Clive Barker
Imajica 2
  
  
  
  1
  
  LIKE THE THEATER DISTRICTS OF so many great cities across the Imajica, whether in 
Reconciled Dominions or in the Fifth, the neighborhood in which the Ipse stood had been a 
place of some notoriety in earlier times, when actors of both sexes had supplemented 
their wages with the old five-acter-hiring, retiring, seduction, conjunction, and 
remittance-all played hourly, night and day. The center of these activities had moved 
away, however, to the other side of the city, where the burgeoning numbers of 
middle-class clients felt less exposed to the gaze of their peers out seeking more 
respectable entertainment. Lickerish Street and its environs had sprung up in a matter of 
months and quickly became the third richest Kesparate in the city, leaving the theater 
district to decline into legitimacy.
  Perhaps because it was of so little interest to people, it had survived the traumas of 
the last few hours better than most Kesparates its size. It had seen some action. General 
Mattalaus' battalions had passed through its streets going south to the causeway, where 
rebels were attempting to build a makeshift bridge across the delta; and later a party of 
families from the Caramess had taken refuge in Koppocovi's Rialto. But no barricades had 
been erected, and none of the buildings burned. The Deliquium would meet the morning 
intact. Its survival, however, would not be accorded to general disinterest; rather to 
the presence at its perimeter of Pale Hill, a site which was neither a hill nor pale, but 
a circle of remembrance in the center of which lay a well, used from time immemorial as a 
repository for the corpses of executed men, suicides, paupers, and, on occasion, 
romantics who favored rotting in such company. Tomorrow's rumors would whisper that the 
ghosts of these forsaken souls had risen to defend their terrain, preventing the vandals 
and the barricade builders from destroying the Kesparate by haunting the steps of the 
Ipse and the Rialto and howling in the streets like dogs maddened from chasing the 
comet's tail.
  With her clothes in rags and her throat uttering one seamless supplication, Quaisoir 
went through the heart of several battles quite unscathed. There were many such 
grief-stricken women on the streets of Yzordderrex tonight, all begging Hapexamendios to 
return children or husbands into their arms, and they were for the most part given 
passage through the lines, their sobs password enough.
  The battles themselves didn't distress her; she'd organized and viewed mass executions 
in her time. But when the heads had rolled she'd always made a swift departure, leaving 
the aftermath for somebody else to shovel up. Now she had to tread barefoot in streets 
that were like abattoirs, and her legendary indifference to the spectacle of death was 
overtaken by a horror so profound she had several times changed her direction to avoid a 
street that stank too strongly of innards and burned blood. She knew she would have to 
confess this cowardice when she finally found the Man of Sorrows, but she was so laden 
with guilt that one more fault or less would scarcely matter.
  Then, as she came to the corner of the street at the end of which lay Pluthero Quexos' 
playhouse, somebody called her name. She stopped and looked for her summoner. A man 
dressed in blue was rising from a doorstep, the fruit he'd been peeling in one hand, the 
peeling blade in the other. He seemed to be in no doubt as to her identity.
  "You're his woman," he said.
  Was this the Lord? she wondered. The man she'd seen on the rooftops at the harbor had 
been silhouetted against a bright sky; his features had been difficult to see. Could this 
be him?
  He was calling someone from the interior of the house on the steps of which he'd been 
sitting, a sometime bordello to judge by its lewdly carved portico. The disciple, an 
Oethac, emerged with a bottle in one hand, the other ruffling the hair of a cretinous boy 
child, naked and glistening. She began to doubt her first judgment, but she didn't dare 
leave until she had her hopes confirmed or dashed.
  "Are you the Man of Sorrows?" she said.
  The fruit peeler shrugged. "Isn't everybody tonight?" he said, tossing the uneaten 
fruit away.
  The cretin leapt down the steps and snatched it up, pushing the entire thing into his 
mouth so that his face bulged and the juice ran from his lips.
  "You're the cause of this," the peeler said, jabbing his knife in Quaisoir's direction. 
He glanced around at the Oethac. "She was at the harbor. I saw her."
  "Who is she?" the Oethac said.
  "The Autarch's woman," came the reply. "Quaisoir." He took a step towards her. "You 
are, aren't you?"
  She could no more deny this than she could take flight. If this man was indeed Jesu, 
she couldn't begin her pleas for forgiveness with a lie.
  "Yes," she told him, "I'm Quaisoir. I was the Autarch's woman."
  "She's fucking beautiful," the Oethac said.
  "What she looks like doesn't matter," the fruit peeler told him. "It's what she's done 
that's important."
  "Yes," Quaisoir said, daring to believe now that this was indeed the Son of David. 
"That's what's important. What I've done."
  "The executions ..."
  "Yes."
  "The purges ..."
  "Yes."
  "I've lost a lot of friends, and you're the reason."
  "Oh, Lord, forgive me," she said, and dropped to her knees.
  "I saw you at the harbor this morning," Jesu said, approaching her as she knelt. "You 
were smiling."
  "Forgive me."
  "Looking around and smiling. And I thought, when I saw you-"
  He was three paces away from her now.
  "-your eyes glittering-"
  His sticky hand took hold of her head.
  "-I thought, those eyes-"
  He raised the knife-
  "-have to go."
  - and brought it down again, quick and sharp, sharp and quick, pricking out his 
disciple's sight before she could start to scream.
  The tears that suddenly filled Jude's eyes stung like no tears she'd ever shed before. 
She let out a sob, more of pain than of grief, pushing the heels of her hands against her 
eye sockets to stem the flow. But it wouldn't cease. The tears kept coming, hot and 
harsh, making her whole head throb. She felt Dowd's arm take hold of hers and was glad of 
it. Without his support, she was certain she would have fallen.
  "What's wrong?" he said.