by Kai Meyer
The envoy expelled his breath in a wheeze. “That must not happen. The attack on the lagoon is imminent. A pact with Hell can bring it all to nothing.” He was silent a moment as he considered the situation. “If the messenger actually appears, make sure that he can’t get to the people. Kill him.”
“And the vengeance of Hell—,” de Angeliis began in a subdued voice, but the third councillor motioned him to silence with a wave.
“Certainly, sir,” said the councillor in gold, with a bow in the direction of the envoy. “As you command. The Empire will protect us from all consequences when it once has the city under its control.”
The Egyptian nodded graciously. “So shall it be.”
Merle’s lungs desperately demanded air—she couldn’t hold her breath one second longer. The sound was soft, barely audible, but still loud enough to alert the councillor in scarlet. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling. Merle and Serafin pulled their heads back just in time. So they only heard the envoy’s further words but couldn’t see what was going on.
“The desert crystal of the vial is strong enough to hold the Flowing Queen. Her regency over the lagoon is ended. An army of many thousands of soldiers stands ready on land and on the water. As soon as the Pharaoh holds this vial in his hands, the galleys and sunbarks will strike.”
Merle felt a movement at her right side. She looked around, but Serafin was too far away. However, something was moving at her hip! A rat? The truth first hit her when it was already too late.
The water mirror slid out of her dress pocket like something alive, with jerky, clumsy movements like a blinded animal. Then everything went at breakneck speed. Merle tried to grab the mirror, but it shot underneath her hand, skidded to the edge of the hole in the floor, slipped out over it—and fell.
In a long moment, as if frozen in time, Merle saw that the surface of the mirror had become milky, fogged by the presence of the phantom.
The mirror plunged past Merle’s outstretched hand into the depths. It fell exactly on the envoy, missed his hood, struck his hand, and knocked the crystal vial out of his fingers. The man howled, with pain, with rage, with surprise, as the mirror and the vial landed on the floor almost at the same time.
“No!” Serafin’s cry made the three councillors leap away from each other like drops of hot fat. With a daring bound he swung himself over the edge and sprang into the middle of them. Merle had no time to consider this sudden chain of catastrophes. She followed Serafin over the edge, her dress fluttering around her, and with a loud bellow that was intended to sound grim but was probably anything but.
The envoy avoided her. Otherwise her feet would have hit his head. Hastily he bent and tried to pick up the vial. But his fingers reached past the vial and brushed across the water mirror. For a fraction of a second his fingertips furrowed the surface, vanished under it—and were gone when the envoy pulled back his hand with a scream of pain. Instead of fingertips there were black slivers of bone, which stuck out of the remainders of his fingers, smoking and burned, as if he’d stuck his hand in a beaker of acid.
A mad shrieking came from under the hood. The sound was inhuman because no face appeared to give it; the screaming poured from an invisible mouth.
Serafin did a cartwheel on both hands, almost too fast for the eye to see. When he came to a stop by the window, he held the vial in his right hand and Merle’s mirror in his left.
Meanwhile the councillor in purple, the traitors’ spokesman, had grabbed Merle by the upper arm and tried to pull her around. With balled fist he raised his arm to strike her, while the two other councillors ran around like frightened hens, bellowing loudly for their bodyguards. Merle dodged him and was able to shake his hand off her arm, but as she did so her back thumped against black stuff. The robe of the envoy. There was a stench of burned flesh around him.
A sharp draft whistled through the cracks of the boarded-up windows: Flying lions had landed outside in front of the house. Steel scraped over steel as sabers were withdrawn from their sheaths.
Someone placed an arm around Merle from behind, but she ducked away under it as she had in so many scraps in the orphanage. She’d had practice in fighting, and she knew what she had to hit so that it hurt. When Councillor de Angeliis put himself in her way, she placed a well-aimed kick. The fat man in the scarlet robe bellowed as if he’d been spitted, holding his lower abdomen with both hands.
“Out!” cried Serafin, holding the two other councillors in check by threatening to smash the vial on the floor—whatever that might bring about.
Merle raced over to him and ran at his side to the exit. They turned into the corridor at the very moment the front door burst open and two bodyguards in black leather thundered in.
“By the Ancient Traitor!” Serafin cursed.
Nonplussed, the soldiers stopped in their tracks. They had been expecting a trick by the Egyptian, with men armed to the teeth, worthy opponents for two battle-hardened heroes of the Guard. Instead they saw a girl in a ragged dress and a boy who held in his hands two gleaming objects that looked not at all like knives.
Merle and Serafin used the moment of surprise. Before the guards could react, the two were on their way to the back room.
There, in front of the open window, the envoy was waiting for them. He had known that there was only one way of escape. At the back, out to the water.
“The mirror!” Merle called to Serafin.
He threw it over to her, and she caught it with both hands, grabbed it by the handle, and hit at the envoy with it. He avoided it skillfully, but that also left the way to the window free. His singed fingertips still smoked.
“The vial!” he demanded in a hissing voice. “You are setting yourselves against the Pharaoh!”
Serafin let out a daredevil laugh that surprised even Merle. Then he somersaulted past the envoy, between his outstretched hands. He landed safely on the windowsill and sat there like a bird, with both feet on the frame, knees drawn up, and a wide grin on his lips.
“All honor to the Flowing Queen!” he cried out, while Merle used the moment to spring to his side. “Follow me!”
With that he let himself fall backward out the window into the waters of the still canal.
It wasn’t really his hand that drew Merle after him: It was his enthusiasm, his sheer will not to give up. For the first time in her life she felt admiration for another person.
The envoy screeched and grabbed the edge of Merle’s dress, but it was with the fingers of his eroded hand, and he let go again with a yelp of pain.
The water was icy. In a single heartbeat it seemed to pierce her clothes, her flesh, her entire body. Merle could no longer breathe, nor move, nor even think. She didn’t know how long this condition lasted—it seemed to her like minutes—but when she surfaced, Serafin was beside her, and life came back to her limbs. She couldn’t have been under for more than a few seconds.
“Here, take this!” Underwater he pressed the vial into her left hand. In the right she was still holding the mirror, which lay between her fingers as if it grew there.
“What shall I do with it?”
“If worse comes to worst, I’ll steer them away,” said Serafin and spat water. The waves slapped at his lips.
Worse comes to worst, Merle thought. Even worse?
The envoy appeared in the window and shouted something.
Serafin let out a whistle. It only worked on the second try; the first just spewed water from his lips. Merle followed his eyes to the window, then saw black silhouettes slip down, four-legged shadows that sprang from holes and drainpipes, screeching and meowing, with unsheathed claws, which they sank into the robe of the envoy. One cat came up on the windowsill, immediately launched again, and disappeared completely into the dark of the hood. Screaming, the Egyptian staggered backward into the room.
“Harmless thieves’ trick!” observed Serafin with satisfaction.
“We have to get out of the water!” Merle turned and let the mirror slide into the
pocket of her dress, together with the vial, to which she gave no further thought for the moment. She swam a few strokes in the direction of the opposite bank. The walls came down to the canal there, and there was no hold for pulling oneself to dry land. All the same, she had to do something!
“Onto land?” Serafin said, looking up at the sky. “It looks as though that’s going to take care of itself.”
Breathlessly Merle turned around, much too slowly, because her dress hindered her in the water. And then she saw what he meant.
Two lions, wings outspread, were diving steeply down at them out of the black of the night.
“Duck!” she screamed and didn’t see whether Serafin followed her command. She held her breath and glided underwater, felt the salty cold on her lips, the pressure in her ears and nose. The canal must be about nine feet deep, and she knew that she needed to get at least half of that between her and the lions’ claws.
She saw and heard nothing of what was happening around her. When she was deep enough, she turned herself horizontal, and plunged along the canal with a few strong strokes. Perhaps she could make it if she could reach one of the old loading doors.
At one time, when Venice had been an important trading city, the merchants had been able to bring their wares into their houses from the canals through doors that lay at surface level. Today many of these houses stood empty, their owners long dead, but the doors still existed, usually rotten, eaten away by water and by salt. Often the bottom third was rotted away. For Merle they offered an ideal chance for escape.
And Serafin?
She could only pray that he was behind her, not too far above, where the lions’ claws could grab him out of the water. Stone lions are shy of water, have always been, and the last flying examples of their kind are no exception. They may put their claws into the water, but they themselves will never, ever dip into it. Merle knew this weakness of the lions and she hoped with all her might that Serafin did too.
Gradually she grew starved for air and in her need she sent a fervent prayer to the Flowing Queen. Then it occurred to her that the Flowing Queen was in a vial in the pocket of her dress, imprisoned like a genie in a bottle and probably as helpless as she was.
The essence of the Flowing Queen, the councillor had said.
Where was Serafin? And where was there a door?
She was losing consciousness. The black around her seemed to turn, and she felt as if she were falling deeper and deeper, while in truth she was struggling toward the top, to reach the surface.
Then she broke through. Air flowed into her lungs. She opened her eyes.
She had come farther than she’d hoped. Very close by there was in fact a door, slanting and ragged, where the water had licked at the wood over and over and finally rotted it. The upper half hung undamaged on its hinges, but under it gaped a dark maw into the interior of the house. The rotted wood looked like the jaw of a sea monster, a row of sharp teeth, cracked and green with algae and mold.
“Merle!”
Serafin’s voice made her whirl around in the water. What she saw numbed her from head to toe. She almost went under.
One of the lions was hovering over the water and holding the kicking Serafin in its front paws, like a fish that it had grabbed and plucked out of the stream.
“Merle!” Serafin bellowed once more. She knew now that he hadn’t seen her at all, that he didn’t know where she was and if she were still alive. He was afraid for her. He feared she had drowned.
Her mind screamed to answer him, to draw the notice of the lions to herself in order to give him a chance to get away. But she was only fooling herself. No lion lets go of what it has caught.
Already the beast completed a turn with a well-aimed wingbeat, moved away, and rose in the air, the defenseless Serafin firmly pressed under its body.
“Merle, wherever you are,” bellowed Serafin in a voice growing fainter, “you must flee! Hide yourself! Save the Flowing Queen!”
Then lion, rider, and Serafin vanished into the night like a cloud of ash dispersed on the wind.
Merle ducked under again. Her tears became one with the canal, became one with it as did Merle herself. On and on, as she dove through the wooden, toothed maw, through the rotted door into still deeper darkness; as she pulled herself to dryness in the dark, curled up like a little child, simply lay there, and wept.
Breathed and wept.
6
THE FLOWING QUEEN WAS SPEAKING TO HER.
“Merle,” said her voice. “Merle, listen to me!”
Merle started up, her eyes quickly searching the darkness. The old storeroom reeked of dampness and rotten wood. The only light came in through the broken door from the canal. There was a shimmer and shining in the air—someone was searching the water surface with torches out there!
She had to get out of here as quickly as possible.
“You are not dreaming, Merle.”
The words were in her; the voice was speaking between her ears.
“Who are you?” she whispered, leaping to her feet.
“You know who I am. Do not be afraid of me.”
Merle pulled the mirror out of her pocket and held it in the flickering torchlight. The surface was clear, the phantom nowhere to be seen. But she also felt that it wasn’t he who was speaking to her. She quickly slid the mirror back into her pocket and took out the vial. It fit comfortably into her hand.
“You?” If she only spoke in single words, not in entire sentences, maybe it wouldn’t be apparent how very much her voice quavered.
“You must get away from here. They are going to search through all the houses that border on the canal. And after that, the rest of the district.”
“What’s happened to Serafin?”
“He is now a prisoner of the Guard.”
“They’ll kill him!”
“Perhaps. But not right away. They could have done that already, in the water. They are going to try to find out who you are and where they can find you.”
Merle shoved the vial back into her pocket and felt her way through the darkness. She was miserably cold in her wet dress, but her goose pimples had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Are you the Flowing Queen?” she asked softly.
“Do you want to call me that? Queen?”
“First of all I just want to get away from here.”
“Then we should attend to that.”
“We? I see only one person here who has legs to run away with.”
In the dark she found a door that led back into the house. She slipped through it and found herself in a deserted entry hall. Floor and banisters were covered with thick dust. Merle’s feet left tracks in the dust as if it were a blanket of snow. Her pursuers wouldn’t find it hard to follow her trail.
The front door was nailed shut from the outside, like many doors in Venice these days, but she found a window whose glass she was able to break with the fallen head of a statue. By some miracle she climbed out without cutting either hands or knees.
What now? Best go back to the Canal of the Expelled. Arcimboldo would know what to do. Or Eft. Or Junipa. Someone or other! She couldn’t carry this secret around with her alone.
“If your friend talks, they will look for you there first,” warned the voice suddenly.
“Serafin will never betray me!” she retorted, annoyed. And in her thoughts she added: He swore never to let me down.
On the other hand, she had watched passively as the lion carried him away. But what could she have done anyway?
“Nothing,” said the voice. “You were helpless. You are still.”
“Are you reading my thoughts?”
She got no answer to that, which was answer enough.
“Stop that,” she said sharply. “I saved you. You owe me something.”
Further silence. Had she angered the voice? So much the better; maybe it would leave her in peace then. It was hard enough to think for one person alone. She needed no inner voice, questioning her every d
ecision.
Cautiously she ran down the alleyway, stopping again and again, listening for pursuers and suspicious sounds. She even kept her eye on the sky, although it was dark enough that a whole pride of lions could have been romping around high up there. It was still hours till sunrise.
Soon she knew where she was: only a few corners away from Campo San Polo. She’d covered half the distance back to the workshop. Not much farther and she would be safe.
“Not safe,” contradicted the voice. “Not as long as the boy is a prisoner.”
Merle exploded. “What is this?” she shouted, her voice resounding loudly from the walls. “What are you? My voice of reason?”
“I will be that, if you want.”
“I only want you to leave me in peace.”
“I am only giving you advice, not orders.”
“I don’t need advice.”
“But I am afraid you do need it.”
Merle stopped, looked angrily around, and found a gap in a boarded-up wall between two houses. She had to settle this business once and for all, here and now. She squeezed herself through the opening, drew deeper back into the dark canyon between the house walls, and sank down with her knees drawn up.
“You want to talk with me? Well, then, we’ll talk.”
“As you wish.”
“Who or what are you?”
“I think you already know that.”
“The Flowing Queen?”
“At the moment, only a voice in your head.”
Merle hesitated. If the voice really belonged to the Queen, wouldn’t it then be polite to deal with her a little more respectfully? But she was still full of doubt. “You don’t talk like a queen.”
“I talk like you. I speak with your voice, with your thoughts.”
“I’m only some girl.”
