The Waking Engine by David Edison Read Free Book Online

client. So she was doubly distressed as she climbed the stairs of her little house south of Ruin and the Boulevard of Wings, staring at the vase of wilted foxgloves that sat by the landing’s small oriel window. Her day had devoured itself this way, aimlessly, and nothing could be less typical of Sesstri Manfrix than aimlessness.
    Of course it was more than Cooper—there was the svarning, which she could feel prickling at her skin and getting stronger every day. The Dying pilgrims were growing in number; they found it harder and harder to Die, and that worried Asher. As it should—the mass Deathlessness brought on a malaise that was partly psychological and partly paranormal, and entirely unpredictable. It infected the young as easily as the old, as if the air itself were tainted by the rotting souls of those who should be Dead. Svarning: a word from a language with no known descendants that was either ancient beyond reckoning or entirely fictional. If the word was real, Sesstri had translated its meaning as lying somewhere between “heartsick” and “drowning,” and occasionally “illuminated,” although the degree to which those interpretations were valid would be open to debate.
    Death. Undeath. Power. Svarning. Sesstri wasn’t disturbed by any of that—it was all grist for the mill of her mind. All part of her work. Like many of the metaverse’s persevering geniuses, Sesstri Manfrix hadn’t let the interruptions of death disrupt her studies. Instead she’d expanded the scope of her investigations to include an existence punctuated by periodic transmigration—through death—and found that what she lost in continuity she more than recouped through longevity. Her second life had been fortuitous: peaceful and providing access to many notes and records of the larger metaverse of which she had been so ignorant throughout her first life. In the reality that called itself Desmond’s Pike, Sesstri had raised a family and researched the metaverse and its primary method of transportation: dying.
    What’s death to an historian who never dies? What’s history to an eternal woman? Even after apocalyptic war came to Desmond’s Pike, with gold machines that fell from the sky and disassembled the world one atom at a time, Sesstri knew that she’d have the luxury to answer her questions at her own pace. Now her limitless learning appeared threatened by the rise of the svarning. So she’d solve it. One woman against a metaphysical illness that threatened all universes? Of course she could solve it.
    Other questions were less forgiving. What’s love to a woman who’d never met her equal? What, for that matter, is love? The browning foxgloves didn’t answer; they only raised further questions. Why hadn’t she refilled the water in the vase?
    Oh, Asher.
    She’d lied because Asher frightened her, and Sesstri had decided at a young age never to be frightened of a man. Her father the Horse lord had taught her that much, at least. She would solve the problem of Asher after she’d unraveled the threat to the metaverse.
    The matter at hand: Cooper hadn’t traveled here by himself; he smelled of no grand magics and heralded no invading army or technological superiority. He was as mundane as it got. That left few options, all of which pointed to the one subject that made Sesstri uncomfortable: the First People. Gods, the ignorant called them. She had no use for such charlatanism, and while there was no arguing the existence of any number of beings who were— or chose to remain—unfathomable to humankind and the other races of the Third People, there were no true gods in the absolute sense of the word, merely players of a larger game, with a wider reach and deeper pockets. They might be beyond mortal ken, but that was due to mortal limitations rather than a MacGuffin called divinity. Name them what you will, Sesstri felt, but worship was a waste of good incense.
    She packed her satchel. She might as well get some work