Moments later, a staircase appeared. Ahead, the spitfire leader disappeared down the steps. The last thing Lakif saw was Torkoth’s sword flailing above his head. The Acaanan closed her eyes as her steed followed Crown down. For a brief moment, her whole body literally hovered above the beast as it plunged. If not for one hand gripping the mane, she would have sailed away. All the air was forced from her lungs when she collided with its back. As the mount charged down the stairs, Lakif felt that her teeth would jar from her mouth. She didn’t hazard to open her eyes lest they too would be wrestled from their sockets by the repeated shocks.
XXV
The Recovery
AS THE HORSE LURCHED TO A HALT, LAKIF SLUMPED FORWARD. SHE WAS TOO numb to even groan. Although her body was paralyzed, her heart raced against the heaving flank. She couldn’t even open her eyes; fear had welded them shut.
Water was dripping somewhere nearby. It could have been from an open pipe or sweat beading off her brow. Burying her face in the mane, she faintly mouthed a saving prayer at having survived the breakneck dash.
While at first she thought she couldn’t move, she realized that instead she was resisting movement. In fact, she was afraid to stir, fearing that to do so would alert her to a missing piece of her body, lost in the plangent escape.
At length, she dared to crack an eyelid. Her breath curled out before her, frozen by a deep chill. The steed’s coat glistened with cool perspiration.
The ground below was a broken collection of stones. It was so heterogeneous that Lakif suspected it was in fact a work of art, a broken collage gathered from all across the city. Gray weeds broke through the cracks.
Eventually, she marshaled the courage to look up. The horse had stalled in a desolate stretch of alley lost in the Old City. In the distance, three figures stood huddled around a burning trash bin. Their hands were buried deep into their pockets, and high collars were pulled up to ward off the cold. They watched her curiously with beaten eyes. Several puddles dotted the crooked ground, their surfaces glimmering into a mirror shine with reflected firelight. Her own steed was lapping up water from one of them. Some sort of rodent was rummaging through a pile of garbage nearby.
The sweat that caked her brow froze with the dipping temperature. She tried releasing the reins, but it proved difficult to extend her curled fingers. Terror had locked them into position. Slowly they uncurled one by one, and she found her hands gooey with sweat.
Ever so carefully she dismounted, fearful that any abrupt movement would fire the horse back into its mania. With both feet earth-bound, she sighed with relief. Her legs wobbled underneath; they were barely able to support her weight. Furthermore, her groin throbbed from countless collisions with the saddle’s horn. With a sullen moan she lurched to the side and slumped against a broken wall for support, cradling her aching crotch.
At length, the coarse clatter of hooves drew her eye across the alley. Crown was grazing there. The mare’s head was bent low, and she was munching on a few hairy weeds ringing a pillar. Her flanks weren’t even heaving! The alabaster mare looked like a unicorn in the umbrage of the alley. She was now perfectly calm, a demeanor quite at odds with her hellion outburst. What had overcome Crown? Had she been thrown into temporary insanity or possessed by some renegade spirit? If so, the berserker demon had been routed.
Torkoth was still mounted. He was cupping his hand under a shower of water that dripped down from overhead. He leaned forward so that water spattered against his brow.
As he looked up, something drifted down from his head. Lakif noticed that numerous light blue petals were interwoven into his hair. They resembled little delicate jewels set on his red mossy locks. How the petals had been attracted to his mane was anyone’s guess. From their distribution, it seemed that he had charged through the sagging branches of a garlanded tree. But there were no trees within the avenues that the Acaanan could remember. Perhaps a potted plant had fallen on his head or had been hurled down by an irate citizen. Then an image flashed in the Acaanan’s mind. The memory of one pedestrian, armed with a posy of flowers for his lover, appearing directly in their path. At first the dandy had frozen in place, paralyzed at the sight of the Half-man’s charge. A second later he was diving for safety, literally throwing the flowers into the air. The petals cleaved to his mane as the Half-man burst through the bouquet.
A shattering puddle alerted Lakif to the third horse. It was in the offing, shifting lazily.
“Where are we?” Torkoth asked, shaking his head violently to dislodge the lavender crowns. The petals flowered out like an explosion of fireworks and drifted to the earth.
Lakif shook her head. How long had they raced through the Old City? It seemed that the thunderous sprint hadn’t lasted long, but with its lightning pace they could have reached the adjacent Circle Station. She realized that she should secure her own steed, which was freely grazing now, as well as the third. Should the horses become spooked and bolt again, they would be short their end of the bargain after all.
Fortunately, the horses didn’t fuss at her approach. The very same leather tassels that had evaded her grasp during the dash were now easy to palm. She led the two over to Crown and cautiously tied their reigns to the bridle of their leader. Hopefully, this would lock the upstarts into obedience.
“You should have mentioned you could ride,” Lakif mentioned, securing the knot tightly.
“I can’t.” The Half-man was brushing off the last clinging pedals from his hair.
Lakif chortled at the lie. No novice could have handled the volcanic mare with the skill the Half-man displayed. His composure during the ride proved he was a veteran in the saddle. Maybe he was some type of scout. Lakif was in no humor to melee with her companion over the falsehood, however. Torkoth would just claim amnesia to this facet of his personality as well. She then noted the dark spots speckling his tunic.
“You’re bleeding.”
Torkoth seemed surprised at the news and looked around for the offending wound.
“I must have caught my shoulder on a tight curve.” A scaled finger was poking around, probing for a tender spot.
Lakif shook her head in disbelief. The way Torkoth had been swinging his sword during the wild brigade, the blood could just as easily have been from an unlucky bystander. In fact, he could have even cut himself on the spinning blade.
“What a fiasco!” Lakif exclaimed, reflecting on the botched escapade. How quickly their plan had gone south! They were supposed to ride out of the Arachna in an orderly fashion and rendezvous with the Kulthean at a pre-designated spot. The absolute chaos surrounding the caper sunk that plan. They hadn’t even gone in the general direction of the ordained meeting point.
“What now?” Torkoth asked, covering up the torn fragment.
“We wait. Since we don’t know where we are, it’s quite unlikely we’ll find our way out. With luck, Bael will be able to find us.” She could only hope that Bael had witnessed the mayhem and was trying to track them down. But Lakif feared the worst; Hermes himself with his flying sandals couldn’t have followed the two.
Torkoth dismounted and sat on a broken slab. He produced his sword and began sharpening it. Lakif noticed that there was not a drop of blood along the blade’s length. This at least calmed her fears that the Half-man’s brazen strokes hadn’t left some poor pedestrian short of a limb.
Lakif copied her companion by appropriating a slab of her own. Yes, they would wait out Bael. She saw little reason to wander off in hope of randomly stumbling into the Kulthean. It was prudent to stay put and let the ringleader track them down. Surely, there was no shortage of witnesses to their roiling course. Hopefully, said witnesses would be able to easily point out the path of the stampede to him.
The alley wasn’t her preferred spot to wile away the time. It was a grimy venue. No doubt, at Vesper, it was the first place besieged by monstrosities of the underworld. But Lakif gauged that it was still early morning, so they were afforded the luxury of time. But she whispere
d entreaties that the Kulthean would arrive with Godspeed.
Fortunately, they weren’t forced to wait long. A form emerged from the gloom. In one hand, it twirled a polished cane capped with a white stone. The three hobos parted to give wide girth to the entering Kulthean. Lakif praised the stars for the divine intervention that had guided Bael here.
“How on earth did you find us?” Lakif jumped to her feet. A dull aching still pulsed in her groin.
“I acted the irate merchant searching for two horse thieves.” Bael wiped his brow clean of sweat. Clearly, he had hustled to catch up with his confederates. “I promised to track you down, for lowly snails leave a slimy trail. There was no shortage of help. Even a blind man pointed out your path!”
Lakif was forced to chuckle at the account. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the milky populace of Grimpkin, the Inhuman races were all but relegated the roles of thieves and degenerates. No one would have doubted that a Half-man and an Acaanan were the guilty culprits. Coming from an unimpeachable source such as Bael, the story was clinched. Lakif was surprised a search party didn’t rally around the Kulthean to help him track down the good-for-nothing thieves.
At the news, Torkoth smirked that he had graduated from burglar to horse larceny. He was chronicling his crimes since making acquaintance with Lakif. He wondered aloud about the next milestone in this promising career as a criminal. Lakif tried to point out the silver lining. Although their plan was not executed with seamless efficiency, the result was the same. Working in concert, they had succeeded in securing the promised steeds—expeditiously to boot. As for now being a wanted horse thief, Lakif was hardly ruffled. It was but another stigma heaped on her reputation. A spit in the ocean, she added.
Although there were countless witnesses to the heist, Lakif felt anonymous. Humans as a whole were notoriously poor at distinguishing one Acaanan from another. They even tended to confuse Acaanan males and females. It would take a keen eye indeed to single out Lakif as the specific perpetrator. Torkoth, on the other hand, was strikingly unique in appearance. His wild behavior during the charge had only served to draw more than his share of attention. If either of the pair were in danger of repercussions from the fiasco, it was he.
“Where are we? I don’t see the Leviathan.” Lakif hoped the Kulthean could shine some light on their whereabouts. For that matter, the Acaanan hadn’t even heard the train’s cry during their wait, suggesting they were well afield of the transport.
“I can lead us back to the beggar’s location. But we must hurry from here,” Bael urged. Lakif nodded in agreement. If Bael could so easily track them down, any armed emissaries from the Arachna would have the same benefit. No doubt, the shrew would be leading the pack. The thought of that butch appearing, club in hand, was impetus enough to jar her from her shaken state and hurry from the area.
According to Bael, they would have to comb through no small amount of the Old City before they re-emerged in the vicinity of the Leviathan. From there, it would be easy to return to the Fornix. Fortunately, Bael’s mental compass hadn’t been as derailed as those of the horse thieves. While Bael had never traveled this ground, he was convinced that a certain course would lead them to the train. That said, the two horse thieves faithfully followed him from the forlorn alley.
Their route was replete with twists and turns as they crawled through the neglected bowels of the buried city. The gloom of the place was striking. Although she suspected that it was still before Sext, thick air enshrouded the ruins. Occasionally, light from above guttered in through cracks in the ceiling or small portals. These spotlights fell as diaphanous patches on the broken causeway. The lighting was frequent enough that they could navigate without the need for their own illumination.
Lakif brooded at length over the crumbling roadways and vestigial ruins of the Old City. What kind of place was this in its heyday? Many of the areas encircled prominent wells. These fountains must have been the center of communities. Lakif once heard that whole villages had continued to reside in the Old City after the district above had spread its wings. But when the wells went dry, these communities were left to wither. No doubt most fled to the surface to be closer to distant water sources, leaving their homes marooned in darkness.
The road was irreparably broken. The flagstones lining the avenues jutted up at all angles. Some had even inverted or disappeared altogether into the earth. In places, there were gaping pits. Lakif steered well clear of these. These holes, together with the shattered landscape, left Lakif with the impression that an earthquake had ravaged the district. From the topsy-turvy rubble, she could easily imagine a wave propagating down the avenues, leveling the city in its wake. All this jelled with the account of the Laureate. But had there really been an earth-shaking catastrophe at the close of the Renaissance? Was this the modern face of that devastation whose far-reaching ripples had annihilated an ancient civilization?
The meandering course and uneven footing hampered progress. Of course, it would have been more convenient and less nerve-racking to climb to the surface. In fact, they passed by several stairs en route. But if the trio didn’t attract enough attention above, the horses certainly would. As secrecy was paramount, they were forced into this crawl through the basement of Grimpkin.
For her own part, Lakif paid her eerie surroundings little heed. She simply marched along, methodically following the Kulthean. She followed on foot, leading Crown by the reigns, who in turn towed the other horses in coffle. Although she hadn’t caught her own horse’s name, Lakif comfortably dubbed the steed Jinx. She had no intention of mounting it again lest another fit bedevil the beast and land her in a distant, unchartered corner of the district. The Half-man followed in the rear, kicking stones and whistling a merry tune that was entirely incongruous with the creepy atmosphere.
As they trawled through the ruins, Lakif felt the weight of countless eyes on them. Most were well hidden behind curtains of darkness. Only a few came with a face. These were invariably hobos or other rejects. Lakif was astounded by their number. They were truly Grimpkin’s desperate lost. Fortunately, none seemed dangerous. Or perhaps only the sight of the formidable group kept them in check.
More than a few times, Bael stopped and crouched amid rubble. From a pocket, he would produce a small straw brush and a glass jar. He probed the cracks and holes that riddled the rocks. Sometimes it was a fruitless endeavor, but more often than not the brush would be coated with webbing and twitching spiders. He dispersed the critters in the glass jar with a brisk shake. Afterward, he placed the odd articles back in his traveling sack. It was clear that he was collecting food for his scorpions, one ingredient from the nursery rhyme. But it was equally clear that he found the task unpleasant. Lakif offered to assume the role of spider trapper. She had no revulsion to arachnids.
XXVI
The Underworld
“THERE.” BAEL POINTED TO A SHODDY WALL. THE BRICKS WERE ALL different colors and sizes, as if in its hasty construction stones were appropriated from any and all sources, ignoring any aesthetic standards. Beyond the wall stretched the trench of the Fornix.
Out of the darkness emerged the train of prostitutes dancing among their daily customers. Some of the women looked familiar from the previous day, or at least their costumes did. As they filtered around the prospective clients, they reminded the Acaanan of a harem of intoxicating succubae emerging from underground caves to enchant any and all males. Lakif kept her eyes peeled for the pimp. She didn’t welcome another round with the hooker’s chaperone.
Eventually, they reached the same area of the Fornix that they had visited the previous day. Lakif took the Kulthean’s word for this. Nothing about the place, except for the divas, rang familiar.
A figure lay prostrate before a tor of boulders. It was covered in a heap of squalid rags. At their approach, it stirred. Unfortunately, such filthy derelicts were the norm in the Fornix. Despite this, Lakif didn’t doubt that this was Janus.
“I’m surprised to see you,” he lisp
ed, without as much as a greeting. He seemed to be in better health today.
“You weren’t expecting us? Had we not a bargain?” Bael asked.
“Of course. But I expected you’d be in custody by now.”
“You heard?” Lakif was flabbergasted that word of their heist had already reached Janus.
“Word spread quickly about the Arachna raiders, whose rampaging path shamed even the riders of the apocalypse.”
“Yes, we had difficulties.” Lakif sighed.
“Acaanans always do,” Janus hissed at Lakif.
Lakif was more than a little perturbed at the remark. As an Acaanan, she would naturally be labeled as the source of the bungled escapade. While it was probably true that Acaanans shouldered more than their share of mayhem, she felt that, in this case, the blame was unjustly levied on her shoulders.
“What makes you think I want hot mounts?” Janus regarded the steeds. Lakif didn’t know if he was referring to the horse’s status as stolen or their saucy temperaments.
“There was no stipulation about their source,” Torkoth claimed.
“I heard of this one,” Janus claimed, turning his rotting eye to the Half-man. “He’s a fierce one.”
“He’s not to be feared,” Bael informed him.
“This is…” Lakif began an introduction, as Janus hadn’t met the Half-man before.
“He is no stranger, for I am privy to his name,” Janus claimed. Today the bum spoke in a much healthier tone.
“You know me?” Torkoth stepped forward, his voice laced with hope.
“Not personally.” The beggar gestured to the spattered drops of blood on his tunic. “Your name is written for all to see, a man dressed in the colors of his office.” Lakif understood this to mean that the blood marked Torkoth as a veteran fighter.
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