Babylon Steel (28 page)

Rikkinet looked at me. “You trust?” she said.

“Mr Fain,” I said.

“Yes, Madam Steel?”

“I’m not satisfied, Mr Fain.”

“No?”

“No. I want something more from you.”

“And what would that be? You’ll receive the other half of the payment. I’ll even include a bonus, since the result has been... more interesting than expected.” Despite the bantering tone, he sounded slightly disappointed.

“That isn’t what I meant. I want an oath.”

“You have my word,” he said.

“I didn’t say I wanted your word, Mr Fain. I want your oath. A Fey oath.”

“Ah. You know, that could make my life extremelydifficult.”

“Only if you attempt to break it.”

“No. Because in my position such a thing is
highly
discouraged. I ask again. Why?”

“Why what?”

“I might,
might,
swear one. If I thought it sufficiently worthwhile. But a Fey oath is a large counter to play at my table, Madam Steel. Why would
you
spend it on someone you never met before today?”

“That, Mr Fain, is my business. Will you swear to provide Enthemmerlee with what she’s asked for, and do your best to protect her, or not?”

He grinned, suddenly, and if I hadn’t been under the influence of Laney’s potion, it would have floored me. As it was, I still wanted to smile back, but I held off.

“On one condition,” he said.

“That being?”

“Dinner. After Twomoon.”

“Dinner?”

“I have a... proposal to put to you.”

“Another one?”

“Yes. Well?”

I looked him over. Pretty, dangerous Mr Fain.

“Can I bring a long spoon?” I said.

“I
’VE DONE MY
best,” I said to Enthemmerlee, on the doorstep. I’d spoken the oath to Fain; he’d made the required response, and there had been a sort of pink shudder in the air, and a deep click like the sound of a turning lock. According to Laney, that was it. I just hoped it would work. “I’m still not convinced you can trust him,” I said, “but he should be on your side now, whether he likes it or not.”

“If I am to change anything,” Enthemmerlee said, “I must begin with trust. I must believe that people can choose to do what is right. After all, you did.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I wish you good luck.”

She held out her hand, and I clasped it, gently. Those delicate little fingers. She seemed so damn fragile, to change a world.

TIRESANA

I
STROKED
H
AP-
C
ANAE’S
bare shoulder, the skin golden and glowing. My own flesh had that same light, though not as strongly as his.

“It would be appropriate,” Hap-Canae said, “for you to take your place as Avatar of Babaska at the Sowing at the great temple of Nard.”

“Take my place? But I thought... I thought I was to stay here.” New to my post and eager, I attended every ceremony they would allow at Babaska’s temple in the precinct. Hap-Canae usually accompanied me; if it was one of his own major ceremonies, such as the dawn worship at the sunburst temple, he would send another Avatar with me.

I was conscious, always, of being watched by the Avatars, but I was almost accustomed to it by then. I assumed that once they knew I would fulfil my duties properly, things would change.

Babaska’s priestesses always dealt with me with immense respect, even the High Priestess, who was gravely and unfailingly courteous. I found it odd from a woman the same age as the head cook at home, who had treated me more like an untrained pup likely to widdle on the floor. Of course, I couldn’t have killed the cook – or at least, wasn’t likely to. The priestesses, I came to realise, had no such surety.

I took my place out front for some ceremonies, in the shadow of Babaska’s statue; for others, I stood behind the screen while people laid gold, weapons, lengths of cloth on the altar, and begged for Babaska’s help in love and war. I tried to use the powers I was still learning as judiciously as I could, to pick deserving cases; I had attempted to behave as I thought an Avatar should, and now...

“Don’t look so devastated, silly child, I’m not sending you away. But it is one of Babaska’s major temples, and the Sowing is her festival. Therefore, it would be a good time for you to appear to the wider world.”

“Will you come with me?”

“Of course. Remember, now. We are Avatars. People need us to be different, Babaska. They need us to be more than they are. Take yourself some lovers – nothing else would be expected of you. But remember what you are now, treat them appropriately, and let the past lie unspoken.”

“Hap-Canae?”

None of the Avatars addressed each other as ‘The Avatar so-and-so,’ just by the name of the god they represented.

“What?”

“How long have you been an Avatar?”

“A long time. The gods chose me many years ago.”

“And was the ceremony the same for you?”

“Now, you know that
our
powers were gifted to us directly by the Gods. But otherwise, yes, it was the same.”

“There was a woman at Meisheté’s temple today,” I said. “She was praying for her family’s fields to be fertile...”

“And?”

“Meisheté could do that, couldn’t she?”

“Of course. If she wished.”

“So why won’t she?”

He sighed, and sat up. “I have told you. We do not interfere in the affairs of other Avatars.”

“I know. But...”

He put his finger over my mouth. “Listen to me. You know that we have limits. Knowing that, we must use our power appropriately. There is a village, along the Rohin, flooded. Yes, I could dry up the floodwaters. Yet that might offend Rohikanta, and it would leave me weak. What if I was called upon again, the next day, for some truly dreadful need? ‘Hap-Canae, save us,’ they cry, and I cannot, because I dragged one fishing village from the mud. What then could they believe in, pray to, hope for? We are what they look to, the light in dark lives.”

“The last Avatar of Babaska, what did she do? Did she help them? Or...”

“Enough questions; we are what we are. Remember, you were Chosen.”

The unspoken half of that little speech being, of course, that I had been Chosen not by a God, but by an Avatar, and that having been Chosen, I could be... unChosen.

And so we went to Nard. I had heard of the temple, but couldn’t remember why. There were long, solemn processions, people coming forward to lay offerings upon the heaping piles, elaborate dances and chants and choking clouds of expensive incense.

We performed the Sowing. It was all done with great solemnity. I thought of Livaia, the woman who had taught us; I was grateful, and wondered what had happened to her. I thought I should like to send her a gift.

Yet something felt wrong. I was the Avatar of Babaska, it was part of my function to increase the life-force that flowed into the land, the crops, the people. But as we performed the ceremony, to the quickening beat of the chant and the little drums, I felt detached – from Hap-Canae, from the land, from myself. The power was in me, I could feel it, but it spiralled in on itself, going nowhere. Intoxicating, but hollow.

I assumed something was wrong with me. Hap-Canae had no trouble completing his part, and I cried out at the appropriate moment, though for me nothing had happened.

Except that I had had that sense, again, of being watched; of that silent, assessing gaze that existed nowhere but in my own head. Afterwards, there were more days of ceremony. The flattery and adulation which had already begun to wear on me even before the Sowing were now troubling; I felt I’d done nothing to earn it. And I was, frankly, bored. I’d worked every day of my life since I was old enough to turn a spit. All the sitting about being chanted at left me too much time to think.

Brooding behind my smile, I remembered that this was where Velance was supposed to have come, as High Priestess of Babaska. But the High Priestess was a middle-aged woman who bore no resemblance to her.

“Oh,” Hap-Canae said. “Meisheté must have been mistaken about the place. You know how she is. Anything outside her sphere is of little interest to her; if it isn’t to do with babies, she hardly troubles herself.” He pulled me to him, then made a face. “The incense they use here! Where do they get it, the street market? Your hair reeks of it. Tell them to use something more appropriate to your status.”

I was hurt. After all, this was supposed to be my temple, and my festival.

Then, sitting on the great chair in the temple, smelling the incense (which I rather liked – a rich, dark, cedary smell) as yet another ceremony rang and chanted around me, I realised, no, it isn’t
my
temple,
my
ceremony. It’s Babaska’s, not mine.

And my mind would not be quiet. Things I saw, things I remembered, clustered around my chair and whispered below the chanting of the worshippers.

Meisheté was supposed to have jurisdiction over pregnancy and childbirth, things of life. The bee-hive and the cattle heavy with milk. And yet... There were the babies born wrong, and fewer cattle, and little honey to sweeten the coarse bread.

They prayed to Shakanti for success at the hunt, but where were the deer?

They prayed to Hap-Canae for success at trade, but what gold flowed into Tiresana?

At least, I thought, with a first jab of rebellion, I
do
my job as best I can. I make people happy, as best I can. When I’m allowed.

And then, frightened of my own thoughts, I shoved them back down and straightened my back and tried to be dignified.

I had plenty of help. Everywhere I went, respect and awe followed me like hungry dogs. People prostrated themselves before me. And yet Hap-Canae stood behind me, in the shadows, in case I said the wrong thing, or overreached myself. To them, I was an Avatar. To him, I was a child. And to me, I was a confusion, with too many thoughts and questions and no-one able or willing to answer them.

When we were back at the Temple of All the Gods, I went to the seer, in search of something solid. Something understandable in the midst of it all. Something that was truly mine.

I had kept with me, all this time, the bag I had been found in. I’d decided to try and track down my parents. I had some idea that I would find, at least, my mother, and present myself in all my glory as an Avatar, and she’d fall on her knees, I would reveal who I really was, and all around there would be tears, reconciliation and so forth.

I’d listened to too many storytellers.

I had no plans to tell the seer
why
I was seeking what I was; I knew the Avatars would never permit it. But I thought I could manage it somehow. I was pig-headed and romantic and, well, sixteen.

The seer had no temple – only the gods, or their Avatars, had those, but he had a set of rooms in the outer precinct. They were full of wind-chimes, which tinkled and clinked in the slightest breeze; one couldn’t move without brushing against them.

The other supplicants moved aside to let me pass; though I’d have waited, I went on, knowing how Hap-Canae would react if I let mere humans go before me. Bad enough that I’d slipped away without telling him where I was going. I wasn’t letting myself think about that, about the fact that I had to deceive him, that I didn’t really trust him.

That he frightened me.

I saw the Seer raise his head as I entered the inner room. He was young and clean-shaven, with a certain tilt and lift to his chin as though the world were beneath his notice.

“An Avatar,” he said. “I am honoured.” He prostrated himself. Everyone did, in the presence of Avatars, but there are ways and ways of doing it; his was that of a man interrupted in some important business, performing a necessary but irritating courtesy.

He made me uneasy; the smooth dents where his eyes should have been troubled me more than the wounds I’d seen in battle; and though he couldn’t see me, I felt watched. Marked. Judged.

“They tell me you can find things,” I said.

“I hope they did not tell you I was infallible,” he said. “I would risk the Avatar’s anger if I did not warn her of possible failure.” But his words said one thing and the cool lift of his mouth another. He seemed not at all frightened of me, and I realised how accustomed I had become to others’ fear.

“Oh, no. I won’t be angry. I suppose it’s like betting, you can’t always get it right.”

“Indeed.” That cool, not-quite-smile again. “What is it you seek?”

“I’d like to know where this came from, and if you can tell me anything about who it used to belong to,” I said. I handed him the bag I’d been found in, with the marble chips shifting and rattling in the bottom.

He took it in clean, pale hands. “I will try,” he said. “But my gift is more towards lost things, than lost people. I have found lost coins, lost earrings, lost crowns, even. I have a bent for metal. People have not enough metal in them.”

I wasn’t sure if everything he said really had more than one meaning, or if it was just that he made me nervous.

He reached into the bag and took out one of the chips, turned it over in his fingers, and put it back; another, a third. He ran the stuff of the bag through his fingers, then shrugged. “I am sorry,” he said. “I have nothing. If you will permit a suggestion, though, a stonemason might be able to tell you where these chips are likely to have come from. Perhaps.”

“Thank you,” I said. I was disappointed, but hardly surprised. I dropped gold into the offering-pot and left, thinking, as I did so, that he was strangely self-possessed, almost arrogant. As though he knew things that no-one else did, and they made him see the rest of us as ignorant, and foolish. In my case, of course, he’d have been right.