The Book of Fire Read online

  When Luco was promoted to First Son, he asked for these rooms to use as his office. Paia, eager to see them alive again, readily agreed. Just as she’d expected he would, Luco made their cleanup and restoration his first major project as operational head of the Temple. Not until their teak moldings and parquet floors were gleaming again, and their coffered ceilings were repainted and regilded, could he settle himself and his staff into them comfortably. Though Luco would protest that he is most fulfilled by his Temple duties to the God, Paia thinks he’s at his most satisfied when seated behind her father’s vast fruitwood desk, with a pile of production reports and levy accounts in front of him.

  But it is quiet in the office today. Luco’s staff, four handsome young Second Sons, glance up from their work as Paia barges through the front doors. They fall to their knees right there at their desks.

  “Mother Paia,” they murmur in unison.

  Paia stops, inclines her head graciously, then motions them to rise. Luco has them so well trained, it’s a pity to waste it. She has some difficulty telling the lesser Sons apart, as they all seem to look a lot like Luco, who—of course—is trying to look like the God. In desperation, she resorts to classification by body type and skin tone. “Is the First Son available to speak with me?”

  “In his quarters, High Priestess,” replies the taller, darker one, the one with the almond eyes, Luco’s current favorite.

  Luco’s living quarters are in the Temple proper, which means that if Paia should encounter one of the Twelve on the way there, the foolish woman will insist on dropping whatever she’s doing in order to follow and attend the High Priestess. Paia does not wish to be attended. She wishes to speak to Luco in private. She takes the back way. She has become very skilled at this by now. It’s simply a matter of running counter to their extremely rigid expectations. It confuses them completely. Paia arrives at Luco’s door free of encumbrance.

  Originally, the God assigned a single guard to the First Son’s door. The number appears to have risen to three. Paia wonders whose idea this was. Is Luco feeling some greater concern for his own security, or has the God’s estimation of the value of his First Son risen accordingly? As High Priestess, Paia enters any door in Citadel or Temple without warning. Out of respect for Luco, she makes an exception in his case. She directs one of the guardswomen to announce her.

  Luco is freshly shaved and washed and wrapped in a soft white towel when Paia enters the second of his string of three windowless rooms. The first is a parlor done in red and gold, stiff little chairs and all, borrowed from the most formal of the three unused dining rooms upstairs. The middle room is more stripped down, a domestic space lined with exercise equipment and cedar taken from one of the Citadel’s defunct saunas. Paia’s never seen the third room, his bedroom. She wonders what it’s like. Like Luco’s fantasy of the God’s Sanctum, perhaps. She’s tried before to get a glimpse of it, but the door is always firmly shut.

  Luco is seated on a padded stool, having his long hair combed out by his chamberboy. The boy kneels when he sees Paia and does not look up. Paia takes the comb from his hand but has to tap him on his thin shoulder to get his attention in order to dismiss him. When he’s gone, she moves around behind the priest to continue what the boy had started.

  “I’m not sure this falls within your description of duties, my priestess,” says Luco wryly. But he makes no move to stop her as she works the comb and her fingers through his damp and tangled locks. “What can I do for you?”

  “Can’t I just come visiting?” She works her way around a particularly knotted tangle, her fingers brushing the soft skin of his neck.

  Luco wraps his towel a little tighter. “It would surprise me. No, let me put it this way. It would worry me.”

  “Oh, Luco. Are you afraid I’ll try to seduce you?”

  “The thought did cross my mind.”

  She laughs and sets the comb aside, slipping both hands into the mass of his curls. Gently, she begins to massage his scalp.

  Luco lets out a ragged breath. “You’d be very good at it if you picked the right guy.”

  “I thought I’d picked the right guy last time, and look what it got me.” She leans over, kisses the top of his head. “There, there, don’t worry. I know I’m lustful, as you say, and way too old to be a virgin, but what I really need is a friend. Someone to talk to.”

  “I’m your friend,” he protests. “We talk.”

  “We talk about the Temple. We talk about business.”

  “We talk about the Suitors . . .”

  She squeezes his head between both palms and gives it a little shake. “Yes. Because you enjoy it so much.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I mean, really talk.” She goes back to her massaging.

  Luco lolls his head back a little, letting her strong hands do their pleasurable work.

  Paia laughs. “You are such a sensualist, Luco. Whatever are you doing in the priesthood?”

  His eyes are closed. He grins. “Are they mutually exclusive?”

  “They appear to be in my case.”

  “Ah, but you have the God.”

  “I . . . what do you mean?”

  His grin fades. Paia feels new tension in the strong muscles of his neck. Her reply has come back at him too sharply, and as often happens, she’s alarmed him. “Forgive me, my priestess. If I misspoke . . .”

  She smoothes her hands over his unlined forehead. “Oh, Luco, you know you can say anything to me you want.”

  But the moment of real intimacy is over. Now he will just play at it, as he usually does. He lets her keep working on him, but he sits up a little straighter now and his eyes are alert. “So what did you want to talk about?”

  “Just stuff. Things I’ve been wondering about. Like, what goes on in the villages . . . or outside.”

  Luco is silent.

  With her fingertips doing detailed work at his temples, Paia asks, “Has the God said anything to you recently about some enemies he’s concerned about?”

  Now Luco is both silent and very still. She can feel his stillness translating through her hands as they cradle his skull. “Enemies? Of the Faith, you mean? Has another heresy been discovered?” He sits up and out of her grip and turns to face her. “Why wasn’t I told of this?”

  “He didn’t say anything about the Temple. He said it was an old heresy, ‘the oldest one of all.’ He said these were ‘ancient enemies.’ What did he mean, do you think?”

  Luco studies her a moment, as if assessing not so much the truth of her report, but her motive in offering it to him. “You mean, enemies from outside? Did he say from ‘outside’?”

  Somehow, it had not yet occurred to Paia to put that particular two and two together. But of course, it makes sense. The God had originally appeared from outside, after all. “He didn’t say it, but what else could he mean?” She recalls now her surprise that the God could only “sense” these enemies. “I think he doesn’t exactly know where they are.” The priest frowns, and instantly Paia catches his anxiety. “Luco, what kind of enemies could the God be worried about? Who could be that powerful?”

  “Or, what could be . . .?”

  Now they both fall silent. Paia knows she’s veering dangerously close to questions about the God’s claims of Omniscience and Omnipotence. Luco knows it, too, and he definitely does not want to go there. He picks up the comb from where she’s laid it, to finish where she left off. “I have to get ready for the noon Call.”

  Paia sighs. “Of course you do.”

  “I’ll let you know if I hear anything about this myself.”

  “I know you will.” She watches him struggle to comb his hair out for braiding and keep his towel firmly about his waist at the same time. The towel, she notes, bears her father’s initials. “Here, sit. Let me do it.”

  And while she braids his hair up in the triple plait he favors for daytime rituals, Paia is pondering where she should go next to find someone to talk to. That is, really talk to.


  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  N’Doch clamps his hands over his own mouth. Yelling out loud, right in the middle of the street! What am I thinking?

  He’s thinking that after only a week of being pampered by women, his reflexes are already going soft. He sneaks a glance at Köthen, sees him swallow what might actually have been a chuckle. Then the baron orders them to move on, only this time, he sends N’Doch up to be point man. N’Doch doesn’t like this decision, but he respects its wisdom.

  They make their way, spread out in a cautious line, along increasingly narrow streets that, guessing from the numbers of big dead trees lining the sidewalks, were once cool and shaded in the summer. The buildings look mostly residential and really old. N’Doch doubts there’s been much new building here—not since way before his time—because of all the brick. He recognizes brick from vids, but he’s never actually seen the stuff in real life, least not a whole building’s worth. Wasn’t ever much building in brick where he’s from, a few during the old colonial days maybe, but mostly it’s cinderblock or concrete. Along here, there are entire blocks of brick-built townhouses, lined up side by side, confronting their mirror images across the littered streets, red-brown facades gaping doorless and windowless like one big collective scream.

  He’s scanning these buildings now like he would in a strange street at home, looking for the telltale signs of recent use, of covert habitation: anything that might warn of an ambush. He wishes he had a laser assault rifle or something serious, instead of a stupid, overgrown steak knife. But the streets just go on and on, empty of life. He gets a sudden chill: what if the place is hot, or diseased? But the destruction looks like looting to him, and firebombing and just plain age, stuff he’s seen a lot of. No full-out nuking. And a place that’s been plague-killed usually shows a lot more signs of it: the old remains lying around, the heaps of bird-picked bones, that sense of a fatal interruption having shown up in the middle of a normal day.

  He pulls up on a corner, in the shade of a tall stone stoop. Crumbling exterior stairs lead up to a burned-out second story, arching over a lower entryway that’s barred with a battered metal door and a rusted folding gate. The fact that there’s still a door alerts N’Doch to check it out carefully. But he sees the gate is welded in place with that blue-green corrosion that salt water lays down on exposed metal. He hears a rustle in the shadowed corners under the stairs. He sees nothing big enough in there to hide anything of size. Must be a rat or something, he decides, and though he hates rats worse than most things, he finds this first sign of life oddly comforting.

  First the girl joins him, then Köthen, who eyes the shadows under the stairs and drops wearily onto a chunk of the collapsed stair railing. N’Doch leans over to pass him the water, and gives his tongue up to the dragon’s control once more.

  “So what d’you think of the States, Baron K.?”

  Köthen sips and passes the jug back, rolling the water around on his tongue like it was some big year wine. “Does it matter to you what I think?”

  This surprises him. What’s gotten the dude riled up again? Surely the baron’s not reconsidering his deal already? “Hey, man, just making conversation.”

  “Let him rest, N’Doch,” murmurs the girl.

  Köthen glances at her over his shoulder, then reaches for N’Doch’s water jug and a second pull. “What do I think? I think it is hot. And I think that this is a very large town to be so empty of inhabitants.”

  N’Doch leans back, relieved. He dislikes being pulled into this dance between the two of them, but he also sees how he can use it to keep the baron talking to him. In Köthen’s eyes right now, he’s the lesser of evils. “Bingo. Looks like they wrecked the joint, then got up and left.”

  “No one would do such a thing.”

  “Hmm. Might.” N’Doch stretches his long legs across the mud-cloaked concrete. “You fought in wars, right?”

  Köthen nods like it’s a stupid question. Like, doesn’t everyone?

  “You ever looted some enemy village, then burned it to the ground just ’cause you wanted to?”

  “Never.”

  The baron’s tone alerts him, but not enough to keep him from plunging forward. “C’mon, really?”

  “Never.”

  “That’s what guys like you always do in the vids.”

  “Guys like me?” Köthen repeats, as if the slang tastes sour in his mouth.

  “You know, knights in armor.” N’Doch shrugs. “Well, probably they didn’t have anything you needed bad enough.”

  Köthen looks to the girl, like he’s checking to see if she agrees that anyone who talks like this is an idiot or out of his mind.

  “N’Doch,” she warns, “It’s a bad idea to accuse a man of honor of behaving like a common thief.”

  “Oh. A common thief. Like me, I suppose. So sorry. I forgot his highness only steals big important things, like other people’s thrones.”

  The girl’s eyes squeezed shut. He can’t imagine why, since he’s said it in French so the baron won’t hear. At least he thinks he’s said it in French. But Köthen is staring at him, and if looks really could kill, N’Doch would be a stone dead man. He sighs and gets ready to defend himself again.

  “Why, N’Doch?” moans the girl. “Why must you do these things?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to hear!”

  Köthen’s mouth is a thin line buried in his neat, tawny beard. “What was your point?” he asks coldly.

  N’Doch’s got a bone to pick with a certain blue dragon. What’s she trying to do, get him killed? Now he’s gotta go and tap-dance the baron into a peaceable mood again without making himself look too foolish. “My point? Just that when people need something bad enough, they take it. And when they got nothin’ to lose, sometimes they wreck the joint, just for spite.”

  The baron’s eyes narrow on him, then dip away. “Or themselves, if they can.”

  N’Doch sees Köthen retreating toward his private darkness. A better place for him than at my throat, he decides. But all this has got him thinking about home, and he realizes he hasn’t given the whole answer yet. He considers what was going on then: the waves of migration out of the bush into the towns as the long drought took hold, then back out again as the drought continued and the towns became lawless. All stuff he’d taken for granted. But now, he’s beginning to sniff out a wider perspective.

  “No, okay, listen,” he says, hearing himself sound earnest in spite of himself. “What I really think is, something happened. Not just another war, but something that made it no good living here anymore, no matter how much stake they’d put into the place or how much they’d fight for it.”

  The girl’s voice is hushed. “Like . . . plague?”

  Some things really are universal, N’Doch notes. “I gave that a moment, too, but I don’t think it was anything that sudden. More like, over a lotta years.”

  This getting serious seems to work. The tightened vise of Köthen’s jaw has relaxed. He’s listening again.

  “Some slower destruction,” he says.

  “Yeah, like . . . well, like the water coming up.”

  Recalling the meters of African beach lost to the sea, the dozens of coastal shantytowns washed away or forced inland, even in his own short lifetime, N’Doch gets up and points down the wider street that crosses the one they’d come in on. “Take a look down there.”

  The street runs downhill from their vantage into a part of town where the buildings get taller and newer. But a block or so past their corner, the road dips into the bay and from there on, the buildings rise out of deeper and deeper water. Köthen joins him, their argument forgotten. N’Doch watches him and the girl try to get their minds around what the water means. Sure, they both know what a flood is, but your usual flood is temporary. Eventually, the water dries up or goes away. This high water has obviously settled in for the long haul. He recalls his moment of revelation in Lealé’s office, what seems like months ago and is really less than two weeks, when
he held the hard copy of PrintNews in his hand and actually read it, understanding it as fact for the first time ever, not just entertainment media. And one of the things it talked about was rising sea levels all over the world, stuff about ice falling off in Antarctica and melting in the tropical oceans. Well, there was a lot going down right then, people shooting at him and worse, so he got distracted from the specifics. Now he wishes he’d read it more carefully anyway. He stares at the green water lapping the window ledges down the hill and shivers, once, very hard. It’s like a spasm of comprehension settling in on him. He’d assumed the drought and the beach-swallowing ocean were local because they affected him locally. No, the truth is, he didn’t even think about it. But now, here he is in the US of A, if his guess is correct, and the same thing is happening. Or has already happened. This is his future’s future, all right, and he’s not sure he’s gonna like it.

  Nah. Easier to backpedal. Be the old streetwise N’Doch who lived for the moment, never gave the future a thought. “’Course I could be wrong, y’know. Probably just a real high tide or something. Storm, out to sea.”