They Who Fell (10 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

J
ana was excited, skipping around the kitchen as she mopped. The last few weeks had been sheer drudgery, and she was about to get a break.

All she’d done the entire time had been to clean, clean, clean. Cassie kept pointing out faults, or creating chores from nothing, but she just couldn’t keep her thoughts on the tasks at hand. It didn’t help that Rhamiel was starting to creep into her fantasies. She kept finding him there when she retreated to the cozy cabin in her head with her giggling brood of children. He’d pop through the door and then the children would be his, flapping around her picket fences with tiny wings and sticking their tongues out at her in defiance. She’d switch to her benevolent reign over the tower, and after a bit he’d just follow, barging into her court and announcing himself as its new king. It was frustrating to be unable to control even her own daydreams, but she couldn’t help herself.

Towards the end, she’d started thinking about Peter instead, as a distraction from the distractions. She’d tried to raise her concerns about him to Cassie, but was just brushed aside. Cassie said there was nothing they could do, and that the foolhardy had to fend for themselves these days. That didn’t stop Jana from plotting elaborate escapes, or dreaming up deals she could make to release Peter from his chains. But then Rhamiel just intruded there, too, taking command in the middle and freeing Peter himself. She kept coming back to Nefta’s warnings, but they weren’t exactly helping. They’d only made him more fascinating. Sometimes she thought he was just arrogant, and sometimes she thought he was injured inside from how he’d been in heaven, covering up the wounds with vanity and cocky smiles. She couldn’t decide, and it was infuriating.

Jana hadn’t even seen Nefta, not since their conversation. She’d retired to her personal chambers, and she hadn’t come out. Cassie had been leaving trays of food at the door, and taking them away whenever they happened to reappear. Mostly that was in the morning. Whatever Nefta was doing, she was keeping odd hours, sometimes waking them up at night with crashes or other noises.

Cassie said it was just brooding, and that she did this from time to time. She’d withdraw into herself, battling with her demons and avoiding anyone else’s company. She’d find herself in a melancholy mood, and wouldn’t be able to find her way out. Thoughts of her scars were most likely to trigger it, and Cassie had nearly erupted when she’d heard that Jana had been discussing them with her. There was nothing to do then but to wait it out, so they did, staying on the alert in case she needed something.

She’d finally come out of her room, spoke to Cassie, and bid them to leave for the rest of the day. She wanted the place to herself, and didn’t particularly care where they went. They couldn’t simply wander about aimlessly, so Cassie told Jana to gather together a few wicker baskets from the storage room. “We need something to do,” she said, “so we’ll go get her some more wood from the crafters. I suspect she’ll be needing it soon, anyway.”

They carried the baskets out, hauling them along in a red children’s wagon. They closed the door shut behind them, but needn’t have bothered. It didn’t have any locks, anyway; the angels stayed away from each others’ quarters absent an invitation, and a servant would have to be suicidal to enter without permission. They wound their way down the central ramp, slowly making their way to the middle levels. A few of the angels stood along an inaccessible terrace protruding from the wall, and stopped their conversation to watch them for a ways. Cassie just looked straight ahead and kept walking, but it made Jana nervous. She didn’t like to know they were thinking of her, and she couldn’t quit worrying about how conspicuous she’d been after the Conclave. The servants’ cardinal rule was to avoid attention, and she didn’t want to become a blip on any of their radars.

“Cassie,” said Jana. “How do we know when it’s okay to go back? What do we do if she’s mad when we come back up?” All the changes had been hard on Jana, and she was being constantly consumed by uncertainty. Even the smallest decisions seemed filled with danger. She wasn’t even sure if it was safe to ask about whether any particular thing was safe to do. It ate at her nerves, leaving them frayed. She’d known the rules down below, but they’d plucked her out of there and dropped her into a different place, with its own etiquette and its own expectations. That wouldn’t have been so bad, if the consequences for a misstep weren’t so severe.

“We’ll be fine,” said Cassie. “We just need to stay away for the rest of the day. It’s not as bad as it seems, really. She’s got things scratching at the edges of her mind. The only thing to do is leave her alone and let it pass.”

They approached a stone archway, looming over them and inlaid with black shards of onyx depicting angels in the midst of heavenly warfare. The blocks of stone it was composed of had been hauled up here, carefully chiseled to lock together seamlessly and shaped into a monument to their rebellion. Along the sides, the angels were setting diamond buildings on fire with clusters of rubies, or doing battle with loyalists shaped from pearls. All along the top was the Fall, with black angels being shoved downward into ruby flames. The crafters took pride in it, though the servants outside claimed the credit for having scoured the jewelry boxes of every housewife in Manhattan.

They went through the arch, entering a madhouse of creative bustle. The crafters’ floor was an immense, open area filled with stations for the various trades, with a ring of personal quarters around the exterior. Some were for the lower-ranked angels, and others were for the higher-ranked craftsmen. It stuck in the craw of the angels who lived there to be lumped together with mere humans. For whatever reason they didn’t have the influence to secure more prestigious quarters, and none of them were pleased about it. But everyone can’t be at the top, and those who were valued the happiness of the best of the crafters over that of the least of their brethren.

Servants rushed around them as they came inside, carrying materials back and forth between the stations. A sullen teenage boy pushed past Jana and nearly overturned their wagon, as he ran a bundle of leather straps over to a nearby armorsmith. He didn’t even bother to apologize, and seemed irritated about having to dodge them in the first place.

“Don’t mind him,” said Cassie. “The crafters work their apprentices like dogs. They have to, to keep the angels satisfied. The ones up top expect the work to be done promptly, and if things aren’t finished quickly enough they’re apt to change their minds and force everyone to start from scratch. Or worse, if the mood strikes them.”

All the runners were younger, and there wasn’t an adult among them. They were each learning a trade, and they had to start at the bottom. Jana had never seen the likes of it. She hadn’t been given a choice of occupations, and had simply ended up in the place she’d started. That was the lot of most of them. A boy was needed to tan leather for the angels’ boots, and so the servants outside found them a boy. A girl was needed to wash dishes, and so they found them a girl.

The angels all wanted things that would maximize their prestige among the others. That meant plenty of work for smiths, who could hammer out dents in their armor or create a shiny, impressive new sword or mace. They claimed the lion’s share of the space, their jerry-rigged forges blasting heat and steam all around their portion of the floor. It was a haphazard mix of the ancient and the modern. On their left, they passed a coal-fired furnace that belched flame near a burly man clanging his hammer against an anvil. On their right, Jana saw another man welding away at a bronze scabbard, using contemporary equipment and a protective helmet. Other machines stood silent, with no one bothering to man them. The crafters had to be versatile. They never knew exactly what supplies they’d have on hand, and their masters had no interest in how sausage was made and no tolerance for excuses.

Cassie and Jana pushed their way through the hubbub and came to a quieter section of the floor: the looms. Talented weavers were always in high demand, and a number of women had found a relative refuge under the instruction of a few dressmakers who’d come to the tower after the Fall. They’d diversified from their former trade, finding themselves a new niche creating custom garments for the tower’s residents. Girls sat in rows, spinning with drop spindles or performing simple dye jobs. Adult women supervised and focused on the advanced work, sewing patterns into tapestries for the walls, creating robes for formal gatherings, and making custom designs of all sorts for whatever social events the angels could concoct.

Finally, they arrived at the woodworkers’ area. It was smaller, dedicated mostly to building furniture. There wasn’t as much need for it, as it tended to last for years. But some of the angels had tempers, and regularly destroyed enough of their furnishings that it was necessary to maintain servants who could replace them as was warranted.

“Gao!” called Cassie, and a little old Chinese man looked up from his work. He was unkempt, his clothes dirty and his face unshaven, and he could have passed for homeless in years before. Strands of grey hair snaked off in all directions from the back of his thinning crown, crawling along the back of his rumpled shirt. He had a permanent hunch to his back, acquired from years bent over his workbench, and had thick wiry glasses from late nights spent carving tiny details into knickknacks he used to sell to tourists. Wrinkles covered his face, which had sunk into an expression of permanent grumpiness as time had passed.

“No wood. No wood,” groused Gao.

“Come on, Gao,” said Cassie sweetly. “You know I need it. Nefta’s been in one of her moods, and she’s just coming out of it. She’ll want to work, you know that. She’ll probably be at it for days. She’s going to be a dynamo, and we need to get her something to focus her energies on.”

“No wood,” insisted Gao. He stood up, waving his hands and trying to shoo them away. It didn’t work on Cassie, so he turned to Jana, grunting and gesturing. She backed away, positioning herself safely behind Cassie. Gao didn’t know much English; he’d come over with his family years before and he’d never needed to learn it. But now they were gone, and all he had left was his quiet labor.

“Gao,” said Cassie. “We just need a little. Just this wagon, see? It’d make us very happy.”

“Too much,” said Gao. “You want too much. Go away now. Tell Nefta go flappy, flappy. Find own trees.” He waved his arms, mimicking flight and puckering his lips as he cawed out in imitation of a bird.

Behind them, a cart toppled over in one of the narrow aisles through the crafting stations. Bits of metal spilled all around, completely blocking the way. The small boy who’d been pushing it frantically started refilling it, trying to grab all of the pieces as larger boys stepped over him. He looked miserable, anticipating the lashing he had to look forward to if he didn’t fix things quickly.

“Go help him,” said Cassie. “Let me work on Gao a little, alone.”

Jana did as she was told. She went over to the boy, grabbing some of the pieces before they were kicked aside or crushed beneath boots of passersby. He was on the brink of tears, and she tried to calm him down. “It’s okay,” she said. “You get the little ones, I’ll get the big ones.” They got the cart righted, and started getting the pieces back into it. Jana shot a glance back at Cassie. She was engaged in an animated conversation with Gao, both of them gesticulating to make themselves understood. Gao was flustered, and Cassie kept working him, pushing his buttons to get what she wanted. Then a furtive handshake, a nod from Gao, and they were done.

Only Jana saw it, the thing in her hands. Cassie had passed him something, hidden in her palm. She hadn’t been able to tell quite what it was. She thought maybe it was a bribe, a gift to grease the wheels and get them their wood. But he didn’t seem any happier about things, and just went back to poring over his work.

“Come on!” said Cassie. “Help me fill up the baskets.” Cassie selected the wood she wanted from Gao’s hoard in a nearby shed, and had Jana run it out to the wagon in chunks as she went. She was careful about it, choosing the finest pieces and getting a mix of smaller blocks and even a few large logs that barely fit in the wagon. They stacked the baskets on top, with Cassie carrying one and leaving Jana to haul the rest behind her.

They went back along their way, past the clicks of the looms and through the sparks and the heat. Jana lugged the wagon dutifully, pulling at it with all her strength. It was slow going, and the apprentices gave her a number of nasty looks. They’d almost made it out when Jana heard something she recognized: a voice, distinctive and cutting through the clamor.

“Hold it. Don’t move. It’ll be worse if you do, I can promise you that.”

Her spine shivered. She couldn’t forget that vile tone, as hard as she might try. And there he was, sitting on a stool near the armorsmiths and playfully swinging one of their swords through the air. Ecanus, watching Peter like a hawk as he held his shaking arm outward and over one of the forge’s flames.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I
t whirled like a pinwheel, spinning its wings in clockwise circles through the air. Shaped like a disc, its wings poked out from its center, giving it the look of a malformed daisy. Its center was rimmed with eyes, human-looking eyes, strings of them that ran around along the edges of the wings. In the middle of it all was a gaping mouth, with sharp, snaggly teeth pointing in all directions. It had tongues, so many tongues, long, thin tentacles wiggling around inside it. It floated, although the laws of physics as man understood them didn’t permit it to. It shouldn’t have been able to keep itself aloft, if it had been following the rules. Some of the wings didn’t even look functional. Withered, dying things that had been lit afire during the Fall, they spun next to fully-feathered ones that shimmered through the colors of the rainbow. Here and there some of its eyes had been put out, left covered by patches of scorched flesh.

“I spy,” said the thing. “I spy something red.” All its tongues flicked in unison as it talked, singing the words together as one.

“There ain’t anything red,” said Thane, before opening fire. He plugged bullet after bullet into it, aiming at the eyes. He even hit a few, but it didn’t do much. The creature flinched, and clenched its eyes shut wherever it had been hit. But after a few seconds they just blinked it off, resuming their stares.

“I spy meat, and juices, and tarty fluids running up and down inside your bones,” said the thing.

Dax started crawling away, hoping to take advantage of Thane’s distraction. Then it grabbed him, reaching out with one of the tongues and looping it around his foot. His fingers sunk into the grass, trying to find a hold as it drew him towards its open maw. They came up filled with clumps of dirt, and it dragged him closer and closer. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” said Dax, chanting the words, a futile incantation of protection against the thing that had him.

“They’ll go crunch, crunch,” said the thing.

Faye unstrapped her rifle from her back and added to the volley of fire. She was aiming at the tongue that had a hold on Dax, snapping it back and forth like a slobbery rubber band with every hit. The thing didn’t seem to mind. It just went back to pulling, and grabbed his other ankle with another tongue for good measure.

“Biles and humours, from out of the spleen,” said the thing. “I’ll share them if you like. Just a taste. A few licks each.”

Dax was bordering on hysteria. He couldn’t help himself from sneaking looks at the thing’s cavernous mouth—and after each one, his eyes would pop with dread and he’d turn back to tearing at the ground, trying to pull himself forward. He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t find a way to escape, couldn’t do anything. He felt helpless, a fly trapped in a spider’s web and waiting for it to quit toying with him and finally do the deed. He could feel the tongues, writhing and wet against his skin where his pants hiked up, cold and clammy and tight. The others kept firing, but the flashes and the noise just added to his stress.

“Hey. Hey!” yelled Holt, grabbing Thane by the shoulder and interrupting him as he was reloading. “Get the sword.” Thane ran to his bike, digging around in his pack to try to find it. He’d buried it in there, somewhere underneath pouches of homemade chewing tobacco, a few naughty magazines, and a collection of assorted personal weaponry. He’d paraded it around on his belt for the first few days of their trip until Holt had finally forbidden it, concerned that the scabbard would draw unwanted attention from anyone they happened to encounter on the road.

“Try it and you won’t go back,” said the thing. “There’s nothing more savory. Take a nibble, you’ll see. Every one of you gets a finger. Generosity, it’s the will of the Maker.” It kept tugging at Dax, reeling him in, until it almost had him. He was kicking frantically, trying to free himself from the tongues, but he had no leverage. Its teeth moved, poking up and down in anticipation of a meal.

“Shut the fuck up,” said Holt, switching to a taser. They carried stacks of them along at his insistence, and he was never without one holstered to his belt. He fired, landing the clamp of the wires inside its mouth. Its eyes slammed shut in unison, dripping out tears as it absorbed the current. The tongues all shrieked; an awful, high-pitched wail that battered their eardrums. It thrashed around, allowing Dax to gain a few feet of distance. Then it recovered, every one of its eyes glaring at Holt, and went back to pulling.

“Lick your insides,” said the thing. “I’ll do it all at once, while your heart still beats. I’ll make new holes, and lap up your innards from every one. It will be slow, and we will become great friends, you and I. I’ll tell you how you taste, and you will say please, please.” It pulled at Dax, and its mouth curved into something of a smile. Then a line of flame flashed between them, and its eyes bulged in agony.

The two of its tongues that had been latched to Dax had been lopped clean off. Thane was standing in front of it, swinging the sword about like a dervish. He clipped one of its wings as the thing tried to back away, slicing off the tip and sending up a puff of feathers. It screamed again, crying and moaning, and then flipped around to escape. Its backside faced them, a solid grey circle of wrinkled flesh. Then it zoomed away, weaving through the trailers until it disappeared among them.

“You okay?” asked Thane, reaching down to offer a hand to Dax. He declined it bruskly, pulling himself up and brushing stray blades of grass off of his shirt.

“I’m fine,” said Dax. “He caught me by surprise. I could have gotten away, he just….”

“He almost bit your ass off, is what he did. Lucky I was there to save it,” said Thane, grinning widely and still pumped full of adrenaline. He picked up one of the tongues from the ground, proudly waving his trophy in the air. “Hope you know taxidermy, Dax. I’m collectin’ body parts, and I want ‘em stuffed. I got me a head, a tongue, and some wing.”

“You’re a real Colonel Kurtz,” said Dax bitterly.

“I’m a what?” said Thane, confused about whether he was being flattered or insulted.

“Dax,” said Holt. “The man just saved your life. The word is thanks.”

He couldn’t hold it in anymore. The dam burst, and it all came out at once. “I’m just some fucking damsel in distress, is that it? I work my ass off, and all I’m ever supposed to do is hide.” Dax’s voice was rising, quivering with a long suppressed fury. “I didn’t sign up for this to stay on the sidelines. I wanted to fight. You don’t even let me carry a gun. I arrange everything, I get you your supplies, and then someone else jumps in at the last minute and gets all the glory. And then I get treated like I’m a complete piece of shit. Like I’m just some fucking joke.”

“Hey, buddy,” said Thane. “I was just fuckin’ around.”

“You’re always fucking around!” yelled Dax. “It’s always tubby, or lardo, or lazy ass! I’m sick of this, I’m sick of all of it.”

“It’s just kidding around, man,” said Thane. “You gotta roll with the punches if you wanna be one of the guys. That’s how this shit works.”

“You can’t let it get to you,” said Holt. “It’s just teasing. If you can laugh at yourself, then no one else will.”

“Except it’s all the time,” said Dax. “All the time, and only me. If it’s just teasing, why is it only me?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” said Thane. “We were just fuckin’ with you. It wasn’t supposed to mean somethin’.”

“Boys,” said Faye. “I hate to break this up, but I’ve got the gas.” She held up a large canister of it, gasoline sloshing around inside. “It’s around the other side of the trailer. There’s stacks of them.”

“Dax, we’ll talk about this later. We have to go,” said Holt. “That thing could be back any minute. We don’t even know what the hell it was.”

“I know what it was,” said Dax. “And of course, I’m the only one here who does.”