Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (42 page)

Sheplar wiped the sweat off his brow. ‘I wonder what they’re say­ing.’

‘They wonder if it would be wise to offer to carry us up the stairs,’ said Sariel.

‘You are making that up!’ protested the flier.

‘I may take them up on that service,’ wheezed Khow. ‘Climbing a tree is one thing. Scaling a plateau this high is another.’

‘All educated men speak Gaddish,’ said Sariel, annoyed at being doubted. ‘I was once taken prisoner by the mighty diviner Unkulu, who lived in a palace of reeds next to the great river of the plains. He kept me in a cage like a parrot, and said he would only set me free when I had learnt fifty new languages, the last being Gaddish, as it is counted as being the oldest and the noblest of all tongues. For each tongue I failed to master, he said his warriors would chop a foot off of my height. Luckily for me, Unkulu kept fifty-five wives, each offered as tribute by a different nation on the plains. How I prayed that none of them would die before they taught me my final language. I am not so tall that I could spare a foot or more of my body for his soldiers’ sabre practice.’

‘If we had been lucky,’ suggested Sheplar, ‘they might have started at the top and removed your lying tongue.’

‘Pah, I always speak the truth – even when I let slip falsehoods.’

‘Given you’re still here,’ said Jacob, passing the old tramp his water canteen for a swig, ‘I’m taking it that you were up to the challenge.’

‘No, indeed, Your Grace,’ said Sariel. ‘One of the diviner’s wives, Zuri, was having a picnic by the river when she fell into the water and was crushed to death by a giant green serpent. She never finished teaching me the language of the nation of Kaaboyo. Thankfully, the next wife due to teach me was pretty Salinge, who had fallen in love with me. She stole a pair of reed wader’s stilts for me, and spent the night lengthening my trousers with needle and thread to accommodate the poles. When Unkulu’s bodyguards chopped a foot off my girth, I used a little road magic to make them believe that they had seen my legs regrow. After that, they treated me with a great deal more respect. Although their ruler still insisted I learn Gaddish, so that I might tell all that I meet of his skill at prophecy and foretelling. And he was uncommonly good at it. He even knew that his wife was going to die in the river, as he had sent heralds to his neighbours demanding a new bride two days before Zuri died.’

Jacob shook his head at the outlandish tale. ‘Pity that diviner isn’t here now. I’d ask him when we’re going to catch up with my son.’

‘I think he would say when we’re ready to deal with the slavers who took him.’

Jacob grunted.
I got two holsters full of ready racked at this city’s guardhouse
.

They continued their climb, until the landscape inside the city state’s walls became as small as a toy garden. Out beyond, Jacob watched the plains for a second. Endless rolling plains the colour of burnt sienna where the last rays of sunset touched the grasslands. Jacob lost sight of it along with his night vision when lamps flickered into life along the staircase.
The city’s builders must have used the stairs at one point. I doubt the lights were put in for the comfort of their slaves
. More lights glowed across the saucer-shaped houses built into the rockface. Electric lamps. A rare, remarkable thing to see. Only Khow didn’t seem impressed by the sight. Maybe his people counted the use of such power as party tricks, or maybe it was the simple life they clung to in the forests. They were a people full of contradictions.

Finally, Jacob reached the top of the plateau. Stairs widened out into a public square, two stone statues of knights standing as sentinels. The upper city’s walls were absent here, making a viewing gallery of the open space. There were few people around, gad servants trudging away to their households, weighed down with whatever cargoes they had been sent to fetch and carry. The first pedestrians Jacob came across were a young couple, giggling and full of the evening, waiting by a rickshaw which had thrown its wheel. The gad driving it was on his knees, pushing the wheel back in place while the boy and girl nudged each other and laughed as though they were watching a piece of private theatre laid on just for them. The pair parted with directions to the library after a little persuasion, so greatly amused by this strange group of foreigners roving the city’s streets at night, that the pastor thought they might roll around on the paving stones and exhaust themselves before they bothered to answer his request. One of Brother Frael’s sayings came back to Jacob as they left the couple behind.
When love is not madness, it is not love.
Maybe what the party was doing here was a form of madness, too. Human specks of dust drifting in the infinite, trying to reunite with all that they had lost.
Tell yourself that you’re following Carter for love. Not for revenge. You need to believe that
. The royal city’s architecture was completely different from the ramshackle tenements leaning against each other below. No wood here, but white-washed stone, tall limestone towers with proud helmeted cupolas and onion-shaped domes. Their few tapered windows fixed far higher than a man could reach, indicating a culture of privacy and secrecy. At street level, the buildings’ entrances were massive and wouldn’t have looked out of place inside a castle rampart. Harsh sodium light leaked underneath the portals’ cracks, giving the homes a ghostly air. Moths and insects swarmed around bulbous lamps pinned into the walls along both sides of the narrow streets. The city’s library, when they stumbled upon it, didn’t look that much different to the entrance to Lucas’s Northhaven guild hold. Its door armoured with a speaking grille set in the wall, the library building appeared little bigger than Jacob’s old rectory. When a guildswoman in a blue librarian’s tunic came to inspect them through the sally port, she was momentarily taken aback by these unlikely strangers carrying a guild seal. As Jacob had thought, after she admitted the expedition, they descended a circular staircase, the library closer to a mine burrowing into the hard heart of the plateau, the bulk of its chambers hidden safe underground. The reading room for guild guests was such a spit of the one in the Northhaven, Jacob half-expected Lucas to appear and inquire what had made the pastor change his mind about being far-called. Instead it was a middle-aged woman who came into view, silver-haired and stern-faced. She looked as though she wouldn’t suffer fools lightly – and probably didn’t take kindly to visitors turning up unscheduled with a call upon the guild for hospitality. Jacob realised that all the librarians he had seen so far in the centre had been women.

‘Well,’ said the woman. ‘I know you’re not new apprentices sent here to study with us.’

‘Too old?’ said Jacob.

‘Wrong gender,’ said the woman. ‘I’m Iaroia, master of the hold here. Or mistress, if you prefer. You’re not guild travellers. The grand duke only allows women to work inside the library… one of his many sweet little foibles.’

Jacob hoped they wouldn’t be staying in the city-state long enough to experience too many of them.

‘Perhaps the grand duke appreciates that tomes of beauty should be looked after by creatures of similar allure,’ said Sariel, making a theatrical bow.

‘The locals do not sully themselves with books,’ said Iaroia, in a tone of contempt that made it clear what she felt about such arrangements. ‘God forbid that they learn something. Most of the librarians working here came in via the airfield as foreign postings. And your flattery would work better after a bath. Which one of you carries the guild seal?’

Jacob took it out and passed it to the woman. He introduced himself and each of the others in turn, as formality required, but didn’t delve into details of the nature of their travels. She eyed the seal suspiciously, turning it over to examine both sides. ‘This is from a library in the north of the Lanca… the league? You are a long way from home.’

‘And we’ll be travelling a ways yet before we call it done,’ said Jacob. He glanced around the chamber. ‘Are we welcome to salt and roof? Rooms and hospitality?’

‘
Welcome
is stretching it,’ said Iaroia. ‘You’ll be tolerated. Borne a little better when I know what you and your little travelling circus act is doing crossing the plains with calls on guild hospitality. Not that we don’t have the room. We’re a lot larger than the provincial hold that gave you this seal. Perhaps seventy times more archive space here.’ She stared at the gask. ‘Can you speak the trade tongue?’

‘I certainly hope so,’ said Khow.

‘Well, you’re better groomed than your friends, at least, even with the spikes coming out of your hide.’ She pointed down a corridor off the reading room. ‘Guest rooms are on this level. You won’t be allowed access to the rest of the library.’ She jangled a large circle of silver keys on her belt. ‘Not without these. There’s a refectory next door to the bunk chamber. I’ll be along with food and water in an hour. There are toilets by the refectory. No visitor baths here, though. You’ll need to use the public ones tomorrow.’

Sheplar watched the guild master walk off; clapping her hands to indicate her juniors should follow after her. ‘Do we need a bath?’

Jacob shrugged. ‘She’s a woman, isn’t she? To her, we always need a bath.’

As good as her word, Iaroia returned with two librarians and platters of food after the party stowed their packs under the simple dormitory’s bunks. Together, they went to the chamber next door. The librarians put the food and water on the table, while Jacob and his companions sat down. The simplicity of the refectory might have been modelled on one of the monasteries perched on the hinterland of Rodal. The fare that appeared before them was of similarly humble origins, a fact not missed by Sariel as he sniffed at the jugs of water, and poked the gruel-like meal with his fork. ‘This is a dry centre of learning, Lady Iaroia?’

‘
Holdmaster
, if you wish to be formal, my scraggly house-guest. Alcohol, confined spaces and flammable paper are not a recipe for the successful preservation of knowledge, Mister Sariel.’ Iaroia sat herself at the end of the bench facing the band of visitors across the table.

Sariel rubbed the surface of his long leather coat. ‘Ah, the dust of travel. I must apologise, dear lady. Normally I would appear before you as a prince, not a rank shard-borne voyager.’

‘A prince of the hedgerows, perhaps?’ she said, using the tongue-in-cheek term for vagrants.

Khow consumed the gruel at the long table without complaint. ‘We should also apologise for keeping you up after your usual opening hours.’

‘Oh, these are well within our hours of work. The radiomen’s guild in Hangel is only five minutes’ walk from the library and they work after darkness here. The next nearest receiving station is very far away. During daylight hours, the sun interferes with their radio’s signal strength. They have to operate at night when the heavens are clearer… so we receive updates for the archives at hours few other libraries would tolerate. Another “perk” of being posted here.’

‘You are not Hangel-born?’ asked Sheplar.

‘I was born in a country to the south of here, far beyond the plains. Denka. Very civilised, very comfortable. At least compared to life perched on this cast-off rock.’

‘No locals working here?’ said Jacob.

‘A couple only. When you have gad servants to run after you, an austere life of service in the cause of knowledge and learning has very little appeal.’

‘I don’t see servants,’ said Jacob. ‘I see slaves.’

She shrugged. ‘They don’t use that term for the gads. But then, the grand duke’s main source of revenue is fuel fees from aircraft that must refuel when crossing the plains. Inflammatory labels such as
slave
might put off some of our more civilised visitors. I strongly suggest you don’t talk in that manner within earshot of the duke’s soldiers.’

‘The hell with them.’

Iaroia shook her head at Jacob’s temper. ‘The Grand Duke Pavlorda Bragin is a mad son from a far-from-sane family line. His paranoia has only grown worse with age. There is a plains people prophecy that during the Age of the Seventh Sun, the House of Bragin’s rule will come to an end by the hand of the grand duke’s own son. According to the local calendar, that’s this decade. The gads are awaiting the auguries… the appearance of the trickster angel Jok and the spirit of Ogan, the twice-born. They grow restless and the Hangels have become even more repressive and brutal in dealing with their workforce.’

‘How many children does this noble have?’

‘As far as his wives are concerned, Pavlorda is without issue. But he is unable to keep his hands off the palace serving girls, and many gads have borne him half-breed children. The bastards are killed, of course.’

Jacob’s hands tightened on the mug of water he was drinking from. ‘He murders his own kin?’

‘Not only his own,’ said Iaroia. ‘What is sauce for the ruler must be sauce for his people. Any half-breed born within the city limits is drowned by his soldiers or abandoned on the plains to feed the first hyena to come across the unfortunate babe. Rumour has it that many years ago, one of the grand duke’s half-breed children was smuggled out of the city by his mother after she gave birth in secret, and the boy was taken in by a gad tribe. That child is known as Chike Bragin and he has grown up to be a war leader who is currently giving the city a great deal more trouble than it is used to.’

‘The merchant clan we flew in with are bringing rifles and ammunition for the grand duke’s forces,’ said Jacob.

‘More weapons,’ she sighed. ‘Just what is needed to improve the situation. Even if every man and woman in Hangel were to carry a rifle and a bandoleer full of bullets, the plains outside go on forever, and there are a great many more gads outside the walls than there are people sheltering behind them.’

‘At least the gads have the power of prophecy on their side,’ said Jacob. ‘Against a seven-round rifle.’

‘Do not mock,’ said Sariel. ‘There is power in words.’

Jacob shrugged. ‘Words are your trade.’

‘And what is yours?’ asked Iaroia, looking intently at him.