Unwrapped Sky
Page 37
Numb to everything, Kata lay down on her mattress in the middle of the seditionist base. She did not rouse herself as the night passed. In a half daze, she lay wretched in her treachery. She wished now that she could take it back, even with Ejan’s group in control. Did she have no principles? Did she not stand for anything? Was it as Josiane had said? She waited for the first cry of despair, the sound of battle.
Sometime in the middle of the night she heard a call from the cavern’s entrance. So it had begun. There was more excited talking, the tense exchanges that signaled an event, but not the arrival of the House guards she expected. She raised her head. From near the entranceway a small group had gathered.
“Ejan,” someone called.
At the entranceway two seditionists were holding up a hooded figure.
Kata stepped to her feet and moved toward the little group as others roused around her. The hooded figure had now been laid on the ground. Others circled around. Kata brushed through them. Lying on the ground, the man’s face was obscured by his hood. Shadows were cast over his face. A foreboding crept over Kata, the feeling that she had overlooked something fundamental.
Ejan stepped forward and pulled back the hood.
They all stared in silence until Kata threw herself to the ground next to the figure, taking his head in her arms. “Maximilian.”
Maximilian looked out into empty space. His cloathes were soaked, his face white. He seemed to be in some kind of fever. “Panadus!” he said. “Panadus, eperantus, el minio el tritian.”
Kata looked up intensely. “Water. Someone get some water.” She looked back at Maximilian. “Max, Max.” But the man didn’t seem to hear. Kata looked up again, as if for some kind of help. Someone passed a flask of water, but the water just dribbled from Max’s mouth. Hope flooded into Kata: she would have to get Maximilian out of the base, but he was alive! She could spirit him away to the villa, but how? She needed to act quickly.
At that moment a cry went up from the guards at the cavern entranceway. This time it was the call of despair. “We’re discovered! We have been found!”
Ejan called out, “Evacuate!”
Mayhem broke out in the seditionist camp. Seditionists scrambled for their possessions. Others ran toward the entrance, bolt-throwers and swords in their hands, their faces set with the promise of grim death.
Kata held Maximilian in her arms. “Maximilian,” she said, but he did not respond. Instead his eyes were glassy, focused inward.
The seditionists poured toward the entrance. Had they halted the House guards at the exit to the city, or closer to the hideout? The farther away the battle raged, the more likely the seditionists were to escape.
Kata tried to get Maximilian to his feet, but his weight hung like a corpse, heavy and inert. She lifted him up desperately and he hung limp in her arms. Someone jostled Kata from behind. She lost her balance, staggered, lost her grip on Max, who slumped back to the ground. Urgently, she clasped him again, pulled him to his feet. With a great heave, she threw him over her shoulders and made for the entranceway. Each moment was vital. Seditionists ran ahead; cries and calls echoed from the stone walls. Already the bulk of the group were ahead of her. They had been expecting such an attack. Someone knocked her and she fell to her knees. Max slipped into her arms as more seditionists ran past her. Again she heaved Max onto her shoulders, staggered to her feet.
Finally, Kata reached the opening to the tunnel. A bloodied woman came staggering back in the direction of the cavern, her hand pressed against her face. “We’re cut off,” the woman cried. “Some made it out and back into the mountain. But we’re cut off.”
Kata carried Max back to the central cavern, the clash of arms reverberating behind. Screams echoed around the underground chambers. Maximilian became too heavy and she rested, with her arm around his waist, his weight propped against her hip.
“Walk!” She took a step forward and to her relief he shuffled beside her. They staggered toward the machine room. Perhaps she could open the great doors that led to the strange labyrinth with the cells of the dead. If so, they might escape.
Around them, seditionists ran desperately. Kata looked over her shoulder where Technis guards had burst through the passageway. Some fired bolt-throwers; several retreating seditionists fell. Others charged in with short-swords. A number of seditionists fell to their knees and surrendered.
“Walk,” said Kata.
And then a Technis guard was standing before them, steely eyed, sword in hand.
Kata laid Maximilian on the ground in despair. She sat next to him and watched as the gray-suited guards efficiently rounded up the final seditionists. Occasionally they gave a seditionist a kick. “Hurry up!”
When Director Autec arrived, he strutted around the hideout like a savage-eyed peacock. Kata sensed a desperate darkness in him. He pressed is hands together, released them, pressed them together once more. His head twitched this way and that, as if he were looking for someone on which to wreak a terrible revenge.
Autec came to Kata, eyes malevolently roving over Maximilian. “Ah, you’ve caught the thaumaturgist. Excellent work, Kata. Excellent work.”
After the raid, Kata took her clothes and slunk out into the dull dawn. Humid clouds had rolled over Caeli-Amur in the night, threatening rain at last. She passed along Via Gracchia. Late-night revelers and insomniacs sat hunched in corners. A tall man eyed her suspiciously and turned back to his book.
She passed through the Arantine, where stately mansions could be seen, the boulevards lines with furnace trees, cold now it was summer. When she reached the gate, she purchased a horse from the stables, using the florens she had saved from her deceit and betrayals and rode out through the dawn.
An hour past the shantytowns, the rock road cut southwestward. To her left lay the water-parks, to her right the hills climbed higher and higher into the great mountain range that ran from north to south. There, high up in their eyries lived the Augurers, waiting for those brave enough to experience their foresight.
Soon she rode along the wide, flat valleys between the rolling hills. The weather here was wetter than in Caeli-Amur, and even in this dry summer, there was a touch of green to the vineyards that wrapped many of the slopes. Elsewhere lay fields of candle-flowers and rows of furnace trees. Like the water-parks and water palaces, Opera and other public areas, the villas that dotted the area were safe areas. Some might be owned by officiates from Marin or Technis, but most belonged to Arbor. In one lush little valley, Kata saw an entire meadow of fire-roses, bursting into flame periodically in their strange reproductive cycle. In another, beds of shifting orange mosses—imported from Numeria perhaps, or developed by Arbor’s thaumaturgists—grew in carefully designed paddies. A third harbored white snow-orchids, siblings of the blood-orchids, which moved together as if in a strange circular dance. Greenhouses were dotted around the place, filled, she knew, with all kinds of carnivorous shubs, narcotic flowers, sentient plants. The villas themselves sat often at the crest of ridges, or high on the surrounding hills, near to little copses of trees.
The clouds rolled ominously above her, a great gray roiling mass that now looked as if it might burst in a great storm. Yet it held off as she turned along a side road, which led her up past a crossroads and through empty paddocks. Here was her villa where she might raise horses, or—as Armand had said to her—any number of wild beasts: bears, great cats, boar, giant lizards, or crocodiles. There was a demand for all of them.
She passed through the atrium, through barren side rooms, into an internal garden complete with benches, a pool, a pergola covered with candle-flowers. In typical fashion, Technis had stripped the place bare. There was not even a chair to sit on, and so she found herself sitting alone back in the atrium.
Never had Kata felt more alone or more despairing. This place, her villa, seemed nothing but an empty tomb. Whom would she entertain here? Who would visit? Officiates from neighboring villas? Despite the wondrous flora that surrounded her, the
place seemed empty of life, for she had no one to share it with. Indeed, why did she deserve the villa at all? What had she done to deserve luxury? There was no glory or pleasure in unmerited gains. She had not made the world a better place. Rather, she had made it worse. She knew this and it seared her soul.
Still she sat, alone as the looming clouds rolled above her. The hours passed as she sat alone. The sky brightened and though the sun was hidden, still the oppressive heat bore down on her. As the light dimmed, she mounted her horse and rode back to the city.
She sold the horse at a loss back to the stable by the southern gate and walked through the hot wind that blew through the night, whipping around walls and rushing down streets, forcing people inside. By the time she arrived at the Factory Quarter, it was late. The moon had risen and fallen and the wind had dropped off. Even it didn’t have the strength to go on. Desolate, she stumbled along her alleyway, barely taking anything in. She tripped on something, fell forward, regained her balance, looked back.
Little Henri had scrambled to his feet. “Kata,” he mumbled, his voice sleepy.
Kata walked on.
Henri grabbed her arm, “Kata!”
She shook him off. “Leave me alone. I don’t want any of your fudge. I don’t want anything.”
She slammed shut the door of her apartment and sat alone on the stairs. How long was it since she had stayed here? In her mind she still heard the cries of the seditionists as they fell before the House assault. She could still see the faces of the dead as they lay on the cavern floor. She could still see Maximilian being dragged away by guards as she looked on, helpless. Helpless—that’s what she had always been, really; at the beck and call of forces around her: just a reed blowing whichever way the wind took her. She staggered to her upper room, collapsed on the bed, and lay there, staring at the ceiling. She thought of Aya’s Day, only three days away and wondered what would occur. So long had the demonstration been planned: the first show of strength between seditionists and Houses, forces she was intimately entwined with. But she knew the result: The Houses would reassert their power, the Collegia were not coming, the House thaumaturgists would loose the Furies, and like the Xsanthians on the docks, citizens would die. There was no hope to be held there.
With sudden intent she stood and rifled through her cupboards for rope. Finding none, she took one of her sheets from the bed and using her stiletto cut a long strip. One would not do, so she cut another and taking both moved quickly to her staircase. She tied the ends around the banister, and let them drop down to the lower floor. She descended the stairs halfway, reached out, and took hold of the strips and made a noose. Then, standing halfway up the stairs, she placed the noose over her head and tightened it around her neck. She climbed over the banister and stood there momentarily. Her face felt heavy, as if the flesh of her face was dragging down away from her bones.
She stepped off the stairs and fell. The noose clamped around her neck sharply. She felt her throat close under the pressure. Instinctively, she reached up to grasp the straps, but stopped herself. She fought the urge to swing back to the staircase. She wanted everything to end, the endless struggle that got her nowhere. Her chest heaved, her lungs trying to let in a gasp of air. Instead all she heard was a desperate croak. Her neck was being crushed, the muscles and tendons, the trachea tearing under the force. The pain engulfed her body. Again her chest heaved, and heaved, and this time not even a croak. Her body now started to shudder, tears poured from her eyes, mucus from her nose. Everything whitened, as if things were fading away. Her body now jerked violently, refusing to accept its own end. The whiteness increased with her body’s jerking and shaking, until all she could see was a ghostly brilliance blanking out all forms and shapes. Death was not far away now. She slowly fell into the bleached world.
THIRTY-NINE
Boris stood beside the Technis master torturer, Delanus Tyle. Tyle had the officious air of a specialist, eager to regale anyone with his knowledge. Even now he was discussing the peculiar characteristics of skin. It could be burned, it could be stretched, it could be cut like parchment and pulled back like the sheet from a bloody bed. Tyle wanted to write a treatise on torture, he explained. This would be part of his legacy.
The elevator rattled as it descended deep beneath the Technis Complex. They passed level after level. Boris had studied the maps of the tunnels beneath the city that were stored in the Director’s desk. The maps were incomplete: spidery tunnels winding into each other, some trailing off and leaving great blank spaces, a subterranean world of cave and catacombs. One of the tunnels wound beneath the city all the way to open out on the other side of the mountain. The entrance to the Elo-Talern’s domain was marked, but the realm beyond was left blank. There had always been rumors of a city built by the ancients hidden beneath the mountain. Perhaps it was there.
The elevator lurched to a halt; the guard took hold of the gate and pulled it open. Two other guards sat together playing dice near the elevator. Seeing Boris, they immediately stood up, chastened.
“This way, Director.” Tyle led the way along the corridor. To each side, large cells were filled with shadowy figures, some with their arms painfully chained to the walls above their heads, others in shackles around their ankles. Yet more wandered around the cells free, or held on to the bars.
“There’s been a mistake, sir, please.” A bony young man barely out of his teens held on to the bars of a cell.
“There’s been such an influx—we’re positively overflowing.” Tyle waved his hand toward the cells without looking.
They came to a darkened intersection. Tyle walked left, and as he passed along the passageway, orbs of light turned themselves on above. “The corridors are kept in darkness in the section for solitary confinement. As we take each prisoner along the corridors, the orbs turn themselves on, and turn themselves off when we leave. It ensures that the prisoner is able to feel their aloneness more keenly. All powered by bloodstone, of course.”
They turned down another corridor. Running along each wall was a series of closed doors.
“We keep the important political prisoners in Section B Twelve.” Tyle looked back at Boris and smiled warmly. He had the look of a man proudly showing off his new house with all its luxuries.
Eventually, Tyle stopped at the front of one of the doors. “The Xsanthian leader Santhor is in here. I think he’s ready to break, but to be honest, I don’t think he actually has anything to hide. Would you like to see him?” Tyle pressed a pad by the side of the door and a panel slowly became translucent. “We stole these panels and the glass from the ancient parts of the Palace. Thought they might be more useful down here.”
Boris found himself looking through a small head-high window as the cell inside slowly lit up. Inside a large Xsanthian leaned against the wall, his head thrown back, his huge mouth open like that of a dead fish. A salty substance seemed encrusted on his scales.
Tyle pressed the pad again and the panel window faded again to black. “The seditionists are farther on.”
They took another turn and Tyle stopped at another door. The window lit up and revealed a hooded man huddled in the corner. “This is the one you want, I believe.” Tyle opened the door.
Boris stepped awkwardly into the cell. His mind raced, filled with anger and sadness, and with other emotions he could barely place. This one was the dreamer. But the northerner Ejan had escaped with many of his followers. They had fought bitterly, forcing their way through the tunnels, leaving dead guards behind them. Boris had again underestimated their resilience. The guards had lost them in the catacombs deeper underground. Boris wished it had been Ejan who Kata had captured. Somehow he felt like blaming the dreamer Maximilian for it.
“Maximilian,” Boris said.
The figure remained motionless.
“Now, Maximilian, we can let you out of here if only you cooperate. It’s not hard. Just a little information. Just as easy as that.”
Still the figure did not move.
“Now, Maximilian, where are Ejan and the rest of the seditionists? Where would they hide? The catacombs?”
The seditionist’s eyes seemed fixed on a point slightly to the right of Boris. Finally, he spoke: “When I was young, most of the world was covered with ocean. We sucked it from the surface to reveal these continents, upon which we built that world that we desired. It’s a wonderful thing, to build the world you imagined.”
Boris looked back at Tyle, who stood in the doorway. Tyle shrugged.
Boris turned back to the seditionist. “Come, Maximilian, help me. And help me to help you.”
Maximilian’s head fell back against the wall and tilted upwards, his eyes staring into space above. “But it’s a terrible thing to have such power. One must constantly improve and grow. But we became complacent. We reveled in our luxuries, we wallowed in our past successes.”
“I’ll return.” Boris stood up. “And we can have a proper discussion. Gather your wits, man.”
Boris walked to the door, where he turned and looked back at the figure of Maximilian, a huddled little pale creature against the cold, stone walls. He wondered briefly if the seditionist had lost his mind, but he knew that seditionists were trained to avoid interrogations. Even if the man was psychologically shattered, they could extract the truth from him with pain.
“Perhaps we should soften him up before you come to see him again?” Tyle said.
“Perhaps you should.”
“I’ll get the apprentices straight onto it. We might start him off with one of the terror-spheres. You know, they are the most amazing devices. I plan to devote an entire chapter to their uses in my treatise.”