Kata led him ultimately to her house. She took him inside and walked to the kitchen. She opened the cupboard door and glanced at the flagon. She left it there and walked back out of the kitchen. Aemilius stood before her, majestic. She reached out and placed her hand on his chest. It did not ripple with muscles as Cyriacus’ had, but his body was powerful nonetheless. Kata leaned in and rested her head against his chest, reaching up to touch his hairy face, the bristles wiry and oiled beneath her hand. The smell of sweat and perfume intoxicated her, and she felt calm as his arms closed in around her. She closed her eyes and felt his chest rising and falling beneath her cheek. Pushing back, she looked up into his onyx eyes, noticing for the first time the soft and dark eyelashes that interlaced beautifully as he blinked.
“Come upstairs,” she said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have to leave at the end of the week.”
“I don’t care. Come upstairs.” She turned and pulled him by the hand. He came, hesitantly, behind her, as if she were leading a child into the dark.
They lay the next morning in her bed, watching the light as it slowly shifted in intensity across the wall. In the afternoon, when he left to buy fruit from the markets, she locked the cupboard that held her bolt-thrower. When he returned, they ate the fruit naked at the table.
“Look at this,” he said, running his fingers along the roughened edge of the table that had been scraped when she’d killed Cyriacus.
“Scraped when I brought it through the door.”
“I hope you didn’t fall and give yourself those bruises,” he said.
“No. Those came from Cyriacus.”
“Ha!” He threw his head back.
“What?”
“I knew. I smelled his blood on the balcony. What happened?”
“We fought. I struck him and he left.”
“He left? Just like that? Don’t lie to me. I know what he tried to do. The young minotaurs, they let pain make their decisions for them.”
“It’s not what you think. He didn’t...”
“I’m sorry for whatever happened. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
She crossed her arms and clenched her teeth.
Aemilius reached over and placed his hand over hers. “You are distant.”
“To be close to someone is...dangerous.”
After he left, Kata lay on the cushions and cried, cursing House Technis and their hold over her. She had volunteered so readily, a chance to cancel all her debts at once. But now...She had to kill another minotaur. It was sacrilege, of course, which was why they had agents like her do it.
She could not fail. She had two days.
Kata sat in the almost-barren room before a polished redwood desk. She looked out of the window to the hanging gardens with their red round fruit, their tinkling waterfalls and marble fountains. Soft purple flowers floated on the breeze. She smelled pollen and overripe fruit.
The door opened and Rudé entered. He sat in the red leather chair behind the desk. “Well?”
“I want to change the agreement.”
“We can’t. We have customers waiting for the different parts of the body. And the House’s thaumaturgists are waiting for the eyes, the liver and kidney, and the skin.”
“Perhaps you could get someone else to do it.”
“Yes. I suppose we could. But it’s a bit late now. Anyway, I’ve already given you an advance.”
“That was hardly worth the price of the first minotaur.”
“Yes, but let’s see. You still owe us for half the house. Now, we could repossess that...but you don’t want to go back on the street, do you? Anyway, look at it this way, Kata: it’s time for you to show some loyalty. Loyalty will get you far in this world.”
She rose to her feet and leaned over the desk at him. “Everyone finds their proper place, you know, Rudé. One day you’ll find yours.”
“Fine,” he said, as if Kata had not spoken at all. “I’ll come to collect the body at the end of the Festival tomorrow night. I trust you’ll be obliging.”
Kata met Aemilius in La Tazia, a tiny coffeehouse specializing in exotic fruits, nestled dangerously high on the south side of the cliffs where white houses and eateries piled upon each other like children’s blocks. The coffee there was dark and imported, the cigars rolled across the sea in Ambibia, and the owner a wasted old man called Pehzi who coughed up blackened phlegm between bouts of wheezy laughter. Nearing death, Pehzi found everything hilarious.
When Kata and Aemilius entered, Pehzi was talking to a fat philosopher-assassin with a shaved head and two bolt-throwers dangling from the back of his belt. Another couple played chess in one corner, their backs against the wall. Kata took Aemilius out onto the tiny, semicircular balcony where a small table allowed them to look over the city and the sea. Kata gazed at the peninsula with its steam baths and liquor palaces on the far side of the piers. She would not look at Aemilius.
“I shall not see you again,” she said.
“I see.”
Pehzi stepped out onto the balcony holding a tray. He placed the coffees on the table. “Waterberry pastries?”
“No.”
Pehzi nodded, laughed to himself about something, and left them alone.
Eventually Kata said, “You’re leaving the day after tomorrow. You’ll sail across the sea to Aya. That’s that.”
“I see.”
“Is that all you can say? ‘I see’? What about me? Why are you so...?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again and reached out to her. “You don’t have to feel alone.”
“Oh, but I do,” she said. “I do have to feel alone.”
He lifted her up in both hands and held her close to him. She could hear his heart beating in his chest, and felt the warmth radiating into her cheek.
“Look over there,” he said. “Can you see how the colour of the sea changes as it passes over the sunken city? There are many who still lie on those marble streets, with skeletal horses and crumbling carriages around them. They are the only ones who should feel alone. But we—you and I—we are alive.”
“Come back with me,” she said. “Come back to my house and never leave. Never go to Aya.”
Later, when he was asleep in her bed, she watched as his eyes moved beneath their lids in sleep. Sometimes he groaned and half-lifted an arm, as if there was something to fend off in his dreams. She did not sleep that night, but lay awake thinking of how they would spend their last day together. And what she would tell Rudé.
Perhaps there was a chance to convince Aemilius to stay; they would not have to live in Caeli-Amur. They could escape the city and find somewhere quiet. But in her heart she knew it to be a dream, for he was a child of Aya. Yet she would struggle for it, just as she had for everything in her life.
In the morning she left him asleep and walked the streets alone. She wandered through the factory quarter, breathing the soot and grime that rose from those square gray buildings or from the chimneys that led from the underground factories.
When Kata returned to her house she found Aemilius and Rudé sitting at the table eating olives and melon. Three flagons of wine stood on the table before them. She stood in the doorway, aghast.
“We’ve brought sustenance,” said Aemilius.
“Ah,” said Rudé, “the woman of secrets returns. I must say, I expected I’d find a minotaur here, but I thought you might be here also.” Rudé grinned, his teeth red with wine.
Kata walked to the table and looked at the flagons. They were empty. “Yes,” said Aemilius, “I brought Anlusian hot-wine also.”
She breathed out.
“So,” said Rudé, rubbing his stomach gently. “We’ll have to find some more work for you, as you’ve clearly failed at your last task.”
“Are you in an enterprise together?” asked Aemilius, throwing a slice of green melon into his mouth.
Kata turned away from them and saw the empty cupboard.
Thinking the question was directed at him, Rudé, who was now looking white, said, “That hot-wine doesn’t agree with me. I think I need some air.”
“I’ll show you the balcony,” said Kata, leading him toward the stairs.
“I know where it is.”
“Even so.”
She led him up the stairs; he doubled over when he reached the balcony. “Oh,” he groaned. “That wine. The one we took from your cupboard, was it...”
Before he could finish speaking, Rudé dropped to his knees on the balcony and vomit came streaming and red from his mouth, dribbling down his shirt, onto the floor.
“The wine, did you drink it all?” she asked.
“We shared it,” he said. “Why?” He slumped onto his side.
“It was poisoned.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Help me.” Rudé fell forward onto his hands, breathing quickly and shallowly, drool coming in long lines from his mouth.
“No. There is nothing that can be done.”
“You bitch. You filthy...”
She leaned in over him: “You’re nothing, Rudé.”
“I fought to be where I am. Like you, I struggled.”
“No, you did exactly what the House wanted. You’re an appendage.”
Only a gurgle came from his white-frothed lips.
She ran back to the stairs, descended as quickly as she could, and found Aemilius standing by the table, steadying himself with one hand.
“No,” she said.
“What?”
She stood there, the room between them, looking at his massive presence.
“You,” he said. “You didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So it’s true, you murdered Cyriacus.” He staggered backward, unsteady on his feet. “I would have done...whatever I could. I would have...helped you.”
“You wouldn’t have. You would have left for Aya with the others. You would have sailed off, leaving me here, alone.”
There was froth around his mouth, and his magnificent eyes had lost their edge. They were clouded, as if a white substance were billowing into them.
He collapsed to the floor, his legs, once so powerful, at awkward angles beneath him. “I fought in the Numerian wars. I defended Caeli-Amur when Saliras’ fleet of a thousand ships appeared from the winter’s fog.”
She sat next to him. “It wasn’t meant to be this way. If only you hadn’t drunk the wine.”
He snarled, a sudden burst of energy lighting his face. “This is how the city repays me. There is no justice.”
She took his massive head in her lap and looked down on him. “I’m sorry.” She refused to cry.
He looked up at her, his words slurring as he spoke. “The New-Men will take this city, break it down and rebuild it. Then you’ll know what it’s like to be overtaken, to be...obsolete.” Finally he lost consciousness, dying quietly in her arms.
“You shall have to pay for Rudé’s death, you know,” said the new Officiate, another gray, middle-aged man with a cold, efficient manner. “There must be payment.”
She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sound of the saw as they cut up Aemilius. Still, she did not cry. In her heart she knew it was time to leave Caeli-Amur—she had struggled enough.
When the men from House Technis were gone, Kata stood on the balcony, watching over Caeli-Amur. She stood there, motionless. The night stars shone down over the water until dawn broke over the horizon and the sea changed from blue to green with little crests of white.
In the morning the minotaurs stepped their way down to the piers, one by one, their hulking bodies small against the ships. The citizens of the city watched them leave, these godlike creatures, powerful and mysterious. The children were solemn this time, knowing the minotaurs would not return for ten more years. And next time there would be fewer still. The elderly nodded their heads and said to each other: “So, they’re off again.” Others were unsure what to feel. When the last of the minotaurs embarked, the ships hoisted their sails and made their way over the sunken city and out to sea.
Lost in the Library of Forgotten Books
East of the twelve towers that stand in the centre of Varenis, and past the bustling boulevards filled with rickshaws and steam trams, the apartment buildings huddle close to each other, pressed together like vagrants in the cold. Hidden between them lies The Library of Forgotten Books, its walls grey from soot and smoke. Little minarets circle its dome, and the gloomy light barely filters through the blue and red stained glass windows. It stands like a symbol for its contents, almost forgotten except in certain critical administrative centres and among particular writers who shudder at its thought and close their eyes as they write during the long nights.
That particular morning, in the middle of one of Varenis’ hot summers, I watched Mr Agee pass through the imposing entrance hall with its massive pillars and into the foyer where I worked with the head librarian, Mr Treskoti. Fat and sweating and already crying, Agee carried his pile of books in both arms. He dropped one, leaned down to try to pick it up, and another three fell to the polished marble floor. One landed face down and open, some of its pages crumpling beneath its weight. He looked up at us savagely, as if we were to blame. I took a step forward, yearning to help him, but stopped myself.
“Damn you,” Agee said.
“Mr Agee,” said Treskoti, “Don’t make a scene.”
“I don’t understand,” said Agee to himself.
“Oh, you understand perfectly well,” said Treskoti. “Your books have been classified as aesthetically bereft, as...unreadable. They have been placed on the list of the forgotten, and are now to be catalogued in line with the requirements of the Directorate of Publications. I trust these are the only copies that you possess.”
Agee’s face shuddered and he took a step forward. “Just because a book is unread doesn’t mean it’s not great.”
Treskoti shook his head in mock-disappointment. “The Directorate is the will of the people. The people say that your aesthetic is dangerously degenerate.”
Agee dropped the rest of the books on the floor in disgust. He turned and walked towards the exit, his fat body lurching from side to side, his flesh moving around his bones as his internal equilibrium shifted. After about twenty paces he turned back. His face was red with anger, and yet there were still tears in his eyes. “Everyone gets what’s coming to them,” he said.
Unperturbed, Treskoti observed Agee from beneath his bushy brows. “Why can’t they all be like Mr Ister? Anyway, catalogue these then will you, Alisa, before he arrives?”
I tried to smooth out the crumpled pages. I hated to see them damaged. One day I hoped to stop floating through life like a balloon in the wind and start my own publishing house. But the best work I could find was in the Library, spending my days surrounded by books that were not to be read, and my nights in the bars and cafés surrounded by facile friends who laughed and drank and planned great ventures that never came to fruition.
At least I could take care of Agee’s books. I ensured my pendant—round and inscribed with its complex ideograms—was around my neck, and headed into the dark places of the library with the books under my arm, ready to be stamped, shelved, and forgotten.
The hundred and more staircases in the huge domed reading room led, criss-crossing like a mad spider’s web, from level to level and into the darkness. I took the small spiral one, its sides adorned with iron minotaurs and sirens, sea serpents and xsanthians. Through the lacework the library’s marble floors disappeared below. The library had grown like an out of control organism, sections added on over the centuries without thought. Now it was a composite of styles and designs, of nooks and crannies, secret reading rooms, stairs that led nowhere, grottos that could only be reached by ladders.
When I reached the upper level, Mrs Emmago’s head popped out from one of the aisles in front of me, her face pl
ump and filled with narrow-minded curiosity. I jumped. “Where are you off to?”
“Memoir: Agee.”
“Agee.” She nodded. “That pathetic fat man.” She scrunched up her unnaturally smooth face and said malevolently, “Be careful of the Guardians.” It was a joke the librarians whispered to each other, laughing without conviction. But with Mrs Emmago there was an edge of cruelty, a touch of pleasure. It was no wonder that despite working in the library her whole life and knowing every shelf and stair, she’d never been promoted. A cold gust of air brushed across me and the fine hair on my arms and neck stood on end. I looked around but could see nothing.
I passed between the labyrinthine shelves with their numbers: 14629—1333—CE Xbuta. And then 14629—1333—CE Xbute. And on and on. I climbed staircases higher still, onto ramshackle wooden stairs which gave way to ladders: up, up, between the ledges littered with unshelved books in cluttered piles. Each of the platforms became smaller, held up by dangerous-looking wooden supports, until I found the right place, the platform barely a shelf itself, the drop precipitous behind me, my legs trembling now.
As I reached up to shelve Agee’s books a voice hissed in my ear. “Ah, another one to be forgotten.” The sound warped in and out of existence; at one moment it seemed to be spoken directly into my ears, and a fraction later as if from down a long corridor. The words bent and warped under the pressure of the Other Side.
I let out a little cry and teetered on my feet. Cold rushes ran up along my back and my breath quickened. I caught a glimpse of too-large teeth and bared lips like those of a dead horse. They warped and twisted, as if melting, and then faded into the black formlessness.
“Oh, don’t fall little one. Oh, we wouldn’t want that.”
I shelved the books, ignoring the dark roiling stain of the Guardian beside me, and took a step towards the ladder.
The Library of Forgotten Books Page 12
