by David Edison
Lallowë cared only slightly more, upset not at the fate that had befallen her half- sibling but by the suggestion that there were entities beyond her ken, powers that could cripple her, too, if given the inclination. More worrisome was the fact that Almondine was gone but not absent, a presence to be looked after and always, always a reminder of the mortality of faeries and the obligations, however slight, of having family in the first place.
Now she had repurposed her shell of a sister, and felt marginally thankful that the Cicatrix had insisted upon preserving Almondine’s empty wooden body. At least she would serve a function, now, provided Lallowë could infuse new life into the vessel, provided Lallowë could re-create a vivisistor and write some life into it, provided Lallowë could animate wood. She’d do so, of course, and brilliantly—she had already half-composed a programming language/ruleset that she expected would establish gender, temperament, aesthetic, malice—the basics of identity. But she resisted bringing back her sister in any form. Even animating the body with a constructed intelligence came perilously close to reviving the filial jealousies that had so beleaguered her early years. Why did it have to be Almondine’s body? Why not some mineral Galatea, girded with pyrite and lapis for eyes? Because no other body would surprise the Cicatrix, and because Almondine’s shell kept Lallowë alert. It also reminded her of the cost of failure.
Sisters. At least she only had one of the bitches to endure.
They were all drowning. That’s how it felt as Cooper, Asher, and Sesstri raced down flights of bony stairs. The walls closed in again like the waves of a dark ocean and the weak lights flickered like those in a sinking vessel. They passed the seraglio of the Undertow, the harem prisoners screaming in distress or, perhaps, escaping like the aesr. They descended into dark floors, where the grids of circuitry embedded within the material surface of the building dimmed and then disappeared entirely—whatever power supplied the skyscraper seemed only to reach the upper levels, and as the three raced toward the ground it felt as if they were racing to the bottom of the ocean floor.
The air grew ice-cold and stale, and the sounds of the pursuing Undertow never faded. The whoops and trills that followed them had begun not long after Cooper led them down from the rooftop, the Death Boys, recovering from the shock of losing not one but two consecutive leaders in the span of about five minutes, enjoined by their sisters the Charnel Girls, all of whom now poured down the alien stairwell in pursuit of the trio. The cold came from the skylords, circling the building now in their gathered, agitated masses; Cooper could feel their tails licking the walls. They knew his taste.
And now that the aesr was no longer siphoning away his pain, the truth of what had been done to his back became more apparent. It felt like he’d been through a meat grinder, and from the expression on Sesstri’s and Asher’s faces when they’d seen the damage, he didn’t look much better. Blood spotted the steps in his wake, and the ache became raking lines of pain, which became a patch of agony stretching from shoulder to shoulder and down to his lower back. He began to slow.
Sesstri took the lead, pulling a thunderstruck Asher by the wrist down the submarine hallways and shooting odd glances at Cooper, who followed as fast as he could. He supposed he looked more than a wreck, naked to his skin and beyond, his ruined back laid open. Something would have to be done about that soon, he knew, provided they escaped with the rest of their hides intact.
Floors passed in a rush of adrenaline and pain and blue- skinned walls, and before they knew it Cooper, Sesstri, and Asher found an exit: a three- storey hole blasted into the side of the building gaped onto the street level, and they stumbled out into the open air. They kept running, Sesstri and Asher now both looking back at Cooper with something resembling awe. Asher’s face was wild. At last they clambered over a wall of rubble that slowed their progress to a crawl, and as he pulled himself past a fragment of broken mirror, slicing his palms on some of the shards, Cooper pulled back in shock—his face was covered in half-dried blood and seemed frozen in an animal snarl.
No wonder they’re looking at me funny .
The blocks-thick border of rubble where the towers stopped seemed to be as far as the Undertow would chase them— a chorus of high-pitched screaming summoned them back as a flock of black lich-lords swooped overhead only to return to their burning towers. As the trio staggered out of the permanent night that shrouded the skyscrapers into the natural night that had fallen over the City Unspoken, a giant orange moon appeared to greet them. No, not a moon— a planet, a great gas giant that reminded Cooper of Jupiter, if Jupiter’s troposphere had cloud layers of Dreamsicles and cream soda. Candy-colored storms painted bands of turbulence across the face of the transient planet, latitudes of tempestuous tangerine, cherry, blood orange, coffee, butter, and chocolate; in its unlikely vastness the gas giant filled a third of the sky. Their shadows flickered against planetlit alleyways.
Cooper hoped they would be safe, and he overheard a fright of Sesstri’s that mirrored his hope: NoMoreScreaming, PleasePleaseNoMoreScreaming. At least he thought that’s what she meant. Looking at her, Cooper realized that it wasn’t only the huge planet ruling the sky that had painted her in a wash of light: he saw more of the strange spirit-colors swirling around her chest. As he watched, they resolved into a bronze sign that shimmered over her brow— an unfurled scroll and a long quill. What was he seeing?
Free from the chasing Undertow, Asher seemed stunned. He kept scanning the sky, muttering to himself and shaking his head.
Both Sesstri and Cooper knew it had something to do with the creature that had broken loose during their confrontation on the rooftop, but each had their own reasons for keeping quiet. Cooper, now that he’d had time to think about it, was half-terrified he’d doomed the captive aesr, and that her explosion and flight had been a reaction to the reflected torture she’d endured on his behalf. The other part of him didn’t feel like adding “Saw an extinct superbeing before she exploded” to the FUBAR list at that particular moment.
At a fork in the road, the trio stood facing the blown-out windows of a dark intersection, limp-limbed, each too wounded, winded, or disturbed to think of what to do next.
“Please, cover yourself,” Sesstri panted, pulling a silk smock from her satchel and tossing it at Cooper. “I’ve seen this show before.”
Cooper wrapped the tiny bit of yellow silk around his waist—being careful of his lower back— and tied off the arms. At least as a makeshift sarong it hid his vital bits.
“Somebody wants us to take a left,” Cooper said, pointing.
One side of the abandoned brick building in front of them—once a warehouse, once apartments— bore a bright red loop of still-wet paint across its windowless façade. A stylized ribbon, thirty feet tall.
Sesstri did a double take and turned apoplectic. “Now she takes an interest? Not when we’re attacked by thugs or lunatics or mincing undead parasites, but now?” She kicked a stone and sent it skidding toward the big red ribbon, but that didn’t provide enough release, so she raised her face and screamed wordlessly at the planet rising overhead. Sesstri bayed. It was when Asher didn’t even smile that Cooper began to worry for him.
“Fine. Just fine.” Sesstri stalked off in the direction the building- sized ribbon indicated. “She snaps the leash and we go trotting along.” Cooper and Asher followed without a word.
They walked past intersections clotted with rubble, following a path away from the burning towers and the burnished orb rising behind them, and in the silence Cooper returned to himself somewhat. Everything that had happened to him since he’d woken up in La Jocondette seemed like an unfortunate dream. The Lady, the thrill of his adventure with Marvin, the bitterness he’d felt at Marvin’s betrayal, the aesr, the lich, rolling Marvin’s butterflied corpse into the sky—what were these but the details of a disturbing dream? All he had to remind him that they were not dream-figments but his own history were his naked skin and the open wreck of his back.
Which hurt
like hell. It was a wonder he wasn’t screaming or unconscious. Shock, sepsis—he’d need massive amounts of painkillers and antibiotics, soon, or he’d lose his navel once and for all.
When they arrived at the next intersection that presented a choice of direction, it became apparent that their unseen navigator had not finished pointing the way—only the upper stories of one face of this squat, square building bore the attentions of any red paint. Then a small figure dropped down from the top corner of the building on a tether and ran in an arc across the bricks: it was Nixon.
Nixon laughed and dashed sideways across the wall of the building, spilling paint from his bucket in thin looping threads as he went. His line secured him to the roof, letting him wall-run along a pendulum’s path as he painted his second billboard ribbon. He whooped when he saw them limping toward the intersection, and ran down the face of the building, then jumped and landed with his arms outstretched and gave a little bow.
“Olga Korbut taught me to land on my feet,” he said. “But I never got the hang of it till now. I can’t help but notice that you guys are early, and alive.”
Asher, Cooper, and Sesstri stared at the unboy, too exhausted to talk. Nixon kept on, walking around them in a circle with an appraising eye. “Thanks for leaving all the climbing gear around. It sure made the job easier.”
“Alouette sent you?” Sesstri asked, recovering her voice and relieved to have someone she could harangue for answers.
Nixon nodded. “Wanted me to correct an earlier mix-up.”
“Lovely,” Sesstri and Asher said as one, but Nixon had discovered Cooper’s back.
“Hey, CinemaScope.” Nixon squared off with Asher, tiny fists on his hips. “Still choking kids?”
Asher said nothing.
Nixon continued. “Turns out I may have been, um, slightly neglectful in my duty. I may, technically, have been supposed to give this ribbon to you, Cooper. I guess I forgot, what with all the violence and spooky shit and whatnot.” He held up a small loop of red ribbon and offered it to Cooper. Cooper didn’t move, and Nixon scratched the back of his neck and made an awkward grimace. “He, uh, okay? He’s supposed to take the ribbon. I’m not supposed to leave until he actually takes the damned—”
Asher grabbed the ribbon and handed it to Cooper. Nixon nodded at a job well done, then squealed in surprise as he, Sesstri, and Cooper jerked and were caught up in a sucking twist of space. In a swirl of red ribbons, they vanished, leaving Asher alone in the deserted ruins.
In the gray man’s current mood, that suited him just fine.
Everything seemed to change when the planet rose above the horizon. They all felt it, even NiNi squirmed on her fainting couch, unable to find sufficiently flattering light. Bitzy waved her hands, orchestrating servants who appeared more distraught than she did; cakes were brought in and removed, returned and sliced into quarters, removed again for re-icing; teapots entered and were judged inferior, porcelain reluctantly accepted, and trays of broiled fish rejected as inappropriate for the occasion.
“I know it’s dinnertime,” Bitzy scolded a pigeon-toed maid, “but this is a tea party. Would you eat dinner at a tea party? No, you wouldn’t, would you? Because that would be ridiculous.” She waved the woman off.
“Thank you, Krella,” Purity said as the maid retreated. Purity turned to Bitzy with a smile. “I’m sure she’s trying her best, Bitz. Krella’s always smart about understanding the details; that’s so hard to find.”
Bitzy answered with a brittle smile.
NiNi stopped humming to lean half an inch toward Purity, cover her mouth with her hand, and speak at full volume: “That was Narvie, Purity. Krella’s the governess and she hasn’t worked for Bitzy’s family for three years now.”
“Oh,” Purity said. “Silly me.”
“Fuck Krella and fuck this stupid tea party,” NoNo muttered under her breath.
Bitzy shot a glance at NoNo, and NiNi lifted her palm in a gesture of forbearance.
“Oh Bitz,” she drawled, “don’t ride NoNo too hard. It must be a Bratislaus trait—like father, like daughter, don’t they say?”
NoNo jerked upright, her hand flying to the grip of her parasol. The look she shot her twin could cut glass.
What’s this? Purity wondered, sitting forward. She kept her face as devoid of expression as she could manage.
“Bitzy,” NoNo said slowly, all the while staring at NiNi, “maybe dinner wouldn’t be the worst thing in the worlds. A nice fat bird, roasted dead— for instance.” NiNi narrowed her already heavy-lidded eyes.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s early yet.” Then Bitzy processed what NiNi had said. “Wait, what did you say about Daddy?”
Purity held her breath, not sure whether she should be excited that change had finally come or horrified at the form it seemed about to take. Either way, she was rapt.
A dry giggle issued from NiNi’s throat. “Sorry, Bitz. NoNo’s been fucking your daddy for months.”
Oh my.
Bitzy worked her jaw and made to say something, but thought better of it and looked down at her hands, her teacup shaking in her lap. “I see,” she said at last, in a small voice.
Outside, an orange gas giant streaked with yellows and browns dominated the night sky and cast them all in unflattering planetlight. Tonight we are the moon, Purity thought before scolding herself for being lyrical during a crisis. The light competed with the bouillotte lamps set on tables around the salon, their gold-leafed inner surfaces trying to add a touch of artificial sunlight to the garish orange globe eclipsing the sky. Filtered through the greenish glass of the Dome, the planet drenched the room in an eerie glow; Purity imagined that the girls were sitting in a sinking ship, looking up at the sun through fathoms of seawater.
We’re drowning, she thought, and nobody even notices.
Well, perhaps not everyone failed to notice. NoNo, for instance. A change had come over NoNo Leibowitz in the last little while: she’d cast off her dead-eyed guise and revealed what appeared to be a vital woman beneath. Purity admired the verve, if not the methodology. She wasn’t sure she bought it, though. Had their NoNo been posing as an idiot all along?
Purity floated a lie to test the new social dynamic and clear away the awkward silence: “I heard the Weapon steals your soul, so that there’s nothing left to return to your body or condense into a new one.”
“Please,” NoNo sneered. “It does not. Besides, stealing souls is like stealing socks.”
Interesting. “How so, NoNo, dear?”
NoNo twirled her ridiculous sunshade. “I don’t know . . . say you burgle a thousand of the things. Then what? You can’t eat souls any more than you can eat used socks; you can’t sell them; and you won’t win friends giving the things away. I suppose you could be very avant garde and sew them into a gown, but what would that earn you—all those souls for one eve ning’s infamy?” She barked a most un-NoNo-like laugh, quick and smart. “No, you can keep your wretched soul—when it comes to theft, I’d rather steal good old-fashioned everything.”
What was this? Was NoNo a real person, all of a sudden?
Bitzy tsked, doing her best to ignore NiNi’s revelation about her father, the lord senator. Proper ladies didn’t react to scandal. “Of course you’re speaking figuratively, NoNo. Ladies mustn’t steal.”
“Mustn’t they?” Purity asked with as much empty politesse as she could rally.
“Oh, I don’t know, I think I’d buy a gown of souls.” NiNi picked at her fingernails, but Purity discerned a hint of bored malice through her thin lips.
“And that’s the difference between us, NiNi.” NoNo rounded on her sister, instantly and finally feral. “Everyone thinks us the same, when they couldn’t be more wrong. Because you’d buy the damned gown, and I’d be the one selling it to you. And when you were starving because you spent all your dirties, you’d have nothing but a gauze of souls to keep you warm, dry, and fed—you appallingly helpless mannequin.”
The room sat in stunn
ed silence. Nobody had ever heard NoNo talk for so long, let alone display more than the barest minimum of a personality.
“There’s a difference between you two? That’s the first I’ve heard of it!” Bitzy laughed, but her voice pitched uncomfortably high. Purity did not think she noticed the look that earned her from NoNo. “Girls, what would your mother say if she heard her daughters barking at each other like mad dogs? Nothing flattering, I can tell you that much. Now please, will everybody just—”
“Don’t you ever talk about my mother, Bitzy Bratislaus. Or I swear, I’ll . . .”
“You’ll what?” NiNi interjected. “Tattle?”
NoNo stared down her sister. “I find it hard to feel insulted by the afterbirth. Don’t you have more candy to eat?”
NiNi blinked back a bland expression. “I’m afraid you’re a bit of a cunt, NoNo.”
“I will Kill you myself.” NoNo was losing control. “Mner told me, if you sing slowly enough, you can make it hurt. I’ll grate you like a brick of cheese, sister.” She realized what she’d said and sat back, scowling.
Mner Bratislaus? Purity tried to follow. Sing?
NiNi appeared not to be paying her twin full attention. “Mmm, capital, et cetera. Purity’s been losing weight, don’t you think?”
Bitzy Bratislaus threw her cup and saucer on the table with a clatter. Her nerves seemed finally to have yielded to circumstances. But rather than shout about her late, faithless father she quavered, “Am I the only one who needs more fucking tea?”
The young ladies were growing jumpier by the minute—NoNo had clutched her sunshade reflexively when Bitzy’d startled them by dropping her china. Now she was rubbing it up and down in a most indelicate—no, Purity realized with a finger of ice up her spine, she’s unsheathing it, just an inch or two, unconsciously. NoNo’s got a sword hidden up her parasol. Indeed, an inch or two of quicksilver blade was visible beneath the lacey baton handle of the sunshade.
Cane dancing lessons. Purity felt ill.