“Gods…”
“Does it really matter? Let her smoke.”
“Just put her on a godsdamned leash!”
The goggles made the world lovely-tinted. The stonework inside the tower was transformed into puccoon patterns while the torches snapped—pretty sheets of coquelicot.
Taelin didn’t know what that meant, but she held the demonifuge close. She tried to block the voice out with another drag as she tumbled out of the tower and into the humming, dripping streets of Bablemum. She was following the crowd.
Glowing signs made strange oases of light. A few of them anyway. Neon colors bubbled. Liquid buzzing sounds soothed her indescribably.
There were thick curved walls, unlike the squared angles of northern cities. And there were tropical trees whose leaves dangled like belts of leather. Vines lit with pale florets threaded the masonry like star maps.
“I’m hungry.”
No one heard her.
“I’m hungry!”
“We’ll get you something in a moment, dear. We’re going to dinner.”
“That’ll be nice,” said Taelin. She looked at the physician’s short solid body padding through the street, dark and compact, hair unmoving. Her profile in the strange light was vaguely rodent-like. “Are you married, Dr. Baufent?”
The physician snorted.
“No children?” Taelin pressed.
“I live alone.”
“That’s good,” said Taelin. “Less sadness … back in Isca … you know? When the jungle eats us.” She burst into laughter. Boisterous. Filled with genuine glee. “Oh, shit! We’re going to dinner!” She bent forward at the waist, eyes closed, bellowing so hard she nearly dropped her smoke.
No one was laughing with her. In fact, she could hear them talking about her.
“Shut her up?”
“… already smoking … it’s dangerous to double up on sedatives.”
“We can drag her.”
She opened her eyes and stared down at a face cast in dark silver. Hairless and dead, it was attached to the body of a teenager that lay crumpled in the street. One of its eyes was filmy but still glistened with moisture. The other had been gored out, probably by a bird. It stank of rotting fish and its abdomen had been opened by scavengers.
Taelin stopped laughing. Her mouth opened wide as she lost her balance and stumbled forward, bashing her knees on the bricks, skinning her palms. She recovered clumsily, felt Caliph’s strong grip under her arm.
She gasped for air. Heavy and fungal, tainted with a billon spores.
“Ahh…” Her mouth was open, drooling. “Ahh … I’m going to be sick.”
“Give her one of your tablets,” said Baufent.
“I already did.”
Behind the voice of the High King were the voices of the Veydens. They sounded gruff but frightened, talking in their language of inverted vowels. They were saying strange things that she doubted Caliph would approve of. Assuming she had understood. She wasn’t exactly fluent. They were talking about Sena. But she felt distracted from the conversation by the silver body. Rather
“Nenuln!”
They were everywhere! A sediment. Debris borne in on a violent tide, deposited without decorum, strewn limb over torso across curb and fender. They were tangled around doorjambs and bariothermic transformers. Ravaged. Some stripped to the bone. Rib cages strung with pemmican.
“Oh shit! Ohshit-ohshit-ohsit!” Her legs gave way again.
The inside-girl wouldn’t be quiet.
The smell of the dead city was in her mouth, her eyes, her hair.
The dry whisper of the old man was in her ears, urging her to stop working the soft metal of her necklace, to stop bending it back and forth, back and forth.
“Soon—soon,” Taelin whispered.
Taelin had lost her cigarette. She spun around in Caliph’s grip. Her whole body felt sticky with sweat. “Gods you have beautiful eyes,” she said directly into his face. “Cobra-brown.”
Then one of the Veydens hissed that they needed to be quiet. That someone was coming. She felt the familiar stab of a hypodermic. People were always giving her injections.
She was laughing again, because the color of death was pink.
CHAPTER
48
When Taelin went slack, Caliph nearly dropped her. Her eyes were hidden behind the dark red lenses of her goggles. He hoisted her limp body across his shoulders, holding a leg and an arm. He tried to gallop toward the Veyden escorts that were motioning to him, windmilling their long olive-colored arms, trying to encourage him through a kind of stone doorway that led into a small court.
The doorway was vaguely coffin-shaped and he bashed Taelin’s head unintentionally against the awkward frame.
“Fuck! Is she all right?”
“Bit of a bump is all,” whispered Baufent.
As soon as Caliph was through, the Veydens panned their hands. Clearly they wanted him to be quiet.
Caliph had no idea what might have spooked them but he decided the best course was to exercise a bit of trust.
On the walls of the court, Caliph could make out several posters of children in southern dress. Their faces were made adult with makeup and they struck strangely sexual poses as they marketed some diversion located at 2229 Led’Nhool N’god.
Sinewy feline shapes hissed from atop a pile of cryptic refuse—things partly organic and partly incomprehensible because they were intricate and foreign. The Veydens led them across the pavement.
Caliph could hear a hive of bariothermic coils. It buzzed against the foundations of the next city block. Initially the sound masked low gluttonous slurping sounds in the darkness. But as they neared the hive’s brain-like convolutions, Caliph drew up.
Icy white fog from the tubing mixed with holomorphic sparkles. The pale light revealed a ghoul hunched over the body of a dog. The sound of eating became clear and Caliph almost let go of Taelin.
Before he could set her down, one of the Veydens had driven his spear into the creature’s shoulder. The blade entered along the neck, behind the clavicle, following the creature’s spine into its chest cavity. The Veyden jerked the spear around, presumably slicing up internal organs before wrenching it free.
Just as the event seemed over and they began to move on, something grabbed Caliph and jerked him sideways against the wall. Again, he almost dropped Taelin. Bolts stuck mindlessly from the mortar where they might have once supported fire escapes. He had gotten snagged.
Baufent asked if he was all right. He nodded but felt his irritation dilate. He did not like his lack of direction or his lack of control.
