Dead Boys (27 page)

“A lookout for the beastie?” The raconteur considered briefly. “Aye, that’ll pass the time.” Jacob hurled the raconteur to Siham, who followed his directions in releasing the clamp.

Once the heads were exchanged, the first wave of warriors representing the Horde’s less terrifying incarnation fell upon the beast, employing various ineffectual tactics with great enthusiasm. During the wholesale rending of flesh that followed, Siham, carrying Jacob and Etienne, dashed toward the center of the Plains, where the recent slaughter had removed all but fallen warriors, and the endless stream of verbiage rushing from Etienne’s mouth could be studied in greater detail.

“He’s totally out of it,” said Siham.

“It’s his first level of psychic defense. Next comes catatonia.”

“Maybe he’ll come around?”

“I doubt it,” said Jacob. “He’s demonstrated a remarkable resistance in the past, and what he’s suffered as a part of that creature might be as traumatic to him as his death. He’s used to being bodiless but autonomous. To be reduced to a mere appendage, particularly by a creature as fractious and violent as—”

Suddenly, as if he’d been tuned to another channel, Etienne started talking sense, if manically.

“Nothing could be bad as that,” he spat, “not Last Man crashing down upon us Leopold torn out of us they fled toward the gate and we were lost inside the beast inside the Plains inside the death inside the void inside—”

“Did that mean anything to you?” said Siham, for Etienne had taken up again in his unintelligible language as abruptly as he’d left off.

“Mutiny,” said Jacob. “The beast threw off its reins. I think we’d better try White Gate.”

“Forward motion!” said Siham, kneeling down and offering her back. “Gee up.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather walk. This pony-ride business is a trifle degrading.”

“I’m a racehorse, I’ll have you know,” said Siham, tossing Etienne’s head into Jacob’s arms. “Thoroughbred!”

On the way, Jacob studied Etienne’s speech. Certain phrases were becoming familiar, patterns were beginning to show, and there was an appearance of syntax that suggested a legitimate language; but even phrases offered to Etienne in his own idiom did nothing to interrupt his steady jabbering. It
did
grow more subdued as they approached White Gate, becoming an insistent, slithery whisper as they fell beneath the shadow of the Rim, as if Etienne, through the haze of madness, had sense enough to fear returning to this place.

“I’m sorry, Etienne,” Jacob whispered. “All I ask is the chance to make things better for you. May this not be a step in the wrong direction.”

Though Jacob was confident that Siham could defend them from any number of debtors, returning to the site of his abduction frightened him, too. With each step he took down that pale hall he flinched at the motion of some imaginary rope. He stared up at the edge of the Rim and gained nothing by it. Were there debtors watching, they were quiet and well-disguised.

“Even if they’re up there, it doesn’t matter to us,” said Siham, but as they edged around a corner, she stopped, holding up a hand as Jacob caught sight of a body sprawled on the floor.

For a time he could only stare at that pathetic jumble of limbs, so limp and various in direction that it took on the appearance of a man-sized puppet discarded after a grand performance. Then he saw the familiar shapes of his own boots, at the ends of his own legs, and noted the dusty blond hair at the top of it all. “Leopold,” he said. Etienne yelped and was silent for a time.

As Jacob knelt at his side, Leopold, who had yet to look at them, lifted his head from the floor of the hall. “Ah,” he said softly, “so you’ve led them to me. I can’t blame you for your betrayal. There was never room on this journey for both our quests, was there? One was destined to be sacrificed for the other. It’s as it should be. This folly must end, Jacob. Let it end at last.” Without so much as a glance at Siham, he dropped his face into the dirt again.

“I haven’t—”

“I thought it would end with death,” he said to the earth below. “The boy thought so, anyway, the boy Tanner brought through your window, the boy who tried to fashion a man out of lace and bluster. But that boy never left the man’s bones: he’s still here, still as broken as he was at birth, making the same noises, the same messes, only now through time eternal. That cycle of degradation is what I saw so well when I fit the belt around my neck. I see now how ludicrous it was to believe I could escape, but a good joke never really ends, does it? Just keeps on punching.”

“Leopold—”

“Let me speak.” He dragged himself partway up, though he had yet to face his audience. “I always knew, you see, that I’d been born into the wrong world. The words that I spoke, the books that I’d stolen them from, confused every relative whose blood and features forced them to acknowledge me as one of their own. I stood out among them like broken crockery, whether in speech or in silence. My father tried to drive the me from me with the strength of his hands, my mother with her screeching voice. But there was no cure for what I was, and the only palliative came in dreaming—the only arena in my existence where I could be king. It wasn’t power itself that I desired, but the freedom from the bottoms of their boots that power could lend me. What I wanted was reversal.

“It will come as little surprise to you that I found my salvation in the most dramatic of places: I found the theatre, and for a short while I was free.

“I was only a boy, I can see that now, and like any boy I had faith that I’d soon conquer the world. Those above me were destined to bend to my will, to surrender at my slightest advance. And that fuming arrogance is what I brought to my audition for Hamlet, Death’s Ambassador.

“‘To think that he perfected the role of a lifetime,’ they’d say, weeping as they stood and ovated, ‘to think that his genius has reached its full flower at such a young age!’

“Lord, how trite my story sounds, removed from the hormonal torrents of teenaged angst. How inconsequential were my problems then, and yet how momentous they’d seemed! But you know already how this story ends. When I learned that the directors had cast a professional in the role, when I learned that I was not to be so much as a nameless Lord in that production, I climbed out of my window and walked the five long, moonlit miles to their theatre, where I broke off their doorknob with a stone from the driveway and stalked to the dressing-room. On the mirror I scrawled NOT TO BE in lipstick, which I thought was terribly clever until I’d already kicked out the chair and felt the belt bite my neck. Swinging from the pipes, I’d have done anything to wipe away those words—but not the act, not even then.

“I have never doubted the wisdom of my death until now. I was convinced, since I learned of his existence, that usurping the Magnate would make sense of my short life. I also believed that I’d succeed in unseating him, though I was never quite clear about how. But now I see that it has all been folly. Even the monster built to serve my desires would rather hack me out and drop me like a fewmet upon the floor of the Plains than use me for its eyes. This world, like the last one, hates me, along with all the people in it—and only the thought that I could triumph here, that I could keep the joy of supremacy forever in my grip, was keeping me on my feet. Now that it’s gone, what’s left for me to hold? In my palm there’s nothing but a single pocket watch. Besides that paltry sum, all I possess are questions, and they’re heavier than I, sitting on my chest and thumping their sooty fists in my face. I can take no more. So give me over to the Magnate, Jacob. Let him cure me. Let me go.”

Holding Etienne against his chest, Jacob looked up at the top of White Gate. “I’m afraid I haven’t brought him. Nor have I brought any answers for you, Leopold, only questions every bit as heavy as your own. How much must we suffer, how long must we strive, before our quests become tragic comedies? I can offer only a morsel of cold comfort: that I, at least, have forgotten the trick of hating you. I understand you, I think.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I should also mention that I’ve lost your penis.” There was a sigh from below, but no hysterics. “At any rate, I’ve made a new friend, and despite my best attempts to prepare her for your theatrics, I found I have, yet again, woefully underestimated your potential. Leopold, this is Siham.”

“Hiya! Sorry about your miserable existence. Listen, I have a question for you, too, but it’s not all that heavy. Where, good sirrah, is the rest of your company now?”

Leopold peered for a while at the Bonemaiden. “Well. They’re naturally buoyant, those three, as certain idiots are. I believe they are currently attempting to climb White Gate by hand.”

Jacob stood, offering his hand. “Leopold, I have nothing to offer you but more path. Would you care to walk it, or would you rather be carried? I’m afraid that leaving you to your own devices is out of the question, considering the condition you were in when we found you.”

“No matter where I go,” croaked Leopold, “the Mortar and Pestle will find me. What’s the point of moving when my eradication is inevitable?”

“Ah, I forgot to mention that bit. The Masker decided not to grind you into dust after all. You’ll be sentenced to the Debtor’s Pool, I believe. It’ll be dreadfully boring, but at least you’ll be intact.”

Leopold propped himself up on his elbows. “Truly?”

“If I wanted to kick you while you were down, Leopold, I’d have done it quite literally by now.”

“No Mortar and Pestle,” he murmured. “Then they mean to make an example of me. Keep me close. Close enough to punish. Close enough to watch.” He executed half a push-up, then collapsed. “But no! Absurdity has finally broken my back, Jacob, after decades of constant effort. Leave me where I lay, and trouble yourself no more with my sordid tale.”

Jacob sat down, determined. “For God’s sake, Leopold, you’re many things, but you’re no nihilist. Think of all the things you might still accomplish, even if it is on the other side of indenture. However dim your immediate prospects, there’s always a chance to beat your naysayers at their own game. Given eternity, who among us might not reverse his fortunes? Why, I was in a very similar situation once, during that drought I once alluded to—”

Leopold dragged himself onto his feet. “Well, if it’s come down to a choice between your memoirs and centuries of indenture, let us press on. White City awaits.”

“I do hope I don’t regret that encouragement,” murmured Jacob to Siham as they followed. “One can never tell with Leopold.”

At the end of the hall, they came upon the remarkable sight of Remington, Adam, and Eve striving to mount White Gate. Remington, after discovering minute chinks in the stone, had cleaned all the flesh that remained on his hands and feet with a scalpel taken from Jacob’s knapsack, and Adam and Eve had followed suit. With their newly denuded digits, they’d set about teaching themselves to climb the sheer face of White Gate one body-length at a time. Remington had begun, holding fast to the stone a few feet off the ground, then Eve had climbed his body like a human ladder, standing on his shoulders and seeking purchase above him, then Adam had climbed her, and so forth, until the lot of them tumbled in a pile at the bottom, eager to try again. After days of practice, they had managed to climb halfway to the top of the Gate, where the reconstructed crow hopped impatiently, squawking encouragement.

“My word,” said Siham, “these three are persistent, aren’t they?”

“Whose word?” said Remington, high above. “I can’t see who that is. Can you guys see who that is?”

“It’s only Jacob,” shouted Leopold, “and his skinny friend Siham.”

“Remy, can you get down from there without breaking yourself in half?”

“You know, I don’t think so,” said Remington, trying to see over Eve’s shoulders, tottering dangerously.

“Stay where you are!” said Jacob. “I’m sure there’s some sane way to open the gate, hopefully without dislodging you three—isn’t there, Siham?”

“Nope,” said Siham, “he’s got the right idea.” She crouched beneath White Gate, well to the side of Remington, then burst up like a coiled spring, stretching her bones as far as their dust would allow and catching hold of the stone with her fingertips. From there, she swung her body end-over-end, catching hold of the chinks in the rock now with her toes, now with her fingers, until she reached the climbers.

“Siham, the Bonemaiden,” she said as she flattened against the rock. “Pleasure to meet you. Grab some rib.”

“Yes, ma’am!” said Remington, taking hold of her ribcage. Eve hung from his foot, Adam from Eve’s, and as Siham began to climb, the three of them ascended in a chain along with her.

Remington whooped with laughter as Siham pulled them up onto the beveled top of White Gate, high above the Rim, where she left them to their wonder. The trio sat enraptured, watching the crow swoop as near as it dared to the pale constructions and the spindly citizens below.

It was over an hour before Siham could be persuaded to bring the others up to join them. “I’m sure you’ll catch up, Jacob,” she said, “but these three are natural Seekers like I’ve never seen. They deserve a first look at their city on their own.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

City of Bone