Clive Barker - Imajica 01 - The Fifth Dominion

"I want kreauchee!" he said.

"I havat! I havat!" the creature said, and led him from the bedroom into the enormous dressing room that lay next door, where she began to search through the gilded boxes on Quaisoir's dressing table.

Catching sight of the Autarch's reflection in the mirror, she made a tiny smile, like a guilty child, before bringing a package out of the smallest of the boxes. He snatched it from her fingers before she had a chance to proffer it. He knew from the smell that stung his nostrils that this was good quality, and without hesitating he unwrapped it and put the whole wad into his mouth.

"Good girl," he told Concupiscentia. "Good girl. Now, do you know where your mistress got it?"

Concupiscentia shook her head. "She goallat alon unto the Kesparates, many nights. Sometimes shellem a goat beggar, sometimes shellem goat—"

"A whore."

"No, no. Quaisoir isem a whore."

"Is that where she is now?" the Autarch said. "Is she out whoring? It's a little early for that, isn't it, or is she cheaper in the afternoon?"

The kreauchee was better than he'd hoped; he felt it striking him as he spoke, lifting his melancholy and replacing it with a vehement buzz. Even though he'd not penetrated Quaisoir in four decades (nor had any desire to), in some moods news of her infidelities could still depress him. But the drug took all that pain away. She could sleep with fifty men a day, and it wouldn't take her an inch from his side. Whether they felt contempt or passion for each other was irrelevant. History had made them indivisible and would hold them together till the Apocalypse did them part.

"Shellem not whoring," Concupiscentia piped up, determined to defend her mistress's honor. "Shellem downer ta Scoriae."

"The Scoriae? Why?"

"Executions," Concupiscentia replied, pronouncing this word—learned from her mistress's lips—perfectly.

"Executions?" the Autarch said, a vague unease surfacing through the kreauchee's soothings. "What executions?"

Concupiscentia shook her head. "I dinnet knie," she said. "Jest executions. Allovat executions. She prayat to tern—"

"I'm sure she does."

"We all prayat far the_sols, so ta go intat the presence of the Unbeheld washed—"

Here were more phrases repeated parrot fashion, the kind of Christian cant he found as sickening as the decor. And, like the decor, these were Ouaisoir's work. She'd embraced the Man of Sorrows only a few months ago, but it hadn't taken her long to claim she was His bride. Another infidelity, less syphilitic than the hundreds that had gone before, but just as pathetic.

The Autarch left Concupiscentia to babble on and dispatched his bodyguard to locate Rosengarten. There were questions to be answered here, and quickly, or else it wouldn't only be the Scoriae where heads would roll.

Traveling the Lenten Way, Gentle had come to believe that, far from being the burden he'd expected her to be, Huzzah was a blessing. If she hadn't been with them in the Cradle he was certain the Goddess Tishalulle would not have intervened on their behalf; nor would hitchhiking along the highway have been so easy if they hadn't had a winsome child to thumb rides for them. Despite the months she'd spent hidden away in the depths of the asylum (or perhaps because of them), Huzzah was eager to engage everyone in conversation, and from the replies to her innocent inquiries he and Pie gleaned a good deal of information he doubted they'd have come by otherwise. Even as they'd crossed the causeway to the city, she'd struck up a dialogue with a woman who'd happily supplied a list of the Kesparates and even pointed out those that were visible from where they'd walked. There were too many names and directions for Gentle to hold in his head, but a glance towards Pie confirmed that the mystif was attending closely and would have all of them by heart by the time they reached the other side.

"Wonderful," Pie said to Huzzah when the woman had departed. "I wasn't sure I'd be able to find my way back to my people's Kesparate. Now I know the way."

"Up through the Oke T'Noon, to the Caramess, where they make the Autarch's sweetmeats," Huzzah said, repeating the directions as if she was reading them off a blackboard. "Follow the wall of the Caramess till we get to Smooke Street, then up to the Viaticum, and we'll be able to see the gates from there."

"How did you remember all that?" Gentle said, to which Huzzah somewhat disdainfully asked how he could have allowed himself to forget.

"We mustn't get lost," she said.

"We won't," Pie replied. "There'll be people in my Kesparate who'll help us find your grandparents."

"If they don't it doesn't matter," Huzzah said, looking gravely from Pie to Gentle. "I'll come with you to the First Dominion. I don't mind. I'd like to see the Unbeheld."

"How do you know that's where we're going?" Gentle

said.

"I've heard you talking about it," she replied. "That's what you're going to do, isn't it? Don't worry, I'm not scared. We've seen a Goddess, haven't we? He'll be the same, only not as beautiful."

This unflattering notion amused Gentle mightily.

"You're an angel, you know that?" he said, going down on his haunches and sliding his arms around her.

She'd put on a few pounds in weight since they'd begun their journey together, and her hug, when she returned it,

was strong.

"I'm hungry," she murmured in his ear.

"Then we'll find somewhere to eat," he replied. "We can't have our angel going hungry."

They walked up through the steep streets of the Oke T'Noon until they were clear of the throng of itinerants coming off the causeway. Here there were any number of -establishments offering breakfast, from stalls selling barbecued fish to cafes that might have been transported from the streets of Paris, but that the customers sipping coffee were more extraordinary than even that city of exotics could boast. Many were species whose peculiarities he now took for granted: Oethacs and Heratea; distant relatives of Mother Splendid and Hammeryock; even a few who resembled the one-eyed croupier from Attaboy. But for every member of a tribe whose features he recognized, there were two or three he did not. As in Vanaeph, Pie had warned him that staring too hard would not be in their best interests, and he did his best not to enjoy too plainly the array of courtesies, humors, lunacies, gaits, skins, and cries that filled the streets. But it was difficult. After a time they found a small caf6 from which the smell of food was particularly tempting, and Gentle sat down beside one of the windows, from which he could watch the parade without drawing too much attention.

"I had a friend called Klein," he said as they ate, "back in the Fifth Dominion. He liked to ask people what they'd do if they knew they only had three days to live." "Why three?" Huzzah asked.

"I don't know. Why three anything? It's one of those numbers."

" 'In any fiction there's only ever room for three players,' " the mystif remarked. " The rest must be .. .' "—its flow faltered in mid-quotation—" 'agents,' something, and something else. That's a line from Pluthero Quexos." "Who's he?" "Nevermind." "Where was I?" "Klein," said Huzzah.

"When he got around to asking me this question, I told him, If I had three days left I'd go to New York, because you've got more chance of living out your wildest dreams there than anywhere. But now I've seen Yzordderrex—" "Not much of it," Huzzah pointed out. "It's enough, angel. If he asks me again I'm going to tell • him I'd like to die in Yzordderrex."

"Eating breakfast with Pie and Huzzah," she said. "Perfect."

"Perfect," she replied, echoing his intonation precisely. "Is there anything I couldn't find here if I looked hard enough?"

"Some peace and quiet," Pie remarked. The hubbub from outside was certainly loud, even in the cafe.