“It will come as little surprise to you that I found my salvation in the most dramatic of places: I found the theatre, and for a short while I was free.
“I was only a boy, I can see that now, and like any boy I had faith that I’d soon conquer the world. Those above me were destined to bend to my will, to surrender at my slightest advance. And that fuming arrogance is what I brought to my audition for Hamlet, Death’s Ambassador.
“‘To think that he perfected the role of a lifetime,’ they’d say, weeping as they stood and ovated, ‘to think that his genius has reached its full flower at such a young age!’
“Lord, how trite my story sounds, removed from the hormonal torrents of teenaged angst. How inconsequential were my problems then, and yet how momentous they’d seemed! But you know already how this story ends. When I learned that the directors had cast a professional in the role, when I learned that I was not to be so much as a nameless Lord in that production, I climbed out of my window and walked the five long, moonlit miles to their theatre, where I broke off their doorknob with a stone from the driveway and stalked to the dressing-room. On the mirror I scrawled NOT TO BE in lipstick, which I thought was terribly clever until I’d already kicked out the chair and felt the belt bite my neck. Swinging from the pipes, I’d have done anything to wipe away those words—but not the act, not even then.
“I have never doubted the wisdom of my death until now. I was convinced, since I learned of his existence, that usurping the Magnate would make sense of my short life. I also believed that I’d succeed in unseating him, though I was never quite clear about how. But now I see that it has all been folly. Even the monster built to serve my desires would rather hack me out and drop me like a fewmet upon the floor of the Plains than use me for its eyes. This world, like the last one, hates me, along with all the people in it—and only the thought that I could triumph here, that I could keep the joy of supremacy forever in my grip, was keeping me on my feet. Now that it’s gone, what’s left for me to hold? In my palm there’s nothing but a single pocket watch. Besides that paltry sum, all I possess are questions, and they’re heavier than I, sitting on my chest and thumping their sooty fists in my face. I can take no more. So give me over to the Magnate, Jacob. Let him cure me. Let me go.”
Holding Etienne against his chest, Jacob looked up at the top of White Gate. “I’m afraid I haven’t brought him. Nor have I brought any answers for you, Leopold, only questions every bit as heavy as your own. How much must we suffer, how long must we strive, before our quests become tragic comedies? I can offer only a morsel of cold comfort: that I, at least, have forgotten the trick of hating you. I understand you, I think.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I should also mention that I’ve lost your penis.” There was a sigh from below, but no hysterics. “At any rate, I’ve made a new friend, and despite my best attempts to prepare her for your theatrics, I found I have, yet again, woefully underestimated your potential. Leopold, this is Siham.”
“Hiya! Sorry about your miserable existence. Listen, I have a question for you, too, but it’s not all that heavy. Where, good sirrah, is the rest of your company now?”
Leopold peered for a while at the Bonemaiden. “Well. They’re naturally buoyant, those three, as certain idiots are. I believe they are currently attempting to climb White Gate by hand.”
Jacob stood, offering his hand. “Leopold, I have nothing to offer you but more path. Would you care to walk it, or would you rather be carried? I’m afraid that leaving you to your own devices is out of the question, considering the condition you were in when we found you.”
“No matter where I go,” croaked Leopold, “the Mortar and Pestle will find me. What’s the point of moving when my eradication is inevitable?”
“Ah, I forgot to mention that bit. The Masker decided not to grind you into dust after all. You’ll be sentenced to the Debtor’s Pool, I believe. It’ll be dreadfully boring, but at least you’ll be intact.”
Leopold propped himself up on his elbows. “Truly?”
“If I wanted to kick you while you were down, Leopold, I’d have done it quite literally by now.”
“No Mortar and Pestle,” he murmured. “Then they mean to make an example of me. Keep me close. Close enough to punish. Close enough to watch.” He executed half a push-up, then collapsed. “But no! Absurdity has finally broken my back, Jacob, after decades of constant effort. Leave me where I lay, and trouble yourself no more with my sordid tale.”
Jacob sat down, determined. “For God’s sake, Leopold, you’re many things, but you’re no nihilist. Think of all the things you might still accomplish, even if it is on the other side of indenture. However dim your immediate prospects, there’s always a chance to beat your naysayers at their own game. Given eternity, who among us might not reverse his fortunes? Why, I was in a very similar situation once, during that drought I once alluded to—”
Leopold dragged himself onto his feet. “Well, if it’s come down to a choice between your memoirs and centuries of indenture, let us press on. White City awaits.”
“I do hope I don’t regret that encouragement,” murmured Jacob to Siham as they followed. “One can never tell with Leopold.”
At the end of the hall, they came upon the remarkable sight of Remington, Adam, and Eve striving to mount White Gate. Remington, after discovering minute chinks in the stone, had cleaned all the flesh that remained on his hands and feet with a scalpel taken from Jacob’s knapsack, and Adam and Eve had followed suit. With their newly denuded digits, they’d set about teaching themselves to climb the sheer face of White Gate one body-length at a time. Remington had begun, holding fast to the stone a few feet off the ground, then Eve had climbed his body like a human ladder, standing on his shoulders and seeking purchase above him, then Adam had climbed her, and so forth, until the lot of them tumbled in a pile at the bottom, eager to try again. After days of practice, they had managed to climb halfway to the top of the Gate, where the reconstructed crow hopped impatiently, squawking encouragement.
“My word,” said Siham, “these three are persistent, aren’t they?”
“Whose word?” said Remington, high above. “I can’t see who that is. Can you guys see who that is?”
“It’s only Jacob,” shouted Leopold, “and his skinny friend Siham.”
“Remy, can you get down from there without breaking yourself in half?”
“You know, I don’t think so,” said Remington, trying to see over Eve’s shoulders, tottering dangerously.
“Stay where you are!” said Jacob. “I’m sure there’s some sane way to open the gate, hopefully without dislodging you three—isn’t there, Siham?”
“Nope,” said Siham, “he’s got the right idea.” She crouched beneath White Gate, well to the side of Remington, then burst up like a coiled spring, stretching her bones as far as their dust would allow and catching hold of the stone with her fingertips. From there, she swung her body end-over-end, catching hold of the chinks in the rock now with her toes, now with her fingers, until she reached the climbers.
“Siham, the Bonemaiden,” she said as she flattened against the rock. “Pleasure to meet you. Grab some rib.”
“Yes, ma’am!” said Remington, taking hold of her ribcage. Eve hung from his foot, Adam from Eve’s, and as Siham began to climb, the three of them ascended in a chain along with her.
Remington whooped with laughter as Siham pulled them up onto the beveled top of White Gate, high above the Rim, where she left them to their wonder. The trio sat enraptured, watching the crow swoop as near as it dared to the pale constructions and the spindly citizens below.
It was over an hour before Siham could be persuaded to bring the others up to join them. “I’m sure you’ll catch up, Jacob,” she said, “but these three are natural Seekers like I’ve never seen. They deserve a first look at their city on their own.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
City of Bone
Dear God,” said Leopold, “those are b
uildings.”
“Built buildings,” said Jacob. “Constructed. Designed!”
“Built by corpses for corpses,” said Remington.
“Yeah, that whole thing about dwelling in ruins always confused me,” said Siham. “Why not just pull apart the bricks and make something new? Is that some kind of zombie aesthetic or just laziness?”
Jacob and Leopold were too engrossed with White City to reply. White Gate, atop which the company was perched, was one of four massive, marble slabs rising out of a circular outer wall. Only White Gate lacked an actual entrance—an understandable design choice, considering their neighbors in the Plains. An avenue began below Remington’s dangling feet and ran to the city center, where a grand, open-roofed edifice stood, a hybrid of mausoleum and amphitheater whose classical features were accentuated by the homely facade of every other construction in sight.
“Most of the buildings are made of giant jigsaw-chunks carved by the bone-sculptors,” said Siham. “You just slap them together to make whatever kind of construction you might need. See?” In the city below, a clutch of skeletons pushed a three-walled room along a grooved street, sliding its open edge to rest in the archway of a larger building. “Nothing looks the same here for very long, although that’s mostly because no one can agree on anything for more than an hour at a time.”
Remington sent the crow to swoop over the open rooftops, where it spied bone-fighters leaping and whirling in a grand arena, mazes of sheer marble walls with skeletons scaling them in a variety of physically improbable ways, vast laboratories and tiny cubicles, and a group of sculptors, masons, and architects using whirring ropes of dust to carve stone in a titanic workshop near the foothills.
“The elders encourage diversity, once you jump through enough of their hoops,” said Siham, “but woe to the hoop-averse.”
“How many of you are there?” said Jacob.
“The official number of Seekers is five thousand,” said Siham, “though half that number haven’t been seen for centuries. I’ve never seen more than five hundred at once. I’d say we’ve got three and change down there now.”
“Where are the rest?” said Remington.
“Seeking. Marrow-grip, a deep meditative state, is achieved, and then a body goes out into the world until she finds her way home. Now and then a seeking is a mission, an investigation, or some kind of a quest, the more hare-brained the better, but sometimes you just pick a direction and go. That’s what I did when I, uh, decided to leave. I walked into the Moving Desert, and when those debtors put me in their cage, I figured I’d see what the Debtor’s Pool was all about. It’s not a subject we’ve dedicated much thought to.”
“This place sounds disgustingly civilized,” said Leopold. “Utopian, even! I mistrust utopias on general principle.”
“Yeah, me too,” said Siham. “This isn’t that, though. Seekers can only tolerate each other for so long before we start to drive each other nuts. All the best seekings begin right after a disagreement. Like Shailesh says: ‘We are drawn to the City in order to leave it, Siham!’
“Which reminds me. Jacob, I’ll try to keep you out of it, but there’s probably going to be a giant-sized argument when we climb down there. I left sort of—abruptly.”
Jacob did his best to pay attention, but he was distracted by the whispering babble of Etienne, whose distress was no less profound for its diminished volume.
The street below White Gate had been attracting Seekers since Remington and the headless first ascended. It was now filled with dozens of warrior-skeletons of unimaginable strength and power, none of whom looked particularly pleased to see them.
With one hand, Siham gripped the top of the Gate, then let out her skeleton beneath her, her bones aligning like links in a chain separated by lengths of dust. Remington and the headless were the first to climb down, and once Jacob and Leopold had been convinced to follow, Jacob gripping Etienne’s babbling head in one arm and cinching down awkwardly with his legs, the skeletons in the street lent a grudging hand, climbing up the chinks in the wall and hefting the newcomers down one at a time.
Jacob was grasped around the waist by a sand-colored skeleton who scampered down the vertical surface of the wall as quickly as he could, eager to distance himself from the newcomer’s rotting flesh. “Another of Bonemaiden’s disasters,” he muttered as he backed away.
“Bonetown!” cried Remington as he touched down. The woman who’d carried him tried to rejoin the crowd, but he clapped his arms around her spine and hugged her close. “Gee, it’s good to be home!”
“Is it good?” she said as she disengaged. “A concept difficult to define. Is it home? More slippery still. Be less hasty in your conclusions, visitor. Study slow knowing. That’s the Seekers’ Way.”
“Ignore her advice,” whispered a second skeleton. “Know like a mote that dances on the wind! Define with the impulsive strength of a frog’s tongue! Do whatever comes to mind—that’s the Seekers’ Way.”
“I’ve already had my fill of this place,” said Leopold, holding up a hand. “Would you be so kind as to fling me back over the wall now?”
Jacob stared at the crowd, which had swelled to at least two hundred. A few of them shone like Siham, but the rest were covered, to various degrees, in a resinous stain that reminded Jacob of the Horde.
“What does the patina signify?” he whispered to Siham under cover of Etienne’s whispers.
“The brighter the bone, the more recent the scouring. Some only do it once, some as often as they can. It’s a thing. Since the Liminal Ode came out it’s been real sectarian around here.”
“Beg pardon?”
“The Liminal Ode. The Poet’s latest.”
Suddenly, a delicate skeleton with bones the color of eggshell skidded into the street at the back of the crowd, cried “Maiden!” in an alarmingly piercing voice, leaped over the Seekers, collapsed into a pile of tumbling bones, and reassembled at Siham’s feet. “Oh, dust-hearted Maiden,” she cried, shaking her fists so hard her bones jangled, “you left me!”
“Not you in particular, Yasmin,” said Siham. “Anyway, look: I came back!”
“That’s not the point,” said Yasmin, jouncing to her feet the better to turn her back. “You left without even a goodbye!”
“Well, I’d hate for a sentimental moment to spoil my air of desert stoicism.”
“Oh, Maiden, dwell on it no more. I forgive you!” cried Yasmin, falling to her knees and wrapping her arms around Siham’s legs. “Your new technique was wonderful! I hate you for it, just a little.”
Leaping backward, she shook her hands at the ground, launching her fingertips at the stone, but they halted a few inches above her knees, and she retracted them with a stomp of her delicate feet. “I’ll never make it out of this place.”
“Next time I’ll take you with me,” said Siham.
“That assumes you’ll ever make it out again,” said Yasmin. “Mistress Ai has been demanding your expulsion ever since you expelled yourself, though she’s lately turned to talk of jailing you. We’ve been arguing the legality of your punishment ever since. Oh, Maiden, here she comes!”
The crowd began to disperse, swiftly and with obvious regret, as a skeleton the hue of iced tea glided into the street. Stretching a finger toward Siham, she tipped her head at the city’s center and began drifting backward, her body rigid above motionless feet.
“Witches!” hissed Leopold. “Utopia is lousy with witches!”
“Siham, is that woman floating?” said Jacob.
“Nah. No witchcraft there, just the underworld’s single greatest reserve of stubbornness. Ai is the leader of the eternalists.”
“Eternals!” said Yasmin. “You demean us with your ‘ists’ and ‘isms.’”
“They’re the ones with the yellowy bones. Yasmin here’s a junior member.”
“We hold that eternity is within the grasp of the individual,” said Yasmin, “and refrain from the reckless expenditure of bone mass.”
&
nbsp; “They don’t like repeat trips into the Moving Desert,” said Siham. “One scouring either turns you into a skeleton or baby powder, so they need that first one to get into the club, but they claim that too much time in the storm will fry your brain. Anyway: Ai, rather than degrading her bones even the slightest bit by taking actual steps, coats itty-bitty pebbles with her dust and lets them do the moving for her.”
“A roller-corpse,” said Remington, bumping hips with Adam and Eve.
“They say the motion Mistress has conserved will one day be expended in a single blow of unrivaled power. She strikes fear into the heart of all Seekers,” said Yasmin.
“Except me,” said Siham.
“All Seekers who are sane,” said Yasmin. “But come! We’d better make haste to the Plaza of the Ancients before Mistress Ai gets any angrier, assuming that’s possible. Oh, Maiden, what a mess you’ve made for yourself to clean up!”
The Plaza of the Ancients towered over White City, the interlocking blocks of its walls as snug as puzzle pieces, their outlines describing the shapes of corpses and skeletons, organs and weapons, mountains and rivers, all so expertly carved that no mortar was needed. The company entered through an archway, staring up at a delicate marble honeycomb that covered the walls in filigreed chambers, each one holding a fragment of a weathered skeleton: skulls, bones, and ribcages sat as motionless as museum pieces, though they buzzed with sentience. Each chamber was a sculpture in itself, combining the styles of hieroglyphics and heraldry to relate some intricate, if obscure, chronicle.
In the Plaza’s center stood a sculpture of a willow, its branches so delicate that Jacob expected them to sway in the breeze traversing the Plaza’s archways; its leaves, thin to the point of translucence, obliged, gently tinkling on thin silver chains. Mistress Ai stood below the tree, and the company followed Yasmin to its circular base, where they seated themselves like students before a lecture, Jacob painfully aware of how much noise Etienne was making. As Remington settled, the crow launched itself from his head in the direction of a bird-faced gargoyle on the Plaza’s open roof, announcing itself as it flew.
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