The Giant's Almanac by Andrew Zurcher (black female authors .txt) 📕

‘Yes, he is,’ she said. ‘You did come from nowhere. You don’t have a mother, not a real one. You’re clever – I’ll never forget your first case, the one with the snakes – but no, you’re not brilliant. Not like Russ. And you’re not good with your hands, like Dolly, or able to see twenty-five moves ahead, like Payne. You don’t have my memory. And you’ll never work as hard as Padge, not at anything. So, yes, he’s right.’

‘Did you come looking for me, just to tell me that?’ said Fitz. He pulled on his hand, but Navy held it.

‘No, I came to tell you this. You’re not those things. But nor are you as evil as Fingal is. And you don’t have one ounce of the devious, manipulative selfishness with which Dina does absolutely everything. In fact, I’d say the opposite. I’d say you have something that none of us has, and I think that’s why you’re here.’

Fitz began to cry. At first the tears gathered silently in his eyes, and overran his cheeks like small rain on thick, snug panes of glass. But it wasn’t long before a sob shook him, and then another, and Navy wrapped her arm round him and held him tight for a long while, as long as he needed. She didn’t tell him to stop, or tell him that he was wrong. She just let him cry. It was all he had ever wanted to do, and she shook with him as the heaves came rushing out of nothing, out of the nothing that was in him.

‘You don’t belong here,’ she said at last. ‘And that’s exactly why we need you.’

When he had finished crying, the night and the air, the space around him – everything – seemed clearer. He took a deep and unbroken breath.

‘You know, there’s more.’

‘More what?’ Fitz asked her.

‘More to the Heresy. When I first got here, when I was little, I was pretty messed up. I mean, I liked it – the lessons every day, all the new information. You know how I am with facts and figures. In one way, I couldn’t get enough of it. But it was exhausting, too. We work all the time, seven days a week, and with the stables and the cages and the aviary … after a while the novelty wore off. I started to feel like I was falling apart: lonely, tired. But above all, I felt so enclosed. Porridge in the morning. Stack for four hours. Lunch. Lessons. Feeding. Nine bells. Repeat. I was like a zombie. But one person noticed, and he said something important to me.’

Fitz waited.

‘It was the Master. He took me aside one night after Feeding, and he said, “Navy, you know, there’s more.” I had no idea what he meant. He said, “You seem like a girl who likes to go for a walk. Would you like to go for a walk?” I said yes. And he brought me here, to the very door of the Heresiarchy where it’s nestled under the mountain, and he showed me the whole of the Heresy, laid out at our feet, just like this, at night, with the moon shining all over the lead roofs and the glass atrium down there to the west, and the weathervanes turning in the sea breeze, and the smoke curling out of the chimneys. All as it is now. And he asked me if I thought it was beautiful. I said it was, but he knew, I knew, that that wasn’t it. And he said, again, “You know, there’s more.”’

Navy was still holding his hand. She squeezed it.

‘Did you notice that the steps continue around the Heresiarchy, on both sides?’

Fitz turned round. In the darkness he could hardly see anything, but he could see – or maybe he could remember having seen, and only believed he could see – that she was right. Two narrow stairways, one on each side, curved round the round curve of the building, leading up and away.

‘He told me that night he had arranged with the other Officers that, on account of all my duties in the stables and the cages and the aviary, and everything, I should be allowed to stay out at nights as late as I liked. I didn’t have to observe curfew like everyone else, even Dina. From that night on, he said, I could go for walks whenever I wanted. And so, together, we climbed up those steps – those ones, behind us – and he showed me that there is more.’

‘What’s up there?’ Fitz asked her. He had forgotten, now, all about the argument in the Lantern Hall. He knew he had forgotten.

Navy took him by the hand and they climbed the steps. The stairs passed behind the palace, and rose, circling, in the mountain, by spirals through steep and narrow arches. It was an arduous climb. They took it in silence, trusting their feet to find the stone, step after step. But as they rose, the air lightened, and Fitz realized that he could see over the valley, over the cliffs, out to sea. And at last, before them, there was a tall building.

‘That’s the Heresiarch’s personal library,’ said Navy. ‘Supposedly only the Heresiarch comes up here. I mean, the Heresiarch, and me.’

A light flashed suddenly over them, and then disappeared. Fitz instinctively pulled back, into the shadow of the last arch they had passed through. Navy, still holding him by the hand, hunkered with him in safety against the wall.

‘And that’s what he showed me,’ she said.

She pointed out to sea. Fitz didn’t see anything.

‘Wait,’ she told him.

Sure enough, a few moments later, the light flashed over them again.

‘What is it?’ he asked her, his voice hardly more than a murmur.

‘It’s a lighthouse. I don’t know if anyone is in it. Maybe it’s mechanical. But at least once, someone must have gone out there, on to a rock