by Jay Lake
"I am not finding sula ma-jieni na-dja. He is being nowhere in the City these last two months."
"He could scarcely have gone somewhere else," Imago said.
"I am not knowing."
If they found Jason, Imago could keep Bijaz occupied a few more days, let the fear and hatred die down. Assuming that arse Fidelo was distracted from bringing suit before the Burgesses by Marelle's efforts at entrapment. And with her gone, what would he do next? The Lord Mayor had clerks aplenty, but few who knew the ins and outs of governing as Marelle had, and Onesiphorous before her.
He knew where she was. He could send for her. Even go beg her to come back. Ageless or crazed, it didn't matter. She was still valuable to him. She hadn't wanted to come any further into the light, to be named to a post where the broadsheets and the letter-writing crazies and the Burgesses themselves might take note of her. Fine, he would let her be a shadow member of his government.
But Imago knew enough of human nature to realize that Marelle had to return on her own. If she was hiding in the Whitetowers archives, he was best advised to just let her hide.
Jason, on the other hand, was hiding somewhere else. And probably not emerging except under strong persuasion. But where was he?
Imago was tired of sitting in his office, being frustrated by news. At the least he could go out on the street and be frustrated first-hand.
No enclosed coach, no horsemen, just a begging dwarf, someone at the margin of holy orders, walking by the docks.
Jason had spent most of his adult life down by Sturgeon Quay. Perhaps his trail was warm there even now.
Tomb's Shipping and Storage had seen better days. The doors stood open, folded back on each side to gape cavernously toward Water Street. Most of the windows had been broken out. Broken crates, old netting, and cargo tackle were spread before the place like spindrift from ancient wrecks.
Imago studied the warehouse. Eyes gleamed from the shadows where feral dogs had taken up residence. A few stacks of goods remained within. There seemed to be little here.
He turned away, intending to try the Teakwood Scow next. A burly full-man stood glaring at him. "What is this place to you?"
"An empty building." Imago tried to step around the man. "I am sorry to have troubled you."
The man stepped with him, blocking his path. "You're not here to chase out the haint?"
Ah, thought Imago. Something was taking place down here. "I know nothing of a haint. I had a friend here once, that is all."
"Some of us had a friend here once. Others thought he was a right bastard. Last winter ate him up either way."
That was as close as Imago figured he'd hear to an admission of anything. "The dead man of winter?"
The big man relaxed a little. "Can you fix him?"
"What if I can't?"
"Then I'll throw you into the river, and kick you back down the ladder when you try to climb out."
"I am Archer," Imago said, taking the name of the late dwarfen godmonger who was an unsung hero of last winter's fighting.
"Two-Thumbs," the big man growled. "Stevedore, shift foreman, and friend once to himself."
"Where is he now? What is he now? A haint?" That didn't quite sound like Jason, even dead.
"You already know, I'm thinking."
"I have an idea." Imago looked around until he found a broken spool, then waddled over to use it for a seat. He wished he'd thought to bring a stick. Didn't mendicant monks always carry staffs? He peered up at Two-Thumbs. "If I stay long enough, will I see him?"
"Depends on whether you can sit a week or two."
"But he does come here?"
"Yes."
"I can't fix him," Imago said, "but I know someone who might be able to." Visions of Bijaz setting men's hands to blooming flooded his imagination. It must be some use, knowing a budding god. "But I need to take him elsewhere to make the effort."
Two-Thumbs spoke meditatively. "They say his sister did this to him. They say it were the bad Imperator what came back. They say it was the magick of the hour, the Lord Mayor's banner touching him. Me, I don't know about any of that. I know his coin was good and he kept his word, and the warehouse has failed these months without him."
"So where is he?"
"You wait, in time you'll see him. If you can bring him back, so much to the good. Or maybe he's better off dead."
"I can wait, but not a week or more."
"Even an old barker like me knows himself a secret or two." Two-Thumbs headed into the shadows of the warehouse, picking up a length of cable with which to fend off the dogs.
Imago watched him go, wondering.
Perhaps ten minutes later, the dogs began howling. Several raced out of the front of the building, while loud splashes suggested that others were going directly into the river. Two-Thumbs appeared from the shadows and waved at Imago.
Once inside, he could see that the warehouse had an office built into one corner, with a second floor above it. Jason's old apartment, before the poor bastard had been forced onto the Inner Chamber and moved into the Limerock Palace.
"This place belonged to Tomb, right? Bijaz's brother?"
"Aye," said Two-Thumbs. "The full-man son of the family. Went south years ago now, left himself in charge."
The man was not going to say Jason's name. "Do you really believe he's a haint?"
Two-Thumbs paused at the door to the office. "I got no way to tell." His voice caught. "No one cares what happened to himself, who gave all for the City. If'n he's a haint, I reckon he should be rested down. If'n he's not no haint, I reckon he should be helped back up into the light. It just ain't me to be the one who does it." Another pause, then: "I figured who you are, Your Right Honorableness. And you were a friend to him awhile. God-shot besides. You got power coming and going."
"I just want to see him, man. Talk if he'll listen. Maybe I can help. Like I said, I know someone."
The stevedore nodded. "That other one, not just god-shot but god-riven he is. Brother to Tomb." He stepped into the office. "Now come and see what set the dogs to fleeing."
Imago followed him into the little office. It wasn't old and rotten—the place had only been abandoned for a season—but it was heroically messy, with papers scattered everywhere. A closet door at the back wall stood propped open. A cold draft blew from it, carrying the stink of old barns.
"He thought it a secret," Two-Thumbs said. "Those of us who knew just figured him for a fallen toff. They got different taste, up in the high houses."
"What?" asked Imago, stepping forward.
"You just go down there and you'll see."
Imago glanced over his shoulder. The big full-man was between him and the room's only exit, herding him toward the closet. Had this been a mistake?
If you're driven, run 'til you're ahead of the herd. It was a maxim he'd learned the hard way in the last year, trying to maintain a hold on the reins of power.
He stepped into the darkness and promptly rammed his knee on something metal.
Behind him, Two-Thumbs stifled a laugh. "'S a boiler, Your Right Honorableness."
The moment of menace was gone. Perhaps if he'd tried to turn back.
"You steps around it," the stevedore added.
Imago stepped around, feeling with his hands. He found a second door propped open. It was no more than a false panel. The barn stench was stronger, the draft decidedly rising up from below.
How was that possible? This warehouse stood on Sturgeon Quay. Nothing but Saltus water should lie beneath the floor. He headed slowly down the stairs in near blackness, one hand firmly braced upon the wooden wall.
It took several minutes of agonized creeping, but Imago reached the bottom. He smelled straw again, and old meat. The draft was stronger, the scent now mixed with the familiar stench of the Saltus.
"Jason? Are you here?"
He stopped to listen.
Nothing, of course. But he was looking for sula ma-jieni na-dja, the dead man of winter. Jason had been stripped of his heart
by his sister. His lungs were now little more than leather sacks serving as bellows to drive his voice.
It had been sandwalker magick, a different noumenon than what crawled the night streets of the City Imperishable. Imperator Ignatius had commanded his walking dead, too, but they were weapons with feet. Jason had been forged into something holy to the Tokhari but incomprehensible to his own people.
"Sula ma-jieni na-dja," Imago said. His Tokhari accent was horrid, he knew, but Jason's wouldn't be any better. What would Bijaz tell the man? "Spring is on the land, Jason. It is time for you to walk into the light once more."
A scrape echoed, followed by a rustle of straw. It could have been some beam in the building's frame settling. Imago knew better.
"Bijaz asks for you now. His power has grown. He may be able to help you."
A muffled thump. The barnyard smell grew stronger. Imago felt a swell of panic. Wouldn't he hear Jason moving around in the dark? What of the rustle of clothes, the swish of straw? Perhaps Jason's mind had rotted and he was nothing more than a vengeful revenant.
"Jason." Imago could not keep the squeak of fear from his voice. "Come up with me. Please. We need you. The City needs you."
A leather claw closed on Imago's throat, startling a terrified shriek from him, but he was imprisoned in an iron grip. Cold air gusted. Then, words: "Need?" The voice seemed to come from a tunnel, long, dusty, and disused. "What is need?"
Imago tried to draw breath to answer, to plead, but he was trapped. Another leather claw found his neck from the other side.
"No one needed me."
"J-j-jason." He spit the words out, past the closure in his throat. "Come back to us. We will help."
"I never wanted to leave."
Imago fought for air. He could breathe, barely, but speaking was torture. "It, it, it doesn't matter n-n-now."
Then the hands were gone. "Send her to me, at moonrise tonight."
"Who?" Imago asked, rubbing his neck.
"My sister. My lover. My killer." The voice seemed to fade, then paused. "Send her with a closed coach. Send her down to me. Then I will come."
Imago found the stairs and began pulling himself up. "I will find her. I will send her. Kalliope." Around the corner, into the faint light. "I promise," he shouted down the stairs. Then he was out, stumbling in the shadowed safety of the warehouse.
"You seen him," said Two-Thumbs.
"Yes." Imago shivered. "He asked for a guide, t-tonight."
The stevedore grimaced. "Don't betray him again."
"No. I will do what must be done."
Imago walked quickly out the warehouse door, down the quay, and on to Water Street. He would do what must be done. Right now he wasn't sure that would amount to any more than an enormous fire.
The Lord Mayor put that thought out of his mind as unworthy, albeit more than a little sane. Two-Thumbs had been right. Jason could not be betrayed again.
Bijaz
He was deep into an old scroll recounting the provisioning and equipage of expeditions beyond the Silver Ridges. A tumult abruptly erupted in the hall outside the map room. Bijaz placed a cup over the rush light and dropped beneath the table. The scroll rattled on the floor as the door banged open, while a flight of wasps tumbled out of the path of his fall to buzz angrily toward the ceiling.
"In, now," said a woman's voice. Kalliope, he realized. Feeling foolish, he crawled back out.
A loud argument in the hall was being conducted in Tokhari. She supported someone else as the door slammed behind them, cutting off the racket. Bijaz came around the end of the table to help.
Even with only the moonlight in the windows, he could see she supported her brother Jason.
"Where—?"
Kalliope waved him to silence with a chop of her hand. "Sit," she told her brother, lowering him to a chair.
With an audible creak, he folded at the waist and knees. His head lolled on his shoulders, held on only by his skin. Bijaz felt his flesh crawl. Surely he had seen Jason walking when he entered on Kalliope's arm.
Kalliope touched Jason's forehead. "Hold." A swirl of hot, sere air came from nowhere. She straightened up to stretch her back. "That was not . . . simple."
A wasp circled close to her. She waved a hand and it crackled, expelling a puff of mist before floating to the floor as a husk. Bijaz hoped his other apports found the windows before they found Kalliope.
"Where was he?"
"Imago located him. In that little dungeon beneath the warehouse on Sturgeon Quay." She sounded disgusted. "I had no idea it was there. If I'd known, I could have told them where he would be hiding."
"Jason was not a kind man," Bijaz said reflectively. "He carried an indifferent violence within him as a youth. I think maybe that had begun to fade with age." He circled Jason, who was now still as his chair. The man was a brittle stick that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Unsurprisingly, the tang of the noumenal hung about him. "Is he held long?"
"Until I release him." She sighed. "Which will happen if I fall asleep, or have my concentration broken."
"Is this power as a means or an end?"
"Don't be nasty." Then, unexpectedly, "Please."
"Of course," Bijaz said. "You had to bind him to bring him in, I presume."
"Yes." She hoisted herself up on the map table, her arse somewhere far out in the Sunward Sea. "I don't know what Jason's plan was, or if he even had one. He scared the hells out of Imago. He asked me to come at moonrise with a closed coach. I suppose he intended to leave." She glanced at Bijaz. "Imago promised to bring him to you."
"Yes." Bijaz began to feel guilty. "I asked for Jason."
"What, to ease your exile to the map room?"
"No. I was worried."
Kalliope snorted. "You've become too dangerous for a lot of people. This would be a very good time to find a path for that power. I think Imago has hope of you curing Jason, and thus showing that you are more than just a danger."
"Cure him? From being dead?"
"I know, I know. I killed him."
"And then he came back. But he's still dead." Bijaz realized that the argument outside the door had died down.
Kalliope watched him glance toward the hallway. "They're frightened."
"He's frightening."
"To be sure. Where's the light in here, anyway? See if you can do something for him."
Matches stood in a bowl on a sideboard where their hosts had been leaving food. Not meals so much as a never-ending buffet of tangy, salty dishes, and more ways to prepare chickpeas than he would ever have thought possible.
Bijaz picked up the little clay lamp, struck a match, and nursed the flame to brightness. Then he looked up at Jason and nearly dropped the lamp.
At the battle of Terminus Plaza, Jason had been pallid but reasonably human. Somehow Bijaz had assumed his old ward would continue that way—of strange coloration but still recognizably Jason.
The Jason-shaped thing in the chair looked as if it had been dragged out of a peat bog.
He had no hair. His scalp was almost black, with a texture like shiny leather. The eyes were pulled wide open, the balls within shriveled gray pits. His lips were drawn so widely around his mouth that most of the jaw was exposed. The rest of Jason's body was mercifully concealed beneath a ragged layer of clothing, though one clawed hand protruded. The fingers seemed to have fused. Every visible tendon was stretched tight as if in extreme struggle.
"By the stars, what has become of him?" Bijaz whispered.
"He's dead."
"But your sandwalker magicks . . . "
"He's stuffed with straw." She practically growled at Bijaz. "I didn't have the right herbs and weeds. He was brought back, not restored to life. His body wants to rot, but the bindings on his soul will not allow it."
"And yet he was strong enough to contest with you when you came for him."
"Contest and nearly prevail, I am ashamed to say." She shook her head. "That big stevedore had to intervene while my brother wa
s strapping me to a whipping frame. I believe Jason broke his leg. Imago has the man with that Tribade doctor now."
Bijaz paced back and forth behind Jason's chair. "So what do we do?"
"We do nothing. You do something."
He squatted next to Jason and poked at the shiny skin. It was like touching a crab shell. "I have no idea what."
"You're the miracle man. That path to power you asked about? I believe it passes through Jason."