Riding the Serpent's Back (48 page)

When he opened his eyes he was lying on the floor and the whole world was revolving. He felt sick. His head was pounding as if someone was hitting it repeatedly against the stone floor. He tried to move but couldn’t. He realised he was still holding onto the broom and let go.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, someone was leaning over him, eyes as big as a moke’s balls. “Cherry?” he said, and started to snigger. She helped him into a sitting position, and then, with her arms around his waist, they staggered across to a bench set against the wall.

When the room had stopped swimming in front of his eyes, Red peered at the girl. Her hair was a sort of mousy ginger and she looked much younger than he recalled. “Cherry?” he said, more uncertain now.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “You’re thinking of someone else. My name’s Jane. You shouldn’t be here, Red. If you’re recognised you’ll be killed.”

It took a few minutes to sink in: she
knew
him.

He peered at her uncertainly. He had no idea who she was.

A little later, she led him out into the street. She had refused to say much in the bar. Now, she took his arm and they walked towards the docks. This was one of the oldest parts of the city and the houses huddled together around the narrow and uneven streets like crows gathered around a corpse.

“I’m sorry,” said Red, peering at her profile in the darkness. “I don’t know who you are.”

“That much is obvious,” said Jane, glancing at him. “I used to work at the palace. I dressed Madam Estelle.”

Suddenly, Red remembered her. Jane had been present during Estelle’s interrogation by the Investigator. He remembered Estelle insisting that Jane saw nothing when in truth she had seen everything.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have known you immediately. But I...I’ve been away. Haven’t touched a drink for years, or so it seemed. Until tonight.”

They walked on. When they came to the docks they turned west and walked past a row of shrines where even at this hour bargees prayed to their patron, Ouzal.

“You must hate me,” said Red. “I caused so much damage and pain.”

She shook her head. “There are far more deserving targets for my hatred than a fool in love,” she said. “The Investigators who took my father. The Principal who threw me out because my continuing presence reminded him of his wife’s unfaithfulness. The soldiers who execute people they know to be innocent simply because they are ordered to do so.”

Red thought of the rows of spikes lining the roads into the city, the thud of hammer on wood. “Your father,” he said. “They killed him?”

“Oh no,” said Jane. “They only kill the dangerous ones, the ones who might oppose them. My father is a stonemason – they charged him with blasphemy simply so that they could take him to work at Samhab. We have heard nothing from him since then.”

Red had heard stories about Lachlan Pas’ scheme to rebuild the First City. He assumed that was where the soldiers who ransacked Atrac had come from, and where those they had press-ganged had been taken to work.

He stopped and put a hand on each of Jane’s shoulders so that she had to turn and face him. “Can I do anything to help you?” he asked. “Whatever you want of me.”

He had thought she was crying, but he was wrong. She looked at him, now, and nodded briefly. “You can rescue Estelle,” she said. “Save her from the Principal’s foul punishment.”

“But...” Red felt as if he had been punched in the face. “But she was to be executed,” he said. “I...”

Jane shook her head. “Lachlan’s mage was here,” she told him. “Oriole. She persuaded him to be merciful, as she put it.”

“How do you mean?”

“My mistress was sent into to exile,” she said. “Ever since you left she has been living on Coltsmore’s Haven, at the ophidy refuge.”

Red’s emotions were spinning madly, just as his head had spun earlier that evening. Relief that Estelle had not been killed, shock and outrage that she should be sent to such a place. Ophidy was one of the most feared diseases of the Rift. It attacked the soft tissues of the body, starting as a rash of tiny white blisters which filled with blood and then began to spread and merge together, forming huge, spontaneous bruises. The flesh beneath these patches became soft and pulpy and eventually the skin became so fragile it would tear at the slightest touch. In the more severe forms, all of the skin would eventually lift off in this way, like a snake sloughing its old skin: the one difference being that the snake had a layer of new skin underneath, the victim of ophidy only raw flesh. Some people died within weeks, but for others the disease could linger in its milder form for years.

“She lives there even now?” he asked.

“If ‘live’ is the right word, yes,” said Jane. “But it’s not just exile: she has a job to perform in the refuge. I was here at the docks when she was taken away on the boat to the island. The Principal said to her, so that everyone could hear, ‘My dear, you’ve been a whore for my servants, so now you can go to your rightful place: from now on you can be a whore for the ophidy refuge – be sure to serve them well!’”

~

Coltsmore’s Haven was a dark, craggy hump looming out of the mist.

Red stared at it as the small fishing boat approached. The regular sound of oars driving into the water was a soothing sound and he felt strangely calm, despite the knowledge of where he was going. There were so many folk tales about ophidy that even mention of the disease’s name was forbidden in some villages. In Totenang there were still people who told stories of an outbreak sixty years ago, when the city had been quarantined for most of a year and more than a third of the population had been killed.

It was suicide, he knew. But at least he would die with Estelle, as he should have done in the first place.

He heard the sound of footsteps approaching across the boat’s slippery deck. Glancing up, he saw Philo Cray, owner of the boat. Philo was Jane’s uncle: she had persuaded him to bring Red out this morning.

Although nobody would talk openly in front of Red, he strongly suspected that there was some kind of network involved, formed to oppose the deepening links between Totenang and the Embodied Government of Tule. He hadn’t enquired: he was hardly the best person to keep these people’s secrets.

He nodded at Philo, and noted that the crew had stopped rowing. With the sails hanging limply from the boat’s single mast it must have been hard work rowing all the way from Totenang: it had taken them the best part of an hour. Red had offered to help, but had been rejected almost contemptuously. He should really have known better.

Now, Philo nodded in return and said, “This is as close as we go. You and I know the ophidy can’t blow through the air, but the boys are in fear of being stuck here if we go any closer. I’ve pushed them as close as I dare, but if I push any harder they’ll be bitching and griping about me at the bar tonight and word of your visit’ll get out.”

Red peered out into the mist at the stretch of water between boat and rocky shore. The surface was so smooth it might have been the icing on a cake. It was about a hundred standard paces to shore.

“You swim?” said Philo.

Red shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Presumably it’s an instinctive reaction to the threat of drowning?” He smiled at Philo’s dumbfounded expression, and stooped to remove his shoes, trousers and shirt. He wrapped them with his other things in a canvas bag that he hoped would keep most of the water out.

With the bag tied across his shoulders, he turned and stepped off the side of the boat.

He had expected the water to be cold, but not as bad as this. As he bobbed back up to the surface, he found himself thinking that surely water so cold should be frozen? But the lakes were continually filled from the northern sea and so this was salt-water.

He decided it was time to stop thinking and start preventing himself from drowning. He swam, settling into a clumsy breast-stroke, keeping his head high out of the water. He had not swum since he was a boy, but he was relieved that it was not something he had forgotten.

Somewhere behind, he heard the sound of oars biting the water, and soon he was alone.

He swam on.

Eventually, he had to stop. He had remembered how to swim, but had forgotten the sheer physical ache across his chest and shoulders, the tiredness in his thighs and hips.

He floated, keeping his head up. He hardly seemed any closer to the island than when he had been on the boat.

Currents
, he suddenly thought. What if, even as he bobbed about doing nothing, a current was dragging him back into the open water? Even if he could beat the flow, a swim that had only looked a hundred paces might actually turn out to be a swim through several hundred paces of moving water.

He started to swim again. He found a rhythm and stuck to it, determined not to stop until he hit the beach.

Eventually, he came to within a few body-lengths of the rocks. When he lowered his legs his feet hit the bottom. He straightened himself and found that he was only waist-deep. He waded ashore, exhausted, chilled through and, more than anything, frightened.

His pack had kept the water out so he dried himself and dressed quickly. He scrambled up over a wide expanse of rocks. Eventually, he came upon a track worn smooth with use, cutting across the rocky beach and up into the wooded fringe of the island proper.

A voice, made unclear by hissing and bubbling sounds, startled him. “Don’t ’ave many visitors ’ere,” it said.

Red spun on his heels and backed quickly away from a tall man who had appeared behind him. The man’s hair was drawn back from his face and plaited tightly, and he wore the faded uniform of the city army. Red stared at his face: one cheek was completely missing, exposing two rows of blackened teeth – no wonder the man’s speech had been slurred.

The man was smiling, Red decided. Or at least half-smiling.

“I...” he said. “No, I...I don’t expect so.”

The man stepped forward and Red stepped back. “I ’eard the oars,” said the man. “So I came lookin’. I’m Jon Pascal, Deputy Captain of the Principal’s army until I ’ad to leave.” The man proffered his hand for Red to shake.

Red stared at it. “Red Simeni,” he said. Slowly, he reached out and took the man’s hand. He could feel the blisters under his fingers, he could feel a patch of skin sliding over the flesh under his grip. “I’m looking for someone,” he explained. “I had to come here.”

Jon nodded and released Red’s hand. “I hope they’re ’ere,” he said. “Because you’ll never leave now. Come on.” He stepped past Red and headed into the woods. “Best way to find out is to come to the party.”

In only a few minutes, the path had taken them over the shoulder of the island’s one hill and they were descending into the heart of a village. Through the clearing mist Red could see the dark fringe of the mainland: these people lived with a constant view of the freedom their illness denied them.

~

Music filled the air: throbbing guitars, the breathy notes of nose-flutes, a steady pulse of drums. It seemed strange to arrive so early and find a party in progress, until Red saw from the disarray of the village that it must have been going since at least the previous night.

The village might have been a quite respectable suburb of Totenang, with its neat stone houses and their little gardens and tubbed trees. But no respectable suburb of Totenang had ever been so festooned with streamers, items of clothing, abandoned bottles and barrels, naked bodies.

Everywhere, people gyrated and danced, alone or in ragged lines that went in and out of the houses. Others lay in the street, or in the gardens. One woman hung out of a window, her breasts squashed against the wall. Red might have felt quite at home here if his eyes were not continually drawn to the raw, exposed flesh that signalled these people’s disease.

He kept wanting to turn and run, but he knew it was too late. He would never get back to the mainland. Even if he did, there were soldiers posted to ensure that no-one could get ashore.

He walked down into the village with Jon Pascal. Staring at everyone, through the tears in his eyes. They passed a shrine and suddenly he saw that what he had taken to be carved snakes were alive, moving lethargically in the cool morning air. He remembered the connection made between ophidy and snakes losing their skin as he shrank away. He wondered how many of the residents of Coltsmore’s Haven died from venomous bites instead of from their disease.

They rounded a corner and came to a building with open sides, like a market hall. There was more music here, and a drunken crowd gathered. As they approached, Red peered through the crowd and saw that they were watching a dancer.

Drawing closer, he saw that it was a naked woman, bent over double, swinging her rear from side to side to the pulsing music. An enormous snake was entwined around her body, its head thrust back between her legs, held motionless as she swayed from side to side.

Red stared at the dancer: it was Estelle. He’d recognise her anywhere. And from any angle.

Leeth flew hard for the rest of the day, finding lodging for the night in a small town near the mouth of the great lake Lai. He set out again as soon as it was light.

Sky took him up into the cool dawn air and they circled lazily over the harbour before continuing their northward course. Below, a fleet of fishing boats was returning across the choppy waters of the lake, their catch glistening in the morning light.

After a short time they reached the lake’s mouth. High mountains rose abruptly to either side of a channel that was about three standard leaps across. The water below was rough, its surface frothy and white as it surged through the channel from the northern sea. This was the only break in the entire chain of mountains which were known simply as the Rim. Through this channel came the water that filled the lakes, and spilled out into the Rift’s two major rivers.

Leeth made Sky go in low across the surf. He could sense the enormous power of the mass of water below. Near to the cliffs, he saw whirlpools easily as wide as an entire village. All along the rocky banks of this channel, he saw the wreckage of boats that had misread the currents. The sight would have been quite chilling if he had not already been frozen right through.