“Like I told you,” Drogon whispered. “We want the same thing. You’re exiles now, and so am I. We’re looking for the same thing. I been looking for the Iron Council for damn years. I wasn’t sure of you, you know. And maybe I still ain’t. We’re not the only ones looking for the Council, you know that. You know why these fuckers are here.” He pointed at a militiaman supine and bloody. “Why’d you think I followed? I needed to know who you-all are looking out for.”
“What’s he saying?” said Elsie, but Cutter waved her quiet.
“I still don’t know I trust you, but I been watching you and I know the best chance I got’s with you. And I showed you your best chance is with me. I’d have gone with your man if I’d been able, after I heard he’d gone.”
“How do you know…?” Cutter said.
“You ain’t the only one with your ear to the ground, who knows what he is. But listen, we ain’t got time: it ain’t just him who’s being followed. This lot were after your man-they don’t know any more than we do already-and there’s others are after you. Been tracking you since Rudewood. And they’re gaining. And they ain’t just militia, either.”
“What? What’s coming?” And what Cutter heard he repeated in terror.
“Handlingers,” he said.
More frightened of dying alone than of the anger of their enemies, those militia still alive began to call out. They were without plan or intrigue-they cajoled not to any end but only eager to be spoken to as they lay in the heat.
“Hey, hey, hey mate, hey mate.” “Come on. Come on, then, come on.” “Jabber, my arm’s gone man, Jabber, Jabber it’s gone.”
They were mostly men in their thirties with expressions of pride and resignation that seemed scoured-on; they did not expect or even want quarter, only to be acknowledged before they died.
The dogs still screamed and circled. Drogon corralled three of the weird-skulled things, herding them with his big horse. He calmed the frantic animals with inaudible commands.
“Why’s he helping?” Elsie said. “What does he want?”
Pomeroy was for killing him, or at least constraining him and leaving him behind.
“Dammit, I don’t know,” said Cutter. “Says he heard what was happening. That he’s out for the Council, too. I don’t know. But look what he’s done-he could’ve killed us by now. He saved my life-took out the man who’d sighted me. You saw how he used them guns. And you said yourself, Pom, he’s a thaumaturge.”
“He’s a susurrator,” said Pomeroy with scorn. “He’s just a whispersmith.”
“I been whispered to by him, brother. Remember? This ain’t a little susurrus to make a dog lie down. He sounded across miles, put me and that fReemade highwayman in thrall.”
It was a petty field, subvocalurgy: the science of furtive suggestions, a rude footpad technique. But this man had made it something more.
The dogs were Remade. The olfactory centres of their brains had been hugely enlarged. Their crania were doughy and distended, as if their unshaped brains bubbled over. Their eyes were tiny, and at the end of their jaws their nostrils were dilated and set in flared and mobile flesh like pigs’. Their wrinkled snouts wore wires and they carried batteries, making thaumaturgic circuits. Each had a rag in its collar.
“Oh Jabber, those are his damn clothes,” said Cutter.
“These’ll track across continents,” whispered Drogon. “That’s how they were following him.”
They did not kill the militia left alive, nor spit in their faces nor give them water, only left them stone ignored. Drogon concentrated on the dogs. He was whispering, and they were calming. They were eager to trust him.
“Them dogs is ours,” Pomeroy said. Drogon shrugged and held out the leash, and the distorted animal looked at Pomeroy and showed its teeth. “What’s your story?” Pomeroy said.
Drogon pointed at Elsie, whispered, and she walked toward him. He took her hands and put them on his forehead, and she went into her hexing state. He kept speaking, enunciating something only she could hear.
When he was done she opened her eyes. “He told me to read him. He told me to verity-gauge. And he said, ‘I want what you want, I want to find the Council.’ He said he’s from the city, but he sure isn’t bloody Parliament, and he isn’t militia. Says he’s a vaquero, a horseman. Lived nomad for twenty years.
“He says there are too many stories for the Council not to be real. And it’s precious to wilderness-men. Iron Council. Like a promised place. So when he got word what was happening-when he heard who’d gone to protect it-he had to come after him to help. To find it. He followed us. Till he was sure he could trust us.”
“You ain’t a truesayer,” Pomeroy said. “This don’t mean shit.”
“No I ain’t, but I’ve got something.” Elsie glowered. “I can feel. I was verity-gauging.”
The whispersmith replaced his hat and turned back to the dogs, subvocalising till they skittered for his affection among the bodies of their handlers.
“She ain’t got the puissance to be sure, Cutter,” Pomeroy said.
Why am I supposed to fucking decide? thought Cutter.
Drogon held the cloths to the dogs’ absurd noses, and the animals slobbered and wheeled north. “We have to go.” Drogon spoke to Cutter. “We’re still being followed. We’re close, now, we’re close.”
Elsie tried to thank the tardy, with no reaction. “You have to go,” she shouted. “Handlingers are coming.” But the ge’ain did not answer. They stood among their revenge and waited for nothing. The humans could only shout their thanks and leave the plant-
giants in stupor. Cutter saluted Fejh’s grave.
The dogs fanned on their leads ahead of Drogon, sniffing urgently. Sometimes he let them career through the hard vegetation, their outsized heads swinging. While Cutter and the others continued their trudging, he would ride out.
He whispered to the travellers each in turn, from miles ahead. He let the dogs run, their leads trailing behind them, and when they went too far he would whisper commands and they would come back.
“Keep walking,” he told Cutter. “Handlinger’s behind you.”
Handlingers. The malefic hands of history. Five-fingered parasites, come out now to the light.
Up through a col in the hills. Cutter thought of Fejh slowly baking in the earth. He looked at the mark they had left, the dead and nearly dead, the two tardy standing like trees, the ruins of the skirmish like a soot stain.
The land before them was more wooded, the ground become peaked, slopes of scree gripped in the roots of olives. Drogon’s dust scattered into a low cloud. He was ahead, his path visible like a seam. There was sage, and dog-rose. Each of Cutter’s steps dispersed a gathering of cicadas.
It was not the only moment of the journey when time clotted, and Cutter was stuck fast. A day was only an instant drawn out. Motion itself-the putter of insects, the appearance-disappearance of a tiny rodent-was an endless repetition of the same.
They did not sleep long that night for the sounding of the bloodhounds and Drogon’s whispers from his camp ahead. They were weighed down by weapons they had taken from the militia, and they left a trail of boot-knives and heavy rifles.
Once they saw a garuda way above them, stretched out like someone on a cross. They saw her dip, lurch earthward, veer toward Drogon, then break and ascend.
“He tried to whisper her,” Cutter said. “But she got out of it.” He was pleased.
Their rhythms were not the day’s: they slept for minutes while the sun was up, as well as at dusk and night. If the whispersmith slept it was in the saddle. On the sierra they passed smudged pebblebeasts, something between giraffes and gorillas, knuckle-walking and eating low leaves.