Babylon Steel (22 page)

Why?

Did she want us to get into trouble, without anyone knowing she’d ‘interfered’?

I stood shuddering in the silent temple, and hauled on the door myself, until it locked again.

Despite my exhaustion, I lay awake the rest of the night, listening to the maddened dogs barking at the indifferent moon.

Two nights later, death prowled the corridors. I saw several bodies being carried across the courtyard. And next morning Aka-Tete hunched on the roof of his temple in his vulture aspect, the dark reek of death spilling from his feathers, and Jonat was nowhere to be found. They said she had gone to the temple of Broseid, far to the North; a cold place to send a desert girl.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

P
REVIOUS MET ME
at the door of the Lantern with a grin. “You’ll never guess,” she said.

“What?”

“We had a delivery. From the Vessels, no less.”

“What? What was it?”

“Money.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope; it’s in your office. There’s a note, too.”

“Did Laney check it?”

“Babylon, come on. Of
course
she checked it. And she says it’s fine; it’s money. And paper and ink. And a bag. No curse, no dodgy spells, nothing she can find.”

“What in all the hells are they giving us
money
for? Do they think they can
buy
souls, or what?”

“You could just read the note and find out.”

I took the stairs fast, and there it was, sitting on the table in my office. A bleached linen bag. Well, of course, they’d hardly go in for velvet and embroidery. And a note, neatly folded, and sealed with blue wax; or at least, formerly sealed. Laney, or someone, had opened it – to check whether the seal would do something nasty when broken, for one thing, and for another because they’re my crew, and nosy as pigs after truffles.

‘The High Council of the Vessels of Purity of Scalentine have been given to understand that their actions may have been seen as intended to cause the disruption of business and might have been considered to be an infringement of Scalentine’s laws. While the Vessels of Purity in no way condone the encouragement of sin, the Order has always chosen to site its temples where the laws of the land do not directly conflict with the Rules of the Order, and therefore we neither condone nor encourage the breaking of any law. In regard of which we send this coin, believed to be an adequate recompense for any loss that may have resulted from any misunderstandings.’

A masterpiece of maybes, that was. It could have been written by a lawyer. Perhaps it was.

I tipped the coin out onto the table. It was pretty close to what we’d have made in the hours we’d lost while the Vessels hung about outside, on a normal day. How had they found
that
out? Who’d done the research?

And never mind how,
why?
Had the Chief gone and talked to them after all? They weren’t admitting anything; they
very carefully
weren’t admitting a single thing. But something had put the wind up their tails all right.

I scooped the coins back into the bag, put it in the cupboard in my office, and went to my room to have a think.

T
HE NEXT THING
I knew, there was whispering outside the door. I sat up and groaned. I hadn’t meant to doze off. “Who’s there?”

Laney poked her head around the door. “There’s someone to see you.”

I sat up, holding my head. The pain felt like a hangover, which was hardly fair since I hadn’t had a serious drink in days. “Who?”

“Not a client, I don’t think. Sit still.” Laney put her narrow, cool hands either side of my head, the silk of her sleeves brushing against my hair, and I felt a tingling through her fingers. I got a brief vision of a stream running through a forest, tumbling down between mossy, water-glittering rocks, the brilliant blue flash of some bird flicking down to the water. Then it was gone, and my headache with it.

“That’s better. Thanks, Laney. So who’s our visitor?”

“I don’t know. They’re wearing a deglamour.”

A deglamour is the opposite of a charisma glamour. Makes anyone’s glance sort of slide over you, without pausing. Not cheap, and something the militia are constantly trying to get outlawed. They weren’t unknown among rich clients who preferred discretion, but since it was getting close to Twomoon I strapped the sword on before I went down, and signalled Laney to hang about, just in case.

The visitor was standing just outside the main door, wearing a great hooded cape – deep blue, the lining crimson. Previous, hand on hilt, was between them and the entrance, not in an aggressive stance, just a ready one. She glanced at me.

“Take the deglamour off, if you please,” I said.

The visitor turned so their face was hidden from Previous and tipped back their hood. The glamour dissipated.

It was Clariel, from the Lodestone.

I recovered my balance. She must have her own reasons for not wanting to be seen coming here. Clariel had reasons for everything. “S’all right, Previous. Stay on the door, I know this one. Come in, then.” Clariel put her hood back up, and I led her through to the Little Parlour. “Drink?”

She waved a hand, as though a fly were buzzing round her – not that I think one would dare. “No. I can’t stay.”

I was briefly distracted by wondering whether the cape had slits cut for her wings, or what; I’d never seen her in outdoor gear. I don’t think I’d ever seen her outside the Lodestone, come to that. Her face was the same calm, pure-cut cameo as ever. But under the cape I could see her wings shifting constantly. The sound of feathers against satin lining made an odd, jagged whispering.

“So. You have some information for me?” I said.

“What?”

“I assume that’s why you’re here.”

“Yes,” she said, fixing her gaze on a painting of a basket of cherries. It wasn’t a great painting, but I liked it. Clariel, however, was staring at it as though it contained the secret of the ages.

“Clariel, is everything all right?” This was
not
a question I expected to be asking. If anyone ever gave the impression of being utterly in control of their personal universe, it was Clariel.

She kept looking at the painting. “Babylon, you understand, I have a business to run. I depend on the goodwill of my clients and those they speak to.”

“I thought you depended on providing the best food in Scalentine.”

She shook her head. “Never mind. The point is that I may have some information for you, but it is essential, you understand, that no-one,
no-one,
knows it came from me.”

“I’m not a total blabbermouth, Clariel. For the All’s sake, if you wanted to pass something on that secretly, why come here yourself? Don’t you trust your staff?” But I knew the answer to that. Clariel’s staff were just that, staff. Not crew, like my lot, not friends. She paid them, they did their jobs. If someone made a better offer, or they couldn’t take the pace, they left.

Why she hadn’t got a message to me, though, asking me to come to her...

“If it
should
come out that I was here,” she said, “I came to get a recipe. Flower’s skills are well known.”

I tried to hide a smile. So she didn’t want anyone to think she’d come here for the skills the house was really well-known for.

“All right, I’ll bite. Give. What is this so-dangerous information?”

“Not dangerous, that I know of. Merely
awkward.
I have heard something about a girl who has gone missing. A very important girl.”

I wasn’t going to let Clariel think I was that easy to get round. “A thousand girls go missing all the time, across the Planes. What makes you think it’s the one I’m looking for?”

“The fact that a number of people are seeking her with great eagerness, including her family. The fact that they seem to believe she disappeared
here,
at the same time that the Avatars from Tiresana arrived...”

The room fizzed, darkened. Everything started to spin away. I could hear Clariel still speaking, but I had no idea what she was saying. I rested one hand on the back of the nearest chair, gripped it until my fingers hurt.
I’d known. I’d known as soon as I’d seen the child’s drawing on the wall.

I could
not
pass out. If Clariel picked up on my reaction, if
that
information made its way back to the wrong ears, I’d be dead, or worse.

I curled my free hand so my nails dug into my palm.
They’re here; they’re here, in Scalentine. Keep your wits about you, Babylon. You need them. Lose it now and you’re a long way worse than dead.

“...so you see, her family have a great deal of influence. If they find out that I was talking to you – indeed, to anyone...”

“I understand.” My voice sounded odd to me, but Clariel didn’t seem to notice. Just as well for me she was so distracted at the thought of losing business.

I had to hear this. I dragged up every rag of concentration I possessed. “Run it by me again, Clariel. Then we’re done.”

“Oh for the All’s sake, Babylon. Very well. Members of two of the high families of Incandress dined at the Lodestone. I overheard a fragment of their conversation. The girl is the daughter of one of them, and affianced to the other. She has eloped. They are anxious,
extremely anxious
, to get her back.”

“So I should hope.”

“Specifically, they are anxious to retrieve her before Twomoon.”

“Yes, so I’d heard. But why before Twomoon? Don’t tell me she’s a were.”

“Not that I could gather. But Twomoon on Scalentine reflects a time of change on Incandress, and elsewhere. It is a syzygy. You know how these things work.”

Well, no, I don’t. I’m not convinced anyone does, however many warlocks with a mouthful of measurements try and tell you otherwise.

My mind was running away with irrelevancies, trying to think about anything except the words ‘Avatars’ and ‘Tiresana.’ I
had
to concentrate. “So why Twomoon? They’re not just worried about her for her own sake?”

“I did not get that impression. Nor does it seem to be a matter of mere... preservation of virtue.” She ruffled her wings with distaste.

“If the poor kid’s been taken by a pimp, it’s somewhat late to worry about that, unless they’re keeping her as a special treat for some bastard.” I saw Clariel’s face go slightly more rigid, but I was too thrown to worry much about her sensibilities at the moment. “So, what
are
they worried about?”

“It wasn’t clear. They were talking among themselves, greatly agitated. They seemed to be in accord that the daughter must be retrieved, and
married,
before the ‘becoming time.’ Which, as I say, appears to coincide with Twomoon. Possibly. My knowledge of Incandrese is imperfect.”

Typical. Clariel had a working knowledge of a ridiculous number of languages. Well, I guess it goes with the territory. Ordering in a restaurant’s more complicated than in a brothel; you can’t rely on sign language so much.

I tried to wrench my thoughts into enough order to run through what she’d said. So far it pretty much matched what I’d heard from Fain. “None of this helps me find her,” I said.

Her eyebrows snapped down like two spears at the throw. “Babylon, I came here at some personal inconvenience to tell you this and you appear not to have been listening at all.”

“I’m listening. Tell me, Clariel.”

She sighed with impatience. “They talked... I’m not certain. I heard a word like ‘revival,’ or ‘resurgence.’ Something from the past. A dead past that should stay dead.”

That’s the problem with the past. Too often, it doesn’t.

“Nothing else?”

“No. Except that the families were united in their desire to get the girl back. There were no recriminations, no arguments. Both families seemed... frightened.”

“That’s weird.”

“Indeed.” Clariel seemed to have regained all her equilibrium. She cocked her head as the great clock in the square began its run-up to the fifth hour; a rising shimmer of notes. “I must go. You will send Flower to me?”

I still had enough of my wits about me not to be outplayed. “I’ll send the recipe. You get Flower to show you how to do it
if
your information helps me find the girl.”

Something crossed her face that might almost, if you were feeling generous, be a smile. “Very well.” She touched the ornament at her throat and the deglamour spread over her again, rendering her dull, normal, unrecognisable. She reached out a hand to me, and I shook it.

As soon as she had gone I dropped into the nearest chair. I felt sick. My hands were freezing. I wondered if Clariel had noticed. Hers were smooth, cool. Marble hands.

I
SAT IN
the wingback chair by the window of my room. I could see down the street to the town square, and the clock.
They’re here.
I watched the interlocking wheels tell their jewelled minutes; the circles that showed the planes moving almost imperceptibly into alignment as the syzygy grew closer.
The Avatars are here, on Scalentine.
It was still afternoon, but dropping to dark; the lamplighter was doing his rounds, the town square lights coming on in pools of warm yellow. The two moons were up, their light falling where the last of the day and the first of the lanterns didn’t reach, casting mauve and green shadows.

In the shadows at the corner just before Goldencat Street opens onto the square, I thought I caught a flicker of movement, smoke-grey, skull-white. Something tall and faintly birdlike; it gave me a grue. I peered, trying to focus. There was a yell to my left, some drunk being thrown out of the Sailor’s Last Hope, the tavern just down the street, and when I looked back to the square, the pale figure had gone. Maybe it had never been there; just a fear, or a memory.

Tiresans don’t leave. Even, especially, Avatars. Whatever they want, they want it a lot.

I settled back in my chair and looked out at the moons.

A room, familiar, crowded with people. Walls of warm creamy stone painted with hundreds of small, brilliant figures of people, trees, birds, beasts, doubling one crowd with another. The floor of polished red granite glimmering in the light of torches. The slow solemn chant, the slap of sandaled feet and the hush of robes.