Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 54

The Empress in her Glory

MATER MOTLEY HAD BEEN known by many names in her long, bloodstained life. She had been the Visage, the Hag of Gorgossium, the Old Mother, and much else besides. But she had not fought her fate. She’d endured the time, knowing that there would come a Midnight when she would bestow upon her own head the only title that she had ever cared to possess: Thant Yeyla Carrion, Empress of the Abarat. Her first edict was to revenge herself upon Commexo City for the troubles its disobedience had caused her.

She was merciless.

The executions were a spectacle no one who survived that dark time would ever forget. For the first two hours following the dissemination of her edict, and its attendant death sentences, the Empress remained in the Circular Room, recovering those energies that had been depleted by her struggle with the Pixler-Requiax. After dispatching with her seamstresses, the Pixler-Requiax retreated to the depths of the Izabella, leaving the Old Hag to her Empire. And when she wearied of watching the sights on Pixler’s shiny screens (What was the use of inspiring fear if you couldn’t smell the sour stink of the terrorized?), she perched herself atop the blue-gray mummified hand on which she always traveled and took to the streets.

This tour of the surrendered city was the first and last time most of Commexo City’s residents would ever see, in the flesh, the woman who had so very nearly destroyed their world. The people of Commexo thought of themselves as sophisticated, not without reason, and to their eyes the sight of this Empress, about which they had heard so many chilling stories, was surprisingly reassuring. To their well-bred gaze, the woman looked like a relic from some antiquated book of nursery tales. She looked ridiculously laughable, so they whispered behind their hands. She was old and unkempt, like a madwoman.

On this last point, they were not mistaken. The Old Mother was indeed insane. But it was not a powerless madness. Even her meditations on the scenes of destruction, which were caught by Rumor Spirals that moved around her, carried wisdom. At one scene of destruction she paused to study the ruins, and saw an orphaned infant lying blank-eyed amid the rubble.

“Oh, my pieties!” she murmured. “At every turn despair is new. Happiness is of a piece, yet was heard by all. And every hurt is its own world.” Then, finished with her unrehearsed elegy, she turned to a nearby skullier and addressed him: “Soldier!”

“Me, Empress?”

“Yes, you. What’s your name?”

“Hemosh, stitched by the seamstress Mezbadee, lady.”

“And where is your mother?”

“Dead, Empress. She perished on the Wormwood.”

“Ah. Well, Hemosh son of Mezbadee, do you see that poor little thing in the doorway there?”

“The babe, lady?”

“Yes. Bring it to me, will you? It pains me to see its distress.”

“Do you wish to . . . hold the babe, m’lady?”

“Why do you sound so surprised? I was a mother before I was an Empress, Hemosh. And I will be a mother after I am dead, for there will be worms in my womb, will there not?”

“I do not care to think of life without you, m’lady. It breaks my heart—”

“You have no heart, Hemosh. You are just mud, living mud.”

Hemosh looked conflicted.

“I don’t understand, Empress. If I have no heart, why does the sound of the child’s crying trouble me so?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care, Hemosh. I am an Empress and you are nothing. Obey me.”

Hemosh nodded and put his spear down on the ground. He took five backward steps, his head bowed, before turning and scrambling up over the rubble to the doorway where the infant still sobbed.

The sound it made was so very like a human voice. But it didn’t look human. Its eyes were set above one another, its mouth also set on its side. As a result its head was long and narrow, and made to look longer still by the infant’s ears, which were tall and pricked, like those of an alerted rabbit.

“Hush, little one,” Hemosh said, reaching down to pick the infant up. Its wails faltered once Hemosh had gathered it into his arms. He rocked it gently, and its wailing ceased. “There.”

Then he turned and was about to start back over the debris when the Empress spoke: “Don’t bother to bring it back. Kill it where you’re standing.”

“Kill it?” Hemosh said.

“Yes, soldier. Kill it.”

“But why?”

“Because I told you to?”

“But it’s quiet now.”

“Are you arguing with me, soldier?”

“No. I just wanted—”

“You are! You’re arguing!”

A sudden fury seized the Empress.

In her rage the Empress stepped down from her hand, her skirts so laden with doll, that when she did so the high-backed throne in which she’d been sitting was knocked over. She glanced down at Hemosh’s spear, which responded instantly to her unspoken instruction. It rose up and turned in the air, so that it was pointing both at the stitchling and the infant who was still weeping in his shadow.

“M’lady, please. I meant no disrespect. I only—”

He got no further. The spear flew at him and the child, quickly silencing them both.

The death of the stitchling called Hemosh and the nameless infant didn’t go unwitnessed. There were eleven other stitchlings surrounding the hand, eight of whom witnessed the scene. But so did many other citizens of Commexo who had come to this spot in order to see their destroyer for themselves. And as the account spread, the number of those who claimed to have seen the two creatures, infant and soldier, run through with the same spear, also increased. Some of these new “witnesses” also embellished the cruelty and vileness that the Empress had demonstrated. One claimed that the Empress had called the baby’s soul to her and imprisoned it in one of the dolls sewn to her gown. These early additions to the account were within the bounds of believability. But as the story spread, and the additions proliferated, they became more and more outrageous. There were tales of the Empress’s legions rising up against the Empress. Rumors that the dead soldier had reappeared, swollen to gigantic size. There were never any witnesses to these marvels, of course.

These rumors simply bred further enemies of the Empress. There were enemies everywhere now. And she needed to be rid of them. So it was time, she decided, to stage the execution of the several thousand individuals whom she had already had arrested. With those enemies silenced, once and for all, she might reasonably expect Those Who Walk Behind the Stars to proclaim themselves happy. After all, had she not achieved all that she had set out to achieve? She was now the Empress of All the Hours, the Abarat beneath the thumb of her nail.

Standing next to her cherished hand in the ruined streets of Commexo City, the Empress unbent the first and last fingers of her left hand an inch, a tiny gesture that was nevertheless seen and understood by some observer in the death-ship far overhead. A hexagonal door opened in the belly of the vast machine and an immense light rained down upon her. She felt the power in the elevation beam pull on her, lifting her up. Though she very seldom took pleasure in relinquishing power to anyone, this was an exception. Being in the grip of the elevation beam was immensely pleasurable. She was perfectly content to let it have custody of her body for a few seconds, opening her arms and turning her palms skyward as the beam lifted her toward the Stormwalker.

When she was no more than her own body’s length from the underbelly of the ship, she heard a cry rise to find her. It was intended for her attention, she had no doubt of it. Nothing so singular, so strange, was loosed without distinction or purpose. It quickly became more than a single cry; it turned into a litany of cries strung together, a churning murmur of lamentation, which in turn became a raw shriek of rage.

It wasn’t difficult to decode the meaning of this. Commexo’s citizens wanted her to be reminded that, although their city was now in darkness, its inhabitants were going to survive this dark time with their memories and their rage still very much alive. And they would find her, their cries promised, and finish the grim business she had begun.

Just in case their cries were not enough, they began to demonstrate one last proof of their fury. Some two hundred Commexians appeared from the darkness, converging on the small circle of light where the mummified hand waited for its turn to be raised up. But before the elevation beam could do its work, the Commexians descended upon the hand, fully intending to slay what was already a piece of something dead.