Siege rockets flew in crisscross trajectories, trailing burning lengths of rope. A cask of napalm burst in a ball of oily flame, sending a mushroom of smoke boiling into the air.
Flecks of fire spattered in a wide circle. Men dived toward whatever cover they could find. Yama dropped to the ground, his arms crossed over his head, as burning debris pattered around.
There was a moment of intense quiet. As Yama climbed to his feet, his ears ringing, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and spun him around.
“We’ve unfinished business, small fry,” Lob said. Behind his brother, Lud grinned around his tusks.
Chapter Six
The Mouse of Ghost Lanterns
Lud took Yama’s knife and stuck it in his belt beside his own crooked blade. “Don’t go shouting for help,” he said, “or we’ll tear out your tongue.”
People were making a hasty retreat toward the gate in the city wall. Lob and Lud gripped Yama’s arms and carried him along with them. The tower was burning furiously, a roaring chimney belching thick red fumes that, with the smoke of the burning wagon and countless lesser fires, veiled the sun.
Several horses had thrown their riders and were galloping about wildly. Sergeant Rhodean strode amidst the flames and smoke, organizing countermeasures; already, soldiers and militiamen were beating at small grass fires with wet blankets.
The fleeing crowd split around Ananda and the priest. They were kneeling over a man and anointing his bloody head with oil while reciting the last rites. Yama turned to try and catch Ananda’s eye, but Lud snarled and cuffed his head and forced him on.
The fumes of the burning tower hung over the crowded flat roofs of the little city. Along the old waterfront, peddlers were bundling wares into their blankets. Chandlers, tavern owners and their employees were locking shutters over windows and standing guard at doors, armed with rifles and axes.
Men were already looting the building where Dr. Dismas had his office. They dragged furniture onto the second-floor veranda and threw it into the street; books rained down like broken-backed birds; jars of samples smashed on the concrete, strewing arcs of colored powder. A man was methodically smashing all the windows with a heavy iron hammer.
Lob and Lud marched Yama through the riot and turned down a side street that was little more than a paved walkway above the green water of a wide, stagnant canal. The single-story houses which stood shoulder to shoulder along the canal had been built with stone looted from older, grander buildings, and their tall, narrow windows were framed by collages of worn carvings and broken tablets incised with texts in long-forgotten scripts. Chutes led down into the scummy water; this part of the city was where the bachelor field laborers lived, and they could not afford private bathing places.
For a moment, Yama thought that the two brothers had dragged him to this shabby, unremarked side street so that they could punish him for interfering with their fun with the anchorite. He braced himself, but was merely pushed forward.
With Lud leading and Lob crowding behind, he was hustled through the street doorway of a tavern, under a cluster of ancient ghost lanterns that squealed and rustled in the fetid breeze.
A square plunge pool lit by green underwater lanterns took up half the echoing space. Worn stone steps led down into the slop of glowing water. An immensely fat man floated on his back in the middle of the pool; his shadow loomed across the galleries that ran around three sides of the room. As Lob and Lud hustled Yama past the pool, the man snorted and stirred, expelling a mist of oily vapor from his nostrils and opening one eye. Lob threw a coin. The fat man caught it in the mobile, blubbery lips of his horseshoe-shaped mouth. His lower lip inverted and the coin vanished into his maw. He snorted again and his eye closed.
Lud jabbed Yama with the point of his knife and marched him around a rack of barrels and along a narrow passage which opened into a tiny courtyard. The space, roofed with glass speckled and stained by green algae and black mold, contained a kind of cage of woven wire that fitted inside the whitewashed walls with only a handsbreadth to spare on either side. Inside the cage, beneath its wire ceiling, Dr. Dismas was hunched at a rickety table, reading a book and smoking a clove-scented cigarette stuck in his bone cigarette holder.
“Here he is,” Lud said. “We have him, doctor!”
“Bring him inside,” the apothecary said, and closed his book with an impatient snap.
Yama’s fear had turned to paralyzing astonishment. Lob roughly pinioned his arms behind his back while Lud unlocked a door in the cage; then Yama was thrust through and the door was closed and locked behind him.
“No,” Dr. Dismas said, “I am far from dead, although I have paid a heavy price for this venture. Close your mouth, boy. You look like one of the frogs you are so fond of hunting late at night.”
Outside the cage, Lud and Lob nudged each other. “Go on,” one muttered, and the other, “You do it!” At last, Lud said to Dr. Dismas, “You’ll pay us. We done what you asked.”
“You failed the first time,” Dr. Dismas said, “and I haven’t forgotten. There’s work still to be done, and if I pay you now you’ll turn any money I give you into drink. Go now. We’ll start on the second part of this an hour after sunset.”
After more nudging, Lob said, “We thought maybe we get paid for the one thing, and then we do the other.”
“I told you that I would pay you to bring the boy here. And I will. And there will be more money when you help me take him to the man who has commissioned me. But there will be no money at all unless everything is done as I asked.”
“Maybe we only do the one thing,” Lob said, “and not the other.”
“I would suggest it is dangerous to leave something unfinished,” Dr. Dismas said.
“I don’t know if this is right,” Lud said. “We did what you asked—”
Dr. Dismas said sharply, “When did I ask you to begin the second part of your work?”
“Sunset,” Lob said in a sullen mumble.
“An hour after. Remember that. You will suffer as much as I if the work is done badly. You failed the first time. Don’t fail again.”
Lud said sulkily, “We got him for you, didn’t we?”
Lob added, “We would have got him the other night, if this old culler with a stick hadn’t got in the way.”
Yama stared at the brothers through the mesh of the cage. They would not meet his eyes. He said, “You should allow me to go. I will say you rescued me from the mob. I do not know what Dr. Dismas promised, but my father will pay double to have me safe.”
Lud and Lob grinned, nudging each other in the ribs. “Ain’t he a corker,” Lud said. “Like a proper little gentleman.”
Lob belched, and his brother sniggered.
Yama turned to Dr. Dismas. “The same applies to you, doctor.”
“My dear boy, I don’t think the Aedile can afford my price,” Dr. Dismas said. “I was happy in my home, with my research and my books.” He put a hand on his narrow chest and sighed. He had six fingers, with long nails filed to points. “All gone now, thanks to you. You owe me a great deal, Yamamanama, and I intend to have my price in full. I don’t need the Aedile’s charity.”
Yama felt a queer mixture of excitement and fear. He was convinced that Dr. Dismas had found his bloodline, if not his family. “Then you really have found where I came from! You have found my family—that is, my real family—”
“Oh, far better than that,” Dr. Dismas said, “but this is not the time to talk about it.”
Yama said, “I would know it now, whatever it is. I deserve to know it.”