The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (58 page)

There were large numbers of armed police, some sitting on the pavement playing dice, some standing scrutinizing every passerby, some inspecting the items a poor hawker was trying to sell from his suitcase, others eating and drinking at a food stall placed illegally in the road. Lyra watched them closely, and felt their eyes when they did deign to notice her, a brief incurious flick at her hidden face, the automatic and inevitable glance at her body, then the look away. Not even her lack of a dæmon provoked a glimmer of attention. Despite the heat, it really was almost like being liberated.

As well as the police, there were soldiers sitting in armored cars or patrolling with guns held across their chests. They looked as if they were waiting for an uprising they knew was coming but didn’t know when. At one point Lyra nearly walked into a squad who seemed to be interrogating a group of boys, some so young that their dæmons kept flickering between one abject form and another, trying to appease the men with guns and faces ablaze with anger. One boy dropped to his knees and held his hands out, pleading, only for a rifle butt to slam into the side of his head and drop him on the road.

Lyra very nearly cried out, “No!” and had to hold herself back from running up to protest. The boy’s dæmon had changed into a snake and squirmed brokenly in the dust until the soldier’s dæmon put a heavy foot on her, and she and the boy fell still.

The soldiers were aware that Lyra was watching. The man who’d hit the boy looked up and shouted something, and she turned and walked away. She hated being helpless, but the thought of this man’s violence made her feel every bruise, every cut from the attack on the train, and the memory of those hands thrusting up inside her skirt made her very entrails cold with repugnance. Her first task was to get out of this place alive and active, and that meant remaining inconspicuous, however hard that was.

She moved on further into the busy streets, into an area of shops and small businesses, repairers of furniture, sellers of secondhand bicycles, makers of cheap clothing and the like. Always the presence of the police, always the sight of soldiers. She wondered about relations between the two forces. They seemed to be keeping scrupulously apart, with a formal politeness when they had to pass one another on the street. She wished Bud Schlesinger would suddenly appear to guide her calmly through the maze of difficulties here, or Anita, to keep her cheerful with encouragement and conversation, or Malcolm—

She let that thought linger until it faded.

The closer she came to the center of the city, the more she felt uncomfortable, because the pain in her left hand got a little worse with each throb of blood through the arteries near her broken bone. She looked at every shop sign, every notice board, every brass plate on every building, looking for a sign that might mean English was spoken there.

In the end the sign she found was on an oratory. A little limestone basilica, roofed with red-brown terra-cotta tiles, in a dusty graveyard where three olive trees grew out of the gravel, bore a wooden sign that said
The Holy Chapel of St. Phanourios
in English, French, and Arabic, followed by a list of the times of services and the name of the priest in charge, a Father Jerome Burnaby.

Princess Cantacuzino…Hadn’t she said that her dæmon was called Phanourios? Lyra stopped to look into the enclosure. Beside the basilica stood a little house in a palm-shaded garden where a man in a faded blue shirt and trousers was watering some flowers. He looked up as she watched, and gave a cheerful wave. Encouraged by this, Lyra moved cautiously towards him.

He put down his watering can and said,
“As-salamu aleikum.”

She went a little closer, into the garden itself, which was rich with many kinds of green leaves, but where the only flowers were deep red.

“Wa-aleikum as-salaam,”
she said quietly. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes, I do. I’m the priest in charge here, Father Burnaby. I am English. Are you? You sound English.”

He sounded as if he came originally from Yorkshire. His dæmon was a robin who watched Lyra from the handle of the watering can with her head cocked. The priest himself was burly and red-faced, older than she’d thought from the road, and his expression radiated a shrewd kind of concern. He reached out a hand to steady her as she stumbled over a stone.

“Thank you…”

“Are you all right? You don’t look well. Not that it’s easy to tell…”

“May I sit down?”

“Come with me.”

He led her into the house, where it was a little cooler than outside. As soon as the door closed behind her, Lyra unwound the headscarf-veil and took it off with relief.

“What have you been doing to yourself?” he said, taken aback by the cuts and the bruising on her face.

“I was attacked. But I just need to find—”

“You need a doctor.”

“No. Please. Let me just sit down for a minute. I’d rather not—”

“You can have a glass of water, anyway. Stay there.”

She was in a small hallway, where there stood one flimsy-looking cane chair. She waited till he came back with the water and said, “I didn’t mean to—”

“Never mind. Come in here. It’s not very tidy, but at least the chairs are comfortable.”

He opened a door into a room that seemed to be part study and part junk shop, where books lay everywhere, including on the floor. She was reminded of the house of Kubi
č
ek in Prague; how long ago that seemed!

The priest moved a dozen books from an armchair. “You take this chair,” he said. “The springs are still intact.”

She sat down and watched as he distributed the books into three separate piles, corresponding, she supposed, to three aspects of the subject he was reading about, which seemed to be philosophy. His robin dæmon was perching on the back of the other armchair, watching her with bright eyes.

Burnaby sat down and said, “Obviously you need some medical attention. Let’s take that as read. I’ll give you the address of a good doctor in a minute. Now tell me what else you need. Apart from a dæmon. We’ll take that as read too. How can I help?”

“Where are we? This is Seleukeia, I know that much, but is it far from Aleppo?”

“A few hours by motor. The road isn’t very good, though. Why do you want to go there?”

“I want to meet someone there.”

“I see,” he said. “May I know your name?”

“Tatiana Prokovskaya.”

“Have you tried the Muscovite consul?”

“I’m not a Muscovite. Only my name is.”

“When did you arrive in Seleukeia?”

“Late last night. It was too late to find a hotel. I was looked after very kindly by some poor people.”

“And when were you attacked?”

“On the train from Smyrna. By some soldiers.”

“Have you seen a doctor at all?”

“No. I’ve spoken to no one except the people who helped me, and we had no language in common anyway.”

“What were their names?”

“Chil-du and Yozdah.”

“A night-soil man and his wife.”

“Do you know them?”

“No. But their names are not Anatolian—they’re Tajik. They mean Forty-Two, the man, and Eleven, the woman.”

“Tajik?” she said.

“Yes. They’re not allowed to have personal names, so they’re given numbers instead, even for the men, odd for the women.”

“That’s horrible. Are they slaves or something?”

“Something like that. They can take up only a limited number of occupations: grave digging is a common one. And the night-soil business.”

“They were very kind. They gave me this veil, headscarf, this…niqab, is it?”

“You were wise to wear it.”

“Mr. Burnaby—Father—what should I call you?”

“Jerome, if you like.”

“Jerome, what is happening here? Why are there soldiers on the street and in the train?”

“People are restless. Frightened. There have been riots, arson, persecutions….Since the martyrdom of St. Simeon, the Patriarch, there’s been a sort of martial-ecclesiastical law in force. The rose garden troubles are at the bottom of it all.”

Lyra thought about that. Then she said, “The people—last night—they had no dæmons. Like me.”

“May I ask how you were deprived of your dæmon?”

“He vanished. That’s all I know.”

“You were lucky not to be stopped this morning. Those without dæmons, often Tajiks, are not allowed to be seen in the hours of daylight. If they’d thought you were a Tajik, you would have been arrested.”

Lyra sat still for a moment, and said, “This is a horrible place.”

“I can’t deny that.”

She sipped the water.

“And you want to get to Aleppo?” he said.

“Would it be hard to do that at the moment?”

“This is a trading city. You can find anything here for money. But it will be more expensive now, such a journey, than it would be in peaceable times.”

“Have you heard of a place,” she said, “called the Blue Hotel? A place where lost dæmons go?”

His eyes widened. “Oh—please—be careful,” he said, and actually got up out of his chair and patrolled the room, looking out of both windows, one facing the street and the other the narrow vegetable garden next to the house. His robin dæmon was twittering her alarm and flew towards Lyra before turning and making for the safety of the priest’s shoulder.

“Be careful about what?” Lyra said. She was a little bewildered.

“The place you mentioned. There are powers that are not of this world, spiritual powers, evil powers. I really do advise you not to go there.”

“But I’m trying to find my dæmon. You know I am. If the place exists, then he might be there. I must go and try. I’m—I’m incomplete. You must see that.”

“You don’t know that your dæmon is there. I have seen cases—I could tell you of examples of real spiritual evil arising in places where…among people who…No, no, I really do counsel you not to go there. Even if it does exist.”

“Even if? You mean it might not exist?”

“If such a place did exist, it would be wrong to go there.”

Lyra thought, Is this Bolvangar again? But she couldn’t waste time telling him about that. “If I were asking,” she said, “as a—I don’t know—simply as a journalist or something, if I were asking how one might get there if one wanted to, would you tell me?”

“Well, in the first place, I don’t know how to get there. It’s all rumor, myth, maybe even superstition. But I expect your friend the night-soil man might know, if anyone would. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Because we can’t speak each other’s language. Look, never mind. I haven’t got the strength to go anywhere at the moment. Thank you for listening. And for the glass of water.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t feel you have to go. I’m only concerned for your welfare, spiritual and…Sit here and rest. Stay awhile. I really think you should let a doctor have a look at your injuries.”

“I’ll be all right. But I’ve got to go now.”

“I wish there was something you’d let me do.”

“All right,” she said. “Just tell me about travel between here and Aleppo. Is there a train?”

“There used to be. Till quite recently, in fact, but they’ve stopped allowing them. There is a bus, twice a week, I think. But…”

“Is there any other way of getting there?”

He drew in his breath, tapped his fingers, shook his head. “There are camels,” he said.

“Where would I find a camel? And someone to guide me?”

“You realize that this city is a terminus of many of the Silk Road trails? The great markets and warehouses are in Aleppo, but a substantial number of goods come here to be taken onwards by sea. And there’s inward trade as well. Train masters load their camels here for journeys as far as Peking. Aleppo is just a step for them. If you go to the harbor—that’s what I’d do—go to the harbor and ask for a train master—they speak every language under the sun. Forget the other idea, I do beg you. It’s moonshine, deluding, dangerous. Really. By camel, Aleppo would be two days or so away. Maybe three. Have you got friends there?”

“Yes,” she said easily. “Once I get there, I’ll be safe.”

“Well, I wish you good luck. Sincerely. And remember, the Authority never wishes for his creation to be split apart. You were created with a dæmon, and he is somewhere now longing to be reunited with you. When that happens, nature will be restored a little, and the Authority will be happy.”

“Is he happy that those poor Tajik people have to live like that?”

“No, no. The world is not an easy place, Tatiana. There are trials we are sent….”

She stood up, surprised at the effort it took, and had to hold on to the back of her chair.

“You’re not well,” he said, and his tone was gentle.

“No.”

“I…”

He stood too, and clasped his hands together. His face was expressing a whole sequence of thoughts and feelings, and he even made a curious writhing movement as if he wanted to burst out of chains or shackles.

“What is it?” Lyra said.

He said, “Sit down again. I haven’t told you the full…I haven’t told you the truth. Please. Sit down. I shall try.”

He was plainly moved. He was struggling against something, and at the same time ashamed to reveal it.

Lyra sat down, watching every expression that came and went on the priest’s face.

“Your Tajik friends,” he said quietly, “their dæmons will have been sold.”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard him. “What? Did you say
sold
? People
sell
their dæmons?”

“It’s poverty,” he said. “There’s a market for dæmons. Medical knowledge here is quite advanced, unlike other things. Big corporations are behind it. They say the medical companies are experimenting here before expanding into the European market. There’s a surgical operation….Many people survive it now. Parents will sell their children’s dæmons for money to stay alive. It’s technically illegal, but big money brushes the law aside….When the children grow up, they’re not full citizens, being incomplete. Hence their names, and the occupations they have to take up.

“There are dealers….I know where—I can even tell you where to find them. This is not knowledge I’m proud of transmitting. In fact, every bone in my body is rebelling….I can’t forgive myself for knowing this. There are men who can supply a dæmon for those who are without one. It sounds atrocious. It sounds absurd. When I first heard about it, when I moved to this living, to look after this chapel, I thought it was something fit only for the confessional, and I admit I suffered—I struggled to believe it. But I have heard it from several quarters. People tell priests things like this. It seems that if a person such as yourself, who has suffered in this way, suffered the loss of a dæmon, if such a person has enough money, they can call on the services of a
dealer
who will supply them with…will sell them a dæmon who will pass as their own. I have seen a few people in that condition. They have a dæmon; she, he goes everywhere with them, appears to be close and understanding, but—”