"Once your presence would have enraged me at my very core. The const.i.tution of a creature of the natural world is inimical to your, ah, manner of persistence. A faerie, in parley with the undead?" The Cicatrix held her black nails up to the sky-they were still translucent, at least. "This reception is a first, Amba.s.sador, in all the worlds."

The amba.s.sador nodded her skull. "I am honored to be the firssst of my ilk to ssset foot on your sssweet ssssoil, my queen. Truly, I mussst be in a ssstate of grazzze, to walk again among sssuch wondrouzzz gardenzzz."

"Do you miss it?" the Cicatrix asked. "Life?"

Amba.s.sador Rousseau held up her hand. Between the polish, wrist bones were pitted like old iron and mottled with rust, held together with sick shadows. She sang a few meters of an old springtime hymn-the Cicatrix recognized it as simple human garden magic. The lich must remember the cantrip from life, as it was a weak thing, of childhood and nursemaids. But the song sounded as sweet as if its singer had possessed lips or a tongue: a b.u.t.terfly disguised as a red leaf stirred upon the ground, struggled up from the mud, and fluttered toward the lich.

"Miss life?" Rousseau smiled, sort of; flakes of leather stapled to her skull twitched up, but it felt like a smile. The autumn- leafed lovewing alighted upon her fingertip, blinked its wings once, long and slow, and turned to ash as it died.

"Of courssse not."

The ash retained its form. Wings flapped weakly, and an inversion of a b.u.t.terfly took flight, a spidery thing that circled Rousseau's wrist before crawling into her sleeve.

"Chains have little to offer a woman who holds the key. Life offers me nothing I cannot sssteal." The amba.s.sador held a hand to her wig, stroking a curl of dark hair against the memory of her neck.

The Cicatrix made a sound that was halfway between a hiss and a moan. "I share your dedication to radical freedom, Amba.s.sador Rousseau."

If the amba.s.sador heard-or cared-it did not show. The Cicatrix found herself wondering what kind of woman this Rousseau had been when she lived. When those iron bones were cloaked in soft flesh.

"The svarning? Madnesss ssstalks the worldz, we are told. We hear it, like dissstant music, growing louder, but not yet drowning out the notesss of life and death. The Dome is sssealed, the Dying are numberlesss and find no ssssurcea.s.sse, and yet we wonder-does the cataclysm we've been promisssed approach, or will the svarning prove to be merely another disappointment?"

The Cicatrix shifted the length of her abdomen, coils shuffling. Something inside her carapace began to sing. "The madness comes, skylord. When you attack, the city will be at your mercy."

"Where is it, then? Thisss disease that will cure the worlds of the tyranny of life and dead?"

Inside the queen's chest, a second- string vivisistor shorted out. The sprite inside seized violently, and before her root process muted the offending mechanism, the Cicatrix heard it scream the word HERE.

"The Dome's martial forces are veteran infantry with cla.s.ssical tactical eleganssse." Rousseau withdrew her Bakelite wand and twisted a cigarette into its end. She put the mouthpiece to her teeth and inhaled; the cigarette flared into what would have been life, had it not been life's opposite. "We have enlisssted a famed former monarch to lead our living hossst, and her battlefield experience will prove decisive: none of ours need survive, of course. Our p.a.w.ns will drown the Dome in sssuicide, while we decapitate the government. Or perhapsss we'll drink it dry."

"You will have my help in that regard, as promised."

Rousseau shrugged. "How can you a.s.ssure usss that the Dome will be reopened, and that government will not rise up againssst usss?"

"I can a.s.sure you victory under any circ.u.mstances. I presume that to be sufficient."

"Please expound."

"No." The Cicatrix loosed her coils and relaxed backward into her nest. These revenants intrigued her, but they would learn their place among her tool set. "Do we have an agreement?"

Amba.s.sador Rousseau remained still, then ground her cigarette into her iron palm. "We do."

The Cicatrix smiled with what remained of her true face, then, retracting the veil of third silver that covered her jaw. She thought she saw the green coals that were the amba.s.sador's eyes widen. The queen's voice box chuckled as she slid the silver lips back into place, half-extending her visor so that it shaded her eyes. She tilted her head back like a sunbathing maiden, though her shoulder servos worked with the gyroscopics within her ma.s.sive helm to maintain the upright posture of the helm and shoulder armor itself.

"That is all." A flick of her nails, volcanic gla.s.s from a gauntleted fist. "Go."

The blades angling out from her spine flexed, piezoelectric arcs flying between them. They were heat sink, capacitor, and auxiliary power source in one-and rather terrifying to behold.

The thing that thought itself her equal spun on an oxidized toe and glided away, burning a line into the mud. Already the Cicatrix had summoned tables and charts to her vison, flicking them around her HUD with eye movements and a habit of thought so engrained it was practically an automated subroutine of its own.

Yes. It was time to choose her weapon. She pulled a horn flute from within her carapace and contemplated the instrument. A good instrument could play any type of music-it could inspire dancers or make warriors weep. But add another voice to the song, and suddenly both instruments must play off and around each other. A symphony? Chaos given purpose.

All her plans spun on their own, and soon they would collide. She would conduct the chaos, channel it to her own purpose. That is what Unseelie faeries did. That was the work of a queen. That was why she'd spared her only viable child.

It was time to play the music, and wake her.

Sisterhood, mused Lallowe Thyu as she fiddled with the confabulation of engineering and inference, postulation and guesswork that comprised the reconst.i.tuted vivisistor, was a vexing condition. Take her wary orbit around Almondine as a case study: full-blooded and firstborn, endowed with rapine cruelty and rapier intellect, perfect in form and function alike, Almondine should by all measures have been the Cicatrix's favored sp.a.w.n. Yet the pet.i.te creature had lived for centuries as an outlier in her mother's court, disdaining the Wild Hunt and following at nearly all times the path of least resis tance. The Court of Scars could be a blissful place, especially for an heir who could have-in theory, at least-pleased her royal mother with a minimum of effort.

When Hinto Thyu flickered through the worlds of the Seven Silvers and captured, for the briefest of moments, the attention of a younger Cicatrix- this was before her rechristening, before her amendments became deformity-no one had expected the child born from his pa.s.sing patronage to amount to much. By rights, Lallowe should have been the outlier, scrounging an existence like the other mongrels, half-breeds, and hangers-on to the Court of Scars. And yet she had quickly become the exalted daughter, reaping the advantages of her mother's esteem while Almondine faded into the background radiation, seemingly at peace with the cagey detente she'd a.s.sumed regarding her younger half- sibling-it was an arrangement with which Lallowe had never felt entirely comfortable; she did not understand why her sister allowed Lallowe to be the beneficiary of their mother's attentions, why she hid the resentment she must have felt, or why she did not murder the half-breed whelp who'd stolen Almondine's favor.

And then, during a rare concession to partic.i.p.ate in the hunt, Almondine had fallen to the soul-devouring predations of one of the First People.

Lallowe summoned the memory of that day as she soldered the rare half cent to the base of the broken vivisistor, blank face up, and ignored the white-hot sparks that peppered her unprotected skin. The hunters had slipped through the wood between worlds as only faeries on the Hunt could, leaving the seven creations of the Cicatrix's domain for wilder coppices in less well-trammeled universes.

They'd emerged somewhere sufficiently fertile, though Lallowe couldn't have said where. Two moons bookended an alien, indigo sky, and the hunters had raced through a sea of dusk-cedars, pleasant arboreal giants whose branches glimmered with ghost-lights that resembled stars. The local inhabitants had of course remained unaware of the faerie incursion taking place within the vast tracts of their dusk-cedar forests.

Lallowe had clad herself in furs that she'd skinned and tanned with her own hands-she smiled at the thought of the denizens of the Guiselaine seeing their marchioness outfitted like a feral huntress, let alone tanning hide. At the time she'd enjoyed the trailing days of a dalliance with a statuesque she-kachina named White Corn, and the two had been lagging behind the company for days, alternating between rutting in the treetops and poaching the red-horned aurochs that pastured beneath the vaulted cathedrals of the forest. White Corn had finished a pipe she'd begun making from an aurochs horn days earlier, and she played a lonely birdsong on the instrument as she and Lallowe tried to catch up to the rest of the hunters.

When they stopped to refill their water skins at a frothy cataract, their stomachs filled with raw meat, Lallowe had stretched herself out on a flat rock to close her eyes and enjoy the warmth of the day. She'd dozed, half- dreaming of the spike-haired gypsies they'd spied living on a blue spur of mountains to the north, when White Corn's piping had awoken her. Annoyed, she sat up, intending to lash the kachina with her tongue-only it hadn't been White Corn playing.

In fact, White Corn was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Lallowe saw a hunchbacked, man-shaped thing with ratty dark hair and bright eyes, who played White Corn's pipe and introduced himself as Pelli. Unimpressed, Lallowe did not return the introduction and only refrained from attacking the man out of the need to regain her companions. Slipping her naked body back into her furs and leathers, Lallowe glowered at the man and leapt high into the branches, leaving the stooped piper behind as she chased after White Corn's scent.

She found White Corn hours later, crying over the unblinking body of Almondine.

The kachina had found her, she claimed, lying there on a bank of moss, her body transformed into a solid trunk of wood. She was not quite dead, but most certainly empty-her spirit turned to wood as thoroughly as her flesh. In the crook of her polished cherry arm lay White Corn's horn pipe.

Lallowe had borne her sister's wooden body back to the Seven Silvers, and left White Corn behind on the world of the dusk-cedars and mountain gypsies, where for all Lallowe knew she still remained. The Cicatrix, for her part, had only been bothered about the fate of her firstborn in an abstract way, which had been perplexing-her mother rarely missed an opportunity to overreact to a slight against her vanity or sovereignty, if indeed the two could be separated. The Cicatrix had scryed out the ident.i.ty of the piper and verified that he was, indeed, some declension of the First People. Beyond that, she forgot the matter easily.

Lallowe cared only slightly more, upset not at the fate that had befallen her half- sibling but by the suggestion that there were ent.i.ties beyond her ken, powers that could cripple her, too, if given the inclination. More worrisome was the fact that Almondine was gone but not absent, a presence to be looked after and always, always a reminder of the mortality of faeries and the obligations, however slight, of having family in the first place.

Now she had repurposed her sh.e.l.l of a sister, and felt marginally thankful that the Cicatrix had insisted upon preserving Almondine's empty wooden body. At least she would serve a function, now, provided Lallowe could infuse new life into the vessel, provided Lallowe could re-create a vivisistor and write some life into it, provided Lallowe could animate wood. She'd do so, of course, and brilliantly-she had already half-composed a programming language/ruleset that she expected would establish gender, temperament, aesthetic, malice-the basics of ident.i.ty. But she resisted bringing back her sister in any form. Even animating the body with a constructed intelligence came perilously close to reviving the filial jealousies that had so beleaguered her early years. Why did it have to be Almondine's body? Why not some mineral Galatea, girded with pyrite and lapis for eyes? Because no other body would surprise the Cicatrix, and because Almondine's sh.e.l.l kept Lallowe alert. It also reminded her of the cost of failure.

Sisters. At least she only had one of the b.i.t.c.hes to endure.

They were all drowning. That's how it felt as Cooper, Asher, and Sesstri raced down flights of bony stairs. The walls closed in again like the waves of a dark ocean and the weak lights flickered like those in a sinking vessel. They pa.s.sed the seraglio of the Undertow, the harem prisoners screaming in distress or, perhaps, escaping like the aesr. They descended into dark floors, where the grids of circuitry embedded within the material surface of the building dimmed and then disappeared entirely-whatever power supplied the skysc.r.a.per seemed only to reach the upper levels, and as the three raced toward the ground it felt as if they were racing to the bottom of the ocean floor.

The air grew ice-cold and stale, and the sounds of the pursuing Undertow never faded. The whoops and trills that followed them had begun not long after Cooper led them down from the rooftop, the Death Boys, recovering from the shock of losing not one but two consecutive leaders in the span of about five minutes, enjoined by their sisters the Charnel Girls, all of whom now poured down the alien stairwell in pursuit of the trio. The cold came from the skylords, circling the building now in their gathered, agitated ma.s.ses; Cooper could feel their tails licking the walls. They knew his taste.

And now that the aesr was no longer siphoning away his pain, the truth of what had been done to his back became more apparent. It felt like he'd been through a meat grinder, and from the expression on Sesstri's and Asher's faces when they'd seen the damage, he didn't look much better. Blood spotted the steps in his wake, and the ache became raking lines of pain, which became a patch of agony stretching from shoulder to shoulder and down to his lower back. He began to slow.

Sesstri took the lead, pulling a thunderstruck Asher by the wrist down the submarine hallways and shooting odd glances at Cooper, who followed as fast as he could. He supposed he looked more than a wreck, naked to his skin and beyond, his ruined back laid open. Something would have to be done about that soon, he knew, provided they escaped with the rest of their hides intact.

Floors pa.s.sed in a rush of adrenaline and pain and blue- skinned walls, and before they knew it Cooper, Sesstri, and Asher found an exit: a three- storey hole blasted into the side of the building gaped onto the street level, and they stumbled out into the open air. They kept running, Sesstri and Asher now both looking back at Cooper with something resembling awe. Asher's face was wild. At last they clambered over a wall of rubble that slowed their progress to a crawl, and as he pulled himself past a fragment of broken mirror, slicing his palms on some of the shards, Cooper pulled back in shock-his face was covered in half-dried blood and seemed frozen in an animal snarl.

No wonder they're looking at me funny .

The blocks-thick border of rubble where the towers stopped seemed to be as far as the Undertow would chase them- a chorus of high-pitched screaming summoned them back as a flock of black lich-lords swooped overhead only to return to their burning towers. As the trio staggered out of the permanent night that shrouded the skysc.r.a.pers into the natural night that had fallen over the City Unspoken, a giant orange moon appeared to greet them. No, not a moon- a planet, a great gas giant that reminded Cooper of Jupiter, if Jupiter's troposphere had cloud layers of Dreamsicles and cream soda. Candy-colored storms painted bands of turbulence across the face of the transient planet, lat.i.tudes of tempestuous tangerine, cherry, blood orange, coffee, b.u.t.ter, and chocolate; in its unlikely vastness the gas giant filled a third of the sky. Their shadows flickered against planetlit alleyways.

Cooper hoped they would be safe, and he overheard a fright of Sesstri's that mirrored his hope: NoMoreScreaming, PleasePleaseNoMoreScreaming. At least he thought that's what she meant. Looking at her, Cooper realized that it wasn't only the huge planet ruling the sky that had painted her in a wash of light: he saw more of the strange spirit-colors swirling around her chest. As he watched, they resolved into a bronze sign that shimmered over her brow- an unfurled scroll and a long quill. What was he seeing?

Free from the chasing Undertow, Asher seemed stunned. He kept scanning the sky, muttering to himself and shaking his head.

Both Sesstri and Cooper knew it had something to do with the creature that had broken loose during their confrontation on the rooftop, but each had their own reasons for keeping quiet. Cooper, now that he'd had time to think about it, was half-terrified he'd doomed the captive aesr, and that her explosion and flight had been a reaction to the reflected torture she'd endured on his behalf. The other part of him didn't feel like adding "Saw an extinct superbeing before she exploded" to the FUBAR list at that particular moment.

At a fork in the road, the trio stood facing the blown-out windows of a dark intersection, limp-limbed, each too wounded, winded, or disturbed to think of what to do next.

"Please, cover yourself," Sesstri panted, pulling a silk smock from her satchel and tossing it at Cooper. "I've seen this show before."

Cooper wrapped the tiny bit of yellow silk around his waist-being careful of his lower back- and tied off the arms. At least as a makeshift sarong it hid his vital bits.

"Somebody wants us to take a left," Cooper said, pointing.

One side of the abandoned brick building in front of them-once a warehouse, once apartments- bore a bright red loop of still-wet paint across its windowless facade. A stylized ribbon, thirty feet tall.

Sesstri did a double take and turned apoplectic. "Now she takes an interest? Not when we're attacked by thugs or lunatics or mincing undead parasites, but now?" She kicked a stone and sent it skidding toward the big red ribbon, but that didn't provide enough release, so she raised her face and screamed wordlessly at the planet rising overhead. Sesstri bayed. It was when Asher didn't even smile that Cooper began to worry for him.

"Fine. Just fine." Sesstri stalked off in the direction the building- sized ribbon indicated. "She snaps the leash and we go trotting along." Cooper and Asher followed without a word.

They walked past intersections clotted with rubble, following a path away from the burning towers and the burnished orb rising behind them, and in the silence Cooper returned to himself somewhat. Everything that had happened to him since he'd woken up in La Jocondette seemed like an unfortunate dream. The Lady, the thrill of his adventure with Marvin, the bitterness he'd felt at Marvin's betrayal, the aesr, the lich, rolling Marvin's b.u.t.terflied corpse into the sky-what were these but the details of a disturbing dream? All he had to remind him that they were not dream-figments but his own history were his naked skin and the open wreck of his back.

Which hurt like h.e.l.l. It was a wonder he wasn't screaming or unconscious. Shock, sepsis-he'd need ma.s.sive amounts of painkillers and antibiotics, soon, or he'd lose his navel once and for all.

When they arrived at the next intersection that presented a choice of direction, it became apparent that their unseen navigator had not finished pointing the way-only the upper stories of one face of this squat, square building bore the attentions of any red paint. Then a small figure dropped down from the top corner of the building on a tether and ran in an arc across the bricks: it was Nixon.

Nixon laughed and dashed sideways across the wall of the building, spilling paint from his bucket in thin looping threads as he went. His line secured him to the roof, letting him wall-run along a pendulum's path as he painted his second billboard ribbon. He whooped when he saw them limping toward the intersection, and ran down the face of the building, then jumped and landed with his arms outstretched and gave a little bow.

"Olga Korbut taught me to land on my feet," he said. "But I never got the hang of it till now. I can't help but notice that you guys are early, and alive."

Asher, Cooper, and Sesstri stared at the unboy, too exhausted to talk. Nixon kept on, walking around them in a circle with an appraising eye. "Thanks for leaving all the climbing gear around. It sure made the job easier."

"Alouette sent you?" Sesstri asked, recovering her voice and relieved to have someone she could harangue for answers.

Nixon nodded. "Wanted me to correct an earlier mix-up."

"Lovely," Sesstri and Asher said as one, but Nixon had discovered Cooper's back.

"Hey, CinemaScope." Nixon squared off with Asher, tiny fists on his hips. "Still choking kids?"

Asher said nothing.

Nixon continued. "Turns out I may have been, um, slightly neglectful in my duty. I may, technically, have been supposed to give this ribbon to you, Cooper. I guess I forgot, what with all the violence and spooky s.h.i.t and whatnot." He held up a small loop of red ribbon and offered it to Cooper. Cooper didn't move, and Nixon scratched the back of his neck and made an awkward grimace. "He, uh, okay? He's supposed to take the ribbon. I'm not supposed to leave until he actually takes the d.a.m.ned-"

Asher grabbed the ribbon and handed it to Cooper. Nixon nodded at a job well done, then squealed in surprise as he, Sesstri, and Cooper jerked and were caught up in a sucking twist of s.p.a.ce. In a swirl of red ribbons, they vanished, leaving Asher alone in the deserted ruins.

In the gray man's current mood, that suited him just fine.

Everything seemed to change when the planet rose above the horizon. They all felt it, even NiNi squirmed on her fainting couch, unable to find sufficiently flattering light. Bitzy waved her hands, orchestrating servants who appeared more distraught than she did; cakes were brought in and removed, returned and sliced into quarters, removed again for re-icing; teapots entered and were judged inferior, porcelain reluctantly accepted, and trays of broiled fish rejected as inappropriate for the occasion.

"I know it's dinnertime," Bitzy scolded a pigeon-toed maid, "but this is a tea party. Would you eat dinner at a tea party? No, you wouldn't, would you? Because that would be ridiculous." She waved the woman off.

"Thank you, Krella," Purity said as the maid retreated. Purity turned to Bitzy with a smile. "I'm sure she's trying her best, Bitz. Krella's always smart about understanding the details; that's so hard to find."

Bitzy answered with a brittle smile.

NiNi stopped humming to lean half an inch toward Purity, cover her mouth with her hand, and speak at full volume: "That was Narvie, Purity. Krella's the governess and she hasn't worked for Bitzy's family for three years now."

"Oh," Purity said. "Silly me."

"f.u.c.k Krella and f.u.c.k this stupid tea party," NoNo muttered under her breath.

Bitzy shot a glance at NoNo, and NiNi lifted her palm in a gesture of forbearance.

"Oh Bitz," she drawled, "don't ride NoNo too hard. It must be a Bratislaus trait-like father, like daughter, don't they say?"

NoNo jerked upright, her hand flying to the grip of her parasol. The look she shot her twin could cut gla.s.s.

What's this? Purity wondered, sitting forward. She kept her face as devoid of expression as she could manage.

"Bitzy," NoNo said slowly, all the while staring at NiNi, "maybe dinner wouldn't be the worst thing in the worlds. A nice fat bird, roasted dead- for instance." NiNi narrowed her already heavy-lidded eyes.

"Oh, I don't know. It's early yet." Then Bitzy processed what NiNi had said. "Wait, what did you say about Daddy?"

Purity held her breath, not sure whether she should be excited that change had finally come or horrified at the form it seemed about to take. Either way, she was rapt.

A dry giggle issued from NiNi's throat. "Sorry, Bitz. NoNo's been f.u.c.king your daddy for months."

Oh my.

Bitzy worked her jaw and made to say something, but thought better of it and looked down at her hands, her teacup shaking in her lap. "I see," she said at last, in a small voice.

Outside, an orange gas giant streaked with yellows and browns dominated the night sky and cast them all in unflattering planetlight. Tonight we are the moon, Purity thought before scolding herself for being lyrical during a crisis. The light competed with the bouillotte lamps set on tables around the salon, their gold-leafed inner surfaces trying to add a touch of artificial sunlight to the garish orange globe eclipsing the sky. Filtered through the greenish gla.s.s of the Dome, the planet drenched the room in an eerie glow; Purity imagined that the girls were sitting in a sinking ship, looking up at the sun through fathoms of seawater.

We're drowning, she thought, and n.o.body even notices.

Well, perhaps not everyone failed to notice. NoNo, for instance. A change had come over NoNo Leibowitz in the last little while: she'd cast off her dead-eyed guise and revealed what appeared to be a vital woman beneath. Purity admired the verve, if not the methodology. She wasn't sure she bought it, though. Had their NoNo been posing as an idiot all along?

Purity floated a lie to test the new social dynamic and clear away the awkward silence: "I heard the Weapon steals your soul, so that there's nothing left to return to your body or condense into a new one."

"Please," NoNo sneered. "It does not. Besides, stealing souls is like stealing socks."

Interesting. "How so, NoNo, dear?"

NoNo twirled her ridiculous sunshade. "I don't know . . . say you burgle a thousand of the things. Then what? You can't eat souls any more than you can eat used socks; you can't sell them; and you won't win friends giving the things away. I suppose you could be very avant garde and sew them into a gown, but what would that earn you-all those souls for one eve ning's infamy?" She barked a most un-NoNo-like laugh, quick and smart. "No, you can keep your wretched soul-when it comes to theft, I'd rather steal good old-fashioned everything."

What was this? Was NoNo a real person, all of a sudden?

Bitzy tsked, doing her best to ignore NiNi's revelation about her father, the lord senator. Proper ladies didn't react to scandal. "Of course you're speaking figuratively, NoNo. Ladies mustn't steal."

"Mustn't they?" Purity asked with as much empty politesse as she could rally.