Path of Smoke

by Bailey Cunningham

  He looked down, trembling from the pain. His tunica was shredded, and there were crooked lines beneath it, welling up with blood. It dripped down his arm and pooled within the smoke, wine blooming at the bottom of a dark vessel. The caela paid no attention. They swirled across the oecus, heading for the vaulted exit.

  Miles and sagittarii ran toward the opening. Arrows tore through the smoke, narrowly missing him. Swords flashed like bright threads against the underbelly of the creature. He wasn’t sure if it was possible to hurt something made of vapor, but he didn’t want to take the chance. The smoke was his only means of escape. He looked down and saw the salamanders, still outraged by the darkening of the lamps. They were moving toward the overturned braziers, which had scattered hot coals across the floor.

  “Lares of fire!” he called.

  The salamanders looked up. Their golden eyes were coins in the dim light, wobbling between heads and tails. They were torn between his voice and the lure of embers.

  “Give me a wall of flame,” he shouted, “and I promise to keep all of your shrines lit, from now until the end of days! I’ll show you the way to the heart of the arx, where a great hypocaust warms every bath and chamber. You’ll have more coals than you could ever dream of!”

  The salamanders hesitated. They were slow to decide on anything, when the heat was so far away. Then, his lizard—the one who’d bitten him and shown him the way—opened its mouth and yawned a tongue of flame. The others exchanged a look.

  He heard them inhale: the low whistle of a bellows.

  Then fire arced in every direction, a font of light that turned the oecus into a forge. The miles raised their gilded shields, only to drop them as they glowed cherry-red. Arrows burned in midflight, until the room was alive with falling stars. Yew bows cracked and melted. At last, fire followed smoke as the dragon roared past. He had to duck to avoid the stalactite ceiling beyond the double doors. He didn’t know what he was holding on to. There was only the smell of ashes, the soaring pain in his arm, and the cries receding behind them.

  The passages of the arx were a blur of color. Painted horseshoe arches, embossed golden panels, tapestries that looked more like ribbons as they flew past. He could hear shouting and the clamor of caligae on flagstones, nails scraping the floor. He had lost his salamander, and through the dull pain, that realization made him nervous. Funny how diving into space couldn’t equal that feeling in the pit of his stomach. He craned his neck, half expecting to see the lizard keeping pace behind him, or a skulk of mechanical foxes. But there was nothing. Felix had disappeared. No company followed him. The smoke advanced in all directions.

  They burst into the night, and he smelled violets. The two miles on duty stared at his mount, then at him, and their faces went white. One advanced, raising his weapon, but the smoke whirled past him before he could swing.

  It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t know how to steer the dragon.

  He raised the horn with his good hand. “Stop!”

  The caela obeyed.

  The red curtain of eyes looked at him. The cinder wings fluttered. If a dragon could be said to look expectant, that was what the uncanny gaze felt like.

  Had he even thought beyond this moment? He was holding a relic and riding a nightmare, but what came next? In a few moments, every archer and guardian and hired sword in Anfractus would be chasing him.

  He didn’t know how its particular magic worked. Did the lares of air submit to its power? Surely, they didn’t obey him simply because he was an oculus. If that were the case, then anyone could influence them. It had to be the horn. The chieftain of the silenus had sounded the note that released them, but where had they been? Languishing in some kind of unseen captivity? He had the feeling, which grew stronger with every moment, that the caela had never left.

  Whatever the nature of the horn, it was too volatile. It needed to stay lost.

  “Take me to the house by the wall,” he said. “You should be able to smell it. The border between worlds there is—”

  But they were already on the move. They passed tall insulae where the wealthy organized tabularia while the poor fed pigeons. Cauponae that glowed from the inside, fluttering with drunken laughter. Sleeping botteghi that were shuttered for the night, their windows offering hoards of necessary things: lamps with self-trimming wicks, rainproof tunicae, personalized rock crystal charms, and weapons for every occasion. A hair salon was still open, and the tonstrix watched him soar past, her eyes widening as she was about to shave a customer.

  They flew through the Subura, and drunken celebrants scattered before them, dropping their wine cups. He was high enough to see various couples and triads, their shutters thrown open to the warm night, sweating against threadbare sheets. Two women kissed on a balcony, so absorbed that they didn’t think to look up. All around him, love carved its deep ruts into the road, wheels singing. It did not stop to admire the dragon.

  As they neared the wall, he saw flickering light. At first, he thought it was merely the lamps. But then he saw that the house was on fire.

  “No!”

  The caela trembled. There was no rhyme or reason to his exclamation—they couldn’t decipher it. But it sounded like stop. The dragon wheeled about, and he fell, rolling across the sharp stones. He landed on his good side, but the impact still tore through his wounded arm, making him cry out. His mouth was dry, and everything felt too hard and brilliant. The pain was threading him through its eye. Soon, he would be flat and senseless, a scream stitched into an unremarkable tapestry.

  The roof of the house was ablaze. Smoke poured through the windows, and a clutch of salamanders had arrived to take in the beauty of the flames. Their brass-button eyes followed the progress of the disaster, while a few basked near the ruined entrance.

  His arm was throbbing. He looked around, wincing from the heat. Aside from the lares, this corner of the street was empty. Surely, this was Latona’s work. She was blocking his escape. But how had she known? Had someone warned her? Perhaps burning down the house was simply hedging her bets. This dark miracle by the wall was too dangerous. She couldn’t allow people to bypass the alleys. This was her city, and she controlled the exits.

  Someone called out a name that he didn’t recognize. He turned, holding his arm. It was starting to go numb. A man in a torn cloak stood in the street. The flames threw his shadow against the ground. It was the singer. His eyes were strangely familiar, but the rest of him remained opaque. He said the name again.

  “That’s not me.”

  “I’m not convinced,” Babieca said.

  “You’d better go. She’s coming for me.”

  “She’s coming for all of us. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He pointed to the dragon, which hovered nearby. “Are you blind? This is a monster. And not the kind that we’ve domesticated. It will devour you.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be doing much devouring at the moment.”

  He had a point. The caela were no longer watching them. Instead, the eyes were fixed on the crowd of lares, which had gathered near the margins of the fire. They observed each other from a politic distance. It was a kind of family reunion, without the food. Unless he and the singer were to be the food. That remained a possibility.

  “You have to go,” he said again. This time, he wasn’t as convinced. The pain was making everything narrow. It was getting harder to concentrate.

  “We’ve been over this.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Do you think you can just crash through life and fix everything with a few songs? Life isn’t music. This doesn’t end well.”

  “Life,” Babieca said, “is absolutely music. I know that, because otherwise, I’m just hearing things. Like a crazy person. I may be drunk, and selfish, and wrong most of the time, but I’m not crazy. Neither are you.”

  He stared at the horn. Beneath the light of the flames, he could see ev
ery figure carved along its length. The chain, he saw, was broken in half. The links were separated by the line that divided two panels. The space between them was polished to a sheen. A lovely blank that could have been anything. He stared at the strange gutter between panels. It was a chance. A leap in the dark, much like his own. Fortuna watched it as well. In the dimness of the arx, he’d thought that she was looking at the rising smoke, but it was the gap that she stared at. The smooth emptiness where one story ended and another began.

  “I have to take this beyond the city,” he said. “It can’t stay here. But she was thinking ahead. She lit our egress on fire.”

  “Maybe it’s not about the house,” Babieca replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t know why the alleys work, or why the house works. But maybe it has nothing to do with the mortar and stone, after all. She can burn that down. But she can’t burn the place. The magic should still be there.”

  He watched the house begin to collapse. “You’re saying that it still works. All we have to do is walk in there.”

  “Simple, right? Except for the part where we die.”

  He looked down and saw that his salamander had returned. He recognized the spots on the creature’s back. Like the others, it was watching the blaze.

  “That part might be negotiable,” he said.

  Babieca’s expression tightened. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  He knelt down beside the lizard. “I need a favor. I know I’ve already asked a lot of your people, but this is just between us. We need to walk into that building. Is there a way that you can—I don’t know—bend the fire away from us? Can you tell it not to harm us?”

  The salamander looked skeptical.

  “I wish there were some way for you to answer back. I guess, though, if I could see you and hear you at the same time, I’d go mad. Not that I don’t feel as if I’m going mad already.”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt this conversation with yourself,” Babieca said, “but I can hear someone coming. I imagine we don’t want to be here when they arrive.”

  “You can do this,” he continued. “I trust you.”

  He held out his hand.

  The lizard sniffed his outstretched palm. For a second, he thought it might bite him again. Instead, it dragged its rough tongue across his skin. The tongue left a dark smudge.

  “I think this might work,” he said.

  “What are you talking about? You haven’t done anything.”

  He took Babieca’s hand. “Do you trust me?”

  “I trust that the fire will be quick. Unlike whatever Latona has planned.” Babieca seemed to notice his arm for the first time. “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s only a life-threatening scratch. Are you ready?”

  Fortuna had asked the same thing. The pillar of smoke revolved above him. Eyes in the dark, waiting for his next move.

  “How are we going to survive this, again?”

  “A lizard licked me.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s something.”

  Hand in hand, they entered the burning house.

  Flame had destroyed what little furniture there was. The old tapestries had gone up quickly, and the trestle tables were a pile of kindling. The fresco was obscured by ash, but he knew that the blue mark was there, even if he couldn’t see it. The fire was all around him. It whispered in his ears. It was frustrated because it couldn’t seem to reach him. The salamander’s touch had granted them a kind of immunity, which would not last for long.

  This was where his life had changed. He’d been standing right here when the salamander revealed his name. Or perhaps he’d always known it, and the creature’s bite had simply reminded him of that old word. Here was where Felix had taken off his mask, where Mardian had shown his scars. Now his epiphany was in flames.

  “My toes are getting hot,” Babieca said. He was sweating profusely. “That’s not a good sign, is it?”

  “If you’re right about the magic, then you must be able to get us out.”

  “It’s a little hard to concentrate with my boots on fire.”

  “This is all new to me, but you’ve been here before. You know how it works.”

  Babieca looked at him. “I have to think of home.”

  “I don’t know where that is.”

  “I do.”

  The singer kissed him. The roof collapsed. For a moment, they were inside a bright disaster, with smoke rushing in through the broken windows.

  Then they were in a clearing, with stars above them.

  Andrew stepped back. Carl was giving him a funny look. Then his eyes widened.

  “Your arm.”

  He looked down. He was naked, and the claw marks were ragged, as if he’d been mauled by a bear. The pain was extraordinary. But there was also something oddly distant about it. The wound had come from another world. It didn’t have quite the same power here. It had already stopped bleeding, for the most part.

  Suddenly, he remembered. “The horn! Where is it?”

  How could he have been so stupid? Nothing survived the transit: not clothes, not weapons, and certainly not relics. He’d been so intent on dragging the horn away from Anfractus, he’d forgotten that such a thing wasn’t possible. But where was it now? Blackening in the heat of the fire? What if it was immune to flame, like the salamanders? He’d simply left it there, a treasure in the ashes.

  “Andrew. Look.” Carl knelt in the grass and held something up.

  It took him a moment to realize what it was. Then Andrew laughed. He laughed so hard that he curled into a ball, trembling.

  A piano key.

  Carl helped him up. They were both shivering violently.

  “I think I hid some clothes around here. Just give me a second.”

  Andrew stared at the piano key. So relics could survive after all, but not unchanged. This was the aftermath. The horn that summoned the caela was now an ivory to be tickled, just one key that might have belonged to a baby grand.

  “Found them!” Carl dragged a sack behind him. “I doubt there’s anything fashionable in here, but it’ll keep us from freezing to death.”

  They dressed quickly. Andrew pulled on a worn pair of jeans and some runners that didn’t quite fit. When he got to the shirt, he sucked in his breath, trying to get his arm through the sleeve. Carl helped him. The shirt, he realized, was from the university bookstore.

  “Plains U Guarantee,” he read. “What exactly is that?”

  “If you’re not satisfied with your courses, they let you take more.”

  “That sounds like—” He looked up. “Oh. Carl? Do you see that?”

  “You mean the giant smoke dragon?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  The caela were spreading across the sky, blacking out even the suggestion of dawn. Their eyes gazed impassively at the green cloister of Wascana Park. They didn’t seem surprised. For them, perhaps, all worlds were connected. The geese hissed at the smoke, outraged by this intrusion within their territory.

  Then he heard growling.

  “Maybe it’s a dog,” Carl whispered.

  “You know it’s not.”

  “Couldn’t it be, though? Just this once? A nice, fluffy—” His face fell. “Pack of silenoi, heading this way.”

  He saw them burst from the treeline. And behind them, Latona was riding a metal horse. It was, he realized, the mount that belonged to Queen Elizabeth II.

  Andrew stared at the piano key. His only weapon. The plan had seemed so noble, so excellent, until the point when it had completely stopped making sense. He’d left out several variables with teeth and hooves.

  “We don’t have a truck this time,” Carl said.

  “No.” He looked at the smoke. “This time, we’ve got something better.”r />
  “Are you shitting me?”

  “Just hold on!”

  They rode the dragon across Wascana Park. Carl screamed the whole way. Andrew struggled to hold on to the piano key, which might have been the only thing keeping them alive, at this point. Behind them, he caught glimpses of Latona on her shrieking metal horse, following the pack of silenoi. They trampled the manicured gardens and smashed the decorative lights along the footpaths, rendering Wascana Lake a plane of shadow.

  Two police cars drove up, sirens flashing. The metal horse reared up and shattered the windshield of the first car. Silenoi encircled the second, and the police officers made frantic motions inside, yelling something into their radio. Andrew thought he should help them, but there wasn’t time. Hopefully, the RCMP knew how to deal with monsters.

  They flew over the legislature. He heard more sirens in the distance.

  “If only we had a mechanical bee,” Carl said. He looked green.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, right. You don’t remember that.”

  “I really don’t. I guess magic cuts both ways.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the university. I may have an idea.”

  “I hope it’s a good one. She’s going to destroy the city.”

  He shook his head. “She won’t. She’d much rather colonize it.”

  As they soared over the lake, he noticed a familiar truck barreling across the Albert Street bridge. It was small and indistinct in the dark, but he saw it, all the same. The headlights cut through ragged bits of smoke that were falling from the sky, like unearthly snow. Latona and her pack were close behind. Not for the first time, he wished that the bridge were a bit longer. Just enough to offer a slight delay.

  They reached the university. The doors would be locked, but he had the feeling that glass was no impediment to the caela. He pointed the piano key in the direction of the entrance and cried out: “Storm the Innovation Centre!”