The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter (35 page)

Firebombs found Serena’s shelter, though one of the explosives fizzled and spluttered and only managed to spray fluids that did not initially ignite. The cognosci living there, which had smelled the man’s approach, warned Serena through spiking anxiety, bouncing from the walls, and she managed to leave by the rear door.

At the same moment, in Hangman’s Alley, Hakim’s booth was also spared too much damage when the incendiary device intended for it was lobbed into the neighbouring stall (selling wallets and small pouches); the previous night, a nervous teenaged recruit had marked an ex on the wrong location post.

Hakim himself was jumped as he closed his restaurant early, obviously concerned about the fire burning on the block adjacent, wanting to go and help, do something. From the north end of the city had come the intermittent sounds of terrific explosions and the shriek of gods. Something monumental was happening. He locked up and moved swiftly toward the area where the fire burned.

His assailants smashed him in the back of the head with a metal bar. He was bleeding and in considerable pain as he broke the left arm of one man and throttled the other into unconsciousness. He killed neither, mostly because the pair reminded him of his youngest two sons, who were constantly making bad decisions. They could use a little leniency now and then.

Gripping the steep slope of clay tiles as winds tugged his body, path felt dampness on his skin, the bombardment of countless machines, each too small to see.

The dungeon roof was in disrepair, with nests and cracks and missing tiles. He found an area where the structure had been so damaged he was able to work one of his legs into a hole. Then he let go of the tiles and raised both metallic hands until the tiny machines began to circle him, slowly at first, then moving quicker, a cyclone.

Kingu and Aspu were near, with a fleet of diggers, attacking blind Anu. Her children were fighting, always fighting. And Mummu was somewhere out there, forming, reforming, in his stunted way.

The seegee swooped into the cyclone and raced exuberantly about, orbiting path’s head a few cycles before throwing itself against his chest, like a lover. Tendrils linked with flesh—

The long spacer blinked, alert; her power plants started.

Path closed his eyes.

Heat kept Octavia away, shoving her back when she tried to step forward. She had seen Nahid run in, had shouted his name, but her voice was lost in the din. When a surge of the blaze made her turn her face away, she saw the fecund, almost transparent now, watching her from across the street.

The ostracon groaned.

Abruptly, she was pushed hard from behind, sprawling in the hot mud. A bare-chested man, reddened by flames, stood over her.

“The sister,” he said. “There is no time to cut your throat.”

He raised his club with both hands, but before he had a chance to strike, a blur hurtled across Octavia, almost too fast to see, and the man was gone.

The fecund, too, was nowhere to be seen.

Movement in the flames. Something large changed position. The entire façade of the ostracon shifted in on itself, about to collapse.

Hornblower toppled as soon as Anu vanished, wrenched upwards, sucked into the clouds. Though hornblower did not pass out, he lay in the mud, unable to move. Above him, banks of mist continued to spin in the vortex he had earlier spotted. He watched for a while until the towers of the structure broke away, rising briefly before coming down in a shower of bricks and tiles and dust.

Later, after he slept, an old man leaned over him, nudging him. Hornblower was startled to see that this man was the same man whose death raft had recently plunged over the edge of the world. The oldest man.

“Are you able to stand?”

“I apologize,” hornblower said quietly. “We sent you here. We sent all of you here.”

The oldest man in the world smiled sadly. “The dungeon has fallen. North End is destroyed. Benevolent sisters have come and gone. We were judged unworthy.” The man took hornblower by the arm and helped him up. “You are ill? You’re sweating. Come with me. Rest. We’re gathering the injured.”

Hornblower wanted to recount all that he had done in the settlement—his sermons, his visits—but words were obscured by the emotions pushing up from his diaphragm. He leaned on the oldest man.

At the temple, he was given water and bread and a place to lie down. Immediately, he fell asleep again. The settlement would function without him, without padres. Though he looked down on citizens, he could not speak to them.

He saw the girls from the funeral. They conspired together, and laughed, and ran away.

The sun shone.

At the junction of the main branch and the branch of moving waters, an effigy had been built, entwined with boughs: a statue.

Hornblower woke up, heart racing. He tried to sit up on the cot but could not. The host was inert in his mouth and he spit it out. Candles guttered. He closed his eyes again. The last image from his dream lingered. He could not sleep any more, though he felt exhausted. The statue had been Pan Renik, the exile, dressed in the suit he had used to fly away. Citizens had gathered around, kneeling before the icon with respect and profound gratitude.

The exemplar covered the woman’s face with a blanket. His second wife had made the blanket for him when they’d gotten married. The talkative one slept. She would most likely live.

Not this one.

As he left the community centre to get air, the exemplar collapsed. There was blood in his mouth. He lay there, quaking, until a farmer came by and shook him gently by the shoulder.

“Exemplar? Exemplar?”

He coughed up blood, and something hard, from the back of his throat, which he spit out. “I am not an exemplar,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Not any more.”

The farmer hesitated.

“We’re on our own now.”

Stones had whirled, and chunks of wood, smoke and flames, blood and melancholy. The long spacer departed. With so few symbiotes, she could not move quickly. Her functions were limited. All of her children were inert once more, back where they came from. She would mourn them until the heart of the boy—the child who had been called path, already tethered to her console—stopped beating.

By then, hopefully, she would be light years away.

Officers of the palatinate carried the chamberlain up the East Stairs on his litter. He was not able to mount these stairs for the energy that had recently filled him had now fled. Erricus felt old and ill. On the second floor of Jesthe, his men were everywhere he looked, as if the walls had secreted them. The palace had suffered considerable damage. Gods had come and gone. Whatever the deities sought was not found in the city or her citizens.

Towers had fallen. Buildings burned. He pressed his fingers together to stop them from shaking.

The chatelaine was not in her room. Rubble had covered the floor of the Great Hall, though the empty bedchambers remained intact.

Of course she passed palatinate, who moved cautiously toward her, gravely, and she thought to herself that they could keep the rotten palace for all she cared. Down and outside through the small courtyard, starting to sob, with snot on her lips, she ran toward the gates. Smoke was thick in the air and she heard the cries of her people.