“But you flew in the air!” he said. “You lived in the NASNA station!”
The idea delighted him beyond all measure. I had grown weary weeks before of the Aviator’s exploits. Oleander, it seemed, never would.
Tast’annin let his lip slide slowly between his teeth until it curled back into its accustomed nerveless grin.
“Yes, I flew in the air,” he said. He turned to look at Oleander, so slowly it seemed he was some huge automaton formed of metal and bone.
“I was one of the last. I was a NASNA Aviator, a remarkable soldier of the firmament; one of those who would save the world and bring about a final glorious Ascension, though not the one your people dream of, Oleander, nor yours, my dear Raphael …”
He laughed mirthlessly. One hand groped through a pile of bright rubbish arranged by one of the smoking braziers. It withdrew a book, an archaic volume tied with string so that its pages would not come loose. I craned my neck to read the title faded across its mottled cover: An Inquiry into Some Ethical Points of Celestial Navigation. He glanced at it, frowned, and tossed it onto the heap of glowing embers. He raked his hand through the rubbish once again, until he drew forth another volume. Its cover was gone and many pages seemed missing, but it appeared to meet his satisfaction. He flipped through the matted pages, peeling them apart with great care, until he found the one he wanted. He began to read. The echo of his words hung in the heavy air, hollow and faintly threatening.
It was a terrible story, and it seemed to go on for hours. I moved closer to Oleander. He listened without looking up, and his stitches grew looser and more uneven, until when he jerked on the thread it broke, and the bone needle flew into the fire. Then he gave up all pretense of working. He huddled beside me, his hands slipping beneath my cloak to clasp mine as the Aviator’s voice broke over us in inescapable waves, and the snores of the aardman droned on behind us, and in the shadows Anku stared unblinking as though he waited and watched for something to take shape and rise from the darkness of the Resurrection Chapel.
“’ The conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea — something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…’”
As Tast’annin read this his tone grew dreamy, almost gentle. He lifted his head from the page.
“That is what we lost,” he said. “The primacy of an idea, an idea worth dying for, something greater than ourselves and deserving of sacrifice …
“But you did not forget, Raphael, and your people did not forget, did they? And these others—”
He pointed at Trey snoring lustily. “The geneslaves have always looked for someone to bow down to: it is in their mongrel nature as dogs, and as failed men too I suppose, to find someone worth naming master.
“I think that is why I was not a religious man: I never found anyone or anything I could bow down to. Pasty weak men and women kneeling before insipid gods, gods with all the blood washed from their wounds, gods who died without a fight—else they’d still be getting their share of glory and blood and sacrifice, eh, Raphael?”
I had lost the sense of what he was saying. The words of his dreadful story still had me in a sort of trance, so that when the Aviator’s cold fingers grabbed the rope around my neck I cried out, and Oleander nearly jumped into my lap.
I thought Tast’annin would kill me then, for no reason but that I had shown fear of him. But after a moment he dropped the cord and leaned back.
“The boy has no idea what I am speaking of,” he whispered. In the dying firelight he looked even more like some ancient effigy, some terrible thing wakened from a long and restive sleep. But it was not the obvious symbols of his derangement that frightened me, the bones and braids and broken knives, or even the rope he made me wear. No, it was the more subtle emblems of the outer world that filled me with a growing unease: that triangle of shining cloth adorning his breast, a type of luminous cloth I had never seen; the little icons emblazoned on his Aviator’s jacket, stars and moons and shapes like arrows or the prows of boats. The ring upon one gnarled finger, a circle of heavy gold set with a large blue stone and surrounded by letters spelling out NASNA . I could not imagine that his people would have weak gods. I could’ not imagine that they would have gods at all, and I told him so.
“You do understand, then, Miramar; a little at least. Yes, they had gods; but not such as you have in this City, a corpse and a whore!”
He laughed, a harsh hooting noise. At his feet Anku turned to regard him before laying his muzzle back upon his paws. As if the jackal reminded him of more serious business the Aviator fell quiet.
“The Gaping One,” he said softly. “Now there is a god whose time has come: a god of death and destruction and despair. Because what have we now to live for or hope for, and what is there left to repair?”
He leaned forward until I felt his breath upon my cheeks and smelled the taint of opium. Oleander crawled away from us and crouched beside a brazier. I swallowed, drew back before replying, “But I do not believe in the Gaping One—my people do not believe, it is an ancient superstition that only the House Saint-Alaban gives any credence to.”
Tast’annin smiled. His upper lip drew up like an animal’s, catching on one of his front teeth. “But your people do believe, Raphael,” he said. “I have used my time wisely in the City of Trees. I have used the tools put in my hands, the geneslaves and the children of the plague and now the Children of the Magdalene, and from them I have learned many things.
“About six weeks ago there was an atmospheric disturbance. We lost one of our stations to the Balkhash Commonwealth. Your people believed the blast signaled a new Ascension; many felt it heralded the Final Ascension.”
“I saw it,” I blurted. “It was—” I started to speak of my meeting with the Hanged Boy, but stopped. “It was very unusual.”
The Aviator fixed me with a strange look. “It was indeed. I was fortunate enough to be watching the skies from the Gloria Tower. As I was fortunate enough to have an intelligent little girl who had joined my little family here, a child named Pearl, whose people had discarded her as they might have tossed away a bad fruit, once they saw she could not run fast enough to escape the fougas.”
His face contorted. He threw his hands open, as though to dismiss everything in the Chapel, toys and aardman and Oleander cowering in the shadows.
“Pagh! You are the real animals, you Paphians and Curators who let your children die and kill these poor misshapen creatures that would have served you bravely, if only you had not been so corrupted by fear! But they have found a better master now, a truthful man if not a kindly one; because it is better in these days to embrace death than to flee him, and offer what solace we can to ourselves since no one will escape him.”
He reached for Dr. Silverthorn’s bag, his hand rummaging around until he withdrew a capsule. Without glancing at it he popped it into his mouth. He continued, “Pearl saw you by the river, in your torn clothes and with a vine about your neck, and with this circus animal protecting you.”
He roughed Anku’s fur affectionately. “‘I have seen the Lord of Dogs, master,’ she told me when she came back that evening. ‘The one the Paphians talk of, I saw him walking in the river.’
“I had her describe this strange figure to me, because as you know I was searching for an escaped empath. Until that evening I retained some foolish hope that if I found her and returned her to my superiors they would reward me, forgive me for my failure to assume command of the City.