Rusts … the Well of Ascension itself would be in there.
“Human,” the kandra said, insistent. “There is something I wish for you to see. Come.”
Another time, Wax thought, turning from the entrance to lost Kredik Shaw and following TenSoon. “MeLaan said that the kandra don’t come down here often. Why not? Isn’t this your home?”
“It is a sacred place,” the wolfhound said. “Yes, it is home, but also a prison—and so much more. Under the Lord Ruler, we needed this place for freedom, to be ourselves. Outside, we were controlled, enslaved by men.”
Bitter, Wax thought. Even after hundreds of years, this creature was pained by the life it had led. Did he blame humankind? Did Bleeder?
“We come here,” TenSoon said, “when the mood strikes us. Usually we come alone, and infrequently. There are clubs up above where we can socialize now, being ourselves. Homes. Lives. The younger generations almost never visit this place. They prefer their lives as they are now, and don’t wish to remember the past. I suppose I’m the same, though for different reasons.”
Wax nodded, walking alongside the kandra as they penetrated ever deeper into the twisting tunnels of the Homeland. They passed many empty chambers, but some that held oddities, like two with old baskets and some discarded bones on the floor.
Wax had been in his fair share of tunnels out in the Roughs, but most of those had been some kind of man-made mine. These caverns were different. Those had smelled of dust and dirt, while this place somehow felt alive. Of water and fungus. Of patience.
The tunnels were knobby, yet smooth, like wax pooled beneath a long-burning candle. Holy ground. Everything else in the world, so far as he knew, had been completely remade during the Catacendre. But these caverns stretched back to eternity, as old as human memory. Older.
Eventually they reached a small chamber that didn’t seem quite as organic as the others. Had it been shaped, somehow, by kandra hands? TenSoon settled down on his haunches in the entrance to the room. Wax’s light glittered off the smooth, bulbous rock of the floor, which fell away into a series of pits. Perhaps three feet across, they looked like holes dug by prospectors foolishly hunting metals out in the Roughs.
Wax glanced at TenSoon.
“I passed by here on my way to meet with you,” the kandra said in his growling, half-human voice. “I smelled something wrong.”
Smelled something? Wax couldn’t catch any odd scents—but this whole place smelled strange to him. He stepped into the room, then noted something. One of the small pits was full. Were those sheets of paper?
Yes, they were. As Wax knelt at the rim of the pit, he was surprised to find hundreds of sheets of paper inside, jagged on one edge, as if they’d been ripped from a book. They contained cramped writing, with numbered verses. The Words of Founding.
Besides the normal writing, someone had scrawled all over these in brownish-red ink.
Blood, Wax thought. It’s blood.
He set down his lantern, then reached down and picked up a page. Book eighty, verses twenty-seven through fifty. Verses about Harmony’s quest for Truth.
Someone, likely Bleeder, had written all over them the words Lies, lies, lies.
Wax dug up other sheets. Most had something written on them, a word or phrase, though many were just smeared with blood. Something bothered Wax about it all, something that made his eye twitch. He couldn’t say what it was.
I was there, one sheet read. Nobody, said another. It was, said another. He started laying them out. TenSoon—whom he’d almost forgotten—sniffed in the doorway.
Wax glanced back. “Did you see these?”
“Yes,” TenSoon said.
“What do you make of them?”
“I … did not stay long,” the kandra said, then looked to the side. “I do not spend time in this room, human. I am not fond of it.”
This room … Wax felt cold. Was this the prison that TenSoon had been trapped in, locked away without bones, awaiting execution?
Rusts. He was kneeling in a place that had decided the fate of the world.
Wax stretched down, grabbing more of the sheets. It seemed like Bleeder had ripped apart an entire set of the Words of Founding—the unabridged version. Old edition too, judging by the fact that it had been handwritten instead of printed.
“You really knew her, didn’t you?” Wax asked. “The Ascendant Warrior?”
“I knew her,” TenSoon said softly. “Near the end, I spent over an hour without my spikes, and so my memories degraded. However, most of what I lost was from the time right before my fall. Most of my memories of her are crisp.”
Wax hesitated with stacks of pages in his hands. “What was she like? As a person, I mean.”
“She was strong and vulnerable all at once,” TenSoon whispered. “She was my last master, and my greatest. She had a way of pouring everything of herself into what she did. When she fought, she was the blade. When she loved, she was the kiss. In that regard, she was far more … human than any I have known.”
Wax found himself nodding as he settled the pages about him, in stacks based on whether they had words or not. The ones with fingerprints he set in their own stack. Perhaps they would be useful. Probably not. Bleeder was a shapeshifter, after all.
TenSoon eventually padded up to him. “They look,” TenSoon said, inspecting the sheets, “like they might say something if you string them together.”
“Yeah,” Wax said, dissatisfied.
“What is wrong?”
“It’s too much,” Wax said, waving his hand at it. “Too convoluted, too sensational. Why would she write on a bunch of pages, then rip them out and leave them here?”
“Because she’s mad.”
“No,” Wax said. “She’s not that kind of mad. The way she’s been working is too deliberate, too focused. Her motives might be insane, but her methods have been careful.” How could he explain it? This case had his instincts fighting with one another.
He tried again. “When someone leaves something like this behind, it means one of two things. They’re sloppy, or they’re trying too hard. She’s not sloppy, but I don’t think she’s trying to be cute either, dangling clues and playing games. When I talked to her…”
“You spoke with Paalm?” TenSoon demanded, his ears perking up. “When?”
“Earlier tonight,” Wax said. “There was something regretful about her. She claimed to not be playing games, but this seems like a game. A thousand discarded pages, left to be put back together and form a clue?” He shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Madness or not, she had to know that other kandra would eventually find this.”
“Very well,” TenSoon said, settling back down. “But she spoke to you as herself, not an imitation?”
“Yes. Is that odd? You’re doing it right now, and MeLaan seems to be acting no specific role either.”
“We are not Paalm,” TenSoon said. “As long as I’ve known her, she’s been subject to the performance. I was like that too, years ago. I didn’t know who I was if I was not imitating someone.”
Wax looked across the sheets. Freedom, one of them said in a scrawl across the page. Will give you freedom whether you, said another, only half of a thought.
“What was she like?” Wax asked. “Who is she, Guardian?”
“Hard to say,” TenSoon replied. “Paalm was the Lord Ruler’s pet kandra, a slave to his will and the contract we made with him. She ignored events surrounding the end of the World of Ash; she vanished, didn’t return to the Homeland. I assumed her dead, until she appeared among the survivors. Even then she separated herself from us, though she served Harmony as we all did. Until … nothing. Absence.”
“Freedom,” Wax said, tapping the page. “She talked about that with me. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” TenSoon said, voice even more a growl than before. “She has betrayed everything we are. But then, so did I. So perhaps we are a pair, she and I. Two of the oldest monsters remaining on this planet, now that m
any of the Seconds have taken the escape of ending their own lives.”
“Freedom…” Wax whispered. “Someone else moves us.… She left a note for me in the governor’s mansion. She removed a politician’s tongue, to stop his lies. Killed a priest through the eyes, to stop him from looking. Seeing. For who? For what?”
She had been the Lord Ruler’s kandra, moved about and danced at his whims. And then … Harmony’s servant? She lived with his voice inside her head, knowing all along that he could take control of her. How would that feel?
Would it make you remove one of your spikes? Would you be trying to bring that freedom to everyone? Misguided, in your insanity, certain that the world needed saving?
Wax stood up slowly. “It’s about Harmony.”
“Lawman?”
“She’s trying to bring down God Himself.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yes,” Wax said, turning to the kandra. “It is.” He started to pace in the small room. “Speak to Harmony and find out something for me. Did Bleeder first leave because Harmony tried to take control of her at some point? Did that set her off?”
A moment of silence. “Yes,” TenSoon replied. “Harmony says He didn’t try to control her directly, but He did push her very hard to do something she didn’t want to do.”
“She’s been persistent about this idea that all people are controlled.” Harmony … was she Bloody Tan? Was she wearing his body, even back then? Was she there when I shot Lessie? “She sees everyone as Harmony’s puppets—in her eyes, the politicians are His mouth. She’s bringing down the government for that reason. Religion? Harmony’s eyes, to watch over the people. She works to undermine that by creating strife between the religious sects.”
“Yes…” TenSoon said. “In a way, it could be seen as a continuation of the First Contract. Serve the Lord Ruler. Bring down the force that he worked to defeat. Harmony is half of that.”
“But what am I in this?” Wax continued, only half listening to TenSoon. “Why me? Why focus on—”
No, wrong question.
What was she going to do next? Eyes, tongue … ears, maybe? Pretend she’s a step ahead of you, Wax told himself. Prepare for the worst.
He looked again at the sheets on the floor. She wanted Wax out of the way. An elaborate puzzle? It was a time waster, a distraction. She’d ripped out these sheets not to tease him, but to remove him from the investigation long enough to accomplish the next phase of her plan. She’d led him here with that dust on her robe. She’d planted it there for that purpose.
“She knows,” Wax said softly. “She knows what you’re going to do, TenSoon. What you’ve done.” He felt cold, and met the kandra’s inhuman eyes. “She’s planned that you would send your kandra to try to win back the hearts and minds of the people. That exposes you. Her next step is to bring them down.”
* * *
Wayne wandered between two bonfires. Inside one, table and chair legs made sharp lines, like the shadowy limbs of corpses being burned. The mists didn’t get too close to the fires, though the smoke made a good imitator in the night. Like a beggar dressed up so nice, you only knew him for what he was when you got close enough to catch a proper whiff.
Wayne leaned in to one of the bonfires to light his cigar, though that required him to heal the skin of his arm as it burned. He smelled both of his own singed hair and of the scent of the fire. Polished furniture didn’t burn clean. He liked feeling the heat though. Made him feel alive.
He had stopped filling his metalminds, hoping he had enough health for what was coming. He couldn’t afford to be weak or sickly right now. Not with what was happening.
He leaned back away from the flames and settled the cigar between his teeth. It was a fancy type, from the governor’s own hidden stash. Wayne took a long puff before remembering that he hated the rusting things. Ah well. He hadn’t traded anything good for it. Just one of Wax’s forks.
The crowd gathering here in the square was the biggest he’d seen this night. They clumped in the bonfire light like a flock of ravens drawn to a kill. Wayne moved up to the back of the crowd and handed his cigar to someone there. He left her standing, baffled, as he dove into the crowd.
With a crowd this big, you couldn’t move through them, but with them. You hadda pull the crowd on like a good coat, snug and tight, then let the cloth give you some direction. Wayne shuffled when the people shuffled, and shouted at the proper points, giving just the right drunken slur to his speech. He gave back a friendly elbow when one nudged him, and before too long he neared the front. Here, above everyone else, a shirtless fellow in trousers and suspenders stood atop a fountain statue, holding on to the Survivor’s spear for balance, his other fist raised toward the crowd.
“They rob us blind!” the man shouted.
Aye, that’s true, Wayne thought, shouting along with the crowd’s roar of agreement.
“They expect us to work long hours every day, but then when it ain’t convenient for them, they just cut us loose and don’t care none if we starve.”
Yeah, they do, Wayne thought, joining in the cursing and shouting.
“They do each other favors,” the man bellowed. “They suck us dry, then gather to throw lavish parties!”
I’ve been to those parties, Wayne thought. Good sandwiches.
“Would the Survivor have stood for this?”
Probably not, Wayne admitted. As the crowd surged around him, Wayne folded his arms and thought. Sure, bringing down a homicidal shapeshifter was important and all, but rusts, this seemed a bad time to be hanging around with conners and noblemen. Listening to this speech, he was half inclined to string himself up, which was really disturbing, since he was generally suicidal only in the mornings.
He was about to turn away and flow back toward the mansion to talk with MeLaan about this when something changed. A new figure climbed up onto the statue: an older, balding man who was a little thick around the waist, but in a friendly-type way. He wore ornate robes that frayed like a mistcoat at the bottom. A Survivorist priest?
The older man held up a pleading hand, and the fellow who had been shouting bowed his head in acknowledgment and stepped back. Beneath the giant image of the Survivor, his priest would be heard. Wayne felt a disturbance stir within him, like his stomach discovering he’d just fed it a bunch of rotten apples. Religion worried him. It could ask men to do things they’d otherwise never do.
“I come to you,” the priest said into the night, “understanding and sympathetic. But I implore you, do not invoke the Survivor’s name for looting and destruction. There is a way to fight back, and I will join you in it, but these are not the days of the Lord Ruler’s tyranny. You have the ability to make your voice heard. You can send advocates to the government for you.”
The crowd hushed. A few men shouted out expletives, explaining exactly what they wanted to do to the governor, but most grew quiet.
“The Survivor said that we should smile,” the priest pled. “He taught that we should not let our sorrows drag us down no matter how bad life became.”
The mood of the crowd was shifting. They shuffled instead of shouted. Wayne relaxed. Well, maybe religion was good for something other than fancy clothes and weird hats. If that priest defused this group, Wayne would buy him a drink, he would. And buying drinks for priests was great, because they usually wouldn’t drink theirs, so you got two for yourself to …
Wait. Why was that fellow in the suspenders—the one who had talked before—sneaking up behind the priest? Raising his hand, as if to—
“No!” Wayne shouted, shoving through the crowd toward the fountain. He froze time, which caused quite a mess of confusion in the people around him, but it didn’t do much. All that let him do was stand there feeling helpless, knowing the priest was too far away to save. The fellow in the suspenders stood just behind the gentle old man, hand raised, knife glittering in the firelight.
Except that wasn’t no knife. It was a needle.
Wayne drop
ped his speed bubble. The needle plunged down, striking the priest in the back. The round-faced man jerked upright, and then his flesh started to melt. It turned translucent, his eyes drooping out of their sockets, crystal bones beneath glittering in the light of the bonfires.
“Look!” the bare-chested man said. “See what they send to try to placate you? The Faceless Immortals serve the nobility! This was no priest, but one of their minions. They want you to believe you’re free, that their democracy works for you, but all that surrounds you is lies!”
Wayne gaped as the priest—no, the kandra—struggled to stand upright and speak, but that made it worse. The protesters shouted, their rowdiness back with renewed strength, save for near Wayne, where the people were still confused as to why time had stopped for them.
A woman in a dirty skirt eyed him. “Hey, aren’t you that guy from the Roughs?”
Wayne grimaced, backing away. On the fountain, the leader spotted him and interrupted his diatribe. He pointed right at Wayne. “One of them is here!” he shouted. “They send constables into our midst! They’re all around, controlling you!”
Basically the entire crowd turned to look at Wayne.
Well, hell.
for any person in the room. Had I not bested the tribes at the Pits of Eltania? Was I not the first to bring back tales of the slopes of the Ashmounts, now gone green with vegetation? And wasn’t it I that had domesticated the fabled long-necked horses of the Plains of Kaermeron?
“I shall not lower this gun,” said the man, “until you pay for your crimes.”
My enhanced senses picked up a faint tremor in the man’s speech. I noticed the almost imperceptible flicks of his eyes to the right and left. This wasn’t one of the Cobblesguilder henchmen as I’d at first thought. He was a man looking for revenge, and he wasn’t entirely sure if I was the one from whom he should exact it.
“Let us talk this through peaceably,” I suggested. I gently removed Lady Lavont’s trembling fingers from my arm. “All will be solved, my lady,” I said, detecting a faint gasp in her breathing as my fingers brushed hers for so short a moment.