She nodded her head politely to him. “I don’t think so,” she said. Her voice was higher than Dajeil’s; more girlish, and with a quite different accent. “Though if we had met and you hadn’t altered in some way and I’d forgotten, certainly I’d be far too ashamed to admit it.” She smiled. He did the same. She frowned. “Unless… do you live on Tier?”
“Just passing through,” he told her. A bomber, in flames, tore past just overhead and exploded in a burst of light behind the Sublimer building. On the street, the argument around the pondrosaur seemed to be getting more heated; the animal itself was staring intently at the Sintricate and its mahout was standing up on its neck, pointing the flaming mace at the darkly spiny being to emphasise whatever points he was making.
“But I’ve been this way before,” Genar-Hofoen said. “Perhaps we bumped into each other then.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps,” she conceded.
“Oh, you two know each other?” said the young Sublimer man she’d been talking to. “Well, many people find that Subliming in the company of a loved one or just somebody they know is—”
“Do you play Calascenic Crasis?” she asked, cutting across the young Sublimer. “You may have seen me at a game here.” She put her head back, looking down that long nose at him. “If so, I’m disappointed you left it till now to say hello.”
“Ah!” the Sublimer lad said. “Games; an expression of the urge to enter into worlds beyond ourselves! Another—”
“I’ve never even heard of the game,” he confessed. “Do you recommend it?”
“Oh yes,” she said, and sounded ironic. “It benefits all who play.”
“Well, I’m always willing to entertain some new experience. Perhaps you could teach me.”
“Ah, now; the ultimate new experience—” began the Sublimer lad.
Genar-Hofoen turned to him and said, “Oh, shut up!” It had been an instinctive reaction, and for a moment he was worried he might have said the wrong thing, but she didn’t seem to be regarding the young Sublimer’s hurt look with any great degree of sympathy.
She looked back to him. “All right,” she said. “You stand me my stake and I’ll teach you Crasis.”
He smiled, wondering if that had been too easy. “It’s a deal,” he said. He waved the cloud cane under his nose and took a deep breath, then bowed. “My name’s Byr.”
“Pleased to meet you.” She nodded again. “Call me Flin,” she said, and, taking hold of the cane, waved it under her own nose.
“Shall we, Flin?” he said, and indicated the street beyond, where the pondrosaur had sunk to its belly, its four legs doubled up underneath it and both fore-limbs folded beneath its chin, as though bored. Two Sintricates were shouting at the enraged mahout, who was shaking the flaming mace at them. The hire guards were looking nervous and patting the restless kliestrithrals.
“Certainly.”
“Remember where you met!” the Sublimer called after them. “Subliming is the ultimate meeting of souls, the pinnacle of…” They left the hushfield. His voice was drowned out by the thudding of projected anti-aircraft fire as they walked along the pavement.
“So, where are we going?” he asked her.
“Well, you can take me for a drink and then we’ll hit a Crasis bar I know. Sound all right?”
“Sounds fine. Shall we take a trap?” he said, pointing a little way up the street to a two-wheeled open vehicle waiting by the kerb. A ysner-mistretl pair were harnessed between the traces, the ysner craning its long neck down to peck at a feed bag in the gutter, the small, smartly uniformed mistretl on its back looking around alertly and tapping its thumbs together.
“Good idea,” she said. They walked up to the trap and climbed aboard. “The Collyrium Lounge,” the woman said to the mistretl as they sat in the rear of the small vehicle. It saluted and pulled a whip out from its fancy jerkin. The ysner made a sighing noise.
The trap shook suddenly. A great deep burst of noise came from the street behind them. They all looked round. The pondrosaur was rearing up, bellowing; its mahout nearly fell off its neck. His mace tumbled from his grasp and bounced on the street. Two of the kliestrithrals jumped up and leapt into the crowd, snarling and dragging their handlers with them. The two Sintricates who’d been arguing with the mahout rose quickly into the air out of the way; people in float harnesses took avoiding action through the confusion of searchlight beams and anti-aircraft fire. Flin and Genar-Hofoen watched people scatter in all directions as the pondrosaur leapt forward with surprising agility and started charging down the street towards them. The mahout clung desperately to the beast’s ears, screeching at it to stop. The stabilised black and silver cupola on the animal’s back seemed to float along above it until the animal’s increasing speed forced it to oscillate from side to side. At Genar-Hofoen’s side, Flin seemed frozen.
Genar-Hofoen glanced round at the mistretl. “Well,” he said, “let’s get going.” The little mistretl blinked quickly, still staring up the street. Another bellow echoed off the surrounded buildings. Genar-Hofoen looked back again.
The charging pondrosaur reached up with one fore-limb and ripped its eye-cups off to reveal huge, faceted blue eyes like chunks of ancient ice. With its other limb it gripped the mahout by one shoulder and wrenched him off its neck; he wriggled and flailed but it brushed him to one side and onto the pavement; he landed running, fell and rolled. The pondrosaur itself thundered on down the street; people threw themselves out of its way. Somebody in a bubblesphere didn’t move fast enough; the giant transparent ball was kicked to the side, smashing into a hot food-stall; flames leapt from the wreckage.
“Shit,” Genar-Hofoen said as the giant bore down upon them. He turned to the mistretl driver again. He could see the face of the ysner, turned back to look up the street behind too, its big face expressing only mild surprise. “Move!” he shouted.
The mistretl nodded. “Goo’ i’ea,” it chirped. It reached behind to slip a knot on the rear of the ysner and jabbed its bootheels into the animal’s lower neck. The startled ysner took off, leaving the trap behind; the vehicle tipped forward as the ysner-mistretl pair disappeared down the rapidly clearing street. Genar-Hofoen and Flin were thrown forward in a tangle of harnesses. He heard her shout, “Fuck!” then go oof as they hit the street.
Something hit him hard on the head. He blacked out for a moment then came to looking up at a huge face, a monstrous face, gazing down at him with huge prismed blue eyes. Then he saw the woman’s face. The face of Dajeil Gelian. She had blood on her top lip. She looked groggily at him and then turned to gaze up at the huge animal face looking down at them. There was a sort of buzzing sensation from somewhere; Genar-Hofoen felt his legs go numb. The woman collapsed over his legs. He felt sick. Lines of red dots crossing the sky floated behind his eyelids when they closed. When he forced his eyes open again, she was there again. Somebody looking like Dajeil Gelian who wasn’t her. Except it wasn’t Flin either. She was dressed differently, she was taller and her expression was… not the same. And anyway, Flin was still draped unconscious over his legs.
He really didn’t understand what was going on. He shook his head. This hurt.
The girl who wasn’t Dajeil or Flin stooped quickly, looked into his eyes, whirled the cloak off her shoulders and onto the street beside him in one movement, then rolled him over onto it, heaving Flin’s immobile body out of the way as she did so. He tried waving his arms around but it didn’t do much good.
The cloak went rigid underneath him and floated into the air, wrapping round him. He cried out and tried to fight against its enclosing black folds, but the buzzing came again and his vision faded even before the cloak finished wrapping itself round him.