Half Discovered Wings (27 page)

‘
Tell me more about them.’

‘
Ghosts of drowned maidens, that’s all there is to it. Simply
ghosts. At least,’ she added, ‘that’s what folk say. The truth is,
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they weren’t a few poor souls
born different and left out there somehow to starve.’

‘
And these folk say the rusalki do … what?’

‘
Cause mischief, mostly. We don’t know what they want, but they
like frightening people half to death whenever they get the chance.
Some people say they can stop your heart by touching
you.’

Gabel looked
down at Rowan.

‘
Where are you headed next?’ Fenn asked, suddenly
quiet.

‘
We’re moving west. I’m not sure which towns we’ll hit before
Hermeticia. Even if you can help Rowan’s earlier illness here, the
magus still has business further west.’

‘
Then the next town is Iilyani, just before the Resting Place,’
she said, gently stroking back a few wayward strands of hair from
Rowan’s beatific face.

‘
That sounds pleasant. Although I think we’ll all have rested
enough before setting out there.’

Fenn laughed, letting her head fall back while she tucked in
the blanket. ‘Mister Gabel, the Resting Place is a
cemetery
. It’s where all
the victims of the Plains are taken, if they’re found. You’ll do no
resting there unless you’re dead.’

‘
I see.’ He found a small wooden chair and sat. ‘The Sinh-Ha
Plains.’

‘
That’s right. You’re not going
over them, are
you?’

‘
We may have to. The only one in our party who knows this side
of the Lual is my employer, the old man. He may order us to go
through.’

‘
You take orders off an old man?’ She sat in a similar chair
beside him, and turned to look at Rowan who was as still as a
wood-cutting in the sparse light from the windows.

‘
He’s my employer,’ Gabel said. ‘I am a factotum.’

‘
Oh.’ She sat up immediately, putting a hand through her hair,
turning away toward the window-wall. The Sinh-Ha Plains were just
visible at the horizon, past the forests outside of Goya, and
beyond the dark patch that showed the town of Iilyani –
the black town
, Gabel
couldn’t help thinking.

‘
I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Does that make you
uncomfortable?’

She continued
to avoid his stare, but seemed a little more at ease now, her
weight shifting from one leg to the other. Discovering Gabel’s true
occupation appeared to have startled her, but he could tell that
she was a woman with remarkable control over her exterior. If she
was truly uncomfortable with this new information, she suppressed
it almost immediately: the professional veneer of a doctor.

‘
No,’ she said eventually. ‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t
realise.’

‘
Perhaps I should have been clearer about what I do. I am a
mercenary.’

‘
Yes. We don’t get many factotums around here. Men for hire …
It’s … Well, do you have any idea how most people in this town
would react? The Goyans are an amiable enough race, but prejudiced,
very prejudiced. Iilyani has had to close itself off from
them.’

‘
You call them Goyans as if you’re not one of them.’

‘
I’m not. At least, I don’t think of myself as one.’ She turned
now, and joined her gaze with his. The light wasn’t too bright in
the solarium, the sun only just beginning to pass over the
building, but Gabel could see enough of her rounded face to know
she was still uncomfortable. ‘My father came from the north, you
see. I always thought of myself as a Ponta Porean, like he
was.’

‘
I suppose you have the right to call yourself what you will.
You said that Iilyani had shut itself off. Do you predict we’ll we
have trouble entering?’

‘
You might, with your skin.’ Unconsciously, Gabel’s fingers
touched the flesh of his palm. ‘The town has had a lot of trouble
recently, though, so don’t be surprised if they seem overly
defensive.’

‘
We only wish to pass through.’

‘
Then you may be all right, if you tell them that. But I think
I should warn you: it’s not just the Luxers that have been
terrorising those poor people.’

‘
Who else?’

‘
The
Caballeros de la
Muerte
,’ she said, and just as she said
it, a southerly wind shook the windows of the solarium. As though
to counteract the chill of the weather’s poor timing, the forest
began to warm in the light of the rising sun, brown turning to
russet. The sky to the west brightened minutely in the glow, and
clouds pushed dark against the clear horizon.

Gabel felt
himself straighten in his chair, and tried to let his muscles
relax.

‘
I see you’ve heard of them,’ Fenn said quietly. ‘They came to
your town or city?’

‘
Not once, or else I haven’t heard of it. The
Caballeros
,’ he said to
himself, feeling the chill in his marrow. ‘This close to the
Plains?’

‘
One or two have even ventured into Goya, Mister
Gabel.’

‘
What do they want?’

‘
You’ve heard the stories, I’m sure.’

‘
Demons encased in armour, slaughtering innocents. I’ve heard
they’re religious zealots, and also that they’re in the employ of
the Hermiticeans – the Shiantis. They use them to keep the
rainforests around the city clear of visitors.’

‘
The name Hermeticia is well deserved. I’m taking to it, in
fact. But the
Caballeros
, no-one knows where they
are from.’

‘
Spain, presumably.’

‘
People are saying that’s just an assumption, although there’s
likely some truth in it. But if you and your party were intending
to go to Hermeticia, surely you were expecting to come across
the
Caballeros
at
some point?’

‘
Yes,’ said Gabel, ‘I always thought we would. But I never
dwelled on the thought.’

It troubled the hunter
greatly how a weakened Rowan might fare against the threat of death
or violence. And the old man, how would he survive an encounter
once the villains saw the colour of his skin? They were thoughts to
turn Gabel’s gut into a trench of acid, and he gritted his teeth
against the discomfort.

‘
A few visitors there have been killed,’ Fenn continued, ‘but
the Iilyanis say they only want to keep the place clean of
traitors.’

‘
Traitors to whom?’

‘
Who knows? The Hermiticeans? Maybe to Irenia, I don’t know.
Apparently the
Caballero
scouts that do come past the Resting Place – and
there aren’t many, I believe – are only to watch for approaching
danger.’

‘
Danger?’ he asked, surprised. ‘What would they have to fear,
but Irenia alone?’

‘
I’ve heard rumours from messengers to the west that there are
some kind of strange creatures in the rainforests, but I never
really paid attention, I’m afraid. I’m interested in animals, not
monsters. Maybe Hadentes has risen at last.’

‘
You sound like you believe that’s inevitable,’ he
said.

She turned to face him. ‘I’m fairly certain it is, Mister
Gabel.’

~

When Caeles awoke he found himself in the
Goyan hotel room. It was small, and bare like the rest of the
planet, and he was alone. His muscles shuddered, an involuntary
muscle-memory. An inclement wind had set in with the morning.

He’d had dreams of starships and skeletons
again, but in this latest he’d watched himself being turned into a
cyborg, his skin peeled back, his muscles removed and stored, and
his organs and brain transplanted into an indestructible body. And,
in the dream, he had grown great steel wings, and produced a
shining neon halo that glowed blue in the dark operating theatre. A
figure had watched the entire procedure, sheathed in shadows like a
hidden dagger. Once it had finished, and Caeles had stretched out
his new pinions like an awakening bird, the man had revealed
himself to be—

‘Tan Cleric,’ Caeles muttered.

Cleric was still around – Caeles knew it.
And somehow, he knew that the man was projecting himself into his
dreams. He couldn’t help but wonder if the magus’ undisclosed
objectives included a psychotic like Cleric, or even the monster
himself.

Caeles dressed and took to
his feet, wandering by the piers. The
Tractatus
was long gone. The waters
were as still as always, and mist hung just overhead. Caeles could
see nothing past the first twenty metres.

He went back
to the hotel, but found the rooms vacant and, guessing there was
only one place they might be found, made his way to the doctor’s
house. By the time he arrived it was almost noon.

There was a third storey to the mansion that contained a
well-lit room not visible from the front of the building. Gabel and
the old man were standing with Doctor Fenn, obscuring something of
such obvious interest to them that they hadn’t noticed his
arrival.

‘
Something I should know about?’ he asked wearily.

They turned to face him, and in doing so revealed a very thin
– but now unrestrainedly animated – Rowan.

~

The following
two days were spent at the doctor’s house, speaking with Rowan and
noting her marked increase in muscle tone. She was much less groggy
and no longer under anaesthetic, though she still looked tired.
Gabel was the only one to notice, but she also seemed to have
regained the energy she had lost since setting out for Shianti, and
he smiled as he watched her relearning how to walk.

On the third night since Rowan’s reawakening she felt well
enough to go to the hotel and stay with her friends, who gladly
showed her the way. She marvelled at the glorious exterior of
Fenn’s place, which of course she had never seen, and at the garden
and topiary that couldn’t be glimpsed from the restricted view of
the solarium. She even seemed to enjoy the phaeton ride to the
hotel, which none of the others had anticipated.

They walked to Fenn’s mansion the next day, Rowan feeling
almost ready to set off once more.

Her physiotherapy mostly consisted of her walking around the
solarium in vague circles, strengthening her legs as the steroids
worked on the rest of her body. It was a boring chore to Rowan, who
filled the time by asking the others what had happened during her
time in the coma.

The first thing she was told was about the bolt-hornet, which
led to questions about who would send it and why. The answer to
that was that they would probably never know, though not one of
them could think of any reason why someone would wish to harm
her.

Afterwards came questions on what happened on the
Tractatus
. The rusalki
were mentioned and to their surprise she said she’d heard of
them.

‘
Father used to mention them in stories,’ she explained. ‘They
get into your dreams.’

As the hunter
watched Rowan’s progress, Caeles took the doctor aside.

‘
Tell me the truth,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with
her?’

‘
Nothing, as far as I can tell,’ she replied. ‘Something,
though. She’s all but recovered from the bolt-hornet. As for her
original illness, I can’t say. All I can see are the symptoms, the
gradual wearing down. I presume she was much stronger than this
before.’

‘
Not much stronger, but I only joined the group a few months
ago.’

‘
I cannot say how she is ill, nor
what
she is ill with,’ the doctor
said, lowering her voice, looking up at Caeles and seeing concern
on his face. ‘I wish that I could help further … Maybe the doctors
in Shianti…?’

‘
Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘Maybe.’

*

Seventeen

“
WHAT ARE YOU?”

The forests outside of Goya were dense and deep in their own
shade. With winter only just preparing to leave, the wind came with
a wild chill. Branches were bare all around them as they travelled,
and under the sludge of the snow that had just fallen, the dead
leaves were a pasty mush that made the going slippery and
slow.

They had left the party city two weeks previously, moving
laboriously onwards toward the town of Iilyani. It lay several
weeks ahead. The magus said that they might even arrive along with
an early spring.

Roland struggled through the forest, moving along a road that
the Goyans had said existed but turned out to be nothing more than
a slightly worn trail cut between the birch trees. There were
curious vines that wound themselves around the cracked paper-like
bark. The magus said that they were a climbing breed of poinsettia,
a plant that had no flowers but grew bright and colourful leaves
that were just as pleasant.

Once or twice
they would stumble upon the corpse of a dead animal, some large
mammal that had been stripped of its flesh. It reminded Gabel of
the corpse he had seen when hunting William Teague so long ago,
bony and bloody, but he now had a better idea of who the culprits
were.