Perhaps it was different for Zovaccio; perhaps he did see Them. Certainly he saw something. His gaze constantly sought the shadows, and the habitual melancholy of his expression sometimes gave way to disquieting smiles. Presently Aureste perceived that the firm pressure of Ojem Pridisso’s hand upon his shoulder was often all that prevented Zovaccio from wandering off into the woods. And he wondered, for the hundredth time, whether this disintegrating Taerleezi arcanist would actually prove capable of functioning when the time came.
He would have to, that was all.
At the end of the day, they came to a low, gently rounded hillock, relatively dry, and there they halted for the night. Following preparation and consumption of a typically plain evening meal, Vinzille Corvestri employed a small measure of power to establish arcane safeguards about the perimeter of the camp. This minor task was usually assigned to the boy, whose youth permitted exceptionally swift recovery from the depletion following arcane endeavor. The power itself was well invested in protection, and potentially sound slumber for all.
The Magnifico Aureste customarily slept the sleep of the just, unvisited by nightmare, undisturbed by pangs of conscience. But this night was different. This night, he tossed and turned, grabbed his blanket and tried to throttle it, while the dire dreams rampaged through his sleeping head. His dreams were filled with vast, inchoate menace, unknowable and horribly attractive. He dreamed that he was insect-sized, scurrying across a world that held no place for him. He dreamed of having no place to hide. And in his dreams there was a voice that he had never before heard, Taerleezi-twanging and filled with joy.
He was first to stir in the morning, and he was instantly wide awake. There were knots in his belly, and a sour taste in his mouth. The earliest dawn light was just beginning to turn the mists to pearl. He looked about him and saw that his companions still slept. Thus, he was first to spy the unoccupied blanket still spread out near the ashes of yesterday’s cookfire, and first to realize that Littri Zovaccio had disappeared.
SIX
Another dimly lit cellar, another secret meeting. Five conspirators sat around a rickety table, in an underground space fraught with shadows and bad air. Jianna surveyed her companions. Lousewort had kept his word. He had brought Songbird and Gyppix back to her, together with a brace of boys supposedly capable of passing themselves off as girls. Supposedly.
One of the pair might perhaps have qualified. “Dagger,” he called himself, and the steely alias was ludicrously at odds with the lad’s smooth prettiness of face. With his slight frame, ethereally blue eyes, rose-petal skin, and fine features, Dagger possessed all the equipment needed to counterfeit femininity. But what use languishing eyes and golden locks, when he sprawled in his chair, legs spread wide, like a drunken yokel? When he scratched shamelessly in all the wrong places? When he chewed tobacco, and spat the juice onto the floor? And how was it possible that a boy of such tender years could have picked up such a revolting habit, anyway?
And then there was the other one, styling himself “Smokehead.” Older than Dagger, and not nearly as pretty, Smokehead was short, stocky, and round-faced, with a troubled complexion. His brown eyes reflected sharp intelligence, which no doubt benefited the resistance. But he did not look remotely like a girl.
No matter. She would make do with them, one way or another.
They were all regarding her expectantly, awaiting explanation, instructions, orders. And it offered a strange sensation to behold herself, Jianna Belandor, acknowledged leader and mastermind of a full-fledged resistance endeavor. She drew a deep breath and spoke.
“I thank the four of you for coming here today. Songbird and Gyppix, our last meeting was interrupted—”
“I shudder to remember!” Songbird interjected, with relish.
“While Dagger and Smokehead are new recruits. Therefore, I mean to relate the whole of our plan, from start to finish. Lads, I’m not sure how much our friend Master L has told you, but if you don’t know already, let me explain that that our aim here is the liberation from the Witch of a condemned prisoner. The prisoner is Dr. Falaste Rione, a man of noble character, innocent of wrongdoing, a great friend of the resistance—”
“Don’t tell us about Doc Falaste. He’s all the way through.” Dagger’s weary sneer reproached her stupidity. “We’ve heard, we already know.”
“Else we should not be here,” Smokehead concluded. His voice was exceptionally clear, his diction precise.
“Very well. I’m glad of your help. I’d thought at first to carry this effort through with a team composed entirely of women, but it seems that things haven’t turned out that way. Never mind, we’ll fare very well. The plan will require only the smallest alteration—”
“The plan will require no alteration,” Smokehead contradicted calmly.
He must have worked hard on his voice and speech, she thought. Not to mention his assurance of manner. Aloud, she returned reasonably, “Since I haven’t yet told you what the plan is, you can’t really know, can you?”
“I know that you shall have your team of women.”
“Really, I’m very happy to have you two lads here.”
“She don’t think we can do it, Smoky,” Dagger observed with a grin. “She just don’t believe.”
“We must prove her wrong.”
“Not necessary.” Jianna felt the reins of control slipping. “Master L sent you, and I don’t question your talents. Now, why don’t you sit still and listen while I explain—”
“Let’s show ’er now.” Dagger slapped the tabletop with enthusiasm. “Let’s show ’em all!”
“Boys, would you please—”
“My colleague speaks truly,” Smokehead observed. “A demonstration is indicated.”
“Oh, yes, please!” Songbird bounced in her seat.
“Aye, let’s see what you’ve got, then,” Gyppix agreed.
At once the boys reached beneath their respective stools to bring forth identical canvas sacks. The sacks yielded skirts, plain bodices, sleeves, scarves, wigs, even a few bits of jewelry. Quickly the two donned the feminine accoutrements over their own clothing. Smokehead skillfully draped a scarf to conceal his telltale masculine throat, while Dagger gave his false ringlets a final tweak. Then they straightened and turned to face their audience.
Jianna stared, entranced. Dagger’s face, framed in long golden curls, belonged to a lovely young girl. His lips were set in a ripe pout. His wide eyes beamed infantine innocence. His stance was upright yet graceful, feet neatly positioned, hands lightly clasped. The illusion was flawless.
And the other one, the boy calling himself Smokehead? He didn’t possess Dagger’s physical advantages, but he had something as good or better—natural dramatic talent. Smokehead could not turn himself into a beautiful girl, but he could be a plain one. His features were heavy and blunt, but a certain timorous sweetness of expression invested them with femininity. His modestly downcast eyes, his careful posture, the discreet inclination of his head, all perfectly recalled the well-bred young maidenlady.
“Sister, won’t you stroll the garden paths with me?” An inviting sweep of Smokehead’s arm seemed to transform the cellar. His voice was perfect, a little husky, but soft and musical.
“Ah, sister, but how delightful!” Dagger fluted in reply. His manner was perhaps a shade exaggerated, verging upon a caricature of girlish animation; but no more so than that of many an affected adolescent female.
Arm in arm, the ersatz sisters paced the width of the cellar. Dagger trod with extreme delicacy. Smokehead, on the other hand, glided along with an easy grace that appeared wholly natural. There could be no doubt—Smokehead was a born actor.
The boys resumed their seats. Songbird clapped her hands, while Gyppix smiled and nodded.
Jianna permitted herself a smile of her own. “You’ve won us,” she conceded. “Now, if you’ll grant me your full attention, I’ll tell you four ladies exactly what we’re going to do.”
It could hardly be deni
ed by the most stalwart of pessimists that the clouds of smoke smothering Vitrisi for so long were beginning to lighten. Certainly, the smoke was still much in evidence. The choking vapors lingered thick and dark as ever in the low hollows, the narrow alleyways, the enclosed courtyards. Warehouses, abandoned tenements, empty workshops and stables had been infiltrated long ago, and in such places, the fumes still crouched in concentrated form behind boarded windows. But in the open spaces—the straight boulevards, the parks and gardens, the waterfront—the atmosphere was regaining transparency. The increase in clarity, welcome though it was, came at a certain price: The stench of putrescent meat infused the atmosphere as never before.
There was a reason for this.
Following months of unremitting activity, the stores of fuel that kept the great funeral pyres of the city blazing day and night were starting to fail. The wooded areas within a four-day radius of Vitrisi had been exhausted. The coal supplies were dangerously depleted, and the peat was fading away. Even such poor stuff as straw, dried leaves, and scrub vegetation were beginning to run short.
The civic pyres were forced to cut back on their hours of operation. The smoke did not vanish, but it diminished, while the backlog of corpses awaiting disposal swiftly expanded.
Of course, not all of the corpses waited docilely. Some of them, too many of them, hauled their dead selves to their dead feet and took to Wandering. Their peripatetic ranks were swelling by the day, and with them traveled the stink of decay.
It was everywhere.
The bolder of citizens stuffed the nasal projections of their masks to the bursting with aromatic herbs, and went on about their business. The more timid bolted their shutters and hid indoors. Bold or timid, nobody quite succeeded in excluding the stench; it found its way through herbs and shutters alike.
As the population of Wanderers increased, so too increased the incidence of Pockets. These discrete, self-contained bubbles of extreme wrongness were proliferating all over town. At first, their manifestations had been of brief duration, usually no more than seconds. A few had been observed to persist for a minute or two before yielding to reality, and for a while this limit was not exceeded. As the weeks passed, however, the Pockets’ average term of existence lengthened. They began to linger for minutes on end, and the minutes gradually expanded into hours. A few of them seemed to pulsate in place, alternating rapidly between immediacy and nonexistence; or, as some observers put it, they “flickered.”
Certain locales scattered about the city evidently favored the formation of Pockets. Nobody knew why, but the disruptions of reality in the Strenvivi Gardens, in Gluttonhaven Court, and in several noisome crannies of the Spidery were conspicuously recurrent. So recurrent were they, in fact, that interested citizens bestowed fanciful names upon them, as if in fondness. Inevitably, each of the persistent Pockets attracted its own partisans, who were swift to attribute specific characteristics, even traits of personality, to the object of loyalty. Thus “Howling Chaos” in Gluttonhaven Court was deemed savagely barbaric and mendacious, while “Ruination,” in the Spidery, was said to possess a cruel intelligence leavened with a sense of irony.
The most dedicated of devotees sought insight by means of direct contact. Few citizens ventured so far, however, and their caution was well founded. Men and women given to plumbing the depths of the Pockets—or “Plungers,” as they were known—eventually developed a marked susceptibility to madness and plague.
And then came the morning that the Pocket christened “Blind Panic,” appeared, as was its wont, in Strenvivi Gardens—and remained. Morning gave way to afternoon; Blind Panic lingered. Afternoon dwindled into twilight, which darkened into night, and still Blind Panic persisted. In the morning, the Pocket was still there; and the following morning, and the morning after that.
Blind Panic had come to stay.
The citizens of Vitrisi learned to live around it. The Strenvivi Gardens still afforded plenty of space in which to walk; it was only advisable to avoid the vicinity of the drained pond. In just such a wise, the residents of the affected areas learned to accept and avoid Howling Chaos, and Ruination, when these famous Pockets achieved permanency. The subsequent intense disruptions of “Unreason,” “Ultimate Tantrum,” and “Little Red Crazy” were unsettling, but could be disregarded—most of the time.
Disregard became harder to sustain, however, when it was noted that the boundaries of Ruination were unmistakably expanding. Spidery territory—taverns, brothels, downer dens, and dark-lairs—all were slowly falling into Ruination. The motley refugees from the canceled neighborhood were crowding the streets and obstructing traffic, but this was no great matter. It was, after all, only the Spidery.
Similar bizarre expansions all over town were likewise ignored, for there was little practical alternative. There was no possibility of destroying the Pockets. A host of self-styled arcanists had tried, and uniformly failed. Nor was the option of flight practical. Reports from all travelers described identical conditions existing throughout the Veiled Isles.
And beyond? No telling, for ships setting forth from Faerlonne or Taerleez were now routinely turned away from foreign ports.
There was really nowhere to go.
The Taerleezi soldiers ranged about the perimeter of Roohaathk confronted no Pockets, yet difficulties abounded. The trouble did not spring from the Sishmindri enclosure; at least, not directly. Behind their makeshift wall, the besieged amphibians lurked; silent, invisible, and inscrutable. There was never a sound to be heard from within—never a whisper, a cry, or a croak. The enclave seemed deserted, but attempted incursion dispelled this illusion. The would-be invaders had found themselves beaten back from the wall upon several humiliating occasions, and at last they had decided to sit and wait, allowing hunger and dread to sap the defenders’ strength and morale.
But the days passed, and then a surprise nocturnal foray proved the defenders as vigilant and lively as ever. If their morale suffered in the slightest, it was not evident.
They possessed hidden resources of some kind. Perhaps secret means of entry and egress. Perhaps friends or human sympathizers in the city, ready to assist them.
This suspicion became a certainty when the attacks began.
It started, as many things did, in Hay Street, where a mild but malodorous springtime twilight found the bored Taerleezi soldiers on duty at the Roohaathk wall. Discipline was relatively lax. The Taerleezis, several seated on the ground, were smoking, eating, polishing brass and steel. Two of them were arm wrestling. The tranquillity of the scene was transformed by the unheralded arrival of two speeding arrows.
The arrows were well aimed. A brace of guardsmen fell, both dying almost instantly. At once their surviving comrades cast about in search of the archers. Clearly the attack had not come from Roohaathk. The arrows could only have been dispatched from the upper windows or flat rooftops of a couple of nearby buildings. By the time the Taerleezis reached those windows, those rooftops, their quarry had vanished.
It did not end there. Early the next morning, a guard on duty at the section of Roohaathk abutting Gammersneedle took an arrow in the brain by way of the eye. Only half an hour later, three soldiers were simultaneously struck down before the wall in Coppercoin Street.
The perpetrators and general purpose of these crimes remained unknown. Nobody was seen, nobody caught. The killers were invisible and elusive as ghosts, and it could only be surmised that ghosts they truly were—Ghosts of the resistance. Their immediate intent—the infliction of damage and loss—was plain enough; their larger aim, less so. Why attack here and now, why risk so much, with no obvious hope of a worthwhile return?
The Taerleezis at the wall took to wearing protective armor: helmets, breastplates, gauntlets, greaves, and the like. The defensive paraphernalia was cumbersome, inconvenient, and difficult to endure throughout hours of duty, but those who neglected caution sometimes paid. Within the next twenty-four hours, two more soldiers died.
It was not to be b
orne. The Faerlonnish assassins needed to learn the error of their ways, and the Taerleezis were accomplished teachers.
Indeed, it seemed scarcely credible that the Vitrisians could have forgotten the recent lesson of Rookery Grove. The remnants of over two hundred heads, mounted on poles, still stood empty vigil in their neat rows at the southern end of the Plaza of Proclamation. Their grinning presence should have discouraged acts of rebellion against legitimate Taerleezi authority, but the Faerlonnish were reluctant to recognize reality.
Time for a new lesson.
Instruction was likely to prove most effective if carried out within sight of Roohaathk wall. Accordingly, a troop of Taerleezis in full battle regalia descended upon the thoroughly innocuous little neighborhood of Klew’s Court.
It was dawn, and the shades of night still lingered in the quiet recesses of Klew’s Court. The invaders might reasonably have expected to find the majority of residents sleeping. Their expectations were to be confounded, however, along with their assumption that the brutal lesson of Rookery Grove had been forgotten.
It had not. Rookery Grove was well remembered.
And Klew’s Court was prepared.
Somewhere nearby, atop one of the tenements, a bell tolled. Almost at once, as if in reply, an urgent braying of horns resounded through the streets. Lights appeared in sundry windows, but the clamor of the horns did not abate. The cacophony continued, and the bright blooming of lights expanded beyond Klew’s Court, into adjacent neighborhoods, and beyond.
The first residence that the Taerleezis assaulted, they found solidly barred against them. This eventuality had been foreseen, and a smashing rain of ax blows pounded the front door. It should have been the work of seconds to break through, but this particular dwelling proved unexpectedly resistant. The door had been fortified in some manner. Moreover, the inhabitants—all but invisible, but damnably industrious—were firing quarrels from two or three upper-story windows, and their aim was not bad. Volleys of arrows whizzed from the nearest neighboring tenement, and the Taerleezis, loath to squander their energy and time upon a nut so difficult to crack, doused the front with oil, set torch to the place, and moved on. When the neighborhood had been properly subdued, they would return to deal with the occupants, if any survived.
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