“Yes,” Glaucous said, hunching his shoulders as he imagined miners might in a cave-in, their candles fading, air turning to poison.
“Not done yet,” Whitlow added, shaking his head. “Might squeeze us to the size of a pea. What then?”
It was obvious to Glaucous that all they had to do—Whitlow and the Moth—was lose him in this tangle, and none of his skills would save him. That might be their intent—yet he had no choice but to follow.
“I bear no resentment for being left behind,” Whitlow said, watching his face with darting eyes. “New circumstances, new codes, not to say new honor. Indeed, not to say that.I might have left youbehind, had it been the other way.”
“The Mistress brought you here before?” Glaucous asked.
“Such a question!” Whitlow said. “She might have done so, and I might have forgotten. You might as easily forget that we are here now.”
“I recognize some things,” Glaucous said quietly. “Narrow escapes. Seeing what lay beyond.”
“When I was younger, I imagined this was a sort of afterlife. Didn’t you?”
“Never thought on it much,” Glaucous said, and that was mostly true.
“I had some feeble excuse that our prey might find a satisfactory existence here—render their own extended service, no worse than what we endure, or what the Moth endures, perhaps. Mistakes also deposit themselves. Hunters clumsy enough to fall into a Gape. Many such, over the ages. No going back when that happens. You’ve lost partners—would you like to reacquaint with a few?”
“No thank you, all the same,” Glaucous murmured.
“We may pass them on our way to the Crux. We are the only survivors. Of all the thousands—tens of thousands, I imagine…” Whitlow looked around. There had not been a touch, a guiding blink of gray authority, for some time. He whistled low and steady, as if summoning an invisible dog. “Where is that creature?”
“Does shereside in the Crux?” Glaucous asked.
Whitlow slowly turned, larger booted foot thumping, looked up, and lifted his hands, fingers feeling through the dark spaces as if he might grab a line and haul them up into daylight. “Not hers. Moth found it. Bigger game, now smaller and weaker, everything coming to its minimum. The small will loom large, Mr. Glaucous. Our last chance.”
“I do not know what you mean, Mr. Whitlow,” Glaucous said wearily. “Bad riddles always.”
“You wouldn’t say that had not all this brought me low. You would listen and smile, obsequious, and I would know there was an understanding. But the chain of command, broken…chain of authority, knotted and clanking. The Moth…”
“I don’t feel him,” Glaucous said, drawing closer to Whitlow. “Where has he gone?”
Whitlow regarded him with momentary apprehension—and then a mask of wry humor. “Tell me about your friend, the bad shepherd, before you decide to take your revenge, Mr. Glaucous.”
“You found him. I followed you.”
Glaucous drew back at another round of creaking and settling. Whitlow held up his fingers, separated by the distance of a pea, and shook them in Glaucous’s face, grinning his threat. “It was rumored ages ago that some shepherds, tormented by the hunt, might acquire certain understandings, certain efficiencies. Threatened, they might leave their personal silken cords and attach to others. Become those others for a while. A desperate ploy. This would disrupt the track of their dreams—and so they would forget. Yet they would still carry sum-runners, still be guided by them…”
Glaucous felt the breezy touch of a huge, soft hand on his back, accompanied by a scent of dry, sweetly irritating powder. The Moth had returned.
Whitlow resumed his off-kilter step. “Better. Shouldn’t wander off like that. What we have found is puzzling,” he said to Glaucous. “Curtains have been pulled aside. Powers have shifted. We suspect the Chalk Princess is no longer actively engaged. We have need of another opinion.”
Glaucous dropped his head.
“She may not know as much yet. More has been reduced than walking distance,” Whitlow said, and pulled Glaucous close, then whispered in his ear, “This does not bode well for the Moth, of course.” He winked and held his finger to his lips.
The Moth moved them again—a wrenching passage, swift but no more brutal than was strictly essential. Glaucous felt the change as a burning, as if his skin were crisping away. That subsided—and then he felt as if he were merely being tattooed all over his body. The pricking sting of predatory fates was something with which he had no previous experience. One normally lived one’s fate; these lived him.Their examination was swift, impersonal, basic. Glaucous had never before been so close to the basement layers of his being, and he found it both terrible and exhilarating. He had also never been so close to an explanation for his life, his existence, and to a last moment of hope—the hope that perhaps there might still be room for correction.
An impersonal offering of grace—a remote and pure shriving.
The pricking passed. Now he was his own powdery thing, still standing, but falling apart and being put back together each split second.
The Moth protected them as best as he could.
“Welcome to the center of the universe,” he heard Whitlow say or think. Their eyes—they no longer seemed to have bodies—saw in some manner a deep black pool in which two large needles churned a thick liquid. The needles met beneath the surface of the pool and spun like the shaft of a gear in a jeweled movement.
“The Crux has no center and no radius,” Whitlow said. “Brace for a nasty residue—a powerful thing once focused its heart of frustration and misery here. It ate our world and spat it out in nasty chunks. You’ll feel it.”
“The Typhon?” Glaucous asked.
Whitlow shrugged. “These steel threads are the last two fates. In one, the Typhon fails and we all pass into nothingness. In the other…there is a kind of success. Who can say which would be better? Now—
“Tell us where we are—draw up the proper thread, and tell us what remains for us to do. That is your talent, is it not?”
Glaucous could not shut his eyes, could not find any private place in which to make his decision—but that did not matter. He had decided long ago.
Fifty years and more had passed since he had decided.
Somehow, in this abstract heart with no center, and without the Moth’s help, he chose the best fate—the last remaining good fate—and drew it down like a fortunate hand of cards, the one lucky flip of a coin. And—always deferent to his employers—he made sure both the Moth and Whitlow approved. Far away, an awful sound echoes again throughout the False City.
And the Dead Gods begin to move.
CHAPTER 112
The False City is quivering, snapping, shrinking. Jebrassy does not know why he is still walking, still seeing.
He looks down on Polybiblios, who has inexplicably collapsed, and then kneels beside him. Some steps away, Ghentun has also fallen. Both are wavering in substance and outline.
“The Kalpa is reaching its end,” Polybiblios says. “The City Prince’s bargain means nothing. I cannot last much longer than my stored fates within the city. All my fate-lines will die with the Kalpa. Finish it well, young breed. You have all you need—but for this.”
The epitome reaches out to give him the thing he has carried since their journey began. Jebrassy holds the small gray box. The epitome of the Librarian winks at him through the armor’s faceplate, then lies back on the black surface.
Jebrassy then moves to Ghentun and lies down beside the Keeper, to hold him as best he can while the Tall One—the former taskmaster and protector—stares up into the ice-crusted darkness. His eyes sink.