“Sounds great,” I said. “Where do I come in?”
“Well, every procession needs a princeps, right? Wouldn’t you like to be that princeps? You’d be perfect for the part.”
“You flatter me,” I said.
“You flatter yourself,” she replied. “I just have a head for business, that’s all. I know profit when I see it. There’d be room for your friend, too. You don’t have to answer me now. Just think about it.”
“What I said about monsters wasn’t far off the mark,” I said.
She bit her lip. “Was I that obvious?”
“I don’t know if you would be to everyone. I’m an escaped beast-slayer, so I’ve had some experience, as you might say. Your description of Pinky was too detailed to be true. But it was the way you treated the workers that gave you away.”
“Them,” the girl said. “They hate me.”
“What do you expect?”
“Well, how else can I treat them? It isn’t as simple as all that. If they respected me they’d cut my throat as soon as look at me. It’s a game. I play the adolescent tyrant. They play the sullen servants. It works. I didn’t ask for all this, you know. My father, that old bastard, died before I could figure something else out. Now it’s the carnival or my life.”
Her second mask had fallen off. Now she was a frightened girl riding a wave too big for her, held hostage by inferiors. Or perhaps they weren’t masks at all, but coequal faces surfacing one after another, like the heads of a hydra.
We were approaching a tenement block beneath the eaves of the metropolis. What appeared a solid prism gradually resolved into an array of towers built against one another and knit into a sort of hive. The air quivered over its crown.
Arges remained outside while I followed Lydia into the building. She led me through a maze of windowless rooms and claustrophobic corridors. We eventually emerged into a quadrangle at the heart of the block, where a tiny stone temple stood on a patch of earth. The grating suspended over its roof was heaped so high with rubbish that it almost blocked out the scrap of sky at the mouth of the well.
She rapped her knuckles on the door. The shutter shot back. Two hazel eyes peered out. “What is it?” the young man demanded. “Is this another one of your tricks?”
“Hello, Perses,” she drawled in a voice that was a shade too loud. “This is just my friend Keftu. He’s going your way.”
“Tell him to lose the sword.”
“I’ll hand it in to you,” I said. “I don’t want to leave it out here.”
“Well,” said Lydia, “I’ll leave you boys to yourselves.” She threw her thin arms around my neck and kissed me passionately. “There,” she said. She took a few unsteady steps toward the way out, then turned. “Remember what I said. If you come back this way, drop by to see me. I love you, Keftu.” And then she was gone.
“That girl’s crazy,” said Perses. “You’d do well to keep away from her.”
“So I gathered,” I said. “Here.” I handed Perses my sword hilt-foremost.
He took it, vanished for a moment, then threw back the bolt. “Come in,” he said.
I went past him into the fane, eyeing it covertly while he locked the door. It had been left to itself for a long time but never rifled, its movables being unlikely to excite even a helot’s envy. Perses had made a bedroom of the space beyond the carved reredoes. Dust lay heaped in the corners. Tarnished light fell from tube lamps hidden in the niches of forgotten gods. There was an oil lamp burning on the altar. Deinothax lay beside it.
“Who are you?” Perses demanded, coming up behind me. “What’s your deme?”
“I’m no Druin, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “People always seem to assume that.” I measured my host with my eyes. Perses was the taller and stronger of us, but we could have been brothers for all that, or cousins, at least.
“What do you mean, you’re not a Druin?” he said. “What else could you be?”
I weighed my words carefully before saying simply: “An Arrasene.”
“Ha,” he scoffed. “What do you take me for? Even if there ever were such people as Arrasenes, which I doubt, there aren’t now.”
“That’s almost true, for I am the last of them.”
“Next thing you’ll be putting on airs. Why, I could almost take you for—” He broke off mid-sentence and looked narrowly at me. “So,” he said, “you want to go to the Deserits, and yet you’re not a Druin.”
“I have my reasons,” I said. “They’re honest enough. But, in this city, honesty only seems to get you into trouble. I’m no liar, so I hope you won’t blame me if I remain silent on the point.”
“No, I won’t blame you,” said Perses, slowly circling to my left. “If I were a spy for the Sun Mage, I wouldn’t want to advertise the fact, either.”
“The Sun Mage! Do you know him?”
“I do,” he said, setting his hand on the dagger at his side.
“Without much liking,” I observed.
“There’s little love lost between me and Vaustus. Or his friends.”
“I’m no friend of his. I’ve never even laid eyes on him. But my errand is not unconnected with him. I will tell you that.” I held my hands up, palms outward. “I came here in friendship,” I said. “I’ve handed you my only weapon. My goal is to get to the Deserits. I heard that you need another pair of hands. Well, I can be those hands. All I ask is that my privacy be respected.”
“Fair enough,” said Perses. He relaxed, and his hand dropped from his dagger. He tossed me my sword. “It isn’t as ridiculous as it seems,” he said. “My caution, I mean. Vaustus has a long arm. I’ve learned that if nothing else. He seems to become more powerful the further away you go, but vanishes almost to nothingness when you get within sight of him.” He snorted. “Hands, you say. What I need is your feet, not your hands.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see soon enough. Shades of my fathers! I’m actually going back! Well, I’ve been ready for months. If there’s no objection, we’ll leave tomorrow at dawn.”
“That suits me,” I said. “I’ve heard that we may have trouble getting past the Tartassus Gate.”
“I’ve heard the same,” said Perses. “We’ll just have to see what we see. Have you eaten? I have plenty of stuff if you’re hungry. It’ll just go to waste otherwise.”
“No,” I said. “I have my own. I’ll—”
A noise brought me up short. It was a soft thump, accompanied by the clink of broken ceramics and the dull ring of scrap iron. Perses cocked his head and looked suspiciously at me. “Keftu…” he began.
“I’d forgotten,” I said. “I left a friend out front. He’s probably just wondering where I am.”
Perses’ face became stony. “There’s no room for a third on our journey,” he said. “The car only holds two.”
“That’s a pity, but expected. I need to go talk to him about it.”
“I’ll come with you, if you don’t mind.”
“As you wish,” I said. “But don’t blame me if you don’t like what you see.”
We went out into the quadrangle. A huge bipedal form was outlined against the faint light that filtered through the screen of junk. I approached it with Perses at my heel. “Arges,” I whispered. The cyclops scraped a hole in the trash and peered through. Perses started violently and suppressed a shout.
“Arges,” I said, “I’ve found my way to the east. It won’t be possible for you to come with us. I still fear that there may be trouble soon in the south if I’m not successful. I would have you return as we came. If you have any more of your kind in the area, it would ease my mind if you could gather them. We may need all the help we can get.” We looked silently at one another. “Thank you,” I said. “The descendants of the Phylarch of Arras will be in debt to your descendants until the end of the world as we know it. Farewell.”
Without a noise the giant melted into the shadows. We had a brief glimpse of him scaling the wall like a great white
specter, and then he was gone.
“Come,” I said. “I’m going to eat, and then we can bed down for the night.” Perses glowered at me but said nothing.
45 Perses
The train burrowed through heavy fog. Dawn was near.
We jumped out at the switchyard where I’d disembarked with Arges. From there Perses led the way through mountains of cast-off machinery. At the far side of the junkyard we crawled out under a fence and went through several warehouse yards and empty lots.
A gravel embankment loomed up out of the fog. We climbed it and turned to the right, walking between the rails. The tracks veered and then straightened out, passing under the livid eaves of the moss-forest, heading for the crumbling foothills.
The forest had a presence that was monumental yet iterative, like an organ fugue, echoed on a smaller scale by the quincuncial skin of each scale-tree. The understory was a particolored patchwork of lichen and moss gravid with mist-drops. Every leaf, every tendril, every parasol and spear looked as though sculpted from something precious. Nudibranchs like living ornaments slid along the rust-dark rails.
“Who is Vaustus?” I asked, breaking the settled silence.
“The Sun Mage, of course.”
“You used to follow him, didn’t you?”
“What makes you think so?” he asked.
“Your hatred.”
Perses laughed bitterly. “There’s a lot that could make you hate a man.”
“But no hatred, I think, could be as great as that for a teacher you’ve renounced. Perhaps you don’t hate him for that reason alone. But I’d swear to it that you were his disciple, and that you were quite close to him.”
Perses drew his dagger and began running his finger along its edge. He peered at his reflection in the polished metal. “I was his catamite,” he said with a savage grin. “That’s growing up fast. I’m not ashamed of it. It isn’t as though I was at fault.”
“Your face betrays you,” I said. “You don’t believe what you’re saying.”
“Well, what does it matter what I think? What matters is that he’ll soon regret it.” He made an involuntary stab with his dagger. I said nothing, and he went on in an embarrassed rush: “So, yes, I was close to him. What is it you want to know?”
“Whatever you would tell me. I know nothing of the man, not even a rumor.”
“And I know everything there is to know. You’re right. I was his special disciple, his page, and he’s a man for talking. During the day it was all casuistry and astral genealogy and aeonic lore. But at night he’d lie awake in bed and go on and on, telling me anecdotes about himself. I’d just be there in my cot, listening. He didn’t want me to say anything, but he got angry if I fell asleep. Zilla—that’s his cupbearer—liked having me around, because if I hadn’t been there it would have been him listening.”
“Is Vaustus a Druin?”
“No, of course not. He doesn’t know what to do with Druins. His presbyters are all Enochites, and he buffers himself with half-castes like me. He’s an Enochite of Enochites, a phylite of the phyle of Aniseuris, a priestly line.”
“If he doesn’t like Druins,” I said, “why did he go out to the Deserits?”
“I can tell you what he did, but as to why he did it, your guess is as good as mine. That’s how it is with Vaustus.
“When he was young, and still receiving the Agoge, he was earmarked as a future hierophant of a certain sect. As he got older he fell into…irregularities. A double life, if you know what I mean. Those were his dark years, as he calls them. At the same time he was always trying to experience theophanies.
“He had some kind of crisis and decided to go out and make contact with the divine. For some reason he hit upon Nightspore Forest as the most likely spot. It’s unexplored, and he has a taste for the singular. He was living on the Golden Horn at the time, just across the strait from the delta of the Nameless River. Well, he went. I’m not certain what happened, but it was bad. He was bitten by a spider and returned raving. He recovered, but wasn’t ever able to get back into the rhythm of things. Eventually he took to the streets.
“One day he had a vision, or delusion, or whatever you want to call it. He saw the sun setting over the sea, and one of the viaducts leading into it. To him it seemed that Amartas was descending upon Bel, and that the elect of the world were going to meet him there. He started walking in that direction but made little progress. He decided that his possessions were holding him back. So he stripped naked and continued. Still he made no headway. Then the tattoo on his ankle—his mark in religion—caught his eye. He put his leg on the train tracks and—”
“He didn’t,” I said.
Perses smiled and nodded. “It used to be one of my duties to oil and pick the sand out of his prosthesis. Well, after that the Cheiropt got him. He was a phylite, so he ended up in the Palace of Collections. Eventually he got quite a following in there. Somehow he escaped and went into the desert.”
“The information I have says that he dallies with chimeras. Did he ever mention them to you?”
“Chimeras? No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, what about…nephelim? Or other members of lower orders?”
“Nephelim, yes. The world of spirits was one of his favorite subjects. He fancies he knows all about it. When I was with him he was always trying to find the primordial city of the princes of the air. Eventually he lost interest. That’s how it is with him. Always some extravagant mission that he never accomplishes.”
“And he just wanders the desert with the Sons of Taïs?”
“That’s right. The rank and file are all Druins, of course, though lately I’ve heard he hasn’t been getting new recruits like he used to. He went right through the Deserits, I guess. It used to be quite a horde. They keep a roll of members, and celebrate all the new men they add, but never strike out the ones who quietly desert.
“It isn’t much of a life, that’s for certain. The foot-soldiers ride in steam-driven half-tracks, but the presbyters and Vaustus himself all have cheboth-drawn wagons. They have a portable bridge for crossing ravines, designed, of course, by the Artificer.”
My ears perked up. “Who’s that?” I asked.
“An engineer. Vaustus used to rely on him for just about everything. He designed the half-tracks, too, as well as a water purification system at their base camp below the Deged, and Vaustus’ prosthetic leg. A man of boundless ingenuity. I’d kill him, too, if I could find him.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“I’ve told you plenty enough,” Perses snapped, suddenly surly for having talked so freely.
After that we went on in silence. Our feet crunched on gravel. The trees dripped. The terrain rose and fell in gentle swells. Moss-rich boulders dotted the forest floor on either hand. Bars of sunlight began to press down like organ notes, working through the omnipresent whiteness as a carder works through fibers. Soon ragged tufts and patches of blue were visible through the livid canopy.
We entered a valley. The tracks were heaped with drifts of papery leaves. There were mossy grottos and rockslides overgrown with ferns. The walls grew steeper with each bend, until the canyon finally terminated in a rock face. The rails continued up a tunnel.
“It’s in here,” Perses explained. “The line dead-ends. They never finished the blasting.” He fished a lantern out of a recess and lit it, then led the way into the darkness. We came to a crazy barricade covered with melodramatic warning signs.
“It’s just for show,” he said, flourishing a key. He unlocked a hidden bolt and threw it back. The entire thing swung open in one piece. “This is the secret cache of the Sons of Taïs. Vaustus sometimes sends spies into the city. I think they’ve forgotten about it. But I haven’t.”
We rounded a bend and came up against a dead end. The floor was littered with moldering reminders of the discontinued blasting, shoved aside to make room for the racks lining the walls. Rows of arms and scrap-metal armor glinted dull
y in the lantern’s light, curiously wrought from junk but all rusted and tarnished. Ranged along the back wall were three handcars. Each had a pair of large pedals radiating from the axle of a suspended gear, around which was slung a chain that passed through a slot in the deck to the driving mechanism.
“Here we are,” said Perses. “They’re quite efficient. Only, you need two riders to make them work. A nephridium engine kicks in once you get going. Also courtesy of the Artificer.”
He set about cleaning and oiling one, then armed himself from the racks. I helped myself to some things as well, but avoided the heavier pieces, as I wasn’t used to the weight. My own armor—which I’d left in my retreat—bore its own weight.
Together we pushed the car onto the rails and set it in motion.
46 A Journey by Rail
The outward journey was mostly downhill. We covered in minutes what it had taken hours to traverse on foot, driving the car with our bodies, up and down, around and around, feet planted on pedals, hands gripping the bars before us. The fog was gone. The gray cathedral spaces had been transformed into a riot of color and hard-edged detail and individual freedoms knit into a coherent whole.
Then we emerged into sunlight, where everything was painfully visible. The smoggy skyline of the coast-long downtown faced us across the flats of Sand City. Two airships crawled across the dirty sky like flies on a bloated corpse. The tracks curved to the north, running parallel to the line of the forest. We crested a low rise, and I saw laid before me the broad valley of the Ilissus River, filled with Enoch’s sprawl.
Soon we were amongst the nearest structures. Other tracks joined ours or diverged from it at intervals. Buildings like blocks of concrete and steel looked down over the fences, peering vacantly at us with clustered windows like spiders’ eyes.
We shot out onto a truss bridge over the Ilissus. Concrete quays and foundations formed the river’s banks, with yellow curds choking the stagnant backwaters between them. The sun’s reflection was a dull rainbow on the slick, oily surface. The ebb of the tide had exposed mud flats, and waddling through the ooze was an ehmoth like a gigantic eft with a wide, brutal mouth.
Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes Page 24