The Book of Fire (34 page)

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 A COLOR IMAGE IS BEYOND THE CAPABILITY OF THIS OUTDATED EQUIPMENT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?”

YOUR PAINTING AND
 . . . 
YOUR PAINTING, AS YOU REQUESTED
. The computer is showing a sudden onset of uncharacteristic courtesy.

“Not those images, the one in between! Please don’t do this to me!”

ARE YOU
 . . . 
FEVERISH, PAIA
?
ARE YOU FEELING UNWELL
?

At last she understands. The House Comp is not sending her the image she sees. Either that, or he is lying, and that
she knows to be impossible. But it’s equally impossible to believe that he could be wrong. Unless . . . Paia recalls how preoccupied House has been lately with the deterioration of his equipment. Perhaps . . .

The screen flashes again. But this image is not her landscape. It’s a bright blue screen cut across by bold white letters:
WHAT PRICE SURVIVAL
?

Paia claps her hands to her mouth. She’s afraid she’ll scream out loud, and that will surely bring the red-clad Twelve racing up the stairs to her rescue. She stares at the words, waiting for them to vanish. They do not.

“House?”

The screen stares back unchanging, glowing white against sky blue.

“House? Are you there?” Paia waves into each of the little eyes at the four corners of the room. “House, come back!” She moves away from the easel in a long curve, and around the side of the room, as if to stay out of range of the monitor’s insistent blue glare. She eases up beside it and taps the dusty box, jiggles its connections. “House?”

No response.

Paia fights off a creeping panic. There is no “off” switch anywhere to be found. She snatches at the folded canvas and drags it roughly over the screen, springing backward as if the entire assemblage might leap at her throat in revenge for being silenced. She stares at the shrouded bulk for a moment, then hurries back to the easel and covers the painting.

Then she stands stock-still, breathing hard in the stream of hot red light from the window, contemplating new strategies for evading the Twelve. She has to get to the Library. Quickly, and in absolute secrecy.

B
aron Köthen hurried Erde up the wide stone stairs to the first landing. He motioned her against the hard, flat wall, then stationed himself a few steps away, at the bottom of the gangway. The neat rows of rectangular stones were hot against her back. While Köthen watched the upper window into which N’Doch had disappeared, Erde thought of all the labor involved in carving each little stone so precisely and placing them all just so. The lord who’d ordered all this built must have had many estates to call upon for labor, and been very powerful indeed.

She was conveying this insight to the dragon when Lady Water interrupted.

He’s made contact!

Erde reached without thinking and laid a hand on Köthen’s arm. His muscles tensed beneath the thin hard surface of his mail as he turned to glare at her.

Two young girls, he says.

She beckoned Köthen to bend an ear so that she could whisper the dragons’ news to him. She mimed the bow and arrow. His stance shifted immediately. His dagger was drawn, and he was already heading up the gangway.

“Stay here,” he mouthed.

Erde shook her head. When he frowned, she murmured, “How will you know what the dragons see?”

His scowl deepened. He tossed his head irritably, then signaled her to draw her own blade. She followed a pace behind him up the swaying gangway. His speed and silence made her feel clumsy and slow. She caught up by the entrance window just in time to grab at his tunic and keep him from going inside. “My lord! They say he’s taken!”

Köthen’s eyes slitted. He did not ask for the dragons to be summoned. He glanced away at the rows of dark windows facing them across the open street. “How many?” his hands asked.

Erde raised one finger. “A man.”

She bent and drew the layout of the rooms as Lady Water saw it, in the dust on the gangway, marking the separate positions of the enemy. Köthen studied the diagram, then flicked her a grudging glance and nodded.

“Now you
will
stay here,” he insisted silently. “Sentinel.”

She thought it fit this time not to argue. Köthen slid around the frame of the window so quickly that he barely broke the opening’s angular profile, so bright against the inner darkness. Erde crouched against the hot wall and prepared to slip in after him.

The man’s got the drop on him, all right. And he’s got the advantage of position. He’s silhouetted in the doorway, against the faint light spreading in from the front room. He doesn’t look real big, but he’s got on a lot of loose clothing that conceals his shape. His head is shaved or bald—N’Doch can see the light reflecting off the dude’s temples—but his face is in total darkness. The only useful detail N’Doch can make out is what looks like a big old fire ax in his hands. This is marginally better than the assault rifle or the Walther P350 that N’Doch has expected, but it can still do plenty of damage.

He spreads his hands a little wider. He smiles and hopes the man can see it. “Got no problem wichu, man.”

“Mebbe no, mebbe yes.” The man shifts onto one hip, his right, as if the other pains him, and looks N’Doch over. N’Doch feels ridiculously caught short. “Wheryu frum, den?”

N’Doch jerks his head in what he hopes is vaguely the right direction. “Up nort’.”

“Ohya? Deadman Crew, aryu?”

N’Doch grins. “Hope not.”

The man grunts. N’Doch thinks he may have got the joke. “Who, den?”

He can already tell they’re talking turf here, and him without a clue who owns what. But he’s finessed his way through worse in his time. “Way nort’,” he amends. “Water Dragon Crew.”

The man shifts back to a two-legged stance. “Sayu?”

N’Doch nods. “I do.” He suspects from the guy’s alert response that he’s said something meaningful without being aware of it. But now he can relax a bit, for he’s noted the brief dimming of the light from the other room, like a shadow passing, and he knows from the dragon that Köthen is in the building. His job now is to keep this guy talking and distracted. Problem is, what can he say that won’t just expose his total ignorance?

“So, you really lay toll?”

“Betcha. Notchu?”

“Nah.”

The man considers this. “Nuttin’ ta get, up nort’, ha?”

N’Doch hears the implication. He doesn’t want to be seen as a rich prospect. He drops his head and nods diffidently. “Yah. Nuttin’ much at all.”

The man shifts his weight again to the right, and seems to be listening. N’Doch fears he’s heard Köthen moving through the outer room. Using the unslinging of his pack as a noisemaker and an excuse, N’Doch backs up along the gangway to draw the man into the room. It works. The man’s interest focuses on the bulging pack. He moves into the doorway. “You come fer trade, den? News?”

“Betcha,” N’Doch mimics.

The man leans against the doorframe to relieve his hip, and an arm snakes out and slams him hard against it from behind. He lets out a pained yelp. N’Doch leaps back just as an arrow thuds into the gangway at his feet. He snatches the ax from the man’s flailing hands and dives through the doorway to fetch up against the opposite wall, hearing the chunk of a second arrow as it buries itself in the doorjamb right beside his fleeing ear.

“Hold on, wilyu?” he yells. “Gonna kill sumbuddy!”

“Gonna kill yu, tallman!”

“Whafor, girliegirl? Ain’t don’ nothin’ t’yu!”

“Yur hurtin’ da man! Lettim go!”

“No way, til yu say truce.” N’Doch’s trying to look in two directions at once. Köthen drags the little man into human shield position, with his blade tight to the dude’s throat, like he might do him in right then and there. N’Doch worries he might. The poor sucker hardly dares breathe and doesn’t struggle, a wise rabbit in the jaws of a fox, like this encounter blew up into a lot more than he’d bargained for. Even in the dim light, Köthen’s weathered face is pale beside him. N’Doch thinks this guy’s skin might be almost as dark as his own.

“Ease up, Baron K.,” he suggests, in the dragon’s German. “I think we got the upper hand here. No thanks to me, of course.” For the life of him, he can’t recall why he thought it was a bad idea to bring this good soldier along.

Köthen lets the apology go by. “Tell him to call the girls down.”

N’Doch does, in his best future-speak. He turns a little, hoping to let the faint light catch sincerity in his eyes. “Ain’t gonna hurt nobuddy.”

The man sighs. “Senda! Mari! Face heah!”

A chorus of raucous negatives bursts from the darkest corner. N’Doch and the little man suppress inappropriate grins. Köthen tightens his grip.

“Now!” gasps the man.

The girls climb down slowly but not because they’re clumsy. They are, with big crossbow, strapped-on water bottles and all, as slim and agile as monkeys. But they are also reluctant and disapproving. N’Doch yanks the two arrows free and moves forward to tower over the pair on the gangway. They are maybe nine years old. Girl-babies, he’d call ’em. The bones of their faces seem to fall into patterns he recognizes. He wants to get all these people out into the light where he can really look at them.

He points at the taller one. “Whichu?”

She plants one end of the crossbow on the planking and glares up at him with her mouth pulled tight as a rosebud. “Dis’un, Mari,” rasps the man over the impatient edge of Köthen’s dagger. “Senda, da udda.”