“The keelways,” he said. “Tell me the truth about how the world works, Doctor.”
You are mine! The eidolon tipped back its head and howled, twisting the mild face of Yama’s stepfather into something coarse and lupine. Its eyes burned with a feral red light, as if a balefire had been kindled inside its skull. The soldiers and servants around it took no notice, of course.
“The boy is fevered,” Dr. Dismas said, and at last managed to wrench away from Yama’s grip. He kneaded the stiff claw of his left hand with his right, as if comforting an injured pet, and smiled at Enobarbus and Agnitus. “I have him, gentlemen. I assure you.”
“I belong to no one,” Yama said. “Tell me about the keelways, Doctor. Tell me about the machines down there. It is possible that I can control them? Is that what you want of me, once the war is over?”
“I want nothing of you, Yamamanama,” Dr. Dismas said quickly. “I have brought you here as a gift to Enobarbus, a weapon to bring a swift end to the war. Ask him what he wants. Do not ask me.”
“Yet somehow he has an idea that you do want something, Dismas,” Enobarbus said. “We’ll talk of this, I think.”
He turned and swept out of the room, his guards on either side and the pentad of officers following behind in a swirl of red capes. The eidolon moved through them like smoke and stood at Agnitus’s shoulder.
I am proud of you, my child, it said. We have already done much together, you and I, and with your help we will do much more.
“Tell me about the machines in the keelways,” Yama said. He stood up, his legs prickling with pins and needles, and limped across the room to the great blister of the window, struggling to compose his thoughts and to conceal his great excitement. If the Shadow wanted his help, then it was not as strong as it claimed. Or perhaps he was stronger, if only he knew it.
Behind him, Agnitus asked Dr. Dismas, “How great are his powers, Dismas?”
The apothecary was fitting another cigarette into his carved bone holder and did not reply until he had it lit; Yama smelled the clove-scented smoke. “He’ll have been told about the keelways by the child of my paramour. Who knows what they talk about inside the skull they presently have in common? It is of no moment, Agnitus, because soon enough the boy will be redundant. Remember to tell your master that.”
A black speck floated far off in the blue sky, high above the patchwork woods of the city of trees, far beyond the archipelagos of floating gardens.
Yama said, “And do not forget to tell him that I have been in the keelways, too. It was after I escaped from you the first time, Doctor. I fetched up in the Silent Quarter and entered the keelways after I got away from the poor fools you employed. I learned much, then.”
The speck was a bird, perhaps, a lammergeyer which had wandered far from the slopes of the Rim Mountains. Yama watched it with growing apprehension.
Dr. Dismas said dismissively, “The keelways are hardly a secret.”
Agnitus said, “You did not answer my question, Dismas.”
“The records are vague, a single sura in the Puranas. Yamamanama’s bloodline built the world under instruction from the Preservers. Why should they not know all about it? But the boy is ignorant, Agnitus, brought up by a disgraced civil servant in a wretched backwater, with hardly any experience of the world. We proceed by experiment. Of course, if your master is frightened, I can leave and take the boy elsewhere. There are many who would be glad of his services.”
“I think not,” Agnitus said.
“That Enobarbus is not frightened? Or that I cannot leave? Take care, Agnitus,” Dr. Dismas said sharply. “I have powerful allies.”
Not a bird. It was too big to be a bird. It came on steadily. Yama could not look away from it and, although he told himself that it was only an illusion, his skin crawled with horror.
Agnitus told Dr. Dismas, “Your allies fight amongst each other even as they try to conquer the world. That is why they were defeated in the wars of the Age of Insurrection, and that is why they cannot prevail without our help. That is why you are here, Dismas. Do not forget that.”
“I’ll hear that from Enobarbus, not his creature.”
Agnitus’s laugh was a low, rumbling growl. He said, “You’re a fool, Dismas. You think everyone should be owned by someone else because you are yourself something’s creature.”
The thing beat the air outside the great bubble of the window with wide leathery wings. It was triple-headed, and each head was set on a long, flexible neck, and their faces were triangulated upon Yama. They were brute-like distortions of the people he knew and loved and had lost: his stepfather, the Aedile of Aeolis; his stepbrother, Telmon, killed in the war against the heretics; and Tamora, the cateran who had been killed by Dr. Dismas on the stair outside the shrine cut into the edge of the world. He bore their gaze, although it was very hard. Their voices crept into his brain.
Nothing ever dies, Yamamanama. I can bring them back. Help me, and I will let them live again.
“I will serve only on my own terms.”
Behind him, Dr. Dismas said sharply, “It’s a last vestige, Agnitus. It will soon pass, and he will be gone forever.”
Foolish creature! We do not need him, Yamamanama, or the old, broken, and insane thing which changed him. Together, we make something new in the world.
“Together,” Yama said.
O yes. Together. Together, we will change everything.
The creature’s human heads opened their mouths wide and blew gouts of flame which washed over the eye of the window. Yama stood his ground. It was only a foolish gesture, a sign of the Shadow’s vanity. And vanity was a weakness.
The flames faded. The creature was gone. Inside Yama’s skull, a voice whispered eagerly.
Soon.
Chapter Seven
The Ironclads
“You will go around it,” Prefect Corin told the captain of the flying platform.
“But I will not,” the captain said firmly. He hung from a branch of the tree by an arm and a leg and glared unblinkingly at Prefect Corin. His eyes were large and black and perfectly round. He was smaller than Pandaras, and naked except for a tool belt. His fine silvery fur was touched with black at the tips of his ears and fingers and toes. Two decads of his crew hung from or stood on branches in the other trees at the edge of the little wood, watching silently. The captain said, “My orders I already have. You know them well, and you know that you cannot change them. This we have already discussed.”
Prefect Corin spoke softly; Pandaras could hardly hear him over the throbbing of the flier’s motors. He said, “You know who I am and what I can do.”
The captain grinned, showing needle-sharp white teeth. “We know that this platform you can’t fly. Beyond the pass no one flies, Prefect. Not while heretics hold high ground and the river.”
Prefect Corin laid a hand on Pandaras’s shoulder and said, “Show it to them.”
Reluctantly, Pandaras drew out the ceramic coin and held it up. Little flecks and dashes of light filled it from edge to edge, scuttling about each other like busy emmets. The captain glanced at it, then shrugged.
“The device shows that the man I seek is not here,” Prefect Corin said. The light of the disc set stars in the centers of his liquid black eyes. “He is farther downriver, amongst the heretics.”