linus mused, “but there’s something eerie about it. Don’t you think?”

Celia nodded. “They call this the Drowned City, and the water over us is the Baie des Trépassés – the Bay of the Dead. They say there was a princess named Dahud who ruled this city at the beginning of the age of witch-burning, and she was obsessed with protecting her people from Muggle persecution. And so she opened the floodgates in secret one night and let in the sea wash over the city. Those inhabitants who couldn’t perform a Bubble-Head Charm drowned, the others survived. Later, of course, they extended the charms to cover the whole city.”

“Remind me again which side was meant to be doing the persecuting in this story?” said Linus.

Celia shook her head. “It’s always hard to tell, isn’t it? That’s the ugly truth that most scholars of Muggle-wizard relations refuse to acknowledge.” They walked on for a moment in silence. “That’s the Café Lanval over there, by the way, at the far end of the square.”

The place Riddle had selected for their meeting was a small, busy café, crowded mostly with working-class local wizards, although Linus noticed a few patrons in well-tailored robes that seemed to be of an English cut. Business travelers, he supposed. Celia, who spoke good though slightly accented French, ordered a bottle of white wine and they sat around sipping it rather nervously, trying to pretend they were there for pleasure instead of business. Half an hour after the appointed time, Riddle’s representative still had not shown and Celia, who had already downed two glasses of wine, excused herself to go to the toilet.

Seconds after she had gone, a short, plump Englishman with thinning blond hair bustled into the café and sat down at Linus’ table. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. My name is Michael Sharpe, and I work for T. M. Riddle – as a factotum of sorts.”

Linus shook the gloved hand the other man offered him, but he had a bad gut feeling about this meeting already. Willing his voice to remain steady, he said, “Perhaps, before we go any further, you’d care to tell me who T. M. Riddle is and what his business with me might be.”

“Gladly,” Michael Sharpe said with a slightly forced smile. “He is the head of a political and philanthropic organization of international proportions, but he lives very simply. Likes to keep out of the limelight. He believes that only with sacrifice and humility can we build a newer and better world. A world, in your case, where people with your ... regrettable affliction will no longer be oppressed.”

“Sacrifice and humility,” Linus repeated thoughtfully. “If that happens to entail giving Mr. Riddle large sums of money, you’d better tell him I haven’t got any to spare.”

“Oh no, you misunderstand,” said Sharpe, still smiling. Linus was more convinced than ever that the man was playing a part. “What Mr. Riddle wants is your confidence and your loyalty. And your help in gaining the loyalties of those similarly afflicted.”

“I don’t know of any man who stopped at wanting loyalty, in the abstract,” said Linus. “In practical terms, tell me again what Mr. Riddle is after.”

Sharpe opened his mouth to reply, but just then a female voice shouted “Stupefy!” and a bolt of red light caught him full in the face. He slumped forward, unconscious.

Linus, along with most of the other patrons, turned his head toward the back of the café to see where the Stunner had come from. There stood Celia, rigid and trembling, her wand hand still outstretched.

The three or four well-dressed wizards who had been scattered throughout the café got to their feet as one man and opened fire, sending several nasty hexes straight at Celia’s chest.