Soldiers of Paradise (42 page)

She shook her head. “I can’t stand the daylight.”

“It’s raining.”

“I can’t stand it.” The curtains were all drawn. “When I was asleep,” she whispered, “I could remember things so clearly. It was like a memory of Paradise—I used to lie in the cold darkness, and I could see the world hang suspended above me out of reach. And it was full of parties, and champagne, and dances, and men in shining uniforms, and servants bowing to the floor, like when I was a girl. The bishop’s palace all lit up, and the platters piled high with winter fruit, and the dancers skimming over the floor like birds. Then we used to ride home through the snow, and my father used to take the horses from the coachman just to scare us, because he used to drive them so fast, so reckless, the sleigh skidding and rattling until Mama cried out. And Jess and I sitting nestled in our furs, laughing and crying, and yelling, ‘Hold on tight!’ It’s not like that anymore.”

“Not much.”

“When I was young, we lived outside the walls, but the house collapsed when the snow melted. Do you remember, Thanakar? I was married from that house, and your father rode the most enormous stallion. Everybody said he was so handsome, and I was so proud because I’d been in suspense for weeks: Was he tall? Was he too hairy? I’d seen a portrait, but they always lie. And then when I saw him I was so relieved, but a little shy, too, because I wondered what he must be thinking. I suppose I was a pretty girl, but nothing exceptional, only my complexion was very good, Mama used to say.” The princess ran her hand over her cheek. “I’ve broken every mirror in this room,” she whispered, looking around.

“Everything changes.”

“He was very kind. So very kind. Only I took so long to be pregnant, and the doctor said I could only have just one, the weather was so bad. That was the eighteenth phase of winter. I must have carried you a thousand days. And I was healthy. My grandmother had had forty-one, and even my mother had had ten. That’s why it was terrible when you …”

“Yes,” said Thanakar. “It must have been a shock.”

“And after that your father changed. Oh, he was always so polite. So formal. He never raised his hand against me. Only, I think he had met some other women somewhere. I can’t think where.”

“He was a cruel man.”

She turned on him. “Don’t say that! You have no right to say that. You of all people. Cripple!” She spat the word out, as if it had been a sharp piece of stone in her mouth, hurting her tongue the whole time she was talking, and she was happy to be rid of it. She paused and sat back. “It seemed natural to blame you for his change of heart,” she said softly, leaning back against the headboard. “What mother could do otherwise?”

“It was a long time ago,” said Thanakar.

“Yes,” she agreed, after a pause. One of the policeman’s shoulders lay near her. She examined lines of red under her fingernails. “It’s hard to imagine such things ever seemed important. Will you take the motorcar?”

“The boat, I think. The roads are jammed. I’ll head for Caladon,” he said. “Along the shore. They must need doctors there.”

Thanakar stood up. He took a vial of white powder from his breast pocket. “Let me show you how to fix it yourself,” he said. “And there’s food in the refrigerator,” he said doubtfully, looking at the remains of the policeman.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll come with you for the first part. The passage underground. I know a way up to the temple. You understand. Vengeance sustains me. It will be my meat and drink. Your father and I were fooled out of our lives by lying priests. There is one who’ll wish he murdered us outright. Demiurge! Tonight I’ll touch your spleen.” She accompanied this peculiar threat with a peculiar cannibal gesture, gnawing at the tips of her bunched fingers.

As if woken by the name of vengeance, the antinomial raised his head and opened his eyes. They shone like pieces of blue ice. “Aspe,” he said. He breathed some notes into his flute, and then, unwinding the white scarf from around his neck, he wiped the instrument with it, caressing it gently, and breathing on it, and rubbing away the mark of fingerprints. From his belt he drew a wooden case. “He has arrived,” he said, and then he paused, frowning down at the instrument in his lap. “Biter Aspe,” he said, and then it was as if he had changed his mind, because he made a little sorrowful noise between his lips, and then he took the flute by its two ends and broke it in the middle like a stick, the glass splintering in his hands.

“Lunatics,” thought Thanakar, but it got worse. The man prepared himself for battle as if for a wedding. He stripped off his hospital clothes and stood naked in the middle of the floor, soaping his body and his hair while the princess eyed him thoughtfully. She commanded hot water to be brought for him in a basin. And Mrs. Cassimer fetched towels as far as the threshold, sobbing, hiding her face, holding her nose, and laid out a white shirt and some white trousers, which had been abandoned by the tallest servant. They fit. The antinomial was a small man for his race. Thanakar thought he must be half barbarian at least. His fantasy of vengeance had enslaved him. And there was something ceremonial in the way he dressed himself, the way he painted his lips, his eyelids, and his ears with blood from a bucket and drew a line of blood around his jaw. He poured hot water into a silver basin and shaved his head with the prince’s razor. And he painted tattoos on his empty palms, strange patterns of violence and good luck. Thanakar wondered where he had learned them.

The white scarf was his talisman. He used it to polish the blade of a hatchet, and then he knotted it around his neck. At noontime he put on his sunglasses, and stepped out onto the balcony, and stood staring towards the north gate, humming to himself. Thanakar went away to turn in his housekeys to the porter, and when he came back, the man was gone. “And thank God for that,” said Mrs. Cassimer, standing in the hallway. “Goodbye and amen.”

 

Far beneath the Starbridge palaces, a system of catacombs and canals spread out underneath the city. They were kept open even in springtime by ancient sluices and locks, and by a race of keepers still more ancient, still bound to their work by iron oaths long after so many servants had fled away. Even so, the tunnels and canals were rarely used. In winter, they were convenient when the streets were blocked with snow. Then families of Starbridges would keep great ceremonial barges and sleds with silver runners, and the long vaults were hung with chandeliers. Then too the crypts were always lit, for there was always a party down there somewhere, people gathering together for their return to Paradise, celebrating the end of their earthly duties. In winter, there were many funerals. By spring, whole wings of the palace stood empty; whole families had gone extinct. Perhaps a third of it was occupied, and underground, the chandeliers had long burned out. Yet still this race of boatmen kept to its work through flood and fire. And when the seasons changed, and the city grew up again, and the palaces whimpered with new life, returning princes and their progeny would find the system still intact.

No child of mine, thought Thanakar, half bitter, half relieved. He stood in the dark on Starbridge Keys, far below the level of the street, watching the boatman pole his shallow craft towards them out of the tunnel’s mouth. Lanterns hung above the prow and stern, and threw troubled yellow circles on the black water. The light shone dubiously on the boatman’s back—he was a bent, gaunt figure, unchanged since Thanakar’s youth. His head protruded down below the level of his shoulders at the end of his long neck, and it swung slowly like a pendulum as he peered to the right and to the left.

Mrs. Cassimer was muttering and complaining. “Shut up, fool,” whispered the princess.

“I don’t care, ma’am. I’ll say it again. It’s a crime to leave him there. He wants to be put into the vault, like his father. He won’t thank you for just leaving him, when you see him again. He wants a funeral like his father.”

“Old fool,” breathed the princess. “Prince Thanakar is dying. He will die in his own bed, and I will never see him anymore. As to where he dies, it makes no difference. Old fool, there is no life but this one: the one that Chrism stole from him and me. But I will be avenged.”

“I don’t care who says it, but that’s atheism, ma’am,” retorted the housekeeper. “Now I know you’ve been to hell and back. I don’t blame you. But it’s colored your way of thinking, ma’am, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

The princess gave her a contemptuous look and leapt from the pier into the boat as it drew up, almost upsetting it. The boatman jammed his pole into the wall and looked at her from under heavy eyebrows. She was an impressive sight, standing taut against the bowstem in a rich black robe, her long black hair, her lips painted black, an onyx ring in her left nostril standing out against the bloodless pallor of her cheek. Yellow lamplight soured her white skin, polluted the brilliance of her changing eyes, but even so she was impressive.

Thanakar stepped into the belly of the boat. Mrs. Cassimer handed in the girl and then got in herself, losing her balance and sitting down abruptly in the bilge. Thanakar sat also, but his mother stood upright in the bow, grasping the lantern pole. The boatman pushed off. He gave no word, no signal of greeting, or gesture of recognition, even though his race had been serving Thanakar’s for all of history, ever since Angkhdt gave the world to certain families.

The princess watched the lights diminish along the key and the darkness resolve around the circles of their lanterns. “I’m not sorry to leave,” she whispered.

“Nor I,” said Thanakar.

They passed into the tunnel’s stony throat, and the last lights disappeared. “Your father had great plans for you,” whispered the princess. “He was a strong man. At one time he almost forced a truce on Argon Starbridge. The Inner Ear rejected it. War has always served their purpose. Continual bloodshed keeps us weak. Otherwise we could not tolerate a man like Demiurge. Your father hated him. Your father had great plans. He could have made you bishop. The army loved him. At that time the parsons were still working on your tattoos, and the central panel of your right hand was still blank. Your father had written to the emperor for permission to have you consecrated, and Demiurge was afraid. He decided to destroy you, to make you an example.”

“Mother—I believe it was an accident.”

“It was not. I saw him throw you down. Chrism Demiurge has a ring with a poisoned barb. Once he cuts you with it, you never heal. Your bones rebel against your flesh. I didn’t find it until later—the tiniest puncture under your kneecap.”

“That doesn’t sound possible.”

“Quiet! What do you know about it? It broke your father’s heart. He had great ambitions.”

Thanakar laughed. “It’s just as well the way it is,” he said. “Lord Chrism had the bishop burned last night.”

“Yes. He burns them when they get too old. For a long time he has ruled through children.”

For a while they glided in silence through the still water, surrounded by hints of stonework in the dark and, from time to time, the carved entrances to other tunnels. Or at times the tunnel they were in would widen out, though the canal always maintained its width. Stone platforms would appear on either side, and small bridges arched overhead, barely clearing the tops of their lantern poles. They passed through underground temples, long disused, and Starbridge family shrines. Occasionally they would pass a kerosene taper still alight, burning among rows of tombs.

“He drank a lot,” whispered the princess. “And when they offered him the choice of dying young, he took it. The weather was so dreadful, you remember. It was a great honor. I urged him to do it. In those days I was very devout. A married woman’s life is so constrained.

“Do you remember, Thanakar? You were just home from school. It was the seventh of November, in the third phase of spring. Two young parsons came to the house, to put the needles in our arms and pump the ichor through our veins. Right away I knew it was a lie, as soon as I lay back. They had told us what to expect. Dreams within dreams, they said. But I could feel the cold in every part of me. It was a lie. Paradise! For fifty mortal months it was like lying at the bottom of this stream, watching the lights passing back and forth along the surface—perfectly conscious, Thanakar. Submerged in the icy dark with nothing but distorted memories to keep me sane. Is it any wonder that I’ve changed?”

It was no wonder. But Thanakar wasn’t listening. They were entering another section of the catacombs, rising through a sequence of shallow locks kept by uncles and cousins of their boatman—old men, silent and misshapen, peering down at them with lanterns in their hands. The light glinted on the machinery, and once they passed a scaffold and two men working on a wall of brazen cogwheels, replacing the belts. They stopped to peer down at the boat for an instant, and then bent back to their work again.

There was more light in these upper regions, closer to the street. It seeped down through the ventilator ducts. And the water was more turbid here because it was mixing with flood waters from the street. In some places the walls glowed as the water slid down from the holes in the vault, and the sugar spread out on the surface of the stream like phosphorescent oil. The air smelled of smoke. Other people, too, had found their way down from above, escaping fire or water. They sat shivering among the tombs.

So far the way was familiar to Thanakar. Eventually they would rise above the surface of the streets into the open air, to where a system of aqueducts would lead them to a Starbridge boathouse built on stilts above the riverbanks, out of reach of the flood. There larger boats—river craft and ocean-going launches—hung from slings below the floor. Most of these would already be gone. But Thanakar’s family still kept a boat there, a sleek narrow racer, useless in any storm.

But the boatman turned aside, down unfamiliar passages. It grew dark again, and the vaults were so low that they had to unstep the lanterns. “He follows my directions,” whispered the princess. “My way lies through the deepest crypts.” Her voice was swallowed by the sound of water being sucked away, for they had entered an ancient lock that plunged them down into the city’s labyrinthine bowels, deeper than Thanakar had ever been. And when at last the sluice gates opened up to let them through, the air seemed hot and rich and wet, and they were in a maze of tunnels overgrown with vegetation. Curtains of white tendrils hung down from the ceilings and brushed their faces as they passed, while the water was overgrown with algae, and lotus pads, and strange blanched lilies. Sometimes a pale fin would break the water, and far behind they could hear something splash and cry. Mrs. Cassimer sat speechless in the bottom of the boat, while in her lap, wide-eyed Jenny sucked her thumb.