“Absolutely, yeah, of course, completely, I’m the first one ever to make a big mistake on something really important. Are you happier now?”
“Without bound,” Leen said unhappily.
“It does make you think, though,” commented Max. “Why does it seem more and more like everybody in the world is incompetent?”
“Everybody but you, right?”
“Especially me.”
“The Adventurer’s God,” Phlinn Arol said, staring into space. “What was I thinking? Why couldn’t I have picked something like God of Actuaries, say, or Lord of Ferns and Moss? No, I had to sign up for Lore and Romance, damn it all. And here’s where it all might end.”
“Have another drink,” suggested Leen.
It’s being reactive I hate, thought Max. Going deliberately over to defense, placing yourself square-up against the bulls-eye because that gave you the best angle on the bowman, these had never been his tactics of choice. People were supposed to dance to his tunes. But Phlinn Arol had been refusing all the most reasonable ideas he’d come up with; after all, if Phlinn wanted he could single-handedly scotch the Knitting in its tracks by refusing to play his ceremonial part. True, that would create its own new set of problems, but that was pretty much a given for any course they took.
Phlinn wasn’t lily-livered, not really; what he was at the moment was even worse - fatalistic. Their earlier discussion on the way over, between Max’s comments on which part of his body the obnoxious armor was chafing now, had illuminated their best guess at the most likely medium the Scapula’s intervention would take. Since it involved a direct strike through Phlinn himself, you couldn’t very well accuse Phlinn of personal cowardice; foolhardiness, on the other hand, was present as a matter of definition. And to rely on Max’s ability to think up a counter on the fly and deploy it in what might be a window of milliseconds ... Well, Phlinn’s fatalism might be understandable, but that still didn’t make it healthy. “How much do you know about the basic mechanics of the Knitting?” Max had asked him.
“Probably more than most,” Phlinn had said dryly, back before his mood had headed for bottom and hadn’t come back up.
“You’re there as the liaison god, right? How much of what you have to do is ceremonial and how much is a physical transfer of power?”
“It’s basically just a sound-and-light show, you should know that. Just symbolism.”
“But do you establish an actual conduit of some sort between you and the Emperor?”
“... I see what you’re getting at, of course,” Phlinn had said, his disposition tilting now over the edge and starting its nose-dive into the abyss. “You think whatever the Scapula is going to try involves infiltrating the link, however limited and tight-band. I would say that’s impossible...”
“Except the Scapula has been doing a lot of the impossible today, and that might not even be too far technique-wise from what he’s already demonstrated.”
“You’d better start thinking what you can do to offset it, then.” And that had been the last thing Phlinn had said that was of any practical relevance to anything at hand.
Max checked around himself again, they glanced over the side at the drop. “I just hope they didn’t plant explosives in this spire too,” he murmured. Then it occurred to him for the first time just what the tower reminded him of: a single-branch candelabrum, with a swelled cup at the top for the flame of the torch. It was big enough to light a flare that could be seen for leagues.
“I just thought of something unpleasant,” Max said.
But Leen and Phlinn Arol had given up paying much attention to him; Phlinn was all but crying on her shoulder. True, Max had resigned himself to his own conclusion that she was eminently lovable, not that he had had the opportunity to seriously pursue the thought, and true, Phlinn Arol’s job did not usually bring him into contact with Leen’s sort of person, since adventurers - male or female, and of whatever species - tended to be a much more rough-and-tumble lot, rather than significantly bookish. True, these were predisposing factors - but still, how had Leen gotten him to discuss a subject Max had been trying to pry out of him for years?
“You see,” said Phlinn Arol, “everyone knew of Byron but not many knew him face to face, personally that is, and of those who were intimate with him I believe I’m the only one left. That’s why his personality is so familiar to me, so familiar in fact that I believe I would know him again if I saw him, whatever his disguise of the moment happened to be.”
“Yes, yes, that’s all very good, but the point is, have you seen him again?”
“Yes,” said Phlinn Arol, “I believe I have. That’s why I was hoping he might be timely enough to show up here now.”
Shaa dragged himself up to Gashanatantra, feeling more than a little askew at the moment. His outfit might not need to be cast into the rags entirely, but it was going to require some serious attention from a cleaner. He had just finished his walk-through of the mob of viscera on the parade grounds. The idea that the Scapula might be hiding in plain sight - among the other Bones, for example - had been too Shaa-ish not to deserve a personal check-out. So there he had been, forcing and wedging his way through the tightly packed ranks of giblets of various sorts, all pursuing their in-group and intra-society jabs and shenanigans as they wheeled and gyrated in their formal exercises. It had taken every bit of slipperiness at his disposal to penetrate the throng at all, let alone accomplish his mission; but somewhat to his own surprise, he had succeeded in making a fairly thorough anatomical sweep, not only of the skeletal members but other attendant systems as well. In none of them, of course, had his brother been found.
Well, it had had to be tried. On to the next step. Which was –
“Wait a moment,” said Gashanatantra, raising his free hand slightly. “A message from Jill.”
Shaa wondered if he should turn and flee back to the body parts. These were gods - you couldn’t very well order them around - but he thought by now they understood how dangerous it was to use any of their accustomed accouterments of their goddish infrastructure. They knew the Scapula had corrupted the conferencing architecture; it was only prudent to assume normal communications were no longer safe either, even if they weren’t yet demonstrably lethal. And there was already enough bait around to spare. But if Gashanatantra wanted to talk to his inamorata at the risk of his life, well, the die was cast.
Maybe there would be a bright side. Maybe she had found a valuable clue or a hot trail to trace by physically examining one of Arznaak’s enthralled god-captives. Maybe it was worth the risk of telling an eavesdropping Arznaak exactly what they were up to and how far they’d come. Maybe -
Gashanatantra gave off whispering to himself and glared back at Shaa. “You don’t know everything,” he declared. “Your brother is not the only one with surprises.” He removed something that looked like a black button from his ear, displayed the item, then replaced it.
“Ah yes, radio,” Shaa said. “I once had one of those myself. Has it occurred to you that perhaps my brother’s confederate is an Artificer? An Artificer might very well have his own radio too.”
“Hence the utility of a private verbal code. There is value to having once been married to someone.”
Shaa sighed. “I apologize. I know you know your business. This whole thing has clearly been getting under my skin to a greater degree than I’m accustomed.”
“Understandable; the adversary is your brother.”
“Most gracious of you. If -”
“Will you just tell me what the hell she said?” croaked Jardin.
If Max had been here, Shaa expected he would have said something like, “Oh, are you still alive?” But indeed it was difficult to look at the drooping energy-drained figure Gashanatantra had propped for the moment against the retaining wall at the base of the stands and recall it as being any more ambulatory than a dressmaker’s mannequin. Except for the smoldering glare of the eyes, which had been closed but were now again open, at least far enough to be charitably described as lolling slits. And for all his desperate ferocity in the task, Jardin had so far been unable to detect the slightest intimation of the new Curse Master in the vicinity. Of course, Gashanatantra hadn’t done any better, and for all the good Shaa had done himself, he might as well have been their maitre-d’. So – what had Jill-tang discovered?