He dreamed of the
Black Door opening and taking him in with teeth made of fire. All this, Mara
knew. She drank it in with her water. She ignored it and she wrote.
Bells rang. She
forgot to count them, but she did rouse herself on hearing them to fetch fresh
ink and a candle. Her movements were followed by the Scrivener. His huge head
swung slowly after her until she stopped walking. He had a mouth. It opened to
emit a saurian grunt. Part of his side bulged outward into a boneless arm that
groped at the air for a second until he became distracted and took it back in,
turning away. His interest was bearable only because there was nothing in it to
touch, only a stupid intent without reason, absolute awareness without a mind.
Sometime later,
as she dimly recalled being promised, bread was brought. In the Scrivener’s
company, Mara could have no appetite, but she ate it anyway. The bread was
tough, brick-hard and mud-brown, gritty. The man who gave it to her was named
Shome Akai. He had come from a village of crushing poverty, father of seven
starving children. He had killed one of them, his most beloved son, as part of
a spell that he had been promised would bring wealth. It hadn’t. In the
darkness, before his crime could be discovered, he had fed the flesh of his son
to dogs, and then fled. Sometimes he dreamed of dogs with human faces, dogs who
cried out to him in human voices. Sometimes it was a dog who took him, a dog
who laughed with Master Madrek’s mouth and bit, bit, bit at the back of his
neck.
Mara stayed in
the Panic Room, making her body eat as she stared thoughtfully into the monitor
that showed her these tangled, doom-swept thoughts when another flickered to
life. Horuseps, coming towards her. She braced herself as best she was able and
dropped back into her body to meet him.
She managed not
to vomit, but it was a near thing. Mara stared into her open book and was a
thousand miles away, a lump of newly-budded tissue and blood suddenly hooked
and ripped apart, ripped away, and it was aware, yes, aware of pain if nothing
else, and she was its weary mother also, back on this filthy table and
thinking, ‘That’s done, that’s over again and I can be back at work in half an
hour.’ She was fetus-pain and mother-relief and she was the infection already
creeping in, the infection that would kill in three months’ time, but not
before she spread the virus to another hundred unknown men, not before she
spawned another swimming, mindless, hopeful lump to die with her in baffled
agony.
A covered tray
appeared before her. Mara looked at it, then up into the face of the
black-robed student who had set it down. ‘Your name is Aaron Micheals,’ she
thought without emotion. ‘You had sex with your sister once when you found her
passed out after a party. And then you got her drunk to do it again, but she
never passed out all the way, did she? She just got sick enough to need to go
to the hospital, just sick enough to come back from it unable to talk straight
or write or take herself to the toilet. You tell yourself you’re here to learn
how to fix her, to fix what you did to her, but that’s not what you’re
studying, is it? You’re studying with Master Letha, you’re studying the art of
Allure, so that you’ll never need to make them drunk again, you’ll just make
them want you.’
The tray was
uncovered. Horuseps passed a hand over it, solicitous as a game show hostess
telling her what she might win. Beneath the lid were several objects, arranged
in a neat, tight circle: a jade frog, a silver thimble, a painted clay cup, a
golden egg-shaped censer, and a scrimshawed shark’s tooth.
Horuseps spoke
while Mara studied these. It wasn’t English this time. The words twisted in her
mind, wanting to catch, but their meaning eluded her.
Horuseps waited
for a while, then heaved a theatrical sigh, turning his hands up in a gesture
of resignation. His palms were unlined. He had no fingerprints. He covered the
tray
Black Door opening and taking him in with teeth made of fire. All this, Mara
knew. She drank it in with her water. She ignored it and she wrote.
Bells rang. She
forgot to count them, but she did rouse herself on hearing them to fetch fresh
ink and a candle. Her movements were followed by the Scrivener. His huge head
swung slowly after her until she stopped walking. He had a mouth. It opened to
emit a saurian grunt. Part of his side bulged outward into a boneless arm that
groped at the air for a second until he became distracted and took it back in,
turning away. His interest was bearable only because there was nothing in it to
touch, only a stupid intent without reason, absolute awareness without a mind.
Sometime later,
as she dimly recalled being promised, bread was brought. In the Scrivener’s
company, Mara could have no appetite, but she ate it anyway. The bread was
tough, brick-hard and mud-brown, gritty. The man who gave it to her was named
Shome Akai. He had come from a village of crushing poverty, father of seven
starving children. He had killed one of them, his most beloved son, as part of
a spell that he had been promised would bring wealth. It hadn’t. In the
darkness, before his crime could be discovered, he had fed the flesh of his son
to dogs, and then fled. Sometimes he dreamed of dogs with human faces, dogs who
cried out to him in human voices. Sometimes it was a dog who took him, a dog
who laughed with Master Madrek’s mouth and bit, bit, bit at the back of his
neck.
Mara stayed in
the Panic Room, making her body eat as she stared thoughtfully into the monitor
that showed her these tangled, doom-swept thoughts when another flickered to
life. Horuseps, coming towards her. She braced herself as best she was able and
dropped back into her body to meet him.
She managed not
to vomit, but it was a near thing. Mara stared into her open book and was a
thousand miles away, a lump of newly-budded tissue and blood suddenly hooked
and ripped apart, ripped away, and it was aware, yes, aware of pain if nothing
else, and she was its weary mother also, back on this filthy table and
thinking, ‘That’s done, that’s over again and I can be back at work in half an
hour.’ She was fetus-pain and mother-relief and she was the infection already
creeping in, the infection that would kill in three months’ time, but not
before she spread the virus to another hundred unknown men, not before she
spawned another swimming, mindless, hopeful lump to die with her in baffled
agony.
A covered tray
appeared before her. Mara looked at it, then up into the face of the
black-robed student who had set it down. ‘Your name is Aaron Micheals,’ she
thought without emotion. ‘You had sex with your sister once when you found her
passed out after a party. And then you got her drunk to do it again, but she
never passed out all the way, did she? She just got sick enough to need to go
to the hospital, just sick enough to come back from it unable to talk straight
or write or take herself to the toilet. You tell yourself you’re here to learn
how to fix her, to fix what you did to her, but that’s not what you’re
studying, is it? You’re studying with Master Letha, you’re studying the art of
Allure, so that you’ll never need to make them drunk again, you’ll just make
them want you.’
The tray was
uncovered. Horuseps passed a hand over it, solicitous as a game show hostess
telling her what she might win. Beneath the lid were several objects, arranged
in a neat, tight circle: a jade frog, a silver thimble, a painted clay cup, a
golden egg-shaped censer, and a scrimshawed shark’s tooth.
Horuseps spoke
while Mara studied these. It wasn’t English this time. The words twisted in her
mind, wanting to catch, but their meaning eluded her.
Horuseps waited
for a while, then heaved a theatrical sigh, turning his hands up in a gesture
of resignation. His palms were unlined. He had no fingerprints. He covered the
tray
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