A Lion Among Men (32 page)

“The sight of me taking any exercise, I know: a taxation to credulity,” said Brrr.

“She’s ill,” said Ilianora. She moved without apparent urgency to the old woman’s side, but her voice betrayed some fretfulness at last. The ancient oracle had sloped sideways to the floor and-oh, not a pretty thing to witness-her eyes had actually rolled back in her skull, just as oracles were said to be able to do, so the blind eyes looked inward. Only a glaucous white showed between the remaining shreds of ancient eyelashes.

Ilianora took Yackle onto her lap, like a mother to a child, but reversed.

“She’s shamming,” said the Lion without conviction.

“Oooh, that’s revolting,” said one of the boys. “Those eyes.”

“She’s trying to hold us here,” said the dwarf as Yackle began to shake. “She is in cahoots with the powers that be. Pay her no mind. Lion, bust down that door before I bust your chops.” He stumped across the floor and showed the Lion a laughable little fist, so close that the pig-bristle hairs growing out of the knuckles went all blurry, and the Lion had to pull back to get them in focus.

“Can we do something to help?” asked Ilianora. Yackle had torn her robes open, and Ilianora tried to close them again. Her attempts were rebuffed by the ancient maunt’s thrashing limbs. The sound unreeling from her mouth was a taper of protest; it hummed against-he could hear it now himself, Brrr could-the groan of the oakhair trees as their harp strings swung in the smoke, and shimmered atonally, and then snapped. All this he could hear, and more besides: The room had fallen so very still as everyone watched Yackle in the throes of some condition, as if in the maw of some invisible beast.

“Water for her,” murmured Ilianora, and one of the boys brought forward a tumbler of water. But Yackle’s mouth wouldn’t stay still enough to cup the liquid, and it drained off her face to stain her robe.

Brrr watched as old Shadowpuppet, who had kept its tail tightly wound about its furled legs, now stretched with effort and scrabbled, you’d have to say, across the floor. It put out a paw tentatively against the heavy cross-laid door, and walked its front legs stiffly up the panels till it was leaning against the door like a fragile glass buttress. The cat meowed. Brrr had heard purrs from Shadowpuppet before, but in all these weeks, nothing more expressive than a glottal hum. This complaint was vicious, like the voice of a tomcat being crossed, and reminded him, just for a second, of Muhlama’s high-flown irritability.

“Let’s go. We’re all agreed,” said the dwarf. “Even your shattery cat can tell that it’s time.”

Brrr flipped his notebook closed. Was Yackle shamming? He wouldn’t put it past her. But why would she want to hold them there? Not to do him harm-the EC Messiars wouldn’t lay a finger on Brrr, not with his letter of introduction from the EC on his person. Did Yackle know something more about the dwarf than she was letting on?

But who cared? He’d gotten a good deal of what he had come for. The old bag of bones could suffer and crumple if she wanted. That was what she had wanted. And anyway, wasn’t bolting from a crisis his special skill and trademark?

He turned back to stalking up and down a few more times. It moved the blood, loosened the joints, bulked up the muscles. It had been a long time since he had had to throw his weight around. Humiliating if he couldn’t actually defeat a door in a mauntery, but he tried not to think about that yet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dwarf rooting through the pocket of the Lion’s own weskit.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing-”

Too late. The dwarf had folded the piece of official vellum into a chevron, and was aiming-

“You don’t dare!”

The paper soared out the window before the Lion could snatch at it. “Now we’re all in the same boat,” said the dwarf affably. “No one is supplied with special defenses against being aggrieved by the Messiars, or whichever army gets here first. So stop stalling, Lion. Get us out of here before the soldiers arrive.”

Brrr could have sprung on the dwarf, swiped him sideways out the window. Mashed him to an ugly organic patty, internal organs extruded like sausage meat through a grinder. Good-bye to Mr. Boss’s unblinking unretreating stance, his outthrust bearded chin and agate eyes. His belligerence. His confidence. In one so small: so concentrated. Like Sakkala Oafish. Where did it come from?

Was the dwarf a Glikkun-avenging the Traum Massacre, after all this time?

No: That was his own nerves attacking him, a case of the humors. Or, as some called it, paranoia. As much to shake himself up as anything else, Brrr roared. The boys started. The dwarf did not.

The Lion tensed and sprung, rolling his spine forward and sideways, to take the brunt of the impact on his shoulder rather than his skull.

There was a gratifying thud, a shriek of splitting wood, and an echo, but the door did not split. The old oaken planks ran in two depths on the bias, they were laid tongue-and-groove and reinforced by iron braces. And the doorjamb was stone.

“Good one,” said the dwarf. “Very nice, that. Expected no less.”

“In words of one syllable or less,” said the Lion, “first: ow. Next: shut up. You want to take a turn, be my guest.”

Ilianora came up to Brrr to press her hands on his shoulder muscles. “Your old auntie needs help,” she said. “Wasn’t that Munchkinlander maunt who locked us in here a healer? An apothecaire? We must find her.”

“You don’t understand. If Yackle is failing at last, the last thing she wants is help,” said the Lion, shaking Ilianora off. “But I’ll try again.”

Three, four times at the door.

“Who’s in a hurry?” said the dwarf. “Not me. I can’t see the army approaching through that high window. I’m too short. So I’m totally unconcerned. I think I’ll sit here and teach myself to count in a foreign language. One, two, three, fuck, fuck, six, seven, eight, nine, fuck.”

“Mr. Boss,” said Ilianora.

“Hey, look at the see-through pussy,” said one of the boys. “She having the genuine hissy fit?”

“Hair ball, more likely,” said another.

“Glass hair ball? Ouch.”

Brrr thought: It’s as if Shadowpuppet is as alarmed by the loss of the writ as I am. Attuned to my jitters. Some sweet, small consolation.

In protection of Shadowpuppet, if no one else, the Lion made another half-dozen lunges at the door. Eventually the wood split along the grain, and the iron doorknob and lock hung at a drunken angle. It appeared that Sister Apothecaire had left the key in the keyhole. They had some job reorienting the lock to line up, but eventually they managed, and opened the remains of the door.

“Are you coming?” said the dwarf.

“She’s not in a condition to be moved,” said Ilianora. “You go, get things in order. We’ll follow as soon as we can.”

They pelted away. Their footsteps retreating down the stone stairs made an isolating sound. The mauntery echoed like a mausoleum.

Still Yackle twitched, like a blind fish unable to see the string coming out of its mouth or the fisherman overhead, but responsive to every tug. Ilianora kept one hand on Yackle’s shoulder or at her wrist.

“You have a talent for comforting the sick?” said Brrr.

“None,” she replied. “Why don’t you go with them? Nothing is holding you here.”

He had no answer so he offered none. “What’s your answer to that same question?” he said.

“By long habit,” she replied, “I don’t answer questions.”

“Could we get her on my back?” said Brrr. “Maybe I could carry her down the stairs?”

“She’s too brittle, and she’s still being bothered by a spell of something.”

“Maybe she’ll wake up and find herself an infant this time,” said Brrr, almost to himself. “With a cowardly Lion and a whatever-you-are for parents. What are you?”

“I’m the handmaiden of the Clock, I suppose,” said Ilianora.

“That tells me less than I want to know.”

“Are you taking notes?”

“No,” he said, “and that’s a promise.”

She drew her knees up to her chin. She looked like a small Ice Monkey, almost, in her white veil. With Yackle in her white, too, they might be Granny Ice Monkey with Granddaughter. Two weird characters in their matching shrouds.

“Are you Mr. Boss’s daughter, or are you married to him?” asked Brrr. “I can’t see why anyone would commit herself to a clockwork oracle, unless it was the family business.”

“I am not married, and will not be so,” said Ilianora. “I’m no longer fit for bearing children.”

“You have white hair, but you aren’t that old…”

“I had myself closed,” she said, “after having heard enough of human iniquity to despair of the species. Closed. So I tread the world lightly, lightly as possible, and I bring no infants forward to suffer as I have done. I worked with the underground vigilantes who struggle against the tyrant on the throne of the Emerald City-our Emperor Apostle-until I learned that in the service of their honorable goal they are capable of actions as dishonorable as the Emperor’s-then I gave myself up for lost. I wandered without aim or ambition, a sad folly of a way to spend one’s life.”

“I wouldn’t know, being drenched in accomplishment each time I open a new door-”

She laughed at him; a bell-like sound so devoid of malice that it made his ears ring. Brrr pressed her to continue, not just for the story but because he was blushing. “And the Clock found you and took you hostage?”

“You could say that,” she said, “if you believe in oracles. Since I don’t believe in fate, it can’t hurt me. Its capacity to predict my days is nil. I have apprenticed myself to the Clock’s company, and I serve as a kind of watchdog of its prophecies. The dwarf is unscrupulous, just doing his job; he doesn’t care what mayhem is rucked up by the Clock. The boys who cycle through the company for months or even years at a time join because they are young and scared of the possibilities of life. A belief in preordained history is consoling to those with few prospects, and the boys generally come from the families of blue-coal miners or serfs. They see a little of Oz, watch the Clock tell its predictions and stir up trouble, and do the dwarf’s bidding. I suppose they think it is a way to secure a brighter future.”

“Perhaps the boys know more than you do,” said Brrr. “Maybe believing in the Clock is its own reward. You’ve never seen it tell your future for you?”

“I have no future. It wouldn’t dare.”

“You sound very cynical.”

“You’ve seen enough of life to suggest I should be otherwise?” she asked.

“As I said, a bed of roses and a walk in the park, that’s my life story. But look, here comes Yackle blinking back to life. She is an oracle without a bevy of spies or a clockwork instrument. She’s the real goods. What might she say to you, if you asked her?”

“I wouldn’t listen to it, and anyway I wouldn’t ask her,” said Ilianora. “Regularly I ask blank paper, and in all my life I’ve never known magic writing to appear on its blank surface.”

Y
ACKLE
GROANED
and made to sit up; Ilianora on one side and Brrr on the other helped her. She murmured unintelligibly. Then she spit on the floor, something thin and bubbly-liquid lace.

“I thought you were dead,” said the Lion.

“More’s the pity,” she replied, “not yet, but I may have seen my way out at last. I’ve had a Sighting, and maybe the truest one I ever had. But you have to help me. Get us out of this hell-nook.”

Brrr glanced at Ilianora and raised an eyebrow. “Lucky you,” he said to Yackle. “I’ve already cleared the doorway.”

“It’s very quiet here,” observed Yackle. She turned to Ilianora. “Where are your friends? They haven’t left without you, have they?” She became alarmed and turned back to Brrr. “It depends on them-on the Clock-I have seen it.”

“Don’t worry; they won’t have left without me,” Ilianora replied. “Give me your arm, old auntie.”

Yackle was irritable with fretfulness. “Are the sisters still in Council, or have they fled in advance of the approaching army? Help me on these steps, will you? I seem to have caught a tremble in my knees.”

“We’re here, on either side,” said Brrr. Yackle reached out her dry twiglike hand and squeezed the muscle of his right forward limb.

“Well, go ahead, you, and stop them if they are trying to flee without me,” said Yackle. “I’m not going to miss this omnibus!”

Brrr and Ilianora glanced at each other. Brrr nodded, and shifted his arms so he could support Yackle, supplying both a handhold and a backrest. Ilianora hurried down the steps ahead of them.

Shadowpuppet stuck close to Brrr’s side.

“I must rest a moment-a stitch in my side,” said Yackle. She leaned her forehead upon the stone wall and closed her sightless eyes.

“Was it upsetting? Your Sighting?”

Yackle said, “You gave it me.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You told me. You cued me to that line-‘You have to leave the way you came in.’ You told me that was for me. And I saw that it was true-it is true for me, and it is true for you as well.”

“None of this will hold up in a court of law.” But he knew that she would hear the sweet mockery in his voice as encouragement.

“I’ll tell you what I saw as it pertains to you. If you want.”

“For a lark, for a joke, to pass the time while armies are converging upon us…sure, what the hell.”

She reached her hand out, searching for his paw. He took it.

“The hunt for a Lion cub in the Great Gillikin Forest,” she told him. “Several decades ago, I’m guessing; I was never good at counting years. Male humans wanted a cub for experimental use in a lab of some sort. I saw a day of floating leaves. You know, the forest in the fall, all red and gold. I saw a circle of men closing in upon a pride of Lions. Most of them scatter, but there is a nursing mother, too tired to run, and her mate stays by her side. A family group. Around them come the men. Beating the bushes, using nets and snares, carrying for defense those hot charred stakes pulled from a portable furnace. Closing in, closing in. That Lion king, that paterfamilias, he is alert, leaping back and forth. The noose is tightening. The Lion family breaks up, hoping to cause confusion, diversion, hoping some might survive. The father and the cub escape before the explosion.”