Blightcross: A Novel (24 page)

Capra blinked and waited for her eyes to adjust to the low, yellow light. “About my height, gangly, bad mustache, lopsided smile? And a really ugly ring on his finger. Like ridiculously ugly.”

There was a silence while Dannac and Vasi gazed at each other for what seemed a long while. “What? What just happened?”

“Capra, you just—”

Dannac raised his voice. “It is an Ehzeri trick. Illusions. Most are susceptible to them.”

Vasi cut in again. “But—”

“Really, that is all. Vasi.”

Had it really happened? It seemed like more than an illusion. She guzzled the small beer and touched the table and bench to ground herself in reality. Solid stuff—the stuff that never disappointed her, always existing as it should. How could the Ehzeri continue to persist in their imaginary world? If she had to spend her life competing with the foggy universe of appearances she had just glimpsed, it would drive her to insanity.

“Okay. Well, at least I'll recognize him when I see him. So Dannac will come with me, and once we find Rovan, he'll take him down the clock mechanism, and I'll find Helverliss and his painting.”

Dannac cleared his throat. “Good. Except that we are not sure that we can climb down the mechanism.”

“What?”

“I saw your schematic. The way the gears are arranged seems like a person could only get away with climbing up through it.”

“Then how are we supposed to get out?”

“I was thinking of jumping out the window.”

Vasi smiled, probably assuming it to be a joke.

Sevari stopped at the mirror before leaving his office: he had to check the knot of his tie, make sure his trouser creases were neat and crisp. He straightened the Corps campaign ribbons on his jacket, and checked the positioning of the rose emblem band on his left arm. His boots had arrived earlier that morning shined to his exacting standards, and one of the servants had plastered his hair with pomade.

It was the fifth day of the week. It was, he reflected as he marched to his personal elevator, too bad that such a happy occasion be spoiled by such sadness.

But duty was duty.

Just as he reached the hall containing his elevator, he stopped to greet young Rovan, who carried a large yellow envelope in his hand.

“This is from Section Three, Leader. They say everything is in order.”

Such a sweet boy, that Rovan. “I am in a hurry, young man. Just go into my office and put it on my desk.”

The boy's eyes went wide. It probably sounded like the stuff of myth to the boy, that kind of directive. “Me? Go into your office?”

He ruffled Rovan's hair. “You've been doing such good work, my boy. I trust you more than my caucus. Section Three would be nothing without your contribution.”

Rovan's face flashed with an uneasiness. Sevari stooped and decided that Rovan's loyalty was worth a few minutes from his schedule. “Is everything going well for you? Are the others giving you trouble?”

Rovan shook his head.

“Then why the long face, son?”

“It is nothing. Just... they've become scared of me.”

“Because of your success?”

“I guess you could say that.”

The boy could barely make eye contact with Sevari. He assumed this was just the way boys Rovan's age behaved—it was an awkward time. Having never produced children, this was unknown territory.

Rovan continued: “Leader, do you know what Section Three does?”

“Of course. Spiritual research. Experiments in intelligence. And their success is going to ensure that my district is the best defended district of Naartland. We may not have armies of thousands, but we do have something almost as good.”

The boy appeared even more conflicted. But after a few seconds of contemplation, he appeared to brighten some. “Anyway, I'll go drop this off.”

“Good show, little man!” Sevari patted Rovan's head.

Children could be strange at times, couldn't they? It was probably harmless. Clearly he was a hard worker, at the very least.

Once he descended into the dank pit of the tower's basement, he stepped into his private rail car, built just for the trip between the refinery and the palace. The engineer bowed his head with appropriate solemnity, as he had been taught, and said nothing during the trip.

At the palace he found found, as always, a contingent of minor bureaucrats hungry for him to sign a ream of forms and bills. They were everywhere, and when he quickened his pace, they followed even faster, a ragged drumbeat of office shoes.

He could take no more of this pestering, and halted. “Must I remind you all that this is my day of grieving?”

In half of a breath, the secretaries and caucus members and administrators and maintenance men shut their mouths. Their eyes all went wide, as if they all knew of this collective crime they had committed.

“Get back to work, all of you.” Sevari removed his pocket watch, glanced at its face. “I am going to be late if this continues.”

The staff inclined their heads in unison and shuffled back to the offices and meeting rooms. A minute more of their pleading and wasting his time, and he would have ordered the fat one with the soprano voice shot as an example.

He ducked out of the main halls into the polished marble and brass corridors that had linked the throne room with the rest of the palace. While the offices and public areas were crumbling, this section shone like a mirror hall and smelled of incense. The old throne room, which now housed his memorial, was like an island in the immense hall. First, he took the circular walkway that skirted the glass enclosure. This was as close as anyone else, even his old friends when they were alive, could come to the memorial.

He then inserted his special key into the giant iron door. A hiss of pressure sounded, and he inhaled the sickly odour of preservative that had long ago become the harbinger of fond memories.

There, on the wall, sketches and paintings he had commissioned and placed in the hall leading to the Sevari family's resting place. His mother's flowing hair, his sister's innocent smile, the old days when things made sense and people were honourable... Such beautiful paintings. Such wonderful times...

As he neared his family, he tugged at his lapels and once more patted down his hair.

A voice called to him in breathless moaning. “Till? Till? Is that you?”

Mamma always spoke first. He went to her pedestal, where his mother's torso stood set into a complex array of machines and
vihs
capacitors. An iron lung next to the pedestal wheezed and the tubes connected to Mamma's back fluttered with each hiss of the machine.

“It is me, mother.”

“Pa's outside. Told me to. Told me to.”

“What did he tell you?”

She paused while the respirator hissed a new breath. “Told me to get you to. Early start on the harvest.”

“Yes, mother. Harvest time already. What will you do with all those apples?”

“You can make a pie. You can make a jelly.”

“Mmm I like pie. Would you make me a pie?”

“You can make a pie.”

He bent to inspect his mother's face closely after noticing an ugly speck on her skin. Yes, there it was—a blemish on one of her leather replacement panels. And her makeup needed redoing.

He went on to his sister. This one was in much better shape than the others, both physically and mentally. It still wasn't clear to him exactly why he had chosen not to have the rope burns removed from her neck. It just didn't seem right to erase that horrible event.

Luckily, her voice was fine. “Till, you're back. Listen to me, you have to get me out of here.”

He nodded, the movement as mechanical as the limited jerks of his family. “Yes, it's terrible what they've done. But I'm here now.” This one he was able to make eye contact with, since the engineers had been able to preserve much of her face so well that with the help of the specially calibrated lights on the wall, they gleamed with the same inner life they had before the war.

“Get me out, Till.” She shifted on her post, and the respirator made a sucking sound. Her eyes flashed with a different kind of recognition. “Till?” She looked down at herself, at the functionless legs, the arms that could only move slightly at the elbow. “What have you done?” More jerks and jolts. “I... I cannot move. Till, help me.”

He angled around to inspect the wires running into the back of her neck.

“What kind of hell is this, brother?”

Everything looked fine. They did say there could be lapses into the present with the bodies that had suffered little real damage. He patted his sister's head and moved on to his favourite one of them all: Iermo Juvihern—his only friend, and probably the only reason he had been successful in wresting power from the Tamish governor.

Sevari had told the engineers to make Iermo as whole as possible and spare no expense. The dead revolutionary sported the same old uniform style that Sevari wore on these occasions. Every three days, a maintenance man would come and dust off Iermo, make sure his medals and cap brass were in perfect shape.

“Iermo, how goes it today?”

“We finally did it, didn't we? They are conceding. Sailing back to Tamarck.”

The routine never changed, but Sevari's smile and warmth was as genuine as the first day he had glimpsed these restored bodies. “Yes. The King of Tamarck's cabinet has allowed him to pull out.”

“They think these engines are a passing fad, eh?”

“They don't know what they are leaving behind.”

There was a faint whirring, gears grinding, while Iermo cocked his head. “I see things sometimes, Till. Sometimes I think it is the future, what we made. But other times, I think it is some ghost. A grimace of history itself, as if none of my life ever happened.”

“Iermo, it is normal to become so confused with life.” His tone became haughty and pedantic.

“It wasn't what we wanted. My hallucinations, I mean. I saw executions and you shaking hands with the king of Tamarck himself. You gave it to him, Till. Is that going to happen?”

“No, Iermo. Blightcross District is its own autonomous nation. It always will be.”

“We will defend it. Even the Hex. It is all ours.”

Sevari nodded and clapped his hand onto the living mannequin's shoulder. “That is the best part, my friend. Now we are fully secure.” He made sure to leave out certain facts—things that Iermo's living corpse could not process. “The worldspirits have caught us in their movement, their silent weaving.”

“Always with these damned spirits, Till.” Iermo began to stutter, then recovered after his respirator chuffed. “It'll be the end of it all. It was about the people, Till. Forget about these worldspirits. Things just happen as they happen; there is nothing behind any of it.”

Sevari had heard that same sentence several times before during his pilgrimages. “You could be right, Iermo. Luckily I was also speaking of our dream. Remember it?”

“Yes, of course.”

“It is done.”

“Really?” The thing's eyes brightened, and more than should have been possible given its state of living death. “Bring me to see it, comrade.”

“Maybe in time. There are still some last minute additions. It needs a mind.”

“You have discovered a way to give it one?”

“Of course. You told me that my pursuit of the worldspirit was nonsense. Here is where we reap the rewards.”

And, once Helverliss capitulated, The Autonomous Naartland District of Blightcross would dominate the ethereal as well as the physical. A new centre of power— neither the dispersed concentration of
vihs
that the Ehzeri used to be, nor the industrial giant of Yahrein, but their ultimate synthesis...

Never again would anyone be able to repeat the horrible war that had driven him to this grotesque attempt to cope.

He knew it was insane, but that didn't mean it wasn't comforting.

Helverliss could see only the painting, its black glare from inside the case just a few steps out of his grasp. Everything else was shut behind a greyness. His bare feet felt tacky in the congealed blood puddle in which he stood. He would have laughed at the rubber sheet they had put under him if he were capable of laughter.

At some point during Sevari's torture—perhaps around four-hundred lashes—he had broken out in hysterical laughter. But it couldn't last forever, and now he was simply existing, bled of any emotive substance.

The bastards... the bastards...

Reversal, reunited with his prized work but not in the way he wanted...

He spat a blood clot to the floor and began to realize that it was all futile. Everything he'd ever done.

They wanted the painting? They wanted to know what horrible secrets lay beneath the canvas?

He grinned. The pain itself bled away. It bled away because Helverliss was losing any connection to the scarred thing he watched in the reflection of the glass cases. It bled away because Sevari had orchestrated his own doom, and ultimately, despite his crippling depression and self-imposed distance from reality, Helverliss could only take satisfaction in becoming the instrument of Sevari's downfall.

A nice reversal, Sevari. J am with my paintings.

He bent to pick up the note pad, dropped it twice between stiff bloody fingers, and began to scrawl.

The complex signifier he scrawled nearly matched the one he had placed inconspicuously in the corner of the painting. Had he been meant, by some strange process, to do this? The decision to tame the power using these signifiers that were beyond language itself, could represent it in its totality, had puzzled him. At the time he had not thought that he would need to access the shadow beings by any means other than
vihs
manipulation.

Now he saw why.

All he needed now was to finish the last few strokes that would open up a void between his symbol and the one marking the painting. The metalanguage, the thing that the cutting-edge theorists ridiculed, the rip in reality that he could effect with mere pen strokes...