Babylon Steel (12 page)

Previous went scarlet (she blushes far too easy for someone who’s a doorguard on a whorehouse, bless her heart).

“And what do you do?” Jivrais said.

“I buy things. I sell them. Sometimes I make a little money.” He shrugged. “Sometimes not so much. And at cards I am not very lucky. But sometimes I am lucky in other ways, yes?”

He smiled at Previous, who gave him a fleeting half-smile and turned to me. “Here, the Vessels. I’ve been wondering. Do they actually
have
any women? I mean, they don’t allow them in the Temples, but they must get new little Vessels from somewhere.”

“So far as I know, the Vessels are an order, not a race,” I said, “though all the ones I’ve met are human, I think. People just join up, somehow. I don’t know what happens to the ones who have families before they join, whether they just get abandoned, or what. Maybe they’re like those people we met in Lahter, remember? The ones who allow women into a sort of annexe, off the back of the temple, where they can hear the ceremony, but not be seen. You know, just in case any of the men sees them at the wrong moment and gets distracted.”

Previous snorted. “Any god you can be distracted from that easily don’t seem like much of a god to
me
.”

“Oh, speaking of distraction – you been to Bannerman’s lately?” I said.

“You joking? I daren’t look in the window in case he charges me.”

“He’s got a Gillalune in.”

Ireq’s ears pricked up. “Gillalune?”

“He hasn’t!” Previous said. “Really? Dammit, Babylon, I’m going to have to go look now.”

“You need a new helmet anyway. Yours is so dented I’m surprised you can get it on without a crowbar.”

“Not from Bannerman’s I don’t.”

The talk stayed with weapons instead of gods, a much healthier subject.

I
T WAS DARK
by the time I got out again. Too early to look for Mokraine at the Break of Dawn; I’d try a couple of his other haunts first.

There’s plenty of gambling in Scalentine; everything from a handful of brass on a street-bet to entire fortunes exchanged on a gentleman’s handshake. For some reason most of it seems to concentrate near Nightwind portal, like a lot of the city’s more disturbing aspects.

It’s not that I’ve got anything against people enjoying themselves, not in my line of work. But... I remember Kyrl, and the knifeman in the alleyway. And it’s not just the violence. I’ve seen too many people utterly focused on the turn of a card, their whole body clenched with need. People I knew had children at home eking out the stale loaf for another day and hoping this time Mummy or Daddy wasn’t lying when they said they’d be coming home with their pockets spilling over with gold.

But that very need was the thing that drew Mokraine.

I passed The Singing Bird first, not exactly hoping to see Darask Fain, but I admit the thought occurred to me.

The Bird has that discreet, velvety look of serious money, rather like Fain himself. The woodwork is glossy-dark, and the windows are curtained with heavy silk. The bouncers aren’t called bouncers, they’re called ‘courtesy guards.’ They look like valets.

It’s not the sort of place they’d willingly allow Mokraine in, though he has his means, and most people are, wisely, a little nervous about getting in his way. But the Bird is also the sort of place where most of the punters have plenty of coin to lose. It doesn’t matter so much to them, and that makes them less appealing to Mokraine.

I went on to The Golden Cup instead.

From the outside, it looks pretty good; not as gilded as The Singing Bird, but with richly draped windows and smart doormen.

When you get close, you realise that the silvery sheen on the curtains that makes them look like the best velvet is actually dust, and that the doormen’s uniforms are worn over armour, and have patches of neat stitching here and there where at some point someone’s put a blade through the cloth.

They checked me over and made me hand in my sword.

Well, I wasn’t planning on needing a blade, and I can handle myself without one. It’s just an extra edge, so to speak.

Inside, the Cup was brightly lit: hissing alchemical lamps with a harsh white glare. It smelled of drink and pipe smoke and sweat and it was very, very quiet. No laughter, little chat. Just the click of dice, the rattle of cups, the whisper of cards.

This place was
all
about the turn of a card, the fall of the dice. No-one was here for fun, they were here for chance. At least, the punters were. For the owner, chance hardly came into it.

Not that this was a scam joint. So far as I knew, The Golden Cup ran straight games, but you can count on one hand the number of customers who can play them and make a profit. Which is why it needed new doormen every now and then; some people get upset when they see their last coin rolling away.

In the ugly light that cast such hard shadows, the customers were pale, almost transparent, nothing moving but their eyes. They looked like hungry ghosts.

A man got up from one of the tables, swaying, and walked towards me. He had that hit-on-the-head look of someone who has just lost everything they had, and more.

Then I saw Mokraine. He rose from the corner where he had been sitting unnoticed, and put a friendly arm around the man’s shoulder. His familiar, grey and lumpen, hopped after him, and leaned its head against the man’s leg like a dog.

The man turned his head, slowly, as though in a dream, towards Mokraine. Mokraine bent down, until his hair brushed the man’s cheek. I couldn’t help but watch, though it made me shudder, as the expression on the man’s face went from numb shock to vague surprise to an utter, white blank.

Mokraine straightened up, and closed his eyes with a look of satisfaction which I personally think belongs in the bedroom. His familiar made a snuffling grunt. The man he’d touched stood for a moment, then wandered away in the direction of the door, as though he were sleepwalking.

I moved closer, and waited for Mokraine to come out of his trance. Eventually he shuddered and opened his eyes. “Babylon, my darling,” he said. I stepped back, and his hand fell away before it reached me. Some emotion I couldn’t quite read crossed his face, quickly replaced by a smile.

“But you look so very anxious, Babylon. Would you not like to be calm, serene...?”

“No thank you.” Dammit, it
still
upset me that Mokraine would try and feed off me, we used to be friends. Still are, in so far as that’s possible with Mokraine these days. But that’s addiction for you. Everything else becomes secondary. You have to feed the beast, and in the end the beast eats you.

“Ah well,” he said, moving towards the door. “I think this place has done its duty for this evening.”

I retrieved my sword from the doorman and followed him. “So,” I said, falling in beside him but making sure I kept out of reach of both him and the familiar, “have you anything for me?”

“Anything? Why, plenty, my darling, if you want it.” He smiled, dreamy and distant. “That fellow there, nothing to look at. Dull as a pudding, wouldn’t you say? But oh, Babylon, what depths of hunger! And what castles of fantasy built over those gulfs on the most fragile of foundations! And he knows, beneath it all. He knows it is all glass and air, that the gulf awaits his every step. He longs for it, he loves the fall he never has the courage to take.”

“Mokraine...”

“What do you think he will do, now, when he remembers? When he feels it all again? Perhaps I should follow him, and wait...”

“Mokraine! Ye gods, man, you get worse. That’s vile.”

He looked at me, and I could almost swear he looked hurt. “I don’t
make
them feel that way, Babylon. I give them a respite from it.”

“I’ve heard about your
respite
from those who’ve been granted it.” Like being an abandoned house, was what I’d heard, all whispering emptiness. Then whatever you were feeling rushes back in, twice as bad for its brief absence.

I hauled on my temper. I didn’t need to antagonise Mokraine. I tried to smile. “You know I get my relaxation elsewhere,” I said. “I just wanted to find out if you’d heard anything about...” I had stepped backwards and my sword was halfway out of its sheath before I even realised, then I swore. It was that damn familiar, which had been sneaking up on me; I’d been on the verge of trying to cut its vile bloody-eyed head off. “Mokraine, can you please keep this thing away from me?”

He clicked at it, looked up at me and shrugged. “It’s not a pet, Babylon.”

“The girl,” I said, keeping an eye on the familiar. “The missing girl. Remember? You heard anything?”

“I have heard many things, Babylon, since last we met. Or, I have tasted them. I have tasted love, dark and sweet as poppy-syrup, and as full of imaginings. I have tasted the suspicions of a cheating merchant, all glitter and edges, like clipped coin...”

I should have caught him before he’d fed. He was quite capable of going on in this vein for some time.

“...and the paranoia of a demigod’s slave; living in a sweat for fear of an unwary word. Fascinating.”

“We’ve been plagued with demigods recently,” I said.

“Those who rule by fear are always surrounded by the most intense of emotions, bound tight, pressed to a concentration. Most... stimulating.”

“And the girl?”

“Girl?”

“The one I’m
looking
for, Mokraine. I showed you her picture, remember?”

He frowned. “There was something...”

Finally.
I let him think, picking through the pieces of his own broken memory and those of whomever he’d fed on recently.

If he was interested in money, he’d be able to blackmail half the city – at least for the few days his stolen memories remain with him. The only reason no-one’s tried to kill him yet is because they’re scared of him. Nobody knows how many of his powers he still retains. Because he was one serious wizard, back in the day. That’s how he was able to open the portal, and that’s how he ended up like this.

Power. That’s another dog that’ll bite you in the arse if you don’t keep it on a choke-chain.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “There was a little child, running about in the crowd, who bumped into me. Oh, really, Babylon, don’t give me such a look, I don’t feed on children.”

I bit my lip, hard, forcing myself not to ask why, since I found it hard to believe he had any morals left on that issue.

“She babbled about something or other, about a pretty lady with sunshine eyes who patted her on the head.”

“Sunshine eyes?”

“That was what she said.”

Yellow eyes aren’t that common, even in Scalentine, except among the Ikinchli, of course. It could have been Enthemmerlee.

“Anything else?”

“That a man had come up and taken the pretty lady away. She thought it rude, that the man had taken her away while she was still talking. Children have such charmingly strict ideas of etiquette, don’t you find?”

“That was all?”

“I fear so. Then her father came rushing up, and he was so relieved and angry at once, I had to take a little taste, just a little.” His eyes went misty again. “The emotions of a parent. So powerful...”

“Mokraine.” I tried to keep my voice level. “Did you get anything that would tell me where to find them? The father, at least?”

Mokraine tilted his head, his eyes on the distance. “A small white temple, the smell of bread. The river, portal light. Masts.”

The city has temples like a miser has coin, but the light, and the masts on the river, suggested the docks. Of course, there were at least three dozen bakeries in the area too.

“And do you remember what he looked like? What race were they, do you know?”

Mokraine frowned. He doesn’t remember the outsides of people so well. “The race I don’t know. Thin. Stretched-looking. His hands were scarred. He was... dusty.”

“All right. I’ll get down there.” I made a face. The day was getting on, I’d have to go tomorrow. Even with Fain’s money, I couldn’t afford to be away from the Lantern too long.

“Babylon.”

“What?”

“I didn’t...”

“Didn’t what?”

He was looking at me with an expression I hardly recognised. Almost sorrowful. “He was still able to look after the child, Babylon. I didn’t take that much.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me. I had no idea what to say.

D
ESPITE THE EXHAUSTING
day and a hot bath, I couldn’t sleep. I suspected Flower was right, and we hadn’t seen the last of the damned Vessels. We’d lost a chunk of trade that day; if they came up with many more tricks like that, Fain’s money wouldn’t last a moon. And I hadn’t found out one useful thing about the missing girl yet. Or been to the tax office.

I tried to find a more comfortable position, but my bed’s already extremely comfortable. It’s designed to be: firm enough for energetic company, soft enough for sleep.

I finally dozed off to dream uneasily of going to butcher’s shops and grocers all over Scalentine, looking for something I had to buy for a special dish Flower was making, only to discover that when I got inside, every shop was a Temple of the Vessels, and I could get what I wanted only if I agreed to be blinded.

TIRESANA

A
VATAR
H
AP-
C
ANAE.
A
VATAR
of the Sun God. Golden Hap-Canae, with his jaguar eyes, his self-confidence, and his desire.

It’s not unusual to have at least one relationship you look back on with a kind of bemused horror. The sort where, once the madness has burned itself out, you wonder who drugged you. You think... by the All that Is, what was I thinking? Where was my brain?

Of course, my brain was where one’s brain usually is in this situation, tucked between my legs more firmly than a scared dog’s tail. And Hap-Canae was a sun-god. So his Avatar could dazzle like nothing else, fill you with his glitter and glow. He loved it, loved the way people basked in his presence. He could ripen fruit and dry floods – and rivers, if he felt like it. Though he didn’t do it. The Avatars didn’t impinge on each others’ territory if they could help it. His aspect cycled through the day, and he was always weakest at night and strongest at noon (it was a long time before I realised why he always wanted to bed me in daylight), but he pretty much always looked like himself. I saw the most of him, of course; I mainly saw the others when they supervised our lessons.