Riding the Serpent's Back (24 page)

Pieter looked at him for a long time before answering. “I know,” he said. “I told you before: a treaty with Lachlan Pas will entail bitter compromise. We have to accommodate the views of Tule if we are to benefit in the long term.”

“But—”

“You have a lot to learn, Red. You’ve been with me a year and you think you know it all. I spend all my working days weighing up the pros and cons of decisions which will inevitably result in death and hardship for my people. A simple decision to tax, say, maize more than rice, could lead to the death of hundreds of peasants. Just as a more complex decision to bind our future to that of Tule might mean that a few mid-ranking Senators and bureaucrats have to pay for their careless words. I’ve shown you a lot of trust, Red. Now it’s your turn to repay it. I suggest you go back to the palace and think about things. Judging by your excellent reports, Lachlan’s investigators will be here for two more days and will kill four more of my people. I reluctantly accept that price. Now, I have work to do.”

Dismissed, Red wandered back through the city. He felt guilty for many reasons, but mostly because he had questioned his master’s decisions. It wasn’t his place to judge Pieter’s policies: he should know the Principal would only do what he thought best for his beloved city.

He endured his last two days with the investigators, taking his pleasures from teasing them and choosing the most troublesome routes from place to place: along uneven roads that threatened to turn their horses’ hooves, through the stinking slums and across the heart of Totenang’s new industrial zone, where Charmed steam turbines continually pumped smoke and sulphur into the air.

On the last morning he overslept, dreaming that he was plodding on foot through air so thick with smoke he had to part it with his hands. On his back rode a priest, and on his back another, and another, and another, so that he bore the weight of all four of Lachlan’s investigators. He walked for hours until the air thinned a little and an old man was waiting for him. “It’s your turn,” he said to Red. “We’ll judge you now.” He stood with his chin in his hand for an eternity, then went on, “Yes, you’re guilty, Red Simeni. You are vain and arrogant, and entirely superficial. You are a liar and a cheat and would fuck a goat if its bleating would further your career. You are Talentless and base, and you are not worthy to be my son.”

Red cried as he watched the old man. He saw now that it was the mage, Donn, and he was telling him what he had always known about himself: that he would never be as good as his aspirations. “And how should I be punished, father?” he asked. But he woke, his body running with sweat, a hammering at his door to tell him he was late and lazy and useless.

He recalled the dream when he returned home that evening, as if it had been some kind of forewarning. But if it was, then it was the first sign of Talent he had ever displayed.

He opened the door of his room, relieved that at last the priests were on their way home and he would ride with them no more.

Seated on his bed, casually picking at her toe-nails was a filthy, ragged child. A girl, he decided, although it was as much guess as judgement: she was in such a state it was impossible to tell.

She glanced up at him as he shut the door.

“How did you get in here?” he demanded. No one should be able to get in here – she must have passed Hellia and at least a dozen others downstairs.

“’S okay,” she said. “Jus’ told ’em I was a whore an’ that you liked ’em a bit scraggy an’ rough.”

He stared at her aghast. No wonder Hellia had given him such a venomous look. Then he saw that she was laughing at him.

“’S okay,” she said again. She nodded to an unshuttered window. “You shouldn’t leave your shutters like that. ’S an invitation, really, isn’t it?”

Red went over to the window and leaned on its sill. “So now we’ve established how you broke in,” he said. “Are you going to tell me why?”

“Got a message for you,” said the girl. “You’re Red Simeni, right?”

“What message?” asked Red. “Who from?”

“From your brother,” said the girl. “Chichéne Pas. He wants you to go and join him in Edge City. Says he needs your help.”

~

Chichéne Pas...although he had shortened his name to Chi, with a hard southern
ch
by the time Red had known him.

Not yet seventeen, Red had been working in the Principal’s administrative wing for three days and was in an inn celebrating his new start. He was with a boy and a girl from the stables, a maid, and three young clerks from his department. Although they had all worked for the Principal for longer than Red, he saw already that he dressed better than them and spoke with more sophistication. Already, he was working to make himself appear too well-bred for his position.

“My father?” he said to Anen, the young clerk about whose neck he had draped his arm. Eventually, talk in such circles always turned to breeding and lineage: there’s no snob like a sixteen year-old snob. “Thervald Simeni was a merchant with a fleet of ships plying the routes between Tule and the Rim ports in the Witherings. My father’s line is True back to the Semsen Family of Samhab.” Then he added modestly, “My mother – although True, of course – was not of such well-documented descent.”

Red had adopted the name Simeni only a few months previously, at the suggestion of his then patron, Rani Anesh. “True is how you act, not what is written on a sheet of paper,” Rani had said. “Documentation can be easily faked, but the manner in which one born to a True Family acts is more difficult to replicate.” Red had set to work immediately, perfecting his act.

And now, he looked at Anen and saw that she was impressed. “My father died when I was a baby,” he elaborated. “And my mother two years later. The business was dismantled to pay her gambling debts and so I have had to start from the bottom. But one day...one day I will be a Senator! And you, Anen, I wonder what you will be by then?” He leaned towards her and pressed his lips against her nose, lingering to breathe out across the smooth white skin of her cheek.

He saw a man approaching, eyes fixed on Red. He was tall, with a thick beard and long dark hair on the point of turning a steely grey. He had the grubby look of a vagabond, but he carried himself with that air Rani Anesh had described: the air of the True.

Red sat back, unable to break the eyes-locked look.

“You’re Red Simeni, aren’t you?” said the man. “I knew your father. A long time ago.”

Red glanced at his new friends. They were smirking at him. He wondered desperately how to get rid of this man who was either drunk, or worse, had known Red’s adoptive father and was about to expose his stories for what they were. “Of course,” he said, hurriedly, trying to think of a way out of the trap he had set for himself.

The man nodded, his eyes distant. He had the look of a man about to launch into an anecdote and Red knew that this would be his ultimate humiliation.

Then the man nodded at him again, and said, “He was a good man. I served on one of his barges. You’re his spitting image.” The man turned and left the bar.

Red settled back in his seat. “Happens all the time,” he said. “Many men still feel themselves to be in my father’s debt.”

The next morning he was out early on an errand, delivering the design for a Charmed poster to a print-shop in the city. The stranger was waiting for him as if he had known he would be there. He had to step aside so that Red could enter the building.

When Red emerged, minutes later, he felt he had to speak. “I don’t know why you said what you did, but I am grateful.” The only explanation that had occurred to him was that the man had once paid for Red’s services, back when he had been turning tricks in the Hangings, yet he was sure he was unrecognisable as the boy he had been back then.

“I did it because you’re my half-brother,” said the man. “We share a father, although not the one you described last night to your little admirer.”

“If you want money, I have none,” said Red. “I was a student until five days ago. If you want anything else, then I’ve stopped doing that kind of thing except for my own gratification. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“I’ve come all the way from the Dependent Territories to find you,” said the man. “My name is Chi. I will tell you about our father: he was a great man, just as you say.”

Red stared at the stranger. “My father is dead,” he said. “My mother, too. That’s why they call me Red: so that I cannot forget.”

“Your father was Donn, the mage,” said Chi. “And your mother was Vida Simeone. You’re right: they are both dead now. I’ll tell you all about it when you give me the chance.”

Red turned away, then hesitated. “How did you find me?” he said. “How did you know my name, and that I would be here this morning?”

“Donn told me. Our father told me.”

“But you said he was dead.”

Chi nodded. “But he lives on in the dreams of his children,” he said. “He came to me in a dream and said that I should leave the Serpent’s Back to find you and tell you of your true nature, and your true potential. Our father may be dead, but he lives on in
us
, Red. That’s what I’ve come to tell you.”

~

The ragged child was watching him intently.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “I have no brother.” He stepped away from the window and gestured at it with his thumb. “Now I suggest you make your exit the same way you came in, before I summon the guards.”

The child sniffed and wiped her nose on a bare arm. Lazily, insolently, she uncurled her long thin legs and swung them out from the bed. She stood, padded across the floor like some wild animal, then jumped up onto the window ledge.

Suddenly, he felt a touch of pity for the thing. At not much more than her age he too had been on the streets, no doubt looking just as ragged and filthy.

He tossed her a coin.

The girl watched its passage through the air until it struck her shoulder and dropped to the floor.

Red had to smile at her expression: how could one so young have mastered a look of such pure contempt?

He stooped to pick up the coin. When he straightened she was gone.

Red hadn’t believed Chi’s wild claims for some time, and after Chi had abandoned him he rapidly learnt to disbelieve them again. Chi had explained that Donn’s last grand project before his death was to ensure his legacy of Talent was passed on to the next generation.

“Talent?” Red said. “Is a facility for language and giving blow jobs to sailors a mage-given Talent? Because that’s all I’ve ever done well.”

“I was far older than you are before I knew my healing Talent was anything out of the ordinary,” said Chi. “It works that way sometimes: great Talents emerge relatively late in life. And in any case, it’s a random process: some of Donn’s children inherited more gifts than others. Some might have inherited none at all, yet we all remain a part of his plan. We will all have our part to play when our people need us.”

“You think any mage, let alone the great Donn, would leave it all down to luck?” asked Red. “Even if what you say about my parentage is true, I don’t see how I can be a part of your plans. I’m just a bastard, sired by an old man in his dotage.”

“But you’re my brother, Red. Let’s have another drink.”

Red found that he enjoyed Chi’s company, and they met regularly in the time Chi remained in Totenang. The man – although he was a good thirty or forty years older than Red – wanted to be considered his brother and Red was quite ready to accept him as such.

It was his first real contact with family.

His mother had died in childbirth and his father – or at least, her husband – had killed himself at sea some months later. His adopted family, in the Hangings, had abandoned him as soon as the charity money ran out. Even old Rani Anesh, who had saved him from a life of buggery and blow jobs, had vanished shortly after helping him secure a place at the Embodied college.

Red was surprised at how willing he was to accept this new man into his life. He was even more surprised at how quickly he came to think of him as his brother, and forget that he had only ever intended to humour the man as part of a briefly amusing game.

He should have been prepared for the pattern of his life to repeat itself, but when the barman at the Lizard’s Tail had passed on Chi’s message – “Says ’e ’as to go, and that ’e’ll see you again some time” – he felt as if someone had clubbed him with a fence-post.

~

Now, he straightened the bedding where Chi’s messenger had sat. Chi had no right to expect him to abandon his life so abruptly. He owed Chi nothing.

Red had learnt his lesson long ago: if you get too involved with people they only hurt you. Other people always let you down in the end. The only kind of loyalty that mattered was loyalty to yourself.

He shuttered his window firmly, then went down to the kitchens to look for some company more amenable than his own.

~

He stared into the eyes of the statue. They were mottled three shades of grey, the outline of the lids smoothed with age. A perfect circle of yellow lichen had spread across one cheek. Red picked at it and it fell away, leaving in its place a circle of pale grey. “You should be a god,” he told the stone man. “They’d look after you better then.” But the statue was only that of some obscure senator from over a century before, tucked away amongst the four thousand others that filled the Garden of Statues.

He walked on, trying to make out the inscriptions. On his many visits to this park, he had constructed a mental map of all the statues bearing names derived from the ancient Semsen line: any girl would be impressed by a visit to the Garden of Statues for a guided tour of his assumed lineage, he thought.

He was so preoccupied with his task that it was some seconds before he noticed Estelle.

She stood in a line of statues, wearing a simple cotton dress, pulled tight at the waist to emphasise her waspish figure. She didn’t move, and Red quickly determined her game.

He approached her, as if by chance, then stopped before her. Still, she did not move.

“Hmm,” he said. “Now this one’s a little better preserved.” He looked down at her feet, as if reading something, then nodded and said, “Hmm. Estelle Lammer, wife of the Principal of Totenang.”