Winterlong (53 page)

I drew back, stunned. Dark bruises had begun to erupt on his skin, the beautiful pale skin that had not been a vanity to him. And at the thought of that, of his beauty ravished in death, horror and grief overwhelmed me so that I knotted his hair about my fingers and began to sob Fury crept to the altar to slink warily between the flames, The lazars slipped from the shadows and approached me, murmuring.

I wept then, who had never wept before; while behind me in the crypt I could hear the hiss of the bonfire where they would lay him—my friend and companion, who had led me from
HEL
and lived only long enough to teach me the beginning of love.

And now I would never know what it was to be human; now all there had been of love in me would burn upon a madman’s pyre. My brain seethed as though it might explode, as inside me I heard the weeping of all the ones I had taken, all those who had gone to feed the Gaping One: Emma and Aidan, Morgan Yates, Melisande, all the others for whom it had been too much, this life, this waking horror that was the world; their voices rising to a shriek, until I shook and my hands dropped from him.

And I screamed, striking at a lazar who had reached to touch Justice’s hair. She fell back, her head striking a marble pillar. She slipped to the floor, a seam of blood like a crack upon her pale face.

“Don’t touch him! Don’t try to hold me!” I shouted.
“None
of you can hold me!” Another child slipped and fell in his haste to run from me. I lunged to grab him, held him above me, and hurled him across the chapel. He screamed, and the voices of the other lazars echoed his end.

“The Gaping One, the Gaping One!” they cried. “He wakes, he wakes—‘”

I stood, panting as they cringed in the shadows of the Chapel, weeping and coughing from the bitter smoke. Then someone else limped from the altar, the reflection of firelight scorching his tattered crimson jacket until he seemed another flame approaching me.

“No!”
he shouted, kicking a knot of crouching children so they scattered like a nest of voles before a stoat.
“That
is not the Gaping One!”

He staggered toward me: the Consolation of the Dead, the mad Aviator, Margalis Tast’annin. The torn jacket flapped like some withered basilisk clinging to his shoulders. From its tattered sleeves hung myriad tiny bones that clattered as he moved.

I stood frozen, staring; and finally I knew why they feared him: because now I too was afraid.

“Go back,” I hissed. “I will destroy you—” I bared my teeth and swiped at the air in front of his face.

“You are not the Gaping One,” he said. He jabbed at me, knocking me to the floor, then grabbed my shoulders. I could smell the plague on him, the fetor of rotting flesh. I fought him with all my strength, twisting, snapping at the air until my teeth felt his skin split beneath them. He swore, kicked me as his blood ran into my mouth and I choked, trying to find the strand there that would unleash the horror upon Tast’annin and disable him. I tried to escape, but succeeded in getting my head free so that I could shut my eyes and try to call it forth, the One who lived inside me, the Boy who lived on blood…

There was nothing there.

Not a thought, not a darkness, not even the black wraith of a nightmare to feed it. Instead I gagged, my mouth filling with hot blood. As when I had tried to tap Justice when he died: He was gone, truly gone. I was helpless before the power of those who worshiped the Gaping One.

I was bound again, my legs left free so that I could walk. Trey and Fury watched me as the lazars dragged Justice’s body away, the children looking at me fearfully as the Aviator shouted at them to hurry. Then I was alone with him in the Crypt Church, with only the aardmen guarding me.

“Wendy Wanders. Subject 117.”

He licked his cracked lips and reached for a taper burning upon the altar. Dried blood caked one side of his face, so that it appeared he wore a grisly half-mask. He raised the candle, held it close enough to my cheek that it burned me and I turned away. “Emma’s prize subject. You led us quite a chase, Wendy; and for what? It doesn’t even work anymore, does it? You couldn’t save your friend, you couldn’t fight me. What good are you now, Wendy?”

I spat at him. He laughed, drew the candle to my temple until I heard the hiss of hair burning and smelled where he scorched me. Beside me Fury growled. “The scars are gone, you can’t even tell anymore, can you? I would have given anything to see how you did it; but I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now, will we?”

He stepped back, kicking at something: a heap of bones, the twisted remains of a white robe. A skull clattered across the floor and came to rest beneath a smoking brazier. He stared after it for a long moment, then turned to me.

“I asked them to show it to me once. Aidan Harrow told me. He told me everything. I was his confidant, his only real
friend
at the Academy—

“‘Show me,’ I begged him; ‘let me see what it is.’ I wasn’t afraid of it, you see, as he was and Emma was. I knew even then that this was something that shouldn’t be kept a secret.

“But he was a coward, Aidan, and we all know what happened to him.” He laughed, flicked melting wax so that it spattered my arm. “Emma was no coward but she was a fool, to think she could hide this—”

“She didn’t know what she was doing!” I tried to pull away from the aardmen, but they only held me tighter. “The implants were part of her research—”

“She knew exactly what she was doing.” His voice was very soft. He took my chin in his hands and turned it so that I faced the brazier and blinked in its fiery light. “Not so pretty as you were, Wendy Wanders.” He traced a jagged cut upon my cheek, and I winced as he prodded where I had been burned at Saint-Alaban. “She knew there had been a boy, your twin brother; I read it in your file. She hoped to awaken this—
thing
—she wanted to see it again…”

I closed my eyes, trying to recall Him, the face peering from spring leaves and the color of His eyes. But it was Justice’s face I saw, pale beneath the film of blood, his eyes dead and gray. They were both gone: gone as though it really had been a dream. Justice dead. The other had forsaken me as He had Aidan and then Emma; and they had killed themselves to find Him again. That beautiful face, those eyes…

When I looked up the eyes boring into mine were pale blue and threaded with blood.

“Why?” I asked. I struggled to shake myself free of the aardmen. Tast’annin glanced at them, nodded. They stepped back to crouch in the shadows. “Why would you care after all this time, about—about Emma, and me, about all of this?”

His gaze drifted upward, seeking something in the smoke-blackened figures that watched us from the vaulted ceiling. “I told you, I was Aidan’s friend,” he said at last. “I wasn’t—happy—about his relationship with his sister. And I was curious.

“To see a god like that, or a demon; even just a hallucination! Something that strong, something to die for—surely you can understand that, Wendy?”

He was silent for a long time, staring at me and then past me, seeing something in the darkness of the Crypt Church, something perhaps in the bones he had scattered across the floor.

Finally he said, “There is a play the courtesans have, a play about twins.”

I nodded, my flesh prickling. “The masque of Baal and Anat.”

He beckoned at Fury. The aardman slunk back beside me, Trey following. “That’s right.
Baal and Anat.
I have seen it many times, I had the children perform it for me. But then I thought, how much better if there were
real
twins, that would give it more impact, more—”

He waved at the air, his hand stabbing at my chest. “More
depth,”
he finished.

“I—I don’t know the play,” I stammered. “It’s a sacred text of the Paphians, of the House Saint-Alaban. Waking the Magdalene—”

“It’s very simple, really. A sort of sacrificial drama. They fight. One dies, the other doesn’t. I’ve arranged a place for the performance—”

Abruptly he turned away, gesturing at the aardmen. “Bring her to the armory.”

He sounded weary, and limped as he crossed the altar. Before he reached the door leading upstairs he looked back at me.

“Even I must serve something,” he said, and began to climb the stairs.

I was half-carried out of the Cathedral. The wind had fallen, the air was still and cold and silent except for muted voices in the distance. A few stars showed through the clouds drifting across the sky. Trey and Fury dragged me hurriedly across the frozen ground, their flanks rippling as they shivered in the darkness. About me I heard the sounds of running feet, coughing, and urgent whispers.

In a few minutes Trey and Fury skidded to a stop, snarling and snapping. I fell between them, tried to brace myself against the ground. There was nothing there. Inches in front of me the earth fell away abruptly. At my side the aardmen hunched, panting.

We were on a ledge ten or fifteen feet above a gaping hole large enough to swallow the Crypt Church. Brilliant white light streamed from it. Many figures moved there, black against the glaring lanterns.

They had excavated a great pit in the earth. Frozen mounds of dirt and gravel surrounded it, heaps of stone and sand lay scattered about its floor. It was the ruins of an ancient arsenal. Banks of monitors and metal pilings, immense shining globes and myriad metal chairs had been lined around the perimeter in a feeble attempt at order. Spikes and rotting timbers protruded from the earthen walls, hung with lanterns or chains or frayed costumes.

In the center of the pit loomed some kind of launching mechanism, its hollow nose pointed skyward, jointed steel legs splayed across the uneven ground like those of a mantid. From within it protruded a long silvery missile. Nearby a small generator had been propped, its tiny operating lights blinking red and green through a film of dirt. Wires strung from it led to floodlamps pitched from crazily tilted poles and scaffolding made from warped wood and metal rods. The whole place was blindingly lit, so that it was impossible to ignore those who had died during the excavation, the stench of bodies heaped along the walls and beneath the launcher.

“Come,” said Fury. He nosed at the earth until he found something, the lip of a rickety metal ladder. He mounted it with difficulty, hind legs scrabbling at the narrow struts as he clambered down, until finally he slipped and fell the last few feet. Shivering, I followed, my hands sticking to the freezing metal, and stepped carefully to the bottom. Trey crouched at the rim of the pit, his eyes glowing as he stared down at us. After a moment a smaller shape joined him, foxy muzzle and ruby eyes watching shrewdly.

“This way, lady,” Fury ordered. I turned to follow him. Lazars squatted exhausted against the walls. Others dragged more captives down from above, and hurried to avoid us as we passed. I shielded my eyes against the glaring lights, stumbling against broken chairs, the gutted shell of some kind of robotic server. Beneath the missile launcher the ground had been swept clear except for a few metal screws, a tooth, and shards of glass. “Here,” said Fury.

As he turned away another voice cried my name, hoarse but unmistakable.

I whirled, tripping so that I grabbed one of the launcher’s legs to keep from falling. In the shadows behind a narrow scaffold stood Jane Alopex, her arms held tightly by a slender lazar still wearing a columbine’s purple shift. A bruise welled beneath one eye, but she held her head high and stared at me with relief.

“Jane!” The word came out in a whisper. Then I nearly wept, because from behind her a smaller figure emerged, dragged by a lazar scarcely bigger than herself. Her gown filthy, mobcap gone, limping slightly because she wore only one boot. “Miss Scarlet—”

Another person was pushed forward. Fabian, staring dazed at the ground. Even at this distance I could see him shaking, his torn clothes fluttering from thin wrists. Of Toby and the others I saw nothing.

“Well! We seem to have all the principals assembled. Not as large a cast as usual, but sure to be an interesting one.”

At the base of a ladder weaved Tast’annin, clutching at Oleander and Trey for support. Behind him stood Raphael Miramar, calm as though just awakened from untroubled sleep.

I drew myself up and called out, “Let my friends go free, Tast’annin! You have no fight with them, you had none with Justice—” I stammered the name, halted.

Tast’annin shook his head. He looked weary beyond belief, his eyes sunk within his ravaged face, his face almost bloodless as it turned from me to Raphael. As his gaze lingered upon my brother loathing writhed across his features, loathing and a dull sort of recognition. He raised one hand to Raphael, with the other grasped at Trey as though to pull him closer. For a moment I thought he would speak, command the aardmen to bear my brother back into the fastnesses of the Engulfed Cathedral, and slay him there as a final offering to the Naked Lord.

Then the light died in his pale eyes. He turned back to me, his voice a raven’s croak.

“No. It must be done—”

He pointed at the far wall where Fabian cowered beside Jane Alopex. “You—whore there, you
actor
—introduce them.”

Tast’annin’s hand flailed at the air. Fabian gasped, then was shoved forward into the ring of light.

“What—I don’t—”

“The masque of Baal and Anat,” prodded Tast’annin. He leaned heavily upon Oleander. The boy grimaced, moved the belt and sheath around his waist, and stepped forward bearing his master. Raphael followed them, then walked until he stood a few paces from me.

“The masque—” Fabian began in a wavering voice. The Aviator stared at him coldly, his lip catching on one upper tooth. “The masque of Baal and Anat, performed by—by”

Tast’annin grinned and clenched his fist. A cry as Fabian was struck and sank to the ground; and another lazar stood pale and trembling where he had.

“You may begin,” whispered Tast’annin. “Wendy—Raphael—”

My brother stared back at the Aviator as though for the first time. His hair had fallen unbound to his shoulders; his face was white as ash, his mouth red against its pallor. Blood caked at the corners as though he had been bitten. My necklace still hung about his throat. Then he turned to gaze at me, his unearthly calm finally shaken.