by Jack Conner
Janx grinned, but it was not a pleasant grin. “She opened up her own temple.”
“She what?”
Janx’s grin turned even more sinister. “She founded her own church, with her as the resident god. The sewer people come up to worship her now, and others too. More had converted than had time or know-how to find a settlement in the Stink, and there are plenty of ground-floor Ghenisans now bowin’ to the whatsits.”
“‘Gods below’ indeed.” Avery caressed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. “Layanna ... the head of her own religion. Why does that give me a bad feeling?”
“Cause you and me think alike,” Hildra said. “Shit, it’s been givin’ me nightmares.”
“And she’s ... accepting human sacrifice?”
“Way we heard it, she was in talks with Prince Id and Gwen to work out some sort of deal,” Janx said. “They’d give her prisoners convicted of capital crimes.”
“And she’d eat ‘em,” Hildra said, unnecessarily. “Some taste in chicks you have there.”
Avery drained his glass. “That’s a similar sort of system to the one Octung has. Please don’t tell me she’s setting herself up as the Collossum of Ghenisa.”
A long moment of silence passed, punctuated by a new and appropriate round of thunder. Bright tongues erupted outside, and the cabin trembled violently. Avery pictured Layanna, a woman that he loved, Sheridan or no Sheridan, standing at the altar of a new temple, her worshippers arrayed before her singing in worship while a victim given to her by the state writhed on the slab ...
“I think I’ll take another drink,” he said.
Abruptly, Hildra stood. She’d been tense and edgy all during the talk. Avery had ascribed it to her dislike of Sheridan, but as she shot a look at Janx he realized there was something else going on.
“Look, I gotta do somethin’,” she said, and left. Janx called out to her, but she didn’t look back.
The big man let out a long breath.
“What’s the trouble?” Avery said.
“It’s nothing,” Janx said. “Just some stuff.”
Avery had risen to pour himself another drink, but now he sat down again next to Janx. He could tell the captain of the ship was out of sorts.
“After all we’ve been through,” Avery said, “I think you can tell me.”
“It’s personal stuff.”
“When have you ever shied from giving me personal advice? Maybe I can do the same for you.”
Janx stared out the porthole. “The night the Starfish died, the city went nuts. You really missed a hell of a thing. There were people in the streets, parties … Well, I woke up with a woman that wasn’t Hildra.”
“Aw, Janx.”
“I know.” Janx nodded. “I know. But ya gotta understand somethin’, Doc. Before ... all this ... Hildra and I were never together. I mean, sure, we’d had some fun, but that was all it was. But after shit and fan connected, we were all we had from the old days.”
“You grew closer.”
“Right. I never wanted it. Wait, I don’t mean that, exactly. I mean, I never wanted her to think that we were ...”
“Meant to be together.”
“Yeah.”
“So that other woman, that was your way of breaking it to her gently.”
Janx gazed at him out of shadowed eyes. “What else was I supposed to do? And don’t you of all people lecture me about sleeping around.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Avery paused. “Hildra’s different, though. She acts tough, but I think under that is something else.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Doc. Neither Layanna nor the admiral’re hard as they appear, either. You’d be wise to remember that.”
Avery conceded the point. “So what are you going to do?”
Janx lifted a drink to his lips. “She’ll cool down in time. Till then, I’ll step lively.”
* * *
“The crew have been shooting me looks,” Sheridan said, reclining against the wall of their cabin. She had been doing push-ups on the floor and sweat beaded her skin. “I went out to take a walk on the deck after supper while you and your cronies were conspiring, and I received the distinct impression that I just made it off the deck without getting tipped over.”
Still drinking, Avery sat at a table in the tiny kitchen, really just a single burner and a small ice-box, but even this was extravagant compared to the cabins used by most of the crew.
“Now you know how I felt aboard the Valanca,” he said. “I was a hated and feared enemy there. So are you here.”
“I don’t know if anyone feared you,” Sheridan said.
“Anyway, at least you have your freedom.”
“For the moment. If we ever return to Ghenisa ...”
“You and I both know you’ll never go. You’ll probably bolt in the Ysstral Empire. Certainly you will after we find the Monastery.”
“If we do.”
Avery nodded, allowing the possibility of their failure. “You’ll slip away somewhere, if you’re still alive to do so, and if I’m still alive to slip away from.”
“Aren’t you cheery.” She rubbed her hands, preparing for another round, then paused. “So what about us, then? If you have it all worked out that I’m gone as soon as this is all over, what about us?”
Avery wished alcohol held as much wisdom as it did blurriness. “I don’t know. I seem to be short on answers tonight. But ... I ... I don’t see how we can have a future together.” He regretted the words even as he was saying them, but somehow the normal control he exerted over his tongue had evaporated.
She paused, then started on the next round of push-ups. He watched her, gleaming and muscular, moving steadily up and down. She really was quite amazing, he thought. He barely had the energy to refill his glass—which he did now anyway—but she never seemed to tire. Her physical discipline was exceeded only by her mental equivalent.
“You should join me,” she said when she stopped, mopping sweat from her brow.
“I’ll think on it over the next drink,” he assured her. He raised his glass to his lips, then let it hang there. “What do you think about ... us?”
She glanced at him, then away. “What do I have to think about? I’m gone, remember? We have no future together.”
Before he could say a word in reply, she started on a round of sit-ups.
Chapter 4
He was on deck the day they reached the Ysstral Empire. Sheridan had wanted to take a walk and he hadn’t wanted her to get pitched overboard, so he decided to accompany her. It was a cold, blustery day; indeed, the Ysstral Empire was not much south of Xlaca, if on a different continent, and what it lacked in snow it more than made up for in frigid winds and rains. Black skies crowned the heavens, bright tongues flicking both down and up, and as the zeppelin approached the lights of Salanth, it passed under the clouds and bitter rain pounded down, rat-rat-ratting on the envelope of the zeppelin and coursing in sheets from its sides.
Avery and Sheridan watched the Ysstral capital come in through a curtain of poisonous water; at least Avery assumed it was poisonous. The city was Salanth, where the Ysstrals had founded their culture around the ruins of some truly ancient and mysterious buildings. Avery wasn’t sure if it was the effects of these ruins that had turned the rain toxic, the sea that had done it, or some other local phenomenon, but the end result was the same. Rain was dangerous. Creatures (or their mutated descendents) like turtles and snails and crabs—things with shells that could protect them—were said to thrive here. A whole religion was based around it.
Great towers, black and ominous, heaved up throughout the sprawling city, and lights like glowing amber shone from them, many and tiny. Avery had often thought of the windows on the Ysstral buildings back home as spider eyes, and these were no different, though somehow more menacing. Perhaps it was their sheer number. The evil eyes glared down from every building, every single one, not just a scattered structure here or there. Flying buttresses held up strangely lea
ning spires, thrusting up and out at odd angles. A great dome in the center of Salanth bristled with slender towers, one of which had another, smaller tower sticking vertically out of it, defying all laws of physics, and this tower was surmounted by another, however tiny, dome. It was a strange, dizzying, crowded city, and fog curled through the streets, masking much of it. Avery saw all this through the curtain of water dripping from the airship’s envelope, making the city even more surreal.
“Not particularly appealing, is it?” Sheridan said, and he didn’t bother to answer.
As if to punctuate her comment, a squadron of bi-wing planes bearing the Ysstral crest (a crystal tower silhouetted against a mountain range) intercepted the zeppelin and began flying in aggressive loops around it. Avery imagined the frantic conversation going on via radio in the Muirblaag’s bridge. The Ysstrals might well frown upon the arrival of an unannounced and unmarked ship. This had been a fear from the outset of the Muirblaag’s journey here. The Ysstrals were a notoriously insular people who discouraged foreigners from visiting, let alone making their residence here—but a fully armed military ship? Avery found himself holding his breath.
“Guess we should count ourselves lucky they’re not firing on us,” Sheridan said.
“Yet. By the way, is the Codex ... ?”
“Same place. Well hidden.”
“Good.”
More ships arrived—dirigibles, this time, two score of them, all military craft. These slower ships could flank the Muirblaag, and they did, escorting the Ghenisans down toward the black harbor that Salanth erupted along. The harbor was ringed by long black breakwater islands, and the military ships escorted the Muirblaag toward the largest one. Waves burst along its rocky shore, showering tracers of energy that seemed to hang in the air seconds afterward, and great ramparts and crenellated towers leapt up from the fortress-like structure that dominated the island. From one tower a search beam, or perhaps a lighthouse-beam, played across the ocean water. Strange fish fly-flapped through the cone of illumination, glittering like stars.
“What’s this?” Avery said. “It looks like a prison.”
“It is a prison.” Sheridan pointed at the walled yard filled with men in shabby uniforms, most huddling under the overhangs, away from the rain. Some played a game involving a ball under a canopy. Many smoked cigarettes and watched the zeppelin come in. Stanchions jutted from the prison wall in places, and from them hung what looked like man-sized bird cages. Avery swallowed, peering into one. Are those bones?
“We’re coming low over the water now,” he said. “You’d better don an environment suit.”
Instead, Sheridan grabbed a couple of pollution pills out of a pocket and popped them dry. When she offered one to Avery, he accepted. Better safe than even more mutated.
The military escorts didn’t force the zeppelin any lower but directed it toward the highest tower of the island prison, where a long terrace served as a dock for airships. People already swarmed it, some with weapons, some with instruments to secure the vessel. Avery and Sheridan drew back as the dock approached, and he started as a score of Ghenisan troops emerged from within the Muirblaag and cast icy looks on the approaching Ysstrals. Making sure we don’t get boarded? Or was Janx simply giving a show of force to prevent undue harassment? None displayed weapons.
Rain pounded down, slicking the deck and making the prison guards, if that’s what they were, appear as if coated in slaver. A sudden blast of lightning made them glow.
The zeppelin docked, and the Ysstrals caught ropes thrown by the Ghenisans and tied the ship down, though the wind still caused it to buck and shake. Avery could feel the vibrations through his feet. Finally Janx emerged and ordered the ramp lowered.
Hesitant, not sure if he should bother Janx in the middle of what might be some sort of crisis, Avery approached the captain.
“Is everything all right?” Avery said.
Janx scowled at a man just emerging from the fortress—a round-shouldered, round-bellied and thoroughly unpleasant-looking fellow with gray hair under a military-style cap. For all his corpulence, he carried himself with certainty and precision, and his uniform was immaculate. Surrounded by several functionaries, the man, whom Avery assumed was the warden, waited under an overhang.
For a moment, Avery didn’t think Janx had heard him, but then he turned to Avery and said, “Ysstrals ain’t happy to see us, Doc.”
“So they’re incarcerating us?”
“I’d like to see ‘em try.”
When the ramp was down, the warden spoke, and he was evidently used to addressing crowds, as his voice carried easily. In a thick Ysstran accent, he said, “Welcome to Curluth Point. You may disembark.”
His guards kept their hands on the butts of their side arms, but none drew them as Janx, surrounded by four officers, stepped down and met the warden, who did not deign to leave his overhang. Looking closer, Avery saw that all the guards wore hats that channeled the rain off their heads down wax-coated flaps so that practically no rain touched them. The Ghenisans jumped and flinched in the downpour, and Avery imagined it must burn them, though all wore caps, even Janx. None of the Ysstrals offered them so much as an umbrella.
Once under the overhang, they quit fidgeting and spoke with the warden for several minutes. Then Janx retuned to Avery.
“C'mon, Doc. You and me an’ Hildy are goin’ with the Magistrate.”
“Magistrate? Does he sit a bench?”
Janx shrugged.
Hildra had slipped out of the zeppelin, and she was frowning through the curtain of water at the Ysstrals, an unlit cigarette in her mouth.
Tonelessly, she said, “They look friendly.”
“Well, we did just turn up on their doorstep, darlin’,” Janx said. “Lucky they didn’t shoot us out of the sky. If I hadn’t convinced ‘em we were Ghenisan, they might have. Anyway, the Maj wants to see the doc here, an’ I ain’t leavin’ you alone.”
Avery tugged at his mustache. “Why me?”
An odd smile, or something like it, curled one side of Janx’s mouth. “Why, ‘cause you’re our resident royalty, ain’t ya? Who better to treat with the nobs?”
“I’m hardly—”
“You’re Ani’s father, and that’s all they need. You’re practically a Drake.”
“That’s a bit much. Still ...” Avery indicated Sheridan. “Jess comes with us.” Before Janx could object, he said, “I’m not leaving her alone.”
Janx was forced to concede the point. Sheridan said nothing. Leading the way, Janx lumbered down the ramp and rejoined the Magistrate, who inclined his head to Avery in what was almost a bow, but not quite—an acknowledgement of Avery’s position, no more. Sure enough, the rain, once it had settled on Avery’s skin for a few seconds, began to sting, and he was glad to duck under the canopy.
“Come,” said the Magistrate. Leaving his troops under the command of a junior officer, he showed Avery’s party inside. They passed down black stone corridors winking with golden highlights and lit with strangely flowing alchemical lamps, all purple, flooding the halls in eerie, slowly shifting light and making them smell like salt and cinnamon. Soldiers wearing black with blue edging stood in niches, staring forward unmoving. At first Avery thought they were statues, but then he saw one blink. Even then he wasn’t quite sure.
The Magistrate brought Avery’s group to his study at the end of a certain hall, a round chamber with a view over the dark, cold-looking Storm Harbor. Seal-like creatures cluttered the rocky islets that ringed the prison island. When a bolt of lightning flickered down, Avery saw that the seals were mutated and somehow disturbing to look upon. The Magistrate plopped down behind his grand desk and gestured for the others to pull up chairs.
“Sit, sit,” he said.
Two of his guards had accompanied them, and they took up positions behind the seated guests, but not directly behind. Still, it gave Avery an uncomfortable feeling, and he constantly wanted to swivel his head to make sure the guards weren’t abo
ut to descend on them.
“Welcome to Curluth Point,” the Magistrate said again, “one of the most notorious prisons in the Empire. All the worst offenders of the seas end up here to serve out their days in grimness and despair, to listen to the laughter of the seals and know their doom. I apologize that your entrance into the country, my, ah, lord, is so, how shall we say, lacking in pomp, but advance notice was not an advantage of ours.”
“I appreciate that,” Avery said, “and I, in return, apologize for coming upon you so unannounced, and with a company of soldiers besides. I hope you understand I don’t mean to invade you.” He smiled to show that it was a jest.
The Magistrate smiled back. “Ha ha. Yes, indeed. No, we weren’t overly alarmed, I must say, though I’m sure your men are gallant and fearsome indeed. It is more that we in the Dark Lands are ... wary ... of those beyond our shores. Those whose ways are not our own.” He paused to let that sink in, and it was clear from the tone of his heavily-accented voice that he considered the ways of the cloud-beset Ysstral Empire superior. “By the way, my, ah, lord, what am I to call you?”
Avery understood by the repeated my-ah-lords that the Magistrate did not consider him much of a lord at all. This might have rankled Avery if he hadn’t so heartily agreed.
“‘Dr. Avery’ has done just fine for many years,” Avery said. “I don’t see why that won’t suffice now.”
“Very ... humble, my, ah, lord. But I’m afraid the worthies of the Empire will not treat with a mere man of medicine, however talented and valuable that man is. A great thing it is, to be a saver of lives, I am sure, but the blood of gods runs in the veins of those most high, and they do not see many whose veins are not so filled.”
Avery had to restrain himself from playing with his fingers. At his side, he could feel Janx tensing, and Hildra was flicking one match and then another, trying to light her cigarette. It appeared her matchbook had become soaked. Sheridan still said nothing, only sat stonily.
“I’m afraid I don’t know my title,” Avery said. “I’ll defer that to you, or those who might know these things.”