The Archon's Assassin (8 page)

“Which was needed for what?” asked Shadrak, taking in the mess with a sweep of his eyes.

“Imagos, picturesques. Things you simians couldn’t possibly compenetrate.”

Nameless perched on the edge of the table and looked up at the ceiling. He recognized some of the writing, but most of the symbols meant nothing to him.

“What’s with the Latin? Thought only the Senate used it. Well, them and an old friend of mine back at Arx Gravis.” Just the thought of Thumil made his guts ache. He refused to think about what he’d almost done to his oldest friend. Would have, if it weren’t for Thumil’s incomparable wife, Cordy.

“Oaf!” Magwitch said. He shoved Nameless off the table. “It’s not just the presbyopia of the Senate, you know. It is the
linguae aeternitae
. Them’s words of great precision; the only ones fit for the task.”

Magwitch plonked himself where Nameless had sat and raised a finger.

“There is an orderliness to Latin, a logistical, a harmonica that befits it to the quintessential arts of my craft. You have heard of the Eternal City?”

“Arnoch?” Nameless said. “Mythical” was the word he’d have chosen.

At the same time, Shadrak said, “Aeterna? On Earth?”

Magwitch rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. “The real Eternal City.”

“Which is?” Nameless asked.

Shadrak drew a pistol and jammed it against Magwitch’s forehead. “Cut the crap, Magwitch. We were talking about psychers, remember?”

“I was simply explicating…”

Shadrak cocked the trigger.

Magwitch licked his lips. “Gun.”

“Your point?” Shadrak said.

“A vile word, no doubt Verusian, but quite apposite.”

“Verusia?” Shadrak said.

Magwitch pushed the barrel away from his head with a finger. “Earth, too. Realm of the Liche Lord. See, a wizard is cognominate of many things. I also know what that dark country used to be called in the time of the Ancients, if you’re interested.”

Shadrak lowed the pistol, and Magwitch tracked it with his eyes.

“A weapon consisting of a metal tube from which missiles are projected by explosive force. Geriatrically, a gun, but a pistol, if we’re to be more exactitudinally precocious. Indeed, a flintlock, by design.”

“You’ve seen the like before?” Shadrak re-holstered the pistol.

“They’ve been a hobbling of mine, ever since Bark Donan’s water-bloated corpus showed up with a hole straight through the center of his craniota. I assume that was you? There are footprints of Earth’s Ancients omniwhere, if you have eyes to see.” He tapped the side of his nose, then seemed to realize the action didn’t match his words, and gave his spectacles a waggle instead.

He had a point there. About digging up the secrets of the past. Nameless only wished it weren’t so easy. Perhaps then Lucius would still be alive. Perhaps then he wouldn’t have learned about the black axe and gone after it. That would’ve saved a whole heap of trouble. He gave the great helm a tap to reassure himself it was still there, and wasn’t just some lingering nightmare. Would’ve saved a lot of lives, too. Countless lives.

“Look,” Shadrak said. There was a softening of his tone. “The whole shogging militia is after us.” He shot a quick look at Nameless. “Well, me. Long story short: Mal Vatès is dead.”

Magwitch’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Was it a bullet?”

“Nothing so fancy. And no, it wasn’t my idea. Just happened, is all.”

Magwitch gave an exaggerated nod and tilted his head to one side. If he had an opinion, he wasn’t sharing it. “And psychers are involved, you say?”

“Just the one, so far,” Shadrak said. “Tracked me to Queenie’s. They anything to do with you?”

Magwitch guffawed. “Psychers are way below my ambulation. Leftovers from Gandaw’s experiments.”

“But the search light was you, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t decry it,” Magwitch said. “A wizard has to make a living somehow. But psychers! The mere suggestive is insulating.”

“And you can’t ward us from them, except in here?” Shadrak said. “Would’ve thought that was nothing for a wizard of your ability.”

“Psychers may be the progeny of inferior craft, but they are virtiginously impecunious to magical assailment.”

“That a fact, laddie?” Nameless said. “But can you still split them down the middle with an axe?”

“Dear, dear, dear,” Magwitch said. He rubbed his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “What a predicate. Or should that be pedicure? They won’t stop, you know, and even if you could stay here, which you can’t, you’d never be able to poke your nose out the front door.” A dark frown dropped over his face. “If I still had a front door. The way I see it, you have two optimates.”

There was a long pause, as if he expected somebody to correct him.

Finally, Shadrak said, “Well?”

“Kill every last psycher in the city, assumptioning you can find them, that is. No, maybe it would be easier to kill every last senator, or perhaps every soldier.”

“Why not the whole shogging city?” Nameless said. He instantly regretted saying it. Isn’t that what he’d tried back at Arx Gravis?

“And the second option?” Shadrak said.

“Leave and never come back. If it’s still posturable.”

“Well, that’s kind of why we came here,” Shadrak said. “First thing the Senate would’ve done is lock down the city. Every shogger guarding the gates will be looking for me; and frankly, I ain’t had time to get used to being Shadrak the Seen, Sketched, and Wanted yet. I’m guessing you know another way out.”

Magwitch held up a finger, and his eyes widened above his glasses. “Come with me, and prepare to be impregnated.” He pulled a white paper bag from his trouser pocket. “Chocolate truffle?”

Nameless reached for one, but then remembered the helm. His stomach growled.

“No?” Magwitch said. “All the more for me, then. Come on. To the roof.”

They followed him up an extending ladder through a trap in the ceiling. The tramp of feet, the bark of orders carried on the blustering wind, and in the streets below, for as far as Nameless could see, speartips glinted, and sunlight glanced off of bronze helms and shields.

“That’s a lot of soldiers, laddie,” he said to Shadrak.

It looked like the entire city was teeming with them, and there wasn’t too much sign of anyone else. A few traders hung about in the squares, but most people must’ve been told to stay indoors. Here and there, militiamen herded stragglers toward heavily guarded buildings. You could say a lot of things about New Jerusalem’s Senate, but at the end of the day, they ran a tight ship; least when it came to avenging one of their own.

“I was saying to the little fellow I met on the road,” Nameless said, “how slovenly soldiers are these days. Think he agreed with me, but it’s hard to tell with strangers. Especially the strange ones.”

“Bird?” Shadrak said. “I thought you knew him. Thought you sent him ahead.”

“Barely met him,” Nameless said. “So, you know him, do you?”

“Not really,” Shadrak said. “Just turned up at Queenie’s. Said you were on your way.”

“Did he now?” Nameless said. He was starting to get that queasy feeling in his guts, the one he always got when there was a whiff of magic or something else he didn’t understand. “Reminded me of you in some way.” He angled a glance at Shadrak, in case the midget took that as a slight. Apparently, he didn’t. “Funny thing was, I went off into the trees to do what a dwarf has to do, and time I got back, he was gone. Even funnier thing: there were no footprints.”

Magwitch dipped his head into the gale and fought his way to a dilapidated chimney stack. A long metal rod had been bolted to its side, and extended high into the sky. Tethered to the rod by a length of rope was a floating sheet of blackness the size of a bed.

“Help me haul her in,” Magwitch called over his shoulder.

Shadrak was still intent on the milling soldiers down in the streets below, but Nameless took a hold on the rope and reeled it in. As the floating sheet drew nearer, he saw it was solid, and flecked with green, the same as his helm.

“That scarolite, laddie?” It was a sizable chunk. You didn’t see scarolite like that outside of the mines near home.

“It is that,” Magwitch said. “Arcanistically aereogated.”

Shadrak sauntered over for a look. “Smuggled, if I ain’t much mistaken.”

“And a bargain, too, thanks to them Night Whores of yours.”

“Hawks,” Shadrak said. “And what bargain?”

“Before your time,” Magwitch said.

“Yeah, well it ain’t my time now, neither. Not anymore.”

“Oh?” Magwitch said. That could have been glee in his voice.

“Handed the guilds over,” Shadrak said. “Left Fargin in charge.”

“Buck Fargin?”

Shadrak nodded and scowled at the same time.

Magwitch rubbed his hands together. “He’s the one that sold me this.”

The sheet of scarolite tugged at the line as Nameless held it firm.

“It’s just a protozoan,” Magwitch said, “but she’ll get you out of the city.”

“Really?” Shadrak said. “Looks like a flying door to me.”

“It’s an air-raft,” Magwitch said. “If you bombusticate scarolite with… Oh, no. I’m not giving up my secretions that easily.”

“Just tell us how it works,” Shadrak said.

“Well, it doesn’t. For you, that is.” Magwitch popped a truffle in his mouth and chewed nosily. He offered the bag around, but when nobody took one, he gulped his down and said, “Hop on, then.”

Nameless nodded for Shadrak to go first. “I’ll hold on to the rope, laddie. Keep her steady for you.”

“There’s no seats, no straps,” Shadrak said. “We’ll fall off.”

“Not if I keep her level,” Magwitch said. He rolled himself onto the air-raft and seated himself with his legs dangling off the edge. Almost immediately, it stopped tugging against its mooring, and Nameless let go.

Shadrak vaulted onto the scarolite and dropped into a squat.

“Where to?” Magwitch asked.

“The boreworm tunnels,” Shadrak said.

At the same time, Nameless said, “The Perfect Peak.”

Both Shadrak and Magwitch said, “What?”

Nameless clambered aboard and rapped on the great helm. “I was heading there next. Need feeding.” He hated admitting it. It was an embarrassment. But what choice did he have?

“Oh, for shog’s sake,” Shadrak said. “How long’s that bald bastard gonna keep his hold over you?”

Before Nameless could answer, he was distracted by the flapping of wings, and a raven alighted on the edge of the air-raft. The air about it shimmered, and there sat the little fellow he’d met on the road, draped in his cloak of feathers.

“Bird!” Shadrak said, hand on a pistol that was halfway to being drawn.

“Shifter!” Magwitch cried, and then his startlement turned to excitement. “Oh, my, a shifter.”

“Maybe not much longer,” Bird said.

“Eh?” Nameless had no idea what he was—

“Aristodeus promised you a way to be free of the helm.”

“You know him?” Shadrak asked.

Bird shrugged, and kept his beady eyes on Nameless.

Nameless had seen eyes like those before, deep in the bowels of Gehenna. Stone eyes. Dark. Shifty. “But only if the power the axe has over me can be broken,” he said.

Bird nodded slowly. “There may be a way, but you will need Shadrak’s help. You will need a plane ship.”

“How’d you know about that?” Shadrak pointed a pistol at Bird, but Nameless held up a hand.

“You work for Aristodeus?”

Bird let out a low laugh. “I do not.”

“Then what’s your role in all this? What do you want?”

Bird’s neck pivoted to an unnatural degree as he looked behind at Shadrak. “I know who you are, Shadrak the Unseen. I know where you come from.”

“Bollocks,” Shadrak said, but his face was tight, and his pistol was shaking. If he’d had color to his face, Nameless reckoned it would’ve drained away.

“Give it time,” Bird said. “Give me time, and you will remember. It is necessary that you do.”

“Why?” Shadrak said. “What’s so shogging necessary that’s gonna stop me putting a bullet through your skull?”

“You are compelled against your will, are you not?” Bird said. He switched his gaze back to Nameless. “And the same could be said of you. Be patient with me. Tolerate my presence, and see if I can’t help you both.”

“You mean trust a homunculus?” Nameless said. Because he was sure that’s what they were dealing with: the spawn of the Demiurgos. Small, shifty, and utterly dishonest. Thing was, you could say the same about Shadrak, and yet there was something about the assassin, something Nameless was drawn to. He wasn’t all bad. Couldn’t be.

“We are not all the same,” Bird said. He climbed slowly to his feet, joints cracking like dry twigs. When he shuffled over to stand in front of Shadrak, his great age became suddenly apparent. Whatever magic allowed him to change shape must have been hiding his true appearance, until now. His face had deeper wrinkles than a walnut, and hair clung to his scalp and chin in thready white wisps. “We are not.”

Shadrak held his gaze for a long moment, then dropped his chin and holstered his gun.

“I keep thinking I know you,” he said.

“You do,” Bird said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “And you will. You are returning to the plane ship?”

Shadrak nodded.

“Good. You must take it and Nameless to the Perfect Peak. Do as Aristodeus bids, at least for now.”

Shadrak tensed and closed his eyes. Beads of sweat pearled along his forehead, and his lips moved silently.

Bird gripped his arm and said, “Your master disagrees. Ask him for time. What he demands of you is too much.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nameless asked. “What master?”

The feathers on Bird’s cloak shuddered, and he whirled away from Shadrak. “Psycher!” He pointed at a neighboring rooftop, where a dark figure crouched. Its face was devoid of features, and as they watched, it thrust out a long, taloned finger.

Bird threw open his cloak, and hornets swarmed forth in a dark cloud. At the same time, Shadrak clutched his head and fell back against the scarolite of the air-raft.

“Go!” Shadrak screamed. “Go!” Blood was seeping from his nose and ears.

Magwitch just stared at him, paused mid-chew of a truffle.