Autumn squeezed her way through them, down the wood and tile steps. When she reached Miriam, she spoke in Withil. “We’re ready.”
“All right.”
Miriam ordered the doors thrown open.
At the front of the building, a wide porch cupped the curvature of the facade. From it, a flight of stairs ran directly to the street. Miriam walked out, kyru in hand. She stood at the head of the steps and gazed down hatefully into the multitude. Sickly fingerlings, thin and newly changed, mewled below her as if waiting for some sign.
Although their insatiable hunger had pulled them close to the Grand Elesh’Ox, Miriam decided there was no real order to the ranks. The flawless of Ulung stood shrouded in black canopies, surrounded by their spawn, paws like pink cake batter dripped from their sleeves.
Other flawless had also arrived. She recognized their diverse forms from Sandren, Iycestoke and the White Marshes of Pandragor. They did not represent a uniform horror. They took many different shapes. Similarity was sparse but a turgid opaline sheen marked them as one.
In the avenue, Bablemumish sculptures of black marble, pewter and beryllium found new uses. They allowed the Willin Droul to coil their limbs around sculpted legs and arms and thereby support their grotesque fatness. They had modified the air so that gills could breathe. They had changed gravity so that huge bodies could have some relief—but it was not complete and they were still heavy and this was not the same as swimming.
For a while, the Lua’groc held back, perhaps savoring the moment. Miriam noticed Autumn come out of the hotel and stand beside her. Her sweet ancilla. She did not regret the moments when they had been just that: cephal’matris and ancilla—when she had been forced to give orders, and Autumn had been obligated to carry them out. The hierarchy had never been an impediment for them. For them, the protocols had only ever allowed them additional ways to show each other respect. To love each other. She had never ordered Autumn around like a subordinate. Ever. There had always been that understanding between them, that they were partners. That they were a team.
Other sisters came out onto the porch, kyrus glittering.
Miriam was almost ready to give the command when Autumn smiled as if for an ambrotypist, modeling the perfect young athletic face of the north. The lean sweat-dappled cheeks and arms. Then she drew back and pitched her kyru into the horde.
The blade landed in a white forehead and blood like lake water rolled out. The windows and peaks of the Grand Elesh’Ox began to mumble with voices. Witches pulled at currents of holojoules in the Unknown Tongue and threaded the power of the Willin Droul’s blood into divergent equations. A bubble of humid dreams surrounded the hotel and sealed the witches in, but they could still use hemofurtum to fight.
An orgy of self-mutilation began among the fingerlings who, under the numbers of the witches, started clawing off their own skins. Their blood fueled other deceptions as some of the flawless turned their long striped talons on one another. Bodies flew. Limbs and organs cartwheeled through sultry blood-flecked air.
Then chirrups and barks and groans welled from the numberless congregation and endless ranks surged at the Elesh’Ox.
Miriam watched the heavy bodies stampede toward her as she talked. With every few words another of the Lua’groc died. But they were without number and without fear.
Lacking a final moment of glory, Autumn disappeared less than ten feet in front of her, swallowed up at the base of the steps. When that happened, Miriam did not scream and throw herself into desperate battle. Instead she dropped her kyru and stopped talking. She looked up at the cloudy sky, hinting at more rain, away from the abortive ancient things that floundered up the staircase and trampled her under claw and limb. The rough brush of their hides, the slapping wetness of their bindings, the stink of their gasses was gagging.
She gasped from the impact, breath forced out when their weight ground her against the right angles of the stairs. They broke her bones. They crushed her rib cage like a sack full of kindling.
And there was blood. An elemental figure in a holomorph’s death. Hot red wax running down the stairs. She searched for any sign of Autumn between the shuffling legs but her head was pointed in the wrong way and the world was getting cloudy.
The greatest equations were products of suicide. She opened her mouth in a bid for final retribution. To gather all of what had spilled out of her into one conclusive strike: a detonation that would kill hundreds. But Miriam’s lungs were empty and she could not fill them.
CHAPTER
51
Sena watched as the tincture unfurled its pseudo-reality, its time-bent brand of postulations-cum-potential-for-meddling.
It was Caliph’s third journey. Though the pain of entry into dream was not so bad—the damage this dose did was extreme. She had lied: he would not recover.
But that didn’t matter. Nathaniel was right. This was her chance to say good-bye, and to apologize.
The tincture brought them both, Caliph as traveler and Sena as guide, down hard in the House on Isca Hill.
In this dream, Caliph was coloring at the kitchen table while his uncle stood in the sunlight holding the Cisrym Ta, reading. She hoped Nathaniel would not follow her. She hoped he believed what he had said and was allotting her this time for closure.
Sena looked around the room. A man in formal uniform was cooking eggs and strudel at the stove. Over Caliph’s shoulder Sena could see that he was drawing red and purple monsters. Their shapes were like simple clouds with serrations instead of soft curves. Their almond-shaped eyes had slits for pupils. Their mouths were jagged.
She wondered why his mind had gone here, of all possible memories. Perhaps the monsters in the sewer had chased him to this quiet morning where similar fears were explained with crayons.
The smell of breakfast was delicious. A bell rang in the house and Nathaniel did not look up from the book. The servant picked up a towel and wiped his hands.
“Let Caliph get it,” said Nathaniel.
Caliph sat at the table, engrossed in his images, pressing hard against the paper so that each stroke made a soft smack when he pulled the crayon away.
“Caliph! Get the door!”
Sena watched the command register. Caliph didn’t look at his uncle but his young eyes grew wide. He glanced peripherally as he slid off his chair.
In an act of betrayal, the crayon rolled off the table. It clattered loudly. The sound of it pulled him up short though he had already marched halfway across the room.
He turned around, looking frightened, then walked back. He picked the crayon up and set it on the table, making sure it didn’t move again. A quick glance at his uncle confirmed that Nathaniel was staring at him. Then Caliph walked fast out of the room, legs leading, butt tucked in, wary of a swat.
Sena followed him down the dim passageway between the mansion’s kitchen and its foyer. Little Caliph glanced over his shoulder but Sena was invisible to him. All he cared about was that his uncle was not behind him.
When Caliph reached the foyer he struggled with the huge door, trying the dead bolt several times before understanding which way he had to flip it. Then he tugged with his whole body, barely managing to drag the portal back.
The day outside was young and brutally cold. Fine snow sifted from the sky and icy golden light flared into the foyer around three women. Sena was stunned. She had not expected this.
“Hello,” one of the women said. Her eyes glittered with miniature carvings. “Is your uncle home?”