" What do you mean, ' your creations'?"
" Why, most everything inside the park boundaries is mine," proudly said the mechanical.
" Even the tiger? One attacked me. A huge cat. Never seen one larger."
" Attacked you? A tiger? Oh, my. I intended him for Constable Luffkin."
" You want to get rid of this Constable Luffkin?"
" No, no, good lady. The Constable asked for a tiger image. He fancies himself some sort of big- game hunter. Tigers are extinct in all but the southernmost province of Torr."
" Tiger image?"
" It' s not real. Nothing in the park is real. This is an amusement park, good lady. A real tiger is dangerous."
" I know," Inyx said. She heaved a sigh and tried to compose her thoughts. The trapped demon had known and hadn' t told her this was an amusement park. It had been interested only in escaping its work assignment powering the fluttercraft. Her eyes tipped skyward, seeking the craft. Only tiny dots high above were visible. They moved much too fast for fluttercraft.
" You have encountered a real tiger?" asked the mechanical. The eagerness in his voice was almost comical. " Tell me about it. Did my image match the real thing? Should I have added a few more touches? Like smell? What do real tigers smell like?"
" It was a great image. Had me fooled completely." The woman remembered her initial fright. Even after the first attack she had continued believing in the reality of the tiger. " Would it have hurt me if its attack had connected?"
" Oh, well," hedged the mechanical.
" It would have killed me, wouldn' t it?"
" Sometimes I go a bit overboard with my images. That one was a specialty item, and I put ever so much work into it. It might have been a bit too much on the substantial side." Knokno averted his glassy eyes and looked at the ground.
" So the images and the real thing might as well be one and the same."
" I do very good work. About the best in Dicca."
" No argument from me on that point," she admitted. " Tell me a little about Dicca and maybe I' ll forget to report that to your superior." Inyx wasn' t even sure the mechanical had a superior. This world grew increasingly complex. Flying craft, demons, soldiers who weren' t even armed with swords, images more deadly than the real thing, talking clockwork mockeries of humans- it all struck her as bizarre.
" What do you want to know?"
" I' m from out of town."
" Oh, one of the Outlanders come in to take part in the election." Knokno gave the impression of relaxing visibly, though how a creature of steel limbs and glass joints relaxed wasn' t too clear to Inyx. He had somehow placed Inyx into a convenient niche in his ordering of things around him and was content. She didn' t want to shake him from this complacency, so she agreed with his appraisal. " Well," he said, " the elections are truly important. The Lord of the Twistings has promised the fairest elections ever."
" But:?" she probed.
" But the grey- clads are doing so much to discourage opposition to the current Lord of the Twistings. I understand some of those most likely to stand against the Lord have: vanished."
" Under mysterious circumstances," she finished.
" You might say that."
In the distance came a trumpeting noise. Inyx turned to see a long, slender neck rising above a foggy shore along a small lake. The snakelike neck whipped this way and that until deciding on a proper direction of travel. The gargantuan body following the tiny head and long neck dwarfed the largest of animals Inyx had ever seen.
" Another nice creation. Our natural history section found bones in a tar pit matching such a beast. The purple skin is my idea." Knokno proudly pointed toward the behemoth.
" About the election," Inyx said weakly, her eyes never leaving the monster now sloshing through the murky waters of the still lake.
" About the only firm opposition is Jonrod the Flash. And everyone knows what he' s like."
The lake monster trumpeted again. An answering challenge rumbled upward to where Inyx sat.
" Knokno, show me out of the park, will you? I' ve got to find suitable lodging before it gets too dark. I don' t know my way around town very well."
" Being from the outlands, that is understandable. The mechanical rose and helped Inyx to her feet. She didn' t want to chance even a fraction of a second with the monster noisily sucking up green water from the middle of the lake. Nervous, she kept glancing toward the stagnant pond. " Just be sure to avoid Luister len- Larrotti over on Lossal Boulevard."
Distracted, she only partially heard.
" What? Right. Lossal Boulevard. Look, can we leave now? I wouldn' t want to be late." Inyx saw a second monster approaching. The two giant creatures faced off, ready for combat. As large as they were, either could step on her and never even notice the lump under its foot. Before she dropped out of sight behind a hill, the two longnecked creatures were savagely battering one another, knifelike teeth slashing and sending out a rain of imaginary blood.
Inyx could do without imaginary death.
" Here' s the gateway into the city. Remember what I said," cautioned the mechanical.
" Lossal Boulevard."
" Right. Luister len- Larrotti."
" Got it. And thanks, Knokno."
" Just don' t mention it." Lower, the mechanical added, " To my boss. Won' t do having humans killed in the park. He' d scrap me for sure." All the way back into the park, the mechanical mumbled. Inyx heaved a sigh of relief when she saw Dicca proper.
Streets. Paved. People wandering along. Campaign posters plastered on every wall. Hustle. This was her world, not that of illusion inside the park.
Whistling to herself, she set off to find Lossal Boulevard, where Knokno had said she could find lodging.
Inyx tried to remember the name Knokno had given her. She' d been distracted at the time and couldn' t- quite- remember. Still, she' d found Lossal Boulevard easily enough. It turned out to be a major arterial cutting through the heart of Dicca. Lined with shops, she found enough to eat. The vendors didn' t even give her strange gold pieces a second look as they exchanged their wares for them. Inyx felt she was being cheated and overcharged, but she said nothing.
Raising a fuss might be the stupidest thing she could do. Everywhere throughout the city were Claybore' s soldiers. Their presence kept even the most boisterous quiet. Many of the citizens around her grumbled, but none came out and spoke against the grey soldiers. Whether from fear or approval, it was hard to say.
Inyx wandered, looking at the wares offered in the many stores along Lossal. The street turned increasingly dingy and more people lounged in doorways, eyeing her in suspicion and lust. She straightened her shoulders and made sure her sword was near at hand. Never had she turned and run because of being in a strange, unfriendly portion of a town. Inyx sought out such places; they made her travels along the Cenotaph Road more interesting, if more dangerous.
" Luister Something- or- other," she said to one man leaning bonelessly in a doorway. " Do you know of him?"
" Luister' s a common- enough name," came the answer. The man picked his teeth with a slender steel spike as his eyes took in Inyx' s form. He didn' t miss a thing, not the trim waist, the slender legs, the womanly swell of her breasts, the piercing blue eyes, or the lustrous black hair. She almost laughed in the man' s face when she saw his look. Inyx had seen it before, and in men with a much better chance of doing what the man mentally considered.
The amused expression on her face made him stiffen.