Babylon Steel (25 page)

Sometimes we passed a crumbling archway. Some were open, tunnels beyond them running silent into the dark; others were blocked with ancient doors or a criss-cross of iron bars. Bliss moved ahead, humming, running his long pale fingers along the wall, sniffing the air, occasionally stopping and staring about.

There was no need for him to track, as it seemed Rikkinet knew where to take us, but it was good to see him looking so awake. Twomoon. A time of transformation, Darask Fain had said, and he was right. It’s not just weres who feel it. I stroked the scar on my face, and wondered. If Enthemmerlee really was what they said she was, would she have begun to change? What would it feel like?

Rikkinet stopped and raised her hand, then disappeared.

I blinked.

She reappeared, and gestured. “This way.”

When we got closer I could see what had happened. There was another of those side tunnels, but it angled back into the wall, its entrance concealed by an outjut of brick that had been carefully designed to look like just another part of the wall until you were practically on top of it.

Perfect place for an ambush, in fact.

Previous gave me a questioning look, and I shrugged.

We followed Rikkinet down the tunnel.

The lamp burned steadily, but it seemed as though the darkness got thicker until you could feel it pressing around you, sucking at the light, wanting to make it gone. There was a deep chill striking up from the paving that the damp encouraged, and I began to wish I’d worn a warmer jerkin. All the Ikinchli, including Kittack, were wearing thick padded jackets and trousers.

If the girl really did have lizard in her makeup, I hoped she was sensibly dressed.

Rikkinet was moving faster – too fast. “Hey!” I hissed. “Hold up!”

She paused, and I caught up with her. She glanced over my shoulder and said, “That one. What is?”

She was looking at Bliss. I realised that he was shuddering like a man with a fever. Always pale, he was now so white he glowed, and his grey eyes had a peculiarly luminous cast.

“Bliss?” I said. “You all right? Man, you’re freezing.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t want you catching your death down here.”

“I didn’t think that was who we were hunting,” he said, and grinned. “Don’t worry about me, Babylon. It’s good to be on a trail again. I feel...” – he held a pearl-pale hand out before him, and looked at it – “much more myself.”

There was no sound except footfalls, breathing, and the lap and ripple of the river. The Ikinchli all moved whisper-quiet, but the rest of us couldn’t match their stealth. What with the noise and the lamplight, if anyone was on watch they’d have plenty of warning we were coming.

Previous stumbled and said, “Oh. Ugh.” Then she turned aside and threw up.

“Previous?”

She pointed. Lying on the paving was a fish, or something like one. It was a pallid pinkish-yellow and had no eyes; they weren’t gone, it didn’t even have a place for them. Its head was just a smooth glistening lump, gashed by a needle-toothed mouth.

“Previous? You all right?” I whispered. She wasn’t normally the squeamish sort.

“Fine,” she said, wiping her mouth.

I looked at her, wondering, but she was glaring at the dead fish, her mouth pulled down.

“Let’s not go swimming,” I muttered.

“Yeah, and I really fancied a dip,” she said.

Kittack came over to see what we were looking at. “Cave fish,” he said. “Been breeding in the dark for so many years, they don’t got eyes. No use for them. No flavour to them, neither.”

I could really have done without the thought of eating the thing, and so could Previous, from her expression.

Rikkinet was getting ahead again. I was glad to hurry after her and leave that poor blighted fish behind.

She held up her hand a moment later, and everyone stopped dead. She extinguished the lamp, and after being plunged in a darkness so absolute it felt like death, I could eventually make out the faintest glimmer of light ahead. It was too faint for me to see anything but a smudge.

Bliss came back towards me and I realised his eyes really
were
luminous; his pupils glowed yellow-green.

He gestured for me to bend down. “Up ahead,” he whispered. “A fire. Several others, I think an Ikinchli, couple of humans, the rest I’m not sure of. Maybe five or six. There are more around, I can hear them, and smell them, keeping out of sight.”

“Right,” I said. “This is Rikkinet’s show. We’re not here to fight. We’re here to talk to the girl. She’s priority, and I don’t want anyone hurt or even scared unless it’s necessary. So let’s try not to look like a bunch of throat-slitting mercenaries.” I looked around. Previous, all scowl and battered armour, except for her fancy new bracers; Bliss, glow-eyed and shivering with some suppressed excitement. And me, of course. “Let’s try quite
hard
, all right?”

A
S WE GOT
closer, we could hear voices. Sounded like an argument.

The fire threw bloody shadows on the crumbling brickwork. We were approaching the end of the path. A crude, or just very ancient, jetty poked a rotting finger out over the river. Behind it was a wall, with three arches. The centre one was occupied; crowded, in fact. The two either side appeared to be empty.

And there was Enthemmerlee, alive, looking utterly out of place in this dank, forgotten hole, her long fair hair gilded by firelight. She was standing between a male Ikinchli and another man who looked, to me, like a Gudain. Had he been the one she had met at the Hall of Mirrors?

There were a couple of people with their backs to us, silhouetted against the flames; one slight, one heavy, that was about all I could see.

“...paid enough,” the Gudain was saying.

“People
looking
for you. This’n our jalla. Millies come, big-big trouble everybody.”

“You say so many days, so much money,” the Ikinchli said, his accent thickening with anger. “Now you say, not enough money, more, always more.”

Bliss tilted his head towards one of the side rooms as we moved up, then skimmed away out of sight, quiet as smoke. From the side room came a skitter of feet on stone, and a scruffy individual with bad teeth and a tarnished gold scarf wrapped around his head appeared in front of us. “Who the hells are you?” A couple more appeared out of the shadows. They looked hard, nasty and well armed; but they also looked a bit glazed, and reeked of cloud. No wonder we’d managed to get within bowshot before they’d clocked us.

“Cap! We got comp’ny.”

There was some incomprehensible language I’m pretty certain was obscene, and the figures by the fire turned around.

The dumpy human had pale, elaborately plaited blonde hair piled onto his head and gleaming with oil, a broken nose and a silk shirt that had probably been white, once, bulging open over a stomach like a pallid mushroom. The slight one was all in faded black; grey-furred and long-nosed with an unfortunate resemblance to a rat.

This was a ruffians’ jalla if I’d ever seen one. What in all the hells were the Incandress lot doing here?

The Ikinchli and the Gudain had already moved protectively in front of the girl, and I saw the Ikinchli’s hand come up, holding a sling. He was moving slow, but whether from caution or cold I wasn’t sure.

Rikkinet stepped forward, made a strange, ducking, twisting movement with her head, and said something in the Ikinchli tongue. There was a brief but furious-sounding three-way argument between her, the other Ikinchli, and the young Gudain man, while the girl just watched.

“You shouldn’t be here,” said the pudgy type in the silk shirt. “Bad idea, come down here. Trespassing, is.” He scowled at Rikkinet. “You ask for private, safe place, now you bring half the city down here. Is not so private.”

“We don’t want trouble,” I said. “I want a conversation with Enthemmerlee, and then we’ll be out of here. We’re not millies, we’re not looking to make any difficulties, and if this greasy little arsehole doesn’t stop trying to creep up on me I’m going to slice him into chops and kidneys.”

The greasy little arsehole in question drew back, muttering.

Pudgy gestured us to come forward. “Come to light. This all you?”

“As you see,” I said. That being Previous, Kittack, and Rikkinet. Bliss was out of sight, the All knew where. I hoped he could keep out of trouble.

Pudgy grinned, showing a mix of glitter and stumps where his teeth should be. “Tell you what. You pay good lucre, you have nice quiet talky-talky, then you be gone. We escort you out, all polite.”

“No lucre,” I said. “We didn’t come for talky with you.”

“Who are you, and why do you want to talk to me?” Enthemmerlee said. She had a low, clear voice, with a faint huskiness to it.

At least she spoke Lithan. That would make things easier. “That’s a longish story,” I said. “And requires privacy.”

“Who are you working for?” said the Gudain.

“Well... That’s a question. See, I
was
paid to find Enthemmerlee,” I said. “But now I want to hear her side.”

“Why should we believe you?” He was a young man, his Lithan well-educated but his voice quivering with nerves and anger. The girl, on the other hand, remained sublimely calm. I began to wonder if they’d drugged her. If that was the case I was getting her away from the bloody lot of them until she had a chance to make some decisions for herself.

Pudgy grinned at me, looking me up and down. “What say you me have our own private talky-talky, hey?”

“Maybe some other time,” I said. “I need to talk to the girl. If you want I’ll ask my friends to back off, and you... gentlemen... can do the same.”

“Fine by me, we not want hear nothing,” he said. “No politicals, us. More trouble than we’s want. You give money. You talky-talky. We wait, you finish your business, you get gone.
All
you get gone.”

The Gudain said, “We’ve already paid to stay here for another day!”

“Yeah well, you not say, so many people after you, all these come looky-looky. Maybe next time type we don’t want see here, maybe is millies, maybe is business competitors, maybe all sorts unsavoury peoples come tramp around our private place, right? So original contract made on basis of undeclared factors, not so valid now, right?”

“We didn’t know people were going to come looking for us!” the Gudain said.

“Could have taken good guess, no?”

“You have no...” He obviously couldn’t come up with the word, in Lithan, and waved his arms furiously. “And I have to say I don’t think much of your guards; they let these people walk right in here!”

Rikkinet muttered something under her breath. I hoped the remark wasn’t going to get the young Gudain into more trouble than he could cope with, but Pudgy merely put his hand on his chest with a wounded air. “Good faith businessman, me. And you don’t like my guards, we take them away.” He gestured and the three guards began to back off. “You talk. We go over there, not listen.”

I wouldn’t have made any bets on that. Information is currency, and I suspected Pudgy wouldn’t pass up the chance to know more about his paying guests. Though his so-called guards smelled of cloud, he didn’t.

They swaggered past me. Pudgy blew me a kiss, which gave me an unrivalled opportunity to smell his breath. Man needed a better diet.

The Gudain glanced at the girl, looking worried. “This isn’t...”

“It’s all right, Malleay,” she said. “I’m willing to listen.”

“I’m not leaving you alone!”

“And why not?” I said. “Afraid of what she’ll say?”

“How dare you!” Malleay might be a revolutionary type, but he had all the arrogance of someone who’d grown up a member of the ruling class. But he was young, and the way he stood – badly, off balance – and the way he kept fingering the dagger in his belt, told me he wasn’t an experienced fighter. “Tell these people to go away!”

“Previous?” I said, “back off, if you would. Don’t get lost and don’t kill anyone if you can help it.” She nodded, and walked away.

Kittack didn’t move. He was looking at the girl, his head on one side.

“Kittack?”

He blinked. “Oh. Okay.” He followed Previous, glancing over his shoulder every now and then.

“Tell me who you are,” Enthemmerlee said. “And why you are looking for me.”

“Will you talk to me alone?”

“Yes.”

“Enthemmerlee...” the Gudain boy said.

She put a hand on his arm. It was a fragile hand, fine as bone china, and I noticed small, delicate webs at the base of her fingers. “Malleay.”

There was another brief exchange, and then, reluctantly, looking frequently back at us, the three Ikinchli and the Gudain lad moved away, around the corner.

“Well,” I said. “I thought you might be here against your will. Are you? Because if you are, I’ll get you out. Somewhere safe.”

Enthemmerlee smiled. “There is no need. They are my friends and fellow soldiers.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes. Who is the person who paid you to look for me?

I told her – leaving Fain’s name out of it. Someone in power on Scalentine, I said, someone who was concerned about the way things could go on Incandress, and didn’t want them to get worse. “I don’t understand the details. I’m no politician. But for some reason there’s worry here about what will happen if Incandress gets more unstable, and they think that if you aren’t found, it will get bad. Reprisals against the Ikinchli, for one thing.”

“I see. But this is not why you are here?”

“First,” I said, “I thought you were just a girl who didn’t want to marry the man they’d chosen for her, then I realised that some of them believe you’re the... Itnunnacklish. The One who is Both. I don’t know about that. But either way, I thought you might need help.”

“And why would you do this? If you were to hide me, and get me away, you would not be paid, surely?”

“More to life than money,” I said, despite a little crawling sensation in my abdomen when I thought of the debts hanging over my head. “And let’s say I’ve a certain fellow-feeling for young girls in trouble.”

“My family wished to use me to keep things as they are, yes. But these here with me want the same things I do.”