Babylon Steel (14 page)

Then they steer into the dock, empty casks and broken boxes knocking and bumping against the hull, through cabbage leaves and rotting fruit and drowned rats, and the glowing sailors leap down and swear and yell at friends and wave to the doxies waiting on the shore, and the sweating stevedores start unloading. Great crates of fruit and grain; livestock bawling and shrieking and shitting, wool and spices, silk and copper.

There was a sleek Imperial yacht with scarlet sails, full of chattering... creatures. The current fashion in the Imperial Court was for robes of stiff, heavily embroidered linen with collars that came halfway up the face, and strange starched headdresses that covered most of the rest. Hard to tell what
species
someone was, never mind gender. Their servants were a mix of humans and other species, furred, feathered and scaled, all chosen for their looks, it seemed. No Fey, of course; just try making a servant out of one of them.

There was no-one I knew. Might be a few of the captains I’d recognise, but the dockworkers and the freelancers change fast. Docks are the same everywhere. It’s easy to disappear, and easy to make someone else do so. Rats aren’t the only things that sometimes turn up dead and floating.

Still, there was plenty to appeal to the eye, what with the Empire folks having good taste in servants, and a lot of husky stevedores around. I had to remind myself I wasn’t here to admire the scenery, but if I had to make enquiries... well, there was a muscular dockworker with luscious skin like rich-grained wood and big gold earrings, stripped to the waist, who was yelling a mix of pidgin and pretty inventive obscenity at three men trying to wrestle a swinging crate full of some bright yellow and very lively animals to the dock. I waited until he had time to draw breath. “Heya?”

“Heya.”

“You herefrom?”

He nodded. “Not sell hereside. You wantshee, you bid himbig jalla.” He jerked his thumb towards the great echoing sheds where they held the livestock auctions. Jalla is Scalentine pidgin – it means pretty much any structure from a temple to a privy. “Sav?”

“Not here for buy.” I looked at the crate. The yellow creatures had long noses, eyes like blue cloth buttons and grey, tubular tongues – I found out the last when one spat at me, a thick gluey divot of phlegm I only just avoided. Whatever they were, they didn’t look wholesome. “Look-my bread fella, by-by godjalla white is.”

“Plenty-plenty godjalla.” He shrugged. “Plenty-plenty bread fella.” He turned away and started yelling at the men some more.

Oh well. I kept asking, and got a variety of responses, some more polite, and one or two less so. I kept my hand near my sword. One grey-skinned pair whose oddly jerky movements seemed to mirror each other directed me down an alley of fish-stalls, where the shifting light coruscated on the flat, chilly eyes of the merchandise and the glittering scales that coated every surface. It reeked, and the footing was slimy with spilled fish guts. I got a bad feeling halfway down, and turned back, to see that the greyskins had followed me. They got very interested in a tank full of some sort of crabs scrambling and clicking over each other. I walked back towards them, slowly, hand on sword, and they decided to do their fish-shopping another day.

After that I was directed to three churches that had no bakery in sight, three bakeries with no churches in sight, one chandler’s next to a very dodgy looking bar (problem in translation, there), all the while fending off threats, promises, and offers. One or two of the offers might have been lucrative, but I had no regrets turning them down. The docks are an even worse area than King of Stone for that kind of business, and just because I can take care of myself doesn’t mean I like unpleasantness.

It started to feel like a long time since breakfast, and I was no nearer any answers. I wondered if Mokraine had been playing some odd little game of his own, or whether he was just plain mistaken.

I was thinking of calling it a day when there was a chorus of squeaky yapping sounds. A plump, freckled little critter appeared around the corner. He had a big plumy tail, a little like a squirrel except he (I thought
he
) came about as high as my waist. He was leading six assorted small furry creatures on leashes, though whether they were pets or offspring I couldn’t tell.

“Are you lost?” he asked. “Now, now, stop that!
Down!
Lost you? Wantshee help? Oh, dear, I am sorry...”

I disentangled myself from two leashes, at the cost of some enthusiastic licking and paw-marked boots, and asked if he knew of a bakery next to a white temple.

“Oh, yes, just round the corner...” he gestured, and ended up with a lead around his neck, which then had to be unwrapped.
“
It’s not far...
stop that!
Go on down this street, turn left at the inn called the Fighting Gloriana, get
down!
Then right, where they’re building the new warehouse. And it should be right in front of you...
waaah!
”He was whisked away as the little beasties spotted something worthy of chasing down the other end of the street, trailing him behind them like a small furry cart in need of brakes.

I followed his directions and passed the place where the new warehouse was going up: noisier than the docks, what with the hammering, the yelling and the grind and slam of stone being dropped into place. I peeked in – lots of pretty muscle, all of it streaked with grey. Then I caught the scent of fresh bread, mixed with some heavy, brain-numbing incense, and there it was. A small dome-shaped building, with round windows and heat baking out of the open door, and next to it a little temple, standing out white as a spring morning against the scramble of houses around it.

Some of them had been dwellings of the rich, once; you could see it. They were still sturdy, though a lot of the gutters were sagging away, and most of the window-panes were cracked or gone.

The little plaster faces were here too – they’re everywhere. I saw Fey and Ikinchli, a few who looked a bit like Flower, broad-nosed and tusked. Not many portraits of humans, except one of a little girl who’d been caught just about to make some delightful mischief. She was a treat, even with her ringlets missing their ends and a chipped nose. But the faces were cracked and grey; stains from leaking gutters ran down their cheeks like bloody tears. I saw another little fish; its grin seemed out of place here.

The temple was newish, built in an odd style that made it look like white soap bubbles stuck together.

I walked up and down the street, looking for some clue as to which house might hold the fellow Mokraine had touched. I
could
ask at the temple.

I’d try the bakery first.

I ducked in through the door and the heat wrapped around me like an overenthusiastic lover. The baker was Barraklé; I swear, Glinchen’s the only Barraklé I know who isn’t involved in feeding people. On the other hand, I guess appetite is, well, appetite.

Ze didn’t look in the mood for conversation; there were three ovens on the go and one helper, who was also Barraklé. I don’t know much about baking (just ask Flower) but I was pretty sure the tray of flat, dark brown, smoking things over which they were arguing weren’t supposed to be either flat or smoking.

I was going to back out and come back when there wasn’t a domestic crisis going on, but the bigger of the two whirled around and saw me.

“You come for the order for the
Sweet Marie?
Is regret, is have to wait, my most stupid offspring is ruin order, I am much sorrowful. Please to sit, I bring tea, you wait, yes?”

“I’m not...”

“Please to tell Captain Juggan I am never to be unreliable, is only stupidness of this one” – ze gave the unfortunate offspring a cuff around the nearest ear, unnecessarily hard, I thought – “who is burn all.”

“I’m not here...”

“No, no, please, you sit, hey, stupidness, unwanted child of my most unfortunate loin, go, out back, make tea immediate and do not burn it.”

“Hey!” I can yell when I have to. If you can make yourself heard on a battlefield you can pretty well flatten walls. They both jolted, curling in on themselves like snails sprayed with salt water.

“I’m not
here
about that. I’m looking for someone.” I was getting tired of that phrase. Looking for people isn’t my
job
. “I’m not sure of his race. Lives around here. Kind of long and thin, dusty,” Mokraine’s description made the poor creature sound more like a ghost than anything else.

They looked at each other, then back at me. The baker shrugged. “Lots races round here.”

Their offspring, eager to please, poor thing, pointed to the pans waiting to go in the oven. “Dusty! Like flour? Maybe baker?”

“No other baker near here,” the baker said. “Me, only.”

Dusty... I’d just seen a lot of dusty people. “It’s all right, I think I know. Thanks.” I smiled at the youngster. “You’ve been helpful.” Ze smiled back.

“Glad this one can be helpful sometimes,” hir parent said. “Most unusual.”

I saw the smile disappear under a sullen look.
Gah
. Parents and their offspring. That’s one problem I don’t have.

I headed for the building site, and enjoyed the scenery until the head mason had a chance to talk to me. She was a big, strapping lass, with an eye patch and a cotton hood over her hair, and coated with stone dust head to foot.

“You looking for work?” she said.

“No, looking for one of your workers, I think.”

She tilted her head, giving me the once-over with the remaining eye – a deep brown, very pretty. Then she bawled over her shoulder, “Boy! Mint tea quick-quick!”

“Please, there’s no need,” I said. Everyone wanted to give me tea today. What I needed right now was some answers, followed by a massage and a big, very alcoholic, drink.

A slab of stone slipped from its rope cradle and slammed onto its fellow, provoking another billow of dust, which came straight at me. I coughed, and brushed uselessly at myself. Make that a bath, a massage and a slightly bigger drink.

“So. Who are you and why are you looking for one of my crew?”

“I’d just like to talk to him.” I told her who I was, and she nodded.

“I’ve heard of the Lantern.” She looked me up and down. “Heard of you, too. My man cause trouble?”

“Not for me. He may know something about someone I’m looking for, that’s all.”

“You know his name?”

“Sorry. Thin, I was told, stretched looking. With bushy brows and scarred hands. Might have seemed a tad mazed, day or so back. That’s all I know. Oh, and he has a child. Little girl.”

She looked down for a moment, frowning, then snapped her fingers. “Badhan.”

A young Ikinchli lad showed up with tea. I took mine, grateful for the chance to rinse some of the dust out of my mouth, and she took her time sugaring hers and stirring it before she said, “Why do you want to know?”

“Hoped I might have a word with him.”

“About?”

I realised she was protecting him; he’d only worked for her a while, or she wouldn’t have taken that long to remember his name, but he was still her crew.

“I don’t want to get him in trouble,” I said. “He may know something that will lead me to a girl who might be in
serious
trouble. I plan to haul her out of it, if I ever find her.”

She looked at me – the gaze of that single eye surprisingly penetrating. “Don’t
make
trouble. I got a business to run, and he’s skilled. You lose me a good worker, you’ll hear about it. Understood?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right. He should be heading in for his shift soon, you’ll catch him on the way, or maybe still at home. Lodgings’re round back of the temple. Brick archway, one flight up, door on the left.”

TIRESANA

W
E NEVER LEFT
the Inner Temple. We never entered the courtyard, not for the ceremonies of the other gods, not even for Babaska’s major ceremonies; they were performed, in miniature, within the rooms, as part of our training.

“Why can’t we go to the main temple?” I asked Hap-Canae. I wanted to get a closer look at it, to try and get a sense of Babaska through her statue, if nothing else. And though the rooms of the Inner Temple were generously proportioned, I was beginning to feel a little itchy at being inside for so long. Fight training in the inner courtyard wasn’t enough.

“My dear child, the main temple?” He gestured, suggesting crowds: the scent of myrrh drifted from his sleeves. “Babaska’s most important shrine? The Hierarchs of the priesthood, the most powerful in the land, attend the ceremonies there. And you have barely begun your training. Imagine if something went wrong, in front of them all!”

I blushed and mumbled, immediately seeing myself tearing my gown, spilling the wine on some terrifyingly important priestess, falling down the steps.

He stroked my hair. “You will do very well, I’m sure. One day I will see you lead the ceremonies, and the worshippers will all be in awe of you. But not yet.”

A few days later another girl was gone. Seili, with her fire-glow hair and her annoying laugh, Chosen by the Avatar Lohiria, she of the West Wind. That night there was a gale at sea, and a trade ship lost with all its hands, its cargo of corn sinking to rot on the sea floor. But none of us made the connection, or if we did, nothing was said.

Stupid? Yes, we were. Stupid and self-involved, wrapped in luxury for the first time in our lives, and so terribly young.

One of our martial trainers was a battered ex-soldier called Farren with one missing eye and two missing fingers, who knew every nasty fighter’s trick, throw, tear, grapple and gouge you ever heard of and then some, having learned how to do them all a second time, with no depth-perception and half a hand. He had me in a tight hold, flat on the marble, my left arm halfway to the back of my neck and his knee on my spine. “See what I did there?” he said, and then, bending close, he whispered, “Message for you. Can you keep your mouth shut?”

I nodded, not really understanding.

“Sometimes you find you’ve thrown a three instead of a six.”