The Waking Engine (16 page)

“Yes,” Sesstri agreed, trying not to let her agitation show. There was red not- smoke boiling into the sky ahead; she had no time for her own fear, let alone the unboy’s.

“Did they drown, or does it just look that way? Did the streets sink? Great Scott, it’s spooky down there.” He peered past the floating dead to see the sunken city below. “Those shadows, those are buildings, right? They aren’t . . . they don’t move, do they? That’s just the light, please tell me that’s just the light?”

“It’s just the light.” Sesstri’s voice came out flat; she wouldn’t have believed herself. “Look at something elevated, if you’re frightened. Pick out a specific building, a wave or mountaintop, and fix your eyes on that point.” Maybe Bonseki-sai looked like an elaborate theater set piece for a reason. The abstracted construction was silly and impractical and potentially hazardous, but it did keep the eye from gazing too long into the abyss below.

“I’m not scared.” Nixon sounded uncertain. “It only lasts a few minutes, anyway. Right?”

As if on cue, the billowing red smoke spun itself into streamers of what looked like solid pigment, pennants of pure red color that rippled in a nonexis tent breeze, waving them forward. Red snaked through the branches of the huge succulent that rose from the center of the district.

“The gray man was right to go on his own hunt, I think.” Nixon marveled as they followed streets that spiraled toward the tree, toward the billowing red strangeness. “Where are you taking me?”

“Nowhere, stupid unboy. You followed me of your own accord.”

“Yeah, but . . . yeah.”

Bloated faces watched their footsteps as they wound their way to the middle of the neighborhood, colorless bodies floating with hair and limbs stretched out limply in the manner of drowned things; a sea, a deluge, a disaster frozen forever underfoot. Sesstri and Nixon kept their eyes fixed straight ahead. They’d almost reached the steps that led, at last, up from the solidified lake of the dead into the branches of the succulents, when a black shadow dropped from a low-hanging eave shaped like a row of cresting waves; the shadow shook a mop of white-blond hair and brandished a steel pipe. Nixon made a noise like chewing glass and dived for safety beneath a stone bench disguised as a puff of cloud.

A member of the Undertow stood there, hate staining his face; he snarled, and gripped a length of steel pipe. Sesstri spat and called out a challenge to the lone Death Boy. “Twice in two days is twice too often for me to encounter your ilk, lich-lover.”

The Death Boy bared his broken teeth and lunged, swinging his weapon at Sesstri’s head. Sesstri simply folded her body out of harm’s way, noticing as she bent backward to dodge the blow and retrieve a dagger from her leggings that she could almost make out the tattoo on the thug’s lip.

“Where have you taken my associate, and why?” Sesstri demanded as she kicked the man in the kneecap. The blond thug spun away with a howl of pain and brought his heavy steel to bear, readying himself to lunge again at his opponent. The men who attacked them had not been Undertow, but Sesstri felt certain that this ambush was no mere coincidence.

She flipped a dagger in the air, caught it by the blade, and sent it flying quick as a bird into the Death Boy’s forearm. The man dropped his pipe with another shriek, a dagger buried in the meat of his wrist.

“Give me answers, or I’ll give you more knives. I have plenty.”

“You’re full of flash,” hissed the Death Boy, wincing as he yanked Sesstri’s dagger from his arm, “but you’ll eat the crow of the living before the week is through. You’ll see your friend again, you pretty pink bitch, when he feeds your soul to the skylords. He’ll be a lich-lover now, and there’s nary a thing you can do to stop it.”

Sesstri grabbed the crazed youth by the collar of his vest and punched his face twice in quick succession. Clutching his bloodied nose, the Death Boy stumbled backward and tumbled over a painted railing into a knot of jade plants.

Frenzied, Sesstri kicked at the railing until a plank of wood came loose. She wrenched it free and leapt over the supine Death Boy, who was still coughing out blood he’d inhaled through his broken nose; Sesstri shoved the splintered end of the plank into the youth’s throat, pinning him to the ground. The empty-eyed dead grinned beneath them, flanking the fallen thug like ladies-in-waiting; waiting for him to join them.

The cornered punk grabbed the plank with both hands and glared defiantly at Sesstri, whose hair fanned out in the sunrise as she panted from exertion. She looked like a pink- stained spider queen at the center of her web, and didn’t hesitate to throw her weight onto the broken plank until her attacker’s face turned purple and blood seeped from the splinters piercing his neck.

“Listen to me very closely, trash,” Sesstri hissed, twisting the plank until the man squealed. “When I have been twice attacked in as many days, I abandon the willingness to curb my violent impulses. I do not know why you’re following me or why you have the poor sense to challenge me on your own, but I was raised by a warlord who taught me to kill before I learned to speak: the next time I see your face I will scrape it off your skull with my bootheel. Do you understand me, you miserable waste of meat?”

The boy thrust his chin with defiance at Sesstri, digging the splinters deeper into his throat and proving that he was willing to die, though neither Sesstri nor Nixon knew exactly what death might mean for one held in thrall to the power of the undead.

“I understand perfectly, whore of the pale vagrant. You fight for your lord and I fight for mine.”

“Tut-tut.” Nixon had recovered the steel pipe and had planted his feet on either side of the Death Boy’s atomic-blond hair. “That’s not how we speak to ladies, you zombie-fucked beatnik.”

Swinging with all of his tiny might, Nixon brought the weight of his stolen weapon down upon the thug’s head. Despite his diminutive size, the blow succeeded in spectacular fashion: bits of blood and skull showered Nixon’s face as well as the soft leather of Sesstri’s boots. The Death Boy lay still.

Sesstri shot Nixon a disapproving look. “I had planned on extracting answers.”

Nixon ducked his head. “Sorry, I wanted to prove that I—”

The dead youth interrupted him with a gasp. He spasmed once, twice, and then sat up with a dumbfounded expression on what remained of his face, even though by all rights he should be lifeless, lobotomized at the very best. But rather than the usual enfeeblements, death seemed to have quickened the boy: fast as a startled rat, he spun onto all fours, tearing clumps of hair out of his scalp that were trapped beneath Nixon’s feet, and scrambled away into the underbrush. Sesstri watched him go with an evaluating look.

She tucked her remaining daggers back into their sheathes, combed her fingers through her morning-rose hair, and turned toward the branches of the tree at the center of Bonseki-sai. She set off toward it without another word.

Nixon gathered her fallen things and ran after Sesstri, his stricken expression lingering until he remembered to replace it with a sideways smirk.

“Monkey’s uncle, bird, you fight like the sauced Irish!”

Sesstri maintained her pace and didn’t look back. “I don’t know what those words mean, but the thug received the thrashing he earned when he decided to attack me.”

“I’ll say. You won’t get any argument from Nixon on that count; I believe in the battle, although I am a racist. I can do that with impunity now, because I left the fags and the chinks and the fucking Italians behind me. Well, the Italians at least. That’s gotta count for something.”

“You’re a strange child, even owning the fact that you aren’t one. Is the Etellyuns so bad?”

Nixon handed Sesstri a fallen dagger, hilt first. “They’re a goddamned nightmare, that’s what they are.”

Safely away from the scene of the attack, Sesstri allowed herself to stop and gather her thoughts; she closed her eyes and tried to sublime her tension through a deep breath. Nixon watched her face, rapt. With her eyes closed and her plum-colored lips parted, he could almost imagine her as a soft, gentle thing, who gave soft, gentle kisses and would open her legs for him, just slightly, enough for him to feel her essential heat with the backs of his knuckles. . . .

“Well, they may not be the woeful Etellyuns”—Sesstri shook off her reverie—“but if the Undertow are attacking me, and tracking us, then I am concerned, and I will remain so until I learn why.”

“But those weren’t Death Boys or Charnel Girls, back at the house. Just plain henchmen. Vanilla-flavored, standard-issue hired muscle. Why would the Undertow fight a proxy battle?” Nixon resumed rubbing his whiskerless chin.

“Why is the sky billowing red? There are plenty of questions without good answers.” Sesstri bent to rummage through her satchel, but paused and squatted beside it, twisting its strap between her fists and eyeing Nixon with an unfixed stare of appraisal.

“Nixon, can I trust you?”

The unboy looked down his long nose at the earth as if he wished he were among the dead in their resinous stasis. “You think I brought those thugs, don’t you? You blame me for your friend with the Danzig t-shirt.”

“Are you avoiding my question?” Sesstri cocked her head.

“You think I work for the bad guys!” he wailed.

Sesstri did not answer, but glanced back at Nixon with something resembling forbearance. Forbearance’s unkind, surgical sister. “I did not say that.”

“But it’s what you think, isn’t it?” Nixon took two deep breaths and looked for all the worlds like a real child, on the verge of tears.

Sesstri clucked. “It’s a possibility I’d be irresponsible not to consider, and either you’d wonder the same thing in my shoes or you’re an idiot, in which case I’m wasting my breath. Am I wasting my breath?”

The boy shook his head in earnest. “No, no, of course not. I’d be suspicious of me too. I’d probably have me beaten and locked up for a day or two just to be on the safe side.”

Sesstri pursed her lips in agreement. “I’m low on closet space, but I did consider stuffing you into the drawer where I keep my underthings.”

Nixon put his hand over Sesstri’s, still wrapped around the strap of her satchel, and squeezed. His brown eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “I swear to you, Sesstri Manfrix, I am a lot of bad things, more than you would ever guess; I am a thief and a liar and a greedy, cruel man, but I am not your enemy. You can trust me. And I’ll understand if you don’t—I know it looks bad. I’ll walk away right now if you think I’m responsible for what happened to you and your friends.”

Sesstri understood that there were gestures appropriate for this moment, but she could think of none that fit her. She certainly wasn’t about to pat Nixon’s scummy little head.

“No, Nixon, I don’t believe you betrayed us.” Sesstri tried to modulate her voice to approximate kindness. “For one, you’re too young to be a threat.” She stood, finally finding her notebook within her bag, scratching a few notes to give the urchin time to wipe his face.

“Well, that’s good news.” Nixon turned around, smiling his half- grin again. “But I’m not young, you see.”

Sesstri hid a smile. “I see no such thing.”

“I think you do, and I think I’m in love with you. Just throwing it out there.” Nixon tried to whistle innocently, looking all around. “Change the subject,” she said. They rounded a final bend and the great tree lifted itself up before them. Like all of aboveground Bonseki-sai, the tree was a conceit. A hodgepodge of elephant-thick succulents—jade plants, semperviva, ice plants, Carmens and Zwartkops—planted strategically among the eaves and railings of a rickety, towering, and well- disguised hostelry called the Jamaica Inn.

At the foot of the great tree, at the center of Bonseki-sai, upon a wide square of sunlit resin, the Jamaica’s entrance yawned between two banyanthick jades, their fat oval leaves filtering smoke and revelry from within, even at this early—or late—hour. The morning sunlight revealed that the ground beneath their feet held no corpses, just a straight view down into the drowned depths, where shadows most certainly did not move. Milling about the square Sesstri saw patrons of the Jamaica Inn, none of whom seemed to notice the still-billowing expulsion of bloodred smoke that filled the sky behind the inn. Men and women drank their beer and spoke together in quiet clusters, oblivious.

Sesstri bit her lip. There’s more drinking, more eating, more blindness to the madness that surrounds us. It was the svarning, she was sure of it. She felt it herself, fluttering against her breastbone like a trapped bird. Wherever he was, Asher felt it too, and soon Cooper; it would take them all and wash them into . . . aimlessness and . . . gray hands on her face and backside, pulling her cheeks apart to swamp her with kisses that . . . “Enough!” Sesstri screamed, hands in her hair, but nobody flinched. Even Nixon failed to notice.

The unboy had no eyes for Bonseki-sai, or the Jamaica beneath its living disguise. He watched the red smoke, filtering through the branches toward them. “That’s not smoke, you’re right,” he said to Sesstri. “It looks more like . . . hair.” Clouds of red curls that burned the air with their presence, scalded three-dimensional space and irradiated time. Nixon’s eyes grew wider, then rolled back in his skull as he fell to the ground in a faint.

Sesstri squared her shoulders and stared down the roil of sentient pigment that bloomed before her. “You are Chesmarul, the red ribbon!” she called out, ignoring the patrons. “If you insist on a show, then show up.”

The red tendrils shivered and began to contract. Sesstri didn’t know what she was watching, yet the sound it made felt nauseatingly appropriate. The red color seemed to crunch in on itself and become . . . real— yet Sesstri knew that by joining her “real” world of three physical dimensions, the red ribbon allowed herself to be diminished, somehow. When the collapsing color grew solid, Sesstri was not surprised to see the heartshaped face and bow lips of her landlady, Alouette, take form amidst the coalescent pigment.

“Fine, then. Enough procrastination.” The red curls vibrated with Alouette’s voice. “Time to put off being an ineffable First Person for a while and become the landlady again.”