Two days later she received an evening message from Zoahnône asking if they could meet in the Determinate Inn. There was news.
She donned a summer dress, low boots, and departed the Shrine from a side door, walking carefully through flowers, fanning insects aside, until she stood at the end of the passage. Rainclouds made it a dark evening, a curtain of drizzle dampening her face. Veneris was quiet. She stepped out into the alley before her.
Strong hands grabbed her arms and twisted them behind her back, while more hands grabbed her face, thrusting a gag into her mouth. She struggled, but they were men, far stronger than she was. She smelled bitter herbs on their clothes; the stink of tobacco upon them. In seconds she was bundled into a covered sedan chair, where her hands and feet were tied.
She saw no faces. The operation had been too swift. She had no idea who they were, what they wanted. Terrified, she struggled to roll out of the chair, but its sides were too high. The poles were lifted; she was moving. She tried to bounce her body up and down in an effort to put them off her stride, even to attract the attention of passers-by, but all to no avail. After some minutes she relaxed. She recalled no vision warning her of this event.
In mere minutes she felt the sedan chair put to the ground. She smelled a rotting odour, reminding her of the northern districts of the urb. Outside, she heard nothing except the soughing of the breeze. The rain had stopped.
They bundled her out of the sedan chair and laid her upon the damp ground. They knelt at her side, and now she could see who they were; the gatecrashing trio. One, the older man, undid her gag, while the others untied her hands and feet, then held them tight, so that she was forced to lie on her side.
“Before you scream,” the old man said, “consider the knife in my hand. Consider that there’s nobody here. Nobody in the Cemetery ‘cept men. Us and you.”
The Cemetery! Her premonition suggested she would die here. Shaking, she managed to reply, “What do you want? Who are you?”
“We’re the Band of Herb Smokers,” he said. “You mean your boyfriend didn’t tell you?”
“Boyfriend? Don’t you know who I am—”
“Shut up,” the man replied, lighting a cigarette. “Nobody talks like that to Argomaïtra.”
“Tha’s right,” the others added.
“Let me go,” Manserphine said, trying to inject some force into her voice. “You’ll be castrated for this.”
Argomaïtra ignored her. “We don’t like chaps splitting from a Band. We was a foursome in the old days. Now stuck-up little Kirifaïfra gets himself a tart and finds society. ‘Cept for prostituting in the Venereal Garden, of course. P’raps you didn’t know about that.”
“I did, and I have forgiven him,” Manserphine said.
That infuriated him. “You forgave him? You cheap tart! You’re all the bloody same aren’t you? Well, we’re here to pass judgement on you and your filthy crone.”
“You can’t. You’re men.”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “We are men. We can do what we like ‘cos we’re just vagrants in this bloody urb and nobody rules us. Got that? Nobody. Not you, nor your hag.”
Argomaïtra stood up, taking a deep drag at his cigarette. He glanced at the smaller of the other men, and said, “Tell her, Shiamaïtra.”
Shiamaïtra knelt at her side. Manserphine felt dread come over her and she struggled once more, only to feel the strength of her captors. Aided by the third man, Shiamaïtra turned her over, so that she saw a large hole beside her in the ground. Beside the large hole was a coffin.
She panicked, understanding their intention, but it was hopeless. For some seconds she saw nothing, felt nothing except her own rigid body and the painfully tight grips on her ankles and wrists. They were too strong.
“Don’t,” she managed to gasp. “Don’t do it.”
“But we’ve got the nails and the hammer,” Shiamaïtra said. “That cost us. And we ain’t got no money. It’s like that, being a man. No nothing. Partic’ly no respect.”
“Don’t!” Manserphine repeated.
“But we’ve got to. The bloke who made that there coffin wouldn’t give us our money back. Would he, dad?”
“He damn wouldn’t,” chuckled Argomaïtra. Suddenly his voice was like ice. “Do it, son. Do it now. Get it over with.”
Manserphine put all her strength into trying to pull away her feet so she could kick out, but it was hopeless. She screamed. She was dumped into the coffin. Argomaïtra had lifted the lid, and as soon as his henchmens’ grip was loosed he slammed it down. For a moment Manserphine thought she would get out, for the lid had landed awry, but they slammed down upon it with their hands as she screamed again, and then she was trapped in total blackness.
She hammered at the sides. Nothing. The sound of a nail being hammered into the lid. Another. Another.
Already the air felt hot. For a second she realised she must conserve air. Then she realised the pointlessness.
She screamed again, all control lost, and pushed out to try and break the wood of the coffin.
Nothing. No give.
Nails banging in. Muffled laughter. Muffled voices. “We sure got her, dad. That’ll show Kirifaïfra.”
She screamed again.
Nothing. Just the unforgiving strength of the coffin surrounding her. The heat of the air. Confined. Suddenly she could not move. Panic had obliterated her responses. Every muscle like stone. Then she gasped a great lungful of air and cried, “No! Please!”
She hammered some more. More and more.
Nothing.
Her body moved as the coffin was thrown into the earth. Noise on the lid of earth raining down.
Boots on the lid.
The air was hot. Her breath was coming raucous.
Then nothing from outside.
Manserphine had never considered death. This unexpected moment left her mind naked. She felt everything, and yet nothing. She understood that this was it. Death. Escape was inconceivable.
Yet she could not believe it.
She waited for sound.
Nothing.
Just nothing.
She was hammering at the sides of the coffin.
Her body was doing something. Yet she was already out of her self, her mind frozen by shock. She felt nothing.
The hammering continued. At the edges of her perception she knew her body was making this rhythmic hammering. Why? Her mind was stilled. It had lost itself. It was a dead thing.
Cracking noises.
Suddenly Manserphine was aware of herself. In the pitch blackness she saw shards of light, heard more wood cracking, splitting, caving in to the push of glowing hands.
The dream continued. A face. Two great crimson eyes on a long metal face. A mouth, dripping saliva. And she felt air on her face, and the rejuvenating feel of pure oxygen.
She screamed, took a lungful of air and screamed again. Unable to move, she tried to look away from the beast. Panic closed again.
The thing was huge. It wriggled close, pushed up and out, making space. Manserphine could breath. It was exhaling oxygen.
Her mind focussed on it. She knew it was here, yet she knew it must be a hallucination. Nobody, but nobody could escape being buried alive. Impossible.
Then it spoke.
“You called.”
Manserphine could only whine at the creature, too shocked, pushed too far into fear to respond. She sounded like a dying animal.
“You called?”
She heard herself say, “No,” but the syllable extended into a howl. She knew she was staring, that she was incoherent, but there was nothing else she could do.
For a third time the beast said, “You called.”
Manserphine tried to grasp some fragment of her conscious self. She tried to speak. “B-b-but… n-nooooooo!”
“You did call,” the beast replied, in a voice of calm certainty. “What bargain would you have me consider?”
“Get me out!” Manserphine managed to reply. Her body,
out of control, hammered and pushed upon the coffin lid.
“The rhythm of your call brought me here, but I cannot simply push you to the surface for we have not agreed a bargain.”
She recalled Cemetery stories. Bargains with necromantic beasts. Those old tales. Kirifaïfra had removed the sea-bracelet with a bargain that had seen him sacrifice his precious hair braid.
“Let me out!” she begged, tears wetting her face. “I’ll do anything!”
The beast shrank back a little.
“No!” Manserphine yelled, reaching out, then jerking back when she felt the slimy, cold metal of its snout.
“You have visions,” it said.
“Yes!” she snivelled, feeling panic approach once more.
“Then here is my bargain,” the beast said. “You will give me your innocence. Will you accept losing your innocence if I raise you to the surface?”
“Get me out, get me up,” Manserphine groaned, weeping. She felt now that she was lost. The beast was playing games. It would eat her.
She was right.
With a lunge it came at her. She squealed and shrank back. Its snout expanded into a metal hand with a dozen fingers which grabbed her forehead.
Again, panic. She hammered at the thing.
A jumble of struggles, cold metal, movement.
Air.
Cold air on her face.
Rain. It was raining on her.
She clambered to her feet.
She ran. Only when she struck a wall and fell to the ground did she look for a gate. There. She ran through.
She ran down alleys. She knew which ones.
The Determinate Inn stood before her. Wailing, limbs loose now with the after-effects of her fear, she stumbled into the inn.
Two figures sitting at a table, lit by a single lamp.
She screamed. She fell to the floor. All the emotions that had been held back by shock now caused her to collapse, unable to bear any more, and she flung herself about, crashing into furniture.
A voice. “Unc! Quick! The chlorodyne!”
Acid menthol splashed in her mouth.
Then nothing.
~
Manserphine woke up. The weirdest dream…
Her body felt light. She opened her eyes.
She lay on her back in her old room. A figure sat at the foot of the bed, reading a hardpetal lamina.
She breathed in, and he heard.
Kirifaïfra was at her side. “Are you awake, Manserphine?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How easy is your breathing?”
She breathed in and out. “All right.”
“Your throat. Does it ache?”
“A bit.”
“Do your arms and legs feel numb? Shake them. Can you feel them?”
Manserphine did as he asked. “I can feel them,” she reported.
He sighed and sat back. “Good. Chlorodyne dosage is difficult to guess. It all happened so fast we were worried about an overdose. That means permanent brain damage.”
“Am I well?”
He paused, and she noticed his glance flicker to her forehead. “You seem to be hale. A nasty…well, it looks like a tattoo that has come up on your forehead.”
“Oh…”
“What happened? You were raped?”
“No, nothing like that.” Manserphine hesitated as images of her torment returned to her mind, and with them the emotions. She heard herself whimper.
“You’re safe here,” Kirifaïfra said, stroking her arm. “We’ll look after you until you’ve recovered.”
Manserphine stumbled through a description of the evening’s events. Kirifaïfra’s face changed from rage at the abduction to shock at the beast, to tearful pity at her flight to the inn. Manserphine cried with him. They held hands as she concluded her story.
“You’re safe here,” Kirifaïfra repeated. “So, you have discovered my secret. If I’d known what I’d lead you into, I would have killed them first. I’m ashamed.”
“You weren’t to know,” Manserphine replied. “I shouted at them in the street. They saw us first, anyway, walking away from the Cemetery, weeks and weeks ago.”
“I was once the runner for the Band of Herb Smokers. The large man, Retykalla, is another nephew of Vishilkaïr’s. The other two are just brutes. They kill peacocks for pleasure. When I departed, it left wounds. I suppose they saw me with you and thought of a way to hurt me back.”
“Very likely,” Manserphine replied, sitting up against her bolster. Tentatively, she asked, “What happened in the Cemetery?”
“You made a bargain with a beast.” He looked away, deep in thought, then continued, “You say you hammered. I think you hammered a calling rhythm, such as you might have heard in play-yards when you were a girl. The beast came to demand a bargain—as they always do.”
“I can’t remember exactly what happened,” Manserphine said, shivering.
Kirifaïfra took her, and hugged her. “The bargain is not always like for like.”
“It knew I had visions. It said something about losing innocence.” Tears came, and Kirifaïfra hugged her closer. “I can’t remember.”
“You went through too much trauma to remember. Don’t worry. Lie back and sleep.”
“I can’t, I’m—”
“Insomniac.” He reached down beside the bed and from a blue flask poured a tot of liquor. “Drink. You need to distance yourself from the fear. Don’t worry. We will be on guard for the rest of the night.”
Manserphine drank.
And she slept.
~
Long after dawn next morning she woke, groggy, with a headache, but alive. The drug—strong, whatever it was—had knocked her out. Because of that, she felt stretched, as if she had undergone a particularly bad night. However she was able to get up and pull on some underwear, a vest, and a gown.
An object dangled from the crown of her head, and she saw a silver cord taking the place of the ribbon she had been given on leaving the Determinate Inn. It seemed to have wound itself around the lock of hair like a constricting snake. She could not pull it off.
Kirifaïfra opened the door, smiling when he saw her on her feet. “Good,” he said. “You’re with us again.” He took her hands and placed them at her side. “Don’t do that.”
“What is it?”
“A present. If ever you are in desperate trouble, call out, ‘Save me, sweet Kiri!’”
Manserphine shook her head, half a smile on her face. “Under all that posturing you’re just an old romantic, aren’t you?”
Kirifaïfra replied, “You really scared us when you collapsed. I’ve never seen anything so frightening. Vishilkaïr has some breakfast waiting for you. And you’ve a guest.”
“Zoahnône?”
“Yes.”
Manserphine walked down the stairs, to see Zoahnône sitting relaxed in a chair as if she was a regular customer.
“Ah, Manserphine,” Vishilkaïr said, “come and have some blueberry preserve on toast. With strawberry tea.”
Manserphine stopped in the centre of the common room. Zoahnône was staring at her. At her forehead. “What?” she said.
The gynoid approached her, looking in wonder at the mark on her forehead. “How did that happen?”
Kirifaïfra interrupted, “The Cemetery beast, Zoahnône. Best not to talk about it just now—”
“Quiet,” Zoahnône snapped. “This was done to you?” she asked Manserphine.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“An ecology of miniature flowers has been connected to your brain. New sensory channels will be opening even as we speak. Are you dizzy?”
“An ecology of flowers?” Manserphine felt the tremors of yesterday’s fear in her mind, making her body tremble. She went to the bay window seat, where she sat. Vishilkaïr was at her side with the tea, silent like a waiter.
“Do you know what this means?” Zoahnône asked, sitting opposite her.
“Do I need to know?” Manserph
ine mournfully replied.
“I think you ought to. It changes everything.”
“Everything?”
Zoahnône answered, “Normally human beings have no direct access to the artificial realities that are dotted about Zaïdmouth, which is why they rely on poppies and other mechanisms. Embodied gynoids have near perfect access. Network entities, of course, have the best access of all. In one sense they become the networks. If Shônsair or Baigurgône were to leap back into the networks, Gaia forbid, they would obtain immense power.”
“But these miniature flowers?”
“An interface between the human cortex and artificially generated information. I daren’t think how your perception of, say, the Garden will alter. And it may alter your visions, which are seated within your emotional body. Now you will feel the lure of network infinities. The real world in which you toil, and sweat, and love, may become remote. You must avoid temptation. Stay as you are. Live as a body.”
Seeing Zoahnône’s agitation Manserphine said, “Don’t worry, I won’t change.”
“Ah, but as yet you have not experienced.”
Manserphine felt cross. To change the subject, she said, “You mentioned news yesterday. What was it?”
“News of Shônsair. She is in Blissis. I have located a friend of the doorwarden Lizlaini, and know now of a haunt. Soon I will capture and then confront Shônsair—”
“Wait a moment,” said Kirifaïfra, interrupting from his position leaning against the bar. “Did you just say dotted about Zaïdmouth?”
Zoahnône nodded. “As Dustspirit, I detected four artificial realities.”
“Four?” Manserphine said. “Where?”
“The Inner and Outer Gardens are two, sewn together. The third is rooted in the Cemetery. The fourth… the fourth seems to float. I think it may be rooted in Aequalaïs.”
Manserphine gasped. “Surely the Sea-Clerics can’t have their own Garden?”
Zoahnône hesitated. Then: “Who knows what they have?”
A silence settled upon the inn. Through the windows came the sound of folk walking by, cursing the flowers and the hoverflies.
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