The Godgame (The Godgame, Book 1) (15 page)

TALOS

EMBLA

Embla sighed and looked at the letter she held in her hand. She moved quickly, threading through the throngs of people, keeping her head down and hugging the sides of the buildings. She didn’t know what was going on, but there seemed to be more people on the streets than usual. They seemed to all be talking loudly, shouting to be heard over each other.

She gritted her teeth and began to cross the street. A buggy honked at her. She passed a stick-thin man in a green suit. A bare-chested boy with sinewy muscles pulling a rickshaw cursed her in a language she didn’t understand. People scowled down at her from the horses they rode.

When she reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street, a dancing, naked man painted all in silver leapt in front of her, pointed, and let out a raucous sound somewhere between a laugh and a howl. She ignored the silver man, managed to step quickly over a wet gob of something someone had dropped, and entered the mailing office.

Everywhere people stood in lines, waiting restlessly, shifting the weight of their bodies from one foot to the next and then back again. Fortunately, Embla already had the postage she required. She took a sharp right turn into the international section, blessedly empty of people, and looked for the proper slot in which to deposit her letter. Few people, she knew, sent letters these days to places outside of Talos, but the post still delivered to Nova as well as several of the island nations.

She might not get along with her sister, or approve of her sister’s lifestyle—Lena’s davon husband and mutt children—but if conflict was brewing between Talos and Nova, she owed Lena, at the very least, a warning. She still loved her sister and would never want anything bad to happen to her.

She slipped the letter into the slot marked
NOVA
and turned to leave.

~

Her next stop was with Johannes Trim, a spokesman with the House of Aesthetics. She was nervous, not used to official meetings, or being around crowds of people. She had grown used to the animals, to the simplicity of their politics. Food, safety, and a warm place to lie beneath the comet was all they required. Even the brutality of nature—fight or flight; eat or be eaten—was a preferable system, Embla felt, to Talosian politics. She had never been good with social subtleties, with coercion and manipulation, with understanding why people said one thing when they meant something entirely different. She had wanted to be good at such things, for her father, but she had never developed the aptitude. Lena was the one good at reading people, at getting people to do what she wanted them to, and Lena had thrown it all away, stomped on every opportunity she’d been given.

“You must remember, She is always listening. Have the will to call out to Her, and She will hear. Have the faith to believe, and you will be rewarded.”

Embla was passing by a small alcove off the side of the street. She stepped out of the way of the walking people and stopped for a moment to listen. The preacher was a woman, dressed all in black, her black hair spilling about her shoulders, framing a homely face, although her eyes were dark and intense with passion.

“Oh, yes,” the preacher said. “Speak, beg for forgiveness, and Awa will
hear
. But commit sin against your neighbor, and She will
see
. Steal and She will take note. Lie and She will listen. Fornicate outside your genesis and She...will...
remember
. And when this life has ended and the next begins, you will be held accountable!”

Embla watched the crowd gathered below the preacher. They were commoners, men and women in plain leathers; some even poorer, in rags, smudges of dirt on their faces and hair in unwashed tangles. Some of them swayed, as if moved deeply by the preacher’s words. Others knelt on the dirty pavement, or held their hands high in supplication before Awa.

“Let us pray.” The preacher bowed her head. “Awa, we reach out to you, your most humble of servants. Awa, our creator, our benevolent mother—hear us!”

“Hallelujah!” someone from the crowd called out.

“Yes, hallelujah,” the preacher said. “Yes!”

The rest of the crowd joined in.

Embla took the opportunity to slip away, before she was noticed.

It was strange, she thought, as she walked, these small gatherings and unofficial sermons. She’d heard of them, that they were taking place all over the City, but this had been the first she’d seen. They seemed harmless enough, but why did these people choose to congregate on the streets rather than inside one of Galen’s Temples? The only thing strange she’d heard the preacher say was her use of the female possessive pronoun in reference to Awa. It did not seem like a major distinction to Embla. Awa was the creator. What did gender matter?

~

“Why do you wish to see Auron, our beloved exarch, Keeper of Beasts?” Johannes Trim asked her from across his desk, drumming his fingers on the closed ledger before him.

Embla took a deep breath. “I have something I wish to discuss with him.”

Johannes nodded dismissively. “Yes, well, he’s very busy.
I’m
very busy. I’m afraid you’ll have to try again another time.”

Embla looked at the man, a pharom, his face long and thin, cheeks sunken and sallow as if he didn’t eat enough, his skin pale and lightly greenish. She tried to think what she could say to convince this man to change his mind. “I…” she began.

Johannes lifted a hand. “That will be all,” he said, as if dismissing an underling, which Embla was not. “Thank you for coming.”

Embla pushed her chair back and stood. “I am the Keeper of Beasts. I live on the upper reaches of the Archon’s Pyramid. I—”

“Yes, yes,” Johannes said, his long face drooping with condescension. “And you’re the daughter of Doran, Head Executioner of the House of Peace. I know all that. It makes no difference to the exarch’s schedule. There is a large shipment of imprinters coming in from the Crooked Isles today and the exarch simply cannot be disturbed.” He flipped his ledger open and began to read, ignoring her.

Embla turned and walked to the door. She stopped and turned back. She cleared her throat. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but I’m prepared to offer the exarch something he’s been after for a long time.” She waited.

Johannes slowly lifted his head, his finger poised above whatever he was reading. “And what is that?” he asked.

“Animals,” she said. “After they die… Many are rare and exotic. He could—”

“Yes,” Johannes interrupted, nodding his head. “Is that indeed what you have to offer the exarch?”

Embla nodded, although she was disgusted with herself.

“Then follow me, please.”

~

“If you want to be one of us,” Maya had said, the woman beneath Bailey’s throne of books in the School of the Unseen, “you’ll have to prove your worth. Are you up for it?”

“What do I have to do? My duties at the biopark keep me busy.”

Maya had smiled. “You’ll have to find the time.”

Embla had sighed.

“We need you to acquire an item from each of the six exarchs.”

“Acquire? You mean steal?”

“They must be personal items,” Maya had continued, “things each exarch knows intimately. A hair brush or a quill only ever used by the exarch.”

“That’s no easy task.”

Maya had nodded. “You’ll have to get close to each one, but you are one of the few with direct access to the Archon and the exarchs. You’re Doran’s daughter. You have connections.”

“My father got me my job in the biopark to keep me out of the way. I’ve never seen the Archon personally. Now you want me to steal from the exarchs? I came to the School of the Unseen to escape that world, not be caught up in it even deeper. I’m trying to find Marrow. Haven’t you been listening to me?”

Maya had shrugged. “What do you know about Marrow?”

“I… What do you mean?”

“The Scholar? The Great Philomath? Marrow, Seeker of Truth? How do you think we attract such an individual? We can’t buy him. He’s not interested in material things. We need information, something enticing enough to bring him to the City to meet with us.”

Embla had stared at Maya. “What sort of information?”

“What do you know about Archon Gideon?”

“You mean the Father of Monsters?”

Maya had nodded. “That’s the one.”

“Well,” Embla had said, thinking back to her history classes growing up, “he was Archon three hundred or so years ago... Let’s see.” Embla had held up one of her hands and counted on her fingers, beginning with her index. “He was a ruthless tyrant. He tortured and killed anyone who spoke against him. He slept with thousands of women, many of whom were from geneses different from his own. And…” She had wiggled her pinky finger. “He is the reason the laws were passed forbidding crossbreeding.”

Maya had smiled. “Very good. You remember your lessons. Yes, before the Father of Monsters, crossbreeding was frowned upon, but not banned.”

Embla had sat forward excitedly. She’d always enjoyed school growing up. “Because the children he had by the women he bedded were horribly disfigured. Even those who appeared outwardly normal displayed mental instability.”

Maya had been nodding. “The hallowgeons killed most of them. The Father of Monsters killed their mothers.”

“Okay,” Embla had said, “but what does the Father of Monsters have to do with Marrow?”

Maya had shrugged. “Do what we ask, get the items from the exarchs, and we’ll talk.”

Embla had sighed. “Fine.”

~

Johannes swept a heavy beige curtain aside and led Embla down a large, dimly-lit hall. “Hear that?” he said with a smile. “That’s Fon, the composer.”

Embla nodded.

As they came to the end of the hall, Embla could hear it more clearly. It was a beautiful piece, composed of trills and warbles, blending into a smooth and sensuous melody. And it was building, she could tell, its harmony growing more urgent, a rising momentum. She knew little enough about music, but she could appreciate the talent and skill that must go into such an extraordinary symphony, performed, no doubt, by the greatest musicians in Talos, an orchestra of several hundred.

Johannes waved her through a side door and Embla and he stepped out into a large theater. They were standing on the far side of the auditorium. Before them, row upon row of empty, anchored chairs ran down the sloped floor, halting before the stage, upon which stood a large machine controlled by a single man.

Embla gaped.

The stage was large, the machine larger, jutting outward and to either side so that its entirety remained partially obscured by the archway that framed it. A construct of polished amplification tubes, metal girders, and wire woven into intricate webs, the instrument pumped and shook, anchored to a base made from ornate wood paneling, like a piano, where a man with long, black hair sat upon a bench, working a display of keys, pedals, and levers: Fon, the composer. Fon’s body stiffened and shook with the passion of his composition, a marionette at the whim of each note.

Embla could feel Johannes Trim looking at her and smiling his condescending smile, but, for the moment, she didn’t care.

As her eyes began to take in the enormity of the site, she noticed more detail. The instrument held small chambers, wire cages, from which she could see movement. She could see bright colors, flapping wings, feathers—they were birds, and the birds were trilling, perhaps a hundred of them in concert. And beneath each cage, blood dribbled, like saliva from the spit valve of a horn. An intricate array of needles pierced each bird, torturing them into song, creating the symphony.

Embla looked at Johannes, who nodded and shrugged, bemused understand in his eyes. The sallow man leaned close to her and she could feel his hot breath in her ear. “Perion birds,” he said. “Don’t they make the most beautiful sounds whilst in pain?”

Embla’s gaze was drawn back to the spectacle. She now saw Auron, the exarch of the House of Aesthetics, sitting in the front row on a special cushion designed specifically to hold his mass, nodding along to the music while he sampled from the array of spoons set before him, each, Embla knew, a single bite of a unique and exotic dish one of his cooks had no doubt spent the entire morning meticulously assembling.

The symphony was building dramatically, the crescendo that was to end the piece. Embla could not tear her eyes away as the birds in their prisons began to flutter more rhythmically, to writhe more frantically, in increasing pain. Fon moved too, standing up suddenly, knocking his bench to the floor. He played and pulled and pushed. He stomped on pedals and threw his head back, exposing his teeth.

Auron looked on, clearly enjoying himself.

Then the final note sounded, the entire apparatus straining and trembling as if it might burst apart, the birds—with their bright green bodies and crimson plumage; with their blue-striped hoods and yellow underbellies; with their spiraling tails and purple beaks—jerked violently, their heads thrust upward, mouths open as wide as starved nestlings.