The object hissed, a static hiss.
He heard the woman make a small sound in her chest.
The flesh of the flying man’s face was stretched so taut over the angular skull that no configuration of bone or route of vein was left invisible. Because the mouth had opened, Nahid could see remnants of ruined teeth. He rubbed his finger on them. A large dread lay inert either side of the scrawny neck, like dead creatures unto themselves.
The flying man groaned.
Horrified, the woman watched. “What are you . . . ?”
Nahid knew why this hemo had sought him out. Nowy Solum created such disillusioned. In many ways, this woman was similar to Name of the Sun; she only wanted him to confirm that everything was going to be all right, that their flesh was the same. But nothing would be all right. Ever. Kholics knew this from day one. Removed from the hemo world, removed from possibilities of hemo futures. Marked, indoctrinated, conditioned. Futile to attempt breaking through the division; they were different creatures.
And, now that she had confronted Nahid, he would show this hemo how different; he tugged the suit back from a bony shoulder.
As the skin of the man became exposed, Nahid saw, even in this shallow pool of struggling light, swarms of nits and chiggers. Without looking up, he said, “Your child will have a wetnurse. He’ll sleep on garbage and become accustomed to it. He’ll know no better.” He leaned forward, bringing his face close to the man’s chest.
“I wanted to give him a name,” said the woman. “I wanted him with me, in my room.”
Nahid snorted. “Even if Erricus could let you keep him, he would be miserable. He didn’t have blood in his veins, but an agitation, like insects, under his skin, fighting to get out. He will clean your streets.”
The hemo, who was crying now, said, “From where I sit, we don’t seem any better. I’m not happy. I’m not. With red blood in my body.” Then, with no power or breath left, her stance seemed to crumple, racked by emotion. “They took my boy away.”
From a few streets over—in the direction of the centrum—there arose a sudden commotion, a series of distant screams, getting closer for a second, then fading. Shortly after, several people ran past the alley and into the night. Nahid turned to watch as a group of palatinate officers hustled by. He caught a whiff of fire.
“Leave,” he said, loudly.
“But what are you doing here? Are there such things as seraphim?”
Nahid held up the long roofing nail; the woman stepped back.
“Go home,” he said. “Go back to your life.”
When Nahid leaned forward again, he did not care if the woman remained or not. The point of the nail slid easily into the man’s skull, just above his left ear. The eyes fluttered open for a second as dim, whitish essences, the essences of life, started to leak from the hole the nail had made. With the head of the flying man pressed against his knee, Nahid pushed and twisted until tiny infestations began to escape, like small black birds, squeezing from the wound and trying to fly off, one after the other, into the dark. Nahid sucked in as many as he could before falling back against the wall, delirious.
Loose, hard objects, so common down here, covered the slope, yet hornblower was able, on all fours, to clumsily ascend. He passed through foliage, which ripped at his clothes and skin, releasing their fragrance, and in which he wished he could lay down forever. Leaves and thorns reminded him of his home and of his people. He wondered, as he contacted these miniature worlds, if there were tiny padres, living atop each, in tiny settlements, and if these padres were about to experience the visit of their own angry powers and have their little lives stolen from them.
Don’t try to hide once you’re inside, Anu called out. Remember, I see what you see and I feel what you feel. I can put an end to anything I don’t like. Do not step astray. Understand?
Hornblower nodded.
And don’t get drunk or otherwise become insensate. Now hurry, exemplar. We need to get out of here. There are strange indications afoot.
He had crested the embankment. People passed in both directions. They did not seem to be dead. He stepped among them. Looking forward and back, he was unable to see any true end to this strange branch: one direction vanished into darkness, over which spread clouds in grey turmoil, and the other penetrated the giant settlement that Anu called the city. The people here paid him no attention, despite how ill he must appear. Had Anu lied? Could they not see him?
He began to head toward the city, lifting one heavy foot after the other. Walls of this settlement went up, into the clouds.
Nearer to the giant doors, he glanced back, down the slope from whence he’d come, but saw nothing of the power, though he knew Anu had not moved. Somehow, again, Anu had made his body invisible. Hornblower squinted, thought he discerned a shimmer, a seam of light that might have been indications of the power’s clever disguise.
Then he was stepping up, onto a bridge, with foul water passing beneath him. Formations through the gates were hundreds of huts, maybe thousands, all clustered together, torn from a nightmare and thrown before him. Inside these huts were no doubt more people—none of whom would acknowledge him let alone give hornblower the respect he was due.
Did the citizens of this awful place even know that his world existed, high above the clouds? Did they understand that cool winds blew there, and that the sun shone?
Passing under a massive arch, hornblower was assaulted by a cacophony of voices and shouts. Tangles of faces and smells caused him to recoil. Men gestured, waved meat on sticks under his nose. Two girls ran past. He was jostled, elbowed—
Grimacing, hornblower moved deeper and deeper into the commotion. Here, a group of men tried to move a huge and very heavy-looking object—not metal, not meat of the world, but the same dense material that seemed to be everywhere down here. From under this mass protruded the thin legs of someone who was, without a doubt, dead.
Hornblower watched this activity for a moment, trying to calm himself, but a nudge of discomfort from Anu urged him to take a step, to choose a direction, to keep moving. So dark and hot here. Hard to fill his lungs. Hard to move. The air was like broth. He was unsure, as he selected a route, of which way to go, but he doubted if any choice would make a difference.
Name of the Sun awoke from her brief nap feeling more tired than when she had fallen asleep. She sat up, thinking about Nahid in a sympathetic light. She got out of bed, the floor cold against the soles of her feet. This was a dangerous state of mind to be in, and she needed to get through the next few days without entertaining doubts and these almost kholic-like thoughts that had come around to weaken her resolve.
Now she set her jaw. She was right to have broken off the relationship. Nahid was an addict, and manipulative. He was a coward. She told herself this over and over, like a mantra, as she warmed herself. All she had to do was wait until her subconscious caught up with her rationale.
Lifting the curtain over the tiny window, Name of the Sun looked outside. Lanterns burned. Early evening. She was not late for her shift. Tendrils of fog lay low over the houses. Stay moving: an important strategy.
She checked her limbs for ticks, removed one or two, and got dressed.
Just as she was about to leave, her roommates came spilling in, quite drunk, and wanted to linger with her, telling her stories about a boy they had just met, and about the group they had drank beers with in the centrum. The girls peered about, pawing at Name of the Sun, looking for Nahid, no doubt, though they didn’t say as much. This encounter was not helping Name of the Sun. She did not want to hear any of this talk or see these stupid faces.
Trying not to be too rude, Name of the Sun smiled at a few of the comments, promised the girls she would go out with them next time—that it would be a hoot, for sure—and then left as quickly as possible to go to work.
Her roommates stood jammed in the doorway to watch her go. When Name of the Sun was out of sight, Dora said, “What a stuck-up bitch.”
“I can s
mell that kholic on her,” said Nina. “I never noticed before, but this whole room fucking stinks.”
Polly was touching the door at knee level, where a mark had been painted. When she took her hand away, her fingers were reddened.
“Look at this,” she said, “someone’s gone and painted a ruddy ex on the front of our room.”
Then Dora wondered if she should make herself throw up, to avoid the bedspins that would surely happen when she tried to lay down, but they all piled back inside the room to pick up their snorting and laughing and drunken repetitions where they had left off.
The air, as they closed the door, carried with it a tinge of smoke.
When the boy was asleep, the castellan stripped him, cleaned his body with cold water, rinsed him, and patted his torso dry. The chest was muscular, the tiny nubs where limbs should have been hard and gristled, the brow formidable: a beautiful specimen. Swaddling the body, the castellan went to the back room, to shout at Tuerdian until the servant rose slowly from his cot. Amid flies and the smells of his own decay, Tuerdian coughed and rubbed at his rheumy eyes with grotesquely swollen knuckles.
“Get dressed,” said the castellan.
“I have just fallen asleep,” said Tuerdian. “I was out on the tower until moments ago. I, uh . . .” He shook his head. “Give me a moment to compose myself.”
Tuerdian moved his swollen legs off the mattress, one at a time, gingerly lifting them with his own hands as if he expected them to shatter, or as if they were separate entities.
The castellan returned to his table. In his arms, the boy snored on, oblivious, wrapped in a blanket. The cobali hissed at his approach. Hardly aware of his flickering thoughts, the castellan already suspected he would not follow any of the procedures he had practiced over the years, or consult the diagrams and results he had so carefully logged, or take any sensible precautions whatsoever. Inspiration motivated him. External forces. The processes he imagined, standing there over the sleeping child, were implausible at best.
Tuerdian emerged from his tiny room, wearing the mask and suit the castellan had designed for him. Shuffling over, the ancient servant took his place by the head of the table, racked by a spasm; the cobali screeched and renewed its futile efforts to escape.
Beyond the dungeon tower, the unseen sun had long ago dropped. The boy twitched, as if in dream. With a sense of profound yet detached wonder, the castellan started to work.
When his knife sliced too deeply, exposing grey muscle, it seemed as if the interior of the boy—the meat and nubs of malformed bone, the sinew and cartilage—glowed with an inner light.
Long before he was done, the castellan wept steadily. The eye he had earlier injured to acquire aqueous humours, to try prolong the life of a now-dead cobali, began to flow again, dripping from his face and down onto the table, onto the body of the boy that Tully had brought here.
Tuerdian paused in his work, immobile, holding the strips of leather and thin sheets of metal. His expression, behind the mask, was impossible to decipher.
They came out of the tunnel into the unlit courtyard, with Jesthe steepled on all sides, black and bridging overhead. Glimpsed over the main gates, clouds were tinged an angry red. The air writhed with smoke. In the last stretch of tunnel, Octavia had convinced the monster to let her climb atop its back—or rather, she had vaulted up, and the fecund, preoccupied with her own concerns, had not complained.
Several people headed across the courtyard, perhaps staff, though it was too dark to be sure (and the fecund was moving pretty quickly now), watching in disbelief before rejoining the shadows from which they briefly emerged.
Beyond the gates—which were open, as always—and from there across the Garden, the fecund slowed to a trot, pausing at the junction of two narrow streets, her sides heaving, to sniff at the air. Octavia watched the monster glance at the buildings all about, eyes wild, snorting and stamping before choosing one of the dark routes—Tanager’s Grove—to follow.
“Nowy Solum,” Octavia said, leaning forward. Crowded structures loomed either side. There were very few people about. “This is the city. Nahid might be in the ostracon, or working Hot Gate.”
“Is the river this way?”
“The river? Sure. But why . . . ?” Octavia struggled to keep her grip on the heaving flanks. The rough skin of the fecund was cold between her thighs and the ridge of the monster’s spine jolted painfully against her butt. She had her arms around the thick neck. “Slow down. Where are you going? Why to the river? Think Nahid’s there?”
“My contractions are getting closer together. I need the water.”
No one had been hurt in the escape, and no one—as far as Octavia knew—was in pursuit. Yet from behind she heard some form of commotion. She did not look back. A woman they passed on Tanager’s Grove began to scream.
The River Crane was at the end of the street, on the other side of the promenade; Octavia saw the sluggish water when the fecund’s trot caused her to bounce high enough. No one walked the promenade. She smelled smoke. Coming out between the last buildings to cut across the verge, and from there over the path of the banks, the fecund had no choice but to slow down. They negotiated mucky rocks on the shore.
“Listen, fecund, has something gone wrong?”
Several kholics worked the river. A fire burned among them, and there was food cooking, probably fish, but this was not the fire she had smelled earlier. As the fecund passed by, they watched warily, with surreptitious glances, but did not flee. Octavia tried to see if Nahid was among this group but the dusk was full and the fecund displayed no interest in lingering.
“But you can’t go in—”
Foul water splashed into Octavia’s face as the monster lunged into the river and began to wade deeper. Octavia was considering trying to get off when the fecund—deep enough in the water now—began swimming. Straddling her, Octavia had to rise as high up the fecund’s back as possible.
“Please,” Octavia said, “where are you taking me?”
“This is not about you or your brother.” The fecund had to lift her snout free of the water to breathe. “I need to be here.”
From the shore, the kholics had begun to call out to each other, words Octavia could not catch, no voice her brother’s.
The night, at least, and the water lapping at her hips, was warm, almost refreshing. Though Octavia could not control her mount, or understand why the monster seemed to be transforming, shrinking, or even decaying, she felt as if her nerve endings were starting to sing, as if being out of the palace had woken her from a deep slumber. Overhead, the clouds were tumultuous, and scents of the river—filling her sinuses, mingled with traces of smoke—were thick and familiar and comforting. She had tears in her eyes. She let out a cry, almost a growl, which echoed off the flanks of Nowy Solum, rising high either side, startling the creature beneath her.
Using her tail, and subtle movements of her body, the fecund proved to be a strong swimmer, despite what was happening to her. Toward the centre of the river, with the slums of Talbot Lane on the opposite side and the crooked shadows of Jesthe on the other, the fecund turned. They began to move upstream, against the current. Only the beast’s neck and the top of her head came out of the water. Octavia was drenched.
A lizard flew low over the water, wings outstretched.
“You’re going to need to stop soon,” Octavia said at last. “I thought you were supposed to listen to me? I thought you were mine to command. You knew everything, past and future. What’s happening to you?” She felt a contraction, then, a spasm in the fecund’s belly, against her legs. “Is something wrong with the baby?”
The monster again lifted her head clear of the water, this time long enough to snort with derision. “Who said anything about a baby?”
“But I gave you a dream. You’re supposed to give birth.”
“Not always babies. And here, in this place . . .” The fecund shuddered. Her eyes, just inches from Octavia’s own, were mostly white. In them, pin
pricks of light danced. Nostrils blew a rancid froth. “The water is good for phlegmatic fluids, like air for blood, and fire for black biles. I need this water.” The head went under, came up again. “I need to be here.”
Octavia looked up and out over the city. The red area glowed angrily against the clouds. Wind carried renewed gusts of smoke; out there, it seemed—in the market place, perhaps?—burned a large fire, getting larger. “Can I help, fecund? Can I help you? Please.”
The fecund stopped swimming. Slowly, she drifted with the current, her great ribs like bellows against Octavia’s thighs. Another contraction wracked her body and, for a second, it seemed as if there were worms streaming from the monster’s skin; these worms moved against Octavia’s own flesh before vanishing from under her palms and down into the sludge.
On the shore appeared several men, whose torches did very little against the gloom. There were shouts, and it seemed there was a scuffle.
Octavia and the fecund watched silently.
Hornblower was tied to a dead man’s raft, plunging over the edge of the branch. Except that he was already under the clouds, lost in this place. Faces loomed from the darkness. The little piece of Anu he had swallowed had taken over his body from the inside, getting rid of everything that had once made him padre hornblower. He thought again and again about his breezy home, but in quick, forbidden images, which he conjured and then swiftly tried to suppress, afraid these memories might be discovered by Anu and taken from him. If he ever found a way to return, would he be able to look at the settlement the same way? Would he be able to look at anything the same way?
Though Anu had not spoken in a while, nor urged him forward, hornblower forced his legs to keep moving, to avoid punishments, to please the power, but he felt so heavy and clumsy on this unforgiving ground. Vistas about him were too dark, too cluttered, too dense. The air continued to press down upon him, filling his lungs as if he were drowning. And the heat was unbearable! Without a horizon, abrupt shapes of the huge huts and the dim branches that ran between them spread out in all directions, endless, everywhere he turned. He craved sky and stars, and to watch the placid face of the moon as it rose above true branches. He had to feel wind against his skin. . . .
The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter Page 21
