The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter (25 page)

Forcing himself into a crouching position and moving forward, Nahid put one hand on the crumpled heap—which felt very warm—and began to lift the thick material aside, searching for a face within. The sensation against his fingers was like none he had felt before: the odd covering was warm and thin, yet pliant as hide. It was also sticky with fluids, but whether this fluid was red or black or something else altogether Nahid could not be sure. His fingers became stained and clammy. In the dim light from the lanterns on the street, he saw the face, sunken and pinched. On the forehead, above a smashed mask (that Nahid thought might be tattooed there, until he felt it), was a grave wound. Very few teeth in the open mouth, and the few that were there were stained brown and worn down to the gum line. The stench of the man was like ripe refuse. Under the mask, the yellow eyes were half-open but rolled back, showing neither pupil nor iris.

The man was alive.

For an instant, like a fool, Nahid looked up at the low clouds, as if there might be more of these seraphim descending.

Nothing.

Smooth metal rods and cryptic pieces of hardware that flickered tiny lights at him caused inexplicable bulges Nahid could not fully access. With his knees pressed up against the unconscious man’s chest, he did manage to find—tucked into a pocket—an object roughly the shape and size of a child’s forearm. As he touched this gently, a chill made his body shudder. His pains ebbed.

Drawing in his breath, Nahid withdrew the artifact, icy cold, but quickly getting warm as his own flesh. The surface was impossibly smooth. He rubbed the device with his thumb and distant voices started to whisper in his head. A woman, speaking a different language? A child?

He turned the treasure around and the whispering ceased. On the sides, tiny engravings—writing of some sort—scrolled like marching insects. The letters glowed dimly. Thin white filaments extended as he watched, poking feebly against his wrist, tapping there, as if trying to get in.

Should he leave the body here, slink back to the ostracon as if nothing happened, to sleep and recover?

But there were poisons in everyone, spirits in their veins. . . .

His plan had been to kill the chatelaine.

The woman’s voice resumed, like a wind blowing through him.

He squatted over the broken creature for some time, until it began to moan. Then he slid the object into the waist of his shorts. As the whispering grew louder still, Nahid managed to stand.

Name of the Sun had hoped to sleep, for she had a shift in the evening at The Cross-Eyed Traveller, but she was already convinced she would not be able to function at work, nap or no nap. She had bitten her nails to the quick.

Her room was small and damp, seldom empty during the late afternoon. Most often her roommates were there—Dora, Nina, and Polly—drinking beer, shrieking with laughter. Or the landlord dropped by. Sometimes all four were cramped into the tiny space when Name of the Sun came home. The landlord was always smiling, always nodding, affable, always trying to get any of the girls to sleep with him in exchange for rent. The other three had ofttimes taken him up on his offer.

When Nahid had come back to the room with her, and everyone was crammed in there, the situation had been awkward, to say the least. Her and the kholic could barely even fit inside, let alone have privacy. But the party would inevitably break up shortly after she pulled Nahid in, looking down at the floor, sitting in a corner, not saying anything. The expressions, the gaffes, the exchanged looks and awkward silences: these had been priceless.

Now the girls must have been at a pub. Quietly, quickly, Name of the Sun unfastened her robe, eager to sleep—or to try—before her roommates tumbled in.

Had Nahid, she wondered—pulling her blouse up over her head—cast a spell over her? Were there traces of his affliction in the semen she had let spill across her stomach or had even swallowed? What could possibly cause the kholic to exert such influence over her? Name of the Sun sincerely wanted to stay away from the kholic, though images of his body, lying on the mattress with her in this very room, and memories of him holding her while she slept, and the feel of his grimy body pressed against her—the thrill of looking into his eyes, against that black mask—flickered relentlessly through her mind.

Only when she found herself thinking that maybe she should give him another chance—that it was true, what he said, she could never relate to his pain, being neither a twin nor a kholic—did Name of the Sun actually laugh out loud and bitterly force herself to imagine something, anything, else.

She brushed at her mattress to rid it of fleas as best she could. Once under her sheet, she idly began to masturbate, as she often did when she was tired and needed to sleep, but her wrist soon became sore and she recognized that the effort to come would be too great, so she lay still, unsuccessfully managing to keep her mind from dwelling on the reasons for the demise of her recent relationship, and why they seemed to make such little sense now.

The closest Name of the Sun came to being distracted was when she wondered, for a little while, about Nahid’s twin sister. Though Name of the Sun had never met the girl, she would very much like to: Octavia could attract a woman such as the chatelaine and could cause Nahid such anguish. Nahid often said that Octavia looked just like him. In which case, Name of the Sun understood the pull that the sister might have; she must have been gorgeous.

Later, still awake, though she might have slept for a moment, Name of the Sun began ruminating about Nahid’s list—his three objectives: fighting, getting high, and fucking—leaving her hand where it was, immobile on her damp mons, all arousal long-vanished.

There came a scratching at the door. She lay, alert again, listening to the patterns of sounds: not as if someone were trying to get in, but as if an animal, maybe, were digging, or some other resident of the city, sharpening claws on the wood.

Silently, she got of bed. Holding the sheet up, she called out softly.

The scratching stopped.

And began again.

Taking a deep breath, and another, Name of the Sun unbolted the door with shaking fingers, yanking it open—

The stoop was empty. She looked up the street. Down. There were people in the fog, old buildings. Wet stone and crumbling brick and the scents of the humid evening.

Nothing unusual—

Except two cognosci, racing into the crowd on all fours.

Naturally, hornblower had been more than a little reluctant to step inside Anu’s mouth. He did not really want to even
look
in there. But the angry sky power had waited, inert, gaping at branch level, while hornblower stood trembling among the dead bodies of his fellows. Wind sang in the branches and the sun got stronger. Ambassadors buzzed around. Finally, when he did not move, two sinuous fingers—very much in appearance like the common green snakes served at most feasts—extended from the bottom of Anu’s chin, moving slowly but with dread certainly and, under the ambassador’s guidance, took hornblower solidly around the waist; hornblower either had to hop forward into Anu’s throat or fall off the edge of the great limb and discover what was really under the clouds, like Pan Renik had done.

Only without wings.

He chose to hop forward, landing on a surface flatter and harder than he had imagined.

Anu bobbed with his weight.

The power was large, and clean, extending back farther than hornblower thought possible, with rows of small yellow lights either side and room for a dozen people, at least. He focused on what could only be a seat, and to this he clung. The material he gripped was soft, certainly not carved from the meat of the world or woven from her leaves. When hornblower risked a quick glance about, he knew that Anu was made of unfamiliar materials. Polymers, the teachings said, but the word seemed pale and hollow in the face of these marvels. Most of the yellow lights he had seen when he first jumped inside appeared now to be writing, and this writing floated in the air. Tiny figures danced and shimmered. Hornblower held onto the chair as if nothing could ever pry him out of it again.

Outside the mouth, he saw the array of dead padres, sprawled on the branch. Red sap ran in rivulets from their ears and noses. Their faces were contorted with final agony. So easily had Anu killed them all. Every padre had been wiped out with a thought or quiet word. Except for him. Hornblower choked back fear for his own future, wanting to cry out, to shout questions, but knowing he’d best remain silent unless he wanted to end up like his brethren.

Farther along the branch, peeking from their huts, several members of the settlement watched. He saw the two girls he had planned on visiting after the funeral standing agog before their hut, and he wondered if they would try to help him. Should he call out to them? But this might also anger Anu, so he merely nodded, to reassure the girls, and gave them a desperate wave: they retreated from sight.

Perhaps the people believed that Anu had called for him, and had devoured his body because he was devout, the best padre ever, the only padre to achieve this miraculous honour—

With a quiet whir, Anu’s mouth closed.

His view of the settlement was cut off.

Dimmer inside now, but the intensity of the yellow lights rose, and images crackled and spun, flickering strange characters at him, passing right through him. He tried to touch them as they swirled but could not.

Careful not to hyperventilate, hornblower pushed farther back into the seat. He wanted to vomit as the sky power began to sway, expecting to be chewed any second by hidden teeth, or digested by a flood of stomach enzymes.

When nothing like this occurred, he risked longer looks around. A series of odd noises, accompanied by the occasional distant voice, crackled through the short wall at his knees, though this voice spoke in words he could not understand, and as if from a terrible distance.

The smell in the power was like the sky right before clouds got dark.

Rocking back and forth, waiting for any clues, trying to be humble and devout but not sure what to do with his hands, hornblower came to the conclusion that he really could not make his situation much worse. Cautiously, slowly, he began to explore. Mere visuals at first, staring with growing awe at the treasures. Someone such as himself, though nevertheless a padre—a powerful padre at that—was surely not meant to understand or perhaps even lay eyes on such incredible wonders.

Hornblower touched Anu, so lightly, reverentially with the tips of his fingers. The flesh of the power was warm and tingling. His hand passed through the dancing yellow lights—

And a tiny slot opened before him. Blinking, he had a view of brightness—shreds of white and blue hurtling toward his face—that made him recoil, turning aside to avoid these shapes tearing through him. He braced himself for impact.

Yet the shapes did no damage, made no sound. He felt no wind against him. Hornblower turned slowly toward the slot again: the white forms continued to pass, brief blurs before vanishing, as if behind him—though when he glanced back he saw only the dim interior of Anu, and other empty chairs, and the dancing yellow lights.

Facing forward again, prepared for the visceral onslaught, he realized that these shapes were
outside
Anu, and that they were moving in the sky beyond—

No. The shapes were not moving.
Anu was
.

Hornblower lurched forward to get a better look. There was a material, clear as air but solid, between him and outside, preventing wind and the white shreds from hitting him. With a knuckle he rapped this cover.

The shapes were clouds, the blue was sky.

No part of his world remained visible: no branches, no leaves.

Anu had left the settlement behind.

“Great sky power,” hornblower wailed, “where are you taking me? Where are we going?”

Anu slowed; hornblower felt this change of speed in his stomach and he gripped the armrests until his fingers turned white again. All he could see through the slot was clouds, lit by the sun. No more sky, no more firmament. Droplets of moisture appeared on the clear cover. Anu began to rock violently.