Beasts of the Walking City (12 page)

Mircada doesn’t seem fazed. When we split up again, Ercan heads back to the corporate areas. Kjat and I start to walk off by ourselves—we’ve got better things to do than watch someone spend money we don’t have. But Mircada inserts herself, takes my arm, leads me toward the merchant docks, and starts pointing out different aspects of the shiptown with almost a child’s eagerness. Kjat follows behind in our wake.

Can you blame me if I start to enjoy it? I grew up with old men—soldiers, farmers—and one bitter matriarch, up in the middle of nowhere. In the Warrens, it’s a constant struggle just to keep what little you have from becoming someone else’s, and everyone regardless of their race or gender is out for what they can get. I’ve known a few women, and they’ve been mostly human, since Hulgliev of my age are extremely rare, and females even more so. Most of them came at a price. 

Mircada is beautiful and witty, even quick on her feet as she dodges a Kruk that barrels through us carrying a tall load of shipping crates. What's not to like?

She points out the variety of walking fish being sold off the deck of a sloop from the Archipelago. “At Moonfall, in the summer months? They’re supposed to rise up to the surface and sing,” she says. “They taste like pears.” On the unusual shape of some of the rusting mechs here: “I think they’re from a renegade factory in old Pehriac—that was old Kerul country before the sea rose up and drowned it. They’re all fat and round instead of the smaller ones that are more common in Tamaranth. Now they harvest the rust off of each other to reproduce.” The Krukkruk: “See how jittery they are? They’re watching everyone with the eyes in the backs of their lower, second heads.” And then she tucks her hair behind her ear and identifies every Akarii soldier within a hundred yards, and their rank and lineage, regardless of how they’re dressed. 

She’s also pretty free with what I gather is Ercan’s money. Ercan is a fan of mushrooms, she says, and she buys him a large basket of local florescent fungus, bright orange, packed for travel. They smell horrible. She jokes about finding something small and yet round enough for Ferhis, and eventually settles on a tie-died shirt with a wide, floppy collar, something that might actually have started life somewhere in 1970s San Francisco. “He’ll hate it,” she says. “It’s perfect.”

Is she playing with me? I can’t tell. Either way, I’m pretty taken with her. The thin silver bracelets on her arms jangle, scattering sunlight like the surface of the water, and I think I’m getting a little hypnotized.

Eventually, she notices we’re not buying anything. She doesn’t say anything for awhile, but I can she she’s taking in the way we can’t help staring at the Stona selling fat, juicy meermeer, or the meat carts, or the kids hawking shaved ice. She steers us back to the main part of the market, and starts filling large sacks with brown noodles and dried fish, fruit and dried meat and local tubers, sandwiches and dehydrated rations packed for travel. 

She hands one to each of us.

I shake my head. “We can take care of ourselves.”

“Yes, you can,” she says. “But if you could help me eat some of this, I’d really appreciate it. It’s an awful lot of food.”

Kjat has her sack open, and is staring down into it. She looks up at me, her eyes wide. We haven’t seen this much food in months.

“We’ll pay you back once we hit Tamaranth,” I say.

Mircada shakes her head. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “It’s a drop in the bucket for Ercan.” She leans closer. “He’s First family, you know. Like I said.  Just don’t kidnap him or anything, all right?”

I wish I could keep all of the human lineages straight. But it just seems like a mess to me. “Thanks,” I tell her.

Kjat’s more practical than I am. She’s already got her mouth full of meermeer.

• • •

The wind shifts, and clouds pass low over the colony and out to sea. Boats are starting to take advantage of the breeze to leave the colony, tacking a wide berth around the Akarii transports. Merchants are slashing their prices. When I linger for too long over a marked-down pouch stamped with an Akarii Reserve label on it, Mircada buys that, too, and hands it to me. It’s full of dried, smoked
khar
leaf. As both Mircada and Kjat watch, I remove several leaves, fold each in half, and stick up my nostrils until just the tip of the stem extends from his nose. When I’m packed full, I use a coal from the vendor to set both nostrils on fire, snort sharply to extinguish the flame, inhale the resulting dark smoke and blow a thick ring of it into the air over their heads.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had leaf this good. I can feel the relaxation seep through the muscles in my shoulders and neck ridges and down along my spine.

“That’s what I like to see,” says the vendor. “A... man... who enjoys his leaf.” He gives us an ironic salute as he places the last of his crates into a small sailboat and pushes away from the dock. There is a small yellow dog in the stern that watches me carefully. It bares its teeth at me, but it makes no sound as it drifts away.

Behind us, a scuffle breaks out. A burly Krukkruk in a stained Violent Femmes t-shirt has walked straight into a disguised Akarii solider, scattering the tools the Kruk was carrying all over the dock and knocking the Akarii’s hat to the ground. As we turn to watch, the Kruk extends both heads in her rage, and begins berating the man in her own gnarled language. Her undertongue thrums, and she starts swinging her multi-jointed limbs in the air. She lets out a cloud of thick, noxious green smoke from a sac below each of her rear limbs.

The solider goes pale, and then draws his knife from under his long coat. Kruk like to make a lot of noise, but this one is pretty pissed off. It backs up and swivels her heads around, looking for a witness. She locks a set of eyes on me. I shake my head, to warn her off, but then she puffs up her chest and goes for the man anyway. He cuts her across a forehead before she crushes his ribcage.

But then soldiers are running over, throwing off coats and drawing their own knives. 

An Akarii mage, a Talovian, starts a matrix, and pulls in four other mages. They throw a tracer line back to one of the transport ships for power.

Down the docks, coming in from the shore, three more brightly colored Krukkruk puff up their manes as they gallop, bellowing as they come, and a number of other colonists react to the Akarii matrix by going for weapons of their own. The smell of the sulfurous green flatulence is nauseating as it swirls and twists in the air.

We scramble behind a tent as the fight gets larger, climb across a series of small, elaborately decorated boats and behind an ore barge to another parallel dock. Unfortunately, there’s a trio of small dogs here, scavenging fish intestines off of the dock. As I climb off the barge their heads swiveled around at the scent of me.

The hair goes up on their backs and they lunge for me, growling and barking, their teeth bared.

I look up and down the length of the dock. Everyone looks distracted by the fighting, or by the desire to pack up and get out. So I throw back my coat, bare my own fangs. One of the dogs leaps for my throat, and I knock it into the water. It keeps barking and foaming at the mouth out there, in the water, but it can’t find a way to climb back up onto the dock so it’s barking ferociously and paddling in circles. Another latches on to my calf, and I have to pry it off with my hands. I try not to use my claws or to break its jaw, and as I get the teeth loose, Kjat grabs it by the back legs and tosses it over the side, too. The third, a tiny white dog, circles me, barking ferociously. I get down at its level and growl at it, a good, full-throated rumble that you can feel in the pit of your stomach. 

It wets the dock where it stands, and then turns and runs off yelping.

I pull my hood back up, straighten my coat. My leg is not bleeding much, for once.

“Friends of yours?” Mircada is working hard to keep her face straight. She’s not being very successful.

I sigh. “It’s been worse.”

I nod to Kjat, and we all run down the length of the dock—followed by one of the paddling dogs, still foaming at the mouth—and we push through the crowds back to the warehouse. The Krukkruk bellowing is just getting louder, and with it the harsh crack of aether echoes back at us off the ships in the harbor.

14.

E
rcan’s at the warehouse already, stuffing supplies from a crate into sacks of his own. “Where have you been?” His face is tight, and the wig clings awkwardly to his head. “There’s an Akarii warship coming in,” he says. “Tel Kharan. A full fleet. Fehris! Get out here!”

“I said I was coming.” Fehris limps out of the hatchway, and studies them all with a dazed expression, blinking. His eyes are glowing faintly. “There’s something you should know about…”

“There isn’t time,” Ercan says, with a chopping gesture.

“What’s going on,” Mircada says.

“The cease fire is broken. The Akarii First Family is apparently moving to full fledged war again, and this Port is right on their path to Tamaranth.”

“That’s why everyone’s getting out,” Kjat says.

Ercan nods. “There’s a small Kerul frigate leaving now, and heading for the Choroleos. Not in five minutes, not in three days,
now
. There’s room for us on it. If we don’t go now, though, we’re going to be in the middle of something that’s way bigger than we want to be in the middle of.”

He turns to Kjat and I. “Come with us, if you want to. I’ve gotten space for you. I don’t know how far we’ll get, but if you stay, you’ll be taken. The Tel Kharan are thorough, you can count on that.”

“We can’t move the ship that quickly,” I say, studying him.

“I know.” Ercan takes a deep breath. “Look, this changes everything for us. The Akarii and their Tel Kharan are taking this colony. I don’t know about you—retrievers and mages are one thing, but the First Family and their army is an entirely different level of problem. Mishna’s already dead. I have to live with that.” He looks at Mircada and Fehris. “We need to leave the ship, and get out. We put a lot of time and money into finding it, but I’m not willing to risk more lives for this. We found this ship once, we can find another one. We’ll figure out something.”

“The Akarii are only men,” I say, unconvincingly. I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m not abandoning
my
ship at the first sign of a little trouble.”

Ercan rolls his eyes, and gestures in the air with his hands like he’s appealing to his higher power. He says something else then, probably a curse, but it’s drowned out by an explosion that rocks the warehouse walls. Kjat runs to the warehouse door and cracks it open. As she watches, another blast of blue fire arcs in from over the horizon, hits the water near the Framarc tents and erupts with a dull roar, sending gouts of flame across tents and boats and bystanders alike. The docks start to burn. Someone dives into the water, others scramble for boats. A man with his bowler hat on fire runs across the doorway in front of her.

The Buhr unfolds itself from my back, extending its three legs onto the dirt floor. It walks to the open door and studies the chaos, waving its feeding tube curiously in the air.

“It’s already started,” Mircada says. "The invasion."

“Why are they bombing the town?” Kjat asks.

“Akarii First Family,” Ercan frowns. The wig is slowly pulling itself back into place on his head. “They like to be sure about things. They’ll take the town and hold it, probably, and use it as a base for sending supplies across the ocean. It might be off-lei, but it
is
the closest port to Tamaranth on this coast.”

“Ercan, there’s really something you should…” Fehris begins, from the hatchway.

“Fehris, keep quiet,” Mircada said. She turns to me. “We can’t stay here. You have to realize that.”

“Go,” I say. I look at Kjat, who swallows nervously. “Seriously. You too. I’ll stay with the ship.”

Kjat shakes her head. “If you stay, I stay.”

“I’m staying too,” Fehris says.

Incredulous, Ercan turns to look at him. “You’re
what
?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’ve found it.”

“Found what?”

“
Te’loria
.”
Fehris looks at each of us. He takes out his small knife and draws a quick flower in the air. “Te’loria? Truthteller? Peacemaker? Flower of the Akarii. Pick your name, ok? Lasser’s balls, I’ve found Te’loria!”

There’s a shocked silence then. The Buhr hums and buzzes to itself. I think all my hair goes white in surprise, and I swivel my ears around to make sure I’m hearing him right.

“At least I’m closer to finding it,” Fehris says.

“
That’s
what you’ve been looking for?” I say.

“Of course,” Fehris says. "What else is there?"

I look at Ercan and Mircada, but they look just as shocked as I do.

Fehris studies us. “Well, you don’t expect me to tell just everyone, do you?”

Mircada frowns. “Fehris, you said this was just a very valuable podship.”

“Am I wrong? If I told you what we were looking for, would you have come out to Tilhtinora in the first place?”

Ercan shakes his head, jostling the wig again. “I should have left you in the stacks where I found you.”

“It’s in the ship?” I ask. “Te’loria?” I’m almost afraid of the answer.

“The ship is some sort of a key,” Fehris said. “It’s hard to explain. Think of it like a map, though it’s not a map, really. And a key.”

“Take any maps and keys you need out of the ship, Fehris,” Ercan says. “But we’ve got to go.”

“We’d have to bring the
whole ship
,” Fehris says. “That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s all tied in. Different levels of embedded resonance, deep in the neural storage. It’s all terribly advanced. And quite beautiful work, too, if you must know.”

“What’s Te’loria?” Kjat asks. She looks at me.

“A flower,” I say.

“Really?”

“A really important flower,” Mircada adds. “If it exists.”

“It exists,” I say. I’m thinking of those pictures in Sartosh’s books.