The Waking Engine Part 21

Asher transformed into an arc of smoke-colored light, he moved so fast. Cooper saw a gray hand chop in an arc upon Marvin like the blade of an axe, splitting the air with its speed, and the newly appointed Death Boy chief's left shoulder fell away from his body, his torso split between neck and collarbone in a jagged tear that cracked his ribs open all the way past his sternum. Cut nearly in two, Marvin sank to his knees wordlessly, fountaining blood from his mouth and the exposed tissue of his lung, then collapsed to one side, blood foaming over his pretty, petty tattoos.

Not sparing a glance for its b.u.t.terflied human s.h.i.+eld, the lich withdrew.

Asher stumbled forward in pure momentum, feral and unaware of his surroundings. His leg gave out and he stumbled, collapsing, as Sesstri broke free of her distracted captors and rushed to Asher's side. Cooper's perception of time slowed to honey: Asher's tears and spittle frozen in midair, an arc of diamonds, while the tall man tumbled into Sesstri's outstretched arms; the scholar's face was a mask of confusion, her hair streaming sideways with the roaring wind, eyes caught between her crazed lover and the wreckage that had recently been Marvin the Death Boy, Marvin the pain-bringer, her prophecy concerning his motives come true in the worst possible way. The other Death Boys and Charnel Girls fell back from the three survivors as if caught in the radial blast of a shock wave, sudden weakness spilling from their eyes, huge and liquid in the permanent night.

For half a minute, Cooper just stood there and stared as Marvin died, feeling the razor kisses on his back burn and bleed, and when the Death Boy's lips turned blue, Cooper knelt and lifted Marvin's head to whisper, "I told you I was sorry, you waste of skin. I told you it wasn't over. Wherever you wake up next, you remember this New Yorker a.s.shole, you remember my grin over your useless forgettable carca.s.s and my promise, a shaman's promise: no matter how far you run, life will always be wasted on you. I've crossed worlds and found you nothing more than a disappointment."

Then he rolled Marvin's corpse off the edge of the roof into the empty air and called after it, "Tonight you fly with the Death Boys!"

He swiveled toward Asher and Sesstri, who crouched in each other's arms, gaping at Cooper. Did they have colors too? Somewhere inside him, the Cooper of three days earlier still existed, horrified, but those hours had altered him-some components upgraded, others removed and replaced with death and magic and knowledge. He was not quite the same machine as the man who'd woken up on a hill of yellow gra.s.s, not anymore. "I'm ready to be rescued now," Cooper said, turning his ruined back on the others and walking with a leaden gait toward the stairwell in the center of the roof. "If we're done killing wh.o.r.es for the night."

10.

I am mother to lions and monsters, monarchs and liars-I will not dissemble and say I loved them all equally. But, Prince, you must remember the following: birth is a blessing, no matter the sp.a.w.n. Poesy was not given to me; nor song, nor gentler arts. Just the teeth behind my smile and my prodigious womb. That has always proven more than enough.

-Eleanor of Aquitaine, Travelling Backwards With Prince Prama Ramay Lord Senator Mner Bratislaus had Died on the privy, tangled in his trousers, trying to s.h.i.+t and survive at the same time. He may have known his Killer, or at least was not entirely ambushed, for he had not triggered the Domewide alarum. That had been the servants of half a dozen lords and ladies, after word spread of the lord senator's Death. Any other lord mightn't have been discovered for days-the Dome covered an area vaster than most huge cities, and Circle business went unquestioned by all. Cliques of lords routinely vanished for weeks at a time under the auspices of the work of the Circle Unsung, even though they usually limited themselves to whoring, gambling, or f.u.c.king one another in an inebriated haze. The lord senator's personal quarters were scrubbed as a matter of routine when he could not be found.

Mauve Leibowitz, who knew the answers to many questions and intended on discovering the rest, stood in the middle of the lord senator's library with her hands on her hips and outrage blazing behind her eyes. Steel-gray hair piled atop a face like a warlord gave Mauve an air of authority that few of the ladies at court could match. Worsted midnight wool flecked with white and gold hugged her curves, roomier in the sleeves and with a high, loose collar-it was not hard to see how she commanded the respect of the Circle. One of nine women on the ruling council of twenty-three families, Mauve held legendary status. She'd been one of few to stand up to Fflaen when he boxed them in; she'd debated the Guildworks United to a stalemate after they proposed a tertiary docking t.i.the; and she'd been the only member of the Circle to stare down Mner Bratislaus after the second wave of Killing, when the Circle seemed poised for civil war and the lord senator wracked with Deathl.u.s.t. Now not only was the insufferable b.a.s.t.a.r.d dead, but she had to wade through the s.h.i.+t he'd left behind, both figurative and literal.

Dead G.o.ds, Lady Leibowitz lamented, is it too much to ask that a man's excrement vanish with his corpse? Two dressing rooms and a cedar closet separated the library from the privy, and still the odor lingered. She made a mental note to remember to eat lightly if she ever suspected the Circle of plotting a water closet a.s.sa.s.sination against her. There were worse things than Death, indeed.

Mauve had hated the man, and had even privately considered using the Weapon against him despite the brinksmans.h.i.+p that forced the Circle back into armistice, but this was travesty. Mner's Murder could undo everything, all the backroom bargaining and bullying which had occupied her for most of the past year. That the sitters of the Circle had, after eons, used the Weapon against one another had been profane enough- a profanity that she and a handful of others had barely managed to contain with a lie: that the Circle had discovered the Weapon only recently, and been so intoxicated by its power that they'd indulged in not one but two full-blown orgies of Murder.

A crock of G.o.ds.h.i.+t, but there you have it. Her womb conspired to produce only imbeciles, so Mauve secured her legacy through political means. In this, she did not consider herself so different from her peers, although she wished she had conceived more children- surely if she sp.a.w.ned a hundred idiots one of them would stumble into usefulness. Better than the pair of limpid swans she called daughters: she often struggled to look at Nonette and Nilliam without wis.h.i.+ng she'd tossed the twins into a ca.n.a.l as soon as she'd expelled them from her body.

Purity Kloo, who sat abashed and slightly blinded in a tall leather armchair, would have made a much less objectionable daughter. The Baron had spoiled her, of course, but Mauve would have raised her to be a razor blade and not a truant.

Mauve took a pull off her long, thin bone pipe and tutted smoke as she closed the curtains against the brilliance of the Pet.i.te Malaison. Today its bones had begun to s.h.i.+ne like they'd used to, but Mauve suspected something worse than the return of Fflaen. Dour times.

She turned her thoughts back to the world she could control and considered the possibilities. She found herself hoping that the Murderer sat on the Circle, although that would mean a rogue lord or lady, and that would breach the armistice and threaten to send the Circle into round three of self- annihilation. She'd seen too many n.o.ble families purge themselves of undesirables and rivals already: now they were weakened nearly to the point of dissolution. Too many new faces on the Circle, young heirs who couldn't possibly carry the responsibility, and too few old friends or enemies upon whom she could rely. Her people had seen more change in the last few years than they had in the uncounted millennia before Fflaen confined them to the Dome. Although now that the billionstone shone again, perhaps something could be done about all of that.

Still, better the Killer be a rogue Circle member than the alternative-if anyone outside of the Circle Unsung had the Weapon, then they were all quite thoroughly rogered.

The greatest legacy of the aesr would destroy the city those long-lost First People had built. Fflaen deserved no less, for all he'd done to preserve the legacy of his race, but saving her house took precedence over punis.h.i.+ng the aesr prince, wherever he'd fled-or turned up. Despite the sins Lady Mauve had committed herself-she was no less guilty than the rest of the Circle- she did not wish to witness the destruction of her home.

She saw Elisabetta and Nilliam skid into the room red-faced and out of breath. Elisabetta had been crying, but Nilliam merely stared at her mother with heavy-lidded eyes that peeked out from beneath her ridiculous sideways hat. She dressed like a clown: batik, in burgundy?

Mauve met her daughter's dead-eyed gaze. "Where is your sister?"

"Nonette, Mother?" NiNi fiddled with her hat, and started up with her humming.

"Do you have another sister?"

"No, Mother."

Bitzy looked fit to dissolve at any moment, so Mauve steadied her with a gold-barnacled hand. "I'm sorry, Elisabetta. He was gone before anyone knew he was in danger." That was a kind lie-she knew more of the lord senator's last few meals than of his Death, only that it was final, and in the loo.

Bitzy nodded and tried to act like an adult. "Thank you, Lady Leibowitz. I . . . I appreciate your kind a.s.sistance. As for NoNo, she's been having skirts fitted all morning, after her dancing lessons, bright and early. She'll come running in any minute, I'm certain of it. NiNi . . . ?"

NiNi shrugged and hopped up onto a side table where, effort expended, she closed her eyes at once. "Clothes people" was all she said. Bitzy sat herself on a sofa near Purity and fixed her eyes on the floor. She'd gone into standby mode, poor thing.

"What about clothes people, Nilliam?"

NiNi buzzed a raspberry at her mother, eyes still closed as if napping. "They couldn't find her. The clothes people. So I told them where to find her. NoNo. I'm helping."

"And where did you tell the clothes people to find your sister, Nilliam?" Mauve Leibowitz must be used to pulling sense out of the senseless, Purity thought.

NoNo chose that moment to drift through the wide double doors like some yellow cloud, her lacey parasol tucked under her arm while she peered at her nails, then buffed them on her shoulder. "Did I miss something?" she asked the bookshelves, craning her neck and seeming a little awed that there could be so many books gathered together, so many stupid paper pages. "Alarms are loud."

"There you are!" Mauve Leibowitz jabbed her bone pipe toward the doors. "My other miscarriage. Get in here and sit with your sister where I can keep an eye on you. Sit down, now!"

NoNo appeared baffled, and looked at NiNi dozing on her perch. "On the credenza?" she asked her mother.

Lady Leibowitz covered her face with a palm and jabbed her pipe at the furniture where Bitzy and Purity sat, still as figures in a painting. "Sit your bottom on the sofa, Nonette. Sit it next to Elisabetta and do please try to be of some comfort to your bereaved friend. Pretend you're an ambient banana tree, that ought to fall within your emotional range-and the dead G.o.ds know you've dressed the part."

"Banana?" NoNo frowned. "This color is called canary, Mother." But she did as Lady Mauve bade, and patted Bitzy as she sat. Bitzy didn't look up, but chewed on her lip, lost in a little moment of empty concentration. NoNo dithered her parasol in her hand like an old man with a cane.

NiNi seemed to wake up, and lit a skinny brown cigarette from a paperweight lighter of scrimshawed horn that shared her tabletop; she puffed on it in what Purity supposed was intended to be a thoughtful manner. "It is canary, you know," NiNi said to no one in particular, then resumed humming that sad syncopation that Purity found so irksome.

"Lady Leibowitz?" Purity attempted to be of some use. "There was a terrible amount of bloodshed in the aviary, have you heard?"

Mauve looked at Purity with a craggy blend of resignation and regret. "No. No, Purity Kloo, I have not heard. Please do enlighten me."

Purity took a breath and described the scene as concisely as possible without including any incriminations-or any mention of Kaien the Murderer. "The alarum frightened me, and I thought-foolishly, I must admit-that the bird sanctuary might provide sanctuary for me as well. Instead I found a dozen dead praetors and as many dead servants."

Lady Mauve narrowed her eyes. "Do you mean to tell me, Miss Kloo, that if I marched you straight to the aviary, we would find no fewer than two dozen corpses?"

Purity faltered. "Well, yes, ma'am. I'm not exaggerating the number of casualties, if that's what you're-"

"-I am not."

"-And I certainly hope you won't be marching me back to that horrid-"

"-I will not."

"-Then, yes, ma'am, that's the gist of it."

"I see." Lady Mauve bit her pipe, ruminating. "And did you by chance happen to make any other pertinent observations while waltzing through the hallways?"

"Well"-Purity bit back several salty reb.u.t.tals that sprang to mind- "I did, as a matter of fact. The guardsmen were scattered, as if they'd been cut down before they a.s.sumed battle formation, which as you might gather suggests that they were killed alarmingly quickly. Also, the servants lay atop the guards and came from the opposite entrance-that is, they were coming from the Pet.i.te Malaison, whereas the praetors seemed to have been dispatched from Dendrite's Folly, where we sit now. This tells us, as I'm sure your ladys.h.i.+p will agree, that the Killer-or whomever is responsible, for there's no direct evidence to link Lord Bratislaus' pa.s.sing to the person or persons responsible for the butchery in the aviary- dispatched the praetors and was subsequently surprised by the servants, who were then cut down."

Lady Leibowitz regarded Purity with something resembling infuriated awe. "My, that is an impressive recounting, Purity, and I'm certain your father would be proud. Proud, if not surprised-judging by how the Baron rambles on in praise of his favorite daughter."

Purity blushed. That backhand would be as close as Mauve Leibowitz could come to a compliment.

"But why, pray tell, would a dozen servants rush into a scene of such slaughter?"

"That's just what we-what I wondered, Lady Leibowitz. I'm afraid I have no satisfactory answer to that question."

"And you say you went to the aviary because you were frightened, do you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"So frightened that you managed to a.s.sess the scene with more aplomb than many a professional investigator?"

Purity gritted her teeth and aimed for hauteur. "As you say, ma'am: would I be my father's favorite without merit?"

Lady Leibowitz shook her head, appeased for the moment. "No, you would not. The Baron dotes overmuch, but he's no fool. Very well. Thank you, Purity. I shall have a look at the scene in the aviary myself, before those praetors begin reviving and our evidence scurries off to the showers in shame."

"In that case, I should like to find my father, Lady Leibowitz. He'll need to be made aware of-"

"-I think not. You will all four of you head down the hall to Elisabetta's apartments and you will stay there until I arrive to say otherwise. Am I clear?"

"Yes, Lady Leibowitz," Bitzy and Purity said as one. NiNi slid off the credenza and ground her cigarette into an amber ashtray.

"Yes, Mother." Something fierce glinted in NoNo's eyes as the girls filed out of the library through the wide, tall doors. Before it disappeared behind a twirling sunshade, her chin made the faintest jab of defiance.

A tense but mercifully short march to Bitzy's salon ensued. None of the girls seemed quite themselves, and the surly Leibowitz house guards in front of and behind them didn't help the mood. Where are the praetors? Purity wondered.

"What are we to do?" Purity was beside herself with worry, dispossessed enough to forget to keep her concerns to herself. "Throw a f.u.c.king tea party while the Circle tears down the Dome around us?"

Bitzy grabbed both of Purity's hands and shook them with cartoonish accord. "Oh, yes!" she exclaimed. "That's a brilliant idea, Purity! Just what we need to distract ourselves from this awkward business. A tea party!" She seemed to have rewound time by an hour or so and unprocessed the news about her father, and Purity wondered if perhaps Bitzy wasn't having a bit of a schism.

"You cannot be serious." NoNo was having none of it, and for once Purity found herself allying with a Leibowitz.

"Really, Bitz, don't you think you should be with your family at a time like this?"

Bitzy threw up her hands. "Drowned G.o.ds, no! The last thing Beauregret and Absynth will want is their little sister underfoot, and Mother . . . Mother will be . . ."

". . . I'm sure your brothers are taking perfect care of Lady Bratislaus, Bitz." Purity reached out to console her friend, whether she needed it or not. If Purity couldn't be out there finding the Killer, she'd at least practice decency. The dead G.o.ds knew it was in short supply.

The Cicatrix jerked as several vivisistors shorted out, their tiny occupants screaming through muted inputs, unheard but felt. There, beneath her shoulder blade, and another beneath her clavicle. She rolled her shoulder and jutted her collarbone, lifting her elbows and turning her wrists in a strange dance. She exhaled, feeling a kind of ecstasy as the latest packet from beyond the Seven Silvers pinged her systems. Again the vivisistors sparked, above her pelvis and a chorus along her spine, and the queen swayed along, full of grace and lightning. All her silver bells were ringing, and they rang like thunder.

The unknown vivisistor beneath the City Unspoken called to her, huge and ancient and hungry. It sucked out her life while it spooled her systems with a sick signal that tasted like all the madness in the metaverse.

The Cicatrix felt her life bleed out into the s.p.a.ce between worlds, an invisible hemorrhage she could do nothing to stop. The vivisistors were a part of her, as much as her scars and bones, and they powered themselves. Her life should have been outside the equation- she was no battery, she was not trapped, dying, inside a machine. A machine that gathered madness in exchange for her essence. And still, she bled.

The song that distant vivisistor sang to her sounded broken, like the tune of a music box whose pins had rusted away. It sounded sickly, too.

She'd stuffed vivisistors into her subjects, forced them upon servants and manipulated trends until her courtiers felt compelled to follow suit. Some had required convincing. She sought to staunch the flow by feeding other lives to the vampiric feedback, to give herself time to diagnose the problem, patch her firmware, or build a better firewall. Nothing. The more faeries she packed with vivisistors, the more hungrily the vacuum drank her essence and filled her up with madness.

And the more incessantly the unknown vivisistor pulsed like an emerald and lilac star, its colors and music strobing through the impossible network. All told, it was not an unlovely way to bleed.

When she allowed herself to sleep, the Cicatrix dreamed of birds and of men, staggering through trees to evaporate. They seemed so much like Lolly's little clockwork toys, ticking down to their final movement. She woke wanting to Die.

Her concierge subroutine pinged her HUD with an alert: the time had come to summon her court to session. An important arrival waited in the wings.

The t.i.tle Weapon of Choice scrolled across her vision. Her heads-up display constantly streamed information, but the concierge subsystem only gave t.i.tles to significant events. She had never programmed it to do so-perhaps the habit was idiosyncratic to one of the pixies that powered its vivisistors. Perhaps they collaborated, to soothe or console her. The lilac and emerald pixels flickered like fireflies before they winked out: Event_t.i.tle: 'Weapon_of_Choice' Sense6th::Inverse lifesign detected. Hardware Failure flagged and logged.

There was no hardware failure-her sensors couldn't interpret the truth about the guest who arrived, and logged it as a failure, but the Cicatrix considered the coming parley a great success even before it began. A first, in all of fey history. Oh yes, she'd been antic.i.p.ating this meeting for days. She was curious to see how her court would react, those who remained. How they'd obey.

The Cicatrix lifted her torso fully upright, rearing back upon a coil of black carbon, a queen cobra commanding her nest. She tasted the air with her tongue, and wondered at the limitations of the natural world. She did not notice any diminished connection to her landscape, now that she'd diminished it, and the many pleasant skies of her empire were quarantined from her working memory, replaced by the single sky she'd built here, above her court: brown to match the earth, barren to suit the trees. No blue sky, no warmth on her skin as she danced.

No dancing.

Once, she could not have tolerated the presence of the undead. "Come, come, you dukes of thorn and claw!" the Cicatrix howled, the voice box in her throat-meat amplifying her call until the denuded forest rang with feedback.

"Come, Lady Ash and Lord Frost! Come, wild hunters and miscarriages of the airy dark! I call the Court of Scars to audience. Who dares ignore my summons?"

The forest s.h.i.+vered, and a few thin birds shot from the trees and escaped to the west. Where was the wild circus? Where were the revelers and murderers, the half-breeds and beast-folk, the haughty pure and their thralls?

Gon to find the bl00d and mu$i, our queen. Fled alonggg teh hedgerow, fled alonggg teh countless branching paths.

"Come, you brave souls." The Cicatrix ignored her outsourced insight and growled to those who lingered. "Attend me."

A mat of leaves between a forked branch blinked and slunk forward. Its skin s.h.i.+mmered from bark to thundercloud to mud as it pa.s.sed, before resolving into thousands of articulated, tiny mirrors. They covered Oona like skin, in place of the skin that had been flensed away.

"We hear," Oona whispered, her voice rough like grinding gla.s.s. "We come."

Old Piezeblossom hobbled forward, wreathed in dark graphene petals that bristled from his cheek to his toe. His other leg had been adapted into a grounding spike, which he wrenched from the muck with every step. He had embraced amendment with a fervor that belied his age- Piezeblossom, too, must hear the call of freedom.

"The dukes are gone," he croaked. "Lady Ash is fled. Lord Frost is dead. The hunters hunt. The Court of Scars a.s.sembles, such as we are."

Oona tugged a rope she held in her chameleon hand, and a line of nameless faeries-children, mostly-marched out of the wood. Their hair was matted, their faces dirty, and their ankles shackled by cold iron. Such good subjects. Most had amendments of the lowest order-older c.o.ke-boiler systems, rusted or clogged or otherwise useless.

Among the trees, long fingers curled around branches like the bars of a jail cell, and huge eyes blinked, watching with held breath.

The Cicatrix smiled, and the gallery of fey whimpered in fear.

Piezeblossom coughed pus into the mud. "A guest, my queen." He pivoted on his spike and bowed as best he could-his ears were fleabitten and moldy along their tips, she saw. "Skylord Rousseau, my queen."

"Come, lich." She'd made the thing wait two whole days-a decision that had proved more traumatic for the remainder of her court than anything; the lich seemed not to notice the pa.s.sage of time.

Amba.s.sador Rousseau slid forward on a curtain of shadowed air, just barely brus.h.i.+ng her toe bones against the mud. It was a blasphemy she was denied in the City Unspoken and its annexed worlds, where no undead could set foot.

The gathered faeries did their best to keep still. The children began to sniffle and were hauled away by an iridescent Oona. A few others gasped and hid behind bare branches. Only Piezeblossom retained his composure. "Cherie, ssssweet friend!" exclaimed a skeleton of iron and silver, polished to s.h.i.+ne along the cheeks and fingers and arm-bones, ribs etched with filigree; the hollow absence where her organs should be was shadowed like a church nave, and the bowl of her pelvis was filled with dried flowers, hyssop, and calamus.

H0w QQuaint.

She wore a russet wig for the occasion, long over one shoulder, silver jewelry to match her bones, and an open robe that disappeared into the shadows holding her aloft- and holding her bones together. An awful green fire burned in the sockets of her eyes.