“Well, I’m no alchemist,” Lazlo said, affable. “You know me, Strange the dreamer, head in the clouds.” He paused and added with a grin, “Miracles for breakfast.”
Thyon’s face went stony at the mention of the book. Was Lazlo threatening him? Absolutely not. He would never break his triple promise, and he heard his own taunts with a sense of unreality. He wasn’t a junior librarian at the golden godson’s mercy anymore, and whatever awe he had felt for him was gone. Still, it was stupid to goad him. He turned back to Calixte. “Now, where was I?”
She referred to her notebook. “The fused bones of slaughtered demons,” she supplied.
“Right. So it was here the seraphim came down—or more like there, in the city.” He gestured toward the Cusp and beyond. “And there they slew the unwholesome ijji, leaving the young and attractive race of man and woman free of foes, and went away again. Millennia passed. Humans thrived. And then one day, as prophesied . . . the seraphim returned.”
He waited for Calixte’s pencil to catch up. “Okay,” she said. “You’ve got the monsters part, and I suppose I’ll grant you beauty. For your lovely face, if not for the seraphim,” she added in a tease. Lazlo didn’t even blush. If Calixte did find his face lovely—which he found distinctly implausible, considering its centerpiece—there was nothing like attraction or desire behind it. No, he had seen the way she looked at Tzara, and the way Tzara looked at her, and that made for a fairly thorough education on the subject of desire. “But what,” Calixte asked him, “is the problem?”
“I’m getting to it,” said Lazlo, though in truth he hadn’t quite figured out that part of his wild and improbable theory. He looked around. He saw that it wasn’t only the faranji paying attention, but the Unseen as well: the Tizerkane, the camel drovers, and old Oyonnax, the shaman. They couldn’t understand Common Tongue, but his voice naturally caught their ear. They were accustomed to listening to him tell stories, though that usually happened after dinner, when the sky was dark and he could only see their faces by the flickering light of the fire. He did a quick translation for their benefit. Eril-Fane was listening with wry amusement, and Azareen, too, who was perhaps more to him than his second-in-command, though Lazlo couldn’t work out the nature of their relationship. The closeness between them was palpable but also somehow . . . painful. They didn’t share a tent, as several pairs of warriors did, and though they showed no physical affection, it was clear to anyone with eyes that Azareen loved Eril-Fane. Eril-Fane’s feelings were harder to interpret. For all his warmth, there was something guarded about him.
The two shared a history, but what kind?
In any case, this wasn’t Lazlo’s current puzzle. The problem, he thought, casting about. Seraphim and ijji.
He caught sight of Mouzaive, the natural philosopher, standing over the cook, Madja, with his plate in his hand and a sour look on his face, and that was where his spark of inspiration came from.
“The Second Coming of the seraphim. It may have begun with awe and reverence, but what do you suppose?” he said, first in Common Tongue and then in Unseen. “It turns out they make terrible guests. Extremely impressed with themselves. Never lift a finger. Expect to be waited on hand and foot. They won’t even put up their own tents, if you can credit it, or help with the camels. They just . . . lurk about, waiting to be fed.”
Calixte wrote, biting her lip to keep from laughing. Some of the Tizerkane did laugh, as did Soulzeren and Ozwin, the married couple with the flying machines. They could laugh because the criticism wasn’t aimed at them. Accustomed to farming the Thanagost badlands, they weren’t the sort to sit idle, but helped out however they could. The same could not be said of the others, who were stiff with affront. “Is he suggesting we ought to perform labor?” asked Belabra, the mathematician, to a stir of astonished murmurs.
“In short,” Lazlo concluded, “the purpose of this delegation is to persuade the seraphim to be on their way. Politely, of course. Failing that: forcible eviction.” He gestured to the delegates. “Explosions and catapults and so forth.”
Soulzeren started clapping, so he bowed. He caught sight of Eril-Fane again, and saw that his wry amusement had sharpened to a kind of keen appraisal. Azareen was giving him the same frank look, which Lazlo met with an apologetic shrug. It was a ridiculous notion, as well as petty and impolitic, but he hadn’t been able to resist.
Calixte filled the last page of the book, and he dug out his ten silver, which was more money than he’d ever held before receiving his first wage from Eril-Fane. “Farewell, good coin,” he bid it, surrendering it, “for I shall never see thee more.”
“Don’t be glum, Strange. You might win,” said Calixte without conviction. She examined the coin and declared that it had “a damned triumphant look about it,” before shoving it into the overstuffed purse. The seams strained. It appeared as though one more coin might split it wide open. The last page in the book, the last space in the purse, and the theory game was ended.
They had only now to wait until tomorrow and see who won.
The temperature plummeted as the desert fell dark. Lazlo layered his woolen chaulnot over the linen one and put up his hood. The campfire burned against the deep blue night, and the travelers all gathered in its glow. Dinner was served, and Eril-Fane opened a bottle of spirits he’d saved for this night. Their last night of thirst and bland journey food and aching buttocks and saddle chafe and dry bathing and grit in every crease of cloth and flesh. The last night of lying on hard ground, and falling asleep to the murmured incantations of the shaman stirring his powders into the fire.
The last night of wondering.
Lazlo looked to the Cusp, subtle in the starlight. The mysteries of Weep had been music to his blood for as long as he could remember. This time tomorrow, they would be mysteries no longer.
The end of wondering, he thought, but not of wonder. That was just beginning. He was certain of it.
16
A Hundred Smithereens of Darkness
Sarai was out of sorts. After dinner, Feral ripped a snowstorm from some far-off sky and they had snow for dessert with plum jam stirred in, but she could scarcely enjoy it. Sparrow and Ruby threw snowballs at each other, their laughter a bit too sharp, their aim a bit too true, and Minya slipped away somewhere, promising to release the ghost, Ari-Eil, to his natural evanescence.
Sarai hated it when Minya brought new ghosts into the citadel. Each one was like a mirror that reflected her monstrosity back at her.
Lest you forget you are an abomination, here’s an old woman who’ll wail at the sight of you. Here’s a young man who’ll think he’s in hell.
It did wonders for her sense of self.
“Why must she do it?” she said aloud. It was only her and Feral in the gallery now, and he was bent over his book. It wasn’t paper, but sheets of thin mesarthium, etched all in symbols. If they were letters, they couldn’t have been more different from the fluid and beautiful alphabet of Weep, which Great Ellen had taught them to read and write. That had no angles, only curves. This had no curves, only angles. Sarai thought it looked brutal, somehow. She didn’t know how Feral could keep poring over it, when for years he’d had no luck deciphering it. He said he could almost sense the meaning, as though it were right there, waiting to resolve, like a kaleidoscope in need of turning.
He traced a symbol with his fingertip. “Why must who do what?” he asked.
“Minya. Drag ghosts in here. Bring their hate into our home.” Sarai heard herself. How petty she sounded, complaining about the inconvenience to herself. She couldn’t say what she was really feeling, though. It was unspeakable that she should pity a human, ghost or living.