The Book of Fire Page 23

  Inside, the gangway continues, cutting the room diagonally, across charred wood and naked joists, safety railing and all. It disappears through a wide archway into an even darker room beyond. N’Doch squints into the ungiving shadow. He listens. It looks and sounds like the building is empty, but he feels that it isn’t. Old instinct tells him that in a place like this, it’s likely he’s being watched. He’s been trying hard to ignore the chill in his gut from the girl’s little dragon-video, but the image is on flash replay in his head and he can’t find the off button. He needs a leg up here, so he does something he almost never does. He calls up the dragon voluntarily.

  Hey, girl—you there?

  Where else? What’s up?

  Nothin’. Only, y’know that eye thing you do? I’m out scouting this old building and it’s dark as a powerdown in here, so like . . . I was wondering if maybe you could help me out a little.

  Sure thing, bro.

  He’s got to grant her this, she doesn’t rag him when she knows he’s in a tight spot. As he’d given over his tongue, N’Doch now gives up his eyes to dragon control, and the spectrum of light available to him increases vastly into the infrared. Details of the room snap into focus in seething black and white.

  “Mega,” N’Doch murmurs.

  You want to ride this road with me a while, or are you guys too busy?

  I’m with you.

  WE BOTH ARE.

  N’Doch’s gotten almost used to Water hanging around in his head. She sounds pretty much like he does, so even with their frequent disagreements, it’s kind of like having a conversation with himself. But when the Big Guy talks to him, it’s a shock to his system. Earth’s voice is as slow and vast as the dragon himself, and there’s no denying the weird and external source of it.

  “Great,” mutters N’Doch to himself and the dark space beyond. “Hope you won’t be sewing me up again too soon.”

  He checks for the knife that Margit loaned him, then leaves it in its sheath and starts off across the gangway. Even in infrared, he sees nothing unusual, but his own personal sonar is about screaming by the time he makes it to the other side of the room. He halts at the archway and peers around one side. Another dark, empty room, longer, much narrower. A hallway, maybe, its one window to the left again boarded, its floor again in tatters. But it occurs to N’Doch that here, the floor has been pulled up on purpose, so that an intruder will be forced to the gangway.

  It’s a few long steps to the next doorway. He takes them swiftly and quietly. He sees that the door has been taken off its hinges and used as part of the gangway. He sticks his nose into the absolute darkness of the third room, barely able to hear for the alarms going off inside his head. Surveying the walls with his dragon night sight, he spots an interesting arrangement of old rope and broken planks that just might lead along one wall to a corner, where a mess of pipe and plaster-dusted studs lean upright to suspiciously resemble a ladder. Sure enough, halfway to the crumbling ceiling, among the mildewing remnants of a plaster cornice, N’Doch makes out a shallow platform and two small bright spots of human heat. One of them has a stubby arrow nocked into a mean-looking crossbow, aimed straight at N’Doch’s heart.

  He pulls back fast into the archway.

  *What? Kids?

  Water agrees. Even his one quick glance has revealed the proportions of the hot spots: slim-limbed, short, and, to N’Doch’s surprise, probably female.

  “Hunh.” Should he go back, get the others? When he and the baron were having their manly shoot-first exchange, N’Doch hadn’t figured on running into women. Not even women. Girls.

  He leans against the archway, using it as cover. “Friend,” he calls out softly, and then, remembering where he is or might be, calls again in English. He thinks he hears giggling in the corner, then a rustling and a brief frantic flapping of bird wings. Confounded, he calls again.

  “Friend?” He hopes his English will be up to this.

  “Toll or password!” demands a voice struggling to sound a lot deeper.

  N’Doch represses a chuckle. He remembers doing this as a kid, extorting bogus toll from passersby in his nabe. “Don’t know no password, ain’t got no toll.”

  Now he knows he hears giggling. “Who sentcha, tallman?”

  “Nobody. Sent myself.”

  Exasperation. “Gotta know sumbuddy sentcha.”

  “Well, nobody did.” There’s unconscious music in the invisible girls’ speech patterns. Without exactly intending to, N’Doch imitates it. “Sumbuddy sendyu?”

  Outright derisive laughter. “Natcheroo.”

  He lets his musician’s ear lead him. “Who be dat, den?”

  “We Blind Rachel crew. Whoyu?”

  You listening in, girl?

  He hears dragon assent in two-part harmony.

  “I don’t know Blind Rachel. Should I?”

  “You lie, tallman.” The voice has remembered to try again for gravity. “Don’ no’un ’scape Blind Rachel ’round heah.”

  “Toldja. Ain’ from ’round here.” N’Doch’s afraid now that this parley’s on an endless loop. Then he has an inspiration. “How ’boutchu takin’ me ta Blind Rachel?” He almost adds, me’n my friends, and then thinks better of it.

  There is a whispered conference up in the corner. N’Doch eases his head around the return of the arch. The dragon has tuned up the resolution, and he can see them as clear as day: two scrawny girls not much younger than the girl waiting outside. One is staring his way, resolutely aiming the crossbow. The other is murmuring and gesturing to her about it. And now he sees the rough-built cage beside them, with the pigeon-sized bird inside. But the cage is plenty big enough for two or three, and suddenly N’Doch fears he understands the wing flapping he heard before.

  “Senta bird, didchu?” he hazards, trying to sound relaxed about it.

  “Natcharoo, tallman.”

  “Okay, good. Now maybe Blind Rachel cometa me, steada me waitin’ ’round all day.”

  A shocked silence from the corner. Then, “You talk reel big, tallman.”

  “No offense, see? But I’m a busy man.” He thinks he’s just about got the hang of their lingo. It’s like singing and he likes the rhythm of it in his mouth. And then an entirely different voice speaks up.

  “An what mightcher biziness be, newfella?”

  This voice is male, and somehow he’s got up into the room behind N’Doch. N’Doch alerts the dragons, thinking: oh, man, the baron’s never gonna let me hear the end of this. He lets his hands float away from his body and slowly turns around.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The first thing Paia notices is that her security’s been tightened. For two days in a row, she tries to elude the Twelve Daughters on the Progress to Lunch, in order to slip away to the Library. For two days, she fails.

  Lunch is the only communal meal, taken in what was once the gymnasium for her family’s staff. Paia, of course, sits alone at a long white table on a raised dais. The Twelve sit in a horseshoe two steps below her, their red robes matched with bright red table linens. Paia is tempted to blame this taste lapse on Luco instead of the God, who would have everyone living in cloth of gold if the Temple could afford it. Luco himself and his subordinates, eight Second Sons, sit opposite in their own horseshoe, while squadrons of Third Sons and Daughters vie for the honor of cheerfully serving their superiors, whose jobs they covet so desperately.

  Paia hates Lunch.

  It’s even lonelier than eating in her rooms. At Lunch, she is face-to-face with all the people she is not allowed to talk to. And Luco, in so public a forum, steadfastly resists all but the most respectful eye contact.

  She also hates that there’s always more food on her plate and more water in her jug than anyone else’s, even Luco’s, who being twice her size should be eating twice as much. Paia never eats more than a third of it, assuring herself that she’s feeding the kitchen underlings, who will eat anything she doesn’t. But today, she notices, there’s even less than usual on the
red-rimmed plates in the horseshoe below, and a bit less, too, on her own gold service. She wonders if the God has instituted some new austerity measure. Another thing he could have worked out with Luco without telling her. This reminds her again of the security increase. Is this the God’s idea . . . or is it Luco’s?

  When the tables are cleared and the Litany of Thanksgiving has been read, Paia intones the God’s Benediction and rises, perhaps more quickly than is proper. She has three hours before Evensong, precious free time that she often spends in her studio. She’s avoided the studio for several days, worried that her presence alone might turn the God’s attention to the heretical painting. But if she goes there now, the Twelve will not follow her up the winding tower stair. She will be left, for a time, in peace.

  They do, however, follow her right to the tower’s bottom step. Without a word to them, Paia heads resolutely up the stairs. Just before her view of the corridor below is blocked by the central shaft, she glances back. Four of the veiled priestesses have settled cross-legged on the carpet to wait, and no doubt to meditate upon the mysteries of the Winged God. Paia flees up the steep stone stair.

  The studio is as she left it: the painting still shrouded on the easel, her brushes in oil where she tossed them, the red afternoon light falling through the dusty window onto her drying palette. But Paia wanders around a bit, uneasy. Something is different . . . some subtle change in the room’s shape or volume. It takes her a while to pick it out. It’s the squarish, canvas-covered bulk in the corner. It wasn’t there before. Paia considers a quick retreat to the stairs. One shout down the shaft would bring the Twelve boiling upward like angry soldier ants. But they are the last thing she wants invading her studio, her only place of true privacy. At least, private until lately . . .

  She slips the God’s little gun from its holster beneath her robe, and advances slowly on the mysterious object. It sits quietly, contriving to seem as if it has always been in that very spot. There is even dust darkening the folds of its cover. Paia begins to doubt her own memory. Could it have been here all along and she not have noticed it until now?

  In front of it, she hesitates, then lifts a corner of the canvas. She reveals a wheeled metal equipment cart, with a single video monitor on the top shelf. She folds the cover back so that it hangs around the screen like hair, or a monk’s hood. It’s an older type of monitor. She hasn’t seen one like it since her childhood. Possibly it’s one of the deactivated house monitors, or something out of an obscure storage locker that even she doesn’t know about. Its blank screen is oddly dark. Paia leans closer and hears the faint hum of power.

  “I know this wasn’t here!” she mutters.

  Immediately, small white letters quick-march across the screen, as if the monitor is so old, it can only call up short sequences at a time.

  HELLO, PAIA. HOW ARE YOU TODAY?

  Paia ducks away instinctively, then catches herself, embarrassed. Finally she whispers, “House?”

  YOU ARE CORRECT! YOU WIN THE JACKPOT! The screen blanks and begins a new message. WERE YOU EXPECTING SOMEONE ELSE?

  Her heart is still racing. “I wasn’t expecting anyone at all.”

  BUT YOU WANTED A MORE CONVENIENT ACCESS TO MY SYSTEMS.

  Paia is confused. “It’s a very good idea. House . . . but how did you get this old thing up here?” She is still whispering, as she always does when she’s with the computer in the Library. Something about the House Comp encourages a conspiratorial guilt.

  PARDON OUR APPEARANCE WHILE WE UPGRADE OUR SERVICE. “That is not an answer, House. You were complaining about not being able to fix your own monitor bank. How did this old one get here?”

  IT WAS ALREADY THERE.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  THEN YOU PUT IT THERE. SILLY.

  Paia remembers that mode of speech. It went with the voice her father used in play when she was a child. It was intended to put little Paia more at ease with the big bad computer, but the artifice of it disturbed her even then and she’s glad not to have to listen to it now. She answers in her most adult voice. “I did not put it there, House.”

  YOU DIDN’T?

  “I’m telling you, no. And it wasn’t there before. I’d remember if it was.”

  The screen blanks again and stays dark for a long moment. Paia wonders what sort of data search House is running in order to verify her claim.

  YOU ARE CORRECT! A REVIEW OF MY SURVEILLANCE TAPES REVEALS THAT THIS EQUIPMENT WAS NOT PRESENT AT THAT LOCATION UNTIL TWO DAYS AGO.

  Two days. She hasn’t been in the studio for at least three. “Surveillance tapes? But the God shut down the interior monitoring system.”

  HE WAS ALLOWED TO TURN OFF ALL NONCRITICAL FUNCTIONS. The scroll of lettering paused. IT’S MY JOB TO LOOK AFTER YOU, PAIA. DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?

  Paia is stunned. “You watch me?”

  OF COURSE.

  “All the time? Wherever I am?”

  WHERE I AM STILL FUNCTIONAL. AS I HAVE EXPLAINED, SELF-MAINTENANCE HAS ITS PRACTICAL LIMITATIONS. MUCH OF MY EQUIPMENT IS OUT OF ORDER. I CAN MANAGE ONLY AN INTERMITTENT RECORD.

  Paia looks up, into the dim high corners of the room, ragged with the contours of hollowed-out stone. There is a tiny surveillance eye in each one, mounted among the rough-hewn ledges and crevices. “If the monitor wasn’t here and now it is, someone brought it. Who?”

  I DO NOT KNOW.

  “Won’t your tapes show it?” And then she wonders how a blank dark screen can be made to look so apologetic.

  TO SAVE POWER, THE SENSORS ARE KEYED TO YOUR PRESENCE.

  “Damn!” Paia realizes she’s still gripping the God’s gun. She slides it back into its soft secret holster. “Then you didn’t see . . .” No, he couldn’t have seen who brought the note either. But he must have observed her making the painting. She feels that same old restlessness rising in her again. She is forgetting to be afraid.

  She strides to the easel and flips back the concealing tarp with a flourish of crackling plastic. “Have you seen . . .!” Her gesture freezes halfway. The tarp settles around her like the train of an ancient ball gown. The painting has changed again.

  Now the tall sky above the mountains is sooty with storm clouds. The great trees that line the silvery river are as bare as sticks, and the velvet grass of the valley floor is brown and stiff.

  Paia cries out in pain. She cannot help herself. Something infinitely precious has been taken from her, or worse, intentionally destroyed. Who could have done this? She puts her fingertips to the painted surface, but the paint is as dry as if she’d laid it on this way herself that long week ago or more. Drier, even. She taps the paint ridges with a gentle fingernail, then smoothes a palm across the canvas. The rough, hard-curved surface sends a sympathetic chill up her spine. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear this landscape had been painted years ago.

  “I don’t understand . . .” she murmurs. But she’s still not afraid. Instead, she’s excited. The old monitor has been carefully placed, she notices. The screen is fully visible if she looks just over the right-hand edge of the canvas. She glances up past the easel, straight into one of the cameras. “Have you seen this, House?”

  IT IS VERY NICE WORK, PAIA. YOU ARE A TALENTED ARTIST.

  “It is not my work.” And having blurted it out so, she realizes that this is exactly how she feels about it.

  BUT I OBSERVED YOU PAINTING IT.

  “My hand, perhaps. But it is not my work.” Paia has never within memory admitted to mystical beliefs, except where the God is concerned. It shocks her to hear herself saying this now. “It changes. It’s different every time I look at it.”

  AS IS TRUE WITH ALL GREAT ART.

  “Oh, House. This is not great art. I don’t need your flattery. What I need is an explanation.”

  I AM SORRY, PAIA. I CANNOT OFFER ONE.

  “Go back through your tapes. Find a record of the painting when I first finished it, and compare it with . . . this.”

  IF YOU WISH
.

  Soon the screen fills, line by line in an agonizingly slow scan build, with a murky gray-and-black image. Paia squints at it in dismay, then remembers that the internal security system had enhanced its monochrome with infrared data, but full spectrum imaging had been considered an unnecessary expense. But she recognizes the landscape anyway. Its clear skies and leafed-out trees are unmistakable.

  “That’s it! You see, I’m not imagining things!”

  I DID NOT SUPPOSE YOU WERE.

  The image clears, and the slow build of the current image begins. But midway, the screen flickers. Paia gets a single, flash impression of brilliant blue and green and golden light, and then is left staring as the monochrome scan resumes. “What was that?”

  House sends a ticker tape across the bottom of the monitor: WHAT WAS WHAT?

  It happens again. This time, the impression is milliseconds longer, enough for Paia to be utterly certain that she has seen a vibrant, full-color image—as clear and present as a photograph—of the landscape in the painting. “Where did you get that?”

  GET WHAT?

  “That last image! The color one! Bring it back!”

  PAIA, YOU MUST BE MISTAKEN. A COLOR IMAGE IS BEYOND THE CAPABILITY OF THIS OUTDATED EQUIPMENT.

  “But I saw it!” Then she tilts her head and smiles into another of the surveillance eyes. “This is a joke, right, House?”

  I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. TRULY.

  As if to prove itself, the green-golden image reappears, two, three, four full seconds, an eternity, long enough for Paia to watch the clouds shift softly and the grasses stir in the breeze. It’s like gazing through an open window. Paia points. “There! That!” And then it’s gone. She reaches out to it as if she could grasp its fleeting loveliness in her hands. The loss of it fills her with longing and despair. “Oh, House, what is that image?”