Babylon Steel (24 page)

“What do you mean, Kittack?”

“I mean is maybe know someone might know where is Gudain girl, or maybe help you find.”

“Kittack, that’s wonderful!”

He shrugged. “No. Is political. Big trouble for everybody. But maybe sometimes got to deal with trouble, even when you think have left it behind, goodbye. Been long time since the ancestor caves, long time since I leave Incandress, but me, I am still Ikinchli. Don’t want everyone back home get head broken because of political stupids. You come?”

“Come where?”

“Meet with talky-talky politicals, maybe know where girl is.”

“Of course I’ll come.”

“You bring some friends, hey? Is political. Is get maybe excitable.”

“Right you are.”

Cruel was on the landing. “Need some help?” she said, smiling at Kittack, who just nodded instead of, as usual, pretend to hide behind me when he saw her. She frowned. “What’s up?”

“I need to go have a word with some people. Should be back soon.”

“We need to know where you’re going?”

I looked at Kittack. He shrugged. “Witchspring Street, first, after that, I don’t know.”

“Well, be careful,” Cruel said. “Oh, Babylon, can I borrow your cloak? That little sod Jivrais has gone off with mine again. Laney offered me hers but it’s
pink.
I don’t
do
pink.”

“It’s on the banister,” I said. It’s a little short on me, so it would be about right on Cruel, especially with the heels she was wearing. “Cruel, how
do
you walk in those things?”

She gave that cool smile. “Practice. Whatever you’re up to, good luck.”

I took Previous and Bliss. I’d have taken Ireq, but he’d eaten something that disagreed with him and was in his room, groaning over a bowl. His fault, as Flower said smugly, for eating outside the Lantern.

Bliss still had his moonlit pallor, but looked slightly more solid than usual, and was going through one of his more alert phases. I didn’t know if we were actually going where the girl was, but if we met someone who’d got close to her, there was a chance Bliss could pick up her trail. Besides, I clung to the hope that giving him tracking work when he was capable of it, reminding him of his old life, might counteract the effect of Fading, pull him back to himself, at least a little.

As we walked up the street I noticed Previous was wearing new bracers. They gleamed on her forearms, the first bit of new armour I’d seen her with in years. They looked expensive, too; delicately engraved with leafy branches and twining beasts. They were a tiny bit long for her: she’d have to have the ends shortened, or they’d chafe the backs of her hands.

“Nice,” I said.

She tugged at a buckle, trying not to grin. “Present,” she said.

“Frithlit?”

“Mmm.”

If she was wearing them even though they didn’t quite fit, it must be love. I knew a good armourer where she could have them shortened, but it might be tactless to mention it.

Kittack took us to the north of the city, into a district where the Ikinchli had bunched together. The sound of running water and wafts of steam trickled from several windows; the scent of fresh fish, mingled with a clean green-water smell. We passed a statue that I recognised, although this one was considerably bigger than the one in Kittack’s room, a good head taller than me. It was of deep red polished stone, carved with a kind of rough grace; it had an Ikinchli’s long jaw and flattened nose, but the high forehead of the Gudain. Its yellow eyes, with their long pupils, stared across the street at a window hung with iron pans.

The door of the house Kittack took me to was half off its hinges, sagging into the street; the windows were broken, stuffed with rags. I remembered the dead girl and had a moment of chilly doubt.

I caught a flicker of movement in the darkness behind the door. Kittack held up a hand and I stopped where I was while he went forward. There was a brief, chittering exchange of which I understood not a syllable. I could feel I was being watched; I hoped the locals were in a receptive mood. I’ve heard about Ikinchli slingshots; the best of them can take out a fly’s eye with a pebble. One small rock aimed with enough accuracy and it’s Goodnight Brain.

Eventually, when I’d had time to get very antsy indeed, I was beckoned forward. I turned to the others.

“Previous, Bliss, you stay out here. If you hear trouble, you know what to do.”

A little light struggled past the cobwebs in the unbroken windows; a big stone tank, steaming gently, stood in the centre of the room. Two Ikinchli stood either side of it, one male, one female, statue-still. The male’s cranial crest was up. Only their eyes moved. After they’d had a good look at me, the woman stepped forward. She had a slingshot, plus a couple of efficient-looking little knives at her hips. “What you know?” she said.

“Not much, and the rest is guessing. But I know that if this girl isn’t found, it could mean a lot of trouble for Ikinchli back on Incandress.”

“Why you care?”

I shrugged. “I don’t like people getting punished for something that isn’t their fault. But frankly? Mainly I’m worried about the girl. I want to find her and talk to her, to make sure she’s safe and has some sort of choice about what she does next.”

The Ikinchli woman exchanged a few words with Kittack, then turned back to me. “Why you so worried about girl?”

“I see a lot of young girls, on the run, scared stupid and prey to every lowlife on the street. You understand? I used to
be
one, but at least I had some training in looking after myself. I...” My breath caught in my throat, suddenly, surprising me. “I want...” The sound of desert dogs, yipping and whining
.
Jonat, lampflames dancing in her dark, terrified eyes.

I shook my head, hard. “I want to help her, if I can. Oh, also, I got paid to find her.” I’d almost forgotten that part.

“Yes.” She nodded at Kittack. “He say. How we know you find, you not take her straight to paymaster, hey?”

“Because she comes first. If I have to give the... paymaster his money back, then so be it.” Right now, that was among my smaller worries.

The Ikinchli woman came right up to me, stared into my eyes, and then sniffed at me, slowly, all over. I stood as still as I could. The other Ikinchli never moved except to blink.

She stood back. “We find her,” she said, “you talk to her, you understand. Then, is decide.”

For the first time the other Ikinchli moved, bursting out in a furious chatter. She spoke to him, pretty sharply by the sound of it, without taking her eyes off me.

“He says, you will not understand. He says, you will not believe. He says, you will betray us.”

You will not believe.
Believe what? That she really was the Itnunnacklish, the One who is Both? Had I been right?

“I say, we see. I say, I think we trust you, and maybe you be help to us. If we think you betray, we kill you. Yes?”

“Seems fair,” I said. “What about my friends?”

“You bring them, maybe they get killed. You tell them this.”

“I think they know, but yes, I’ll tell them.”

“I am Rikkinet,” she said. “You come with us.”

TIRESANA

T
HEY GAVE ME
spiced wine and took me, bathed and scented and dressed with silk and flowers like a sacrificial goat, into the altar room.

I’d never been there; I hadn’t even known it existed. It was right at the centre of the temple, in a place no-one ever went. The floors were so thick with dust it puffed up around my feet as I walked, rising up in smoky curls and drifts. There were no guards, no acolytes. Just me and the Avatars.

Double doors, with carvings worn almost to invisibility. There was neither lock nor handle; no apparent means of opening the doors at all. But Hap-Canae read out words from a scroll. I don’t know what the language was, but the words rang in my head as though cut from bronze.

Insiteth

Abea

Iatenteth

Hai ena

The floor hummed under my feet, and the doors swung open.

I’d expected a room lined with gold, at the very least, but this was just a plain box of a place, walled in great blocks of rough-cut sandstone.

There were no windows; the only light came from the window in the corridor.

In the centre was the altar. No carved and painted glory, this, just a chunk of iron-red rock, hacked into a rough cube. It looked so ancient it was as though it had been there before temples, before gods; as though it had been there first, and everything else had grown up around it.

There was nothing else in the room.

Silence, except for the shift of cloth, and the chink of jewellery, and the click of Aka-Tete tapping his nails against the skulls he wore around his waist.

They told me to put my hands on the altar. There were hollows there, too big for my hands. Above them, in the centre, a round indentation, the size of a copper coin. I looked at it, and my mind made some curious sort of weaving, and I thought of the times I’d been casually tipped just such a coin, when I was with the caravans. Of how enough of them to clink in my pouch had been riches.

That had been Ebi. If I put my hands on that altar, I should never be Ebi again.

I looked at Hap-Canae, and he smiled at me.

So I put my hands on the rock.

I shut my eyes. It was like looking down a long, dark tunnel, with a tiny light at the end. In the tunnel were voices, whispering; some near, some so far away that my mind shrieked at the distance.

I heard one voice getting clearer, closer; a woman’s voice. But there were only fragments. She spoke my name, Ebi, then I felt her watching me, so clearly that I turned my head to look for her, and then the light wasn’t at the end of the tunnel anymore, it was rushing towards me, bigger and bigger, huge.

It hit.

It was like having a firebolt the size of a city go through me. It roared, smashed everything apart, brain, body, pulled it backwards through itself and rammed it together again. By the All, it was incredible. I felt huge. As big as the world and flaring with light. I felt... magnificent. I felt I could stride across worlds like stepping-stones.

My hands jerked free of the altar.

I was all flesh and fire. I wanted to fight and I wanted to fuck and I didn’t know which to do first. I was laughing with the sheer
force
of it.

Hap-Canae took my hands. “Now you’re one of us,” he said.

I grabbed at him, trying to pull him down to the floor with me, not caring in the least that the others were there. He stood back out of reach, laughing, and Meisheté made me take some drink that doused me a little.

Once I was calmer, Hap-Canae took my hand and led me away.

My new rooms were ridiculously luxurious: silk and marble and gold. I hardly noticed, because there were weapons laid out, and the first thing I did was pick out a sword and a dagger. They were good, but not wonderful. I knew that in a way I hadn’t before, and I decided I wanted weapons made to my hand. I told Hap-Canae and he laughed.

I caught a glimpse of the mirror, and went to it, and stared.

It was as though my old face had been an apprentice-piece, and the new one was the work of the master. I’d never been beautiful; striking, maybe, though at sixteen I’d not yet grown into a definite nose and a strong jaw. Now, even I could see I was beautiful. The scar was there, and I ran my fingers over it. It felt warmer than the rest of my skin; a little trail of heat.

I was taller, and broader, and had muscles I wouldn’t earn for another ten years.

The next thing I did was pull Hap-Canae down onto the bed.

I’d never taken the initiative before, but he barely seemed surprised.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Y
OU DON’T HAVE
to come,” I said to Kittack, who’d fallen in with us.

He shrugged. “Want to get a look at this girl everyone so crazy for.”

I glanced at Rikkinet. She was moving ahead with that sleek Ikinchli glide. “Rikkinet, I think this girl... well, I think she may be the Itnunnacklish. Or at least, they believe she is.”

“I know.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No. Me, I do not believe; is story to make happy little Ikinchli. But maybe she is Gudain who want to treat Ikinchli like people. Is novelty, yes?”

“It doesn’t bother you, that someone would pretend?”

“Maybe she believe it too. Or not. If can change things by pretend to be old legend from past, why not? If works, is good.”

Yeah, maybe – or maybe it would just get her torn apart by fanatics on one side or the other. Or both.

We went down into the docks, into a blind alley that ran behind a scruffy chandlery. There was a carving of a little fish on the wall; its grin looked too knowing for my liking.

Rikkinet had her weapons ready.

Previous and I did likewise. Whatever was on the other side of that wall, it might react badly to unexpected company. Bliss doesn’t carry a weapon, or at least, not for long. He always loses them somewhere. It gets expensive.

Rikkinet stood on tiptoe, and traced the outline of the carving with one long finger.

The fish seemed to grin more widely, and tilted silently upwards.

With only the faintest gritting noise, no more than might be made by a mouse crossing gravel, a section of the wall slid backwards.

I could hear running water, and smell dank stone and more than a hint of sewage. A little light fell through the opening, just enough to show ancient-looking paving, and a shimmer of water to the right.

Rikkinet lit a small lantern of pierced brass, and we followed its dancing glow into the darkness.

Once the door was shut behind us, my eyes began to adjust. The lamplight didn’t reach far, but it showed us solid brick to our left, about ten feet of path ahead and, to the right, the satiny glimmer of running water; we were walking alongside a river, of sorts.