Shadows of Self (28 page)

The scent marked him as a pilgrim upon this holy ground, and he passed among the penitent seeking forgiveness on his way to the altar. The air of the place was odd tonight. Solemn. Yes, the temple was a place of contemplation, but it should also be a place of joy. Where were the hymns, sung in a holy slur? Where was the laughter, the joyful noise of celebration?

Not good,
he thought as he settled onto one of the pews—in this case a rough, circular table with scriptures carved into it, like
Mic is a total git
and
The sausages is rubbish
. He’d always liked that one. It brought up real theological implications, it did. If the food they ate was trash, were they ultimately trash? Were they all nothing in the end? Or should one instead see even trash as something to be elevated, as it had been created by the God Beyond like everything else?

Wayne settled back in his seat and drew a few looks from nearby tables. As a lovely young conventicalist in a plunging top passed by carrying mugs, he took her arm. “I’ll haaave…” he blinked. “Ahll have some whiskey.” He had the accent and tone of a man who had been very,
very
pious already this night.

The maid shook her head and continued on her way. Those nearby ignored him. Wayne closed his eyes and listened to their prayers.

“They’re just gonna let us starve. You heard the governor, Ren. All he cares about is his rusting reputation.”

“We’re supposed to have the good life. Harmony made this land for us all. But do we get to enjoy it? No. Its riches only mean that the fine folk get more outfits and big houses.”

“Something needs to change in this city. I ain’t out of work like those fellows at the steel mill, but Harmony…”

“Sixteen-hour shifts. I leave before my little girl gets up, and she’s in bed before I get back. See her once a week, I do.”

“We work and die so we can give it all up to the same people. They own the building we live in. Ain’t that the scam? Work for them all day, then give it all back at night for the privilege of bein’ able to survive another day to keep workin’.”

Weighty prayers, those were.

Wayne kicked back away from his table and walked to the altar at the front of the room, with its bottles on the rack behind shining in the light. Gas lights. Real traditional, this temple was. He settled down at the altar between a fellow with suspenders and another with arms so hairy he had to have some bear in him. Grandfather, at least.

“Whhiskey,” Wayne said to the priest behind the altar.

The man gave him a cup of water with a lemon in it instead. Rusts. Might have laid the accent on a little too thick. Wayne settled back, sipping his water.

The men here at the altar, they didn’t complain. They just stared, holding their cups. Wayne nodded. Those were silent prayers, the kind that you could read in their eyes. He reached out and plucked the cup from the next man’s hands and gave it a sniff. Plain rum. What fun was that?

He reached over to bear-fur and plucked his drink from his fingers as well, and gave it a sniff. Both men turned toward him as he downed the rest of his water, then mixed their drinks together in his cup. He gave it a squeeze of his lemon and a pinch of sugar from behind the altar, then added some ice, placed a coaster on top, and shook like his life depended on it. Which it might, since the fellow with rugs on his arms had just stood up and cracked his knuckles.

Before he could start pounding, Wayne spun a cup toward each man and settled back in thought. The cups settled into place, and the altar fell silent. Hesitant, the men reached out and tried their drinks. Suspenders tried his first.

“
Wow
,” the man said. “What did you do?”

Wayne didn’t reply, tapping the table with one finger as hairy-arms tried his drink and nodded appreciatively. Living among the fancy folk had taught Wayne a few things. Fancy folk couldn’t ever do anything the ordinary way. Sometimes he thought they acted strange just so they wouldn’t be like regular folk.

But they
did
know how to get drunk. He’d give them that.

The priest came over to investigate the disturbance, but both men just wanted more of what Wayne had made. The priest listened to them try to explain it, and then nodded—looked like he’d worked some fancy parties, or had some rich folk come in.

Wayne slipped something onto the altar. A couple of bullet casings.

“What’s this?” the priest asked, setting down the cup he’d been wiping. “Is this … is this
aluminum
?”

Wayne stood up and gathered a few things from behind the altar, then piled them in the priest’s arms. He had ice, fortunately, from a delivery earlier. That was getting cheaper and cheaper these days, with shipments down from the mountains. The fellow also had a nice collection of spirits and some fixings. Enough for Wayne to make do.

Wayne pointed for the man to follow him, then began working his way through the room. He stopped at each table, taking their drinks and reworking them. Those with beer got juice or soda water, mixed carefully and transformed. He always left them with something like what they’d started with, but new. Fresh. He added ginger to some—worked real nice with lemon—and bitters to others. He tried to use something from every table, and only got cussed at a couple of times. Before too long, he had the temple feeling far more companionable. In fact, he’d drawn something of a crowd.

The group cheered as he settled down at a table in front of a tall, pretty woman with large eyes and long fingers. The drink he made for her wasn’t actually anything special—gin and lime, with some soda water and a hint of sugar—but the secret ingredient … well, that
was
something special. A pouch of blue powder he’d found at the party earlier that night. He’d traded some sand for it.

He mixed the powder into the drink with a hidden twist of the fingers, shaking, before finally adding the lime. As he slid the cup in front of the woman, the drink’s blue liquid swirled and moved, then blushed to a deep violet, the color moving through it like growing mists.

Those around him hushed in awe, and the woman smiled at him. He gave her a grin back. He was taken, yes, but he needed to keep practicing his flirtin’ or Ranette was likely to start ignoring him.

And then the skin of the woman’s cheeks shifted to
blue,
then
violet,
just like the drink had. Wayne jumped back from the table as her skin returned to normal. She took the drink with a sly smile and sipped at it. “Nice,” she said, “but I usually like something with more kick to it.”

The others in the temple were retreating to their pews. They’d enjoyed the show, but were looking forward to enjoying their liquor even more. They didn’t seem to have noticed what the woman’s skin had done. Perhaps Wayne had been mistaken. He hesitantly took the seat back and looked at the woman, whose eyes—clear as daylight—shifted from blue to violet, then once again to blue.

“Well hang me,” Wayne said. “You’re that immortal, ain’t you?”

“Sure am,” she said, sipping her drink and holding out her hand for him to shake. “Name’s MeLaan. Waxillium told me to say ‘all yellow pants’ to prove it. You did well here tonight. When I first arrived, I felt like the place was going to burst from all the anger. You might have stopped a riot.”

“It’s just one pub,” Wayne said, shaking her hand, then settling back in his chair. “One outta hundreds. If a riot is brewin’, I can’t stop it with some girly drinks.”

“True, I suppose.”

“What I need to do,” Wayne said, “is get the whole
city
drunk.”

“Or, you know, advocate workers’ rights to bring down working hours, improve conditions, and meet a base minimum of pay.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Wayne said. “That too. But if I could get
everybody
drunk, think how much happier this city would be.”

“So long as you get
me
drunk first, I’d be fine with it.” She held out her cup to him. “Top a lady off, will you?”

Wayne frowned. “Now, this ain’t right. You’re some kinda demigod or something. Shouldn’t you be moralizin’ at me?”

“Lo, behold,” MeLaan said, wiggling her cup, “bring an offering to your deity in the form of one blue sunset, extra gin. And ye shall be blessed.”

“I think I can do that,” Wayne said. “Bloody hell, maybe I
am
religious after all.”

*   *   *

The immortal demigod took a throaty slurp of her beer, then slammed the mug down onto the table, grinning like a four-year-old who had been paid in cookies to rat out her sister. Wax studied her as she looked Wayne in the eyes and let out a belch that could have woken the dead. Beside Wax, Wayne nodded in appreciation, looking quite impressed. He then downed his own beer and belched back at MeLaan, easily twice as long and loud.

“How do you
do
that?” MeLaan asked.

“Years of trainin’ and practice,” Wayne said.

“I’ve been alive for well over half a millennium,” MeLaan said. “I am
certain
I have more practice than you.”

“You don’t have the
will
, though,” Wayne said, wagging his finger. “You gotta
want
it.” He downed the rest of his mug and let out a protracted belch.

Marasi, who sat next to Wax in their booth at the pub, looked horrified by the exchange. Wax had allowed her to drive them here, if only so he could rebind his wound and check it over. The painkillers were doing their job, though. He could barely feel the hit.

After the short ride, he and Marasi had walked in on these two in the middle of their belching … contest? Wax wasn’t certain if it was a contest, or more a matter of mutual appreciation, like two virtuosos playing their favorite songs.

MeLaan finished her beer, then dramatically held up her hand. The palm split, forming lips, which then let out a soft belch.

“Cheating,” Wayne said.

“Just using what Father gave me,” MeLaan said. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t belch out of other body parts if you could.”

“Well,” Wayne said, “now that you mention it, I
can
make a real interestin’ sound wif—”

Wax cleared his throat. “Not to defer a conversation about which parts of Wayne’s body can and can’t make noise, but I have to admit that you aren’t what I expected, Your Grace.”

“Bloody hell,” MeLaan said. “Please don’t call me that.”

“You’re a servant of Harmony,” Wax said.

“I’m from one of the later generations,” MeLaan said. “In kandra terms, I’m basically still a kid.”

“You lived through the Catacendre,” Wax said. “You knew the Originators.”

“I spent the Catacendre underground,” MeLaan said. “I was an adolescent, and didn’t know the land when it was covered in ash. You really don’t need to be intimidated by me.”

“You’re over
six hundred
years old,” Marasi said.

“So is dirt,” MeLaan said. She leaned forward. “Look, I’m just here to help. If you want someone to fawn over, I’ll send VenDell or one of the really ancient ones to you. They like it. I just want to see Paalm stopped, then helped.”

Wax leaned forward on the table. He could sense in the way MeLaan smiled at people passing by—the way she tapped her finger to the tavern song a group of drunk men sang in the corner—that she liked people. She liked being here, among them. She wasn’t aloof, as he’d expected, or withdrawn. Not even that alien, despite the fact that she’d just made a mouth in her hand. “You’re the one who brought me my earring,” he said, fingering his ear with its tiny spike. “All those years ago.”

MeLaan’s smile widened. “I was wearing the same body, but I’m still surprised you remember.”

“And whose body is it?” Marasi asked. “Where did you get those bones?”

“I made them,” MeLaan said, raising her chin. Her face went transparent, suddenly, revealing the skull underneath—one made of carved crystal of a vivid emerald color. “I prefer True Bodies, though if I need to I can take another form. I’ll warn you, as far as kandra go, I’m only so-so at impersonation.”

“And this one we’re huntin’?” Wayne asked. He’d started building a houselike tower using the thin wooden coasters strewn around the tavern table, balancing them on their ends.

“Paalm?” MeLaan said, turning her face back to normal. “She was one of our best. Of all the kandra I know, only TenSoon is better at it than she is.”

“But she’ll be erratic,” Wax said. “She’s gone mad. That should help us spot her, even in disguise, right?”

“Maybe,” MeLaan said, grimacing. She took a few of the coasters and started her own tower. “Paalm is good, and imitation … well, it’s kind of
ingrained
in us, particularly the older kandra who worked back in the days of the Final Empire. Some of them don’t feel like they have personalities of their own; they don’t know how to live unless they’re being someone else.”

“You seem to find the idea disturbing,” Wax said, curious.

“I’m a youngster,” she said with a shrug. “Never really had to serve the Lord Ruler. I’ve always served Harmony, who seems like a generally nice fellow.”

An odd way to refer to God. Wax glanced at Marasi, who cocked an eyebrow at him and shrugged. Around them, the pubgoers chattered with a low hum of energy and enthusiasm. Wax and the others had settled into a secluded booth at the side. The warm gas lighting was somehow friendlier, more alive than the electric lights back at his mansion.

“All right,” Wax said to MeLaan. “Let’s talk about what Bleeder can do. And about how to kill her.”

“You don’t need to kill her,” MeLaan said quickly, getting her tower to a second story. She glanced at Wayne, who already had his up to three levels. “Just remove her remaining spike, which will basically immobilize her. She’s confused; we can deal with her once we have her in custody.”

“Confused?” Wax said. “She killed a priest by
nailing him through the eyes
.”

MeLaan’s smile faded. “She only has one spike. She’s not thinking straight.”

“Yes,” Wax said, “but she pulled the other spike out herself, right?”

“We think so,” MeLaan admitted. “We’re weaker than other Hemalurgic creatures. Only two spikes, and we can be taken. So she removed one.”