"I didn't say I found nothing," Asher muttered. "It just wasn't helpful."

"Are you certain?"

"About as certain as can be, yes, milord."

"Well"-the marquis flashed his pretty blue eyes and reached unsuccessfully for the rear end of a nearby serving girl-"that's not terribly certain, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Only that portents are notoriously vague, eh? Isn't that rather the point of saying sooth-that the answer will somehow make sense to someone, and therefore be validated? 'A red door and a house on fire!' Now that could mean any number of things, for instance."

"I suppose . . ." Asher didn't suppose any such thing. Cooper was not what he'd been promised.

"If that's the case"-the marquis smiled at his own reasoning-"why not take whatever it is you did find and do something with it. Whatever you intended your next step to be." He waved his hands in mock secrecy. "Not that I'm remotely curious about the details, of course. Your business is your own, I'm sure."

Asher frowned.

Oxnard rolled a broken chip across his knuckles. "I can only imagine what my wife must be feeling now, to have her prize s.n.a.t.c.hed from beneath her watchful, exotic brows. A lady like ma cherie would never mope and whine and gamble. Why, she'd be planning . . . something painful, I'm sure."

Asher's frown deepened.

The marquis pushed the remainder of his losses to Asher's side of the table, almost spilling his beer in the process. Every eye in the room was on that pile of chips, and Asher discreetly swept them into his satchel.

"Don't forget the broken one, friend." The marquis tossed the broken chip he'd been toying with onto the table and smiled dismissively. On the chip, someone had drawn a crude profile, a long-haired woman with an overlarge nose. Terenz-de-Guises stood to leave the Guile & Gullet for fresher meadows. "I've told you my heart's desire and given you all my chips, what's left to say? And if you've got nowhere else to start on your little project, then any old hole is as good as the next, eh? You'll excuse me for needing to relocate, but the dinner hour has pa.s.sed. Other wenches to grope, you know."

Lallowe Thyu twitched an eyebrow in consternation at her empty winegla.s.s. She sat in a solarium paned with gla.s.s and black lead, filled to capacity with lush plants. Leaves like slabs of green steak dripped water into sluice-runs carved into the stone floor, and exposed root systems that crept over stone pots and the moss- stained feet of statues set among the hothouse bloom. Surrounded at her table by an immensity of white petals, the Marchioness Terenz-de-Guises looked the picture of courtly femininity: pet.i.te, dark of eye and hair, primped to apparent helplessness.

But upon closer inspection, Lallowe Thyu's delicacy was an illusion. She was thin but whip- strong, and her copper-oxide eyes simmered with a cruel tenacity. She wore a sleeveless blouse of gray- green silk that matched her eyes, and her feet were bare except for a coat of clear lacquer upon the filed turquoise chips that grew from her toes in place of nails.

She exhaled a string of birdsong curses in her native tongue that could have stripped the lead from the windows and pondered for the hundredth time why she'd bothered to marry rich in the first place. Oxnard, the Marquis Terenz-de-Guises, had been the perfect patsy, but it was not as simple to master life as a married woman as it was to master the man. Now she had a house hold to run, a district to govern, and cryptic orders from her mother to obey. Cryptic, and increasingly disturbing. And the b.l.o.o.d.y eyeball atop the ice cream sundae was-she'd missed the boy. And then seen him with Asher.

A queen of faerie made for an odd parent under normal circ.u.mstances, and these were anything but. Air and darkness were one thing; madness and monsters were part of their culture, but what her mother had become . . . and the new name she'd taken: the Cicatrix, queen of scars. Scabbed with metal and plastic. Lallowe shuddered, and obeyed.

Past the archway that exited the solarium, down the parquet hall and through a series of dressing rooms hung reams of expensive parchment paper. Several nights ago a message had appeared, as they did, upon one long sheet: a missive from the Cicatrix, containing orders.

They were odd orders. Brief and plainly written, which was itself unusual, they mentioned a location and the description of a man, and a single untranslatable word. Svarning.

Setting the word aside, Lallowe had considered what to do. Mother provided the details of the human's arrival, but had given not so much as a hint as to what to do with it. Him. She had to stop doing that.

For once, Lallowe erred on the side of caution. To be certain, she would enjoy ripping the guts out of the meaty childborn that seemed so abruptly important, but without knowing why he was important, she risked her own evisceration. The Cicatrix was not a forgiving parent-or, at least, she was forgiving no longer. Lallowe's sister had taken care of that.

So Lallowe had waited in her carriage, idling at the corner of Dismemberment and Ruin. Tam had tried to catch her attention, but was Lallowe really expected to pay attention to every corpse that woke up in that beige, lifeless neighborhood? She'd expected some flash, at least a little colored smoke to catch her attention. It was hardly her fault that she'd missed one chubby human slung over the back of a man painted to blend in with the clouds.

Arrangements had been made. If there was one thing Lallowe had learned from the Cicatrix, it was to nest your best plans inside better plans. The Lady would tell Lallowe what this Cooper meant, and how well he played the game. Lallowe needed a new player; she grew bored of picking apart this city one guild, shopkeep er, and vagrant at a time. Asher still vexed her when he could, as he had today, but he was a limited, broken creature.

She closed her eyes pictured her childhood home-before it had been spoiled-trying to summon the peace of the bowers of the Court of Scars. Recurved branches like cathedral ceilings or longbows, the yellow and blue suns that chased each other across the sky, the lithe limbs and swooning embraces of her kin. She yawned, homesick, even though the home she remembered no longer existed.

Even the marchioness was answerable to someone. Not her husband, who by all rights should have been the governing force within the district and his home, but was not. In fact, as one of the few members of the aristocracy who'd escaped the prince's insane imprisonment within the Dome, the marquis could have seized some measure of power and dragged this city back into a semblance of order. But that was pure fantasy; he'd been a dandyfop to begin with, and since his marriage to the "foreign exile," Lady Thyu, Oxnard Terenz-de-Guises had gone both to ground and to seed. These days he was rarely seen- and never seen sober. Which of course was why it had been so easy to steal control of the family fortunes, and everything else besides.

But Lallowe's mother . . . The Cicatrix possessed limited patience and a fusion-powered exoskeleton. Who had advice for that?

A pain in her head interrupted her machinations. An old pain, but one that she used to feel elsewhere within her body. It stabbed through her head from temple to temple, and heralded the arrival of more than a simple message. Somewhere, worlds and universes away, a faerie queen began to send her sole remaining daughter a gift. Mother's gifts were never pleasant.

Lallowe drained her wine and left the solarium. Her bare feet made no noise on the parquet floor of the hall, nor on the lush pile of her carpets. She tore a page of parchment from her boards-of a thick caliper, crisp and neat, neither ivory nor white but bone- and spread it across her desk with stones at the corners. The warm-toned drawing room was darker than the solarium, but faerie eyes needed no lamps.

From inside a drawer, a pouch, and handkerchief she took a draft pen loaded with a very particular ink. The sound of pen scratching parchment made her skin p.r.i.c.kle as Lallowe etched a single line. Dark ink spilled but did not clot. In another universe, Mother pushed, and the line split into two arcs, creating s.p.a.ce where there was none before. The parchment puckered at its sides as its weft was distorted by the dilating oval of ink. Crimson and black pigment filled the little creases in the parchment, spreading its tattoo as the spell allowed Mother to slip something through from there to here.

Birthing her way between universes; it was powerful magic, but slow. Much slower now than when Mother could still use her womb.

As she watched the v.u.l.v.ar portal widen, Lallowe felt reminded of the pressing need to understand her mother's transformation from unseelie queen to mechanical nightmare, as well as her machine-derived increase in power. With her mother's interest looming over her shoulder, Lallowe could not afford to play the game as murderously as she would have liked-she would have to find a way to subvert while appearing obedient.

Something shiny glinted from within the blood-inked pa.s.sage, and Lallowe's head cramped again. A gold oval-flatter than an egg but fatter than a pocket.w.a.tch-pushed its way through the paper, rising up from the flat surface of her desk.

Lallowe s.n.a.t.c.hed it up at once, pulling it from the inked v.u.l.v.a. A cursory glance gave no hint to its purpose, or her mother's reason for sending it, and it was not until she wiped the ink from its surface that Lallowe realized what she held. The bauble vibrated with energy, and Lallowe felt the whisper of magic within it. And also the p.r.i.c.kle of electricity. This pretty little thing was a machine.

It was the machine that had turned her mother into a monster.

Sesstri was livid. Asher hadn't worked out how his anger at Sesstri had sublimated into meekness, but somehow Sesstri managed to claim the rage that by all rights ought to have been his. He never expected her to care about Cooper; she'd seen him at the Apostery? With a Death Boy? And Cooper still had his navel?

"He didn't die?" Asher held his head in his big gray hands and looked at Sesstri like a beaten puppy.

"No, he didn't, and I was waiting until you returned, but you dumped him like trash, you stupid, stupid man!" She puffed hair from her face.

"Why did you wait?"

"I . . . I didn't know . . . Horse t.i.ts, Asher, I was trying to reason it out. I didn't think you'd toss him into a f.u.c.king ditch!"

"It wasn't a ditch." Asher's stormy mood was gone. Sesstri raged against the idiocy of men and the likelihood of Terenz-de-Guises' a.s.sa.s.sins tracking them all down and sending them spiraling off into other lives.

"We're right back where we started, only worse," she steamed. "Because now there is a young man who is not a t.u.r.d walking around the City Unspoken, and he's being courted by a Death Boy. Did I mention that? Cooper was drunk and holding hands with a minion of that." She pointed north, through the bay windows, where the burning towers lit the night sky.

"f.u.c.k me," Asher said in despair, when an insistent knocking sounded at the door.

"You sure this is the place, kid?" asked a child's voice from outside.

"It's the only place I know," said a voice that brought a brilliant smile to Asher's face. He leapt up and threw open the door, grabbing Cooper and wrapping him in a crushingly strong bear hug.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Asher shouted, twirling Cooper around, or trying to, while covering his face in kisses. "I won't ever leave you again, my special little darling."

"f.u.c.k you." Cooper pushed Asher away, but didn't feel as angry as he knew he should. Partly because Nixon was trying to tug off Cooper's t-shirt when he ought to have at least a moment of indignation at the great gray ape who left him to rot in the middle of this nightmare city. Nixon pulled up on the t-shirt to little effect.

"Hey, buddy, give me my shirt." Nixon pawed at Cooper's side. "What's your shirt say, anyway? What's a Danzig?"

Then, "s.h.i.t. You gotta navel, kid. What gives?" Nixon fixed Cooper with a doubtful eye, and Cooper pushed him away.

"Huh?" Cooper's eyes were wide. "Of course I have a navel. Everybody has a navel."

Nixon pointed at his own bare belly. There was no navel there, just smooth skin. "Jesus. n.o.body has a navel, moron." Cooper's eyes grew even wider, saucers of shock in his round face. "Excuse me? n.o.body has a f.u.c.king what?"

Asher held up his hands. "Okay, okay. Listen, Cooper, as it turns out, you didn't exactly die."

Before he could vomit, Sesstri stepped in. "It's my fault. I saw it when I strip-searched you. I just . . . didn't . . ." She wilted.

Cooper blinked rapidly. "You saw what, exactly?"

"Your navel. It's just another scar, Cooper. And scars disappear when you die."

"I don't understand." Cooper didn't. "Why are you telling me this now?"

Sesstri skirted that question. "When your body fails, you move on. Your spirit clothes itself in its own reflection-the flesh and blood and good denim that you remember. You awake in a body that is your own, but new. The only way to tell, really, is this." She prodded his belly and then shrugged artfully. "You only get one belly b.u.t.ton. So you cannot have pa.s.sed over. You are still on your first waking life. You are simply too young to be anything more than you seem."

"I still don't understand."

Asher took a turn. "Plenty of people have navels. Anyone born here, in the city, and they're on their first life- in their first body. Because you only get a navel by being born-you weren't born here, you merely reincarnated here. You had no placenta, no umbilicus to feed you. You awoke, whole and new and dead." He pointed to Nixon. "This boy has no navel because he's died at least once already, that's how he got here. Neither does Sesstri, and, I thought, neither did you."

"So . . . so. I'm not dead? I'm not dead!" Cooper cheered, then realized that not-dying changed his circ.u.mstances very little. "Why am I here? How am I here?"

"I would very much like to know." Sesstri glared at Cooper as if he knew the answer and refused to share. He glared right back, taking the opportunity to examine Sesstri more closely: tall, thin and coldly beautiful, her light brown eyes flashed with a surgical intelligence. Sesstri wore a high- necked dress of wrapped yellow silk, its stiff collar only emphasizing the length of her amber neck. Like so much here, she was breathtaking and frightening at the same time. Nixon and Sesstri had taken one look at each other and, by wordless accord, ignored each other entirely. The unboy retreated to the doorstep, listening from outside while appearing to doze.

Asher took the opportunity to needle the angry woman. "Witness, Cooper, this irradiant creature who a.s.saults us: Sesstri Manfrix-scholar, tyrant, beauty queen." He finished his drink.

"Cooper," Sesstri p.r.o.nounced, and it sounded like an accusation. She poked him again. "Cooper. Not a magical adept, not a Coffinstepper or other professional corpse, no advanced technology, nothing. So what are you? Why are you here?" He shrugged. "Tell me!" she commanded, her words trailing the faintest red thread of panic. WhatBringsYouHere? Her thoughts scratched a rhythm in his head. WhatRises?

"I don't know," Cooper said, his voice beginning to crack. This was too much. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shoot them both in the face with a fat .45.

Asher stood and put his hand on his hip. His red-rimmed eyes were kind.

"Cooper," he said, pressing one big gray hand against Cooper's shoulder. "You will be fine. I promise it. You will be more than fine." And then, "I'm sorry I abandoned you and left you for dead."

And for the first time Cooper really saw Asher: maggot skin, bloodless lips, beauty in a body bag. He was s.e.x and dissolution and strength in a ropey slouch.

"Something is wrong with the world," Asher rasped, and his voice was thick with a sorrow deeper and wider than Cooper would ever have guessed from his casual front. That face was a mask hiding a whole underground ocean of sorrows.

"We need worthier drinks for this part of the conversation." Asher stalked into the kitchen. "And by worthier, I, of course, mean stronger." He returned with a squat bottle of dusty gla.s.s in one hand, balancing three ice-filled tumblers in the other. Into each he poured a measure of acid-green liquid. "This is obsinto," he announced. "It makes everything better." With a little two-step flourish, he pa.s.sed Cooper a drink that smelled of anise and mothb.a.l.l.s.

"Something is wrong with all worlds," Sesstri corrected, still musing over Asher's p.r.o.nouncement. "And n.o.body seems to care. We don't know what to do, or what will happen." With an expression of supreme relief, Sesstri closed her eyes and drained her gla.s.s in one quick motion. Then she looked at Cooper and smiled. A peregrine falcon smile, fierce but just as much a mask as Asher's. She was sad, too, Cooper realized, and desperate as well. They were each desperate and sad, and for some reason Cooper himself was a disappointment that increased the measure of both. He asked why.

They exchanged a long glance. A loaded glance, and there was more than business and world-worry in it.

"We thought you were . . ." Asher hesitated. "You won't understand."

"Tell me!" Cooper commanded.

"He'll think we're crazy," Asher cautioned Sesstri, who kept silent, occupied by her thoughts. WeAreWeAreWeAre.

"I already do."

She sighed and threw up her hands in defeat. "Hardly a surprise," she said flatly, then leaned in to Cooper with intensity. "Do you know what a shaman does?"

"We thought you were a shaman," Asher said, rolling his eyes out of sheer helplessness. "Or an adept. A mage, a mystic. Something to help us."

"We were looking for someone," Sesstri corrected. "Instead we found you."

"What do you mean, shaman?" he asked, ignoring her newest insult.

"Shaman: a core-world, practically proto-cultural totemic, whose power is usually marked by, among other things, a journey of ascent-or descent-into the lives beyond life. A guide, a protector, a seer. Primitive from a certain vantage, perhaps remedial but, under certain circ.u.mstances, quite effective. One who walks between worlds and communes with spirits." She clicked her tongue, looking him up and down. "But you don't look proto-cultural."

Cooper bared his teeth.

"He looks feral enough to me," Asher said blandly.

Sesstri shook her head and her hair rippled. Dawn silk dancing. "Look at his clothes. He's wearing denim, Asher, not home-tanned leathers." She leaned over Cooper, peering closely and scratching at the seam of his jeans with a lacquered nail. "I woke up in a bath towel-this is merely part of the process. As I observed earlier, the st.i.tching is clearly mechanical and the construction and branding imply a large commercial presence. Maybe ma.s.sive. Industry." She leaned in close, her burl-wood eyes flashing. Sesstri's intellect shone from those eyes, self-evident and intimidating. "Do the words Starsung Underwine mean anything to you?"

Cooper shook his head no.

"What about Dramba.s.sel Fivemalt?"

No again. Sesstri pouted.

It dawned on Cooper that she was listing brand names, though he didn't know why.

"Mercedes-Benz?" she asked hopefully.

Of course. She was trying to place him. She could do that?

Cooper nodded with enthusiasm, more pleased to have been correct in his a.s.sumption than to give the woman what she wanted. His battered mind was adjusting after all.

Sesstri snapped her fingers and rounded on Asher. "This one is no shaman!" she p.r.o.nounced. "I told you so. I know of his world."

"You do?" Asher asked with a screwy face.

"So do you, you just aren't aware you know it-it's one of the big players. Real shamans don't exist in postindustrial, magic-dead societies. Coreworld shamans are shadows, and their magical adepts are simply pract.i.tioners of self-delusion. It's all drugs and drumming."

"So what am I?" Cooper interrupted. They both looked at him like they'd forgotten he could speak.

"An erratum, I guess," Asher muttered, averting his gaze down into his tumbler.

"I haven't the slightest idea what you are, stranger, or why you're here," Sesstri said with finality. "That alone should terrify you."

Cooper looked down into his own gla.s.s-they were all avoiding eye contact now-and swirled the gra.s.s-colored pastis to enjoy the familiar sound of ice cubes clinking. He drained it and observed that he wasn't terrified at all. Embroiled in a plot beyond his understanding, something that stole him from his bed as he slept and dropped him here, among these improbable strangers in this impossible city-Cooper should have been horrified; he should have been a quivering ma.s.s of tears and snot. But he wasn't horrified, not anymore. By some trick of fate or magic or inner strength, Cooper found himself merely annoyed. And careful.

"I guess I find that kind of rewarding," he said, looking at Sesstri. She didn't shrink from their locked gaze, and neither did he. "It may be self- defeating, it may even be suicidal, but right now? Right now I think, Sesstri, that stumping you is a beautiful thing."

After that, she did not speak to him for quite a while.

Sleep called to Cooper like a siren. Sesstri and Asher circled each other for the better part of an hour, sniping and ignoring Cooper, who was happy to be ignored. He poured mothb.a.l.l.s down his throat and got drunk for the second time that day, while stars circled overhead. Still, a tension had been broken. Somehow it felt as if the three of them were bound together now, in their loneliness and confusion. Cooper wondered if they were . . . it felt like they might almost be friends. And that was the least sane thing he'd observed all day.

Companions, then, if friends was too strong a word. Coconspirators. Mutually f.u.c.ked. Outside, Nixon napped on the threshold stone, his head against the door. f.u.c.ked seemed to be a hot commodity in the City Unspoken.