“What did she mean by threatening me like that? Bah, hearing that warty flaccid thing declaim verses—is it true that she has some sort of reputation as a poet? I can’t conceive it, it must have been another of their lies—as if the muse would speak through a mouth like hers! Can she actually intend to poison me?”
Gus seemed quite exercised on the subject of Anura’s recitation. Asterion had escorted us back to his rooms, which I had never seen before; they were small but luxuriously appointed in a rather bloody style, all crimson draperies and crossed swords. Asterion pivoted to look at him in genuine astonishment.
“Threatening you? But why?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Who can say what a creature like Anura is thinking?”
Asterion’s laugh whickered moistly on his bovine lips. “Well, Anura’s only a woman at the last; one Patience Stott according to my information. Though that hardly disputes your point. And as for Madame Laudine!” He let out a malicious chuckle; I failed to see the joke. “But, Gus, as I understand it you and Anura engaged in dealings that were mutually beneficial, isn’t that so? It’s not as if you cheated her.”
“Exactly! And yet she has the gall to insinuate to my face that she’ll find some underhanded way to murder me. Mind, Asterion, it’s not that I’m afraid of her—”
“As you shouldn’t be. Gus, my friend, I don’t deny that Madame Laudine and Anura were delivering a threat through that absurd poem of hers. But I don’t for one moment believe that it was meant for you.”
Gus recoiled as if slapped. Worse than a threat to his life was an affront to his vanity, for it had plainly never occurred to him that he might not be the object of Anura’s machinations. He took in Asterion’s meaning that he, Gus, was not important enough to be menaced in such a fashion, and all his spluttering indignation went cold. When he spoke again it was with affectless chill.
“For whom, then?”
“Well—Madame Laudine and Nemo have not always been on the best of terms. I took it that she was using Anura to hint he might fare poorly under Mariam’s new regime; mere empty taunting, as far as I can tell. Really, you keep so stubbornly apart from society that I don’t see how you could make enemies—there’s just no occasion for it! My friend, you can put your mind at ease.”
They were both wrong. For once I was glad I could produce no sound but screaming, or I might not have been able to suppress a laugh. Anura’s poem had assuredly not been meant for Nemo, nor for Gus either.
It was for me. She had slipped me a message of the greatest importance, cleverly encoded in those lines about poison and wine.
Too cleverly, perhaps. For now the difficulty was that I could only guess at her true meaning. That is, it seemed likely that I was the wine and Gus the man dispatched by my poison. But as for the glass—and as for what Anura thought I might be able to do—there I had only the wildest speculations.
Gus and Asterion’s conversation now began treading more familiar ground: Gus’s ideas for improving his beamers, for making them responsive and sensitive enough to beguile young women, for expanding their reserves of false memories and, most importantly, instilling a sense of mission, inexorable and absolute. And then they must discuss the magical expense of such an ambitious undertaking—for of course Gus’s claim that he would drain me only to meet Margo’s needs was brazen nonsense.
Asterion unpacked his umbrastring and jabbed the fork into my thigh. I felt at once the dreadfully familiar thickening, almost as if a knot of infected flesh formed around the prongs while the rest of me remained as airy as ever. Gus sipped on the trailing thread, and the swarming pain bit through me, each prick wheedling away something essential. Oh, that cold deletion, that stinging robbery of myself, how many thousands of times have I endured it!
That draining. As if I were so much wine.
“Even assuming I can reclaim, perhaps, seven or eight hundred when I render down this last beamer—the immediate improvements I wish to make in the next one might cost me as much again! Margo can test its capacity for learning while I save, of course, but—”
There they were, twittering about money while I swirled in agony. Gus held the umbrastring’s end pinched in the corner of his mouth while he spoke. I realized then that I always resisted that suction as best I knew how; I leaned against the current, fought the connection.
“Oh, more than that! And then you must allow for the inevitable losses that occur when magic is reused—some always leaks away in the process—taxes, you know—I’d estimate twenty-five percent or so. From what you tell me, you’d be wise to budget at least twelve hundred. With a great project like yours, you must not skimp on the small refinements. In the final analysis it’s the details, dear Gus, that will make the thing convincing.”
Possibly resistance was a mistake.
“Twelve hundred! Oh, I suppose—and more for future iterations. And then I still haven’t begun the search for materials to grant the things real physicality. Matter has to come from somewhere, and it’s far easier if it doesn’t require fundamental transformation.” Gus looked sidelong at Asterion as he said this, perhaps remembering the old promise: an Athenian youth. What exactly did he mean to do?
“Oh, as to that—when your work is ready, something can be managed. Of course, what you’re attempting is quite unusual. For most beamers the illusion is more than sufficient, and the work that’s been done on truly embodied ones is preliminary at best. Unstable creatures. They don’t tend to last long.”
“Mine must last, though—say a year. They’ll need to sleep, won’t they, and eat? Otherwise they’ll notice the discrepancy between themselves and ordinary people immediately. All the bother of a working digestion, imagine it, just to deliver a single kiss!”
A kiss? Even in my weakness the word spasmed inside me. A kiss, like the one which—
And then I was no longer weak. My flickering caught in a blaze of white incandescence, and I thought I understood Anura’s message. Gus took a deep pull on the umbrastring, drinking me down; all that remained was the poison.
And do they not say that the poison is in the dose?
Rather than straining to withhold myself, I surged into the string like the breaking of a dam. The dial’s tiny hand spun into a circular blur and I felt myself ramming into a sort of folded thought—that then was the purse where magic was stored! The purse split and overflowed, and I leapt outward, attempting to explode Gus’s skull from within.
For half a moment, my ghost stopped screaming. Then my scream lashed out of Gus’s mouth, driving his head back at such a sharp angle that I hoped to snap his spine. Asterion caught him by the shoulders as the umbrastring fell from his lips and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Gus slipped to the floor in a faint, his skin deathly white. I was in poor shape myself, reduced to a rag doll of wraith sagging over him. I was no larger than a newborn baby. My scream thinned to a kettle’s whistling.
Asterion didn’t bother to check Gus’s pulse. Instead he looked dead at me, brows arched.
“If you did manage to kill him, you’d almost certainly destroy yourself into the bargain,” Asterion informed me. “But I suppose that was the idea?”
Even in my deflation, this address startled me. Apparently Asterion understood that I was sentient enough for conversation.
“Luckily for my personal finances, you can’t. But if you rushed him hard enough, you might wind up trapped inside his body. Forever. If you find your intimacy disagreeable now, I don’t suppose you’d much enjoy knocking around in his skull.”
Ordinarily I would not have credited anything Asterion said. But in this case his claim was confirmed by direct evidence: I’d heard my scream on Gus’s lips. I imagined how it would be: Gus’s stinking breath sieving through my immaterial person, his sweat surrounding me like a thin but impassable moat. Still worse, I supposed I might be caught in the endless dunning of Gus’s thoughts, his dreams, with none of the merciful interludes of his silence I enjoyed now.
My limp doll shape flashed and bucked at the thought, and Asterion nodded.
“I thought so. Stick to feeding him the interest, then. No more stunts with the capital!”
That was an interesting way to put it. What, exactly, did he fear I might do?
Meanwhile I was subtly and slowly inflating again, though I still felt very ill.
“Just in case, though, I’d better take my umbrastring back to its maker. He mentioned the possibility of spelling it to smooth out just that sort of excess activity. It seemed like a waste of talens at the time, but now you’ve forced me to protect my investment. I have Anura to thank for that, don’t I?”
Oh! Contrary to what he’d told Gus, Asterion had known quite well to whom that poem was addressed. It showed far more acuity than I’d suspected in him. While I absorbed this realization, Asterion stooped to pick the dropped umbrastring off the floor and held it close, inspecting the dial. He whistled as well as his cow’s mouth would allow.
“I’m sorry to tell you that all you’ve done is to give Gus one hell of a windfall. Nearly three thousand talens at a blow! He might not mind a patch of indisposition at that price!”
With that Asterion knelt and slapped Gus’s cheeks until he roused, his head rocking and eyes wild. A haze of magic seeped from his mouth, softening his contours. He attempted to sit and Asterion eased him down again.
“Don’t try to move. You’ll need to rest for a good long while, my dear friend. No work for a bit, all right? I absolutely forbid it.”
“What happened?” Gus’s gaze slurred in my direction. I was by this time perhaps three feet tall, and my scream was regaining something of its usual force.
“Oh, it was only that a bit of our conversation got through to Catherine. In her dumb way she grasped that you were in need, so she rushed to help. It was more enthusiasm than you could support, that’s all. But look how much power she gave you!”
Asterion dangled the dial in front of Gus’s eyes and favored me with a sly half smile. My education in matters of hatred had not ended with my death.
“She did?” Gus goggled. “I can’t feel anything like so much. The power. I—”
“Oh, then it must have spilled out while you were unconscious. Did you keep enough for my share, at least?”
Passivity had the poor virtue of protecting me from disappointment. Action exposed me to crushing failure. Possibly Asterion was lying when he said there was no way I could kill Gus by my new method, but he would deny me the chance to try again. Had I misunderstood Anura’s message, or was I simply too inept to follow her implied instructions? Had I ruined my only opportunity for putting an end to my former friend? These questions tormented me throughout Gus’s convalescence.
For all my anguish, though, I nurtured a tender warmth at the quick. I was no longer as utterly alone as I had been.
Anura cared what became of me, enough even to enlist her friends in schemes of coming to my aid. When I considered her evident concern, her affection even, my failure seemed less significant. Perhaps I had misconstrued her; perhaps in time I might grasp her meaning better, and find another way.
But of Anura’s kind intentions, I could be certain.
So far as I was concerned, that kindness was the only magic in Nautilus worth having, and Anura was the greatest sorceress alive. She had brought hope to the hopeless. Is that not a feat more splendid than burning a blizzard or melting a tower?