The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [112]
How we became friends?
I sometimes traded stories for drinks. He had just come off a ship, had money to spare, and was interested in my stories of his homeland which, he said, must have changed greatly since I had been there. He had an interest in history – a quiet, intelligent man, who would have harmed no one. I told him my stories, he bought me drinks. Then, from his silence, I drew out his own story, and began buying the drinks myself. By the end of the night we were friends.
I never told him about the island, of course. I couldn't. I wish I had…
I remember the night he brought your mother to meet me. He had met her – he didn't say, exactly. She was drifting at sea, floating on the strangest raft he had ever seen, and by the time they had rescued her she was close to dying. He didn't tell me the coordinates, nor the nature of the raft, but I guessed. Not at first, but later.
Mary was lovely. It's the only way I can describe her. Like Kangee, she was quiet but, like him, she had a wild streak in her. She was new to the city. She had come on Kangee's ship and was intoxicated by this world, which it seemed she had never even known existed. They were so happy together…
Of course, I did not know at the time that Mary was wanted. She seemed wary – though not afraid – of the lizards, avoiding any public royal events to which the other citizens would flock. She and Kangee moved into a small house in Limehouse – always the first port for new immigrants, and a good place in which to lie low, too. For a while, everything was perfect. When the baby was born, she called him William. His father gave him his second name, which was Chaska, meaning "first-born son".
I was his godfather. Your godfather, Orphan. You were not always an orphan.
But then the man came.
How they found her I do not know. They must have gone through the harbour logs and located the ship that had found her at sea. It was not too difficult. Kangee came to me a month after the birth of the baby. His old captain had been found dead in an alleyway, the victim of an apparent mugging.
It was not uncommon. The city was rougher then.
But then there was the man.
He came asking questions, a young, not-unhandsome man, very self-composed, very friendly.
Kangee feared him more than he did any other man. Though he did not know the man, he recognised in him all the qualities of a hunter. In later life the man became known for his hunting of big game. You may have heard of him, Orphan.
His name was Sebastian Moran. Yes. "Tiger Jack" Moran. So you have heard of him. I am not surprised. At that time he was a young man, barely out of Oxford, but as a hunter he was already ambitious: he went for the biggest prey there is.
Kangee came to me for advice. Tiger Jack was slowly stalking Mary and him, circling around, but had not yet revealed himself directly. What should he do? Kangee asked me. It was clear Les Lézards were after Mary. She was a danger to them, at best a liability. She threatened their safety.
Run, I said. Leave the city. Go to France, or better yet, go back to Vespuccia. Go as far as you can go, away from the empire altogether. Then they might let you live in peace.
Kangee found it difficult to run. But, for the sake of the baby, he agreed. He would return to the Great Sioux Nation, where they would be safe. I procured false papers for them, at great expense, and Kangee secretly booked passage on one of the then-new steamer ships to Vespuccia. Everything was ready.
Orphan, I have never told this to anyone. I have never been able to. When I had a body, it was built with certain prohibitions. I could not speak of Caliban's Island, of my travels with Vespucci, nor of the Bookman beyond banal generalities. Only once, on the cusp of death, and now, with the help of that strange device of yours, that egg that is a hub,