Dead Boys (28 page)

D
ear God,” said Leopold, “those are buildings.”

“Built buildings,” said Jacob. “Constructed. Designed!”

“Built
by
corpses
for
corpses,” said Remington.

“Yeah, that whole thing about dwelling in ruins always confused me,” said Siham. “Why not just pull apart the bricks and make something new? Is that some kind of zombie aesthetic or just laziness?”

Jacob and Leopold were too engrossed with White City to reply. White Gate, atop which the company was perched, was one of four massive, marble slabs rising out of a circular outer wall. Only White Gate lacked an actual entrance—an understandable design choice, considering their neighbors in the Plains. An avenue began below Remington’s dangling feet and ran to the city center, where a grand, open-roofed edifice stood, a hybrid of mausoleum and amphitheater whose classical features were accentuated by the homely facade of every other construction in sight.

“Most of the buildings are made of giant jigsaw-chunks carved by the bone-sculptors,” said Siham. “You just slap them together to make whatever kind of construction you might need. See?” In the city below, a clutch of skeletons pushed a three-walled room along a grooved street, sliding its open edge to rest in the archway of a larger building. “Nothing looks the same here for very long, although that’s mostly because no one can agree on anything for more than an hour at a time.”

Remington sent the crow to swoop over the open rooftops, where it spied bone-fighters leaping and whirling in a grand arena, mazes of sheer marble walls with skeletons scaling them in a variety of physically improbable ways, vast laboratories and tiny cubicles, and a group of sculptors, masons, and architects using whirring ropes of dust to carve stone in a titanic workshop near the foothills.

“The elders encourage diversity, once you jump through enough of their hoops,” said Siham, “but woe to the hoop-averse.”

“How many of you are there?” said Jacob.

“The official number of Seekers is five thousand,” said Siham, “though half that number haven’t been seen for centuries. I’ve never seen more than five hundred at once. I’d say we’ve got three and change down there now.”

“Where are the rest?” said Remington.

“Seeking. Marrow-grip, a deep meditative state, is achieved, and then a body goes out into the world until she finds her way home. Now and then a seeking is a mission, an investigation, or some kind of a quest, the more hare-brained the better, but sometimes you just pick a direction and go. That’s what I did when I, uh, decided to leave. I walked into the Moving Desert, and when those debtors put me in their cage, I figured I’d see what the Debtor’s Pool was all about. It’s not a subject we’ve dedicated much thought to.”

“This place sounds disgustingly civilized,” said Leopold. “Utopian, even! I mistrust utopias on general principle.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Siham. “This isn’t that, though. Seekers can only tolerate each other for so long before we start to drive each other nuts. All the best seekings begin right after a disagreement. Like Shailesh says: ‘We are drawn to the City in order to leave it, Siham!’

“Which reminds me. Jacob, I’ll try to keep you out of it, but there’s probably going to be a giant-sized argument when we climb down there. I left sort of—abruptly.”

Jacob did his best to pay attention, but he was distracted by the whispering babble of Etienne, whose distress was no less profound for its diminished volume.

The street below White Gate had been attracting Seekers since Remington and the headless first ascended. It was now filled with dozens of warrior-skeletons of unimaginable strength and power, none of whom looked particularly pleased to see them.

With one hand, Siham gripped the top of the Gate, then let out her skeleton beneath her, her bones aligning like links in a chain separated by lengths of dust. Remington and the headless were the first to climb down, and once Jacob and Leopold had been convinced to follow, Jacob gripping Etienne’s babbling head in one arm and cinching down awkwardly with his legs, the skeletons in the street lent a grudging hand, climbing up the chinks in the wall and hefting the newcomers down one at a time.

Jacob was grasped around the waist by a sand-colored skeleton who scampered down the vertical surface of the wall as quickly as he could, eager to distance himself from the newcomer’s rotting flesh. “Another of Bonemaiden’s disasters,” he muttered as he backed away.

“Bonetown!” cried Remington as he touched down. The woman who’d carried him tried to rejoin the crowd, but he clapped his arms around her spine and hugged her close. “Gee, it’s good to be home!”

“Is it good?” she said as she disengaged. “A concept difficult to define. Is it home? More slippery still. Be less hasty in your conclusions, visitor. Study slow knowing. That’s the Seekers’ Way.”

“Ignore her advice,” whispered a second skeleton. “Know like a mote that dances on the wind! Define with the impulsive strength of a frog’s tongue! Do whatever comes to mind—
that’s
the Seekers’ Way.”

“I’ve already had my fill of this place,” said Leopold, holding up a hand. “Would you be so kind as to fling me back over the wall now?”

Jacob stared at the crowd, which had swelled to at least two hundred. A few of them shone like Siham, but the rest were covered, to various degrees, in a resinous stain that reminded Jacob of the Horde.

“What does the patina signify?” he whispered to Siham under cover of Etienne’s whispers.

“The brighter the bone, the more recent the scouring. Some only do it once, some as often as they can. It’s a thing. Since the Liminal Ode came out it’s been real sectarian around here.”

“Beg pardon?”

“The Liminal Ode. The Poet’s latest.”

Suddenly, a delicate skeleton with bones the color of eggshell skidded into the street at the back of the crowd, cried “Maiden!” in an alarmingly piercing voice, leaped over the Seekers, collapsed into a pile of tumbling bones, and reassembled at Siham’s feet. “Oh, dust-hearted Maiden,” she cried, shaking her fists so hard her bones jangled, “you left me!”

“Not you in particular, Yasmin,” said Siham. “Anyway, look: I came back!”

“That’s not the point,” said Yasmin, jouncing to her feet the better to turn her back. “You left without even a goodbye!”

“Well, I’d hate for a sentimental moment to spoil my air of desert stoicism.”

“Oh, Maiden, dwell on it no more. I forgive you!” cried Yasmin, falling to her knees and wrapping her arms around Siham’s legs. “Your new technique was wonderful! I hate you for it, just a little.”

Leaping backward, she shook her hands at the ground, launching her fingertips at the stone, but they halted a few inches above her knees, and she retracted them with a stomp of her delicate feet. “I’ll never make it out of this place.”

“Next time I’ll take you with me,” said Siham.

“That assumes you’ll ever make it out again,” said Yasmin. “Mistress Ai has been demanding your expulsion ever since you expelled yourself, though she’s lately turned to talk of jailing you. We’ve been arguing the legality of your punishment ever since. Oh, Maiden, here she comes!”

The crowd began to disperse, swiftly and with obvious regret, as a skeleton the hue of iced tea glided into the street. Stretching a finger toward Siham, she tipped her head at the city’s center and began drifting backward, her body rigid above motionless feet.

“Witches!” hissed Leopold. “Utopia is lousy with witches!”

“Siham, is that woman
floating
?” said Jacob.

“Nah. No witchcraft there, just the underworld’s single greatest reserve of stubbornness. Ai is the leader of the eternalists.”

“Eternals!” said Yasmin. “You demean us with your ‘ists’ and ‘isms.’”

“They’re the ones with the yellowy bones. Yasmin here’s a junior member.”

“We hold that eternity is within the grasp of the individual,” said Yasmin, “and refrain from the reckless expenditure of bone mass.”

“They don’t like repeat trips into the Moving Desert,” said Siham. “One scouring either turns you into a skeleton or baby powder, so they need that first one to get into the club, but they claim that too much time in the storm will fry your brain. Anyway: Ai, rather than degrading her bones even the slightest bit by taking actual steps, coats itty-bitty pebbles with her dust and lets them do the moving for her.”

“A roller-corpse,” said Remington, bumping hips with Adam and Eve.

“They say the motion Mistress has conserved will one day be expended in a single blow of unrivaled power. She strikes fear into the heart of all Seekers,” said Yasmin.

“Except me,” said Siham.

“All Seekers who are sane,” said Yasmin. “But come! We’d better make haste to the Plaza of the Ancients before Mistress Ai gets any angrier, assuming that’s possible. Oh, Maiden, what a mess you’ve made for yourself to clean up!”

The Plaza of the Ancients towered over White City, the interlocking blocks of its walls as snug as puzzle pieces, their outlines describing the shapes of corpses and skeletons, organs and weapons, mountains and rivers, all so expertly carved that no mortar was needed. The company entered through an archway, staring up at a delicate marble honeycomb that covered the walls in filigreed chambers, each one holding a fragment of a weathered skeleton: skulls, bones, and ribcages sat as motionless as museum pieces, though they buzzed with sentience. Each chamber was a sculpture in itself, combining the styles of hieroglyphics and heraldry to relate some intricate, if obscure, chronicle.

In the Plaza’s center stood a sculpture of a willow, its branches so delicate that Jacob expected them to sway in the breeze traversing the Plaza’s archways; its leaves, thin to the point of translucence, obliged, gently tinkling on thin silver chains. Mistress Ai stood below the tree, and the company followed Yasmin to its circular base, where they seated themselves like students before a lecture, Jacob painfully aware of how much noise Etienne was making. As Remington settled, the crow launched itself from his head in the direction of a bird-faced gargoyle on the Plaza’s open roof, announcing itself as it flew.

“A bird,” said Mistress Ai, “spilling black feathers on white streets.

“A pack of corpses, shedding skin and tissue, fascia and muscle, dirt and excrescence.

“A severed head, lost in madness, filling the air with tortured noise.

“The shame that trails like a poorly harnessed thread of dust from an unauthorized departure and swift return.”

She drifted to the edge of the platform, looking down on the company. “The Bonemaiden brings many gifts to our City.”

Siham sighed. “I have a name, Ai.”

“The Seekers’ Meeting has granted the Bonemaiden no name, and little wonder: when Master Shailesh indulged you, you repaid him with violent betrayal. Were it left to me, you would have been hunted and buried beneath a cairn of marble slabs. Now, as it was then, your fate is for him to decide.”

The pebbles beneath Mistress Ai’s feet trickled to the floor. Gently, she drew her foot forward, stepping onto the tiny stones and gliding past the company. “Master Shailesh will deal with you presently,” she said, rolling toward an open archway. “Yasmin, consider well the company you keep.”

“Now there’s a skeleton I can understand,” said Leopold. “I can always make time for mystic crypticism, provided that it’s concealing an insult.”

For a long while, the only sounds in the Plaza were the tinkling of marble leaves and the ceaseless monologue emerging from Etienne’s mouth. Then Siham began pacing below the watchful sockets of the disembodied warriors, her feet clacking angrily on the floor.

“Why do they call you the Bonemaiden if your name is Siham?” said Remington.

“Because there are no dogs for them to kick.”

“That’s unfair!” said Yasmin. “Even Ai was called Bonemaiden until she passed her first review. Every apprentice must foreswear her name until she’s recognized by the Seekers’ Meeting.”

“But I’m too willful to name,” said Siham, “or too strange, or too contrary. I’m always
too
something, that’s the consensus, although it’s rarely the same thing twice.”

“What did you do, anyway?” asked Remington.

“Oh!” cried Yasmin. “What Maiden did was terrible! And a little amazing. After she failed her review for the tenth time—is that right, Maiden? Ten times?”

“Who’s counting?”

“Well, after her most recent failure, she built an enclosed room and remained there for months. What noises she made! Some Seekers said she was carving up her own bones, so she could emerge in a cloud of dust and slice us all to pieces!”

“We have more than a few drama queens in our fair City.”

“When she emerged, she challenged Master Shailesh, her own teacher, to a duel.”

“Shailesh is a hothead,” said Siham. “It took about a goad and a half to get him to agree that I could go seeking if I could best him in battle.”

“Even before this duel, Maiden’s skills as a bone-fighter were legendary. Master Hamish says she’s as fast a learner as Inpu the Faithless! A frightening proclamation, I’m sure you’ll agree. But however advanced she may be, no apprentice may go seeking without passing three reviews and an ordeal, which usually takes twenty more years of training than the Maiden received—so you can understand how scandalous this was!

“Master Shailesh cleared the training grounds, and White City stood around its edges to watch. For those who haven’t met Master Shailesh, I’ll tell you, he’s a terrifying man!”

“If you find large puppies terrifying.”

“He’s so dedicated a fighter that he ground his own left kneecap into powder in order to wield the longest dust-thread ever seen.”

“He also lost half its mass when a strong wind interrupted the grinding.”

“When, at the start of that terrible duel, he let out his cutting-arm to its full length, everyone knew that he was serious. Swinging it over his head, he cried, ‘I will teach you this lesson if it costs me my vows!’”

“He says that to rocks when he stubs his toe.”

“Master Shailesh bounded at her like a white lion, but before he had drawn near enough to strike, Maiden drew her arms behind her back and flung them forward, propelling her fingertips like ten arrows toward his backbone! A huge quantity of dust was required to shoot those arrows, but more impressive still was the force behind them: each struck one of Master’s vertebrae hard enough to send it bursting from his back, so that his dust-whip was sucked through his spine! And the moment his whip was gone, Maiden entangled him with her ten threads and drew so close that many feared she’d gone the way of Inpu and was about to behead her own Master. But she only whispered something to him. Oh, Maiden, tell us what it was!”