Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [90]
The magician leaned back again, in no particular hurry to get down to specifics. The city fell away quickly here, to vague silver and gray lands stretching flat and away toward Ocean, invisible at the horizon. Strange winds and smells were astir. Cinnamyrtle and isolarch haunted the nose.
The fire had been built on a high terrace, in a crumbling depression of stone that Gregorian called a “whale wallow.” Like all of Ararat, it was heavily eroded. Hooks protruded from rounded walls, their purpose lost. Rooms were choked with coral and mud. Fag ends of braided cables and the ribs of sea creatures jutted from among the barnacles. Here and there sheets of adamantine stood exposed, perfect and incorruptible. But these Perimeter Defense retrofits were rare, jarring intrusions in the aged city.
The bureaucrat leaned back against a carbon-whisker strut. The chains that shackled him to it rattled when he moved. To one side he could see into the command room with its stacked crates of food and survival gear. To the other, he could look out into the wide and windy world. At his back he felt the empty streets, narrow and dark, staring at him. “I want to take you up on your offer,” he said.
Lazily Gregorian said, “Now what offer do you mean?”
“I want to be your apprentice.”
“Oh, that. No, that was never meant seriously. It was intended to make you confident enough to chase me here, that was all.”
“Nevertheless.”
“You don’t know what’s involved, little brother. I might ask you to do anything, to—oh, crucify a dog, say. Or assassinate a stranger. The process changes you. I might even order you to fuck old Pouffe. Would you be willing to do that? Right here and now?”
Pouffe sat opposite the two of them, his back to the land. His face was puffy and unhealthy in the window light. His eyes were two dim stars, unblinking. The bureaucrat hesitated. “If necessary.”
“You’re not even a convincing liar. No, you must remain as you are, chained to that strut. You must stay there until the tides come. And then you must die. There is no way out. Only I could release you, and my will is unwavering.”
They both fell silent. The bureaucrat imagined he could hear Ocean, soft as a whisper in the distance.
“Tell me,” Gregorian said, “do you think that any haunts have survived into the current age?”
Surprised, the bureaucrat said, “You sent your father the head of one.”
“That? Nothing but a cheap trick I brewed up with what remains of Korda’s old lab equipment. I had all these rich old corpses left over from my money-raising endeavors, and it seemed a good use for one. But you—they tell me you spoke with a fox-headed haunt back in Cobbs Creek. What do you think? Was it real? Be honest now, there’s no reason not to.”
“They told me it was a nature spirit—”
“Bah!”
“But … Well, if he wasn’t one of your people in a mask, then I can’t imagine what else he could have been. Other than an actual haunt. He was a living being, that much I’m sure of, as solid as you or me.”
“Ahhhh.” The groan rested uneasily somewhere between satisfaction and pain. Then, casually, Gregorian drew an enormous knife from his belt. Its blade was blackened steel, its hilt elfinbone. “He’ll be ready now.”
Gregorian walked over to Pouffe, and crouched. He cut a long sliver of flesh from the old shopkeeper’s forehead. It bled hardly at all. The flesh was faintly luminous, not with the bright light of Undine’s iridobacteria but with a softer, greenish quality. It glowed in the magician’s fingers, lit up the inside of his mouth, and disappeared. He chewed noisily.
“The feverdancers are at their peak now. Ten minutes earlier and they’d still be infectious. An hour later and their toxins will begin to break down.” He spat out the sliver into his palm, and cut it in two with his knife. “Here.” He held one