The Emperor of Everything

Ruiz hesitated. His deepest suspicions were aroused. How could he meet a man who masked himself as Remint y’Yubere, without wondering if a trap had been set especially for him? On the other hand, could his enemies be so stupid as to assume that he would enter the mythagogue’s den trustingly? That was hard to believe; he had never been a man who attracted stupid enemies, unfortunately.

Furthermore, how could his enemies have known he would appear in exactly this place, so that such a complicated trap could be laid? For all that he thought he understood Remint, he could not bring himself to believe that his motivations could possibly be so transparent to the slayer. Why not? asked a small rebellious voice, but he suppressed it and stepped forward with a credit wafer in his hand.

“I’m such a one,” he said.

The skinmask was not animated, so there could be no expression for Ruiz to read, but he had the eerie sensation that the mythagogue smiled beneath the dead plastic. “I know,” said the man in a soft voice, and held out his hand for the wafer.

He stepped down from his stool and went inside, limping a bit, the servomotors in his legs whining. He paused with his hand on the curtain, and when Ruiz was over the threshold, the mythagogue let it fall shut.

The myth-maker gestured to a straight-backed wooden chair and settled himself on a padded bench. The little chamber was very dark, the walls hung with tapestries so faded and gray that Ruiz couldn’t tell what they depicted, though gold thread occasionally threw back a subdued glitter from the light of the single yellow lamp that burned on a small table set to the side.

A narrow door led to the mythagogue’s living quarters, and Ruiz stepped to it in one swift stride. He listened at the door for a moment, heard nothing, felt nothing.

“He’s not there,” said the mythagogue.

“Who?” asked Ruiz, the hair lifting on the back of his neck.

The mythagogue laughed, a dry scratchy sound. “Who else? Remint y’Yubere, whose blood you seek.”

Ruiz pressed back against the wall, fighting panic and a curious prideful anger. “How could you know this?”

The mythagogue laughed again, this time more wildly. “It boils off you, your need for him, like a great violent stink — as anyone could tell. Your shadow is full of his shape, as only I can sense. Besides, he told me you would come here, and here you are, unmistakable.”

Ruiz drew a pin knife from his boot. “What else did he tell you?”

The mythagogue shook his masked head; once, twice — so violently that the skinmask hung askew, revealing the crudely shaped metal beneath. “He ordered me to hold you here, enthralled by his vast collection of fables, until he could arrange to take you. What else? And I could have done it — have no doubt there! I’d have told you about the Thorn Goddess of Niam and how She found Her heart — rotten though it is. Or why bright flowers spring up in the footsteps of the Cronwerk Demons, and why these cursed blossoms bring madness and death — and why that is good. Or how Thubastable the Loquacious earned His awful name. All of Remint y’Yubere’s favorites.” The blind head came up. “And you’d have listened, if not because of my grand and glorious Voice, then because you hoped to get a clue to his whereabouts, some bit of information that the lords had failed to extract from me.”

A chill moved up Ruiz’s spine. He had the feeling that he was out of his depth, treading water in a murky sea of deception — in which swam an irresistible predator. A sensation of helplessness stole over him, and he felt weak and alone, as though all he could do was kick and flail and wait for the crushing grip of terrible jaws.

No. “And what did the lords learn from you?” asked Ruiz.

The mythagogue shrugged. “Nothing of importance. Listen! Go to the curtain and look out, carefully. Do you see her, a woman with steel feet?”

Ruiz remembered the tall naked woman. He stepped across the room and looked out through a tiny rip in the fabric.

She was on the far side of the rotunda, standing still, looking directly toward him across the pool.

“You see her? She’s a puppet of the lords. She wears steel on her feet, and smells of sex, blood, and some sweet powder — though I cannot describe her elsewise. What does she look like? Is she beautiful? I think she must be…. She was with them when they interrogated me, and I felt her pleasure in it.”

Ruiz drew back and went again to the door to the living quarters. He started to ease the door open.

“No!” said the mythagogue urgently. “He has a spy bead within, and one out in the rotunda. He would also have one in here, except the the Wind places a high premium on client confidentiality, and has installed very good antisurveillance tech in here.”

“Why do you tell me these things?” asked Ruiz.