The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter (15 page)

“My— my father, painted these pictures, and he is also somewhat of— of a physicker, a splicer. I’m sure you know he’s up there, in the dungeon?” She pointed self-consciously to the wooden ceiling. “Self-imposed isolation. He’s afraid of ailments, you see, among other things. He once explained to me about the four humours, the biles. And the elements of fire, and water. Air, of course.” She had almost told the girl, right then, that the castellan often accused his own daughter of having traces of melancholy in her blood, so prone was she to gloomy moods, but the chatelaine managed, at least, to not blurt this out. At a loss for further words, however, she stood awkwardly, regarding her pets, feeling like she had already said too much. The empty cage taunted her. Something had just happened here, in the alcove. Something had shifted between her and the kholic. Then, as soon as she accepted once more that she really didn’t understand Octavia at all, the girl leaned forward and kissed the chatelaine on the lips. When the chatelaine opened her mouth, their tongues twined. She pulled the girl closer, ran her hands down Octavia’s back to her buttocks, where they stopped. The chatelaine was already wet. She tried to lift Octavia’s shift off, but the girl, breaking away, did it herself. As the garment rose, exposing the stunning body, the chatelaine’s breath was finally stolen.

She raised shaking hands, worshipping.

Her pets again went mad.

Ambassadors buzzed Pan Renik, lashing whenever they could at his exposed face and hands with their wire tails. Unable to defend himself (and knowing enough in his state of delirium not to even make an effort), the exile lay on his side, in his nest, moaning as he struggled to hold onto his rather limited senses. When he opened an eye, just a crack, wire tails caught at his skin and made him whimper.

One ambassador hovered a few centimetres before his face. Wings a blur of silver, it was there every time he looked, as if studying him, or maybe waiting. He peeked: still there. The tails beat at him. Never before had Pan Renik seen a single ambassador this close—usually only hordes of the messengers going about their business on high, or giving padres instructions from the sky.

Sap trickled his forehead.

If he had not known better, Pan Renik would have been certain that the ambassador was made of metal, for it shimmered, and reflected his marred face. But padres told the people that Anu and his countless minions were composed of
polymers
. Bio-engineered polymers that even—

Look what have you done.

For a second, Pan Renik thought the voice might be his own conscience; his conscience had spoken to him in the past, in various voices and from several sources, internal and external. But this voice was somehow different.

Do you have
any
idea what you’ve done? Everything was calibrated: her crash, her wounds. She was meant to remain
alive.

The ambassador, he realized, addressed him: this voice was no conscience. But ambassadors only spoke to padres—and to Anu, of course. Yet what other explanation could there be?

Humbled, Pan Renik accepted the pain and asked, “What did I do? Why are you here?”

Small fissures and cracks in the little round face, but no mouth, no feature at all that could be considered a mouth. Several wings on the back end. Sharp, dangling legs. The size of his fist.

The ambassador did not respond.

Pan Renik struggled, without much success, to sit up.

Perhaps a dozen of Anu’s emissaries had gathered in the air about him, including the one facing him, the one that seemed to be communicating. Others worked on his limbs, slashing at them. His arms and legs were covered in growing welts. His face burned.

When the ambassador spoke again, it radiated a mild heat. This heat was, in its own way, like another wire, twisting in Pan Renik’s brain:

Anu is interested
.

Each syllable stung as the ambassadors circled around, no doubt to get better shots, to strike at his forearms, his forehead, the bottoms of his poor feet.

He tried not to flinch. “Interested in me?”

Yes
.

“How can that be? I’m the exile.”

She came up from the clouds.

“What?”

The one you attacked. She came up from under the clouds
.

“That would be a miracle.”

Yes. A miracle. Exactly. A miracle, until you killed her. Now Anu is coming. He is far away, but he is coming here.

“Anu? For me?” Pan Renik saw now that the woman’s body was there still, in his nest. He touched the corpse with his toes. The metal also remained. He could not imagine how he could have been left alone with these treasures, or why.

Now the power was going to visit.

Nor could he imagine a way out of this situation.

Though Pan Renik knew he had not been unconscious for long, daylight had grown stronger since he had cracked open the woman’s skull. Black sap marred her face. Her mask was broken. In this early sunlight, all metal tubes and the remains of her flying device glittered more than they had before, when he had first laid eyes on them. He reached out toward one of the rods but instead, trembling, his grubby fingers came to rest on his mace, still sticky with the woman’s fluids.

Circling ambassadors renewed whipping his exposed skin.

You need to tell us what she told you. We saw her speak to you. Anu needs to know.

Those wire tails inflamed the skin on the back of his hands, on his face and neck. “She said nothing. So leave me alone. I mean, did she do this to me? Or did you? How did I get like this?” He wiped sap from his face with one hand, then looked beyond the ambassadors, toward the horizon, where it was already full day.

Idiot! She tried to defend herself. What do you think? Her suit gave off a jolt when you bludgeoned her.

A pause just then. Silence. The wire tails froze in mid-lash so that only the very low buzz of the ambassador’s wings could be heard. Pan Renik’s wounds during this interim stung with renewed throbs of this intense pain. Could he fight the tiny emissaries of Anu? Polymer, the padres said, was tough. And there were so many! If he did fight, would that assure his own death? Either way, he could not take a renewed round of lashes.

We would like to inform you
, the ambassador said,
Anu approaches the vicinity now. Prepare yourself. You’ll be interviewed, and recycled.

Refraining from defending himself had achieved nothing. He would be
recycled
.

Far below came faint shouts of the padres, rising from lower branches, as if they too had heard the proclamation. Had padres watched all the while? No doubt they had grown more and more concerned. Why were ambassadors of the sky, they must have wondered, talking to a citizen? To the
exile
, no less! And attacking him? What in the world had Pan Renik done? How had he messed up this time?

Managing to sit, then, smeared by his own sap, condemned to die, Pan Renik suddenly smiled; ironically, he had found an inadvertent way to get revenge on the settlement, to spoil the lives of the padres. He felt a surge of energy, and he used this energy to stand.

Take it easy
, said the ambassador.

So, Pan Renik thought. He would be
recycled
. Life was over. Everything was over. If not killed by Anu, then killed by padres. All for stupid pieces of metal.

He reviewed, briefly, his impulse to bash the women’s head in and could see no good way the scenario might have ended. Perhaps he was an idiot. He had been called this many times, for sure. He looked at the corpse. All he had ever wanted was a chance to improve himself and to own shiny things. Were these the crimes of an idiot?

His eyes burned. His skin, stung over and over by lashes, seemed to scream. Snatching up his mace, Pan Renik tried desperately to formulate an additional step, one last step, or to see if one were possible, but the tails beat his face, his neck, his shoulders. “Leave me alone,” he shouted. “Leave me alone, you lousy galls!”

He saw more ambassadors approach from above, through the red haze of sap on his face. Dozens of them, coming to get access to him, to contribute their bit to his punishment. Exile, condemnation, existence: all unfair!

As a tail caught Pan Renik across the cheek and he felt hot fluids burst on his face, his strength and anger and energy suddenly exploded: he spun the mace without further thought, knowing full well he could never hit an ambassador, for they were invincible messengers of a higher power, of the mighty Anu, but to his shock he heard the mace connect, heard the buzzing clip: the ambassador spun down, fizzling, crippled, to land on the twigs of his nest, near the woman’s corpse, where it flopped about and emitted a high, keening wail.

Other ambassadors backed off a few metres, en masse.

Pan Renik stared at the crippled messenger for a second. Incredulous. Then he looked up, beyond the masses of hovering ambassadors, at the clear blue sky. There was no entity visible, no sign of Anu coming out of the sun to kill him.

Not yet, at least.

He smashed the broken ambassador again as it tried to lurch away. Sparks sprayed from a crack in its back. He hit the device one more time, a mighty two-handed wallop that smashed its carapace, and again, until the ambassador stopped twitching and lay in shattered fragments.

“Galls upon you,” he panted. “Galls!” A spring popped up from the wreck: the trajectory took the spring over the side of his nest and down, beyond the clouds, out of sight.

Pan Renik’s breath came in ragged gulps. He tightened his grip on the mace.

Then a distant rumbling, as if of thunder, emanated from the firmament, building slowly. Pan Renik only saw the calm blue expanse of the morning, stained along the east cloudline with brighter light.

But something was coming.

Faster than his eyes could follow, the ambassadors vanished.

All of them.

Something was coming—

Scrambling over to where the dead woman lay, Pan Renik madly searched the black outfit. There were strange seams, confounding him, a variety of studs, clasps, all foreign to his clumsy fingers. Several openings parted easily, others he tore, but he managed to completely strip the sap-covered corpse.

Naked, the woman seemed less alien. Smaller, somehow. He tried not to wonder what her laugh might have sounded like. He tried not to think about lying with her, like a padre, and how her body might have felt against his, if it were not cold and hardening.

The rumbling from heaven continued to build.

He saw, next to the woman—so black it looked like a hole in his nest—an object the size and shape of his forearm. He thought of starless nights. Hesitating, stooping, his fingers almost touched the object, but not quite, because a faint voice started to whisper in his mind.

But there were no living ambassadors around.

He grabbed the treasure, which must have rolled free of the outfit, grunting as his hand closed over a surface so smooth and cold against his skin he thought he’d been seared. When he lifted and cradled it, the whispering grew louder and louder, and he wanted to throw the thing away but literally could not. Voices reached a crescendo in his head, then just the sound of wind.

He pushed the object back inside the suit, then put his own limbs into the sleeves, under the straps. He fastened clasps he had previously undone. He pulled material tight over his body. Pan Renik had no way of knowing if he had put the bizarre costume on in the correct fashion but he could not wait, not for anything. Not anymore. Waiting was over.

Sounds from above made the thin branches quaver.

Metal rods that the woman had died for extended out either side of Pan Renik’s body, trapping gusts of wind. Strung between the rods, the black blanket stretched, filling, pushing him forward. He looked like a glider. He looked like a gall-licking glider. He hooted and tried to make a rude gesture in the direction of the settlement but his movements were hampered. The rods were lighter than Pan Renik had expected. He braced himself on his haunches, shrugging, even dancing a bit, and discovered that he could unlock the frame; pressure from the wind suddenly decreased; he was able to fold his arms.

The broken mask, streaked with the dead woman’s sap—and by drips of his own—covered Pan Renik’s eyes, mouth, and nose.

And here they came! A mass of ambassadors, approaching directly from the sun. More than he had ever seen before: a thousand, ten thousand. Behind the myriads, some bigger shape shimmered into view. The intensity of light made him gasp. Around the form, sky broke up into scales of light that made it difficult to focus. He saw a large torso with a fiery tail, and an elongated head, eyes dim with blindness.

Ambassadors were leading the sky power to him.

Massive hands grasped the air, tentatively, spread out to soar—