Babylon Steel (31 page)

“Trust me, I’m not planning on getting killed.”

“No-one ever is, Babylon. No-one ever is.”

TIRESANA

I
SPENT THE
next few days in a strange state: guilty, delighted, bemused. I had thought I was in love with Hap-Canae, but this was... sweet. Sweet and gentle and fun
.

His eyes were as rich a brown as good earth, and he smelled like spring. We talked, solemnly, for hours, about stars and beasts and rivers and worlds, but also we laughed. A lot.

And as for the sex... I hadn’t realised just how ignorant I was. Oh, in terms of technique, I knew more, certainly, than Ranay, but technique is only, in the end, mechanics. With Ranay, within days of our first meeting, just the touch of his hand on my arm sent me closer to swooning ecstasy than Hap-Canae had ever managed. Being close to him was like swimming in warm clean water; touching him was painfully sweet, always, even if all we did was lie in each other’s arms, just breathing. When he slipped into me, lithe and easy as an otter into water, I felt a kind of ecstatic terror, because I wanted him so much.

I began making plans. Plans to free Ranay from his drudgery, to bring him to my temple and get him access to the knowledge he craved. I built whole futures in my head, as beautiful and false as the city of mannequins I had dreamed of in Hap-Canae’s bed.

And yet always, between us, was the awareness that I was an Avatar, and he was not. We didn’t speak of that, or of the other Avatars. Though we seemed to talk about everything, the silences where we didn’t venture were, by the end of the voyage, beginning to swallow our words.

The last night on the barge I looked into his great dark eyes, and saw all the questions that were hiding there. I was afraid of what would happen if he asked. I was afraid that I might answer. I pulled him down with me, and kissed and licked every part of his sweet silky body as though I was trying to take the taste of him into me forever, as though I was trying to consume him. I suppose I was. But I was also trying to distract him and exhaust him so that the questions would never be asked.

I was very good at what I did. But he knew. The next morning I saw him watching me, with a brooding look, as the barge drew close to Prella.

Lohiria saw it, and laughed, running her fingers through her hair. “I see you’ve got yourself a dog,” she said. “Pretty, too. Does he do tricks?”

I thought how like a nest of snakes her hair looked, writhing and twisting on itself.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “Don’t let him get above himself, dear. You
know
what happens to Babaska’s lovers.”

“I’m not
her
,” I said. “Any more than you’re Lohiria. And anyway, they didn’t all die.”

“Not by her hand, no,” Lohiria said. “But they still die, little Avatar. They all die... one way or the other.”

She waved to Ranay, and he bowed deeply.

When we pulled up at Prella, there was a somewhat thin display of priests and priestesses, and no Shakanti; I was told she had been called away, to her regret, and would meet me later.

It was a manoeuvre, intended to put me in my place. Most of the Avatars cordially disliked each other, but Shakanti loathed me, in particular. I think it was the sex thing: she despised it, and everything to do with it. Perhaps I should have felt sorry for her; for whatever it was, that had made her like that. But other times I just wished the crazy bitch would disappear, instead of breathing icy disapproval over everything about me and the goddess I was supposed to represent.

So when she wasn’t there, I was less insulted than relieved. I would only have to avoid my escort and a dozen or so priestesses, rather than Shakanti herself. Lohiria was easily distracted by rumours of a ship driven aground, down the coast; she went charging off to see if someone else was impinging on her territory.

Ranay I enlisted to make a demanding fuss about my accommodation, to keep everyone occupied.

Once their attention was elsewhere, I swathed myself in scarves to conceal my shape and wrapped cloth around my face. Many of the quarry workers were similarly draped, to keep the dust out of their lungs. I headed into the town, with no clear idea of what I was going to do.

Of course, I hadn’t thought it through. I wandered the streets, looking at the stalls in the market where people bargained for worm-eaten vegetables, undersized fruit and scrawny chickens. It was so long since I had walked among ordinary people, without an escort, that I felt lost; I couldn’t ask any questions without revealing myself, and, I realised, I had no idea what questions to ask. All I knew, all I had ever known, was that I had been left hanging on a door, in a bag, with chips of what might have been Prella marble wrapped in a bit of cloth. I clutched one of the chips in my hand as I walked. What was I going to do? Walk up to some respectable matron and ask if she had abandoned a baby girl in my hometown sixteen years ago?

I looked for anyone who looked like me – or looked like me as I had been. But on Tiresana, high-nosed faces and black curly hair are hardly unusual. I searched every passing face, scrutinised stall-holders and weary women, bent and coughing quarriers and skinny children scurrying among the dusty legs.

I saw a woman, who could have been any age from thirty to fifty, stooped and grey. Was there something familiar about her face? Or not? Another, another. Any of them could have been my mother. Any of the men could have been my father. I stopped, in the middle of the street, suddenly overwhelmed with fear and shame. Why was I going to try and walk back into my mother’s life? After sixteen years, she might be dead. She might be respectably settled, she might have no desire at all to have a reminder of her past turn up on her doorstep.

I had been thrown away with only the marginal kindness to hang me on a door rather than leave me to wail in the desert until the wild dogs found me. How did I even know that it was one of my parents who had left me there, and not some stranger, with just enough compassion to give me that chance?

People were beginning to glance at me curiously, to smile in my direction. The Avatar charisma was seeping out despite my attempts to conceal it. I turned and ran, scooting down side streets and out to the outskirts of the town, where I went on running up into the wooded hills.

Finally, in the cool shade, I stopped. Birdsong embroidered the silence. I was crying. I had let the piece of marble fall at some point. I stood there calling myself a coward and an idiot. I wanted to talk to Ranay, but what could I say?

And then, not before time, I started to think.

All those people looking, smiling. Because I was an Avatar. Instead of running off like an idiot, with no plans, perhaps I could use that, use my power and my influence to find my parents, if either of them were alive; I might have sisters, or brothers. I could act as their benefactor, from afar, and then when I was sure, when it could be done safely, I could reveal myself to them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I
DIDN’T WANT
to get out of bed. Unfortunately we had no clients; so there was no good reason for me to stay there. Eventually, I got up, dressed, and checked on Cruel. She had swapped her white bandage for a scarlet one, which looked very dramatic against her black skin, and was already up and dressed, seeing no need to stay in bed as she felt, she proclaimed, perfectly well.

I went to glare at the accounts. The thing about life’s tribulations is that sometimes you can avoid one by dealing with another. If I put the papers into some sort of order, I’d know which bills I needed to pay first. Then I’d take the rest of Fain’s damn money, if there was any left after I’d paid the bills and the tax office, and put it in the Exchange before it all got spent.

I stared at the bits of paper. All I could see was the Chief’s face.

A dangerous secret. If only he knew.

Now things were quiet, I couldn’t avoid thinking about the Avatars anymore. They were here, right here on Scalentine.

All right, I’d been... a little distracted the last few days. But knowing they were here, I’d done nothing. I’d been keeping my head down, afraid that if I got within a mile of them, if I even asked questions, somehow the past would burst through the skin of the present, and destroy my life. But what was I going to do, just hide and hope they went away?

Because I knew, as well as I knew
them,
that whatever they were here for, it wouldn’t be anything good.

More than twenty years had gone by, but I didn’t think they’d have changed that much.

Half an hour later, I was down in the welcome warmth of the kitchen, watching Flower, in a crisp clean apron, marshal his pans like a battle leader.

“You got a minute?”

“Jivrais, watch that pan, stir that pan. Do not allow that pan one minute’s peace. If you let it burn, you go in it,” he said, ushering me out.

“You’re busy,” I said, backing off. “This can wait.”

But he’d already spotted the bunch of receipts in my hand. “Not if it’s the accounts, it can’t. How broke are we?”

“Not completely. Fain paid me, but I need to know what’s urgent, and I can’t even
read
half of these.” We went into the blue room. “Most are stuff from the butcher; how’s the new one, by the way?”

“All right, I suppose. We had a bit of mutton that was older than I’d have liked. That was that stew, yesterday.”

“That? If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it was gorgeous. How’s Jivrais doing?” Jivrais had decided he wanted to learn to cook. Flower had offered to teach him. I viewed this with some trepidation, given Jivrais’ capacity for chaos.

“He can cook,
if
he keeps his mind on it. Trouble is every time someone he likes the look of walks past the window, he gets distracted. Or anyone wearing clothes he can make fun of, or clothes he wants to buy. Or just clothes.”

“Obviously not enough naked people walking around.”

“I’m not sure that would help,” Flower said.

“Maybe not. Can you teach someone to cook blindfolded?”

“Jivrais’d still find a way of being distracted. Like you.” He tapped the papers.

“All right, all right. Just go over these with me, will you?”

He flipped through them, muttering. His hands are huge, but he has long, clever fingers. He keeps his claws fairly short. Otherwise they get in the way when he’s cooking.

“That’s odd,” he said. “All the stuff for the kitchen’s here, so far as I can tell, except the copy of the last order for Mirril.”

“Our old butcher.”

“Mmm.” Flower frowned. “Did you ever find out what was going on there? She was so reliable. I mean, the new one’s all right, though that lad of his has a neck and a half, but the quality just isn’t as good.”

“She just said she couldn’t serve us anymore. You know how it is, Flower.”

He kept flicking through the papers, sorting them into order. “That’s what’s strange about it. I mean,
she
knew how it was, too. She’s always known what sort of place this is, never bothered her before.”

“Maybe she got
religion
,” I said.

Flower looked down at me. “Ouch.” He took a glance around, but there was no-one else near us. “Babylon?”

“Hmm.”

“We’ve never talked about where either of us came from. You took me in and I was grateful...”

“Flower, I couldn’t run this place without you
.”

“Pff. Anyway, I just wondered if you ever felt like talking, you know, I’ve got some pretty good golden hidden away. Thought we could break it out, maybe tonight. No customers, after all.”

“What brought this on?” I said, sharper than I meant to. “Did you... has someone been asking about me?”

He shrugged, looking down at the bills. “No. And I wouldn’t tell them anything if I knew it. You should know that.”

“I’m sorry, Flower. It’s been a little crazy.”

“I had noticed.”

“As for that golden – yes. Soon.” I patted his arm. Actually I wanted to throw my arms around him and hold on; I wanted to put my arms around the whole building and hold on.

We went back to the office and looked for the copy of the order for Mirril, but it wasn’t around. It was just a bit of paper with my signature scrawled on it; I told Flower not to fret. Rather wished someone would tell me the same thing, not that it would have helped.

I packed the bag of Fain’s money inside my coat and headed for the Exchange.

We were close enough to Twomoon now that the streets were getting lively; I could hear the clash and shriek of a band from Hayanna howling through the streets. The music was supposed to drive away the evils that lurked under the double moon. I don’t know about evils, but it would work on me.

Pity it wouldn’t work on the Avatars.
Could
they be here looking for me? They didn’t know me by my current name, but eventually it would occur to one of them to start checking brothels. Or sending someone to do it, more likely. What could I do? Shut the place down? Some of my crew had places to go, like Laney, and Flower could get a job anywhere he chose, but what about Jivrais? Essie? Ireq? And the thought of them all scattered to the winds... dammit, they were my
family
.

I barely managed to duck a bit of random magic that fizzed past my ear, and roundly cursed the bloody wizard who was too busy experimenting to look where he was throwing his spells. But you get a lot of that around Twomoon; I should have been keeping my eyes open.

I tried to concentrate on my surroundings, but I couldn’t. Instead I thought about maybe taking myself off somewhere; hiding out, at least until the Avatars had left Scalentine, but I’d have to come up with some kind of explanation for the crew.

And was I really going to run? Again, after all this time?

Unwillingly, I thought of Kittack, who hadn’t wanted to get involved, but had. Of Enthemmerlee herself. She could have turned away, she could have lived the easy life of someone at the top of the Gudain hierarchy. Instead...