An Excerpt from Blasphemy vol. 2

Saleem on the Q'Sh / Aiqyon

1.

Thankfully, there were no dreams. Instead of being thrown into his body from the black abyss of a nightmare Q'Sh, Saleem was allowed to wake up on his own and in so much pain he could hardly open his eyes, let alone move. Consciousness gradually returned him to the world, pulling gently at his eyelids with tiny rusty claws, and he became more fully aware of the giants pounding anvils in his head, the nausea washing his entire body in a sheen of stinking sweat. His mouth was dry and tasted like crusty dog shit. Opening one eye and not knowing where he was, seeing the unfamiliar room swim in and out of focus, he realized that he was still drunk; the hangover hadn't even come yet. A drink would help, aye, but the thought was a stone in his throat. Saleem groaned.

He tried to think back. He remembered bumping into Simon Sorosomon on the street on his way to the Anchor & Cloud. Or was he? He remembered stopping near the tavern, but not going in until later. He told Simon to bring his ring. Saleem couldn't remember what ring, and groaned again. Where the hell was he?

Saleem opened the other eye, lifted his head with effort, and looked around. The room was bare, save for a table—which actually appeared to be an overturned crate—and a broken chair in the middle of the tiny space, a dirty porthole, and the hard cot in which Saleem lay in a great, fat heap. A lamp and a closed book were on the table, but Saleem could not see the book's title. The entire room was only a little larger than the meditation cell in which he sequestered himself all those years ago, to dry out and face 'them,' as he supposed he was going to be doing now. A plume of sunlight came in through the porthole, lighting the room, but dimly, illuminating the dust; it was where his eyes came to rest as he surveyed his surroundings. Saleem had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there, but the porthole disturbed him greatly. He lifted himself up and propped himself up on his elbow. The room swam and his stomach gave a lurch. Saleem dropped back down onto the cot and closed his eyes, considering the simple and terrible fact that airships had portholes.

The thought triggered his recalling of yesterday afternoon's stupendous vision, which came back to him in bits and broken pieces. The airship of his dreams with the double-headed battle-axe, the blood, Simon Sorosomon holding aloft a great opal revealing a multitude of passageways.

Saleem, with a supreme effort, heaved his bulk up to a sitting position. The hard little cot beneath him creaked in agony. The room spun, but then slowed and became still, for which Saleem was grateful; but the gorge rose in his throat anyway. Fortunately, there was nothing for him to throw up on the dirty floor but some thin, yellowish fluid, but he dry heaved violently a few times, pulling a muscle in his neck. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stood, using the wall to support himself. He waddled laboriously over to the porthole, wiped away some of the grime, and peered out at the Expanse rolling and piling and tumbling forever in a madness of poison every color of the rainbow.

“Oh, fuck,” he said, fogging up the glass. “Oh my fucking no,” he said, fogging up the glass further. It felt like his stomach suddenly dropped, like a trapdoor on a gallows, as if his stomach somehow knew that there were now only mere boards of wood and some twisted metal between it and three miles (or was it five? Or fifty?) of liquid swords and crushing weight. He felt like he was going to shit his stomach out, in fact. He wiped the glass clean again and dared another peek.

The Q'Sh rolled and gyred. It spun and spiraled, as if it saw Saleem staring bleary-eyed through the grimy porthole and put on a performance just for him. It did see him. It saw him and it recognized him. ...Hello, Saleem, where have you been all these years? ...We missed you, Saleem! ...Going to conquer the world, Saleem? ...Well, first, you have to conquer us! ...Come watch us dance, Saleem. We've danced for a thousand centuries over the bones of the world before you were born, and we'll dance for a thousand more long after we've devoured you, Saleem. You'll be a part of us forever. We'll dance on your bones, too, Saleem, and what a terrible song they'll make as they creak and they crack and they break! ...She is waiting—

Saleem tore himself from the porthole, gulping air, realizing he was holding his breath. “Oh, fuck,” he said again, and moved away from the glass. What had he done? He was trapped on an airship bound for...the Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility, he supposed. A million atmospheric miles from nowhere. Saleem, who had attempted communion with the Q'Sh on the deck of an airship many years ago, and who had attempted suicide as a result of the depth of self-knowledge it unleashed.

The clouds and the vapors are ever-changing.

He noticed the book, and lumbered over to the overturned crate, eager to distract himself from the horror swirling and shining around hm. He picked up the book and read the title. The Conjurations of the Seventy-two Princes of the Q'Sh. Interesting. He wondered who it belonged to. It was obviously written by some nut with no actual ties to the O∴O∴S∴, because anyone of any consequential degree in the Order knew that there were seventy-eight Princes. Unless this was a blind, a purposely introduced error placed into widely-distributed copies of manuscripts by high-ranking Adepts in order to keep the Order's secrets safe. Safe from what, Saleem had no idea, for without the proper practical instruction, all the so-called “secrets” of the O∴O∴S∴ could be written out clearly for all the world to see, and it would mean nothing at all to most, and drive very few others mad. He flipped through the pages, gave a few of the diagrams and sigils a cursory glance, and shut the book. A tiny envelope that had been stuffed into the back fell out and onto the floor. Saleem tossed the book onto the crate and stooped to pick up the envelope. There was a tiny amount of powder inside. He tucked it back into the back of the Conjurations, and glanced uneasily back at the porthole. He half-expected some shapeless demon to have shambled up to the side of the airship out of the chaos, pressed its featureless face against the glass, and to be staring at him with lidless eyes and a gaping, jawless mouth hanging open like a grave with a coffin tongue. But there was only a stalk of sunlight filtering placidly into the small, stuffy room. The envelope of powder may come in handy later, he thought to himself with a weak laugh.

⚔︎

An hour later, Saleem felt ready to leave the tiny room through the door he had been eyeing suspiciously since he opened his eyes. He had found a chamber pot under the cot, and so had an excuse to remain hidden, but now he was hungry, and the confines were closing in and making it harder for him to breathe. He needed fresh, open air, even if it meant going up on deck. He needed to see this opal, as well. And if Simon Sorosomon lied and didn't bring it.... He thought about this for a moment, and there really was nothing he could do except refuse to even attempt to divine any elusive magical spot anywhere in the accursed Q'Sh. Which, of course, would also negate his own chance of actually finding something, something that could place the Holy Branch of Hagiyon directly into his hand and seat him upon the Throne of the O∴O∴S∴. Yes, it appeared that he had no choice. Simon Sorosomon had brought the opal, Saleem knew it. He grunted as he clambered to his feet and went out the door.

The daylight and the wind felt good, there was no doubt, when compared to the stale and shut-in dust down below. A bit of moisture in the air, but that was to be expected when you were surrounded by thousands of atmospheric miles of clouds. Saleem climbed the steps from below the forecastle of the Amelia, looking straight ahead toward the mainmast, which was fully unfurled and bursting with wind. He could hear the mechanical whirring of the propellers, and was thankful for the sound they made to fill the terrible emptiness that accompanied the silence of the Expanse. He thought back to his sole venture out in the clouds, and the unnerving quiet that seemed to magnify his thoughts and the direction in which they tended. Like the wind currents and jet streams. Ah, the Expanse is already in my head, he thought. Perhaps the sympathy provided by vision and trance remains in the back of the mind, hidden away in a box, just waiting to be dusted off and put once again to good use.

A man stood behind the wheel at the helm. He was short, wore glasses, and had a short whitish beard, though he appeared to be younger. He wore a cap; feeling the sun glaring down on his own head, Saleem understood why. He was facing Saleem, but gave no indication that he saw him. Saleem started waddling across the deck, slowly moving against the powerful wind, and stayed directly in the middle. He felt the helmsman's eyes on him as he reached the mainmast and placed a shaky hand on it to steady himself. Saleem wasn't sure if his shaking was due to terror or wine, but decided that it was probably both, with a dash of ravenous hunger tossed in for flavor. The wind lashed out and swept his stained brown robe behind him. If it was strong enough, it could easily throw someone over the side. The thought gave Saleem vertigo—or was it nausea?—and he pushed it from his mind. He began to move again, looking neither to the left nor the right.

What seemed like an hour later, Saleem had traversed the entire deck of the airship, all ten-thousand miles of it. He reached out and pressed his hand against the wall of the aftcastle, looking up at the bespectacled helmsman. “Ahoy,” he called out, unsure if that was the appropriate salutation for a pirate.

The man looked down at him. “You shouldn't be up here,” he said. It looked like he had a black eye, but it was hard to tell because of his glasses and the glare of the sun. “Wind'll knock you right over the side.” Saleem wondered why he watched him cross the entire length of the airship before confirming his fear. “I've seen it,” he added with a slow nod.

“Thanks for telling me,” Saleem replied. “What if you blow over the side?”

“I'm tethered.”

“My name's Saleem,” Saleem said.

“Harp,” Harp said.

“Nice to meet you. Would you direct me to the mess hall? I'd love to get some breakfast.”

Harp laughed. “I'll bet,” he said. “Nothing to eat. We had a...mishap in re-filling the stores. We're stopping at Aiqyon. Should be there in a few hours.”

“Ah.” No food. But a stop at Aiqyon could also mean his slipping away like a thief, if he chose. The idea of a choice heartened him.

“Thank you, Harp. By the way, whose room am I in?” he asked, thinking of the book.

“Caspar's,” Harp said, shaking his head. “He's the reason we have to go to Aiqyon.”

“What happened to him?”

Harp looked down at Saleem. “You were there. You...well, I suppose you weren't really there, were you. You were passed out on the floor. Caspar got an arrow through the neck.” Harp jabbed an index finger toward his own neck and tilted his head abruptly, miming the attack which had killed the junkie. “Some goddamn bounty hunter, I guarantee. They always show up. They're a real wasp in your boot.”

Saleem considered this. “Bounty hunters?” he asked, incredulous. “Who is this captain of yours?”

“Osmar DeFeo,” Harp answered, staring ahead at the miles. “Maybe you've heard of him.”

Saleem had heard of him. The Skinhauler was a name that had come up on more than one occasion in his past conversations with the whores frequenting the local taverns and inns nearby the College at Azel-zel. Exotic women, spicy, all the way from Urai, and even as far as the remote tribes peopling the eastern coast of Xyle. His name was always, always, accompanied with a shudder or a look of contempt, and the subject was always changed. One plump young peach had told him about a cargo hold on his airship where she was stowed away with sixteen other girls, “and it wa' hot 'n dark anit stunk like shit ana chamber pot fulla used rags, aye!” But she was a sweet Uraian thing with hourglass hips, and he stopped her when she began describing how he “picked one of us out and took her away, and we ain't never seen 'er a'gin!” Saleem wondered if Osmar DeFeo had a full cargo hold right now.

“Looks like we're coming up on something. You'd better get below,” Harp said, nodding. Saleem turned and saw a dark patch amidst the thousand-layered iridescence. It looked like an inkwell had been overturned on a kaleidoscope. “Just a little squall, nothing more, but we still can't have you falling overboard. Damages come off the top, you know. We've got to make at least what we lost.” Harp looked down at Saleem. “Not that I can see you blowing away in the breeze,” he added with a guffaw.

Damages, Saleem thought. I'm an investment. He laughed dryly. His nausea was returning. “Thank you, Harp, that's all for now,” he said. Harp nodded. Saleem turned and waddled back toward the front of the airship, inch by inch, stopping halfway across to retch and pull a muscle in the other side of his neck. Harp silently judged him from on high.

⚔︎

When Saleem finally arrived back at his cabin, feeling miserable, he didn't remember leaving the door open. He let out a pathetic sigh. He just wanted to go back to bed. He poked his head inside and saw Simon Sorosomon seated at the chair beside the overturned crate. The Conjurations was open in his lap. “There you are!” Simon said happily, shutting the book and tossing it on the crate. A cloud of dust rose where it fell, slapping the wood. “Interesting book.”

“It's not mine,” Saleem grunted, stepping into the small room and taking up a quarter of it.

“I think your cabin is bigger than mine,” Simon said, glancing around. He grinned, one side of his face wrinkling. “But that's ok. I brought something for you.”

The ring! The vision came back in a flash flood—he saw an opal with many rays refracting and breaking up their beams into a thousand tiny angled points. He saw Simon holding the ring in golden armor that glinted in the sunlight, but he was no more than the ring's bearer, and he bore it for him, the Companion Who Should Have Been a Warden, and it would lead to his crown. Of the many rays projected into the ever-changing shape and shadow of the Expanse, he alone could see the One. In the tapestry of clouds, he alone could pick out the Single Thread. This was the test of tests, and Saleem had to prove himself to the Q'Sh before it would accept him as Warden of the Wardens of the World, and Grand Master of the Holy Order. The nausea persisted, and he began to perspire, but Saleem ignored it.

“Shut that door, would you?” Simon asked, gesturing behind Saleem at the open cabin door. Saleem closed it. Simon opened the pouch that hung from his steel-studded, twin-eyed belt, and withdrew an object bundled in cloth. “You've never seen anything like this before,” he said, slowly unwrapping the thing. Saleem's eyes widened in anticipation. Then he faltered.

It was probably nothing special, Saleem thought to himself, becoming suddenly acutely aware of his splitting headache, the dry, dead taste in his mouth and throat, his hunger. Who did this prick think he was? An antiques dealer. Ah, if only he wasn't so tired. So tired and sick and hungry and miserable...

The Twelve-Eyed Secret caught the sparse light that filtered through the layer of grime on the glass of the porthole, and it sparkled too brilliantly to be merely catching a few ragged rays. Saleem's jaw dropped. He could immediately feel energy pouring outward from it that cut through his hangover like steel through flesh. The energetic waves took the form of amber-colored snakes of light, and these issued from the quietly pulsating glow deep within the stone. And they sought out Saleem, and Saleem was sure that he was the only one who could see them. Like tendrils of smoke, they swirled around him. Searching for something. Fully conscious, fully aware, translucent arms of eyes that saw as they probed and felt as they saw. They sniffed curiously at the fat man, reading him. And when they were satisfied with the yellowed pages of the miserable life they'd skimmed, they focused themselves on his eyes—which of course are the windows of the soul. And Saleem saw, reflected in his mind, a vision of six giants uplifting the world above the Q'Sh, which was the opal itself. Six giants, one with eyes that were diamonds, one with eyes that were turquoise, another of star sapphire, another of amethyst, another of ruby, and the last with eyes of great golden topaz. They stood at the points of two opposing triangles, forming a hexagram. And the giants looked at the world they were uplifting, and they studied it through the lenses of their twelve eyes, and they passed judgment upon the world, and the world was condemned to death.

“Here!” Simon cried a little too enthusiastically, a twinkle in his eye. “Hold it!” He thrust the ring toward the fat Companion, who, torn prematurely from his trance, could not bear to even look at the apocalyptic thing. He jumped backward, pinwheeling his arms, got his legs tangled, and went down with a resounding crash, knocking his head against the closed door. Simon snatched the ring away immediately and replaced it in its cloth. Then he laughed. “Are you still with us, my friend?” he asked, smiling outwardly. Inwardly, Simon waxed in his convictions.

“No, no, it's not that,” Saleem replied from the floor. “...I...had...a long night.” Then, after a pause, “By the way, I can safely agree with you that this ring is nothing ordinary.”

“You see, my friend? I told you!”

Saleem rolled to the left, then to the right, then struggled into a sitting position, his back leaning uncomfortably on the door. He looked at Simon, his head swimming. “Where the hell did you say you found it?”

“I didn't. I tracked it,” Simon lied. “Across three continents, over six years. It nearly cost me my life.” There was a knock at the door.

“Yes?” Simon called. He dropped the bunched up cloth back in the pouch at his side and tightened the drawstring. Whoever was on the other side of the door tried to push it open, but Saleem's generous body was blocking it. A muffled voice came from the outside.

“What was that crash?” the voice asked. “What's going on in there?”

Saleem rolled his eyes and wriggled away from the door. “Come in!” he shouted, his head throbbing so badly he felt it in his wine-and-puke-stained teeth. The door opened. Harp stepped in, looking from Simon to Saleem on the floor.

“Harp,” said Saleem. “Shouldn't you be at the helm?” Saleem noticed that Harp, indeed, had a black eye under his glasses.

“That was over two hours ago,” was the curt response. “Anyway, we've arrived at Aiqyon. The Captain has already disembarked to replenish our pantry. We leave at sunset.”

Over two hours? Saleem stopped listening to Harp's babble. He calculated perhaps ten minutes from the helm to his cabin (due to his inch-by-inch method of movement across the windswept deck), perhaps three to five minutes jawing with Simon Sorosomon, and perhaps twenty seconds of looking at the ring.

“Sounds good to us,” Simon said with a smile. He rose from his seat, politely nudged Harp out the door, and then closed it.

“Simon, how long did I look at that ring?” Saleem asked.

Simon laughed. “'Not long, maybe twenty-five seconds.” he said. “But then you stood there for two hours with your eyes rolled up in your head, swaying. See how much of this I read?” Simon held out The Conjurations. “I wanted to see what would happen, so I left you alone. Well, until I snapped you out of it.”

2.

The quay at the port town of Alybra on the northern coast of the continent was alive with merchants, airships, crews, and cargo in various stages of loading and unloading. Small knots of people milled about, having their conversations and conducting their business. Saleem could count sixteen horse-drawn carts, their straw-strewn beds empty, lined up and waiting at the other end to be laden with crates and boxes and huge lumpy sacks. The airships that were docked alongside the Amelia were buzzing with activity, too; mainsails lowering and rising, people climbing masts and hanging over the sides on rope ladders, tending to the propellers. Saleem averted his eyes from the ladders and focused on Harp, who stood beside him surveying the landscape.

“So, what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Saleem asked. He didn't see one food cart or vendor, but assumed they would be lining the streets in town. After all, Aiqyon was the most centrally located of the inhabited continents, and for this reason was the hub of international trade and commerce, a world marketplace. It was also the location of the Q'Shama-lil, the palace of the Emperor, in the central city of Aiqaoth. It was connected directly to Aiqyon Tower by a stone bridge—so the Emperor could practice his own dumbed-down Rite of Sublimation, Saleem had always thought. To bridge the gap between religion and government, he had also thought.

“I don't care,” Harp replied, shrugging. “I've got to take a look at one of these solar cells—propeller four was dragging—and Silas is off with the Captain. Go get your breakfast,” he said, even though it was early afternoon. “Just remember, sunset.”

When they were down in Saleem's cabin, Simon told him that he was going into Alybra to research Tasso Armistace, the Dwarf Warden of Te-Jdth, whose family was originally from Aiqyon. Saleem was impressed that Simon knew so much about a far-gone Warden on another continent. In his own observation at the Anchor & Cloud (which he missed terribly, despite the fact that not even twenty-four hours had passed), Saleem had noted that most people didn't seem to think that other continents existed. When he pressed him as to why the Dwarf Warden, Simon answered, “For a project.”

He was very secretive, this Simon Sorosomon of Sorosomon's Antiques. And a liar. He could see it even as he still sweated and pissed the poison from his body. How much more easily will I see it when I dry out? he thought with dismay. Saleem didn't trust Simon, yet he had allowed himself to be persuaded to go on this...adventure. Yes, but it was his own vision that had persuaded him, his vision of the opal held aloft by giants, presenting it to him. He recalled the crown resting upon the oak throne atop whatever nameless Tower spired upward from the swirling mountains of mist, and thought briefly of the span bridging Aiqyon Tower and Q'Shama-lil—which would become his home, he thought with a thrill that sent a shiver through him. Simon will be dealt with as necessity dictates, but he was Saleem's ring-bearer, and he must play his part. After all, he had been sent by the One True God to directly deal with Saleem's soul in this way. He chuckled dryly to himself.

⚔︎

As soon as he left the confusion and chaos of the quay, Saleem could smell sausages slowly cooking in the nearby town, their aroma wafting downwind directly over him. He thought he could smell sweet onions as a seasoning, and could imagine the juices dripping onto the red-hot coals that cooked them as they spat and sizzled. His mouth was watering as he crossed beyond the line of wagons and carts and horses, leaving their grosser smells behind. Saleem, weak and queasy, lumbered onto the main avenue of the town, following his nose. He lumbered down the avenue, grasping hold of a lamppost or a rain barrel or a fence or whatever else was handy to support himself when he got a sudden touch of vertigo. Passerby regarded him with mixed looks of disdain, pity, and repulsion, parting to let him pass, and he was truly a sight to behold: his ragged robe was tattered at the hem, and now a strip dragged along behind him in the mud as he weaved through the throngs of people; his hair stuck out in every direction, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was covered in a sheet of beige perspiration. His mouth hung partially open as he wheezed, and a white crust had formed at the sides of his chapped lips.

Turning a corner, Saleem was overjoyed to see a food cart with the sausages cooking over a small grill. He bought three and gobbled the first up with neither ceremony nor the unnecessary pomp of Dignity and Good Manners as he stood at the cart. Yea, and people made wide berths around him. The hot juice dribbled down his chin and he wiped it away nonchalantly with a sleeve.

After finishing the second sausage, Saleem began to feel some of his strength returning. The pounding in his head had mercifully subsided, as had the rumbling in his stomach, and now he could focus on a new sensation: thirst. He went back around the corner and continued walking in the direction he had been headed, munching contentedly on his third sausage as he went.

Alybra was a thriving and bustling port city, different from the quiet of Port Town. Saleem did not observe a single fortune-teller or mystic on this main street, and wondered how he would fare, were he to relocate. A simple hovel within walking distance of the local tavern, and he would do just fine. Conceivably, he could just not return to the airship. He could find himself a tavern and have a few glasses of wine as he watched the sun go down, and just like that, he would become a resident of Aiqyon.

But he wasn't fooling anyone. This was Shareen speaking, telling him not to fight too hard, not to strain himself. Take a rest, Saleem, two or three years ought to do it. You ought to be proud of yourself for facing your fear and traveling on an airship all the way to Aiqyon, but enough is enough, and the One True God will provide for his servant.

⚔︎

The day that Sargon gave up the ghost to whatever illness it was that moved with lightning speed through his body was cold and miserable and gray and rainy. In fact, the sky became overcast when Sargon took to his bed, and it grew steadily grayer and colder as his illness progressed—which, remember, was not long. The fire in his bedroom had been kindled and re-kindled, but the chill didn't leave the chamber until the body was removed; the flames danced merrily, making no difference but in the leaping of the shadows on the pallid walls. It is the residue of Death, who has just recently slipped quietly out the door with my father's soul in a pouch at his belt that makes the room cold, Saleem thought, hugging himself. Out the door and into the street, Death lost in a crowd of faces, whistling some nameless tune to keep himself company. Aye, everyone he ever went to visit died.

His father's body laying motionless in the bed, his lump form under the blanket showing no signs of respiration, unnerved the pudgy young man. He looked across the room at his father's corpse, listening to the rain falling outside and beating on the window glass, and the crackling and popping of the ineffectual fire in the hearth. Saleem wondered what his father's final thoughts were, whether they were of disappointment in his son, embarrassment, humiliation. He knew that the unexpected surprise that had been his birth had thwarted his father's plans for advancement in the Order, and he was acutely aware of the burden to succeed that had been placed upon his own shoulders as a result. Saleem wondered if his father's final thoughts were of disappointment...or possibly relief to finally be done with it all.

And Shareen gave quite a performance, both before and during the funeral. No widow had ever veiled herself in more black or beat her breast with more enthusiasm. No mourner had ever mourned more magnificently or wailed more wholeheartedly—her audience was captivated, and still speak of it. Shareen clung to her son and watered his head with the steady stream of her tears, and held his handsome face in her hands, and Oh you look just like your father! It was Saleem who walked with her up to the coffin to support her before the cremation (Pharathe had moved beyond the antiquated practice of burial centuries ago, mainly due to the limited space—and depth—of the inhabited continents), and it was Saleem who stayed with her as she crawled painfully through her period of mourning; all the while cursing himself for his failures and his disappointments. And he planned his return to his disciplines and his studies with an added edge of inspiration in the wraithlike apparition of Sargon, shaking his head and lowering leaden eyes in defeat.

He said nothing to his mother at first; he knew that a return to his practice would worry her, but he found it difficult to hide his sudden apparent lack of appetite. His polite refusal of the elaborate banquets she prepared for him worried her, his refusal of wine alarmed her and made her suspicious; and when she tried to tempt him away from his mysterious nightly vanishing acts with a whore she had picked up for him—at the same tavern he was caught whoring in, in fact—he refused, and sent the confused girl on her way with an apology, and flames in his eyes as he wheeled on Shareen.

He raved and he screamed and he slammed his fist down on the table, upsetting a bowl of fruit and sending a nectarine rolling toward the edge, where it went over the side and into Shareen's trembling open hand. You have his temper, too! she told him, tears welling in her eyes as she avoided the fires in his. And she relented—for a time. She left him alone and backed into the shadows and continued to watch her son's comings and goings closely from a respectable distance, but would not interfere.

Instead, she got a cat, an all-black Xylian longhair that she named Alice, and that Saleem hated with a passion.

Oh, Saleem had always hated cats, and he had a sneaking suspicion that that was probably why she had gotten one. Shareen told everybody that it was to help cheer her up, to give her something to take care of and responsibility for, something to keep her mind off of the tragic death of her poor, poor saint of a husband. She told everybody that she needed Alice to get her through each day, especially now that her own son had forsaken her. Her only son! But Saleem knew better. He knew that the goddamn cat was meant to provoke him, and this was confirmed as he pissed out the dregs of the wine that soaked his brain and his power began to return in measures. And despite the fact that he knew what she was doing, he allowed it to get to him just as planned, which doubled his rage. Discipline had never been Saleem's strong suit, after all.

He may have been scratched or bitten once as a very young boy and simply didn't remember it, but Saleem really couldn't say where his animosity toward cats originated. He could never pinpoint one particular reason, or trace it back to one particular experience. He hated the way they moved, the way they leapt so gracefully from floor to tabletop, the way they just seemed to appear. Cats weren't something you could play with. You could throw a stick and a dog will fetch it, presumably—dogs were stupid and filthy flea-ridden shitbags, and Saleem didn't much care for them, either—but a cat didn't do anything. It laid in the sun, it ate, and it shat. If his mother had really wanted an animal to “help” her deal with the untimely demise of Sargon, she should have gotten herself a shitty little lap dog that she could bathe and brush and trim and dress up in ridiculous little outfits. Instead, she got something that was “independent,” an overgrown black rat that still needed to be fed and watered, (“Even though,” Saleem always said, “make no bones about it, it would eat you in a heartbeat if you happened to die in bed.”) and that went with Shareen everywhere she went. She had a woven basket with a lid that she liked to put Alice in when she went out, and people would stop and smile and laugh when she would poke her little head out. It was so adorable it made Saleem want to cram the lid down on the basket with enough force to push the little fucker's eyeballs out of its skull.

The leash was even worse. Shareen would sometimes carry a long leather leash—pink, very thin, very feminine—with Alice trotting along beside her on the other end. Shareen would walk Alice around the courtyard to the Tower, and people would stop to smile and laugh at how adorable it all was, and it made Saleem want to swing the leash around like a morningstar and dash the thing against a stone wall. He could almost hear the splat, and it always made him chuckle, the stupid goddamn thing.

The cat must have known, it must have had power of its own, because it would lift its head and hiss at Saleem from its place in his mother's lap any time he entered the room. Saleem had never touched Alice, whether to pet or to kick—though he had kicked many cats in his life, and stomped a kitten once when he was eight or nine. “Alice, no,” Shareen would chide sweetly as she pet the black, fluffy shape with the green eyes that fixed themselves upon her son, and Saleem would force himself to smile. Just as when Saleem would come into the room to find Alice curled up in his favorite chair, which also happened to be Alice's favorite chair. He would shoo the cat, but she would only look at him scornfully, and he dare not touch the thing, because if he did it would be to break its neck. Indeed, he wanted to kill Alice, and was unsure if that was what his mother intended; that he kill the cat and return to his place at his mother's heel out of the supreme dose of guilt that she would most certainly administer. She had never had a cat, she had never shown the slightest interest in cats or dogs or fish or birds or rodents of any kind. She had Sargon as her pet, and now he was gone, and she was trying to replace him with Saleem; and it seemed to him that his mystical defenses were increasingly steered against Shareen's onslaught.

One day, some months after the funeral, following a particularly draining day of confronting and subduing the endless parade of 'them', Saleem returned home to find that Alice had gotten into his room somehow and shat upon his copy of Barnabas the Traveller, a quasi-Holy Book concerning the wanderings of a mythical half-giant across the lands beneath the Q'Sh. It was more of an allegory than a story. Barnabas represented the unrefined man, the aspirant to the Mysteries, while the Mysteries themselves were revealed in symbolic form as the various mountains, valleys, and vales that thrived under the endless storms of the Expanse. It had been a gift of the Adept who had vouched for his admission into the College, straight from the personal library of another Adept on Zosmos, who had commissioned a copy of the original manuscript, complete with illuminations. Gold leaf upon fine vellum, bound in leather, signed and dated by the scribe alongside the seal of his House, caked and smeared with drying cat shit. The book was open on an oaken display, so Alice must have attacked it from above, where indeed a shelf holding a small potted plant hung. It landed almost directly in the center of the binding, and was still wet enough to both soak through a sizable number of pages, blotting the ink and causing it to spread and run, and loosen the glue of the binding. It had splattered because Shareen fed Alice so richly that her digestive system had incredible difficulty performing its gastro-acrobatics, and the beads of splatter extended all the way to the gold leaf at the edge.

Had he left his door open? Saleem never left his door open, and this was exactly the reason why. He didn't want Alice anywhere near his room, or his few things. He had very little of value, a silver skrying bowl that had been a gift of the College, and his copy of Barnabas the Traveler, which was now ruined. Saleem always closed his door, even if he were only going to the other end of their apartments. Was it her? he thought in disbelief. Did she let the cat in?

He went over to the door, went out into the hallway, and closed it, heard the familiar click as the latch caught. Tested it. The door didn't open. He turned the knob, opened the door, and went back into his room. Saleem looked over at the window. It was closed. Looking down, he noticed that his hands were trembling, he was so angry. He needed a drink quite badly. His room stunk like shit.

Later on that night, as Saleem sat on a stool at the tavern, he thought about his day, the phantasmagoria of shapeless shapes and thought forms that plagued his mind, the burden of the wicked plans of others. He was getting better at combatting them, at turning his back, but it was ceaseless. Even when he wasn't in his cell, the images manifested around his bed, around a dark corner, passing by in the street with eyes that gazed out from the gulf of emptiness, eyes glazed with cataracts, eyes with three spinning pupils, eyes that bled. There was no way to make 'them' leave him alone, and in the end it was all due to the severe imbalance between the developed and the undeveloped aspects of his psycho-spiritual mind—namely, his raw talent and the introspection required to filter the lens.

      But, then again, there was something else that helped, too, and Saleem was three tankards in.

He thought about how wonderful it felt to have some respite from the shades and the visions that crept from his dreams and into his waking life. Even the shade of his father seemed to have retreated into the shadows. For the moment. Only for the moment, Saleem thought with a sinking feeling that sparked his anger. Tomorrow, most likely in the evening—depending on how much more drinking he would allow himself—the door would creak slowly open in the damp cellar of his fears, and 'they' would issue forth and seek him out. Just as the sun would be going down, most likely.

His thoughts returned to Alice...and to Shareen. The spark of his anger kindled itself into the beginnings of a rage. Saleem drained his tankard and signaled the tavern-keeper for another. She did let the goddamn cat in, he knew it. It horrified him to think that his mother would go to this much indirect trouble just to make him jealous, to make him stay, to make him Shareen's pet. And the fact that he was letting it happen simply added fuel. She couldn't have shat on the floor or on the bookcase, or even on the pillow to my bed. It was as if Shareen held Alice directly over the book. “Ok, Alice, shit here! Good kitty kitty!”

When Saleem finally stumbled home late that night, it was directly to the set of knives in the kitchen that he went. He pulled a nine-inch carving knife from the rack, and watched the blade gleam in the light of a stubby little candle left out to die. He held the wooden handle firmly, his hand slick with sweat, and moved out of the darkened kitchen, past the counter where Shareen so lovingly prepared all of her son's favorite meals—and Alice's. He caught a whiff of basil as he passed. Saleem shambled down the hallway, knocking into a small side table, cursing to himself as he righted it, and crept up the stairs in the darkness toward the bedrooms, knife at his side. A lit candle burned in his other hand, a taper that he lifted from a sconce on the wall at the top of the stairs, holding it askew so that the wax would not drip onto his hand. Alice would be with Shareen, he knew it...unless she had opened his door again after he flew out of the house in a flurry of anger. As a matter of fact, to his slight surprise, Saleem found himself almost wanting his door to be left open. It was not.

Stepping past his own room, Saleem stopped in front of his mother's closed door. No light peeking out from the crack at the bottom meant that she was sleeping, and probably with the aid of sand tears, but he already knew that she would be—Shareen always went to bed early, right after her night invocation. He turned the doorknob and pushed the door gently open, and poked his head cautiously inside. It was dark, but he could hear his mother breathing in the quiet of the night, deeply, slowly, evenly. Yes, she was asleep. He could smell roses. Saleem brought his hand holding the candle cautiously into the room. Immediately, he saw the reflection of the light in Alice's eyes as they burned like green embers from the foot of the bed where she lay, watching Saleem with her usual contempt and scorn. Saleem smiled and pushed the bedroom door more fully open. The door never even creaked.

⚔︎

Indeed, Saleem did end up finding himself at a local tavern called The Aiqyon, where a stein of beer cleansed his hangover, taking off some of its terrible edge. Saleem noticed that his stein was dirty, but he didn't care. Nor did he care about the whore being blatantly bounced off of her client's lap on the other side of a nearby card table. He winked at Saleem when he happened to glance over, but Saleem was too preoccupied with his frothy stein to consider much else. That, and the prize that awaited him at the end of this journey into the pit.

It was still some hours before sunset, but Saleem already knew that he would have to return to the Amelia. Especially after what he had seen. The Twelve-Eyed Secret. Even now, as he revolved these thoughts in his mind, the Companion felt a subtle pull back in the direction he had come; not from the airship, nor the Q'Sh, but directly from the ring. He could sense it here on his stool in the dimly-lit sanctuary of the tavern, as if it were watching him beside the whore fucking her client. It wouldn't be the first time the Q'Sh had opened an eye into my soul, he mused. The Eye of the One True God. He still wasn't sure that Simon Sorosomon was fully aware of what he possessed, and he intended to keep it that way.

He was another problem, the antiques dealer. Saleem did not trust him. He felt that Simon knew considerably less than what he implied, and that he had little to no intention on paying him a fair or reasonable—both subjective—share. They were all the same, anyway, these crooked merchants with their ill-gotten gains. He couldn't even begin to fathom where Simon could've come across such a relic. He said that he tracked it, but from where? And to who? He probably stole it, Saleem thought, but then he smiled, because in the end none of that mattered; Simon Sorosomon was, after all, merely the ring bearer. His function was fulfilled the moment Simon withdrew the ring from its covering to show him, and he had no idea. The opal was alive, and there wasn't a doubt in his mind that it would lead them to...something! He decided that he would play along as if he had no idea what he was looking at. And when he sat upon the throne at Q'Shama-lil at the end, nothing else at all would matter, neither the antiquarian nor the goddamned Q'Sh itself.

A hand fell lightly on Saleem's shoulder. He jumped in surprise, spilling some of the frothing beer the tavern-keeper had just refilled his stein with. He spun around, nearly falling off of the stool.

“Didn't mean to startle you,” Silas said. “We finished getting what we need, the Captain and I. Everything's being delivered now. Still have some time, so I decided to come on by for a beer before we head out. I guess I came to a good place,” he said, motioning over to the couple at the card table who were just finishing up.

Saleem had no idea who this huge man was, only that he must be from the Amelia, and that Saleem should not make him mad—the man was enormous. “I don't think we've met,” Saleem said.

“I'm Silas. I'm a mate on the Amelia.”

“Saleem.”

“I know!” Silas confirmed with an exuberance that threw the Companion off. His eyes lit up for a moment, but then he lowered them again and shifted uncomfortably. “I know,” he repeated, more subdued. Then he changed the subject. “It's too bad about Caspar. He was kind of hopeless, I guess, but he got an arrow through the neck.”

Ah, the junkie, Saleem thought. At first he didn't know who in the hell Caspar was, just like he didn't know who Silas was, but Harp had told him about what happened.

“I know who did it,” Silas said. He nodded gravely.

“Who?” Saleem asked, tilting his head slightly, not caring.

“Airship two or three slips away from us at the quay. I saw his spyglass. He was why we had to get out of Azelphaphaj so fast.”

“Who?” Saleem asked again, still not caring. He took a generous swallow from his stein.

Silas shrugged. “Whoever. Some bounty hunter, I guess. Don't know how they tracked us. Well, more work for me, anyway,” he laughed, “but the Captain probably won't pay me twice.” Silas was quiet for a minute. He watched Saleem take another swallow. After some sort of inner conflict, he finally said, “So, is it true that you can...see things?”

Saleem thought for a moment and nodded. He had noticed Silas's tattoo, the eyeball garlanded in flames. The Eye of the One True God (that symbol keeps coming up), that sees through us and burns away the gross, leaving the spiritual and fine. Roughly done, but Saleem was able to deduce that Silas was a religious man. He could use this to his advantage. It is, after all, what they taught him in College, at least in some of the Accelerated Courses. “After a fashion,” he said. “It isn't as much seeing as it is sensing. You sense something, and your imagination fills in a recognizable shape to correspond.” He thought for a moment. “But sometime you do actually see. And it isn't just us. You can do it, too, to some degree. Everyone can.”

“I don't think I can,” Silas returned, enamored.

“Of course you can.” Always, always, always insist upon everyone's ability, they taught him. Of course they don't all have it; in most there is minimal potential, and in the others there is atrophy. But it gives hope, and hope gets them returning to the Tower, and to the Rituals, and, at the end, to the Treasury to cheerfully make their deposits. “It's a matter of discipline. If you want to be strong, you carry heavy things. When you want to see, you practice.”

“Discipline and the Grace of God,” Silas added frankly.

Saleem had forgotten about that part. Grace, the imaginary virtue, the tool of mass appeal in the Outer Order, of zero practical use. “Exactly,” he agreed solemnly, taking a contemplative sip from his stein. Outer Order drivel. It reminded Saleem of his mother, who insisted continually that the alleged Grace of God would miraculously result in his enthroning upon the Warden of Azelphaphaj Tower as he sat idly by getting shitfaced.

Silas lit up when Saleem agreed with him. “Saleem, I want you to know that I believe in the One True God,” he said, much to Saleem's dismay. “I've chosen a life out on the Expanse to be close to  the One True God, the Q'Sh, and to serve the Q'Sh.” Saleem nodded and pursed his lips. Silas apparently took this as an invitation to continue. “You are a Companion of the O∴O∴S∴ and a Messenger of the Divine, and I believe that you were sent as a direct dealing of God with my soul. I would give you my word that no harm shall come to you while I am aboard this airship. I believe that this is a holy mission, and that we are sent to do God's work.”

Saleem brightened at this unexpected windfall, and the final tatters of his hangover fell away. Silas must have been a prisoner rotting away in some dungeon somewhere for some petty bullshit crime, and that was probably where he got that poorly-executed tattoo etched into his forearm. And some missionary, some sower of seeds, must have stopped by and planted one in Silas that took root. For this, Saleem gave thanks and praise. “Well, Brother,” he said, clapping the ogre on the back, “then let us go and work the will of God together.” He drained his stein and the pair walked out of the tavern as the tavern-keeper was busy mopping up the mess at the card table. Saleem never paid.