For the first time since I arrived, I looked out on all the various wonders and mysteries of the Nameless City, the occult architecture and history that April had described to me breathlessly, during the warm sleepless nights of the summer, whispered like secrets into my ear.
The elevated tracks of the transit system ran through the city like a line of stitches, disappearing underground and reemerging at intervals. The pillars of Iram towered above everything, delicate and fragile near their fluted apexes, alongside a collection of aging and contemporary skyscrapers. Crowds milled and surged across intersections below us, intent on the commercial and recreational establishments built around the bases of the great pillars.
Adjoining Iram and the towers of downtown, the hulking mass of Chambers Museum sat on its haunches like a sphinx, surrounded by exquisite gardens and visited only by schoolchildren on field trips and my neighbors. At the very edge of Iram’s suburbs, on parallel tracks of meteoric iron, Black Trains made nightly arrivals at Bierce Station, their shrieking whistle echoing through the core of the city. No one waited in the cavernous halls of the Station, and no one was ever seen to disembark.
Innsmouth Harbor was a massive horseshoe, rotting docks and moorings clustered behind a breakwater constructed from raw stones of impossible size. Just beneath the sluggish waters of the bay, the city beneath the sea lurked, waves skimming over Empire of the Deep. The black water was thick with the city’s refuse, as were the shores and beaches. A series of canals deposited the sad remains of the Skai into the harbor. The ships docked at the old quays below the halogen lamps of the container port flew ragged black sails.
The industrial ridge of Sarnath loomed above the harbor, choked with chimneys and cooling towers. Across the confined Skai, the flat grey of the Empty District, hardly visible during the day, but obvious at night, a patch of darkness in the urban lightshow. The purple crests of the Moon Trees in the Enchanted Forest poked out above the abandoned tenements. Traffic forced its way through the narrow old streets of Palsey and Thoroughbridge, near Iram, while gardeners maintained the vast guarded cemetery of Wenth near the inland Lake of Yath, onyx walls in stark contrast to the slate grey cloud front. To the north, I could just make out the misty reaches of the Essex Coast, lashed by the leaden Southern Sea, where stately old vacation homes and mildewed fishing villages maintained an uneasy truce with the local Selkie population.
Across the harbor, the island of Oriab, and the port city of Baharna, with porphyry wharves and a pair of lighthouses that have burned, untended for centuries, for which the locals have forgotten the names. This was another favorite destination of the black-sailed ships, who valued the icons local artisans carved. At the edge of the horizon, the false lights of lost Carcosa through the perpetual fog, marking a coast that no vessel could land upon, and no navigator could triangulate.
I could see the distant foothills, and even the clock tower of distant Providence, flanked by the petrified trees of the Still Forest and embraced by a yellow mist. The dormant volcanic peak of Mount Ngranek was barely discernable, the far side of which is rumored to be fashioned into the forms of the gods who once lived atop it. The heat shadow of the arid Waste swirled in the background, and beyond that the shadows of the grey mountains of Mnar, carved by singing glaciers into wild and unstable forms, which they say no waking man has ever visited. The fabric of the Nameless City continued unbroken to the extent of my vision, an urban patchwork; hemmed about by the mountains, bisected by the Skai, and bounded by the poisoned Southern Sea, the depths of which have never been sounded.
I felt awful, incidentally.
“You’ve done only half the work.” Madeleine complained with a satisfied smile. “It is presumptuous to seek a reward.”
She nudged Yael with the toe of her dainty shoe. Yael was still, arms tied behind her with hempen rope, more of which looped around her ankles. The dripping Servants of the Deep had been rough about that, binding her limbs tightly and then tossing her indifferently to the ground. Only her mask, which the fish-people were unable to remove, prevented her skull from hitting the stone. One waited patiently in each corner of the room, as inanimate as scarecrows, backs turned for privacy.
“Call it a gesture of good faith,” I suggested. “I’m assuming all the risk. I want some assurance of payment before I go forward with the other half.”
“Unless this is a delaying tactic. Tell me, Preston dear – are you reluctant to produce your companion, as you have conspired to provide me with Yael Kaufman?”
“You make it sound like my idea.”
“Wasn’t it?” A charming tilt of her head, a muffled giggle. Madeleine Diem laid it on thick. “I made an offer, Preston. The rest was entirely up to you.”
“That’s why I want some reassurance. I’m taking a big chance for you, Madeleine. I want a consideration so I know you’re good for the rest.”
She wandered about the elevated platform at the top of the observatory, occasionally humming to herself with good humor, mostly hiding her smile with the butterfly fan. I wasn’t sure if the display was for my benefit or if Madeleine was simply unused to other people after her long confinement – as well as her time among the fish-people, who didn’t strike me as talkative.
“Very well,” she said, with a sigh that became a tittering, little-girl laugh. “What do you want?”
“To understand,” I lied, seizing the opening. “Did you really leave the Nameless City, after your fight with Constance?”
“What a clever boy,” Madeleine said approvingly. “How did you find out?”
“That’s not important,” I said hurriedly. “Holly imprisoned you, didn’t she?”
Her nod was unexpectedly vulnerable.
“Yes.” Her smile was overexposed and indistinct. “She was very cross, and understandably so.”
We both paused to look at the only object in the otherwise empty glass room. The chair was made of rough-hewn wood, as if it had been put together in a hurry, the seat and arm rests worn smooth and bright from years of contact. The metal cuffs attached to the armrests and front legs were in better shape.
“How long did she keep you locked up here?”
“Until I found a way out. With some help from my friends.”
“You seem pretty calm about it,” I observed. “You aren’t angry?”
“Sisters fight at times, Preston.” A giggle belonging to a girl ages younger. “You wouldn’t understand. Besides, it could have been worse. At least she kept me somewhere with a view.”
“A prison with a view is still a prison.”
“Fair enough. Perhaps I am simply not inclined to bitterness.”
I nodded warily at the lantern resting on the chair, light spilling from vacant sockets.
“I find that hard to believe.”
She laughed.
“Don’t judge me too harshly,” Madeleine suggested, with a wink and a genteel leer, mostly hidden by the iridescent fan. “I was young, and Constance provoked me.”
“So there’s no conflict between you and Holly?”
She frowned and brushed nonexistent dust from the front of her gown.
“Nothing that can’t be settled with an exchange of carefully chosen words. We witches are a civilized folk.”
“You get your new arm and legs, and then live happily ever after?”
“Why not?” Madeleine asked, bemused. “Everything is permitted, and all that.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You are very inquisitive. Haven’t I told you enough?”
“One last thing,” I said, forcing a grin. “How did you rope Elijah Pickman into all of this? Is he one of your…boyfriends?”
Madeleine’s laughter was unexpected and uproarious. She doubled over and clutched her stomach as if afraid she might burst.
“You can’t be serious!” She wiped her eyes and shook her head. “He is my great-grandnephew, after all. In any case, Holly would never forgive me for such a thing, even if he is a handsome
boy.”
Madeleine tossed a wrench in the works, and my thought process came to a grinding halt.
“Ah…what?”
“Yes,” she said, with a curt bob of her head. “Holly has always been terribly fond of him.”
Despite my best efforts to kick-start my grey matter, I kept tripping over the most basic facts.
“Your grandnephew? Really?”
“Great-grandnephew,” she corrected, with a giggle. “Do I look old enough to have one, Preston?”
Her eyes fluttered coquettishly.
“You know you don’t,” I said, as gruffly as possible. “Who is Elijah’s great-grandmother, then?”
Madeleine smiled at my ignorance, doll eyes gleaming like marbles.
“Holly, naturally. Doesn’t she strike you as the maternal type? Constance is a committed spinster, in any case.”
“I’m having trouble imagining Holly settling down and having children…”
She laughed again, ephemeral notes from a glass piano, honey color hair dangling in her face.
“She never settled! Witches don’t, as a rule.” Madeleine fluttered her fake eyes. “Holly took lovers at rare intervals. Very occasionally, these dalliances would end in pregnancy. One such romance involved Elijah Pickman’s great-grandfather – a gifted artist, as I recall, very driven. Holly is quite traditional, you know – she insisted on a full nine months with a swollen belly, the ghastly delivery, and even nursing. I do note, however,” Madeleine added, with the enthusiastic air of a child divulging a secret, “that she exempted herself from both the baby weight and post-partum depression, which is hardly sporting.”
She left me no space for consideration.
“Holly raised Elijah’s grandfather?”
“I doubt it very much. Holly is a career-minded woman, Preston. Obadiah Pickman’s upbringing would have largely been the responsibility of the Pickman family, though Holly enjoys entertaining and spoiling children.”
“How many kids are we talking?”
“I wasn’t counting, darling. Do you really care so much?”
I shook my head. I felt confined and suffocated, despite the view.
“Not really. It’s just weird to think that Holly has kids running around somewhere.”
“Oh, not hardly!” Melodious laughter. “They are all long dead, Preston. Do you still desire Holly, now that you know she is lifetimes older? A woman rarely becomes more attractive when you delve into her secrets. You should know that.”
“I suppose so.”
Madeleine lost interest and resumed her wanderings across the roof, occasionally gazing at the city with the confident affection most reserved for a possession. I made a quick check of my limbs, just to be sure.
“How did Elijah get caught up in all of this? At Holly’s request or your own?”
“Well,” Madeleine said, putting a finger to her lips in thought, “she is my sister.”
“That doesn’t really…”
“I think that’s more than enough to prove my sincerity, don’t you?” Doll eyes behind lowered lids, glimmering with quiet hostility. Or, my imagination, maybe. “We can discuss your reward later. Why don’t we get down to business?”
I shrugged as if it didn’t make any difference, as far as I was concerned.
“I suppose.” I offered Madeleine a relaxed smile. “Let’s.”
“Excellent!” She clapped once, to punctuate her enthusiasm. “I will need Yael Kaufman’s left leg, if you please, including as much of the thigh as you can free from the hip, so my designers can accommodate the difference in height. It will be more difficult than you expect, but butchery is always that way. Persevere, however, and the rest will be self-explanatory.”
She grinned as if she were being clever. I glared as if I didn’t agree.
“That was never part of the deal.”
“Wasn’t it?” She tapped her lower lip thoughtfully. “I could have sworn I mentioned that.”
“You did not.”
“Oh well. Consider it a favor,” Madeleine suggested, offering me a handsaw and a boning knife, “and get cutting, won’t you?”
12. Not Knowing When the Dawn Will Come, I Open Every Window
An empty room is sacred; a broken mirror is an altar.
“That’s quite enough, I think.”
Yael cast aside her severed bonds, the scalpel I slipped her during our collision held cautiously in her left hand. “Let’s settle this, Madeleine; shall we?”
Madeleine clucked in disappointment, but her inanimate eyes didn’t show anything of the sort, glimmering with synthetic amusement.
“Oh, Preston, I am surprised at you!” Madeleine wagged her finger at me. “You came so highly recommended. Such a foolish decision, Preston – the things I could have done for you – and to you! – if only you cooperated. What a disappointment!”
“Don’t feel too bad,” Yael grumbled. “Preston didn’t warn me at all before he hit me.”
“I…ah…figured your mask would cushion the blow.”
“It did. A little.”
“You are both very rude,” Madeleine said humorously. “You should treat your host with more respect.”
Madeleine snapped Sumire’s fingers, and all four of the fish-people turned to face us.
“Tell me the truth,” Yael demanded, pointing at Madeleine Diem like a lawyer in a courtroom drama. “You admit to arranging the attack on Sumire Iwakura, do you not?”
“Not a bit of it.” Madeleine pouted. “Elijah Pickman offered me the limb, as a gift.”
“Nonetheless,” Yael persisted, “you must have told him who to attack…”
“What? Oh, not at all! He requested specifications – measurements and aesthetic requirements.” A frown flitted briefly across her face, but found no satisfactory resting place. “I was not able to accept every gift he offered, for that reason. A waste, I suppose, but it seemed a shame to criticize, when little Elijah was feeling so enthusiastic…”
“Then the attacks…all of them…” Yael’s voice quavered shortly. “Elijah did that?”
“My great grandnephew is a capable young man,” Madeleine stated proudly. “I am happy to provide him with part-time work.”
“That is just awful.” Yael sounded pretty down about it. “I still hold you responsible. You motivated these terrible attacks, Miss Diem. Dragging poor Elijah into this…”
“Dragging Elijah?” Madeleine raised one thoroughly plucked eyebrow. “I assure you, no coercion was required. Elijah was desirous of something difficult to obtain, you see, and I was in a position to assist. The limbs he provided were a freewill offering, an expression of gratitude. Taking them is no more a crime than accepting stolen property, in my mind.”
Yael and I exchanged a look – despite the reflective lenses inset in her mask.
“Receiving stolen property is most certainly a crime, Miss Diem.”
“Maybe where you come from,” Madeleine asserted forcefully, “but for the well-travelled…”
She looked to me for support.
“Sorry, Maddy.” I shrugged. “I think that’s illegal everywhere.”
“Oh.” She sighed, as if enduring the latest in a long line of disappointments. “Well, I’m still not guilty of the murder.”
“She’s not dead!” I shouted. God help me, I shook my fists. “Sumire isn’t dead, and she never was! Elijah stabbed her a bunch, cut her throat, and then cut her arm off – but she lived! There was no damn murder, okay?”
“Preston.” Yael’s tone was surprisingly tolerant. “Please.”
“Sorry, it’s just…no. You’re right. Sorry.”
“You’ve made your point,” Yael said, turning her attention back to Madeleine. “We’ll go find Elijah, and try to find a way to fix this. Matters are not settled between the two of us, however.”
“Of course not!” Madeleine put a hand in her chest and looked scandalized. “I have no intention of allowing you to leave, after all.”
The fish-p
eople began a clumsy simultaneous advance, dripping water on the concrete floor, reeking of fermented seaweed. Yael and I backed up against each other, studying our enemies closely while trying not to be too obvious about watching each other. It was like a trust-building exercise.
“Can you take the two on the left?”
“My left or yours?”
Yael glared from behind reflective lenses. I was sure of it.
“Does it matter?”
“No. And I doubt it, for the record.”
“I’ll take my right, then,” she explained, disregarding the whole of my response. “Watch my back.”
I had no time to clarify, because the Servants of the Deep closed the distance, one swinging a heavy driftwood cudgel, while the other clutched a pair of wicked looking curved knives, the kind favored by sinister cultists the world over. Maybe a meter and a half between them, advancing sloppily, aiming to flank me. If I failed to stop them, they would run all over Yael’s exposed back, while I’m sure the same thing was happening behind me. I waited where I stood, and made them come to me.
The fish-people were obliging. The hideous hybridization of their features was on full display as they closed in, from the iridescence of their scaly hides to the ruby-red slits of their gills. They had all the accessories that normally come with the human package – ears, noses, and the like – but these features were diminished, as residual as a pinky toe.
They circled to either side, and I watched. Behind me, I heard the hiss of an aerosol, and the sound of flesh contacting flesh, but there was no time to worry about Yael. If she went down, I would follow seconds later, likely never even seeing the Servants of the Deep who would tear me apart. I waited, until I saw one of the fish-people sneak a glance at the other, trying to arrange a simultaneous attack.
I sprinted toward the fish-person with the cudgel, hoping it was distracted, and preferring to deal with the blunt object first.
The fish-person saw me coming, and telegraphed its response the entire way. It wound up with the cudgel like an overenthusiastic batter and aimed to take my head off in one go. I avoided the cudgel with something less than grace, weighted driftwood glancing off my bicep and numbing my arm. I feinted toward the neck with my scalpel, and then lunged for its body, and came up short. It took another two handed swing, and I went low, rolling beneath the sweep of the club. I drove the scalpel into its hamstring – assuming it had one of those – until only the handle protruded.
The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2) Page 22
