Page 59 of Only a Monster

‘He probably didn’t want it anywhere near him,’ Aaron said. ‘And neither do I.’

They reached an intersection. Joan pressed the button at the lights. Aaron’s fingers twitched, as if standing still were intolerable.

‘Why are you so scared?’ Joan asked him.

‘We need to get back to the market,’ Aaron said. His mouth was tight, and the pale press of his lips reminded Joan of how ill he’d looked when Ruth had spoken of seeing Court Guards at the hospital.

‘Who is he king of?’ Joan said. ‘All the monsters of England?’

Aaron didn’t seem to want to answer. When he did, it was curt. ‘Our borders don’t match what you’d think of as countries,’ he said shortly. ‘They were drawn in a different time.’

What you’d think of as countries. Joan had that feeling again of seeing a crack through a curtain—a glimpse of another world. There was so much she didn’t know—so much Gran had never told her.

A red Royal Mail van trundled past them. Aaron tracked it until it had turned the corner. He was watching every car that passed. The lights changed. ‘Come on,’ Aaron said. He’d already started walking.

‘Aaron—’ Joan said.

‘Keep walking,’ Aaron said. He waited for Joan to catch up. ‘The King is never seen,’ he said, still curt. ‘He rules through the members of the Monster Court: the King’s arms and executioners. We sometimes call them the Curia Monstrorum.’

Joan matched her pace to Aaron’s. She tried to make sense of the pieces she had. The monster world had a hierarchy of authority. Ruth had talked about Court Guards; Joan guessed they were something like police officers. Above them were the members of the Monster Court. And above them, the King himself.

The King is never seen. Joan imagined an invisible presence that permeated the monster world. ‘Do you think it could be true?’ she asked Aaron. ‘What Ying said? Do you think the King once changed the timeline? Do you think he erased the true timeline with a device?’

Aaron shot another reflexive look over his shoulder. ‘Don’t say things like that,’ he hissed. He caught Joan’s confused expression. ‘True timeline,’ he clarified. ‘Don’t say those words in public.’

They were walking alone beside the road. Hardly public. And Ying hadn’t seemed afraid to say them. ‘No one can hear us,’ Joan said.

Aaron looked around before he spoke, and when he did, his voice was soft, as if he was afraid they might be overheard, even though there was clearly no one in earshot. ‘There is only one timeline. The King’s timeline,’ he said. ‘Events are just as he wishes them to be. To speak of another timeline, to call it the true timeline . . . it’s dangerous. It’s—it’s blasphemy.’

‘Blasphemy?’ Joan repeated. It was an unexpected word for the context. She would have thought treason would be a better fit for a king. ‘But, Aaron, if—’

‘Please,’ Aaron ground out. ‘Please can you wait until we’re somewhere safe before you ask any more questions?’ He ran a shaky hand through his hair. ‘What have we got ourselves into?’ he asked, almost to himself.

The Ravencroft Market was busier than it had been when they’d left. As they wove through it, Joan finally saw how the main area was structured: divided into periods like the sections of a department store. Over there was the twentieth century; and over here the twenty-first, the clothes becoming less and less familiar in colour and cut with each decade after Joan’s own, until they were as strange as clothes from the distant past. It made Joan want to walk through to the far end of the market—to see the contraband technologies there.

‘There are Court Guards patrolling the market,’ Aaron murmured. ‘Keep your head down.’ He ducked his own head, but Joan was curious enough to look around. Monster police, she thought. She remembered again Ruth’s story of seeing Court Guards at the hospital.

She didn’t spot any of them at first. And then she turned into an aisle where a man was saying mildly to a stall owner: ‘Give me all the cell phones.’

The man wore a gold pin on his lapel: a winged lion, posed as if stalking the viewer, wings outstretched like a bird of prey. The stall owner was a middle-aged woman with purple lipstick and a matching purple jacket. The Court Guard’s manner was easygoing, but the woman’s hands shook as she put the phones into a box. She didn’t look at him directly.

Aaron took Joan’s elbow and moved her quickly past them. As they walked, Joan began to spot more and more guards with winged-lion pins. Stall owners looked on, white-lipped but not protesting, while phones and other devices were confiscated, as their tables were stripped bare.

‘Technology out of its time,’ Aaron whispered to Joan as they reached the stairs. ‘Technically illegal, but Court Guards don’t usually concern themselves with small markets like this.’

Joan swallowed. ‘Ruth said she saw Court Guards after she spoke about the massacre,’ she whispered. ‘And I was overheard speaking of the massacre yesterday. Do you think they’re looking for us?’

‘If they were here for us, their attention would be on people, not technology,’ Aaron said. ‘It’s just a coincidental raid. Come on.’

To Joan’s relief, Ruth opened the door to the flat on the first knock.

‘There are Court Guards—’ Aaron started to say.

‘I know,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ve been watching them from upstairs.’

She ushered them into the bedroom nook. There was a pulldown ladder in the ceiling.

Joan followed Ruth up the ladder and found herself in a rooftop garden. On one side, the market’s glass dome rose like a sail. From up here, the leadwork ravens in the blue glass were the size of cats. Waist-high parapets enclosed the rest of the rooftop, reminding Joan of the Liu family’s courtyard.

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