A long time seemed to pass before the weight eased from his chest with no apparent harm done. Xagor opened his eyes cautiously. The mandrake was squatting nearby watching him. It laid one long finger where its lips would be to shush him and pointed out of the tunnel mouth. Xagor craned around to look with hope rushing unbidden into his heart. The cloaked figure that had been chasing him was out there, mounting a stolen skyboard and racing away. The air was filled with the high-pitched whine of anti-grav units as Malixian’s Kabal took up the chase. Xagor was saved.
Or not. Of course the mandrakes might think that it was Xagor’s bodyguard that had just fled and left him to their tender ministrations. They might simply be mocking him in their weird, silent way. He looked back at the mandrake for a clue, but its shadow-skinned face was unreadable. A second mandrake seemed to coalesce out of the darkness. It was earning something in one hand that it extended towards him and Xagor tensed involuntarily. With a shock he realised that it was handing him his jar back.
The Screaming Tower had never felt more like a sanctuary. Xagor entered as quietly as he could, so as to not disturb the master—an infraction that carried its own considerable risks. The tall, lanky form of Bellathonis was bent over some consoles that spilled a profusion of wiring connected to three subjects strapped into examination frames. Bellathonis straightened and pressed a control. All three subjects simultaneously erupted in modulated howls of pain.
“What do you have for me, Xagor? The materials I wanted from the Red House, I trust?” Bellathonis said without looking around.
Xagor was taken off guard and quailed a little in spite of himself. The master was fond of modification and had recently implanted extra eyes with fully functioning optic nerves into his shoulder-blades. “All the better to watch my rivals with,” he had said. The idea that the master could be looking at you when his back was turned was somehow deeply disturbing to Xagor.
“I have the jar from the Red House, master.” Xagor called, “but also news of tremendous import.”
That caught the master’s attention in no uncertain terms. His hooked nose and sharp chin turned to Xagor and made him feel like he was back in the Aviaries being regarded as a morsel to be consumed by one of Malixian’s pets.
“I’ll be the judge of its import. Xagor, and if it’s truly important you’d better not have tarried on your way back to me.” Bellathonis’ tone was jocular but the cruel glitter in his eyes told a different story.
“A Dysjunction, master. Matsilier at the Red House talks to all the clients and he told me that the crones have predicted a Dysjunction in the city. Soon!” Xagor finished in a rush.
“A Dysjunction, eh? Oh, how very interesting. Our lovely crones have read the fates and seen that our little abode of the damned is due for a shake up. It must be all over the city by now.” The last was sharp; Xagor wondered how much Bellathonis already knew.
“I came straight back, master! I didn’t even wait for a guard. I was pursued, there was a Talos and a-a hunt…” It all sounded like an increasingly weak string of excuses to Xagor’s soon-to-be-modified ears.
“Yes, yes.” Bellathonis waved away his excuses. “But here you are, so the mandrakes I sent looking for you obviously did their job.”
Xagor gawped. He had never heard the master talk of employing mandrakes before. Bellathonis elegantly plucked the jar from his nerveless hands.
“Don’t look so surprised. I knew there was a hunt in the Aviaries and it seemed likely that you would go that way with the ‘news’ you were so desperate to bring to me.”
“You already knew, master?” A crushing weight descended on Xagor as Bellathonis let the moment stretch out. The Haemonculus eventually gave him a chilling smile.
“Only suspected, oh faithful servant. Certain factions have been making preparations and it seemed likely that you would hear something at the Red House. Well done; this is very important news. A Dysjunction will change all the old alliances and rivalries beyond recognition, something which has long been overdue. I’ve only witnessed three in my considerable lifespan and they all made for very interesting times, let me tell you.” Bellathonis continued as he unsealed the lid of the jar. “Yes, you’ve done well by bringing this to my attention so promptly, Xagor. I do believe you’ve earned yourself a reward. Extra pineal gland, perhaps?”
Bellathonis dipped a long-fingered hand into the jar, but what emerged looked suspiciously like a dripping, shrunken head to Xagor. Bellathonis held it by snaky black locks and tutted as he wiped slime from the face of the thing.
“Master, I don’t understand.”
“Allow me to introduce you. Xagor, this is Angevere; Angevere this is Xagor.”
Bellathonis held the head out for Xagor to see. The face was pinched and lined. The eyes and lips were crudely sutured shut but Xagor could see that they were still moving, the face contorting.
“Angevere the crone,” Bellathonis murmured as he connected the head to one of the consoles he’d been working on as Xagor entered. “Now come over here and when I nod to you, twist this dial half a turn to the right and then back again.”
Xagor’s heart swelled with pride. He was being asked to assist! Just him and the master, working together like old comrades. The other servants would be incandescent with jealousy. Bellathonis pushed a final needle into the neck stump of Angevere and nodded to Xagor, who twisted the dial with gusto. A triple scream burst from the three subjects again, this time curiously intermingled as if they cried out with one voice. As Xagor twisted the dial back to its start position the three subjects spoke for the first time.
“What have you done to me?” they said together.
“Made you my guest, you dreadful old monster,” Bellathonis cackled with radiant self-satisfaction. “For the duration of the Dysfunction at least, or perhaps longer if you misbehave. We can while away the time delightfully with these three fresh subjects I’ve connected you to.”
Bellathonis’ nod was almost imperceptible but Xagor was drinking in every moment and he caught it. He twisted the dial clinically and was rewarded by another chorus of screams and a faint smile from the master.
“What do you want?” the three voices gasped.
“Ah, the correct question—and there’s nothing so precious in any discussion. We’ll talk about the future and what you know about it in due course, Angevere.”
“There will be consequences,” the voices said.
“Desperate times mean desperate measures, witch. If I’m right, it won’t matter soon,” Bellathonis said with an air of finality. He turned to his servant with a look of apparently genuine concern. “Poor Xagor, you look exhausted. There’s a young man out in the vestibule waiting to see me, ask him to step in here and then go straight to your quarters. Get some rest; we’re going to be very busy later.”
“They tore my face!” the young man shouted.
“So they did. Dear me, I should take a look at that,” said Bellathonis. “Take a seat.”
“Damn right you’ll fix it! I was about your business and I demand some kind of recompense for this farce.”
“Of course, getting this injury does mean that you got outwitted by birds, doesn’t it?” Bellathonis remarked as he selected something long and sharp from a tray. “And my business, as I recall, was receipt of a package that got here with precious little help from you—apart from the Talos, of course.”
“I—”
“Hush now, Kharbyr, and let’s see what we can do with that face.”
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Midnight on the Street of Knives Page 3
