His cajoling got him as far as the first landing, but then his legs all but gave out, and thereafter he had to climb using his one good arm to haul him onward.
He was halfway up the final flight when he heard the voiders' whistle in the street outside, its piercing din unmistakable. They had found him quicker than he'd anticipated, sniffing him out through the darkened streets. The fear that he'd be denied sight of the sanctum at the top of the stairs spurred him on, his body doing its ragged best to accommodate his ambition.
From below, he heard the door being forced open. Then the whistle again, harder than before, as his pursuers stepped into the house. He began to berate his limbs, his tongue barely able to shape the words.
"Don't let me down! Work, will you? Work!"
And they obliged. He scaled the last few stairs in a spastic fashion, but reached the top flight as he heard the voiders' soles at the bottom. It was dark up here, though how much of that was blindness and how much night he didn't know. It scarcely mattered. The route to the door of the sanctum was as familiar to him as the limbs he'd lost. He crawled on hands and knees across the landing, the ancient boards creaking beneath him. A sudden fear seized him: that the door would be locked, and he'd beat his weakness against it and fail to gain access. He reached up for the handle, grasped it, tried to turn it once, failed, tried again, and this time dropped face down over the threshold as the door swung open.
There was food for his enfeebled eyes. Shafts of moonlight spilled from the windows in the roof. Though he'd dimly thought it was sentiment that had driven him back here, he saw now it was not. In returning here he came full circle, back to the room which had been his first glimpse of the Fifth Dominion. This was his cradle and his tutoring room. Here he'd smelled the air of England for the first time, the crisp October air; here he'd fed first, drunk first; first had cause for laughter and, later, for tears. Unlike the lower rooms, whose emptiness was a sign of desertion, this space had always been sparely furnished, and sometimes completely empty. He'd danced here on the same legs that now lay dead beneath him, while Sartori had told him how he planned to take this wretched Dominion and build in its midst a city that would shame Babylon; danced for sheer exuberance, knowing his Maestro was a great man and had it in his power to change the world.
Lost ambition; all lost. Before that October had become November Sartori had gone, flitted in the night or murdered by his enemies. Gone, and left his servant stranded in a city he barely knew. How Chant had longed then to return to the ether from where he'd been summoned, to shrug off the body which Sartori had congealed around him and be gone out of this Dominion. But the only voice capable of ordering such a release was that which had conjured him, and with Sartori gone he was exiled on earth forever. He hadn't hated his summoner for that. Sartori had been indulgent for the weeks they'd been together. Were he to appear now, in the moonlit room, Chant would not have accused him of negligence but made proper obeisances and been glad that his inspiration had returned.
"Maestro..." he murmured, face to the musty boards.
"Not here," came a voice from behind him. It was not, he knew, one of the voiders. They could whistle but not speak. "You were Sartori's creature, were you? I don't remember that."
The speaker was precise, cautious and smug. Unable to turn, Chant had to wait until the man walked past his supine body to get a sight of him. He knew better than to judge by appearances: he, whose flesh was not his own but of the Maestro's sculpting. Though the man in front of him looked human enough, he had the voiders in tow and spoke with knowledge of things few humans had access to. His face was an overripe cheese, drooping with jowls and weary folds around the eyes, his expression that of a funereal comic. The smugness in his voice was here too, in the studied way he licked upper and lower lips with his tongue before he spoke, and tapped the fingertips of each hand together as he judged the broken man at his feet. He wore an immaculately tailored three-piece suit, cut from a cloth of apricot cream. Chant would have given a good deal to break the bastard's nose so he bled on it.
"I never did meet Sartori," he said. "Whatever happened to him?"
The man went down on his haunches in front of Chant and suddenly snatched hold of a handful of his hair.
"I asked you what happened to your Maestro," he said. "I'm Dowd, by the way. You never knew my master, the Lord Godotphin, and I never knew yours. But they're gone, and you're scrabbling around for work. Well, you won't have to do it any longer, if you take my meaning."
"Did you... did you send him to me?"
"It would help my comprehension if you could be more specific."
"Estabrook."
"Oh, yes. Him."
"You did. Why?"
"Wheels within wheels, my dove," Dowd said. "I'd tell you the whole bitter story, but you don't have the time to listen and I don't have the patience to explain. I knew of a man who needed an assassin. I knew of another man who dealt in them. Let's leave it at that."
"But how did you know about me?"
"You're not discreet," Dowd replied. "You get drunk on the Queen's birthday, and you gab like an Irishman at a wake. Lovey, it draws attention sooner or later."
"Once in a while—"
"I know, you get melancholy. We all do, lovey, we all do. But some of us do our weeping in private, and some of us"—he let Chant's head drop—"make fucking public spectacles of ourselves. There are consequences, lovey, didn't Sartori tell you that? There are always consequences. You've begun something with this Estabrook business, for instance, and I'll need to watch it closely, or before we know it there'll be ripples spreading through the Imajica."
"The Imajica..."
"That's right. From here to the margin of the First Dominion. To the region of the Unbeheld Himself."
Chant began to gasp, and Dowd—realizing he'd hit a nerve—leaned towards his victim.
"Do 1 detect a little anxiety?" he said. "Are you afraid of going into the glory of our Lord Hapexamendios?"
Chant's voice was frail now. "Yes..." he murmured.
"Why?" Dowd wanted to know. "Because of your crimes?"
"Yes."
"What are your crimes? Do tell me. We needn't bother with the little things. Just the really shameful stuff'll do."
"I've had dealings with a Eurhetemec."
"Have you indeed?" Dowd said. "However did you get back to Yzordderrex to do that?"
"I didn't," Chant replied. "My dealings... were here, in the Fifth."
"Really," said Dowd softly. "I didn't know there were Eurhetemecs here. You learn something new every day. But, lovey, that's no great crime. The Unbeheld's going to forgive a poxy little trespass like that. Unless..." He stopped for a moment, turning over a new possibility. "Unless, the Eurhetemec was a mystif... ." He trailed the thought, but Chant remained silent. "Oh, my dove," Dowd said. "It wasn't, was it?" Another pause. "Oh, it was. It was." He sounded almost enchanted. "There's a mystif in the Fifth and—what? You're in love with it? You'd better tell me before you run out of breath, lovey. In a few minutes your eternal soul will be waiting at Hapexamendios' door."
Chant shuddered. "The assassin..." he said.
"What about the assassin?" came the reply. Then, realizing what he'd just heard, Dowd drew a long, slow breath. "The assassin is a mystif?" he said.
"Yes."
"Oh, my sweet Hyo!" he exclaimed. "A mystif!" The enchantment had vanished from his voice now. He was hard and dry. "Do you know what they can do? The deceits they've got at their disposal? This was supposed to be an anonymous piece of shit-stirring, and look what you've done!" His voice softened again. "Was it beautiful?" he asked. "No, no. Don't tell me. Let me have the surprise, when I see it face to face." He turned to the voiders. "Pick the fucker up," he said.