The Cydonian Pyramid (21 page)

L
IA STARED AT THE STOLID WOMAN WITH THE HARD
face and raspy voice standing before her.
This
was her mother? Inge looked equally disconcerted. As the seconds stretched out, as Inge’s eyes flicked from one part of her to another, Lia got the sense that her mother did not like what she saw. They had hardly exchanged a word, and already her mother disapproved of her. Lia’s rising storm of emotions clouded into anger.

Inge must have seen it in her face. She shrugged, and her eyes darted to the side. “I did not think to see you again.”

Lia had often fantasized about finding her mother. She had imagined her mother waiting on the other side of a Gate with open arms, imagined her coming in the middle of the night to comfort her. But she had never imagined that it would be so
awkward.
Or that her mother would be so hard and cold.

Lia heard herself speak. “You may have given birth to me, but you are not my mother. You gave me away.”

Inge raised one dark eyebrow. “Was that so bad? You lived fifteen years surrounded by luxury, you survived your blood moon, and now here you stand, a Yar. As I see it, you have no cause for complaint.” She turned to Hidalgo and Song. “I do not believe the priests will risk the Gate.” She gestured at Satima. “We cannot alter our plans on the word of a madwoman. We must prepare ambushes at all three exits from the city.”

It was as if Inge had completely dismissed Lia from her mind. Song caught Lia’s eye and compressed her lips, then gave her head a quick shake and turned to Hidalgo. “Inge is right. We must cover the roads. But we should cover the Gate as well.”

“That will spread us too thin,” Inge said.

“I agree,” said Hidalgo.

Song said, “If the priests use the tunnels to get to the top of the pyramid, they will be bottlenecked. It will require only a few of us to stop them.”

“
If
they use the tunnels.”

“They will. They would not risk exposing themselves on the zocalo.”

“It is a waste of time,” Inge muttered.

“How many would you need?” Hidalgo asked.

“A hand, no more. Beetha and her sons. And Jonis, to show us the way.”

Hidalgo nodded. “Jonis, do you have your maps?”

“I do,” said Jonis, patting the side of her satchel.

“Good,” said Song. “You are with me.” She started for the door. Jonis followed her out of the atrium. Lia stood there helplessly, feeling as if she did not exist.

Hidalgo noticed her and gestured toward the door. “Go with Song, Yar Lia. Make yourself useful.”

Lia ran after Song and Jonis, relieved to be away from her mother.

“She is not so uncaring as she seems,” Jonis said when Lia caught up with her. “This is a bad time for reunions. Inge has much on her mind.”

“I don’t care what she has on her mind,” Lia said.

“She did not give you away of her own will, you know.”

“She could not have tried very hard to keep me.”

Jonis shook her head. “Lah Inge was once a girl much like you. Before her blood moon, she was taken by the priests to the temple. The life of a temple girl is not an easy thing — they used her well. When she became pregnant with you, she was confined to the cellars beneath the temple. You were taken from her at birth, and she was sent to the farms as a laborer. She has cause for bitterness.”

“None of that was my fault.”

“Nor hers.” Jonis gave Lia a rueful smile and shifted her satchel from one shoulder to the other. “This must be a difficult time for you,” she said.

“I have been through worse,” Lia said. “How is it I never met you before, when I was a Pure Girl?”

“I don’t often leave the
biblioteca.
”

“What is a
biblioteca
?” Lia asked.

“A library,” said Jonis. “A collection of books.”

“Books? You mean
old
books?”

Yar Jonis nodded, her lips curving up in a teacup-shaped smile that made her cheeks look even plumper.

“I thought all the old books had been destroyed,” Lia said.

“Not all. I protect those few that remain.”

Lia thought of the books in Hopewell.

“Do you have one called
A Wrinkle in Time
?”

“I have not heard of that book.” Jonis shook her head sadly. “But that is no surprise. There were once many, many books. Rooms and rooms of books. More books than there are people in Romelas. But no more.” She sighed. “Our entire collection fits into this satchel.”

“Your bag is full of books?”

“I could not leave them for the priests.”

Outside the Casa, Song was waiting for them beside the hay cart. With her was a rangy woman with a creased and sun-darkened face, and a pair of young men. Song introduced the woman as Beetha. The men were her sons, Argent and Oro, workers from the farms south of Romelas. Both had the powerful build of laborers. Oro was the bulkier of the pair, with shoulders like cantaloupes and arms as big around as Lia’s thighs. Argent, not much older than Lia, was lankier and slightly taller.

“Beetha and her sons will be with us,” Song said. “If the priests leave tonight, as Satima suggests, we will be on the frustum waiting for them.”

“Just the hand of us?” Jonis said.

Song focused her eye on Lia. “Unless Yar Lia wishes to join us.”

Lia hesitated for only a moment. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

Song smiled grimly. “I want you to fight.”

“S
OME OF THESE PASSAGES DATE BACK TO THE EARLIEST
days of the Lah Sept,” said Jonis. “Originally, they were built as escape hatches in the days when the Lah Sept were being persecuted. Right now we are directly beneath the zocalo.”

They had entered the tunnel system at the church, at dusk, and were moving through the passageway in single file — Song, Lia, Jonis, Argent, Oro, and Beetha.

“I still say we are too few,” Jonis said.

“We have no more. Inge and her people are occupied setting up ambushes on the roads,” Song said. She was carrying the
arma
she had taken from the deacon in the convent along with a slingshot at her belt. Lia had a baton. Oro and Argent had knives, and Oro carried a steel bar with a chisel-shaped end. Jonis was lugging an ancient double-barreled shotgun. She had wanted to bring her satchel of books, but Song had made her leave it behind.

“I want both of your hands on that gun,” Song said.

Jonis snorted. “The shells in this beastly weapon are older than my great-grandmother’s great-grandmother. It may not fire at all.”

“Our goal is to free the girls,” said Song. “If all goes according to plan, you may not need to test it.”

Beetha, at the rear, was bent beneath the weight of a canvas backpack. Lia was not sure what was inside, but Beetha had lifted it onto her back with great delicacy.

They reached an intersection in the passageway. Jonis took a map from her pocket and examined it with the aid of a hand torch. “We turn here.” They took the left-hand passage, which ended in a ceiling-to-floor pile of rubble. A dim yellow glow was visible coming through an opening at the top. Song climbed onto the rubble and peered through. She climbed back down and addressed Oro and Argent.

“Time to put those fine shoulders to work,” she said to Oro.

Oro attacked the rubble pile with his steel bar, working the broken stones out a chunk at a time. Lia stood by, trying to make sense of all that was happening. Only that morning, she had arrived in this nightmare version of Romelas, and now she was a member of some sort of platoon made up of Yars and farmers, working to overthrow the priests. Events were moving too quickly for contemplation. For good or ill, she was a part of it.

Oro announced that he had an opening large enough to crawl through.

“Wait here,” Song said. She climbed back up the rubble and shined her lamp through the gap, then crawled through to the other side. A few seconds later, they heard her voice telling them it was safe.

Lia followed Song through the opening. The tunnel on the other side was illuminated by wall sconces every few yards, indicating its regular use. The smell of mold and hot wax took Lia back to her blood moon, when the priests had led her through this same passageway, her thoughts muddled by poppy tea.

Beetha’s sons came through next. Beetha passed her pack through to Argent, cautioning him to treat it like “the last egg of the last chicken.” She wriggled through the gap and was followed by Jonis, whose ample buttocks presented a problem. Oro and Argent each grabbed an arm and pulled. Jonis popped through like a cork from a bottle.

“You could have cleared away a few more stones,” Jonis said resentfully, brushing dust from her hips.

“Or
you
could have enjoyed fewer empanadas,” said Beetha. Jonis glared at her.

“Bicker later,” Song said over her shoulder as she strode off down the passageway. Moments later, they reached a chamber and the base of the coiled iron stairway that led straight up through the ceiling and eventually to the top of the pyramid. The last time Lia had climbed those stairs, she had been drugged.

“Here?” Beetha asked.

“Here,” said Song.

Beetha opened her pack and began to arrange its contents on the chamber floor — cylindrical objects with colored wires attached. At first, Lia did not understand what she was seeing, but she saw how carefully Beetha was handling the cylinders. They looked like giant versions of the firecrackers Tucker and his friends had played with at Hardy Lake. Beetha concealed the cylinders beneath the bottom step, then attached the wires to the iron stairs.

“Are those fireworks?” Lia asked.

“It is called dynamite,” Beetha said. “It is very old, but we have tested it, and it works. There is enough here to completely destroy the staircase.”

“So the priests will not be able to ascend . . . but won’t they just climb up from the outside?”

“They won’t know until it’s too late.”

Lia realized then what Beetha was saying. The staircase would not be the only thing destroyed in the explosion — their intent was to kill anyone who was on it as well.

“What about the girls?” she asked.

“We will get them out first,” said Song. “Are you ready, Beetha?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Song started up the stairs, followed by Oro and Argent.

“Don’t you have to set fire to them?” Lia asked Beetha, thinking of the boys with their matches.

“I have attached an ignition apparatus to the explosives.” Beetha held out an object that looked like a cell phone. “This Boggsian device activates the explosives. I just flip back the cover and press this button. The metal staircase will act as an antenna, transmitting the signal from the frustum down to here. Bang.”

Beetha slung the empty pack over her shoulder and started up the winding staircase.

Lia looked to Jonis for explanation. The plump librarian shrugged and joined the others on the stairs. Lia followed uneasily. The sound of multiple feet on the iron steps took her back to the first time she had been there — and to the same sense of helplessness and doom.

From above, she heard the grinding of the altar sliding back from the opening.

“Stay low,” Song said as she helped Lia out of the stairwell and onto the frustum. The stone on top was moist — it had rained, but the sky was clearing. The moon was a black hole in a field of stars, cupped by a faint paring of white. A light breeze carried with it the smell of wood smoke and wet ash.

Bitte, the only remaining Gate, hummed and buzzed at the edge of the platform.

Song shifted a lever at the base of the altar, and the stone slid back into place. Lia followed her to the edge of the platform opposite the temple. The others were waiting on the tier just below the frustum.

“What now?” Lia asked.

“Now we wait.”

Below them, the zocalo was dark, deserted, and spotted with puddles.

“It looks so peaceful,” Lia said.

“The peace of the dead,” said Beetha, fondling the detonator. She turned to Song and said, “I do not know the range of this device. There’s a lot of stone between here and there. The signal may not be strong enough. I may have to get close to the staircase.”

“Then that is what you must do,” Song said. “The priests will herd the girls up the stairwell to the top. They may send a few of the deacons first, but the priests themselves will come last. They will not risk exposing themselves any longer than necessary — it is their nature. Once the girls are out, we act while the priests are yet inside. If all goes well, we will have to deal only with a few deacons.”

If all goes well.
When had all ever gone well? Lia stared across the deserted zocalo. She could see the unlit convent, and the colonnade leading to the Palace of the Pure Girls. The priest’s temple, on the opposite side of the zocalo, was not visible. It occurred to her that she might die here. She had cheated death on the frustum once. Perhaps fate would favor her again.

Argent, sitting next to her, smelling of man sweat, whispered to Lia, “Is it true that the mad Yar eats bugs?”

Lia nodded. “And worse,” she whispered back. “But Song listens to her.”

“My mother says the bugs give her visions.”

“I think she is mad even without the bugs,” Lia said.