“Was this avatar a woman, dressed in white?”
“It was neither man nor woman, and neither young nor old.” The old priest smiled in recollection. “How I miss its wild laughter—it was filled with fierce joy, and yet it was a gentle creature. But it is gone. They have all gone. Men still come to pray at the shrine, of course, but although the Preservers hear every prayer, men have fallen so far from grace that there are no longer answers to their questions. Few come here now, and even fewer to bare themselves humbly before their creators. Most who come do so to ask the one below to curse their enemies, but there are not even very many of them.”
“I suppose that most people fear this place.”
“Just so, although we do have problems with cultists from time to time, for they are attracted by the same thing which the ordinary folk fear. My brother and I come here each evening to light the lamps, but otherwise the temple is not much used, even by our own bloodline. Of course, we have our high day when the atrium is decorated with palm fronds and wreaths of ivy and there is a solemn procession to aspurge every corner and to propitiate the Thing Below. But otherwise, as I have said, most people keep away. You are a stranger here. A palmer, perhaps. I am sorry that you and your friend were attacked. No doubt a footpad followed you, and saw his chance.”
Yama asked Antros if the Thing Below was the machine which had fallen in the final battle at the end of the Age of Insurrection.
“Indeed. You must not suppose it was destroyed. Rather, it was entombed alive in rock made molten by its fall. It stirs, sometimes. In fact, it has been very restless recently. Listen! Do you hear it?”
Yama nodded. He had supposed that the high singing in his head was his own blood rushing through his veins with the excitement of his brief skirmish.
“It is the second time in as many days,” Antros said. “Most of our bloodline are soldiers, and part of our duty is to guard the well and the thing entombed at its bottom. But many have gone downriver to fight in the war, and many of those have been killed there.”
“I met one,” Yama said. He did not need to ask when the machine had begun to be restless, and felt a chill in his blood. He had called for help in the merchant’s house, and the feral machine which had answered his call was not the only one to have heard him. What else? What else might he have inadvertently awakened?
Out in the atrium, someone suddenly started to shout, raising overlapping echoes. The old priest looked alarmed, but Yama said, “Do not be afraid, dominie. I know that voice.”
Tamora had returned to the inn, she said, and had had to threaten the painted witch who ran it to find out where Yama and Pandaras had gone. “Then I realized what the game was, and came straightaway.”
“It was Gorgo,” Yama said, as he tied the laces of his torn, bloodstained shirt. “I appear to have a knack of making enemies.”
“I hope you gouged out his eyes before you killed him,” Tamora said.
“I have not seen him. But someone shot an arbalest bolt at me earlier, and I remember that you said Gorgo had killed someone with an arbalest. He missed, and then he sent another man to kill me. Fortunately, I had some help, and was able to scare off the assassin.”
“I will have his eyes,” Tamora said with venomous passion, “if I ever see him again! His balls and his eyes! He is a disgrace to the Fierce People!”
“He must be very jealous, to want to kill me because of you.”
Tamora laughed, and said, “Oh, Yama, at last you show some human weakness, even if it is only conceit about your cockmanship. The truth is, I owe Gorgo money. He’s not one for fighting, but for making deals. He finds work for others, and takes a cut of the fees for his trouble. And he loans money, too. I borrowed from him to buy new armor and this sword after I was wounded in the war last year. I lost my kit then, you see. I was working on commission to pay off the debt and the interest. I got enough to live on, and he took the rest.”
“Then the job I did with you—”
“Yes, yes,” Tamora said impatiently. “On Gorgo’s commission. He didn’t really expect me to succeed, but he was still angry when I told him that we’d killed the merchant and hadn’t been able to collect the fee.”
“And that is why you agreed to help me.”
“Not exactly. Yama, we don’t have time for this.”
“I need to know, Tamora.”
Yama understood now why Tamora had embarked on such a risky enterprise, but he still did not understand why Gorgo wanted him dead.
Tamora hung her head for a moment, then said with a mixture of vulnerability and defiance, “I suppose it’s only fair. The star-sailor job would have paid well, but we lost the fee because you went crazy and grabbed that circlet. And I still owe Gorgo, and I was going off to work for you, as he saw it. I said he should wait and I’d pay back everything, but he’s greedy. He wants the liver and the lights as well as the meat and bones.”
Yama nodded. “He decided to kill me and steal the money I have.”
“He said that he would rob you, not kill you. He said it was only fair, because you’d lost him the fee for killing the merchant. I didn’t know he’d try and kill you. I swear it.”
“I believe you,” Yama said. “And I know that Gorgo found someone else to help you with the job in the Palace of the Memory of the People. He wanted me out of the way.”
“A man with red skin and welts on his chest. I told Gorgo that I was going to work with you, Yama, and no other, but Gorgo said the man would be waiting for me at the Palace gate. I went there, but I couldn’t find the man and I went back to the inn and found that you had come here.”
“Well, the man you were waiting for was here. It was he who tried to kill me.”
“I was going to tell you everything,” Tamora said. “I decided something, while I was waiting. Hear me out. I made an agreement with you, and I will stick with it. Fuck Gorgo. When the job is finished I’ll find him and kill him.”
“Then you will work for me, and not Gorgo?”
“Isn’t that what I said?” Tamora said impatiently. “But there isn’t time to stand and talk a moment longer, not now! You’ve been lying around in bed, and then fooling about in this mausoleum, and meanwhile I have been busy. We have already missed one appointment, and we must not miss the second, or the contract will be voided. Can you ride?”
“A little.”
“That had better mean you can ride like the wind.” Tamora seemed to notice Pandaras for the first time. “What happened to the rat-boy?”
“A blow to the head. Luckily, the assassin Gorgo hired had some scruples.”
“Maybe it’ll have knocked some of his airs out and let some sense in. I suppose you still want to bring him? Well, I’ll carry him for you. Why are you staring at me? Do you call off our contract after all this?”
“I have already woken things best left sleeping. If I go on, what else might I do?”
Tamora said briskly, “Would you emasculate yourself, then? If you don’t know who you are and where you came from, then you can’t know what you can become. Come with me, or not. I’m taking the job anyway, because I’ll get paid for it with you or without you. And when I’ve finished there, I’ll kill Gorgo.”
She slung Pandaras over her shoulder and walked away with a quick, lithe step, as if the boy weighed nothing at all.
After a moment, Yama followed.