The Infernal City

by Greg Keyes

  “It took me a week to give Mere-Glim his skin back.”

  “He had his skin,” Annaïg pointed out. “It was just translucent, that’s all. It didn’t hurt him.”

  Hecua buzzed her lips together in disdain. “Well, there’s no talking to the young, is there?” She held up the list and began picking through the bottles, boxes, and canisters on the shelves that made up the walls of the place.

  While she did so, Annaïg wandered around the shelves, too, studying their contents. She knew she didn’t have everything she needed. It was like cooking; there was one more taste needed to pull everything together. She just didn’t have any idea what it was.

  Hecua’s place was huge. It had once been the local Mages’ Guild hall, and there were still three or four doddering practitioners who were in and out of the rooms upstairs. Hecua honored their memberships, even though there was no such organization as the Mages’ Guild anymore. No one much cared; the An-Xileel didn’t care, and neither the College of Whispers nor the Synod—the two Imperially recognized institutions of magic—had representatives in Lilmoth, so they hadn’t anything to say about it either.

  She opened bottles and sniffed the powders, distillations, and essences, but nothing spoke to her. Nothing, that is, until she lifted a small, fat bottle wrapped tightly in black paper. Touching it sent a faint tingle traveling up her arm, across her clavicle, and up into the back of her throat.

  “What is it?” Hecua asked, and Annaïg realized her gasp must have been audible.

  She held the container up.

  The old woman came and peered down her nose at it.

  “Oh, that,” she said. “I’m really not sure, to tell you the truth. It’s been there for ages.”

  “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “I pulled it from the back, while I was dusting.”

  “And you don’t know what it is?”

  She shrugged. “A fellow came in here years ago, a few months after the Oblivion crisis. He was sick with something and needed some things, but he didn’t have money to pay. But he had that. He claimed he’d taken it from a fortress in Oblivion itself. There was a lot of that back then; we had a big influx of daedra hearts and void salts and the like.”

  “But he didn’t say what it was?”

  She shook her head. “I felt sorry for him, that’s all. I imagine it’s not much of anything.”

  “And you never opened it to find out?”

  Hecua paused. “Well, no, you can see the paper is intact.”

  “May I?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Annaïg broke the paper with her thumbnail, revealing the stopper beneath. It was tight, but a good twist brought it out.

  The feeling in the back of her throat intensified and became a taste, a smell, bright as sunlight but cold, like eucalyptus or mint.

  “That’s it,” she said, as she felt it all meld together.

  “What? You know what it is?”

  “No. But I want some.”

  “Annaïg—”

  “I’ll be careful, Aunt Hec. I’ll run some virtue tests on it.”

  “Those tests aren’t well proven yet. They miss things.”

  “I’ll be careful, I said.”

  “Hmf,” the old woman replied dubiously.

  The house, as usual, was empty, so she went to the small attic room where she had all of her alchemical gear and went to work. She did the virtue tests and found the primary virtue was restorative and the secondary was—more promisingly—one of alteration. The tertiary and quaternary virtues didn’t reveal themselves even so vaguely.

  But she knew, knew right to her bones, that this was right. And so she passed hours with her calcinator, and in the end she was turning a flask containing a pale amber fluid that bent light oddly, as if it were a half a mile of liquid instead of a few inches.

  “Well,” she said, sniffing it. Then she sighed. It felt right, smelled right—but Hecua’s warning was not to be taken lightly. This could be poison as easily as anything. Maybe if she just tasted a little …

  At that moment she heard a sound on the stairs. She stayed still, listening for it to repeat itself.

  “Annaïg?”

  She sighed in relief. It was only her father. She remembered he had been bringing food home, and a glance out her small window proved it was near dinnertime.

  “Coming, Taig,” she called, corking the potion and stuffing it in her right skirt pocket. She started up, then paused.

  Where was Glim? He’d been gone an awfully long time.

  She went to a polished cypress cabinet and withdrew two small objects wrapped in soft gecko skin. She unwrapped them carefully, revealing a locket on a chain and a life-sized likeness of a sparrow constructed of a fine metal the color of brass but as light as paper. Each individual feather had been fashioned exquisitely and separately, and its eyes were garnets set in ovals of some darker metal.

  As her fingers touched it, it stirred, ruffling its metal wings.

  “Hey, Coo,” she whispered.

  She hesitated then. Coo was the only thing of value her mother had left her that hadn’t been stolen or sold. Sending her out was a risk she didn’t often take. But Glim had had more than enough time to get to the waterfront and back, hours and hours more. It was probably nothing—maybe he was drinking with his cousins or something—but she was eager to find out what the Psijic priest had to say.

  “Go find Glim,” she whispered to the bird, conjuring the image of her friend in her secret eye. “Speak only to him, hear only at his touch.”

  She purred, lifted her wings, and drifted more than flew out of the open window.

  “Annaïg?”

  Her father’s voice again, nearer. She went out, closing the door behind her.

  She met him near the top of the winding flight. He was red in the face from wine or exertion or probably both.

  “Why didn’t you just ring the bell, Taig?” she asked.

  “Sometimes you don’t come down right away,” he said, stepping aside. “After you.”

  “What’s the rush?” she asked, descending past him.

  “We were going to talk,” he said.

  “About the trip to Leyawiin?”

  “That, and other things,” he replied.

  The stair came to a landing, and then continued down.

  “What other things?”

  “I haven’t been a very good father, Thistle. I know that. Since your mother died—”

  There was that annoying tone again. “It’s been fine, Taig. I’ve got no complaints.”

  “Well, you should. I know that. I tell myself that I’ve been doing what’s needed to keep us alive, to keep this house …” He sighed. “And in the end, all meaningless.”

  They passed the next landing.

  “What do you mean, meaningless?” she asked. “I love this house.”

  “You think I don’t know anything about you,” he said. “I do. You pine to leave here, this place. You dream of the Imperial City, of studying there.”

  “I know we don’t have the money, Taig.”

  He nodded. “That’s been the problem, yes. But I’ve sold some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “The house, for one.”

  “What?” She stopped with her foot on the floor of the antechamber, just noticing the men there, four of them—an Imperial with a knobby nose, an orc with dark green hide and low, brushy brows, and two Bosmeri who might have been twins with their fine, narrow faces. She recognized the orc and the Imperial as members of the Thtachalxan, or “Drykillers,” the only non-Argonian guard unit in Lilmoth.

  “What’s going on, Taig?” she whispered.

  He rested his hand on her shoulder. “I wish I had more time, Thistle,” he murmured. “I wish I could go with you, but this is how it is. Your aunt will see you get to the Imperial City. She has friends there.”

  “What’s happening, Taig? What do you know?”

  “It doesn’t matter,
” he said. “Best you not find out.”

  She brushed his hand from her shoulder. “I’m not going to Leyawiin,” she said. “Certainly not without a better explanation and certainly not without you—and Glim.”

  “Glim …” He exhaled, then his face changed into a visage utterly alien to her. “Don’t worry about Glim,” he said. “There’s nothing to be done there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She could hear the panic building in her voice. It was as if it had pulled itself outside of her and become a thing of its own.

  “Tell me!”

  When he didn’t answer, she turned and strode for the door.

  The orc stepped in her way.

  “Don’t hurt her,” her father said.

  Annaïg turned and ran, ran as fast as she could toward the kitchen and other door, the one that led to the garden.

  She was only halfway there when hard, callused hands clamped on her arm.

  “I owe yer father,” the orc growled. “So you’ll be coming with me, girl.”

  She writhed in his grasp, but the others were all around her.

  Her father leaned in and kissed her forehead. He stank of black rice wine.

  “I love you,” he said. “Try to remember that, in the days and years to come. That in the end I did right by you.”

  With half a bottle of Theilul sloshing in his belly, Mere-Glim made his wobbly way back toward the old Imperial district. He knew Annaïg was going to be irritated with him for not returning sooner, but at the moment he didn’t care that much. Anyway, it wasn’t much fun watching her concoct her smelly compounds, which is what she had surely been doing all afternoon. He hadn’t spent much time with his cousins lately—or with anyone except Annaïg, really. If he had, he might have known he wasn’t alone in feeling a bit cut off from the tree, that only the An-Xileel and other, even wilder people from the deep swamps seemed to enjoy complete rapport with it.

  That was bothersome in a lot of ways, and perhaps most bothersome was that his mind—like many of his people—had a hard time believing in coincidence. If the tree was doing something strange at the same time a flying city appeared from nowhere, it seemed impossible that there wasn’t some connection.

  Maybe Annaïg’s father was right—after all, the old man did work with the An-Xileel. Maybe it was time to go, away from Lilmoth and its rogue tree.

  If it was rogue. If all the Hist weren’t involved. Because if they were, he would have to get out of Black Marsh entirely.

  A light rain began splattering the mud-covered path as he passed beneath the pocked, eroded limestone arch that had once marked the boundary of the Imperial quarter. He whirl-jumped as a fluttering motion at the edge of his vision opened ancient templates—but what he saw there wasn’t a venin-bat or blood-moth. It took him a moment to sort out that it was Annaïg’s metal bird, Coo.

  She must really be irritated, he thought. She rarely used Coo for anything.

  He blew out some of the water that had collected in his nose and flipped open the little hatch that covered the mirror.

  He didn’t find Annaïg gazing back at him, though. It was dark, which meant the locket was closed.

  But it was emitting faint sounds.

  He pressed the bird nearer his ear. At first he didn’t hear much—breathing, the muffled voices of two men. But then suddenly a man was shouting, and a woman shrieked.

  He knew that shriek like he knew his own—it was Annaïg.

  “Back here, girl!” a hoarse voice growled.

  “Just tell my father you put me on the ship!” he heard Annaïg shout. “He’ll never know the difference.”

  “Maybe he wouldn’t,” Hoarse Voice grunted. “But I would, yeah? So on the boat you go.”

  Annaïg then vented a string of profanities, some of which she almost certainly had made up on the spot, because Mere-Glim hadn’t heard them before, and he had pretty much heard all of her arsenal of swear-words and phrases—or thought he had.

  With a grunt he turned around and started back down toward the docks. It seemed Annaïg’s father did know something, something so bad he’d had his own daughter kidnapped to get her out of town.

  Well, that was great. Now he felt worse about everything.

  He began to run.

  FIVE

  Annaïg thought she would have a chance to escape when they reached the ship, but her father’s thugs—and his money—seemed to convince the captain, an Argonian so old that patches of his scales had become translucent. She and her things were placed in a small stateroom—about the size of a closet, actually—and that was bolted from the outside, with the promise that she would be free to wander the ship once they were a few leagues from land.

  That didn’t stop her from trying to find a way out, of course. The small window was no help, since she couldn’t shape-shift into a cat or ferret. She tried screaming for help, but they were facing away from the docks, so there was no one to hear her above the general din. She couldn’t find a way through the door, and as it turned out, if someone had built any sort of secret doors or panels into the bulkhead, they were far too clever for her.

  That left crying, which she actually started before completing her search. Her tears were thoroughly mixed—anger, grief, and terror. Her father would never think of treating her like this unless he was certain that remaining meant death. So why had he decided to stay and die? Why did he get that choice and not her?

  Once she got past the noisy stage of crying and settled into more dignified, ladylike sniffling, she realized someone was saying her name. She looked at the door and window, but the sound was funny, very small …

  And then she remembered, and felt really stupid.

  She took off the locket and opened it up and there was Glim’s familiar face. His mouth was slightly open and his teeth were showing, indicating his agitation.

  “Glim!” she whispered.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I’m on a ship—”

  “Did you get the name?”

  “The Tsonashap—‘Swimming Frog.’”

  The tiny figure of his head turned this way and that.

  “I see it,” he said at last. “It’s making ready.”

  “I’m in a small stateroom near the bow,” she told him. “There’s a short corridor—” She stopped and bit her lip. “Glim, don’t try it,” she said at last. “I think … I think something really awful is about to happen. Trying to get me out of here—you’ll only get caught. Get out of Lilmoth, as far and as fast as you can.”

  Glim blinked slowly.

  “I’m going to close the bird and put it away now,” he said.

  “Glim—” But the image vanished.

  Annaïg sighed, shut the locket and her eyes. She felt tired, hungry, worn-out.

  Glim was coming, wasn’t he?

  The first hour, she waited anxiously, preparing herself to spring into action. But then she felt the boat moving on the water. She looked out the window and saw the lanterns on the quay receding.

  “Xhuth!” she swore. “Waxhuthi! Kaoc’!”

  But the lights, uninterested in her expletives, continued to dim and dwindle.

  She opened the locket, but no image greeted her. She held it up to her ear, but she didn’t hear anything, either.

  Had he heeded her advice, or had he been caught, injured, murdered? In her whirling thoughts he was all of them. Glim, missing an arm; Glim, headless; Glim bound in chains and about to be thrown overboard …

  Something rattled at her door, and her heart actually skipped a beat. She’d always thought that was just an expression. She stood, fingers knotted in fists she didn’t really know how to use, waiting.

  The door opened, a snout appeared, and large reptilian eyes that sagged deep in their wrinkled sockets.

  “Captain,” she said, making her voice as cold as possible.

  “We’re in deep water,” he grated. “Don’t be foolish and try to swim for it. You’ll not make it, not with t
he sea-drakes hereabouts.”

  He glanced down at her clenched hands and flashed his own claws, shaking his head.

  “Never think that,” he said. “I’d see you safe to your destination, but no one attacks a captain on his ship and doesn’t pay hard. It’s law.”

  “Law? Kidnapping is against the law!”

  “This isn’t kidnapping, it’s your father’s wish—and you aren’t old enough to go against his wish, at least not in this sort of matter. So best resign.”

  He hadn’t said anything about Glim, and she was afraid to ask.

  She loosened her fingers. “Very well. I’m free to move about the ship?”

  “Within reason.”

  “Right. Here’s me moving, then.”

  She pushed past him into the brief hall, up the steps, and onto the deck.

  Above her, sails billowed and snapped in the plentiful wind that always drove off the coast early in the night, and the bow cut a furrow through a sea lacquered in silver and bronze by the two great moons above. For a moment her fear and dismay were overcome by an unexpected rush of joy at the beauty of it, the adventure it seemed to promise. Across the sea to the Empire, and everything she’d always wanted. Her father’s last, best—almost only—gift to her.

  She went and stood with her hands braced on the bulward and looked out across the waters. They were sailing south, out of the bay, and then they would go west, along the mangroved coast of Black Marsh, until they reached the Topal Sea, and then they would turn north.

  Or she could throw herself in the water and swim what she guessed to be west, brave the sea-drakes, and with more luck than she deserved reach land. But by the time she made it back to Lil-moth, it would be too late. The city—or whatever it was—was supposed to arrive in the morning.

  Still …

  “Hold your breath,” someone whispered behind her, and then she was lifted and falling, and a blink afterward stunned and wet. She gasped for air and clawed at her captor, trying to climb up on his head, but a strong hand clamped over her nose and mouth before she could so much as scream, and suddenly she was beneath, enclosed by the sea, moving though it in powerful pulses. She knew she shouldn’t breathe, but after a few moments she had to try, to suck in something, anything, to make the need stop.