The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter (12 page)

Through the visor, Pan Renik discerned the altering expression on the woman’s face as he climbed carefully up onto the rim of his nest. He crouched over her, making sure his toes curled on branches and not on the giant membrane, protecting it from his long toenails. She looked at him, perplexed. Concerned. Maybe even a little hopeful? He took great care, as he moved closer, not to damage the frame of the precious device.

Beneath the woman’s shoulder protruded the handle of his wooden mace. He had made this weapon himself, using bark and cloth to smooth the wood. Touching the mace now, rubbing the shaft with his rough fingertips, he said, “And where were you going?” He almost asked,
Who knows you are here
?, but decided, at the last moment, to shut up.

Holding the shaft of the mace made him feel stronger, confident; he ground his remaining teeth together, recalling (with great distaste and shame) his earlier fear—fear that this woman had caused.

Meanwhile, she coughed, and continued coughing for some time, unable to offer any response. When she did speak again, Pan Renik no longer understood the words she used, for they were not in his tongue.

He began to work the mace out from under her heavy body.

“Rescue,” she said, suddenly, her voice dry and weakened, struggling to lift one hand toward him. “My friends are still there. I must tell someone. Listen. If they come looking for us. We found a ship. In stasis. A mother. We boarded her. But she wasn’t discarded. And I took her seegee from her console. I stole it. And when I touched the surface, I felt the connection, the jolt. She used me. She was waiting for someone, someone like me, for ages. Her symbiotes had all been killed. But there was a brood ship. And when we tried to get away, we were shot down.” She licked her lips. “It’s insane. This world. We crashed . . . But I came up again, to send for help, because no transmissions get out from these horrid clouds. My friends told me it was crazy but I insisted. They were waiting. The drones. They saw me. And now I can’t move.”

She had begun to weep.

Against the dawn’s light, Pan Renik slowly raised the mace above his head. Too many words, he thought. Just like a padre. Too many words, spinning around. For an instant, the briefest of hesitations, while he tried to consider options, he paused. But he came up with no options. There were never options. He felt only vague remorse as he brought his weapon down, with all his might and frustration, trying to destroy what was left of his fear, smashing the woman between her shocked eyes. A little remorse, but not much.

Looking down through the parchment, shacks and cluttered markets appeared heaped, as if thrown from the window and abandoned before the slightest logic and pattern could be imposed. Beyond them, the River Crane seemed blurry and a more uniform sepia than usual, most likely due to her hangover and the dampness that sprung to her eyes.

Outside, there had been rain.

The chatelaine waited for Octavia to return. Her bedchambers felt colder than usual. Because she had not yet ordered it cleaned, the air was still rank with scents: stale wine gone acrid from half-full cups left in the corners of the room and on the few available surfaces; bodily fluids from countless bodies, passing through, essences of which rose above the heaped bedclothes and the strange, scattered devices like spirits of her lost evenings; decaying crusts of food, desiccated and rotting on plates forgotten under the bed. She felt quite ill. Buried like this, in her own city, as most of the palace was—quite literally—allowed the standard brew of city smells to infiltrate from outside, and at times penetrate her room, but the chatelaine had added her own contributions to the mix from within. These combinations nauseated her now.

Most pungent of all was the smell of fright, from her menagerie.

Her poor, poor pets, traumatized by the intruder during the night. Now they were tired from their displays of fear and merely quivered, silently.

What was left of her menagerie, anyhow.

The chatelaine knew she was a leader wont to excesses and, as such, existed in a world filled with the residues of her indulgences. She lived with this knowledge every day. Could the kholic help her change? She imagined scenarios of the two of them together, sharing absurdly mundane domesticities.

Rustles from a rat or other vermin caused the chatelaine to turn from the hazy cityscape: a beast ran across the reeds that carpeted the central part of her timber floor. Not a rat. A faster creature, on two legs. Reddish. Long tail. A jinn, perhaps? Too fast for her to be sure. Some new, unclassified beast, escaped from the dungeon, or even created up there?

The creature vanished behind a curtain.

She sighed.

Just like she had told the pretty kholic, the chamber’s big fires were nearly out. The fireplace itself, which was as tall as a person and two such lengths in width, held but a few sad, smoldering logs. No wonder the pervasive chill. During the previous evening—flushed, eager, much too drunk—she had dismissed her servants, including the fire-tenders. (To their great relief, no doubt.) Though this was a usual call, it was also a stupid one; often these fires expired; often her chambers became cold. All the stone, she imagined. But did it seem strange that, beyond, the city sweltered? Perhaps it was she who radiated this chill?

Regardless, she was a bad mother.

When Octavia returned, she would tell the girl how she felt.

And then visit her father.

Turn over a new leaf.

Be forgiven.

She put her fingers together, raised them to her lips.

Surprising, sometimes, that servants ever returned. Then again, what choice did they have? They surely must be afraid of what they might see.

The chatelaine nearly smiled.

A void had been left when the cherub was abducted. Out in the city, there would be suffering: the void must be filled.

Even from where she stood she saw, in the large mirror against the far wall, the reflection of the gallery of cages, and—near the centre—the empty one, the glaring space.

Her missing cherub represented the Main Gate—the bridge leading into Nowy Solum, and South Gate, spanning it, welcoming or threatening all those leaving or visiting the city. From her window, the chatelaine could not see these parts, but she had an awful feeling just then, a crawling on her skin, and she wondered if someone or something unpleasant might be arriving just now—or would arrive shortly—through the unprotected gates.

“We came over the sand for two days. We left our home ’cause my boy was not right in the head but then a light come down and touched him, changed him, put ideas in him. Only he don’t know what they mean and he needs someone to unlock ’em. Or explain ’em. See? A light come down from the sky and we needed to leave home.”

Path’s father had paused to take a sip of murky water. Then he choked for a while. In the lantern light, his skin appeared pale. His hands shook. Path was perched on the table, in his sling. Because of his position, he could not see much of this hovel, nor of their host—just a wall of dry reeds.

“A finger of light touched him?”

“Yes.” His father wiped at his chin. “That’s what I said. Didn’t see it happen, though. He was outside, in the garden. Watching for lizards. He would scare lizards away. That’s what he did.” Another pause. Father glanced at son, who stared back, unblinking. “There’s not many people where we live. After this here light hit him, he was a new boy. Smarter. Not like the boy we tried to raise. I didn’t believe him at first. But he was different.”

“You do now?”

“What’s that?”

“You believe him now?”

“He talks in his sleep. Says things no one could understand. Words no one knows. He’s changing every day. He speaks in a voice I don’t know. He talks about places I don’t know. But I guess that ain’t saying much. We’re stopping in almost every home, to see if the right words will come, but he’s said nothing so far.”

“Any women travelling with you?”

“Women? I don’t see why . . . My wife, you see, she got ill a long time ago.”

The stranger chuckled wetly.

“Stop talking,” path said. “He’s making fun of you. I’m not getting anything here. This is not the place. So just stop talking.”

His father, who looked as if he had run out of oxygen, acquiesced.

Then the man who owned this property, and who had reluctantly given them water, said, “Your boy’s right about one thing. You talk too much.” He spat on the floor of his own home, which was not dirt, like the floor in path’s home had been, but a sheet of real tin. “You talk and talk.”

Path craned his neck again to try see the stranger. Fragments of the vision had begun to flicker once more in the perimeters of his mind but no directions or clarifications were presented. He saw a girl, alone, and then crowds of vague people. He saw a vast, cold void where surely nothing could live. What had his father been saying? Did he truly talk in his sleep? Everything seemed like a dream now—

Abruptly the homeowner’s face loomed. He was grinning. He had a hole where his nose should have been and only one eye. He said, “You don’t look very capable. If you’re heading into Nowy Solum, I give you a day, at best. Now get your dad to hold your cup up, drink yer water, and get on out of here.”

Path said, “We were thirsty.”

“Show yer gratitude, boy.” A knife appeared in the man’s hand. “You’re done here.”

Path’s father swiftly hoisted path. “We’ll be going,” he said. “Thanks for the water.”

Later, at another house, a large and ugly woman told them her husband was out back, and that he would eviscerate the pair of them if they did not get off the property. From the wedge of gloom behind the woman’s huge body, a child watched with saucer eyes.

The door was slammed in their faces.

All these people regarded path and his father with overt hostility. A few asked gruffly where they were from; most shoved weapons at them. They should get lost, never darken these doorways again.

“There’s something wrong,” path said, after yet another rebuke. “There’s something wrong out here . . .”

The dirty road they followed was fully defined now, and packed, the surface marked by the passage of both wheels and feet. They had passed several groups of people, heading the other way, into the badlands, and other groups had passed them, heading at a quicker pace, toward the city, which was still hidden from their view but palpable, a presence in the vicinity. None of these people had wanted to speak either, and path received no more of his visions.

Clouds overhead were the full amber of day. Path squinted. Heat grew but was not yet unbearable. Craning, as he had all morning, to look into the distance, where the road dwindled into haze and shimmering illusions looked like water, he finally became convinced that he could discern shadows and hints of spires, the minarets and fabulous structures that the salesman had once described. Fading in and out, the details did not become clear.

Yet more groups of pedestrians approached, driving animals ahead of them: sheep; a bird, flying at the end of a thin chain; a dog, erect on two legs, squinting with suspicion at path before curling one black lip. There were dirty families and wary men, travelling alone. Most, if they saw path, head bobbing above the fabric ridge of the sling, looked away. His father stumbled and bumped path hard against his sternum. Here, vendors had set up haphazard stalls, either side of them, selling sundry and sparse items. A whiff riding the breeze was suddenly rank and exciting.

And then Nowy Solum appeared from the mists, undeniable, unavoidable.

They stopped, awed.

The sheer size of the apparition had helped obscure it. Stretching across the horizon—defined by the sheer cliffs of its surrounding wall—the city dwarfed them, dwarfed the road, these homes. Ahead, a sluggish river merged with the road to enter the enormous main gates, bridged by a stone arch. Path heard his father gasp for breath, felt his father’s heart pound.

There was a singing in path’s mind, and far away voices. Before a nearby stall, in which a bearded man presided, small crowds had gathered. “There,” path said, mouth gone dry. He saw flashes of white from the counter of the stall, and these flashes seemed to be trying to relay information to him. “Go over there.”