A City Dreaming

by Daniel Polansky

  “No, I mean . . .” M thought for a while about what he did mean, and how he could explain it to the innkeeper. “Let’s say we needed to get somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Oz. Lankhmar. Poughkeepsie. Not here. Who would we see about that?”

  “Don’t know if I can help you there. I’m just your average boggan, trying to keep his head down through the Pale King’s winter, like all of the benighted people of the metropolis. If you’re looking for a hymn of transport, the wisest of the witches and the highest of the magi can only be found within the walls of the island. But most of them have long since thrown in with the Pale King, and they’d be loathe to help you without payment, and probably not even then. The Spring Bride could have taken care of it in an instant, were she not frozen solid by the Pale King’s curse, her dandy lions and legions of ivy kept sleeping long after their time.”

  “How long has she been frozen?” Stockdale asked, and to M’s annoyance Boy had put aside her cannon and seemed to be listening eagerly. Andre was staring down at Boy’s cleavage, rendered voluptuous in her new garments, but still, M could feel the thing slipping away.

  “Who speaks of time, when each day brings with it the same blank snow, the same fierce winds? What is a year when there are no seasons? Besides, it is better not to remember the days of summer, nor even to mention them. The Pale King has many eyes watching, in the wind and in the night, for despite it all he still fears the Four to Come. The Four who will end his rule and bring harmony once again to the city.”

  “A bit on the nose, don’t you think?” M asked, hurrying them upward and back into the evening.

  Outside the gas lanterns were making a brave but futile stand against the falling dark. The moon, if there was a moon, was nowhere to be seen, obscured by the winter storm. Following them to say good-bye, the innkeeper’s eye went wide as milk saucers, and he pointed one trembling finger into the night. “Winter men!” he shrieked, before darting back inside and slamming shut the door.

  They must have been waiting in the snowdrifts, drawn by one of the Pale King’s spies. Eight or ten of them, corpses made white from ice and black from frostbite, eyes empty, hands filled with frost-forged war scythes, shambling forward hatefully.

  Ser Dale intercepted the first, parrying an awkward strike and following with a riposte that pierced the thing’s skin, releasing an ichor that froze like maple syrup once it touched air. It collapsed backward into the snow, and then Ser Dale was over the corpse and in among his fellows. “What ho!” he yelled, as if he really meant it. “You’ll find I’m made of sterner stuff than that!”

  Lady cackled and spun the crank on her Gatling gun, razored rounds vomiting forth from the barrel, bringing a second death to the Pale King’s minions, bloodless flesh shreding like confetti. But more kept emerging from the depths of the snow, finally awakening from their long sleep, rising upward to join the fray.

  M watched the proceedings with antipathy bordering on contempt, even as one of the creatures broke away from the pack and approached him. “I got nothing to do with this,” he said. “Can’t you get killed by one of the others?” But the thing seemed disinclined to parlay, slashing at M with his ice sickle, glittering streaks of frost cutting through the air. M gave ground rapidly, trying to explain his position, until one of the cuts got a little too close. Then, displaying rare nimbleness, he dodged forward, grabbed the thing by both ears and said, “August twenty-first was the hottest day of the year in Tunisia, which was where I was, the hubble-bubble pipes torturous to the touch, the sunlight harsh off every reflective surface, even the most devoted of Mahomet’s female servants worrying at their shrouds of modesty, sweat falling off your nose and down into your tea, which never cooled, which came out of the kettle boiling and went into your mouth boiling and boiled itself all the way down into your gullet . . .” By then the thing was down on one knee, and a few sentences of further description were enough to bring him all the way supine.

  But despite M’s grudging assistance, the contest still seemed in doubt. Lady had gone through her clip with a rapidity that spoke more to amateurish enthusiasm than the cool eye of a veteran, and she struggled to reload. Ser Dale was being pushed back by a half-dozen winter men, unable to contend with their numbers and the reach of their blades. It was at that moment that Galahad, who had thus far been less valuable than M, albeit more engaged, slapped shut the breach on his strangely fashioned blunderbuss and fired a round that exploded in the sky above them.

  For a brief few seconds it was summer: not only the warmth, but the sunlight as well, and the smell of fresh-cut grass and cooking asphalt, even that dull lethargy that one gets after eating a few plates of barbecue in a suburban backyard. The winter men stared up at August with growing smiles, then slipped softly into the release the Pale King’s cruelty had so long denied them.

  Lady held her cannon aloft and hooted triumphantly. Ser Dale wiped the winter men’s ichor off his blade and returned it to its sheath. Galahad smiled cheekily.

  “A fine shot, Galahad!” Lady yelled.

  M gave Boy a look that would have curdled milk. “Who the fuck you talking to?”

  “What?”

  “Who the fuck you talking to?”

  “I was complimenting Andre on his aim,” Boy said.

  “No,” M said, shivering and scowling, “you were not.” But he didn’t say anything further. The innkeeper refused to respond to even their most vigorous banging, and having nowhere in particular to go, they made west for the island. But soon it became too dark to continue, a heavy fog obscuring the gaslights and making farther travel impossible. It turned out that one of the things inside Andre’s satchel was a tent large enough to fit all of them comfortably, as well as sleeping sacks, heavy blankets, and a brazier to keep them warm. They assembled them all in one of the small but not infrequent parks they came across, little wedges of old-growth forest sprouting up between the cobblestones. The Four went to bed that night exhausted but happy. Three of the four, anyway.

  The next morning they discovered the ferry wasn’t running, on account of a recent surge of attacks from the rat creatures that lived deep below the docks. They were forced on a quest to take the Rat King’s pelt, and in the tunnels Lady’s cannon did good work, and Ser Dale’s blade did not remain long unbloodied. It took all of Galahad’s cleverness to convince the half-feral children who manned the ferry that the pelt was authentic, however, conversing in their strange clipped cant, nonplussed by their catapults or their savage, beautiful eyes.

  M alone did nothing to earn his keep. On the boat ride over to the inner city, when the turquoise giantess whose great torch illuminated the bay came to demand tribute, he looked up and shook his head and went back to vomiting over the side, leaving the rest of his companions to placate her. When they reached the platform and were forced into a running fight with the Blue Boys, the Pale King’s corrupt and inefficient city guard, he could barely be convinced to keep up with the jog, let alone to extend himself so far as to attack their foes.

  The Four survived, but only by fleeing into tightly packed tenements nearby, forced into the subterranean barrens where the larger portions of the city’s population now lived, dug in deeply against the Pale King’s icy fury. There they heard rumors that the last of the Spring Bride’s thranes kept residence in the north of the city, secretly hidden at the very foot of the Pale King’s lair. He was said to be as powerful a magi had ever lived and capable of crafting a verse that could bring a man to even the most distant realms, though, admittedly, it was only M who seemed interested in that particular point any longer. Regardless, they realized that they didn’t have the money to continue north toward the village, nor begin to attempt crossing the gardens, which in the dead of winter would require sleds and dire wolves to pull them. They were forced to take a job from the First Portion, who had heard word of their accomplishments with the rat men and enlisted their aid in putting down a rebellion in nearby Zucodi Park. But it
swiftly became clear that the First Portion was a thief and a liar and planned on betraying them anyways. So the companions found themselves allied with a group of earnest if somewhat exhausting tribals, leading them in rebellion and dethroning their erstwhile employer. With what they earned there, they managed to travel farther north, to the Morpheme City, where they mediated between the two rival sects of calligraphers who were near to open war over the possession of the sacred twenty-sixth, the letter that would give the reader absolute power over all the others. Having found it, the companions decided it was better lost forever, and with great regret, Galahad dropped the scroll containing it into the Well Unceasing, followed by a tear that mankind’s enthusiasm for improvement was exceeded by its instinct for self-destruction.

  Through it all M remained sullen, taking only what part in their adventures was necessary to ensure his own immediate safety, and even then grudgingly. In the evenings he would sit by himself and mumble long, discursive stories about places that did not exist and things that had never happened. Occasionally, though infrequently, he would fly into a rage and throw incomprehensible insults at his companions, saying that they “had the aesthetic sense of idiot children” and demanding to know of Galahad if “a dildo came complimentary with his aviator goggles.” But the next morning he would arise unthreatening if not apologetic, and the rest seemed happy not to speak of it.

  It was a source of measured concern among his companions. One night, in a hostelry some ways out from the Village, after M had retired early to his room with a scowl and a bottle of liquor to pour into it, they called an impromptu round table.

  “What plagues him?” Ser Dale asked. “He has never been what one would call a team player, but I’ve never known him to give in to such constant loathing.”

  “He was always strange,” Lady agreed. “Ever frowning when others smile, never satisfied with his hearth or the lot appointed to him, always searching, searching, searching. Also, he is very lazy and would rather mock or complain than apply himself to a situation.”

  “He dresses very shabbily,” Galahad concurred, “and yet somehow seems prideful of the fact.”

  “It would not be a tragedy if he drank less frequently,” Ser Dale agreed, “but this is not the purpose of the conversation.”

  “It is a mystery how he imagines himself a Lothario, the way his hair sticks up in the back.” Galahad said.

  “None would gainsay it,” Ser Dale confirmed, “but again, we walk off topic.”

  “He worries me,” Lady admitted. “He has worried me as long as I’ve known him. I think he is more miserable than he would like us to think.”

  “How did you meet?” Ser Dale asked.

  Lady thought for a long time but found she could no longer remember.

  • • •

  And with one thing and another, some months passed, or seemed to pass. They had been forced to spend the Great Prismatic Snowstorm of ’87 holed up in a vast, half-abandoned hotel, long days staring out the window as the parti-colored blizzard rose higher and higher up the tenements, only sprinting out to forage when the storm sent one of its less dangerous hues. Between freeing the Germingest Auberge from the rule of its inbred emperor and their work against the First Portion, they had long since marked themselves as enemies of the Pale King. Pursued across the city by his minions, they were forced to make common cause with the ragtag band of rebels who hoped to return the Spring Bride to her throne and finally free the city from winter’s tyrannical grip. After long struggle, they met finally with the last thrane, who asked that the Four sneak into the Imperial Tower and steal the Pale King’s eye, the source of his power and majesty.

  And indeed that last night, they were trying to make their way to the top of the thousand floors of that legendary citadel, an escapade mad and supremely dangerous and certain to earn them a name eternal amongst the city’s residents. Mad Myron’s aerocraft had collapsed on landing, the steel burnt and twisted from the Corps of Wyverns that had contested their passage, the heroes lucky to have survived it. Things had not improved from there. The Custodians, the Pale King’s last line of defense, faceless and insentient, pursued them relentlessly through the grim gray corridors of the hive building. Galahad’s powders and flasks of morbid smoke, normally so effective, had proved useless, and they had only managed their way to the top by frequent aid of Lady’s cannon; even the Custodians were not impervious to the rat-tat-tat and the sharpened splinters of metal that came an instant afterward.

  “You’d best move swiftly,” Ser Dale was saying, holding back a wave of Custodians with his rapier, hand moving at twice the speed of his tongue. “Reinforcements arrive.”

  Galahad knelt at the keyhole, and his lock pick held steady as he answered, “Yes, go faster. That’s very helpful. Thank you. Lady, can you do something?”

  “Not out of ammo, I can’t.” She had taken a shot from one of the Custodians glü guns and was cutting through the webbing with a hand knife.

  A snick from the lock and Galahad pulled open the door and headed swiftly inside, Lady following him. Ser Dale pressed one of the jewels on the pommel of his sword, and the blade crackled a fabulous white, and then he threw himself into a series of passes, the traces lingering and hardening into a thickly woven wall of lightning. “Move fast!” he yelled. “My spectral shell will only hold them for a moment!”

  M followed the recommendation, though with no great excess of enthusiasm. Last in, Ser Dale shut the door thunderously, and Galahad was quick to pour a sufficient quantity of his sealing wax into the gaps to buy them some time. Still, it would not hold for long against the more-than-human strength of the Custodians.

  Then again, it did not need to. They had found the Pale King’s eye, a sparkling glass sphere hanging motionless midair, each infinitesimally tiny facet displaying a strange and wondrous vision, portals and windows and apertures into foreign worlds, solar systems, universes, the effect of the entire thing a glittering ball of pure magic.

  “Zwounds!” Galahad exhaled.

  “By the Seventh Host of Atlan!” Ser Dale exclaimed.

  “Baby Christ on a Cracker!” Lady added.

  M threw away his cigarette.

  “With that much energy we could free the Spring Bride from her stasis!” Ser Dale said. “We could regrow her armies and push the Pale King back to the North! We could return harmony to the seasons and justice to the land!”

  “Sure,” Lady asked, “but how the hell do we get out of here?”

  “Fear not!” Galahad said, smiling and pointing toward the open window. “My alchemy might not be of use against the Custodians, but this philter of Soft Landing is proof against any fall!”

  “For the love of God,” M said, then put his hand up against the globe and breathed in deeply.

  When they walked out of the bar the sunlight shone hard on the concrete and on the dull, gray, cold city. Someone had torn open a bag of trash, and the contents—rotted fruit and used hygiene products—lay scattered about the front.

  “Spoilsport,” Stockdale said.

  “Killjoy,” Andre added.

  “Asshole,” Boy muttered.

  “You looked absurd in that corset,” M answered.

  15

  * * *

  A Boon for the Red Queen

  M had hoped that his incapacity—not to say manifest disinterest—in having an apprentice or shepherding a youth into adulthood or really doing anything much beyond overseeing his own immediate pleasures would in time be enough to convince Flemel he might do better looking elsewhere for a tutor. Alas, an odd month after M had grudgingly acknowledged the boy’s existence, he was still appearing with unbecoming regularity, stopping by The Lady several times a week and even, in a bout of almost unimaginable presumptuousness, showing up for impromptu tutoring sessions in M’s parlor.

  At least he generally had the good sense to bring an offering. M was devouring one of these—a bacon, egg, and cheese on an onion bagel from the Hasidic bagel shop near where Fle
mel laid his head—while Flemel was in the midst of attempting to perform some sort of cantrip, reciting words in a slippery, serpentine tongue and wiggling his fingers in a not altogether unsilly fashion.

  A puff of smoke and M’s couch, which heretofore had enjoyed existence as black leather, turned a pink paisley.

  “That goes real well with the decor,” M said, brushing poppy seeds out of his thin beard. “You got the rhythm wrong. It’s broken beat, like a Tropicália tune. And your mental picture is off: You need to square the circle at the same time you land on the last syllable.”

  “I did that!”

  “Obviously you didn’t do that, or my couch wouldn’t look like someone vomited Kool-Aid on the slip cover.”

  “How come I never see you do any of this? Is this just an elaborate effort to make me look foolish?”

  “I wouldn’t need to go through so much trouble.”

  M’s buzzer buzzed, as buzzers sometimes do. M slipped up from his chair and answered it.

  “M?”

  Flemel had known M a few months, and in that time he had never seen M quiver, not when threatened with murder by a gang of oversize bikers, not when Stockdale was possessed by the ghost of a long-dead Five Point street tough, not even when they walked into The Lady and Dino told him all the beer taps were down. It was an impressive streak that ended just then, M’s pallor growing ghastly and his eyes wide.

  “¿Que?” he asked after too long a moment. “¡No habla Inglas! ¡Gracias! ¡Adios!”

  “Hola, M. Tu acente es horrible, suenas como un gallo borracho. ¿Me deja ahora?”

  “Sí,” M said miserably.

  “Who’s that?” Flemel asked.

  M didn’t answer, taking his charge by the arm and walking him good-naturedly toward his bedroom window. “Say, Flemel, you ever climb down a fire escape?”

  “No.”

  “No? Never? You just have to. It’s a New York rite of passage,” he insisted, opening the window.