The Godgame (The Godgame, Book 1) (16 page)

The birds slumped, many of them motionless. A couple, Embla saw, flapping wings feebly.

Fon dropped his arms and stood back gasping.

Auron began to clap, nodding his head in approval. “Quite nice,” he said. “Quite nice!”

Johannes waited a moment and then began to clap as well. “Follow me,” he said to Embla and began to walk down the aisle, approaching the exarch. “Bravo! Bravo!”

Embla held back a grimace, tried to push the horror of the situation away, and followed.

Auron turned his head so he could see who approached. “Johannes? You heard that? What did you think?”

“Only the final moments, Exarch,” Johannes said. “It was wonderful.”

Auron nodded. “Indeed. Indeed it was.” The exarch turned his attention back to the stage. “Maestro,” he called to Fon, who had turned on the stage to face his audience, standing, waiting patiently. “You play that marvelous machine masterfully. What do you call it?”

Fon bowed slightly. “I call it the Grand Avis Carillon. It took my team many months to assemble.”

“Yes, yes,” Auron said. “I would very much like to arrange a concert. How’s your schedule for next week?”

Fon looked uncomfortable. “It will take some time to catch and train more birds. As you can see, they do not survive. I would think—”

“How long?”

Fon dropped his eyes. “Three months, at least.”

“I will give you one month and a team of bird catchers.”

“But, I’m afraid, it’s not—”

Auron interrupted Fon with a wave of annoyance and the composer shut his mouth quickly and left the stage. The exarch looked down at his spoons of food, wiggling his fingers. He selected one, brought it carefully to his mouth, and slurped its contents. He chewed slowly, his eyes turned upward as he assessed the experience.

Johannes waited, Embla standing by his side.

Auron swallowed. “Hm,” he said. “Alright, Johannes. What can I help you with? I’m busy. Very busy, as you can see. After this, I must approve next season’s line.”

Johannes took a step forward. “Embla, Keeper of Beasts, has a proposition you may find interesting.”

Auron lifted a small vial from the folds of his clothing and, using the long nail of his pinky finger, scooped a tiny pile of powder black as jet from the vial, brought it to one nostril, and snorted. He replaced the stopper on the vial and it disappeared once more into his folds. “Well,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Bring her forward.”

Johannes nodded to her. Embla took a deep breath and walked forward until she was standing before the exarch, the stage and the macabre instrument looming at her back. She scanned the table set before Auron: the spoons of food, utensils, a cloth napkin, a set of magnifying goggles. Beneath the table, she saw, was the pail she was looking for, filled with discarded spoons.

Auron turned his large, liquid eyes up to her. “What do you have for me?”

Embla cleared her throat. “I work in the Archon’s Biopark. I—”

“Yes, yes, animals. Go on.”

“I...we do not have the proper funding. There are many things in need of repair,” she said, not lying about the condition of the biopark. “Food for the animals is very expensive. Proper enclosures are essential to—”

Auron raised a hand. “And how does this concern the House of Aesthetics?”

Embla glanced at Johannes, who nodded and smiled.
Awa forgive me.
“I am prepared to offer you, in exchange for the money we need, the bodies of the deceased animals.”
You’ll never get them
, she thought to herself.
Bastard.

Auron leaned forward, bumping the table as he lifted his bulk. He smiled widely. He clapped his hands together. “The animals? Really? You have such rare and unusual creatures. Oh, the possibilities!” His body jiggled with excitement. “The things my artists could do!”

Embla forced herself to smile. In her mind she could see the perion birds, writhing in pain, blood dripping, dripping.

“Yes! Oh, yes! I believe we may come to an amicable agreement. Johannes, draw up the paperwork!”

“Of course,” Johannes said.

Embla glanced at Johannes again and then back at the exarch nervously. “Wait,” she said.

Their eyes turned to her. “May I… May I come closer, Exarch?”

Auron looked at her for a moment, and then let out a feminine giggle. He waved her forward. “You would like to seal the deal with a kiss, is that it? Or perhaps you’re hungry?”

Embla gritted her teeth and walked up to the exarch. He was grinning at her and patting an empty sliver of the cushion that supported his bulk, indicating where she could sit. She sat stiffly.

“Good,” the exarch said. “Good.” One hand hovered over the table, searching for a spoon, while the other crawled at the small of Embla’s back.

Embla endured, although the exarch had a sickeningly sweet smell about him, cloying, making her lightheaded.

“You’re brean?” the exarch asked in her ear.

Embla nodded.

“So am I.” The exarch selected a spoon. “Here,” he said, bringing it up for Embla to sample. It was like a decorative flower made from petals of unidentifiable flesh cut paper thin and seared crisp with a glossy cherry at its center.

Embla knew she could not refuse and opened her mouth. Auron shoved the food between her lips and she chewed. It was very sweet, with a charred aftertaste. It sucked the moisture from her mouth as she chewed and chewed.

“What was your name again?” Auron asked.

“Embla,” Johannes answered for her from his place to the side.

Embla continued to chew while the exarch talked, trying desperately to swallow the horrid bite.

Auron sighed. “Embla. Yes, Embla. I could make you quite beautiful, you know.” He giggled again. “I have surgeons who could smooth your skin, widen your eyes, shrink your nose, without losing your brean qualities, of course. Or perhaps you’d care to play. I could have a set of masks, quite lifelike, designed for you, each a different face, one for every day of the week. Would you like that? I have artists to paint your body, to shrink your waist, to enlarge your breasts, to increase the lubrication between your legs. I could have—”

Embla stood abruptly. She swallowed the food in her mouth, gasping. “I’m sorry,” she said. She stepped back from the exarch.

Auron looked her up and down, surprise on his face.

“I have to return to my duties,” she said quickly. She moved to the aisle at the side of the stage where Johannes stood.

“Then we have a deal?” the exarch asked, clear annoyance in his voice.

“Uh-huh.” She hurried toward the door, this time in the lead with Johannes following her.

~

“Very good,” Johannes said, moving behind his desk and motioning for her to have a seat. “Shall we get started?”

Embla couldn’t get the image out of her head of the animals she cared for, some of them nearly extinct, cut into pieces and sewn into grotesque parodies, like the butchers with their oxhoags—bird beaks sewn onto primate faces; feathers protruding through reptilian scales; amphibian legs on feline bodies—all in the name of art.

Embla looked at the empty chair, then at Johannes’s condescending sneer. She thought about how good it would feel to smash his face with her fist, teeth crunching, blood spraying.

Johannes looked at her, waiting, smiling.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Embla said, spinning around and marching for the door, but not before she saw Johannes’s mouth dropping open.

She had what she came for, wrapped in a napkin and tucked into her pocket, one of Auron’s used spoons.

NOVA

ASH

From the cold mud where he’d slept, he lifted his head. He watched the people, the survivors, crowd around Mother Marlena, as the old woman whispered to them what they must do.

The people scattered into the brush, seeking out the things they needed. They scurried like rats, their eyes darting this way and that, their dirty clothes, their mud-streaked faces. They brought back branches and reeds. They brought back tangles of vine. They were camped near a swampy region of forest and they brought back scoops of thick mud, brimming from scavenged helmets, black like tar.

They began to assemble, according to Mother Marlena’s barked directions, something strange. They used the thicker sticks as support beams, lashing them to smaller kindling. It began to grow taller. They smeared the mud into the gaps and crevasses left between the sticks, unmindful of the mess they left upon themselves. They wore blank expressions as they worked, moving slowly but efficiently. Mother Marlena stood back and watched, leaning on her strange cane; she wore an expression grim but knowing.

Ash couldn’t move, sitting where he was, frozen with horror as he began to understand what the villagers were making.

“Wait,” Ash said, his voice hardly a whisper.

The slap of the mud; the squishes and squirts; the creaking dissent of the branches tightened together.

He forced himself to stand. “We should be gathering food,” Ash said. “We should be building shelter.”

No one turned, content in their work.

“Stop!” He stepped forward. “We’re not safe here. We should keep moving.”

The villagers ignored him. He was furious with them; he was a soldier in the Novan army and they should be listening to him. The thing they were building stood on its own now. It was becoming whole.

“She killed my mom with her medicine!”

The villagers stopped. They turned to look at him. Some of them shook their heads; others gave him smiles of pity. Mother Marlena stared at him, a slight smile tugging her lips. The villagers turned back and continued their work.

“That’s right,” he said, directly to Mother Marlena this time. “You’re a fake! You’re not even a real witch!”

Mother Marlena shook her head wearily.

The villagers were almost done.

The old woman pointed her cane at him. “Come and see me later,” she said. “I must discover what power runs in your veins.”

The effigy’s face began to grin.

~

Ash hunkered down beneath a tree on a dry hill at the edge of the swampy area. From a distance, he watched people from his village circle the effigy—tall and skinny, with a huge globular nose and sunken spots for eyes—calling out to it for protection.
He
was a soldier.
He
still had his rifle. They should be calling on him to help protect them.

He felt alone, and hollowed out inside. He’d wandered wordlessly through the surviving villagers, looking for other members of his family, just one sister that might have survived, but there had been no one. He knew they were all dead. He could feel them missing. The emptiness he felt must be the place where, without him even knowing it, they had filled.

“Don’t worry about it, kid.”

Ash turned just as two men emerged from the trees. They were dressed in drab civilian clothes, but they both carried Novan rifles slung by straps at their backs.

The man who’d spoken had a faintly red-tinted mustache and wore a pair of strap-on goggles, not over his eyes but holding his scrappy hair back on his forehead. The goggles were black, the kind Ash had heard allowed you to stare at the comet without damaging your eyes.

The other man had a full beard on his face like a rug, speckled with gray, which gave his eyes a sunken appearance; his shoulders broad and muscled.

“You can’t help them,” the mustached man with the goggles said. “They need their comforts.”

Ash watched the man with the mustache glance at the one with the full beard. The bearded man nodded.

The mustached man sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Let me introduce myself.” He cocked his head to the side. “My name is Niko, and this here,” he smacked the much larger bearded man on the back, “is Wolf. At least that’s what we call him.” He smiled.

Ash nodded. “What do you want?”

“Great,” Niko said. “Right to the point.” Again, he glanced at Wolf before he continued. “We’ve been looking for you.”

Ash looked carefully at Niko. “Me? Why?”

“Well,” Niko said, his eyes darting nervously away for a moment. “We’ve been watching you. We were hoping you’d join us.” He glanced down at Ash’s chest, then back up.

“Who’s ‘us?’”

Niko smiled. “I’m glad you asked.” With a jerk of his hand, he lifted a flap of cloth by his shoulder, revealing a glinting pendant.

Ash gaped. He looked down at the front of his soldier’s jacket.

“Yes,” Niko said. “You wear one as well, although I’m guessing you don’t know what it means.”

It was the medal he’d found beneath the captain’s cot, the medal depicting two crescent moons facing each other.

Niko was chuckling, but when he looked up it was Wolf who caught his attention, shaking his head grimly back and forth. “Put it away,” Wolf said. “Now.”

Ash fumbled with the pendant, unclipping it, holding it in his hand. “Sorry,” he said, and offered it to Wolf, who only continued slowly to shake his head.

“Keep it,” Niko said. “And come with us.”

Ash looked from one man to the other. He let the pendant drop into one of his pockets. “Where?” he asked.

“First,” Niko said, “to find some food. There’s an abandoned farm just on the other side of these woods. Follow me. Quickly, before the witch notices.”

~

Niko and Wolf moved fast through the woods, Ash struggling to keep up. He had his rifle unslung, the tip of its barrel bobbing in front of him. Niko led the way and then Wolf, his hulking shoulders shifting deftly to avoid low-hanging branches. They did not look back; they trusted Ash to follow, which he did with renewed excitement. It was good to move. He was happy to have new companions. These were real men—Novan mercenaries—and he could tell they were serious in their opposition to the Talosian threat. He smiled a little and his heart beat quickly.

When the trees began to thin, they slowed. Niko put his hand out, signaling for them to stop. They crouched in the bushes, looking out on a patch of land that had been cleared and tilled, unidentifiable sprouts peeking through the dark soil in evenly spaced lines.

“I believe the people who lived here were killed during the Talosian drop, but they still may have a few hens or pigeons,” Niko said. “We need to be careful.”

Wolf nodded, grunting lowly.

Ash did the same.

Niko lifted himself, flashed them a jaunty grin, then turned and began running across the field.

Wolf and Ash followed.

If there were riflemen in the trees, they’d be easy targets out in the open. Ash ducked his head a little, and trusted that Niko knew what he was doing.

Up ahead, he could see the farmhouse, a modest cabin painted a rusty red color, peeling and flaking. The barn, a little further on, was larger than the house, covered with the same paint.

They dashed across the field and flung their backs against the side of the house, panting, Ash more out of breath than the others.

Somewhere distantly, Ash heard rifle shots, but Niko didn’t seem to notice and made a motion with his hand, sending Wolf ahead this time.

Wolf moved around the house, stopping only briefly to look from side to side, then up the steps to the front door. Niko gave Ash a pat on his shoulder and then went after Wolf.

Niko and Ash waited, using the stairs as cover, while Wolf investigated the door. After only a moment spent of trying to open it, Wolf lifted his foot and kicked the door open. He nodded to them grimly, and disappeared inside.

Ash stood to follow, but Niko stopped him with an upraised hand.

They waited.

Ash scanned the field, eyeing the trees closely, that trembled with anticipation in the wind. There was something familiar about this sight, something menacing. A shiver ran through him.

Wolf’s head appeared from the open doorway and waved them inside.

Niko and Ash ran up the steps and into the house.

~

“Stay here,” Niko told him, and he and Wolf left him alone.

Ash looked around. He was sitting at the table in the main room of the farmhouse. There was a wood-burning stove and built-in cupboards and counter space. There were several other chairs and a scattering of feather-stuffed pillows. It was a cozy little house. It reminded him of…

He gulped and forced the thought away. He was a soldier now. He had to control his emotions; he couldn’t be weak anymore. He stared at a rack of pots and pans, which seemed to rock gently where they hung, until he had himself under control.

He stood, to explore the house further, but instead staggered around collecting a few of the pillows. He tossed them into a pile in the corner and fell into them.

Almost instantly, he was asleep.

~

Someone was shaking him, forcing him awake. He opened his eyes and Niko’s face bobbed into view. “It’s okay,” Niko said. “You can sleep. I just thought you might like something to eat first.” He smiled.

Ash sat up and blinked.

“We found bread and cheese and the water from the well is still sweet.” He offered Ash a cup.

Ash took the cup and brought it to his lips. He swallowed and it was good.

Wolf was sitting at the table, his large and hairy hands resting before him. He lifted a chunk of bread, ripped a bite free, and chewed. He gave Ash a nod.

Niko helped Ash to stand. “Come and sit,” he said.

Ash flopped into one of the chairs across from Wolf. The cheese was arrayed in raw chunks on a plate—different kinds, some speckled with blue, others shot through with veins of pink—and there was a knife from the kitchen to cut it and a long loaf of bread.

Niko took another chair and the three of them began to eat.

~

“We checked the perimeter. We’re safe. At least for the moment,” Niko said.

Ash took another gulp of water and sighed. They’d divided the pillows and now sat each in their own corner of the main room, facing the wood-burning stove that now glowed, radiating heat.

“We didn’t find any hens, but there’s an oxhoag in the barn. An oxhoag! We fed and watered it and we’ll take it back to camp in the morning. Tonight, we’ll sleep here.”

Wolf grunted amiably, rolling a massive cigarette between his fingers.

Ash laid his head back.

“Wish I’d gone on that trip when I had the chance,” Niko said. “I had an offer. I could have been sailing the seas right now. I could be on a beach in Feluscia, eating fruit and soaking in the cometlight. I’d spend weeks doing nothing, lying about; maybe find a little opium and a beautiful woman to prepare it for me. I can see her now, her smile lighting up my life.” Niko sighed.

Ash didn’t say a word. He sipped his water.

Niko waved his hands irritably at Wolf. “And I wouldn’t take this guy.” He turned to Ash. “He doesn’t know how to relax. He wouldn’t know what to do with a beautiful woman if she used her breasts to smack him in the face.” He laughed.

Ash shrugged and smiled.

“Doesn’t exist,” Wolf said, his face remaining grim.

Niko scowled. “What doesn’t?”

“The island of Feluscia,” Wolf said.

“What? Of course it does,” Niko said. Then, to Ash, “He’s always like this, doesn’t believe in anything. If it were up to Wolf, there wouldn’t be anything wonderful in the world, just war and death.”

Ash looked over at Wolf and watched the large man shake his head, but the large man did not reply.

“Doesn’t believe in Orealis either,” Niko said. “When we first met, I told him that’s where I was gonna go. Told him I’d find it.”

“Is that the secret colony of philosophers?” Ash asked.

Niko gave him a look of surprise. “That’s right. A haven for free-thinkers and radicals.”

“Is that the place where the people glow?”

Niko was nodding. “Yup. From what I heard, there’s a big mushroom farm there and the spores are on everything, including the people. Gives them a phosphorescent look, like ‘flies in the light of the comet’ an old friend of mine once told me.”

“My dad told me about it once, but my mom just laughed at him and shook her head. I guess she didn’t believe either.”

Niko clapped him on the back and smiled widely. “Well, I believe. That’s what counts, right?”