The Stars Askew
Page 37
Kata and Rikard scrambled away from the edge of the pool, but already Alfadi was upon them, blocking off their retreat. The thaumaturgist’s glowing hand clamped onto Rikard’s face, and the young man screamed. A stench of burning flesh filled the air.
Behind them, the leviathan burst from the water, its two longest tentacles whipping out, their flat stingers reaching for meat. Maximilian was somewhere beneath it, hiding himself, invisible. Kata had to help him, so she twisted, spun one of her knives toward the creature’s evil and intelligent eyes. The dagger plunged deep, just as the leviathan fixed a hundred more eyes onto her. The monster thrashed in rage.
Kata heard a thump and a crack as Rikard went down. Instinctively, she spun to the side, but Alfadi was already on her. He reached for her throat with a glowing hand. His eyes shone with an impossible darkness, a thaumaturgical fire.
She took a step diagonally backward and deflected the arm. Again the thaumaturgist lunged at her, and again she took a step back and to the side. This time she struck out with her open hand and caught the man in the ribs. She knew if she caused him enough pain, he would not be able to maintain his thaumaturgical equations.
He gasped and swung at her, but she skipped backward, sideways, and leaped into the air just as the leviathan’s tentacle whipped beneath her legs. Now she was fighting two foes: one in front of her, one behind. Rikard lay motionless on the ground, no help at all.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a hundred shorter tentacles undulating toward her, reaching, yearning, hoping to drag her into the creature’s deadly embrace. Again the longer tentacle lashed. This time it came at waist height, hoping to strike her body. She rolled beneath it, felt air being displaced as it whipped through the empty space above her.
She came to her feet in a single motion and launched her other knife at Alfadi. The thaumaturgist waved his hand, and the whirling weapon spun off to one side, as if it had hit some invisible shield. Alfadi stood still, both hands like burning coals, waiting for her to take a step out of the range of the leviathan.
Kata knew she was finished, caught between the two monsters. She dashed forward and to her left. Alfadi’s hand shot out at her. She raised her arm to block it, but this time he caught her arm. She lost her momentum, fell to one knee, and screamed. Her forearm burned as if a bracelet of molten metal was clasped around it. Alfadi’s other hand reached toward her face. She caught Alfadi’s forearm in turn, halting his palm just before it seared her skin. She felt the heat, a little furnace close to her cheek.
Though she was quicker than Alfadi, he was the stronger of the two, and now he had the advantage. She leaned back to avoid the searing hand, but that brought her closer to the swinging tentacle behind her. At any moment either Alfadi’s blazing palm would clamp her face or the tentacle behind her would whip around her leg and drag her into the pool. Hope was gone, replaced by despair.
Alfadi suddenly screamed. His hand dropped from her face. He looked down at his foot, where a sharp little gladiator sword—like a long piercing needle—had been driven between the bones. Henri scuttled away like a crab.
In an instant Kata grasped Alfadi’s right wrist, which still held her burning forearm. Dropping to her back, she pulled the thaumaturgist toward her. He lurched forward. His great bulk connected with the soles of her feet, which were now pointing toward the sky. With a rapid kick, she threw him over her head.
She heard a terrible scream. By the time she hopped to her feet, Alfadi was already wrapped in a dozen tentacles, constricting around him like a writhing mass of pythons.
Kata scrabbled back as the leviathan slid its slippery and immense bulk into the water. Alfadi struggled in the monster’s powerful tentacles as it descended into the depths, still looking at her with those terrifying alien eyes.
On the far side of the room, a soaked Maximilian hauled himself out of the tank, heaving and gasping.
Kata couldn’t think of anything to say to the wide-eyed and staring Henri. Eventually she just stepped across to him and pulled his awkward body to her. Relief and love flooded through her. The little boy was alive, and he had saved her, just as she had wanted to save him. He’s so smart, she thought.
“I couldn’t get away,” he said. “So I had to pretend I liked it here. He was going to kill me.”
Rikard was unconscious, one side of his face burned black and red. His eye was closed over, or burned away—she couldn’t tell. His body heaved for air.
“Come on, Maximilian. We have to get him to the Opera. We can’t be sure if we’re safe here, so we’ll return the way we came. Who knows how many of these thaumaturgists were in Alfadi’s employ? Perhaps all of them.”
“We can’t take him to the Opera. Ejan will have us arrested,” said Max. “From what Alfadi said, he, Dumas, and Ejan formed a triumvirate.”
“Rikard is my friend.” Kata’s voice was certain, angry. “There will be healers at the Opera who might save him, so that’s where we’re taking him.”
They lifted Rikard over Maximilian’s shoulder and headed to the secret door, which still hung open in the wall behind them.
* * *
Black-suited vigilants helped them carry Rikard through the Opera and deep into the vigilant wing. The place was quiet for once, for the action was about to begin at Technis Palace. They carried Rikard into Ejan’s office, placed him gently on the table, and lit the fire for warmth. Kata had already told Henri in no uncertain terms to go home, and the boy had simply said, “Yes.”
In the office, Ejan peered at the dying Rikard and turned to Kata coldly. “What have you done to him?”
Kata crossed her arms belligerently. “This is your fault.”
Two apothecaries rushed in and quickly began to apply balms and some kind of thaumaturgical reparative. “Not even a Sortilege could save him,” one of them remarked.
When they were done, Kata held out her own arm, which they treated and wrapped. She expected the vigilants to arrest her at any moment. She looked at Ejan again, prepared herself for a confrontation. She might still kill him: she judged the distance between them. Yes, she thought. He’s not too far. His thuggish bodyguard Oskar stood in the corner of the room, but he wouldn’t have time to react to Kata’s first blows.
But before they could break into even greater hostilities, Kata looked up to see Dexion striding through the door. She immediately felt safer. Around him, twenty or so globes from the entry hall burned a steady orange. He flapped his arm at them, and they scattered.
“Kata, thank the gods, I found you here,” said the minotaur. “I’ve been at the Arena with the other gladiators, preparing for the final spectacular. A message came from the Marin Palace about a half hour ago. All work stopped, and those asleep were awakened. Dumas is mobilizing the gladiators. They’re heading for all the strategic points of the city. From what I can tell, the Collegia are moving against the seditionists. A counterrevolution has begun.”
Silence reigned for a moment. Kata dropped her head despairingly. It was all over now, the city’s hopes and dreams in ruin. She turned to Ejan. “So, you’ve succeeded. You and your friends can now divide up the city.”
Ejan looked at her blankly. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about: Alfadi. The Collegia. You. You met with Dumas the other day, and you’ve refused to move against him. You placed the corrupt Georges in charge of the Criminal Tribunal. You tried to kill Maximilian. But this time you’ll succeed—there’s no one to stop you now.”
To Kata’s shock, the man grinned in disbelief. It was such an incongruous expression, she was taken aback. Even his tone had changed when he next spoke. “Kata, we may disagree on certain things, but I’m not interested in ruling the city—I never have been. I know nothing of Alfadi or Dumas’s conspiracy. All I wanted was to maintain order, to defeat our enemies by any means at our disposal”
“Liar.” Kata was filled with doubt. Had she misread his motives and intentions? She thought now of Rikard’s
denials, and how certain her friend had been that her accusations were unfounded. “You were about to attack us in the Technis Palace.”
“Because you had attacked the popular power. You had killed vigilant guards and undermined the decisions of the tribunal. It was you who were setting yourself up as a dictator, you who defied the elected representatives of the Insurgent Authority. Where was your democracy then?”
Kata stood silent, dumbfounded. Only the crackling of the fire disturbed the silence.
Ejan turned quickly and opened a locked chest behind his desk. She half expected him to unveil a bolt-thrower and shoot her down, but instead he held up a folder containing a thick wad of papers. “Kata, here is your file from House Technis, containing the entirety of your history before the overthrow. Take it.”
Kata reeled but took the file. “Why didn’t you use it against me?”
Ejan’s face regained its steely composure. “I knew you had changed. You were a seditionist. Rikard vouched for you, and I trusted him. Discrediting you would have brought no victory to me or to the movement. We fight for principles, not people. I didn’t want to defeat you; I wanted to defeat your ideas.”
Kata leaned against the table next to Rikard. She felt as if her legs might give way. She had been willing to believe that Ejan was a part of the conspiracy because she hadn’t trusted him. She’d judged him before she had any right to. And he had stuck to his principles, even if they were crude and cold in her eyes.
“I’ve been so wrong. I’ve made so many mistakes,” she said.
Ejan nodded. “We all do, you know. I should have moved against Dumas as you suggested. Now he moves against us.”
The reality of the situation crashed back onto Kata. A gladiator army was marching toward them. Dumas had been right when he’d written that letter: they would be ready by the Twilight Observance. They had hoped to lie in wait like a snake beneath a rock, but she had provoked them into action. Would the thaumaturgists march too now that Alfadi was dead? Someone must have sent the letter from the Marin Palace to Dumas. But who, and how many thaumaturgists did that person command? Would the Brotherhood of the Hand rise to help? The questions were impossible to answer.
Ejan turned to his lieutenants. “The conflict between the vigilants and the moderates is over. Take Kata here to the Technis Palace immediately. In my absence, she is to be considered leader of all the vigilant forces there. I’ll fight a rearguard action here at the Opera with those remaining.”
Ejan turned back to the stunned Kata. “Save us, if you can. Go now! Go!”
Kata laid a hand on Rikard’s chest. She then turned and threw her file into the fire. The flames surged, devoured the papers, and threw warmth out into the room. At least the file was good for something, she thought.
Kata then turned and strode through the Opera, Dexion, Maximilian, and Ejan’s lieutenant behind her. They climbed onto horses reserved for vigilant leaders. Kata’s mind was awhirl. She had misread everything, misjudged everyone. But now all truths had been unveiled, and the decisive clash was at hand. She would not fail this time. She would die before that happened.
Kata rode with the cool wind in her hair, possessing a calm certainty for the first time in her life.
THIRTY-NINE
The griffins set Armand and Giselle down on the outskirts of Varenis, for the wild creatures would not approach the vast thrumming metropolis. After a train ride into the city, Giselle took Armand to a boardinghouse in the Kinarian Pocket, where she had been keeping a large room. As she led him through the door, Armand became aware of a massive figure lounging on a soft chair, one hand pointing a gargantuan modern bolt-thrower at them.
“Fat Nik! Put that down, you fool,” said Giselle.
The man shrugged, leaned the chunky bolt-thrower against the chair, took a piece of fruit, and dropped it into his mouth.
Giselle collapsed into a nearby chair and reached over for the fruit bowl, but Fat Nik swatted her hand away with his other arm, which was only a stump. “Get your own.”
Armand thought about his future. In the images, his left arm had been amputated, presumably to stop the bloodstone disease that even now burned within it. Was it possible to change this future without changing his later triumph? What did it take, he wondered, to change history? Wasn’t it happening at every moment? Already he was anticipating the future he had seen. In doing so, wasn’t he changing that very future? He shook his head, as if to clear it of these maddening thoughts.
He would stick to his original plan: to conquer Caeli-Amur at the head of one of Varenis’s legions. He hoped that this would still allow him some flexibility, to save both his arm and Irik. Would the future allow his victory over Caeli-Amur together with these personal rescues? Could he change his future, altering the visions just enough to keep his victories and avoid his defeats?
He was certainly changing. The dreadful time in Camp X, the pain of losing Irik at the Needles—these ate away at everything he had believed in. He was shedding all his former verities—loyalty, honesty, civilization—and replacing them with cold calculations. One did what one had to reach one’s goals. Valentin had been right when he’d said, You must learn to be realistic. For the first time, Armand reconsidered Valentin’s story about his grandfather’s betrayal. Perhaps Valentin had told the truth.
“I thought we were receiving reinforcements,” Giselle said to Fat Nik. “You’re not all we’re getting, are you?”
“Very funny,” said Fat Nik. “Dumas sent me with a secret weapon. It’s in the other room.” Nik waved. “I couldn’t bear to keep it in here. There’s something wrong about it—you know, something unnerving.”
Fat Nik picked up an odd-looking pastry from a wooden board and examined it for a minute before stuffing the entire thing into his mouth.
Through the open door to the bedroom, Armand could see a large brown book lying in the center of the bed. Armand found himself walking slowly toward it as Nik continued to talk, his mouth half full with food.
“Bound in human skin, apparently. Thaumaturgical tattoos all over it. They might have lost their potency, but I’m not taking any chances.”
From up close, the book emanated unearthly power. Armand felt its force as his hand hovered close to its covers. The faded equations and ideograms drew him in, and he found himself staring at it, absorbed by the symbols, which seemed to spin before his eyes.
Excitement filled him, for he had seen this book before, during the Embrace with the Augurer. In that vision, he had given the book to the Gorgons, which was surely a step on the path to his victory.
From the other room, Giselle continued talking to Nik. “What happened to your hand?”
“I lost it fighting a dragon in a pyramid near the Teeming Cities. We passed deadly traps and crossed vast abysses before I lifted the ancient statue of some long lost god from its pedestal. Sculpted from sapphire—you should have seen it. Then the serpent slithered out of the darkness. Gods, the size of it, its awful fangs! It swallowed my hand and the statue whole!”
Then Fat Nik called out to Armand. “Leave it alone, Lecroisier. It’ll send you mad.”
Armand opened the book but could understand little of the contents. The language was theoretical and specialized. There were sections about the structure of Alerion’s prism, the nature of the life-force within. Detailed diagrams and equations were written in spidery text, many overlapping so that the pages themselves resembled the insides of some ancient technology, all latticework, cogs, and gears of unknown design.
Armand closed the book, but he felt like something had dislocated in his mind.
That night Giselle took the couch, and Fat Nik sprawled his elephantine body over the soft chair. Fat Nik snored like an engine. Every now and then Giselle would sit up from her couch and lash out with a cushion. “Shut up, Nik. By the gods, you’re lucky you’re my ally!”
“What? What?” Each time Fat Nik raised his head, looked around, and quickly returned to his thunderous slumber.
As Alerion’s soul slipped away, the Aediles found him. Taking his body into their laboratories, they captured what was left of his power and encased it in the prism, hoping the object they made might help them heal the world. Yet the world disintegrated, the works of the ancients fell, and everything was in ruin. Not even the prism could stop entropy. But it could ward off the poisoning effects of the thaumaturgy. It also possessed other dark powers Armand couldn’t quite understand. How much of Alerion’s spirit still resided in the prism was unclear, though the object seemed to possess a personality.
Without this book, it seemed, control of the prism would be at extremely dangerous at best, and perhaps impossible. And so Armand now possessed his trump card. He could approach Controller Rainer and exact his revenge on Valentin. He had been through too many trials to fail.
* * *
When Armand and Giselle entered Rainer’s vast office in the Department of Satisfaction, he was already waiting on a wide couch, a chess set in midgame in front of him. He had lost weight, revealing huge and muscular shoulders, though his beard was still trimmed and sculpted into sharp and geometric edges, and his head was still shaved.
On a pile of cushions nearby lounged a slight female figure, her hair dyed a brilliant purple—a Trid-Girl. Armand remembered her from Valentin’s party, when a group of them had surrounded Rainer. There was something airy and insubstantial about her, as if she might at any moment float up into the air. She stood and, placing her hands on the floor, gracefully cartwheeled once, twice, and pressed herself to Rainer. Once there, she began to croon quietly.