Imajica

  But first, Sartori. Though two days had passed since he’d let the Autarch slip, he nursed the hope that his other would still be haunting his palace. After all, removal from this self-made womb, where his smallest word had been law and his tiniest deed worshipful, would be painful. He’d linger awhile, surely. And if he was going to linger anywhere, it would be close to the object of power that had made him the undisputed master of the Reconciled Dominions: the Pivot.

  He was just beginning to curse himself for losing his way when he came upon the spot where Pie had fallen. He recognized it instantly, as he did the distant door that led into the tower. He allowed himself a moment of meditation at the spot where he’d cradled Pie, but it wasn’t their fond exchanges here that filled his head, it was the mystif’s last words, uttered in anguish as the force behind the Erasure claimed it.

  Sartori, Pie had said. Find him . . . he knows. . . .

  Whatever knowledge Sartori possessed—and Gentle guessed it would concern plots laid against the Reconciliation—he, Gentle, was ready to do whatever was required in order to squeeze this information from his other before he delivered the coup de grace. There were no moral niceties here. If he had to break every bone in Sartori’s body, it would be a little hurt set beside the crimes he’d committed as Autarch, and Gentle would perform such duties gladly.

  Thought of torture, and the pleasure he’d take in it, had tempted him from his meditation entirely, and he gave up on his pursuit of equilibrium. Venom swilling in his belly, he headed down the corridor, through the door, and into the tower. Though the comet was climbing towards midmorning, very little of its light gained access to the tower, but those few beams that did creep in showed him empty passageways in all directions. He still advanced with caution; this was a maze of chambers, any one of which might conceal his enemy. Fatigue left him less light-footed than he’d have liked, but he reached the stairs that curled up towards the silo itself without his stumblings attracting any attention, and began to climb. The door at the top had been opened, he remembered, with the key of Sartori’s thumb, and he’d have to repeat the feit himself in order to enter. That was no great challenge. They had the same thumbs, to the tiniest whorl.

  As it was, he needed no feit. The door was open wide, and somebody was moving about inside. Gentle halted ten steps from the threshold and drew breath. He’d need to incapacitate his other quickly if he was to prevent retaliation: a pneuma to take off his right hand, another for his left. Breath readied, he climbed swiftly to the top of the stairs and stepped into the tower.

  His enemy was standing beneath the Pivot, arms raised, reaching for the stone. He was all in shadow, but Gentle caught the motion of his head as he turned towards the door, and before the other could lower his arms in defense, Gentle had his fist to his mouth, the breath rising in his throat. As it filled his palm his enemy spoke, but the voice when it came was not his own, as he’d expected, but that of a woman. Realizing his error, he clamped his fist around the pneuma to quench it, but the power he’d unleashed wasn’t about to be cheated of its quarry. It broke from between his fingers, its force fragmented but no less eager for that. The pieces flew off around the silo, some darting up the sides of the Pivot, others entering its shadow and extinguished there. The woman cried out in alarm and retreated from her attacker, backing against the opposite wall. There the light found her perfection. It was Judith; or at least it seemed to be. He’d seen this face in Yzordderrex once already andbeen mistaken.

  “Gentle?” she said. “Is that you?”

  It sounded like her, too. But then hadn’t that been his promise to Roxborough, that he’d fashion a copy indistinguishable from the original?

  “It’s me,” she said. “It’s Jude.”

  Now he began to believe it was, for there was more proof in that last syllable than sight could ever supply. Nobody in her circle of admirers, besides Gentle, had ever called her Jude. Judy, sometimes; Juju, even; but never Jude. That was his diminution, and to his certain knowledge she’d never suffered another to use it.

  He repeated it now, his hand dropping from his mouth as he spoke, and seeing the smile spread across his face she ventured back towards him, returning into the shadow of the Pivot as he came to meet her. The move saved her life. Seconds after she left the wall a slab of rock, blasted from the heights of the silo by the pneuma, fell on the spot where she’d stood. It initiated a hard, lethal rain, shards of stone falling on all sides. There was safety in the shelter of the Pivot, however, and there they met and kissed and embraced as though they’d been parted a lifetime, not weeks, which in a sense was true. The din of falling rock was muted in the shadow, though its thunder was only yards from where they stood. When she cupped his face in her hands and spoke, her whispers were quite audible; as were his.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said. There was a welcome warmth in her voice, after the days of anguish and accusation he’d heard. “I even dreamed about you. . . .”

  “Tell me,” he murmured, his lips close to hers.

  “Later, maybe,” she said, kissing him again. “I’ve so much to tell you.”

  “Likewise,” Gentle said.

  “We should find ourselves somewhere safer than this,” she said.

  “We’re out of harm’s way here,” Gentle said.

  “Yes, but for how long?”

  The scale of the demolition was increasing, its violence out of all proportion to the force Gentle had unleashed, as though the Pivot had taken the pneuma’s power and magnified it. Perhaps it knew—how could it not?—that the man it had been in thrall to had gone and was now about the business of shrugging off the prison Sartori had raised around it. Judging by the size of the slabs falling all around, the process would not take long. They were monumental, their impact sufficient to open cracks in the floor of the tower, the sight of which brought a cry of alarm from Jude.

  “Oh, God, Quaisoir!” she said.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s down there!” Jude said, staring at the gaping ground. “There’s a chamber below this! She’s in it!”

  “She’ll be out of there by now.”

  “No, she’s high on kreauchee! We have to get down there!”

  She left Gentle’s side and crossed to the edge of their shelter, but before she could make a dash for the open door a new fall of rubble and dust obliterated the way ahead. It wasn’t simply blocks of the tower that were falling now, Gentle saw. There were vast shards of the Pivot itself in this hail. What was it doing? Destroying itself, or shedding skins to uncover its core? Whichever, their place in the shadow was more precarious by the second. The cracks underfoot were already a foot wide and widening, the hovering monolith above them shuddering as if it was about to give up the effort of suspension and drop. They had no choice but to brave the rockfall.

  He went to join Jude, searching his wits for a means to survival and picturing Chicka Jackeen at the Erasure, his hands high to ward off the detritus dropped by the storm. Could he do the same? Not giving himself pause to doubt, he lifted his hands above his head as he’d seen the monk do, palms up, and stepped out of the Pivot’s shadow. One heavenward glance confirmed both the Pivot’s shedding and the scale of his jeopardy. Though the dust was thick, he could see that the monolith was sloughing off scales of stone, the pieces large enough to smash them both to pulp. But his defense held. The slabs shattered two or three feet above his naked head, their smithereens dropping like a fleeting vault around him. He felt the impact nevertheless, as a succession of jolts through his wrists, arms, and shoulders, and knew he lacked the strength to preserve the feit for more than a few seconds. Jude had already grasped the method in his madness, however, and stepped from the shadow to join him beneath thisflimsy shield. There were perhaps ten paces between where they stood and the safety of the door.

  “Guide me,” he told her, unwilling to take his eyes off the rain for fear his concentration slip and the feit lose its potency.

  Jude slipped her arm aroun
d his waist and navigated for them both, telling him where to step to find clear ground and warning him when the path was so heavily strewn they were obliged to stumble over stone. It was a tortuous business, and Gentle’s upturned hands were steadily beaten down until they were barely above his head, but the feit held to the door, and they slid through it together, with the Pivot and its prison throwing down such a hail of debris that neither was now visible.

  Then Jude was off at speed, down the murky stairs. The walls were shaking, and laced with cracks as the demolition above took its toll below, but they negotiated both the trembling passageway and the second flight of stairs down to the lower level unharmed. Gentle was startled at the sight and sound of Concupiscentia, who was screeching in the passageway like a terrified ape, unwilling to go in search of her mistress. Jude had no such qualms. She’d already thrown open the door and was heading down an incline into a lamp-lit chamber beyond, calling Quaisoir’s name to stir her from her stupor. Gentle followed, but was slowed by the cacophony that greeted him, a mingling of manic whispers and the din of capitulation from above. By the time he reached the room itself, Jude had bullied her sister to her feet. There were substantial cracks in the ceiling and a constant drizzle of dust, but Quaisoir seemed indifferent to the hazard.

  “I said you’d come back,” she said. “Didn’t I? Didn’t I say you’d come back? Do you want to kiss me? Please kiss me, sister.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Gentle asked.

  The sound of his voice brought a cry from the woman. She flung herself out of Jude’s arms.

  “What have you done?” she yelled. “Why did you bring him here?”

  “He’s come to help us,” Jude replied.

  Quaisoir spat in Gentle’s direction. “Leave me alone!” she screeched. “Haven’t you done enough? Now you want to take my sister from me! You bastard! I won’t let you! We’ll die before you touch her!” She reached for Jude, sobbing in panic. “Sister! Sister!”

  “Don’t be frightened,” Jude said. “He’s a friend.” She looked at Gentle. “Reassure her,” she begged him. “Tell her who you are, so we can get out of here.”

  “I’m afraid she already knows,” Gentle replied.

  Jude was mouthing the word what? when Quaisoir’s panic boiled up again.

  “Sartori!” she screeched, her denunciation echoing around the room. “He’s Sartori, sister! Sartori!”

  Gentle raised his hands in mock surrender, backing away from the woman. “I’m not going to touch you,” he said. “Tell her, Jude. I don’t want to hurt her!”

  But Quaisoir was in the throes of another outburst. “Stay with me, sister,” she said, grabbing hold of Jude. “He can’t kill us both!”

  “You can’t stay in here,” Jude said.

  “I’m not going out!” Quaisoir said. “He’s got soldiers out there! Rosengarten! That’s who he’s got! And his torturers!”

  “It’s safer out there than it is in here,” Jude said, casting her eyes up at the roof. Several carbuncles had appeared in it, oozing debris. “We have to be quick!”

  Still she refused, putting her hand up to Jude’s face and stroking her cheek with her clammy palm: short, nervy strokes.

  “We’ll stay here together,” she said. “Mouth to mouth. Mind to mind.”

  “We can’t,” Jude told her, speaking as calmly as circumstance allowed. “I don’t want to be buried alive, and neither do you.”

  “If we die, we die,” said Quaisoir. “I don’t want him touching me again, do you hear?”

  “I know. I understand.”

  “Not ever! Not ever!”

  “He won’t,” Jude said, laying her own hand over Quaisoir’s, which was still stroking her face. She laced her fingers through those of her sister and locked them. “He’s gone,” she said. “He won’t be coming near either of us again.”

  Gentle had indeed retreated as far as the passageway, but even though Jude waved him away he refused to go any further. He’d had too many reunions cut short to risk letting her out of his sight.

  “Are you certain he’s gone?”

  “I’m certain.”

  “He could still be waiting outside for us.”

  “No, sister. He was afraid for his life. He’s fled.”

  Quaisoir grinned at this. “He was afraid?” she said.

  “Terrified.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? They’re all the same. They talk like heroes, but there’s piss in their veins.” She began to laugh out loud, as careless now as she’d been in terror moments before. “We’ll go back to my bedroom,” she said when the outburst subsided, “and sleep for a while.”

  “Whatever you want to do,” Jude said. “But let’s do it soon.”

  Still chuckling to herself, Quaisoir allowed Jude to lift her up and escort her towards the door. They had covered maybe half that distance, Gentle standing aside to let them pass, when one of the carbuncles in the ceiling burst and threw down a rain of wreckage from the tower above. Gentle saw Jude struck and felled by a chunk of stone; then the chamber filled with an almost viscous dust that blotted out both sisters in an instant. With his only point of reference the lamp, the flame of which was just visible through the dirt, he headed into the fog to fetch her, as a thundering from above announced a further escalation of the tower’s collapse. There was no time for protective feits or for keeping his silence. If he failed to find her in the next few seconds, they’d all be buried. He started to yell her name through the rising roar and, hearing her call back to him, followed her voice to where she was lying, half buried beneath a cairn of rubble.

  “There’s time,” he said to her as he began to dig. “There’s time. We can make it out.”

  With her arms unpinned she began to speed her own excavation, hauling herself up out of the debris and locking her arms around Gentle’s neck. He started to stand, pulling her free of the remaining rocks, but as he did so another commotion began, louder than anything that had preceded it. This was not the din of destruction but a shriek of white fury. The dust above their heads parted, and Quaisoir appeared, floating inches from the fissured ceiling. Jude had seen this transformation before—ribbons of flesh unfurled from her sister’s back and bearing her up—but Gentle had not. He gaped at the apparition, distracted from thoughts of escape.

  “She’s mine!” Quaisoir yelled, swooping towards them with the same sightless but unerring accuracy she’d possessed in more intimate moments, her arms outstretched, her fingers ready to twist the abductor’s head from his neck.

  But Jude was quick. She stepped in front of Gentle, calling Quaisoir’s name. The woman’s swoop faltered, the hungry hands inches from her sister’s upturned face.

  “I don’t belong to you!” she yelled back at Quaisoir. “I don’t belong to anybody! Hear me?”

  Quaisoir threw back her head and loosed a howl of rage at this. It was her undoing. The ceiling shuddered and abandoned its duty at her din, collapsing beneath the weight of rubble heaped behind it. There was, Jude thought, time for Quaisoir to escape the consequences of her cry. She’d seen the woman move like lightning at Pale Hill, when she had the will to do so. But that will had gone. Face to the killing dirt, she let the debris rain upon her, inviting it with her unbroken cry, which didn’t become alarm or plea, but remained a solid howl of fury until the rocks broke and buried her. It wasn’t quick. She went on calling down destruction as Gentle took Jude’s hand and hauled her away from the spot. He’d lost all sense of direction in the chaos, and had it not been for the screeching of Concupiscentia in the passageway beyond they’d never have made it to the door.

  But make it they did, emerging with half their senses deadened by dust. Quaisoir’s death cry had ceased by now, but the roar behind them was louder than ever and drove them from the door as the canker spread across the roof of the corridor. They outran it, however, Concupiscentia giving up her keening when she knew her mistress was lost and overtaking them, fleeing to some sanctuary where she could raise
a song of lamentation.

  Jude and Gentle ran until they were out from under any stone, roof, arch, or vault that might collapse upon them, into a courtyard full of bees feasting on bushes that had chosen that day, of all days, to blossom. Only then did they put their arms around each other again, each sobbing for private griefs and gratitudes, while the ground shook under them to the din of the demolition they’d escaped.

  III

  In fact the ground didn’t stop reverberating until they were well outside the walls of the palace and wandering in the ruins of Yzordderrex. At Jude’s suggestion they made their way back at all speed to Peccable’s house, where, she explained to Gentle, there was a well-used route between this Dominion and the Fifth. He put up no resistance to this. Though he hadn’t exhausted Sartori’s hiding places by any means (could he ever, when the palace was so vast?) he had exhausted his limbs, his wits, and his will. If his other was still here in Yzordderrex, he posed very little threat. It was the Fifth that needed to be defended against him: the Fifth, which had forgotten magic and could so easily be his victim.

  Though the streets of many Kesparates were little more than bloody valleys between rubble mountains, there were sufficient landmarks for Jude to trace her way back towards the district where Peccable’s house had stood. There was no certainty, of course, that it would still be standing after a day and a night of cataclysm, but if they had to dig to reach the cellar, so be it.

  They were silent for the first mile or so of the trek, but then they began to talk, begining—inevitably—with an explanation from Gentle as to why Quaisoir, hearing his voice, had taken him for her husband. He prefaced his account with the caveat that he wouldn’t mire it in apology or justification but would tell it simply, like some grim fable. Then he went on to do precisely that. But the telling, for all its clarity, contained one significant distortion. When he described his encounter with the Autarch he drew in Jude’s mind the portrait of a man to whom he bore only a rudimentary resemblance, a man so steeped in evil that his flesh had been corrupted by his crimes. She didn’t question this description, but pictured an individual whose inhumanity seeped from every pore, a monster whose very presence would have induced nausea.