"Fine. Yes, Basel Prouk was First Mason when your father sat on the board of the Guildswork United, but . . ."
"But?"
"Now, see, that was five years ago. Things have changed since then."
She put her hands on her hips and skewered him with a skeptical look. "And you would know this how?"
Kaien cleared his throat. "Right. Well, see, it"s like this. The Guildworks United dissolved less than a year after the Writ of Community, when you all were locked up. Without backing from the Circle, First Mason Prouk and the rest of the representatives of the various guilds lost their authority. My father, Cecil Rosa, became First Mason when he led the remains of the organized masons to partner with the plumbics-the Guilds Masonic y Plumbus are the only functional labor organizations left in the city. The only ones cooperating, anyway, although the dockworkers are congenial enough so long as we keep their dikes sh.o.r.ed up and the buried chains from clogging up ca.n.a.l traffic."
"What," Purity interjected, "does this have to do with anything?"
He held up a meaty palm. "Well, with all the chaos, you see, my father and Head Pipeswoman Grigalie decided to employ certain . . . intelligences. And um, they decided-after some lengthy debating and not a few walkouts-to send one of their number-me, in this case-into . . . um, into the Dome to perform some basic reconnaissance."
Purity"s flesh went numb. She bit her lip and blinked rapidly. "Pardon me, Kaien, I"m sure I drifted off. It sounded as though you said you came into the Dome after it was sealed."
He looked at his feet. "Not quite a year ago, in fact."
Kaien was not prepared for the burst of sudden violence as Purity slammed him and seized his collar with both tiny hands. "WHAT?" She was stronger than she looked and loud as all the bells in bedlam. "Are you saying that you know a way out of this h.e.l.l?"
"A way in, actually," he said, unclasping her hands from his shirt one slim steel finger at a time, "although I was hoping I"d be able to use it to leave soon-when my scheduled replacement arrived."
Purity"s pale green eyes grew even wider. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are running shifts?" She pushed herself away, raked her fingers through her hair, and exhaled an animal groan of frustration. "Do you have any idea what I"ve been through trying to escape this place for the past five years? Bells, Kaien, I spent two weeks cutting my own throat like a slaughterhouse piglet just to see if I could break the body-binding spells! I"ve been willing to die and move on all alone and you tell me that you-you and the rest of the d.a.m.ned bricklaying b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have been waltzing in and out the whole time?"
Look how those curls tumble, Kaien marveled. "Well, not waltzing. And not all of us, no, just me."
"How?"
"That I can"t tell you. I can"t, Purity."
"Fine. Let"s see." She rolled her eyes but smiled despite herself, loving a puzzle and not minding a demonstration of her skills for a boy who would flirt with her before the day and deed were through.
"This little group of masons und plumbers or whatever you"re calling yourselves, you lot know how to get in and out, so it must be something fundamental. Something too neglected for servants to bother with and therefore something that the n.o.bles don"t even know exists. And if Fflaen didn"t seal it, it must be old enough for him to forget, which means old. That"s more than enough to solve the riddle, but I shan"t stop there." Purity slipped into a wry smile. "Something old and basic: if I follow the logic of my own cancerous kind, it will be something utterly essential to our way of life. Food, shelter, clothing- all of that is sustainable without intercession from the city outside. Water, perhaps? No, we"ve got springs aplenty in the Groveheart and the Dendritic cisterns. Cisterns."
Kaien"s stomach sank. He shouldn"t have given her anything, now she"d taken up the conundrum and he could see that Purity Kloo made a stellar detective. He scrubbed his face with his hands and hoped his father would forgive him-supposing they survived long enough for Kaien to see his father again. He"d hate to be reunited with his family only to be bodybound and bricked up alive for becoming a traitor.
"Water," she said, zeroing in on the answer. "We"ve got all the fresh water we need but . . . there"s something else. Something I"m in which I"m not fluent. Something . . . something like . . . excrement. Water in, water out." Purity spat on the floor. "Trade secrets of plumbers and bricklayers. Oh Kaien, Kaien, please tell me you didn"t crawl in here through something as absurdly obvious as a sewer?"
Kaien stared at his feet resolvedly.
"But I"ve checked all the culverts-that was my first thought, obviously. The whole complex is hermetically sealed!"
"The whole complex?" Kaien stroked his whis kers. "It"s an old place, Purity. A funny old place."
She stalked a few feet away, grabbed a wren from midair and snapped its neck with one pretty hand. "f.u.c.k." She hurled the dead thing at his chest like a miniature cannonball. It bounced off him and rolled away on the tiles.
"Bells, Purity!" He raised his arms in surrender.
"f.u.c.k!" She elaborated to the lead-paned gla.s.s ceiling and the trees above. "f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.ketty f.u.c.k!"
Purity drew a ragged breath and tried to compose herself, but her eyes werewild.
"Dead G.o.ds dressed and dried," Purity cursed more eloquently now, "I wish I could go with you."
"Excuse me?" Kaien"s bewilderment reached new heights. "What are you talking about? Purity?"
"Isn"t it obvious? You need to take word of what"s happening to your father, to the city. Fflaen"s left us here to rot, the rest mustn"t suffer the same fate."
"Purity . . ." he began. "I don"t think you realize . . ."
"I realize more than you think, bricklayer! You have your duty, and I have mine. There"s a Murderer to bring to justice. I can stop the selfannihilation of the Circle with a ransom like that, I know I can." She merely had to decide whether or not she should do so.
"Your duty, however, lies with the guilds and the people-ordinarily I wouldn"t presume to bother the world at large with the Circle"s internecine strife, but something larger is brewing, and I don"t think it"s right to leave the city in ignorance of the chaos into which their erstwhile governors have descended. Also: the possibility that the Murderer might find his way out into the city through your f.u.c.king drain." Purity stalked toward the exit.
Following, Kaien reached out with his hands and then s.n.a.t.c.hed them back, worried she might bite off a finger. "You can"t go running around the Dome with a Murderer on the loose, Purity. It isn"t safe! We"ll stick together and take care of things as they come. n.o.bility and guildsmen working together, as it should have been from the beginning."
"Just go, Kaien." Purity didn"t bother to look back as she shook her head. "We"ll build a brand new world after we"ve saved the old one from total obliteration."
"Absolutely not, Purity-"
"Go." She turned at the exit, leaning on the archway for support. Bells, she was turning down a way out. "There is nothing you can do to protect me from the Murderer anyway, Kaien, although your gallantry is noted and, I should add, appreciated. Go help the people worth helping."
"Purity Kloo: shut up." Kaien took her shoulders, one in each hand, knowing she might interpret it as an act of aggression. "Close your pretty mouth for one single second! The First Mason didn"t send his only son into the tolling Dome to sneak about and eavesdrop on ladies" gossip, no matter how winsome that lady may be. The City Unspoken needs a government, Purity. My duty is to ensure that nothing remains of the old, failed government that could hinder the formation of the new one."
Purity stopped midsentence, eyes and mouth agape. She held a gloved hand up to her mouth, then put it on her hip and scowled, almost opened her mouth, then realized that Kaien still had his warm paws on her shoulders and covered her mouth with her hand again.
"You what? You"re . . . bells and bells and tolling bells, Kaien. It is you, isn"t it?" Purity stepped back slowly, fingers trembling against her lips.
"What? What"s me?"
"You"re the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who"s been running around Killing stableboys and Tsengs who don"t know any better!" Purity scrubbed her yellow hair and looked around the tiled vestibule that led away from the aviary.
"Purity," Kaien said, his stomach gone cold. "What are you talking about?"
"I"m a cancer?" she said, looking back from the threshold. "Dead G.o.ds, Kaien, better to be a tumor than a Murderer!"
She spun and fled toward exit, running for the nest of n.o.bles that was Dendrite"s Folly. Kaien let her go, watching the small bustle attached to her turquoise skirts. He wasn"t sure if he wanted to stop her and tell her the truth, or if she was better off without him.
Purity found and followed a trail of scurrying guardsmen and servants, and was surprised to find herself walking toward Lord Senator Bratislaus" library. She was even more surprised to see Lady Mauve Leibowitz lording over the three- story, book-lined offices.
NiNi and NoNo"s formidable mother, member of Circle Unsung and war-honed battleaxe, Lady Mauve fixed a steely eye on Purity as she entered. She pointed a finger at Purity"s heart and grated: "You, Purity Kloo, are in worlds of trouble."
Tam hurried down a cobbled lane, laden with shopping bags in enough colors to make a faerie proud: hyacinth and cornflower, viridian, cyclamen, sunset. Today, Lallowe Thyu wanted a coin, but she also wanted three pairs of shoes, a new set of luggage, clockworking tools and new coding pins, and a camisole from a dressmaker in Amelia Heights. Only by chance was the numismatist"s shop located nearby the dressmaker, or Tam feared he would have died of exhaustion.
He pushed his way past window- shoppers and a slope-nosed little boy with no shirt, a red ribbon tied around his finger, and a bucket of red paint. The little urchin ran right in front of him, and Tam almost kicked the boy, but thought of his packages and reconsidered.
The coin shop-if it could be called such-was typical of Amelia Heights, where the city"s intelligentsia and least-starving artists packed themselves into odd little rooms in odd little buildings, all stacked together like so many hatboxes. The coin shop was tiny and at the top of several rickety flights of stairs, and so crammed with papers, volumes, and overflowing tabletops that it took Tam a solid minute to find the old man amidst the clutter. Lapin the Numismatist sat hunched over a desk beneath a wall bestrewn with shiny medals hermetically sealed in laminate and cardboard, and seemed not to notice Tam"s arrival. He wore a navy blazer with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and his hair was the brightest white. Tam found it hard to believe that this one old man was responsible for every body-binding performed in the City Unspoken. Coins and bodies, bodies and coins. They always went together.
Tam coughed politely, to no response. He cleared his throat but received no welcome. Finally he announced himself: "If you are the coiner Lapin, then the Marchioness Terenz-de-Guises would have your attention."
"Eh?" The white-haired head perked up. "Or you"ll have my kidneys instead? I remember the spiel." The old goat turned around and Tam saw that one of his eyes had been replaced with a prosthesis. Where the other should be was installed a lens of absurd thickness, through which an iris showed rheumy-blue and gigantic. "What are you about, girl? And why the sudden interest in a pair of much-abused organs? Making kidney pie, are we? I"m not hungry." He turned back to his coins, muttering about marrow and sweetbreads.
"I"m a young man." Tam said, too quickly. He looked out the window to the noonday skies, silvery like the old coiner"s enormous eye. Tam was told to be polite, so he held his tongue. "My name is Tam, and I represent the mistress of the Guiselaine."
"Are you sure you want to represent such a mistress?" Lapin asked from his workbench. Tam had seen gargoyles with less grotesque foreheads, so bushy and long were the old man"s eyebrows. "Lallowe Thyu acted very unpleasantly the last time she paid me a visit. It"s not nice to threaten to eat an old man. She called me a goat!"
Tam was unsure what to say-it would be beyond his station to apologize for the marchioness, but the old man seemed to expect some kind of redress. "The fey are fickle," Tam said, "I"m certain my mistress intended no insult. And goats are . . . very n.o.ble creatures." He paused.
"I"m more of a mutton, I"m afraid, and a bit gamey at that." He pulled the thick lens from his face, which remained craggy and overgrown but, at last, attentive. So it wasn"t a prosthetic eye at all, but a mere device, a contraption of leather and gla.s.s that exaggerated the rheum in his old eyes.
Lapin continued. "What manner of coin does the queen of the Guiselaine wish to add to her coffers, today? I would have thought she"d have graduated to bullion. Or does she want her new faerie handmaiden body- bound as well, is that it?"
"Both." Tam sighed, resigned to be amused by the old fellow. "A half- cent, thank you, and one body-binding to go." He held out the note with the details of the coin.
Lapin leapt and gave a funny little cheer, ignoring the note. "Ah! Well, then, if we"re to do real business, girl, I prefer you to address me properly. A coiner is a nickeldime a dozen, if you"ll pardon the pun. I am the Numismatist."
"And I am no girl. I am-"
"-Fey, yes? Yes, I can see that. It"s the ears, child. Dead pointy ringers." Hooking the shopping bags in one arm around his elbow, Tam felt at his ears, which were as round and human as ever.
"Perhaps you should replace your lens, Mister Numismatist. This coin I seek, it is malformed."
Lapin nodded. "We call the lens a loupe. Now, let us find your halfcent. If I read you aright, Miss Tam of the manse Terenz-de-Guises, your mistress desires what we numismatists call an error, an error half-cent, in this case. This will be a half-cent that was misstruck with a faulty print, a double print, a blank press, a broken die . . ."
"Die, that"s what she said. Missing a die, she said-"
"-And isn"t that odd, in a city where half the population is trying to Die, and missing the mark." Lapin"s hobby seemed to be amusing himself.
Tam kept speaking, shaking the note in the old man"s face. "-Missing a die and originating at the, um, pelican mince?"
"American Mint." Lapin nodded and turned immediately to one of the rickety cupboards surrounding his worktable. "Core world coins! That"s easy enough. I have several dozen errors from that particular universe alone, each different from the last. That"s the fun of both error coins and universes, you see, they come in more flavors than pies, and endure a great deal longer. . . ."
Tam growled. "The coin?"
"Must be named before it can be purchased, young lady."
The old man finally took the note from Tam, glanced at it, and rattled off a list of numbers and names of which Tam understood precisely nothing.
"Oh, that"s a good one!" Lapin clapped. "Yes, yes, the American 1809 half-cent, Cohen number six, reverse only. Excellently doc.u.mented, that world"s coins. Whole families devoted to their study. Poor Breen describes it, although he had only ever seen one uniface striking, which he ill.u.s.trated. Grellman authenticated it. My friend Tettenhorst . . ."
Airy dark, this one rambled. "Do you have it?"
"Of course I have it," he snapped, then continued with his tale of tails. "Breen died in prison, a pederast. His wife was quite famous for another reason entirely, but I digress. The coin. I forget quite how it came to me, but I do remember the collection, the largest of its kind in the entire metaverse, a worthy endeavor. The Davy Collection, you see, named after the collector"s youngest boy. What became of the man and his son we"ll never know, I fear. Perhaps they traveled together. Perhaps they lost each other. Perhaps they"re both here right now, and don"t know it. Lives get lost just as easily as coins, girl. But coins can be found again, and identified. Lives are not often as lucky, which is why I work with both. Would you like it?"
"No, old man," Tam began, with acid sarcasm, "the marchioness of the wealthiest remaining district in the city has sent me to your closet to listen to worthless stories about worthless coins. Of course I don"t want it. But your ersatz governor does. You might give more consideration to thoughts of her dis pleasure. . . ."
"Feh. I might give more consideration to a ha"penny trollop with elfin ears if she considered my lives" work worthy of a moment"s attention." He dug through one of a hundred drawers, pawing lazily at neatly labeled cardboard pouches much less neatly arranged until, after a moment, he drew a brown square from the rest and stared at it with pride. "And Amelia Heights does not bend its knee to Lallowe Thyu. 1809, Cohen six, reverse only-here we have it. For your purse, I will part with it."
Tam tossed his purse at the barnacled ancient, eager to escape the dusty attic. Despite his age, Lapin s.n.a.t.c.hed the bag deftly and flipped Tam the small cardboard envelope.
"Might I be permitted to ask, Miss Tam, what has generated this sudden interest of the marchioness in as n.o.ble if neglected a diversion as numismatics?"
"You may indeed, Sir Lapin." Tam flashed a smile. "And get a purseful of nickeldimes as your answer; that"s all I got when I asked. With a mistress such as mine, it is wisest not to ask twice."
Lapin snapped his fingers. "Which reminds me, you mustn"t leave without a binding scrip. I prefer to bind in person, but I"ll not hear more threats from Thyu or her elfish minions." He procured a sc.r.a.p of paper from a drawer and a green felt-tip pen from the inside pocket of his blazer.
"These are much harder to do than they seem," Lapin elaborated as he scribbled on the paper strip, "which is why I"m the only one providing the service, these days. Oh, there used to be a row of us, across town in the Callow Heights, but they"ve all since danced on and those crazy thugs drove everyone out of the district, so here I am. She"ll need to press it against the wrist of whomever she intends to bind. I hope your mistress won"t murder her quarry before she binds it."
Lapin treated the little curl of drafting paper far more carefully than he had the coin. "I forget myself with that vixen. Although I am pleased she sent a foxy feykin la.s.s in her stead." Tam raised an eyebrow. "I mean no disrespect, Miss Tam. The fox always f.u.c.ks the vixen in the end, no?"
A slow smile spread across Tam"s pointed face. "We shall see, Sir Numismatist. In the meantime, I will rest easy knowing you have the sense-d.a.m.n you and your puns-to keep your mouth shut and your keen eye in its loupe where it belongs. Good day."
Lapin made a half bow as Tam struggled down the stairs with his varicolored bags sc.r.a.ping against the sides of the narrow steps. "Happy hunting, little fox!" Lapin called as Tam turned the first landing.
"To you as well, old goat!" he replied before the daylight hit his face and he was lost again, coin and life, to the turbulent streets.
This time the vision quest beluga bore nautical tattoos and sported a jaunty if somewhat ill-fitting sailor"s hat, waving her body lazily through the paper streamer ocean. Cooper wondered briefly if he was back in Cleopatra"s lap, but no-he knew something was wrong, indeed that a great many things were wrong, and moreover that things had begun to go wrong for him shortly after he commenced his education concerning all things metaversial.
"Just how shortly after?" he asked out loud.
"Very very shortly after," the beluga answered.
I wonder, is that a coincidence?
"Not exactly!" The beluga seemed chipper.
"You"re not Marvin." Cooper practiced his backstroke through the undersea psychoa.n.a.lytical medium . . . crepe paper.
"Of course not, silly." The beluga lifted one stubby fin and somehow, in the way only a mind weaned on Disney animals could hallucinate, raised its hat to the rhythm of a little vaudeville vamp-itself produced from an old player piano that popped into existence for the occasion, then melted away like clarified b.u.t.ter. "Ta da."
"But you"re wearing his tattoos."
"n.o.body"s perfect." If a sea mammal could look shifty, this one did so. "You"re not Cleopatra, either." Cooper treaded crepe paper water. "Cleopatra." The beluga rolled its little black eyes. "That fat lady got sung."
"So who are you? Are you my spirit animal?"
"Those are two completely different questions, Cooper."
"Well, are you? Some animal guide thing?" He squeezed a spongy stress ball that appeared in his hand for the count of three, then was a crocus from his mother"s garden in February, then was nothing again. "What makes you ask that?"
"Well, the last time I saw you-which I guess was also the first time I saw you, you were wearing spectacles and talking an awful lot like a shrink." Details of his immediate circ.u.mstances returned now, Marvin and Hestor and the pretty, pretty thing he"d heard for days. "And now here you are wearing the skin of the guy who, I think, just sold mine. And all that business with the shaman-stuff, I dunno. It just seems sort of timely."
"You"ve got that part dead right, at least. It sure is timely." The beluga wrapped its fins around a ship"s line that appeared from nowhere and pulled with all its weight.
"I can"t be a shaman, I"m Jewish."
"Mazel tov!" A Purim noisemaker gragged above the beluga"s head and it let go of the line.
"Don"t tease. I"m a fragile flower at the moment."