The Waking Engine (36 page)

And then, during a rare concession to participate in the hunt, Almondine had fallen to the soul-devouring predations of one of the First People.

Lallowë summoned the memory of that day as she soldered the rare half cent to the base of the broken vivisistor, blank face up, and ignored the white-hot sparks that peppered her unprotected skin. The hunters had slipped through the wood between worlds as only faeries on the Hunt could, leaving the seven creations of the Cicatrix’s domain for wilder coppices in less well-trammeled universes.

They’d emerged somewhere sufficiently fertile, though Lallowë couldn’t have said where. Two moons bookended an alien, indigo sky, and the hunters had raced through a sea of dusk-cedars, pleasant arboreal giants whose branches glimmered with ghost-lights that resembled stars. The local inhabitants had of course remained unaware of the faerie incursion taking place within the vast tracts of their dusk-cedar forests.

Lallowë had clad herself in furs that she’d skinned and tanned with her own hands—she smiled at the thought of the denizens of the Guiselaine seeing their marchioness outfitted like a feral huntress, let alone tanning hide. At the time she’d enjoyed the trailing days of a dalliance with a statuesque she-kachina named White Corn, and the two had been lagging behind the company for days, alternating between rutting in the treetops and poaching the red-horned aurochs that pastured beneath the vaulted cathedrals of the forest. White Corn had finished a pipe she’d begun making from an aurochs horn days earlier, and she played a lonely birdsong on the instrument as she and Lallowë tried to catch up to the rest of the hunters.

When they stopped to refill their water skins at a frothy cataract, their stomachs filled with raw meat, Lallowë had stretched herself out on a flat rock to close her eyes and enjoy the warmth of the day. She’d dozed, half- dreaming of the spike-haired gypsies they’d spied living on a blue spur of mountains to the north, when White Corn’s piping had awoken her. Annoyed, she sat up, intending to lash the kachina with her tongue—only it hadn’t been White Corn playing.

In fact, White Corn was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Lallowë saw a hunchbacked, man-shaped thing with ratty dark hair and bright eyes, who played White Corn’s pipe and introduced himself as Pelli. Unimpressed, Lallowë did not return the introduction and only refrained from attacking the man out of the need to regain her companions. Slipping her naked body back into her furs and leathers, Lallowë glowered at the man and leapt high into the branches, leaving the stooped piper behind as she chased after White Corn’s scent.

She found White Corn hours later, crying over the unblinking body of Almondine.

The kachina had found her, she claimed, lying there on a bank of moss, her body transformed into a solid trunk of wood. She was not quite dead, but most certainly empty—her spirit turned to wood as thoroughly as her flesh. In the crook of her polished cherry arm lay White Corn’s horn pipe.

Lallowë had borne her sister’s wooden body back to the Seven Silvers, and left White Corn behind on the world of the dusk-cedars and mountain gypsies, where for all Lallowë knew she still remained. The Cicatrix, for her part, had only been bothered about the fate of her firstborn in an abstract way, which had been perplexing—her mother rarely missed an opportunity to overreact to a slight against her vanity or sovereignty, if indeed the two could be separated. The Cicatrix had scryed out the identity of the piper and verified that he was, indeed, some declension of the First People. Beyond that, she forgot the matter easily.

Lallowë cared only slightly more, upset not at the fate that had befallen her half- sibling but by the suggestion that there were entities beyond her ken, powers that could cripple her, too, if given the inclination. More worrisome was the fact that Almondine was gone but not absent, a presence to be looked after and always, always a reminder of the mortality of faeries and the obligations, however slight, of having family in the first place.

Now she had repurposed her shell of a sister, and felt marginally thankful that the Cicatrix had insisted upon preserving Almondine’s empty wooden body. At least she would serve a function, now, provided Lallowë could infuse new life into the vessel, provided Lallowë could re-create a vivisistor and write some life into it, provided Lallowë could animate wood. She’d do so, of course, and brilliantly—she had already half-composed a programming language/ruleset that she expected would establish gender, temperament, aesthetic, malice—the basics of identity. But she resisted bringing back her sister in any form. Even animating the body with a constructed intelligence came perilously close to reviving the filial jealousies that had so beleaguered her early years. Why did it have to be Almondine’s body? Why not some mineral Galatea, girded with pyrite and lapis for eyes? Because no other body would surprise the Cicatrix, and because Almondine’s shell kept Lallowë alert. It also reminded her of the cost of failure.

Sisters. At least she only had one of the bitches to endure.

They were all drowning. That’s how it felt as Cooper, Asher, and Sesstri raced down flights of bony stairs. The walls closed in again like the waves of a dark ocean and the weak lights flickered like those in a sinking vessel. They passed the seraglio of the Undertow, the harem prisoners screaming in distress or, perhaps, escaping like the aesr. They descended into dark floors, where the grids of circuitry embedded within the material surface of the building dimmed and then disappeared entirely—whatever power supplied the skyscraper seemed only to reach the upper levels, and as the three raced toward the ground it felt as if they were racing to the bottom of the ocean floor.

The air grew ice-cold and stale, and the sounds of the pursuing Undertow never faded. The whoops and trills that followed them had begun not long after Cooper led them down from the rooftop, the Death Boys, recovering from the shock of losing not one but two consecutive leaders in the span of about five minutes, enjoined by their sisters the Charnel Girls, all of whom now poured down the alien stairwell in pursuit of the trio. The cold came from the skylords, circling the building now in their gathered, agitated masses; Cooper could feel their tails licking the walls. They knew his taste.

And now that the aesr was no longer siphoning away his pain, the truth of what had been done to his back became more apparent. It felt like he’d been through a meat grinder, and from the expression on Sesstri’s and Asher’s faces when they’d seen the damage, he didn’t look much better. Blood spotted the steps in his wake, and the ache became raking lines of pain, which became a patch of agony stretching from shoulder to shoulder and down to his lower back. He began to slow.

Sesstri took the lead, pulling a thunderstruck Asher by the wrist down the submarine hallways and shooting odd glances at Cooper, who followed as fast as he could. He supposed he looked more than a wreck, naked to his skin and beyond, his ruined back laid open. Something would have to be done about that soon, he knew, provided they escaped with the rest of their hides intact.

Floors passed in a rush of adrenaline and pain and blue- skinned walls, and before they knew it Cooper, Sesstri, and Asher found an exit: a three- storey hole blasted into the side of the building gaped onto the street level, and they stumbled out into the open air. They kept running, Sesstri and Asher now both looking back at Cooper with something resembling awe. Asher’s face was wild. At last they clambered over a wall of rubble that slowed their progress to a crawl, and as he pulled himself past a fragment of broken mirror, slicing his palms on some of the shards, Cooper pulled back in shock—his face was covered in half-dried blood and seemed frozen in an animal snarl.

No wonder they’re looking at me funny .

The blocks-thick border of rubble where the towers stopped seemed to be as far as the Undertow would chase them— a chorus of high-pitched screaming summoned them back as a flock of black lich-lords swooped overhead only to return to their burning towers. As the trio staggered out of the permanent night that shrouded the skyscrapers into the natural night that had fallen over the City Unspoken, a giant orange moon appeared to greet them. No, not a moon— a planet, a great gas giant that reminded Cooper of Jupiter, if Jupiter’s troposphere had cloud layers of Dreamsicles and cream soda. Candy-colored storms painted bands of turbulence across the face of the transient planet, latitudes of tempestuous tangerine, cherry, blood orange, coffee, butter, and chocolate; in its unlikely vastness the gas giant filled a third of the sky. Their shadows flickered against planetlit alleyways.

Cooper hoped they would be safe, and he overheard a fright of Sesstri’s that mirrored his hope: NoMoreScreaming, PleasePleaseNoMoreScreaming. At least he thought that’s what she meant. Looking at her, Cooper realized that it wasn’t only the huge planet ruling the sky that had painted her in a wash of light: he saw more of the strange spirit-colors swirling around her chest. As he watched, they resolved into a bronze sign that shimmered over her brow— an unfurled scroll and a long quill. What was he seeing?

Free from the chasing Undertow, Asher seemed stunned. He kept scanning the sky, muttering to himself and shaking his head.

Both Sesstri and Cooper knew it had something to do with the creature that had broken loose during their confrontation on the rooftop, but each had their own reasons for keeping quiet. Cooper, now that he’d had time to think about it, was half-terrified he’d doomed the captive aesr, and that her explosion and flight had been a reaction to the reflected torture she’d endured on his behalf. The other part of him didn’t feel like adding “Saw an extinct superbeing before she exploded” to the FUBAR list at that particular moment.

At a fork in the road, the trio stood facing the blown-out windows of a dark intersection, limp-limbed, each too wounded, winded, or disturbed to think of what to do next.

“Please, cover yourself,” Sesstri panted, pulling a silk smock from her satchel and tossing it at Cooper. “I’ve seen this show before.”

Cooper wrapped the tiny bit of yellow silk around his waist—being careful of his lower back— and tied off the arms. At least as a makeshift sarong it hid his vital bits.

“Somebody wants us to take a left,” Cooper said, pointing.

One side of the abandoned brick building in front of them—once a warehouse, once apartments— bore a bright red loop of still-wet paint across its windowless façade. A stylized ribbon, thirty feet tall.

Sesstri did a double take and turned apoplectic. “Now she takes an interest? Not when we’re attacked by thugs or lunatics or mincing undead parasites, but now?” She kicked a stone and sent it skidding toward the big red ribbon, but that didn’t provide enough release, so she raised her face and screamed wordlessly at the planet rising overhead. Sesstri bayed. It was when Asher didn’t even smile that Cooper began to worry for him.

“Fine. Just fine.” Sesstri stalked off in the direction the building- sized ribbon indicated. “She snaps the leash and we go trotting along.” Cooper and Asher followed without a word.

They walked past intersections clotted with rubble, following a path away from the burning towers and the burnished orb rising behind them, and in the silence Cooper returned to himself somewhat. Everything that had happened to him since he’d woken up in La Jocondette seemed like an unfortunate dream. The Lady, the thrill of his adventure with Marvin, the bitterness he’d felt at Marvin’s betrayal, the aesr, the lich, rolling Marvin’s butterflied corpse into the sky—what were these but the details of a disturbing dream? All he had to remind him that they were not dream-figments but his own history were his naked skin and the open wreck of his back.

Which hurt like hell. It was a wonder he wasn’t screaming or unconscious. Shock, sepsis—he’d need massive amounts of painkillers and antibiotics, soon, or he’d lose his navel once and for all.

When they arrived at the next intersection that presented a choice of direction, it became apparent that their unseen navigator had not finished pointing the way—only the upper stories of one face of this squat, square building bore the attentions of any red paint. Then a small figure dropped down from the top corner of the building on a tether and ran in an arc across the bricks: it was Nixon.

Nixon laughed and dashed sideways across the wall of the building, spilling paint from his bucket in thin looping threads as he went. His line secured him to the roof, letting him wall-run along a pendulum’s path as he painted his second billboard ribbon. He whooped when he saw them limping toward the intersection, and ran down the face of the building, then jumped and landed with his arms outstretched and gave a little bow.

“Olga Korbut taught me to land on my feet,” he said. “But I never got the hang of it till now. I can’t help but notice that you guys are early, and alive.”

Asher, Cooper, and Sesstri stared at the unboy, too exhausted to talk. Nixon kept on, walking around them in a circle with an appraising eye. “Thanks for leaving all the climbing gear around. It sure made the job easier.”

“Alouette sent you?” Sesstri asked, recovering her voice and relieved to have someone she could harangue for answers.

Nixon nodded. “Wanted me to correct an earlier mix-up.”

“Lovely,” Sesstri and Asher said as one, but Nixon had discovered Cooper’s back.

“Hey, CinemaScope.” Nixon squared off with Asher, tiny fists on his hips. “Still choking kids?”

Asher said nothing.

Nixon continued. “Turns out I may have been, um, slightly neglectful in my duty. I may, technically, have been supposed to give this ribbon to you, Cooper. I guess I forgot, what with all the violence and spooky shit and whatnot.” He held up a small loop of red ribbon and offered it to Cooper. Cooper didn’t move, and Nixon scratched the back of his neck and made an awkward grimace. “He, uh, okay? He’s supposed to take the ribbon. I’m not supposed to leave until he actually takes the damned—”

Asher grabbed the ribbon and handed it to Cooper. Nixon nodded at a job well done, then squealed in surprise as he, Sesstri, and Cooper jerked and were caught up in a sucking twist of space. In a swirl of red ribbons, they vanished, leaving Asher alone in the deserted ruins.