by Jay Lake
He tucked Marelle close. They lay a long while, breathing in rhythm, until it was time to make love again. This time he used the juices of her cunny to finger her like a boy. He took her the same way without any grease but that, splitting her open like a pomegranate until they both exploded into hot, thrilling agony, her arse pressing against him as she thrashed like a hooked fish, his seed spilling deep within her.
Then they slept, tangled like monkeys, sharing dreams as their breath mingled in the deepening shadows.
The krewe assembled their processional the next day. The light was dim, which spoke of poor weather outside, but the Krewe of Faces seemed unconcerned. The stage with the Lord Mayor and Crusty Alice was being tested.
He watched the puppets go through their motions. They would draw a crowd, even amid the overflowing streets of a processional, but the figures would also draw fire.
They'd tried this before, invoking the old magicks and lore of the City Imperishable. It had worked during the Trial of Flowers and at the battle in Terminus Plaza. He doubted they could pull the same trick a third time.
Wedgeburr might be as cracked as Lord Logdancer's chamber pot, but the First Counselor was not a stupid man.
The Krewe of Faces, like all the krewes, was a marching society. It was decidedly not a military unit. Even Enero's Winter Boys had been slaughtered by Wedgeburr. These people would stand no chance. Not unless Wedgeburr was sleeping and his bailiffs drunk to the last man. Imago pushed out on the floor, looking for the Card King and hoping for Marelle.
He found them inspecting a large crate of black hats. The headwear was made of some cheap fur—rabbit?—in imitation of the Lord Mayor's formal attire.
Imago realized what the Card King had meant by the surprises for the day. "You're going to dress everyone as me."
"Yes." Marelle looked pleased. She was clad from a costume box with bloused pants, a linen shirt, and a leather vest. "That will sow confusion and aid your revelation of yourself. Or your escape. Whichever proves the more needful."
The Card King nodded, a smile on his face as well. He was in his jeweled, glittering red satin, ready for his role.
"I forbid it," Imago said flatly. "They shot two dozen people during a session of the Assemblage for simply following me. The bailiffs will have orders to stop this sort of thing. Quickly and fatally."
"Oh, it gets worse," the Card King said cheerfully. "We've got over thirty Crusty Alices as well."
"You'll all be killed!" he shouted. "And your krewe houses burned in the bargain! I will not be a party to this, not in my name."
"You're still dead, dear," Marelle reminded him. "This is in your memory, not your name."
"Are there not enough graves in the Potter's Field for you?"
"I'm afraid we've gotten into the habit of standing up for ourselves." The Card King cracked his knuckles, then made a pair of meaty fists one atop the other. "The City Imperishable belongs to its people, not to its government. Not you, not the Burgesses."
"The City belongs to itself." Marelle's voice was urgent. "Mistake that at your peril."
Imago turned to her. "Is that the secret you have lived so long to protect?"
She glanced at the Card King. "Not now, Lord Mayor."
"Your confidences are your own," the Card King said. "But the krewes remember much that is lost, mistress. We march to keep the memories alive. If we hid when affairs grow difficult, we'd not be worthy of our sacred honor."
"Everyone has secrets," Marelle replied graciously.
Imago was ready to explode. They were not listening to him. "It's no secret that Wedgeburr will grow berserk at this."
"Precisely," said the Card King. Marelle nodded vigorously.
"And you have a charm against bullets?"
"Even better." She smiled, her eyes sparkling. "We have bought off the bailiffs."
"How?"
"Selsmark is a fool blinded by the power of his office. Most of the Burgesses are not, not when their own skins are at stake. Wedgeburr came to power on the backs of two dead bailiffs. Even the Imperatorials can see how their fortunes will eventually run under Wedgeburr." She leaned close. "He doesn't have the kind of grip on power that Prothro held. This time there's no Imperator Ignatius at the middle of it like some mad spider."
"Wedgeburr stands alone," said the Card King. "But for his lap dog Selsmark."
"The Tribade convinced the bailiff serjeants," Marelle continued. "Robichande was a hard man, and strange in his thoughts, but he was respected. The redcoats know who killed him. Their commanders will ensure the men go out with blank loads today. It won't be a mutiny, it will be an error."
"Better they not shoot at all," said Imago. It sounded insane to him—counting on a handful of notoriously loyal men to betray their oaths to the Assemblage of Burgesses.
"Better," she said. "But we cannot do everything."
The Card King nodded. "The processional is meant to goad Wedgeburr into the sort of angry, lunatic fit you encountered the night you were arrested. If he comes unhinged in front of a street full of people, he is undone. Even his remaining loyalists will not stand with him then."
"They are weak enough already," Marelle added.
"Your plan depends on much you cannot control," Imago warned. "And a great deal of faith."
Marelle reached out and touched his chin. "But no one knows we have you." She handed something to Imago—a leather pouch that might hold a timepiece or a compass.
When he tugged it open his chain of office poured out.
"This was dumped into the drains by one of Wedgeburr's men, just after the massacre in the Great Hall," the Card King said. "Your Saltfingers found it somewhere down below. He is a strange little man, but I expect he could find a way into Dorgau's last hell if there was a need."
"If it has a foundation, he probably could," said Imago.
They were all crazed. Absolutely crazed.
Bijaz
The five of them skidded flat on the ice. A trailing leg brushed Bijaz from above. The wind howled as three more wasps crawled from the smoldering entrance.
In the quiet which followed, the ice bear rose, claws digging into the frozen surface, to sprint for the doors. The other four trailed behind. Bijaz was last.
Where in the brass hells was Ashkoliiz?
Following on the heels of Iistaa, they pelted into the deep shadows within. The ice dropped off in an unexpected slope. Each slipped to plunge into the darkness. Only Bijaz screamed.
He fetched up hard against a solid, furry mass. The ice bear, of course, breathing hard. A stone surface beneath him had taken a goodly toll on his joints. It was slick with thin, frozen runnels. Bijaz assumed from the rustling around him that Ulliaa, Amalii, and Ashtiili were alive. Their small noises echoed in a huge space.
Were an enemy lying in wait, they would already be butchered. His greater fear was that another covey of those wasps hung overhead.
Bijaz reached back into his memory of the fragment of the sun and opened his hand to a bright shining light.
Pillars carved from the living rock rose to a vaulted ceiling. Behind him was the ice slope where the frozen sea outside had pushed in. More pillars receded into distant shadows.
Nothing was here but a dais some distance away in the lung-scraping cold. No wasps, no treasure, no army.
A sharp shriek echoed as DeNardo, Ashkoliiz, and three of her men slid down. One of the men bled from a scalp wound, and Ashkoliiz's coat was torn.
The Northmen caught her, letting the others fend for themselves. She brushed the ice chips from her knees, then looked around. "Are you lighting our way, little god?" Ashkoliiz asked.
He clenched his fist. The brightness faded to a dull red. Glare shot between his fingers. "I am lighting my way, lady. If you choose to follow, I shall not bar your steps."
The ice bear groaned. Bijaz looked at DeNardo. Did the man understand that this creature had been the mastermind behind Ashkoliiz's antics? He wasn't quite ready to ask for Iistaa
to be shot, and he wasn't certain that he'd be heeded if he did.
DeNardo's gaze slid away without acknowledgment. Bijaz began walking toward the dais.
The platform was topped by a stone coffin. The sepulcher's lid had been drawn out of true. Bijaz mounted the three steps and looked at what he'd come so far to find. The only decoration was a single line of lettering carved across the top that read Terminus, Ego.
Bijaz knelt at the corner where the interior was exposed. He raised his glowing hand, flooding the resting place of the last true Imperator with light.
A man lay within, curled on his side. His skin was tight leather over the rack of his bones, stretched open in places. The bottom was filled with fresh leaves, sharp-scented pine needles, and dead wasps of the usual size.
Neither silver nor gold. No battle flags nor temple arks nor jeweled chests. Nothing but a dead man.
Only the bedding made Bijaz wonder. He'd seen no broad-leafed trees this side of the Silver Ridges. Even the last of the struggling desert pines were days of marching behind them.
As for the wasps . . .
He realized Ashkoliiz, DeNardo, and the Northmen were crowded close, staring within.
"Where is being the history?" DeNardo finally asked.
"Him," Bijaz said.
Behind them the ice bear roared. DeNardo turned, grunted, and fired his pistol twice.
Iistaa was tearing the head off one of DeNardo's horsemen. Bijaz once more called down the fire of the sun. Flames washed over her. The bear dropped the lifeless body of the trooper and stalked toward Bijaz, fur on fire.
"Back!" the dwarf shouted. The reaper man was close, the grain bending flat in the whirlwind of his passing as the moon ate the sun to noontime darkness. "Back! Beyond your mountains!"
Iistaa opened her mouth to roar. Bijaz poured fire into her throat. His legs shivered. The sepulcher groaned as it was eroded to dust by the demands of his powers. Within the ruins of the tomb a great buzzing arose.
The ice bear coughed twice, then stumbled. She fell to her knees before Bijaz in a mass of flame. The sepulcher collapsed in a cloud of wasps and leaves circling one another. Tiny blue and green fires played within them.
His defense against the ice bear had unleashed whatever slept here. Had she attacked him for that very reason? So he could begin the disaster?
"The Eater of Forests!" shouted one of the Northmen.
"No!" screamed Ashkoliiz.
"Run," said Bijaz quietly.
The glissade of the icefall was already turning to slush. Great crackling noises echoed from the doors higher up. Bijaz struggled to climb the frozen slope, desperate to reach the outside before the frozen sea melted and flooded into the tomb. The bright light of his hand stabbed into the ice, highlighting dark shapes trapped within the flow.
Men, he realized. Horses. Banners roiling as if they had been caught mid-flood. Something with eyes that gleamed—a statue, six-armed and glowing.
Here was Terminus' last army with its train of priests and gods and treasure.
He glanced back. Four people clambered after him. Something that sparked fitfully followed at a distance. The damned bear yet lived.
Bijaz climbed faster. The ice beneath his hands was turning to slush. He would soon be caught in a waterfall with a drowned army and its angry gods.
"If I am the City's luck," he gasped, "then this is the cast of my die." He willed the Numbers Men to hear him, though they were notoriously deaf to prayer. "I must carry these tidings home."
A flight of wasps buzzed past. They trailed green leaves glowing with pale fire.
The Eater of Forests.
Bijaz had no doubt that the horrors were bound for the City Imperishable. Trees, it had all been trees from the beginning. Not the march of them, but the death of them.
He stumbled onto the portico, knee-deep in slush. Dead men and open water were spread before him. The wind bore a stale warmth like old, hot iron, reeking of the noumenal. The sound of large things on the move echoed in the distance.
Bijaz struggled away from the porch to gain a solid rock and so pull himself above the melting sea. DeNardo followed close on, dark as a seal with the soaking water. He turned and helped Ulliaa out. The Northman moved as if in great pain. Ashkoliiz was next, cursing monotonously under her breath. Amalii followed, limping badly.
"Where is Ashtiili?" Bijaz asked.
Ulliaa grunted. "We remember him."
Something very large moaned out upon the waters.
"You!" Ashkoliiz's voice was savage as she stabbed at Bijaz with a finger. "You ruined everything."
"I saved something. Including your miserable life. Be silent if you wish to retain it any longer."
The ensuing silence could have been measured in blade widths. After a few heartbeats, everyone sagged.
"Now being what?" DeNardo finally muttered.
"Leave," Bijaz said flatly. "Immediately. Get as far as we can, as fast as we can." He stared up the cliff. "Do we have any rope? I don't fancy trying to make it all the way back to that canyon."
Onesiphorous
So it went, throughout the plantation country and well into the month of Avrille. They received occasional word of Beaulise and her fellow shareholders raising the disaffected men of the thumbs. In some cases, miners were coming in to the plantations on their own, poling crude rafts. Onesiphorous advised those planters and overseers who were willing to set aside old grudges to send out boats.
He had little enough notion what he would do with his flotilla of armed men. He wondered what had become of the papers he'd sent on with Silver, whatever kind of princess she actually was, whether a response was on the way. Even if the miners and plantationers struck the corsair colors from Port Defiance, a lasting peace would require the black ships to retreat for good. Onesiphorous had no power to enforce that, not even if the entire City Imperishable were at his back.
He looked to hear from her as well—the queen of Angoulême. The waterways were filled with her horses, but none chose to speak.
Their greatest blessing was Jason, settling into a quiet sleep that lasted all the hours of the day and most of the nights. He rarely left the boat, waking only to trail his fingers over the side or mumble to the moon. Onesiphorous was reminded of an insect metamorphosing into something new.
Neither he nor Kalliope were eager to see what Jason would become.
"I have been too long away from the sand," she said as they sat around a fire the night before their last plantation stop. After putting in at the docks of The Fastness, they would turn downstream and east, heading for the rendezvous at the Bay of Snakes.
He poked the flames with a stick. "You told me you'd been called to stay."
"In the City Imperishable." She whetted her knife. "Not here, amid the stench of old mud and the whine of insects. There are no pests in the desert."
"Not even snakes and scorpions?"
"They are not pests. They are children of the sand."
Onesiphorous could see her smiling despite her mood. "The frogs and biting things are children of the swamp."
"Yes. But I am a sandwalker, not a, a, whatever they have here."
"They have her here," he said seriously. "Queen of Angoulême. Mother of the swamps."
"Yes, and the only sand here is wet enough to sink a mouse." She leaned against his shoulder. "Jason sleeps amid lengthy green dreams. You chase your city's need through the fogged minds of people addled by heat and distance. Me, I do nothing but wait."
Onesiphorous set his arm around her back. "But what do you wait for?"
Her voice was sad and hollow. "The end of the magick I began when I opened my brother's life to the soil last winter."
"I do not think you will wait much longer." He hugged her closer. "Jason will not sleep forever. Win or lose, the new moon of Mai will draw this to an end. Beyond that, another beginning. Whatever it may be."
She did not kiss him, then or later, but she slipped his hands inside her shirt. They touche
d awhile, each taking comfort from the other's warmth, though that was the limit of it.
In time, Onesiphorous crouched in the shadows away from the fire and tugged until his seed spilled in dark water. He was shamed at his lust for Kalliope's breasts.
A fish with a wide, pale face surfaced to strike at the floating white dribble which still hung by a narrow string from his cock's tip. The fish burped, then said, "So you found a way to call to me, little City man."