Babylon Steel (15 page)

“Kyrl! You’ve seen her?”

He wrenched my arm further up. “Quiet!”

Always someone watching. That morning it was Shakanti, her face glowing like a sick moon in the shadows.

I hated it when she was there. I felt her willing me to fail, hungry for any or all of us to suffer injury, humiliation, despair. Something had twisted Shakanti badly; who knew what, or how long ago? Twisted her enough that she remained determinedly celibate, while she loved to torture others with her beauty; something that becoming an Avatar had only distilled and concentrated to a lethal elixir.

Farren got off me to go shout at one of the others. Then he came back, grabbed me in another grapple, cold marble pressing against my face, and whispered again, “She said she’s got a cousin in Babaska’s temple at Pryat. If you find you’ve thrown a three, get a message there, and they’ll get you out. That’s all.”

“Why would I want...”

“Open your eyes, girl.” He raised his head and glared around. “You, girl in the blue. See where my hands are. Now look where yours are. Doesn’t matter if your opponent’s underneath you if he can still throw you off and break your wrists while he’s at it.” Velance, the one he was shouting at, rolled her eyes and shifted her grip.

“What do you mean?” I muttered.

“This place reeks of bad luck. You see your blade lying at your feet with two of your own fingers still in the grip, you learn to be watchful, or you die,” he said, his mouth so close to my ear his breath stirred my hair.

“Tell her I’m fine, everything is wonderful. And when I’m a priestess, if she needs anything... if any of them do... send to me.”

“I hope you’re right, girl. Very well, I’ll tell her.”

He pushed me hard for the rest of the session. The next day he was gone, and we had no fight trainer for three days.

Maybe Shakanti got suspicious and had him disappeared. Or, maybe, he’d scented the wind in time. I hope so, still.

I was in love, I lived in silk, I enjoyed my lessons. And if I felt a growing fear creeping in towards my heart, I pushed it aside. Hap-Canae wouldn’t let anything happen to me, I told myself.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HERE SEEMED TO
be no-one about at the lodgings except an orange cat dozing in a patch of sunlight on one of the steps, and a small boy concentrating on some game that involved moving pebbles about and muttering. I stepped around both of them, and went through the archway up to the room. I knocked on the door, and someone called, “Who is?”

“I’m looking for Badhan?”

Mutterings from behind the door. I kept my hands ready, in case. Finally a long, thin, dusty-skinned sort opened the door; he had a slightly dished face, and no nose to speak of, just a sort of a bump, I couldn’t see any nostrils. The dust wasn’t from building, as he hadn’t been to his work yet. It was just the look of him. He was almost my height, but I doubt he weighed half as much; I knew what Mokraine meant about him looking stretched. He stood in the doorway, keeping between me and whoever was in there. “What wantshee?”

I glanced down at the hand clutching the door. It was knuckly and seemed too big for the skinny arm it hung on. Narrow pink scars writhed across the backs of his fingers.

“Can I speak with you? I’m looking for someone.”

He looked at my sword. “Trouble no want.”

I dropped into pidgin, offered to leave off the sword if it would make him happier. Eventually he edged back into the room, with a jerk of his head.

Someone stood near the window – also long, and thin, one arm protectively across the child peering around her legs. I smiled at the girl. One day she would presumably have the same dusty-looking skin as her parents, but now she just looked pale, as though she’d never had quite enough sun.

It wasn’t over-generous, for three people. Floorboards, a window, walls, a roof. A bed. Not much. But at least it smelled clean. Compared to some lodgings I’d seen, it was luxurious.

A small stray feather, perhaps from their bedding, drifted across the floor. The orange cat, which had wandered in from outside, pounced on it. The child squeaked with delight and attempted to lift it off the floor.

I started forward, worried the animal might object to being manhandled. The mother did likewise.

The cat allowed the child to pick up its abdomen while its feet remained on the floor, until it looked like a furry bridge. The child giggled, her mother whisked her into her arms, and I whisked the cat into mine, in case its patience ran out.

With the cat kneading my shoulder and purring loudly in my ear, I tried a smile on the mother and got a tentative grimace in return. The child stretched out her arms towards the cat; the mother sighed and moved closer, took the child’s hand and showed her how to stroke the cat’s head (she had to reach up a way to do it), saying,
patha, patha,
which I assumed meant
gently.

There are worse icebreakers than a cat. Especially one that, as in this case, had bright yellow eyes. “Cat,” I said.

“Yes, tat.”

“Close enough.”

“
Cat,”
said the mother, obviously not thinking close enough was good enough.

“You have cats where you come from?”

The child shook her head.

I pointed to the cat’s eyes, though they were currently half-closed with the pleasure of being the centre of attention. “Yellow eyes,” I said. “Like the sun.”

“Like the sun.”

“Right. You saw a lady, with eyes like that, didn’t you?”

The girl shrugged, more interested in putting her hand on the cat’s throat and feeling it purr. “Honey? Listen.”

But she was getting bored, and twisted away in her mother’s arms. “Down!”

I looked at her mother and said, “Please. Sun-eyes girl in bad-bad is. Needs help my. You sav?”

The parents looked at each other. “Girlchild is?” the woman said.

“Child-woman is.” The cat wriggled and I put it down.

The woman knelt and took her daughter by the shoulders, made quick soft-voiced conversation. The child sighed, with every sign of someone kept from massively important business by trivia and said, in rapid pidgin, “Sun eyes lady saw my, sun eyes lady talk my.” She patted herself on the head. “Touch my. Nice is. Sun eyes lady smell pretty-pretty. Man come talk, take her away.”

“Man look how?”

She shrugged again, watching the cat longingly as it chased the feather into a corner and beat it into submission. Her mother said something to her.

“Man high, but not so high like you.”

“Man sun eyes have?”

“Not.”

“Man look same-same sun-eyes lady?”

“Not same-same-same. Some same.”

Possibly they were the same race, but the child could have meant anything. Hair, even clothing.

Still, maybe I could find out something.

“Sun eyes lady fear have? She see man go...” I made an exaggerated frightened face.

The child shook her head. “Not fear lady have. Have thinking.” She scowled ferociously. “Then she go with.”

Whatever Enthemmerlee had heard had made her thoughtful; neither angry, nor scared – yet she’d gone with the person who’d said it, apparently willingly.

What had someone said, to persuade her away from her parents and any guards? I imagined her taken by the hand, led away from her life all unknowing, and a shudder went through me so bone deep I had to cough to hide it.

“I play cat now?” the child said.

I reckoned that was probably it, and that I’d been lucky to catch her before the memory faded. “Thank you,” I said. She was already picking up a string to tempt the cat with.

Badhan was obviously eager to see me leave, but the woman put a hand on my arm as I was going out. She glanced over her shoulder at the girl, who was lying on the floor, the cat settling against her side, and said, “You find her, yes?”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

She nodded, and closed the door.

The small boy who had been playing outside was gone. The street seemed suddenly too empty, and the wind too cold.

I had only passed a couple of houses when light falling across a wall caught my eye, and I crouched down.

A child’s drawings, scratched with a sharp stick or a knife when their parents’ attention was elsewhere. A sun. A house. A blobbed something or other, coloured in with mud... I hoped it was mud.

A man surrounded by little bent, servile figures; a man with either several horns, or rays, coming out of his head. Like the sun.

Next to him, a stick-thin figure, with long hair and what seemed to be a skull for a face.

I straightened up, slowly.

It didn’t mean anything. Plenty of strange creatures pass through Scalentine, and a child’s drawing makes them look stranger yet. I had Hap-Canae on my mind, that was all. It didn’t mean he was here.

But forget a bath, a massage and a big drink; right now I felt like just filling a tub with wine and a couple of close friends and getting straight in.

H
ARD AS
I tried, I couldn’t get the drawing out of my head. Had some child seen Hap-Canae and Shakanti here, on Scalentine? After more than twenty years, were they looking for me? Why?

Worrying makes me hungry, and I wanted the distraction of noise and people. I headed back towards the centre of town and Gallock’s. It’s not fancy, mainly a place for the performers from local theatres and gambling houses to rest their feet and complain; if any of the Avatars
were
on Scalentine, it wasn’t the sort of place they’d go.

I pushed open the door to a roar of conversation in a number of languages and the smell of meat pies and perfume and sweat and coffee. Two dancers of indeterminate sex, with headdresses (or hair, I wasn’t sure) of multicoloured feathers and hands with at least twelve long fragile fingers apiece, were at the counter getting coffee and hot sausages. I could tell they were dancers because they wore mainly skin and sequins, their glittering shoes so high in the heel that they stood almost as tall as me. “Come on, Gallock, move yer arse, darlin’. I gotta be back on stage in a lizard’s blink.”

“Here is, sweetie pie. How is new job, The Lotus? You like?” Gallock is another Barraklé, like Glinchen, though half the weight and with a voice like a troll chewing gravel, all four arms flicking back and forth between plates and pans at eye-blurring speed.

“Yeah, s’all right, but he’s a bugger if you’re late. Ta, love.” The dancers scurried out, clutching their food. How anyone even moves in shoes like that, never mind dances, is beyond me.

“Hey, Babylon,” Gallock said, freeing one hand to wave. “Shan’t be a... Borlak!
Sh’tin tazik dimankat laiagrai!
” Gallock shoved a loaded tray at a wispy young man, presumably Borlak, who took it with an exasperated eye-roll and swayed off between the tables. Out of work actor, I’d have bet my best boots on it.

Gallock rested hir lower set of bosoms on the counter and grinned at me. “Babylon, not seen you long-long. How going the world, hey?”

“It keeps on rolling, Gallock. You?”

Gallock patted hir rounded stomach. “Breeding.”

Looking at hir beaming face, I gathered this was good news. “Congratulations.”

“Is good, no? Soon I get some more help round here.”

“Planning to shove the little ’un to the sink as soon as it can... slither?”

“Of course. Start work early my family.”

“Hey, listen, I don’t suppose you’ve seen this girl, have you?” I showed hir the picture.

Gallock shook hir head. “Not so’s I remember. Sorry.”

“Worth a try.” I put it away. I wasn’t sure whether or not to feel less worried about the girl. It sounded as though she had gone willingly, but who knew what had been said to her, what promises made, what lies?

Gallock looked up as the door opened and hir face changed.

I spun around so fast I knocked a plate off the counter; I was in a twitchy frame of mind.

There were three men in the doorway – all human, all young. “You,” Gallock said. Hir voice cut through the chatter like a hatchet, not because it was especially loud, but because of the tone. It was glacial. “You out. Now.”

“What?” said one of the men, making a wide-eyed, innocent face. They kept coming towards the counter. There was a lot of silence around them.

“You know what. Get.”

“We don’t want to order,” said another. “We just wanted a chat.”

“Don’t chat with the likes of you,” Gallock said.

“Who are these people?” I said, still raw with relief and annoyed at my own jumpiness.

“
People
is right,” said one of them. “The ones who
belong
here.”

Great. I can always do with meeting idiots on an empty stomach, puts the edge on the day.

A lot of the customers were staring at their plates, or suddenly very interested in the contents of their pouches. I didn’t blame them, really. They weren’t professional fighters. Why risk a broken head for the sake of a bacon roll?

I sighed. I didn’t put my hand on my sword, not yet; I didn’t want to risk anyone getting hurt who didn’t deserve it, and this was a bad place for a barney; too many tables too close together and a greasy floor.

“Come on,” I said. “No-one wants trouble.”

“Trouble?” said one, a lanky type with a cheap tattoo. “Who said anything about trouble? Just want our city back, that’s what.”

“
Your
city?” Gallock said. I raised a hand to shut hir up.

“Who are you, anyway?” said the other thug, who had badly bitten nails.

“I’m Babylon Steel, and I haven’t had my dinner. You want to talk about this outside?”

“All on your own, girlie?” said the third, doughy and raspy-voiced.

“I’m hungry. Let’s get this over with.”

“We’re not fighting
you,”
doughy said.

“Then leave.”

Instead, he leaned over and swept the dishes off a nearby table. “S’disgusting, s’had their four filthy hands on it!”

The sight of the good food scattered on the floor broke my temper. I grabbed his arm, folded it behind him, ran him out the door and propelled him headfirst into the nearest wall with a boot in his arse for emphasis.