Weave World

Then? ah, then...

A chill on his nape stirred him from speculation.

Immacolata was standing at the viewing-room door. The light did not indulge her. It showed her wounds in all their suppurating glory; showed her frailty too; and her rancour. It repulsed him to look at her.

‘What do you want?' he demanded.

‘I came to join you,' she said. ‘I don't like this place. It stinks of the Old Science.'

He shrugged, and turned his back on her.

‘I know what you're thinking, Shadwell,' she said. ‘And believe me, it wouldn't be wise.'

He hadn't heard his name uttered in a long while, and he didn't like the way it sounded. It was a throwback to a biography he'd almost ceased to believe was his.

‘What wouldn't be wise?' he said.

‘Trying to breach the Gyre.'

He made no reply.

‘That is what you intend isn't it?'

She could read him still, all too easily.

‘Maybe,' he said.

‘That'd be a cataclysmic mistake.'

‘Oh, indeed?' he said, not taking his eyes off the Mantle. ‘And why's that?'

‘Even the Families don't understand what they created when they set the Loom to work,' she said. ‘It's unknowable.'

‘Nothing's unknowable,' he growled. ‘Not to me. Not any more.'

‘You're still a man, Shadwell,' she reminded him. ‘You're vulnerable.'

‘Shut up,' he said.

‘Shadwell -'

‘Shut up!' he repeated, and turned on her. ‘I don't want to hear your defeatism any longer. I'm here, aren't I? I won the Fugue.'

‘We won it.'

‘All right, we. What do you want for that little service?'

‘You know what I want,' she said. ‘What I've always wanted. Slow genocide.'

He smiled. His reply was a long time coming, and when it came was spoken slowly.

‘No,' he said. ‘No, I don't think so.'

‘Why did we follow them all those years?' she asked. ‘It was so you could have profit, and I could be avenged.'

‘Things have changed,' he said. ‘You must see that.'

‘You want to rule them. That's it, isn't it?'

‘I want more than that,' he said. ‘I want to know what creation tastes like. I want what's in the Gyre.'

‘It'll tear you apart.'

‘I doubt that,' he said. ‘I've never been stronger.'

‘At the Shrine,' she replied, ‘you said we'd destroy them together.'

‘I lied,' Shadwell said lightly. ‘I told you what you wanted to hear, because I needed you. Now you disgust me. I'll have new women, when I'm a God.'

‘A God now is it?' She seemed genuinely amused by the thought. ‘You're a salesman, Shadwell. You're a shabby little salesman. I'm the one they worship.'

‘Oh yes,' Shadwell replied. ‘I've seen your Cult. A boneyard, and a handful of eunuchs.'

‘I won't be cheated, Shadwell,' she said, moving towards him. ‘Not by you, of all men.'

He'd known for many months that this time would come, when she finally understood how he'd manipulated her. He'd prepared himself for the consequences, quietly and systematically divesting her of her allies, and increasing his own store of defences. But she still had the menstruum - of that she could never be dispossessed - and it was formidable. He saw it burgeoning in her eyes even now, and couldn't help but want to flinch before it.

He governed the instinct however, and instead walked across to her, and putting his hand to her face, stroked the lesions and the scabs there.

‘Surely ....' he murmured, ‘... you wouldn't kill me?'

‘I won't be cheated,' she said again.

‘But dead is dead,' he said, his tone soothing. ‘I'm just a Cuckoo. You know how weak we are. No Resurrections for us.'

His touch had become more rhythmic. She hated it, he knew. She, the perfect virgin; she, all ice and regret. In earlier times she might have burned the skin from his fingertips for visiting this indignity upon her. But Mama Pus was dead, the Hag her useless lunatic self. The once mighty Incantatrix was weak and weary, and they both knew it.

‘All these years, sweetheart ...' he said,'... all these years you gave me just enough leash, just enough temptation ...'

‘We agreed -' she said, ‘- together -'

‘No,' said Shadwell, as though correcting a child. ‘You used me, to go amongst the Cuckoos, because if the truth be known they frighten you.'

She made to contradict, but he put his hand across her throat. ‘Don't interrupt,' he told her. She obeyed him. ‘You've always held me in contempt,' he went on. ‘I know that. But I was useful, and did as I was told, as long as I wanted to touch you.'

‘Is that what you want now?' she said.

‘Once....' he said, almost mourning the loss, ‘... once I would have killed to feel the pulse in your throat. Like this.' His hand tightened a little. ‘Or to have stroked your flesh ...'

He worked the palm of his other hand against her breast.

‘Don't do that,' she said.

The Magdalene's dead,' he reminded her. ‘So who's going to produce children now? It can't be the old bitch; she's sterile. No, lover. No. I think it has to be you. You'll finally have to offer up that precious cunt of yours.'

At this she threw him off her, and might have struck him dead but that revulsion at his mauling distracted her from the act. She soon recovered her self-control. The killing power was mustering behind her eyes. He couldn't with safety delay his revenge any longer. She'd taken him for a fool, but he had ways to make her regret her arrogance. As she raised her head to spit the menstruum at him he called out the names he'd written, mere hours before, on his pack of cigarettes.

‘Sousa! Vessel! Fairchild! Divine! Loss! Hannah!'

The by-blows came at his call, scrabbling up the stairs. They were no longer the wretched, love-lorn things that the Magdalene had suckled. Shadwell had treated them tenderly in the short time he'd owned them; fed them; made them mighty.

The light died in Immacolata's face as she heard them behind her. She turned as they spilled through the door.

‘You bequeathed them to me,' he said.

She let out a cry at the sight of them, grown gross and meaty. They stank of the slaughterhouse.

‘I gave them blood instead of milk,' said Shadwell. ‘It makes them love me.'

He made a clucking sound with his tongue, and the creatures sidled over to him, trailing organs they had yet to find a purpose for.

‘I warn you,' he said, ‘try to harm me and they'll take it badly.'

As he spoke he realized that in these last moments Immacolata had summoned the Hag from the cooler regions of the Firmament. She was at the Incantatrix's shoulder now, a restive shadow.

‘Leave him,' he heard her sigh in Immacolata's ear. He didn't for an instant think she'd take that advice, but she did, first spitting on the floor at Shadwell's feet, then turning to go. He could scarcely believe the battle had been so easily won. She'd been more demoralized by grief and mutilation than he'd dared hope. The showdown was over before it had even begun.

One of the by-blows at his side uttered a soulful wail of frustration. He took his eyes off the sisters and told it to hush itself. His doing so proved all but fatal, for in the instant his gaze dropped the wraith-sister came flying at him, her jaws wide, her teeth suddenly vast, ready to tear out his cheating heart.

At the door, Immacolata was turning back, the menstruum breaking from her.

He yelled for the beasts to come to his aid, but even as he did so the Hag was upon him. His breath burst from him as he was thrown back against the wall, claws raking at his chest.

The by-blows weren't about to see their blood-bringer laid low. They were upon the Hag before her nails could rip through Shadwell's jacket, and she was dragged from him, shrieking. She'd been midwife to these creatures; she'd delivered them into a world of lunacy and darkness. Perhaps for that very reason they showed her no mercy. They tore at her without pause or apology.