The Crooked Letter (34 page)

The invisible ‘fingers’ eased, and Seth was able to move again. ‘Thank you,’ he said, with as much grace as he could muster. Agatha echoed the sentiment.

The storm rumbled again.
It was an easy boon to grant. No one saw what happened here, apart from you small things
—
and what could the fomore do about it, anyway? They can prick me all they want. I’m not going away.

Agatha dipped close to hover at Seth’s side as Xol finally caught up with him. Their diaphanous wings overlapped, but seemed unaffected.

‘Are you unharmed?’ the dimane asked him.

‘Yes. Thanks to Agatha.’

She acknowledged his comment with a bare nod. It occurred to him that Nehelennia and the rest of her kin might not have thanked her for saving him. The longer he was alive, the more danger the realm was in.

‘Have you seen the others?’ she asked Xol.

‘Not yet, but we’ll find them.’ His gold eyes slid away, and he pointed upward, to where a bright point of light was beginning to shine through the gloom. ‘Onward and upward. We have a long way to go.’

Seth took a deep breath and indicated that he was ready. With wings blurring and vibrating at their backs, and the feeling slowly returning to his cold-numbed fingers, they ascended out of the heart of the storm.

* * * *

‘Our world was born at terrible cost. There was a

war, some say
—
a war between gods whose

names were strange and battles stranger. The war

between the gods destroyed the world that was

and made it into the world that is. The

wastelands and ruins and empty cities are built

on the bones of the dead. Our songs are full of

sadness and loss. What has been broken cannot

be mended.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
FRAGMENT 166

adrian’s memory of Lascowicz’s lair — of a square with an X joining each corner — was quite different to the ground-level perspective he presently endured. Previously, from Kybele’s supernatural perspective, it had seemed a relatively simple arrangement of buildings and roads with Ellis at the centre; from a street or two away it was a tangle of walls and lanes as confusing as any other city block. Towers loomed on all sides. It was impossible to see further than the nearest building, unless one stood exposed in the middle of a street or intersection. The only navigational clue was the light-shrouded tip of the Transamerica Pyramid itself, when it was visible at all.

To make matters worse, the invisibility charm had an unexpected side effect. The act of blending them into the background put some of the background into them. He could, as a result, taste the city on his tongue and smell it in his nose more intimately than he had ever desired. Rock, mortar, glass, steel — and dust, grime, mildew, rot. All seeped steadily into him. He wondered what would happen if the charm remained in effect too long. Would he and the city blend permanently into one?

He had no intention of finding out. Concentrating on his footing to avoid making any sound, he followed Gurzil’s broad back as Kybele led them closer to the wolf’s lair. The cloud cover was dense overhead. Rain swept over them, at first bitterly cold and needle-thin, then warm and thick, saturating. Gusts of chilled air caught them by surprise, then abated. On one occasion, Hadrian almost slipped on a surface that turned out to be ice. The weather was as screwed-up as the city itself.

Due to the dense cloud cover, there were no stars or moon. The only light came from the ghostly effulgence sweeping up and down the besieged Kerubim. Hadrian still hadn’t worked out whether the light was a symptom of the attack or of a defence against it, and at this stage it didn’t matter much either way, he supposed. The important thing was getting into the lair undetected and finding Ellis.

They followed a series of alleyways that were so cramped Gurzil had to turn side-on to squeeze through, yet were so tall in places that the tops disappeared into darkness. Kybele led them under a tangle of exposed pipes that might once have pumped steam from one building to another but were now cool to the touch, and brought them to a studded steel door, streaked and stained by age. There she stopped, and they stopped with her. Their breath fogged in the cold air — except the Galloi, who didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

‘We wait here,’ she whispered, ‘for the sign.’

‘How will it come?’ Gurzil asked.

‘We’ll know it when we see it.’ She sat down beside the door with her back to the wall. The strange brass instrument she had produced before summoning Mimir came out of her pocket again. The filthy bricks behind her were clearly visible through her head. ‘It won’t be long, I think.’

Hadrian controlled his impatience. He wanted to keep moving. They knew where Ellis was, were on the verge of rescuing her, and it seemed counterintuitive to stop right on the brink. His palms itched. Utu vibrated softly in his right hand.

You smell blood,
whispered the staff.
I smell it through you.

He sniffed the air but noticed nothing unusual. If the staff was telling the truth, then the scent was too faint for him to consciously detect.

Apart from pale ghostlight reflected off the clouds and the occasional roll of thunder, the city was silent and dead around them. Hadrian was beginning to forget what it used to be like: he tried to remember the sound of traffic, but it wouldn’t come; he tried to picture the sidewalks full of passersby, but the image seemed ridiculous. The city was a monolithic structure best suited to creatures of similar stature. Humans may have built it, and even thought they owned it for a time, but the gods had returned to claim it for their home. And they had brought exterminators with them.

He became aware of a faint sound that wasn’t thunder. It was a rapid panting, much like a dog would make after running hard. The sound was so unexpected in the dead city that it stood out. Even after the tree and the raven, the thought that some natural creature apart from himself might have survived the city’s apocalypse still filled him with hope — until he looked up the alley and saw red eyes reflected back at him.

The panting came closer, and so did the eyes. Gurzil had noticed them too. He stiffened at Hadrian’s side and cracked his strange fingers. The shape of a large Great Dane padded out of the shadows, its ears up in points. The long face, all angles, stared expressionlessly at them as it approached. Its hide was chocolate brown fading to black at its jowls and paws.

It stopped several metres away and stared coldly at them. Its flanks rose and fell in time with the panting. Something was wrong with its shape: its sides bulged and its stance was slightly splay-legged. Only after a good minute did Hadrian realise that the dog was pregnant.

That it could see them — or smell them — perfectly well was obvious. It growled, and Gurzil stepped forward.

‘Don’t touch it,’ warned Kybele. She was still seated behind them, unconcerned. ‘Let it be.’

‘What is it?’ Hadrian whispered.

‘A ghul. It’s come to let us know that it and its kind are here.’

The growl ceased, and the dog went back to breathing heavily. Spittle dripped from its overhanging jowls.

‘Is it real?’

‘The ghul are hosts, not ghosts,’ she said. ‘The dr’h, their riders, have managed the leap across Bardo to take new homes. It won’t harm us if we don’t harm it. They might even help us.’

The dog completed its blank appraisal of them then turned away. Hadrian noticed, as it padded back up the alley into shadow, that its rump was covered in matted blood. Its belly and teats were hideously swollen.

He shuddered. Was this what life would be like, he wondered, if the Cataclysm wasn’t reversed? An endless series of perversions and possessions? Or was life meant to be this way, and only the recent separation of the realms had led humans to think otherwise?

Something screeched loudly across the sky. Hadrian looked up, recognising that awful sound from his first day alone in the city. He saw nothing above but black sky.

Then, out of the blackness, something descended. It was small, the size of a knife-blade, and fell as gently as a feather.

It
was
a feather. Black and glossy, perhaps from the belly of a big bird like a crow or a raven, it zigzagged softly into their midst and settled onto the ground at Kybele’s feet.

‘It’s time,’ she said. She rose and turned to confront the door. The handle turned easily under her hand. She swung it open to reveal a dark, echoing interior. ‘Let’s get this done.’

With a grunt of agreement, Gurzil followed her inside.

* * * *

The darkness was complete, but Hadrian could still see. They were in a kitchen large enough to serve a small restaurant. Pots and woks still rested on stoves that had stopped working days ago; the air was thick with the smell of rotten vegetables and meat. Kybele led them unhesitatingly through it and out the far side.

Into another kitchen. This one was larger, industrial-size, with metal counter tops. Knives and pots hung from meat hooks fixed to the ceiling. A line of massive burners stretched along one wall.

From there they entered a third kitchen, a cramped apartment facility with barely enough room to hold the four of them. A bowl of spoiling cat food filled the air with the stench of fish. Hadrian tried not to look at the pictures stuck by magnets to the fridge door as he passed. Someone had lived here, once; now they and their cat were dead.

The city was rearranging itself — and it wasn’t only the external world, the roads and the buildings, migrating and recombining according to strange geometrical laws that had more to do with Jung than Pythagoras. The interior worlds were clearly shifting, too.
Like attracts like,
Kybele had said, in this case forming a sequence of kitchens. Perhaps elsewhere there was a chain of bedrooms, or laundries, or closets.

Kybele took them past an apparently endless series of sinks, flour spills, spice racks and food processors. The rotting smell was ever-present and too powerful to ignore. Perhaps the stink would hide them from the Wolf’s finely tuned sense of smell, Hadrian thought, even as the taste of city dust became stronger, cloying at the back of his throat.

At one point, the earth jerked beneath their feet. This wasn’t the same sort of tremor he had experienced before, that of the world rearranging itself under him. This was a solid boom, followed by a dwindling tail of aftershocks, as though something truly enormous had been dropped from a great height.

Knives and forks rattled in drawers. Cups and plates tinkled. Kybele paused in mid-step, then continued.

‘Nothing they can’t handle,’ she muttered without explanation.

Hadrian’s heart was beating loud and fast by the time they reached the final door. It felt as though they had been traversing the city’s interior spaces for longer than an hour. Without a working watch, there was no way of telling.

Kybele stopped at the exit to look at each of them in turn. Her translucent face was barely visible in the darkness.

‘We get the girl, and we get out,’ she said. ‘Don’t stop to do anything fancy.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gurzil. ‘Keep the Feie from me no more. I am hungry for breakfast!’

With a warning look, Kybele opened the door and waved Gurzil ahead of her. The bullish figure shouldered his way through, closely followed by the Galloi. Hadrian gripped Utu tightly in both hands. He could hear the sounds of fighting coming from the other side of the wall: weapons clashing; cries from a variety of throats; a ghastly scream. Flashing light cast strange shadows on the wall opposite the door.

‘Hold fast,’ said Kybele. ‘You are very close to her now.’

He swallowed, suddenly terrified.

‘Take my hand. We’ll do it together.’

Her strong fingers interlaced with his. There was no turning back.

* * * *

Gurzil and the Galloi guarded the door as Kybele and Hadrian emerged. He looked around to get his bearings. The world had changed during their kitchen trek. Fire leapt from building to building; flames coiled like whips around flagpoles, window frames, wooden facades — anything that offered a purchase. Fragments of glass sparkled over every flat surface like water after a sun-shower. It looked as though all the windows along the street had exploded at once; numerous tracks marred the sparkling crystalline fields. Many feet had come this way since the shattering had occurred.

Two human-shaped bodies lay in growing pools of blood under a lamppost. A car smoked blackly, casting a foul stench across the scene. Behind the rising plume, the Transamerica Pyramid shone like a sliver of the sun, the light enshrouding it bright enough to cast shadows, even off their translucent bodies. The air was dense and humid.

They were on the southern boundary of Lascowicz’s lair, with the pyramid high and bright to his left. The nearest diagonal road would take them north-west to the centre, to the park where Ellis was being held. Where the other diagonal of the X intersected with the southern and eastern boundaries of the lair, a fierce battle was taking place.