Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey (40 page)

“He probably heard the same rumor I did, that a hideous giant had been found floating in the Danube.”

“And why are
you
following me?”

“I think I might be able to explain now that we are here.”

“What do
you
know of this place?” he asked.

“This place may be the answer to why I have followed you so far.” The words were directed at Heraclix, but the tone was introspective. Her eyes were on her surroundings, her thoughts elsewhere. She was, in a word, diffuse.

Heraclix looked at the blackened pile in the middle of the room. The center was mostly ash, with the occasional piece of charred but not fully consumed furniture. A chair leg here, a small section of board there. A few pieces of mirrored glass caught the candlelight.

Vadoma produced a few more candles from one of the satchels she carried. She lit them from the flames of the already-burning candles. The added light permitted closer investigation by both gypsy and giant, both of who circled the pile of refuse.

“Why were you weeping when I found you?” Vadoma asked.

“Because I knew who lived here, and I thought the worst for one I considered a friend.”

“Friend?” Vadoma says with a bit of surprise. “Well, I will tell you that I knew him long before I ever met you, if my suspicions are . . . Ha!”

She knelt down at the edge of the pile and began digging with her hands. She examined each handful, casting some behind her, setting others aside. After sorting through several handfuls, she slowed, putting her face down close to the refuse. She carefully cleared soot and debris with the tip of a finger. Suddenly, she thrust a hand down into the pile and, with a triumphant yelp, wrenched something free and held it aloft with a broad smile.

“Ha! I’m right! It’s him!”

The object at first appeared to be a simple stick. But, drawing closer, Heraclix saw the thing’s smooth surface and the lightness of it in Vadoma’s hands. She scrubbed at the black surface to reveal a patch of white bone under soot.

“You can see the cut marks, here at the wrist!” she exclaimed. “this is him!”

“Vladimir Porchenskivik,” Heraclix said flatly, unsure of how to read her tone.

“That was his name?”

“Yes,” Heraclix said with deep sadness. He didn’t care whether or not she approved at this point. “That was his name. Tell me, how did you know him? Then, please explain why you have been following me this long time.”

“I have already told you the answer to your second question. I followed you
here
to
be
here. I had an old debt to settle, but it appears I am too late now.”

“And since you have led me here and given me his name, I will answer your first question.”

“We Romani move. It is in our blood. We are an independent people. We value our liberty and don’t like to be tied down to any one place. Every land is our homeland. We are a nation—or nations—of vagabonds.

“My family was no exception. Some time ago, when I was much younger, we were uprooted from our admittedly temporary home halfway between here and Sofia. This was an unfortunate time to have to move. I sensed forebodings about our journey as we loaded up our belongings. Not that I would miss the place we were leaving. We were never really welcome there, though we kept to ourselves and lived peaceably for several years. No, it wasn’t any sense of forthcoming homesickness. It was just a sick feeling, like something was bound to go wrong.

“We discovered early on that there was much tumult in the regions round about. An irregular army of Serbs had the notion that there was something for the taking there. But it was a poor region, and it remains so. The Serbs found little by way of wealth, but they were already mobilized, so they took all that was left: dignity, virtue, and life, usually in that order.

“The Serbs had set up checkpoints along many of the major roads, so we crept along back roads and mountain paths, hoping to avoid them until we could find refuge in a more civilized area, in a city. But in the mountains, not far south of this place, we found trouble. Or, rather, trouble found us.

“My parents heard the horses approaching and told us to run into the woods off the pathway. We did, but didn’t go far. We watched. We saw what they did to our father, then to our mother. I don’t remember the men’s faces. I only remember their taunting voices, their laughter, their grunts.” Vadoma held up the bone: “And their hands.” She looked at Heraclix’s left hand, the hand that was once the Serb’s.

“One of them was that hand, Heraclix. ‘
Osvetnik
,’ ‘Avenger.’”

“I . . . I am truly sorry,” he said.

“There is no need for sorrow. You are a victim as much as my parents. Besides, I have had enough of sorrow and pain.

“That day, he saw me. He was one of the last to leave my parents’ violated, murdered bodies on the road. My sister or I had made some kind of noise, I suppose, so he looked over into the woods where we thought we were hidden. We were
not
so well hidden. He saw me directly, looked straight into my eyes. At first, I was terrified. Then a strange numbness came over me. My parents were dead. We had nothing. I felt nothing. This was my way of dealing with the moment. When he finally tore his gaze from my own, he walked away with a puzzled look on his face. I wept. We wept, my sister and I, into the night until the wolves howled and we huddled around a small fire, protecting our parents’ remains from the scavengers.”

“I am truly sad for your loss,” Heraclix said.

Vadoma looked hard into his eyes. “Yes. I think you are genuinely sad for me. That big chest of yours is full of compassion.”

“I am finding that it was not always so.”

“No one remains the same, Heraclix. People are more complex than that. People change over time. That is why I’m here.”

“Because you changed?”

“Partly. But mostly because
he
changed.” She held up the bone again, running her fingers along the squared-off edge where the hand had been removed.

“The man I knew,” Heraclix said, “wasn’t the man you knew.”

“No, the man you knew was the man that had grown out of the one I first knew. Not a different man, a changed man.

“Many years later I had the chance to meet him again. We were traveling through Bozsok. My sister was very sick. I thought she
might die. None of the cures my grandmother had taught me could help her. While in the village, we overheard some of the villagers talking about the hermit who lived in the mountains. Some said he was a madman. Others said he was a miracle man. I thought we might as well seek out this person, which we did. We found him both a madman and a miracle worker.”

“You recognized him?” Heraclix asked.

“Not at first. As I said, I didn’t remember the faces of my parents’ killers. But when he laid his one hand on my sister, I recognized that hand. It all came back to me full force, the memory did. But he healed my sister. It was as if he drew the very sickness out of her body. She fully recovered in a matter of minutes.

“Curiously, he never recognized me. Or, if he did, he didn’t let on about it.”

“My sister thanked him, and we left. She hadn’t seen the man when our parents had been killed. She had no idea who he was. But she was cured. I didn’t feel the need to tell her the truth of the matter.”

“So when you examined my palm . . .” Heraclix said.

“Yes, I recognized Porchenskivik’s hand. The overwritten tattoo didn’t fool me. I would have known it anywhere.”

Heraclix became aware that he had involuntarily moved the hand behind him. The sense of shame that he felt indicated that the hand wasn’t acting autonomously. He had hidden it, even if semiconsciously. He tested the indication by forcing the hand out from behind his back. It came naturally, a willing part of him. But the shame remained. He felt he should keep the hand visible, however, as a sort of penance.

“You don’t have to hide that,” Vadoma said.

“But it must be as painful for you to see as it is for me to show it. More so, even.”

“When I read your palm, Heraclix, I saw that the hand no longer belonged to Porchenskivik. The lines on the palm are distinctive. Past and future were radically different.”

“Then the lines determine my fate?” Heraclix asked.

“No. You make choices that determine the lines, my friend. Fate has little to do with it.”

“You don’t think it was fate that brought us here?”

“No. I followed you, remember? Now I . . . wait a moment.”

She knelt down again and examined a corner of unburnt paper that was sticking out of the very edge of the ash heap. She carefully pulled the paper out of the ashes. She discovered that it was actually a pair of papers, loosely rolled together. The outer paper was surprisingly intact, browned from heat but not consumed. It adhered to the other page slightly, until Vadoma peeled them apart. The mirror image of some hastily scrawled, illegible writing showed on the inner paper, where the two were stuck together. The author had been in a hurry to wrap one paper inside the other, so much so that the ink had not even dried on the outer manuscript.

The outside document looked very familiar. It was a rough diagram of Porchenskivik’s hand. Not as detailed as the one that Pomp had discovered at Mowler’s apartment, but very similar to it.

The inner document was made of sturdy parchment with handwriting in a florid script, carefully crafted in a formal manner. The words were faint, but Heraclix and Vadoma could make them out, just barely. Heraclix read the words out loud over Vadoma’s shoulder:

          
Most honorable Pasha,

              
I gratefully received news regarding your acceptance of the terms set forth in my previous communication. You should be prepared to act in full force by next winter. This will give you more than adequate time to be ready, though events have been progressing more swiftly than I could have ever hoped. Soon, sooner than you expect, you will be called a hero by the subjects of the Ottoman throne. Remember our agreement. We are confederate.

Truly,

Graf Viktor Von Edelweir.

“Fate or chance, this letter makes my arrival in Vienna even more urgent. I must be swift! Vadoma, farewell!”

“Wait!” she called out. “I want to help. How can I help?”

Heraclix thought for a moment. “Go toward Istanbul. Ask until you find the Agha Beyruit Al Mahdr. Tell him of what we have discovered here. He will know what to do next, I’m sure.”

“I will make haste,” she said.

On his way toward the trapdoor, Heraclix stopped. “I had all but forgotten about him,” he said, looking at the assassin’s body. He bent down and picked up the scimitar, turning it in the candlelight.

“It’s coated with silver,” he said. He removed the sheath from the man’s body, sheathed the sword, and slid it under his belt. “He knew what he was doing.”

“And we know what we must do, friend Heraclix. Make haste!”

C
HAPTER
27

P
omp has to go home to warn them of what’s coming. Her falsified “Mowler attacks!” is not false anymore. He will attack, and she must raise the alarm!

The city shimmers, folds, gives way to the flower-painted hillsides of Faerie. Nothing has changed, except for the absence of Doribell and Ilsie, who will never return to these fair meadows.

Gloranda is there, as beautiful on the outside as she is ugly on the inside. Pomp doesn’t much like her anymore. Gloranda is, after all, an ignorant, possibly uncaring fairy. But she is family, and that is why Pomp is here now.

“Gloranda!” Pomp says with as much enthusiasm as she can muster.

“It’s me, Pomp. I have come to warn you of danger.”

Gloranda looks at her sister, then starts to laugh almost uncontrollably, rolling on the ground, holding her sides. Even the mirth has become painful, Pomp thinks. “Oh stop, my sister,” Gloranda begs, “That was a very funny joke!”

“It’s no joke,” Pomp says.

Now Gloranda doesn’t make a sound. Not because she is taking Pomp seriously. Because she is laughing so hard and so suddenly that she can hardly breathe.

Finally, she gasps her words out. “Ah, such good fun. Where are the twins?”