by Jim Grimsley
The priest was still. He looked dead. Nerva was standing over him. Now the man-thing caught his scent, stood over him, nostrils flared.
“Shall I get our bags?” she asked.
The thing was pacing around Dekkar. “Not so fast. This one. What is he?” He had switched to the other language, which appeared to be more comfortable for him. The switch made Keely’s head ache again. For a moment the man-thing blurred and his body appeared to rearrange itself; he was suddenly taller, looming over her.
“It’s better if you stick to their language,” Nerva snapped. “I’m fixed in this form, remember, it hurts my head to speak otherwise.”
“You were speaking Erlot against him. Is he learned?”
“I don’t know what he is. He’s not one of their Prin and he’s been stripped of his Drune, I already checked that part.”
“He does not feel properly bound to me.”
“I bound him,” Nerva said, running her hands over Dekkar, doing something that made him flinch. So he was not dead.
“We were not expecting one of their incanters this far north. Why have you traveled here with him?”
“He brought us here by flitter. Without him I’d have been stuck in your war in the south.”
“Yes, but you’ve allowed him to be close to the child.”
“The damage was done when he met us. What did you expect me to do?”
The man thing was gingerly leaning down toward Dekkar as if compelled; the nose started to sniff and ran over Dekkar’s face, his hands. “I cannot leave him here and I cannot take him. I will not eat him myself. But if I let the eaters have him and Rao wants to know more about him, I will regret it. You would be far better off, my dear, not to have presented me with so grave a problem.”
“Don’t threaten me. I’m a foster mother to Rao once this child goes into Greenwood.”
“Yes. You are. Then. Not now.” He advanced on her slowly, opening that wide, wicked mouth again. In spite of herself she backed away. “I will have to speak with the source. We will likely have to bring the incanter with us.”
The smell of Dekkar drew the man-thing back again. Keely closed his eyes when the thing began to press its teeth into the priest’s dark face.
When Keely looked again, Dekkar’s skin was oozing blood, same as Uncle Figg’s, and the man-thing was looking blissfully down at him, carefully cleaning the teeth with that sharp, long tongue. “He is the better taste of the two by far.”
The pavilion shook on one side as the huge monster mantis uprooted trees and destroyed the outlying pavilions of the house. Keely found himself watching the monster’s dark eyes, which looked like a lot of glittering beads; it had captured some kind of small animal and was holding it in forelegs, tearing the flesh into its maw. It had reached the pool of water and stood there with water flowers tangled around its legs. The bug monster on the other side of the pavilion was standing quietly with its huge jaw hanging over the balcony railing. The inside-parts of the bug’s mouth looked moist.
The man-thing reached into a pouch that hung at his waist and pulled out the same kind of brooch Nerva carried. He took it in both hands, held it above his head, and closed his eyes. Nerva watched him. With his mouth closed he looked almost like a person, his skin a sickly gray-green, his naked body gleaming. A few of the shadows broke off from him and flew around him in short loops.
Keely was sitting on the edge of Uncle Figg’s bed. He still had his cereal bowl on his lap, empty now. Carefully he set it on the floor.
The room went suddenly dim and Keely froze. More of the shadows had broken off from the man-thing and were whirling in the air around him. Sometimes their wings brushed Keely’s face and made him shiver. He stared at Uncle Figg, who had frozen completely still with his eyes open, fixed on nothing, lying on his side on the floor. His face had stopped bleeding but the puncture marks were blue and swollen.
The priest, on the other hand, looked as though nothing had happened to his face at all. He looked more present in the room, less sickeningly twisted than before, and his eyes came open.
He started to move, sat up, watched the man-thing. Nerva, who was standing still herself, holding her own brooch, flung it down and hurled herself at Dekkar.
By the time she moved, he had stood, and she stopped in front of him as if he were holding her and looked him up and down. Her expression slowly shifted from the meanness that Keely knew so well to a first wave of fear. The flying shadows, looking more and more like dark birds, were whirling around them all, and a darkness covered Dekkar’s skin, like an oily shadow, and then a kind of popping sound burst out of him and the shadows fell, collapsed. The man-thing stood watching Dekkar as the fallen shadow birds flopped aimlessly and tried to use their wings to drag themselves.
Dekkar was watching the man-thing for a while and closed his eyes. Light wove itself over and through the surface of his skin, colors shimmering, and Nerva shrieked and fell to her knees. The man-thing broke apart into the flying shadows all in an instant and they attacked Dekkar, flew at him from all directions, but some passed through him, sliced through the walls of the house, and then their shapes changed and they slammed into the walls or the floor or the ceiling and were stunned. After a moment it was clear Dekkar was taking control of the shadow-birds one by one, and he went on standing there until the shadows started to form the man-thing; then he tore them apart again; and they tried to form and he ripped them separate again, over and over. Nerva was shrieking, blood leaking from her ears and nose, from the corners of her lips, a trickle. Uncle Figg was on his feet backed blindly against a wall, touching the wounds on his face. At his feet Penelope was starting to move her legs.
Keely moved to sit at Dekkar’s feet all in one motion, suddenly, holding his breath. The shadows tried to touch him and failed. Finally they clotted all in front of Dekkar for a moment and the man-thing formed again and froze. Dekkar opened his eyes and said, “Shut down your constructs or I’ll kill you this moment.”
“You know all I have to do is wish it and they will destroy this house and everyone in it.”
“If you want to test my limits, friend, please feel free to try. I’m likely to tear you to pieces, though, while I’m in the process of making rubble out of your toys. Tear you to pieces permanently, I mean. So make your choice.”
“You’ll kill me one way or the other.”
“Maybe.”
“So why should I help you do it?”
Dekkar closed his eyes again, and the light along his skin darkened, deepened, till the whole pavilion was gloomy. The insect-monster nearest the pavilion shuddered and shook and moved away. It took on a defensive stance against the hillside. The other, the one that was presently destroying Figg’s compound systematically, gave an unearthly piercing shriek that made Keely fall back trembling on the carpet. Uncle Figg looked like he’d been knocked to the floor.
“I’ll shut down the one that’s left,” the man-thing said, trying with all its needle teeth to look contrite.
Dekkar nudged Nerva with his toe. Keely was watching the look of pain on her face with a feeling of warm satisfaction. “Who is this woman? Where did she come from?”
“I will die before I answer,” the man-thing said. “I am a high servant of a high master.”
“Yes, I know. The God Rao.”
The creature looked discomfited.
“You should not have said his name for me to hear,” Dekkar said. “But that was only one of your mistakes. You should never have bit me. I tasted you as well, you see. You might have had a chance to keep me bound until then.”
The thing was whimpering, as if Dekkar were using a special voice himself, but Keely heard nothing.
“You made contact with Rao or one of his subordinates, too. That was another of your mistakes. So now I know where he is.”
The man-thing was breathing with effort, stretching his lips across those teeth.
“Now you are mine,” Dekkar said, and his voice was not at all nice but it w
as still just a person’s voice. “For the record, you said earlier that you would die before you answer. In fact, you will die after. Now, who is she?”
The man-thing fought for a while, mouth moving, those needle teeth out of control, piercing his cheeks and lips. When he could no longer control himself, he answered, gazing at the ceiling. He looked as if he were in agony. “She is one of the envoys. Sent to select from your race ten candidates to learn the Erlot.”
“Say that again.”
“Erlot. The numbers of Rao.”
Keely had heard this name before today, in the math box. It made him cold, and he shivered.
“Ten candidates?”
“It was the box,” Keely said in a whisper.
“What?” Dekkar asked, not moving his gaze from the man-thing even for a second.
“That was a word in the math box. Nerva made me use it every day. To teach me numbers.”
“Keely is one of your ten?”
“Yes,” the man-thing hissed.
“What was to happen to him?”
“One of the ten will become the body of the God Rao on this world. The others are taught to be ipocks, speakers of Erlot.”
Dekkar made him say that again too. The man-thing did everything Dekkar told him to do.
“Who are you?” Dekkar’s voice hardened.
The man-thing flinched, bit his needle-teeth into his own gums, his face running with brown-red blood. He spoke even more obviously with the strain of resistance. He made a sound that might have been his name. “I gather the ten for Rao. Nothing more.”
“Why this child?”
“He has a gift for numbers. They all do. She searched for him and found him and brought him.” He indicated Nerva, senseless along the table where she had fallen.
“You were coming to take him away today.”
“Yes. I was sent to bring him into the north.”
“You meant to kill the rest of us.”
“Yes. The calcept would eat you and shit you out and your farm would be a ruin.”
That time Dekkar repeated the word, calcept, and Keely knew it meant the big bugs with the maws like black saw blades. “Why? The northerners aren’t even your enemy.”
“We are Rao. We have no friends or enemies.”
“What kind of creature are you?”
“Chalcyd. Ipock. I speak Erlot at the fifth rank.”
He had to repeat all that, and did. His eyes were streaming with yellow fluid, more viscous than tears.
“I am Dekkar,” the priest said. “I speak three true languages at a level you will soon learn all too well. This is your lucky day,” and the priest made the man-thing’s name sound, exactly the way Keely heard it the first time. “You live to go home. Tell Rao I’m coming.”
“Rao will not need to fear so small a one—” His words choked off and his features wrenched as if in agony.
Dekkar said, “No more foolishness. Go and give my message to Rao. I won’t give you back your calcept pet—it’s mine now. And remember this while you’re on the way. When you finish this last task for me and carry my message to the God Rao, I will withdraw my hand from you and you will drop dead where you stand.”
The man-thing made a low shriek and spat fluid from its shredded mouth, pink-flecked saliva. Its lips hung in tatters, the teeth retracted inside.
Dekkar opened his eyes and smiled at the creature as if he were its best friend.
A moment later in a burst of black wings it was gone, and Dekkar knelt to Nerva. She flinched, to the degree that she could move at all, and tried to move away from him. He glanced at Uncle Figg, who was starting to get his breath under control. “Are you all right, Figg?”
He nodded, nostrils flared, eyes big as if he were still seeing that mouth with all its teeth close over him, prick him. “I need to clean these wounds.”
“You’d better not touch them until I get a chance to look at them. How do you feel?”
“Numb.” He drew a sucking breath, ran a hand through his hair. “I swear, Dekkar, if you don’t kill her I’m going to.”
“No, you won’t. I need her alive for the moment.”
“Who is she?”
“At the moment she’s more or less Erejhen. The copy is far from perfect. That’s what I was noticing last night when I questioned you about her. I have no idea what she is originally. One of the chalcyd, maybe. Those flock-creatures. They appear to able to change shape.”
Figg moved to sit beside Keely, embraced the boy, who was stiff and frightened still. It was hard to have anybody close, but this was Uncle Figg.
“What has she been doing to you?”
Keely shrugged. The question closed up his throat.
Dekkar released her partially so that she could talk, but otherwise kept her as she was. He said, “This voice of yours is troublesome. Be careful how you use it.”
She made incoherent sounds, trying to move.
“Did you enjoy tormenting me a few moments ago? You appeared to.”
Her hair was sliding into the remains of her breakfast, pudding on her face, and sausage grease, and gobs of sticky rice.
“I want you to know I opened myself to you in order to give you joy,” Dekkar said. “I allowed you to cause me pain. I want you to know that. But, you see, in taking advantage of my offer you’ve made a grave error, and you’ll pay a grave price. I’m going to keep you with me for a while till I’ve learned all that you know, and there is nothing in this fold of space and time that will prevent me from finishing my work with you. Do you understand?”
Her toes were curling out of her shoes. She was still making that whimper noise; she was trying to make the voice.
“Figg, do you want to ask this creature any questions?” Dekkar asked.
“Yes. But I’d rather Keely weren’t here.”
“All right. I can leave her with you in a way that won’t permit her to harm you as she’s been harming Keely.”
She was sitting up now, food sliding down her face and dress. She looked funny and Keely snorted.
Dekkar laughed, too, looking down at Keely. “You want to know what I’m going to do right now, Keely?”
He nodded, too shy to speak.
“I’m going to take her voice out. Not her whole voice, just the part that hurts you. Would you like that? And I’m going to wipe her brain so clean of all those words that she’ll never get them back. Would you like that?”
Keely understood the first part but not the second; he nodded anyway. He could tell that was what he was supposed to do. He felt old inside, wasted. All the memories he had lost came flooding back. Whatever Nerva had done to him to keep the old memories away, Dekkar put an end to it.
Nerva shrieked, a ghastly sound, and Uncle Figg walked Keely to the porch where he could not watch her crying. So Keely stopped and said, “No, Uncle Figg. I want to see.” His heart was pounding.
Uncle Figg spoke with effort, his face so swollen he could hardly make words. “I had no idea she was hurting you,” he said.
Keely shrugged and smiled to make Uncle Figg feel better. “I don’t remember much of it,” he said, though in fact he remembered all of it, now. But for some reason the lie didn’t make Uncle Figg feel better at all. His face was all cloudy with sympathy. In the pavilion, though, Nerva continued to wail, and Keely’s heart brightened at the sound.
2. Fineas Figg
Figg toured the wreckage of his compound, the garden shredded along one side of the house, two pavilions still standing, the dead mantis collapsed under what was left of a tree, its black carapace decaying at an ominous rate and sliding into the ground with a toxic sheen.
His face ached. Dekkar had cleaned the wounds and said it was better to leave them be until he knew more.
The Herman and the Hilda were stirring, cleaning the mess that had been made of breakfast. The bodyguard Zhengzhou, who had arrived last night with the rest of the party’s luggage, crept out of one of the intact pavilions and stood dazed in the bright day.
/>
Figg had talked to Nerva, not that she gave him much satisfaction. But it was easy enough to piece together the story. In her guise as an Erejhen she had lived on Senal for many decades. She had come to Senal to find one of ten pupils for her master and had located a group of candidates, all gifted in their potential for mathematics. She selected Keely as the best of them, visiting him in the guise of a social worker from the upper levels of Kinahd, the city beneath which Keely had lived. Nerva had used Sherry, and later Sade, in her bid to get legal control of Keely; since she needed to emigrate with him, she did not want to risk simply kidnapping him. Nerva had convinced Sherry of the advantages of a high-profile public suicide. From that point she had simply waited out events and at some point during the whole preparation for Sade’s now-infamous party, she had helped Sade purchase an option to adopt Keely, and the two of them had seized the child.
Following Sade’s death, Figg had proven ideal in the bond he felt with Keely, in his sense of obligation, and above all in his irreproachable family connections. She had used this voice of hers and her knowledge of true language, likely the same Erlot that the man-thing had mentioned, to get Figg to do what she wanted, to hire her.
At times Figg had suspected her of using the child to get into his own good graces, due to his wealth, which was still considerable. Now he understood that Keely had always been her focus.
In exactly the same way, this morning, when the monstrous mantises first crashed into the garden, he had thought they had come for him, because of his family name. Even in disaster he was still living in the past, in the old, dead world of his importance.
Sherry had obtained a license to commit public suicide in order to sell herself to Sade as entertainment; Nerva had helped Sherry with the arrangements. The girl might never have wanted to die, in fact, and the realization sickened him. Sherry might have been under Nerva’s influence all along. Sherry might have been listening to this creature’s voice, might never have wanted to sign those papers, to consent to her own death, at all.