Ambassador to the Faith

The headquarters of the Unconscious Ministry was located in an old farm silo and was a grey tower of a building.  A staircase wound its way round the outside, with warning signs at various points on the wall, and gates that had men stationed at them to ensure that no-one using the staircase wasn’t supposed to be there.  There was a door at the bottom, originally intended for grain-trucks to drive through, and a smaller door inset that had been installed for people.  The top of the silo was hidden by advertising hoardings that proclaimed the message of the Ministry to anyone who cared to look up, and listed dates of significant gatherings nearby.

The land around the silo was also owned by the Ministry, after a slightly protracted legal battle with the original owner.  She had insisted that she’d only ever leased the land to the Ministry, and that the documents they’d produced showing that it was actually a long-term purchase order with a good-behavious clause (that they’d scrupulously adhered to) were forgeries.  The Ministry had been patient and restrained throughout the whole trial, unlike the land’s owner who had had hysterics, made wild accusations, and at one point thrown herself across the courtroom at a lawyer and attempted to bite him several times.  Ultimately though it was the independent expert’s opinion that the documents were genuine, and the judge’s opinion that the contract was fair and well-written that carried the case, and the ministry gained a further two-hundred and forty acres.  This was now fenced around, with discrete electric fencing at the boundaries, then more substantial wooden fencing further in.  The headquarters possessed a three-quarter circle of brick walls that enclosed a set of lovely gardens and were claimed to be essential for the micro-climate, but the real guards were hardly ever seen and drifted around on the land as they saw fit.

The car halted at the boundary gate, where two young men who were neatly dressed in white shirts and dark suits smiled winningly and came out to greet the car holding booklets of Ministry material.  The bony woman waited while the driver lowered the electric window on her side, and then smiled at the young men almost as nicely as they were smiling at her.

“Abigail Malonde,” she said.  “Here to see the Ambassador to the Faith.  I believe I’m expected?”

One of the young men bobbed his head and disappeared back into the little steel security hut at the side of the gate.  The other smiled a little wider.

“Marcus will get the guest list and check you off,” he said.  “In the meantime, could I perhaps interest you in a little reading material?  Or for your friend, perhaps?”  He angled his head, trying to see inside the car and get a good look at Marguerite.  “The drive to the headquarters is still another fifteen minutes.”

“Thank-you, but I already have reading material,” said Abigail.  She gestured, and the young man tried to see inside the car again.  This time he caught sight of the jackalope and took a step backwards.

“Ah,” he said, his eyes growing wide.  “Of course, that’s not a problem.”

Marcus reappeared, holding a red clipboard with a couple of white A4 pages clipped to it, and a pen on a string dangling down.

“Abigail Maldone?” he asked, presenting the clipboard to the car window.

“Malonde,” said Abigail.  She sounded pleasant but firm.  She took the clipboard and glanced at it.  Then she reached into her inside pocket and produced a steel pen that she uncapped with her teeth, and used to sign in a small box on the form.  She slipped the pen back into its cap so she could speak clearly again.

“There, I think that’s all in order.  Tell me, is the Ambassador available early?”

The two young men looked at each other, both clearly confused.  Finally Marcus looked back.  “We’ve had no word of the Ambassador’s movements,” he said, and there was an element of care in his words that seemed unnecessary.

Abigail smiled.  “Of course, it was just an idle question.”

She sat back and the window slid up again, and the gate started its slow slide across its track to let the car pass.  Abigail looked over at Marguerite.

“Well,” she said.  “Much as it pains me to do this, I think you need to use that little talent of yours.  Tell me where the Ambassador is.”

Marguerite

They threw flowers as she walked down the street; carnations, roses, tulips and daffodils filled the air and then fell to the pavement.  She walked over them, her heels crushing green leaves and stems, her soles pressing petals apart.  Her hair fell over her face, and her dress, old-fashioned and heavy, ornate with lacework (women in the crowd whispered to one another that prisoners in the Coteille had hand-sown every inch) seemed to wallow around her.  Fragrance rose from the torn flora and little eddies of wind pulled it this way and that, dispersing among the crowd and bringing faint smiles to faces.  Finally, when she was barely ten steps away from the armoured car, someone called her name.  She paused in mid-step and a hand, so pale and white that the nearest people in the crowd could see the blue tracery of her veins lifted to her hair as though to draw it back.

“Marguerite!”  The voice came from inside the armoured car and was snake-strike sharp and fast.  If words were weapons this was a glass-barbed whip; lifting and tearing skin then retracting as fast as it came, readying for another blow.  Marguerite’s hand sank back down to her side and her foot came down on the trumpet of a daffodil and she continued walking.  Behind her now, a young boy pushed his way to the front of the crowd and threw an armful of lillies after her.  They pattered to the floor like the briefest shower of rain.

“Get in the car,” said the voice as she reached the door, but she was already ducking her head and looking inside.  On the back seat was a long, bony woman wearing the uniform of the Unconscious Ministry: a high-collared grey jacket with red piping on the lapels and cuffs and the Blinded Eye embroidered on the breast pocket.  On a pull-down seat opposite her was a jackalope wearing a silvered collar attached to a thin metallic leash that in turn was tied to the inner door-handle.  Marguerite stepped in, and folded herself up on the back seat.  Someone outside the car closed the door with a soft, but definite, click, and the engine started instantly.

The bony woman waited until they had driven beyond the edge of the crowd before she spoke again.

“Tell me why we shouldn’t confine you to the Coteille.”

Marguerite tried to swallow but her throat was dry and it didn’t work.  She felt slightly nauseous, not least from thinking about the Coteille, the prison-ship moored a mile offshore, visible to people walking along the harbour’s edge.  Far enough away that no-one jumping over board had a chance of swimming to shore, yet close enough that you could hear the screams on a balmy summer’s evening.  If you listened for them.

“I don’t actually care what you think,” said the bony woman.  “Your silence is gratifying.  You will not, however, be going to the Coteille.  I think there are better uses that can made of you.  Your talents.  Don’t you, Marguerite?”

“Y… Yugh… Yes,” she managed.  Her throat was too dry for words, and too sore from screaming.  For a moment there was a memory of a silver belltower on a desk in front of her, a student looking puzzled and tapping a bell with a tiny silver hammer and… and… no chime.  She remembered there being no chime.  It was incredibly important.

The jackalope, seemingly a rabbit crossed with an antelope, long curving horns projecting from either side of its skull, growled and bared teeth that were all incisors, teeth that no herbivore had ever needed.

“There, there,” said the bony woman.  “It’s quite all right, Virgil.  She won’t hurt you.”

Marguerite shrank away from it, pressing herself into the corner of the car.  Only the gentle purr of the engine told her that they were still moving, the windows were opaque and there was no sensation of movement.  She reached out with her mind for a moment, forgetting herself and felt the car grow somehow thin in a direction she couldn’t point in.  Buildings appeared in her thoughts, a church with a steeple and a tiny graveyard on the left, a couple of shops, one a butcher’s on the right.  The road appeared silvery and the car appeared to be a redd–

The bony woman slapped her with a hand that felt like it was made from steel.

“Bad girl,” she said.  The jackalope bared its teeth, and its eyes glinted.

A shrill screech emanated from the bony woman’s jacket and, without taking her eyes off Marguerite, she reached into an inside pocket and produced a mobile phone about as large as the palm of her hand.  She touched the screen with her thumb and ripples like water spread out from where she touched it, stilling the screech.  She raised it to her ear.

“Carmen,” she said, her words crisp and clipped.  “I have her, yes.  She’s behaving passably.  No.  No, the vote went the other way.  I can’t talk to you about that now.”  There was a long silence, and then, “Deadwood, and I didn’t tell you that.”

She lowered her hand, her thumb pressing against the screen again, and looked at the jackalope.  “He’s rather pretty, don’t you think?  His horns are unusual, they have a corkscrew thread.  It’s supposed to make them especially vicious.”

“Pretty,” said Marguerite, her voice so hoarse it was more a whisper.

“Yes, pretty.”