The Waking Engine Part 18

"Really, Phlebas?" Vaitch asked with a weary voice. The dark one just shrugged and followed his partner to stand sentinel beside the open hatch. Cooper followed Vaitch inside.

The U-shaped room contained maybe a dozen prisoners, chained, bound by twine, or simply too weak to move. No two of the creatures were alike, except for their piteous condition. A few looked human, but most seemed alien to a lesser or greater degree; all were terrified.

This is where she is, Cooper understood as he took in the tableau of abused exotics. She hadn't sung or cried or screamed since he'd pa.s.sed beneath the black veil of the towers, but she was here, he needed no sixth sense to know that. Next to him, Marvin raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

Vaitch the Sommelier named each vintage as he strode down the line of the curving room, his voice as cold and curious as a docent. He named each prisoner as he walked past.

"Treble-Toe the Fifth Gender, our most spectacular guest of fey provenance, though we have lesser faeries in some of the other seraglios. All told, the skylords' cortege spans seven towers, did you know that?" The three-toed creature looked like a sad mime, oversized feet and hands grasping at the air, spun off in some hallucination that Cooper hoped it found less unpleasant than its prison. Huge eyes looked out from a hammerhead skull, but Treble-Toe's teeth were ground- away and flat; its tongue lolled out of its mouth, furred with flagella that bristled in the damp air.

"Revered Matron Maia-Lande, Divine Bride of something-or-other. It's telling, I think, that she expects no rescue from her husband. Some G.o.d, eh?" The Matron was baseline human, naked except for a ragged wimple that had been bolted to her skull. Her eyes were gone, and the scratches around their cavities suggested she had inflicted the wounds herself.

A man with dirty blond hair hugged his knees and stared at the floor. The Death Boy curator winked at Cooper and waved toward the man with a flourish. "Kurt Cobain, of course."

Cooper looked away.

Wine-dark Vaitch padded around the corner to the other half of the gallery. "And you see our trio of First People-the crown jewels of this particula.r.s.eraglio."

Marvin hustled Cooper forward. Hestor, the guards, and a few Death Boys who'd followed filed into the room behind them.

Vaitch continued. "Onis.h.i.+mekka, a folioform being whose capture was not worth the effort, if you ask me." What looked like a pile of paper flipped its pages and rose a few feet into the air, forming a roughly spherical shape of origami edges and folded material. It winked its leaves at Cooper like an overgrown paper flower, and before it collapsed back onto the ground it emitted a scratchy noise that almost resembled a word.

What Cooper thought Onis.h.i.+mekka said was, "Her."

"Moving right along, we have Morrigan 2/6, one const.i.tuent of a ninefold ent.i.ty that was whittled down to six by the time we found her. It was easy enough to steal her, although she'll tell you that you don't steal an agent of fate made manifest in the worlds. Still, she screams as loud as the rest."

Marvin saw Cooper's face and nuzzled his shoulder. "These are all criminals or dangerously insane people." Cooper shrugged him off and began to grind his teeth; the sounds of fear were all around him, a tide that could not stop rising. The last lay ahead; now that Cooper had come, she'd fallen silent.

Vaitch the Sommelier gave a little bow. "And of course our most popular and most potent vintage, who won't-or can't-tell us her name. Nameless or not, she provides ten times the juice than any other odalisque, although she coc.o.o.ns up whenever we drink too deeply."

There, whimpering against the wall in a nest of wet leather, huddled a creature more beautiful than Cooper had ever dreamed could live. Gold light played along her opaline flesh, where wings and limbs and s.h.i.+ning protuberances conspired to keep her anatomy a mystery of s.h.i.+fting beauty and unearthly radiance. The single eye set into her crested skull was at once crimson, emerald, and glacier-blue, and even in abject terror, the sight of her body was exposure to pure glory. Spears of light danced up her sides, spiking out from polyps that grew from her flank, her rib cage.

"We wouldn't be half so numerous or prosperous in our territorial advancement without her life to drink," Marvin confessed in a hush. "She'll be your first taste, Cooper."

Vaitch the Sommelier drew something out of his tattered robes. "She tastes like milk, don't you know? Milk that burns like fire. Liquid light. I'm more than a little in love with her." In his hands he held some kind of flail, a long grip from which dangled a number of braided leather cords, each ending in a hooked blade. Vaitch looked at the brilliant thing with longing.

"She's an aesr," Cooper realized aloud-cyclopean, finned, radiant.

"She is known to you?" The curator whipped his head around, not happy to have his presentation interrupted.

Cooper shook his head. "She is amazing."

"A thing of light and music," Marvin explained, putting his body between Cooper and the annoyed curator. "And rarer than rare. To those who hunger for life, aesr taste better than blood, better than souls, better than winecarp caviar." Marvin licked his lips in naked antic.i.p.ation.

Cooper went cold. Of course the Undertow would have nothing pleasant planned for a helpless creature out of legend. "You're not going to hurt a . . . nearly extinct angel, are you?" Any remaining sense of safety fled Cooper in an almost physical wave. What had they planned for him?

" 'Hurt?' " Hestor mocked Cooper's humanity. "That's a petty word for what we do- but no, we won't be doing anything."

"The skylords found her years ago," Marvin explained as more Death Boys crowded into the room behind them, "incubating in one of the towers, half-coc.o.o.ned in her own mucus. She empowers us, Cooper-more than any of these others, she makes us what we are. Death Boys. Charnel Girls. She's the reason our ranks have grown, the reason we control as much territory as we do. And soon we'll control it all. Hestor will be made a skylord for our coup, and you will join us." Ambition gleamed through Marvin's eyes. "And then I will lead the pack."

The creature of light lifted her cyclopean head and tried to talk, but coughed on her own radiant blood. "Chara . . ." she managed, staring at Cooper.

He rounded on Marvin, his anger returning in a red haze. He shoved the Death Boy. "What the f.u.c.k, Marvin? Is that a criminal? You're not a cultist, you're just a dead old queen who tortures helpless creatures! What do you do in the off-season, b.u.t.tf.u.c.k unicorns?"

Before Marvin had a chance to respond, Hestor's arm whipped out and smacked Cooper against the side of the head. He saw stars but stood his ground.

"I am not afraid of you anymore, Hestor," he lied. "You can spike your hair and fly on all the wicked broomsticks you like, but if you expect me to cooperate with you for one single second more, you will keep your bully hands off me."

Hestor laughed in his face. His boys swelled their chests behind him, proving the unsaid point: Hestor had hands enough to spare, all of them eager to prove themselves meaner than dirt. He wondered how spectacularly his bl.u.s.ter would backfire.

s.h.i.+t.

The aesr coughed. "Mother . . ." the thing croaked imploringly before pa.s.sing out again.

Then it occurred to Cooper that he was no longer bound by Earthly rules. He summoned the fear still turbulent in his gut, held it in his mind like a stone on his tongue, then directed it at the ruined aesr. He visualized a laser of communication lancing out from his forehead, beaming straight into her single eye.

IIIWantWantWantToHelpHelpYouYouYou.

She writhed, only partially conscious but aware of his intrusion into her thoughts.

h.e.l.lo? He tried again, and again the aesr thrashed about but did not respond.

"We want you to have the honor, Cooper." Marvin spoke carefully as Hestor crossed his arms impatiently and more bodies filed into the room. All eyes on Cooper as Vaitch offered the weapon hilt-first.

"I . . . you really don't have to. I have tons of honor already, really I do."

"This honor is singular," Hestor spat.

"What honor, exactly?" Cooper knew, of course he knew-there would be only one kind of honor here, but he had to ask. He had to hope the Death Boys couldn't be this ugly. He had to give them one last chance.

Marvin nodded at the aesr. "Spilling her blood will mark you as one of us. She's mad, Cooper, and doesn't know herself."

"Grace of form, swiftness of foot, and freedom from the cycle of lives-this is what we gain from the aesr," Hestor said. "Out there they would have you believe that Death is a gift you must earn. We reject that notion, claim existence as our birthright, and for our induction rites we desecrate their false icons, the pure things of the worlds, and now at last, one of the very founders of their city. Draw her blood and you will never be alone again. Share yourself with us, Cooper."

"I don't want to do this."

"It's a little late for that," Hestor said, reaching out to stroke the flail with his fingers, stroking the barbed ends. "Take the lichtail."

Marvin nodded encouragingly. "Flay her."

Cooper maintained his self-possession. He didn't blanch, flinch, squeal, run, cry, or beg, although he badly wanted to do so. He knew he'd gotten off too easily earlier with Marvin and the knife and the carving-up. Oh, if only it could have stopped at kisses. But now, what if he refused? He couldn't possibly back out now, they wouldn't allow it-would they? No, Hestor and his boys wanted blood-Cooper's blood or aesr's blood-and they were going to get it.

"No," said Cooper. It was his word.

"Hurt her, Cooper," Marvin pleaded.

"I said no."

"You won't like what we do to those who throw our gifts in our faces, Cooper," Hestor threatened, taking the rust-razored flail from his lackey and handing it to Marvin. "You wouldn't want to take the aesr's place, would you?"

Hestor smiled at the look of understanding on Cooper's face. "So many of my Death Boys want to see the childborn shaman flay the aesr cow. They want blood. It would be selfish of me to deny them the pleasure."

Why are you doing this? Marvin begged him in a thought-whisper, his fear amplifying the whisper into a scream. Cooper didn't even think the answer to himself, worried that he might accidentally brush minds with Marvin. A feral punk like Hestor, driving Marvin to flay him alive? Cooper just hoped that the Death Boy didn't intend to render him into a pile of b.l.o.o.d.y ribbons.

"We welcome you to the Undertow, one way or another, CooperOmphale," Hestor grated, a sick smile plastered over his clown's face. "You plunged yourself into the underworld by ascending to our overworld, and now we call you back to the living. Once you've felt the power of our freedom you will beg to taste it. Maybe you're onto something, Cooper. There's wisdom in your refusal to join us without learning our ways from the inside out. Yes, I think you'll be a stronger Death Boy once you've felt the alternative." Hestor smiled and Cooper almost threw up. "Turn him around."

Cooper said nothing as Marvin advanced with the lichtail raised. He was spun into the corner and he covered his head with his hands as the rain of razors began to fall upon his shoulders. The aesr nearby cried out and he knew innately that she would feel every shredded neuron in perfectly mirrored agony. The pain was immediate and all-consuming, and as Cooper collapsed to the floor his last coherent thought was an observation-if he survived the torture Sesstri had repeatedly warned him against, this journey through worlds of death and bodily pain, he supposed he might wake up a shaman after all.

9.

From above and from below they rage, Frothing forth to suck at me; All the work the living do, And not an hour of it for free.

-Hinto Thyu, "The Sovereign," Twice Born A Boychild Your kind is a cancer. Purity thought Kaien looked shocked at the ugliness that had rolled so easily off his tongue. Two score bodies surrounded them, the air perfumed with blood spray from bird beaks, and Kaien's own mouth shamed him most.

Purity looked at him, thinking that might be the closest thing to an ally she had in this forsaken cage- and she could have him arrested and strung upon a thievespole for a spy with a single word, wasn't that neatly packaged and tied up in a bow? How had he been foolish enough to tell her who he was? If the Circle discovered a way out of the Dome, things would go from horrible to f.u.c.ked-beyond-repair: her kind did deserve to be locked away, at the very least long enough for the city to ratify a decent government in their stead.

She stood beside Kaien as he crouched beside the body of the apprentice tailor and rested the boy's head on the celadon tiles of the aviary floor, unable to bring himself to look at her. The boy stared unblinking at the cyclone of feathers that still squawked overhead, and with the same solemn gesture she'd used before, Purity knelt and closed them forever. Somewhere the boy was waking beneath a new sky, but his world had ended all the same.

"It's called a prayer," Purity said, rocking on back on her heels and latching onto Kaien's arm for support. "You wouldn't have ever seen one, if you're a childborn citizen of the city. They bury every prayer at the Apostery as they should, I suppose. I merely wished him well on his first step."

"Step?"

"Of the dance of lives." Lifting the dead boy's s.h.i.+rt, Purity showed Kaien the navel of a childborn. "Someone lost a son today." Kaien blinked back tears and kneeled over the body.

"So you see, there is some merit to be found even amid the lords and ladies of death, metastases that we are."

Kaien winced. "Purity, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to speak to you roughly, I just-"

She shushed him. "I couldn't disagree with you less, you know- and even if I did, we haven't the time to debate social justice." She pulled on his shoulder from behind with surprising force, and Kaien tumbled backward onto the floor.

"Bells, but you're forward-" he began, when Purity jumped atop of him and pressed her face against his.

"Shut. Up," she whispered fiercely into his ear, then went limp on his chest at the sound of the lockstepped march of praetorian boots. She tried not to move, or breathe, or think of Kaien's firm body pressed against her own.

They held their breath as the praetors approached, but to Purity's astonishment they did not stop in the aviary-the tempo of their marching didn't slow, and still the alarum rang. Still the birds flew in troubled circles, denied their rest.

Purity made a noise of consternation and pushed herself up a bit, glancing around and then staring down the slope of her pert nose at Kaien. "I really did expect them to take a bit of a look- see, you know."

Kaien blushed and tried to turn away, but where could he go? Purity's arms rested on his shoulders-which she squeezed admiringly, then winked. He was so innocent! She rolled off him and stood, smoothing her stained dress down her hips, legs. "So much for the charmeuse. Kaien, you really must learn to be more opportunistic."

He sputtered, then reoriented himself. "Why didn't the guards stop?" he asked, sitting up.

"Because the mess here is just ancillary damage."

"But then what-"

"Kaien, I'm-" The alarum suddenly stopped. Purity covered her ears with her hands before she realized how silly that looked- but the abrupt silence seemed more offensive to her ears than the wailing Klaxon.

"Well, that's a relief." Kaien sighed with a little too much emphasis, brus.h.i.+ng off his trousers. He stood turned away from her at a discreet angle.

Purity rolled her eyes. Oh, for goodness' sake.

She cleared her throat and tried not to snicker. "Do I need to excuse myself while you scavenge a fresh pair of skivvies, Mister Mason?"

The back of his dark- skinned neck flushed a deep rust-brown, like the sky during an ammonia monsoon.

Changing the subject by way of a mercy, she asked him, "If the guards are going to ignore us, then you might as well tell me just what, exactly, you are doing here in the Dome, Kaien, master spy and journeyman mason? Don't you think I'll forget to ask simply because a ma.s.sacre or two interrupted us."

At last, he smiles. Purity shook her head. This boy strove for propriety more dutifully than most of her peers. He'd make a good lord, if their circ.u.mstances were reversed.

"I'm only a second-degree journeyman, Miss Kloo, but my father is First Mason."

She nodded airily.

"You have no idea what that means, do you?" he asked.

"Kaien, I'm not stupid. Have we not discussed my education, specifically its thoroughness concerning city affairs? I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't fib."

"What?" He seemed genuinely incredulous. "I'm not lying!"

She raised an eyebrow and led him beneath the sheltering branches of a fig tree, well away from the stink of birds and bodies. "Basel Prouk is First Mason, Kaien-or he was when we were sealed inside this lovely little prison. I know that spies are supposed to practice being circ.u.mspect, but you really oughtn't lie to a girl whose father sat on the board of the Guildworks United."

Kaien looked s.h.i.+fty for a moment. "Now, see, about the Guildworks . . ."

"What?"

"I . . . I'm not supposed to say anything."

"I'd say it's a bit late for that, Kaien." She fingered the head of the hammer looped through his belt, and brushed white powder from her fingertips. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Kaien swallowed hard, but nodded. "Sure. Yes. Do I have any choice?" Purity shook her head and used her grip on his belt to pull him closer. Kaien tried to keep a clear head as he continued, "But, listen, may I have your word that you won't repeat what I'm about to say to another soul?"

"You're choosing this moment to get coy on me, you hairy aurochs?" She punched his arm, then shook the sting out of her fist.

"Masons are a tight-lipped lot," he said. "Promise me."

"Oh, for the sake of all that's dead and gone, Kaien: fine!" Purity raised her hand. "I, Purity Genghis Umptelle Hyacinth Kloo, youngest of Baron Emil Kloo and scion of the Circle Unsung, hereby swear upon pedigree and principle that I shall keep your soon-to-be-revealed secret from any and all, upon pain of Death and general dismemberment. Are you satisfied, or must I open an artery?"

He flashed her an uncertain look, tugging at an unripe fig. "Is that a real oath?"

"Of course it is, Kaien!" she lied. "Are you questioning my honor?"