A cry escaped his lips then, forcing its way out through gritted teeth. But he took that grief and used it, and it gave him strength. He hauled Condred towards the open door of the echo chamber, the same terrible portal through which he’d once put Condred’s daughter. Condred slipped and pushed this way and that, but Crake was relentless. A hand hit him across the nose, startling him with pain. He didn’t let go. Muscles straining, he manhandled his brother through the hatch. Once Condred was halfway in, he seized him by the hips and shoved his kicking legs in after.
‘Hurts so bad. .’
He slammed the hatch on his brother. A bloodied girl’s hand slapped against the inside of the porthole. Crake recoiled, frightened. Then his face reddened in anger, and he surged towards the control panel. He twisted the dials, not caring where they went, building a chord of appalling disharmony.
Tiny arms slipped round his leg, and a cold little body pressed against him.
‘Nice try,’ he said hatefully, and threw a switch.
The echo chamber blasted Condred with a sonic barrage, a mess of vibrations and harmonics that swooped and crossed and hammered. A shriek echoed through the wine cellar as the daemon was torn apart by the flux. It seemed to come from everywhere at once: from the walls, from the floor, from inside Crake’s head. It lasted a long time before it faded, receding to some unguessable distance as it did so.
He didn’t let off the assault until he was sure there was no little girl holding his leg any more. Only then did he dare to look down.
He wrenched the door of the echo chamber open. Condred was there, bundled and still, his eyes closed and his mouth and chin slicked red.
Dead?
‘You’re not dying on me!’ Crake said furiously. He reached in and pulled. He wouldn’t allow Condred to be dead. He’d make it unhappen through sheer force of will. He hadn’t half the affection for Condred as he’d had for Bess, but to kill them both in his sanctum would be more than he could take. It wouldn’t happen. No world could be so cruel.
It took all his strength to drag his brother out of the echo chamber. Condred’s bare feet slapped heavy and limp to the floor as the last of him emerged. Crake stumbled, borne down by the dead weight, and went down onto his arse. He sat there, with Condred’s head in his lap like a lover’s, searching that pale, slack face for a sign of life.
Condred’s eyes flew open, and he screamed.
‘No! Don’t! Don’t!’ he shouted, arms flailing as he fended off invisible enemies. He lurched away from Crake, rolled over and ended up on his side, hands held defensively in front of his face. Then a wary calm came over him, like a man woken from a nightmare.
‘Where is the man in black?’ he whispered hoarsely. He raised himself so that he was kneeling. ‘The intruder?’ His eyes went to Crake. ‘Is he gone?’
Crake’s heart darkened at his words. No wonder he’d sensed something sinister when he’d entered this house. One of them had been here. A man in black. An Imperator.
‘Yes, Condred,’ Crake said quietly. ‘He’s gone.’
Condred peered at him. ‘Grayther?’ he croaked.
Crake felt tears welling and fought them. ‘It’s me,’ he said.
Condred stared, his eyes widening in amazement. Then he lunged at Crake. Crake put his hands up, but he was too slow to stop Condred throwing his arms around his brother and hugging him tightly.
Crake did cry then. He couldn’t stop himself. He sobbed as he held his brother, the frail shell of the man he’d known, and despite all their animosity he clutched him like someone long-lost and dear. Of all the things he’d expected when the Shacklemores had caught up with him, he hadn’t expected this.
‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ said Condred over his shoulder. ‘Spit and blood, after all I’d lost, I thought I’d lost you too.’
‘Condred. .’ Crake said. ‘Condred, I’m so sorry. .’
Those words broke him, and his tears became hysterical, and he gripped his brother’s back with fingers like claws and knucklebones stark. But while Crake was wracked with grief, no tears fell from Condred. He breathed steadily, and held his brother and was silent.
Finally, Condred released him, and they sat facing each other on the stone floor amid the scattered apparatus of the sanctum. The shadows were deep in the grim electric light, and still the darkness lay beyond. Crake waited, half in hope and half in terror, for his brother to speak.
Condred wiped the blood away from his mouth with the sleeve of his nightshirt. He was weak, and his head was evidently causing him great pain, but he didn’t complain. That was his way. Their father had never liked a complainer.
‘Grayther,’ he said at last. ‘You don’t know what it means to lose a child and I pray you never do. If you had asked me before it happened, I would have said this: that I would hunt you to the ends of the earth and see you dead for what you did to Bess. But hate has a limit, at least for me, and I reached it long ago. When Bess was gone, when Amantha was. .’ he swallowed, ‘gone. . What was the point of revenge after that? To spite myself by killing the last person I loved?’
Crake felt a jab in his chest, a physical pain. To hear Condred say a thing like that. He’d never imagined Condred felt anything more than contempt for him. But hadn’t Condred taken him in when Crake needed a place to live, and made him part of the family, however reluctantly? Hadn’t he done what a brother should, even though every act came bundled in scorn?
‘I can’t explain it to you, Grayther,’ he murmured. ‘I just. . One day, I didn’t hate you any more. So I resolved to let you go. There had been enough suffering. Causing more wouldn’t undo a thing.’
He’d never heard Condred speak this way before. Crake didn’t know what to say in return. Words seemed a pitiful tool for the purpose.
‘It was an accident. .’ he said, and then stopped because it sounded pathetic.
‘I know,’ said Condred. ‘Of course I knew. You adored her. We all did.’
But Crake blundered on. If he didn’t get it out now, he feared he’d never get the chance. ‘It wasn’t. .’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me that did it, do you understand? There was a daemon in me. It was my fault, oh, spit, it was my fault but it wasn’t me in there, it wasn’t me that did that.’ He felt tears coming again. ‘I locked the door. I always locked the door. But maybe that time I didn’t. .’
‘You locked the door.’ Condred’s voice was weary, devoid of feeling. It was as if it had all been drained out of him. He was never an emotional man, at least not on the outside, and he must have cried all the tears he ever would over this. ‘I knew what you were doing down there.’
Crake looked up at him in surprise. Condred snorted. ‘Living under my roof, spending all your time in my wine cellar, pretending you were working on some grand invention? You think I’d let you build some scientific contraption without my knowing about it? I feared you’d blow the house up. There was always a second key, Grayther. So when you were away, I went down there.’
He sighed, and ran his hand over his forehead, pushing back his lifeless grey and white hair.
‘When I found out, I pitied you. Poor little brother with his wild ideas, never able to settle to business like I could, never able to find his place.’ He shifted position, sitting up against the echo chamber with a wince. ‘I thought daemonism was superstitious nonsense. I thought you’d grow out of it. But I was blind and careless, and one day I left the key out.’ He managed a small, bitter smile. ‘You remember how desperate Bess was to see your workshop? You told her you were making toys down there. Every so often you’d bring a toy from the city and tell her you made it. Well, she found that key. You locked the door, Grayther. It was my fault she got in.’
His head hung, though whether from exhaustion or grief Crake couldn’t tell. He stared at Condred, numbed by the moment, processing all that he’d been told. If not for Condred, Bess would never have been down in the sanctum that night. If not for him, she’d be alive. And his brother blamed himself for that.