Barker, Clive – Imajica 01 – The Fifth Dominion. Part 8

“How well do you know him?”

“Who? Tick Raw?” The placid features were momentarily confounded. Then Pie said, “He has. . . a certain reputation, shall we say? They’ll find him for certain. There isn’t a sewer in the Dominions he’ll be able to hide his head in.”

“Why should you care?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Answer the question,” Gentle replied, dropping his volume as he spoke.

“He was a Maestro, Gentle. He called himself an evocator, but it amounts to the same thing: he had power.”

“Then why was he living in the middle of a shithole like Vanaeph?”

“Not everybody cares about wealth and women, Gentle. Some souls have higher ambition.”

“Such as?”

“Wisdom. Remember why we came on this journey? To understand. That’s a fine ambition.” Pie looked at Gentle, making eye-to-eye contact for the first time since the episode on the platform. “Your ambition, my friend. You and Tick Raw had a lot in common.”

“And he knew it?”

“Oh, yes. . ..”

“Is that why he was so riled when I wouldn’t sit down and talk with him?”

“I’d say so.”

“Shit!” “Hammeryock and Farrow must have taken us for spies, come to wheedle out plots laid against the Autarch.”

“But Tick Raw saw the truth.”

“He did. He was once a great man, Gentle. At least. . . that was the rumor. Now I suppose he’s dead or being tortured. Which is grim news for us.”

“You think he’ll name us?”

“Who knows? Maestros have ways of protecting themselves from torture, but even the strongest man can break under the right kind of pressure.”

“Are you saying we’ve got the Autarch on our tails?”

“I think we’d know it if we had. We’ve come a long way from Vanaeph. The trail’s probably cold by now.”

“And maybe they didn’t arrest Tick, eh? Maybe he escaped.”

“They still caught Hammeryock and the Pontiff. I think we can assume they’ve got a hair-by-hair description of us.”

Gentle laid his head back against the seat. “Shit,” he said. “We’re not making many friends, are we?”

“All the more reason that we don’t lose each other,” the mystif replied. The shadows of passing bamboo flickered on its face, but it looked at him unblinking. “Whatever harm you believe I may have done you, now or in the past, I apologize for it. I’d never wish you any hurt, Gentle. Please believe that. Not the slightest.”

“I know,” Gentle murmured, “and I’m sorry too, truly.”

“Shall we agree to postpone our argument until the only opponents we’ve got left in the Imajica are each other?”

“That may be a very long time.”

“AH the better.”

Gentle laughed. “Agreed,” he said, leaning forward and taking the mystif s hand. “We’ve seen some amazing sights together, haven’t we?”

“Indeed we have.”

“Back there in Mai-ke I was losing my sense of how marvelous all this is.”

“We’ve got a lot more wonders to see.”

“Just promise me one thing?” “Ask it.”

“Don’t eat raw fish in eyeshot of me again. It’s more than a man can take.”

From the yearning way that Hairstone Banty had described L’Himby, Gentle had been expecting some kind of Khat-mandu—a city of temples, pilgrims, and free dope. Perhaps it had been that way once, in Banty’s long-lost youth. But when, a few minutes after night had fallen, Gentle and Pie stepped off the train, it was not into an atmosphere of spiritual calm. There were soldiers at the station gates, most of them standing idle, smoking and talking, but a few casting their eyes over the disembarking passengers. As luck had it, however, another train had arrived at an adjacent platform minutes before, and the gateway was choked with passengers, many hugging their life’s belongings. It wasn’t difficult for Pie and Gentle to dig their way through to the densest part of the crowd and pass unnoticed through the turnstiles and out of the station.

There were many more troops in the wide lamplit streets, their presence no less disturbing for the air of lassitude that hung about them. The uncommissioned ranks wore a drab gray, but the officers wore white, which suited the subtropical night. All were conspicuously armed. Gentle made certain not to study either men or weaponry too closely for fear of attracting unwelcome attention, but it was clear from even a furtive glance that both the armaments and the vehicles parked in every other alleyway were of the same elaborately intimidating design as he’d seen in Beatrix. The warlords of Yzordderrex were clearly past masters in the crafts of death, their technology several generations beyond that of the locomotive that had brought the travelers here.

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