The Chamber in the Sky (15 page)

Gwynyfer woke up with the unpleasant, squat Druce breathing on her hair. When she opened her eyes, his eyes loomed in hers. He snorted deeply, drawing something in his nose back into his throat. Then he swallowed hard. He blinked several times in surprise. He did not expect her to be awake.

“There's games,” he said. “Aelfward's torturing the animal.”

“What animal?”

“The human animal. We're going to watch. You could come with me special.”

Gwynyfer got up quickly, keeping as far away from Druce as possible. The other kids were gone. Gregory was still sleeping.

“Ortwine!” Gwynyfer shouted. “Ortwine!” She went over and shook Gregory's arm. “They're torturing that awful human thing.”

Gregory scrambled up and looked around, shocked. He and Gwynyfer ran for the livestock car with Druce creeping along behind them.

Gregory was terrified. From what they could get out of Druce — who was trying to impress Gwynyfer — Gregory pieced together what had happened: A soldier had found Aelfward in the feed closet. Aelfward was too proud to say that he had been trapped in with the pellets
as a prank. Instead, he'd said he was ordered to feed the animals and the door had locked behind him by accident. So then he had to go around feeding the animals.

When he got to the human animal, he asked the guards if he could play some games.

They said sure. No blood, no foul.

Gregory was frantic at what might be happening to Brian. But he was also sick with worry for himself. He knew everyone was watching Gwynyfer and him. He knew that their disguises wouldn't last forever. At any moment the illusion would fade and —
whoomf
— they'd have whites in their eyes. Their black coats would be gone. And Gregory's ears would be stumpy and round.

Gregory and Gwynyfer ran along the rumbling passage.

The door to Brian's cell was open. Inside, the Young Horde scouts were gathered in a circle, grinning.

Aelfward had hung Brian up by the chains on his wrists. Brian's arms were stretched straight in the air. His toes barely, barely touched the floor. He swayed from side to side with the juddering of the train. He had to dance on his tiptoes to keep his arms from pulling out of their sockets. He let out sharp, agonized breaths as he veered left and right and fought to keep standing.

Aelfward reached over and poked Brian in the stomach. Brian's leg jerked up, his whole weight hit his shoulder, and he screamed in pain.

Aelfward reached out a wiggly finger toward Brian's underarm. In a high baby voice, he sang, “Chuck the chick, chuck the chick, chuck the chick under the chin.”
He started to tickle Brian. The boy flinched, made a noise, could barely breathe.

Gregory charged into the circle.

“Hey!” said Gregory. “Stop!”

Aelfward did stop. He stared at Gregory. The others stared, too.

Gregory stood unsteadily. The train rocked beneath him. He had no idea what to say now. No Thusser he'd ever met would have protected Brian. If Gregory wasn't careful, he'd be up in chains, too. With Gwynyfer hanging by his side.

“What's your game?” asked Aelfward. He was clearly still miffed about being shoved into the feed closet. He stepped forward and pushed Gregory back by the collar. “Why're you sour, Ortwine?” Aelfward looked from the one human to the other. “Not a friend of yours, is he?”

Gregory could feel everyone staring.

He had no plan. He just had to get Brian down from there. The train hit a curve in the tracks, and Brian was racked in agony. He danced on tiptoes like the Sugar Plum Fairy in razor-blade slippers. He hissed with pain
en pointe
.

Gregory said, “There are other games the animal can play.”

Aelfward glared.

Gregory went over and tried to pull the chains off the hook high on the wall. He couldn't reach. He was several inches shorter than Aelfward.

“The proud orphan needs help,” said Aelfward, reaching up and unhooking Brian.

The dark-haired human boy collapsed against the wall, sobbing with deep breaths. He rubbed his shoulders and his red, bleeding wrists. He clearly didn't want everyone staring at him. He turned away and hid his face.

“The animal seems to believe the games are over,” said Aelfward. “Up your sleeve is …?”

Gregory froze. He didn't have any ideas. Anything had to be better, though, than Brian having his arms slowly torn out of their sockets.

“Dancing,” he said. “We'll dance.”

He took Gwynyfer by the hand and led her to Brian as if offering her at a fancy ball. “Music!” he said.

Two of the Young Horde began to thump out a rhythm against the train on the wall of the car. A girl began to sing an old Thusser waltz.

“Dance, fatty!” crowed Gregory, as evilly as he could. He pushed Brian and Gwynyfer together. “Dance, human filth!”

Brian, unbelieving, looked at Gregory.

Gregory couldn't wink at him. He couldn't give him any sign. The other scouts and the guards were all watching him. He couldn't explain to Brian that he had to be cruel to save all three of them.

Brian began to stagger in Gwynyfer's arms.

“Dance, you little vermin!” Gregory called. He saw Brian's white, horrified face float by. Gwynyfer threw back her head and howled with laughter.

Gregory hoped she was just putting on a show.

This was fine, Gregory thought.
Humiliating, but not dangerous. Brian will thank me.
Brian and Gwynyfer moved in dizzy circles.

And then someone threw the first knife.

Gregory swore to himself. He should have thought of that. Of course that's what they thought he meant by dancing. They were throwing knives at Brian's feet.

The human boy's feet were bare and covered in mud. They were still marked by red slices from an attack a few weeks before in the Imperial palace. Despite spells, the scars weren't fully healed.

Now a blade struck right next to the foot. Another thwapped into the wood of the floor.

Gwynyfer pushed Brian away in surprise. She didn't want her feet hurt.

Druce snuck forward and plucked up the knives, returned them to their owners.

The kids took turns throwing as Brian scampered as if drunken. He tried to keep his feet in the air as much as possible. He was exhausted. He bounced against the wall.

The train jolted on the tracks.

A woman's voice rang out. “What's the pleasure here?” Lieutenant Kunhild stood in the door, watching them play.

One of the boys reported, “Tormenting the animal, ma'am.”

Gregory never thought he'd be relieved to hear the lieutenant's voice, but now he welcomed the interruption. The dance stopped. The singing stopped. One boy was still banging out a rhythm on the wall, but otherwise, everyone just stood and waited. The train rattled.

The lieutenant walked into the cell. “No interruption. Sing.” The girl picked up her waltz. Kunhild bade them, “Dance. Make merry.”

Brian sagged against the wall, his mouth open, sweating.

Then the girl Ianogunde swayed forward in rhythm, took Brian's hands, and began to spin him. “He's repulsive!” she said, in time to the music. “He's sticky! He's wet! My pet person!” She laughed with her deep, cherry lips.

She held Brian's hand and spun him out as if they were doing a routine. When her arm was fully extended and Brian tottered at the greatest distance, Aelfward threw his knife, and this time it sliced Brian's heel.

The whole crowd, Lieutenant Kunhild included, burst into cheers. Brian fell to one knee. Ianogunde rushed to him and lifted him up. She kept him waltzing, pressing his soaking head to her shoulder as if they were in love. She rolled her eyes in mock ecstasy.

Everyone whooped and clapped.

Gregory and Gwynyfer did not. Gwynyfer stood without moving near the door, her face tipped up. Gregory just looked desperate.

The dance went on. Brian had trouble walking now. He was limping. His right foot left a smudge of blood at each step.

“We regret the blood,” said the lieutenant. “No more blood.” She turned to Gregory. “The babe Ortwine. I like a young man to enjoy my regiment. A young man needs to collect those memories of camaraderie and shenanigans
in foreign parts to treasure in later years, when the bones are soft and things are quiet in the nest. But you, little Ortwine, you don't seem to have the requisite spirit of kick-up-your-heels. You look positively ill at ease. Green around the gills. What ails you, Ortwine? I wonder whether you know our human animal here. I wonder whether you met when you were on Earth. You're not old friends, are you?”

Gregory looked at Brian, forced to canter in circles with Ianogunde screeching, “You're foul! Foul!” in the boy's ear. He looked at the smirk on Lieutenant Kunhild's face.

And then he spluttered, “No! No, I don't know him!”

There was no reason, Gregory thought quickly to himself, to get locked up, too. They couldn't help Brian escape if they were also —

“So play along,” the lieutenant ordered. “Unless you know him.”

She pointed. Brian sagged in Ianogunde's arms.

Everyone was watching Gregory. He went into the middle of the circle.

One
two three,
one
two three,
one
two three went the music. Two kids were singing now in ugly harmony.
One
two three.
One
two three.
One
two three.

And Gregory began to kick his friend's wounded foot in time.
Kick
two three.
Kick
two three.
Kick
two three.

Brian said, “Please … Please …”

And the lieutenant smiled as Gregory kicked his friend's wounds, and the dance went on and on and on.

W
hen Lord Rafe “Chigger” Dainsplint stopped to think about how the old game of life was treating him, he felt heavyish in his gut. Things were not going swimmingly for his lordship.

Lord Dainsplint came from one of the most ancient and noble Norumbegan families — a family that had often worn the purple and ermine of high, even royal, office. He owned much of the city of New Norumbega and many other organs beside. He had grown up surrounded by luxuries, drinking pearls dissolved in wine, eating peacock with the tail fanned. Two weeks earlier, he had almost been elected as Regent and Prime Minister of the Empire of the Innards, and perhaps would have now been the most powerful man in the Great Body if people hadn't taken unkindly to his murder of his chum Gugs — which he thought was rather blinking dank of them, considering that no one ever could really stomach Gugs when the chap was alive (often rattled on a bit; brayed, even; a terribly slow card player).

Two weeks before, Lord Dainsplint had considered himself almost at the top of the Norumbegan hill of beans: views from the palace windows, long afternoons spent playing polo on droneback, plenty of champagne and orange juice for breakfast.

So now it was somewhat difficult to face up to the fact that he was sitting in a grubby undershirt, prisoner in a fortress carved entirely from snot.

Encrusting one wall of Three-Gut's vast stomach was a huge flow of phlegm, dried over centuries into great swaths and columns and ripples. The mannequins had chiseled their way into this shimmering cliff and had created a towering fortress with battlements and turrets of mucus hard as stone.

Exactly how Lord Dainsplint had ended up imprisoned in Pflundt was a complicated tale, and one he didn't really want to think about too hard. He had been exiled from New Norumbega, of course, after shooting Gugs (people can be so dashed particular), and he'd wandered the Dry Heart at first, uncertain where to go. Eventually, he'd paid for passage on a sub headed to the Splenetic Wastes, where he owned a hunting estate. He had the thought that if he got bored of shooting beasties in the crannies and crevices of the wild, he could always pop over to the monastery next door — St. Diancecht's — where he knew a monk who was an expert in herbal poisons. If he ever wanted to go back into politics, it seemed necessary to have a few undetectable and fast-acting toxins in his kit bag.

He hadn't gotten far. In midstream, the passenger submarine he was on had been surrounded by Thusser vessels and threatened with destruction. The Thusser boarded and steered the thing to Pflundt.

And now here sat Lord Dainsplint, favored son of a glorious family, in a prison yard, eating plain rice off a scrap of brown paper bag.

The only good news was that he had been chosen to act as social manager for the Norumbegan prison population. He arranged the distribution of food and the sleeping arrangements and the amateur theatricals. He made sure that the noble families in prison got a separate table and didn't have to eat with the peasantry. He had met some splendid people in the last week — some very solid eggs — and it was always a bit of a shame when they were dragged off to some location where their wills were broken through torture, their minds were laid bare, and they were melded into the walls, alive but corpse-like, psychically fed upon by Thusser, young and old.

Dainsplint looked up from his meal of rice and saw that the gates to the prison yard were opening. Several guards came in, and between them, a new set of prisoners.

Dainsplint stood. It was time for him to do his duty. He handed his rice to a grubby child who stood near him — “Finish it off, Rufus. You look a sight too spindly.” — and marched over to greet the new prisoners.

“Hell-o, all. The Honorable Rafe ‘Chigger' Dainsplint greets you and all that rot. Welcome to General Herla's
Holding Tank. Delightful you could come. We hope you'll enjoy your time here, et cetera. I'll be showing you to your cots and the mess hall and whatnot. And you are …?”

A man with a white walrus mustache bowed. “The Honorable Osbert Darvish, Baronet of Twilly Steadham, greets the Honorable Lord Dainsplint, and expresses his delight to be imprisoned and tortured with such a worthy peer, who surely will extend protection for his lowly servant.”

“Yes … I wouldn't get too giddy about my protection, old tripe. A day or two and you'll be feathering some Thusser mum's nest.” To himself, Dainsplint thought:
A mere baronet! Puffing around as if he expected the red carpet and servants in livery! Poor old duffer looks like he'll break easily.
“And you are?” he asked the next couple, who presented tear-stained faces.

He was dealing with a family of eight — the horrific Drastlumpkins, most of them wailing for toys — when suddenly he spied a familiar face.

A grubby human boy with broken glasses.

His accuser. The boy who'd unmasked him as a murderer.

Brian Thatz.

Lord Rafe “Chigger” Dainsplint smiled. “Well met, Brian, old flick. It's so delightful to see you. Let me throw an arm around those husky shoulders.” Dainsplint squeezed Brian as hard as he could. The bones popped a bit.

Dainsplint's grin was wolflike. “Well, my son, aren't we going to have times?”

Gwynyfer and Gregory's Young Horde troop were housed in an old machine shop in the lower reaches of Pflundt. Someone had laid out cheap air mattresses for them, and a Norumbegan lady had been webbed to the wall, her eyes and mouth gaping wide, lost in dreams, so that they'd be able to feed on her energy. She wore an oversize sweater and leggings. She still had on large earrings, which swayed when, occasionally, her head bobbed.

She made Gregory and Gwynyfer nervous.

Gregory said they had to get out on the streets and start checking out the city. “Two things we need to find,” he whispered to Gwynyfer. “Where Brian is and where the capsule is.”

“Oh, lordy, the capsule. The capsule! You people and the capsule!”

“Look, Gwynyfer, it's the only one-step way to beat the Thusser. The Norumbegans can't stop them. The mannequins can't stop them, obviously. So we have to get the Rules Keepers to stop them.”

Gwynyfer gritted her teeth and nodded. They left the machine shop and walked through the streets.

The last time Gregory had been to Pflundt, it had been full of mannequin life. There had been vendors and hawkers in alleys, mechanical families dressed in proper suits promenading on the avenues. If the mannequins were given their independence, this would become the capital of their nation.

Now the gray, cobbled streets were nearly empty. There were signs of the violent assault that had taken the city. Huge chunks of wall were blasted to pieces, and neighborhoods were empty shells. The mannequins who remained now served the Thusser, carrying armaments through the streets or even carrying Thusser dignitaries on platforms. For the first time in more than two centuries, the mannequins had to cook again. In public squares, they made cauldrons of stew for their Thusser overlords. In kitchens, mechanical men sliced up alien vegetables. Butchers hacked at the haunches of many-legged beasts.

There were not enough Thusser to fill the city. Most of the shops and houses were closed up.

“You know what's happening, don't you, while we stroll around?” said Gwynyfer.

“What?”

“The other chaps are poking holes in our inflatable mattresses.”

“Look,” said Gregory. “That must be the prison down there.”

They stood on a bridge partway up the cliff. Down the slope, through a tangle of rooftops and chimneys, was a gray, paved yard that had been outfitted with razor wire on its walls and giant Thusser runes of warning or condemnation. Norumbegans were sitting on the cobblestones in the courtyard, trapped and dejected.

“I'll bet Brian is in there,” said Gregory.

“Perhaps,” said Gwynyfer, shrugging. “If he hasn't already been brain-sucked.”

Gregory surveyed the place, leaning over the railing. He mused, “There has to be some way in there.”

“Oh? We could give ourselves up. We'd be in there in seconds.”

“Don't be a bore,” said Gregory, trying to speak a language she understood. “It will involve disguises.” He wagged his eyebrows.

“I do love disguises. Too bad these ones are going to quit soon, and leave us with the Thusser crawling all over us like ants swarming on a turkey carcass.”

“We can't replace the batteries?”

“On garbagy little items like these? No. They're throwaway.”

After they'd looked around the city, they stopped at a café where they ate awful little Thusser cakes and drank tea grown in the moist hillocks of Axial Organ #6 (“Slumber-Bear Daydreams” — decaffeinated). Gregory urged Gwynyfer to talk to some of the other Young Horde scouts who were slouching at nearby tables, reading magazines. He was too worried that his accent and his ignorance would give him away.

She inserted herself into a group, pulling up a chair and sitting on it backward. Gregory watched the way she touched her hair or boys' arms and the way she laughed. He wanted her to laugh that way with him.

Finally, he watched as two boys, eager to show off, stood up and displayed their scars for her.

When they left the café, Gwynyfer had a lot of news.

“Something big is happening tomorrow. They don't know what … the Norumbegan prisoners are being kept
in that walled yard we saw, but only until they're needed in a Thusser dwelling or encampment. That's as we expected …. None of the fellows there have seen three mechanical giants carrying a capsule of any kind. Stupid move on my part — they were a mite startled by the question. Did seem too awfully specific …. As for the mannequins: The ones who've been taken prisoner are allowed to run down — no one winds them up — and they're stowed in a factory down at the foot of the cliff until they're needed. They're not being used for psychic fertilizer because the structure of their thought is too alien. That factory's the best guess as to where three mechanical giants might be stowed. All clear?”

“Let's go to the factory,” said Gregory, and when she rolled her eyes, he grabbed her wrist and started running. He knew that speed and recklessness would please her.

They pelted down through the gray, empty streets. They galloped down winding staircases that crisscrossed the cliff, and arrived at the factory breathing heavily and laughing.

It was made of dull brick. Some of the high windows were broken from nearby explosions. There were two Thusser guards standing by the front doors with long rifles and bayonets.

Gregory said, “Should we claim our troop wants a personal tour?”

“No. That's nuts.”

Gregory nodded. “Then we're just going to have to find a way to break in,” he concluded.

They went back to their barracks for dinner and a poor night's sleep on their punctured and deflated beds.

Brian did not have a good night's sleep. Lord Dainsplint had arranged for Brian to share a cell with him. This was just so his lordship could torment him.

Brian came back from dinner to discover Lord Dainsplint standing next to their bunk bed.

“D'you know,” said Lord Dainsplint, “it is a tragedy that the terrors and mishaps of childhood so often plague us in later years. I, for example, was once locked in a haunted butler's pantry overnight. The expressions and expostulations of the dead quite unsettled me. To this day, I find that being in an enclosed space — such as a small cell — often prompts in me a horrible spate of bed-wetting.”

Brian looked at his lordship. He said, “That's my bed you're wetting.”

Dainsplint looked down. “So it is, old fish. So it is.” He walked off to look out into the prison yard through the bars of the door.

So Brian had not slept in a bed. He'd slept on the cold, hard floor. And every time he finally got to sleep, Dainsplint had started singing a menacing old folk song about wringing the neck of a fat little goose.

Brian was exhausted. His nerves had been attacked magically. His foot was festering with an untended
wound. He had a fever. He had hardly eaten for days. His best friend had betrayed him, somehow — Brian couldn't tell exactly what was going on there. He kept hoping that the door would burst open and Gregory would be there, dressed as a …