Chapter 47: Imogen’s Pyre

I could write for months on the sights and sounds of Thieves' Gate and fail utterly to do it justice. It was in truth many cities imploded together, with buildings formed in places where they should never be. The vast roof housed many thousands alone, where bird riders were born and raised and the boldest of alchemists studied the worsening health of the sky. The enormous atlas pylons that held the roof aloft were of course solid, but scaffolding the size of Upper Haven was built around them, and the tree towns sprouted from there, spawning the workforce who devoted their lives to keeping the pylons strong. Unlike Upper Haven, these townships thrived, and order was maintained in them all (I place a caveat here, that order in Thieves' Gate had little to do with law, and its enforcement was largely an entrepreneurial affair). The ground level served mostly as a commercial district in the center, with bazaars and market stalls and eateries galore, and surrounding them were the martial and industrial facilities.

Tomorrow Gives Her Hope introduced me to an ennui named Lafayette. It seemed oddly delighted to see me, puckering its round mouth and smiling with its eyes. I wondered if somehow the ennui minds might be linked from afar, and if it recognized me from my encounter with Tau. Taking a chance, I said the name, and Lafayette lit up, nodding vigorously, and pointed at my chest with a question on its face.

Tomorrow Gives Her Hope asked me who Tau was, and when I told her, she shook her head. "They no has no names. That ennui, it was talkin' 'bout you." Every near-pidgin word from Tomorrow Gives Her Hope's mouth made me want to go to her Ground Zero.

I asked her how this ennui got its name, and she told me that it was given the name when it was staring at an ancient painting in Haven's grand archive.

"The painting was of Lafayette," the ennui said. When they speak, they do so with a whisper you can always hear. "Lafayette's clothing was gorgeous."

I looked at this Lafayette, and noticed that its hose and tunic were custom designed to fit its tubular, sexless body, with a ballooned upper pants and a frilly collar.

We were bobbing in a sea of sound; the din of jovial voices, the buzzing of festival lamps, the chinking of coins, and around and within I heard a clear string of chimes. I saw Astus slip behind the ennui's stall and rummage through its Sundry wares. No one but me saw the boy, it seemed, and he rifled through old maps, bound books, derelict djinn vessels, and stables of porcelain dolls with impunity. I smiled at the little paper lamp as he danced about the stall, artfully pocketing a number of small items. A trio of screaming antagarthan women came rushing to us and Tomorrow Gives Her Hope was embraced by six slender arms. I always found the sexual dimorphism in the antagarthan species to be striking, in both its disparity and its consistency. I never bothered to learn this, but it is a question in my mind, if that vast difference in physical might was the impetus for their stoic cult's extremism.

Tomorrow Gives Her Hope told me her friend's names, which I promptly forgot, partly due to their length and intense concentration of vowels. I meant no sleight to the women, but how could I be expected to remember which one of them was Ouawiaouia, and which was Ueoiaouaiao? Naturally their fathers thought the names beautiful, and so strung them of as many letters as they could to show their affection for their little girls. The mothers named their sons with far greater utility.

The tallest of Tomorrow Gives Her Hope's friends, Euieaowa, I think, was fawning over Lafayette's collar, and the rest were absorbed in a triplicate conversation that spun my head like a top, so I looked where Astus was pilfering, and saw that he had in fact returned the items and darted away. One caught my eye; a glass flower of shifting hues, and peering into its petals I thought of the crystal that found its way into my hands after meeting Eris. This flower was just as detailed, its layers of petals all frosted white at their roots, morphing into a soft pink midway to their tips. In its center was a cone of yellow that I can now tell you looks like the Sun.

Another, flashier piece hovered into view, and when I looked up I saw a smiling Lafayette holding several other glass flowers as a painted lady holds a fan. I glanced at the other pieces in Lafayette's sprawling hand, but found them tawdry and overly saturated with color and detail.

"What type of flower is this?"

The ennui shrugged. "Nelumbo."

"It looks like a lotus."

It shrugged again. "You want? You keep."

It occurred to me that I had no money, and was eating on Turk's dime at the barracks Jadus gave us for the night. But still... "I can't take this from you, but thank you."

It shook its head, then wrapped my fingers around the nelumbo with its own. I smiled and nodded.

"Tau," it said, and still I don't know why.

Ueiowaioueia screamed happily and I was swept from Lafayette's stall to a plaza with a fountain of dolphins spouting clear water into the air. Above us was a vast pavillion, and strung from it were lights of every color, fueling an endogenous glow in silk streamers as long as a city street.

The girls were all laughing and fawning over each other, and I'd never seen one so happy as I saw Tomorrow Gives Her Hope. She commented to me that these friends made her feel like a mother again, and no sooner than my stomach began to knot, Lafayette appeared and my realization was interrupted. Tomorrow Gives Her Hope knew what she had said, though, and her smile was now painted over shame, so I put my arm around Lafayette's waist and led it to her, where we both took her in her arms.

"I sorry for lie," she said in my ear. I planted a kiss on her head to show I did not care, and the six of us spent the following hour speaking loudly about nothing, and then the music began, and all was a blur and a reverie, and for the first time since I lost my sweet bride I felt joy.

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When the tambourines and bagpipes and zithers had dispersed, we sat on the ground with our backs to the fountain's rim. I was beginning to feel hungry, and after a draft from Ueoaieaieu's boda bag I felt the urge to urinate, but I was having far too much fun to leave, so I held fast my bladder and made jokes of my gurgling innards.

After a time the crowd thinned, and we enjoyed the luxury of calmer speech. I learned that the girls were orphaned by Devils and adopted by thieves. None of them were sisters by blood, but had grown as close during their trials. Aieuaeuou claimed to have been Jadus's consort for a night, a claim that Euouieauoe and Ouaouauaoei vehemently challenged. Lafayette spoke seldom, but when it did we all leaned close, as it had lived in more lands than any of us had seen, and claimed to have lived long enough to remember Turk's founding of the Cataphracts. I noticed then for the first time that its skin was lined with a myriad fine wrinkles, there, but difficult to see, like strands of blond hair on a clean wave of sand.

A quartet of young tyfloch boys came by with cymbals and drums, and one with a timpani strung to his waist. Most of their limbs were prosthetic, no doubt thanks to the god doctor I slew. They danced around us playing a stirring batu, bringing us to our feet for some more dancing. The liquor from Aeueauoeiau's boda swirled in my lower abdomen and I could no longer hold in my water, so I leapt drunkenly into the fountain and pissed into the water, only to see that it was not there, and that I'd vaulted so clumsily that if there were a sculpt of a dolphin before me, I would have caught my shins on its dorsal fin and planted my face in the dirt. As it was I was almost equally embarrassed, standing there with my trousers half down and wantonly molesting a most magnificent djinn. Those around me laughed, my friends the hardest, and to my horror and mirth the tyfloch boys joined in my offensive littering.

Again we found ourselves reclining against the rim of the fountain, which of course was part of the djinn's vessel.

"Such a powerful creature could surely be put to finer use, surely."

Lafayette spread his long hands. "What finer use is there than to entertain?"

I said nothing, but I was imagining the power this djinn could lend a band such as ours in our fight to save Tarthus.

"This," Tomorrow Gives Her Hope said, patting the rim, "is how we beat Tarthas."

"Beat Tarthas? No, Tomorrow Gives Her Hope. We wish to save Tarthas."

Tomorrow Gives Her Hope too was intoxicated, so she did not explain her view as eloquently as she had to me around the fire.

I was contemplating the djinn's display, noting the sign of Delphinus embedded like tooth marks on the head of the most remarkable dolphin. Astus appeared again to the echo of a tambourine, poking his head above the far side of the vessel and jumping in. He waved his hands about and the dolphins wavered, but a megathere child stomped by and he ran off startled.

"Does the djinn know other shapes?" I asked.

"Many!" said Ueoauoeiaoaeia, a little too loud for how close she was leaning to me. She turned and leaned over the ledge, then waved her upper hands. She wore a great many rings about her arms, and they clattered like dropping plates as she waved her arms. The djinn flickered but did not fully morph, so I turned and leaned over and mimicked the motion Astus was making before the young giant frightened him. A flowing glyph was traced in the air between me and the djinn, and the dolphins congealed in a phosphorescent haze. When the haze cleared I was looking on a spur of rock overgrown with moss. I leaned further over the rim and peered at the rock, seeing beneath its mossy skin the shape of a pair of humps rising from a flat plane.

"What is... "

"Reclaimers!" Lafayette was on its feet and pointing, its long arms high over most of the remaining crowd. A cheer went up and we saw a parade following a raiding party flaunting their spoils. Huge drums were carried on poles by rows of men. Other people, men and women and children alike, held items over their heads. One tends to think of thieves stealing jewelry or contraband, but these spoils were air cleaners, jugs of petroleum, smeltable metals, mineral samples, and other such mundanities that in a place like Haven would have been commonplace and freely rationed. I wondered how many small settlements had been picked clean to supply this haul, and how many people were killed in its taking.

I turned after a moment, my joy for the night tainted, and stared intently at the statue, idly fondling the glass nelumbo in my pocket as I did. I heard Lafayette speaking some more, and picked my name out from its fervent words, but I ignored all things but the statue, as its forms were emerging from the moss to be a pair of men bent over a bier. I became aware of Tomorrow Gives Her Hope leaning over the rim next to me, and so I pointed to details of the statue far from the runes carved into the bier, which read, when translated literally, 'The endings cannot be happy'. But she brought up her pain without my prompting, telling me that her sons died with their father.

"They all fought for save me, so now I fight for thank them."

I had a memory of my little friend Kendra then, and a gnawing in my gut over her parents and how they faded from her life. While living among the Dolomites we would often find quiet places to sit alone. I would talk and she would listen, or she would sing and I would listen, and always we would end up resting our heads together, as Tomorrow Gives Her Hope and I did by Imogen's Pyre.

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