“I would have followed, Yama, but I could not leave you. He has not come back. I hope he has fallen off the edge of the world or has bled to death. But I didn’t feel my blade hit bone and I don’t think I cut any major blood vessels because there’s not enough blood on the floor. He’s probably still alive. Tell me that you’re all right and I’ll go look for him, and kill him when I find him.”
“He wanted to use me,” Yama said. He sat down, feeling suddenly dizzy. The pain in his head was expanding. Red and black rags of light seemed to flutter at the edge of his vision. He was diminishing, or the world was receding from him.
He said, “I thought that he wanted to help me, but I have been a fool. He wanted to use me, like most people I have met. You were right all along, Tamora. I apologize.”
“I was wrong, too. I thought he was working for Prefect Corin, when all along he had his own plans. This was his chance to master you, but he failed. Everything will be all right now.”
Light flooded the chamber. They both looked up. It came from the entrance, a harsh blinding glare that shriveled the soft radiance of the shrine. Tamora swept up her sword and ran straight through the arch into the light, and Yama followed as quickly as he could.
Outside, the light was as bright as the sun. Every figure in the intricate friezes which covered the cliff wall stood beside its own shadow. The wide steep steps shone like ice. With one hand raised to shade his eyes, Yama saw that Tamora was standing at the foot of the stair, gazing up at the huge shadow that floated behind the flood of light. It was as big as the Weazel, and shaped like a claw. It floated only a chain from the edge of the stair, a hundred or so steps above the entrance to the shrine. Figures moved on its upper surface, bleached shadows within the nimbus of brilliant light that shone from it.
It was a flyer, Yama realized, and he knew then why Eliphas had brought him to the edge of the world. He shouted a warning to Tamora, but she was already bounding forward, taking the steps two at a time. She was running toward Eliphas, who had crept out of his hiding place between two carved figures and begun to climb toward the flyer. The old man had ripped the sleeve from his shirt and tied it around his wounded leg, which dragged behind him as he climbed. He held the little black box to his mouth. He was shouting prayers into the box and when Tamora was almost upon him he turned and raised it as if in a warding gesture. Her sword went under his arm and he jerked and tried to hold onto the blade at the place where it pierced his body.
For a moment, they stood still, joined by the sword. Then there was a flash of fierce red light and a wave of nauseous heat.
“Yamamanama,” a voice said.
Yama was wedged against the feet of a carved man. He looked up, blinking blood from his eyes. When he tried to speak a bubble of blood swelled inside his mouth and broke over his teeth and his lips. All of his muscles had turned to water.
The black, bent figure of Dr. Dismas stood over him. The apothecary had a pistol in his left hand, its blunt muzzle laid along his thigh. In his right he held a little black box, the twin of the one Eliphas had carried. Behind him, the flyer floated down and grounded against the ledge at the entrance to the shrine, just as the floating island Yama and Telmon had seen on the far-side shore had grounded against the edge of the world. Above the flyer, the stair rose between the black cliff and the sky, scorched clean by fire.
“It was ordained we should meet again, dear boy,” Dr. Dismas said. “How pleased I am to see you.”
Yama spat a mouthful of blood. “It was you,” he said. “All the time it was you.”
The light around them was very bright. He could clearly see the edges of the plaques under the skin of Dr. Dismas’s hands. The same sharp-edged shapes that lay under his own scalp.
Yama said, “How? How did you infect me?”
“At The House of Ghost Lanterns,” Dr. Dismas said.
“In the beer. Or the food…”
“Good! Very good! Yes. Little builders. They have been working ever since. You are strong. Yamamanama. You resisted them for a very long time.”
Yama spat more blood. So much blood. First Lud, and then Lob and Unprac, the landlord of The House of Ghost Lanterns. The palmers and the bandits, the cateran who had tried to kill him, Iachimo and the rogue star-sailor and its creatures, the two pythonesses of the Department of Vaticination, the old guard, Coronetes, and all the clerks and soldiers in the Department of Indigenous Affairs, the mage and the soldiers who had taken the peel-house, the traitor Torin, the Constable of Aeolis and his sons and the mob, Prefect Corin and the crew of the picketboat, Dr. Dismas’s man and the boy, Pantin. And the Aedile, his heart broken, and now Tamora and Eliphas. All dead. All because of him.
Yama said. “Tamora thought that Eliphas was in league with Prefect Corin. But all the time he was working for you.”
Dr. Dismas waggled the little black box. “He kept in touch using the twin of this, right until the end. A pity he had to be killed. He was a useful servant. He was turned long ago, in one of the chambers beneath the surface of the world. He was looking for old texts to sell, but found something far more valuable. Or rather, it found him.”
“I thought that he was praying to that little box.”
Surreptitiously, Yama pulled the fetish from his wrist. When Pandaras came to look for him, he would find it, and know that his master was still alive.
“Long wavelength light,” Dr. Dismas said. “Bounced off one of us a million leagues above the plane of the world. You will soon understand everything, Yamamanama.”
Yama felt very cold. He was badly hurt, and the thing in his head had turned his heart to ice. He said, “My people. Eliphas found where…”
“The map and the scavenger’s account? My dear Yamamanama, they were forgeries, and not even very good forgeries. But they did not have to be, because you wanted so very much to believe in them. No, your people died out long ago. All are dead except you, and even we do not know where you came from. Once I realized what you were, I went to Ys to search for your origin. Eliphas helped me then, but we found nothing and I came back empty-handed. It does not matter. All that matters is that you are here, and that you will join us. You are my creature, Yamamanama. We will do wonderful things together. To begin with, we will form an alliance with the heretics, and save the world.”
Men walked out of the light toward them. Yama was lifted up. Light swept over him, and then a warm darkness. Presently, the flyer tilted away from the side of the cliff and rose above the edge of the world. There was a small business to attend to, a few witnesses to be removed. It did not take long, and when it was done the flyer shot away downriver, toward the war.