Ito. “It will block the fire engine. We must move it.” He shook Kit’s shoulder. “Come on, who has the keys?”
“I don’t know.” Pulling free, Kit screamed, “Yoshi.”
A wall of flames roared back.
“My wife,” said Kit.
Hands dragged him away and when Kit looked again there was no doorway from which to be dragged. The fury had swallowed every detail within its flames.
A fire officer was demanding answers. Try as he might, Kit couldn’t remember having been asked a question. After a second, he understood.
“Hai,” he said. The two Iwatani burners in the kitchen used butane. Yes, there were spare bottles stacked near the grill. Four, maybe five. But what he really needed to do was find…
“Yoshi,” he yelled.
The next time he tried to break free, a girl in a white coat appeared at a nod from the officer and snapped open her leather bag. The jab took less than five seconds to disconnect Kit from the chaos around him.
C HAPTER 11 — Nawa-no-ukiyo (Floating Rope World)
Stumbling through the door, Lady Neku, otherwise known as Baroness Nawa-no-ukiyo, Countess High Strange, and Chatelaine of Schloss Omga, fell to her knees and threw up all over mother-of-pearl floor tiles. What she’d seen inside his head clung to her like static, and he’d taken memories from her. Lady Neku could still feel the holes.
“Fuck.”
Polyglot, polygoyle…
Polyandrous?
Double fuck. She wasn’t allowed to forget what shape those tiles were, remembering stuff like that was her job.
Lady Neku was also Duchesse de Temps Perdu. Sometime around the start of the last millennium there had been a bout of title inflation. Hyperinflation, her grandfather said sniffily, guards became captains, captains became generals, and the fugees got rights. Although, to be honest, they were no more free than before.
When Lady Neku looked again the tiles were triangular.
“Stop it,” she told Schloss Omga, her family’s castle.
Maybe the castle was listening, or maybe it just got bored and decided to stop the architectural equivalent of twiddling its hair. Whatever, next time Lady Neku looked, the tiles in her bedroom had changed back to polygons and that was the last change of the day.
Dragging herself to her feet, Lady Neku stared around her. The vomit was already gone, swallowed by the floor and fed back to the castle. Schloss Omga was good at telling the difference between living organics and waste. It hardly ever got this wrong.
“Shit.”
She felt sick. Hell, she’d been sick. The damage to her shadow must be worse than she thought. Lady Neku turned the cloak over in her hands until she found a small tear. He shouldn’t have grabbed her like that, she’d almost let the rip close around her. And then where would she have been?
Dead, obviously.
So cross was Lady Neku at having damaged the red cloak that it took her five minutes to notice her memory bracelet was missing, and another five to realise her real body wasn’t in the room waiting for her. No back-up beads and no original from which to burn more. This was serious. Actually, it was beyond serious.
She’d left her body on a chair beside the door. At first she imagined her bedroom had just tidied it away, but all her wardrobes were empty. So she checked the room she’d used as a child, just in case household gods were being more forgetful than usual, only her body wasn’t there either.
“Castle,” Neku demanded.
All she got by way of answer was an echoing emptiness in her head.
“Come on,” she said.
Again silence.
This was not unusual. The Katchatka family castle could sulk for decades if really pushed, and everyone but Neku regarded Schloss Omga as irretrievably senile and did their best to ignore it. Work arounds, her Lady Mother called them.
Work arounds involved cutting new doors rather than waiting for them to grow and quarrying storage space out of the bloody flesh beneath the council chamber rather than asking the living core of the
“I don’t know.” Pulling free, Kit screamed, “Yoshi.”
A wall of flames roared back.
“My wife,” said Kit.
Hands dragged him away and when Kit looked again there was no doorway from which to be dragged. The fury had swallowed every detail within its flames.
A fire officer was demanding answers. Try as he might, Kit couldn’t remember having been asked a question. After a second, he understood.
“Hai,” he said. The two Iwatani burners in the kitchen used butane. Yes, there were spare bottles stacked near the grill. Four, maybe five. But what he really needed to do was find…
“Yoshi,” he yelled.
The next time he tried to break free, a girl in a white coat appeared at a nod from the officer and snapped open her leather bag. The jab took less than five seconds to disconnect Kit from the chaos around him.
C HAPTER 11 — Nawa-no-ukiyo (Floating Rope World)
Stumbling through the door, Lady Neku, otherwise known as Baroness Nawa-no-ukiyo, Countess High Strange, and Chatelaine of Schloss Omga, fell to her knees and threw up all over mother-of-pearl floor tiles. What she’d seen inside his head clung to her like static, and he’d taken memories from her. Lady Neku could still feel the holes.
“Fuck.”
Polyglot, polygoyle…
Polyandrous?
Double fuck. She wasn’t allowed to forget what shape those tiles were, remembering stuff like that was her job.
Lady Neku was also Duchesse de Temps Perdu. Sometime around the start of the last millennium there had been a bout of title inflation. Hyperinflation, her grandfather said sniffily, guards became captains, captains became generals, and the fugees got rights. Although, to be honest, they were no more free than before.
When Lady Neku looked again the tiles were triangular.
“Stop it,” she told Schloss Omga, her family’s castle.
Maybe the castle was listening, or maybe it just got bored and decided to stop the architectural equivalent of twiddling its hair. Whatever, next time Lady Neku looked, the tiles in her bedroom had changed back to polygons and that was the last change of the day.
Dragging herself to her feet, Lady Neku stared around her. The vomit was already gone, swallowed by the floor and fed back to the castle. Schloss Omga was good at telling the difference between living organics and waste. It hardly ever got this wrong.
“Shit.”
She felt sick. Hell, she’d been sick. The damage to her shadow must be worse than she thought. Lady Neku turned the cloak over in her hands until she found a small tear. He shouldn’t have grabbed her like that, she’d almost let the rip close around her. And then where would she have been?
Dead, obviously.
So cross was Lady Neku at having damaged the red cloak that it took her five minutes to notice her memory bracelet was missing, and another five to realise her real body wasn’t in the room waiting for her. No back-up beads and no original from which to burn more. This was serious. Actually, it was beyond serious.
She’d left her body on a chair beside the door. At first she imagined her bedroom had just tidied it away, but all her wardrobes were empty. So she checked the room she’d used as a child, just in case household gods were being more forgetful than usual, only her body wasn’t there either.
“Castle,” Neku demanded.
All she got by way of answer was an echoing emptiness in her head.
“Come on,” she said.
Again silence.
This was not unusual. The Katchatka family castle could sulk for decades if really pushed, and everyone but Neku regarded Schloss Omga as irretrievably senile and did their best to ignore it. Work arounds, her Lady Mother called them.
Work arounds involved cutting new doors rather than waiting for them to grow and quarrying storage space out of the bloody flesh beneath the council chamber rather than asking the living core of the
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