Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

He'd been following a caravan of several loosely connected Jaybird bands who'd been moving south from the Flirtin hills; he wandered along with them, imitating a birdy imbecile whenever anyone tried to speak to him, and he waited for them to stop somewhere and stage one of their big communion spirals so that he could see if anyone present particularly fitted the description of his quarry.

Finally, just as he'd been about to give up on them and retreat back north, they did all stop for a communion, in a parking lot at the Anahime Convenshin Centr. It had been about noon of the day before yesterday.

The shepherds had climbed to the tops of the old light poles and the weird two-tone roar had started up as the old man in white showed up and walked into the spiral, going around and around as he got closer to the center. McAn had watched the whole spectacle while sitting comfortably on the roof of a truck, remembering to wince occasionally and glance with chagrin at his hand, which he'd wrapped in the realistically red-spotted rag he always took with him now on redemptions. People in severe pain, he'd learned, were disqualified from taking the sacrament.

During the parking lot ceremony he spotted two possibles, and when the sacrament hammered them down he noted which of the sprawled shapes they were, so that after they recovered he'd be able to approach each of them and spring one of the questions the quarry's parents had primed him with.

Though his luck, as he now knew, had been about to run out, it had not quite abandoned him yet. The second of the boys, still somnambulistic from the communion, had not only shown clear recognition of the family dog referred to in the question—"Lucy's chewing all her fur off and she's covered with sores, what can we do besides have her killed?"—he'd even given the correct answer: «Put garlic in her food, like we did last summer.»

McAn had been eyeing the nearby fences and walls and doorways, looking for a hidden spot where he could knock the kid out and then carry him away unseen, when the shrill metallic whistling began. Because he'd been peering around he was among the first to see the several dozen Y-shaped bicycles racing across the pavement toward the Jaybird crowd, and he grabbed his quarry's arm and pulled him along in the opposite direction through the confused crowd.

An irregular pop-pop began punctuating the screams behind the fleeing pair, but it wasn't until McAn and his quarry had broken away from the crowd and begun running south along a sheltered sidewalk that he realized the noise must have been gunfire.

The Jaybirds had been at two disadvantages when the attack occurred: most of their number were unconscious or disoriented, and, secure in the knowledge that hooters never dared to attack Jaybird bands, the shepherds had set up the communion in an open, paved spot.

McAn couldn't get the boy to run for more than a minute at a time, and the fleetest Jaybird fugitives quickly caught up with and passed them, and soon McAn and his quarry were just two bobbing heads in a packed crowd that was being herded south by grim-faced shepherds on horseback. The shepherds held drawn pistols, and kept standing up in the stirrups to look back, and they took every opportunity to drive their herd up steep hillsides and through narrow gaps in the eternal aluminum chain-link fences—clearly they expected the starving hooters to try again. McAn assumed that the wagons, and all the still unconscious communicants, were being taken south too by some other route, but he couldn't see anything—his horizon was the close heads of the Jaybirds who jogged uncomplainingly along all around him. All he could do was trot along with them and maintain his grip on his quarry's arm.

They passed the wide street which was Chapman Av. They were in the Seal Beach Desolate now, and showed no sign of slowing down.

McAn still wasn't too worried. Obviously there would be some opportunity between here and Irvine for him to grab the boy and slip away.

McAn paused now when he came to the alley that he'd reconnoitered last night. He knew it looped around to the square where the wagons stood, and he swept a disapproving glance over the street before he stepped out of the patchy, unwarm sunlight and into the shadows of the alley.

But of course, he thought, no such opportunity came, and here we are in actual goddamn Irvine. I've stumbled onto a couple of small pieces of luck—having been healthy-looking enough to be assigned to the detail that loaded wagons with the people, including my quarry, who passed out during the two-day forced march; and being able to salvage this robe from a shepherd killed yesterday, in the confusion of the hooters' second attack—but now it's time tp make some luck. My disguise is good; they never iron these robes, so you can't tell that this one spent twelve hours crumpled in my pack, and with the hood up you can't see the cropped patches on my head where I cut off hair to make this fake beard with.

Think about that second two hundred and fifty fifths! And the unparalleled stories you'll be able to tell once you get yourself and the kid out of this loony, bottom-of-the-world town.

I think the thing about this place that most puts my teeth on edge, he thought as he silently picked his way along the trash-littered alley, is that there's nobody in the whole damn ramshackle settlement who's not birdy as a bedbug. The real shepherds have to hop just to keep slugging all the guys who click over to the speaking-in-tongues channel, and piling them onto the wagons heading into the Holy City. I suppose I ought to punch somebody, just to seem in character. I wonder if there's a back gate to the city somehwere, where they bring the empty wagons out. There must be otherwise you'd be able to see the piles of old wagons over the top of the wall. Heh heh. Unless they—

He froze, for a ragged figure was crouched tensely at the courtyard end of the alley, apparently staring at the wagon McAn had to get to. Well, McAn thought, his heartbeat beginning to accelerate as he flexed his right hand and stole silently forward, here's where I start behaving in character.

But with an alertness uncharacteristic of Jaybirds the figure spun to face him when he was still several yards away, and with no hesitation the man drew a knife from his sleeve and lunged at McAn. McAn managed to knock the knife arm aside, but the man collided hard with him and they both tumbled to the filthy pavement. McAn's false beard was hanging from one ear and was badly unraveled, but he'd sat up and got his own knife out now, and had begun a feint to draw a wide, flank-exposing parry from his opponent—

«Frake!» his opponent gasped, and McAn hesitated.

He peered at the gaunt, red-eyed face. «Who are you?» McAn asked in a clipped whisper, not lowering his knife.

«Rivas.»

«Tell me who you are, or—» McAn looked more closely. «Really?»

Rivas nodded, leaning back against the alley wall and obviously trying to pant quietly.

«What on earth's happened to you, Rivas? And I thought you'd retired.»

«I did.» He took several deep breaths. «This is . . . special circumstances.»

McAn got painfully to his feet. «You're awful hasty with a knife. You I was only going to hit .»

Rivas had got his breath back, and stood up too. «That's why you were always the second-best redeemer.»

McAn smiled coldly as he carefully re-hooked the beard across his lean young face. «Yeah. I sure do envy what being number one has done for you.»

To McAn's surprise, Rivas actually reddened. What's this, Greg, he thought—did you shed the cynical armor too when you shaved off that silly, affected, half beard?

«You're on a job, I gather,» said Rivas quietly. «Someone in that wagon?»

«Right. The skinny kid just inboard of the right rear wheel. I put him there late yesterday. Which one's yours?»