The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [53]
Urkhan stood by the window, resplendent in a low-cut blue ball gown. Pearls hung about his wrinkled neck. His thin lips were pasted with thick red gloss. His sunken cheeks were rouged. His large, waxy ears were pierced; a diamond-studded ring was clipped through his right nostril. He glanced at them and covered his mouth with his fingers. His liver-spotted hands were adorned with rings and bracelets.
The room was full of old tea chests. There was not a single loose article in the room. Ashura's master was on the move.
He giggled. "Oh, not more presents, surely, oh he is such a generous patron, oh, do thank him, what is it this time?"
"Thank whom?" asked Paragrat, sweetly. Ashura just stared.
"Oh, that dear, dear man ― why does he wear such silly black drapery? He's such a darling. Tell him I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm all ready.
Where's the wagon, come, where's my coach?" Urkhan tottered towards them. His crabbed feet were strapped into ludicrous sequined, high-heeled bootees. A stiletto caught in the gap between two floorboards; he twisted his ankle and with a cry he fell into Ashura's arms.
"Oh, you sweet boy."
Ashura's spine screamed. His eyeballs shivered and exploded. His groin bloomed with a thousand strange erections, and he was inside the ward of Mother Lamprey and he saw a city, and it was GodGate, but not GodGate, and he saw people in the city, strangers, but somehow he recognized them, and he saw their lives, knew theirfriends, their likes and dislikes, their hurts and their fancies, and it was the whole story, and when Paragrat pulled him away, Ashura wept himself to sleep at the loss of it.
When Ashura came to, he found a couple of hours had passed, and it was late afternoon. Urkhan was standing at the window, staring into the mellow, peach light. A beatific smile played upon his ragged, painted features.
Paragrat came and hunkered down beside the apprentice. "Urkhan's not strong enough to handle Mother Lamprey's ward properly," he said.
Ashura nodded, dumbly. Having touched it, he knew well the ward's power.
Paragrat flinched. "Ouch," he said.
A split second later Ashura felt it too, the fleeting passage of a little ward.
Ashura glanced round. "A chaffinch," he said.
"That's right. They come in through that window every minute or two. Guess where they go."
As if Paragrat's words were a cue, Urkhan stiffened and sighed.
Ashura stared and pointed with a shaking hand. "In.into him?"
"And now they're talking to each other," Paragrat finished for him. "The chaffinches are messengers. They talk to Mother Lamprey's ka. They tell her things. When I pulled Urkhan away from you ― I sensed what they were doing, and I felt around for a while." He caught Ashura hurriedly wiping the tear stains from his cheeks. He grinned and hit the boy playfully, and painfully, on the shoulder. "I don't blame you for getting upset, lad. No shame in it. Old Lamprey's powerful. She's putting together a prediction to end all predictions. She's putting the whole city inside Urkhan's head."
Ashura shuddered. "The city, it's.not quite GodGate."
Paragrat nodded. "It's a model. Unfinished. You know I told you I met other pregnant women with wards inside them today? Mother Lamprey's ka is using the chaffinches to talk to every unborn in the city." Paragrat's bony hand took Ashura's shoulder in a vice-like grip. Ashura gasped in pain. "It's like a hundred oracles put together," Paragrat went on. "Think of that computational power! Whoever owns that could be the despot of us all before the month's out!"
"You mean Urkhan?" Ashura queried through clenched teeth. He wondered how his arm would fare, once Paragrat had pulled it off.
Paragrat shook his head impatiently and released the boy's shoulder. "No, lad, Trimghoul! Urkhan went and made himself a ward from Mother Lamprey