by Tim Pratt
Zie vomited more often than usual, though.
***
A day passed, and Howlaa was sober and bored at home, playing five-deck solitaire while I made desultory suggestions, before the fat man reappeared. The singing gem keened at mid-day. Howlaa cocked zir head, taking information from the gem.
Zie became the questing beast, and we were away.
This time we landed in the city center. The fat man sat on the obsidian steps of the Courthouse of Lesser Infractions, face turned up to the sun, smiling up at the light. He held a golden scythe across his knees, and blood and bodies lay strewn all over the steps around him, many wearing the star-patterned robes of magisters.
Howlaa did not hesitate, but traveled again, this time appearing directly in front of the fat man and lashing out with barely-visible hooked appendages to grasp the killer. Then Howlaa traveled again. We reappeared in the racing precinct, startling the spectators and scattering the thoroughbred chimeras. The fat man struggled in the hoof-churned mud, his weapon gone.
I had barely overcome my disorientation before Howlaa traveled again. I knew it was Howlaa controlling the movement, for the sensation was quite different from the swirling transcendence that came when the fat man dragged us to that other world. This time we appeared in another populated area, the vaulted gray halls of the Chapel of Blessed Increase in the monastic quarter. We flickered again, Howlaa and the fat man still locked in struggle, and flashed briefly through another dozen places around the city, all filled with startled citizens – in the adder’s pit, the ladder to the stars, the moss forest, the monster farm, the glass park, the burning island. We even passed through the Regent’s inner chamber, briefly, though he was not there, and through other rooms in the palace, courtrooms, dungeons, and chambers of government. There was a fair amount of incidental damage in many of these instances, as the fat man rolled around, kicked, and thrashed.
Then we appeared in the dream engine’s chamber, and everything in my full-circle visual field wobbled and ran, either as an aftereffect of all that spatial violation, or because bringing a dream into such proximity with the dream engine set up unstable resonances.
Howlaa and the fat man thrashed right into the pulsing royal orphan in its tangle of wires. The orphan’s wings fluttered as it broke free from the mountings, and the ovoid body fell to the floor with a sick, liquid sound, like a piece of rotten fruit dropping onto pavement. The fat man broke free of Howlaa – though that wasn’t possible, so Howlaa must have let him go. He attacked Howlaa, who flickered and reappeared on the far side of the weakly pulsing royal orphan. The fat man roared and strode forward, a new weapon suddenly in his hand, a six-foot polearm covered in barbs and hooks. He tread on the royal orphan, which popped and deflated, a wet, ripe odor filling the room. The fat man swung at the unmoving Howlaa, but the weapon disappeared in mid-arc. The fat man stumbled, falling to one knee, then moaned and came apart. It was like seeing a shadow-sculpture dissolve at the wave of an artist’s hand, his substance darkening, becoming transparent, and finally melting away.
Howlaa became human, fell to zir knees, and shivered. “Feel sick,” zie said, grimacing.
I was terrified. The Regent might kill us for this. We’d stopped the fat man, yes, but at the cost of a royal orphan’s life. “We have to go, Howlaa,” I said. “Become the questing beast. I won’t try to stop you – let’s flee across the worlds. We have to get away.”
But Howlaa did not hear, for zie was vomiting now, violently, zir whole body heaving, red and milky white and translucent syrupy stuff coming from zir mouth, mingling with the ichor from the dead orphan on the floor.
The door opened. The Regent and two Nagalinda guards entered. “No!” the Regent cried. “No, no, no!” The guards seized Howlaa, who was still vomiting, and dragged zim away. I floated along inexorably behind. The Regent stayed, kneeling by the dead orphan, gently touching its unmoving rainbow wings.
***
“Feeling better, traitor?,” the Regent said. Howlaa sat, pale and still unwell, on a hard wooden bench before the Regent’s desk.
“A bit,” Howlaa said.
The Regent smiled. “You didn’t think I’d let you be the questing beast forever, did you? I couldn’t risk your escape. Wisp is one line of defense against that, but I felt another was needed, so I laced the blood with poison and bound their substances together. When the poison activated, your body expelled it, along with all the questing beast’s genetic material. You’ve lost the power to take that form.”
“I’ve never vomited up an entire shape before,” Howlaa said. “It was an unpleasant experience.”
“The first of many, for a traitor like you.”
“Regent,” I said. “As Howlaa’s witness, I must inform you that you are incorrect. Howlaa did not mean to harm the orphan. The fat man appeared and disappeared, and Howlaa and I were simply carried along with him. Surely there are others who can attest to that, testify that we appeared all over the city, fighting? Howlaa held on, hoping the fat man would fade and we would be taken to the world of the dreamer, but before that could happen... well. The dream engine was damaged.”
“The orphan was killed,” the Regent said. “You expect me to believe that, by coincidence, the last place Howlaa and the killer appeared was in that room?”
“We could hardly appear anywhere after that, Regent, since the dream engine was destroyed, dissolving the fat man in the process.” I spoke respectfully. “Had that not happened, I cannot tell you where the fat man might have traveled next.”
“He was a lucid dreamer,” Howlaa said. “He’d learned to move around at will. He was trying to shake me off, bouncing all over the city.”
The Regent stared at Howlaa. “That orphan was the result of decades of research, cloning, cross-breeding – the pinnacle of the bloodline. With a bit of practice, it would have been the most powerful of the orphans, and this city would have flourished as never before. We would have entered an age of dreams.”
“It is a great loss, Regent,” Howlaa said. “And we certainly deserve no honor or glory for our work – I failed to kill the dreamer. He killed himself. But I did not kill the orphan, either. The fat man tread upon it.”
“Wisp,” the Regent said. “You affirm, on your honor as a witness, that this is true?”
My honor as a witness. My honor demanded that I respect Howlaa’s elegant solution, which had saved the city further murder and also destroyed the Regent’s wicked dream engine. I think the Regent misunderstood the oath he requested. “Yes,” I said.
“Get out of here, both of you,” he said. “There will be no bonus pay for this farce. No pay at all, in fact, until I decide to reinstate you to active duty.”
“As you say, Regent,” Howlaa and I said together, and took our leave.
***
“You lied for me, Wisp,” Howlaa said that night, reclining on a heap of soft furs and coarse fabrics.
“I provided an interpretation that fit the objectively available facts,” I said.
“You knew I was the one dragging the killer around the city, not vice-versa.”
“So it seemed to me subjectively,” I said. “But if the Regent chose to access my memory and see things as I had seen them, there would be no such subjectivity, so it hardly seemed relevant to the discussion.”
“I owe you one, Wisp,” Howlaa said.
“I did what I thought best. We are partners.”
“No, you misunderstand. I owe you one, and I want you to take it, right now.” Howlaa held out zir hand.
After a moment, I understood. I drifted down to Howlaa’s body, and into it, taking over zir body. Howlaa did not resist, and the sensation was utterly different from the other times I had taken possession, when most of my attention went to fighting for control. I sank back in the furs and fabrics, shivering in ecstasy at the sensations on zir – on my – skin.
“The body is yours for the night,” Howlaa said in my – our – mind. “Do with it what you will.”
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“Thank you.”
“You had the right of it,” Howlaa said. “We are partners. Finally, and for the first time, partners.”
I buried myself in furs, and reveled in the tactile experience until the exquisite, never-before-experienced sensation of drowsiness overtook me. I fell asleep in that body, and in sleep I dreamed my own dreams, the first dreams of my life. They were beautiful, and lush, and could not be stolen.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the following people, who provided feedback, or advice, or other support the project: my wife Heather Shaw; my agent Ginger Clark; Jenn Reese; Greg van Eekhout; Melissa Marr; Sarah Prineas; Michelle Ossiander; Ian Mond; Michael Jasper; Gary Singer; Jonathan McNeill; and Jennifer Theis.
You can visit The Nex online at www.timpratt.org/nex (where the novel was serialized) for author notes on each chapter, and a more extensive list of acknowledgments.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title_Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Bonus Story: Dream Engine
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Cover
Title_Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Bonus Story: Dream Engine
Acknowledgments