After a long while of peering at the lad intently, Huáng said, ‘For the time being, I will take him under my protection and he will be a companion of the Rumi. We have seen Madame Livia’s affinity for him. Is this acceptable?’
‘And when we are gone?’ I asked. ‘What will happen to the boy?’
Huáng considered the question. After a pause, he said, ‘I cannot tell what native abilities or talents the boy might possess, other than that of angering village women. Let us have our company, and us his, and decide together. Possibly, he could make a page for you, Secundus, or become a Praetorian, Mister Shadow.’
‘Or find some sort of employ with you, Sun Huáng. We two saved him. I won’t allow him to be cast aside.’ These strange maternal instincts had been stirred in me.
‘Yes. Let us see what abilities and Qi he possesses.’
‘Curious thing, this Qi,’ said Tenebrae, the issue of the boy settled. ‘We seem to encounter it quite a bit in conversation without having a full understanding of it. Is there some book or treatise … a pamphlet even … that has more information on it in the written language of Latinum?’
Huáng nodded. ‘While Min was in Rume, I instructed her to transcribe the—’ His brow furrowed and a lock of white hair fell. He brushed it back. ‘The title would be, roughly, ‘A History of Kithai.’ It was presented to Tamberlaine as a gift, with the double-headed concubine. It had a large section on Qi.’
‘I don’t imagine there’s any copies, then,’ Secundus said, mulling over a silver goblet of spiced white wine. He puckered his mouth as he sipped. ‘I will confer with my father via the Quotidian. It is possible we can have him – or one of his secretaries – give us the information regarding Qi on the Ides.’
‘I will instruct Min to provide another copy,’ Huáng said, frowning. ‘From her cloister.’
‘That would be wonderful,’ I said. A thought occurred to me. ‘The Qi. When we use these infernal devices … they take our Qi, is that correct?’
‘Your physical form of it. Your jing, if I’m not mistaken.’ He nodded his head. ‘I witnessed your Ruman Emperor Tamberlaine using one, once.’
‘And you said the Autumn Lords are “creatures of pure Qi”.’
Huáng nodded his snowy head.
‘And vorduluk, these ‘chiang-shih’ consume it?’
‘Yes.’
‘How are these things connected?’
He smiled. ‘Qi is life. There are hungry ghosts. There are hungry men. Mothers that eat their young. It is a monster of a world that we live in and we become monsters to survive,’ he said. It all came out in a rush, so his pronunciation was terrible and, now, as I write it, I’m filling in where Huáng flubbed our words and declensions. But the sentiment was obvious.
‘I am trying to understand, yet sometimes it still seems like magic to me,’ Tenebrae said. ‘All this talk of Qi.’
‘Shut up, Shadow,’ Carnelia said. ‘Sifu is talking.’
Huáng smiled at Tenebrae. ‘You are Ruman, and it would take many sheaf of days to get you to lower your practical nature and embrace the idea of Qi.’
The boy sat up and looked about, blinking. He had huge eyes, for a young man, and almost preternaturally fair skin. Huáng beckoned a serving woman and set her to washing his face and hands, cleaning the wound on the back of his head. Interrupting her work, I probed at it with my fingers, delicately, and though it seemed much less of a wound than it appeared when he received it. The skin was barely broken.
The boy stared at me with wide, open eyes and lightly placed his hands on my stomach. He said nothing, made no noise.
‘I will make sure the boy is well, and safe, Livia,’ Huáng said, softly. ‘There is no worse thing than to be alone in the world.’
I didn’t truly understand why he said that, but my heart clutched, and I thought of Fisk, so far away. I did something then I had not done before. Many times, I had seen Carnelia, Secundus, and Tenebrae bow to Sun Huáng when entering the armatura pitch, and he would respond in kind. I, however, being a Cornelian, and emissary of Rume, have always felt that it was a sign of submission to do so and at least one of our party should remain unbowed. Yet here was this man, this old man, full of knowledge and wisdom, and who in all appearances had remained honest and true to our mission and cause. I felt a great warmth for him then, and I know not if it was the inner currents of my jing or Qi or whatever in my body – or young Fiscelion’s – but, rising, I bowed to Sun Huáng with as much respect as I could.
He returned the bow.
Again, I acted on impulse. I took his hand in mine, I kissed it. It had the liver spots that many aged have – my grandmother Livia, whose name I bear, always spoke of them as mistake marks, as if each big one, her first husband, her affairs, her second son, were writ upon flesh. Yet, taking his hand, looking at it, feeling the texture of his skin, the strength beneath, at that moment I found him beautiful, this withered bit of lightning made flesh. At first he was tense – this, I think was one physical interaction he was wholly unprepared for – and then he relaxed and I drew his hand to me. I placed it on my stomach, where the boy’s hand had just been. He laughed, a soft breathy sound, and said words I did not understand. For a while we stood there together, him feeling my stomach twitch and convulse. Young Fiscelion popped him a good one right in the palm and Huáng’s eyes widened and he laughed, a merry, musical laugh. When he did that the years on him fell away.
When I released him he smiled at me and placed his hand again on my protruding belly and I did not make him remove it. For all the talk of Qi, and jing, he seemed to want to know the wellspring of lifeforce.
‘You are a delight,’ he said. ‘And hard as quarry stones.’
‘I am Ruman,’ said I.
‘And I am an August One of Kithai,’ he said, bowing to me, again.
‘The August One Who Confronts the Foreign Devils.’
‘Yes,’ he said, his face pained. ‘I am he.’
We returned to Jiang and settled back into our daily routine there. The boy is now accoutred if not like a little lord of Kithai, then a lord’s page, and he wanders Huáng’s manse as if in some dream, silent and unspeaking. Tomorrow or the next day, we will be taken before Tsing Huáng who is the August One Who Speaks for the Autumn Lords and if he deems us worthy, we will parlay with the rulers of this land and present the chest that Tamberlaine has instructed us to bear here.
I am near bloodless now, having refreshed the sanguine-ink slurry once already.
Know that I love you and miss you and
I remain,
Your loving wife Livia
TWENTY-FOUR
15 Kalends of Sextilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis
I was fixing to light out from New Damnation for Harbour Town, putting my hangover and the last month behind me, when I received the note. Written in a fine hand.
The Tempus Union sold your mule to Mister Mortuus Caccoups, a trader from Carthago Delenda Est. I give this to you because you seemed somewhat lonely when last we spoke and I thought you might miss your wife – Sincerely, A
A real card that Andrae was.
I didn’t know where Fisk was – his last letter mentioned Panem and Confluence and finally Harbour Town, so I decided to truck on to Carthago Delenda Est – the fancy name for Carthage, known to residents and neighbours as Fishstink – a minor little sea village not far west of Harbour Town on the shore of Gulf of Mageras. So I booked a passage on a steamer – took my share of the stretcher money from Fisk’s legate’s chest to tide me over – made sure there were none of the Tempus Union assholes on board and then headed down the Big Rill and from Encantata was able to buy passage with an old woman waggoneer who let me off in the general vicinity.
I found Bess in a stable not too far from the shore where the sound of the waves wasn’t enough to mask her hawing. Her coat was nappy and demeanour brisk, but she brayed when she saw me and I kissed her on the nose and rubbed her canescent cheeks until she tried to bite me and I tried
not to think about Andrae’s jibes.
Her owner didn’t want to sell, even with my orders from Cornelius – ‘A forgery!’ he cried – so I crushed one of his testicles with a knee-strike, stuffed a silver denarius into his pocket, managed not to kill his burly son with a knife (a fine piece of work, that, avoiding his vitals), and lit out expecting a pursuit. They must have thought better of it.
So it was not until the 3 Ides Geminus that I arrived in Harbour Town to look for Fisk. At the Collegium of Engineers, a studious looking young gentleman told me where I could find Samantha Decius, now chief engineer in charge of munitions. She’d set up shop at 32 Victrix Way.
Harbour Town was unlike most Ruman colony burgs in its layout because, like Passasuego and Hot Springs, it was first a Medieran settlement. It is said that the Medieran soul burns with all sorts of undeniable desires – for sex, for art, for poetry – and consequently, they’re absolute shit in the organization and execution of city planning. Rumans, on the other hand, think with their high-heads, not their low ones.
Harbour Town was a jumble of neighbourhoods, carious with alleys, riddled with thoroughfares that went nowhere and ended abruptly. But Victrix Way was in a warehouse district near the western piers, on the western side of where the Big Rill emptied into the Bay of Mageras, and it was there I took myself to find Sam.
There were Ruman legionnaires everywhere though none bothered me until I found number 32 – a massive stone building that might’ve been a warehouse except for the sturdy construction. It was even larger than the Passasuego engineer’s collegium. Two great, oxen-fed brutes guarded the front entrance with Hellfire carbines and pistols. Along the roof of the building, which was nondescript and bland – just as most Rumans like them – I could see sharp-shooters with the tell-tale silhouettes of rifles. I gave my name, presented my portfolio, and waited until one of the bully-boys escorted me to Samantha’s office.
I’ve seen enough engineer and summoner’s chambers to know that Samantha’s was an exception. While Sapientia’s was neat but overfull, Samantha’s was pristine and almost devoid of all clutter. It was a windowless chamber (as nearly all of the engineers’ chambers I’ve ever been in save Beleth’s were), lit by daemonlight, with bare stone walls. A worktable of rich stained wood, mahogany or some other dense tree, centred the room, surrounded by cushioned barrel-chairs. In the corner was a secretary’s desk, its parchment, quills and inkwells, wax tablets and styluses immaculately arranged, and the wall flanking the desk was covered entirely with neatly labelled storage cabinets and drawers.
Samantha herself sat at the table, a secretary near her, and they were discussing something in low tones when I entered behind the legionnaire, who positioned himself by the door as I approached her. Spying me, Samantha smiled, a big genuine smile of welcome, and stood. Once plump and ruddy cheeked and rather plain in the way that soft men and women can be, she now showed the toll of her new elevation in the engineering world at the order of Cornelius, and the stresses and workload that accompanied it. She had lost weight, copious amounts of it, but instead of her becoming some ingénue, her skin was loose and waxy, her teeth yellow, her hair thin and brittle, and she was hollow eyed.
‘Shoe!’ she said, coming around the table to embrace me. In the past, I would’ve been buried in her big, matronly bosom, but now there were hard angles and ribs there. Her clothes – dungarees, an engineer’s apron with deep pockets filled with awls and quills and styluses and whatever other tools the engineers used in the pursuit of their craft poking me in the sternum, a fine cotton tunic tucked into pants – hung loosely on her frame. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Shoe,’ she said with a hurt expression.
‘Sam …’
She shook her head. ‘Yes, I look atrocious.’ She held up a long, calloused hand. She had always been a strong woman, of personality and physique, and her blunt, craftsman’s hands and bright, supremely intelligent eyes were still the same. ‘Spare me. I have no time for worry that I am ill. I am not. I am but sleepless and busy and no advice can change that.’
‘Do you like chicken?’ I asked.
She seemed taken aback by the question. ‘I guess so.’
‘I will fry some for you. You need to make the acquaintance of fried yardbird. It’ll sort a multitude of problems for you.’
‘Yardbird.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Like what problems?’
‘You ain’t eating enough, that’s for sure, and once you eat a half-a-bird, you’ll go right to sleep, which I imagine you’ll sorely need.’
‘Chicken,’ she said, incredulous. A woman who, now that Beleth had turned traitor, was in charge of the munitions production of the western front of Occidentalia in the Hardscrabble Territories. But more than that, this was a woman who dealt with the raw, undirected forces of the infernal itself on a daily basis.
And I spoke to her of yardbirds.
‘They’ll stick in the yard as long as they know they’ll be fed,’ I said, moving my head in the pecking manner of a rooster or a hen at their feed.
Sam laughed. ‘You can always surprise me, Shoestring,’ she said.
‘You’re the one with the big surprises, Sam. Most of ’em doozies.’
‘Come. Wacher?’ Sam turned toward the secretary, a lovely blonde girl in her teens but, judging by the amount of doodads and writing utensils in her apron and the intelligent questions in her eyes, a good companion for Samantha. ‘Will you please fetch us something to drink and eat?’
Wacher nodded and scuttled out and we settled down. She returned swiftly with cheeses and cured meats and smoked fish and sliced pleb loaves and a glass pitcher of wine as dark as coagulated blood and a matching pitcher of water as clear as air. Sam poured merely a finger of wine and watered it until it was pointless to drink. I poured wine, picked up the water pitcher, tapped it against my glass and replaced it. We drank.
‘You’re here for Fisk.’ A simple statement.
‘Yes, ma’am. He would be with a woman. Winfried. A fierce one, and grievous wounded at the loss of her husband and brother.’
‘I’ve met her. They came here nigh on a month back and left a message for you with me.’ She took a drink of her ‘wine’ and retrieved an envelope from her desk. It read on the front – SHOE. The wax seal of Fisk’s legatus badge was unbroken.
Nones of Geminus, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis
Shoe,
About time. We’ve taken lodging at a boarding house near the century garrison – you’ll know it by the razorback hog on its sign and the word Ingenuus below. If we are not there, I have left instructions with the widow Balvenus, the lady of the house, to welcome you to and allow you to bunk down with me. You can stable your mount at the garrison, it is but a hop, step, and jump away from the House Ingenuus.
Heard word of Beleth, or someone who sounds suspiciously like him, sniffing east around Dvergar. Our mutual friend Andrae has sent word that his agents confirm that Beleth’s interests have moved in that direction and, if you missed it after your recovery, much of the fifth and the third legions have mobilized and begun moving south where we are most vulnerable from attack by sea, since Mediera has blockaded the Gulf of Mageras.
Things move apace and I’m ready to have you back by my side, old friend.
Fiscelion
After reading, I thanked Sam, handed her the letter so that she might read it, and helped myself to the tray, making small sandwiches and washing them down with strong red wine.
‘What is Beleth up to? Fisk brought you up to speed, did he not? Of all people in the Territories, you know Beleth best.’
She nodded and looked concerned. ‘I am troubled by the marked vaettir you found on the plains. The body has gone bad, but I had an artist – Undreas Fesalian – make detailed drawings of the glyphs on the body.’
‘Sapientia said Beleth had a thing for possession.’
‘Indeed. He was not the strongest physical engineer, which is one of the reasons I was his assistant.’ She smiled again, weary, and it bare
ly touched her eyes. ‘But he was ridiculously talented in the manipulation of daemons. Sometimes I wondered …’
She paused, thinking. The way her eyes slid off me, looked at some far fixed distance away, through wall and stone – it was the look of someone who pondered a troublesome question over and over, like a glass-smith polishing a creation until the surface was unblemished and clear.
‘What?’ I said.
‘That he might have been—’
I caught the thread, tugged. ‘A daemon himself? That is an interesting thought.’
‘Not a daemon, but possibly infested with one. He spent years in Kithai studying. And when he returned, they say, he was different.’ She shook her head, dismissing the idea. ‘No. It’s preposterous. It would mean that all that time—’
Easy to dismiss such a heinous idea when it means the snake was in your trousers the whole time. It was an interesting idea, and something to be seriously considered.
In some ways, it was more terrifying to believe that Beleth might just be a human beast, a devil born of man.
She stood, went to the wall with the desk, opened one of the drawers there and removed a sheaf of parchment and returned to the table. She tossed them on the table in front of me. ‘Take a gander, Shoe. I’ve made some notes.’
I riffled through the drawings, all of an elongated torso. Had it been of anything else, I’d have thought that the artist had the proportions off.
Over the heart, a curious glyph that seemed to have concentric circles of words burrowing down into a smaller size into illegibility. On another sheet, I found a larger detail of the circular writing. It had an old familiar phrase, one I’d heard before in Beleth’s chambers when he bound the Crimson Man to Isabelle’s hand. The writing said in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni in the old debased tongue of Latinum and looped around on itself a few times then went on to say more indecipherable things. But I did see two words I recognized.
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