A Gathering of Wings (13 page)

Neal calls back, “As beggars go, they live like little kings and queens. There’s enough garbage in Kahiro to feed a whole city of tads. Stay with me now. We’re almost there.”

“Are we walking in circles?” Malora asks.

“It is entirely possible,” Honus says.

Meanwhile, a fresh wave of beggars and street hustlers has risen up around them.

“It’s because of you two,” Honus explains. “You and Zephele are new to Kahiro. It happens to everyone their first time. It’s as if the city senses new blood. It’s all in your faces. Your faces are open. Soon you will learn to close your faces, to walk with your eyes hard, and the beggars won’t bother you.”

A beggar dances before Malora and Honus, a scruffy Capricornia with a patch over his eye and one raffishly cockeyed horn. “You two there, with the horned heads, welcome to the Mother of the World, cousins! I will be your guide! Follow me!” he says, his voice as nasal as a nanny goat’s.

Honus responds with a flip of his hand. “We require no guide, my ovine friend. Be off.” Then Honus turns to Malora. “Mother of the World is apt,” he says, “for Kahiro is the most ancient city on earth. Countless civilizations have risen and fallen on this very spot and left their mark like the alluvial sands deposited by the river. The Ka are merely its most recent inhabitants. The Ka won it. Whether on land or in the water, in battle or on the playing field, rich or poor, the Ka are supremely sportive.”

“And what of the sheKa?” Zephele asks.

“One rarely sees them on the street during the daylight. The poor are in their hovels, the rich in their villas. The wealthy sheKa are the world’s finest hostesses. The Ka are intensely
jealous and many a duel is fought between jealous heKa over the favors of a sheKa,” Honus says.

“I sell you statue of zaffinks for cheap. Two for one nub,” the same Capricornia beseeches them.

“What are
zaffinks
?” Malora asks.

“Ha!” says Honus. “He means
the Sphinx
. It is a giant ancient statue that lies somewhere outside the city walls far beneath the earth. The stone likeness of a lion-human hibe—carved many thousands of years before the living hibes ever walked the earth—is now lost to the sands of time. This horn-headed fellow is bluffing. He will take you to a mound of sand in the middle of nowhere and tell you this is where the Sphinx lies, buried beneath it. Then he will dig and dig and dig and eventually, he will unearth a few worn rocks and attempt to sell them to you as true relics of the sphinx. Oh, they’d sell the very sand if they thought they could find a buyer for it.”

They scurry to catch up with Neal as he disappears around another corner. They have passed into a residential neighborhood where the crowd is sparser, more composed and quiet, consisting mostly of Ka, their long narrow feet encased in leather sandals whose papyrus straps crisscross their muscled calves and tie off at the knee. They wear embroidered cloth headdresses that cast deep shadows over their green-tinted faces and make them seem noble and mysterious. Unsmiling, they stride with purpose, carrying long sticks that have knobs carved and painted like brightly colored serpents.

“Those sticks are multipurpose,” Honus explains. “The Ka use them for dancing, dueling, fishing, poling barges, digging clams, and conjuring their gods. They have also been known to save lives with them. If one of them chances to step
into a sinkhole, his mate offers him the end of the stick to pull him to safety.”

“Perhaps I should get a stick of my own,” Malora says. She has not given up on the idea of having to enter the Downs. If that is what it takes to find Sky, she will do it.

“In the marketplace of Kahiro—”

“I know,” says Malora, rolling her eyes, “I can get anything I want.” But all I really want, she adds silently, is to find my horse.

The street comes to a dead end at the wall, in what Malora calculates is the northwest part of the city. A structure rises, built into the wall and extending halfway up.

“We have arrived!” Honus announces. “The Backbone of Heaven!”

“What an odd name for a place,” Malora says to herself as she stares up at the inn, the beads at its many windows rattling in the breeze. Then she looks down. Surrounding the inn and bubbling up from beneath the wall at its back is a trench filled with water.

“Over the years, the inn has acquired a moat courtesy of the ever-encroaching seawater,” Honus explains.

There is a stone footbridge over the trench leading to the wide arched entrance. On a terrace in front of the inn are large round tables at which are seated a variety of hibes drinking strangely colored beverages and dropping strange-looking food with their hands into their upturned mouths.

“Seafood,” Honus says. “It takes some getting used to.”

“Give me your Eyes and wait here,” Neal says to them. “I’ll make sure our reservations still hold. We’re a day early.” Neal collects their documentation and strides across the bridge and into the inn.

“Where will we stay if they can’t put us up?” Zephele asks fretfully. There are smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Orion says. “Kahiro is full of inns and hostels. Still, I hope they can take us. I am fond of this place.”

“These are not particularly luxurious accommodations, mind you,” Honus puts in. “But it is quiet and clean, and at night you can hear the sea as well as see a small sampling of it right here.” He gestures to the pool. “From the depth, I am judging that the tide is high.”

Malora bends down and dips her finger in the water. It is a milky pale green color and shockingly cold. She raises her finger to her mouth and sucks it. It is as salty as tears.

“Try it,” she says to Zephele.

Zephele bends and cups some in her hands, sampling it on the tip of her tongue. “It is most flavorful,” she says.

“I don’t suggest you drink it,” Orion says.

“Or swim in it,” Honus says.

“Why not?” Malora asks.

“It is full of all manner of creatures,” Honus says.

Orion intones, “Fish and poisonous seagoing snakes. Whales and sharks and octopi and eels and all nature of cold-eyed creatures. Not to mention the coldest-eyed of all, the aquatic hibes.”

Zephele hugs her elbows and shivers, but Malora is intrigued. “I have swum with hippos and crocodiles. I would like to swim in the sea.”

“Always the fearless one,” Zephele says, “wherever she may find herself.”

“I have fear,” Malora says defensively. “Only a fool has no fear. For instance, I fear for Sky.”

“Fear for the safety of others is simply another form of empathy. Valor, even,” Zephele says.

Malora feels nettled. She knows she is not as good, or as noble, as her friends think she is, but it is hopeless to point this out to them. They refuse to believe that a human being could be flawed. In their own way, they are as bad as the worshippers in the Church of the Latter Day Scienticians.

“Easy, my friend. We know you’re afraid for Sky,” Orion says gently, “and we will do everything we can to help you find him.”

Neal appears on the other side of the bridge and beckons. They cross over and go through the arch into a palm-shaded courtyard in the center of which a round stone fountain splashes. Across the courtyard is a high desk, and behind it the Ka innkeeper nods at them cordially.

“Welcome to the Backbone of Heaven! I am Akbar, at your service,” the innkeeper says in a voice that flutters through his fleshy lips. “I have three rooms available on the ground floor for the quads. And a suite on the top floor for the two bipeds.” He doles out iron keys to each of them. “Thank you for choosing the Backbone. There will be an evening buffet served in the courtyard at the sound of the bells.” Then he crooks a long webbed finger at Neal and adds, “A word with you, my fine young quadruped?”

As Ka and centaur confer, Malora wanders over to an arched indentation in the wall where a statue of a man and a woman, draped in lapis-blue hooded cloaks, stand side by side, palms upturned, sweet smiles on their lips, eyeglasses perched on the ends of their noses.

“Who are they?” Malora asks Honus, who has joined her.

“Doctor Adam and Doctor Eve,” Honus says. “The last People.”

“No, they’re not,” Malora says automatically, then catches herself immediately. “I see. They look so …”

“Insipid?” Honus suggests.

“Dim-witted,” Malora says with an apologetic shrug.

“Yes, you wouldn’t know it to look at them, but they were brilliant Scienticians, the patron saints of the Latter Day Church of the Scienticians.”

Malora makes a face. She prefers Kheiron to these two. At least Kheiron looks wise and kind in the art and statuary dedicated to him, a god who demands not faith but the diligent adherence to Edicts.

Neal has returned from his brief conference with the innkeeper. “Akbar strongly recommends,” he says, “that we keep our two females under close watch. The streets of the city are crawling with scouts. I had forgotten that it’s recruiting season.”

Dock growls and clutches his whip handle. “Let ’em
try
.”

“Try what?” Malora asks. “Who are these scouts?”

“
Talent
scouts,” Neal replies. “Agents who roam the streets in search of fresh talent for the Houses of Romance.”

“How exciting!” Zephele says, her eyes flashing. “Might they choose Malora and me? Surely, our beauty and cleverness qualify us.”

Malora squeezes Zephele’s hand, happy to see that her friend’s spirits are rekindling.

“This is not a competition you would wish to enter, much less win,” Neal says.

Zephele draws herself up tall. “And why not?”

Malora adds, “From the way Zephele has described these places, they sound like fun.”

“Most entertaining,” Zephele adds.

“I’m truly sorry if anyone has said anything to give you that impression,” says Neal. “Nothing could be further from the truth. While many hibes run away from home to join them, they live to regret their decision. In the Houses of Romance, the females—and the males—are poorly treated. Their individual wishes and their very identities are subsumed by the house, and they become mere commodities, objects to be sold and sold again to the highest bidder until their value and usefulness, their youth and their beauty, are exhausted and depleted.”

Malora feels as if she has just lifted a beautiful rock only to discover a scorpion with an arched tail. When she finds her voice, she says, “Thank you for finally telling us the truth, Neal. In that case, we are not interested in visiting these places.”

“
Definitely
not interested,” Zephele agrees, chin upturned. “Moreover, we shall not hesitate to express our feelings to any scout who has the temerity to approach us.”

Neal shakes his head wearily. “You still don’t understand. Your
interest
is the furthest thing from their minds. They say that one moment you are standing in the bazaar fingering some exotic piece of goods and the next, you are lying bound and gagged and drugged in a room that, for all its finery, is little more than a prison.”

“We’ll be vigilant,” Malora says, squeezing Zephele’s hand harder now, less afraid for herself than for the centaur maiden.

“As will the rest of us, pet. Rest assured,” Neal says. “I wouldn’t want to be the one who had to tell the Apex his daughters had been pulled into a House of Romance. If anything would make him toss the Fourteenth into the Neelah that would be it.”

“We can’t let that happen!” says Zephele.

“Pay no heed to Featherhoof,” Orion says. “Father would be more than willing to pay whatever ransom was demanded.”

“Ransom?” Malora asks.

“It is customary,” Orion explains, “for the wealthier families to pay for the release of their sons and daughters. It’s a valuable source of income for the Houses.”

“Families pay handsomely,” Neal says, then adds with a wicked grin aimed at Zephele, “unless their sons and daughters are more trouble than they are worth.”

Neal is the only one who finds this funny.

“What kind of a place
is
Kahiro?” Malora bursts out.

“Not Mount Kheiron, that’s for sure,” growls Dock.

“Actually,” Honus says, “the Houses lie outside the walls and are therefore not subject to Kahiran law—or any other.”

“Makes you appreciate the Edicts a bit more, doesn’t it?” Orion says. “I suggest we retire to our rooms and refresh ourselves before the evening meal.”

As exhausted as she is, Malora must ask, “What about Shrouk?”

“It’s nearly dark,” Orion says. “The streets will soon be unsafe and the marketplace is closed. There will be time enough to see Shrouk tomorrow.”

Tomorrow, Malora thinks, I will learn about Sky.

Serving them their evening meal is a pink-skinned, broad-bottomed hibe. Her tiny head, with its protuberant eyes, is set on the slender stalk of her neck. An ostrich woman, Malora thinks. I wonder how fast she can run.

“What I wouldn’t give to have eyelashes like hers,” Zephele whispers to Malora.

“Me too,” Malora says. This is a white lie. She is indifferent to the length of eyelashes but encouraged to hear Zephele say anything positive about another hibe.