To catch up to Drager he would have to do a lot of thinking and thinking did not come easily to him. It kept him occupied all the way back to the fortress base. He would have run away with Pela right then and there but it would barely have bought them an hour. He needed more time than that. A ship leaving harbor, a pair of horses fleeing for the border – both these could be run down and stopped unless he had a day or more in hand. He wondered if Punka knew the mess he’d gotten him into.
****
Thom Drager took care not to slump or show any weakness after the soldier left. He could hold out that much longer. This man, Kengshee, or whatever was his real name – he wasn’t going to show him how much he needed it.
“Well, done, Mr. Drager.” Kengshee clapped him on the back. His eyes came up to Thom’s neckline. It was like being threatened by a garden dwarf, those gaily painted ornaments that half the houses in Carstelan had planted among their ferneries. Except Kengshee wasn’t as pretty, and he had little hair. “If he follows orders, he should be back late tomorrow or the next day. “I’ll be back to set up before that.”
He turned as if to leave then slid a hand into a belt pouch and withdrew a small box. Familiar scratching sounds came from inside.
Thom stared at the box, holding himself back from snatching it away.
“You’ll be wanting this?” The grin on Kengshee’s face was wide.
Nonchalance, he would have liked to show utter nonchalance. Thom licked his lips and cursed himself. “Yes.” His voice cracked.
“Remember, you must be prepared to leave immediately when we are finished with Samos. The trail will lead here. Come with us and live, or stay to be tortured by the Imperator’s enforcers. Here.” He tossed the box into the air and Thom caught it.
Before the front door had closed behind them he heard light footsteps running up the corridor. Leonie. Quickly he slipped the box into a pocket, then turned and half-knelt with his arms outstretched. “Hello!”
Leonie leaped into his arms. “Dada! Here, look. I’ve been drawing!”
“And, what is it?” With Leonie on his knee, he rotated the square of paper, squinting as if to better see it. “A ship? No? A hat? And this is the sun.” He swallowed down the bitter taste in his mouth.
“It’s a ship, of course, silly. Like the one we saw yesterday. It’s a present for you.”
“Oh, thank you, darling.” He kissed her on the cheek.
“Yes. Because you’re sick. Grace told me. I thought it might make you happy again.”
The woman had quietly walked up behind Leonie.
“Grace,” he said quietly.
She blanched. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to upset her. She asked...”
“No.” He held up his hand. “I understand. I understand.” His hand was shaking.
He held Leonie, smoothing her hair, over and over. The Need was back. “You go with Grace to the house. I’ll be there soon.”
“Sir, I’m not her nanny.” She rushed into her next words. “I’ll take her, sir. But this is all...beyond me. I must leave your employment, sir.” Her voice was firm yet sadness filled her eyes. “Those men, they frighten me. I don’t know what this is about but I will not stay. Sir.”
He nodded wearily. “Two more days. Just until then and then you may leave.” He rose to his feet.
“I don’t like them either, Dada.” Leonie screwed up her face.
“They won’t harm you.” The fear came upon him. That somehow he was wrong, that this would hurt his daughter. The Need was there too, gnawing at him, and to his shame, he couldn’t tell which was greater.
Once they left him alone, he held the drawing before his face, unseeing. A tear fell and snailed down the paper, across the blurred lines.
****
Afterward, when the fanfare was done – all the saluting and the parades – when the appointed visit to the Imperator’s Needle Master was over, Samos slipped from the fortress into the city. He found a quiet dead-end alley and leaned, quivering, against a cold stone wall.
Was he flesh and blood, or did something else now flow inside him?
He remembered the needles going in. Even through the haze induced by the poppy and willow bark, he had felt them burn as they sank into his flesh. They still seared him. No one had told him it would feel like this. Had anyone ever asked an Immolator how he felt? Each new needle had connected in some way to the others to form a net of flames. He was a burning man. But he was strong, he was fast, and cuts to his skin clotted and healed while watched. He knew this because they had tested him after he was needled.
And his heart beat as quickly as a bird’s, counting off the days of his life in hours.
He touched the left-hand needle of the pair that went in through his temples. It was fused to the bone and did not move. He ran his palm down his arm, feeling the metal bumps one-by-one. All were inserted deep with their golden heads flush to the skin. There were little blue tattoos marking where the rest of the needles might go, including the ones at the inner corner of each eye.
He had his first orders. Travel to the Winter Palace in the mountains to the north of Carstelan and report for duty. Two days before the Imperator was likely to leave to journey there. Two days before they figured out he wasn’t where he should be. Long enough.
He needed to find Pela. Her house was miles away, near the harbor.
He went up on his toes, bounced once, screwing the grit under the balls of his feet, and he ran.
His speed was fast enough to make people stop and stare. They scattered to either side when they saw what he was.
He already knew what he would find. He would be right, he knew this too.
As he ran, he thought. He couldn’t stop thinking. His mind whirred and dashed about like a bee gathering nectar. He thought about how since he’d been reborn as an Immolator he’d been right. Things clicked into place inside his head like so many jigsaw pieces. He could read the street signs and the signs on places of business as easily as a man stirred his soup. As easily as a man killed. He knew precisely what a sword did inside someone – cutting through muscles and tendons and pulsing blood vessels. Rending apart what the gods had made. The wrongness of this pulled at him.
This new thinking was a curse.
The wind warbled past his ears as he leaped over carts, past donkeys, through doorways. He snatched up a burnoose and donned it as he ran.
The first time he saw Pela, she had been helping her father repair a fishing net.
When she bent to unravel the net, her long black hair swung across her narrow shoulders and her waist swayed in that exquisite way. She hadn’t the figure of someone who worked hard for a living. Her curves were gentle and her eyes the translucent blue of clear water, and he had told her so. And her lips had been soft and welcoming that night.
Gathered around a bonfire on the beach, her clan had cooked their meal. He had fitted in as though he had known them since childhood. Her father, Tarlos, was strict yet garrulous and laughing always. The food was plain fish and sweet potatoes but delicious and filling, and his plate had been heaped high. Tarlos had let his daughter give Samos a piece of the vibrant jade that came from their homeland. Later that night Samos had carved it into a heart shape. He’d plaited together a lock of her black and his sand-blond hair then used the hair to fasten the jade piece to a leather thong. He’d hung the heart round his neck.
But this was now not then.
Love had been swept away by fear and lies.
Eyes wide with fright or awe, a boy jumped out of the way to let Samos pound past him.
Last time he’d seen her, there’d been a little swelling where Pela’s stomach was usually perfectly flat. Their child. Would it be a boy or a girl? He might never find out.
He slowed, trotting to a halt. Pela’s house was at the end of this street.
From the shadows of a harafe shop awning, with the hood of his burnoose pulled up, he watched the yard of her house. Tarlos was there talking to a yellow-haired man, Jussumo. On anothe
r day, when all had been peaceful, Jussumo had showed Samos how to do the nine knots that a Haplander fisherman needed to know.
Their words came clearly to his ears despite the distance and the background cacophony of shouting merchants and their customers.
“She’s gone, Tarlos! Gone. My boy says he saw some Sungese men in the street just before.”
The world lurched. Samos swayed on his feet, dizzy. He had been right.
Logic rained down like confetti inside his mind.
Kengshee was the man in charge and he would take no chances and leave no glimmer of a possibility that Samos could rescue Pela without her dying. Immolators, especially partial ones, had limits. If he did not turn up at all? If he did not try to rescue her? The result of that was less certain but Pela would probably still die.
“Listen to me!” Jussumo fell silent as Tarlos spoke, his voice flat and clear and yet brimming with anger. “Get us a tracking hound from Kerr. Then gather your weapons and meet me back here and we will find her. We will find her!”
Jussumo sprinted away.
Near Samos, under the shop awning, two men sat imbibing steaming cups of harafe and playing chathurangum, the ancient strategy game. They began to argue in a peaceable way. Two other men who stood behind their chairs did not react. The bodyguards of rich men, thought Samos. He watched them, half-listening, while in his mind he assembled and discarded plans for rescuing Pela.
“I have to leave now,” said the taller game player to the other, a shriveled, gray-haired man with a twitching nose, who reminded Samos of an elderly mouse. “I will win in ten moves no matter what you do. Concede!”
I know the rules to this game. But that was all. He couldn’t play. The thoughts in his mind locked into place like the intertwined threads of a tapestry, one by one, over and under and through, and...
He leaned over the table and swiftly moved pieces to the men’s astonishment. The bodyguards flinched and made to stop him but the old man waved them back.
“You’re wrong,” Samos said. “This will happen. Elephant takes castle in five moves. Then this can be done.” He let them take it in before putting the game back as it was.
“Oh,” said the tall man, mouth half-open. “You’re right, sir. Sorry old friend. I must concede instead.”
The old man nodded once then grinned in an evil way. Two of his front teeth projected over his lip. “Thank you, young man. I owe you a favor for that.”
Samos stared at nothing. Immolators did not think like this. Something odd had happened. There were two variables unaccounted for. One was the lack of imprinting to the Imperator’s commands, the other was the memory needle that Drager had inserted. He looked at the chathurangum board. He might miss this when he was deneedled. When he became stupid again.
He left a note to Tarlos with a street boy, writing it easily. How he had ever had trouble reading? He told the boy not to deliver it until two hours after nightfall. Time enough for him to achieve what he could. Pela would never forgive him if he got her father killed.
In the last of the daylight, he collected the things he needed and headed for the Monument to the Highest Gods. It would be a good, quiet place. On the way up the outer wall his fingers crushed and left impressions in the soft sandstone. Such power could be addictive.
At the top he rested, sitting among the guano and feathers on the broad ledge that went around the spire. He hugged his knees to his chest and wondered how you could be so close to being a god yourself and yet so close to despair.
A few more needles sliding in, a little more pain, and he would be a Full Immolator.
The wind slipped cool fingers through his hair, rearranging his curls. It harried a feather along the ledge until it flipped into the air and went spiraling earthward. He watched it fall. Yesterday he had been ecstatic at the prospect of marrying Pela and now he was wondering if they would die. The jade heart pendant that dangled on a thong from his neck gleamed in the last rays of light.
Orange leaked across the western horizon, between sea and sky. The day ended, perhaps so would his life.
C H A P T E R F I V E
Gheist Weapon – a trinketton weapon that uses ghost energy, ectoplasm, to kill – the ammunition is the compressed ectoplasm of trapped ghosts.
Normal guns cannot handle ectoplasm.
*****
Uncle had sent a late messenger, calling her into the office. The building should have been dark by then, with only the watchmen and cleaners about, instead it bustled with activity. There was only one contract that Heloise could think of that would make this a sensible exercise. Drager. And she was right.
This time he was standing with hands clasped behind his back, at the opening to the balcony. The last light of sunset glowed in the sky beyond him.
“Uncle?”
“Ah. Heloise. We have a possible escapee situation. Thom Drager promised to pay the first instalment tomorrow and yet there are men at his premises who have links to a ship moored in the harbor.” He turned to her. “One that is ready to sail.”
She nodded. Her skin prickled. This was it.
“I need you and a team to keep the clinic under surveillance and be ready to descend upon Drager and take the appropriate action.”
She nodded again. “Where’s the ship from? Where did he get the money to pay for passage?”
“Good questions. It’s a ship that’s gone through several owners.” He held up a finger. “Suspicious. Payment?” He shrugged. “Men like Drager generally have valuable items, artworks they can sell.” He blinked and took her hands in his. “You’re to stay back and command from outside the clinic when, or if, they go in. Sonja is second-in-command.”
“What?” She pulled her hands away. “Then I may as well not be there. Uncle...”
“Next time. Next time you can go in. This is a little unusual and Drager could be dangerous.”
“Oh. Drager seemed harmless enough.”
“Somm addicts are dangerous when they’re deprived of the drug. I doubt he’s still getting a regular supply. I’ll be informing the enforcers just in case.”
Enforcers meant this was indeed unusual. Uncle never called in the law. A cool breeze blew aside the flimsy lace curtains. A feather swirled in through the opening and settled at her feet.
“Very well. I’ll stay back.”
“One last thing. You’ll be picking up the girl from his house on the way.”
“No.” She blinked and felt her face redden. The word had come out almost before she could think.
“Yes. Or you’re out of a job, niece or no niece. She’s insurance. Violence is less likely to be necessary if you can put her in front of Drager’s nose. Got that?”
“Yes. Sorry, sir.”
****
The city below Samos crept into the twilight hours and the mosaic of its rooftops and gardens, all those reds and greens and blues, melted into shades of gray.
From here he could see from one horizon to the other. This monument was the tallest building in the city barring the palace of the Imperator. To the west was the harbor with the orange glow of sunset dribbling from the sky across the rippling sea. The ships were made toys, the buildings the houses of dolls, and the people so insignificant they might as well not have been there at all. Unless he concentrated. Then he saw the warm red pulse of their hearts against the cooling ground as if they were tiny, living jewels.
Around him and below him was the district of the principal gods. To the east ran a major road, straight through the traders’ district and on into the precinct of the practitioners of magience, among them the Needle Masters like Drager.
If he could deliver Drager and Kengshee, as well as solid evidence of their crimes to the Imperator, he had a chance of a pardon. But he needed them to confess.
Of course the simplest thing would be to give them what they wanted. His other self had wanted that but now...now he found he couldn’t stomach the idea of being a traitor. Besides, that opened up all sorts of possibilities
. The information on Immolator creation would be worth so much that mere human lives would be so much chaff on the wind. He’d wanted to be an ordinary human, to run away from it all with Pela. Instead he’d put her in terrible danger. All for his own selfish reasons.
No. If nothing else, he would try to rescue Pela, though it might cost him his own life.
He jammed his eyes shut and whispered a prayer so fervent it clawed lines across his heart.
You call me, Samos Goodkin? The voice breathed in echoing whispers.
He looked about, whipping his head from side to side.
I will help you if I can, since you pray to me twice and thrice.
Gossamer pieces detached from the stone around him, floating out in glowing specks to form the miasmic shape of a woman sitting beside him. A wreath of feathers and flower blossoms rested amongst her streaming locks.
“Who...” But he realized he knew who this was – Amora, the goddess of love. “Twice, thrice?”
Yes, I adore the number two, and you have prayed to me twice. Your love, Pela, has prayed once. Thus also thrice. Three is also nice. She laughed.
“You will help me? How?” Instantly he wished to retrieve that word. Questioning a god seemed dangerous.
Perhaps. My powers are small and unfitted to this task. I must consider. Perhaps, I may help a little. There may be...consequences. Do you accept?
She asked him this? And then the many stories came to him of how man would inevitably pay a steep price when he dealt with the gods. “If you aid me...will I marry Pela and live a long life, safely, with my child?”
Her voice deepened, screwing deep into his ears, As long and as safely as most! You will be a father, more than most, less than some. Perhaps. Perhaps.
He took his hands from his ears. There was no real choice. “Then, yes, I accept your aid. He bowed his head. “Thank you.”
The wind sighed, and when he looked up she was gone.
A god had come to talk to him. A god. A tale to tell down the generations, if he didn’t die today or tomorrow.
Needle Rain Page 4