He thought of something then, and mincing carefully forward, pivoted them both counterclockwise around the statue. When Neila saw what had been hidden from view by the statue’s bulk, her breath caught in her throat.
“That,” Salim said, again feeling that ridiculous sense of pride, “is the Threefold Pillar of the Axiomite Godmind.”
The three crystalline obelisks rose glittering into the sky, their points uneven but all three far taller than any other visible structure. Up their sides—inside them, as if projected onto their surface by one of the so-called magic lanterns of the theater—twined brilliant streams of symbols like those that made up the axiomites’ true forms. It was there, in the absolute center of Axis, that the children of the Plane of Law did their true work, pooling their very essences to unlock the fundamental truths of existence. Salim knew this just as he knew the space between the pillars was the throne in which that combined intelligence—the axiomite Godmind—would manifest in times of great need and confusion, though he doubted any human alive had ever seen it. Yet even without that presence, it was still a magnificent monument, its transparent shafts burning with reflected light and scrolling shapes.
Neila let out her breath in a long, contented sigh, and Salim was suddenly keenly aware of the girl’s youth, her warm body pressed against his through the thin fabric of their clothes. One of her arms had fallen against his where it wrapped around her and unconsciously hugged it to her side. Looking out over her head, which fit neatly into the hollow between his chin and breastbone, Salim could smell the light, faintly sweet scent of her hair as further sections of it came loose from its tight knot and blew around them both. He pulled aside a little and looked down, seeing the strong face in profile, smile radiant as she stared off toward the gleaming pillar. It was an expression he’d never seen on her before, like a veil had been lifted.
This must be how she looked before her father’s murder, Salim realized. At that moment, she turned and met his eyes, smile widening.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Salim felt warmth spread through his chest and limbs, the vague impression that an egg had cracked somewhere inside him and begun slowly draining. Under the fingers of his restraining hand, the silk of her blouse slid over taut skin, thin as a slick of oil on a pond.
That was no good. No good at all.
“We should go,” he said. Before she could respond, he let go and bounded down to the pavement, wetting the hem of his robes in the process. She shot him a momentarily puzzled look, then followed with her prior grace.
They moved quickly now, Salim navigating the streets with ease and acting as a blocker for Neila, who stepped nimbly in his wake. Though they cut across several streets as the flow of traffic directed, Salim moving more by instinct than by a perfect knowledge of Axis’s infinite layout, the dark-robed man was careful to always trend toward those immense lightning rods at the center of the city.
At one point, with an avenue clogged by some sort of performance or altercation—it was hard to tell with all the onlookers gathered about—Salim led them off the roadway and into a tree-lined square that was half parkland and half market district. White marble statues of Abadar stood fifteen feet tall at each corner of the space, looking over the assembly with calm benevolence and loaded crossbows, their banker’s scales hanging prominently at their belts. Within, tents and stalls not so different from the crowded marketplace of Lamasara clustered in an elaborate matrix—one no doubt designed to ensure shoppers passed by the greatest number of merchants before exiting, regardless of entry point or trajectory. Between these temporary structures, which Salim knew were probably not temporary at all, thick-crowned trees with tiny green leaves and dangling, willowlike streamers added explosions of green to the mix. The overall effect was that of both carnival and pastoral beauty, which somehow managed to coexist without either diminishing the other.
Neila’s face as they entered the maze of hawkers and barkers said that it was clearly working. If anything, the childlike delight that had been placed there by her first true view of Axis grew. Where before she had moved with Salim in perfect step, threading through the crowd, now she dawdled, slowing and even pausing as new sights caught her eye.
Not that there weren’t things worth staring at. Every one of the stalls was a wonder a girl who’d lived her entire life on the mundane world of Golarion could only dream about. Here were floating weapons that sang as they flew to defend their bearers. Baby phoenixes—or reasonable illusions thereof—singing mournfully from cages of unmeltable alloys. Potions and baubles of every color and description, all manned by eager merchants who were every bit as strange as the wares they purveyed. Even those stalls that were objectively horrible—the hag with her jars of screaming, tortured soul larvae, or the snake-headed artist with his moving paintings of corpses performing unspeakable acts—were still amazing in their uniqueness and vibrancy.
At last Salim was forced to take Neila’s hand and tug her gently along.
“Come on, Lady,” he said. “I don’t know how much gold’s in your pouch, but there’s no way it’s enough for any of this lot.”
Neila grinned, a little sheepishly, and allowed herself to be led.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “After all that we’ve seen so far, you’d think I’d be used to—”
“G’day, Madame and Gent! And a good day it is, though I gather it’s always a good day when you’ve a woman like that by your side, eh, Master?”
The strange little man who leaped out in front of them was no taller than Salim’s navel, and so twisted and wizened that it was impossible to tell whether he was some species of goblin or something else entirely. His skin bore a grayish cast, and his ears pointed slightly beneath a ridiculous, muffin-shaped hat of purple felt. His only clothing was a sash of sky blue over a deep purple jacket of the same material, with bright brass buttons and gold-cord epaulets. The jacket hung down over his potbellied stomach, but still failed to conceal his bandy legs or atrophied genitals.
“We’re not interested,” Salim said automatically, and sidestepped to the left, intending to keep moving. With a yell, the little man threw himself in that direction, landing hard on the pavement and somersaulting to his feet in front of them.
“Of course you’re not!” Muffin Hat cried, not even breathing hard from his impromptu tumbling performance. “Who could be interested by the sight of me alone? No, not even my fabulous physique could keep your interest in such a festival of delights as this!” He puffed out his chest and spread his hands wide, standing on tiptoes. Next to Salim, Neila put a hand to her mouth to hide an involuntary giggle, and the creature smiled, wiggling its long nose.
“The lady has the right of it, sir, as ever they do, so they do. I am but a humble practitioner of the showman’s arts, and nothing special when compared to the sights you’ve no doubt seen. Were I alone, I would likely hide myself in the skirts of one of the nearby stalls until you passed, so as to not accidentally catch your eye and distract you from more worthy points of focus. Yet such is not the case, for I come not alone, and ask your brief attention not on my own behalf, but on that of my ever-so-talented and one-of-a-kind friends.”
In a practiced gesture that made Salim momentarily tense—he’d seen plenty of knifemen who had that same easy grace when going for a blade—Muffin Hat reached behind his back and drew forth a crank-driven music box which hung from the blue sash. Sensing Neila’s interest, Salim sighed and resigned himself to watching the little creature’s performance.
“Beautiful Lady and most exquisitely tasteful Gentleman,” Muffin Hat cried, hopping from foot to foot in excitement. “Allow me to present to you a sight never seen in any market or on any plane but this one—Marlott the Marvelous’s Dancing Spiders and Acrobatic Arthropods!”
With a snap, Muffin Hat—who Salim now presumed was named Marlott—unhooked a latch on the bottom of his music box and let it swing open, releasing a cascade of scuttling horrors that fell to t
he pavement and began to stream across it in all directions. Neila screamed and shrank back, and Salim found himself going for his sword, for all the good it might do.
“No! No need to fear the performers, gentle folk, for they are the height of gentility itself. Observe!” With one hand, Marlott began turning the crank, causing the box to emit a rickety, high-pitched tune like that of a carousel.
As he did, a strange thing happened. Where a moment before the spiders, scorpions, and more disturbing creatures he’d released had skittered every which way, now they began to draw back together, forming orderly rows. As Salim watched, they began to flex their legs in time to the music, bobbing their whole bodies up and down.
“Yes! Yes!” Marlott’s voice was ecstatic. “Dance, my loves!”
As one, the spiders of the front row began to hop back and forth from side to side, catching themselves on one bank of legs before throwing themselves over and balancing on the other, matching Marlott himself. Behind them, the centipedes were raising their foresections into the air and clambering over each other to create tottering arches several times their own height. Through these, scorpions rolled in an imitation of Marlott’s somersault, reaching up to grasp their own tails and then rolling like wheels, one after another.
Neila actually clapped her hands in delight. “Wonderful!” she cried. “Absolutely magnificent!”
Salim had to admit it was pretty good, even given their fantastical setting. He was about to tell Marlott so when he noticed the goblinoid’s eyes flick sideways past Neila, his manic grin unchanging.
It was all the signal Salim needed. He whirled around in time to see the second figure—this one no larger than Marlott, but wrapped in a dark cloak that left only a long nose visible beneath the cowl—moving up behind Neila. With one hand, it reached toward her purse. In the other, it held a curve-bladed knife smeared with black grease.
“Down!” Salim said, shoving Neila violently aside.
To her credit, the girl didn’t fall. Seeing what had been creeping up behind her, her mouth made a little O of surprise, but she immediately drew her own sword.
The cloaked figure charged, ignoring Neila in favor of Salim. The attacker came in low, dagger held reversed and flat against his forearm like a true knife-fighter, not out straight where a simple twist could disarm him. The hand came up fast, in a savage slash designed to open Salim’s stomach.
But his stomach wasn’t there. At the last second, Salim twisted aside and arched backward, the knife whistling past his gut without so much as a scratch. It was a good thing, too—Salim couldn’t be sure what the gunk on the blade was without further investigation, but he had a feeling that a scratch was all the pint-sized assassin needed. Before the little man could recover, Salim leaned forward and put a boot in his side.
The assassin fell, but not for long, hitting the pavement with his shoulder and rolling to his feet in much the same way Marlott had. He came up swinging, the knife point whistling in sideways in a savage stab aimed at Salim’s kidneys. Salim swung his own blade in a downward arc like the hand of a clock, easily blocking the knife.
Or so he thought. With an agility Salim had no idea the man possessed, the assassin sprang upward, the knife’s angle rising two feet mid-thrust, suddenly level with Salim’s neck. Without time to raise his own sword, Salim dropped sideways and down, falling artlessly to the ground as the dagger passed close enough to ruffle the hair on his head. Not giving his target a chance to recover, the little man moved with him, raising the knife high and bringing it down—
—and then screaming as Neila’s sword flashed in, spitting his wrist. The poisoned dagger fell from nervous fingers, and Salim prudently rolled to avoid it.
Neila stood with sword and arm outstretched in a textbook fencer’s lunge. The rest of her hair had spilled from the knot at the nape of her neck, and now it ran wild around her face and shoulders. Though her expression was the shock of someone who’s never felt the disturbing ease with which steel slides through flesh and grates against bone, her arm didn’t waver. With a twist, she withdrew her rapier and returned to a formal en garde stance, as if waiting for a referee to announce the point.
The assassin, for his part, didn’t waste any time. Snatching at the dagger, he turned and fled back into the stalls, disappearing behind a brightly colored awning before Salim was all the way to his feet.
Together, Salim and Neila turned toward Marlott. The little man was still grinding away at his box organ, creepy-crawlies dancing and a big grin splitting his face. Only now that grin looked more rueful than obsequious.
“It’s my sincere hope, Lady and Gent, that you’ve enjoyed this fully interactive and death-defying performance, in which you yourselves have been the stars, and acquitted yourselves with remarkable flair. Yet I’m afraid I cannot linger—much to do, yes, much to do! ‘Bugs to trade, traders to bug, then a-buggering a lassie with a pretty-pretty mug,’ as the old song goes. I will, however, allow you to personally thank the performers.” He quit turning the crank, and pointed toward the two humans.
“Go meet your audience, lovelies.”
As one, the mass of skittering horrors swarmed toward Neila and Salim.
After the near-skewering Salim had just escaped, it wasn’t much of a battle. Swords were next to useless against the bugs that, while poisonous, were still nothing more monstrous than the tiny desert scorpions one might shake out of a shoe in the morning. As it turned out, shoes were their primary weapons. Within moments, many of their attackers had been transformed into black and purple smears on the pavement, and the rest had scuttled away into the bushes and stalls, searching for more appropriate prey. Yet it was long enough—by the time they could cease their own dance of destruction and look up, the grinning Marlott was nowhere to be seen. Salim crouched down, stretching stiff muscles in his thighs.
“They meant to kill us,” Neila said, tentatively.
“Yes.”
“For our gold.”
“Yes.”
She let this sink in. Clearly, the thought that someone on this magical, unimaginable plane might kill her for the handful of coins in her purse had never crossed her mind. He watched as understanding dawned. On this plane or any other, a market was still a market.
“And we had no choice but to defend ourselves,” she continued. “If I hadn’t stabbed that man, he would have run you through.”
Salim heard the question inherent in her statements, and answered it.
“Without a doubt. That dagger was almost certainly poisoned. One nick and you’d be on your own now.”
“Right.” Her features softened with obvious relief. Salim gestured at her sword.
“You should wipe that off before you sheathe it.”
Neila nodded. Glancing around like a guilty child to make sure nobody was looking, she rubbed it down with a fold of canvas from a nearby awning, leaving a long red smear. Then she sheathed the sword, and together the two of them moved quickly out of the park, no longer enthralled by the wonders of the stalls or the calls of the barkers. As they passed one of the statues of Abadar, Neila paused, then looked backward over her shoulder, her expression wistful.
“Too bad about the spiders, though.”
Chapter Ten
The Clever Endeavor
Later, as they were walking along yet another side street—this one far less crowded and home almost exclusively to dark-skinned humans and the gleaming, diamond-and-clockwork servitor constructs that followed them around—Neila asked a question.
“If this is the plane of ultimate law,” she said, “how come those two back in the market tried to murder and rob us?”
Salim took her arm and sidestepped to allow a clockwork creature—not one of the axiomite’s warrior automatons, but something altogether less sophisticated—to pass them. The waist-high machine was shaped like a Tian puzzle-box with legs, and hummed an off-key song as it ambled by, upright pipes puffing little rings of steam. A net bag of oranges was balanced precariously ato
p its head, the bag’s mouth secured by a small pincer apparatus.
“Law and morality are different,” Salim said. “Axis welcomes all who walk the ordered path, and while that makes it popular with gods like Abadar, there’s room in its streets for all who follow a code. Those men who attacked us, for example. I suspect they’re children of Norgorber.”
“The Reaper!” Neila was aghast.
Salim nodded. “The assassin god has a sizable following in the city. It’s said that the god himself resides in the strange passages beneath Axis, his realm touching all points and none. Certainly his worshipers run the undercity, and navigate the old bug tunnels like sewer rats.”
“But that’s terrible!” Neila pressed. “Why don’t the axiomites send those warrior things—the machines—to drive them out?”
Salim raised his shoulders. “Why would they? The Reaper may not be as trustworthy as a devil, but a good assassin stays bought, and that has its own sort of code to it. Breaking a law in a consistent, regimented fashion is itself an expression of order.” He stepped wide to avoid an access shaft in the street, its man-sized ladder leading down to the ant-folk’s elaborate network of hive tunnels.
“Besides,” he said, “sometimes assassins come in useful, even on Axis. The rules of commerce don’t preclude a little trimming of the competition now and again, and axiomites tend to mind their own business as much as possible. The men who attacked us had a reasonable motive—getting into our purses—and we defended ourselves in a reasonable manner. As far as most folk around here would be concerned, everything’s balanced. It might as well have never happened.”
Neila nodded, but her eyes remained fixed on the wide tunnel mouth as they passed. She shivered and moved to quicken her pace, but Salim stopped suddenly and turned to face the buildings to their right.
“In any case,” he said, “we’re here.”
Neila looked doubtfully at the plain eaves and brick facades that faced them. None of the buildings in this neighborhood had windows, and these particular doors didn’t have the welcoming look of shops or inns. If Salim had to guess, he’d presume they were storage houses of some sort, or workshops for those who valued their privacy. Knowing Neila must be thinking the same thing, he stepped forward and tapped authoritatively at a small brass plaque affixed to the wall. It rang louder than it had any right to, as if Salim had struck a bell.
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