Path of Smoke (28 page)

“I almost told you that night. About the crack in the lute.”

“You're not making any sense.”

“The crack is what makes the music. My mother taught me that. I threw the lute across the room, because I was afraid that I had no music in me. When I picked it up, the lute had a scar. But it wasn't ugly. It was a crook where love had settled. It reminded me that the instrument was alive. I touched the scar, and then I played my first song.”

“You can't even play a recorder.”

Carl took Andrew's hand and laid it against his chest. “Feel that. You want crazy? I look at you, and my heart sings like a tomcat. I can't make it shut up.”

Andrew looked at him uncertainly. The rhythm was a match for his own. The carpeted walls were closing in again, and all he could hear was Carl's
lub-dub
, the only true thing. The equation was crumbling. He drew back.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Where?”

“I could tell you—but it would be a lie.”

“Andrew.”

“Make it stop,” he said.

Then he walked out of the room, ignoring the sound in his ears.

H
E
STARED
AT
THE
blue smudge in the fresco. It could have been anything. Outside, the light was changing. It trickled through the window slats, red-tinted, as if the day were drowning in cheap wine. The salamander was asleep on the front step, dreaming no doubt of volcanic glass, or a bed of coals to lie in. Anyone passing by would have seen a heat shimmer against the flagstones, a trick of the sun, but nothing more. Its tail left ashy whorls. It remembered the older, world-destroying fire, untamed, rushing through underground cells, warming the roots of mountains. In dreams, it basked on the edge of magma lakes, purring a threnody with its brothers and sisters. Fire, now chained to braziers and singing kettles, would not remain captive forever. One day, the blinding estuaries would rush their banks and spray hoarse pain through rocky vents. The salamander was patient, because it knew that all things were flammable.

“Is it a dolphin?”

Felix secured his mask, then looked at him. “What?”

He pointed. “The blue mark. What do you think it is?”

The mask squinted. “Maybe an undina. Or a sapphire.”

“Or an eye.”

“Time doesn't spare frescoes.”

“Fate moves as it must.”

Felix looked at him oddly. “Where did you hear that?”

“I can't remember.”

“Most people say
the wheel
, not
fate
.”

“What's the difference?”

“Fortuna leans her shoulder to the wheel. Fate is just—” He shrugged. “I don't know. I picture it as the winter that waits outside, knocking, always knocking.”

“It sounds like we're all in this tapestry together.” He returned his attention to the knife sitting on the table. “Is that part of it too? Just another thread?”

“A sharp one.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Try it out. Test its balance.”

“It doesn't seem to have anything to do with balance.”

“Then think of it as a tool for unraveling.”

He picked up the knife. Wrought animals played along the surface of its hilt, joined beak and claw. Lapidary winked in the failing light, forming spiderweb trails that danced before his eyes. It was light and heavy at the same time. The blade, serrated, reminded him of a dangerous comb that would part you, ghost from bone-house, as ivory teeth parted strands of hair.

“There used to be blades that were sharp enough to cut day and night,” Felix said. “The artifices gave them impossible edges. They could cut a thought from your head. One knife could cut love out of your heart, just like paring a fish. But that risky craft is gone.”

His hand moved the blade, while he watched from a distance.

“What do you expect me to do with this?”

“You'll know, when the time comes.”

He looked at Felix. His tunica was slightly rumpled, his feet stained with clay. Like the mosaic, he seemed to flicker, his shadow prowling along the frame. Those parts of him smudged by ash and dirt, the parts that time hadn't spared, were the most interesting. They were already weighted with a regret, words that had outlived their story. He had made up his mind to do something—that much was visible in the settling. He had his own shoulder to the wheel, but it was yet too dark to catch a glimpse of the outcome. The spokes sang out. He felt his hoard opening, every precious thing rising to the surface.

currite ducentes subtegmina,

currite, fusi

The words broke into a run. They had slept beneath the dragon, beneath his vast, bejeweled softness, warmed into insensibility. Now they were on the move, and he saw their meaning in a flash as they passed by him. Spindles running in the deep dark, running toward something that was smoke, enormity, spreading end. There was a path through the smoke, but he couldn't quite see it. Maybe the smoke itself was the path. Something breathed nearby, and he knew that there wasn't much time.

“What are you thinking?”

He looked again at Felix. “Your name means luck.”

“That's one interpretation.”

“Will this work? If I believe in you, in your name—is there a chance?”

Felix fingered the die around his neck. “Always.”

“I've never killed anything.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

He blinked. “I suppose not. My shadow—did he—”

“There's no sense looking back. Everything changes tonight.”

He placed the knife in a brass sheath, which he belted to his new tunica. The weight was oddly comforting, which surprised him.

“I think I'm ready. I just have to follow the smoke.”

Felix frowned. “Does that mean what I think?”

“I'm not sure. But it's all I can see, for the moment.” He looked once more at the blue smudge on the fresco. Then he laughed. “
That's
what it was. The whole time.”

“What do you see?”

“Never mind. Let's go.”

They left the house. Felix shut the door and locked it with an L-shaped key. Its layer of gold had flaked off, but it was still a formidable device in his hands. The house seemed to shrink as they stepped away from it. Pressed so close to the curtain wall, it was hard to say whether it belonged to the city at all. Felix had told him that it was a tricky place, a kind of crossroads—that he must never take its magic for granted. The salamander looked up. Its eyes were old, but not kind. He knelt down and carefully scratched its head, just with the tips of his fingers. He thought it might bite him again, but instead it began to purr.

“Can the lares speak?”

“Only the auditores hear them,” Felix said. “And only the oculi see them. If you could do both, you'd probably go mad.”

“I wonder what they sound like.”

“I'm told it's like reading a book, all at once. Their thoughts press the wax of your senses. The conversation isn't strictly consensual.”

“If you could speak,” he said to the salamander, “you might tell me what to do. Although, I suppose you did lead me here. That didn't require words.”

Felix chuckled. “It's funny—listening to you converse with the air. Before, there were pauses, while you waited for a reply.”

“Before?”

Felix smiled. “You fed him apple peels. I watched them vanish. I suppose it was the first real piece of magic I'd seen, close up.”

He looked at the salamander again. “
This
one? We've met before?”

“I've no idea. I can't see it, remember?”

The sense of recognition was faint. He couldn't tell if it meant anything or if it was just a trick of the creature's gaze. For a moment, he felt as if every salamander watched him, staring curiously through those speckled eyes. But he couldn't say for sure. The more he looked at it, the blurrier it grew, until it was a mirage at his feet.

They walked uphill. This time, the Subura was different. He no longer noticed the riot of people, the gleaming cups and wreaths. The snores that rose from behind paving stones, the puddles of wine and fouler fare, didn't capture his attention. What he saw, for the first time, were the lares. They were everywhere. Dark geniuses of the city, crawling and floating and making their inarticulate way through the dust. Salamanders slept in piles by the roadside shrines. A few intrepid ones had crawled into the basin and were lapping up the oil with pink tongues. But most of them snored at the base of the altar, rumbling as loud as the wagons that passed by. It was strange that he could hear their noises but not their speech. Perhaps the auditores, of which Felix spoke, could also see hints of them without perceiving the whole.

The salamanders weren't alone. Semitransparent things peeked over the rims of fountains, watching him with eyes like sallow green lamps. They were covered in bits of shell and long strands of kelp. Some of them had beards, where ghost crabs slept, claws twitching as they dreamed of underwater cloisters. The undinae swam in slow circles or crouched in the spray, following his progress silently. He looked up and realized that they were also a current of shadow, moving along the top of the great aqueduct. They bobbed and leapt in the channel of water, occasionally scurrying along the sides of the basin. Somehow they could cling to the stone without falling. It might have had something to do with their webbed hands.

He saw a child standing in the mouth of an alley. He started to draw closer, but the salamander growled and stepped in front of him. The child's face contorted, and he realized that it wasn't human. It was made of some hard, striated substance, like petrified wood. It hissed at the salamander, then ran back down the alley, dragging its claws along the brick wall. He could hear their din, shrill at first, then receding, until the creature had vanished.

Felix touched his shoulder. It startled him. The mask looked concerned.

“You nearly wandered into the path of a litter. If you don't keep your eyes on the road, you'll be trampled.”

“Sorry.” He swallowed. “I'm distracted.”

“You can see them.”

He nodded. “They're all over the place. Why doesn't anyone notice?”

“People see what's in front of them. The road. The bottegha with half-priced goods. They aren't trained to notice spirits.”

“It's hard not to trip over them.” He glanced down another alley. “Some don't appear to be friendly. Even the salamander is wary.”

“Lares are territorial.”

“Are they older than the city?”

“Nobody knows their age. The ones you're seeing might have been here since the beginning, when Anfractus was a collection of huts and fire pits. Or you could be looking at the grandchildren of those old ones. There's no way to tell for sure.”

“We could check their teeth. Doesn't that work with horses?”

Felix grinned. “You first.”

As he watched, he realized that the lares had burrowed their way into human affairs. The salamanders gathered by forges, braziers, and the public baths. Where they slept, the fires burned hotter and brighter. The undinae crowded the fountains and slithered along the aqueduct. Their fins stirred up the water, keeping it clear of debris, encouraging the pipes to flow. He couldn't quite tell what the petrified wood children were doing, but he imagined that it had something to do with the upkeep of the alleys. If Anfractus was the city of infinite alleys, then perhaps their task was the most essential of all. Not that he wanted to meet one up close. Their claws could crack bone as easily as brick.

He saw the smoke as it moved on gray paws, high above the insulae. The pigeons watched as well from their aeries, fluttering nervously at the massing clouds. There was something inside the smoke. A glimmering piece of network, a cluster of red-rimmed eyes that saw him, not just as he was, but as he might be.

Don't look,
the pigeons said.
Tend your own nest.

But he had to look. And the smoke grew darker, until it was a dragon, yawning oblivion as it watched him from above. Its scales were filth and torpor, rubbing against blackened chimneys, gleaming with night soil. And yet there was something beautiful about it, the glide of its disaster, the tail of ash and lucre. The eyes flamed, every scale an eye, until the mist was all that he had ever known. He heard something, but whether it was a word or an old spark coming to life in the heart of the cumulus, he couldn't say.

“What are you looking at?”

He realized that Felix was staring at him, along with a few strangers. He was standing dangerously close to the middle of the road. He shook his head, as if to clear it. Then he stepped back onto the curb.

“Ghosts,” he said. “I think.”

“You can see
them
?”

For the first time, he heard real fear. It wasn't the mask talking. Felix himself was looking out from the plane of silver. His eyes were slightly wide. For a moment, he was a child, asking whether dragons slept under the bed.

“I'm not sure,” he said. “Nothing is clear. I feel as if I'm learning to see for the first time. Maybe it's like building a muscle. The salamanders are bright. The swimmers and the children with knives for fingernails—they're less distinct.”

“And what of—” He looked up, wordlessly.

“Smoke. The breath of the city. That's all it is.”

“You're certain.”

“No,” he murmured. “I wish that I were.”

“Some people think that they never left—the lares of the air. That they've merely been biding their time, watching us from above.”

He looked up again, but the dragon's shadow was gone. All he could see was the ashen halo, a black curtain brushing the tallest buildings. The salamander had paused next to him. It also watched the sky, and its expression remained impossible to read. It seemed to be looking back through time, to a much older skyline. Beginnings and endings collided within its gold irises, half-lines of verse that were balanced by a cut, so neither could devour the other. Sadness rose from the bitter, burned caesura. Somewhere along that cruel staff, which had witnessed suns of a different color, the lizard saw its own end. Just another pause in this pale yard, where they all waited for the smoke to make its move.

“And she wants to bring them back?”

Felix nodded. “She aims to make a deal. She's forgotten that you can't bargain with something that hates you.”

“What about the giant goats?”

“The silenoi? They're hungry and impatient. They don't realize it yet, but she's backed them into a corner.”

Violets were blooming around them. The path sloped sharply upward as they approached the arx. He expected a steady stream of wagon traffic and opulent carriages, but the road was deserted. Figures in armor patrolled the margins. One of them noticed Felix and nodded. The meretrix raised his hand in greeting.

“They haven't yet figured out that they can't trust me,” he said. “It's the mask. It plays tricks on the best of them.”