“Get on with it,” she said after his unbearable pause.
“She will come. Tonight. Here.”
Miriam watched him closely. Kosti’s cagey eyes flicked first to Autumn’s face, then once again to hers. He watched them with animal interest for signs of deception, but Miriam couldn’t tell what he might be thinking. His facial tattoos blackened the serenity of unmoving cliff-like structures of bone. His skull was almost prehistoric, and undeniably frightening.
“Why is she coming here?”
“To make peace.”
“What do you mean make peace?”
“To make peace is all the Sslia said.” Kosti stood up from the red leather settee and slipped the jewel into a pocket on his satin vest. Apparently he felt his duty here was over. His yellow-green hands flickered with muscles. His braided hair swung like fronds from a tropical tree.
“Will you let me go and tell the Sslia that I delivered my message?” he asked.
“I don’t think you’ll go back to her, Kosti. You wouldn’t want to risk leading us there. So no. I’m afraid I won’t let you go.”
She looked at Autumn and spoke in Withil. “Take him out behind the hotel.”
* * *
TAELIN followed Baufent. They left the ship by way of a lightweight boarding bridge, which was anchored to a mooring tower.
Rather than coming himself, Ku’h had sent a detail of men to escort the High King. They were not proficient in Trade.
Taelin listened to them.
She kept her fingertips on the cable railing. As she moved down the center of the bridge, she felt the causeway bounce under her feet. At the far end, she stepped off, through an outer mesh of caging that decorated the top of the mooring tower. A proper stone dome formed the inner shell of this caging and provided an apse-like space, lit with wild torchlight and painted with a profoundly ancient-looking cyclorama. Taelin had to duck her head.
One of the Veydens spoke to the High King and gestured toward a set of stairs that led down. Although it was plain that Caliph didn’t understand their speech, body language sufficed and the Veyden quickly switched to rudimentary Trade, still beckoning with his hand. “Come,” he said. “Come, come.”
The stairs under the painted dome funneled Taelin down a guttering orange nightmare. Flames flapped in the warm dense air, sounding like water.
Sometimes the inside-girl talked to her. Sometimes there was a dryer, older, darker whisper in her ear, telling her what to do. Or more specifically, what not to do. It was her mission from Sena to ignore both of these voices, which was difficult—especially when the inside-girl chimed in.
Father says you shouldn’t listen to her. The witch is lying …
To help ward the voices off, Taelin rubbed the demonifuge between her thumb and fingers. It was cold and comforting against the warm humidity of this place. She worked it vigorously. Like picking at a sore, it drove her on, wanting to be open, slick and glaring.
As she followed Caliph Howl and the others down into the tower’s belly, she pushed at the necklace’s edges, felt the setting bend and stretch.
Shapes moved under the splashy torchlight. Taelin fumbled for her goggles. She tightened them to her head and rummaged in her pocket. She stopped while the others walked on and pulled out the secret tin. There were only three sticks left. She had rolled them earlier. She took one. The crinkling sound and the texture between her fingers offered prompt reassurance. She could feel the seeds sliding inside.
She patted herself, found her box of matches and snapped one. The wonderful smell effused, of the beggary seeds’ first contact with fire.
“What is she doing?” Caliph’s voice was far away. “Ubelievable…” There were hands on her arms now. She batted them away.
“Gods…”
“Does it really matter? Let her smoke.”
“Just put her on a godsdamned leash!”
The goggles made the world lovely-tinted. The stonework inside the tower was transformed into puccoon patterns while the torches snapped—pretty sheets of coquelicot.
Supposed to be mine. Mine. One of the voices was like a feather quill scratching over paper.
Taelin didn’t know what that meant, but she held the demonifuge close. She tried to block the voice out with another drag as she tumbled out of the tower and into the humming, dripping streets of Bablemum. She was following the crowd.
Glowing signs made strange oases of light. A few of them anyway. Neon colors bubbled. Liquid buzzing sounds soothed her indescribably.
There were thick curved walls, unlike the squared angles of northern cities. And there were tropical trees whose leaves dangled like belts of leather. Vines lit with pale florets threaded the masonry like star maps.
“I’m hungry.”
No one heard her.
“I’m hungry!”
“We’ll get you something in a moment, dear. We’re going to dinner.”
“That’ll be nice,” said Taelin. She looked at the physician’s short solid body padding through the street, dark and compact, hair unmoving. Her profile in the strange light was vaguely rodent-like. “Are you married, Dr. Baufent?”
The physician snorted.
“No children?” Taelin pressed.
“I live alone.”
“That’s good,” said Taelin. “Less sadness … back in Isca … you know? When the jungle eats us.” She burst into laughter. Boisterous. Filled with genuine glee. “Oh, shit! We’re going to dinner!” She bent forward at the waist, eyes closed, bellowing so hard she nearly dropped her smoke.
No one was laughing with her. In fact, she could hear them talking about her.
“Shut her up?”
“… already smoking … it’s dangerous to double up on sedatives.”
“We can drag her.”
She opened her eyes and stared down at a face cast in dark silver. Hairless and dead, it was attached to the body of a teenager that lay crumpled in the street. One of its eyes was filmy but still glistened with moisture. The other had been gored out, probably by a bird. It stank of rotting fish and its abdomen had been opened by scavengers.
Taelin stopped laughing. Her mouth opened wide as she lost her balance and stumbled forward, bashing her knees on the bricks, skinning her palms. She recovered clumsily, felt Caliph’s strong grip under her arm.
She gasped for air. Heavy and fungal, tainted with a billon spores.
“Ahh…” Her mouth was open, drooling. “Ahh … I’m going to be sick.”
“Give her one of your tablets,” said Baufent.
“I already did.”
Behind the voice of the High King were the voices of the Veydens. They sounded gruff but frightened, talking in their language of inverted vowels. They were saying strange things that she doubted Caliph would approve of. Assuming she had understood. She wasn’t exactly fluent. They were talking about Sena. But she felt distracted from the conversation by the silver body. Rather bodies.
“Nenuln!”
They were everywhere! A sediment. Debris borne in on a violent tide, deposited without decorum, strewn limb over torso across curb and fender. They were tangled around doorjambs and bariothermic transformers. Ravaged. Some stripped to the bone. Rib cages strung with pemmican.
“Oh shit! Ohshit-ohshit-ohsit!” Her legs gave way again.
You know it was Corwin that saved me? He pushed me out of the way at the last moment. Then this beautiful glowing stone came down on his head. And he just … disappeared. Is that what you’re going to do? Sacrifice yourself to save Sena? Push her out of the way while the Yillo’tharnah come down on you?
Don’t do it.
The inside-girl wouldn’t be quiet.
The smell of the dead city was in her mouth, her eyes, her hair.
The dry whisper of the old man was in her ears, urging her to stop working the soft metal of her necklace, to stop bending it back and forth, back and forth.
“Soon—soon,” Taelin whispered.
Taelin had lost her cigarette. She spun around in Caliph’s grip. Her whole body felt sticky with sweat. “Gods you have beautiful eyes,” she said directly into his face. “Cobra-brown.”
Then one of the Veydens hissed that they needed to be quiet. That someone was coming. She felt the familiar stab of a hypodermic. People were always giving her injections.
She was laughing again, because the color of death was pink.