“You’re right, that’s hopeful. It means there’s some limit to her power, either here or because of something back in Heaven.” I filed that one away. I still didn’t think we had a snowball’s chance in a game of Tartarus tennis, but I wasn’t giving up without some kind of fight.
A little while passed in silence, not the peaceful kind of sitting with old friends so much as the exhausted kind. Clarence and I hadn’t done much except to take a long walk, but seeing what Anaita had done to the place had hollowed me out, and I didn’t have much left. Also, I truly didn’t think we had much of a chance. It was a familiar feeling, in a way, like the hours before a major action back when I was in the Harps, especially after we lost our top-kicker Leo, and he didn’t get resurrected. It was all there—the doubt, the fear, the feeling that what you really wanted to do was start screaming about how unfair it was and never stop, or even just pick a direction and start running. But in the Harps we never did, mainly because everybody else was in the same position, and if you buckled, the whole wall might collapse and come crashing down. But, damn, the wall sure felt shaky.
“Anything else I need to know about the physics of this place?” I asked Sam after a while.
“What, you mean like, ‘You can avoid dying by jumping twice and then using your special Survival coin?’” Sam smiled sadly. “Ain’t a video game, B. This is pretty much just like Earth. Superior force beats weaker force. We don’t eat, and the souls themselves may not die, but they disappear and don’t come back if their bodies die here. We found that out after You-Know-Who blew our asses up. As the kid said, I’m guessing that the ones who got killed went back into real Judgement.” For a moment I saw the deep hurt he’d been keeping hidden. “God, I hope they did.”
“Yeah, but she’s got that wired somehow, too,” I said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t risk freeing all those souls. She must have some way to silence them about Kainos when they’re being judged. Maybe the same trick she used on me at my trial. Or she’s keeping them away from judgement altogether.” I confess I shuddered a little. “What was it like here before everything went to shit?”
“How do you mean?”
“What was the routine? Did the wicked witch visit often, when she was Kephas?”
“I’m sorry about that, Bobby. You were right about her. I just didn’t want to hear it. I’d put too much into the place. I let myself get conned into believing in something again.”
“It doesn’t matter now, Sam. I just want to know all the odds.”
“You think there’s something we can do other than just get barbecued like so much brisket?”
Clarence wasn’t saying anything, but he was clearly listening. I had come to like him enough that I was truly sorry I’d got him into this not-so-fine mess. “Who knows?” I said. “But I live in hope, so please answer the questions. The Mecca cube, for instance. Does it connect to anything besides Anaita?”
“Just Herself, as far as I know. She used it to send us messages, instructions, back in the days when we all believed in this. And we could call her with it if we had an emergency. She didn’t like that much—even then, when she was Kephas, she was kind of a pain in the ass about answering questions—but it always worked.”
“Well, that’s something, anyway. Do you still have your magic glove?”
He was a bit surprised. “Yeah. Tucked away in here.” He patted his crude jacket. “But I don’t think I can use it against her. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure of it, because Fred—Phidorathon—had one, too. All us Magians do. Walker said Fred tried to use it against her when she came. All that happened was that Fred burned up like a road flare, hand first, then all down him. At least it was quick. In fact, I might use it that way myself, if it comes to it.” He laughed, and for a moment sounded a bit more like the old Sam. “Better quick than slow.”
“Don’t do anything stupid. We’re not totally out of options.”
He gave me a look, mostly cynical, but with just enough interest to make me feel like a real bastard, because even I didn’t believe any of my half-baked ideas had a chance of working. Too many variables, especially variables as crazy as whether Eligor could be trusted. Yeah, that’s what I said. If we had even the tiniest chance to survive this, it would be because the archduke of Hell, who hated my guts and had already swindled me several times, would decide to do something that would help me. He’d accepted the deal I offered him in Five Page Mill, but that meant exactly nothing. In fact, since even if he fucked me again, Eligor himself would stay fat and happy, the odds were distinctly against his honoring his promise.
“Options? Tell me,” Sam said.
“Is it safe? Can all these people be trusted?” Clarence asked.
It was a fair question, but as I said, none of the Kainos-folk seemed to be listening. Still, I beckoned Sam and the kid to get up and move with me a little farther away from the camp. It wasn’t until long afterward that I realized I never checked to see where exactly Ed Walker had gone.
“It’s like this,” I said when we’d settled ourselves against an outcropping some distance away. “We really don’t have a prayer—no pun intended—against our goddess friend if we’re just going to try to trade shots with her.”
“We’re not going to trade any shots, anyway,” said Sam. “You may have noticed that other than the Mecca cube, there isn’t any technology here that would make a medieval peasant scratch his head. We’ve got arrows, spears, clubs. Shit, we haven’t even got around to smelting bronze yet. So how are we going to fight You-Know-Who? This isn’t Kansas, but it isn’t the Emerald City, either. You could throw the world’s biggest bucket of water on her, and it wouldn’t do a thing.”
“I know. But I’m not just going to lie down and die, either. The bitch has been after me for months, sent that Smyler psychopath after me, brainwashed Walter Sanders and banished him to Hell—yeah, I know, kid, I haven’t told you about that, but guess what, she did. Oh, and she murdered a really nice young woman who was a friend of mine. And now she wants you and me on a stick, Sam. You too, Clarence, since you’re with us. She won’t leave any witnesses.”
“Harrison,” he said.
“Huh?”
“You promised you’d stop calling me Clarence.”
“Shit, yeah, I did. Look, if we survive, I promise I’ll do better.”
“That’s so like you, Bobby,” he said, but without too much heat. “Give a promise you know you won’t have to live up to.”
“The only kind worth making, my friend, the only kind worth making. Now, just let me spin out some stupid, hopeless ideas, and you guys can start shooting them down.”
“I’m too tired,” Sam complained. “Can’t I just tell you now that you’re full of shit, it won’t work, and you’ll get us all killed, so I can get some sleep?”
“Not a chance, big guy. We’re all in this for the duration, but it may go down as soon as the sun comes up, so we need to do our talking now.”
Sam sighed. “Shit. You probably won’t stop talking even if you do burn up.”
So, as the familiar and yet wildly foreign stars wheeled through the sky above us and the camp fell into silence and sleep, I explained to them the novel way I’d figured out to get us all killed.
Because who wants to die some boring, old-fashioned way?
forty-four:
white on black
IT STARTED snowing during the night, swirling tiny white flakes that stuck in hair and clothing but never came thick enough to make drifts on the ground. Not until the wind rose, anyway. After that it all moved pretty quickly into what you’d expect in the hills in midwinter back home, and that’s basically where we were, even if this was a California that hadn’t known a human footstep until recently.
I was finding it hard to sleep, so I got up and wandered through the camp and out to the edge where I could brood by myself. As I stepped out of the last knot of Kainos-folk sleeping huddled together for warmth, I saw a lone woman standing sentry, several layers of cloth and skins wrapped around her, a spear in one hand and something I couldn’t quite make out in her other. I could see it, of course, because I have Super Angel Vision (a bit better than human normal, not really x-ray eyes or anything) but it was way too weird-looking to be any weapon I could think of. The sentry watched me approach without saying a word, but she seemed to make a small, strange noise as I passed. It took me a moment to realize it was the sound of her teeth chattering. I turned back.