Cage of Souls, page 55
“No, you are all my mind’s things, that I can cut out. For if she, of all the people in the world, was still alive, then I could never be rid of her.”
I crawled up to my knees, a fitting position for a supplicant. “Listen to me, Greygori,” I choked out. What did I have to say to him, though? He was madder than I was.
“I could never be rid of her…” he mused distantly. “You, though… I could be rid of you. If you are truly here…”
It was my misfortune then to be truly there and not one of his hallucinations. One of those spider legs flicked forwards and hit me in the stomach. I doubled over and fought for breath, even as a hook caught in my collar and I was hoisted aloft again, this time strangling.
I kicked out, but I was nowhere near him. I clutched at the twisted spines of his hand but could not loose them. The other hand was coming in, a surgeon’s toolkit of spines and barbs. It hovered before my face meditatively.
“Cut,” said Greygori’s mouth mindlessly. “Cut away. Cut it away.”
His free hand made an experimental motion and scarred a line down my cheek. I screamed and he brought the claw before my eyes, almost solicitously, as though it would not be so bad for me if I truly appreciated the instrument of my dissection.
And then he stopped and skittered, swinging me along like a sack. I could not say where any of his eyes were looking, but I saw something reflected in them – something behind me that shone softly.
Greygori stuttered through his atrophied sphincter of a mouth, “T-t-t-t-t.” Forgotten, I reached up and tore at my prison greys until I fell to the ground, and still Greygori did not react. The Macathar parts of him trembled and twitched as though eager to be off doing something incomprehensible and alien, but his upper half was paralysed by the sight.
I backed away from him slowly, but I did not see myself reflected in those huge dark eyes, only her. I did not look at her myself. I thought I might not be able to escape, if I did.
When I had passed three junctions in my headlong flight from Greygori, I heard his voice again. The sound of him calling her name echoed through the tunnels, as distorted as the rest of him. He sounded terribly lost and lonely, the last human part of Greygori Sanguival.
He was receding, as far as I could judge, and so I collapsed down with my back to the tunnel wall, and that was where she found me. I think she did. I remember this happening, but I was exhausted and had not slept for a long time. I did not truly see her with Greygori, only the faint image of her in his eye. Perhaps I never saw her again, at all.
But let us say I did. If so, it was at the edge of the light, just a pale glimmer of her. She would not approach closer than that. I saw the manufactured perfection of her face, her expression one of wary caution, poised to flee.
She wore a mismatched assembly of clothes: a rich woman’s gleaming gown over Outrider canvas, with an Academy Master’s hat covering her gleaming hair. She, who had first come to this place naked, had a whole city for her wardrobe.
I think she said my name. When I shifted position she was gone, creeping back when it was plain I would not lunge for her.
I could only stare and shiver. If I truly saw what I saw then she survived, and I wondered if it was because she was a thing, like Thelwel was a thing, and the Weapon had not concerned itself with things. The great men who made her had left her behind, just like their clothes and their money.
She looked well. She looked alive in a way she never had before. She looked like I felt when I put the Island’s walls behind me for the last time. We had all put walls around her, after all: me, Sergei, Greygori, Jon Anteim the Elder (or whoever it was who had commissioned her making). She had been built to be an object without agency – worse, she had been built to evince just that response from all of us: that she must be protected and possessed and coveted. I could tell myself that I had been innocent and only sought the best for her, but in truth the only moment I had ever acted in her interests and not my own was when I let her go.
I could have said so much, then. I could have asked what happened when the Weapon fired, or how she made her life now, or why she had returned to Underworld. In the end I did not trust myself. If I stirred my voice into conversation then I would speak her name, and if I spoke her name I would ask her to come closer. I wanted her to come closer. I wanted to feast my eyes on her. I had let her go once, and I think it was only that Sergei was there, that let me. I valued his regard and did not want him to know what sort of a man I truly was. And perhaps he valued my regard and did the same right thing for the same wrong reason.
Faith was still waiting, and I thought of the way she had tried to return to the place where they had kept her, even though she hated it. Was she drawn to Greygori and to me because we had kept her, too? Was that a hook they had put in her?
And so I did speak, after all. I begged her to go. I told her that there were still men in the city, and that she should stay clear of them all. Even me. Especially me. Even that much wore down my good intentions, and I had to bite down on whatever contradictory words might have come next.
I thought I saw her smile before she vanished. Or perhaps she was never there, and all this is my subconscious pretending to a strength I never really owned.
*
I did sleep a little, then, which adds to the hypothesis that it was all imagined. After that, I levered myself up and looked to find a way out of Underworld, to search all of Shadrapar for my friends. Taking stock, I found that I was close to the portal through which Sergei and I had smuggled Faith. Still fuddled from a long and hectic night, it was a strange thing to stand in the shadows looking up at that square of light. Last time I was here, I had been looking down through that opening where Greygori had scratched and pleaded.
He was there again. Possibly he had returned there a hundred times since that day.
His voice quavered from the darkness. “Stefan…?” I froze.
I heard the tap-scrape of his arthropod legs hauling him forwards until the edge of that light touched him. “Stefan…?” he said again. I was waiting for Cut it away but there was no admission in face or voice that he had any recollection of our encounter so soon before. Or perhaps the sight of Faith (if there had been a sight of Faith) had effaced it from his memory.
“I’m going now,” I told him, though there was no way I could have made it through that gap had he chosen to stop me. The reach of those arms was appalling.
“But you died on the Island,” he said.
I felt a sudden wash of impatience. “Yes, yes, I died on the Island and you keep seeing me and Arves and Faith and you’re very guilty and you want to cut the guilt away. I know it all already.”
He actually flinched back from the words. I barely made out his next halting utterance, or perhaps I misheard it – after all he had no lips to read.
“I just want to stop feeling this…”
His legs shifted, impatient to be done. Those long, deadly arms flailed a little, aimlessly, neither human nor Macathar, an error of replication.
He could lash out for me at any time, I knew. Probably he could outrun me if he could order his legs properly.
“Greygori,” I said, “you’re right. I died on the Island. It was a long time ago.” Surely the world’s weakest deception, save that he was confused and in pain and detached from anything I would recognise as reality. “But listen,” I went on, “before I died, I forgave you.”
He stayed still, various of his eyes upon me.
“I remembered us playing chess like we used to,” which was true-ish. “I remembered you took me in. I was happy down here for a while. I’m sorry we became enemies. And so I forgave you, before I died. And Arves did, too. You don’t need to think about us any more.”
Perhaps he had access to all the senses of the Macathars, but what would such capabilities understand of guilt or absolution? It was his human remnant I spoke to and I saw my words hit home.
“I’m going now,” I told him. “You’ll never see me again. Forget me. Forget all of it.”
I stepped closer, reaching up for the hatchway, well within the reach of those hooked hands, but Greygori made no move to attack me.
“Forget,” he said, and grew two extra arms. They came from behind his back and were surprisingly human. Then one of them grabbed his ribs for purchase. Abruptly Greygori was bucking and twisting his head back and forth as I stared, utterly bewildered. Then one of his arms caught me with a ridged knuckle and knocked me flat. Only then did I realise that there was a man on his back.
Greygori’s long limbs jerked furiously behind him but never seemed to catch anything. “Cut!” the puckered mouth spat out. “Cut! Cut! Cut!” and obligingly, the newcomer did. One human hand moved in a flashing pass across Greygori’s throat and in its wake it left a track of black fluid that was too thick for blood. The rhythm to which it gushed and pulsed owed nothing to a human heart.
I scrambled backwards as the Transforming Man’s human parts collapsed back upon his arthropod parts. The four Macathar legs wobbled and folded. He went down into a pile of unrelated limbs from which a human figure stepped clear.
“Gaki,” I said softly. Who else?
“You have the strangest friends,” Gaki said softly, looking down at the tangled mess of Greygori’s body.
“I suppose he was a friend, once,” I agreed.
“And now it is no longer important what he was, for he is past and the world need not concern itself with him.” He tossed the knife from hand to hand idly, the same tiny diamond blade he had taken from Father Sulplice.
He saw me looking at it. “Sing not the praises of the sword or jagged knife, for the perfect’st measure of destructive force needs naught but the point and the edge, and all else is vanity.” I recalled the quote from Sandor’s Lying in State.
“A metaphor for politics,” I noted.
“But here at the world’s end we need no metaphors, for all the things we have left are themselves and nothing else.” He was smiling at me as though I was an old friend he had not expected to meet. I was terribly aware of the edge and the point cupped in his hand.
“I have not been a happy man all my life, though you may not believe it. I owe you much, Stefan. You opened my mind and told me what was wrong with myself.”
I conserved my strength for the task of standing up.
“I have been set aside from my fellow man by a pressure at the back of my brain that could not be explained. It distanced me, a burden I thought only I bore until I met you. Now I know that we are brothers and we share that burden. I wish I could have met Helman Cartier. From what I read he must have been an impressive intellect.”
I nodded shortly, back to the wall.
“That pressure was my mind’s sense of the world, the dreadful babble of a thousand other minds, all those mundane, pointless thoughts, that wasted intellect. We know, you and I, how many tedious ideas pass through even one poor brain. We know the drudgery of being surrounded by all that unceasing banality. I think that must be how I found my true vocation. The first time I killed, I felt a tiny lessening in that interminable pressure.”
Without any warning he was right up close to me, a companionable hand on my arm. I could not see the knife.
“The Island was easier, of course, although there were still far too many minds there. I am surprised at my own forbearance in not killing the Marshal sooner. Or perhaps he is still dying; he was a resilient old man. No mercy, though, for such a strident thinker. I knew you would approve.”
I had indicated nothing of my approval or disapproval. Perhaps this in itself condoned his actions.
“If I killed him sooner, though, they would have exiled me from the Island and forced me back to civilisation. But see: I have returned at exactly the right time. Is this not a wonderful development?”
I stared at him leadenly.
“I have had a dream forever that I would be alone in the world. That no mewling thoughts would press upon me and make me angry. I dream of a world in which I need not be a killer, because there would be none left to kill. And now I have my dream, or nearly. Shadrapar is a beautiful place now the rabble have gone. There are only the animals and the Silence. Isn’t the Silence wonderful, Stefan?”
My expression must have disagreed with him. Abruptly the levity was gone from his face and he nodded seriously at me.
“You’re right, of course,” he noted. “We are not perfect yet.” He smiled with genuine warmth. “I have to kill your friends, and then you. But, because you have been such a friend to me, I’ll leave you until the last. Goodbye.”
He was off out of the hatch then, and running. I was battered and bruised and I could not have kept up with him anyway, but I prayed to the Wasted God for a little strength. I was after Gaki as fast as I could manage and hoping I would not be too late.
46
The Reckoning
At the time the sheer effort of chasing Gaki left me with no room at all to think. I did not fear losing Gaki to the maze of Shadrapar. I did not consider that I had no idea where Kiera and the others were, though Gaki seemed to know. I just found a ragged rhythm and stuck with it, and eventually the pain from my legs, arms, side and head settled into a kind of harmony.
In retrospect, I suspect Gaki slowed his pace to be always at the limit of my vision, too far ahead to catch, not far enough to lose. He wanted me to be there when he killed my friends.
The lack of thought was a blessing. Otherwise I would have had to ask myself what I would do if I ever caught Gaki. I could not fight him. I would sooner throw stones at a Macathar than take on Gaki; sooner strike at the Silence.
I saw Peter, Kiera and Shon ahead, picking their way through a clothes-strewn street towards another square. Perhaps they were looking for me. Gaki was racing towards them and they had not seen him.
I filled my lungs and yelled out, “Gaki! Look out! Gaki!” and shattered the Silence for good.
Gaki, like an actor with his cue, was instantly still and waiting for them. Peter and the others stopped and saw him there, in the centre of the square. There was a brief debate whose tides I could not plumb, and then Peter had launched himself forwards, hauling the Ropa blade after him. He had surely known that Gaki was waiting for him to do just that. Being Peter, he must have thought that if he acted suddenly enough he might still catch the other man off guard.
Behind him, Shon was also picking up speed. Gaki was unmoving and I knew he would be smiling.
At my distance one saw the movement and not the stillness. What excuse Peter could have in not seeing Hermione there I cannot say. She must have been shadowing my friends while Gaki hunted me in the dark. Her huge, motionless form was just another piece of ruin to Peter, until she put out a massive arm and slapped him across the face. His head snapped back and he fell, Ropa blade describing deadly circles before burying itself to the quillons in the ground.
I was still running, and the next few moments had already sketched themselves out in my mind with a surprising accuracy. Peter lay still, Kiera sprinting forwards to aid him, and Shon was ahead of her. Hermione loomed before him and I imagined him breaking against her like a wave, but his hand flashed out, and the woman reeled back with a hoarse yell, clutching her face.
Shon did not stop or even slow, but ducked under Hermione’s arm and lunged for Gaki himself. I wanted to shout at him that Gaki could not be beaten that way but I had not the breath. Still I powered on, feet raw, muscles searing. In my hand was the punch-dagger Peter had given me.
Shon feinted at Gaki, turning the feint into a full thrust when he did not react. Gaki was abruptly not there, a sidestep so subtle that Shon was out of position, turning his lunge into a forward roll to get clear of an answering cut that never came. The murderer stepped back lightly and said something I could not catch. Shon turned, knife and off-hand outstretched, a proper fighter’s stance. If Gaki was baiting him, he was not biting.
Hermione had her back to me, so I could not see what Shon had done to her face. She was advancing on Kiera though, driving her from Peter’s body at some signal from Gaki. Kiera was shouting something but all I could hear was my own breathing, savage and strained in my ears.
Shon circled, feigning a thrust that Gaki again failed to believe. His knife flicked at the killer’s face, scooped down for a stomach shot. Gaki bowed gracefully aside, danced his own glint of a knife past Shon’s face, kicked Shon’s feet out from under him, stepped back. Shon stumbled but caught his balance. He had his back to me now: I could not see his face either.
I was almost there.
Shon cut high, changing his grip so that he could stab down as Gaki moved under his blow. Gaki slid out from under the stroke, cutting with a knife that was suddenly in the other hand. Shon blocked, forearm to forearm, trying to grapple so he could get his blade in. Gaki slipped from his grasp like smoke and that tiny glint in his hand arced in again. This time Shon only got his elbow in the way of the blade. It was his prosthetic elbow and I think he was counting on it jarring the knife from Gaki’s hand. I recalled Father Sulplice whittling machine parts with that knife.
It sheared straight through Shon’s elbow. My friend had time for a curious cry, more of surprise than pain. His arm went limp, bone and tendons severed. His own knife came up, but Gaki grasped the wrist and held him off easily, even as the diamond blade licked out to touch Shon’s throat.
For a jagged second they were poised like that, a barber and his client. Then the blade moved the tiniest space and Shon was falling backwards in a shocking shower of blood that Gaki walked through and came out clean and spotless.
I was there now, with all that momentum, my knife plunging towards the small of Gaki’s back.
He backhanded me lazily away. The knife fell somewhere beyond my knowledge. My head rang with the blow but I clearly heard him say, “Don’t be stupid, Stefan.”
I saw Peter sitting up, shaking his head awkwardly. Kiera shouted, “Keep back! I mean it!”
Hermione went for her and Kiera levelled the gun and pulled the trigger. I think Gaki, Peter and I were all watching, waiting for the outcome.
