The Causal Angel (Jean le Flambeur) Read Online Free PDF

heart jumps when you see her.
    ‘You should not have come here,’ Yuki-Onna says with a cold voice. The bitter taste is back in your mouth.
    ‘I will grant you this honour, sister,’ the usagi-ronin says. ‘Your courage has earned you the right to take her life.’
    There is something in your mouth: a peach-stone. Its contours are rough on your tongue.
    You draw your katana in one fluid movement and plunge it into the usagi-ronin’s belly.
    As the light dims in her eyes, you feel a stab of regret. ‘I did not come to take her life,’ you say, ‘but to offer her my sword. I wished the mountain would take you first, or that I could have died for you. But it is too late.’
    ‘Well done, child,’ the witch says. ‘Now come to me and accept your reward.’
    She gestures and the figure at her feet stands up unsteadily. You rush to her side and embrace her. She rustles in your grip. She has no flesh or bones.
    She is a doll, made of cloth.
    The laughter of Yuki-Onna is high and cold and blue like sunlight on snow. You let go of the doll image of your lover and fall to your knees.
    Your katana claims your flesh just as hungrily as it enters your body. To your surprise, the blade is not cold but hot, burning iron just below your heart. Gripping the hilt with both hands, you twist it upwards.
    The witch disappears, and so does the world. And then you are Mieli, the daughter of Karhu. And Mieli is standing on a balcony. Below her is a blue canal. It goes on forever, a thread that vanishes into a haze somewhere impossibly far. The wind is warm and gentle on her face. And above her spreads the vast, vast sky of Saturn, cut in two by the blade of a ring.

3
    THE DETECTIVE AND THE FIREFLIES
    The King of Mars can see everything, but there are times when he prefers not to be seen.
    Invisible, hidden in a cloak of gevulot, he walks the streets of the Moving City of the Oubliette. As usual, he is late: this time, it has taken a while to elude his tzaddikim bodyguards. The Martian sky is pale, Phobos just a bright promise beyond the jagged teeth of Hellas Planitia. There is a chill in the air. Heaters are lit in the shadows of the tall grand buildings along the wide avenues of the Edge, and diners and drinkers are starting to come out. The city sways softly as it walks, and the distant boom of its steps is a constant, reassuring heartbeat. On the surface, everything is as it always has been.
    But the King – Isidore Beautrelet – knows better. He tastes the tangy, bitter undercurrent of fear, sees the excessive formality in the steps of the people who no longer trust their anonymity to gevulot. A smiling couple walks past, hand in hand. The woman is tall, mahogany-skinned, and catches Isidore’s eye. By accident, he brushes her memories, remembers being Jacqi the tailor, tears running down her cheeks when she gathered with the crowd on the Permanent Avenue to watch the death of Earth in the sky, the world she had come from.
    Isidore shakes his head. He can hear and remember every conversation, every thought in the Oubliette. It is a doubleedged gift given to him by his father the cryptarch, the thief Jean le Flambeur’s twisted copy, now imprisoned in the needle of the Prison, doomed to play endless games. The only way Isidore can think and breathe is by hiding and, even then, the Oubliette is always with him, just a thought away. He knows how afraid his people are. Giants are moving beyond the sky, and the soft light is not as soothing as it used to be.
    His destination is near the southern rim of the city, a small house surrounded by a fenced garden. It is a curious design, round windows and soft amber concrete, almost disappearing into the dense foliage of white sword-shaped Thoris roses that grow wild and thick all about it.
    As he approaches the gate, a co-memory message reaches him, as if the rich smell of the roses reminded him of the stern gaze of his mother, Raymonde. He remembers that he is supposed to be at a meeting