Lord Kosoter spat. In a hiss that was almost a whisper, he said, 'Sobber.'
Sarl's face crunched into a wheezing laugh. 'No sobbers!' he cried, bending his voice to the others. 'That's the Rule. No sobbers on the slog!'
Achamian glanced from Xonghis to Kiampas, saw the same expressionless mask he hoped to fake. The Nonman, Cleric, stood with his mouth open, as though trying to catch some taste of what they all smelled. Achamian blinked, let go a shuddering breath. Everything had happened so quickly, too quickly for his heart to feel, let alone for his soul to comprehend. All he knew was that something was wrong… Something in the man's gibberish had carried the deep bruise of truth.
It looks and looks and it can't see!
'Cut him open,' he heard himself say to Xonghis, who by now was standing at his side.
'What?'
'Cut him open… I need to see his heart.'
Our skin is too thick…
The Imperial Tracker glanced from his Captain to Sarl, who said, 'Do as he says,' pinched through a scarcely restrained cackle. For all the world, the bandy-legged sergeant seemed like a man who had gambled everything on the mad turns of this encounter-nothing could spoil his run. Xonghis knelt in their midst, pulling a Jekki saw-knife from his boot as he did so. The dead Pick lay in his own inert shadow, his blood making black wool of the surrounding dust. His chest thudded like a broken drum when Xonghis cracked his ribcage. The Tracker worked with the thoughtless concentration of a long-time hunter: deer, wolf, or man, it was all the same to him, it seemed.
He pulled the heart from the overflowing cup that was the Pick's breast, held the gory mass up for Achamian to inspect. The shadow of his arm fell long across the floor beyond.
'Rinse it.'
With a kind of bemused scowl, the Imperial Tracker shrugged and reached back with his free hand. He raised his waterskin to his teeth to unstop, grinning as though it were whisky. His fingernails shone fresh and pink as he gingerly rinsed the blood from the lobes. The water drained rose from the back of his knuckles. He kneaded the heart, turning the clear meat to his palm. The tubular cluster at the top was soaked white.
Suddenly he stopped. Everyone leaned forward, breathless, struck by the sight of a scar or suture along one of the heart's fat-sheathed chambers. With his thumb Xonghis pressed open the upper lid…
A human eye stared at them.
'Sweet Seju!' Sarl hissed, stumbling back bandy-limbed.
The Imperial Tracker laid the heart on the Pick's gore-soaked stomach, but carefully, as though fearful of waking something asleep.
'What does it mean?' Kiampas cried.
But Achamian was staring directly at Cleric. 'Do you know the way forward?' he asked. 'Do you remember?'
The ageless face regarded him for an inscrutable moment. 'Yes.'
'What does it mean?' Kiampas fairly shouted, demanding the Wizard's attention. 'How did you know?'
Achamian looked to him. 'This place is cursed.'
'It's not time to follow the donkey shit home yet,' the Captain growled.
'Cursed?' Kiampas pressed. 'What do you mean? Haunted?'
Achamian matched the sergeant's gaze, silently thanked the Hundred for his sober eyes. The two of them had much to discuss.
'What happened here-'
'Means nothing,' Lord Kosoter grated, his voice and manner as menacing as the dead eye watching. 'There's nothing here but skinnies. And they're coming to shim our skulls.'
The Captain's word signalled the end of the matter. Nothing was said to the others, but they all knew that something had happened. On the long walk back, Sarl harangued them with the Captain's story. The skinnies had got the best of the Bloody Picks, true, but then they were the Picks, and not the Skin Eaters. They didn't have their Captain, nor did they have two 'light-spitters,' as scalpers were wont to call sorcerers.
'This is the slog of all slogs, boys!' he cried with a peculiar, red-faced savagery that was all his own. 'We run for the Coffers, and nothing-nothing! — will stop us!'
Certainly not skinnies.
Those who had seen the eye in the Pick's heart could only trade worried glances. The grandeur of the underworld Mansion had become hoary with threat. The long ache of emptiness and uncertainty had been replaced with the pang of teeming things. Mimara even clutched Achamian's hand, but every time he glanced at her, she was staring at the cavernous hollows opening above them, peering through the chains, as though following the stages of brightening light. She seemed younger, somehow, more fragile with beauty. The curve of her cheeks, like the outer edge of an opened oyster shell. Her compact lips. Her wide eyes, lashed with quill strokes. For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother's. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet's whore- shell.
They would survive this, he told himself. They had to survive this.
The great sheaf of debris that had originally halted them rose white in the light of the blinding Bar, so that it resembled the decayed outskirts of a glacier. Those left behind to guard the mules and supplies came running toward them like farm dogs: Obviously they had spent the entire time stewing in their terror. Sarl and Kiampas immediately began shouting, instructing everyone to stow their gear and ready the mules-despite the obvious exhaustion of all.
There would be no more sleep in the Black Halls of Cil-Aujas.
The Outside was leaking in. Hell.
The Bar of Heaven had burned for quite some time; Achamian could feel the picking toll of maintaining its meaning in the nethers of his soul-like holding a sum in thought for a span of hours. Even still, he hesitated before dispelling it, struck by the image of the Skin Eaters bending and bustling in its soaring glare. Sarl watching, more priest than slaver, with a scrutiny that could only be called ravenous. Kiampas wandering among the company's more recent recruits, or the Herd as the originals called them, slapping shoulders and tightening straps, offering what small wisdoms and assurances he could. Galian working closer to Xonghis than was necessary, shooting pressing looks at the almond-eyed Tracker whenever opportunity afforded. The former Columnary was too savvy not to know something was amiss. Achamian imagined it was only a matter of time before they all knew that Sarl was 'coughing up their cracks'-as they liked to put it. Pokwas berating a harried Somandutta, who because of his refusal to relinquish his Nilnameshi garb was perpetually delaying the others. Every so often the tall black man glanced at the others, flashed them the broad smile hidden behind his outraged expression. Glum Sutadra, the Kianene everyone insisted was a Fanim heretic, packing his kit with the slow-handed intensity of a mortal ritual. Monstrous Oxwora towering head and shoulders above the rest, laughing at something thought or heard, pinch-faced Sranc heads swinging in his wild Thunyeri mane. One of the younger Galeoth boys, Rainon, scratching the veined cheek of his favourite mule, whispering encouragements he obviously didn't believe…
And Cleric standing over the Captain as he tightened the lacing on his Ainoni boots, staring with bland fixity at Achamian, his eyes so much older than the ceramic face that held them-like holes.
'What is it?' Mimara asked from his periphery.
'Nothing,' Achamian said, looking away from the Nonman, letting go the cramped meaning that was the Bar of Heaven. The line dimmed, as if it were a seam in a slowly closing door, then was clipped into nothingness. There was a moment of jeering cries and blackness, so utter it seemed to possess its own sound, followed by a sorcerous murmur and the reappearance of the twin points of light, like the eyes of two different races opening in the same invisible face.
The Skin Eaters resumed their work, though now many cast anxious looks into the darkness that leaned heavy about them.
The plan, Sarl announced after conferring with Lord Kosoter, was simply to continue with all possible haste. Odds were, he told them, they would encounter nothing at all, given the vast extent of Cil-Aujas. Odds were, whatever destroyed the Bloody Picks had withdrawn to the depths to lick their wounds and to count their spoils. Nevertheless, they were to march 'on the sharp,' as he put it, which meant without undue noise and with eyes and
