Bone and Jewel Creatures (12 page)

This did not prevent some from dying untreated, of course, and soon Messaline fluttered with stinking pigeons and swarmed with necrotic rats. The river fouled and only covered cisterns stayed safe for drinking—though some must, perforce, drink the river water or go thirsty. And still Bijou’s bone and jewel creatures brought her more and more of the dead and dying.

Bijou’s unquiet loft hummed with people—the comings and goings of Brazen’s household, the child’s jackal wardens like ghosts about the garden, the sick. And, more and more, it was also busy with the recovering. Once healing had begun, many of those returned to assist with the still-sick. Lazybones hid in the attics so that Bijou hardly even heard it. The street before Bijou’s house, and for yards in every direction, took on the aspect of a fair.

The first treated animal to be released was the cat, new forelimbs silenced cunningly with tiny leather pads upon the toes. Bijou carried it to the back garden wall and set it down, stroking its ears when it twined her ankles. “Go on,” she said. “Be about your business.”

As if the work she and Brazen had put into it and its brethren had made them, like her Artifices, capable of understanding her speech, the cat looked at her, meowed condescendingly, looked away again, and with a smooth leap mounted the garden wall.

Two hours later, it returned with the neck of a fluttering undead pigeon gripped in its teeth, the bird shedding gobs of putrescence and pecking at its eyes.

“Oh thank you,” Bijou said. “Just what I wanted.”

As she lurched forward, Brazen burst from her loft, a parchment fluttering from his fingers like a fan. By its freight of ribbons and wax, she knew the source even before he called, “Bijou! I am summoned to speak before the Bey!”

Brazen went alone, on foot, so as to seem humble. He went with the dawnlight, Iashti’s time, for a good beginning. He went in sandals and plain robes, so as to seem scholarly, but though his turban was coarse black cloth, still he wound it seven times. And having wound it, and made his sash tight, he also divested himself of all weapons.

When he presented himself before the
kapikulu
guarding the Bey’s gates, they searched him as carefully as he had anticipated, but they did not demand his letter of invitation before allowing him passage. It served as a small reassurance that his star had not yet fallen irretrievably.

Such things could change very fast, when it came to politics. But it seemed that they had not changed
yet
.

The Young Bey sat upon a gilt platform amid silken rugs and mirrored cushions, a tray resting at his right hand upon a low cradle.
Kapikulu
stood like skirted statues at every corner of the room, their coats as stark as the marble floor.

Aware of their gaze, and the attention of the Young Bey, Brazen lowered himself to the stones, swished the skirts of his linen robes out from under his knees, and crept forward. He thought of the jackal-child as he slid his palms across cold marble, tracing pewter-and-black veins. When his fingertips touched the edge of the platform, he paused and touched the floor with the peak of his turban.

“Your excellence,” he said. “Your unworthy servant begs your indulgence.”

“Face me,” the Bey said. Brazen pushed himself back onto his suffering knees.

“At your command,” he said, so the Bey rolled his eyes at him.

“Come, sit,” the Bey said. “And pour the coffee. Let us set aside formalities today, Brazen, and be men who were once teacher and student.”

Though he called himself a man, the Bey’s hands were as smooth as his cheeks, or the silken pillows he rested his backside on. Those hands lay upon his knees as Brazen edged up the stairs, careful never to turn his back. He sat one step below the Bey, off the cushions, and reached to pour two tiny cups of tarry coffee. The smell rising with steam from the cups was so rich and bitter it made his eyes water. There were sweets also, layered heaps of nuts and honey and threads of pastry.

Brazen served two to the Bey and chose one for himself, lifting it on a cloth napkin once the Bey had taken a bite of his own. This was a gesture of great trust, and a subtle message. The Bey had spoken as if man to man, and taken food from his hand. This conversation was not one of a subject to his ruler, but rather one between two acquaintances.

That also implied that the Bey did not anticipate that he would be able to offer any assistance, which did not surprise Brazen at all. But first there were pleasantries to be dispensed with, and so they were. And there was coffee to be sipped, and so it was.

And finally the Bey leaned down close to Brazen’s ear and spoke softly, for his hearing alone. “You have come to beg assistance against Kaulas the Necromancer.”

“It is a formality,” Brazen said.

“My advisors will not hear of interfering in a Wizard war.”

“That is as I told my old master,” Brazen said. “Also, that Kaulas set your father in his place, and when in that service he placed the Council, he placed men loyal to himself.”

The Bey sat back, a grim smile twisting his lips. “So you will understand when I tell you that I cannot give you men, or any succor or comfort when you brace him.”

“I will understand many things,” Brazen agreed. He bit down on pastry, though it might as well have been a swallow’s nest for all the pleasure it gave him. Brushing crumbs from his beard gave him a moment to school his expression. “I understand that a man faces many difficulties in life, and he cannot always choose how he meets them.”

“It is true,” the Bey said. “True and yet a source of sorrow for all devout men. Still, a great service may be remembered with gratitude.”

“Indeed,” said Brazen. “Or disquiet, in gratitude’s failure.”

Bijou knew from Brazen’s stride, from the swirl of his robes about his ankles and the way his sandals hit the floor, that the conversation with the Bey had gone no better than anticipated. But because it was expected, she laid down her corruption-soaked tools and stepped back from the current cadaver, holding fouled hands wide. “Well?” she said.

Brazen’s sigh was gusty enough that Bijou half-thought she should feel it across the loft. He broke his stride and folded his arms, choosing to stand well back from her work table.

“He says that if we kill Kaulas for him, he’ll try not to hold the favor against us.”

“Oh,” Bijou said.

Brazen nodded. “Yes. That went about as well as I expected. So what now?”

Bijou nodded to the deliquescing carcass pinned before her. “We chase Kaulas from his den, my dear one.”

Maybe now the old creature trusts the cub to return. At least, she has made the new-creatures—the ones that carry scimitars and stand as still as doors—allow the cub and the mother and the brothers-and-sisters to come and go as they please. And where they please to come and go is to and from the stinking den of the enemy.

The cub—and the mother—understand now that the old creature and her allies are pack, or at least they are pack as one might find pack in the dry season, when the lions are lean and will hunt even jackals, if they can get them. So they do what jackals do best, and at the edge of the enemy’s territory ghost from crevice to shadow, waiting for what he will do.

The cub is most tireless of the sentries, along with the mother. The mother seems to have chosen it, to rely upon its judgment now as she did not before, and this makes the cub lift its chest with pride. If the cub had a ruff and proper ears, they would be puffed up.

Instead, it leans its shoulder on the mother’s shoulder as they crouch in the shadow of a vine-hung wall out of eyeshot of the enemy’s den, but within range by even the cub’s crippled sense of smell. The cub presses its face under her neck in submission and gratitude. The mother—warm, richly scented and soft—stretches her neck and turns her head, returning the caress. And then they wait, and try to avoid the notice of the occasional vicious dead things that shamble or flutter through increasingly-deserted streets.

And wait some more, through lingering evenings and still-sharp days.

It so happens that when the enemy at last emerges from his den, the cub and the mother are crouched under that very arbor. The enemy comes forth on the last day of autumn, which falls exactly between the equinox and the solstice, in the grey light before the sun breaks over the horizon and begins sending its red fingers seeking between the walls of Messaline. On another day, the markets would be bustling in the morning cool, but some premonition must have stolen into the stall-keepers in their beds. Because the progress of the enemy’s reeking army through the streets is met by silence, barred doors and vacant streets, and heralded only by the stench of corpses and the long strides of jackals running before him.

Bijou had never heard the city jackals howl before. Certainly the jackals of the river, the ones she knew from her childhood, were anything but silent, so she knew they must be able to yip and cry and converse. But the jackals who lived within Messaline were next to ghosts, silent as shadows. So to hear their concerted cries in the street jerked her upright in her bed. Beyond the alcove curtain, Hawti rang like a carnival as it strode towards the door.

Bijou groped for her spectacles, balancing them on her nose while struggling her feet to the floor.

She did not need to ask. She stood, rocking to her feet—perhaps the urgency of crisis was not a panacea after all. The previous day’s robes hung over her vanity stool. She shrugged them on, thrusting buttons through holes with an aching thumb, and faced herself in her mirror, where she made her face stern and empty.

Of course, he had waited for Kaalha’s season to pass, and Vajhir’s to begin. At least it was winter and not the killing summer. But he must have begun his campaign then.

Bijou stared at herself sternly in the mirror, and tucked her hammer in her sash before she went out to face the Necromancer, brushing past the
kapikulu
at her front door as if they were no more than cords of hanging coins
and crystals.