Kitchens indulged himself sufficiently to wish that the paper had never come into his hand. A choice not presented could not be refused.
He placed it now on the tiny table unlatched from the cabin wall. A folded scrap, about the size of a postage stamp. The original had been kraft paper rather than the fine stationery of a royal palace, or even the decent writing paper of a gentleman in a hurry. Something a servant might use to keep a laundry list. Something a woman might secret away, whose every movement was constrained by mechanism and close observation.
At a practiced flick of the wrist, the razor fell out of his sleeve into his hand. Kitchens thumbed open the blade without looking at it. It would be hair-sharp and silver-bright. His blades always were. The note was stained a cranberry color, mottled with blood and fluid, crusted into a papier-mâché square.
He used the tip of the razor to lift the free edge of the small, folded piece. Little purpose in tugging with blunt, clumsy fingers. The paper made a popping noise, then flopped into a rectangle.
To his surprise, it did not break at the spine of the little joint now revealed.
A bit more work with the blade tip split the crust on the next set of open edges. He was patient as a man mixing explosives.
The ship rocked with some shift in the winds. Kitchens set the open razor down on the table, one finger pressed to the handle to keep it from sliding away in the event the deck canted. The engines growled more loudly for a brief moment, then settled down to their usual thrum.
After a few minutes of quiet, he resumed his surgeries.
WANG
The monk led him back down the long steps, through the darkness. “You have yourself a thoroughly modern quest,” she called to Wang over her shoulder.
“I am relieved to know that I have not fallen into some ancient xiákè epic.”
“Not to be so lucky. I am afraid your epic is likely to be short and brutal. Are you familiar with any weapons?”
His breath came so much easier on the way down, though his knees complained. “Only personnel and requisition forms, ma’am.”
That drew a laugh. “With which one may lay waste to armies from the comfort of one’s own desk, to be certain. Surely you have cut your own brushes?”
“Any man knows how to use a small blade,” Wang said defensively.
“A small blade is all that most men have,” she replied. “No matter.”
After a moment, he asked, “That is everything?”
“You were expecting mystic revelations?”
“I was expecting . . . more . . .”
She laughed again. “You hunt a Mask of great power and ferocious reputation. Your only weapons are your words.”
“Followed by some watcher in force, I am certain,” he grumbled, then paused his descent in dawning horror as he realized just who his watcher would be.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
It took Wang a moment to realize the monk had spoken to him in Latin. He did not take her meaning, but she seemed quite pleased.
“I believe you have a boat waiting for you down below,” she added.
PAOLINA
Following their guide, she and Ming descended into the village. The settlement was scattered along the riverbank as far as Paolina could see in both directions before the dark, overhanging shadows of the jungle obscured her view.
Open walls were formed by pillars and posts that leaned at odd angles. Roofs were a haphazard mass of reeds, flowers and dangling leaves. No doorway was particularly square.
Familiar habits of thought reasserted themselves. She noted that the architecture conformed to the demands of this junglescape. Rain would not fall directly on most of these houses, but rather filter through the upper layers of the trees. This place was so warm that the inhabitants should never need sealed windows. The materials were harvested by gathering, rather than by gangs of men with axes, so the surrounding tropical forest remained almost unchanged.
“The home of the Correct People,” their guide said with a shy smile.
Her folk were everywhere. Many lounged, but somehow even then they had a quality of coiled motion. Many more carried fruit, speared fish, splashed in the river, whittled—all the business of a tropical settlement, but with a curious and refreshing quality of play about it.
Ming nodded to the right. Paolina looked up to see a much larger structure lodged in the trees. This one resembled a European building. Gabled roofs overhung balconies and porches. A Correct Person in a wrap of pale cloth gazed solemnly down at the travelers. She seemed the only sober-mannered individual in the whole village.
Paolina raised a hand in greeting. Her gesture was returned with a quiet, patient nod before the Correct Person stepped back into the shadows of the enormous house.
“Who lives up there?” she asked their guide.
Without even glancing toward the house, the woman said, “Kalker will explain all.”
Who is Kalker? Paolina held her tongue.
They descended into an amphitheater set along the riverbank. A net of vines overhung the space. Rows of seats had been made from stones or split logs.
“Kalker will meet you here,” the guide said. “This is a special place, built up to honor our . . . Well, that is his story.”
Paolina smiled. “What is your name, that I might be more properly grateful later?”
“Arawu,” the Correct Person said shyly. She added something in a sibilant, hissing tongue. Then: “I go.”
Ming bowed from the waist. Arawu giggled and trotted back up to the top of the amphitheater before vanishing into the jungle.
“What now?” the sailor asked in Chinese.
“We wait,” she said in the same language. Switching to English: “I think this is the place the angel meant for us to come.”
Enjoying a sense of accomplishment—whatever she had been pursuing since crossing the Wall was at hand—Paolina examined the feather. The pinion was ragged from their passage through the jungle. As she walked through their village, the Correct People had stared at that feather even more than they had stared at her.
She tried to imagine a bird-mad jungle monster cruising low above the treetops. These folk did not live as though they feared death from the air. They did not live as though they feared much.
Paolina wondered what Boaz would have made of this place. Ming was a fine traveling companion—respectful, protective, thoughtful—but even though they’d been together for the better part of a month, Paolina could not call it friendship.
Nothing like what she and Boaz had developed upon a Murado. The Brass man was by turns intriguing, infuriating, disrespectful, even strange; but always there had been an innocence about him.
Even Ming with his endless Oriental patience and calm politesse was a man. A man to step in front of her, to pick up a weapon at need, to make an urgent decision and issue peremptory demands.
Her inner self-honesty interrupted that thought: Had Boaz not done so, in carrying you down the Wall against your will?
That had been different. Paolina knew this, surely as she knew the span of her own hands. Different because it was Boaz, and he was special to her, lovely in her eyes? Or different because he was not human?
Could she love a Correct Person?
Ming tapped her arm again. She followed his gaze.
An elderly man of the Correct People hobbled down the bowl of the amphitheater toward them. His fur was silvered, his face deeply lined, and he walked with a short, twisted cane. A few heads bobbed briefly behind him, others taking a look, but they withdrew as soon as her eyes lit upon them. This one had to be Kalker.
Paolina stood. “Welcome, sir.”
Shuffling, Kalker peered up at her. His eyes were crusted with rheum, though a strong spirit glowed within them. He then examined Ming, tapping the Chinese sailor’s knee once, very gently, with the stick. Finally he turned his attention back to Paolina.
“You have a feather.” His English carried the strange, sibilant accent
of these people’s speech, which made Paolina wonder how Arawu had come to speak the language so well.
She held the angel’s feather out. Kalker took it, turned it over in his hand once, then handed it back. “Messengers from the Northern Earth,” he said, his voice freighted with authority. “We have our own Creation here. The Wall keeps the Garden safe, as your people would explain it.”
“How do your people explain it?” she asked, intrigued.
He smiled, an easy grin filled with age-blunted teeth. “The Correct People do not explain. We experience. Every day is the morning of the world; every night is its ending. Only you Northerners require time to flow like a river from a hidden spring to a dark and distant ocean.”
She sat. It felt rude, but so did towering over him. This way they could speak eye-to-eye. “Is it you whom I was sent to meet?”
“No.” Kalker laughed, wheezing. “Like one of your God’s angels, I am only a messenger. A prophet lives among us, who was sent forth and brought back again. He will never again leave this place, but you are the first to come to him.” The Correct Person grew more thoughtful. “The last as well, I hope.”
He looked at Ming. “What manner of man are you?”
“I am a sailor of the Middle Kingdom,” Ming responded in Chinese.
“Hmm.” Kalker closed his eyes a moment, then said in English, “Welcome to our village.”
“Does this place have a name?” Paolina asked.
“Does it need one?”
She had no real answer for that, so she let the silence unfold. Kalker seemed happy to join in, until his head cocked at a distant hooting. “Ah, we are ready. Please do come.”
He turned and walked slowly up the log steps. Paolina followed, trailed by Ming.
Out on the path, the Correct People had gathered. Many carried fruit or flowers, as if going toward an offertory. Others clutched children, or held hands with their friends. Faces were smiling and proud, not fearful or tense, she noted. Ming walked so close behind her that he almost stepped on her heels.
Paolina was unsurprised to find they approached the almost-European house. Kalker led them to a ladder that had been carved into one of the great tree trunks supporting the structure. He stepped aside as the solemn woman of the Correct People awaited them there.
“I am Arellya,” she said, also in English. “Are you ready to climb?”
“Of course.” Paolina was intensely curious to meet their prophet.
“I will follow last,” Ming told her softly in Chinese.
Paolina clasped the gnarled wood of the rung at her eye level. It was rough and mossy. She felt tiny flowers crushed beneath her grip. She climbed into deepening shadow. The ascent was easy enough, though surrounded as they were by the mass of Correct People, it carried the taste of ritual.
At the top, she pulled herself onto a porch. A wide doorway led inward. Thin curtains stirred in the breeze. A man sat within—no, a thin-shouldered boy of her own people, barely grown to man-height. He was only a silhouette to her.
Not waiting for Ming, she stepped inside. The boy looked up, his face visible now in the shadowed interior. He had been comely enough once, dark haired and pale eyed, but the ravages of pain and ill use had set lines upon him prematurely.
“Welcome.” His voice was accented like an Englishman’s, but with the trace of another country. “I have been making a clock.” Without getting up, he pointed her to a chair across from his worktable. Ming sidled over with her and took a place at her shoulder.
The prophet leaned forward, still seated. “I am Hethor Jacques. Tell me, what mischief has God set upon the world this time?”
GASHANSUNU
The way of dreaming opened with a pallid crocodile swimming as in deep, rushing water. Its body twitched like an armored eel. The great legs snapped back and forth, propelling the beast forward. She rode along beside it, much as her wa rode along beside her, watching in the sun-bright depths of the beast’s gold-flecked eyes.
The waters opened before her like clouds, and Gashansunu understood the crocodile had not been sounding the pelagic depths but the argosy of stars, never sighting land, for its eyes had always been trained on the heavens. This was a hunter of souls, an eater of spirits, and the medium where it pursued its sport was the Silent World.
Using the Precepts of Dreaming, she stepped away. The crocodile grew smaller, then smaller still, then tiny, until it became a pale silverfish swimming against a current, a tiny chip of fire in the eyes. Gashansunu reached out and crushed it between her fingers. The swift searing of her flesh she accepted, for in truth it was only a pinprick.
When she opened her hand to inspect the damage she saw that a tiny tattoo had been placed where the crocodile had died. The mark was a map of the skies, the ring-of-Earth with the ring-of-Moon both encircling the sun. She stared at the markings until they grew to overwhelm her vision; then she stepped through them into the space between the stars where the great beast had swum. Kicking, she found her own momentum, settling into the easy, purposeful rhythm.
After a while, she realized that her wa was pacing her, close and nervous. Ahead, the stars parted to reveal a great waterfall. An entire ocean cascaded from beyond the skies, but her wa retreated from her, growing smaller and smaller against the gigantic raindrops until two great, ridged pincers came to crush her life.
She awoke sweating.
Her hand ached.
Gashansunu again used the Precepts of Dreaming, this time to determine if she was in fact awake, or somewhere within another layer of the Silent World.
This time she was in fact herself. Outside, a sunrise stippled with the gelid colors of fruit threatened the world with what was to come next.
The meaning of the dream was obvious enough. She was being drawn into a self-consuming circle. Gashansunu and her wa would need to see past the traps that were coming and find their way to reconciling the regrets of the world.
She rose, pulled on a kilt of muslin with a tooled belt, and a beaded vest to bind her breasts and cover her back. She gathered her satchels—one for promise, one for fear and one for the practical filth that was the body itself.
Down the long, winding stairs cut into this tower and off to find Baassiia or one of the other circle callers from Westfacing House.
Gashansunu knew from the angle of the dreaming crocodile’s circling that she was being drawn to the inland east. Almost the direction of the hold of the pale wizard, though that one was now thought to have been lost some time ago.
Birds followed overhead as she paced the dawn streets. Though Gashansunu did not take note, the morning mists swirled in her wake with a hot agitation that brought them puddled to the ground behind her.
She would tell Baassiia about her dream. Whatever troubled the world was out there. Gashansunu would find it, and set things to right.
CHILDRESS
They peered out the window of the festival warehouse. The fields beyond were empty even of cattle. The road to Panjim was deserted. Engines droned close by, but they saw nothing.
Al-Wazir stood by the door, four sailors with him. He had an ear cocked as well.
“Can you tell anything by the sounds, Chief?” she asked in a stage whisper.
He looked pained. “If I were out in the open, ma’am, probably.” His voice was normal, though. “ ’Tis muffled by the walls of this wretched building. I dare not look until I know. No point in showing me remaining hand.”
One of the sailors looked at her. “I can try to reach the top from within,” he said in Chinese.
Childress nodded. “Go, then.”
The chief watched him head back through the warehouse, hunting for a ladder. “Now you order my men around.”
“Our men.” She forced a smile.
“Only one captain on a ship, ma’am.”
“He is below in the dark with his vessel.”
Chinese hissed from above, too rapidly for Childress to follow. Fong, one of the other sailors, looked back and forth betw
een her and al-Wazir—one, twice, three times—then gave up and addressed her.
“It is of the Middle Kingdom. Lu does not recognize which fleet, but in these waters that should be the Nanyang Navy.”
A Chinese airship? Over Goa? “He says it’s one of theirs,” she told the chief.
“They don’t operate here,” al-Wazir said shortly. “Not in the ordinary run of things. Too damned dangerous for them along the Hindoo coast, pardon my language, ma’am.”
“They operate here now.” Childress returned to peering out the window as the engine noise grew in pitch.
“It turns,” whispered Fong. “Lu says another approaches from the west.”
Far more likely they are both sub hunting in these waters than that they have the temerity to attack British India, she thought.
Then two ships passed into her line of sight, making for Panjim. Definitely of Chinese lines. They trailed long banners of black silk. Someone out there rode to war on wings of cloud.
The chief eased the door open and watched from shadow. “Damn my eyes, they’re making a bombing run.”
“Who would bomb Panjim?” she asked.
“Someone who wishes to show the Royal Navy how overstretched British forces are.” Al-Wazir almost choked with laughter. “Every ship on the East African station could be here and altogether they would not even begin to cover such a coastline. John Chinaman is calling England’s bluff.”
Childress joined him at the door. Smoke already billowed up from the town. She could hear the crackle of gunfire, but no answering airships rose to the defense.
Death was the same whatever guise it came in. Childress had learned that from Anneke, aboard the Mute Swan all those months ago. Part of another woman’s lifetime, some unreal drama for which she had once held a scripted role.
“The British will answer,” she said. “This is war, not a skirmish or test or reconnaissance. It will not be waved away at a table by drunken diplomats.”