Babylon Steel (36 page)

At least I’d caught up to Frithlit before he cleaned me out, but what else might he have got in my name, and with my ring?

And what about poor old Previous?

And what was I going to do about the thrice-damned bloody Avatars?

There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in that room except me and the clock, and too much time to think, with very little to show for it. I ran through some training moves, just for something to do, and nearly ran through the banker as well, when he opened the door without warning.

He squeaked; fortunately I’d time to pull the blow. “Madam Steel?”

“Is he here?”

“It’s the militia, Madam. They want to talk to you.”

“What? Where’s Frithlit?”

“He... er... hasn’t arrived.” The banker, looking disconcerted, tugged at his beard.

I wondered for a moment, with a sudden surge of hope, if the Chief was here, but why he’d have come looking for me and how he’d have known I was here I couldn’t imagine. “You’d better take me to the millies, then.”

It wasn’t the Chief. It was Roflet, the blonde young officer with the eyelashes. He was standing very straight, with his hands by his sides, all his flirtatious charm put away. “I understand you were looking for Frithlit Oprentic, Madam Steel.”

“If that’s his name, I was, yes. Little bastard tried to rob me. Gave one of my crew a pair of bracers he’d conned out of Bannerman’s, too.” I dropped the package on the table. “These. Seems he didn’t give a toss if she was caught wearing them and accused of robbery. He forged a copy of my seal-ring and tried to get money in my name – I suppose the banker told you.”

Roflet glanced at the package. “I see. When did you discover the forgery?”

“About an hour ago, when I came here.”

“Can you tell me when you saw him last?”

I thought back. He’d been there when we were looking after Cruel. “Yesterday, about mid-afternoon, I think.”

“And you haven’t seen him since.”

“No. Why? Who’s he ripped off this time?”

“Possibly someone who took it rather badly. We just found his body.”

TIRESANA

I
WANDERED TOWARDS
the meeting-place we’d arranged, barely seeing what was around me; seeing only those cold sarcophagi, the pathetic little relics. The torn scarf, the dented ring.

Ranay came towards me with his hands held out. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but he looked stricken. “What is it?”

The worst of it was the sense that I’d
known
, somewhere, in the back of my mind. I’d suspected things were wrong, that we were being lied to.

I’d done nothing. And now all of them but me were dead.

I shook my head. I felt strange, afloat. He took my hands. “You’re cold.” Outside the sun was a bronze hammer; the precinct swam with heat. I hadn’t even realised my hands were freezing.

“Yes.”

He pressed my hands to his chest to warm them, wrapped me close in his arms. I buried my head in his neck, in the clean fresh scent of him.

“Help me,” I said.

“Tell me.”

So I told him.

He just held me for a long time, stroking my hair.

“I hate them,” I said, into his shoulder. “I hate them and I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to be one of them anymore, Ebi. I found something.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I think so. If I have read the scrolls correctly, you must shed your blood on the altar, and place your hands where you placed them before, and you’ll be free. Not an Avatar any longer.”

I should have felt relief. I did. And yet, I realised; I was planning to run. I was
Babaska’s
Avatar. Babaska didn’t run from anything. Strategic retreat, yes, but never cowardice. I thought of those soldiers, in their stinking barracks; I thought of the dead girls – Velance, Jonat, Renavir. Adissi. How many more?

If I stopped being an Avatar, I’d have nothing to fight them with. Nothing at all.

I put my arms around him. “So many people are dying, Ranay. For nothing. While I’m still... this, while I still have some power, I think we should tell them.”

“Tell them?”

“What the Avatars are.”

He looked at me, silent. I felt a weight on my heart. He’d said he would do anything I asked; he hadn’t promised to die for a forlorn hope. Maybe I would have to do this alone.

But that wasn’t what troubled him. “Ebi,” he said, “I’m not sure it will work.”

“What do you mean?”

He took my hands. “I’ve been a priest longer than you’ve been an Avatar. I’ve seen them at the temples. Do you know that the worse things get, the more they come to worship? People are so frightened; they see how things are, the dust where the crops used to be, the eyeless children. But the Avatars are powerful. People believe in their power; they’re desperate to believe in
something
. You’re going to be telling them that power’s hollow. I don’t think they’ll want to listen.”

I thought about it.

“Then maybe we should just start with me. Maybe... maybe we can get them to understand, if we tell them about me, if we can prove it, then maybe they’ll believe.”

He nodded. “Perhaps. When a temple starts to fall, it doesn’t go all at once. It starts with a little crack, that spreads and widens. Do you have a way to make one?”

“There are people who knew me. Before. If we can find them...”

Not the master. Certainly not the mistress. But Radan, Sesh, Kyrl, they knew me. They would know me now, however much I’d changed.

“There’s something I need you to do,” I said. “Get a message to Babaska’s temple at Pryat, to be passed on to the cousin of the Priestess there.”

“What message?”

“‘Tell Kyrl...’” I thought for a long time.

“‘Tell Kyrl I’m about to risk everything on a bad hand, and does she fancy joining the game?’”

He repeated it, until he had it by heart.

“Ranay, did you find any more of those things about the godhead jewel?”

“Yes. A few.”

“Were there more of those marks? Because I think I might have seen them before.” The scroll Hap-Canae had found in the library, the one he’d burned; that too had had something about godhead on it. True godhead that came with blade and flower.

“I found two or three more. Always upside-down to the text. Perhaps she hoped that they wouldn’t realise it was her mark.”

I wondered who she had been. Alone, frightened, trying to leave clues, not knowing if anyone would ever find them, already feeling her death breathing down her neck.

“If we found the jewel, could we destroy it, do you think?” I said. “Stop them from ever using it?”

“Maybe. But things like that... even if we could find it, it’s not always easy to destroy such a thing. Or safe.”

And we didn’t even know what it was. All we could do was start to undermine them the best we could. I knew it might be a long time before Kyrl could get to me; if she could. If she was still alive. So, readying the ground, we started to chisel cracks. Whispers among the supplicants at the temples. Rumour, spreading on the hot summer wind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

F
RITHLIT WAS DEAD.
Through the shock I felt a sting; not sorrow, exactly, but a kind of regret. He’d been a fraudster and a lowlife, but he wasn’t the worst and, hells, when I first met him, I’d actually
liked
him. And so had Previous. Oh, sweet All. Breaking this news to her was going to be even more fun than the last time.

“What happened?”

“No-one knows. The last anyone saw of him alive, he was at a card game in the Moon and Mackerel, down on the docks, this afternoon.”

Why in the name of all that was sane Frithlit would choose to get into a dodgy card game when he had a big chunk of someone else’s money at the Exchange, just waiting to be walked off with, was beyond me. But maybe he was someone who couldn’t resist just one more scam. I’ve met the type: always overreaching.

“Did he try and pull a con?”

“No-one made a fuss about being cheated. But apparently there was interest in a certain ring he was wearing; a lot of interest. Someone tried to buy it from him, and he said no. They were very insistent, offered a considerable amount of money, and he still said no.”

“A ring?”

I stared at the ring on my finger. So did Roflet. “Deep red, with a sword and lotus carved in the stone,” he said. “From what our informant said, there has been some interest in a ring like that, the last few days.”

“But who’d have wanted it? It isn’t even real!” Except, I realised, no-one knew that, apart from me and Frithlit.

“All we were able to find out,” Roflet said, “is that money was being offered to find that ring, and take it to a contact at the Blue Sun. And the victim wasn’t wearing any jewellery when we found him.” His eyes, very blue, were as cold as Clariel’s. “So you only just discovered the forgery? And the theft of the bracers?”

“Yes, I told you.”

“Because some people might think that was a motive.”

“A... wait a minute. You don’t think
I
killed him? Last time I saw him I didn’t even know he was a thief!”

“You were, however, extremely angry. You’re a trained fighter, are you not, Madam Steel?”

I
was
getting angry now, and hauled on my temper hard. “A fighter, yes. I am not a murderer. And if I’d caught Frithlit, I’d certainly have been tempted to slap him bluer than he was already, for trying to steal from me, and even more for being a rotten deceiving little fraud who hurt a good friend of mine, but kill him? There are worse things he could have done, Officer Roflet. Much worse. I don’t kill people over trivialities.”

At his expression, I realised I could possibly have put that better. “And you don’t know anything about why someone – several someones – might have been trying to buy a copy of your ring?” he said.

“No. I mean, unless everyone’s suddenly got the same idea as Frithlit and is planning to rip me off, but frankly, anyone who thinks I’ve got that kind of money...” I shut up as a new idea fought its way to the front of my brain, and my throat closed.

“Madam Steel?”

“The Blue Sun.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said, a contact at the Blue Sun. Was he burned? Frithlit?”

“Burned?” Roflet looked startled. “No, he was drowned. The tide rolled him back in. It was only luck we found him so quickly, otherwise he might have been washed out through Portal Bealach and that would have been it.”

Drowned. Shakanti, I had no doubt at all. Even that mad bitch had realised turning him to stone might cause comment.

What if they had come to Scalentine, not for me, but for my ring? But how had they traced it? Followed it from portal to portal?

The seer. I remembered the seer; that eyeless, self-possessed young man. Had they used him to find the ring?
I have a bent for metal,
he’d said. They must have done; him or someone like him. Not that the how of it mattered. They’d found it, or so they thought. But the real question remained.

Why did they want it? Did they actually want it at all, or was it only a way to track me? And why
now?

Roflet cleared his throat, making me start. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Why burned?” he said.

“What? Oh, I don’t know... I thought... maybe fire magic...” It was a rubbish explanation and we both knew it.

“If you think you may know something, Madam Steel, the Chief would appreciate it if you let us know.”

“Yes. How is he?” I said, before I could stop myself.

“Still working.”

“Still? Isn’t he getting kind of close to Change now?”

“I’m sure he’ll take himself off duty as soon as he feels it necessary,” Roflet said.

I stared at the ring, trying to force my brain to work.

What if I told him, right now, that I suspected the Avatars might have something to do with this death? Even if he believed me, it would mean telling him, someone I barely knew, more about the past than I was comfortable with. And what would they do? Arrest the Avatars?

Hardly. The Diplomatic Section would step in before you could say ‘Neutral Territory.’

But if I didn’t tell them, and it came out anyway? What would the Chief think of me then?

“Officer Roflet? Do you know anything about some demigods who were staying at the Blue Moon?”

“Demigods? Oh, that lot who caused such a fuss a few days ago? They’re gone.”

“Gone.”

Gone.

That meant, if it meant anything, that it had been the ring they wanted, not me. I was, strangely, conscious of a kind of wounded pride. I’d mattered so little, then?

“Yes, they’re gone. Why?” Roflet said.

“I... I thought... I don’t know. They were staying at the Blue Sun.”

“You think
demigods
might have had something to do with this?”

“Well, he’s dead, and they’re gone...”

“Why, exactly, do you think demigods would go to the trouble of murdering a petty criminal?”

Because murder’s what they do
, I thought, and only just stopped myself from saying so.

I shrugged. If they were off-plane, they were out of the militia’s jurisdiction in any case. Which meant the Chief couldn’t do anything. Which meant there was no point troubling him with it.
You’re fudging, Babylon. Be honest with yourself, at least. You just don’t want to tell him.
“Silly, I suppose,” I said. “We’ve enough murderers right here on Scalentine. Why look elsewhere for ’em?”

“Indeed,” he said. “Murderers are usually someone the victim knew, after all. We’re going to want to talk to you again, Madam Steel.” He picked up his helmet. “Let us know if you’re planning to travel off-plane, if you please. And if you think of anything, please contact us.”

TIRESANA