Mountain of Black Glass (110 page)

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Authors: Tad Williams

BOOK: Mountain of Black Glass
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Moving at Orlando's staggering pace, they made their way slowly up through the city until they had almost reached the palace of Priam, which was streaming with smoke and flames all along its roof. !Xabbu turned them to one side, through a carefully tended grove of trees surrounded by a low stone wall. In the depths of the tiny pine forest, with their vision of the catastrophe blocked for a moment and the noises of Troy's painful demise deadened by needles and branches, it almost seemed they had escaped the horror. Then they stumbled across the garden's caretaker, ribboned with bloody wounds, staring up sightlessly at the distant stars.
!Xabbu hurried them down a succession of narrow alleys behind the palace. All the houses here were abandoned, or the denizens had extinguished their lights in the futile hope of escaping the attention of the victorious Greeks. As they moved past these tight-packed dwellings into a street of large low buildings adorned by twin rows of cypresses, Paul saw a small knot of people waiting in the shadows.
“There's someone ahead,” he whispered.
“It is the others,” !Xabbu assured him. “Martine!” he called softly. “We are here.”
The four figures moved out into the narrow, cobbled road. The largest held an unlit torch; Paul had no trouble recognizing T4b. The other three were women, two of them struggling with the third, who seemed to be having some kind of fit. Of these first two, one wore the body of a young, well-dressed Trojan woman, the other that of a crone, with much of her head and face swathed in bandages.
The younger of the two turned at their approach, but maintained a tight grip on the third woman, who continued to weep and struggle. “Renie?” she said. “And are these truly Orlando and Fredericks?”
“Orlando's sick, Martine,” Renie said. “He's barely conscious.”
“And Emily's pitching a fit,” the older woman said shortly. “She hates this place.” She turned her one good eye on Paul. “So this is Jonas?”
“We don't have time for long introductions,” Renie said. “The city is falling apart out there—they're killing and raping and looting. Yes, this is Paul Jonas.” She gestured to the two women. “That's Martine, and the one with the bandages is Florimel.” She frowned. “The one crying and carrying on is Emily.”
“It hurts! Take me away from here!” the girl wailed, and for a moment twisted free of Florimel's grasp. She lurched a step toward the newcomers, and for the first time Paul saw her face.
“Good Lord, don't you know who this is?” Paul took a step forward, half-certain that he would find himself in another dream. He seized the girl by her slender shoulders, astonished to be once more looking into that hauntingly familiar face. Something in her panicky expression pushed at his memory and he felt a name suddenly rise to the surface, something long hidden in shadows, but now flashing like a bird's wing in a beam of sunlight.
“Ava?”
The girl they had called Emily froze, tearstains glinting on her cheeks. “I don't . . .” she said slowly, then her eyes rolled up until only the whites showed and she collapsed onto the road before any of her stunned companions could catch her.
“Ava . . .” Paul said wonderingly, and as he said it again, something inside him broke free. . . .
 
“You're perfect,” Niles had told him, laughing. “No grudges, no skeletons in the closet, no strong political views. And, lucky you, apparently you went to the right public school, too.”
It had been Niles, of course, who had found him the job—Niles, whose family loaned its summer cottages to net stars and foreign royalty, who had grown up calling the Archbishop of Canterbury “Cousin Freddy.” If Niles or his family didn't know someone, it was likely no one else knew them either. “It's a strange little setup, mate, but you said you wanted some time to think about things—getting a bit bored of the routine, and all that . . .”
This was what happened when you made idle chitchat about changing your life in front of Niles—you wound up with an embassy job in Brazil, or owning a nightclub in Soho, or doing something even stranger. The younger sister of one of Niles' other friends had just decided that although she'd love to work in the U.S., she didn't want to be quite so isolated, so Niles had put in a good word for his friend Paul instead. Thus Paul had found himself at the far end of a six-month security clearance and an eight-hour jet flight, being shuttled across the New Orleans international airport tarmac toward a helicopter as shiny and sleek as a black dragonfly.
When Paul had fastened his webbing, the helicopter suddenly surged into the air. He was its only passenger.
“You're a bit younger and a bit more male than what they wanted,” Niles had said, “but I had Uncle Sebastian put in a good word for you.” The uncle in question was a former Treasury Minister, presumably the kind of person that even global business magnates might listen to when it came to references. “So don't do anything stupid, will you, laddie?” Niles had added.
As the helicopter rose, Paul wondered what stupid thing even he could possibly do to bollocks this up. He was going to live on the estate, so it wasn't likely he would oversleep and miss work. And he liked children, so it seemed equally unlikely he would forget he was dealing with some of the world's most powerful people and give one of his charges a brutal thrashing.
The black helicopter swung out over Lake Borgne. A ragged flock of seagulls broke apart before them, wheeling and scattering. Birds. Paul had never been to Louisiana, had not known how much like a tropical jungle the place was. There were so many birds here, in so many shapes and colors. . . .
Despite the spyflick precautions, the net-star luxuries, all of the evidence that he was far, far out of his league, Paul had almost convinced himself that everything was going to be fine until he saw the tower jutting up from Lake Borgne like a vast black fang.
Oh, my God,
he thought
—it's huge.
He had seen net footage, but that had been nothing like the experience of the real thing.
It's like something out of a fairy tale—an ogre's castle. Or one of the watchtowers of Hell . . .
The helicopter did not land on top of the massive spike, but instead settled slowly toward a domed structure a few kilometers away across the island, whose roof plates slid open like the aperture of a camera to reveal the landing spot. Feeling more than ever as though he had entered some kind of dream, Paul was hustled from the helicopter by several conspicuously well-armed, efficient men in military-style uniforms. After a curt formal greeting, one of them accompanied him on a quarter-hour shuttle bus journey to the black skyscraper, through street after street of low buildings and cultivated parks, an entire small town that seemed to have grown like a patch of mushrooms in the tower's shadow.
The armed man delivered him to the gold-plated doors of the tower and watched with professional patience as Paul walked in beneath the vast, stylized “J” above the entrance and into the lobby, a huge space full of low lighting, spotlit sculpture, trickling water, and clusters of well-cushioned seats. The entire British Army, Paul could not help thinking, could have waited for an appointment in that lobby.
Almost two more hours of security clearance—fingerprints and retinal scans being among the less intrusive methods—dragged by before he was at last ushered into one of the several banks of elevators and puffed silently up to the 51st floor to meet a man named Finney.
The huge office had the most fabulous view Paul had ever seen—almost half the tower's circumference of glassed wraparound panorama—but Finney himself did not seem the type to enjoy it. He was several years short of middle age but as sexless as a harem eunuch, a slender man with long surgeon's hands, small eyes that appeared grotesquely large behind thick, old-fashioned lenses, and the smile of a bored sadist.
“Right, then.” Finney watched Paul trying to make himself comfortable in the too-large chair on the other side of the desk. “You come with good references—yes, truly excellent references—which we have decided compensates for your lack of a great deal of experience as a tutor. You understand our security concerns, I'm sure—I hope everyone treated you well, nevertheless?” His smile flicked on then off, an implement used only for political purposes. “Mr. Jongleur is one of the world's most powerful men, and you are being given a position of great responsibility. He was most insistent on a traditional education—a ‘good old British public school education,' as he puts it.”
Presumably without the beatings, the sodomy, and the cold food,
Paul thought but did not say—he could no more imagine making a joke to this pale, affectless man than swearing in front of his grandmother. He opted instead for the safely polite. “I'm sure Mr. Jongleur will be happy with my work. And I'm looking forward to meeting the children.”
One thin eyebrow crept up Finney's forehead. “Children? No, I'm afraid you've jumped the gun a bit. For the moment there is only one child.” He leaned forward, fixing Paul with a stare that seemed oddly intrusive, peering through the bottleglass lenses as though he had Paul under a microscope. Paul could not hold the man's eyes for more than a moment, and looked down guiltily. “I'm sure there are things you will find surprising here, Mr. Jonas. We are a family-owned company, and we have our idiosyncratic ways. The last tutor . . . well, she made herself very difficult and disagreeable. I think it is safe to say she will not work again in that profession.” He sat up. “But that was largely due to misunderstanding, so let me make something perfectly, perfectly clear. Mr. Jongleur will do whatever is necessary to make sure no harm comes to any of his family or intimates, Mr. Jonas. That includes unwanted publicity. If you are a loyal employee, you will come to value this, as I do. But you do not ever want to be on the wrong side of the equation. Not ever.”
“I . . . I beg your pardon?”
“Rich men are particularly susceptible to kidnapping and extortion, Mr. Jonas, and the richer they are, the more attractive to criminal minds. It goes without saying that we have taken careful precaution against such things—as you have no doubt noticed, Mr. Jongleur has gone to great lengths to ensure the security of his home and business . . . and your pupil. But just as he firmly defends his assets against overt threats, he also considers unwanted attention from the media to be a form of assault as well. Your contract was very explicit about the Jongleur family's privacy, both during and after your employment. I hope you read it carefully. The penalties for breach are . . . severe.”
He knew what was expected, and said it. “I take my responsibilities very seriously, Mr. Finney.”
“Good, good. Of course.” Although Finney neither moved his hand nor made any other telltale sign, the door at the back of the office opened and a huge shape appeared there. “Mr. Mudd will take you up and introduce you.”
“To . . . to Mr. Jongleur?” Paul was reluctant to look away from Finney, but from the corner of his eye, the newcomer seemed to be as large as a bus.
Finney laughed, a most disconcerting sound. “Oh, no! No, Mr. Jongleur is a very, very busy man. I doubt you will ever meet him. No, my associate is going to take you to your charge.” He shook his head, still amused.
There was barely room for Paul to fit in the same elevator with Mudd, a vast pink man whose shaved head seemed to have grown directly out of his massive shoulders.
“Jonas . . .” Mudd grinned, showing a row of perfect, large white teeth. His voice was surprisingly high. “Is that Greek?”
“No, I don't think so. Might have been French at one point.”
“French.” Mudd grinned again. He seemed to find the whole thing very funny.
The elevator stopped so smoothly that it was only when the door opened that Paul knew they had arrived. Outside the elevator was a little enclosed bay which ended in a door that might have come from a bank vault. Mudd applied his thick fingers to the code pad, then blew into a grille. The door hissed open.
“What . . . what is this?” Paul asked, startled. They seemed to have entered some kind of indoor garden, a massive place as wide as a football field, if Paul could judge from what he could see of the distant ceiling and walls. A path led away from the door, snaking through tall trees rooted in actual soil.
“Conservatory.” Mudd took him by the arm, giving him the impression that he could shatter Paul's elbow with a light squeeze. “She's always in here.”
She was kneeling beside the path, partially hidden by a tree—he saw the hem of her skirt before he saw the rest of her, a fold of pale blue cotton with a froth of white petticoat peeping from beneath. “He's here, Princess.” Mudd spoke with the cheerful familiarity of a sailor greeting a favorite whore. “Your new tutor.”
As she rose and stepped out from behind the trunk like a dryad slipping its bark, a bright bird fluttered up from where she had been crouching, flared its wings, and shot away into the upper branches. The girl's eyes were huge, her skin pale as cream silk. She looked Paul up and down, then gave him a strange, solemn smile and turned back to watch the spot where the bird had disappeared.
Mudd extended his hand in mocking party manners. “Mr. Paul Jonas, this is Miss Avialle Jongleur.”
“Ava,” she said dreamily, still looking in the other direction. “Tell him to call me Ava.”
 
“... And ... and that's all,” Paul said after long moments had passed. “I can feel the rest of it just ... just there. But I can't reach it.” He shook his head. It had all come so quickly, so completely, like plaster sloughing off an old wall to reveal an intricate fresco hidden beneath, but the returned memories had ended just as suddenly. He looked down to where Emily lay in the darkened street, her head propped on crouching Florimel's knee, and wished he had time to give the others more than a sketchy summary of what had come back to him. Clearly this was the heart of the matter: even the smallest details might be important.

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