Babylon Steel (45 page)

“Previous?”

I turned around.

Previous, Laney, Flower and the Twins were standing there. Previous was flushed and sweating; Laney, wearing strangely practical garments of plain linen, her green eyes rimmed red, looked so sick she was almost the same colour as Flower, who was holding her up and scowling at me. The Twins were, as always, as neat and self-contained as cats. Even Cruel’s bandage looked as jaunty as a pirate’s bandanna.

“You honestly thought we’d just let you
go?”
Flower said.

I clutched at the neck of the nearest sandmule to steady myself, and it bawled a protest. “No, no. I can’t believe you did this. How? How did you... never mind. You have to go home, all of you.”

“Why?” Previous said. “And frankly, after what we went through catching up with you, I’d rather fight Nederans.
Drunk
Nederans.”

I took a breath, looked around; the ostler had drifted outside to gossip with a friend, and was out of earshot. I grasped Previous by the shoulders. “The Avatars. If they think for a moment that you might be a threat, they will have you killed, or tear your guts out and keep you alive just to make an example of you. Do you understand me? I’m not taking you lot anywhere near them. Please. Go home.”

“Who said anything about ‘taking’?” Cruel said, stretching elegantly. “We’re not servants, as you’ve often pointed out. We want to take a little trip, well, who’s to stop us?”

“Cruel, you don’t even know what you’d be facing!”

She shrugged. “Then you’d better tell us, hadn’t you?”

“No! Please.” I was so caught between fury, tears, gratitude and terror I could barely get the words out. “Hap-Canae burned my lover to death in front of my eyes, just by touching him. You think I want to see that happen to you?”

“Babylon.” Flower loomed over me. He wasn’t wearing his apron; he looked odd without it, somehow much bigger, and more muscular, and more dangerous. A great long scar, paler green than the rest of his skin, ran from his left shoulder to the right of his waist.

He shook his head. “Look at you. If I ever thought a little thing like you was going to be trying to keep
me
safe... what sort of life do you think I had before I arrived in Scalentine? Or any of us? You think we were all wrapped in silk and petals? You have any idea how many times I’ve fought for my life? Never mind, I’ll tell you later. Just accept that I do know how to look after myself.”

“And Laney?” I said, “you can’t even
walk.
”

“Oh, Babylon, darling, really,” Laney rasped. “It’s just portal sickness, I’ll be over it in an hour or so. And we’re not on Scalentine, are we? I mean, I won’t have the same powers I would in my own plane, but still.” Laney managed a small, but thoroughly disconcerting smile. “Let’s just say, you’ve never met the Lady Lanetherai, and neither have they. I mean, how do you think we
got
here?”

“We can all manage,” Cruel said. “Trust me.” Unusual nodded.

“So what’s the plan?” Previous said.

“Plan? The
plan
was for me to leave you lot safe behind me, that was the
plan.
”

“We’ll have to make a new one, then, won’t we?” Previous said.

U
NABLE TO STOP
them hiring their own sandmules (they just threw Empire coinage at the man until he collapsed in a heap of gibbering gratitude) I realised that the only thing I could do, that might stop them, was tell them everything.

There was no time. I would have to talk as we rode.

There was a house beside the livery stable. Outside was a small, headless statue; heavy-breasted, a sword at its side.

Babaska. All of her statues had been broken, of course. But I could see the stains where someone had poured wine at her feet, and a few crumbs of bread.

A couple of women were leaning in the doorway, looking weary and underfed. “A little company?” one called out, in broken Lithan. “We’ll make you welcome.”

“Sorry, ladies,” Cruel said. “Here on business.”

The whores glanced at me too, and glanced again. I supposed it was the crew. It could hardly be me. When I’d been Babaska’s Avatar, I’d been a sixteen year old girl with an Avatar’s charisma and glow. Now, I was a slightly-used woman a good few years older, and the description ‘handsome’ was as close as I was going to get. But there were other considerations...

“There is one thing you can do for us,” I said. “Scarves. Head wraps, for the dust. We’ll pay well.”

One of the women scurried inside and came out with armfuls of cloth: turquoise and emerald, rose and scarlet, threaded with gold. Hoarded treasure.

As I took the scarves one of the women smiled at me, and drew her finger along her jaw, in exactly the place I bore my scar. Where Babaska bore hers. I could see a faint line, like a smudge of kohl, along her jaw.

Before I could puzzle it out, she bowed, and hurried back inside.

“Here,” I said to the others. “Put these on. Wrap it over your head and around your face.” I demonstrated; my hands remembered, moving as though I’d done it only yesterday.

“Must we?” Unusual scowled at his scarf, which was a vivid yellow.

“Yes, unless you want a mouth full of grit and a face like a stonemason’s before we’ve been on the road an hour. Besides, in case you hadn’t noticed, there wasn’t any other foreign trade coming through the portal. There were never many people on this plane who weren’t Tiresan, and I’d rather not have everyone noticing us, if you don’t mind.”

“And that’s supposed to work on me how?” Flower said.

“Dammit, Flower... yes, all right, but at least cover your head. They might not notice the rest of you once it’s dark.”

The evening shadows were stretching long and blue across the desert, and the wild dogs began to howl. We saw a few of them: pathetic and mange-ridden for the most part, slinking among the thin clumps of whistle-grass and biteweed, their shadows far more threatening than themselves.

A
S
I
SETTLED
back into the sandmule’s stride, once as familiar to me as my own, I kept drawing breath to speak. The sandmules’ feet with their great soft pads went
thup, thup
on the cracked hardpan. The stars burned hard and far. I could hear the crew’s soft comments, but they were mostly quiet, and I knew they were waiting.

In the end, I stared at the sandmule’s great veined ears as they twitched and furled, and said, “I was an orphan lucky to get taken in as a servant. I was Chosen, I thought, to be trained as a priestess...”

I told them about the Avatars, and how I had become one; about the girls, about what I had done and failed to do. My voice sounded strange to me – young, distant, like the memory of Ebi.

I told them about the way I’d been punished, and how I had run, abandoning my friends, the soldiers and whores I was supposed to protect. I told them about the ring. Both rings.

By the time I trailed into silence, I felt numb, and a long way from everything.

No-one said anything for a while. Then Previous pulled up alongside me, and patted me on the arm. “Sounds to me like these bastards are well overdue for a kicking,” she said.

“Kicking’s the least of it,” Flower growled. “When I get hold of them...” his mule made a hoarse whine of protest as his hands tightened hard on the reins.

I turned my mule to face them.

Laney’s eyes were glowing brilliant scarlet, and she was crying. It made her look as though she were weeping blood, and I shuddered to my bones.

“Now you’ve heard,” I said. “You know what you’re facing. So. One last time. Will you go home?”

They just looked at me, stubborn as a wall.

“Oh, arse on the lot of you,” I said. I wrenched the sandmule around so my back was to them, because seeing your battle-leader in tears isn’t generally good for morale, and we set off again.

Previous coughed, and said, “So. You’re sort of an ex-goddess of war, then.”

“Not quite. Avatar. And ex, yes. Definitely
ex
.”

“No wonder you’re so bloody good at fighting.”

“Hah. Not that good, I’ve still got the bruises from our last training bout, remember?”

“Hey, yeah. So, I beat you, eh?”

“To a pulp, thank you very much. Don’t sound so damn pleased with yourself, Previous. I’m no Avatar any longer.”

“Don’t ruin her moment of glory,” Laney said. “If she wants to have beaten up a goddess, let her.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll keep it in mind next time she wants to lame me for life.”

“And you were a goddess of sex, as well?” Laney said. “You could really make men swoon just by looking at them?”

“And? You can do that anyway,” I said.

“Not
all
of them.” She pouted.

“Even you couldn’t handle
every
man in the planes.”

“I wouldn’t mind the chance to try.”

I felt hollowed out with exhaustion, but oddly light, as though there were space in my head for the first time in a very long time. “I suppose I’d better try and come up with a plan, then,” I said.

“Well, yes, that
might
be useful,” said Laney.

“How does the ring actually work?” Cruel said. “We need to know that before we can plan anything, don’t we?”

“From what Mokraine said, it has to be placed into some kind of hollow. There’s a place in the altar that looks the right shape.”

“So if we can get in there,” Previous said, “you can just pop it in there and we run and it goes boom?”

“Not quite. For one thing it has to be placed when something happens – Mokraine said the appearance of the altar will change. It has to be put there at the right time. Also, someone has to be wearing it.”

“Ah. Did he say anything about what
happens
to the person who’s wearing it?”

“No. But the power is supposed to sort of dissipate out. That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage.

“So,” Laney said. “Why don’t you just swap the one you’ve got for the one
they’ve
got, and they’ll use it, and they’ll go foof? Or the power will go foof, which is just as good.”

I stared at her. “Just swap them.”

“Well, yes, if you can find where they’re keeping the fake one, why not?”

I didn’t answer for a moment, thinking. Could it
really
work like that? I felt a rising hope. Maybe I could just swap the real ring for the fake, get my crew the hells out of there, and let the Avatars do the job for me. Bring about their own destruction.

“Where would they keep the ring?” Flower said.

“They trust each other about as much as hyenas around a corpse. They’d keep it somewhere they could all keep an eye on it, until it was time for the ceremony. Somewhere safe, but neutral; nowhere anyone else might happen on it. There’s only one place I can think of... the altar-room.”

“They’d keep it in the room where the ceremony’s supposed to happen?” Laney said. “Really? What if something went wrong? What if someone got in? Will there be guards?”

“There never used to be, because they didn’t want anyone knowing it was there. And because of the opening spell. But it would be sensible to assume they’d have taken
some
precautions. And so should we. They have charisma, all of them. Very strong.”

“Well you did ask for an anti-charisma potion,” Laney said. “So I assumed we might need it. I dosed everyone before we left. Honestly, Babylon.”

“So all the time I thought I was leaving you behind... how the hells
did
you follow me, anyway?”

“You mentioned Tiresana,” Unusual said. “After that, all we had to do was keep after you. The trouble wasn’t that, it was keeping out of sight until it was too late for you to give us the slip.”

“But I had papers...”

“We had me,” Laney said. “Oh, and some money.”

“Whose money?”

“The money you forgot to take to the Exchange. The rest of Fain’s and the money from the Vessels and Lord Antheran.”

“Oh, great. So are we broke again?”

“Well, not
entirely.”

We raced the night across the desert, stopping only to water the beasts and ourselves at a well in a patch of scrub, dying trees, and the remains of a few scattered walls.

The well had Rohikanta’s head carved on it, with fish frolicking in his beard. I realised I knew the place. But when I’d last seen it there had been a small but vigorous market here, people selling dried fruit and water-bottles and fortunes. Now, nothing but a smear of silty water, and the well.

Previous doused her face, and looked up, dripping. “Wouldn’t hurt to have a diversion on hand,” she said. “Something to get any guards looking the other way.”

“I can do that,” Laney said. “I think...” she shook out her sleeves, gave the nearest palm tree a calculating look, raised her hand, and flicked her fingers.

A fat spark the size of an orange shot out of her hand, danced around the tree, giggling, zoomed out over the pool, dipped to meet its own reflection with a hiss, bounced up, and shot up into the night, still giggling.

“Well...” Previous said, doubt in her voice.

Laney was scowling at her hand, and looked pale. “Drat.”

“What?” I said.

“There’s something wrong here. That was
hard.
Much harder than it should have been.
And
it didn’t work.”

“Like on Scalentine?” I said.

“Oh no. On Scalentine it’s like, you can only, I don’t know, you can only shout so loudly. After that you can’t shout any louder however hard you try; something damps the noise down as it leaves. Here... it’s more like something’s stopping your voice working properly in the first place. And it feels
wrong.
”

“Well, I suppose Scalentine isn’t the only plane where magic works differently.”

“I may have to stick with illusions, then,” Laney said. “Botheration. Do they
have
Fey here?”

“I’d never seen any until I left. Tiresana didn’t interact much with other planes; I suppose the Avatars preferred it that way. They always acted as though the portal didn’t exist.”

“Who’d they have their wars with, then?” said Previous.

“Each other. They sent their soldiers out to fight as though they were chess-pieces. It was a game to them.”