“And he’s coming here?”
“That’s the rumor. He’s losing his grip in the Fourth, and he knows it. So he’s decided to put in a personal appearance. Officially, he’s visiting Patashoqua, but this is where the trouble’s brewing.”
“Do you think he’ll definitely come?” Pie asked.
“If he doesn’t, the whole of the Imajica’s going to know he’s afraid to show his face. Of course that’s always been a part of his fascination, hasn’t it? All these years he’s ruled the Dominions without anybody really knowing what he looks like. But the glamour’s worn off. If he wants to avoid revolution he’s going to have to prove he’s a charismatic.”
“Are you going to get blamed for telling Hammeryock we were your friends?” Gentle asked.
“Probably, but I’ve been accused of worse. Besides, it’s almost true. Any stranger here’s a friend of mine.” He cast a glance at Pie. “Even a mystif,” he said. “The people in this dung heap have no poetry in them. I know I should be more sympathetic. They’re refugees, most of them. They’ve lost their lands, their houses, their tribes. But they’re so concerned with their itsy-bitsy little sorrows they don’t see the broader picture.”
“And what is the broader picture?” Gentle asked.
“I think that’s better discussed behind closed doors,” Tick Raw said, and would not be drawn any further on the subject until they were secure in his hut.
It was spartan in the extreme. Blankets on a board for a bed; another board for a table; some moth-eaten pillows to squat on.
“This is what I’m reduced to,” Tick Raw said to Pie, as though the mystif understood, perhaps even shared, his sense of humiliation. “If I’d moved on it might have been different. But I couldn’t, of course.”
“Why not?” Gentle asked.
Tick Raw gave him a quizzical look, glancing over at Pie, then looking back at Gentle again.
“I’d have thought that was obvious,” he said. “I’ve kept my post. I’m here until a better day dawns.”
“And when will that be?” Gentle inquired.
“You tell me,” Tick Raw replied, a certain bitterness entering his voice. “Tomorrow wouldn’t be too soon. This is no frigging life for a great sway-worker. I mean, look at it!” He cast his eyes around the room. “And let me tell you, this is the lap of luxury compared with some of the hovels I could show you. People living in their own excrement, grubbing around for food. And all in sight of one of the richest cities in the Dominions. It’s obscene. At least I’ve got food in my belly. And I get some respect, you know. Nobody crosses me. They know I’m an evocator, and they keep their distance. Even Hammeryock. He hates me with a passion, but he’d never dare send the Nullianac to kill me, in case it failed and I came after him. Which I would. Oh, yes. Gladly. Pompous little fuck.”
“You should just leave,” Gentle said. “Go and live in Patashoqua.”
“Please,” Tick Raw said, his tone vaguely pained. “Must we play games? Haven’t I proved my integrity? I saved your lives.”
“And we’re grateful,” Gentle said.
“I don’t want gratitude,” Tick Raw said.
“What do you want then? Money?”
At this, Tick Raw rose from his cushion, his face reddening, not with blushes but with rage.
“I don’t deserve this,” he said.
“Deserve what?” said Gentle.
“I’ve lived in shite,” Tick Raw said, “but I’m damned if I’m going to eat it! All right, so I’m not a great Maestro. I wish I were! I wish Uter Musky was still alive, and he could have waited here all these years instead of me. But he’s gone, and I’m all that’s left! Take me or leave me!”
The outburst completely befuddled Gentle. He glanced across at Pie, looking for some guidance, but the mystif had hung its head.
“Maybe we’d better leave,” Gentle said.
“Yes! Why don’t you do that?” Tick Raw yelled. “Get the fuck out of here. Maybe you can find Musky’s grave and resurrect him. He’s out there on the mount. I buried him with these two hands!” His voice was close to cracking now. There was grief in it as well as rage. “You can dig him up the same way!”
Gentle started to get to his feet, sensing that any further words from him would only push Tick Raw closer to an eruption or a breakdown, neither of which he wanted to witness. But the mystif reached up and took hold of Gentle’s arm.
“Wait,” Pie said.
“The man wants us out,” Gentle replied.
“Let me talk to Tick for a few moments,” Pie said.
The evocator glared fiercely at the mystif.
“I’m in no mood for seductions,” he warned.
The mystif shook its head, glancing at Gentle. “Neither am I.”
“You want me out of here?” he said.
“Not for long.”
Gentle shrugged, though he felt rather less easy with the idea of leaving Pie in Tick Raw’s company than his manner suggested. There was something about the way the two of them stared and studied each other that made him think there was some hidden agenda here. If so, it was surely sexual, despite their denials.
“I’ll be outside,” Gentle said, and left them to their debate.
He’d no sooner closed the door than he heard the two begin to talk inside. There was a good deal of din from the shack opposite—a baby bawling, a mother attempting to hush it with an off-key lullaby—but he caught fragments of the exchange. Tick Raw was still in a fury.
“Is this some kind of punishment?” he demanded at one point; then, a few moments later: “Patient? How much more frigging patient do I have to be?”
The lullaby blotted out much of what followed, and when it quieted again, the conversation inside Raw’s shack had taken another turn entirely.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Gentle heard Pie saying, “and a lot to learn.” Tick Raw made some inaudible reply, to which Pie said, “He’s a stranger here.”
Again Tick murmured something.
“I can’t do that,” Pie replied. “He’s my responsibility.”
Now Tick Raw’s persuasions grew loud enough for Gentle to hear.
“You’re wasting your time,” the evocator said. “Stay here with me. I miss a warm body at night.”
At this Pie’s voice dropped to a whisper. Gentle took a half step back towards the door and managed to catch a few of the mystif’s words. It said heartbroken, he was sure; then something about faith. But the rest was a murmur too soft to be interpreted. Deciding he’d given the two of them long enough alone, he announced that he was coming back in and entered. Both looked up at him: somewhat guiltily, he thought.
“I want to get out of here,” he announced.
Tick Raw’s hand was at Pie’s neck and remained there, like a staked claim.
“If you go,” Tick told the mystif, “I can’t guarantee your safety. Hammeryock will be wanting your blood.”
“We can defend ourselves,” Gentle said, somewhat surprised by his own certainty.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so hasty,” Pie put in.
“We’ve got a journey to make,” Gentle replied.
“Let her make up her own mind,” Tick Raw suggested. “She’s not your property.”
At this remark, a curious look crossed Pie ‘oh’ pah’s face. Not guilt now, but a troubled expression, softening into resignation. The mystif’s hand went up to its neck and brushed off Tick Raw’s hold.
“He’s right,” it said to Tick. “We do have a journey ahead of us.”
The evocator pursed his lips, as if making up his mind whether to pursue this business any further or not. Then he said, “Well then. You’d better go.”
He turned a sour eye on Gentle.
“May everything be as it seems, stranger.”
“Thank you,” said Gentle, and escorted Pie out of the hut into the mud and flurry of Vanaeph.
“Strange thing to say,” Gentle observed as they trudged away from Tick Raw’s hut. “
May everything be as it seems.”
“It’s the profoundest curse a sway-worker knows,” Pie replied.
“I see.”
“On the contrary,” Pie said, “I don’t think you see very much.”
There was a note of accusation in Pie’s words which Gentle rose to.
“I certainly saw what you were up to,” he said. “You had half a mind to stay with him. Batting your eyes like a—” He stopped himself.
“Go on,” Pie replied. “Say it. Like a whore.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“No, please.” Pie went on, bitterly. “You can lay on the insults. Why not? It can be very arousing.”
Gentle shot Pie a look of disgust.
“You said you wanted education, Gentle. Well, let’s start with May everything be as it seems. It’s a curse, because if that were the case we’d all be living just to die, and mud would be king of the Dominions.”
“I get it,” Gentle said. “And you’d be just a whore.”
“And you’d be just a faker, working for—”
Before the rest of the sentence was out of his mouth, a pack of animals ran out between two of the dwellings, squealing like pigs, though they looked more like tiny llamas. Gentle looked in the direction from which they’d come, and saw—advancing between the shanties—a sight to bring shudders.
“The Nullianac!”
“I see it!” Pie said.
As the executioner approached, the praying hands of its head opened and closed, as though kindling the energies between the palms to a lethal heat. There were cries of alarm from the houses around. Doors slammed. Shutters closed. A child was snatched from a step, bawling as it went. Gentle had time to see the executioner draw two weapons, with blades that caught the livid light of the arcs; then he was obeying Pie’s instruction to run, the mystif leading the way.
The street they’d been on was no more than a narrow gutter, but it was a well-lit highway by comparison with the narrow alley they ducked into. Pie was light-footed; Gentle was not. Twice the mystif made a turn and Gentle overshot it. The second time he lost Pie entirely in the murk and dirt and was about to retrace his steps when he heard the executioner’s blade slice through something behind him and glanced back to see one of the frailer houses folding up in a cloud of dust and screams, its demolisher’s shape, lightning-headed, appearing from the chaos and fixing its gaze upon him. Its target sighted, it advanced with a sudden speed, and Gentle darted for cover at the first turn, a route that took him into a swamp of sewage which he barely crossed without falling, and thence into even narrower passages.
It would only be a matter of time before he chanced upon a cul-de-sac, he knew. When he did, the game would be up. He felt an itch at the nape of his neck, as though the blades were already there. This wasn’t right! He’d barely been out of the Fifth an hour and he was seconds from death. He glanced back. The Nullianac had closed the distance between them. He picked up his pace, pitching himself around a corner and into a tunnel of corrugated iron, with no way out at the other end.
“Shite!” he said, taking Tick Raw’s favorite word for his complaint. “Furie, you’ve killed yourself!”
The walls of the cul-de-sac were slick with filth, and high. Knowing he’d never scale them, he ran to the far end and threw himself against the wall there, hoping it might crack. But its builders (damn them!) had been better craftsmen than most in the vicinity. The wall rocked, and pieces of its fetid mortar fell about him, but all his efforts did was bring the Nullianac straight to him, drawn by the sound of his effort.
Seeing his executioner approaching, he pitched his body against the wall afresh, hoping for some last-minute reprieve. But all he got was bruises. The itch at his nape was an ache now, but through its pain he formed the despairing thought that this was surely the most ignominious of deaths, to be sliced up amid sewage. What had he done to deserve it? He asked it aloud.
“What have I done? What the fuck have I done?”
The question went unanswered; or did it? As his yells ceased he found himself raising his hand to his face, not knowing—even as he did so—why. There was simply an inner compulsion to open his palm and spit upon it. The spittle felt cold, or else his palm was hot. Now a yard away, the Nullianac raised its twin blades above its head. Gentle made a fist, lightly, and put it to his mouth. As the blades reached the top of their arc, he exhaled.
He felt his breath blaze against his palm, and in the instant before the blades reached his head the pneuma went from his fist like a bullet. It struck the Nullianac in the neck with such force it was thrown backwards, a livid spurt of energy breaking from the gap in its head and rising like earth-born lightning into the sky. The creature fell in the filth, its hands dropping the blades to reach for the wound. They never touched the place. Its life went out of it in a spasm, and its prayerful head was permanently silenced.
At least as shaken by the other’s death as by the proximity of his own, Gentle got to his feet, his gaze going from the body in the dirt to his fist. He opened it. The spittle had gone, transformed into some lethal dart. A seam of discoloration ran from the ball of his thumb to the other side of his hand. That was the only sign of the pneuma’s passing.
“Holy shite,” he said.
A small crowd had already gathered at the end of the cul-de-sac, and heads appeared over the wall behind him. From every side came an agitated buzz that wouldn’t, he guessed, take long to reach Hammeryock and Pontiff Farrow. It would be naïve to suppose they ruled Vanaeph with only one executioner in their squad. There’d be others; and here, soon. He stepped over the body, not caring to look too closely at the damage he’d done, but aware with only a passing glance that it was substantial.
The crowd, seeing the conquerer approach, parted. Some bowed, others fled. One said, “Bravo!” and tried to kiss his hand. He pressed his admirer away and scanned the alleys in every direction, hoping for some sign of Pie ‘oh’ pah. Finding none, he debated his options. Where would Pie go? Not to the top of the mount. Though that was a visible rendezvous, their enemies would spot them there. Where else? The gates of Patashoqua, perhaps, that the mystif had pointed out when they’d first arrived? It was as good a place as any, he thought, and started off, down through teeming Vanaeph towards the glorious city.
His worst expectations—that news of his crime had reached the Pontiff and her league—were soon confirmed. He was almost at the edge of the township, and within sight of the open ground that lay between its borders and the walls of Patashoqua, when a hue and cry from the streets behind announced a pursuing party. In his Fifth Dominion garb, jeans and shirt, he would be easily recognized if he started towards the gates, but if he attempted to stay within the confines of Vanaeph it would be only a matter of time before he was hunted down. Better to take the chance of running now, he decided, while he still had a lead. Even if he didn’t make it to the gates before they came after him, they surely wouldn’t dispatch him within sight of Patashoqua’s gleaming walls.
He put on a fair turn of speed and was out of the township in less than a minute, the commotion behind him gathering volume. Though it was difficult to judge the distance to the gates in a light that lent such iridescence to the ground between, it was certainly no less than a mile; perhaps twice that. He’d not got far when the first of his pursuers appeared from the outskirts of Vanaeph, runners fresher and lighter than he, who rapidly closed the distance between them. There were plenty of travelers coming and going along the straight road to the gates. Some pedestrians, most in groups and dressed like pilgrims; other, finer figures, mounted on horses whose flanks and heads were painted with gaudy designs; still others riding on shaggy derivatives of the mule. Most envied however, and most rare, were those in motor vehicles, which, though they basically resembled their equivalents in the Fifth—a chassis riding on wheels—were in every other regard fresh inventions. Some were as elaborate as baroquealtarpieces, every inch of their bodywork chased and filigreed. Others, with spi
ndly wheels twice the height of their roofs, had the preposterous delicacy of tropical insects. Still others, mounted on a dozen or more tiny wheels, their exhausts giving off a dense, bitter fume, looked like speeding wreckage, asymmetrical and inelegant farragoes of glass and metalwork. Risking death by hoof and wheel, Gentle joined the traffic and put on a new spurt as he dodged between the vehicles. The leaders of the pack behind him had also reached the road. They were armed, he saw, and had no compunction about displaying their weapons. His belief that they wouldn’t attempt to kill him among witnesses suddenly seemed frail. Perhaps the law of Vanaeph was good to the very gates of Patashoqua. If so, he was dead. They would overtake him long before he reached sanctuary.
But now, above the din of the highway, another sound reached him, and he dared a glance off to his left, to see a small, plain vehicle, its engine badly tuned, careering in his direction. It was open-topped, its driver visible: Pie ‘oh’ pah, God love him, driving like a man—or mystif—possessed. Gentle changed direction instantly, veering off the road and dividing a herd of pilgrims as he did so, and raced towards Pie’s noisy chariot.
A chorus of whoops at his back told him the pursuers had also changed direction, but the sight of Pie had given heat to Gentle’s heels. His turn of speed was wasted, however. Rather than slowing to let Gentle aboard, Pie drove on past, heading towards the hunters. The leaders scattered as the vehicle bore down upon them, but it was a figure Gentle had missed, being carried in a sedan chair, who was Pie’s true target. Hammeryock, sitting on high, ready to watch the execution, was suddenly a target in his turn. He yelled to his bearers to retreat, but in their panic they failed to agree on a direction. Two pulled left, two right. One of the chair’s arms splintered, and Hammeryock was pitched out, hitting the ground hard. He didn’t get up. The sedan chair was discarded, and its bearers fled, leaving Pie to veer around and head back towards Gentle. With their leader felled, the scattered pursuers, most likely coerced into serving the Pontiffs in the first place, had lost heart. They were notsufficiently inspired to risk Hammeryock’s fate and so kept their distance, while Pie drove back and picked up his gasping passenger.