“You can’t heal the dead.”

“You’re quite the plain speaker, aren’t you?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. My son has done a lot of terrible things. I see the stain he leaves behind him, on whatever he’s touched. Even on you.”

Candy suddenly felt as though somebody had just emptied a bucket of sewer water over her head. How clear was the stain on her that a blind man could see it?

“You do know it wasn’t me he wanted, right? It was Princess Boa. She’d been hidden in me all my life. I didn’t know she was there until . . . until I found the Abarat. Or it found me.”

“Are you sure?”

“About what?”

“Christopher wanting Boa and not you?”

“Yes. I know it,” Candy said, nodding.

“I saw you in a vision once, while I was laying out the cards. I had no idea who you were, but you were talking to Christopher, who was lying down, barely able to lift his head . . .”

“That was back in Chickentown. Yes. He was very weak. I thought for certain he was going to die. He wanted to talk to Boa, and of course I let him.”

“What did he want from her?”

“He wanted them to die together.”

“And she was ready to go along with that?”

“No, I don’t think she was. I can’t be sure . . .”

“Even though you were sharing a mind?”

“Sometimes I couldn’t find her. She hid from me. Even in my own head. Why does it matter?”

“Does he know that you and the Princess are—?”

“No longer together? Yes, he knows. I saw him, in Tazmagor. He came to find me . . . well, no, to find her, but in the end all he got was me. He came to warn one of us about what was coming.”

Some tension that Candy hadn’t seen in the blind man’s face until now suddenly melted away.

“You know that for certain?”

“What? That he’d wanted to save my life? Or her life? Yes. Yes, I know that for certain. Why? Does it matter?”

“That he has a shred of goodness in him? That he cares enough about somebody to put himself in harm’s way? Yes, it matters a great deal. Only to me, perhaps. But then I’m the only one who has to live with the knowledge anyway.”

“The knowledge of . . .”

“All the terrible things he did. The families he destroyed. The love he destroyed. I was a bad man before the fire, Candy. I’ll be the first to say so. But I didn’t teach him to murder people with their own nightmares. That was my mother’s doing. The Mad Hag of Gorgossium . . . and now our Empress and executioner. She’s there . . .” As he spoke, he pointed to the card that had surfaced in Candy’s hands. She’d been sifting through them as they talked and one had drawn the blind man’s attention. “My mother,” he said.

The image on the card was one of heart-stopping terror. In a bare room, lacking even the most rudimentary comfort or decoration was a single occupant: a small unclothed figure stood looking at a window that filled most of the left-hand quadrant of the picture. Through it, staring down at him, was the vast bloodless face of a devourer, its teeth glittering.

“I don’t think this is your mother,” Candy said.

“It’s a symbol, not a likeness,” Zephario replied. “There is a difference. That thing at the window represents the power that allowed my mother to do all that she’s done. It is Nephauree. One of Those Who Walk Behind the Stars.”

Candy could feel cold emanating from the painted image. It made her head throb.

“It’s Nephauree magic she wields. That’s why she’s been able to do so much harm. I pray my son has not made the same bargains with them.”

“Why?”

“Because the price of that power will be a terrible thing to pay. I could perhaps persuade him to turn his back on the Nephauree if I could speak with him.”

“Then talk to him.”

“I need your help to do that.”

“This isn’t something I had planned for.”

“I have no wish to put you in harm’s way—”

“That’s not what worries me.”

“I have no money—”

“I wouldn’t want it even if you did,” Candy replied.

“Then what do you want?”

“We need to leave this place, Zephario.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be difficult. You have the power to make a glyph, do you not?”

“Oh, I do. And this one is going to be very unusual.”

Chapter 59

A Whisper of Infinitude

THE EMPRESS THANT YEYLA Carrion stood at the fifty-foot-wide battle window of her Stormwalker and viewed with immense pleasure and subtle satisfaction the spectacle of the Ceremonial Assembly of the Imperial Executioners. Everything was proceeding in an orderly fashion. There were eight battalions of stitchling executioners, each a thousand stitchlings strong. The excess of knives to hearts was intentional, a precaution taken in case the number of condemned turned out to be significantly larger than expected, or there was a failure to successfully kill among some portion of the executioners. Their commander stitchlings were sewn with special symmetry from remnants of finely woven fabric and the bleached skins of scaly reptiles.

The Empress stood, admiring her steamstresses’ handiwork, when a voice, entirely unwelcome, interrupted her reverie.

“Hello, Grandmother.”

The Old Hag bristled.

“Christopher.” She didn’t turn. She didn’t need to. She saw his reflection in the window as he stepped out of the shadows. “This is—”

“Unexpected? Yes. I have new scars. But then you know that. You gave them to me.”

As he spoke, a flicker of the old rage, the fury that had erupted from him on the deck of the Wormwood, reappeared. The nightmares caught the infection of anger, and became still more livid.

“I sense that you still harbor a measure of resentment toward me,” the Empress said, turning to face her grandson.

He hardly resembled at all the despairing, forsaken creature Candy Quackenbush had met in the alleyway behind the marketplace at Tazmagor. Now he was wearing fine robes, new white linens that made a perfect screen for the light from the blazing ziggurat on Scoriae. And the nightmares in his new collar threw their own illumination up onto his face as they circled his head.

“Are my reasons hard to fathom, lady?” Carrion said. “With just a few words you could have saved me.”

“You suffered. And so did I. But we recovered. We can still plan for the future.” She looked past the interwoven strands of nightmares to find the glittering gaze of her grandson. “Now you should go.”

“I don’t choose to go now, Grandmother. I want to see why you’re not going home to Gorgossium. I hear you tore my tower down—”

“I tore all of those ugly things down.”

“Why?”

“Don’t be angry about your tower, darling, please. I thought you were dead.”

“You thought no such thing. You knew I was still living, just as you knew the soul of my Princess was hidden in Candy Quackenbush. You just see the things you want to see and disregard the rest.”

The Empress offered no reply to this. At least not for half a minute or more. She just tapped on the window, watching her army. Finally she spoke: “You can take my tower!”

Carrion was genuinely shocked at the proposal.

“I can . . . take it?”

“It’s yours. I’ll have you escorted back to Gorgossium.”

Carrion laughed into his night terrors.

“Oh, you are very clever, aren’t you? You can’t slip out of this so easily. I want to see what you’ve got hidden in Scoriae.”

“Enemies, Christopher. Just the same old enemies. Only in an hour they’ll all be dead. Every last one of them.”

“Ah. Now I see. A knife for every heart.”

The Old Mother nodded, the weight of the years and the crimes and the betrayals heavy upon her.

“Yes, a knife for every heart,” she confessed. “Are you happy now? I am about to do the last and bloodiest business of a very bloody time. You needn’t witness it.”

“No, but I will. You may keep your fine tower, lady. I want to see this business to the very end. Then you can deny me no part of the spoils. For my hands will be as stained red as yours.”