I shrugged. Points against me in the invisible tally Yael was keeping, but I didn’t have a clever story to cover my injuries. I was too tired to bother with deception, and my throat was too sore to make excess conversation. The buzzing of what might have been a fever flitted in and out of existence in my brain stem, sending occasional chills down my spine.
“Fine. Be that way.” Yael shrugged. She rubbed her hands together for warmth, which was lacking as the clouds concealed the sun. “You said you wanted to show me something relevant to our investigation. What is it?”
“Not what. Who. Someone I want you to meet.”
Yael took a pair of gloves from an interior pocket on the windbreaker. I held the silver gate open for her on the way out to Leng Street.
“Who, then?”
“You need to meet her for yourself. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Yael’s eyes narrowed and she studied me through the mist of her exhalation.
“Her?”
“Yeah. That an issue?”
“In a sense.” She laughed and flexed her fingers within their wool confines. “You seem to have girl problems, Mr. Tauschen.”
“Would you please call me Preston? The way you say my last name makes it sound like a joke.”
“Isn’t it?”
Dunwich trotted past me to coil around his mistress’s ankles, moving with the weightless silence that is a birthright of the feline race.
“No. Deadly serious.”
Yael smiled.
“Sumire was right.”
I was having trouble following her tangents. The girl was more frustrating in a good mood.
“About what?”
“You are funny,” Yael said, with an approving nod. “You try too hard, though.”
For a modest girl, she had me rattled, all right.
“Better than not trying.” I headed down the hill, motioning her to follow. “We should get going. This might take a while.”
Yael had to scramble to keep up, thanks to the difference between our strides.
“Where are we going, Preston?”
I didn’t like the way she said my first name, either, but at least she didn’t sound as if she was trying not to laugh.
“She was somewhere in Sarnath last I heard, down by the factories. That was a couple of months ago, but we have to start somewhere.”
“Why aren’t we going to the train station?”
There was suspicion behind the question, but it wasn’t acute. I did my best to step lightly, in a conversational sense.
“It’s not that long of a walk, and there are a couple other places I want to look. They aren’t very likely, but we should take them off the list.” Yael found the answer wanting, so I decided to employ the truth. “I also wanted to stop by the convenience store. I need caffeine.”
Yael seemed to have things on her mind, so we walked down Leng Street in silence, listening to the dissonant songs of the wind worming through fissures in the concrete and broken windows.
I considered my options. Coffee would have been helpful, but I purged our kitchen of anything that could cut, grate, blend, or heat water several months ago, after a series of incidents. That pretty much made me Elijah’s bitch, but it beat having a pot of boiling water dumped on my chest while I slept.
The parking lot around the convenience store was deserted. I have never seen a car parked there, as none of the residents of the Estates own a car, to the best of my knowledge, and I have never encountered a customer who wasn’t also one of my neighbors. I wasn’t sure how the place stayed in business, Sumire and April’s love for ice cream bars notwithstanding. It took a titanic effort to force the door open.
Elijah’s face fell when he saw me, but brightened as Yael followed me inside.
“Good morning, Elijah!” Yael said, with a demure bob of her head. “How are you?”
“Could be worse, Yael. What brings you here?”
I poured myself a cup of the surprisingly palatable but scorching hot coffee. I listened to Yael gossip about Carter affairs, and commiserate over the unfortunate Sumire, while I picked out an energy bar and a bag of trail mix, neither of which I like.
“That’s terrible!” Elijah looked mortified, and also a bit like he hadn’t slept recently. “It does remind me of a story that I heard, though, from a recent arrival to the Nameless City…”
“Oh, good.” I put the snacks and the coffee on the counter. “Another story.”
“Please be quiet.” Yael gave me a cold look. “Do continue, Elijah.”
“According to legend, a doom has always hung over this city,” Elijah proclaimed, relishing every word. Weirdo. “Before the ocean receded to the expose the city in sea, before the first human inhabitants, the Nameless City was lost.”
“Okay,” I muttered. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Both of them glared.
“What?” I snarled defensively. “How can you have a city with no people?”
Their reaction implied that this was a very foolish question indeed. Elijah laughed, while Yael shook her head, as if saddened by my intellectual weakness.
“The Empty District, and the Unknown Kadath Estates within it, is particularly forsaken,” Elijah explained, studying me with watery brown eyes that seemed decades older than the man himself did. “Even the gods have forgotten it.”
“I think you mean God,” Yael said brightly. “And I doubt that very much.”
Elijah grinned broadly as if Yael had told him a joke.
“Unknown? I live there,” I grumbled, thoroughly puzzled. “The Estates are hardly unknown.”
“Are you certain?”
He and Yael exchanged a knowing look. I was getting real tired of not being in on whatever everybody else was in on.
“Pretty damn certain, yeah. I mean, we get mail.”
“Language, Preston,” Yael snapped. She glared in my direction, then returned her attention to the clerk, who still made no move to scan my purchases. “Ignore him, Elijah. Please finish your story.”
Elijah gave me a victorious sneer before continuing.
“As I mentioned, this story dates from the earliest days of the Nameless City. In those days, the moon was not so close, and the Old Ones were still buried by the sea. The night was shorter, and there were more stars.”
I sighed loudly, but everyone ignored me.
“Three sisters lived in the city at this time. They were remarkable from the time they were children, but each was renowned for a particular attribute – the eldest, for her penetrating wisdom and foresight; the middle for her beauty and cunning, and the youngest for her wit and…” Elijah hesitated, then licked his lips and glanced at Yael nervously, as if reluctant to finish his sentence. “…prowess in the bedroom.”
Yael winced. I smirked.
“Eventually, the house they shared became too small for their ambitions. The fighting between them grew worse, and their hearts hardened toward each other. In particular, the youngest and the eldest came to despise one another, the elder envying the youth of the younger, and the younger desirous of the elder’s secrets. One Friday night, during the evening meal they had all shared for too many years to count, words between the sisters became particularly harsh. Then, words were not harsh enough, and the conflict became physical. The middle sister pleaded with them to stop their madness, to no avail. Before that morning, each of the sisters had left their cottage in the Enchanted Forest, to take up residence in different parts of the Nameless City.”
Elijah’s fairy tales bored me, but Yael was captivated, as if all of this came as a revelation. Yael wasn’t as practical as I thought if she went for the Gothic romanticism of Elijah’s parables.
“The eldest went to Sarnath, and there she built a sanitarium, with high walls and extensive grounds planted with flamboyant and bizarre plants that no one could recall ever seeing elsewhere. The guests arrived swathed in robes and scarves, their faces hidden but the bizarre shape of their bodies obvious e
ven under layers of cloth. She never emerged again from the sanitarium. According to one rumor, she remains there to this day, sequestered in a concealed room deep within the bewildering halls and corridors, kept alive by strange machines brought by the black-sailed ships that come from the moon. According to another, the sanitarium has only her body, as the younger sister took her head as a prize after mounting an attack on the sanitarium.”
I decided to reclaim my coffee before it went entirely cold. Elijah still hadn’t made a move to ring me up, his eyes far away, as consumed by the story as Yael.
“The youngest went to Iram, and lived in a palace beside the pillars, bounded by marble walls and lush gardens. There she was visited by the Lithurge, who live and die in the course of a single night; the Thake, who live on the other side of mirrors; and the veiled and turbaned travelers who navigate the black-sailed ships. Some say that she, too, was never seen again, but that her voice could be heard regularly at night, crying out in an unknown and unintelligible language. When the moon is swollen and close, other claim that she joins the Toads in hunting stray cats across the Nameless City, daring to hound them to the very borders of Ulthar. In some stories, she commands the legions of the Drowned Empress. In others, she carries the severed head of her elder sister like a lamp, the skull hollowed and a candle placed inside, illuminating her aged skin like weathered parchment.”
“Ugh.” Yael made a face. “That’s gross.”
“These legends tend to be rather crude,” Elijah said, by way of apology, scanning my food and then manually pounding in the price of my coffee. “The Nameless City’s history is replete with brutality.”
“It’s present, as well,” I said, forking over exact change, which seemed to annoy Elijah. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stabbed since I came here.”
“I don’t think you get to complain too much when your companion is doing the stabbing,” Yael reminded me pertly. “What about the middle sister?”
A shadow flitted across Elijah’s face.
“She remains,” he said, something shifting behind his eyes. “Remind me on another day, and I will tell you of her mysteries.”
“Yeah,” I said, nudging Yael’s shoulder. “We should get going, anyway.”
Yael was studying Elijah closely, which seemed to make him uncomfortable. I didn’t blame him – the girl was intense.
“Okay.” She frowned, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her windbreaker. “Let’s talk again soon.”
“Of course,” Elijah said, suddenly very involved with something on the other side of the counter. “Until then.”
The sun was lost behind a layer of bright mist. Ashen clouds choked the horizon, and the cold air made my sinuses ache. My coffee tasted like nothing in particular in my burned mouth. We walked on opposite sides of the sidewalk, me against the buildings, while she followed the curb. It was a bit of a walk to Sarnath, so I racked my brain for a topic.
“Kid tells some crazy stories,” I said, with a friendly grin. “Eli, I mean. Do you think he makes that stuff up?”
Yael looked at me, first in surprise, gradually mutating into a superior sort of pity.
“Oh, Preston,” she said, with a rueful smile. “You are impossibly dense.”
***
Nothing on the banks of the Skai, nothing underneath the pedestrian bridge to Ulthar. Not that I expected anything, given the temperature, but it didn’t hurt to look.
Not unless I found her, that was.
We cut across the fringe of Ulthar, the shortest way to Sarnath. We didn’t even make it off the bridge before the cats spotted us, and we picked up a couple less than discrete tails within a block or two. The traffic was sparse, due to the cold, but there were still more cats on the icy streets than people. Ulthar was the only place in the city that I was sure I wouldn’t find her.
She hates cats.
I half-wondered if Dunwich would peel off at that point, to find that mangy stray, Snowball, and report in or whatever, but the former stray showed no inclination to be anywhere but near his mistress’s feet. He exchanged looks with some of the cats we passed, which appeared to me to be no more than a casual acknowledgement. The affairs of cats are beyond those of men, however, so I had to assume that whatever message was required had been sent.
If Holly is to be believed – a tall order – then Snowball has his grubby little paws in just about every pie in the Nameless City. Unsanitary expression intended.
“Dunwich is pretty smart,” I remarked. “He from Ulthar?”
Yael nodded.
“Yes.” She bent to stroke his coat. “Lord Snowball placed him under my care not long after my arrival in the Nameless City. He is young, but valiant – the youngest, in fact, to become a Hunter-Beneath-the-Moon.”
That shut me up.
“It’s an order, among the Cats of Ulthar,” Yael explained, taking pity on me. “Think of it as special forces, perhaps, or a sort of knight errant.”
“I see.” I kept my distaste out of my voice and facial expression, but it took effort. “You’re a believer in the whole “Kingdom of Talking Cats” thing, then? I suppose that Holly told you about Ulthar?”
Yael shook her head and gave me a condescending look.
“Do cats refuse to speak with you, Preston?”
“Well, ah...actually, I can’t say that.” I felt the ghost of a headache-past, remembering the drugged evening when I had encountered the reputed Lord of Ulthar, Snowball, somewhere on the streets of the Nameless City. “There was this one time...”
Yael waited for me to continue. It was perhaps the first time I had truly caught her interest, but I wasn’t in a sharing mood.
“It’s hard to put much credence in it,” I said, shaking my head to dispel bad memories. “I was on drugs.”
“Oh.” Yael looked disappointed. “That’s a bad habit, Mr. Tauschen.”
“There you go again,” I complained, making the right turn on Providence Avenue that would take us to the chimneys and foundries of Sarnath. Already, the air smelled of burnt sulfur and coal smoke. “Why won’t you just call me Preston?”
“I hoped it might serve as a reminder not to tell me any stories. I know what you are.”
I fought down the temptation to drag her down one of the narrow alleys we passed, and provide her with a thorough education on exactly what I was. The cuts around my eye tingled, and I felt pin and needle chills that presage a fever.
“Not likely.” I produced a contemptuous laugh. “If it makes you feel better to think that, though...”
Yael reached up to adjust her hair, and her sweater lifted to reveal the canisters of the gasmask hanging from her belt. According to April, she carried it with her everywhere. I got the feeling I wasn’t the only one who came prepared for the worst. In another context, I might have liked Yael Kaufman.
“You aren’t as mysterious as you think.” Yael trotted along cheerfully beside me, kicking a crushed can along the sidewalk ahead of us. From the way she manipulated the crude aluminum disc, I got the feeling she had played some soccer. “The Cats of Ulthar see nearly everything that happens in the Nameless City, and beyond. Your arrival was noted, as was my own. The Cats of Ulthar watch everyone, and I am their friend and ally. Dunwich whispers secrets across my pillow every night, as I fall asleep.”
“Is that so?” My tone and body language were intended to convey doubt, and an adult sort of superiority to these notions. “What secrets have they told you about me?”
Yael met my gaze, her eyes confident and inexplicably sad.
“Let me think.” I expected evasion, or a bluff. She put a finger to her glossy lips in thought. “You were a doctor, once, weren’t you?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, tasted copper and raw meat.
“Not true.”
“Could be. I heard you were a doctor, though – and not just any doctor. Rumor is you were April’s doctor, back at some weird institution, a secure medical facility.”
“Not an institution,” I said, with a shake of my head. “The Institute. I wasn’t a doctor, but I worked there.”
“Different job, hmm?” Yael shrugged. “Same reason for leaving, though, I’d imagine.”
My hands twitched in my pockets.
“What’s that?”
Against all expectation, she blushed, looking down at the toes of her patterned plastic rain boots.
“You had an inappropriate relationship with a patient.” Yael frowned. “I guess that’s actually ongoing, now that I think about it.”
“That’s just so...look, Yael – April and I aren’t like that.”
“Oh, I know. She told me.”
“I...see. Good.”
“That’s not all she told me.”
I sighed and ran my hands through my hair. It was greasy, because I had run out of shampoo the day before, and since forgot to buy a new bottle.
“No one can keep their mouth shut, can they?” I intended my smile to be intimidating. “What else have you heard about me, Yael?”
“I think I’ll keep the rest to myself, if it’s all the same to you.”
It wasn’t. I nodded anyway.
“One thing I will say,” Yael continued, subtly judging the distance between us. “You’re armed, all of the time. It’s in your right pocket now, but you switch that sometimes. Are you ambidextrous, Preston?”
The sound of my footsteps in my ears was painfully loud. My mouth opened and closed soundlessly, like a goldfish.
“Doesn’t matter.” Yael shrugged and smiled at Dunwich, who ran along the retaining wall beside us. “As long as you know that I know.”
I’m careful. April tailored my pants to allow for improved concealment. No one ever noticed, not even back at the Institute, when I first swiped one off a tray, during exploratory surgery on one of the growths littering April’s frontal lobe. I carried it through security checkpoints and searches, for weeks, without none the wiser.
“How?”
The question itself was a sort of admission, but that was unavoidable. Yael had me at seemingly permanent disadvantage.
“I have some tricks of my own, Preston.”
The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2) Page 7