It opened onto an icy street. Buildings pressed close on either side, but when I looked up, I saw a vast stretch of glowing bale instead of the sky. I turned to ask Far how far its ability to shape bale extended, but the wall behind me was blank.
This was going to be fun, I thought, pulling the chalk out of my pocket and putting an “x” on the wall. Then I put the chalk away again and began to walk.
I could only assume that this was Far’s version of Cislunar, a transient-distorted nightmare of my home town. The streets were wider and the buildings taller than they should be; doors were sealed and windows opaque and unbreakable. Within minutes I’d walked from the bale-Blackstone to a re-creation of Northgate, where the Vigilance’s offices were located. The walk should have taken me half an hour, at best. The Vigilance building itself looked bigger than it should have been, with a looming metal gate and an ominous-looking garden.
“Michael? Lorencz?” My voice sounded flat. I didn’t like the acoustics across the Line. They made me sound insignificant.
I walked onto the grounds and looked around. The walkways and benches were empty. The twisted plants looked like tarnished silver. The Vigilance’s heavy doors were too tall, as if seen from a smaller person’s perspective. I pushed them open.
The waiting room was vast and its walls covered with portraits depicting people whose faces were blank smears. An empty desk and chair stood in the center of the room.
“Michael? Lorencz?”
No answer. I opened a few doors and found nothing. Frustrated, I dropped into the secretary’s chair to think.
“So, here I am, in hell at last,” I said out loud. My voice still sounded flat and impotent. There wouldn’t be any choirs in hell. I dragged my thoughts back to the search.
Hell. Hell drives sentinels mad. Every sentinel I’d worked with who’d crossed the Line had returned insane.
Too bad for Michael and Lorencz, then. I scowled, annoyed. Sure, I could go back to Cislunar and keep working for the Watch on my own, but it wouldn’t be the same without Lorencz to argue with. And Michael was the last living member of my family. Nobody had the right to kill him except me.
Where would they be, if they were going insane? Where would Axton and Croix be, for that matter?
The asylum? No. That was where people were sent after they went insane. Except for Axton, who worked there. But I didn’t give a damn about the little alienist. So where do people go insane? Where would I go insane?
Home. Home is where people go insane. Home would certainly be my first choice for hell.
I stood and left the Vigilance.
The Aronson family mansion was on the Hill. It took me less time to get there than it should have. In this version of Cislunar, the house stretched across half the block, its windows reflecting the silvery pall like mirrors. I walked up to the doors, which loomed too tall, and felt a strange shudder go down my spine as I reached for the knocker. Hands touched my shoulders. I heard a hissed warning and felt fingers digging into my flesh.
“Fuck off,” I growled. “This isn’t my hell.” I shrugged away my father’s phantom grip, grabbed the iron ring, and pounded.
Nothing. No noise at all. But I found myself standing inside the hall. It wasn’t my cousin’s hall anymore. It was his parents’, filled with musty tapestries and bad paintings. Adult voices were raised in argument somewhere not too far away. I heard my own name spoken with anger.
I swore at both Yzyrchye and Far and began walking, throwing open doors as I plunged through the house.
The rooms were ghosts of the past, filled with the sour stink of my own childhood. They were arranged out of order, or rather, in some order that had meaning only in hell. I strode through them, my anger growing with each step. If I ran into my father, or Michael’s father, for that matter, I was going to kill them. I’d always wanted to kill them, back when I’d been a boy. I’d even tried, although I hadn’t succeeded. In the end I’d run away, and while I was gone, my father and both of Michael’s parents died in an opera house fire. I’d been disappointed to hear that, when I’d come back. I’d been hoping to kill them myself.
I didn’t run into them now, either, although their voices surrounded me like oppressive echoes.
At last I threw open a tall door and stood before a great glass palace. Its fragile walls were scorched and cracked and broken. Snow whipped through the jagged openings. Michael’s greenhouse. I kicked one of the cracks wide enough to slip through without getting cut and entered, my breath rising in a cloud of vapor.
The plants in the greenhouse were blackened and brittle, their fronds rattling, their twigs as bare and needle-sharp as Yzyrchye’s probing antennae. Long bodies stretched across the floor, their vivid green and blue scales dulled by death. Ice frosted their dark, open eyes and stiffened slender, multijointed toes. Michael’s pet lizards, the only things in the world upon which he lavished any affection. I tried not to step on them as I pushed through the dead foliage. They weren’t anything but shaped bale, but there was still something uncanny about their cold, motionless shapes.
I found my cousin sitting in the middle of the greenhouse. The clearing held several chairs and small tables, all scorched. He sat in one chair, keening over a body cradled in his arms. Iguana corpses were piled around his feet like dry, dead branches.
“Michael.” I walked forward until I could see what he was holding.
A kitten. Grey, white, and black. It had been a gift from his mother, his first pet. I remembered wringing its neck and cutting it open with my penknife. I’d left it on his pillow with its guts arranged around it as an artistic touch. Now its entrails were frozen and stiff as they dangled from his arms. Michael’s eyes were as blank as the kitten’s.
I’d forgotten all about that cat. I’d been, what? Thirteen? My cousin was a few years younger than me. He would have been nine, ten, maybe. Why had I done it? I couldn’t remember. Because I could, most likely.
His mother. Maybe it had had something to do with his mother. Might stirred, pressing against my leg. I remembered the kitten’s fur against my fingers and the way it had grown matted with blood and lost its softness. I’d started killing animals, oh, maybe when I was six or seven. It had reduced the pressure in my chest; the tension that had sometimes threatened to strangle me. It had made me feel normal again, for a while.
Drinking had helped, too. I’d started drinking very young, but I’d stopped when I became Yzyrchye’s Hound. With Might at my side, I hadn’t needed to drink anymore. And now I refused to start again. But killing — killing’s an addiction I’ve never managed to shake. It still makes me feel normal again, for a while.
Michael’s thin wailing cut through my reverie. I shook my head and wiped my damp palms on my sweater. They left red streaks. I looked at them and saw fresh blood and kitten hairs.
“Really?” I pulled off my sweater, finished cleaning my hands, and dropped it on the floor. The winter air pierced my shirt and I shivered.
Sentinels can call bale from hell and shape it to their will. Apparently, in hell, so could I. That wasn’t good, I decided as Might throbbed.
I walked forward. Michael ignored me.
“Hey, Michael. Michael.” I nudged his shoulder. “We’re across the Line. The kitten’s just an illusion.”
He didn’t look at me.
“Michael.” I crouched in front of him, squattin over a pile of dead pets. “Michael? It’s me. Tegeus.”
He recoiled, snapping back into the present. Or something like the present.
“You killed my cat!”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll get you a new one.”
“I don’t want a new one! I want Misty!” He glared, his fingers curling on the dead kitten. “Mother gave her to me.”
“Yeah, I know.” I grabbed his hand and forced his fingers back open. “Look, she’s still alive. See?”
He looked down.
“I saw her breathing,” I insisted. “Watch. I’ll clean off this mess and you’ll see that she’s as good as new.”
I lifted the frozen body and brushed at the kitten’s frost-covered guts. They didn’t move.
It wasn’t working. Apparently when it came to a clash of wills, his was stronger.
“Michael, she’s alive. Believe it. If you believe it hard enough, it’ll be true.”
“She’s dead.” He looked away from the small body, his stricken gaze sweeping over the iguana corpses scattered over the floor of the greenhouse. “They’re all dead. I killed them.”
The light around us flickered and I smelled smoke. I set the kitten’s body down, shrugging.
“Okay, you’re right. She’s dead. But you’re not. Come on. Let’s get out of here.” I stood.
“Why? They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
The iguanas had turned into children. Five of them. For some reason, their sleeves were all charred, as if they’d swung their arms too close to a fire.
“Listen, Michael. Far says the kids are still alive somewhere. It and Milka have gone to rescue them. And we need to find Lorencz, Axton, and Croix. Remember them?”
Nothing. I leaned forward and shook his shoulder.
“Lorencz, Axton, and Croix. If you don’t snap out it, they’ll die, too. Wake up and help me keep them alive.”
He blinked, looking around, and then focused on me.
“Tegeus,” he growled. “You son of a bitch.”
“Oh, good, you’re feeling better. Let’s go.”
He rose and swung. I was so surprised by it that his fist landed on my jaw, knocking me backward a step. I laughed, delighted. Michael was himself again. No, he was better than himself. He hadn’t tried to hit me since we were children.
“I hate you,” he spat.
“I know.” I rubbed my jaw, grinning at him. “You usually do a better job of hiding it, though.”
“You don’t even care, do you?”
“If I cared about everyone who hated me, I’d have killed myself a long time ago.” I kept an eye on him, just in case he tried to hit me a second time. Once was all he got, last surviving relative or not. “I don’t hate you. I don’t like you, either, but I don’t like anyone.”
“You like Lorencz.”
I smirked.
“Jealous? I’m not interested in her. You, though, you might be a different matter.”
He recoiled.
“Liar.”
“Sure. I thought about fucking you when we were younger. I just left before I could get around to it. You always knew how I felt, though, didn’t you? I know you didn’t like being alone with me.”
His face had become shiny with sweat.
“That wasn’t you.”
“Yes, it was.”
“That was your father.”
His answer hit like a second punch. I had to take a moment before I could reply.
“I’m a hundred times more dangerous than my father ever was, cuz.”
“Dammit, Tegeus, why are you here?”
“You’re my last surviving relative.” We were back in the house again, in his parents’ room. I hadn’t noticed the bale shifting, but now that we were here, it made sense to take advantage of the change. I walked to the wardrobe. Michael grabbed my arm.
“Stay out of there!”
“I’m cold. Far reconstructed winter along with the rest of Cislunar.” I grabbed the first garment that came to hand, a formal black opera coat, and pulled it on. The cut was antiquated, but at least it put another layer of fabric between me and the chill air.
“You —” Michael stopped. “How’d we get here?”
“One of us shifted the bale. Probably you, because I don’t remember this room. Did we ever have an argument in your parents’ bedroom? Or did all that talk about fucking get you so excited that you wanted a bed?”
“I — yes — yes, we did.” He glared at me. “You were stealing Father’s money. You wouldn’t give it back, so I told my parents. That’s why you killed Misty.”
“Was it?” I didn’t remember, but it wasn’t impossible. I’d stolen from everyone, back then. I’d needed the money to buy alcohol and whatever else caught my fancy. And there was no doubt that Michael’s father would have thrown a fit if I’d taken anything of his. He’d been very protective of his title and property; he’d had to be, with my father sniffing around.
I glanced at my hand and thought I saw hair and blood in it again. I wiped it on a dress. What the hell was going on, anyway?
Michael was apparently wondering the same thing.
“Did you say we’re across the Line?”
“Far made it look like Cislunar, but it’s not very stable. Probably keeping us from going balemad, though.” I kept rummaging until I found a pair of men’s gloves. “Here, put these on.” I tossed them to him. “Want a coat?”
“I have one.”
I turned. He’d re-created his own cashmere coat, which had been left behind in the hospital director’s office. He pulled on the gloves I’d tossed him, though.
“Make one of those for me. Your father’s coat is tight around the shoulders.”
The jacket altered, thickening and lengthening into a Watch greatcoat.
“Thanks.”
“I don’t know why I’m helping you.” He sounded petulant.
“Because we have a better chance of finding the others if we work together.” I cast him a sidelong look. “Because even if we don’t like each other, we’ve always been safer together than apart. And because we’re both different people now than when we were kids.”
Michael ran a hand over his face, then paused and looked at it, puzzled.
“I can see.”
In all the rest of the strangeness, I’d forgotten that he’d been baleblind.
“Is it because we’re across the Line?” he asked himself, looking around. “But bale should exacerbate the problem, not resolve it. Shouldn’t it?”
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. Not now, anyway.” He frowned and turned his attention back to me. “Are you really different, Tegeus? I mean, deep inside?”
I shrugged.
“Maybe I can just control myself better now.”
Michael pointed to Might.
“I chose to draw it,” I protested. He studied me.
“Did you really want to…” he hesitated. “To sleep with me?”
I laughed.
“Is that still bothering you? Don’t you secretly imagine what it would be like to fuck every woman you meet? I feel the same way about men.”
“Not everyone’s a pervert, Tegeus.”
“Of course they are, in their own heads. But don’t worry; I’m not going to attack you. Not here and not now, anyway.” I opened the bedroom door and stepped out on the street. Snow blew around us, carried on the stinking balewind.
“Where do you think we’ll find Lorencz?” I continued. “Her flat? That warehouse she burned down last summer? I already tried the Vigilance, and nobody was there.”
“If this is supposed to be Perdition,” Michael said, looking around with wonder, “then she’ll be wherever she’ll suffer the greatest pain.”
“That warehouse fire?”
“No.” Michael pulled his coat around him. “No. She’ll probably be with Elliot.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” I pulled up my collar and started walking.
“You’re worried about her, aren’t you?”
“No. But I bet myself she’d die in a transient attack before she went balemad, and I’d hate to be disappointed.”
Michael hurried to follow me.
“You are worried. She’s your friend, and you don’t want to see her hurt. Is it because she’s a woman? Can you be friends with women because you don’t want to sleep with them?”
“Cuz?”
“What?”
“I went looking for you first.”
He fell silent, no doubt wondering what I meant. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure, either.