“I heal quick.”
Cadman didn’t doubt it. There was something about the assassin’s appearance that nagged at his overburdened mind. It was in there somewhere; just needed to be dredged up from the depths, filtered out from all the dross and scum of the centuries.
“What do I owe you?”
More than you can afford. Cadman tried not to sneer as Shadrak searched through a pouch for some loose change. He was adorned with pouches, replete with them, all the way around his belt, and two strapped over his shoulders, running alongside the twin baldrics with their gleaming blades and razor stars. The pistol was holstered at one hip, a stiletto sheathed at the other. All kitted out for killing and looking just the part with his deathly complexion and eyes like diluted blood.
“Do you know a place called Broken Bridge?” Cadman made a show of scrutinizing the flyer.
“Shit hole twenty miles south. Why?” Shadrak gave him a look that could have been mistaken for nonchalance by anyone other than Cadman.
“You’ve been there?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Quite, quite.” Twenty miles might not have seemed far, but to Cadman that was the end of the Earth. He’d not left Sarum in decades and got into a panic if he had to go further than the city center. Travel was not something he did anymore, if he could help it, and that created something of a dilemma.
“May I see the wound?” He took a step towards Shadrak but stopped when he caught the look in his eye, the tension in his tiny body.
“Told you I heal quick. Just needed you to get the…”
“Bullet.”
“Whatever. To get the bullet out.”
It came to Cadman like an aneurysm. “Homunculus!”
“What?”
He was sure that was the word. He’d come across it in one of Blightey’s books. The little folk, denizens of Aethir, wasn’t it? The world of the Dreaming. He would have loved to ask questions but doubted Shadrak would be very forthcoming.
“Just thinking aloud. Put the purse away, there are other ways to settle a debt. Do you have any urgent engagements?”
He could see Shadrak didn’t like it. His eyes were darting all over the place, fingers stroking the tops of pouches.
“What you got in mind?”
“Oh, nothing too strenuous. Wouldn’t want to impede your recovery.” Actually, the albino already looked fully healed, and that wasn’t natural. Whatever Shadrak was, Cadman very much doubted he was human. “How do you fancy a trip to Broken Bridge?”
“Who d’you want dead?”
Now there’s a thought. “No one.” At least not right now. “Think of it as more of a reconnaissance; information gathering.” Cadman handed him the flyer. “Go to this recital and come back with everything you can glean about Eingana.”
“That it?”
“That’ll pay for your treatment. If it leads to any more work, I’m sure I could rustle up a denarius or two.”
Shadrak’s pink eyes widened at that.
Avaricious barbarian. Just like the rest of these Sahulian cow-herders and sheep-shaggers: despising everything about Nousia, except for the value of its currency.
“Excellent,” Cadman said. “Every last detail about Eingana, remember. I don’t want you to miss a jot.”
STAGE FRIGHT
Elias Wolf had never been a nervous performer. Man, he was too wasted for nerves most of the time. He’d been gigging for so long he reckoned his memories of the old shows must have passed down the crapper of history along with the world of the Ancients.
“I wouldn’t say it’s nerves, as such.” He flicked ash into the mouth of the Statue of Eingana, a black and toothless snake, staring at him like she would have bitten his hand off for the offense; if she’d had anything to bite with. “Reckon it’s more separation anxiety.”
Rhiannon was pissed but doing a good job trying to disguise it, face all pale and serious, eyes with that glazed-over look that turned Elias on. Turned him on with any other woman, that’s to say.
“Do you want a glass with that?”
“Think I’m right.” She took another swig from the bottle, wine staining her lips, giving her the look of a raven-haired queen of the Abyss. She had a sort of undead-ish quality, freshly risen from the grave to sup on the flesh of men.
The thought sent sparrows’ claws hopping up and down Elias’s spine. Cold sparrows, that is, the sort you might find in an arctic tundra, feet all frozen in ice. Wow, he was stoned. Stonedy stone stoned. But the vampire tart thing was cool, though. “Chuck us my notepad.” Bloody good image for a song, that. The sort of thing that needed to be jotted down before it faded like a dream on waking.
Rhiannon swayed as she stood, and for one moment he thought she was going to topple into the rows of instruments standing on display against the peeling, crumbling wall of the studio—his babies.
She threw him his pad and he scribbled some notes about blood-sucking strumpets.
“Now don’t go getting too wrecked on me, gal. This is an historic occasion.” He did the regal voice thing and accompanying flourish. “And finally,” he announced to the invisible crowd, “after year upon year of sweat, toil and… Sweat, toil and what?”
“A ton of bloody weed.” Rhiannon gave him that grin—the broad one that said she was a comedian, and your best friend, and a bitch all at the same time. Elias dug the economy of the girl; reckoned she was a natural. Shame to see her wasted on the Templum. Still, give it time, she’d screw it up. Couldn’t see her cow-towing to Nousian rules of obedience. And chastity—there was just no way.
“Weed. I like that.” He took another drag to emphasize the point. “Once did a gig—years ago.” Centuries, even. “Geezer chucks me a joint, someone else hands me a beer, and this crazy chick dumps a baby on my lap. Thank Ain for guitar stands, I says. Well, actually I didn’t—don’t thank Ain for much, really. You know my thoughts on that.”
Rhiannon brushed the hair out of her face and rolled her eyes. “Don’t start.”
Elias wagged his finger at her. “For you, my darling, I would praise Ain to the heights of Araboth.” But not for anyone else. “Like I was saying, baby, beer and spliff. I says: ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ —meaning, like, how can the gig go on?—when the chick hands me her purse. It’s like she was saying ‘Take the money; it’ll pay for the baby’s keep.’ And no, it wasn’t mine. You have one hell of a smutty mind for a postulant. Anyhow, I open the purse, look inside, turn it upside down and shake it. ‘Empty,’ I says. ‘Like society.’ “
Rhiannon didn’t look much like she was listening. He’d probably told that one before. The grin fell off her face.
“Shit.” She slapped her head, spilling some wine as she set the bottle down. “I bloody swore.”
“I think, my girl, you might have bitten off more than you can chew with this religious thing.”
“It’s the drink, I swear it is. You’re a bad influence.”
“Shit!” Elias jumped up from his stool and stubbed the butt out in Eingana’s mouth. “My scrumpy!”
He tripped over a guitar stand and hurtled into the door, bowling through and landing in a heap next to the stove. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of cinnamon and cloves.
“Pan’s boiled dry,” Rhiannon said, lifting it from the heat and scraping around in the ashes with a spoon. “That’s what I meant by gently heat. No mulled cider for you tonight. Still, there’s plenty of wine.”
“You know me and the ol’ vino.” Elias climbed to his feet and dusted himself down. “Don’t agree with my guts. Bad omen, that—the cider. Doesn’t augur well for the opening night.”
“You’ll be right. Long as you don’t forget your lines like last time.”
“That was hardly the same.” He ushered her back into the studio. “This, my dear, is a masterpiece. Centuries in the making, and every last lyric burned into the ol’ noddle like … like…”
“Like cider into a pan?”
�
�Funny that. Cider in a pan. Remind me to hug myself in case my sides split. Bugger, what’s the first frickin’ line? Pass me Old Mr. Spud, will you.”
Rhiannon reverently lifted the guitar and blew dust from the headstock. Elias rested it on his lap and gave it a quick tune. “The ol’ mother-o’-pearl’s a little lack luster. Bit of spit and polish’ll sort that out. Sounds beautiful, though, with the new strings.” He strummed an open G and looked up expectantly.
“Lovely.” Rhiannon obviously had no appreciation for the subtle tones of the ol’ phosphor bronzes. She wasn’t alone in that. Backward bleeding world—in a forward sort of a way.
He struck up an alternating bass line with his thumb and plucked away with his fingers, the notes crisp and ringing with the clarity only new strings had—and then only for a day or two, if you were lucky. He closed his eyes, picked out the melody, took in a breath and sang:
”A gift of the Void or a fool’s prophecy,
A tumbling of stars came the Aeonic Three.
The Archon, his sister and brother…”
The worst thing that can happen to a bard. His mind was a blank. He tried again, strummed the intro to see if that helped. It didn’t.
Rhiannon squatted down in front of him. “Is it the weed?”
Elias was as close to panic as he’d ever been. This was not cool. Not cool at all. “Course it’s not the weed. Might have blamed it if I’d not had any—withdrawals an’ all. No, it’s not the bloody weed. Song’s cursed, that’s what.”
“Cursed?”
“Whole frickin’ epic’s cursed. Always has been. Reckon that’s why it took so long to pen.” What had Huntsman said? This one’s not for the world? Something like that, all dressed up with Dreamer heebie jeebies and interspersed with “fellah” and “Sahul says.” Someone might hear, he’d said. Apparently that wasn’t such a good thing. Certainly wasn’t if “someone” was Sektis bleedin’ Gandaw, who the Dreamers seemed to think of as a dark and vengeful god. The last thing Elias wanted was a return to the Global Technocracy that had screwed the world up big time before the Reckoning. Machines telling you when to wake up, spouting shit at you all day long, cooking your dinner, wiping your arse. They even had machines that played guitar, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as far as he was concerned. No, the world was better off without Sektis Gandaw and his bloodless utopia. If the shogger hadn’t been killed during the Reckoning, he’d have snuffed it centuries ago in any case, despite what Huntsman seemed to believe. And even if he were still alive, Elias suspected the Technocrat of the Old World had more in common with a cockroach surviving a nuclear winter than with an immortal deity.
“He’s put the signs on me,” Elias said with mock horror. “Doomed me with stage fright.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Huntsman, the scary witch doctor geezer. Can’t miss him: bloke with bones and things through his nose and a stinking cloak of feathers. What’s up?”
Rhiannon had one hand covering her lips as if she were going to be sick. She raised the other hand to say she’d be all right, shook her head and lowered herself to a stool.
“Need some more to drink?”
“Yeah.”
He headed back to the kitchen. “Tea? Sober you up?”
“You gotta be kidding.” As quickly as it had come, the change was gone. That big complicated grin slid back across her face. “Beer will see me right, then I’m outta here. Got to see someone before the show.”
“Anyone I know.”
“Just Gaston. Last chance I’ll get before I go.”
“Gaston Rayn? The sorry little shit back for another bite of the cherry now Shader’s out of the way?”
“It’s not like that.” She caught his look. “Didn’t you hear? His dad was killed last night, in the Griffin.”
“No way.” Now that was a seriously bad omen; worse than the cider. Not to mention it might frighten the crowds away. “What happened?”
“Sheriff’s just finished up at the pub, by the looks of things. Expect we’ll know soon enough. They’re saying it was the Sicarii. I heard…” Rhiannon closed her eyes and swallowed. “Heard it was like those murders they had in Sarum way back, you know, just a hole in the head and no sign of what made it.”
“Shadrak the Unseen?” That’s the last thing he needed. The slipperiest, most feared assassin in Western Sahul going about his business just before the debut of the most important performance since Sergeant Sunshine’s gig at the Crypt. On the other hand, there were bound to be hordes of ghoulish thrill-seekers sniffing around the scene of the latest Shadrak murder. Every cloud…
Rhiannon nodded, and then her eyes snapped open. “And besides, I thought you knew me better.”
“I’m saying nothing. I’m sure it’s just a sisterly goodbye before you swan off into the riveting world of contemplation and wiping the arses of the sick.”
They’d been childhood sweethearts. Nothing ever came of it as far as Elias knew, but that wasn’t due to a lack of trying on Gaston’s part. “Is he still playing knights with Barek Thomas and Justin Salace?”
“What do you think?” Rhiannon sighed and shook the empty bottle at him. “They’ve got the whole Order down at the barn. Been there for a week, practicing like mad.”
Elias grabbed a couple of beers, opened them with his teeth, gave one to her and sipped on the other.
“Hoping Shader’ll change his mind?”
Rhiannon shook her head, momentarily letting the mask slip. “No. He’s gone all right. Guess that’s something we have in common. Once we make up our minds, there’s no stopping us.”
“And so the twain will burn for each other with heroic mortifications, he enclosed in Pardes whilst she prays for her soul in Sarum.” It reminded him of something he’d read years ago, way back before the Reckoning. Some bland tale of unrequited love, all for the sake of an imaginary friend in the sky.
“Damn!” The lyrics sailed past on the misty river of his mind. “Almost had it.”
“What’s it about? Besides the Void and the Areolate Three, I mean.”
“Aeonic. I can see you’re keeping abreast of the situation. The Triad of powers that dropped from the Void to grace our dull little cosmos with their divine presence.”
“Hmm.”
Maybe the prose form was still in there. Might jog his memory of the song. “The Aeonic Triad: the Archon, Eingana—” He cocked a thumb at the statue. “—and their brother, the Demiurgos, tumbled out of the darkness, from Ain knows where—or most likely from nowhere.”
Rhiannon mimed a yawn. She’d heard it all before, back when he used to teach her and the rest of the kids of the villages; back before Huntsman had told him to put a sock in it. He was gonna be mightily pissed Elias was going ahead with the performance, not that it was any of his business. It was a free world, with free speech—even if it was sadly lacking in free love these days. He wrinkled his nose at Rhiannon and pressed on.
“They fell, still fighting, the Demiurgos tearing at his sister with tooth and claw, the Archon stabbing at him with a sword. Three gods tussling. The Archon all radiant light, Eingana in the form of a serpent, and their brother, blacker than the Void and just as empty.
“It’s said Eingana fled into the constellations, but the Demiurgos pursued and ravished her. She swelled with his spawn, but couldn’t give birth. The Dreamers say she had a very small…” He indicated his crotch and then flapped his hands at Rhiannon, guessing she’d get his meaning. “The Archon slit her open with his sword and plucked the child from her womb, a monstrous hybrid, part ape, part dog.”
“You’re singing about this tonight? In the Griffin?”
“Yep.”
“You better hope they’ve got a free run on the liquor, mate.”
“You don’t want to hear about the Cynocephalus then?”
She gave him a blank look.
“Eingana’s son—the dog-headed ape.”
“Oh, him.” Rhiannon rose and ru
bbed her eyes. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Best wake Sammy.”
“One more thing before you leave.” Elias opened his arms. “What do I look like?”
She sucked in her cheeks and chewed on them a minute. “Straggly haired ragamuffin with more patches than trousers on some crazy-arsed fabric called…What’d you call it?”
“Denim.”
“Right. And a jacket of the same stuff spattered with badges saying who knows the heck what? Is that the look you’re shooting for?”
Elias winked and gave a toothy grin. “Groovy, huh?”
She gulped down the last of her beer and flashed him her winningest smile. “Good luck tonight, Elias. Or should I say break a leg?”
Now there was a phrase from the past. She must have got that one from him.
“See you later, Missy Kwane, and don’t be late.”
He swept up Old Mr. Spud again as the door shut behind her, thrashed some chords to clear out the cobwebs, gave a little cough, and tried again.
”A gift of the Void or a fool’s prophecy;
A tumbling of stars came the…”
”Bugger!”
Blank as a Dreamer’s gaze. He knew it was in there somewhere, clawing at the back of his mind. Something beginning with “A”, and it sure as hell wasn’t “Areolate”!
RUJALA
Rujala spewed from the Numosian coast in a slurry of rotting seaweed. A wall of roughly mortared boulders hemmed the bay and sprawled across the harbor mouth parallel with the shore. Timber jetties bristled with doggers, barks, dories, and dugouts unloading their catches or preparing to set out to sea. A high-prowed galleon loomed above them, white sails furled upon three massive masts, bowsprit jabbing at the harbor village like an accusation.
Shader squinted at the crumbling buildings standing back from the shoreline, crowds of dark-skinned Numosians teeming around them, voices a muffled wall of sound punctuated by the talking of drums.
The crew of the Aura Placida were throwing their packs to the jetty and jostling to be the first to join the rancid carnival beyond the life of the ship. Coins were counted, and swiftly thrust from sight, curses exchanged and backs slapped as they moved off like rats after refuse.
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