"Yes. It is consistent with the metaphor in which we cloak our reverence-if the pool before you is filled with tears, then the Lash . . ."
"Ah, I see." And he did, after Osman"s explanation. "If that"s an eyelash, I"d shudder to see the eye it"s attached to."
"You see it every day, Omphale." Osman stared at the ceiling as if he could see clear through the bedrock.
"He does?" Sesstri asked, skeptically.
"Yes, and it sees you." Sid ate another seed. "Your Prince has made it his palace."
Nixon whistled. "Oh ho! The Dome? That"s a new one."
Osman shook his head, still struggling to smile, his lips curling slightly upward at the corners. "In fact it is a very, very, very old one. The Grotto is the axis of our world. Our axis mundi-our world-pillar. That symbolism ties itself closely to the notion of the navel, the omphalos, the world"s point of beginning, its center. It is that worlds-center upon which we meditate."
"So why does everybody witchy call me that?" Cooper asked.
"Centers shift." Sid hung back, but answered the question. "If yesterday, the center of all worlds was a hemp seed, then today-perhaps it is a man."
"No," Cooper thought out loud while looking at the Lash and realizing what it was that he saw. "It"s a gold Death machine, and it"s older than f.u.c.k."
Machines of magic and electricity, that powered themselves with the slow death of a living battery. He"d seen those inside the Cictatrix. And he"d seen one beneath the City Unspoken, afterward-he had followed its signal- scent home, the golden apple rotting from within.
Alouette nodded. "I won"t say much, Cooper, but you"re right."
"Then you know what we have to do." Cooper marveled at the scale of the task.
Another nod.
"Sesstri?" Cooper asked. "Have you ever heard the word "vivisistor" before?"
"Vivi-what?" Sesstri scowled. "Have I-no. No, I have not. Tell me everything."
"Little machines that trap something alive inside, impaled on a spike, to generate electricity." He held out his palms, cupped together like a closed oyster. "Open it up, and the trapped thing dies, and the vivisistor shuts off."
"That does not sound like everything-explain better and faster."
"The Dome is a vivisistor, Sesstri. A huge one, and an ancient one." He looked at Alouette. "You said you pierced the skin of the worlds, to create the possibility of True Death. This is how you did it, isn"t it? With a machine?"
Alouette looked down.
"With one of your own trapped inside." He shook his head. "Who"s dying now, finally, and that"s why the pilgrims who come to the city no longer Die. That"s where the svarning will come from, when the vivisistor fails completely."
Sesstri cursed. "What under the braided t.i.ts of the horse mother is a "vivisistor?" And how would you open the Dome?"
"With big-a.s.s chains," Cooper answered easily. "I"m right, aren"t I?" He looked at Alouette, who dipped her chin once in a nod. The Winnowed men closed their eyes in meditation at the mention of the chains.
"Are you still going to say the words?" white-haired Bede asked Alouette, speaking up at last. "Old Dorcas would want you to say the words, were she still living."
"Just a moment." Alouette nodded, and spoke directly to Sesstri. "The lich-lords march on the Dome at dawn. A faerie queen the likes of which you cannot imagine invades the city, and you will feel her arrival. She is filled with vivisistors, and she comes for the eldest. Take this and run. Alone." Alouette pulled a book out from behind her back and pressed it into Sesstri"s hands.
Sesstri did not fight. She nodded, eyes sharp, and took the book. Urban Weather Patterns by Susan Messerschmidt. "Which way do I run?"
Osman pointed the way he"d come, and the sphincter of resin sucked itself open into a doorway again. Sesstri moved toward it.
"Cooper?"
"I"ll be okay, Sesstri," he said. "Do whatever she says. I can find you, now, I think." Cooper hoped that was true. Nixon looked back and forth between Alouette and the receding Sesstri, torn. Then he turned and ran after Sesstri, complimenting her a.s.s and asking why she wasn"t slowing down for him.
The Winnowed shuffled their feet, and Alouette conceded. She took a big, physically incarnated breath, and saluted Bede like Shirley Temple in The Little Colo nel. "Worms beneath my heel, I command you to complete Anvit"s Great Work," she said. "Pull the chains, mechanic- slaves of the First Children. Open the Eye. Crack the Dome and finish what my arrogant brother started, so long ago. The chains, men!"
The Guile & Gullet suffered from a surfeit of customers, and though the staff struggled to serve the crowd that spilled outside into the square, Oxnard Terenz-de-Guises enjoyed a large table by a bay window on the inn"s mezzanine, with a view of both the crowded tavern floor and the milling throng outside, where boys usually relegated to washing dishes were serving beer from a makeshift stand. The marquis sat alone at his table but had ordered enough food and drink for four, and seemed to be enjoying his repast with equivalent relish.
As the crowd below parted around Asher, the gray man looked up from the street and saw the marquis through the diamond-shaped panes of the lead gla.s.s windows. Terenz-de-Guises licked gravy off his ringed fingers and waved.
As Asher made his way through the crowd, he noticed a fevered pitch to the mob"s revelry. No, it was more than that. Faces flushed with too much drink were pouring down pint after pint as if they couldn"t quite get drunk, and bellies beneath shirts stained with grease were swelling with haunch after haunch of meat. Something dark slithered out of one man"s ear, and another woman had three of the things, two in one ear and another snaking out her nostril. None of them noticed, or if they noticed, did not care.
A clutch of bloods.l.u.ts gathered in a far corner looked wild-eyed and hungry, and during his short stroll into the tavern, Asher saw half of them drag away drunkards into the shadows. It took a rare life-wh.o.r.e to look forward to his or her trade-seeing half a dozen bloods.l.u.ts eagerly soliciting business was downright wrong. He wondered whether they were even dying for their johns or just f.u.c.king them.
Sesstri and Alouette thought the city too sane, given the end of Death and the expected consequence. But it was obvious from a walk down the street that the dam had burst at last. The malaise that had been creeping up on the city had erupted, and would soon touch everyone, not merely the unlucky and the Dying. The svarning had come. Wherever Sesstri"s red-ribbon G.o.ddess had stolen them, Asher hoped that she and Cooper were safe from the worst of it.
He pushed his way through the door and toward the bar, scanning the tables. Oxnard whooped to get his attention and waved him up the stairs that ringed the greatroom of the tavern. Of course the marquis had his own table, and of course it was overladen. Of course he was waiting for Asher, ready as always to prattle.
"Sit, sit!" Oxnard said unnecessarily as Asher sat himself across from the man. "Help yourself."
"I see that you"re in good spirits as usual."
"What"s the alternative, poor spirits?" Oxnard laughed, but glanced at the crowd outside.
"That"s the solution I seem to have found." A barmaid flashed Asher a limp smile as she brought four pints of lager to the table. Asher drained one and picked up a second.
"Not gambling tonight?" he asked.
"Well, you"re here." Oxnard smiled. "That"s always a bit of a risk."
"Funny you should mention that." Asher slid the broken chip bearing the Lady of La Jocondette"s profile across the table. "I"d like to thank you for directing me to La Jocondette, friend. I hope you did not knowingly send me into an ambush. That"s a risk."
The marquis"s expression of confusion looked genuine. "I"m certain I have no idea what you"re talking about. I"m also certain that you wouldn"t have found your abducted friend nearly so quickly had I not been clumsy enough to leave behind a chip upon which I had so idly doodled." He reached across the table and grabbed the chip. "It"s funny how things work out. I"ll thank you for returning my winnings, however. Arigato." Asher shook his head. "Your father would not be proud, Oxnard."
"Let"s not delve into fathers and pride, eh?" Oxnard smiled into his lager. Asher looked away. "At least we"ve both kept busy. Drinking, for instance, we"re both quite good at that. Avoiding our wives-sorry, that"s a sore subject for you, isn"t it? Sincerest apologies-to continue: we"re both stupendous at whoring, of various inclinations and for various purposes.
Helping things along in our own utterly insufficient way; I"ve been funding some of the more necessary local guilds, par exemple. Trying to keep business afloat as much as possible."
Asher scowled. "The only business you keep afloat, Oxnard, is the hospitality industry."
Oxnard wagged his finger. "You"ve always been too quick to judge, my friend. Yes, yes, I know you"ve got more years under your belt than I can imagine, but that"s no reason to be surly with us wee cretins. Besides, hospitality forms a larger piece of the pie than you"d think. Who keeps all those workaday types happy at the end of the week but bartenders and wh.o.r.es and whatever you call the man who puts meat on skewers?" Oxnard laughed.
"You"re in a good mood, for a man whose district seems perched on the verge of chaos. Have you looked outside?"
"You know, I have. And what do I see? I see people who have finally decided to embrace life." Oxnard impaled half a dozen leaves of larded greens with his fork and stuffed them into his mouth. "Viva la muerte, etc."
"You can"t mean that." Asher scowled.
The marquis almost finished chewing before he answered. "Oh, but I do. And to answer your next pregunta: no, I do not know why everybody"s suddenly gone into several strains of frenzy. And for the life of me, I cannot remember why I"m supposed to care."
"And that doesn"t strike you as odd?" Gray elbows on the tabletop, Asher leaned forward.
The marquis nodded, accidentally spilling beer onto his fancy shirt. "Of course it does. But as I said, I can"t seem to care. And I"m not one for caring overmuch to begin with."
Asher browsed a plate of pickled vegetables. "Well. You"re not so different from your peers in that, I suppose." He snapped a vinegary baby parsnip in half with his teeth. "Don"t you want to know if I found your red metal jewelry box?"
"Nope." Oxnard speared another folio of greens and stuffed them into his mouth. "Oh dead G.o.ds, the Gullet has got to keep this new cook. Who knew rainbow chard could be braised to heaven? It"s a cruciferous apotheosis, I tell you."
"You know," Asher said nastily, "I supposed I shouldn"t be surprised that the best interest of the people isn"t really your priority, or you might have reconsidered handing the Guiselaine over to the most vile woman the city"s seen since Ladybeth FenChrissie and her enslavement pogroms.
We don"t exactly have another Shriving Kloo around to placate the people and reestablish the government."
"Oh, I wouldn"t be so sure about that," Oxnard said, for once relishing details left unmentioned. Then he leaned forward, unable to help himself. "Besides, what makes you think I"m not desperately in love with my darling Lolly? Who says I don"t conspire with her to bilk workers of wages and t.i.the shopkeepers into debtor"s prison? Contrarywise, what makes you think that my exotic hothouse orchid wasn"t as much a scrim for me as I was for her? Strategy runs both ways, and makes for interesting- and appealing-bedfellows." The marquis snapped for more lager. Outside, a man started screaming. Long black thorns erupted from his shoulders, thorns that forked and forked in a fractal pattern. Then from his legs, his sides, his hands. Within seconds the man was coc.o.o.ned within lines of black, iterating and reiterating across his face, obscuring his body but not his agonized, wailing screams.
Oxnard watched for a moment, then turned back to Asher and shrugged.
"I was bored, so I married a sociopath. What did you do when you grew bored, my prince?"
"What, do ye think you"re the only one who gets bored? The only one who reads?" NoNo stalked into the reliquary and flipped her sword cane in the air before catching it by the hilt; she left Kaien disabled and forgotten. "You can"t believe yer the first virgin la.s.s to learn a thing or twain from a man she let f.u.c.k her? I bet your cunny still smells of chimney sweep."
Purity blanched. She also felt that something wasn"t quite right. NoNo sounded . . . off. She was playing a role, but a role in which she"d been horribly miscast. Swordplay aside-the girl was a right prodigy in that regard.
"Aye, you"re a proper lady of the Last Court," NoNo sneered. "You"d not survive a week at sea with Captain Buonaparte or the crew of The Dying f.u.c.kman."
Purity stopped blanching. Pirate novels? Was NoNo really misquoting pirate novels? She couldn"t help herself: "NoNo, I think you have that last bit turned around."
"Are ye blind as well as deaf, landlubber la.s.s?" NoNo sneered, shaking her lace-hilted cane sword. "D"ye want a taste of this?"
"Are stories of pirates all you"ve got to go on?" Purity felt terrified, but also increasingly frustrated. Was she the only adult in the entire Dome? "That and your prodigious skill with a coward"s blade. You do know that"s what an offensive melee fighter-like a pirate- would call your cane sword, don"t you, NoNo?"
"Ha ha, Purity." NoNo advanced. "You"re so witty, aren"t you? "I"m Purity Kloo and I read smarty-pants books, just look at my perfect little nose and the big brown bear I"m f.u.c.king!" You be a good la.s.s and smash those pretty windows, I"ll spit on a handshake and promise not to tell Bitzy you"ve been wearing the same stockings for two days straight."
Purity turned an ankle and looked. Bells, she"s right.
NoNo unfastened the hammer from Kaien"s tool belt and kicked it to Purity-its head, a fist of steel, made an awful sound as it sc.r.a.ped along the white tiles of Fflaen"s reliquary. Purity stopped the hammer with her slipper and simply stood there, looking at the tool on the floor, then back at NoNo, who replaced her boot atop Kaien"s back; the two girls stood in similar positions with worlds of distance between them.
"Pick it up," NoNo demanded.
Purity tugged on the handle-it was heavier than she remembered. "It"s probably a good idea for you to save your courage for the high seas, NoNo. You"ll need it, because that"s the only place you"ll be safe when your mother hears of this."
"My mother is the reason I"ve done this, Purity Kloo!" NoNo spoke with fire in her belly, and Purity"s incredulity redoubled at the girl"s sincerity. "And if you hadn"t spent your entire life hiding behind your father"s trousers, you might understand why."
"Lady Mauve?" Purity tried not to sound condescending. "What in the name of all the debunked G.o.ddesses could possibly make you think Mauve Leibowitz would want any of this? There"s a good chance you"ve destroyed your entire family, NoNo. I"m not sure you understand that- do you? Nothing will be the same for any of them after this."
"You say that like it"s a bad thing, Purity." NoNo shook her head.
"I . . . well . . . what?" That was unexpected, and unsettlingly aligned with Purity"s own thoughts on the status quo.
"Your father has stood in this room and committed Murder. But not your mother. It"s different when your house is ruled by a woman. Maybe it shouldn"t be, but it is. When it"s your mother standing here, choosing to become a Killer, you feel it, through the blood, through the childborn womb. I did, anyway-NiNi doesn"t feel a thing. But I felt my mother pollute herself when she used the Weapon. I don"t know why I felt it, but I did, and I couldn"t fake it anymore. Fake being NoNo, fake being stupid, fake f.u.c.king dance lessons."
Dead G.o.ds, not only did NoNo sound sincere, she sounded stricken. "But . . . why fake it to begin with?"
"Come on Purity, don"t choose now to become a thickheaded cow." NoNo pointed to Purity"s ankles. "You know exactly where a strong personality will get you in our crowd: cut up to pieces for wearing the wrong stockings. While we enjoyed a little light butchery, the Circle was consigning each other to oblivion. They were Killing one another as an indulgence."
"So you polluted yourself instead?" To her horror, Purity knew what NoNo meant, and how she felt.
"Somebody had to do something to stop them. Can you really tell me that you, out of all of us, haven"t felt the urge to . . . do something, anything, just to change things? Just to escape?"
"Escape what?" Purity had wanted to escape, yes-escape the Dome, escape her friends, escape what she increasingly recognized as a trap designed to rid the city of them all.
"Escape everything. Aren"t you suffocating? Aren"t you drowning in this gilded s.h.i.t?"
Purity remembered when she first found this room, and the blind anger that had fueled her. She looked down.
"There you have it," NoNo relished.
A wave of helplessness washed over Purity, but she shook her head clear. "I would never do what you did."
"That"s a fine hair to split, Purity Kloo."
"Better to split a hair than a child, Nonette Leibowitz." Purity locked eyes with NoNo and remembered Kaien"s heartache at the young tailor"s apprentice, who died with NoNo"s canary yellow thread in his hand.
"I . . . I didn"t know what the song was, at first. I thought Mner was teasing me, singing me back to his bed one measure at a time with pretend fragments of the Weapon, a little pillow game. Then, when I put the measures together and I Killed those boys, actually Killed them . . . I had to try to make some good come of it."
"And you"re willing to destroy your family name for what, exactly?"
"To end this? Gladly. And not just my family, all of our families. We are an abomination, Purity, I know you see that."
She saw no such thing, despite the overwhelming despair that tried to claw its way into her heart. But as NoNo lectured Purity on the evils of the Circle, Purity stared at the Dawn Stains in what she hoped looked like distracted awe. She was searching for some sign of the Weapon when she remembered the threat NoNo had made against NiNi- at the time she thought it had been simple spite, but now she saw the truth of it.
"Mner said if you sing slowly enough, you can make it hurt," NoNo had said. "Singing me back to his bed."
And suddenly the truth of a quarter-million years. .h.i.t home. The lords and the Circle; the Weapon; a room that, until very recently, only the prince and the Circle could enter. The Circle Unsung.
"Sweet suicide, they"ve had the Weapon all along." They must have. The lords hadn"t discovered the Weapon, they"d always possessed it. If that was true, then knowledge of the Weapon was the reason the Circle existed-a balance of power, of mutually a.s.sured destruction. Bells, the entire history of her society was predicated upon a secret standoff of epochal proportions. That explained how the lords had kept hidden the knowledge of a way to choose Death-or inflict it- and more significantly, why they hadn"t bothered fighting each other for control of it. Anyone with a voice could wield the Weapon.
"Oh bravo, Purity." NoNo clapped. "Putting all the pieces together by your lonesome self."
But Purity wasn"t listening: the lords had kept the Weapon safe for ages. Kept it tucked away until they"d been locked inside the Dome, and then they"d resorted to using it. Was she right then, had the Writ of Community been Fflaen"s way to dispose of the ruling cla.s.s permanently?
Either way, she"d found what she was looking for-the link between the prince, the Circle, the Weapon, and the Dawn Stains. It was right there at the bottom of the gla.s.s, on every pane, in bars of black and gold that looked incidental to the scenes depicted above them. From just a few feet away the notation looked illegible, but closer up Purity could make out some of its sense. If she scanned the lines correctly, the meter shifted between bars in an inconsistent way, but it was most definitely music. The Dawn Stains held a song.
Sometimes truffles and perfect comfort and velvety red wines just didn"t satisfy, mused Lallowe Thyu, Marchioness Terenz-de-Guises. She pouted in the bath with her ankles scissored into the air, so she could admire the lacquer-sheen smoothness of her toenails. She picked at pomegranate seeds from a gla.s.s ramekin, snapping them up with the thin coding pins she held scissored in her hand. Lallowe found herself not enjoying the flavor so much as the gem-bright b.l.o.o.d.y color and the memory of how, when she was much younger, her mother had fed her pomegranate seeds and pretended they were teeth stolen from sleeping children. Pomegranate, she mused, was much tastier as a body part.
Thanks to a bitter mood, she"d spent nearly the whole eve ning in her bath- a bowl of shale as wide as a small pond, frothed over with water that never cooled and was perfumed with her most recently favored scents- damp wood in March, rain- slick limestone, and jasmine-but Lallowe had not wasted a moment. The coding pins had danced in her hands all eve ning, scripting sentience into the abalone programming compiler that floated in her lap like a giant oyster. Beneath the crust of calcium carbonate glowed an interior of mother-of-pearl and electrum: a box of light and golden wire suspended inside contained a grid of 1,024 by 1,024 squares in 1,024 layers, projecting a cubical matrix that served as the parchment upon which she wrote herself a sister.