Babylon Steel (33 page)

That was it, that was what they wanted. Their powers were terrifying, but limited; they wanted to be gods in truth.

But they were caught in a dilemma of their own making: they didn’t have the scholarship or the dedication, and at least in the case of the wind Avatars, they didn’t have the brains, to find out the information they desired for themselves. They dared not set human scholars to study for them, for fear their secret would get out.

I managed to get a glimpse at a few of the scrolls, but I was afraid, too. Frightened of drawing attention, frightened they would guess. And I had only recently learned to read; trying to decipher words written two hundred years before I was born was often beyond me. I found nothing.

I was walking across the outer precinct after leaving the bed of yet another priest who’d been able to tell me nothing, frustrated, frowning at the ground, when something made me look up.

Ranay. Walking towards me, smiling. I felt a wave of love and terror so strong my vision blurred.

“Avatar Babaska.” He prostrated himself on the dusty stones.

“Ranay. What are you doing here?” My voice seemed to come from very far away.

“I have offended you,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “Avatar Babaska, I will remove myself from your presence.” Oh, his eyes, so dark, so hurt.

“No,” I said, “Follow me. Keep your head lowered.”

In the room behind Babaska’s statue I closed the door and leaned on it. “Ranay.”

I longed to touch him with my whole body, with my whole self. I shook with need. But I stayed where I was. He lifted his hands, as though to embrace me, but I was an Avatar. He could not, without my permission.

“My lady.”

“How did you get here?”

“I asked to be transferred to the Temple...” his voice tailed off.

It was obvious he had asked to be transferred to be close to me. I breathed in his fresh, green scent; it was like sweet air after being closed in a sickroom.

“Oh, Ranay. You shouldn’t have come.”

My eyes were dry, though inside I was wailing like a child. How I hated not being able to cry.

He knew, though. He reached out a hand to me, but I waved him back.

“What is it? My goddess, what is it?” He looked both miserable and frightened, and I hated myself even more. But I couldn’t tell him the truth. I didn’t dare.

I looked at him. My sweet, my lovely man; so gentle and so dear.

“Ranay, if I asked you, could you help me do something?”

“Anything,” he said.

“It’s dangerous. They mustn’t know.”

“Danger? Who can threaten you?” he said.

“The others. The other Avatars. I’ve seen... I’ve seen them do terrible things, Ranay.” The thought of his sweet warm body turned to stone finally wrenched a tear from me; I could feel it, burning against my cheek.

“It’s you they’ll hurt,” I said. “I couldn’t bear it.”

“Let me help you,” he said. “Please. Seeing you cry, it’s like darkness on my heart. Please.”

He was crying, too.

I thought, if I can stop being an Avatar, we can escape. We can run away together.

“I have to tell you something,” I said. “But if anyone finds out you know this, they will kill you. You understand? You mustn’t ever speak of it. Ever.”

“I will take an oath, if you want me to.”

“No. There’s no need.” Even now, it was hard to say; fear and the habit of obedience closed my throat, until I could only whisper. “Ranay, I’m human. Or I was. All the Avatars were, once.”

I held out my hand, and looked at it; it cast a faint golden light, not enough to read by.

“You’re...”

“My name was Ebi, and I was a servant. There was another Avatar of Babaska before me, but she’s gone. Disappeared. They chose me to take her place.”

He believed me, immediately. Perhaps some part of him had already suspected. Or perhaps it was just because he trusted me.

“How?” he said.

I told him about the altar-stone.

There was a silence. His eyes were on me, but I didn’t dare look at them; fearing I’d see contempt, or hatred, or just the end of love.

“Ebi,” he said.

It was so strange, to hear that name again. “Yes.”

“Why did you tell me?”

“Because I want to be human again. I want to find out how to stop. Will you help me?”

“You want to stop being an Avatar.”

“Yes. Ranay...”

For the first time, without asking permission, he reached out, and touched my face. “Ebi,” he said. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

So I took him in my arms and kissed him, and it felt like coming home. But there was a darkness on my heart, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I
HEADED BACK
towards King of Stone. I needed somewhere big and crowded, where no Avatar would be likely to lower themselves to venture, where I could have a drink and get my thoughts together.

I had to stoop a little to get through the door of The Sideways Road, but once I was inside there was room enough and more. It’s a big old barn of a place, goes back further than it looks like it should from the street. It smells of burned meat and old beer and smoke, and could do with a cat or six to keep down the healthy population of vermin who thrive on its leavings. Of which there are plenty; the food’s terrible. But they keep surprisingly decent wine, and right now, I needed some.

It was fairly crowded; must be due for another scouring out by the militia. They don’t bother until enough passing trade complains loudly enough about being scammed. Most of the locals know better than to get into any kind of game in the Sideways and most of Scalentine’s
important
visitors don’t venture down to King of Stone. I pushed my way through the press of bodies, after making sure my pouch was well hidden. There were a few card games, there always were, but there were more than a few other scams going on, old and new. “This ring was my mother’s, it’s worth more than I’m asking, but I have to get through Portal Bealach tonight and the captain won’t take it as surety, he wants forty silver...”

“The coin’s under this cup... or is it this one?”

“I’ll give you one silver, that makes it proper, see? Makes you a real poet, that does. We’ll print up your book of poems pretty as you like, then you just have to sell it, you see, to all the fine folks....”

“One silver?”

Whoa, I knew that voice. Right enough, it was young Antheranis – last seen in the afterglow of his first bedding – looking with wide eyes at a grease-nailed slime crawler I knew of old. Pettifer Crewe; well-known talent vulture.

“Pettifer, get your claws out of this boy. Lord Antheranis, this is no place for a young man like yourself, and this is no-one you should be talking to.”

Antheranis looked from me to Pettifer, and clutched his sheaf of poems to his chest.

Pettifer swelled like a boil. “I was about to give this fine poet the chance he deserved! I’m a respectable businessman, and you’re...”

“I’m an
honest
whore. Whereas you’re a vile, envy-ridden dream-thief who wouldn’t recognise fine verse if you stepped in it.”

He looked towards Antheranis and spread his palms. “Don’t listen, my lord. She’s trying to crush your hopes! I can....”

But Antheranis was already tucking his poems away in his coat, and if there were tears trembling on the ends of his lashes, I for one was prepared to pretend I hadn’t seen them.

Pettifer looked as though he were about to burst with fury and frustrated greed. Sadly, he didn’t. “You... you... I shall...”

“Sharp with language as ever, ain’t you?” I said.

He actually shook his fist at me. “You’ll regret this, Babylon Steel!”

The man even talked in clichés. “Oh, get in line,” I said. “But right now, get your arse out the door, Crewe, before I slice myself some pork.” Finally, he went, leaving the air a little fresher, in my opinion.

I turned back to Antheranis, who was looking bemused. “My lord, what in the All’s name are you doing here? And alone? You don’t have an escort?”

He poked his lower lip out. “I am not
prevennis
– a child.”

“No, but you don’t know Scalentine. There are places
I
don’t go without an escort.” Okay, it wasn’t true, but I was trying to save what face the poor lad had left. And I had to get him back to his father before anything worse than his dignity got damaged.

“I am wishing to see the real life,” he said. “Not just the pretty.”

I didn’t want to knock him out and carry him – that would do nothing for his dignity. And even in here, someone
might
think it suspicious.

All save us, a young boy on a runner from his father’s care and innocent as an egg was
not
what I needed. Sometimes this town was just too damn small, but now I’d seen him, I had to do something. I looked regretfully at the bottles behind the bar. So much for my drink.

A skinny rat of a creature tried to sell Antheranis some cloud. I’d have intervened, but the boy knew enough to give a very firm
no
. The rat-like dealer disappeared sharpish before I could make my displeasure known. He looked pretty similar to the creature I’d seen below ground, but then, a rat’s a rat.

“Good lad,” I said to Antheranis.

“My father, he take me to the street where many beggars, all beg for cloud, even when they have only skin over bones.” He made a face. “I do not want to be like that.”

“Your father is a sharp man.”

“Yes, but he does not understand. I wrote about the beggars. They were...” he waved his hands. “I do not have the Lithan. But in my tongue, I write about them. People should know, yes?”

“Well, yes, but lots of people only want to hear about... what did you call it? The pretty.”

“That is what my father says.”

“He’s not wrong, you know.”

“Sometimes the ugly is more important.” I didn’t have an answer for that, since I couldn’t help but agree with him.

“Tell me about this man Pettifer,” he said.

“Oh, he’s the ugly, all right. If you want to hear, I’ll tell you, but we’ll have to do it while we walk, my lord. I need to go to the Exchange hall.” Fortunately it was near the good hotels – money tends to pool together, I’ve noticed – and I knew which one his father was staying in.

Antheranis sighed, and looked around. “I have seen this place now. And I do not think they appreciate poetry here. Will you show me another place?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Your father ever taken you to Nederan? Beyond Throat portal. Icy place. Inhabitants tend to the hairy.”

“No, but I would like to go very much. They have a great respect for poets.”

“Good poets, yes. If you please them you can fatten for a year on what they’ll pay you. Pettifer Crewe tried to make it as a court poet. Did one recital and barely got out with his life. They threatened to nail his tongue to the wall if he ever crossed their border again. They take the phrase ‘murdering the language’ fairly literally, the Nederans.”

“Indeed?” He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps I will practice some more.”

“Anyway after that, Crewe decided to leech off other people’s talents instead of attempting to improve his own. He’ll take someone’s work with all manner of fine promises, but all they get is lots of excuses and empty pockets.”

We turned towards the square. As soon as he saw the cluster of fine hotels, dominated by the Riverside Palace with its soaring white marble frontage, the boy’s face grew sulky again. I only just managed to grab his collar before he made off down a side-street. “Oh, no, you don’t,” I said. “What do you think your father would do to me if he knew I’d let you go wandering off by yourself?”

“You make me a
fath
, a trick!”

Then I saw who was coming out of the Blue Sun. It’s only two doors from the Riverside Palace, and the most expensive place in Scalentine. Cold sick fear dropped through me all the way to my boots. I put my hand over the kid’s mouth and hauled him into an alleyway. He was struggling madly, reaching for the little dagger in his belt. I whispered in his ear: “My lord, if you value your life, be still and
shut up.
No trick. I’ve just spotted someone who wants my hide and they won’t have any compunction about taking yours to go with it.” He stilled. “Are you going to stay quiet and do as I say?
Please,
my lord. I don’t want either of us dead.”

He must have felt me trembling. I felt him nod against my palm, and let him go – though I kept one hand on his shoulder.

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. I had to sneak a look around the corner again, just to be sure.

There was no mistaking Hap-Canae. I would have known him anywhere, and he’d always looked his best by torchlight. Draped in the gold and amber silks he adored, he still had that unmistakeable swagger. And the charisma, too. No applied magic, this, but a part of what he was. Even from where I stood it tugged at me, trying to curve my mouth into a smile, whispering in my flesh.

Lucky that my first instinct had been to hide. Luckier, perhaps, that the boy Antheranis was with me. Lucky for me, if not for him. I kept my hand tight on his shoulder.

“Oh!” he said, his eyes huge and the same smile I was suppressing bending his mouth.

He was watching Shakanti, of course. She drifted down the steps, her gossamer blue and silver robes billowing around her like smoke, like clouds lit by moonlight. It was hard to tell, but I thought that beneath them she was thinner than ever, scoured to the bone. Her face was veiled. Her charisma felt cold as well-water; the attraction of mystery and the night hunt.

Of course, her charisma had never had the same effect on me as Hap-Canae’s, but it was pretty devastating nonetheless. I wondered if being so close to two full moons was increasing her powers. It wasn’t a pleasant thought; she was one dangerous bitch without any extra help.