by Ken Scholes
“You will show us what we’re looking for eventually, Abomination,” she said in a flat voice. Then, she leaned closer, her mouth so close to his ear that none could hear but him. “It will not be long, Nebios. I swear it to you.”
When she left, he fell into a light, dreamless sleep. He drifted there, feeling the heat gradually leaking out of his wounds and momentarily forgetting the dull ache of the rocky ground that bit into his back. He’d just reached a moment of oblivious peace when he was jarred awake by the sounds of pandemonium.
He opened his eyes, suddenly alert, but could see nothing but a twilight sky and its tentative moon. Still, he instantly placed the snarling and howling of kin-wolves mixed with the sounds of battle nearby.
Twisting his body, he pulled at the ropes that held him, but the stakes were driven too deep. He felt a light breeze, and a strong hand clamped down suddenly over his mouth. A strong arm snaked across his chest to hold him still.
Neb felt an instant of panic when he could not see the figure that now kept him from speaking or struggling. He felt the hot breath of a mouth against his ear and heard the muffled but familiar voice.
“I followed them to you,” Renard whispered. “You’ve been impossible to get close to until now.”
Neb stifled a sob at the sound of the Waste guide’s voice and tried not to cry. Relief flooded him, and he felt his body trembling from it.
Renard’s hand stayed firm over his mouth. “Listen well, lad,” he said. “They’ll not kill you until they have what they want from you. I’m no match for them on my own, and I’m not sure the wolf trick will work more than once. Stay alive. I will be back for you.” He paused, and Neb felt another hand giving a reassuring squeeze to his shoulder. “I will be back for you,” Renard said again.
The hand loosened over his mouth, and Neb felt terror racing through him.
Don’t leave me.
He wanted to shout the words, to shriek them, but instead, he swallowed against the fear. He’d watched a small number of blood-magicked scouts cut easily through a room of armed men at Rudolfo’s Firstborn Feast. He quickly ciphered the odds and knew that Renard-a far more savvy scout and soldier than Neb-was right. He’d most likely used the urine of a female kin-wolf in heat to draw down a handful of males, but they would be no match for the four women who held him. Renard would not fare much better on his own.
Petronus rides for you. Once more, his father had spoken from his grave in Windwir. As the hand left his mouth and the arm lifted from his chest, Neb swallowed and formed words that he hoped Renard could hear within the raw rasp that his voice had become from days of screaming. “Petronus rides for me,” he croaked.
If Renard heard, he did not answer. Already, there was yelping and yowling as the defeated wolves realized their mistake and fled the knives of Neb’s captors.
Neb tried to will the trembling from his body, tried to take hold of the sobs that threatened him with a storm of tears.
He failed, but when he wept now, it was from the sure knowledge that he wasn’t alone. He simply had to hang on, to keep averting his inner eye and inner ear from the mechoservitors at their work and the song that compelled them.
Neb closed his eyes again, and the next time he awoke, it was beneath the knife.
But this time, Nebios Homeseeker did not scream.
Charles
They rode the last two leagues in somber silence, Rudolfo and Isaak side by side in the lead and Charles behind them. They left their horses at the opening of the canyon, handing the reins over to scouts freshly recovered from their magicks and dressed in robes that matched the Androfrancine and his metal son.
I am too old for this, Charles thought. But it was something he’d thought often since that day his apprentice had drugged him and spirited him out of Windwir. Before his secret imprisonment by Sethbert and later, his nephew Erlund, he’d not considered himself especially old.
Perhaps losing everyone and everything you love in a span of hours changes one’s perspective on time, he thought.
Rudolfo led them forward over freshly salted ice until the canyon walls narrowed and the downward slope was sealed away from the white sky as the base of the Dragon’s Spine swallowed them.
When they reached the cave, it was crowded with men and buzzing with activity. A wooden frame had been set up over and around a large circular hole in the floor, and a system of pulleys had been rigged to move equipment in and out of the ground. Tables and chairs were strewn around the cavern, and men sat at some of them going over crudely sketched maps. Even as they stood, men started climbing from the well, ducking beneath the frame as they scrambled over the edge. They were followed at last by a mechoservitor-Number Eight, Charles thought-and a heavyset man with thick, curly hair, his face and hands black with grime. The man approached them.
“Lord Rudolfo,” he said, inclining his head.
Rudolfo returned his nod. “Turik, how goes our exploration?”
“We’ve mapped extensive tunnels and chambers six leagues south and east. The western passages have been more difficult-a lot of debris and water-but we’re making headway.”
Rudolfo turned to Charles and Isaak. “This is Turik, chief engineer of our operation here. He’s spent most of his life underground in our mines in Friendslip.” He offered a grim smile. “Who’d have thought that for two millennia we’ve had a Whymer Maze beneath us.” He looked back to his engineer. “This is Brother Charles, formerly arch-engineer of the Androfrancine Office of Mechanical Science and Technology and now attached to the new library. And Isaak, of course.”
The man studied the two of them. “I received your message, Lord, and hoped to speak with you about it. I don’t think it is prudent for-”
Rudolfo raised a hand and interrupted him. “It is not prudent. But neither will I prevent them. Isaak is most insistent about his ability to find their destination. I want your men to escort them as far west as you have mapped. but no farther.” Rudolfo looked at Isaak, and Charles saw concern in the Gypsy King’s eyes. “From that point, they are on their own.”
On our own. It did not appeal to him, traveling underground passages into unfamiliar territories. But Isaak would go either with or without him, and the same curiosity that had driven him into engineering in the first place so many years ago drove him now. Something had happened to his mechoservitors. He had resisted Introspect’s order to send them alone and unsupervised into the Churning Wastes on the Sanctorum Lux project, but in the end, Holy Unction compelled his compliance. He had trained them to maintain themselves, had scripted them each for scheduled visits to the Keeper’s Gate for a clandestine escort to his offices in Windwir for routine checkups. And something had happened. Somehow they had stumbled across the data coded into that song and had created a new script for themselves based upon it.
And it changed them. As it was now changing Isaak.
Isaak spoke, drawing Charles back to the present moment. “I am confident of my direction.” He reached into the leather satchel he carried over his shoulder and drew out the book that the mechoservitor had given him. “There are rudimentary maps ciphered into the text of this book.” He extended it to Rudolfo. “The mechoservitors attached to your operation should be able to decipher at least some of them. When they are finished, the book should be destroyed.”
Charles felt his own eyebrows rise. Rudolfo raised his as well, a hand moving instinctively to his beard. “You would destroy a book?” the Gypsy King asked.
Isaak nodded. “I would destroy this book.”
Charles saw the question on Rudolfo’s face but asked it first. “Why?”
Isaak blinked, his eye shutters clicking. “Enemies of the light beset us. They must not be permitted to prevail.” He paused, his body shaking slightly as his bellows wheezed. Charles saw water at the lower corners of his eyes, where he’d installed the tear ducts as per Rufello’s Book of Specifications. “My analysis of your physiological and verbal cues indicates that you are displeased with me
, Lord. It was never my intention to-”
Rudolfo raised his hand again. “Isaak,” he said. His voice was low, and Charles thought for a moment that he might’ve heard it crack with emotion. “I am not displeased with you. I am displeased with this outcome and concerned by your decision.” He waited a moment. “You understand some of my concerns, I think. Those that I have discussed with you.”
Isaak nodded. “I will guard it, Lord. I swear. And the library will function adequately without my presence. I have reproduced from my memory scrolls all appropriate holdings contained therein and have left them with Mechoservitor Number One.”
All appropriate holdings. Charles had not seen the scrolls but felt confident that all matters regarding the spell and the dream had been carefully expunged from the scripts Isaak had left behind.
“But there is another concern,” Rudolfo said, “that I have not discussed with you.”
Isaak cocked his head, and Charles was struck yet again at how human his creation seemed. No, he realized, not seemed. Was. And becoming more so. “What concern is that, Lord Rudolfo?”
Charles watched the hardness soften in Rudolfo’s eyes and watched the line of his jaw relax as the Gypsy King stepped closer. Isaak towered above the shorter man. Stretching himself to full height, Rudolfo embraced the metal man. “That I will miss my friend until he comes home to me.”
For a moment-just a moment-the arch-engineer thought there were tears in the man’s eyes. There was no mistaking Isaak’s tears.
And when he was partway down the ladder, wrapped in the warmth of an unexpected wind that rose from beneath them, Charles discovered his own tears.
Blinking them away, he followed his dreaming son into the Beneath Places and wondered what they would find there.
Chapter 16
Frannie
I can’t remember once in my life ever hating that it was the weekend. But this weekend was hell. There were nightmares about alien body snatchers and convicts with hooks for hands. There were dreams about Luc and Gabe that I blush just thinking about. And twice I was sure I saw a black ’68 Shelby drive past my house.
Belias, Avaira, me, we’re all from.
And all day today at school I’ve felt like I was on some kind of possessed seesaw, up and down with Gabe and Luc. But after last-period government, I waste no time grabbing Luc’s arm and dragging him to the parking lot. We climb into his car, and, as soon as the doors are closed, his lips are burning into mine. It feels amazing, so it’s really hard to push him away.
“Tell me,” I say into his lips.
“What?” he says into mine.
I force myself to push back from him. “What you were going to say Friday-in my room-before my mom showed up.”
He reaches for me. “I don’t remember.”
I push back harder. “Belias, Avaira, me, we’re all from. ” I say to jog his memory.
For a second, his face pinches in a wince. “Later.”
“Now.”
His eyes grow hard, like black obsidian. “It’s nothing.”
“It didn’t seem like nothing Friday.”
He leans back in his seat, closes his eyes, and blows out a sigh. “You really don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I really do.”
He pulls his head off the headrest and looks at me with tortured eyes. “I’ve done some pretty awful things.”
I feel my gut knot. “So who hasn’t?”
“I mean it, Frannie.”
But all I can think is that there’s nothing he could have done that’s even close to what I have. And suddenly my throat is closing and my chest is tightening. And there’s no air in the car. I push the door open and sort of stagger out onto the pavement.
Luc is there in a heartbeat. He pulls me to him, keeping me from falling over. “Frannie, what’s wrong?”
Secrets.
I lean into him for a long time, gasping for air, then shove him away. I hate that he’s here, seeing this. And I hate more that he thinks I need his help.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
I can tell he doesn’t believe me, and I don’t care. But when he wraps his arms back around me, I let him. He sits me back on the seat of the car as my breathing eases.
“Sorry,” I say without looking at him.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” I spin my legs into the car and grab the door handle. “Let’s go.”
He steps back and I close the door.
He’s right. I don’t really want to know his secrets. The ones I already have are enough.
Our bodies move together to the pounding rhythm of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.” As hard as it is, I push Luc’s burning body away from mine and sit up on his big black bed, working to catch my breath. “I don’t think Mr. Snyder is gonna accept ‘we were too busy messing around’ as an excuse for this outline not being done.”
Luc grabs my hips and pulls me back down next to him. “We could try ‘my dog ate it,’ ” he says hopefully, wrapping his arms around me again. I glower at him for a second before he groans and says, “How fast can we get this thing done?”
I slide up and prop myself against a stack of pillows on the headboard. “We only have the last few questions. It should go pretty quick.”
He gets his composition book off the floor and sits against the headboard next to me, but he’s not writing. He’s staring at me. “You’re going to have to put your shirt on, or I’m not going to be able to concentrate on this,” he says after a minute. “That red bra is way too hot. I didn’t think the pope let good Catholic girls wear red bras.”
“I’m not a good Catholic girl, remember? I got thrown out of Catholic school.”
“I remember,” he says, and his smile makes my heart skip.
As Depeche Mode urges me to “reach out and touch faith,” I trace the coil of the black serpent tattooed around his upper arm and ogle his bare chest.
“Okay, so. Steinbeck.,” I say to distract myself from that smile-and that body. I draw a deep breath and pull my shirt on over my head. Looking down at Mr. Snyder’s handout, I read, “What is he saying about the character of man?”
“That anyone can justify anything, no matter how wrong.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Really? ’Cause I didn’t get that. I’m thinking his major upshot is that circumstances dictate actions.”
“Same thing.”
“Not really. Think about it. All through the book, Tom does things. makes choices based on what he and his family need at that moment. It’s not like he just wakes up one day and says, ‘Gee, I think I’ll go kill somebody today.’ ”
“Okay, but then he does kill someone and goes on the run, where he’s not helping his family because he can’t work, and he may end up hurting them if they get caught helping him. So you can’t say he only does things for the good of his family. People do things, and they wrap those choices in all kinds of noble garb, but in the end it’s all self-serving.”
I put the handout down. “Wow. so people are all just lying, scheming, self-serving shitbags?”
“Yep, pretty much.”
“With no redeeming qualities whatsoever?”
“Sounds about right.”
“That’s sad,” I say, shaking my head.
“Sad, but true.”
“Okay, so what about Rose of Sharon at the end? She loses her baby but then breast-feeds a starving man. What’s self-serving about that?”
He looks at me for a minute then smiles. “Sorry, you lost me at ‘breast,’ ” he says, glancing at mine.
I elbow him. “You’re such a pig.”
He grins. “I’m not a pig, I’m a guy-which, now that I think about it, is pretty much the same thing. Point taken.”
“I bet your heart is coal. It’s no wonder you see the world through Hell’s glasses,” I say. Opening my composition book, I flip to the page headed “Steinbeck, wrap-up essay outline, Frannie and Luc” and write my last few bullet points. When I’m done I hand it to Lu
c and watch his face screw into a scowl.
“Well, your glasses are rose-colored, because this list is incredibly naive.”
“Just ’cause I don’t choose to believe that everyone’s evil doesn’t make me naive.”
“Yes it does, but that’s all the better for me. So where were we?” he says with a grin. He throws the composition book on the floor and eases my shirt over my head, staring at my red bra.
“I’ll show you naive,” I say.
His eyes flash and I swear he stops breathing when I smile my own wicked smile and reach behind my back to unhook my bra, tossing it to the floor on top of my shirt. I roll in next to him on the bed and feel my skin melt into his. Luc kisses my neck and my ear, his hot breath pebbling my skin with goose bumps.
“Mmm, you’re beautiful,” he whispers in my ear. I shudder as a massive rush rolls through me. So is he.
My whole body is a live wire. I’m absolutely buzzing, every nerve ending on overload. With all the others, there was never any question that I was going to stop. I’ve never been ready. But none of them have ever made me feel like Luc does. Everything about him is wrong, but nothing has ever felt so right. The way I can’t get him out of my head and my heart only feels full when we’re together, how he makes everything feel new and exciting, the way I can picture myself with him-telling him everything.
He kisses me deeper as a tear slips from the corner of my eye. I feel like I’m suffocating, but I can’t push him away. I want him closer.
Luc
All I can feel is her body next to mine. All there is is her body next to mine. The rest of the universe, Heaven and Hell included, has disintegrated into nothingness. By all that is unholy, I’m going to have her for all eternity. I won’t stop until she’s mine. in the Abyss. where she doesn’t belong.
I push the thought away and focus on Frannie. Her eyes are closed and she’s pressing into me, kissing me. I feel her hands on me-all over me. “Don’t stop,” she whispers hot in my ear, but she has no idea what she’s asking. Because, despite what she thinks, she is naive. I know what lurks in the hearts of man and in my own brimstone heart.