kyria

Because this is too long for tumblr, and too unfinished for AO3, would take a novel at either end to be finished, and I still really like parts of it: extremely iddy, quite AU, rather dystopian h/c JS&MN...

...in which Mr Norrell successfully takes control of English Magic and reinstates the Cinque Dragownes (or a Respectable Facsimile, in which he functions as prosecutor, judge, and jury).

He continues his habit of harassing other magicians, but with his new authority he’s not content to discredit or expel them - instead, a network of informers, with Lascelles and Childermass at their head, keep watch for illicit magic. John Segundus goes into hiding, but eventually he’s caught in one of Norrell’s purges. Rather than lending Norrell more power, Segundus casts a spell in the last moments before his capture that causes him to forget all of his magic, and even that he’s magical at all.

It saves his life.

But in the meantime, Segundus - who now truly believes he is not a magician - is kept in prison, subjected to all of the curbs that would be placed on a magic user: kept from speaking or gesturing, blindfolded to prevent him from looking into mirrors or anything that might hold a reflection…

Except Norrell, who harangues him for his intransigence and selfishness, no one speaks to him, lest he enchant them and gain his freedom. Even if a friend were to learn of his predicament and write him a few lines of comfort, he wouldn’t be allowed to read or answer them, for fear that he might remember and manage to communicate the method of his final spell.

*

They had caught a strand of his hair in the knot, when they blindfolded him. He tells himself the constant nagging tug has ceased to trouble him, except in those moments when a movement or sudden gasp pulls sharply at his scalp. It is merely a reminder: stay quiet; stay still. Stay safe.

“Why must you defy me?” Norrell asks peevishly. “What is it you have done to disguise your magic?”

“I am not a magician,” John Segundus whispers, jaw still aching from the strap they had used to prevent him from speaking clearly. “I have performed no spells; I have concealed no magic from you.”

“You have! You worked your spell even as you turned at bay; it was done before witnesses, sir: you can make no denial of it. You will reveal this spell to me--you will reveal all your spells to me.”

“Please! Please, you must know I have nothing to tell you. Do you think I am so skilled an actor as this?” Segundus says. He no longer has any hope that Norrell will believe him. He has not, since the evening of his arrest.

“You’ll get nothing from him in this fashion, sir,” says another voice, and Segundus flinches again. He had not realized Childermass had entered the cell with Norrell, but of course, he would have: the Cinque Dragownes’ chief hound, there to keep the accounts and tidy away the messes. “Leave the gentleman to me,” Childermass says. “He has made himself my business.”

“I would prefer not to witness any incivility--“ Segundus knows that Norrell’s scruples, his quick shifts of subject, are not a reprieve. “And I am due before the Ministers; the smuggling of magical pamphlets continues unchecked. Such writings are seditious--as your intransigence is seditious, Mr Segundus--and I fear you must all burn for it....You ought not to have permitted Strange's wife to escape you, Childermass; he would not trouble us so if she were--”

“But she has escaped you, sir, and so that means of persuasion is lost to you. Come, let us stop his mouth again, if you still fear he will enchant his jailers, and go do battle against the rebellious pen.”

“Your hands are bloody,“ Segundus says, in the last moment before Childermass forces the leather strap back between his teeth. He imagines he can feel the flames already, taste Jonathan Strange’s words in the choking smoke of his pyre.

“We will have speech when I return, Mr Segundus--not perhaps so pleasant a conversation as you and Mr Norrell commonly enjoy--but I think we shall make ourselves understood to one another nonetheless.”

Childermass’s fingers linger at the corner of his mouth, press lightly on the linen over his eyes. Segundus whines around the gag, trembling at the implied threat in the touch. “Hush, now,” Childermass says, as he might soothe a fretful child, and then he is gone.

“I am not a magician,” Segundus thinks. Even in his terror, he knows it to be true. “I am not a magician.”

*

The danger had seemed clear; it had been presented with the plainest of logic: if French spies could penetrate the very heart of London, could nearly slaughter England’s greatest magician on his doorstep, if hucksters and petty thieves could divorce English magic from respectability, might through profligate use drain England itself of magical virility, then English magic must defend itself.

The frightened ministers gave way before Mr Norrell’s arguments. It was a matter of security, they agreed, that magic be practiced only by Norrell. Only right, they ruled, that all magical books and papers be forfeit to the Crown, for use by the realm’s protector. It was but one short step more to the spell Mr Norrell next devised, to wrest all magical knowledge from any magician so unfortunate as to attract his attention. And with his reinstatement of the Cinque Dragownes, in a form suited for the respectable and parsimonious modern age, England had its magical judge again--and with him its informers, prisons, interrogators, and executioners.

The York Society was broken. Segundus had seen the Honeyfoots and Lady Pole safely aboard a packet for the Continent; his last sight of them Lady’s Pole’s pale face staring back at him through the rising fog, before Mr Honeyfoot took her elbow to hide her away below. No one knew what Jonathan Strange was about: rumor said he, too, had fled England; that he ruled a Faerie Kingdom bordering Shropshire; that he had disguised himself as an officer of the 43rd; that he had run quite mad.

*

When at last Childermass arrives outside his cell, Segundus hears first the clink of coins, and the tumblers turning in the heavy locks on his cell door; hears the guards leaving; hears one set of footsteps come closer, circling behind the chair where he sits blinded and motionless; hears a harsh whisper, “Be still and silent now, Mr Segundus, and I swear by the Raven King that no harm will come to you at my hands.”

Segundus tells himself that he can be brave, and that after all he cannot much help remaining still. Even if he cannot be silent, perhaps it will not hurt so very much, and nevertheless there will be no shame in it if he should cry out in his innocence.

But then he feels Childermass’s hands working at his blindfold, unbuckling his wrists and ankles from their restraints, removing the leather strap that keeps him from speaking clearly. Even in the gloom--for, blindfolded, Segundus needed no candle, and Childermass has brought none--Segundus squints his eyes nearly shut again, straining to see Childermass at his elbow: Childermass, urging him to rise. Segundus does not speak, and he is too weak to stand and walk; after watching him struggle for a moment, Childermass stoops to hoist him over one shoulder, saying, “Cling tight to me, for the keepers of this road ask a heavy toll of strangers, and they do not know you yet.”

Childermass pulls a flask from his greatcoat pocket, and pours a puddle--gin, Segundus thinks--onto the flagstones lit by a single lantern beam shining through the bars of his cell door. The juniper-scented reflections rise around them. When Segundus looks round again, he is nowhere he could have imagined, and knows he understands nothing of what has just occurred.

*

In Faerie, it is raining.

It is not a gentle rain, misty droplets falling over green meadows attractively bedecked with wildflowers or young, flower-like damsels in brilliant draperies. It is not a gothic rain, all torrential downpours and dramatic lightning strikes on craggy ruins poised above sheer precipices. It is, instead, a relentless, dreary rain, falling on a grey, dreary hillside, a rain that promises wet stockings, chilly fingers, and bad tempers.

This is, Segundus feels, unfair. If he is to be arrested, threatened with unspecified torments, and kept in fear for his life, only to be slung over his jailer’s shoulder and toted into another realm, he might at least have the opportunity to contemplate a magnificent vista. At least Childermass has put him down, and he thinks he may soon be quite able to walk on.

Childermass makes a flicking gesture towards the hillside. “Come along,” he says, “the path won’t wait for you to catch up to it.”

And when Segundus looks, there is plainly a path, a rocky, muddy, narrow twist of a thing, seeming to begin just under Childermass’s boots and leading down the hill towards the beck flowing between overhanging banks.

*

[...]

*

The air carries with it scents Segundus feels he ought to know: paper, ink, old leather. For an instant, he seems to hear his own voice over the rustle of pages, reciting a peculiar phrase, something he is sure he understands, nothing he can remember. But then the rain is only rain again.

“Come here; it is not safe,” Childermass says from further inside the cave. And when he does not move, again, demandingly, “Come here.”

His fingers are cramping where he has worked them into a fissure in the cave wall, but he will not relax. “In these circumstances, I think I should prefer the danger I do not know,” he says.

“You are a stubborn creature,” Childermass says, sounding almost admiring, but he draws back into the shadows and leaves Segundus to look out over the rain-soaked, weed-choked ruins.

“What will become of Norrell’s men?” Segundus asks suddenly.

“Their hands are not clean either, John Segundus, but Norrell’s rage will spend itself on me. I told them to be off and leave me to my work; if they’ve their wits about them, they may yet brazen through. But at this moment, I do not much care what becomes of ‘em.”

Somehow, Childermass conjures up a fire, coaxing cheery, snapping flames from scraps of nothing-in-particular that Segundus, if asked, would have said were the very furthest things from proper kindling. He rummages through the pockets of his greatcoat, as if conducting inventory, producing tobacco pouch, notebook and pencil stub, bits of string, a rowan twig wrapped in red thread, the flask of gin, before seeming more satisfied by his discovery of an apple and a hunk of bread, which he begins at once to saw in two.

“You do not seem amply provisioned for a rescue,” Segundus says, “or an abduction.”

“My apologies,” he replies. “In future, I will be certain to supply a hamper for all prison escapes. Do you require strawberries and cream, or might you be satisfied by cold ham and salad?” He holds out the knife, with one half of the apple speared on its tip.

“A meat pie and fresh bread will suffice,” Segundus says, and reaches for the fruit. Childermass pulls it back suddenly.

“Show me your wrists,” he says. Segundus looks at his outstretched arm, and sees the brownish-purple bruises exposed below his ragged cuff. Childermass takes a small tin from his pocket. “I am no physician,” he says, “but small hurts I can soothe. Permit me?”

Childermass takes his hand loosely, gently smoothing honey-scented salve across the bruises, feeling out the small bones and tendons, lingering where the blood runs close beneath the fragile skin. Segundus watches the dark head bent over his wrist. In the flickering light, Childermass’s eyes seem more deeply set; his hair hides his expression as if he is half shadow himself.

“I did not wish to cause this,” Childermass says, still intent on his task.

“And yet you have caused it,” Segundus answers.

Childermass closes his eyes and sighs. “Yes,” he says. He has closed his fingers around Segundus’s wrist. Segundus remembers other touches--false comforts--and jerks his hand away.

“Would you call in your debts now?” Childermass asks. “You may, if it will give you peace.”

“Give me your knife,” Segundus says. His pulse drums in his ears; he does not know what he will do: whether he ought to flee into the night, or take Childermass at his word, and collect...something. Childermass places the knife in his hand: a wicked, useful thing, easy in his grasp, well-used, slightly misshapen where the blade has been honed too often.

Segundus remembers waiting in the dark, listening to Childermass threatening and cajoling, leading prisoner and jailer alike as he would have them go. He holds the edge to Childermass’s throat.

When he does not move, Segundus presses it harder against the skin, wondering what would happen if he were to twist the blade a little--not much, just enough to part the skin, to draw one drop of blood, to see Childermass finally stripped of his inhuman calm.

Childermass watches him, unblinking, and slowly offers his hands, palms up and empty, perfectly steady. His breathing has not changed at all.

Segundus lowers the knife. He cannot do it, after all. Perhaps he could stab at Childermass as he runs; perhaps he will turn the blade against his own throat; perhaps--perhaps nothing will come of it, and even free he is still as helpless as he has ever been.

“You may go as you wish; I will not prevent you,” Childermass says, “Only travel with me just one day more: you need not trust me! only stay a little longer.”

“I will keep the knife,” Segundus says.

*

[...]

*

“The correct choice is quite obvious,” Segundus says. Evading Childermass’s sudden grab at his elbow as he passes, he steps briskly into the center of the crossroads.

“You are unknown to us,” says a slyly curious voice. “Come, turn about so that we may assess your worth properly.”

Segundus turns slowly; as he expected and feared, a bright-eyed, angular creature is revealed behind him. A bright-eyed, angular, wicked-looking creature, which cocks its head and looks him over head to toe: most certainly a fairy. The fairy looks mildly intrigued, as if Segundus is a new and potentially useful sort of insect (how an insect might be useful, he cannot at first imagine, but on considering bees, and ladybirds, and silkworms, and cochineal, he decides that insects may be useful in many ways. He hopes the fairy prefers those who are useful while still living).

Childermass, meanwhile, is edging cautiously onto the path; as he nears, the limp weasel pelt draped around the fairy’s shoulders rouses itself briefly to snap ivory teeth in his direction, before subsiding once again into lifeless fur.

‘He is in my company,” Childermass says. “He owes no duty to any other here.”

“I can collect nothing from you--” and Childermass quirks a brow in agreement, never pausing in his slow progress towards Segundus, “--but your...companion...is a newcomer and a Christian; he has stepped into my crossroads; and so he must pay. What will you trade me for safe passage, Christian?”

“I have no coin,” Segundus says.

“I care not for coin, or for your sorry rags and worn-down knife; I can make better from dried leaves and vain wishes. But come, sir! I do not ask an unreasonable price: only the least and slightest loan. Your heart, perhaps? Its lack will cause you no anguish; you will hardly miss it, I do assure you.”

“I could not give you my heart,” Segundus says. [...?]

“The toll must be paid. If I cannot claim his soul, and you will not lend me your heart,” says the fairy, ”then I will take your sorrow.” He presses one hand to Segundus’s chest, fingers clutching talon-like at his breast, and Segundus is weeping.

It is more terrible than any sadness he has known: childish fear, lost love, petty betrayal, pitiless death, grey despair: all knot tightly round his heart and choke the breath from his lungs. He falls to his knees at the pain: he cannot stand, cannot stop his sobs; the tears fall through his fingers onto the muddy verge.

“You are wasting them!” cries the fairy, and someone prises his hands from his face, draws them back and away, exposing him to the fairy’s avid gaze. The fairy catches a tear as it falls, sucking delicately at his fingertip as if savoring a drop of honey from the comb, then leans closer, licking the tears from Segundus’s cheeks. Segundus wrenches back, only to find that Childermass is braced immovably behind him, still holding his wrists, and whispering urgently, “Hold fast, hold fast. I know it is nearly unbearable. Hold fast.”

The fairy smiles at the instruction, unkindly, gripping his chin in one long-nailed hand to turn his face this way and that as he works. The touch of his tongue burns; its path must surely sear the tear tracks onto his skin. Segundus is crying still; he fears he may never stop.

At last, the fairy draws back, and reaches over Segundus’s shoulder to flick something from Childermass’s cheek.

“Exquisite, cousin,” the fairy says. “Your passage is paid.” He bows, gesturing them grandly towards the road, then vanishes.

The worst of Segundus’s all-enveloping sorrow goes with him, but he is weeping truly now, with relief and exhaustion, slumped back against the solid brace of Childermass’s chest. Even when his tears cease, he cannot stop shaking. Childermass clutches him tightly through the spasms, wrapped into his greatcoat, as if the wool and his arm alone might hold Segundus together. Eventually he becomes aware of Childermass murmuring into his hair, “Hush now, hush, my brave heart, my bright one, it was well done, hush.” From the rushing, rusty sound of his voice, he has been speaking for some time.

Listening, Segundus turns his burning cheek further into the shelter of Childermass’s collar, and allows himself to be soothed. The reassuring, sentimental nonsense slows and stops. They huddle silently beside the track, curled one into the other against the twilight and the growing chill, until the wind bites through Childermass’s coat, and Segundus shivers anew.

“My wrists will bruise again,” he says dreamily, and Childermass makes a choked noise. “Why is magic now done in England?” he whispers into Childermass’s shoulder, “There is nothing good in it; it brings with it only unkindness.”

“I cannot mend this, lord,” Childermass says. “I cannot.”

A raven croaks nearby.

“Rise and walk, John Segundus,” says a voice. “Allow my servant to show you joy.”

*

The rushing stream gurgles past, and Segundus has a sudden notion that the trees have leaned closer to overhear their conversation.

“I cannot understand you. No true Christian would behave so,” Segundus says dully. He is bewildered still, his head swimming with exhaustion and hunger. He takes the flask Childermass dips for him at the stream, savors the sharp stony taste of the water, its cold cutting the worst of his headache.

“You are so sure that I am a Christian?” Childermass asks. The sidelong glance he gives Segundus is knowing, and very bright.

Segundus slowly lowers the flask, but it will not avail him; he has already accepted it, already swallowed. Dread tightens his throat, and he says slowly, “The fairy at the crossroads named you cousin. You have been Mr Norrell’s servant--”

“--these twenty-five years and more.” Childermass smiles. It is not comforting.

*

[...]

*

“You are late,” says the fairy. “We have been waiting since last Thursday, four thousand years at least.”

“You are impertinent,” says Childermass. Segundus marvels at his daring. The fairy sniffs. “I have a letter for you, from a lady--but here, let her tell you herself.”

They walk further into the chamber.

No smudges mar the mirrored sconces lining the gleaming marble walls; no wax has dripped from the immense cut-glass chandelier onto the green-veined floor. Everything is precisely ordered, and extremely clean.

A woman rises from the gilded chair set against one wall, and walks toward them, holding out her hands in greeting.

“Why, Lady Pole!” Segundus says. “How very fine you look, dressed for dancing.”

She stops short, casting him a fiercely indignant look, but he cannot deny it: she does look very well indeed, in a dress of silver tissue, with jewels spangled across the skirts and shining in her upswept hair.

“Forgive him; he has spelled himself into a quite comprehensive ignorance: tidy work, if inconvenient,” Childermass says.

“But I am not--”

“--a magician. Yes, so you have maintained.”

*

[...]

*

“He is not a bad man,” Childermass says. Lady Pole sniffs and looks away. “He is not. He is petty, yes: selfish, prone to jealousy, fearful, and too much indulged, but he did not set out to become some sorcerous Grand Inquisitor. He is misguided, not evil.”

As he speaks, Childermass shuffles his cards, splits the deck, shuffles, splits, shuffles, over and over. He is uncertain, Segundus thinks; he can perhaps be prodded. “You say Mr Norrell is misguided, but you have not led him. He is too much indulged, but you did not hinder him. You have helped him destroy the living heart of English magic; are you proud of your work? You are become a figure fit to frighten children! I heard a child in York pause in her sweeping to tell her sister that if she tracked mud into the hall, Norrell’s Black Dog would find her by her footprints and drag her into hell. Is that how you serve your masters?”

*

[...]

*
“How many masters do you serve, John Childermass?” Segundus asks. “Mr Norrell, the cause of English magic, your King in the North...do you not worry that they may one day command you to go in opposite directions?”

“You have forgot one,” Childermass says, “and he is the most powerful of all: I am my own master, as all men are.”

“And women,” Lady Pole interjects, from her post by the window.

“And women,” Childermass adds, nodding in her direction.

“A pretty notion,” says the Fairy King, ”but demonstrably unsound, in the world as in your England.”

“It is an ideal, your majesty, and as with all ideals, apt to tarnish without care,”

“Enough philosophy!” cries Lady Pole, “Your Mr Segundus did not travel here to listen to you exercise your rhetoric--although I must observe that your fine theories of the rights of man do not, evidently, extend to his person.”

“Being occupied as he was in tormenting loyal subjects of the Crown, I expect he did not notice,” Segundus tells her.

“That was never in our agreement, John,” she says chidingly. Segundus imagines she looks amused by his small defiance; he may yet find an ally.

*

Segundus dreams.

A cavilling, chiding voice tells him, “You have misapplied Lucy’s Revelation! It is as plain as the eyes in your head!”

And when Segundus peers into the indistinct, sleep-shadowed room, he finds the voice is quite correct: everywhere around him stand young women offering up their eyes on silver platters. He spins, stumbles forward, and the eyes follow him, rolling about on their salvers to keep him in view.

*

By midmorning, Segundus has entered the maze six times, pushing his way through the narrow alleys, and six times has turned a corner and abruptly found himself back at the entrance. He is overheated and dirty, hands covered with sap where he has pushed the overgrown hedges too violently aside, and welted where the branches snapped smartly back. He snagged a stocking during his third attempt, and, plagued by the sweltering mugginess within the maze, loosened his neckcloth on the fifth.

The seventh time, he stares intently at the pathway, closes his eyes, and ignoring the first turn, walks directly ahead, cocking one arm before his face to protect it from the thorns. But the petulantly rustling branches bend back before him, and he makes his way further into the maze through a spacious, green-scented passageway.

When cool stillness settles around him and he feels certain he has reached the center, Segundus opens his eyes. Childermass looks up from lighting his pipe, and salutes him.

*

It is a small book bound in worn but cheerful cherry-colored leather, placed like a lure in the puddle of golden lamplight. Segundus pages through to the half-title. “A Complete Description of Dr Pale’s fairy-servants, their Names, Histories, Characters and the Services they performed for Him--I do not know it.”

“A pity, but no matter,” Childermass replies. “I am not in it.”