Part 26 (1/2)
”She's a pretty one,” he says, talking to Spyder but keeping his piercing, close-set eyes on Niki. ”I've always said no one can question your taste in quim, Weaver.”
”Or your manners,” Spyder replies, and he laughs.
”Old Eponine said you'd come back to us, but I thought she was just having another one of her fits. We heard from Tirzah that the jackals caught up with you at-”
”Are you disappointed, Scarborough?” Spyder asks him, and the man grins and shakes his head.
”Are you kidding me? h.e.l.l, when we got the news, I cried for three days straight. I couldn't even eat or take a s.h.i.+t, I was so d.a.m.n distraught.”
232.
”Is that a fact?”
”A fact or close enough. I mean, a man gets puking tired of moldy books and starfish, day in and f.u.c.king day out. I need a little variety, now and then,” and he winks at Niki again. ”And I know we can always count on you for variety, Weaver. Is she really supposed to be the Hierophant?”
”That's what everyone keeps telling me,” Niki says and moves closer to Spyder.
”Well, you're not exactly what I expected,” he says, and stands up, brus.h.i.+ng at the seat of his jeans. ”Vietnamese or Korean?”
”Vietnamese,” Niki replies uncertainly.
”Yeah, that's what I thought. See, I spent a couple of months in Ho Chi Minh City before I-”
”Where's Esme?” Spyder asks impatiently, and the man named Scarborough frowns and motions past them, towards the labyrinth of shelves and netting and work tables.
”Oh, I'm sure she's around here somewhere, unless she's somewhere else,” and he points at one of the open pools.
”Lately, she's been spending an awful lot of time with a certain octopus. You ask me, she's got quite the unhealthy fixation on that old mollusk.”
”But they didn't ask you, did they, Mr. Pentecost,” a woman says with a voice like a frozen stream, and Niki turns to face the s.h.i.+mmering chamber again. And this must surely be the fish augur, Esme Chattox, a tall and willowy spectre standing on the dais, a thick leather-bound book tucked beneath her left arm and a large squid drooping lifelessly from her right hand. She wears flowing, layered robes that glimmer faintly beneath the living, phosph.o.r.escent chandelier, and Niki realizes that they're sewn from a crazy-quilt patchwork of fish hide. Her skin is a sickly green-gray color, like aged cheese or something drowned, and her stringy soot-black hair hangs down past her shoulders in sloppy corkscrew curls. She stands up straight and beckons Spyder and Niki to come closer.
”It's true, Weaver,” she says. ”We'd all given you up for 233.
dead. Or worse. Tirzah and the ghouls down in Weir all scryed your fate. They aren't often wrong.”
”It was kinda touch and go for a while,” Spyder says, and then she leads Niki down a long, crooked aisle, between shelves that stink of formalin and dust, until they're standing at the edge of the dais. Esme carefully lays the thick book and the dead squid on a stone lectern and then stares down at Niki.
”The Hierophant,” she says approvingly, her voice as ageless as any Niki has ever heard. ”You've done well, Weaver. Please forgive me for ever doubting you.”
This close, Niki can see how large and perfectly black Esme Chattox's eyes are, no distinction between iris and pupil and sclera, and when she smiles she reveals rows of razor-sharp teeth, a shark's teeth set in cyanotic gums. Her fingers end in long nails that may as well be claws, and there are thick webs between them.
”You don't look well, Hierophant.”
”I don't feel very well, either,” Niki replies. ”And my name's Niki. Niki Ky.”
”She's in a bad way,” Spyder says. ”She needs food and rest, and her hand-”
”Yes, her hand, indeed,” Esme says and kneels down on the dais in front of them. ”The ghouls saw that as well. A part of the Dragon has found its way into her. And that means it knows where she is, Weaver. That's not something we can afford to take lightly,” and then to Niki, ”Do you have the philtre, child?”
”The what?” Niki asks, trying not to wince or make a face or cover her nose, but the fish augur's breath is the worst thing Niki's smelled since she and Spyder started down the spiral staircase.
”The philtre, ” Esme says again, more emphatically than before. Her black eyes flash and grow a little wider as she leans nearer to Niki, bathing her in chilly waves of that brine and beach-rot breath, and this time Niki does cover her nose and mouth.
”I don't know what you're talking about.”
234.
”She means the ball bearing,” Spyder says to Niki and then smiles nervously for Esme. ”I'm afraid she doesn't.
The jackals came too soon.”
”Oh,” Esme says and stands up, and now Niki notices the four bloodred slits on either side of her neck, beginning just beneath her chin, the feathery gill filaments exposed whenever the fish augur takes a deep breath. ”Without the philtre we are lost,” she says to Spyder. ”You know that, Weaver. Without the philtre, she's just another useless . . .”
and Esme hesitates, glaring at Niki while she searches for some particular word. ”Just another worthless pilgrim, ”
she finishes.
”You know, I didn't ask to come here,” Niki says, glaring back up at the tall woman in her scaly robes, meeting her empty eyes and those sharp white teeth.
Esme wrinkles her nose and turns back towards the lectern. ”Hold your tongue, child, or someone else may soon be holding it for you.”
”Don't threaten us, Esme,” Spyder says and steps between Niki and the dais.
”But I wasn't threatening you, dear Weaver. No, you know that I'd never threaten you.”
”She's here because of me. You threaten her and it's the same thing as threatening me.”
”This is tiresome.” Esme moans. ”Will you still protect her when the jackals find us because she could not perform such a simple task? Will you keep her safe then?”
”I don't remember asking anyone to protect me,” Niki says, and her hand is hurting so much that she really doesn't care who or what she p.i.s.ses off, who's threatening who or promising to keep her safe. ”I asked Daria to find the ball bearing for me. When I was . . . when I was dying, I found her on an airplane and asked her to find it.”
Esme Chattox c.o.c.ks one thistleback eyebrow and looks down at them again. ”What's she talking about? Who's this Daria?”
”Daria was my lover,” Niki replies before Spyder can answer for her.
235.
”And she'll do this for you? Find the philtre?”
”I think she'll try.”
”You think she'll try. That's not terribly rea.s.suring, Hierophant.”
”I told her where to find it. I told her to take it to Spyder's old house in Birmingham.”
”And what do you have to say about this, Weaver?” the fish augur asks and starts picking at the dead squid with her sharp nails. She pulls loose an eye and sets it aside.
”Esme,” Spyder says, and she sounds tired and irritated, ”we need to tend to her wound first. She needs rest. We can talk about these things later.”
”You may soon find that there isn't very much later left us. The Dragon knows where she is, and without the philtre there's absolutely nothing to stop him from killing us all.