Nixon handed Sesstri a fallen dagger, hilt first. "They"re a G.o.dd.a.m.ned nightmare, that"s what they are."
Safely away from the scene of the attack, Sesstri allowed herself to stop and gather her thoughts; she closed her eyes and tried to sublime her tension through a deep breath. Nixon watched her face, rapt. With her eyes closed and her plum-colored lips parted, he could almost imagine her as a soft, gentle thing, who gave soft, gentle kisses and would open her legs for him, just slightly, enough for him to feel her essential heat with the backs of his knuckles. . . .
"Well, they may not be the woeful Etellyuns"-Sesstri shook off her reverie-"but if the Undertow are attacking me, and tracking us, then I am concerned, and I will remain so until I learn why."
"But those weren"t Death Boys or Charnel Girls, back at the house. Just plain henchmen. Vanilla-flavored, standard-issue hired muscle. Why would the Undertow fight a proxy battle?" Nixon resumed rubbing his whiskerless chin.
"Why is the sky billowing red? There are plenty of questions without good answers." Sesstri bent to rummage through her satchel, but paused and squatted beside it, twisting its strap between her fists and eyeing Nixon with an unfixed stare of appraisal.
"Nixon, can I trust you?"
The unboy looked down his long nose at the earth as if he wished he were among the dead in their resinous stasis. "You think I brought those thugs, don"t you? You blame me for your friend with the Danzig t-shirt."
"Are you avoiding my question?" Sesstri c.o.c.ked her head.
"You think I work for the bad guys!" he wailed.
Sesstri did not answer, but glanced back at Nixon with something resembling forbearance. Forbearance"s unkind, surgical sister. "I did not say that."
"But it"s what you think, isn"t it?" Nixon took two deep breaths and looked for all the worlds like a real child, on the verge of tears.
Sesstri clucked. "It"s a possibility I"d be irresponsible not to consider, and either you"d wonder the same thing in my shoes or you"re an idiot, in which case I"m wasting my breath. Am I wasting my breath?"
The boy shook his head in earnest. "No, no, of course not. I"d be suspicious of me too. I"d probably have me beaten and locked up for a day or two just to be on the safe side."
Sesstri pursed her lips in agreement. "I"m low on closet s.p.a.ce, but I did consider stuffing you into the drawer where I keep my underthings."
Nixon put his hand over Sesstri"s, still wrapped around the strap of her satchel, and squeezed. His brown eyes shimmered with unshed tears. "I swear to you, Sesstri Manfrix, I am a lot of bad things, more than you would ever guess; I am a thief and a liar and a greedy, cruel man, but I am not your enemy. You can trust me. And I"ll understand if you don"t-I know it looks bad. I"ll walk away right now if you think I"m responsible for what happened to you and your friends."
Sesstri understood that there were gestures appropriate for this moment, but she could think of none that fit her. She certainly wasn"t about to pat Nixon"s sc.u.mmy little head.
"No, Nixon, I don"t believe you betrayed us." Sesstri tried to modulate her voice to approximate kindness. "For one, you"re too young to be a threat." She stood, finally finding her notebook within her bag, scratching a few notes to give the urchin time to wipe his face.
"Well, that"s good news." Nixon turned around, smiling his half- grin again. "But I"m not young, you see."
Sesstri hid a smile. "I see no such thing."
"I think you do, and I think I"m in love with you. Just throwing it out there." Nixon tried to whistle innocently, looking all around. "Change the subject," she said. They rounded a final bend and the great tree lifted itself up before them. Like all of aboveground Bonseki-sai, the tree was a conceit. A hodgepodge of elephant-thick succulents-jade plants, semperviva, ice plants, Carmens and Zwartkops-planted strategically among the eaves and railings of a rickety, towering, and well- disguised hostelry called the Jamaica Inn.
At the foot of the great tree, at the center of Bonseki-sai, upon a wide square of sunlit resin, the Jamaica"s entrance yawned between two banyanthick jades, their fat oval leaves filtering smoke and revelry from within, even at this early-or late-hour. The morning sunlight revealed that the ground beneath their feet held no corpses, just a straight view down into the drowned depths, where shadows most certainly did not move. Milling about the square Sesstri saw patrons of the Jamaica Inn, none of whom seemed to notice the still-billowing expulsion of bloodred smoke that filled the sky behind the inn. Men and women drank their beer and spoke together in quiet cl.u.s.ters, oblivious.
Sesstri bit her lip. There"s more drinking, more eating, more blindness to the madness that surrounds us. It was the svarning, she was sure of it. She felt it herself, fluttering against her breastbone like a trapped bird. Wherever he was, Asher felt it too, and soon Cooper; it would take them all and wash them into . . . aimlessness and . . . gray hands on her face and backside, pulling her cheeks apart to swamp her with kisses that . . . "Enough!" Sesstri screamed, hands in her hair, but n.o.body flinched. Even Nixon failed to notice.
The unboy had no eyes for Bonseki-sai, or the Jamaica beneath its living disguise. He watched the red smoke, filtering through the branches toward them. "That"s not smoke, you"re right," he said to Sesstri. "It looks more like . . . hair." Clouds of red curls that burned the air with their presence, scalded three-dimensional s.p.a.ce and irradiated time. Nixon"s eyes grew wider, then rolled back in his skull as he fell to the ground in a faint.
Sesstri squared her shoulders and stared down the roil of sentient pigment that bloomed before her. "You are Chesmarul, the red ribbon!" she called out, ignoring the patrons. "If you insist on a show, then show up."
The red tendrils shivered and began to contract. Sesstri didn"t know what she was watching, yet the sound it made felt nauseatingly appropriate. The red color seemed to crunch in on itself and become . . . real- yet Sesstri knew that by joining her "real" world of three physical dimensions, the red ribbon allowed herself to be diminished, somehow. When the collapsing color grew solid, Sesstri was not surprised to see the heartshaped face and bow lips of her landlady, Alouette, take form amidst the coalescent pigment.
"Fine, then. Enough procrastination." The red curls vibrated with Alouette"s voice. "Time to put off being an ineffable First Person for a while and become the landlady again."
Red wisps pulled into Alouette"s body like smoke billowing backward into the fire. Yes, Sesstri imagined that Chesmarul-her self-would be reduced to the limits of the tissue within her rapidly solidifying skull. To be as the Third People are: alive and small and desperate. When the color bled away from Alouette"s warm brown eyes, Sesstri saw a human confusion there, a genuine waking, as real as Sesstri"s own waking here, in this too-quiet district.
"h.e.l.lo, Pinky." Alouette blinked her eyes, glanced around, and frowned. "This city is too sane by half."
Sesstri planted herself in front of the First Person. "I demand to know what you"ve embroiled us in, Chesmarul."
"No." Alouette shook her head and pointed to her chest. "Alouette." She glanced toward Nixon, unconscious on the gra.s.s. "Did he give Cooper the ribbon?"
"Excuse me?" Sesstri folded her arms across her chest.
"He didn"t, did he? Little s.h.i.t. We"ll sort that out. You lost the man, then?" Alouette looked Sesstri up and down. "My, this is a mess. And you can"t even get my name straight."
Sesstri pushed aside the questions, demands, complaints, and murderous a.s.saults that crowded her head. Yes, she found herself in a ridiculous tourist trap of a neighborhood, facing an absurd being from before the dawn of time, while Death itself ground to a halt that would soon fill the metaverse with a disease of endless living. Yes, there was a gray man somewhere out in the City Unspoken who filled her head with feelings Sesstri had thought she"d amputated. Yes, she had plenty of plenty and not enough time or knowledge to reckon with it all. But she was Optimae Sesstri Manfrix, daughter of the Horse lord, and she had conquered death and men in equal measure. She would get a single straightforward answer from Alouette, and she would make it count.
"Why is Cooper here?"
"Oh, I have no idea." Alouette shook her head with emphasis. "None at all. Let"s hope that answering that question is one of the things a Cooper does."
Sesstri clenched her fists into b.a.l.l.s of stone. "What is Cooper?"
"Today? Eh . . ." Alouette"s eyes darted evasively. "Don"t we decide that for ourselves, Pinky, each and every morning?"
"You have been meddling in every aspect of mine and Cooper"s lives- you can feign all the ignorance you want, Alouette, but you cannot convince me that it"s genuine."
"Fine." Alouette looked ready to make nice. "So, Cooper. I made him the center of everything, and I"m not sure why."
Sesstri nearly choked on her surprise. That was a straightforward answer, if there was any truth to it. "Are you-"
"-No, look, I am sure why." Alouette stood her ground, combed her curls with her fingers and then c.o.c.ked her head. "I"m the sort of person who can only exist when she"s grounded. That"s not a metaphor. I"m in flesh right now because I . . . I honestly can"t be bothered to focus on something as small and quick as a human life, if I"m not bound by human context." Alouette bit her lip.
"So you"re telling me that the ancient being who is revered as the patron of the lost is . . ."
". . . Completely inured to human suffering, yes." Alouette"s expression held sympathy and pity in equal measure. "You expected something else, from a woman older than suns?"
"You"re not a woman, and you know it."
"But I am. I am, and I am, and I am." Alouette almost stomped her feet in earnest. "I"m in this wrinkly, fatty brain and these tidy, internal gonads, and I"m telling you, girl, I"m a woman."
Sesstri huffed. "Why make such a show?"
Alouette looked genuinely confused. "What are you talking about?" she asked.
"Do you remember manifesting in the district in an explosion of red hair?" Sesstri waved behind her, toward the branches of the Jamaica, where patrons continued to drink in peace.
"That? Oh." Alouette rolled her eyes. "For me, honey, that was just a red dress."
Sesstri marched off, then stopped herself, turned around, and threw her hands up. "Why here, of all places?"
Alouette followed Sesstri. "Bonseki- sai and I go way back. If I appear, it"s always here. You should ask the angel about it, he"ll tell you more than I remember right now." She picked at her skin. "These bodies. How do you live so small?"
"Angel? What angel?" Sesstri wasn"t so much annoyed at more obscure drivel as she was excited at the prospect of anyone else to question- anyone but Alouette. "There are no angels in a G.o.dless city, unless you"re speaking in riddles."
"No riddles, only words, which amount to the same thing." Alouette shook her head. "The angel-the Angel of Bonseki-sai? That"s half the reason I"m even here; where is he?" Alouette peered around her as if there might be an angel hiding under the fat leaves of a jade plant. "The Angel of Bonseki-sai is a famous monument, it"s what brought the district back to life after-oh." Alouette paused. "Time. f.u.c.k. I"m in time now. Oh, why didn"t I bring a map!"
Sesstri ma.s.saged the divot between her brows and waited for Alouette to stop rambling. She knew there was meaning there, and she memorized every word for later a.n.a.lysis, but in the moment she could do little but keep herself from screaming at the woman.
"Huh." Alouette winked at Sesstri. Winked. "I told you, the city is too sane. There"s not even an angel yet. No wonder this place is so quiet-the angel comes to answer the madness. The svarning should be here by now."
Sesstri started speaking before her resentment could kick in and impede any opportunity to learn from Alouette. Any window of lucidity was priceless. "We found some symptoms of the svarning as the number of Dying began to increase noticeably." Sesstri led with what little data she had. "But as the inability to achieve True Death has become more widespread, we haven"t seen a corresponding increase in the svarning- notthat we know what to look for. The svarning . . . it should come, but it doesn"t."
Alouette shook her head, not understanding. "That"s not how it works. There aren"t words or small-enough ideas to fit into these heads and mouths we have, but if the Dying cannot Die, then the svarning will come. It must come."
She paused, then her eyes lit up and her curls shook. "Machines! Oh, oh, there is an old song that I do not quite remember. The Angel sings it all the time, or he did. There are machines . . . engines of being. They are hearts, and they are clubs. Oh, oh. This head hurts me." Alouette pressed her fingertips against her temples and scowled. "The svarning comes. Something manipulates it, but it comes, Sesstri."
Sesstri nodded. She understood what Alouette meant-one side of a seesaw couldn"t go up without the other going down. Imbalance was imbalance. "What could possibly manipulate the svarning?"
And can we use it to save ourselves?
Alouette wasn"t paying attention. She knelt to place her palms on the resinous floor of Bonseki-sai, mercifully black again. She frowned, and lowered her cheek to the ground as well. Then she shot up, a look of alarm on her face. "Listen, I need to go. I"ll see you in a bit, okay?"
"Tell me one more thing," Sesstri asked, wondering what Alouette could possibly infer from kissing the ground. "Why don"t these people notice you?"
"What people?" Alouette scrunched up her face.
"The ones all around us!" Sesstri waved her arms and pointed behind her, where the Jamaica still bustled. It did bustle, didn"t it?
Alouette fixed Sesstri with a funny look. "Girl, n.o.body lives here, it"s Bonseki-sai.The place is f.u.c.king haunted."
"Of course it"s not. There are plenty of people here." Sesstri turned around. The door to the Jamaica was half-hidden beneath overgrowth, its cleverly designed windows boarded. Its garden was empty of people. "But, but I woke up here."
"Yeah," Alouette said slowly. "That"s why I took care of you, hon- this is no place for a girl to wake up. You were lost. You still are, if you think there"s anyone but the two of us standing here."
5.
For her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation, and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pa.s.s from one language to another . . .
To return to Cleopatra; Plato admits four sorts of flattery, but she had a thousand.
[NB: A thousand and one, she proved some lives later in a most unlikely palace.]
-Plutarch, Parallel Lives: Collector"s Edition Flowers. The scents of flowers, cacophonous and overlapping: jasmine and lavender and rose, orange blossom and honeysuckle and peony. Flowers circled his sleep-self, the non-dreaming seed of thought that kept company with the darkness while Cooper slept. As his mind crept open, the scents expanded to include sandalwood, then amber and musk, anise seed, mace and pepper. Something else, too, laced between the clash of perfumes-alive, seeking, spiked and dangerous. It was poison.
Cooper"s mind woke by degrees, the seed of his sleeping mind unfurling its cotyledon leaves-not yet himself but beginning to apprehend himself again, the down pillows beneath his cheek, the linen against his naked skin. A sound like banners rippling in the wind became soft music, sighing strings, and a voice just shy of singing, nuzzling his ears in the gentlest ways-an anti-lullaby, a reveille blown from a subtle throat and matched with fingers on his temples, chrism on his lips and brow and throat. He underwent a ritual of awakening that men had sacrificed armies to enjoy, given freely to Cooper by the Lady of La Jocondette as he lay in her canopied bed, in her lap, in her inestimable care. Somehow, the seedling of his waking mind knew this.
"Wake, wake, wake little asp," she all but whispered her song, every nuance of the moment a variable manipulated by her cunning. Even the heat of her breath was praise. "Wake, wake, wake and warm yourself on my breast, sun yourself in my blood, O serpent, O man. The suns are shining and all the worlds await you, little snake; come and greet the morning coiled in the cup of my palm."
Cooper felt the mattress stir beneath him, and the fingers left off ma.s.saging his head. The notes of song and scent drifted away, and he lifted his head to follow his captor.
She moved with more n.o.bility than the Dome itself could contain. The woman who woke him was not beautiful, strictly speaking-in the predawn half light she stood veiled by dark hair, rivers of black curls framing the dark pools that were her eyes. A chin that would have been weak on another woman, and the hooked nose of a general, not a prince. Her figure was wider than some strictures of beauty permitted, with heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips like the sacred cow, Hathor, who was her onetime guardian.
No longer.
Cooper marveled at the pieces putting themselves together in his head, as if the thoughts were thinking themselves. Weirder and deeper, deeper and weirder . . .
The Lady matched Cooper"s gaze and smiled, and if she knew exactly the path his thoughts were taking, well, it was a oft-trod path, and she had led many men and women down its length during her centuries. Even in the City Unspoken, she had founded legends and ended dynasties.
"Welcome to the waking," she purred, "long-lost child of Rome."
If the Lady was flower- and-song then Cooper"s thoughts were thorn-and-noise- he pulled his mind back into his body against every instinct, which was to hide in the darkness and remain unborn to the world. A stillborn b.a.s.t.a.r.d for some other mother to mourn.
"You are wondering where you are, who I am, and why you"re here. You wonder if you dream still, or if the madness has overtaken you at last, and the moon and her lunatic children have claimed you for their own."
"I . . ." Cooper bit back the urge to answer, and watched the Lady draw thin curtains from the windows. The room matched the light outside- pale blue walls decorated with porcelain, woven mats on the floor.
She turned up the wick on the lanterns, and continued, "You are a guest here at La Jocondette, and though my patrons overpraise me with an honorific I no longer merit, it would give me great pleasure to hear you address me by the name given to me at birth by my father, and that is Thea. I am Thea Philopater, and you are CooperOmphale, whether you know it or not."
"h.e.l.lo." His voice was thick with sleep and hoa.r.s.e from the shouting- the shouting that he remembered with a rush of adrenaline.
He sat up too quickly. "We were attacked-"
"-So I understand. A useless act of violence, in my sight, but such are the means of men in any world. You are safe here, Cooper. Know that."
"Safe!" He barked a laugh. "I hear unspoken fears and the Dying roam the streets like lunatics. You violently kidnapped me and attacked my friends. What"s safe?"
"How like Asher you sound, child of Rome." She fluffed his pillow and he lay his head back down. "Has he affected you so profoundly, or is it merely that common contrivance of man in the face of the overwhelming: feigned bravado?"
"I"m not brave or feigning-just overwhelmed. About ten times over. How do you know Asher?" From her considerable decolletage, an answer sprang to mind.
The Lady closed her eyes. "I cannot imagine how you could fail to be overwhelmed, under the circ.u.mstances. Do you still pray? Have you prayed today, CooperOmphale?"
"Excuse me?"
She opened her eyes, and they were iron. "Has a single day on the other side of life shattered your faith, or do you yet venerate whatever G.o.ds our people worship in the centuries since my feet last touched Earthen sands?"
"Earthen sands?" Cooper asked, but as he said the words he realized that he already knew.
"You and I walked the same world, darling boy." She raised his chin with a finger so that their eyes met. "It has been many years since I ruled there, but I have read some few of the scrolls they scribed about my first life, and seen the play-acts. I am not so luminous as that purple-eyed angel, but surely you know me?"
Cooper heard more than a little vanity in her tone. Purple-eyed angel? Queen? If he hadn"t known better, he"d have thought he was still dreaming. Either this woman was bats.h.i.t barmy or she was . . . the realization crystalized. He was suddenly giddy with the idea. This was possible only here, so how could he be wrong to doubt it? Could the City Unspoken be a blessing in disguise? Possibilities bloomed.