Babylon Steel (21 page)

I said, “I have got problems and no time to be nice, so talk.”

He looked hunted. “What about?”

“Girls. New girls, who don’t know a bad client. You been wearing a mask lately? Or supplying ’em?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“No?”

“No!”

“There’s a girl, dead. I take that very seriously, little man. There’s another girl, with yellow eyes, who might have been pulled into the business against her will, and if she ends up the same way,
someone
is going to regret it, especially if they knew something that could have stopped it and
didn’t tell me
. Now, you heard anything?”

“No!”

“You hear
anything,
you come to the Red Lantern. And stay away from young girls. That kind of thing can be entirely unhealthy, you get me?”

“I get, I get!” His scalp was starting to bleed. I let go, and wiped my hands on a filthy, beer-wet rag, which was still better than having that wretch’s hair-grease on my hands.

“Glinchen? Glinchen!”

The faun had disappeared down Glinchen’s cleavage most of the way to the waist. Brave man. I don’t know how long I’d have had to wait for Glinchen’s attention if ze hadn’t suddenly shrieked, and used all four arms to pull the faun out, holding him in midair looking ruffled and slightly short of breath. “Sharp horns!” Glinchen said, shaking him. He flopped back and forth. “Sharp-sharp! Naughty boy. Next time you file them down or no play with Glinchen no more.”

He got his breath back, gave a lopsided grin, and shrugged. “Sorry, beautiful, it’s kinda hard to avoid poking
something
in there.”

“No poke!” Glinchen put him down and jabbed him with a finger. “You go buy more drinks, make up for stabbing me in the chestings. Babylon-baba, you stay, have a drink?”

“No thanks, Glinchen. And hey, you really care about poor lost girls, sober up long enough to bloody well talk to Bitternut, all right?”

Ze looked at me, with reddened eyes, and I’m not sure which of us felt more ashamed.

But I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I left.

TIRESANA

I
CAUGHT
V
ELANCE
being sick in the corridor on the way to our lessons. “It’s just the smell of fish from the kitchens,” she said. “I shan’t be eating it, it reeks.”

But it wasn’t the fish. We’d been taught what to do to avoid pregnancy, how to make a preventive out of a plug of vinegar-soaked wool or a sheath of waxed linen. Which herbs to use to make the foul-tasting tea no amount of honey could sweeten, which nonetheless was more reliable than wool or linen for pregnancy, though less good for disease. Not that we ever
had
to make these things for ourselves; servants did it all. But it was in the scrolls that Babaska’s priestesses knew these things, so we were taught them.

And, of course, we’d been taught to spot the signs if the avoidance didn’t work.

“Are you going to tell her?” Jonat said, tart as ever.

“Meisheté?” Velance said. “Of course. As soon as I’m sure.”

“You don’t think she’ll be angry?” I said. I knew, somehow, that Hap-Canae would be if I should slip up that way.

“Why should she be?” Velance said. “She’s the Avatar of the Mother Goddess.”

Jonat looked at me, and I at her, and it was as though something walked by us, like the shadow of a predator.

It wasn’t even a month later, when one night there was a terrible howling from somewhere in the Inner Temple; it woke me and I looked out of my window, wondering if some beast from the deep desert had wandered in.

I saw Jonat at the lesson next morning, but not Velance.

“She’s gone,” Jonat said. Her face was sallow, with shadows like smears of mud beneath her eyes.

“Velance?” said the Avatar Meisheté. “Yes. She’s to be a priestess at the great temple at Nard.” But her face was rigid when she said it, her shadow-surrounded eyes glittering with fury. I could feel the anger coming off her like heat. She looked at the three of us who were left like someone working out how to make one skinny chicken feed ten people.

“Did you hear the howling? There was blood in the corridor,” Jonat said, in a whisper, as soon as Meisheté’s back was turned.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Meisheté likes the
idea
of babies. I don’t think she likes
actual
babies. And all of them, the Avatars... there’s something
wrong.
When have you seen...”

She shut up as Meisheté turned around.

Meisheté had a temper, even though she controlled it better than Shakanti. I imagine there were a lot of miscarriages that month. A lot of wailing women at the temples, whose hopes had been washed away in blood. A lot of love built up only to have nowhere to go.

But maybe some of them were grateful. It was hard times in Tiresana; hard to feed another hungry mouth, however small.

High summer, and the air so hot it scraped like sand. The stench of the river Rohin and the middens reached us even in the heart of the temple. I was surprised to find myself missing Velance. That stolid practicality of hers had been a kind of cushion of sanity.

Now there was only me, and Jonat, and Renavir.

Lying awake, I could hear the splash of a river-horse, though it must have been a half-day’s walk to the Rohin, and the yipping of a dog, half-crazed by the heat and the moon.

I heard the sound of the lock and sat up. Had Hap-Canae come to me? He never did that.

No-one came in. The door creaked open an inch, and stopped. I got up and looked out.

There was no-one. The moonlight fell like sliced metal in the empty corridor. The habit of obedience was so ingrained that I hesitated. We were always locked in, always.

But tonight was different. I wrapped a robe around me and went out, feeling as though I were in a dream.

I heard a clink, in the room where we’d had our lessons in serving wine. I looked in, and there was Jonat, standing with a silver cup in her hands. I didn’t think I’d made a noise, but she turned, ruffled up, glaring at me like a hawk disturbed from its kill.

“Was your door open, too?” I said.

“What do you think?” She lost that hunched look. Whatever she was afraid of, it wasn’t me.

“Who do you suppose did it?”

“I don’t know. I was asleep. There’s some wine left, do you want some?”

“All right.”

She thrust a cup at me and picked up the wine-jug. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“Shut up and follow me.”

I did.

We crept through the temple like mice in the walls. Jonat took me along corridors I didn’t know, through the back of Aka-Tete’s temple, to the outer wall of the precinct. On the other side of the wall, outside the precinct, the back of Aka-Tete’s statue reared above us, hunched against the stars. Moonlight poured down over his shoulders like a silver cloak.

The guards never saw us; they looked outwards, not in. “Look,” she said.

“What? Oh, there’s a crack...” The wall was split by a crevice, about two hand spans wide.

Jonat said, “Hold this. And be quiet.” She gave me the jug and wriggled through the crack.

Her hand came back through, gesturing, and I, bemused, put the jug in it.

“Well, come on!” she whispered harshly.

I writhed after her in the gritty sand, scraping my back against the broken edge.

I emerged from the wall, the first time I had left the precinct without supervision since the moment I arrived, to find myself in a narrow space between it and the statue’s base. The moonlight couldn’t reach back here, but to either side I could see the bare sand outside the precinct and the gleaming weapons of the guards.

Something pale fluttered in the dark – Jonat’s arm, beckoning. There was a crack in the statue, too, bigger than the one in the wall, and she was inside it.

I hesitated, scared, wondering what she had done, what she wanted. The dogs were, briefly, quiet. The night wind whispered across the sand, and one of the guards shifted his stance. I scurried for the hole in the statue, in case he should turn and see me, and tell Hap-Canae that I was outside the walls.

Jonat lit a lamp. There was a tinder-box; how long had she been coming here? She stared at me in the flickering light, her eyes huge wells of darkness. “It’s hollow,” she said, as the light danced on the inside of the statue. “I think all of them are.”

“How did you find it?”

She just shrugged. “I wanted somewhere...”

“Doesn’t Aka-Tete lock you in at night?”

She snorted. “I was living on the street when I was Chosen. I learned to get round a lock like that before I was ten years old.”

I brushed the inside of the statue with my fingers. “This is strange. We’re outside, but we’re still... inside.”

“Yes.” She poured the wine. “Well,” she said, “what do you think’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not stupid. Not
that
stupid.”

“Oh, thanks a lot.”

“When we went out fighting... how many priestesses did you see on the battlefield?”

“I wasn’t really looking, I was too busy. Anyway, how would you tell? They’d hardly fight in their official robes.”

“Have you ever seen a priestess of Babaska fight? Or seen one whore?”

“Well, hardly. I mean I’ve hardly even seen one.”

“And why’s that?”

“How do I know?”

“You’re going to be one, aren’t you? Why haven’t you asked?”

“We’re the Chosen,” I said.

“Chosen by who, though?”

I glanced at the wine-jug, wondering how much she’d had.

“I’m not drunk,” she said. “We weren’t chosen by
her
, were we? Why didn’t the Avatar of Babaska choose us herself? None of us have ever even seen her.”

“I think she waits,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it.” I sipped the wine, which tasted of spice and iron. “See, I think Babaska’s the strongest of them all. I mean,” I looked up, at the hollow inside of Aka-Tete’s statue, and lowered my voice even more as though he could hear me. “She’s the best, isn’t she?”

“What do you mean, the best?”

“Babaska’s goddess of all the good stuff. The fighting and the sensual arts. She gets to have more fun than anyone, and so does her Avatar. What, you think there’s better?”

“Death’s stronger. Death’s stronger than
anyone.”
I might have expected her to leap to Aka-Tete’s defence, but she said it in a flat, chilly little voice. “But you’re right,” she said, to my surprise. “Babaska’s different. Different from all the others.” She shrugged. “She’s... I don’t know. I don’t think the others like people much.”

“Hap-Canae likes people!”

“He likes people to like
him
.”

Something about that stabbed me. I yanked the subject back to Babaska. “I saw an old scroll, about Babaska.” It had stuck, the way anything with rhythm or rhyme tended to do. “‘And with her sword shall cut the way to power; true godhead comes only with blade and flower.’”

Shadows chased each other across Jonat’s face. “True godhead?”

“Yes.”

“So what’s
false
godhead?”

“I don’t know. It’s just an old rhyme. But the other Avatars are still doing Babaska’s bidding, aren’t they? They’re choosing priestesses to serve
her
. I think they try and pick people who’ll please her. And Babaska waits until we’ve had our training and then she picks the best ones herself to be priestesses.”

“So when did she come and pick the others? In the night? Why? Babaska’s not a night goddess. Wouldn’t it make more sense to Choose us herself from the start? You’d think she’d have come to see us, if only to make sure we were getting proper training. What if we’re picked and it’s all been done wrong?”

“Oh, you worry too much.” She was saying things I’d only thought, and I was frightened.

“Have you family?”

“Bag-child.”

“I never knew mine. Velance was a bag-child too, did you know? And Renavir and Shanket. No family, anyone.”

“All
of them? So it’s true the gods can Choose anyone, then. I always thought you had to be rich.”

“Are you
trying
to be stupid? None of us with people back home expecting an influential priestess to help them out, get their goods bought by the temples, get them favours. No-one to worry if we never come home. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know.” I thought about telling her what I’d seen, in the tent after the battle. But I was scared, scared all the way to my bones. “Well, once we’re priestesses, we’re certain to meet Babaska’s Avatar. We can ask
her
all these things, surely?”

“Yes,” she said, with a thin, bitter smile in the darkness, “once we’re priestesses.”

The words dropped into me like stones in a well, echoing cold. And I ran from the meaning that followed them down. “I’m going to practice,” I said.

“In the middle of the night?” Jonat shrugged. “Go on, then.” She swallowed the rest of the wine down at a gulp. I remember her fingers were so tight on the cup that her knuckles stood out like little skulls.

I dived back through the hole in the wall, back into the precinct, and ran to the empty practice room, where I drilled until I was exhausted, until my limbs burned. Staggering, I walked back to my room.

Something landed on my bare arm as I passed the window; I thought it was a spider-thread at first.

It wasn’t. It was a long, silver hair that glowed with its own lunar shimmer.

Shakanti.

Had she opened my door? Had she opened Jonat’s, too?