August (16 page)

Louis strolled confidently towards the pile. Harry sprang at him, snarling as he grabbed the taller boy's throat, but Louis remained perfectly calm, simply flicking his long foot at Harry's groin. Harry fell to the ground, howling. Louis retrieved the pieces and returned them to the central pile. He circled, studying them closely.

Tristan watched the two boys, one moving with easy charm, the other still snorting as he regained his feet. He tried to stand back, to observe from a greater distance, but his mind would not let go of the room. The rector would have chosen the two boys carefully, anticipating the nature of their clash. He would have known how easily Tristan would solve the puzzle, and how poorly the attendant violence would suit him… What then was written in the envelope Tristan carried in his pouch? But no, there was no envelope, there was no room.

Leave the scene. Let the future unfold without you.

But she was there now, expanding inside his head, squeezing him back into the room.

While Tristan stood aside the others paid him no attention. He breathed deeply and focussed on the point of nothingness he had created behind his forehead. He imagined it as a light, pulsing with perfect regularity. He listened to the murmuring of his competing thoughts. Possibilities were swarming, seeking a foothold, each working to lodge its claim. A faint vibration, something like the rasping of metal on wood, resolved into a call to inaction.
Sit the game
out
, the pattern urged.
Do nothing; confound them.
The possibility rose then fell away. A deeper, thicker drive hummed beneath the clamour, marshalling its forces.
Win her
, it ordered.
Whatever it takes, win her.
From there a new thought grew, high-pitched and insistent.
They cannot solve this thing
without you,
it counselled,
but they don't know it yet. Sit tight. Let
them battle. Let them tire themselves out.
As this last thought grew louder the other swirling candidates meekly disassembled, lending weight so quickly to the emerging winner that the naïve mind might have believed it had willed it.

As the decision threatened to settle, Tristan forced himself to look away. With no mind to attach itself to, the impulse fragmented, each connection fizzing and spluttering back to unbeing. Tristan smiled. He did not care if the observers saw him do it. He surged with new power.

‘Keep Harry at bay,' Tristan called to Louis, ‘and I will complete the puzzle for you. You can have the final piece. Victory is yours if you can subdue him.'

Louis looked up, immediately suspicious.

‘Why should I trust you?' Louis asked. Tristan kept a wary eye on Harry, who had begun circling them both on all fours, as comfortable in the gait as any animal.

‘Take this.' Tristan offered him a piece of the puzzle. ‘I cannot complete the puzzle without it. And use it as a weapon if I attempt to cross you.'

Louis hesitated, tempted. ‘If you are lying to me I will kill you.'

‘It is what I expect,' Tristan replied. Louis nodded and took the piece. He stood guard while Tristan set to work on the puzzle. Tristan allowed himself a smile as he imagined the rector slumped in defeat behind the glass while the members of the Holy Council checked their scripts and demanded an explanation.

The puzzle was not difficult and within minutes Tristan was making progress. In the background the children of the night stalked each other, Louis always between Harry and the puzzle.

Harry however was no fool. He seemed to know his best chance lay in unsettling his opponents. He began running around the outside of the room at startling velocity, his jaw flapping as he howled like a wolf. Louis swivelled, attempting to track Harry's crazed trajectory. Tristan tried to ignore the noise and concentrate on the puzzle. He was close to finishing, but the terrible sound panicked him and the heavy pieces began to jam. He felt his arms tiring. The howling grew louder and Louis began to shout over it. ‘Back! Back! Back!' he screamed, as if warding off a wild animal. And then, suddenly, ‘Tristan, watch out!'

Harry charged. Tristan sprang clear just in time and his adversary crashed into the almost completed crucifix, propelling it into the wall. Harry pounced on a loose piece of wood, all he needed to remain in the game. Tristan was closer than Louis and instinct propelled him forward. He threw himself on top of the boy and clung to his back for dear life, panicked blood surging through his veins. There was nothing now— no room, no competition, no rector, no Grace—only this moment, and the desperate desire to survive into the next.

Tristan had not lived his life in the wastelands and could not conceive of their brutality. Louis ran forward swinging his puzzle piece as a club, aiming it at the side of Harry's head. The force took Harry sideways and knocked Tristan from his back. Tristan could not tell if the blow had killed him or only knocked him cold. Blood pooled beneath Harry's face, set now in pained bewilderment.

‘No rules,' Louis panted. The tall boy's fingers trembled at his side, not with regret, Tristan guessed, but with the afterwash of adrenalin.

Louis looked at Tristan, as if expecting the game to change now. He nodded for Tristan to continue with the puzzle, but Tristan didn't move. In the settling silence a new doubt was taking hold of him. He had followed his own rules, subverted his instincts, but, now the path was clear to him, it felt predictable. Wouldn't the rector have known Tristan's sheltered life had not prepared him for the brutality of the children of the night? What then was more foreseeable than Tristan putting physical safety ahead of the game, as he now intended to do? Hadn't the rector had him followed to the church that night? They must have seen that he had been too frightened to speak. Faced with love he had yielded to fear. Wasn't it obvious he would do so again?

Tristan remembered the number test and pushed back at the temptation to second-guess. But it was too late: the seeds of doubt gathered quickly into clouds. Tristan moved to the broken puzzle and crouched, ready to engage. His hands became clumsy as his thoughts turned inward, seeking out their motivation. He peered deep, peeling back layer after layer of contrivance. But all he found were more layers. Layers all the way down.

A sudden emptiness tugged at him with a weight denser than sadness. He groped about for the frayed edges of his will and found only her, the young woman, sitting calm in the centre of the storm.
Why do you even want to defeat him? Why
would you care? I am here. Come to me.

The crucifix was almost finished. Tristan made a final adjustment and moved to the other side of the pile, ready to position the penultimate piece. He felt Louis' eyes on him, watchful and certain. It was easy for Louis. His purpose was unshakeable. The piece slid easily into place; the cross was solid now. Tristan stood back and pointed to the place where the last piece would slot.

‘Thank you,' Louis said simply. He moved warily to the puzzle.

Tristan closed his eyes but the room pressed closer still.

Leave the scene. Let the future unfold without you.

No, I am here. Come to me.

Louis leaned in, his hands on the piece. Tristan watched, waited…

He felt his body lurch forward. His shoulder found the small of Louis' back. The boy attempted to swivel but he was already falling. Tristan felt fingers scrabbling for his eyes. He turned from their grasp, reaching for the last piece of the puzzle. A bony thumb found a socket and Tristan's head lit up with pain. But his hands had already found the wood and the impulse was past reversing.

Tristan slid the last piece into place.

He threw his defeated opponent from his back and sprang to his feet, expecting Louis to come for him now and punish him for his betrayal. Louis' eyes were empty. He shrugged and tried to smile.

‘Well played,' he whispered.

Tristan felt a great rush of regret. ‘I am sorry. I too was playing for my soul.'

Tristan turned to face the back wall, no longer fooled by its blankness. He waited for the verdict. It seemed impossible that they had got to this point before him. Or impossible for anyone but the rector. Triumph flattened to anticipation, and then concern.
It doesn't matter
, her voice whispered. But it did. It mattered. Tristan was shaking.

They emerged in single file, three venerable gentlemen dressed in the purple robes of the Holy Council. They walked across the room and Tristan saw in their dazed faces that he had defeated them. Two victories then, sweeter still. One of the men stopped to contemplate the blood at Harry's head. Another ran a mottled hand across the completed puzzle, as if to confirm this wasn't a dream. None of the three spoke a word. Tristan made no effort to hide his joy. He skipped from one man to the next as a child might, to look more closely on their anguish. Not one met his eye.

They departed without speaking and it was only then that Tristan realised the rector hadn't emerged. That was unfair. Tristan had earnt the right to be congratulated.

‘Come on!' Tristan shouted to the gap in the wall. ‘What are you waiting for? Did you really think you would win?'

There was no response. Tristan walked to the small observation room and found it empty. He felt the same. Why wouldn't he show himself?

‘The prize!' he shouted to the empty space. ‘You promised me the girl. Where is my prize?'

Still there was no reply.

Tristan remembered the envelope. He would wait here; someone would come eventually. Simon probably. He would know where to find the rector. In the meantime Tristan would read the prediction, see where the great man had made his mistake:

At first Tristan will struggle with the violence of the
game. He will step aside, in order to stay clear of his own
instincts. Tristan will offer Louis a deal, believing this
will foil our predictions. He will offer to let Louis slot
the last piece into place if he in turn can keep Harry out
of the game. But Tristan will be shaken by the violence
of the competition and this will break his resolve. Strong
emotions will bring the girl back into play. He will forsake
the game for the girl. At the last moment he will betray
Louis, and claim the prize for himself.

Tristan read the words through three times, each time grasping only snatches of their meaning. The greater picture refused to form. He didn't understand. He had seen the men of the Holy Council. They had walked with the heavy footsteps of the defeated. And yet here he read the opposite. He slumped to the floor.

‘What is wrong?' Louis asked.

‘I don't understand.'

The door opened and Simon entered.

‘Where is he?' Tristan demanded. ‘Where is the rector?'

‘On his way.'

Simon helped a groggy Harry to his feet and escorted him from the room. Louis followed without looking back. As the door clicked shut behind them, the rector announced his presence with a cough, and Tristan turned to him.

The rector walked forward and offered his hand. Tristan refused to take it, standing unassisted. He looked to the ground. Bile rose within him.

‘You tried.' The rector spoke gently, a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis. ‘You tried your best. They saw that. They cannot argue otherwise.'

Tristan brought his hands to his ears. He would not hear this. It was not possible.

‘No, I have beaten them,' he cried. ‘I saw their faces.'

It was all he had to offer, a child's petulance. The rector looked at him with concern and Tristan knew what would come next. A question. Always there was a question.

‘Do you think defeating me and defeating the Holy Council are the same thing?'

Tristan's thoughts turned slippery, a feeling he had all but forgotten. His mind opened just a fraction and understanding slid into place.

‘They are the opposite things?' Tristan said.

‘Yes.'

There was a solemnity about the rector now: the teacher returning to his sacred task.

‘What you proposed was heresy,' Tristan continued. Understanding is never complete: one thought demands another.

‘Of course it is heresy. To have a choice is to have a soul, is this not so?'

‘We have been taught so,' Tristan answered.

‘But what must we do with all we have been taught?' the rector probed. There was only one interrogation and it never ended.

‘Question it.'

‘And what first led you to question all we had taught you?'

Tristan's answer was honest and unguarded. There was no competition now, no enemy.

‘The girl you made me draw. You said she had no soul.'

‘She is a child of the night. It is doctrine that they are beyond salvation, so why would you question it? What did you see that sparked your doubt?'

Tristan considered his question, the pupil as eager as his teacher to reach their destination.

‘Only my instinct. I saw her suffering. I felt it.'

The rector smiled and an old feeling returned to Tristan, the glow that came from pleasing the teacher.