Beneath Ceaseless Skies #165 Read online

  “Want my advice?”

  “That’s why I came, isn’t it?”

  “Let it have her. Better for you, better for everyone else. Not so good for your sister. But you’ll recover.”

  Yani’s face turned white. She got up. “That will be all, thank you. Perhaps it wouldn’t occur to you that I love my sister.”

  “Wait,” said Keftu, also rising. “Someone needed to put the thought in your head. It’d be no good to me to have it suddenly occur to you after I’ve stuck my neck out.”

  “Then you will help me?”

  “That depends.”

  She sat down again and opened her reticule. “I can afford two good meals a day as long as you’re in my employ, and a room to sleep in tonight.”

  “Yes?”

  “Will that do?”

  He laughed. “I’m waiting for you to get around to the reward.”

  “Reward? Didn’t I already—? Why, how foolish of me. The reward is the hand of my sister. The one who saves her will become the royal consort. Here.” She drew a cameo from her reticule and handed it over.

  Keftu took it. He could see the resemblance between Yani and her sister. But where Yani’s face was thin and shrewd, her eyes narrow and haughty, the sister’s face was open and finely sculpted and full of light.

  “She’s beautiful,” Keftu said. He looked up. “I’ll do it.”

  * * *

  They had the compartment to themselves. Keftu wore his armor openly in the sparsely populated inlands. A compact case was bound to his back by leather bands, and a sword hung at his side. Yani sat across from him, wrapped in a white shawl. There was hardly anyone else on the train. Keftu was watching the bleak landscape fly past.

  The city’s conquest had been incomplete. Towers were crowded right up to the edge of the winding coastline at every point. The fingers that divided inlet from inlet were overbuilt, and the isthmus itself was a maze of streets and towers undercut by shipping tunnels. But the interior, the palm of the outstretched hand, was a desolation of volcanoes and pumice deserts and industrial wastelands surrounded on all sides by the winding metropolis.

  Now the inland districts were falling into ruin. Many had been isolated by the slow ebb of the population. Strange tales were whispered of them. And there were dark corners left as they had been since the Elder Ages, cut off by the encircling city, with old wild things still hiding in them.

  “You called it a worm of Anûn,” the girl said suddenly.

  “Did I?”

  “What did you mean by that? Did it really come from the moon?”

  “Most likely. I don’t know for certain. But worms gnaw at the heart of Anûn. Sometimes they descend to Earth. So the old stories say.”

  “What are they?”

  “They’re said to be neither living nor nonliving, but something else altogether. They were formed by gods before man was a dream, to serve as vehicles and fell weapons. They repose in seminal form deep within the Earth and beneath the face of Anûn. From time to time one comes to maturity.”

  “Why would it want my sister?”

  “Who can say? Perhaps it just wants to make Anadogra bend. They hate anything ancient and ordered.”

  “Will you be able to kill it?”

  “Haven’t you heard what I’ve said? It’s not alive. But I’ll do what I can.”

  “You’re probably making half of that up,” Yani said. “A shiftless, undersized autochthon. And I take up with him.” She shook her head. “But I’ll be rid of you soon enough.”

  The train was rattling across a plain of dun earth dotted with sagging buildings. Here and there stands of gray nimlath trunks pointed into the pale sky like warnings. Away to the northeast a single cone towered above a cluster of smaller peaks.

  The tracks passed into an industrial district, a wilderness of warehouses. Yani pulled the chain. There was a hiss of brakes. The line of cars slowed as it crossed a drainage channel and came to a stop at a platform.

  They were the only ones to get off there. The train moved off and vanished around a curve. A gate clanked in the breeze. The place was deserted.

  “Looks promising,” said Keftu.

  Yani led the way to the main road, which pointed northeastward. It was like a ravine with walls of concrete and rusted metal. Long-abandoned tracks ran beside it.

  They hadn’t gone far when they encountered a maugreth, with the scaly, bristly skin, skinny legs, and long claws of its kind. It bared its ophidian teeth. Keftu brandished his sword at it, and it vanished into an alley.

  The district went on for miles, gradually dropping. At last they approached a gorge that cut across their path. The road bridge was gone and the truss bridge sagged dangerously. “What now?” Keftu asked. “Did you cross that?”

  “I think I came a different way.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “I’m fairly sure.”

  “Are we going the right way now?”

  “Oh, yes. I know where we are, more or less.”

  There was an old aqueduct to the south. Keftu pointed with his sword. “We’ll cross that.”

  Someone whistled. They both turned. Three gaunt scavengers emerged from a warehouse and stood in the middle of the road. One was wearing a travesty of a dress and had a savagely rouged face. The other two had armor pieced together from scraps.

  “Nah. Nah. Nuh-uh,” said one of the latter, apparently the leader. “You just turn round and go back on out where you came from.” He leered, revealing rotten teeth. His arms were covered with sores.

  Keftu guided Yani into a warehouse on the left. The scavengers jeered at him from the street.

  “What? Are you afraid of them?” Yani whispered.

  He ignored her, exploring the building. It had a concrete floor and metal walls; chains dangled from the darkness above. He searched the back but couldn’t find a way through, so he returned to the street. Yani stood in the doorway behind him.

  The men were still there. “Nah,” the leader said. “Nuh-uh. You’re still going the wrong way.” Now he had a pole topped with a saw-blade in his hands. “Have your whore beg for your life, and maybe we won’t kill you too slow.”

  “I’m an archon’s daughter, not a whore,” Yani said haughtily. “And I’ll have you know that you’d be doing me a favor. This is just a worthless autochthon who’s following me about.”

  The scavengers roared with laughter. Keftu set his hand on his hilt. Tinges of bronze-green forked along his tawny limbs. The leader swung back his weapon. Keftu leaped forward and clove the man’s skull from crown to chaps. The other two dropped their arms and ran.

  “Come on,” he said. The green was already fading from his limbs. He went into the next warehouse. At the back was a little room that stank of urine. The door was chained but there was a window beside it.

  He turned. Yani hadn’t followed him. He went back out to the road. She was just standing there, staring at the body, which was already being worried by a maugreth. “Are you coming or aren’t you?”

  She started and looked up at him. “I’ve never seen anything like that!”

  “Well, it has to be done sometimes.”

  “No, I mean the way you killed him! Down to his throat in one blow!”

  “Right. Let’s get out of here, before his friends come back for his body. They won’t let that meat go to waste without a fight.”

  She followed him into the warehouse. “It must be that armor,” she said. “You stole the Dragonfly’s armor, and now it lends you his strength. What a thief you are!”

  Keftu took up a brick and smashed the window. He cleaned out the shards and climbed through. “Come on,” he said, holding out his arms.

  She came and swung herself through on her own, pushing him aside. She winced when she landed and looked at her hand. A streak of blood was smeared across her palm.

  “That was foolish,” Keftu said. “Here, let me see.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Let’s just go.”
<
br />   Keftu led the way along the top of the drainage channel. When a pile of rubbish blocked their path they slid down the concrete embankment. A ribbon of moisture ran down the center, orange and slippery. They followed it to the aqueduct.

  It was an ancient structure, built of big blocks of stone. They walked along the edge of the trough. The floor of the gorge was hidden in shadow, but flickering lights shone through bleary windows clustered like spiders’ eyes. Clouds of foul steam wreathed the buildings.

  They reached the far side. The channel turned south to follow the gorge. They climbed a slope of weedy scree and regained the road. They were in a tenement district now, the old workers’ city. Side streets branched off in every direction, but the main road continued as before.

  They’d gone a mile or two when something made Keftu turn. They were being stalked by a pack of maugrethim. “There,” said Yani. “Opponents more to your liking. You probably ate vermin like that in the desert.”

  Keftu rushed them, but to no effect.

  “Or perhaps not,” Yani called. “No wonder your people went extinct.”

  Keftu drew his sword and approached more slowly. The leader yowled and leaped at his throat. He cut it down, then fell on the others. One he beheaded and another he rove through the vitals. The rest fled. He wiped his sword and returned to Yani.

  “Say what you like about me,” he said. “Leave Arras out of it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, taken aback. Keftu strode past her, and she fell in behind him.

  The road was winding amongst the knees of the peak now. Buildings climbed the gray slopes. Abandoned tram lines ran up to old mines. The neighborhood narrowed as they climbed to a saddle. They crested the rise and looked out.

  The broad basin beyond was the seat of what had once been a richer district, with small tenements of brown-black basalt and glittering glass. An old lava flow had inundated half of it. The twin campaniles of a buried temple stood out of the rippled gray stone that ran up to the snow-capped cone. Other buildings lower down appeared to wade in it.

  “Now I know where I am,” Yani said. “We’re close to the Guardian’s gate.”

  Gongs began to reverberate in the temple. A litany that was somewhere between a chant and a moan insinuated itself through the exposed arches. Votaries started emerging like swarming ants, some weeping, some laughing ecstatically. They were a blend of phylite and helot and ghul with the helot predominating, pallid and pink-eyed.

  They formed a procession with a youth on a starved cheboth at their head. He was crowned with a wreath and held a scouring rush in his hand. They went along the lava ripples to a road that crested a sharp ridge thrown out by the cone.

  Evening was falling. Keftu led the way down amongst the buildings. An effigy sat at the first intersection like a warning. It was made of coarse black sacking, with long, ropelike arms and legs; it had two yellow buttons for eyes and maugreth fangs for teeth. They continued past it.

  The first inhabited tower was a hotel. “What do you say to that?” Keftu asked.

  “It’ll do, I suppose. This neighborhood has a bad reputation.”

  “You don’t say.”

  He held the door for her and followed her inside. A helot sat behind the counter at the far end with his hands folded across his soft belly. His placid, froglike eyes hardly shifted as Yani approached.

  “Two rooms,” Yani said.

  “Nine rods,” the helot replied.

  Yani opened her reticule in consternation. She blushed. “Well, I—”

  “One room will do,” Keftu said.

  She looked up at him and turned bright red. “Listen to me, you—”

  “What are you afraid of? You can trust me. If you can’t, well, you’re at my mercy anyhow, aren’t you? Just pay the man, and let’s get something to eat.”

  “Fine. One room.”

  “Five rods,” the helot said.

  “But you just said—”

  “That was with the discount.”

  Keftu leaned across the desk. “Four rods. That’s our final offer.”

  The helot shrugged. “Have it your way. Room three two one.” He took the payment and handed over a key.

  * * *

  Dinner was unsettling. The nearby saloon was dark and crowded. They were the subject of evident curiosity. The host overcharged them for the meal, but it didn’t seem the place to protest.

  Afterward they returned to the room. It was at a corner of the building. A dusty mattress sat in an iron frame with each leg in a bowl. A washstand with a porcelain basin and pitcher stood beside it.

  Keftu slid one window open and looked out. There was a ledge below the sill. Another building stood across an alley. It had a fire chute. He went over to the other window, which gave upon the main road, and opened it wide.

  “What are you doing?” Yani asked.

  “Looking around. You may as well fill those bowls. That way we won’t have any visitors in the night.”

  She did as he’d said. He beat the mattress, then laid his sword lengthwise down the middle. They got in and sat side by side with the blade between them.

  “The House of Zim of the City of Anadogra isn’t exactly wealthy, is it?” said Keftu. “One of these fine old branches whose riches are in their blood.”

  “We’re rich beyond what any autochthon could imagine,” Yani said.

  “Then why are we staying here? Where’s your retinue?”

  She shrugged in the darkness.

  “You weren’t sent by your father, were you? Is that reward something you just made up to get me here?”

  “No!” she said. “It’s all true. My father proclaimed it. Only—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, he forbade me to go out any more, after the last one died.”

  “So I’m not the first.”

  “No.”

  “That’s fine. I just like to know where I stand. Here, let me see it again.”

  Yani got the cameo out of her bag and handed it over. Keftu held it close to his eyes, so that he could see it in the near-darkness. “She really looks like this?”

  “No,” said Yani. “She’s lovelier by far. She can be kind and merry like a country maid, beautiful and terrible like a star goddess. My people worship her very slippers.”

  “And you do too?”

  “She’s everything to me. You’ll understand when you see her.”

  “What’s her name? I haven’t even asked you her name.”

  “Her name,” she said, “is Yolara. But I call her Yoli.”

  “Yolara. And your father?”

  “He is the Lord Baslark.”

  A floorboard creaked in the hall. “What was that?” Yani whispered.

  “Come with me,” Keftu said. “Make no noise.” They rolled off the mattress as quietly as they could. Keftu gestured to the side window with his sword. Yani slid it open and climbed out to the ledge, where she clung to the wall. He followed her, sliding the window down so that it was almost closed.

  There was a rap on the door. Silence. Then a crash and a guttural roar, a sound of shattering wood and plaster, a tinkling of porcelain breaking into shards and being trodden underfoot.

  Before she could protest Keftu took Yani in his arms and leaped across to the fire chute. He kicked in the window and stepped inside. By ill luck the manager caught sight of him. “There!” he shouted, pointing.

  Keftu set Yani down. He broke through the door and led the way to the stairs. At the foot of the first flight the floorboards gave way. He crashed through another story before he reached the ground floor in a heap of dust and splinters.

  Yani made her way down without mishap. She touched him. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.” He looked up. Yani followed his gaze. Heavy footsteps sounded above.

  “I told you this place has a bad reputation,” she said.

  “Then why in blazes did you bring us here?”

  “It’s the quickest way to Anadogra. But every way has
its own difficulties.”

  “What could they be looking for? They know we don’t have any money.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, come on,” he said.

  They made their way to a back door that gave upon another alley.

  It was quite dark now and beginning to drizzle. Threading the narrow byways, they soon found themselves in a dead end with brick walls all around. There was a narrow wooden door to one side. Keftu threw himself against it three times before he realized that it was unlocked. He lifted the latch and went through, with Yani holding onto his cuirass.

  It was too dark to see anything. Keftu groped his way across a few rooms into a long corridor. They rounded a corner. A glass double door stood at the end of the next reach. They went out and found that they had regained the road. The saloon was directly opposite.

  A group of helots was gathered there. Keftu nodded to them. The girl clung to his back.

  All at once the men rushed him. He drew his sword but they were on him before he could bring it down. Their numbers bore him down. Yani was torn from him. He began to lash out with his fists. The helots went mad. His head exploded with pain as they pummeled him with clubs and mallets.

  Soon he was down on the ground, trying to shield himself from their kicks. Blood streamed from his nose and mouth.

  Mad with fury, they began assaulting one another as well. Someone—Yani—shouted for them to stop. She began to scream. Her voice sounded as though it was coming down a long tunnel.

  * * *

  When he came to he wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. He was on the floor of a dark storeroom, probably at the back of the saloon. An argument was going on outside the door.

  He dragged himself over to listen. “...only one way to do it,” someone was saying. “All our knives out at once. Even if he is awake, he can’t get more than one or two of us, if any. The sooner the better.”

  “I’ll have no part of it. You fellows were the ones that threw him in there like that. You deal with the mess you made.”

  “Then you’ll have no part of her,” the first voice replied. “We’ll tell him you wouldn’t help us.”

  “But it’s my place! It’s only fair that I—” He was cut off by a clamor of protests.

  Keftu rolled over to look around the room. Dim light filtered through a window at the top of a pile of barrels and crates. There were cans of kerosene at the bottom. He was still armed—that’s what they were arguing about—but Yani was nowhere to be seen.