The Waking Engine (30 page)

“My second whore,” Cooper murmured, almost fondly.

“You live!” Marvin cried in triumph, a moment too late to be entirely natural, watching Cooper collapse back to the ground beneath the steel overhang that sheltered them somewhat from the downpour of black rain. He turned to his fellows and gestured. “I told you this one would not fail!”

Warm hands helped him to his feet, and Hestor’s teeth gleamed in the firelight. From behind the plastic scrim of his sunglasses, he spoke with the basso of a leader. “I doubted you, Marvin, but that was my error. You’ve earned your reward tonight, in part.”

“In part?” Marvin asked in a voice close to a wail. Cooper’s heart fell, though he’d expected it to.

Hestor held out a wicked knife with one hand and pointed the other toward the sky. “The emirates of freedom will weigh your redemption when your work is complete.”

Reward? Cooper wanted to run, but Marvin’s hand on his back kept him rooted to the rooftop. Redemption? Marvin hung his head and accepted the knife with his other hand.

“I’m sorry, Cooper,” Marvin whispered through tears while his fingers danced up Cooper’s spine, his thighs, his throat. Then, inside his head: SorrySorrySorry SoManyReasonsForSorrowMyChubbyAngel, MyDearBoyIWouldLoveYou, IfOnly IfOnlyIfOnlyIWasAllowed.

Hestor gave a barbed chuckle and peeked out from over his stupid sunglasses.

“Do it. Carve him up.”

Again, Marvin’s narcotic touch made Cooper arch his back and moan. Entropy would consume the boundless universes before Cooper tired of this, and still he would beg for more. Marvin knew it and smiled, continued. Cooper’s tattered feelings fell away, and he found himself pleading: do it; take me; consume me. You fucker.

Once Cooper had a home, but he lost it; friends, but he wandered off; a way forward that he lost when his sight blossomed into a rose of possibilities. Sight beyond sight for the lost beyond lost. With his terrible new sight Cooper saw that he would dance with the Undertow to be free again, if that’s what it took; Cooper would love an Undertow Death Boy, give him his lifeblood and his soulhunger if he asked for it. If Marvin led him toward freedom, Cooper would hand over his heart itself. He would kiss a lich and lick the paper lips from its teeth, if that’s what freedom demanded.

Marvin bared his teeth and unsheathed his knife—then Cooper learned bliss.

“What is the matter with you?” Sesstri asked, holding Asher’s arm as the big gray man went into some kind of fit. They’d had a tough climb up the exterior of the smooth- skinned building, which rose from the city like the nacelle of a mile-long airship, and Asher had grown more agitated the higher they’d come. By the time they pulled themselves onto a sloped ledge just a few floors shy of the rooftop, he’d become apoplectic. They’d have been lost to Cooper, and he to them, if not for Asher’s preparedness: he’d brought more climbing gear than Sesstri had thought to do, and moreover, he’d jerry- rigged a descent line with expert skill; it didn’t hurt, of course, that the spikes on the crampons he’d attached to their boots sank easily into the soft but firm skin of the building. It felt to Sesstri like she was climbing a towering animal, digging her feet into the hide of something too big to notice.

“What’s wrong?” she repeated. Spittle flew from Asher’s mouth. Asher didn’t answer but pointed to the building above them. His eyes rolled wildly as he seized Sesstri’s roan leathers. “She’s here!”

he screamed, and she winced at the sound, hoping nobody would hear him. “And she’s on fire . . .”

“Who? Asher, who’s here?” But he was beyond hearing.

“Oh dead gods, they’re cutting her back. His back. Whose back are they cutting?” Asher gnawed on his own fingers in distress, unable to escape the pain being broadcast into his head. That made no sense, but it burned him like fire anyway. “They’re flaying him alive, I think.”

“Who are they . . . flaying?” Sesstri bent her knees and sagged into her harness, letting the line take most of her weight. “Cooper? And who is she?”

Asher gave no response.

“Fine, just concentrate on climbing, okay?”

He nodded, or she thought he tried to, but at least he put one hand over the other and kicked his way up the flank of the skyscraper with the mindless skill of an expert. Sesstri wondered just how much there was about Asher she didn’t know. She looked behind his eyes and saw something vast that terrified her—what’s worse, her terror was shameless. So she concentrated on the unknowns she could wrap her head around: those old and new scars between his ribs, for instance. She’d been thinking about those scars, and how they could have all been reopened at the same time, uniformly, and the more she thought about that the more she felt like they should remind her of something. Then she remembered his hands on her body and it all fell away.

Those hands. She focused on climbing.

Then, just below the toothy ridge of the roof, Asher began giggling like a madman, and Sesstri was forced to interrupt their ascent. If she had to, she’d secure him to the line and leave him here while she rescued Cooper herself. She didn’t relish the thought of taking on all the gathered Undertow they’d seen climbing and sky-lining to the rooftop of this peculiar, smooth- skinned building, but she supposed she could manage. They were so close, though, if Asher could have just stayed sane for a few moments longer . . . well, she’d figure out what drug he’d taken or been dosed with later. It had to be chemical, didn’t it? Unless the liches were somehow broadcasting something witchy directly into his head—that wasn’t a prospect she relished.

Could he be vibing off something they’re doing up there? He’s shown no trace of psychic ability, how would that work? And who, by the hoofbreaker’s stones, is “she”?

Distracted, Sesstri continued her climb when something grabbed hold of her hair and jerked her up with wicked force. A bola snapped around her wrists before she could reach for her knives, and the leering face of a Charnel Girl hove into view.

“Lookee here,” the gap-toothed woman said as her companion hauled up a still-squirming, half- senseless Asher, “we caught us a pretty pair of sky rats.”

Cooper lay upon his former clothing, cut to shreds by Marvin’s knife. He and Marvin weren’t the only ones copulating openly on the rooftop, but they drew the most onlookers. The boys and girls had clapped along to the rhythm around their merging bodies.

Cooper had never been even remotely comfortable with public nakedness, let alone exhibitionist sex before a gang who might just as easily kill him as fuck him. In the heat of the moment he hadn’t cared—the crowded roof gave him a thrill as he and Marvin worked each other’s bodies, mouth, fingers, cock. Now he felt like a stretching cat, lying naked on a rooftop beneath the eyes of dozens of Death Boys and Charnel Girls, and any number of unseen skylords.

The fact that he hadn’t been eviscerated, or otherwise “carved up,” as Hestor had commanded gave Cooper little solace. He knew Hestor’s type, the sadistic controller who would promise you agony and then offer you ecstasy, only to snatch it away at the last moment and replace it with the torture you thought you’d avoided. Still, Cooper had come to find the crying woman, and he would stay to save her. Not that he thought flight possible—he was well and truly trapped.

Oh, but what a prison. Marvin growled into Cooper’s neck, half-asleep but tangled in Cooper’s limbs. Cooper snarled in response, nipping at Marvin’s ear and earning a warm, tightening embrace. Just when he thought matters were about to escalate to round two—or was it three?— Marvin extracted himself and stood, honoring Cooper with a look of lusty regret.

“Come on.” He tickled Cooper’s side with his foot. “It’s time.”

The rooftop looked no brighter for the fires that still burned in trash cans and torches set into the crumbling walls, but it was less crowded. Only Hestor stood at the far edge, swinging by one arm from the grip of a secured zip line attached to an exposed beam. He crooked a finger and Marvin brought Cooper closer. Cooper was still naked, and almost laughed at how recently that would have been the worst fate he could imagine. Instead, his nakedness felt like armor.

Be careful what you wish for, Death Boy.

“You’ve felt the freedom we claim as our deathright,” Hestor lauded. “You’ve tasted the black rain of freedom on your tongue and felt the tail of a skylord hugging your body. You’ve taken and given pleasure with us”— Hestor nodded at Marvin, who wrapped the straps of a leather harness around Cooper’s bare torso—“and exulted at the ecstasy of our dance.”

Cooper nodded in his best imitation of sagacity, trying unsuccessfully to dispel the sense of unease that had resumed growing in his gut. The danger was real now, again. What a seesaw I ride, he thought. What a lich’s tail, what a graphene dragon queen.

Hestor leered at Cooper’s naked body. “There’s really only one step left.” Hestor lording his authority over them both. “I’m envious, Cooper. You only get your first taste once.”

First taste of what, Death Boy?

Cooper grew queasy just looking at the zip line and the hundreds of feet between the towers. A feeling of sheepishness crept over him, at developing a fear of heights now, after he’d flown through a thunderstorm with the liches. All his former fears were just . . . so . . . amusing.

Hestor handed Marvin a second zip line grip and buckled him together with Cooper. Their bodies reacted as if they’d begun round two—or three—despite the frigid air and the menacing presence of the Death Boy chieftain.

“Are we going somewhere?” Cooper tried to quell the fear in his voice but the effort was hopeless.

“Is that a problem?”

Cooper was still racking his brain for a reason to delay when Hestor shoved Marvin off the roof with both hands, dragging Cooper with him— his naked body spinning into the air, dangling too loosely from the harness attached to Marvin’s. The zip line buzzed and shook violently with their passage through the open air, and Cooper continued to spin for what seemed like half an hour but couldn’t have been more than half a minute. Then Marvin slammed into something hard that knocked the wind from Cooper— a wall?—and they both hung limp from the line. Marvin unclipped himself and they dropped to the floor just seconds before Hestor followed on the line, rebounding from the wall with a jump and a shout as he landed. Hestor needed no harness.

The fall had bloodied Cooper’s knees and scraped his wrists, but otherwise he felt undamaged. Hands that were neither Marvin’s nor Hestor’s helped him to his feet and brushed him off— a crowd of Death Boys stood on the rooftop, forming a half circle around the end of the zip line. One of them slipped some sort of robe around Cooper’s shoulders and he drew it in close, teeth chattering with cold and fear.

They stood atop a different tower, this one more fantastical than what Cooper had assumed was the Undertow HQ. But, of course, all these towers belonged to the liches and their minions. The floor and remaining walls of this skyscraper were constructed from a seamless whale-blue material that seemed a cross between metal and clay, and pinpoint electric lights traced the paths of circuitry beneath the matte surface.

Cooper said nothing.

“Are you prepared to feel the full power of the Undertow?” Hestor gloated, taking off his louvered shades and tucking them into the breast pocket of his vest while, behind him, a thin youth with long burgundy hair emerged from the shadow of a stairwell. “Let me ask you a question, Cooper.”

Cooper looked up at the black dyspeptic sky. “Okay.”

Hestor stretched his back like a cat. “What wine do you drink?”

“What? Wine?” Cooper wondered aloud. The new Death Boy stepped up beside Hestor and dipped his head, whispering.

“Yes.” Hestor laughed. “What wine?”

Cooper looked out at the city that lay sprawled beyond the veil of shadow— another night was almost over, but the Dome still glittered from within, and the districts sprinkled with lights, the craggy heights further north. The idea of a city, cockled and crusty, bearing its own history on its broken back. What’s an idea but a kind of spirit? he wondered. Shamans communed with spirits.

“What wine. Um. I think, Mister Hestor, that you’ve caught me in the midst of a sea-change.”

“A what?” Hestor asked, but Marvin and the long-haired Death Boy nodded.

“Three days ago that would have been an easy question.” Cooper closed his eyes and remembered the last song he’d played from his laptop. That world was so gone. “Two days ago I only belonged to one city, and now I’m part of two. Two days ago? Cheap Bordeaux, maybe a nice Lafite when my father sent me wine for my birthday. I miss my dad, you know. I don’t know if that’s an idea that matters to you people.” He stressed the word. “I think it’s probably something you don’t approve of talking about, am I right?— but anyway, I miss him, and I’m glad I miss him. Because it makes it easier to tell you that my wine, Hestor, is the metaverse and every goblet world it holds, decanted in space like Lafite or Viognier or whatever horrible miscarriage of flavor that I know you’re about to pour down my throat.”

Hestor looked at Cooper as if the childborn shaman had grown an extra head in his armpit. Cooper doubted anyone spoke back much to Hestor.

“So, um . . .” Cooper scuffed the roof with his bare foot. “That’s my fucking wine.”

Hestor bit his lip to hide a smile. He nodded toward the long-haired Death Boy. “Vaitch the Sommelier here curates our most precious spirits. I’ll let him show you the prize that awaits you.”

Vaitch pulled a thin-lipped smile; his eyes didn’t quite focus. “Forget the metaverse, Cooper,” he said, and turned away. “My wine cellars will occupy your attention for much, much longer.” Marvin took Cooper’s hand as the sommelier led the group down a flight of stairs into the watery flesh of the building below.

Vaitch the Sommelier led them down a sloped hallway lined on one side with open portals, and the din in Cooper’s ears grew louder. From within each—sealed with an oval hatch, more like a ship than a building— came whimpers, moans, and sounds of pure animal misery that echoed down the dim corridor. The walls curved overhead like the blue pipe of a wave that never broke and Cooper felt as if he were drowning, only the water wouldn’t finish him off—sinking into a vastness of blue-gone-graygone-black, dwarfed by the yawning deep but still aware, still alive, an unendable witness to fathoms and fathoms of emptiness.