Riding the Serpent's Back (3 page)

Most settlements on the Serpent’s Back were agrarian trading centres where the widely dispersed farming communities came for supplies, and to trade their produce with the agents of the northern city-states. This town was larger, its buildings uniform and blocky, all erected together according to a grid street-plan instead of casually cast in the ramshackle disorder of the market towns. Clusters of slag heaps and mining gantries were spread around the fringes of the settlement, large ironworks and processing plants huddled either side of the street as the group passed through. The Serpent’s Back was a rich source of iron, copper, gold and all sorts of minerals used by industry and agriculture, most of which was processed and transported to the cities of the Rift valley in the north. The mines were scattered across the continent’s surface, but occasionally, as here, an entire town would be constructed on a particularly rich site and it would become a centre for processing raw materials from the entire region.

“Fifteen years, I’d say.” Jaryd was referring to the age of the settlement: fifteen years ago, this plot of land would have been 550 leaps closer to the Michtlan Ridge, at about the edge of the region where the land became more stable and so inhabitable. The town would ride the Serpent’s Back for another eighty or ninety years and then all that could be removed would be transplanted to a virgin site near to the Ridge and the remainder would be abandoned to fall unwanted into the Burn Plain.

Jaryd was muttering to himself. He had been the last to back down in the debate about whether to avoid the town or not. He saw no sense in crossing what he saw as enemy territory, and was too pragmatic to care whether any abstract ideas of freedom were challenged by a simple choice to avoid possible conflict.

Although he had not contributed to the debate, Leeth, too, felt uncomfortable as this town swallowed them up. All the straight lines, the square buildings, the numerous temples with their red and gold friezes of serpents and eagles and painted statues of Habna, Samna, Qez, Michtlanteqez and the rest of the pantheon...the people, stopping to stare at the ramshackle procession, the men in their sturdy overalls and serge suits, the women with their faces shielded beneath the peaked brims of their bonnets...Leeth couldn’t help but think of the Scrips, the district around his college in Khalaham.

This was a Church town, a toehold for the Embodiment on the island continent of the Serpent’s Back. Leeth had not realised, until that point, quite what a powerful force the new evangelism had become, to penetrate so far south.

The travellers dispersed, leaving Jaryd and Bean watering the horses and mokes from a barrel bought from a reluctant trader who charged an additional one-tenth tributary tax for his local temple.

Leeth tagged along with Chi and Cotoche, revelling in the curious looks this wild-looking couple received as they walked along the busy streets, past all the busy people. His own looks were still remarkably conventional and, alone, he was sure he would have passed unnoticed.

“What do we do?” he asked, hurrying to catch up.

Chi half-turned, and it was then that Leeth saw how tense he had become. “We push the limits,” he said, his dark eyes narrowed. Then he grinned. “But first of all we’re going to buy some liquor.”

A few traders had stalls in the street, but their wares were of no interest to Chi. Shortly, they found a building with a sign that declared its proprietor was a general trader, licensed by the Governor’s Office. “I didn’t know the Serpent’s Back had a Governor,” said Cotoche.

Chi just grunted. He pushed through the swing doors and approached a man standing behind a counter. “A case of rye, and two of gin,” he said. “How much?”

The man looked at him, his eyes passing down the traveller’s dusty clothes and then back up again until he met Chi’s eyes. Leeth guessed the two of them were probably close in age – mid-fifties – but they had little else in common. Chi was dirty, lean, fit, with wild hair and beard and his eccentric ornamentation of feathers; the trader was clean, bald, with a belly even rounder than Cotoche’s.

“You have a card?” asked the man, in an incongruously deep and musical voice. “You are registered for labour?”

Chi leaned over the counter towards him. “Make that two cases of rye,” he said. “I’m thirsty.”

The trader stepped back, shaking his head. “I’m afraid, sir...”

Chi slammed his purse hard onto the counter. There was movement in a doorway at the back of the shop and Leeth saw a teenaged boy’s anxious face peering out.

“I’ll put your order aside,” said the trader. “You can go to the Town Hall and register and then I shall serve you. But not before then.”

Cotoche went to stand at Chi’s side and put a hand on his arm. He rounded on her as if he was about to lash out. Then Leeth saw Chi meet Cotoche’s eyes and then follow her sideways glance. The boy hiding in the shadows of the backroom had levelled an army musket, holding it steady against the doorframe.

Cotoche picked up Chi’s money and guided him out of the shop.

There was a poster outside on a wall: another reminder of Khalaham, another new intrusion into life on the Serpent’s Back. As they drew near, a printed face leapt into a crudely animated semblance of life. “Praises be to Habna, for He created all that is our world. Praises be to Samna, sustainer and preserver. Praises be to the Embodiment of the Gods which is all that we are, all that—”

Chi snatched at the poster, tearing it from the wall. He scrunched it up into a ball and rammed it into his mouth. For a few seconds, a muffled evangelical voice came from his closed lips, and then silence.

A middle-aged woman in greys and a batik shawl portraying the big-nosed god, Samna, barged past Leeth. “You can’t—”

Her words were cut off abruptly as Chi turned towards her and spat the chewed wad of paper into her face. She was left behind, spluttering her disapproval, as Chi marched away, trailed by Leeth and Cotoche.

Cotoche couldn’t match the pace he set and a gap opened up. Leeth thought that was probably just as well. As they walked he kept a cautious eye out for any sign of pursuit, but there was none. “Why does he get like that?” he asked, after a time. “He’s so changeable. Is it his drinking? Is that the reason?” He watched Cotoche’s face as she thought about her answer. He was secretly savouring the guilty pleasure of being alone with her in this strange town.

“He’s a little boy,” she said, although Chi must have been three times her age. “He gets frustrated. He bottles everything up and then has to let go in some way. It’s a way of denying that the rest of the world can still make any kind of difference to him.” She thought a bit more, then added, “It’s in us all: our divided nature. Only Chi has more extremes. It’s like your gods: simultaneously good and bad, creating and destroying with the same stroke.” Her choice of words –
your gods
– underlined the differences between them, fracturing their brief spell of intimacy.

Eventually, they caught up with Chi and together the three made their way slowly back to where the animals were tethered. They found Sunshine Chopal scrubbing around the wing-stubs of her moke, singing a soft song as she worked. Sunshine was a heavily built, middle-aged woman, who had actually lived for a time as a prostitute in Khalaham. She had been driven out ten years ago by the priests who had once numbered among her best customers.

Leeth joined her. He scratched at the mule-sized beast’s slender neck and it pushed its craggy face affectionately into his. Although mokes were flightless cousins of coursers, their thoughts were shapeless and dull; Leeth could never form a bond with a moke – he would have to concentrate too hard, doing all the work himself.

“No good, huh?” said Sunshine, breaking into his thoughts.

Leeth shook his head.

“Work registration cards, huh?”

He nodded. “Chi didn’t take it too well.”

“At least they didn’t arrest him,” she said. “They held me for most of an hour. They wanted to see my card, wanted to know what I do for a living. I told them I travel, do odd jobs, which is the truth. They were so
patronising
.” She said it as if it was the worst thing that had ever been done to her. “They wouldn’t even let me buy a maize cake, for the sake of Habna!”

Leeth told her about Chi’s dispute with the trader. “I thought he was going to get himself shot.”

“I expect one day that’s just what he’ll do,” said Sunshine. “He says he’s pushing back the limits. I say he’s tempting fate. We don’t always agree, the two of us. I tell him he needs a good woman of close to his own age.” She pouted, coquettishly. “But I ain’t got a butt like Cotoche has got a butt.”

Leeth flushed, his colour deepening even further when he saw that Sunshine had noticed and was chuckling. “But I tell you something,” she added, leaning towards him across the moke’s back. “I could show you a trick or two no little girl like her could show you.” She blew at his cheeks in an age-old come-on, and Leeth backed away awkwardly.

He felt helpless. He would never understand the ways of these people. He was foolish to even think that he might.

When the rest of the travellers had returned it became clear that Chi’s experience was a common one: no trade without proof of registration – which was out of the question for anyone wanted by the police, or not qualified by birth for citizenship. Only one or two people had been able to find someone willing to sell water or food without official clearance. “Soon we’ll be needing a card even to breathe,” said Bean, to general agreement.

As they trailed despondently out of the town, Leeth asked Chi if it was really as bad as everyone made out: couldn’t one or two register and trade on behalf of the others? He was sure the authorities would have neither the resources nor the desire to send out arrest squads for every criminal wandering the Serpent’s Back.

Chi turned to him, wearily, all his earlier anger dissipated. “That depends on who you are,” he said, and turned away.

~

They made good time in the few hours that remained of daylight. Nobody liked the idea of lingering too close to a Church town.

“Why can’t you return to the north?” asked Leeth, as he sat with Chi that evening. “You’d have all of the Rift to travel through. I’m sure you could find somewhere quiet to settle.” He didn’t know why Chi had suddenly taken to his company. He suspected that it was not so much his novelty as what he represented: the land Chi had left behind, the world he had rejected.

“Why should I want to?” asked Chi, defiant with drink again. “What does it hold for me that I don’t have for free out here?”

Cotoche and most of the others were splashing about in a hot pool nearby, but Chi was too drunk to join them and Leeth was still too reticent, still the nervous outsider.

“Is your crime so bad?” Leeth had come to see as sheer paranoia Chi’s fear that the authorities would pursue him for a crime committed so long ago – so much had changed since that time. And he must be suffering from a persecution complex if he thought anyone would know – or perhaps even
care
– what dark arts he had practised out here in the wilderness.

“Think about what I did,” said Chi, struggling to contain his anger. “Lan was fifteen, and as rebellious as fifteen year-olds can be. I was perversely proud of his rebellion, even if I could not understand the form it took: he declared for the True Church of the Embodiment, and quickly became a votary. He spent all the time he could trying to convert his family to his archaic beliefs. I think he saw me as a challenge: I was a politician and atheist, yet I was of True Family descent with a limited Talent for healing, so I should, theoretically, sympathise with his creed.

“One day while I was away at Senate he made his grand move. He burnt all my books – some of them handwritten copies of texts dating back to the beginning of our Era. He daubed religious symbols throughout our house, nailed wooden figurines of the gods across every door and window and as I returned he started to chant arcane gobbledygook right in my face.”

“He thought you were possessed.”

Chi nodded. “He thought if he could drive out the demons I would fall into his arms and thank him for saving my damnable soul.” Chi began to cry now, as he spoke. “He stood there with his arms spread wide to welcome me, a sick grin plastered across his face. I hit him so hard the blood formed clots in his brain and he was rendered comatose.”

Chi swallowed before continuing. “I used what Talent I had mastered at that time to keep the spark of life going in him: every time his brain shut down – seven times! – I managed to haul him back from the edge. I spent the ensuing months seeking out those healers who worked outside the law, and as they helped me sustain Lan they also helped me refine my Talent until it had become greater than any of theirs. My wife, by then, was unable to bear more children, so I paid one of our servants to bear a child on our behalf and I used my gift to move Lan’s life force into the unshaped brain of the baby. When he was born, we passed Lan off as our own but he always knew the truth. I rebuilt him from scratch and he has hated me for it ever since, as if that hatred was somehow ingrained by the very act of his rebirth.”

Leeth had never had to deal with a man’s tears before, and he was at a loss as Chi came to the end of his story. With his own schooling in the ways of the True Church, he could see why the boy would resent his new form so much. Putting aside his father’s attack, Lan’s new body had half the blood of a servant woman: in his new form he was only half True Family. But in his first existence, Lan had made a name for himself proclaiming the divine rights of the True: by those very arguments, if in his new life he admitted his lowly physical origins then he would deny himself a place in the Church hierarchy. The alternative was to go along with Chi’s cover-up and keep the secret to himself.

Chi’s tears did not last long. Soon, he was on his feet, poking at the fire with a stick.

Leeth still struggled to understand exactly why Chi should be banished to the Burn Plain. He had explained his son’s hatred for him, but by his story the authorities should know nothing of his abuse of his healing Talent, yet that was the reason he had given for his exile: not the murder, the bringing back to life.