Babylon Steel (46 page)

I heard Previous swear under her breath.

“Laney,” I said. “Can you do a deglamour?”

“No. But I can
dim
you, I can do that even on Scalentine.”

“What does that do?”

“I’ll show you.”

“No! Don’t. If things aren’t working right you might not be able to do it when you need to. What is it?”

“It blurs your edges. Makes you sort of shadowy. Remember when that client came calling and he had such terrible breath, and he was asking for me? That’s how I got past him. It only really works if it’s dark, though.”

“Laney... why didn’t you just
say?
”I said.

“Because it was funnier watching you try and find a tactful way to tell him.”

“Yes, well, never mind that. Do you know how long you can do it for?”

She shrugged.

“All right, we’ll see how we go. As to the Avatars... I doubt they’d leave one alone to guard it. They don’t trust each other that much. So it’ll be two or three if they’re there.”

“How do we deal with them?” Flower said.

“You don’t. If there
are
Avatars there, we have to get them away from the room for long enough, without confronting them. They’ve different powers, all nasty if not deadly. Shakanti can control any water in the vicinity; that shouldn’t be a problem at the heart of the temple, even
she’s
probably not mad enough to flood the whole place to get rid of us, but she can also turn you to stone, or drive you mad. Some of the others I never saw use their powers, so I don’t know what they can do, but I’d not risk a stand-up fight with any of them.”

“So we just need to draw them away? Well, I can do
that
,”Laney said.

“You have to give me long enough to get in, get past whatever they
have
got set up, and swap the rings.
If
I’m right and the damn thing’s actually there. If not, I’ll have to rethink.”

“What are they likely to have?” said Cruel. “Wards?”

“No. There’s almost no magic here but for the Avatars’ own powers. Traps or deadfalls, maybe. I don’t know.”

Cruel and Unusual looked at each other. “You brought the ropes?” Cruel said.

Unusual just smiled and patted the bag he was carrying.

“What else have you got in there?” I said. “No, don’t tell me, I’m not sure I want to know. Laney, can you create an illusion of one of the Avatars?”

“Not without knowing what they look like. And not at the same time as dimming.”

“Damn.”

“
You
know what they look like, though.”

“Yes, but I can’t draw for donkeyshit.” I thought. “Right. Once we get there, the dawn worship will be starting. We should have a chance to see at least some of them,
if
they bother to attend to their worshippers when they’ve godhead on their minds.”

T
HE STATUES OF
the gods rose out of the desert. Arrogance in stone; so vauntingly huge it seemed as though even the vast temple they guarded hadn’t been enough to contain them. One was broken off at the waist, a gap like a lost tooth; Babaska’s.

So old, those statues. As old, perhaps, as the altar-stone itself. But the altar was solid, and these were hollow. I looked at them, thinking hard.

There were others ahead of us, travelling in the cool of the night; people driving thin, bawling herd animals, carts of dusty vegetables. All those priests take a lot of feeding. People with offerings of gold and perfume, meat and roots. I thought of Adissi, with her handful of pebbles. Did the statue that had been a living girl still stand in the temple at Pella?

Shakanti was insane, but Hap-Canae wasn’t. He’d always known exactly what he was doing, and had no excuse but a selfishness so bone-deep you couldn’t dig it out with a three foot blade. Though admittedly, the thought of trying didn’t exactly displease me.

Maybe I’d get the chance before he burned me to charcoal.

THIRTY-THREE

Day 10

Second Day of Twomoon

A
THIN LINE
of light was showing on the horizon when we entered Akran. The great torches at the gate, clasped in the hands of statues fifty feet high, hissed and sent flickering yellow light across the sand and over the people, catching on patched armour and gimcrack jewellery and sunken eyes.

There were a few non-Tiresans present; what little external trade there was, of course, was almost certain to end up here. I’d the scarf on still, pulled up over my nose. But still, people looked. I hoped it was just my height; I was taller by a head than most Tiresans. Flower, of course, was even taller. If I’d known they were going to be such damn fools and come with me, I’d have made some attempt to make us look more like traders.

Trudging through the gate, we limped and drooped and kept our faces covered. There were hundreds of people in the precinct: cartloads of vegetables and bawling beasts going towards the kitchens, priests and priestesses from other temples with messages and requests, guards and porters and acolytes.

And of course, worshippers: pregnant and would-be pregnant women heading to the temple of Meisheté with its blood red tiles; young girls, their hair dressed with flowers if they could get them, to Shakanti’s silvery-walled temple. Others prostrated themselves in the middle of the precinct, hoping for the notice of any god or Avatar who deigned to look their way.

Here and there, even in the half-light, I spotted that dark streak along the jaw-line. On men and women, young and old. Some looked like soldiers; some like whores. Some like neither. On one or two the scar was a real one – self-inflicted, by the look.

“What does it mean?” Laney asked me. “That mark?”

“I think perhaps Babaska still has her worshippers. One of the whores back at Mantek had the same mark. They’re taking a hell of a risk, though.”

I looked around the precinct, a little puzzled. It was the same, and yet, not quite. There seemed to be more space somehow. Then I realised it was not that the precinct was bigger, but that worshippers were fewer. Perhaps, for many, the faint hope of a favour was no longer sufficient to drag them here.

No-one paid us any attention as we worked our way around the edge of the precinct to Babaska’s temple.

“We’ll have to be careful. Her worship was discouraged, vigorously. We shouldn’t be seen going in if we can help it,” I said.

We edged and shuffled, climbing, one by one, up the part of the steps that was still in deepest shadow, freezing if anyone seemed to be looking our way.

Bits of Babaska’s statue lay about, like a giant child’s toy, flung down in a temper. Curses had been carved around the entrance, promises of doom and misery on those who dared worship Babaska of the Bloody Hand, the Traitress.

The pillar still stood, grey stone stabbing up, the blackened chains hanging silent against it. Dark stains scored its sides. I could hear the sound of beetles skittering in my skull.

Behind that pillar was the door that would take us inside the maze of tunnels that led to the altar-room. Babaska’s face smiled blindly at me from the floor. I had to go in, before someone noticed us, but I couldn’t.

“Oh,” Unusual said softly behind me. “You were right. Look.”

Just inside the threshold, a flicker of colour. A handful of wilted flowers, tucked beneath the statue’s shattered hand. A bracelet of blue beads. The gleam of a copper coin; a small well-sharpened dagger.

Offerings. Who were these people, still hoping for help from she who could no longer grant it?

But maybe I could. I gripped the lintel and forced myself to step through, my heart cold in my throat. Shadows scuttered away from my feet. Beetles; it was as much as I could do not to cry out.

I brushed one of the chains as I moved past the pillar, and it chinked faintly. I put my hand on the wall to steady myself.

“Babylon?” Laney said.

“I’m all right.”

The altar had been hacked to pieces, but the screen was still there, its hundreds of little figures still frozen in love and war.

The door behind it was locked, of course.

“We may need to break it,” I said. “But I don’t want to draw attention.” I looked over my shoulder. The precinct was brightening rapidly, light beginning to spill into the temple. “Previous, go to the door, but stay out of sight. You should see a temple over to the left, lots of gold about it, priests in yellow robes outside. Are they there?”

Previous picked her way through the debris, and peered out. “Yes, I see it. Bunch of priests and worshippers.”

“There’s someone up on the temple roof, see them?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll drop their hand when they see the sun, and all the priests will sing out. Previous, drop your hand when they do. When she does, Flower, hit the door.”

We stood in the cool whispering shadows for what seemed like endless minutes, until, finally, Previous dropped her hand. To a clash of brass and a shout of chanting, Flower dropped his shoulder and barged the door.

It cracked right across, the gilded wood shuddering and splitting. Flower began to tear it away, then we all put our hands to it.

I made them wait while I went through.

The stairs behind it were silent, deserted. Light was beginning to paint the walls pale. Dust lay thick on the steps.

Feeling like a ghost of myself, I led the others up the stairs, paused for a moment, and turned left. Past the room where the sarcophagus was; where I had lain. Past the room where our trainers had instructed us in seduction. Silent, these rooms, now. Left to the beetles and the dust.

We passed a window that looked down into the inner precinct. I risked a glance and saw Meisheté, in her aspect as a heavily pregnant woman, heading no doubt for the back entrance to her temple. Even in the low dawn light I could see she had that blooming glow, the essence of a healthy, welcome pregnancy, her eyes shining in their shadowed surrounds. I thought of the women I’d seen outside, swollen bellies on skeletal frames; the skinny huge-eyed children.
Go,
I thought.
Eat up the praise you don’t deserve.

Even now, when they were about to gorge on power, they had to wrench out the last drop of worship.

Previous peered out beside me. “Is she...”

“No. It’s an illusion, one of her Aspects. They’re all barren. Sssh.” I beckoned Laney up behind me. “Look, there’s Meisheté. And...” Behind her, strolling along, Hap-Canae. He’d always loved the worship, bathed in it like sunlight.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Laney whispered. “Well, I understand why you fell for him – that
... yrrkennish paiketh.
”

“The what?” I said.

Laney –
Laney
– actually blushed. “It’s... never mind. Just don’t ever say it if you’re around Fey. Seriously. Ever. Who’s that?”

“Shakanti,” I said, grabbing Laney’s arm and pulling her back as Shakanti’s head tilted like a hawk’s, her hair drifting about in the morning breeze, strands of silver shining like spider web.

“She’s the one who...
oh
.” Laney’s hands, fine and fragile as china, curled into claws, and her eyes glimmered scarlet. “Oh, Babylon, let me...”

“Sshh. Listen.”

Below us Shakanti approached Hap-Canae, and their voices came clearly up to us. I gestured the others to silence.

“...those women will be of no use at all,” Shakanti said. “We should go back.” I remembered that voice. I still heard it, on bad nights.

“No,” Hap-Canae said. “We must go on.” His voice was exactly the same, every rich syllable as rounded and full of caressing warmth as I remembered. “Nothing must seem different today. We discussed this. Emptying the precinct for the creation of an Avatar may have been one of the things that started these rumours.”

“Once it is done, these whores and brawling peasants will pay for their heresy.” Her voice was the same, too: glass and silver, gleaming ice over death-cold depths.

“Yes.
Once it is done.
After the morning worship.”

He drew her away, and with a suspicious glance backwards – the woman had the paranoid instincts of a sheep-killing dog – she went.

“What did they say?” Laney said.

“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered, though I wondered. Heresy. The whispers that Ranay and I had started. Sesh had wanted to fight the Avatars, and perhaps in his own way he had; more whispers, about the true nature of the Avatars. He’d have been good at it. He was always a storyteller, Sesh. “Keep away from the windows, and keep quiet.”

As we approached the corridor where the altar-room was, I waved the others back behind me and held up a hand to keep them still. A breeze skittered past us, sending the dust swirling.

I peeked around the corner. Two tall, hawk-faced women in their robes of grey and blue, their long pale hair in constant motion. Lohiria and Mihiria; Avatars of the goddesses of the east and west winds.

It made sense. They’d always fought like bantams, for all they were twins. If any of the Avatars could be trusted not to band together, it would be those two. They were staring in opposite directions, the set of their shoulders making it plain they’d been arguing. I drew the crew back.

“Now listen,” I said. “You need to stay here, out of sight. There are two Avatars guarding the door, and I have to get them away. Laney, can you make me an illusion of Shakanti? The woman with the silver hair? Voice as well?”

“Yes. But... you really want to be
her?
”

“I have to,” I said. “They’re scared of her, and she’s known for telling the truth, even if she always did it to hurt. She’s the only choice.”

“Well, if you’re sure...”

“I am. The rest of you, wait for my signal. Laney? Glam me up.”

Laney hunched her shoulders and narrowed her eyes, and colour streamed from her fingers. The illusion poured over me like cold water. For a moment I couldn’t see anything except a swirl of blue and silver, then it settled.

My real eyes were slightly below where Shakanti’s were, my body bulkier than hers; it felt rather like wearing a badly fitting helmet.

Laney was looking relieved, but anxious. “I don’t know how long it will hold, Babylon,” she whispered.