"And then what? Are you leaving? Won't they find out what I've done?" Zal suddenly sensed there might be a fate worse than death. In his hand the silver compact was cold.
"The sisters always have their little feuds," Mr. V said with an airy manner but a significant nod and wink that indicated the feuds were on epic scales. "You are Glinda's. That was the first part I knew, and Lily was playing with you. And then, having heard you talk and seen you about I began to realise how it was. What you were in your life, all that you were, is almost gone. Whatever happened to bring you here in this state, it was the ending of that, almost entirely. But while memory and mind has fallen into the past, spirit does not fall. You have yours still, so you are not someone dead they have pulled out of the weft, you are not someone undead walking and talking. You have lost only memories, but you are truly alive and free. If you had only the wit or inclination to leave here they could not stop you." He paused and smiled at Zal's expression. "Did you not know? I see not. And that is what enabled you to get this. I hope you will forgive my own game with you and presumption on you. I hope you understand why I did not enlighten you immediately."
Zal was thinking. It was hard. Lint wasn't suited to the task. He was quick to reassure Mr. V nonetheless. "Yeah, of course. But what if I keep it?"
"It would not do to make an enemy of her. She controls the warp, and that means she can pull threads in the lives of all you cross and not only your own. She is a prodigious weaver, a knotter, a tangier.... Do not."
Zal sagged slightly. "But what will happen to you if you go? You're going to go, aren't you?"
Mr. V's face became kindly and old again, like the grandfather Zal had never had. "Yes. I am going because I was tricked into staying. I have paid for my mistake. Mina doesn't need me. They can make other servants." He shuddered slightly as he said this but he carried on. "Dragons are not part of the warp or the weft. We are ... hm, the analogy breaks down a little ... we are like free shuttles. She has no power to yank my strings, and I have some power to ruin hers so I think she will consider us quit and be wary of me from now on. Not that I have any wish to see her again. Besides, who would miss me?"
"Well, I would," Zal said. "Nobody else talked to me. Except 'biancs and-"
Mr. V put his hand to Zal's mouth. "Say no more, boy. Nobody finds the Yin a happy companion, though she has her place. She'd be a great deal more pleasant if the other one hadn't run off, but we all have our losses to bear."
Zal didn't know what to make of this. He thought he'd try to remember for later since he was short on memories. "Can I go too? Can I go with you?"
"No," Mr. V said sadly. "No, you can't survive as I do. I could not travel safely and be sure I wouldn't kill you each second in the way I move. But you can leave."
"Oh, I suppose you mean the fire." Zal glanced at the embers, coated in ash, thought of himself as those ashes with fear and reluctance.
"Yes. Or you can answer the geas, the burden Glinda wishes you to bear."
"Would I be dead?" Zal asked, continuing to stare at the ash. "Would it hurt? If I become part of the strands of light, won't I lose everything?"
"It may be," the dragon said. "But you have an affinity for fire. Maybe you would be burned-there is always a chance of that with fire. But maybe not. Anyway, understand that this is not only true because you are here, and made of unsuited things. Anywhere. Anytime. Do you understand me? If you are not consumed fire can be your path, Zal. It always was. Come." He took Zal's hand, slid the silver compact into Zal's pocket carefully, as if giving him a gift, then led him to the fire surround-a silver guard decorated with grapes and vines. Gently he sat him down facing the weak heat and then, as he had for countless days and nights, Mr. V busied himself with the log basket and built up the fire again, expertly laying the pieces and adjusting the flue. Zal found it almost impossible to imagine being here without him. He wanted to catch the little man's sleeve and cling to it.
"Now," Mr. V said, caressing the logs lightly with his fingers.
Green flame played gently on their broken bark and then darted inwards to the old fire. Within moments the dry, seasoned wood had caught and was burning enough to allow flames to dance through the gaps and up, reaching for the sky.
"In yesterday's suns," he said softly to Zal. "Your memories were made. Look again. Look again. Is there anything?"
Zal looked, and for a while there wasn't. He felt close to Mr. V and wretchedly sad at the same time, but then something came to him, faint and far away, a couple of notes, a line. His throat felt strange. He heard music in his mind, he didn't know why.
"... that's our destiny ..."
"Go on!" Mr. V cried, hands clasped before him.
"... the gods may throw the dice, their minds as cold as ice It came and went and Zal felt sure suddenly.
"The game is on again...." He couldn't pick out the words fast enough. And then, like Mr. V's rebirth, in a rush there it was, belting out of him in a voice he didn't even know he'd had, like a foghorn calling for the last ship to come to shore.
"Winner takes it all! The winner takes it all!"
There was a thump from upstairs and a sound like a hefty girl falling off a chair followed by a cross wail of disappointment and annoyance.
Mr. V was up and running, shaking his hands at Zal. "Go boy! Go! I'll see to her this last time, don't worry. Just run and put it back, bring the book, undo what's been done."
Zal stood, still in shock, his mouth too strange to speak. He looked at Mr. V for a moment and hoped somehow his awkwardly sewn face could show all he meant in that second, all the warm feeling and gratitude, the sorrow and the gladness. Then he turned and ran, his thick stuffed feet flapping on the path with a sound of someone thumping a rug.
But he was not fast enough for Tubianca. As he reached the gate she shot out of the low bushes at the edge of Mina's small garden where she'd been hiding behind a bag of Mr. V's grass clippings and wrapped herself around his leg, digging in all her claws and taking a large mouthful just below his knee for good measure.
He howled in surprise, anger, and pain and paused to pull at her and shake, but she wouldn't be budged. Through his trousers she hissed, "I see you conspiring with that dwarf.... What are you up to? ... Awful doll thing ..." Here she stopped to get a better purchase with her teeth and yanked off a large piece of cloth, tearing his leg. Her hind paws paddled at him, ripping through his clothes. She intended to shred him, he realised. Already his leg had begun to bend oddly. He started running again, hauling her with him in a huge swinging stride around his hip. At least the swinging forced her to stop tearing so she could prevent herself from falling off.
She let out a yowl that ended with, "Sto-op!"
"No," Zal said, in between bursts of effort. "It's none of your business." He kicked as hard as he could, but his only reward was the sound of his seam splitting. He didn't slow down.
"Stop," the cat garbled again, sensing both his determination and the rapidly lessening distance to Lily's house. "I want to talk. I promise."
After what Mr. V had said about her Zal was inclined to believe her. She was fey, and she had said the p-word, but before he paused he gasped out, "Talk and nothing else." He kicked again, hoping she was sick and dizzy.
"Yes!"
He stopped. Tubianca unpicked herself from his leg and spent a moment turning away to smooth her fur and regain a dignified sitting position.
"Well?"
She licked her whiskers. "He said something about me, but I didn't catch it. You were too far away and whispering like little rodents."
Zal sensed an opportunity, though for what he wasn't sure. "He might have. What's it worth? Will you stop sneaking around and trying to get rid of me?"
An unhappy miaow escaped from her mouth. "But it is so dull!" she cried in protest, and he found himself agreeing with her.
"I know. But I don't find your methods of entertainment pleasant. I expect you let that rat in on purpose."
Her eyes grew
round, and then the pupils slitted with hatred. "I did not, though I might wish I had. Very well, I will stop pouncing on you."
"And the sneaking?"
She stared at him. He got the impression she was at the limit of her ability to bear the shame of being beholden to him in any way. "One thing for the pouncing. If it is good, then we will see."
"For the pouncing then," he said, hoping he didn't regret it. "He said you were a lot better when the other cat was here."
Her expression wavered. She was quiet, then she said, "The thing about you, doll, is that you are the last in a long line of inferior toys. I have no memory of another cat, so either you are lying or else I have spent too long here in the comfortable rooms."
Zal couldn't answer that. He shrugged and turned to go.
"Wait!" she snapped. "The other. Thing."
He said nothing.
"I promise I will not follow you around."
"Anymore."
"Anymore," she repeated acidly.
"He said no one finds the Yin a happy companion."
At that she turned her face away and became abruptly and passionately consumed with a contemplation of the distant rocks. Finding her unresponsive to any gesture or word he resumed his trip to Lily's house, ignoring the way that bits of his stuffing were loose and trailing on the floor. The leg was half crumpled but still worked well enough that he could move without being too slowed down.
He made a quick search. He was most interested in establishing that she was not in, which she wasn't, but he couldn't help noticing the peculiar clutter in the downstairs rooms, even her workroom which was normally a place of order, housing the magnificent, evanescent tapestries on their bone stretchers. Today there was nothing but charts, and mostly ones that looked to his untrained eye like nautical charts. An astrolabe was out in the kitchen, a sextant in the workroom, and rulers, string, and writing materials lay here and there. On her small desk he saw an abacus and a scientific calculator side by side. Her bag of movable materials was missing, so she must have gone upwards into the real planes. He longed to have a good look around but he knew he couldn't waste a chance. He ran upstairs, pulled down the ladders, and scrambled into the dusty, empty reaches of the loft.
Two dirty skylights showed him a clutter of objects lying hig- gledy-piggledy, coated in a layer of dust so thick it was like a kind of moss. A few items in the farthest area were relatively clean, and here he easily found the book. It was lying on top of an open red velvet case, which bore the deep imprinted shape for the compact mirror. In a trice he had switched them over and closed the lid of the case. Fortunately things were reasonably dust free here and did not mark. As he was about to go his attention was drawn by the setting of the case ... he had wondered how, in an entire loft, the dwarf could get by with a phrase like "what you will find there." The case glowed scarlet and was, clearly, the most obvious object in the room, but still ... and now that he looked he saw that there were other things here: a old perfume bottle of pale blue, down to its dregs; a silver-backed hairbrush with a dated style of pig's bristles for brushing long hair; and a small green glass swan or goose with a red beak and big, childish eyes. Glinda must have seen all these, he thought, and then he looked at what they were resting on.
The dressing table was a kidney-shaped curved item in walnut, clearly an antique. It had a mirrored back, but the mirror was covered in a heavy velvet drape of mid blue that had faded unevenly in the light from the windows. It was weighted with long golden tassels on all sides that meant it couldn't slip off by accident. In the middle of the drape was a gold-stitched emblem of a rune that he recognised as being a royal mark of some kind.
He turned to go and found the white cat standing at the top of the ladder.
"You promised!"
"I came here of my own free will without any following or sneaking," she said, and moved forward, delicately sniffing at the floor and stepping only in the cleared space between items where there was no dust. Even so, she sneezed. "Blame yourself if you will go leaving ladders down where they aren't supposed to be. I have a rat hole to find too." She glided smoothly past him and looked askance at the dresser, then prowled about its legs observing the skirting boards.
"I have to go. Come on."
But she continued her idle prowl. "Go on, do. Don't let me stop you."
"I will put up the ladders and close the trap. You'll be stuck here."
"I can always sing to be let out," Tubianca said mildly, sitting down and observing the hang of the low swinging tassels.
"But then she'll know we were in here."
"And? I shall only say I came here after the ladders were down. She can interrogate me all she likes with that stare of hers, it is the truth. You are the culprit. What are you doing here, anyway? Perhaps if you tell me I will come quietly and Lily need be none the wiser." She batted idly at the tassel nearest to her.
"Stop that. Don't touch anything."
"But it's so much fun," she wheedled. "And I have no fun left anymore since you spoiled it with your stupid promises." She smacked again, harder. The weight tugged on the cloth and it slid half an inch.
He could leave. If he went now he could give Mr. V the book, throw himself on the cinders, burn, and be dead or gone before Lily returned from whatever strange errand she was on. If she caught him ...Ifshe...
The door downstairs closed with a firm sound and they both heard the jingle of keys and the sound of Lily's sigh as she hung her coat.
Without a thought he threw himself forward, arms outstretched, fingers wide. He met cat and floorboards at the same time, fortunately without a sound as he was too light to make one, although the book clunked faintly on the hollow floor. White fur slipped through his fingers and he felt claws rake his face a second later, though she made no sound in her flight. There was also a slight flumping sound, and then the tinkle of the perfume bottle falling onto its side.
As he got to his knees, slipping on the polished wood, he saw the big white tail vanish through the trapdoor with noiseless ease. Cursing her, he straightened up and reached forward to set the bottle right, and without a thought his eyes glanced forwards into the mirror where the heavy drape had fallen free.
He knew it was a mistake as soon as it had happened. For an instant he was paralysed, staring at himself and the dusty room behind him, the yellow gleam of the door in the floor where lamplight was coming through....
... And then he was standing straight and tall, staring at the falling form of a large and ugly cloth doll as it collapsed to the floor, coat wide. The book showed clearly, half fallen from the inner pocket.
The paralysis was gone.
"Genius," said a voice sarcastically from behind his left shoulder. He turned, and there was Glinda. They were both inside a room that was exactly like Lily's loft, only reversed. Glinda bit out her cigar and spat the end on the floor, grinding it under her boot. "Well, that's one way of getting a move-on. I told you not to play games, but you never listen." She shook her head, grinning at herself. "You think I'd understand by now. Anyway ..."
But he was looking down at himself. "I'm ... I'm ...'
"You're a shadow," she said, waving off his wonder and awe with a flippant hand. "Big deal. It's part of your nature. Shadowkin. Just don't go running around in bright light, not that there's much of that here so I wouldn't worry."
It was true-there was not much light, and what there was seemed blue and dim, making his shape a stain of black and purple on the air. He felt better than in the cloth form however, fluid and strong.
"Let's move," Glinda said, clapping sharply. When he looked back at the mirror she had already covered it with a filthy black robe.
"The book. Mr. V...." he began.
She sighed, adjusted a piece of her part-plate, part-leather armour, and suddenly produced the book, offering it to him. "Here. Don't ask me again or I'll have to kill you."
"Thank you, but he needs ..."
"You should have thought of that before," she sai
d, shrugging rather like Tubianca in manner. "Now you promised me that you'd be my little soldier." She pulled out a new cigar, stuck it between her teeth, and grinned at him. Her golden eyes blazed.
"I have to stop doing that."
She snorted as if it was self-evident.
He looked around. "Where are we?"
"Isn't it obvious?" She held out her hands and made a sweeping gesture at her own magnificence. "Where do you think you get to see and talk to me in person?"
"Thanatopia?"
She made her hands into guns and lined them up to shoot at him.
"Am I-"
But she was giving him a look that said if he even uttered the word she'd be glad to make it so.
Zal shut up. He did a turn, and another, found he could walk, move, talk. He smiled. "Okay. Let's go."
"You first," Glinda bowed theatrically and waved him on. "Rules say I gotta follow at the stated position."
"Where?" He reached the trapdoor. There was no ladder here, just a set of stone steps winding down into a fathomless blackness.
"I don't know exactly," she said with good humour. "But I think you used to once be a decent soldier, so my plan is to find necromancersany necromancers-and prise the truth out of their nasty, fiddly little fingers by any necessary means until we hit the right one or get a clue. I know where they all are while they're here, so the first part will be easy. After that I'm sure we can think of a way to make 'em talk."
And with that less-than-comforting confidence they began to descend.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
here was light. For an instant it even blotted out all of her sensors. There was sound like a force on its own that made the stone vibrate and weaker portions of it shatter, sending splinters and dust flying into the air. There was a blastwave that cracked the stones which survived the sound and threw over a hundred bodies up and into the air to join the matchwood and rags, the fruit and meat and vials and potions and fetishes and jewellery and small animals that had taken flight along with them. There was a roaring of storm-force winds and an unearthly terrifying howling of vortices counter-ripping, tearing hapless objects to pieces. There was a thudding. There was a pattering. There was a kind of extended sigh and then there was a silence.
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