by David Edison
Those hands. She focused on climbing.
Then, just below the toothy ridge of the roof, Asher began giggling like a madman, and Sesstri was forced to interrupt their ascent. If she had to, she’d secure him to the line and leave him here while she rescued Cooper herself. She didn’t relish the thought of taking on all the gathered Undertow they’d seen climbing and sky-lining to the rooftop of this peculiar, smooth- skinned building, but she supposed she could manage. They were so close, though, if Asher could have just stayed sane for a few moments longer . . . well, she’d figure out what drug he’d taken or been dosed with later. It had to be chemical, didn’t it? Unless the liches were somehow broadcasting something witchy directly into his head—that wasn’t a prospect she relished.
Could he be vibing off something they’re doing up there? He’s shown no trace of psychic ability, how would that work? And who, by the hoofbreaker’s stones, is “she”?
Distracted, Sesstri continued her climb when something grabbed hold of her hair and jerked her up with wicked force. A bola snapped around her wrists before she could reach for her knives, and the leering face of a Charnel Girl hove into view.
“Lookee here,” the gap-toothed woman said as her companion hauled up a still-squirming, half- senseless Asher, “we caught us a pretty pair of sky rats.”
Cooper lay upon his former clothing, cut to shreds by Marvin’s knife. He and Marvin weren’t the only ones copulating openly on the rooftop, but they drew the most onlookers. The boys and girls had clapped along to the rhythm around their merging bodies.
Cooper had never been even remotely comfortable with public nakedness, let alone exhibitionist sex before a gang who might just as easily kill him as fuck him. In the heat of the moment he hadn’t cared—the crowded roof gave him a thrill as he and Marvin worked each other’s bodies, mouth, fingers, cock. Now he felt like a stretching cat, lying naked on a rooftop beneath the eyes of dozens of Death Boys and Charnel Girls, and any number of unseen skylords.
The fact that he hadn’t been eviscerated, or otherwise “carved up,” as Hestor had commanded gave Cooper little solace. He knew Hestor’s type, the sadistic controller who would promise you agony and then offer you ecstasy, only to snatch it away at the last moment and replace it with the torture you thought you’d avoided. Still, Cooper had come to find the crying woman, and he would stay to save her. Not that he thought flight possible—he was well and truly trapped.
Oh, but what a prison. Marvin growled into Cooper’s neck, half-asleep but tangled in Cooper’s limbs. Cooper snarled in response, nipping at Marvin’s ear and earning a warm, tightening embrace. Just when he thought matters were about to escalate to round two—or was it three?— Marvin extracted himself and stood, honoring Cooper with a look of lusty regret.
“Come on.” He tickled Cooper’s side with his foot. “It’s time.”
The rooftop looked no brighter for the fires that still burned in trash cans and torches set into the crumbling walls, but it was less crowded. Only Hestor stood at the far edge, swinging by one arm from the grip of a secured zip line attached to an exposed beam. He crooked a finger and Marvin brought Cooper closer. Cooper was still naked, and almost laughed at how recently that would have been the worst fate he could imagine. Instead, his nakedness felt like armor.
Be careful what you wish for, Death Boy.
“You’ve felt the freedom we claim as our deathright,” Hestor lauded. “You’ve tasted the black rain of freedom on your tongue and felt the tail of a skylord hugging your body. You’ve taken and given pleasure with us”— Hestor nodded at Marvin, who wrapped the straps of a leather harness around Cooper’s bare torso—“and exulted at the ecstasy of our dance.”
Cooper nodded in his best imitation of sagacity, trying unsuccessfully to dispel the sense of unease that had resumed growing in his gut. The danger was real now, again. What a seesaw I ride, he thought. What a lich’s tail, what a graphene dragon queen.
Hestor leered at Cooper’s naked body. “There’s really only one step left.” Hestor lording his authority over them both. “I’m envious, Cooper. You only get your first taste once.”
First taste of what, Death Boy?
Cooper grew queasy just looking at the zip line and the hundreds of feet between the towers. A feeling of sheepishness crept over him, at developing a fear of heights now, after he’d flown through a thunderstorm with the liches. All his former fears were just . . . so . . . amusing.
Hestor handed Marvin a second zip line grip and buckled him together with Cooper. Their bodies reacted as if they’d begun round two—or three—despite the frigid air and the menacing presence of the Death Boy chieftain.
“Are we going somewhere?” Cooper tried to quell the fear in his voice but the effort was hopeless.
“Is that a problem?”
Cooper was still racking his brain for a reason to delay when Hestor shoved Marvin off the roof with both hands, dragging Cooper with him— his naked body spinning into the air, dangling too loosely from the harness attached to Marvin’s. The zip line buzzed and shook violently with their passage through the open air, and Cooper continued to spin for what seemed like half an hour but couldn’t have been more than half a minute. Then Marvin slammed into something hard that knocked the wind from Cooper— a wall?—and they both hung limp from the line. Marvin unclipped himself and they dropped to the floor just seconds before Hestor followed on the line, rebounding from the wall with a jump and a shout as he landed. Hestor needed no harness.
The fall had bloodied Cooper’s knees and scraped his wrists, but otherwise he felt undamaged. Hands that were neither Marvin’s nor Hestor’s helped him to his feet and brushed him off— a crowd of Death Boys stood on the rooftop, forming a half circle around the end of the zip line. One of them slipped some sort of robe around Cooper’s shoulders and he drew it in close, teeth chattering with cold and fear.
They stood atop a different tower, this one more fantastical than what Cooper had assumed was the Undertow HQ. But, of course, all these towers belonged to the liches and their minions. The floor and remaining walls of this skyscraper were constructed from a seamless whale-blue material that seemed a cross between metal and clay, and pinpoint electric lights traced the paths of circuitry beneath the matte surface.
Cooper said nothing.
“Are you prepared to feel the full power of the Undertow?” Hestor gloated, taking off his louvered shades and tucking them into the breast pocket of his vest while, behind him, a thin youth with long burgundy hair emerged from the shadow of a stairwell. “Let me ask you a question, Cooper.”
Cooper looked up at the black dyspeptic sky. “Okay.”
Hestor stretched his back like a cat. “What wine do you drink?”
“What? Wine?” Cooper wondered aloud. The new Death Boy stepped up beside Hestor and dipped his head, whispering.
“Yes.” Hestor laughed. “What wine?”
Cooper looked out at the city that lay sprawled beyond the veil of shadow— another night was almost over, but the Dome still glittered from within, and the districts sprinkled with lights, the craggy heights further north. The idea of a city, cockled and crusty, bearing its own history on its broken back. What’s an idea but a kind of spirit? he wondered. Shamans communed with spirits.
“What wine. Um. I think, Mister Hestor, that you’ve caught me in the midst of a sea-change.”
“A what?” Hestor asked, but Marvin and the long-haired Death Boy nodded.
“Three days ago that would have been an easy question.” Cooper closed his eyes and remembered the last song he’d played from his laptop. That world was so gone. “Two days ago I only belonged to one city, and now I’m part of two. Two days ago? Cheap Bordeaux, maybe a nice Lafite when my father sent me wine for my birthday. I miss my dad, you know. I don’t know if that’s an idea that matters to you people.” He stressed the word. “I think it’s probably something you don’t approve of talking about, am I right?— but anyway, I miss him, and
I’m glad I miss him. Because it makes it easier to tell you that my wine, Hestor, is the metaverse and every goblet world it holds, decanted in space like Lafite or Viognier or whatever horrible miscarriage of flavor that I know you’re about to pour down my throat.”
Hestor looked at Cooper as if the childborn shaman had grown an extra head in his armpit. Cooper doubted anyone spoke back much to Hestor.
“So, um . . .” Cooper scuffed the roof with his bare foot. “That’s my fucking wine.”
Hestor bit his lip to hide a smile. He nodded toward the long-haired Death Boy. “Vaitch the Sommelier here curates our most precious spirits. I’ll let him show you the prize that awaits you.”
Vaitch pulled a thin-lipped smile; his eyes didn’t quite focus. “Forget the metaverse, Cooper,” he said, and turned away. “My wine cellars will occupy your attention for much, much longer.” Marvin took Cooper’s hand as the sommelier led the group down a flight of stairs into the watery flesh of the building below.
Vaitch the Sommelier led them down a sloped hallway lined on one side with open portals, and the din in Cooper’s ears grew louder. From within each—sealed with an oval hatch, more like a ship than a building— came whimpers, moans, and sounds of pure animal misery that echoed down the dim corridor. The walls curved overhead like the blue pipe of a wave that never broke and Cooper felt as if he were drowning, only the water wouldn’t finish him off—sinking into a vastness of blue-gone-graygone-black, dwarfed by the yawning deep but still aware, still alive, an unendable witness to fathoms and fathoms of emptiness.
After they’d passed a dozen or so of the cells, each leaking sounds of misery into the corridor, Vaitch the Sommelier stopped at a hatch and put his hand against it, leaning a bit as if he were out of breath. After a moment, two Death Boy guards emerged, one thin and blond and bored, the other dark with a smile, still fastening his trousers.
“Really, Phlebas?” Vaitch asked with a weary voice. The dark one just shrugged and followed his partner to stand sentinel beside the open hatch. Cooper followed Vaitch inside.
The U-shaped room contained maybe a dozen prisoners, chained, bound by twine, or simply too weak to move. No two of the creatures were alike, except for their piteous condition. A few looked human, but most seemed alien to a lesser or greater degree; all were terrified.
This is where she is, Cooper understood as he took in the tableau of abused exotics. She hadn’t sung or cried or screamed since he’d passed beneath the black veil of the towers, but she was here, he needed no sixth sense to know that. Next to him, Marvin raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Vaitch the Sommelier named each vintage as he strode down the line of the curving room, his voice as cold and curious as a docent. He named each prisoner as he walked past.
“Treble-Toe the Fifth Gender, our most spectacular guest of fey provenance, though we have lesser faeries in some of the other seraglios. All told, the skylords’ cortège spans seven towers, did you know that?” The three-toed creature looked like a sad mime, oversized feet and hands grasping at the air, spun off in some hallucination that Cooper hoped it found less unpleasant than its prison. Huge eyes looked out from a hammerhead skull, but Treble-Toe’s teeth were ground- away and flat; its tongue lolled out of its mouth, furred with flagella that bristled in the damp air.
“Revered Matron Maia-Lande, Divine Bride of something-or-other. It’s telling, I think, that she expects no rescue from her husband. Some god, eh?” The Matron was baseline human, naked except for a ragged wimple that had been bolted to her skull. Her eyes were gone, and the scratches around their cavities suggested she had inflicted the wounds herself.
A man with dirty blond hair hugged his knees and stared at the floor. The Death Boy curator winked at Cooper and waved toward the man with a flourish. “Kurt Cobain, of course.”
Cooper looked away.
Wine-dark Vaitch padded around the corner to the other half of the gallery. “And you see our trio of First People—the crown jewels of this particularseraglio.”
Marvin hustled Cooper forward. Hestor, the guards, and a few Death Boys who’d followed filed into the room behind them.
Vaitch continued. “Onishimekka, a folioform being whose capture was not worth the effort, if you ask me.” What looked like a pile of paper flipped its pages and rose a few feet into the air, forming a roughly spherical shape of origami edges and folded material. It winked its leaves at Cooper like an overgrown paper flower, and before it collapsed back onto the ground it emitted a scratchy noise that almost resembled a word.
What Cooper thought Onishimekka said was, “Her.”
“Moving right along, we have Morrigan 2/6, one constituent of a ninefold entity that was whittled down to six by the time we found her. It was easy enough to steal her, although she’ll tell you that you don’t steal an agent of fate made manifest in the worlds. Still, she screams as loud as the rest.”
Marvin saw Cooper’s face and nuzzled his shoulder. “These are all criminals or dangerously insane people.” Cooper shrugged him off and began to grind his teeth; the sounds of fear were all around him, a tide that could not stop rising. The last lay ahead; now that Cooper had come, she’d fallen silent.
Vaitch the Sommelier gave a little bow. “And of course our most popular and most potent vintage, who won’t—or can’t—tell us her name. Nameless or not, she provides ten times the juice than any other odalisque, although she cocoons up whenever we drink too deeply.”
There, whimpering against the wall in a nest of wet leather, huddled a creature more beautiful than Cooper had ever dreamed could live. Gold light played along her opaline flesh, where wings and limbs and shining protuberances conspired to keep her anatomy a mystery of shifting beauty and unearthly radiance. The single eye set into her crested skull was at once crimson, emerald, and glacier-blue, and even in abject terror, the sight of her body was exposure to pure glory. Spears of light danced up her sides, spiking out from polyps that grew from her flank, her rib cage.
“We wouldn’t be half so numerous or prosperous in our territorial advancement without her life to drink,” Marvin confessed in a hush. “She’ll be your first taste, Cooper.”
Vaitch the Sommelier drew something out of his tattered robes. “She tastes like milk, don’t you know? Milk that burns like fire. Liquid light. I’m more than a little in love with her.” In his hands he held some kind of flail, a long grip from which dangled a number of braided leather cords, each ending in a hooked blade. Vaitch looked at the brilliant thing with longing.
“She’s an aesr,” Cooper realized aloud—cyclopean, finned, radiant.
“She is known to you?” The curator whipped his head around, not happy to have his presentation interrupted.
Cooper shook his head. “She is amazing.”
“A thing of light and music,” Marvin explained, putting his body between Cooper and the annoyed curator. “And rarer than rare. To those who hunger for life, aesr taste better than blood, better than souls, better than winecarp caviar.” Marvin licked his lips in naked anticipation.
Cooper went cold. Of course the Undertow would have nothing pleasant planned for a helpless creature out of legend. “You’re not going to hurt a . . . nearly extinct angel, are you?” Any remaining sense of safety fled Cooper in an almost physical wave. What had they planned for him?
“ ‘Hurt?’ ” Hestor mocked Cooper’s humanity. “That’s a petty word for what we do— but no, we won’t be doing anything.”
“The skylords found her years ago,” Marvin explained as more Death Boys crowded into the room behind them, “incubating in one of the towers, half-cocooned in her own mucus. She empowers us, Cooper—more than any of these others, she makes us what we are. Death Boys. Charnel Girls. She’s the reason our ranks have grown, the reason we control as much territory as we do. And soon we’ll control it all. Hestor will be made a skylord for our coup, and you will join us.” Ambition gleamed through Marvin’s eyes. “And then I will lead the pack.”
<
br /> The creature of light lifted her cyclopean head and tried to talk, but coughed on her own radiant blood. “Chara . . .” she managed, staring at Cooper.
He rounded on Marvin, his anger returning in a red haze. He shoved the Death Boy. “What the fuck, Marvin? Is that a criminal? You’re not a cultist, you’re just a dead old queen who tortures helpless creatures! What do you do in the off-season, buttfuck unicorns?”
Before Marvin had a chance to respond, Hestor’s arm whipped out and smacked Cooper against the side of the head. He saw stars but stood his ground.
“I am not afraid of you anymore, Hestor,” he lied. “You can spike your hair and fly on all the wicked broomsticks you like, but if you expect me to cooperate with you for one single second more, you will keep your bully hands off me.”
Hestor laughed in his face. His boys swelled their chests behind him, proving the unsaid point: Hestor had hands enough to spare, all of them eager to prove themselves meaner than dirt. He wondered how spectacularly his bluster would backfire.
Shit.
The aesr coughed. “Mother . . .” the thing croaked imploringly before passing out again.
Then it occurred to Cooper that he was no longer bound by Earthly rules. He summoned the fear still turbulent in his gut, held it in his mind like a stone on his tongue, then directed it at the ruined aesr. He visualized a laser of communication lancing out from his forehead, beaming straight into her single eye.
IIIWantWantWantToHelpHelpYouYouYou.
She writhed, only partially conscious but aware of his intrusion into her thoughts.
Hello? He tried again, and again the aesr thrashed about but did not respond.
“We want you to have the honor, Cooper.” Marvin spoke carefully as Hestor crossed his arms impatiently and more bodies filed into the room. All eyes on Cooper as Vaitch offered the weapon hilt-first.
“I . . . you really don’t have to. I have tons of honor already, really I do.”