The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter (18 page)

Anu, the almighty power, trailed by ambassadors, hovered in all his fearsomeness over Pan Renik’s abandoned nest. Beyond the glow from his skin, even the firmament seemed pale by comparison. Ambassadors dove, momentarily lost in his light, then flickered away.

Anu was the size of five huts pushed together.

His roar shifted, lowered.

Hornblower watched fires burst from the mighty loins; along the great back, several sets of wings blurred with heat of their own. Staring up, the padre trembled. His heart thundered. He was close to expiring right there, on the main branch. He wanted to run but was afraid running might attract attention. Even if he tried to run, he doubted his legs would obey.

All other padres on this lip of the world—ironuser, leafjoiner, ropemaker, plus three or four junior leaders whose roles were not fully assigned yet—stood likewise trembling, no doubt in the same awed state.

They had expected the exile to be executed.

That had not happened.

Because Pan Renik jumped
.

Now Anu, mighty and fearsome, had arrived.

Were all dreaded things about to come true? Anu—whom hornblower had spoken about so cavalierly his entire life, and whose name he had used so many times to achieve what he wanted, to get what he desired—was real, right here, and no doubt angry.

So easy had it been to interpret and shape words passed down from generation to generation, to visit girls, claiming the visits were on Anu’s behalf, to instruct people, to lead people, but in the power’s glow, hornblower now felt transparent and as mortal and flawed as anyone else in the settlement. Should he stammer an explanation? Beg for forgiveness?

What explanation could there possibly be?

Crazy Pan Renik had jumped into the clouds.

Anu’s hands brushed against the upper branches as he turned. Ranking him, ambassadors zipped frantically, whirrs audible over the thrumming roar of the power. Once clear of the branches, Anu descended, blowing hot air and stirring up leaves, making the padres robes tug and crack like whips.

Of course, Anu knew they were there; he had known all along, despite his blindness. Ambassadors had told him.

The power glowed with a light that was impossible to either look at or look away from, just like the stories had said, just like hornblower’s father had told him in sermons. The light illuminated hornblower’s inner self, his secrets, inside and out—illuminated secrets of all the padres. None could ever look away again.

His eyes watered. The roar was like a throbbing heart. On the power’s long face, the large eyes were cracked and dim. Anu’s fingers, the size of branches, flexed and trembled. Close enough now that hornblower could have hit his flank with a stick, had he been so foolish, Anu slowed.

Ambassadors touched Anu’s skin, lingering there for a second, then darting off. Hornblower saw seams on the body of the great power and a series of darker marks, splayed in streaks toward Anu’s outstretched legs where his smooth skin seemed scarred and dented.

The hum rattled hornblower’s teeth.

Next to him, a padre began a sermon: “Decayed friends and awful neighbours . . .”

But his voice trailed off.

Damn Pan Renik! The exile should have been thrown off the edge of the world at birth!

“Anu,” cried leafjoiner, unable to withstand the pressure of the situation any longer, “tell us your intents!”

Renewed gusts of hot air came from under the entity as it shifted, turning away from hornblower. Ambassadors circled in another flurry of activity.

Hornblower muttered a prayer. What else was there to do? Was there the slightest chance that Anu had come down from his skies on a visit of commendation and reward for the devotion of his padres? This did not seem very probable. He thought again about getting to his knees to praise the almighty, and he tried not to think about his indiscretions, or how much pain he might feel if the power finally decided to punish him.

Anu slid through the air until he was only a few metres away, filling the sky. Hornblower reviewed what his own padres had taught him, looking for a maxim to cling to, to save him, or at least give him small comfort in these last moments.

Words seemed so futile now.

Then, suddenly, to his left, padre firelighter dropped to his knees. From the corner of hornblower’s eye, he saw the man pitch forward, face down onto the bark of the great branch. Hornblower could not stop himself from turning, just for a second, to get a better look: red sap leaked from both of firelighter’s ears.

The padre twitched and went still.

Dead.

“Please,” hornblower whispered, unable to keep his silence, “please spare me. Great Anu, power of heaven and the sky and all that is overhead. Please,
spare me
. Firelighter was weak, it’s true. But I was always speaking for you, in all that I did. Always. I obeyed . . .”

An ambassador appeared instantly, close to hornblower’s face, and froze there.

Anu
, it said, buzzing,
chooses you.

“Me? For what?”

To retrieve.

Hornblower was stunned. Surely the ambassador was not talking about retrieving Pan Renik? But what else could it mean? The phrase was like cold metal in hornblower’s head. He did not look to see if other padres could hear this, or even if they remained alive. Now he knew the madness of what the power wanted: he had to go beneath the clouds, never come back. He would follow Pan Renik into the afterlife. “Ask Anu not to make me go down there,” he said quietly. “Ask him . . .”

Anu has not taken a human exemplar in a hundred years. But now he chooses you. He can’t go alone. We can’t go. So you will guide him.

Below the ambassador, behind a hundred of them, Anu hovered, stoic, arms out. He did not seem like anything that was ever alive.

The one that jumped took with him a device that belongs to Anu. Anu wishes to get it back.

“But not into the clouds . . .”

You will be Anu’s eyes. Your hands will be his hands. We cannot follow him. Do you understand? You will guide the power down there.

“I can’t go. I can’t.”

Tastes of agony put an abrupt end to further protests. Hornblower closed his eyes and hoped he would never open them again. The pain was worse than any pain he had ever before felt. When it lingered, he put his hands up to his face, expecting to feel sap gushing from all exits, but there was none springing forth from his ears, or nose, or mouth. And, in his chest—at least so far—his heart still pounded.

Taking a chance, he glanced at the other padres.

Dead, all of them, leaking their lives out onto the branch.

He could not resist Anu. He could not do anything. Just like old times, the great power of the sky had come down from the firmament to deliver his wrath, and to assign to an unfortunate padre a divine and impossible quest.

Rubbing both palms over her eyes, and holding them there for a moment, as if she hoped reality might alter when she finally lowered them, Name of the Sun said, “I did something stupid last night.”

They sat on damp and filthy rocks on the shores of the River Crane, by New Market quay. For Name of the Sun, the ambient stench was anathema, but because her friend was a kholic, the smell of the river was a form of comfort. Name of the Sun tried her best not to show her distaste, but she had never been able to get accustomed to certain of the kholic predilections, no matter how often she associated with them.

Nowy Solum rose like ragged cliffs. A few boats struggled on the Crane, beyond where several people stood in the shallows, with nets or poles, looking for anything they could eat or sell or clean—not all out there were kholics, though several tattooed children clustered about nearby outhouses, lean bodies spattered.

“I went with Nahid.” Name of the Sun watched the children. “We did something crazy.”

Her friend, Serena, looked down at her own knees.

Around the girls squatted several cognosci. Two of the beasts gnawed bread crusts. A third, as Name of the Sun turned, lowered its paws from its muzzle, then showed teeth to her, massive and yellow.

A moment passed before Name of the Sun understood that the creature thought they were playing a game, peek-a-boo, initiated because she had been holding her hands up to her face. She tried to return the distorted smile. Cognosci were ugly by any standards, their doggish faces compressed, their skin sagging and grey. The beasts made horrible growling noises when they breathed, as if with each breath they were about to expire from a painful ailment. Yet she knew the creatures were oblivious in their ignorance, unrelenting in loyalty. “Last night,” she said, “Nahid and I did something I regret.”

Serena said, “Are you going to tell me?”

Still watching the cognosci, Name of the Sun hesitated. She recalled Nahid’s drunken list, the so-called pleasures in his life. Why had she expected more from him? Kholics were restricted by training and culture and history. Like these simple cognosci, rooting for remnants on the beach, they were damaged by the city.

The brains of these creatures, low functioning at the best of times, had been fried altogether by bleach, which had been served to them by the madam who had captured them, and knew how to permanently pacify them. Serena had found the cognosci discarded behind a whorehouse; fucking the creatures was popular among certain deviants in Nowy Solum.

How different, Name of the Sun suddenly wondered, was the fetish of fucking kholics? In the eyes of some, no different at all. She shuddered. Just to entertain these thoughts was horrible. Nahid had put doubts in her with his hurtful words.

“We used the tunnels,” she said, “to get into Jesthe.”

“From the centrum?” Now Serena seemed alert.

“I hadn’t been inside since I was seven. Nahid had never been in there.”

“Why would he? Kholics can’t go in. That place is for hemo kids.”

Name of the Sun frowned. “I told you his sister works in Jesthe? His twin sister—”

“Octavia. Sure. Everyone knows that.” Serena made an expression that was hard to decipher.

“We went to where the chatelaine sleeps. We went into endocarp.”

“Endocarp?”

“The inner sanctum. Heart of the palace.”

Serena almost looked up. “I know what it means. You went there with Nahid?”

“Yes.”

“And was she there?”

“Octavia?”

“No. The chatelaine.”

“She was.” Name of the Sun did not want to tell Serena any more of story. This had been a bad idea. She said, “Have I done something to upset you?”

“I’m not upset, it’s just that there were these men who came by the ostracon—”

“Maybe I should just go.”

One of the cognosci, which had been looking over its shoulder, started to make a nasally whine; people nearby—three male hemos—were moving among the rocks, carrying fishing poles, making it nervous. The cognosci were accustomed to Name of the Sun being around, but men terrified them.

“Let’s both go.” Serena stood. “I need to get these guys back up. You can come back, too, if you’d like.”

Serena ran a shelter in a shed on Red Cross Street. There, she had taught herself rudimentary physicker training—enough, anyhow, to mend the most obvious of ailments. The creatures followed her wherever she went. But the invitation to return to the shelter had been cold, hollow; Name of the Sun did not feel welcome. She was so tired anyhow, and she had a shift at the end of the day. “I should get some sleep.”

They walked the embankment and Name of the Sun glanced up to see a man wearing only a loin cloth, holding a crop, staring down at her. She froze. The man’s chest was streaked with welts. He pointed toward her with his whip and she looked away for a moment, breathless—

When she looked back, the man was gone, but the cognosci huddled by Serena, baring their teeth, piddling where they stood, and would not budge.

Lingering in the narrow archway at the top of the stairs, the chatelaine watched her father. Her lungs and legs were sore from the exertion of the climb, and from the recent sex, both this afternoon’s and the debacle of the previous evening. She should have brought water to drink.