Butcher Bird (16 page)

"It's a little after midnight when the guy, Pablo, gets off. He pulls around the front of the hotel in the smallest car I've ever seen. This car'd give a fetus claustrophobia. I'm polite, so I squeeze into the back. Pablo and Trina are up front.

"He starts driving and we don't know where the hell he's taking us. I'm suspicious, because that's my nature. But Pablo is cool. He takes us by some old buildings where Jean-Paul Marat and other French Revolution psychos used to live. He takes us into a dark, wet park where it's just starting to snow. This is the park where the best hookers hang out. Sure enough, there's a woman in a fur coat standing at an intersection, looking like she's waiting to cross. As we pull near her, she opens the fur coat. She's naked underneath, a Victoria's Secret wet dream. Pablo asks if we've ever seen Versailles. We hadn't, so he drives us out."

Spyder spun the Hornet's metal strands, and thumbed a stud on the grip. Spring-loaded spikes popped from both ends of the weapon. The Count had explained that when a fighter destroyed an enemy's sword, the spikes could be driven into the opponent's midsection as a finishing blow.

"Now, this is after midnight on Christmas Eve. In Paris. Everything is closed. Does this stop Pablo? Hell, no. He drives us all the way around Versailles until, in the back, we spot a guard gate that's open. This is too good to pass up. We sneak inside.

"There's a guard house maybe ten feet away, and we can hear the guards inside getting juiced on Christmas cheer. They don't care that three idiots are sneaking into a national monument. Did I mention that we'd been drinking?"

"I took that for granted."

"By now, the snow's stopped and there's mist everywhere. We're not drunk enough to try and bust into the palace itself, but there's acres of gardens out back. We wander back there for an hour, whispering, hoping not to set off any alarms. At times, the fog is so thick, we can't see anything, even standing next to each other. Leafless trees appear out of nowhere and then vanish again into the gloom. We sit on benches and smoke and try to peek inside the palace to see the Hall of Mirrors or where the Sun King might have shagged a mistress in secret.

"We couldn't see anything and the cold was starting to sober us up. Now we're getting nervous, so we decided to get out of there. Of course, when we went back, the guard door was locked. There's nothing to do but climb one of the stone walls to get out, and the only wall low enough to climb was right by the guard shack. We started up and hoped to god that the guards stayed put. We had to walk along the top of one wall and drop over the side of a second to get out of the place. The whole time we were going, I was praying, Please, Lord, don't let them find us sneaking out of there with a Peruvian. They'll think we're Shining Path guerillas and never believe we didn't plant a bomb or something."

What was weird about the Count's weapon was that, as polished and well-balanced as it was, its surface felt uneven and rough. Like maybe it hadn't been built—and even here, in this insane new world he inhabited, it struck Spyder as an odd idea—but as if it had been grown, like a flower.

"Is that it?" asked Shrike.

"I didn't get to the good part. The guards came outside with their stinky cheese and we had to shoot our way out."

"You did not."

"No, we didn't. We drove back to the hotel, ran upstairs and hid, waiting for the gendarmes to come and take us to jail on Christmas Day. But they didn't come and we got away with it. I suppose, it's not much of an adventure, as far as adventures go. There's no sex or imminent death or flying monkeys, but for some reason it sticks in my mind as a kind of perfect night."

"And the cynical tattooist is revealed to be a romantic."

"All losers are romantics. It's what keeps us from blowing our brains out."

"We'll reach the city by midday tomorrow, if we get moving by dawn," said Count Non.

"Good news," said Primo. "We need to reach the Kasla Mountains by the full moon. A shadow cast through a certain rocky promontory is the only way to find the entrance to Hell. If we miss the moon, we'll have to wait a month until the next one." He made a face and rubbed the shoulder where his arm was missing. Spyder felt for the guy. His side was hurting after the all-day hike.

"Fuck that," said Lulu. "Fuck that with Michael Jackson's pet monkey."

"Full moon's just a few days off. Think we can make it?" Spyder asked Shrike.

Shrike was smoking Spyder's last cigarette, puffing, then passing the butt to him. Spyder took a drag, then passed the precious smoke to Lulu, who opened her mouth to accept it like a communion Host. She smoked and passed the butt to Shrike, who leaned on her cane, lost in thought.

"We have to make it," Shrike said. "We can't hide out here like bugs in the sand for a month. We're lucky to have made it this far."

They sat in the entrance of a shallow cave, which served as cover for the small fire they had going to ward off the cold desert night. Earlier in the evening, they'd stacked brush at the cave entrance to diminish the glow of the fire, hoping not to be spotted by any scouts from the Seraphic Brotherhood, the Erragal prince or any of the other far too interested parties who might be looking for them. Spyder wasn't sure if "lucky" was the word he'd have used to describe their situation, but they were alive, and he had to admit that that counted big time in the luck department. But his gratitude lessened with every stab of hunger and throb of his injured ribs.

"I wonder what Rubi's doing right now," said Lulu.

"Missing you," Spyder said. "Cursing me."

"Blue moon, you saw me standing alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own . . . " Lulu sang softly. "Elvis should have stopped right there, you know? He never did fuck all after he left Sun Records."

"If he'd stopped there, he wouldn't ever have done 'Suspicious Minds.'"

"Was it worth dying on the shitter for?"

"For 'Suspicious Minds'? Most definitely."

"I'm going to have to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one."

Spyder was sorry that Lulu had brought up Rubi. It made him think of Jenny, whom he no longer really missed, but who remained a kind of sick ache in his stomach. He couldn't even describe the sensation, but it was compounded of regret and the sense that he'd failed as a human in some fundamental way and that her desertion was the starkest proof of that. On the simplest level, though, it just made him gloomy to think that someone he'd been so connected to was walking around hating him. He gave Shrike the last of the cigarette, went to the cave entrance and sat down, letting the night breeze blow over him. The cold made him stop thinking.

He heard someone coming up behind him and saw Shrike settling down.

"You're quiet tonight," she said.

"It's a quiet night."

"You're thinking about home."

"I'm not thinking about anything right now."

"I liked your France story."

"Did you?"

"Would you like to hear one of mine?"

"Not right now. I mean, I want to, but I'm hurting and tired and won't be able to listen right."

"All right," she said. She held up her face to the wind as it blew into the cave. Spyder thought she looked like a young wolf when she stretched her head up like that. She was beautiful.

"Tell me about being blind," Spyder said. "About how there's 'blind and then there's blind.'"

Shrike poked at the sand with her cane. "You probably sensed that I have moments where I appear to see things."

"From the first night we met."

"It's not really sight. It's simple magic, the only kind I know. I never had any formal magic training and just picked up things along on the road. Traded for spells. Bought them. Stole them. There has always been a little magic in my family, but my mother had that knowledge and she was dead. I studied weapons because it made my father happy.

"When our kingdom was scattered and I was on the road, I only had the possessions I could grab from my bedside. A few family heirlooms. One of these was a kind of bracelet with a casting of a bird on top. A shrike. That's my family's totem animal.

"We also had family gods which we prayed and made offerings to. All the royal families have household gods. You need a deity or two on your side to keep other Houses from taking what's yours. Those who knew how could petition the gods for favors. I didn't have that knowledge. But I got it.

"I'd run off some bandits from the property of an odd little man, Cosimo Heisenberg, a kind of mechanical wizard. He made machines that were like people. 'Karakuri,' he called them. Little windup men and women who could sing an aria or write a sonnet or sew a wedding gown.

"He wanted to pay me with a new set of eyes, but I didn't like the notion of depending on mechanical, windup sight. So, he helped me use the gifts I already had better. He made this cane for me, which, as you've seen, is more than a cane. He also examined my heirlooms to see if there was anything of value. He was the first person I'd trusted since leaving home.

"He checked out the bracelet with the bird and figured out what it was for. You see, it made no sense as jewelry. The maker had cast the bird's claws from razor-sharp steel and fitted them to the underside of the piece, so that they were in contact with the skin of the person wearing the bracelet. There was also a spring mechanism to rake the claws down the wearer's arm. What use could there be for something like that?"

"Cutting. Blood," said Spyder, who'd seen his share of bloodletting and scarring rituals among the
überhipster
modern primitive crowd in San Francisco.

"Exactly. The bracelet was an instrument of sacrifice, a device for making a blood offering to my family gods. Say the right incantation and release the spring on the silver shrike. The blades would take your blood and help you get what you want. On a small scale. It's not much of a sacrifice. Only good for small favors. Like a second or two of sight."

"What do you see? Is it like normal vision?"

"Nothing at all. It's like I'm floating above the scene, looking down on everything happening. I can see myself and my opponent, plus the nearby landscape. The visions never last for long. Just long enough for me to get my bearings and a sense of an opponent. I can't do it too often. The gods get tired of these dime-store sacrifices. I have to be careful not to ask for their help too often."

Spyder frowned. "I wondered why you kept that coat on, even in the heat. You're hiding the bracelet."

"And my arm," said Shrike. "It's not something to see."

"How many times have you used the bracelet?"

"I don't know. Sometimes you make a blood offering without asking for anything in return. Sometimes, when you're boxed in, say, you use it more than once. More blood sometimes means more sight. Sometimes not. I've been using it for ten years."

Spyder reached over and pushed up the sleeve of Shrike's coat. The bracelet was on her right forearm. It was a beautiful object. Like something that belonged in a museum, he thought. He turned Shrike's arm over and worked the bracelet's clasp, sliding the thing off her arm. Shrike's skin was streaked with years of ragged scar tissue. The back of her arm was red with new scars, still in the healing process. She'd used it on the airship, Spyder thought.

He set the bracelet over his own arm. It was too small to go all the way around, so he held it in place and pushed the metal shrike back until he felt it catch. Feeling around the bird's wings, he found the release button and pushed it. The bird raked down his arm, sending an electric pain all the way up to his shoulder. When Shrike heard the bracelet snap, she started a little and reached for him.

"What did you do?" she asked.

"I wanted to know what it was like," Spyder said. He leaned down and kissed her scars before putting the bracelet back on Shrike's arm. She leaned into him and he put his bloody arm around her.

"Where I come from, this isn't your standard dating scenario," Spyder said. Shrike laughed at little. "But I guess it's one way to get to know each other."

"Excuse me."

Spyder looked up. Primo was standing over them.

"I hate to intrude, but I need to speak to madame Butcher Bird."

"Meaning you want me to take off?" asked Spyder.

Primo was silent.

"It's all right, Primo. Spyder is part of this and can hear anything you have to say."

"Yes, ma'am," Primo said. He groaned as he sat down. "There's something Madame Cinders didn't tell you, afraid that you might not agree to perform the service she requires."

"She wanted you to tell me when we were on the road and in too deep to turn back."

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. I would have preferred not to do things this way."

"It's all right. I understand that it wasn't your choice. What is it that was too awful for me to know?"

"The mutinous spirits in Hell, the confusion that is to be our cover?"

"Tell me."

"Some say that it is led by the Golden Bull, Xero Abrasax."

Shrike was silent. She stabbed the ground with her cane.

"Shrike?" said Spyder. "You know this guy?"

"Yes."

"He's the . . . "

"Yes, he's the bastard traitor who fucked me, took my father, my sight and my kingdom."

"There's more, I'm afraid," said Primo.

"Fuck that sick bitch," Spyder said.

"Be quiet," said Shrike. "Tell me the rest, Primo."

"The key that Madame put into your body. You know that it was forged in Hell. It is not an object that is compatible with life. If you fail to reach the cage in which the book rests, the key will move through your body, as it is doing even now, and pierce your heart. You will die."

"We should turn around right now," said Spyder. "We've got the Count with us. She'd never expect an ambush. We'll kick her chair over, pull out her tubes and stand on her fucking throat until she takes that thing out of you."

"I can't do that. Loyalty is all people in my profession have."

"Excuse me, ma'am, but Mr. Spyder has a point. Whatever you decide, this I'm telling you as a friend and a Gytrash: Madame Cinders does not always honor her bargains gracefully. When this is over, you must be wary."