by Clive Barker
The kreauchee was better than he’d hoped; he felt it striking him as he spoke, lifting his melancholy and replacing it with a vehement buzz. Even though he’d not penetrated Quaisoir in four decades (nor had any desire to), in some moods news of her infidelities could still depress him. But the drug took all that pain away. She could sleep with fifty men a day, and it wouldn’t take her an inch from his side. Whether they felt contempt or passion for each other was irrelevant. History had made them indivisible and would hold them together till the Apocalypse did them part.
“Shellem not whoring,” Concupiscentia piped up, determined to defend her mistress’s honor. “Shellem downer ta Scoriae.”
“The Scoriae? Why?”
“Executions,” Concupiscentia replied, pronouncing this word—learned from her mistress’s lips—perfectly.
“Executions?” the Autarch said, a vague unease surfacing through the kreauchee’s soothings. “What executions?”
Concupiscentia shook her head. “I dinnet knie,” she said. “Jest executions. Allovat executions. She prayat to tem—”
“I’m sure she does.”
“We all prayat far the sols, so ta go intat the presence of the Unbeheld washed—”
Here were more phrases repeated parrot fashion, the kind of Christian cant he found as sickening as the decor. And, like the decor, these were Quaisoir’s work. She’d embraced the Man of Sorrows only a few months ago, but it hadn’t taken her long to claim she was His bride. Another infidelity, less syphilitic than the hundreds that had gone before, but just as pathetic.
The Autarch left Concupiscentia to babble on and dispatched his bodyguard to locate Rosengarten. There were questions to be answered here, and quickly, or else it wouldn’t only be the Scoriae where heads would roll.
II
Traveling the Lenten Way, Gentle had come to believe that, far from being the burden he’d expected her to be, Huzzah was a blessing. If she hadn’t been with them in the Cradle he was certain the Goddess Tishalullé would not have intervened on their behalf; nor would hitchhiking along the highway have been so easy if they hadn’t had a winsome child to thumb rides for them. Despite the months she’d spent hidden away in the depths of the asylum (or perhaps because of them), Huzzah was eager to engage everyone in conversation, and from the replies to her innocent inquiries he and Pie gleaned a good deal of information he doubted they’d have come by otherwise. Even as they’d crossed the causeway to the city, she’d struck up a dialogue with a woman who’d happily supplied a list of the Kesparates and even pointed out those that were visible from where they’d walked. There were too many names and directions for Gentle to hold in his head, but a glance towardsPie confirmed that the mystif was attending closely and would have all of them by heart by the time they reached the other side.
“Wonderful,” Pie said to Huzzah when the woman had departed. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find my way back to my people’s Kesparate. Now I know the way.”
“Up through the Oke T’Noon, to the Caramess, where they make the Autarch’s sweetmeats,” Huzzah said, repeating the directions as if she was reading them off a blackboard. “Follow the wall of the Caramess till we get to Smooke Street, then up to the Viaticum, and we’ll be able to see the gates from there.”
“How did you remember all that?” Gentle said, to which Huzzah somewhat disdainfully asked how he could have allowed himself to forget.
“We mustn’t get lost,” she said.
“We won’t,” Pie replied. “There’ll be people in my Kesparate who’ll help us find your grandparents.”
“If they don’t it doesn’t matter,” Huzzah said, looking gravely from Pie to Gentle. “I’ll come with you to the First Dominion. I don’t mind. I’d like to see the Unbeheld.”
“How do you know that’s where we’re going?” Gentle said.
“I’ve heard you talking about it,” she replied. “That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m not scared. We’ve seen a Goddess, haven’t we? He’ll be the same, only not as beautiful.”
This unflattering notion amused Gentle mightily.
“You’re an angel, you know that?” he said, going down on his haunches and sliding his arms around her.
She’d put on a few pounds in weight since they’d begun their journey together, and her hug, when she returned it, was strong.
“I’m hungry,” she murmured in his ear.
“Then we’ll find somewhere to eat,” he replied. “We can’t have our angel going hungry.”
They walked up through the steep streets of the Oke T’Noon until they were clear of the throng of itinerants coming off the causeway. Here there were any number of establishments offering breakfast, from stalls selling barbecued fish to cafés that might have been transported from the streets of Paris, but that the customers sipping coffee were more extraordinary than even that city of exotics could boast. Many were species whose peculiarities he now took for granted: Oethacs and Heratea; distant relatives of Mother Splendid and Hammeryock; even a few who resembled the one-eyed croupier from Attaboy. But for every member of a tribe whose features he recognized, there were two or three he did not. As in Vanaeph, Pie had warned him that staring too hard would not be in their best interests, and he did his best not to enjoy too plainly the array of courtesies, humors, lunacies, gaits, skins, and cries that filled the streets. But it was difficult. After a time they found a small café from whichthe smell of food was particularly tempting, and Gentle sat down beside one of the windows, from which he could watch the parade without drawing too much attention.
“I had a friend called Klein,” he said as they ate, “back in the Fifth Dominion. He liked to ask people what they’d do if they knew they only had three days to live.”
“Why three?” Huzzah asked.
“I don’t know. Why three anything? It’s one of those numbers.”
“ ‘In any fiction there’s only ever room for three players,’ “ the mystif remarked. “ ‘The rest must be . . . ‘ “—its flow faltered in mid-quotation—” ‘agents,’ something, and something else. That’s a line from Pluthero Quexos.”
“Who’s he?”
“Never mind.”
“Where was I?”
“Klein,” said Huzzah.
“When he got around to asking me this question, I told him, If I had three days left I’d go to New York, because you’ve got more chance of living out your wildest dreams there than anywhere. But now I’ve seen Yzordderrex—”
“Not much of it,” Huzzah pointed out.
“It’s enough, angel. If he asks me again I’m going to tell him I’d like to die in Yzordderrex.”
“Eating breakfast with Pie and Huzzah,” she said.
“Perfect.”
“Perfect,” she replied, echoing his intonation precisely.
“Is there anything I couldn’t find here if I looked hard enough?”
“Some peace and quiet,” Pie remarked.
The hubbub from outside was certainly loud, even in the café.
“I’m sure we’ll find some little courtyards up in the palace,” Gentle said.
“Is that where we’re going?” Huzzah asked.
“Now listen,” said Pie. “For one thing, Mr. Zacharias doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about—”
“Language, Pie,” Gentle put in.
“And for another, we brought you here to find your grandparents, and that’s our first priority. Right, Mr. Zacharias?”
“What if you can’t find them?” Huzzah said.
“We will,” Pie replied. “My people know this city from top to bottom.”
“Is that possible?” Gentle said. “I somehow doubt it.”
“When you’ve finished your coffee,” Pie said, “I’ll allow them to prove you wrong.”
With their bellies filled, they headed on through the streets, following the route they’d had laid out for them: from the Oke T’Noon to the Caramess, following the wall until they reac
hed Smooke Street. In fact the directions were not entirely reliable. Smooke Street, which was a narrow thoroughfare, and far emptier than those they’d left, did not lead them onto the Viaticum as they’d been told it would, but rather into a maze of buildings as plain as barracks. There were children playing in the dirt, and among them wild ragemy, an unfortunate cross between porcine and canine strains that Gentle had seen spitted and served in Mai-ké but which here seemed to be treated as pets. Either the mud, the children, or the ragemy stank, and their smell had attracted zarzi in large numbers.
“We must have missed a turning,” the mystif said. “We’d be best to—”
It stopped in mid-sentence as the sound of shouting rose from nearby, bringing the children up out of the mud and sending them off in pursuit of its source. There was a high unmusical holler in the midst of the din, rising and falling like a warrior cry. Before either Pie or Gentle could remark on this, Huzzah was following the rest of the children, darting between the puddles and the rooting ragemy to do so. Gentle looked at Pie, who shrugged; then they both headed after Huzzah, the trail leading them down an alleyway into a broad and busy street, which was emptying at an astonishing rate as pedestrians and drivers alike sought cover from whatever was racing down the hill in their direction.
The hollerer came first: an armored man of fully twice Gentle’s height, carrying in each fist scarlet flags that snaked behind him as he ran, the pitch and volume of his cry undimmed by the speed at which he moved. On his heels came a battalion of similarly armored soldiers—none, even in the troop, under eight feet tall—and behind them again a vehicle which had clearly been designed to mount and descent the ferocious slopes of the city with minimum discomfort to its passengers. The wheels were the height of the hollerer, the carriage itself low-slung between them, its bodywork sleek and dark, its windows darker still. A gull had become caught between the spokes of the wheels on the way down the hill, and it flapped and bled there as the wheels turned, its screeches a wretched but perfect complement to the cacophony of wheels, engine, and hollerer.
Gentle took hold of Huzzah as the vehicle raced past, though she was in no danger of being struck. She looked around at him, wearing a wide grin.
“Who was that?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
A woman sheltering in the doorway beside them furnished the answer. “Quaisoir,” she said. “The Autarch’s woman. There’s arrests being made down in the Scoriae. More Dearthers.”
She made a small gesture with her fingers, moving them across her face from eye to eye, then down to her mouth, pressing the knuckles of first and third fingers against her nostrils while the middle digit tugged at her lower lip, all this with the speed of one who made the sign countless times in a day. Then she turned off down the street, keeping close to the wall as she went.
“Athanasius was a Dearther, wasn’t he?” Gentle said. “We should go down and see what’s happening.”
“It’s a little too public,” Pie said.
“We’ll stay to the back of the crowd,” Gentle said. “I want to see how the enemy works.”
Without giving Pie time to object, Gentle took Huzzah’s hand and headed after Quaisoir’s troop. It wasn’t a difficult trail to follow. Everywhere along the route faces were once more appearing at windows and doors, like anemones showing themselves again after being brushed by the underbelly of a shark: tentative, ready to hide their tender heads again at the merest sign of a shadow. Only a couple of tots, not yet educated in terror, did as the three strangers were doing and took to the middle of the street, where the comet’s light was brightest. They were quickly reclaimed for the relative safety of the doorways in which their guardians hovered.
The ocean came into view as the trio descended the hill, and the harbor was now visible between the houses, which were considerably older in this neighborhood than in the Oke T’Noon or up by the Caramess. The air was clean and quick here; it enlivened their step. After a short while the domestic dwellings gave way to docklands: warehouses, cranes, and silos reared around them. But the area was by no means deserted. The workers here were not so easily cowed as the occupants of the Kesparate above, and many were leaving off their labors to see what this rumpus was all about. They were a far more homogenized group than Gentle had seen elsewhere, most a cross between Oethac and Homo sapiens, massive, even brutish men who in sufficient numbers could certainly trounce Quaisoir’s battalion. Gentle hoisted Huzzah up to ride on his back as they joined this congregation, fearful she’d be trampled if he didn’t. A few of the dockers gave her a smile, and several stood aside to let her mount secure abetter place in the crowd. By the time they came within sight of the troops again they were thoroughly concealed.
A small contingent of the soldiers had been charged to keep onlookers from straying too close to the field of action, and this they were attempting to do, but they were vastly outnumbered, and as the crowd swelled it steadily pushed the cordon towards the site of the hostilities, a warehouse some thirty yards down the street, which had apparently been laid siege to. Its walls were pitted with bullet strikes, and its lower windows smoked. The besieging troops—who were not dressed showily like Quaisoir’s battalion, but in the monochrome Gentle had seen paraded in L’Himby—were presently hauling bodies out of the building. Some were on the second story, pitching dead men—and a couple who still had life in them—out of the windows onto the bleeding heap below. Gentle remembered Beatrix. Was this cairn building one of the marks of the Autarch’s hand?
“You shouldn’t be seeing this, angel,” Gentle told Huzzah, and tried to lift her off his shoulders. But she held fast, taking fistfuls of his hair as security.
“I want to see,” she said. “I’ve seen it with Daddy, lots of times.”
“Just don’t get sick on my head,” Gentle warned.
“I won’t,” she said, outraged at the suggestion.
There were fresh brutalities unfolding below. A survivor had been dragged from the building and was kicked to the ground a few yards from Quaisoir’s vehicle, the doors and windows of which were still closed. Another was defending himself as best he could from bayonet jabs, yelling in defiance as his tormentors encircled him. But everything came to a sudden halt with the appearance on the warehouse roof of a man wearing little more than ragged underwear, who opened his arms like a soul in search of martyrdom and proceeded to harangue the assembly below.
“That’s Athanasius!” Pie murmured in astonishment.
The mystif was far sharper sighted than Gentle, who had to squint hard to confirm the identification. It was indeed Father Athanasius, his beard and hair longer than ever, his hands, brow, and flank running with blood.
“What the hell’s he doing up there,” Gentle said, “giving a sermon?”
Athanasius’ address wasn’t simply directed at the troops and their victims on the cobblestones below. He repeatedly turned his head towards the crowd, shouting in their direction too. Whether he was issuing accusations, prayers, or a call to arms, the words were lost to the wind, however. Soundless, his display looked faintly absurd and undoubtedly suicidal. Rifles were already being raised below, to put him in their sights.
But before a shot could be fired the first prisoner, who’d been kicked to his knees close to Quaisoir’s vehicle, slipped custody. His captors, distracted by Athanasius’ performance, were slow to respond, and by the time they did so their victim was already dashing towards the crowd, ignoring quicker escape routes to do so. The crowd began to part, anticipating the man’s arrival in its midst, but the troops behind him were already turning their muzzles his way. Realizing they intended to fire in the direction of the crowd, Gentle dropped to his haunches, yelling for Huzzah to clamber down. This time she didn’t protest. As she slipped from his shoulders several shots were fired. He glanced up and through the mesh of bodies caught sight of Athanasius falling back, as if struck, and disappearing behind the parapet around the roof.
“Damn fool,” he said to himse
lf, and was about to scoop Huzzah up and carry her away when a second round of shots froze him in his tracks.
A bullet caught one of the dockers a yard from where he crouched, and the man went down like felled timber. Gentle looked around for Pie, rising as he did so. The escaping Dearther had also been hit, but he was still staggering forward, heading towards a crowd that was now in confusion. Some were fleeing, some standing their ground in defiance, some going to the aid of the fallen docker.
It was doubtful the Dearther saw any of this. Though the momentum of his flight still carried him forward, his face—too young to boast a beard—was slack and expressionless, his pale eyes glazed. His lips worked as though to impart some final word, but a sharpshooter below denied him the comfort. Another bullet struck the back of his neck and appeared on the other side, where three fine blue lines were tattooed across his throat, the middle one bisecting his Adam’s apple. He was thrown forward by the bullet’s impact, the few men between him and Gentle parting as he fell. His body hit the ground a yard from Gentle, with only a few twitches of life left in it. Though his face was to the ground, his hands still moved, making their way through the dirt towards Gentle’s feet as if they knew where they were going. His left arm ran out of power before it could reach its destination, but the right had sufficient will behind it to find the scuffed toe of Gentle’s shoe.
He heard Pie murmuring to him from close by, coaxing him to come away, but he couldn’t forsake the man, not in these last seconds. He started to stoop, intending to clasp the dying fingers in his palm, but he was too late by seconds. The arm lost its power, and the hand dropped back to the ground lifeless.
“Now will you come?” Pie said.
Gentle tore his eyes from the corpse and looked up. The scene had gained him an audience, and there was a disturbing anticipation in their faces, puzzlement and respect mingled with the clear expectation of some pronouncement. Gentle had none to offer and opened his arms to show himself empty-handed. The assembly stared on, unblinking, and he half thought they might assault him if he didn’t speak, but a further burst of gunfire from the siege site broke the moment, and the starers gave up their scrutiny, some shaking their heads as though waking from a trance. The second of the captives had been executed against the warehouse wall, and shots were now being fired into the pile of bodies to silence some survivor there. Troops had also appeared on the roof, presumably intending to pitch Athanasius’ body down to crown the cairn. But they were denied that satisfaction. Either he’d faked being struck, or else he’d survived the wounding and crawled off to safety while the drama unfolded below.Whichever, he’d left his pursuers empty-handed.
