The Waking Engine (32 page)

Purity stopped midsentence, eyes and mouth agape. She held a gloved hand up to her mouth, then put it on her hip and scowled, almost opened her mouth, then realized that Kaien still had his warm paws on her shoulders and covered her mouth with her hand again.

“You what? You’re . . . bells and bells and tolling bells, Kaien. It is you, isn’t it?” Purity stepped back slowly, fingers trembling against her lips.

“What? What’s me?”

“You’re the bastard who’s been running around Killing stableboys and Tsengs who don’t know any better!” Purity scrubbed her yellow hair and looked around the tiled vestibule that led away from the aviary.

“Purity,” Kaien said, his stomach gone cold. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m a cancer?” she said, looking back from the threshold. “Dead gods, Kaien, better to be a tumor than a Murderer!”

She spun and fled toward exit, running for the nest of nobles that was Dendrite’s Folly. Kaien let her go, watching the small bustle attached to her turquoise skirts. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to stop her and tell her the truth, or if she was better off without him.

Purity found and followed a trail of scurrying guardsmen and servants, and was surprised to find herself walking toward Lord Senator Bratislaus’ library. She was even more surprised to see Lady Mauve Leibowitz lording over the three- story, book-lined offices.

NiNi and NoNo’s formidable mother, member of Circle Unsung and war-honed battleaxe, Lady Mauve fixed a steely eye on Purity as she entered. She pointed a finger at Purity’s heart and grated:

“You, Purity Kloo, are in worlds of trouble.”

Tam hurried down a cobbled lane, laden with shopping bags in enough colors to make a faerie proud: hyacinth and cornflower, viridian, cyclamen, sunset. Today, Lallowë Thyu wanted a coin, but she also wanted three pairs of shoes, a new set of luggage, clockworking tools and new coding pins, and a camisole from a dressmaker in Amelia Heights. Only by chance was the numismatist’s shop located nearby the dressmaker, or Tam feared he would have died of exhaustion.

He pushed his way past window- shoppers and a slope-nosed little boy with no shirt, a red ribbon tied around his finger, and a bucket of red paint. The little urchin ran right in front of him, and Tam almost kicked the boy, but thought of his packages and reconsidered.

The coin shop—if it could be called such—was typical of Amelia Heights, where the city’s intelligentsia and least-starving artists packed themselves into odd little rooms in odd little buildings, all stacked together like so many hatboxes. The coin shop was tiny and at the top of several rickety flights of stairs, and so crammed with papers, volumes, and overflowing tabletops that it took Tam a solid minute to find the old man amidst the clutter. Lapin the Numismatist sat hunched over a desk beneath a wall bestrewn with shiny medals hermetically sealed in laminate and cardboard, and seemed not to notice Tam’s arrival. He wore a navy blazer with brass buttons, and his hair was the brightest white. Tam found it hard to believe that this one old man was responsible for every body-binding performed in the City Unspoken. Coins and bodies, bodies and coins. They always went together.

Tam coughed politely, to no response. He cleared his throat but received no welcome. Finally he announced himself: “If you are the coiner Lapin, then the Marchioness Terenz-de-Guises would have your attention.”

“Eh?” The white-haired head perked up. “Or you’ll have my kidneys instead? I remember the spiel.” The old goat turned around and Tam saw that one of his eyes had been replaced with a prosthesis. Where the other should be was installed a lens of absurd thickness, through which an iris showed rheumy-blue and gigantic. “What are you about, girl? And why the sudden interest in a pair of much-abused organs? Making kidney pie, are we? I’m not hungry.” He turned back to his coins, muttering about marrow and sweetbreads.

“I’m a young man.” Tam said, too quickly. He looked out the window to the noonday skies, silvery like the old coiner’s enormous eye. Tam was told to be polite, so he held his tongue. “My name is Tam, and I represent the mistress of the Guiselaine.”

“Are you sure you want to represent such a mistress?” Lapin asked from his workbench. Tam had seen gargoyles with less grotesque foreheads, so bushy and long were the old man’s eyebrows. “Lallowë Thyu acted very unpleasantly the last time she paid me a visit. It’s not nice to threaten to eat an old man. She called me a goat!”

Tam was unsure what to say—it would be beyond his station to apologize for the marchioness, but the old man seemed to expect some kind of redress. “The fey are fickle,” Tam said, “I’m certain my mistress intended no insult. And goats are . . . very noble creatures.” He paused.

“I’m more of a mutton, I’m afraid, and a bit gamey at that.” He pulled the thick lens from his face, which remained craggy and overgrown but, at last, attentive. So it wasn’t a prosthetic eye at all, but a mere device, a contraption of leather and glass that exaggerated the rheum in his old eyes.

Lapin continued. “What manner of coin does the queen of the Guiselaine wish to add to her coffers, today? I would have thought she’d have graduated to bullion. Or does she want her new faerie handmaiden body- bound as well, is that it?”

“Both.” Tam sighed, resigned to be amused by the old fellow. “A half- cent, thank you, and one body-binding to go.” He held out the note with the details of the coin.

Lapin leapt and gave a funny little cheer, ignoring the note. “Ah! Well, then, if we’re to do real business, girl, I prefer you to address me properly. A coiner is a nickeldime a dozen, if you’ll pardon the pun. I am the Numismatist.”

“And I am no girl. I am—”

“—Fey, yes? Yes, I can see that. It’s the ears, child. Dead pointy ringers.” Hooking the shopping bags in one arm around his elbow, Tam felt at his ears, which were as round and human as ever.

“Perhaps you should replace your lens, Mister Numismatist. This coin I seek, it is malformed.”

Lapin nodded. “We call the lens a loupe. Now, let us find your halfcent. If I read you aright, Miss Tam of the manse Terenz-de-Guises, your mistress desires what we numismatists call an error, an error half-cent, in this case. This will be a half-cent that was misstruck with a faulty print, a double print, a blank press, a broken die . . .”

“Die, that’s what she said. Missing a die, she said—”

“—And isn’t that odd, in a city where half the population is trying to Die, and missing the mark.” Lapin’s hobby seemed to be amusing himself.

Tam kept speaking, shaking the note in the old man’s face. “—Missing a die and originating at the, um, pelican mince?”

“American Mint.” Lapin nodded and turned immediately to one of the rickety cupboards surrounding his worktable. “Core world coins! That’s easy enough. I have several dozen errors from that particular universe alone, each different from the last. That’s the fun of both error coins and universes, you see, they come in more flavors than pies, and endure a great deal longer. . . .”

Tam growled. “The coin?”

“Must be named before it can be purchased, young lady.”

The old man finally took the note from Tam, glanced at it, and rattled off a list of numbers and names of which Tam understood precisely nothing.

“Oh, that’s a good one!” Lapin clapped. “Yes, yes, the American 1809 half-cent, Cohen number six, reverse only. Excellently documented, that world’s coins. Whole families devoted to their study. Poor Breen describes it, although he had only ever seen one uniface striking, which he illustrated. Grellman authenticated it. My friend Tettenhorst . . .”

Airy dark, this one rambled. “Do you have it?”

“Of course I have it,” he snapped, then continued with his tale of tails. “Breen died in prison, a pederast. His wife was quite famous for another reason entirely, but I digress. The coin. I forget quite how it came to me, but I do remember the collection, the largest of its kind in the entire metaverse, a worthy endeavor. The Davy Collection, you see, named after the collector’s youngest boy. What became of the man and his son we’ll never know, I fear. Perhaps they traveled together. Perhaps they lost each other. Perhaps they’re both here right now, and don’t know it. Lives get lost just as easily as coins, girl. But coins can be found again, and identified. Lives are not often as lucky, which is why I work with both. Would you like it?”

“No, old man,” Tam began, with acid sarcasm, “the marchioness of the wealthiest remaining district in the city has sent me to your closet to listen to worthless stories about worthless coins. Of course I don’t want it. But your ersatz governor does. You might give more consideration to thoughts of her dis pleasure. . . .”

“Feh. I might give more consideration to a ha’penny trollop with elfin ears if she considered my lives’ work worthy of a moment’s attention.” He dug through one of a hundred drawers, pawing lazily at neatly labeled cardboard pouches much less neatly arranged until, after a moment, he drew a brown square from the rest and stared at it with pride. “And Amelia Heights does not bend its knee to Lallowë Thyu. 1809, Cohen six, reverse only—here we have it. For your purse, I will part with it.”

Tam tossed his purse at the barnacled ancient, eager to escape the dusty attic. Despite his age, Lapin snatched the bag deftly and flipped Tam the small cardboard envelope.

“Might I be permitted to ask, Miss Tam, what has generated this sudden interest of the marchioness in as noble if neglected a diversion as numismatics?”

“You may indeed, Sir Lapin.” Tam flashed a smile. “And get a purseful of nickeldimes as your answer; that’s all I got when I asked. With a mistress such as mine, it is wisest not to ask twice.”

Lapin snapped his fingers. “Which reminds me, you mustn’t leave without a binding scrip. I prefer to bind in person, but I’ll not hear more threats from Thyu or her elfish minions.” He procured a scrap of paper from a drawer and a green felt-tip pen from the inside pocket of his blazer.

“These are much harder to do than they seem,” Lapin elaborated as he scribbled on the paper strip, “which is why I’m the only one providing the service, these days. Oh, there used to be a row of us, across town in the Callow Heights, but they’ve all since danced on and those crazy thugs drove everyone out of the district, so here I am. She’ll need to press it against the wrist of whomever she intends to bind. I hope your mistress won’t murder her quarry before she binds it.”

Lapin treated the little curl of drafting paper far more carefully than he had the coin. “I forget myself with that vixen. Although I am pleased she sent a foxy feykin lass in her stead.” Tam raised an eyebrow. “I mean no disrespect, Miss Tam. The fox always fucks the vixen in the end, no?”

A slow smile spread across Tam’s pointed face. “We shall see, Sir Numismatist. In the meantime, I will rest easy knowing you have the sense—damn you and your puns—to keep your mouth shut and your keen eye in its loupe where it belongs. Good day.”

Lapin made a half bow as Tam struggled down the stairs with his varicolored bags scraping against the sides of the narrow steps. “Happy hunting, little fox!” Lapin called as Tam turned the first landing.

“To you as well, old goat!” he replied before the daylight hit his face and he was lost again, coin and life, to the turbulent streets.

This time the vision quest beluga bore nautical tattoos and sported a jaunty if somewhat ill-fitting sailor’s hat, waving her body lazily through the paper streamer ocean. Cooper wondered briefly if he was back in Cleopatra’s lap, but no—he knew something was wrong, indeed that a great many things were wrong, and moreover that things had begun to go wrong for him shortly after he commenced his education concerning all things metaversial.

“Just how shortly after?” he asked out loud.

“Very very shortly after,” the beluga answered.

I wonder, is that a coincidence?

“Not exactly!” The beluga seemed chipper.

“You’re not Marvin.” Cooper practiced his backstroke through the undersea psychoanalytical medium . . . crêpe paper.

“Of course not, silly.” The beluga lifted one stubby fin and somehow, in the way only a mind weaned on Disney animals could hallucinate, raised its hat to the rhythm of a little vaudeville vamp—itself produced from an old player piano that popped into existence for the occasion, then melted away like clarified butter. “Ta da.”

“But you’re wearing his tattoos.”

“Nobody’s perfect.” If a sea mammal could look shifty, this one did so. “You’re not Cleopatra, either.” Cooper treaded crêpe paper water. “Cleopatra.” The beluga rolled its little black eyes. “That fat lady got sung.”

“So who are you? Are you my spirit animal?”

“Those are two completely different questions, Cooper.”

“Well, are you? Some animal guide thing?” He squeezed a spongy stress ball that appeared in his hand for the count of three, then was a crocus from his mother’s garden in February, then was nothing again. “What makes you ask that?”

“Well, the last time I saw you—which I guess was also the first time I saw you, you were wearing spectacles and talking an awful lot like a shrink.” Details of his immediate circumstances returned now, Marvin and Hestor and the pretty, pretty thing he’d heard for days. “And now here you are wearing the skin of the guy who, I think, just sold mine. And all that business with the shaman-stuff, I dunno. It just seems sort of timely.”

“You’ve got that part dead right, at least. It sure is timely.” The beluga wrapped its fins around a ship’s line that appeared from nowhere and pulled with all its weight.

“I can’t be a shaman, I’m Jewish.”

“Mazel tov!” A Purim noisemaker gragged above the beluga’s head and it let go of the line.

“Don’t tease. I’m a fragile flower at the moment.”

“Let’s talk about that. Why all the floral imagery? That crocus just now . . .”

“From my mother’s garden.” Cooper put his arms behind his head and leaned back into the chartreuse leather fainting couch that manifested beneath him. He was a gay neurotic New Yorker; there wasn’t a magic cetaceous shrink in the metaverse that could get the jump on him. “A purple one, my favorite kind. They come weeks before the other early spring flowers, like daffodils and redbuds. Out of a deep March or February freeze, you’ll suddenly see these stumpy green shoots, followed by flowers like dwarf tulips.”