Pandaras managed to claw one side of Enobarbus’s face, but then he was picked up and tossed aside. The barge and the sky revolved around each other; he struck two soldiers and knocked them down, fetched up against something that rang dully against the back of his head. It was Mr. Naryan’s tank. Enobarbus had thrown him halfway down the barge. Pandaras jumped up and ran forward again. At the bow, broken chains shook and danced beneath the crane’s jib. The frame was gone.
Pandaras swarmed halfway up the crane and saw Prefect Corin’s floating disc scudding away above the waves, chasing something borne on the strong current. Two half-naked soldiers were climbing toward him, and he kicked out and dived into the river without thinking, and at once realized that he could hardly keep his head above the surface. The water was like a living thing in constant torment. Pandaras was caught in a current that forced him down amongst glittering fans of bubbles, then shot him back to the surface. A wave washed over him and he snatched a breath and glimpsed a shadow cutting toward him, and was pulled under again just as something twitched across his flanks.
A rope. He grabbed hold with his one hand and tangled his feet around its end. Whitecaps slapped his face one after the other. The side of a small boat pitched back and forth above him. Someone leaned down and grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and hauled him over the side.
Pandaras sprawled on his belly in a slop of water. The river had pummeled all the strength from his muscles. A motor roared and the launch made a long sweeping turn. Pandaras tried to stand up and fell into a nest of plastic bags, each containing a splinter of wood or a strip of white cloth, and knew who had rescued him.
Usabio turned from the helm of the launch, grinning hugely. He locked the controls and came back, bracing himself as he reached down to help Pandaras. And reared away, screaming and pawing at the splinter which Pandaras had jammed into his eye.
Pandaras kicked Usabio’s legs from beneath him and struck him with all his weight. Still screaming, Usabio pitched backward over the side of the launch and was gone.
The launch was heading away from the fall of the river. It took Pandaras several tense minutes to work out how to unlock the little machine which controlled the launch’s motors and turn it back.
The two galliots were on fire and drifting toward the edge of the world. The black barge was moving away, a cloud of machines swirling around it. Pandaras bounced the launch over the waves as fast as he dared. There was no sign of the floating disc, no sign of the frame. And no sign of either Prefect Corin or Yama.
The launch drew fire from the barge; machines buzzed it like angry hornets. Pandaras turned it away in a wide arc and pointed it upriver.
He did not believe that Yama had died. He swore to find him. He thought that he would spend the rest of his life looking, but he was wrong.
Chapter Twenty
The Isles of Plenty
Some time after he had been brought back from the Glass Desert by the heretics, Yama had become aware that Prefect Corin was drawing near to the ruins of the city of Sensch. The man had enslaved several machines, and, in the days after Yama’s trial, had moved from place to place around the edge of the city and its huge garrison, presumably probing for weaknesses. Yama had been certain that the Prefect would try and rescue him from the heretics, but had not believed that he would be successful. At best, he might provide a useful diversion. But now it was clear that, once again, Yama had underestimated the Prefect’s resourcefulness.
Yama had his own plan of escape. He wanted to fall over the edge of the world into the shortcut where the river went, where past and present tangled together. The shortcut had been made when the world had been put together, and he thought that he could fall to its beginning and at last find his people. He had learned this from Dr. Dismas’s paramour. It had absorbed many lesser machines and many men and women, and hoarded their knowledge much as a pack rat will decorate its nest with scraps of glass and plastic and metal. That great store had poured into Yama in the moment the machine had tried to make him its own, a torrential flood that had almost washed away his own self. He had had only a little time in which to try and map its limits, but he knew now the secret of the Great River, and knew that in the beginning of the world lay its end, and that was enough.
It was easy to fool the minuscule brains of the sharpshooters’ carbines into thinking that they had discharged when they had not. It was harder to turn one of the swarm of machines which accompanied the barge, for they were imprinted with hundreds of interlocking shells of subselves, and each had to be painstakingly unpicked. But Yama knew that he would need a machine to cut his bonds after he was cast into the river, and he worked hard at it while the heretics prepared him for execution.
And then, as he hung naked on the execution frame, something blew the flier from the air and a motor launch rammed the galliot to his left and exploded. He guessed what was happening even as Enobarbus ran toward him, and used the machine he had laboriously subverted to kill the officer who held Pandaras. But instead of trying to escape, Pandaras ran to help his master, attacking Enobarbus as the warlord shot away the chains from which the frame was suspended.
And then Yama fell. The frame smashed down into the water and was at once whirled away from the barge. A sudden surge threw it into the air and crashed down into a wave that washed over Yama with bruising force, pulling his bound arms and legs in different directions. Yama managed to get a breath and then another wave struck the frame and he went under again and came up, gasping and blinking and wondering if he would drown before he fell over the edge of the world.
A shadow covered him: a floating disc. It tipped in midair and Prefect Corin slid down onto the frame and straddled Yama, bracing himself against the rock and roll of the waves. His staff was strapped to his back, over his fluttering cloak. He hit Yama four times with doubled fists, twice on the left temple, twice on the right. Something flashed as he raised his right hand. A knife. Yama, barely conscious, could only watch. The knife slashed the rope which bound Yama’s left hand to the frame. Prefect Corin’s face was a handspan from his. “We are here to help you, boy,” he said. He had to shout above the clash of white-water waves and the long unending roar of the river’s fall. “We will not lose you again. Say that you will come with us and we will free you.”
Yama tried to speak, but could not gather his thoughts. Spread-eagled and naked beneath his enemy, dazed and helpless, he felt all his old fears return. Prefect Corin was implacable, unforgiving, tireless. There was no escape from him. He would never stop, never give in, never die.
Prefect Corin laid his face against Yama’s. His pelt was wet and cold, his breath hot. His left eye was a puckered ruin. “You are ours, Child of the River. Now and always. Whether we live or die, we will do it together.”
Yama tried to focus on Prefect Corin’s face. Things kept slipping away, jumping back. He had not been afraid of falling off the edge of the world because he had known where he was going, but he was filled with dread now. He was more afraid of this man than of anything else on the world.
Prefect Corin smiled and whispered, “You do not want to die. That is a beginning.” He kissed Yama on the lips and sat back on his heels, ready to cut the other bonds, and his cloak suddenly flew sideways. Prefect Corin clasped his shoulder, then looked at the bright red blood and Yama remembered Enobarbus’s rifle. At the same moment something cracked the air like a whip on his palm, and a spray of blood struck Yama’s face. Prefect Corin grunted, toppled sideways, and was swept away in foaming crosscurrents. The floating disc tilted and swooped off, following its master. Yama watched it dwindle through pouring rain, and then a strong eddy caught the frame and swung it around.