The Waking Engine

by David Edison

  She looked at the Dawn Stain before her. It glittered in the light, a thing of history and magic. Her life and its confines descended from those ancient, alien panes. From a history that was not human, the Circle Unsung had arisen to hold the city in trust for the Third People who needed it. For all the pilgrims who needed to Die, so that the metaverse could grind on, fostering new lives, on and on. These brightly colored windows were sacred, irreplaceable, probably magical, and symbolic of all that held her back, all that colored her world with the tint of tradition and duty and slaughter. Damn the rules! There was only one reason Purity could have come this far, though she hadn’t known what she would find.

  Relying on the same imprudent instincts that had gotten her this far, Purity seized the hammer and, with a whispered apology to her father, hoisted it above her head with a grip steadied for an eon-shattering blow.

  Thea Philosopater rested on her divan watching the suns climb above the roofs of the buildings, blue light transforming the canal into a ribbon of steel. Cooper and Marvin would be out of Purseyet already and halfway to the ever-burning towers where the Undertow laired—the cultists knew nearly as many secret ways as Asher did. Ways that Thea would need once Lallowë Thyu learned she had set Cooper free.

  She hadn’t lied when she’d spoke to Cooper about the gray man: she would rather tear out her eyes than betray his trust. But that was the problem with her broken life—every time she tore out the offending orbs, they grew back.

  Isis, the irony. Thea shook her head in silent laughter, tossing the curls that had intoxicated titans. Isis, you turn out a fake, you fraudulent goddess, while your onetime avatar raises herself from the dismembered dead until the end of eternity.

  Asher kicked down the door with a crash. Thea slipped a sweet into her mouth from the plate at her side, and met Asher’s glare in perfect repose. She chewed the morsel while he fumed, giving him time to stoke his famous rage. When in doubt, play to a man’s strengths until they could be turned to weakness.

  “Hello Thea.” His voice shook with anger, but not as much as she’d expected. Something else interfered; was it fear? She didn’t need to be Cooper to know Asher’s fears.

  “Milord.” She prepared herself for all eventualities. “Are we breaking everything in sight, or just the doors?”

  “What did you do with Cooper?”

  She shook her chin. “I could ask you the same question. But I won’t— I’m not petty, Asher, and I didn’t steal your friend. He left here of his own accord, arm-in- arm with a handsome young Death Boy; if you want answers you’ll have to extract them from the Undertow.”

  “I know Thyu arranged the attack. You can stop trying to fool me.”

  Thea tutted. “Lallowë Thyu did not pay me enough to lie for her. Not to you.”

  “Why did she pay you?” Asher flipped the chip with her likeness on the bed.

  “The same reason you pay your pink woman. To look for something special in a supposedly un- special stranger.” She took another sweet for her tongue to work.

  “And?” She had him.

  “And, I told him that I saw what I imagine you and your scholar saw.” Thea swallowed. “Very little.”

  And then, “I lied, of course. If I told the infant what he may become, he might never become it.”

  Asher threw up his hands in disbelief. “What did you see, Thea?”

  She guarded a sly little smile. “Client confidentiality—you should know that better than anyone.”

  This made Asher uncomfortable. They both felt it. “So you gave him to the Undertow, who just happened to be swooping by?” he asked, changing tack. “Are you deluded, or desperate?”

  “Oh, Asher.” She pouted. “Can’t it be both?”

  “You don’t know, do you?” Asher looked at the pearly wallpaper, the china bracketed there for decoration, and wondered how much of Thea was bluster, and how much was Pharaoh. “You don’t even know why you play the game, I’ll wager. You’ve become a pawn again, Thea, and this time you won’t have a man to blame.”

  The Lady suppressed a bristling rage. She blinked slowly, subduing her body by focusing on her heavy lidded facial expression. Every soul could be seduced, her own included.

  “What do they want with Cooper?” Asher asked her.

  “Another question you’ll have to save for a man who knows the answer.” She spread her hands with steady fingers and sat on a cushion at the window. “I am just a whore.”

  “Whose modesty is as false as the rest of her. You sold him to scum, and you will tell me why.” He wished Sesstri were here, she would simply solve this woman like a puzzle, and be done with brothels.

  “I attach myself to powerful men. It’s something I’m working to improve.” She pulled her plate of sweets into her lap.

  “The Undertow aren’t men, Thea! They’re children—they’re brainwashed junkie babies.”

  “And their masters?” Thea stared out the window at the horizon, where a black funnel spun above the ever-burning towers.

  “Are not men. Are flying zombies. Are unworthy of your loyalty.”

  “But they are powerful. And we share a certain predicament. . . .” She reached for another candy.

  “You share nothing!” Asher snatched the plate and dashed it against the wall. “What ever you have been led to believe, Thea, there can be no common ground between a living woman and the bruised ghosts who call themselves the skylords. They are abominations; you were a queen!”

  She lashed out in equal measure, smashing the window by her divan with one arm, the rest of her perfectly still. He’d earned a dose of her volatility, and it was legendary—how could he think to out-tantrum her? “They call me the Queen of Poisons! A queen of whores and drug-fucked madmen! How dare you manipulate me with my lost sovereignty! I am a captive in this body, bound to this place with only my own moisture for succor—the beasts of the desert live better!” She took a breath and picked glass from her gown. “I decide where my best interests lie, and the skylords and I have something in common. . . .” She stressed the title the lich-lords had given themselves.

  “You cannot Die. The liches cannot live—they’re undead; Thea, we don’t ally ourselves with abominations. Even a dark fey like Thyu knows that. Not even for self-preservation.”

  “We do what ever we deem necessary, gray man. And you are no longer in a position to afford our favor, nor its attendant courtesies.” All possibility of coquettery was flown, now. Her beauty evaporated, replaced by bronze and thunder.

  “Reverting to the royal we, Thea? You are slipping. Whatever hold those undead husks have over you must be powerful indeed.”

  “You think you know desperation. Ask the skylords. Ask the Unseelie. Ask us, Asher, we have ever known urgency and fear. Now the Dying cannot find Death, and a sickness is coming that every poison-whore worth her asps can smell. Something holds it at bay for now, but not, I think, for much longer.”

  “You’re desperate.” Asher gave her a searching look. “No, you’re mad. It’s already got you, hasn’t it?”

  “Ask me that question when you’ve been dethroned and damaged beyond mending, Ash-skin. You have choice while I have none. Talk to me of freedom and royalty when you have poisoned your spirit so thoroughly that it cannot Die.”

  “Oh Thea. I am. I have.” He shook his head, feeling sorrier for the Queen of Poisons than ever before. How could he hate her when he felt so much of her own pain? They were too similar, though he could never say so. “You’ve betrayed me and sacrificed an innocent to the lichdom because you are unhappy?”

  Thea threw up her hands. “No, you stupid man, I saved your friend from the Terenz-de-Guises she-elf, who tortures her father to death once a day. I do not betray you—I will not bring more poison into my soul.” She couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “Although what befalls him once he’s made his choice, well . . . perhaps he would be better off butchered by your marchioness.”

  Asher looked dumbfounded, then stunned. “Dead gods
, what have you done?”

  “A dead god— that’s what I am, Asher.This is what a dead god looks like.” She spread her arms, looking so unhappy. “A moment ago you rebuked me for not acting a proper queen. But that’s exactly what I’ve done. The skylords aren’t so different from their underlings, or from the lords and ladies of your own Circle Unsung— aimless, purposeless. Godless. Kingless.”

  Now she rose, turning her back to him and gazing out the broken window into the new day. A day that would see her life change, at the longest last. She pointed west, to the Guiselaine, where the Manse Terenz-de- Guises squatted like a cancer of dark wood and daub. “She’s free. The rest of the pigs are locked away, Asher—why leave her uncaged?” Thea’s voice shook with a jealousy that surprised Asher with its virulence. “Tell me what Thyu and Terenz-de-Guises and the other scattered handful of free- range nobility did to earn their freedom? Tell me now and I’ll undo everything. I will return your useless boy and abase myself if you can just tell me why.”

  Rage. Asher said nothing. He thought nothing. He held himself as still as possible and wished the words would fly back into her mouth and choke her.

  “I didn’t think so.” She drew herself up and searched him with unblinking eyes. “I see the serpent slithers free, as it always does. Cooper knows you have a daughter, did he tell you that? I don’t know how, but he knows. Your threadbare game unravels.”

  Asher’s eyes flared with blue-red fire. “You sound just like Thyu, threatening me with scraps of knowledge you don’t begin to understand. I don’t know what motivates her, Thea, but what drives you is ugly to the core.”

  She shrugged, thinking of the throne she’d build atop those towers flickering like candles on the horizon. A house of suns. It was a pretty lie, and it had let her lead herself this far. Every soul could be seduced, even hers. Even Asher’s.

  “What do you know. A woman with a spine is a foreign creature—to you, we are all the same. Of course you’d see the similarities between women who resist you, desperate narcissist that you are. It doesn’t matter now, does it? I will be monarch, or I will be nothing.”

  Asher buried his face in his hands. If he’d thought he couldn’t feel any sorrier for Thea, he’d been wrong. “Two thousand years and you’re still making the same mistakes, Thea. Still choosing the losing side. And that makes it all the sadder—where will you run this time? No snake can save you now.”

  She could not keep the sadness from her face or voice, this once. “No, not a snake.” Then she shook her head clear and resumed her lies. “The Undertow make the perfect army, for the proper queen. The liches . . . the skylords are ready-made generals. Fflaen has abdicated and his puppies are locked in their kennel. Thyu might stand against me, but her goals lie beyond the city, you must know that. I, however, am damned to live in this world, so I must content myself with ruling it.”

  “Bells, Thea, if I had a dirty silver for every bitter former god-emperor who said as much . . . We are all of us trapped. You think you’re the only one who’s desperate for change? Wake up. That’s everybody.”

  But she simply nodded. “Of course ambition is common. Rather less common, Asher, is ambition’s realization. A Deathless city needs a Deathless ruler; we cannot Die. We are what we have always been, Asher. We are the Woman King.”

  Wrong and wronger. “Oh Thea, I am so, so sorry.”

  “As well you should be. Your freedom nears its end, Asher, and soon you will be the prisoner. You know precisely what we mean. Nobody seems to know about the svarning except those of us who should know what to do about it, you abysmal failure of a man.”

  That last, she’d never been more sincere.

  “That isn’t what I meant.” Asher shook his head, tears rolling down his face. He could sail a sea on the tears he’d shed . . . A ship of bones, a ship of doves. “I’m sorry about this, Thea. I did not want to see you meet your end this way.”

  “You waste your sorrow on me. You waste your breath.” Do it. Please, old friend. Believe my lies.

  Still crying, Asher nodded. “I know.”

  Thank you.

  She needed peace, he knew, even though it would hurt him. She needed to fade away rather than rise again. The Lady could not Die, so Asher lifted his head and, with the voice of a mutilated angel, began to sing.

  6

  Candace swears like a sailor & drives like a drunk. She’s pissed & pulling 80 in an ancient diesel Benz that cost her $60 & a hand- job. She wants to be a cocktail waitress but she can’t get past change-purse girl. Green polyester pants & church pumps with rubber soles. Vomit.

  “Fuck him and his ass-sucking mother. She can rot in sinner’s hell, the shit-eating whore.” Candace lights a Lady Pinksmoke Menthol UltraLight while trying to scrape no-smear lipstick off an incisor. Finger slips & the Lady Pinksmoke drops into her lap.

  “Assfuck.” Candace elaborates into her chest & she gropes for the filter. Doesn’t see the truck. Doesn’t see the impact coming.

  Wait for it. In less time than an eye-blink: every car commercial she’s ever seen, leafy afternoon light through the sunroof, Momma & the gambler sweaty on the sofa, an Isadora Duncan scarf streaming past the rear window, Berlioz on a record player.

  Glass shatters. Her eggshell skull shatters too, & Candy is a held breath and starlight. Then for a moment she’s nothing at all.

  Brushes off the dust, stands. Rust & clay smeared across her face, caked in her bangs, eyelashes, gums. Knuckles grime from her sunstabbed eyes, shakes herself off & tucks the girls back into her top. There beneath a sky a shade too yellow to ever dare squat over Texas stretches a ribbon of concrete. Nothing but dust & gray-green weed & empty foothills. And fertile Candace, alive & alone. Wonders if she’s hurt the baby. Hopes she has.

  “Fuck you, Candy.” Mutters, reaches into her pocket & realizes she’s lost her Lady Pinksmokes somewhere along the way. “Another Christ- fucking highway.”

  —Jack Kerouac, Fast Moves for Goners

  Still reeking of beer, Osebo the Leopard carried Nixon in his arms. Worn out and still thoroughly fainted, Nixon lolled in the valley between Osebo’s bare biceps, looking for all the worlds as innocent and helpless as a child. He was coming around now, mewling like a cranky kitten as he floated out of sleep. Osebo had stolen the unboy away from the confrontation in Bonseki-sai and carried him to safety. He hadn’t interfered with the angry pink-haired woman for numerous reasons, not the least of which was her rocky relationship with his wife, but he’d been unwilling to leave a little boy, even a false one like Nixon.

  So while Asher and Sesstri fought their battles and Cooper flew into madness, Osebo the Leopard took it upon himself to tend to the child, and to see if he could kindle in Nixon’s eyes the ghost of wonder he knew had once lived there. They all had that, and as a rule they all lost it one way or another; in that way, Osebo mused, they were no different than the First People. It had taken marriage to reawaken the house cat sleeping inside the full-throttle jaguar who’d stalked the jungles of the worlds, and Osebo thanked his wife for it. The beast was not weakened by the babe within— so he hoped it might go for Nixon, too.

  But Nixon had none of a child’s tacit complicity—evinced as soon as he blinked himself awake and looked up to see Osebo’s dark face. He bucked like a wet cat and tried to claw his way out of Osebo’s arms.

  “Fucking queers!” he roared, or would have if he hadn’t been a ten-yearold. Instead his roar sounded more a squeal. Nixon’s face grew beet red.

  “Be still, boy.” Osebo’s hand wrapped around the scruff of Nixon’s neck and pulled him back down to safety. His nonhuman strength brooked no argument. Stunned, Nixon’s eyes went wide, then he burped. Nixon might assume otherwise, but Osebo was not prejudiced by the unboy’s misleading body. To Osebo, they were all kitten-babes—infants—when measured by the years they’d lived. When he met a mortal who’d lived so long he couldn’t remember his own origin, Osebo might consider that soul his chronological peer.

&
nbsp; “Um.” Nixon’s pupils didn’t quite match yet, but the boy was recovering quickly “Why do you stink like beer?” he asked, only half- awake.

  “I gave directions to your friend, earlier. He appeared very lost.”

  “Cooper?” Nixon made a screwy face and knuckled sleep from his eyes. “Yeah. Cooper the lost. Why the fuck are you holding me, guy?”

  “You are in no danger.” Osebo thought that might be the kind of thing he should say.

  “Ha!” Nixon barked his laugh and started struggling again. “Be still, I said.” More firmly this time.

  “I’ll be still when you get your oily paws off me, Black Panther!”

  They weren’t far from their destination, so Osebo set the boy down on his feet. Nixon tottered for a moment before finding his legs, then rounded on Osebo with an expression he’d obviously picked up from Sesstri.

  “Hippie queers!” Nixon bellowed, glaring up at Osebo.

  “I find you very strange, little boy.” Osebo’s face was implacable.

  “That’s because I’m not a little fucking boy, Sambo!”

  Osebo shook his head with laughing eyes. “Of course you are. Just a tantrum away from the cradle, I’d say. Once elevated above the others, some of you never learn your lessons. But you have, haven’t you, Nixon?”

  “How do you know my name? What, are you friends with the gray man and his harpy?”

  “I am not.”

  Nixon frowned. “Cruised the burly kid that got kidnapped after you gave him ‘directions,’ did ya?”

  “I did not.” My, but the Third People are odd, he thought.

  “So what happened back there? Where’s the pink girl? If you’ve hurt her, I’ll smash your goddamned mosshead in. I’ve done it once today already!”

  Osebo walked down the lane, leaving Nixon to catch up. “Your friend is fine. The same cannot be said, however, for the Death Boy who seemed so determined to accost her. Your concern belies some tenderness, Nixon.”