Chapter 39
In Which I Am Executing a Scheme. In Which the Scheme Is Genius, Enough so that if It Works, I Will Be Commissioning Someone to Stitch It into a Tapestry, but In Which Some Participation Is Required for Its Success. In Which That Participant Is Bemoaning His Participation.
I can’t waste my time on this,” Merulo groaned—but we’d already gone back and forth, and I’d already won.
It was a significant victory. He worked, and he ate, and he slept, but the last two only barely. At night, I fell asleep to the scratching of his quill on parchment.
It opened a wound in my chest, comparing these last weeks to our time in the castle. What had changed? Why this distance? Was it just desperation, brought on by his draining?
Or could it be resentment, for my role in his ruin?
I shrugged off these thoughts as best I could as I led the sorcerer down a crumbling path between crumbling buildings. In a comradely manner, and with no nerves whatsoever, I beamed at him, breathing the recycled air with gusto. “A healthy body leads to a healthy mind.”
“Yes, and how is yours?” he grumbled, before pausing. “That was mean, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m supposed to be nice.”
“Yes.”
“Except when I’m not supposed to be nice.”
“Exactly,” I said, and Merulo groaned again.
A number of the buildings leaned over us in frozen collapse, like eavesdroppers. The sorcerer eyed these as we passed, fingering the wand tucked into his belt. “You shouldn’t walk here alone.”
“Nothing bad has happened yet.” I paused, realizing this wasn’t a sound argument. “And if it happens, then it happens.”
“Nothing has happened, but if it happens, it happens.” The sorcerer raised his hands to the domed ceiling, as if in prayer. “Sometimes, I find it hard to distinguish whether intelligible language is passing through your mouth, or whether you’re just making sounds.”
I decided to ignore him.
It was an interesting exercise, matching the sorcerer’s strides.
His spidery legs traversed the same distance as mine, but, without adjacent muscles to power them, I found myself outpacing him whenever my attention lapsed.
Merulo made a great show of not breathing heavily, though his nostrils flared with the effort.
But if I slowed too much, then away he strode, as imperiously as he might pace the lengths of his battlements.
It brought an odd anxiety, embarking on such a mundane activity with him.
Walking with someone else, I might reach for their hand, and intertwine our fingers—but with the mad sorcerer?
Spitting lightning bolts and forging half-alive monstrosities were perfectly natural for him. Handholding, less so.
“It’s here,” I said, spying the fallen sign I used as a landmark. Something like a sentient wheel of cheese lay balanced against a wall, its mouth agape. “In here.”
Forgetting my inhibitions, I grabbed for Merulo and pulled him into the alley between two buildings, where the artificial lighting failed to reach.
He made a face, but allowed himself to be maneuvered into the shadows, and positioned before a ladder.
“You have to climb,” I said, pointing. “If you’re able. ”
Merulo glowered. “Of course I’m able.”
I eyed him, doubtful. “Would it be better for me to go first, so that I can help you up? Or . . .” At his hesitation, I decided. “I’ll go first.”
“This is beyond foolish,” he called, as I scurried up the metal rungs, luxuriating in the stretch of my muscles. “And unsafe. These buildings are very, very old.”
At the top, I pulled myself onto the roof, then turned to hang my head down. “You scared?”
“You—” the sorcerer spluttered, and reached instinctively for his wand. “You mangy—You insufferable—You think that I would be scared, of a ladder?”
I leaned further over the edge. “It does look that way.”
Truthfully, I’d been scared, too. The first time ascending, I’d placed my weight carefully on it, step by step, ready to jump free at the slightest sign of bending.
From two stories below, Merulo speared me with a glare. “If you continue to speak like Hydna, I will forbid you from spending time with her.”
“Alright, I’m sorry. Can you come up, though? Please?”
Saliva filled my mouth as my anxiety grew. We’d both experienced flying on our own wings, so fear of heights shouldn’t really be a factor—but his pride might be. And I didn’t have time to cook up a different scheme. Not before he shed his limbs.
There was some further grumbling, as Merulo shifted from foot to foot. Finally, he rolled back the sleeves of his robe, exposing arms like white sticks, and stepped onto the ladder. His face took on a look of great concentration.
I decided against hooting and clapping, as that might be interpreted as mockery. Instead, I hovered at the roof’s edge with the nervous pride you might feel watching a small child ride their first unicorn. “Come on,” I muttered, too quietly for him to hear. “You can do it.”
Step by step, Merulo mounted the ladder. His skin went through a remarkable transformation, shifting from bleached white, to the boiling red of a shellfish. At the top, I seized his flailing hand, lifting him bodily onto the roof.
“There,” I said, kneeling beside him. “Doesn’t it feel good to use your body?”
He lay panting on the cement for long enough that I grew worried, before replying: “No.”
“Come on.” I pulled him to his feet, and let him lean on me for a moment, before drawing him forward. “Over here. I promise it’s worth it.”
Merulo glanced around the rooftop with a level of concern that I wasn’t used to. “It’s collapsed!”
“Only partially.”
“Only partially . . . Cameron, when we tell you not to wander, it’s not out of cruelty. It’s because—ouch!”
I swirled, my heart in my throat, to see the sorcerer hopping on one foot. No obvious blood or gore surrounded him, though I did see a protruding crevice where one might stub a toe. “You alright there?”
Merulo’s face flushed, his mouth twisting into innovative shapes.
“Remember who you are speaking to. I am the sorcerer Merulo, who has defeated armies, held kingdoms at bay, and . . . oh, fuck it.” Perhaps it was my polite nodding along, but his outthrust chest had deflated, his posture drooping. “Just get on with it.”
An empty doorway led down a flight of stairs. At one point it had contained a door, but a jammed one that had given way to a couple of moderate-strength kicks. “The ground-level entrance was blocked,” I said apologetically, as Merulo narrowed his eyes at me.
Judging by his breathing, descending the stairs took less toll on him than the ladder. My excitement grew as we neared the room, until I was practically skipping.
“If this were anyone else, I’d think I was being led into a trap,” said the sorcerer wearily.
I beamed at him, opening the rusted door and pretending not to notice how it came off in my hands. As Merulo stalked past, I balanced the now-detached door against a wall, and followed.
A plush black carpet covered the floor, decorated with an eye-burning pattern of stars and whirls. Defunct machines crowded the walls, rectangular booths where plush seats faced dead screens. And ahead—
“Look!” I pointed at it, all but hopping. “It’s you!”
A dragon reared across the wall, black scales gleaming in the light of the fire shooting from its jaws.
Granted, it had the wrong number of limbs (the overly generous artist had given it arms, legs, AND wings), and its snout lacked the beakish angularity of Merulo’s.
Across from it, a unicorn reared, its horn angled to plunge into the dragon’s throat.
I’d thought about covering that bit up before bringing Merulo, but decided there was no need. The painted dragon would clearly win.
I had shifted some of the boxy relics so more of the dragon was visible. It helped that the partially collapsed roof and walls allowed in a wash of light—though I disliked how it highlighted the unicorn.
“I thought everything here was supposed to be nautically themed,” Merulo said, somehow managing to complain. But his eyes were fixed on the mural. “Is that what I look like?”
“Yes! Only, your horns are much longer. And . . .” I struggled to think of ways in which he compared favourably. “You have a more elegant neck.”
The sorcerer surprised me by laughing. “An elegant neck?”
“Yes, like a swan! Or like me, when I was a vulture.”
“Cameron . . .” The sorcerer looked pained. “You did not have an elegant neck.”
“Anyways. Point is”—I gestured at the walls, which also depicted a shining knight, and a geezer in a pointed hat shooting magic from his fingers—“this is pre-Descent, isn’t it? These people were dreaming about our world in the same way that you’ve been dreaming about theirs.”
“Cameron.”
“I’m not being manipulative,” I lied. “It’s just . . . if you reframe your thinking, we’re already living in someone’s ideal version of reality. So instead of changing it all, perhaps you could just . . . change how you perceive it?”
The sorcerer approached the mural with something like reverence. He placed a hand against the faded paint. “Your thoughts, when you manage to summon them, are not entirely insensible.”
“So then . . . ?” I’d been holding myself with more tension than I realized; as black spots entered my vision, I reminded myself to breathe.
His spidery fingers crept along a wing, following the flare of leather. “They dreamed of dragons. And then they starved here, in this ruin.”
“I mean, you could look at it that way—”
“And I do.”
“So that’s it, then.” A portion of roof lay on the carpet. I sat on it heavily, my head in my hands. When I’d spotted the mural in passing through a broken wall, the idea had come to me like divine providence. Now, the thought it ever could have worked seemed ridiculous.
What else? My skull felt overheated from the force of my thoughts. What else could I do to save him from himself?
The sweep of black fabric in the corner of my eye saved me from further descent. Merulo sat beside me, wincing as the concrete shifted slightly beneath us. “This room,” he said, with a stiff carefulness, “is, ah. Very nice. Thank you, Cameron, for sharing.”
“But it’s not enough.”
He exhaled through his teeth.
“Alright,” I said. An odd urge struck me, to tear this stupid carpet up by the roots and shove the relics out to fall onto the street—but instead I put on another smile for Merulo, and stood. “Let’s go back, then.”