CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness (10 page)

All of them, human and less so, had an agitation about them. They moved with a step more hurried and a nervous indecision, both, that on a different day might have been absent. Tempers were quick as people got in each other’s way. But only threats and curses were exchanged. It seemed no one had the stomach for trading blows.

A rumbling beat penetrated the hubbub. It resolved into the sound of dozens of feet—booted, hoofed or clawed—treading in not-quite-unison. A company of soldiers marched by, their armour an irregular assortment of lamellae and baked leather, only a handful with helms of any kind, the rest in felt caps or bareheaded. The weapons on their shoulders made an ugly forest of mismatched steel.

“And what’s this, cluttering my step?” said a deep voice, startlingly close.

The door had opened behind her. A cassocked figure filled the frame. Blue human eyes glared down at her from a horned bovine face. Sparse hair covered a hide as thick and dimpled as citrus peel. She had seen his kind stand like colossi on the last day of Avalae while Yng’finail Reavers slaughtered their lesser brethren around them, until weight of numbers and iron blades brought them down, too.

“Be gone,” the minotaur said, lifting an arm to strike backhanded.

She scrambled back, shaking her good arm free of her blankets. She raised the stone hand in warning while she got her feet under her. The minotaur’s eyes widened as she retreated into the sunlight.

He followed, raising his hand again, but palm outward this time. “Wait.”

But she was already running. A carthorse flapped its neck frills in warning as she skipped in front of it. She ducked the half-hearted swipe of the carter’s crop and pushed on through the crowds.

The cobbles were cold and slippery wet, her feet bruised and aching from her running the night before. She soon slowed to a hobbling walk. She had no direction in mind, no knowledge of the city beyond the plaza where she had stood. She passed terraces of shops and houses walled with brick and stone and black iron plate, others roofed in bright canvas to resemble the sails of ships. Others still were grown of living trees woven tight together.

Lost, she let the pedestrian tides carry her where they would, until her attention was arrested by the aromas of a pie seller’s stall. His wares were heated over a bed of coals in the iron belly of his spider-legged cart. Her stomach knotted painfully as she watched a man walk away with a steaming pastry. She sidled closer, wondering if she might snatch a pie and run.

She noticed a boy staring at her, narrow-eyed and blunt nosed, a younger, leaner version of the pie seller. He tapped a leather cosh meaningfully against his thigh.

Downcast, she retreated, and walked on.

She passed a golden tree, growing in the centre of the thoroughfare. Beneath it, a trio of hook-beaked gargoyle men confronted a party of soldiers with axes. A gargoyle woman knelt between them, wailing and tearing at copper breastfeathers.

The black tower loomed above the rooftops. She turned towards it. Her pulse quickened as she ascended the hill, a twinge of fear as she remembered the man she had injured the night before.

Reaching the plaza, she saw that her anxiety was needless. A mob had gathered before the angel’s keep, demanding entry. Soldiers watched them, but made no move to intervene. No one had any attention to spare for her.

She stopped beneath the petrified figure of her mate. His features were opaque with the sun behind him. She stretched up, but his outstretched hand was too high for her to reach. She pulled aside the briars that covered his foot and ran her fingertips over the shape of his toes. The stone was as ungiving as the severed hand she clutched against her belly.

A loaded cart arrived, and people started piling wood for a bonfire. She cleared a nest among the briars, on the side of her mate’s plinth that faced the tower, then sank down and curled her limbs around the hollow misery of her belly.

* * *

She started from a torpid daydream, of her mate smiling, his stone visage turned to flesh, his fingers grasping hers.

The minotaur looked down at her.

She levered herself up, fumbling for her stone hand.

Panic made her clumsy, and she dropped it in the briars at her feet. With a yelp, she bent to grab it.

“Be still,” the minotaur said. “I’ll not hurt you.”

She paused, warily, the stone hand half raised. He gazed at her in silence for a time, then his blue eyes shifted to look at the male statue.

“How did this come to be?” he asked.

She opened her mouth, struggling to shape a response. Although she understood him, like a small child, she lacked the skill to form words of her own. She pointed to the grand balcony.

The minotaur gave a bovine snort and took her by the wrist. Dragging her along in his wake, he marched towards the tower.

A few, braver or more angry than their fellows, still beat at the gate with mallets and staves. The blackened iron seemed to drink the sounds of their blows into itself. The hammerers fell back at the minotaur’s arrival. He raised his fist, muttering beneath his breath, then struck the door, three times. With each blow a boom like the striking of a gong echoed inside the tower.

For a time, there was stillness. Then a postern cracked ajar within the surface of the gate and an Yng’finail head peered out. The man’s hair was yellowed with age and his skin a jaundiced orange. His pale eyes blinked and watered in the daylight.

“We seek audience,” said the minotaur.

The old man licked his lips. His eyes flickered to the minotaur’s companion, still caught by the wrist, and back again.

“Forgive me, m’lord,” he said. “There’ll be no audience today.”

He began to withdraw, but the minotaur raised a hand to stay him. “When?” he asked.

The man started an answer, thought the better of it and stuttered to a halt. “I cannot say.”

He shrank back as the minotaur leaned towards him. “If he is hurt, I might aid him.”

The old man’s eyes went wide. He stepped back abruptly through the door and shut it behind him.

An angry mutter passed through the crowd. The minotaur snorted. A human might have sighed.

“Go to your homes,” he said, and turned on his heel. He let go his captive’s wrist. “Go.”

She stared at his broad back as he strode from the tower. The hammerers closed again around the gate. She struggled free, buffeted and bumped, and hurried after the minotaur. She tugged at his sleeve to stop him, and pointed to the male statue.

The slump of his shoulders was answer enough. He said, “Only he who gave life to you can give it to your mate. I cannot help.”

She fought with her tongue. “When?”

The minotaur glanced back at the tower. He shook his head. “Come back tomorrow, and see.” The pocked skin around his eyes was tight, as though something pained him. “Come. I will see you fed. You can bed in front of my hearth. Cassiann, is my name.”

She looked back over her shoulder, at her mate in his cloak of briars. Her gaze travelled up the black face of the tower, to the balcony, silent to the entreaties raised below.

They returned to Cassiann’s house. He had to duck his head to fit through the door, and remain stooped, inside, so as not to scrape his horns on the ribs of the ceiling. Inside, a wooden bench stood along one side of the hall. The door of the front room was open, the room lined with shelves of jars and vials and tins, every one labelled in meticulous script. A high table with an ornate set of scales stood in the centre and, to the rear, a padded couch and scale curtain to pull around it.

He was an apothecary, Cassiann said, and when it was plain she did not know the word, explained that he healed people with magic and medicine. He led her down the hall to the kitchen and parlour in back. He pointed to the stairs, leading up to rooms where he slept and studied, and showed her the larder, the lavatory chute and the water pump. He tossed a fresh log onto the hearth, set out fruit and cheese, and a bowl, and cloths, for her to wash herself, should she wish. Then he said he had customers to prepare for, had missed appointments already. He closed the hallway door, and she was alone.

She stuffed the food into her mouth, hardly chewing before she swallowed. Finished, she wriggled back in the seat of his solitary chair, so that her feet dangled clear of the ground. Her stone hand was cold beneath her living palm. She stared into the flames that licked inside the hearth. Her stomach still grumbled, but her hunger lacked the urgency it had before.

Presently, she heard voices, the minotaur’s and another, higher in pitch. She listened for a while, idly trying to discern their words. Her gaze wandered around the room, settled on the staircase, then up the curve of the wall to the joists of timber and giant ivory that crossed the ceiling.

She slipped down from the chair.

The lowest stair creaked beneath her foot. She crept quietly up, across the small landing at the top and into the bedroom. She padded past the long bed, to the window that opened over the street. The panes of polished leviathan scales let in light, but revealed only the murkiest outlines of the world beyond. She examined the latch, gave it an experimental tug. The window swung outward. She pushed it open.

Cool air brushed over her face and arms. She leaned her elbows on the damp sill and gazed up at the dark tower, high on its hill. She saw a black stone face, and fingers reaching for her own.

* * *

She awoke early the next day, in the dull red light of the coals in the hearth. Her mate’s face faded slowly from her mind’s eye.

Cassiann was already in his surgery, mixing powders. He paused when she appeared in the doorway. “I hope I didn’t disturb you.”

She shook her head.

The minotaur returned to his work, tipping a measure of pale green powder into a jar already half filled with white. He stoppered the jar and shook it vigorously to mix the powders together, then placed the jar on a shelf. His hand lingered. He seemed to be gazing at something other than the shelves in front of him.

“It is a lonely thing, to be unique,” he said, suddenly. “My people’s shaping occurred elsewhere in the realms of Avalae. Our nation holds the islands to the west of here. It has been a long time, since I was forced to leave them.”

He fell silent again, ordering the ranks of jars. He stopped, faced her. With an abrupt stride, he closed the gap between them. He reached out, jerkily, to touch her cheek. “My people were made to adore those whose shape you wear,” he said.

His fingertips were dry and smooth. He traced the shape of her ear, the rapid pulse that arose in the side of her neck. His hand paused at her collarbone, then slowly eased the blanket from her shoulder.

Carefully, she stepped backwards through the doorway. The minotaur hung his head. His outstretched fingers curled back into his palm.

“Forgive me. I did not think I would be so overcome.”

She fled, out into the morning fog.

The greyness was disorienting, and she stayed close to the buildings as she hurried along. Her heart thumped against her ribs—terror at what he might’ve done during the night, had his compulsion overcome him sooner.

The top of the hill was clear of the mist. The black tower stood stark against the chill blue sky, unrelieved by the bright sunshine. The buildings at the plaza’s edge stuck up like jagged teeth, the city beyond them lost beneath a white blanket of cloud.

Yesterday’s near-riot had become an encampment. Handcarts and wagons did service as sleeping shelters. Would-be supplicants hunched around cookfires. There were soldiers among them, now. A delegation of Reaver captains camped closest to the gate.

She rubbed her mate’s frigid toes.

The Reaver captains thumped on the gate and hollered up to the angel’s balcony. The tower remained silent. The captains argued briefly among themselves, and several left with their men.

A cloud of copper-coloured bees buzzed around her head. She watched them dance patterns in the air. A starling swooped, scattering the cloud. The bird alighted on her mate’s outstretched arm. One beady eye met hers. A bee struggled vainly in its beak. The rest buzzed about erratically.

The starling flapped its wings and was gone.

“Bet you’re hungry, eh?”

She jumped. An Yng’finail soldier in mismatched conscript armour held up a torn loaf of bread, just out of her reach. Her stomach complained loudly.

“Need to agree on a price first, love,” he said. “It’s not coin I have in mind, you understand.”

She backed away, only to bump into a second man.

He sneered. “Too good for the likes of us, eh?”

She cried out and swatted at him with her stone hand. He caught the blow on the shoulder of his cuirass, cursing. His companion grabbed her arms from behind. The man she’d struck pulled back his fist and punched her in the mouth.

She tasted hot metal and salt. Pain radiated from her crushed lips. They took her by an arm each and began to drag her away. She struggled feebly, dazed from the blow.

The man to her left punched her again, under the ribs, driving the air from her lungs. She sagged, gasping.

She heard a sharp enquiry. A Reaver captain had risen, over by the tower gate, and stood watching them with hands on hips. His scrutiny was enough to make the two men falter. Their grip on her arms slackened.

She wrenched free. They shouted after her as she tottered into a run. One of them started to pursue, but a bark from the Reaver captain stopped him. Only their curses chased her from the plaza.

She didn’t run far. The press of traffic soon forced her to slow. She found refuge in a doorway alcove. Gradually, her pulse slowed, her panic settled.

A memory floated to the surface of her thoughts, of festival dances beneath the tower: Avalae twirling in silk and gauze, each the focus of a ring of ecstatic slaves, competing for their masters’ attention with the energy of their dancing. Every so often a slave would be chosen, and their masters would lead them by the hand through the black tower’s gate.

She paused, thinking of cold and hunger, curled in her nest of briars and not knowing when the angel might open his gate. She thought of the men who’d seized her today, of the one who’d first found her, and thought of what might have happened had the first man been more wary, or had the Reaver captain not taken an interest.