Ancients of Days

Chapter Twenty-Four Gond

“It is a city that shines like the ice flows of the mountains at the end of the world,” Eliphas told Yama. “I last saw it many years ago, but I still remember how it shone in the sunlight across the blue waters of the river. The river may be shrinking, brother, but it runs deeper here than anywhere else in the world, deeper even than at Ys. They fish for leviathans off the shore of Gond.” Yama flinched, remembering the one solid fact he had gleaned from the muddle of his stepfather’s papers. Eliphas did not notice. He was lost in his memories.

“They fish not from coracles or cockleshells,” the old man said, “but from barges as big as fields, with big motors that make the water boil around their sterns when they are working. There are leviathans deep beneath our keel, and that’s what these barges are after. They send down lures as tall as a man and armed with explosive hooks, using steel cables several leagues long. If they strike lucky, they haul up their catch and render it there and then. Of course, most of the time the leviathan escapes, and sometimes, despite its power, a barge is dragged under by what it catches.”

“I thought that the people of Gond led aesthetic and contemplative lives,” Yama said.

“The fishermen come from the cities of the Dry Plains, further downriver. From Ush and Kalyb and Galata, and the twin cities of Kilminar and Balbeck.” Eliphas intoned the names with sonorous pleasure. “If a barge catches more than one leviathan in the hunting season its crew count themselves lucky. The proceeds from rendering one monster would buy a ship like this twice over.”

Yama and Eliphas were leaning side by side at the rail of the main deck of the Weazel, in the shadow of the big, rust-red sail. Sternward, smoky columns of rain twisted beneath the reefs of white and gray clouds that overshadowed the far-side shore—a desolation of mudflats and pioneer mangroves inhabited only by birds and swarms of army crabs. There had been no sign of either the warship or the picketboat in the past three days, and the Weazel was at last angling away from the far-side and the spurious safety of the mangrove swamps. Ahead, in the far distance, the Great River bent toward the Rim Mountains, and at the angle of the nearside shore a mote of light glistened, white as a crystal of salt: the city of Gond. Captain Lorquital had announced that the Weazel would put in there to collect a passenger and to take on fresh provisions.

Yama told Eliphas, “I see that you are happy to retrace the steps you took when you were a young man.”

Eliphas closed his eyes. His face was shaded by the wide brim of the straw hat he wore as protection from the sun. “It has been more than a hundred years. I thought I had forgotten most of it, but each place we pass brings memories rising from the depths of my mind, as the monsters of the abyssal currents of the river rise to follow the glowing lures trailed by the fishing barges.”

He opened his eyes and smiled: silver and white flashed in his black face. “Do not worry, brother. I will fulfill the promise I made to you in the library of the Department of Apothecaries and Chirurgeons. I will find the lost city for you. I know that your servants are suspicious of me, but I have your best interests at heart.”

“They are not my servants, Eliphas.”

Eliphas smiled. “They believe otherwise, brother. Look there! A pod of grampuses! See how they sport!”

Three, four, five sleek white creatures swam swiftly through the clear water, effortlessly overtaking the speeding ship. They caught up with the purling bow-wave and rode it briefly, plunging and leaping in white foam, then all at once they sounded, pale shadows dwindling away into the dark depths of the river.

Eliphas said, “Some believe they are intelligent, and that they herd the fish of the river as the autochthons of the mountains herds sheep or goats.”

“When you are swimming in the river, you can sometimes hear them singing,” Yama said. He had often heard their songs himself, for in summer schools of grampuses migrated far upriver. Songs that lasted for hours, deep throbbings overlaid with scatterings of chirps and whistles, haunting, mysterious and somehow lonely, as if defining the inhuman vastness of the Great River.

“They say that the Preservers placed everything on this world for a purpose,” Eliphas said, “and the ultimate purpose is to raise up all the Shaped so that we may live forever in their glory. But I sometimes wonder if the Preservers brought creatures like the grampuses to the world simply because of the joy they strike in the hearts of men. If that is true, I can forgive them much.”

Yama remembered that the woman in the shrine, Angel’s aspect, had said that the Preservers were descended from her own people. He said, “I think that the Preservers were once not so different from us. The first suras of the Puranas tell us that in times long past there were no gods, but only many kinds of humans.”

“There is no gradation in godhood,” Eliphas said. “It is not like the process of aging, which is so gradual that only by looking back are you shocked by how much you have changed, for you have no sense of having changed at all. And of course, from day to day you have not changed in any measurable sense. No, brother, the Preservers changed utterly and at once, and so what they were before they became gods is irrelevant. When godhood descended upon them, or when they ascended to godhood, everything they had been fell away.”

“And yet they made us over in their image. Not as what they became, but as what they once were. And so they did not leave their past behind.”

Eliphas nodded gravely. The old man loved metaphysical discourse. He was one of those for whom the world is merely an object from which theoretical ideals might be abstracted, and therefore less important than thought.

“The Preservers have not forgotten what they once were,” he said, “but they put it behind them, as a butterfly puts behind its caterpillar childhood when it emerges from its cocoon. The Puranas are perhaps that cocoon, which we riddle for clues. Yet it is only an empty shell left clinging to the twig of the world. That which matters has ascended into everlasting sunlight.”

Yama smiled at the old man’s fanciful metaphor. He enjoyed these conversations; they reminded him of the long debates with Zakiel and Telmon, of happier times.

He said, “You have seen me read in the Puranas. It is not to understand the Preservers. It is to understand myself.”

“I believe that your copy of the Puranas is a very old one.”

Yama knew that Eliphas wanted to examine the book, but he had decided that he would not show the transformed pictures to anyone. Not, at least, until he had understood Angel’s story. He would read more tonight. He thought that he already knew how it ended—but perhaps it had not ended after all. Perhaps he was part of that story, coming late onto the stage to draw the curtain and announce the end of the play.

Eliphas said, “Books are more powerful than the world. Even if the world ended, then surely someone would chronicle it. And so that book would save the world, for it would live again in the minds of any who read the account.”

“I spent much of my childhood in a library. Perhaps too much of it was spent studying the past. I want to see the world, Eliphas, and all its wonders. I want the present, not the past.”

“But the past is all around us. We cannot escape it. Everything important has happened in the past, and we are its children. The Preservers achieved godhood in the past and made the world in the past and shaped the bloodlines in the past. The future is a small thing and hazily glimpsed, and we are told that once every bloodline has changed the future will cease, for history will cease. But you are right, brother. Children should look ahead, not behind. We cannot live in the past, or else the future will only echo what has already happened.”

So they talked as the ship, sailing aslant the river’s currents, drew closer to the shining city of Gond. Eliphas preferred his own opinions to those of anyone else, but Yama was grateful for the diversion of his company.

He could not grieve for his stepfather, not yet. He could not give way to grief or anger. He must stay calm and alert, for sooner or later he would have to face Prefect Corin again.

He did not believe that he had escaped. Prefect Corin was a thorough man. He would not have been fooled for long by Yama’s ruse, and would have returned to the floating forest to search for remains of his quarry. Finding none, he would have gone on downriver, implacable, relentless. This was not mere supposition: Yama had already turned aside several machines that were searching the wide river for any trace of the Weazel. So he was not surprised when, that evening, as the Weazel scudded ahead of a light breeze toward the floating harbor that stood off the shore of Gond, Captain Lorquital called him up to the quarterdeck.

Aguilar and Tamora stood on either side of Captain Lorquital’s sling chair. Aguilar told Yama, “Your trick with the machines has run aground. The devil has got ahead of us.”

“We’ll have to face him now,” Tamora said, and her black lips peeled back from her teeth at the thought.

Ixchel Lorquital handed Yama her spectacles without comment. Through their magnifying lenses, the floating harbor leapt closer. There were ships of every size laid up at the leagues of pontoons and cranes and warehouses of the docks; their masts made a leafless forest. And in the channels beyond the floating harbor, a picketboat and a triple-decked warship were anchored side by side, their sails half-reefed.

“Well,” Yama said, “we could not hope to hide from him forever.”

“There was a light signal from the harbor,” Captain Lorquital said. “We are to pick up our passenger tonight. He’s an important man, and we can leave tomorrow morning under his protection, like any other honest vessel.”

“We can’t depend on that,” Aguilar said, and told Yama, “Your devil will be watching the river night and day, but I think we’ll have a better chance if we run at night.”

Tamora said, “We might surprise him.”

“I saw a machine today,” Captain Lorquital said. “It was making directly for us when it suddenly angled away, as if it remembered business it had elsewhere.”

“I cannot confuse the minds of men,” Yama said, “and Aguilar is right. Prefect Corin’s men will be watching every ship that passes by. Especially those few that pass by at night.”

“We have lost our cannon,” Aguilar said. “We have only our small arms. If it comes to a fight, we must surprise them.”

“We must strike first,” Tamora said.

“We have made plans,” Aguilar said. “Barrels of pitch. A catapult—”

Captain Lorquital said, “I won’t be a pirate, daughter. They must fire the first shot.”

“And that one shot could sink us,” Aguilar said.

Yama said, “It is better to know where our enemy is than to run with the thought that he is always somewhere behind us. Besides, he will have no warrant or power here. He is merely another sailor put in for shore leave and reprovisioning. If he tries to hurt us, the common law will protect us.”

“The people of Gond care little for anything but their philosophies,” Aguilar said. “They’ll probably turn us over to that town burner rather than interrupt their meditations to listen to us plead our case.”

“She’s right,” Tamora said. “We must take matters into our own hands.”

“Then we’ll be worse than them,” Captain Lorquital said firmly. “This is an end to the argument. We’ll behave as any normal ship. The free men will get their shore leave, and you, daughter, will stand guard with the slaves. Nothing will happen to us at the harbor, and once our passenger is aboard, we’ll have his protection.”

Afterward, Tamora followed Yama to the bow. “You are planning something,” she said. “I know you don’t believe that crut about common law.”

“I want to kill him,” Yama said.

Tamora grinned hugely. “That’s more like it. How? And how can I help?”

“I want to kill him, but I do not think that I should.”

“Then he will kill you.”

“Yes, he will, if he cannot make me serve him.”

“He destroyed your home, Yama. He killed your father as surely as if he had put an arbalest bolt through his heart. He is your enemy. There is nothing sweeter than drinking the blood of your enemy. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure.”

“He is only one man. How many more will the Department send after me? How many more would I have to kill? If I kill Prefect Corin there will never be an end to killing. I will always be hunted. But if I can find a way to end this, then I will be free.”

Tamora thought about this. “We’ll try your way,” she said at last. “And if that doesn’t work, give him to me. He is as much my enemy as yours. I’ll rip his heart from his chest and eat it in front of his dying eyes.”

She smiled fiercely at the thought, but Yama knew that she shared his foreboding.

A fishing barge was anchored upstream of the floating harbor, the enormous carcass of a leviathan sprawled across its wide flat deck. Already partly defleshed, the arches of the leviathan’s ribcage rose higher than the barge’s cranes. Its guts, tinged pink with the plankton on which it had fed, spilled in heavy loops from a rent that would have admitted the Weazel, mast and all. A line of men was strung across the wide flat tail of the carcass, like harvesters working across a field. They were using huge flensing knives to cut the hide away from the blubber beneath. Black smoke poured from the barge’s rendering furnaces, sending up a stink of burning fat and hazing the last light of the sun. Flocks of birds dipped and rose like whirling snowstorms, fighting for tidbits in the bloody waters.

As the Weazel glided through the lee of the barge, Yama watched the city of Gond slip past to starboard. It had once risen out of the river; now, it looked like the last tooth of an old man, its roots exposed beyond a labyrinth of mudflats. Gond, the porcelain city. A clutch of luminous white shells three leagues across, rising and falling in rounded contours like a range of ancient dunes, tinged with rose and silver and gold. Here and there were clusters of slim towers, their tops ringed round by tiers of balconies. Floating gardens hovered along the river margin, their parks and woods strung with thousands of lamps.

Eliphas climbed onto the forecastle deck. “There are probably not more than a hundred living there now,” he said. “Mostly, it is maintained by machines.”

“Yet they once ruled Ys,” Yama said.

He had once read a brief history of the porcelain city, and remembered that it had grown from a single seed planted in the sand of a beach at the first bend in the Great River. He wondered if that beach was still there, beneath the carapace of the city—the past preserved forever in the present. But no strangers were allowed into Gond. Its beauty was also its shield. Its people were great philosophers and teachers, but they did their work in colleges scattered amongst the orchards and fields and paddies that surrounded the city. From the first, the city had drawn circle around itself.

“They ruled Ys a long time ago,” Eliphas said, “in the grim days after the Hierarchs vanished, but before the civil service reached its present consensus. They are much diminished, yet still much exalted. If any who live in these days are close to the Preservers, then the people of Gond are the closest. They are so holy that they no longer have children. Their bloodline dwindles. The youngest is a century older than me, and I am counted as long-lived by my bloodline. Their holiness will be the death of them, soon enough. The past has consumed them, brother. The face of the city is more beautiful than I remembered, but it is the beauty of a well-kept tomb.”

As the Weazel made her way toward the harbor under the power of her reaction motor, her sail neatly reefed, a small boat motored out to meet her. A pilot came aboard and formally greeted Captain Lorquital, then asked to see the boy, Yama.

“We have two ships under command of an official of the Department of Indigenous Affairs,” the pilot told Yama. “Perhaps you know him.”

“His name is Corin. He is a Prefect of the Department.”

The pilot was a small man, smaller even than Pandaras, but he had the brisk, assured air of someone used to command. He wore immaculately polished black boots and loose linen trousers under a scarlet djellaba, and was smoking a black cigarillo. He blew a riffle of smoke with a flourish and looked at Yama squarely. “Whatever business you have with him, it is nothing to do with the harbor. We have become a staging post for the war, but we are not under the command of the Department of Indigenous Affairs.”

“I understand.”

“You will not take weapons if you go ashore. Neither will he, nor will his men. All go unarmed here.”

“You put it very plainly,” Yama said. “I hope that I may speak plainly, too. This man wants to make me his prisoner. Because of that, Captain Lorquital fears for the safety of her ship.”

The pilot nodded, and drew on his cigarillo. “He tried to force the issue, and the Harbor Master had to point out that we do not take sides in any dispute. Nor will we be the arena for the settling of any quarrel. Frankly, if he had not tried to force us, we would have let him take you. But we cannot allow him to set a dangerous precedent.” He flicked the butt of his cigarillo over the side and turned on his heel. “Now, Captain Lorquital, the helm if you please. I will take you in.”

The pilot guided the Weazel to a berth at a long pontoon at the inner edge of the harbor, amongst mussel dredgers and two-masted ketches of the kind which carried small cargoes between cities everywhere along the river. The sultry air tasted of the acrid smoke of the fishing barge’s rendering furnaces. The water around the pontoon was stained with sullen rainbows; flocks of tiny machines skated the surface, absorbing spilled fuel oil through pads on their long legs.

Pelicans perched on mooring posts, drying their wings, like rows of arrowheads against the red light of the setting sun. A league away, across a maze of channels and pontoons and graving basins, colored neon lights blazed and winked above clusters of clapboard buildings and plastic domes. The pilot repeated his warning to Yama and Captain Lorquital, and took his leave.

“We can’t go ashore unarmed,” Tamora said.

“You have your teeth and claws,” Pandaras said, “I have my cunning, and our master has his power over machines. What more do we need?”

“I want to talk with him,” Yama said. “I will go alone, and unarmed.”

Tamora said, “And where will you begin to look for him? It would be better if you stayed here. It’ll be the first place he’ll look, and there’s nothing to say we can’t be armed if we stay aboard our own ship.”

Even as the sailors began to make the Weazel fast in her berth, shills appeared on the pontoon, handing out little tiles that whispered seductive invitations to whorehouses and bars. One of the shills called Yama’s name and threw a tile to the deck at his feet and quickly walked away, pushing through the others. Yama picked up the white tile and the golden dragon printed on its surface flexed its wings and breathed a wisp of blue fire that formed two words. A name.

Mother Spitfire’s.

Yama insisted on going alone, although Tamora argued fiercely against it. “The crews of the picketboat of the warship will be crawling all over this place,” she said.”A gang of them could set on you anywhere. Better to fight in a place of your own choosing.”

“I know where he wants to meet you,” Eliphas said. “This place is famous for its entertainments. Of course, it has moved downriver. It used to be anchored off Kalyb, but the fall in the level of the river has stranded that city a dozen leagues from navigable water.” He peered at the long strip of lights twinkling in the dusk and added, “It seems larger, but I suppose that is because of the war.”

Tamora spat over the side of the ship. A tiny machine skated over oily water after her gob of spittle. “Grah. You should swim out to the warship, if you are so eager to meet Corin. It would make as much sense. A man like him won’t dirty the soles of his boots in the stews of a place like this. His invitation is a trick.”

“Better we speak on neutral ground,” Yama said.

“I could break his neck for you.”

“I am sure you could.”

“Or gouge out his eyes.”

“I just want to talk with him, Tamora. That is why I will go alone, or not at all.”

Pandaras agreed readily enough to this. He said that he had a mission of his own.

“Captain Lorquital has given the freemen liberty until the midnight watch, and it seems that my friend, Pantin, has never been with a woman. It was part of the discipline of his former trade. I feel it’s time he was taken in hand, as it were.”

“If you know what you are doing,” Yama said, thinking of the young sailor’s reputation as a pit fighter. Pantin was already on the pontoon, waiting with his hands in the back pockets of the scuffed leather trousers he habitually wore.

“Pantin has renounced the knife life,” Pandaras said, “and I’ll make sure he’s too busy to get into trouble.”

Pandaras walked a little way with Yama, then he and Pantin went off arm in arm, and Yama went in the other direction, toward the far end of the Strip and Mother Spitfire’s.

The main drag of the floating harbor was laid out along a broadwalk half a league long. The gaudily painted fronts of chandlers, bars and whorehouses rose shoulder to shoulder on either side. Groups of intoxicated sailors and soldiers surged and staggered beneath flashing neon and flaring torches, carrying paper cups of beer or smoking pipes of crystal or weed as they moved from one attraction to the next. This was the last stop their transports would make before the battlefields above the midpoint of the world, and Yama supposed that they sought oblivion in the few hours it took for their ships to renew their stores.

Hawkers cried the merits of drinking or smoking dens; there were tattoo parlors and fast-food joints, dream parlors and gambling palaces. Dancers of all sexes and a decad of different bloodlines (or perhaps they were all mirror people, he thought) bumped and ground in lighted windows above the awnings of bars; musicians, magicians and gamblers made islands in the throng. Here and there, magistrates stood on floating discs above the packed heads of the crowds, and their tiny, glittering machines spun everywhere through the neon-lit air.

Mother Spitfire’s was a gambling palace at the far end of the Strip. A dragon limned in golden neon tubing sprawled across its tall façade; pillars of fire roared within tall columns of glass on either side of the wide doors.

Tamora and Eliphas were waiting outside, and Yama’s first pang of anger quickly gave way to relief. He laughed, and said, “I suppose Pandaras and Pantin are skulking somewhere nearby.”

“I sent them off to a whorehouse,” Tamora said, “but the old man insists on staying here, even though he’ll only be in the way.” She was not wearing her sword, and stood with her thumbs stuck in the belt of her leather skirt, scowling at every passerby.

“I know this place,” Eliphas said, “and I hope that I can be of help. But I fear that Prefect Corin does not want to talk. There are many places on the Strip that will amuse you. Let me show them to you. Forget all this for a few hours, and then we will be gone.”

“You wanted me to destroy him a few days ago,” Yama said. “If you do not wish to meet Prefect Corin, then go back to the ship. I will not blame you.”

“We can still strike first,” Tamora said, “beginning with this Mother Spitfire. She must be a friend of Corin’s.”

“She is famous here,” Eliphas said, “Or rather, infamous.”

Yama said, “Ixchel Lorquital told me that Mother Spitfire will lose her license if she allows any of her guests to bear arms. We will talk. That is all.”

Tamora passed the palm of one hand over her scarred scalp. She said, “I’ll do more than talk with him if he so much as looks at me in a funny way. Him or anyone else.”

Inside, men and women crowded at dice tables down a long room, under greenery that spilled from floating discs.

Most of the gamblers were in uniform. The roar of their wagers and prayers mingled with the plaintive music of a shadow puppet show that played on a screen raised above the midpoint of the room. Beyond, more people crowded around the walls of a fighting pit or were scattered on the tiers of wide steps that rose on either side.

Mother Spitfire herself came up the central aisle to greet Yama. She was very tall and very slender, golden-skinned and clad in a sheath dress of red silk that flowed like water. Two burly men of Tamora’s bloodline stood behind her, impassive in black robes. Tamora stared at them; they stared back.

“Welcome, Yamamanama,” Mother Spitfire said, bowing so sinuously that her small, sleek head was brought close to Yama’s. Her breath smelled of honey and cinnamon. She pressed a stack of gambling markers into Yama’s hand. Her fingernails were very long, and painted scarlet. “May your luck increase this poor gift many times over.”

“Where is he?”

Mother Spitfire’s green, slit-pupilled eyes were large and lidless; a nictitating membrane filmed them for a moment. She said, “You are as bold and direct as he said you would be. Is it bravery, I wonder, or innocence? He is on his way. Meanwhile enjoy yourselves. We have several pairs of well-matched contestants tonight”—her voice lowered—”although if I were to place a wager on the next bout, I would favor the smaller animal.”

“Thank you for your advice,” Yama said.

“There will be no fighting here,” Mother Spitfire said, looking at Tamora for a moment, “except for that in the pit.”

“I trust you were paid well for the risk,” Yama said.

“Not so much that I can afford to have my business closed. I have pledged that there will be no trouble from either side.”

Mother Spitfire swept away, followed by her bodyguards. Tamora stared after her and said, “They could take us here and no one would notice.”

Yama pointed to one of the little machines that spun through the smoky air above the gaming tables. “The magistrates watch everywhere,” he said. “What happens in the pit?”

“They fight to the death,” Eliphas said. “This place is infamous. Mother Spitfire is the last of her kind, older than anyone in Gond. But it is not a seemly spectacle that she presides over, brother. Perhaps Tamora is correct. We should choose our own meeting place. Here, we place ourselves at the mercy of our enemy.”

“I am tired of running,” Yama said.

He led the way through the crowd that clustered around the oval fighting pit, and climbed the sweep of steps to the very top. The pit was filled with water and lit by powerful lamps. Men and women leaned at the rail, watching as two naked slaves trawled fragments from the water with long-handled rakes. A gong sounded softly and the slaves set down their rakes and cranked down spring-loaded arms with a net stretched between them, dividing the flooded pit in two. A little old man in a black robe, his beard so long that he wore its forked end over his shoulder, climbed into a basket seat and pulled vigorously on a system of ropes and pulleys to hoist himself above the water.

“They keep them in heat,” Eliphas said. “They do it with injections, so they’re always ready to fight.”

The gong sounded again, battered brass soft as a dying man’s last sigh. Water boiled at either end of the pit and two sleek shapes glided out into the light. There was a flurry of betting amongst the spectators.

Yama’s breath caught in his throat. The creatures in the water were kelpies. Steel spurs were fastened to their flippers; spiked chains to their tails. One swam straight at the net and recoiled from a sputter of fat blue sparks, spouting a cloud of oily vapor. The other held still in the center of its half of the pit, its tail moving up and down with slow deliberation.

The old man said something about preparing the bout, and, last wagers please. As his amplified voice echoed around the room, there was a renewed flurry of betting.

Then the gong sounded for the third time and the spring-loaded arms snapped back, raising the net out of the water with an explosive motion. The two kelpies shot into the center of the pit, lashing around each other, parting, and engaging again.

Water splashed over the sides, draining away through slots in the floor. The spectators hooted and stamped and whistled. Both kelpies were bleeding from gashes in their pale bellies. Their blood looked black as it fluttered through the brilliantly lit water. For a moment, they hung head to head; then they engaged again, and suddenly one was on top of the other. It beat at its opponent’s flanks with its tail chains, and with its teeth ripped through blubber and flesh to expose the spine, which it broke with a quick snap of its head. It slid away, snorting vapor through the nasal slits at the top of its head and making a hoarse braying whistle, and the corpse rolled over and sank through a cloud of its own blood. The old man above the pit chanted a string of numbers and there was a flurry of activity amongst the spectators as betting markers were exchanged. Slaves used long electrified prods to drive the victorious kelpie away from the corpse and harry it into one of the tunnels.

Yama felt both sick and excited. The spectacle was horrible and degrading, yet even in their hormone-induced fury, the animals were possessed of a fierce beauty.

Eliphas saw Yama’s disgust. He said, “There is worse to come, brother. We should leave now. Meet with your enemy elsewhere. Let me show you—”

“Too late,” Tamora said. “He is here.”

Three men were coming up the steps toward them. As always, Prefect Corin wore a plain homespun tunic, but this time he was not carrying his staff. His two companions wore breastplates of plastic armor and short kirtles of red cloth that left their legs bare.

Tamora insisted on patting the three men down. Prefect Corin submitted to her search with good humor, and favored Yama with one of his rare smiles. “You are well, boy,” he said. He looked sleek and self-satisfied and calm. “I am glad. It was quite a chase you led me. The trick with the scouts was good. I should have guessed that you could fool them sooner than I did. You have learned a great deal since I last talked with you.”

“Many things have changed,” Yama said. He had expected to feel a hot rage when he confronted the man who had murdered his stepfather, but instead he felt nothing at all, not even contempt. His hands were trembling, though, and he folded his arms and returned Prefect Corin’s gaze as steadily as he could.

“They’re clean,” Tamora said, “but don’t let them come any closer. I’ll break their necks if they try.” She glared at Prefect Corin’s companions, who looked through her as if she did not exist.

Prefect Corin said, “The reputation of your companion is not the highest, but I understand that she tries to make up with bravado what she lacks in skill.” He glanced at Eliphas. “This man had a reputation, too. Where is he leading you? What trick is he upon? You are out of your depth, Eliphas. You should have stuck to gouging would-be widows wanting recipes for undetectable poisons.”

Eliphas said with great dignity, “I don’t know you, dominie, but I see that my jealous rivals have been whispering in your ear.”

Yama told Prefect Corin, “I am not sorry about your machines. I will destroy any you send against me. You must know that. And you must know that I will not serve.”

Prefect Corin said, “There are always more machines. Think of it as a test. The more you resist, the more we learn about you. The more you try to escape, the more we will chase you. If you came here hoping that I would allow you to go on your way unhindered, than I must disappoint you. Give in, boy. The river is wide, but it is not endless. The further you travel, the nearer you approach the war, where there are millions under the command of the Department. You cannot hide from all of them; you cannot override all of the machines. I can offer you much, and that is why I am here. We do not want to lose you.”

Yama met Prefect Corin’s mild gaze with an effort of will. He said, “How goes the war amongst the departments in the Palace of the Memory of the People?”

“We will win.”

“Perhaps not, since you have not already won.”

“What will you do if you do not join us? Trust Eliphas and his wild tales? Preach to the underclasses as you did on the roof of the Palace? Take care with your answer. I would not like to indict you for heresy against the word of the Preservers.”

“I go in search of my people, nothing more. And I do not believe that you serve the Preservers. You do not even serve the Department. You serve your own ends.”

“You were brought up in the traditions of the Department, and you should know that we are here to serve the people, not our own selves. I was sorry to hear of your father’s death, by the way. He was a good servant, although a weak man who clung to traditions long past their usefulness. He should not have become involved in this.”

Tamora said, “Yama, I’ll make them go. Just give me the word.”

“I will hear what he has to offer,” Yama said. He felt perfectly calm, despite the tremor in his hands. Crowds were gathering around the flooded fighting pit again. The body of the loser had been removed and the water had been cleaned.

Prefect Corin shrugged. “Perhaps I will not bother. Perhaps I believe that you have already made up your mind, Yamamanama.”

“But you cannot know for certain. That is why you came.”

“You dare to presume—” For the first time, Prefect Corin’s reserve was breached. He drew a finger down the white streak which divided the left side of his black-furred face and said, “You presume too much. You are not subtle, boy. But I will tell you this. We will not ask you to fight. We will ask only that we can study you to find out how you control machines. And when we know, why, you will be free to do as you will. You wish to find out why you are here and where you come from? All the resources of the Department will be at your disposal. You will be elevated through the ranks to the first circle of committees. If you wish to help the underclasses, do so within established structures of power. Otherwise you waste all that you might be. How can you justify throwing that away, because of pride?”

“You would raise me up to a level I do not deserve in order to give the Department power it does not deserve. The Department exists to serve those you call the underclasses. Perhaps it has forgotten that. Perhaps it would be best if the Department looked to its own faults before attempting to correct the faults of others.”

“Ah, Yamamanama. I admire your certainty. But do think a while on what I have said. We have no hurry. Your captain still awaits her passenger, although he would be ill-advised to journey with you, should you choose to attempt to leave.”

The gong sounded again. Prefect Corin turned toward the pit. He said, “We will watch the next bout. I think that it will amuse you. And while you watch, think on what I have offered.”

“It is the worst of the wickedness of this place,” Eliphas said, with a sudden passion.

Two men sat at either end of the pool, in the same kind of suspended basket chairs as the old man who had refereed the first bout. The men were masked and gloved. Thin cables trailed from the chairs into the water. As spectators thickened around the pit, the men sat quietly above the rising buzz of conversation and the rattle of betting markers. The net was not lowered this time; suddenly, without fuss, two kelpies were hanging at either end of the flooded pit, shadows floating as quiet and still in the water as the two men seated in the air above them.

Yama asked Eliphas what kind of contest this would be, but Eliphas simply said that Yama would soon see.

“But we should leave,” he said. “It is a perversion of old knowledge.”

Prefect Corin said, “Knowledge is like power. It is only effective if it is used. You will not use your power, Yamamanama. That is why we will triumph, and you will lose.”

The gong gently battered the air again. Above the pit, the men rolled and twisted in their basket chairs. The kelpies shot forward. They missed each other on the first pass. One smashed its blunt head against the side of the tank while the other somersaulted clumsily and bore in with a sudden rush. It ripped a gash in the belly of its opponent with a steel-tipped flipper, but failed to follow through.

Yama saw the thin cables that trailed after each kelpie and understood what was happening. The kelpies were living puppets, commanded by the masked and gloved men just as Nergal had commanded the spiders.

He seized control with a spasm of anger and disgust.

The kelpies shot past each other and crashed into opposite ends of the tank. The impact killed them instantly; their human operators were both stricken by seizures that jerked them out of their suspended chairs. One hung by his harness; the other toppled over and smashed into the water.

Yama collapsed against Tamora, momentarily blinded by feedback and red and black lightning.

Half of the spectators surged forward to see what had happened; the others were trying to get away. Knots of fighting broke out. A grossly fat woman stood in the middle of the mêlée, screaming with operatic force.

Yama shrugged off Tamora’s grip and started down the steps. One of Prefect Corin’s men tried to stop him, but Tamora kicked him in the back of his knee and he went down as Yama dodged past. He threw up the markers Mother Spitfire had given him and, as people scrambled for them, ran under the screen and dodged through the maze of gambling tables, overturning them as he went. He was fueled by rage and fear. His sight pounded with red and black in solid flashes. The thing inside him had come back; he was a helpless passenger in his own skull.

The entire building seemed transparent, with all the places where machines worked shining clear. Overhead, a hundred little spies exploded in sputters of white-hot sparks, crashing down amongst the gamblers and the tables, starting a hundred fires and doubling and redoubling panic. Yama was carried forward by a sudden press of people who shared the same thought: to get out before the fires took hold. His body knew what to do. It fought to keep its feet on the ground, for with one slip it would be trampled underfoot. One of Mother Spitfire’s black-robed bodyguards pushed through the crowd and reached for him, and Yama saw the machines in the bodyguard’s head and did something terrible.

When he came to himself, he had fetched up in the doorway of a dream parlor at the other end of the Strip.

One hand clasped the wrist of the other, crushing the coypu hair fetish. Seed pearls pricked his fingertips. There was blood on his hands and flecks of blood and bloody matter spattered his tunic and face and hair. It was not his blood.

Inside the dream parlor, within a huge glass tank filled with boiling wreaths of thick green smoke, a naked woman pressed her face and breasts against the glass for a moment, her mouth opening and closing as if she was trying to tell him something.

Yama cried out.

“Angel!”

But the woman stepped backward into the smoke and was gone.

Sailors and soldiers were rioting up and down the length of the Strip. Yama borrowed the eyes of a machine high above the crowd and saw that white smoke was pouring from the edges of the steep tiled roof of Mother Spitfire’s gambling palace. The gold neon dragon spat sheets of sparks; one of its wings went out. Yama spun the machine and saw that the buildings around the gambling palace were on fire, too. Magistrates on floating discs were cutting a firebreak across the Strip with pistol shots. A painted façade plunged like a huge guillotine blade into a gap that was blown open in front of it. Strings of light-bulbs and strips of jointed neon tubing fell, smashing amongst the rioting crowd.

Yama released the machine and got up and started back toward the ship, but he had not gone very far when he was seized from behind, lifted, and flung against a wall.

There were two men, burly and tall, as alike as brothers.

They wore breechclouts and plastic breastplates, and their shaven heads were crowned with tight-fitting copper caps.

One man pinned him while the other quickly and roughly frisked him.

“I have no money,” Yama said.

The man who held him laughed and said, “He thinks we’re robbing him, Diomedes!”

“We’re badly misunderstood, Dercetas,” the other said, and told Yama, “We’re from an old friend, boy. He’ll be pleased to see you again.”

Dercetas got Yama in an armlock and shoved him forward, down a service walkway that ran out above black water. Diomedes brandished a pistol, and when a magistrate suddenly swooped down from the darkness beyond the rail, he twitched his pistol and fired. The magistrate fell with his clothes on fire; his disc shot straight up in a clap of thunder.

Most of the magistrate’s machines had been destroyed in the violet flare of the pistol blast. Yama threw the rest at Diomedes. The man was knocked backward and spun around, held upright only by the machines which had embedded themselves in his flesh. One eye was a bloody hole; blood filled the space beneath his transparent breastplate and ran down his bare legs.

“Let me go,” Yama shouted. “Let me go and I will spare you!”

His head hurt very badly. He could barely see because great flags of red and black were crowding in. Diomedes’s body twitched as the machines began to work their way out of his flesh.

Dercetas thrust Yama from him and stepped backward, then turned and ran. Yama staggered after him and said in an entirely new voice, “Wait. You fool. Wait for me.” But the man had vanished into the crowd at the end of the walkway. Behind Yama, the dead man fell forward and the machines flew away into the night.

Much later, Pandaras and Pantin found Eliphas standing over Yama. There was a bloody corpse nearby, but at first Pandaras thought nothing of it. The riots had been very bad, and order was only now being restored. Magistrates were supervising teams of sailors and soldiers, putting out fires and clearing debris from the walkways. Bodies had been laid in neat rows in the big square at the center of the Strip, awaiting identification and shriving.

Eliphas seemed to be praying over Yama. As Pandaras approached, the old man turned and said, “He is sick, but I do not think that he is wounded.”

“Let me see,” Pandaras said. He pushed Eliphas aside and squatted beside his master. Yama stared past him at an imaginary point somewhere beyond the world. Pandaras said, “Master, do you know who I am? Do you know where you are?”

“He killed that man,” Eliphas said.

For the first time, Pandaras looked closely at the dead man. He wore a plastic breastplate and a copper cap. The breastplate was riddled with bloody holes.

“I’ve seen others dressed like that,” Pandaras said. “I expect they’re Prefect Corin’s men. Help me, Eliphas. We must get him back to the ship.”

Two men wearing armor and copper caps had found Pandaras and Pantin in a whorehouse. Pantin had stabbed one in the eye with a table knife and had jumped on the back of the other and cut his throat, sawing and sawing with the blunt blade until the man’s head had been nearly cut off. The boy was trembling but docile now, like a horse which has just run a race. Blood crusted his bare chest.

Together, Eliphas and Pandaras helped Yama stand. “We must get out of this, master,” Pandaras said. “Prefect Corin found you, didn’t he? I shouldn’t have listened to Tamora. I should have stayed. I’m sorry.”

“There is a monster,” Yama said dreamily. “I am dangerous, Pandaras. Even to myself.”

“He’s too hard on himself,” Pandaras told Eliphas. “You don’t go running to the magistrates to ask for justice when it’s your own family, and you don’t stint, either. If it was me, I would have burned the whole thing down to make sure I killed Corin.”