Riding the Serpent's Back (20 page)

“You’re sure?” she said, knowing as she spoke that her words were committing her to something that would take her far away from her small safe world, perhaps forever.

Freya raised her eyes to the sky. “Of course I am, Ma. Just go. Tell my father all about me – or the nice bits, at least. At least tell him he has a daughter.”

Monahl nodded. On an impulse, she tucked the silk flower she had been given at the docks into Freya’s hair band. “I’ll tell him,” she said. And then they turned and headed indoors together.

On the second evening of Chi’s disappearance a crowd of more than a hundred of his friends gathered around the foot of the pyramid where Jacaranda Street opened out at the foot of Qezham Hill. It was the only place large enough to hold them.

The pyramid was made of basalt covered with brightly painted stucco. Steps were cut into its gently concave sides, all the way up to the wooden temple at the top. Leeth sat a short way up, slightly apart, his isolation reminding him that he was an outsider here, he had no real role.

“Something happened to him,” said Ghost, who was speaking for the Raggies. She was small for a teenager, her body twisted from polio, but she was effectively the leader of her ramshackle group. “He ain’t be doing this for no joke,” she said. “He ain’t the kind of guy to go running like that.” The ragged children around her muttered and stamped their feet in agreement.

Leeth looked across to Cotoche, who was sitting with Lili, the mother of several of the children she sometimes taught. He knew Cotoche didn’t trust the Raggies, despite their current show of concern. She said it was because of the beatings they had dealt out when Chi was first establishing himself. Leeth thought it far more likely that she simply felt uncomfortable to see Chi running with these wild children so much closer to his physical age. He thought she was jealous of them.

Now, Cotoche said, “He was angry. He ran away from us.” She looked beseechingly at the gathered faces. “He’s still only a child in so many ways.”

Joel and his men were gathered below Leeth, at the foot of the pyramid. “Why was he angry?” he asked. “What did you do?”

Softly, Leeth said, “He was drunk. I told him he should be careful. He was playing right at the edge of the Falls and I tried to make him keep back. I think he’s hiding somewhere, sulking. I think the changes he’s made in his body are confusing him – he’s going too fast.”

Joel glanced across to Cotoche. She was listening intently. Joel hesitated, then said to Leeth, “You think he’s safe? You don’t think he’d do anything foolish?”

Leeth shook his head. “Not in the sense you mean. But I don’t know how safe it is for a child so small to be on his own. Although he has many allies, he also has enemies out there, and people who don’t care who he is but just see him as vulnerable. None of us know how well he can look after himself if he gets into trouble.”

~

The meeting had broken up with little resolved. They would gather again at first light and then the search was to start in earnest.

After the meeting, Leeth had returned alone to the hut so that someone would be there if the boy returned. Cotoche had been persuaded to stay with Lili for the night.

Leeth woke with his body being shaken roughly. At first he thought it was the big quake that had been presaged by a number of lesser tremors over the preceding days. When he opened his eyes there was a short figure looming over him, shaking his shoulders.

“Chi?” he said, trying to focus.

“No news,” said the voice. It was Echtal, standing on his stumps.

Leeth heard Joel’s hooves on the ground outside and when he looked the horseman was leaning down to peer in through the doorway. “The search begins,” he said. “Marsalo is leading a party down to the Falls. Apparently there’s any number of hiding places out there. The Raggies and Chi’s police and assorted others are searching the shanty town. Cotoche is leading a delegation to the Warren – they intend to ask the ghetto barons for help. Most of them are in league with the boy, so I expect they’ll do what they can. I thought you could take Anton, here, up on that flying moke of yours. I’m going to ride out to the Junction – the two of you could keep pace and search from above. Anton has good eyes and he won’t take much space.”

“Of course,” said Leeth, climbing to his feet. “Let’s go.”

Leeth dressed quickly in the faded old kilt he had bought long ago from Cotoche. Here in Edge City nobody cared how he dressed or chose to look. They either ignored it or they accepted his androgyny as part of the Painted Lady tradition, which was still allowed to exist south of the Rift.

He went out and lifted Echtal up to Joel and then they walked along the narrow track to Jacaranda Street.

There was an air of urgency about the slums today. In ones and twos, the police passed along the street, pausing to talk to people on their way. Ragged children rushed about calling Chi’s name as they went. Others stood outside huts, talking to their neighbours.

A man in a tattered vest and not much else stood peering out around a sackcloth screen. From his place in front of Joel, Echtal called out to him, “We’re looking for—”

“The boy-healer,” said the man, his belly wobbling as he spoke. “So will I be when I find my trousers.”

When they were in the open, Leeth sent out his summons and Sky came down almost immediately. Minutes later, Leeth and Echtal were looking down over the wide spread of slum that made up the largest part of Edge City.

“How will they ever find him in all that?” asked Echtal in wonder.

“If he’s hiding somewhere then it’s entirely up to him,” said Leeth.

“You sounded more certain last night that he was in hiding.”

“I think he was, at least at first,” said Leeth. “He’s a master of hiding, after all: he spent twenty or more years hiding on the Serpent’s Back.”

“If what I’ve heard of his story is true,” said Echtal, “then he’s also killed himself at least once, too.”

“Only when he knew that he would survive his own death.” But that thought had been circulating through Leeth’s mind all night. When Chi was drunk he became either aggressive or morbid. At the Falls he had been aggressive, but there was no guarantee that once alone he had not descended into one of his darkest depressions.

Out over the countryside, Sky flew in great circles, covering a wide sweep of ground to either side of the main track to the Junction. Joel rode below them, stopping to ask questions of the steady flow of labourers coming back to Edge City or those he passed on their way out to seek a day’s work.

Joel had been right about Echtal’s eyesight. Frequently he would say, “Ahead: a child,” when all Leeth could see were the dim shapes of another group of travellers on the track ahead. Each time, they swooped down for a closer look. People waved and whooped at the sight of them, and the children jumped and shouted for them to fly past again, but none of the children was Chi.

“I keep thinking he’ll just turn up,” said Leeth, as they flew. “When I was eighteen I spent a short time at an Embodied College in Khalaham. It was the unhappiest time of my life. I had no family, none of my old friends and little prospect of any relationship that was not merely superficial with the other students there. Even Sky was several hundred leaps away, wandering the Rim where I had set her free to roam. When I finally decided to leave I had no money to buy passage on the Hamadryad, so I thought I would have to walk. Early one morning I set out. After a time on the road I heard the beating of a courser’s wings and Sky landed in front of me. Somehow she had sensed my distress over all that distance and come to find me.” Leeth shrugged. “I suppose I thought it would be like that now: we’d all have time to become worried and then Chi would simply appear as if nothing had happened.”

“What if he can’t ‘simply appear’?” said Echtal.

“I know,” said Leeth. “What if he can’t?”

Ahead, the Junction came into sight. The rolling green fields of maize and sorghum gave way to a swathe of low wooden warehouses. With its offices and trading posts and workers’ dormitories, the Junction was a small town in its own right. Beyond the buildings, the river Hamadryad spread out, three standard leaps wide at this point. A multitude of boats plied its surface: the smaller fishing smacks and tugs, and the bulky forms of the river barges which transported food, cloth and minerals north to the cities of the Rift. Even the northern lake-ports were rarely this busy.

When they reached the Junction, Joel was stopped by security guards. “Please,” he said, as Leeth landed nearby. “We’re looking for a missing child.”

“I’m sorry,” said an officer, baring the yellowed stumps of his teeth as he spoke. “What can we do?”

“Keep your eyes open. Spread word. His name is Chi and he’s the size of a four year-old. He has long dark hair and...and a beard...”

“The little healer,” said the man, his tone hardening. “He won’t be here. He’s been excluded from these grounds for several months now as an undesirable. You can be assured that if he comes here he will be turned back immediately – he’d never get through our security.”

Joel wasn’t satisfied. He made as if to ride on into the town but the officer reached out and snatched Harken’s harness. The horse reared and Joel reached reflexively for the obsidian-bladed club he carried slung across his shoulder.

He stopped when he saw that three of the guards had short spears already slung into their atlats, ready to hurl. A soldier trained in the use of an atlat could sling a spear with great precision up to a distance of about forty paces, and with less accuracy to twice that range – they were far more accurate than the relatively modern muskets favoured by many northern soldiers.

Leeth spread his hands defensively. The remaining three guards had taken aim at him and Echtal.

Joel snorted, and brushed his hands down his chest as if to rid himself of the man’s touch. “There’s no necessity for that,” he said. “Don’t touch me. Now please let me through.”

The officer shook his head. “You’re excluded too,” he said. “A friend of the man-child. If you don’t turn around now and leave I will have you arrested.”

Joel turned away. Despite his brave stories, he clearly knew when it was pointless to argue.

Leeth told Sky to lift and they took off. Rising quickly, they flew high over the guards’ heads. Down in the streets, line upon line of mokes dragged carts from warehouse to dock, dock to warehouse. Gangs of labourers worked on the barges, loading them up with crates and sacks and tubs; steam cranes heaved heavier containers from dock to barge, moving with a strangely soothing precision. Soldiers seemed to be everywhere at the Junction. Leeth was taken aback to see how heavily militarised the port-town was.

Sky flew out over the river above a barge that was just setting out, its inertia being overcome by a pair of tugs at its bow, huge paddles churning up the water behind into a white frenzy.

They turned back over the town. There was little chance that they would spot the boy if he was hiding out here.

And if he was here against his will, then there would be even less chance that he would be seen.

On their return, they followed the same routine as before: Joel stopping to question everyone he passed, Leeth and Echtal on Sky covering a wide area of the landscape, but they saw nothing.

Leeth spoke with Echtal sporadically. The athlete seemed amiable enough – mostly diffident and cautious but occasionally gushing and extrovert – but Leeth found something awkward about his unfailing loyalty to Joel. “Did he really repair your broken back?” asked Leeth, mischievously trying to dislodge some of his passenger’s faith in the horseman.

“I don’t know,” Echtal said, unhesitatingly. “All I remember is hearing the roar of the crowd and the sound of Fever’s coming up behind me, then the explosion in my back when he hit me, then nothing. Nothing until there was a kind of light in my eyes and some old bird crooning in my ear, then being lifted. The only way I knew I was being lifted was the air blowing across my face and the blurry look of the ground rushing by. That was when I realised I couldn’t feel a thing and that’s what they say is how you should feel when your back’s been broken, so I believed him when he told me what was wrong with me. And now I can move and I can feel things again – I can even feel my legs, even though I left them on the railway line at Annatras – so I have to believe my back’s not as broken as it was, if that’s what it was. So yes, in short, and if you accept that I’m not a medical man myself, then yes, Joel fixed my busted back.”

“What about your legs? Can’t he mend them?”

“Ach, that’s just stupid,” said Echtal. “Can’t mend what ain’t there in the first place, can he? He’s only a bloody healer, for the sake of Habna.”

They came down to land so that Leeth could relieve the pressure in his bladder. Joel spoke to them briefly, before setting off again.

A group of horseriders was approaching along the track. Leeth decided to wait and see if they knew anything. As they drew near, he could tell immediately that they were new to the region, with their fine clothes and even finer horses. They had probably come off one of the steamers he had seen at the Junction.

There were sixteen of them, in all, and from the swords and clubs and firearms it was clear that they were prepared to protect themselves. The two leading riders approached Leeth and Echtal.

One was a tall woman of about thirty, riding bolt upright in her saddle on a big grey mare. She had short hair that was naturally as blonde as Leeth’s hair had been bleached and a neck that was almost non-existent, so that her head sat low on muscular shoulders.

Her partner was a shorter man, with the same blonde hair and short neck, but an altogether more rounded appearance. Where the woman’s skin was pale and marred by scars and exposure, his was ruddy and uneven, purple veins etched across a blob of a nose, upon which a pair of small, round spectacles rode precariously. He nodded in greeting, then took a red cloth from a pocket and wiped his sweaty face.

“We saw you flying over the Junction,” said the woman. She had the refined tone of the True. “Not so common a sight, these days.”