Riding the Serpent's Back (19 page)

In the morning the city was blanketed in a heavy smog. Clouds had come down from the north in the night and dropped a heavy load of rain across the Burn Plain. The rising steam had lifted with it a residue of sulphur and smut, so that it stung the eyes and every breath burnt the lining of the throat. Monahl pulled a veil hard across her face and hurried out across Preservers’ Bridge.

She had risen early and completed her chores in the kitchen before many of the others had even risen. She was going to meet someone today. She had dreamed it in the night: a stranger. A messenger. The dream had not been clear but she felt certain that she knew who had sent the messenger. She hoped she would have good news to bring back to the Order today.

She climbed up over the lip of the crater, then followed a winding street down the hill towards the docks. It was a poorer part of the city here, the houses clustered shoulder to shoulder, many two or three storeys high with one family living on top of its neighbour. Sounds of conversation spilled out into the street, through cloth screens pulled down to keep out the acrid smog.

As she came closer to the foot of the hill she passed more and more people, dark shapes materialising suddenly from the grey, then merging and disappearing just as quickly. Men and women walking to work at the docks, or on the barges; children running and chasing with the energetic abandon of the young. Overhead, Monahl could hear a steady traffic of fliers: the regular grunt of the coursers they rode. Other than the Charmed barges, coursers were the only means of transport across the Burn Plain, and for a time Monahl fretted that her dream might have been misleading: was her messenger flying overhead even as she hurried down to the docks?

The city’s main docks were situated in the lee of the floating island. A cove had formed, long ago, shaped as if a giant had taken a bite out of the rock. Within this cove a sheltered lava bay had formed.

The bay was always free of debris. Whether the city passed over molten lava or was driving its way through a thin, new crust – whatever the terrain of the Burn Plain, the city left behind it only liquid magma.

As Monahl went down the winding road, the smog became patchy and thin and her breathing started to come more easily.

At the eastern extremity of the cove, one of the city’s five spurs thrust itself out over the lava. The thing was so slender it appeared to taper away to nothing about halfway out, then it bulged at the end into a dark lump silhouetted by a fierce glow as the rising sun burned through the remains of the smog. It would be Amathyr, today, at Downe Silver corner, doing his bit to ensure the smooth passage of their city.

Monahl descended the last flight of steps to stand on the thronged esplanade. It was a mass of complex activity. Labourers scurried about like rats, loading goods onto carts for transport into the city’s markets and trading halls. Others formed human chains to convey barrels and crates from the barges onto the docks, whilst a few steam cranes hauled the bulkier goods out of the holds and onto solid land. Stone barges were moored all around the curve of the bay, their hulls Charmed to repel the heat of the lava so that they could ply their trade across the Burn Plain. Such Charming was an art that was exclusively the preserve of the True Blooded of Zigané, and so the floating city had always held a wealthy and powerful position in the web of human relations south of the Zochi jungle.

Monahl walked through the busy crowds of dockers and bargees. As they saw her smock and silver jewellery, people stepped aside to let her pass: no one here would dispute the necessity of Charming the earth – many of these people waged their lives on such Talents every day.

Stalls lined the docks, offering refreshments to the workers. As Monahl passed, their proprietors held out offerings – food and drink for her consumption, or a small jewel or candle for the shrine. In response to each offering, Monahl bowed her head and touched lips, chin, nose and brow.

A line of withered cacti stood in the gravelly compost of a long trough, just to one side of a row of steps. Beyond, an identical trough held water for the few mokes waiting to haul their loads up into the city.

A woman came down the steps, preoccupied by something buzzing around her face. She almost collided with Monahl, was about to curse her when she saw the smock and the silver. Suddenly nervous and apologetic, the woman bowed her head, then plucked a silk flower from her hair and pressed it into Monahl’s hands, an offering for the shrine. Then she backed off, turned, and hurried away into the crowd.

Monahl was reliving her dream. She had forgotten the cacti, the water trough, the woman, but now it all came back to her.

She tucked the flower into her own hair and turned and the ragged boy was standing on the docks staring at her with the dumb insolence of one twice his seven or so years.

“Angelo,” she said, and the boy was shocked out of his reverie. He hadn’t known this woman in her plain smock with her straight ginger hair pulled up into a twist behind her head was the Monahl of Camptore he had been sent to find. He’d merely been staring at the woman with the flower, and then at the plain one who had accepted the flower with that strange gesture where she seemed to be squashing fleas on her face.

Monahl knew all this from her dream.

“Angelo,” she said again. He was backing away. The images of her dream were dissipating rapidly, until they were gone, and she had to take things along on her own.

The boy had stopped again, and was looking at her strangely. She saw now that he had a slight cast in his eye: he might even have been looking past her. She didn’t know what he must be thinking.

He was filthy, his hair long and twisted into waxy strands that were held together with their own grease. For a moment his ragged appearance reminded her of Freya’s Maggot Man and she saw him tumbling to the floor, his head split open by a silver disc she had hurled.

She stopped herself. That wasn’t the dream, it was her own twisted mind remixing the images in her head. She wondered if she was going mad again, if the prescient dream was an early symptom of another mental unravelling. As she considered this possibility, she realised there had been other recent symptoms: a general apathy, occasions when the voices in her head took on a ranting tone, a violence of thought which she desperately feared might spill out into action. All these things had been symptoms of her psychotic periods in the past.

“How’d you know my name?”

The boy’s words snapped her back to her senses. She looked at him. He was just a boy, one who had grown way ahead of his years. An orphan, perhaps.

She smiled in what she hoped was a sympathetic manner. “I dreamed of it last night,” she said, a little apologetically.

The boy nodded, accepting her explanation readily. “Are you Monahl of Camptore?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I brought you a message from the Shelf. You got any food or money for me?”

“You’ll be looked after,” said Monahl. “Did Herold send you? Is he coming back to Zigané?” But the boy looked blank again. “Herold,” Monahl repeated. “Guardian of the city. Is he coming back?”

“Dunno,” said the ragged boy. “Didn’t see him, did I?”

Monahl had been certain the messenger was from Herold. “So who did send you, then?”

“Chi,” said the boy. “Chichéne Pas – your brother. He said you’d remember him. He said he needs you to join him in Edge City. He said it’s for your father, said you’d understand and you’d come back with me. You do remember him, don’t you?”

Monahl stared at the child. So he had come from Chichéne. Of course she remembered her brother – how could she fail to? She saw him in their daughter every single day: the dark hair, the charmingly arrogant manner, the rapid swings of mood. And now he wanted her with him again, after thirteen years.

~

Back at the Order, Brother Edric of Edric took the boy in and cleaned him and fed him. “You bringing in kids off the street,” he said to Monahl. “Doesn’t he have his own home to be in?” Edric always complained, but his heart was good.

Monahl smiled. “He has, I expect,” she said. “But a long way from here. He’s come from Edge City to find me.”

Edric raised his eyebrows, but said no more.

Monahl left them together in the kitchen, Angelo pointing eagerly to all the foods he wanted to try and Edric rushing about with a clowning expression on his face.

She wanted to find Freya, but her pallet was empty in the room they shared. She wandered through the buildings of the Order, then out through the gardens which were crammed with fruit and vegetables and working devotees.

No one had seen her. Monahl suspected she was off with Diggory and the others.

She went inside and found Cheri in a workroom, cranking the handle of an ancient sewing machine. Monahl sat opposite her, but said nothing.

“Long face,” said Cheri, glancing up from her work.

“I’ve been looking for Freya,” she said. “I hope she’s not in trouble again.”

Cheri said nothing.

“I had a message from her father today. He wants me to join him. I think there’s trouble coming. I think he’s in danger.”

“Have the gods granted you vision again?” asked Cheri.

Monahl shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I just
feel
it.”

“Will you go with the boy?”

Monahl stared at her. Cheri always knew more than she let on. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave Freya, and I can hardly take her with me.”

“I have no wish to influence your choice,” said Cheri. “But you know Freya always has a home with the Order. None of us can replace you, but all of us here are like brothers and sisters to Freya. And we’re always here for you, too.”

Monahl reached over and squeezed her hand. Cheri’s words penetrated perhaps farther than she had intended. Monahl’s own mother had died when she had been barely five and Monahl had grown up with only the Order for family. She knew exactly what it was like to grow up without mother or father: did she have the right to inflict that condition – for however short a time – on her own daughter?

Just then she heard a familiar voice drifting in through the open window from below. Without another word, she left her chair and went down to find her daughter.

~

“Freya!”

The girl was down on the path that led through the lower gardens, heading for Preserver’s Bridge. She hesitated, as if deciding whether to pretend she had not heard. Then she turned and raised a hand as her mother hurried after her.

“I’ve just come from Edric and that filthy boy,” said Freya, when Monahl had joined her. “Really, ma, why on earth did you bring him here? The Order isn’t a poorhouse, is it?”

“I thought you didn’t care about the Order,” said Monahl, remembering old arguments. She stopped herself. There were more important things to consider. “Did you speak to him?” she asked. “The boy, I mean?”

“Why? He was only rude. And he barely stopped shovelling the food down that greedy mouth of his.”

“He’s come a long way,” said Monahl. “He came to find me. He came from your father.”

That stopped Freya in her tracks. “But...”

All Freya knew of her father was what Monahl had told her: that he was True Blood, that he was noble and strong and a leader of men, and that he did not know of her existence.

“What did he want?” asked Freya, finally. “Why now, after such a long time?”

“He wants me to go to him. I think he’s in trouble and he wants my help.”

Freya digested this information slowly. “And you’re going?”

Monahl shook her head. “I can’t abandon the Order,” she said. The rotas were tight enough already – her absence would only inflict greater hardship on those Talented enough to Charm Zigané’s passage across the Plain. “And I can’t abandon you.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

Monahl looked away. She felt too vulnerable to argue now. “I love you, Freya. I can’t abandon you. You might not appreciate it now, but it’s hard to be on your own.” She tried to smile. “If you didn’t have me then who would you have to blame for everything?”

“Myself?”

Monahl embraced her daughter briefly. “I can’t leave you,” she said. “And I can’t take you with me into whatever danger is waiting. I can’t give up my duties with the Order. So I have to stay.”

Freya was staring at her, eyes narrowed in another expression inherited from her father. “I might as well not be here, right now,” she said. “You’re not arguing with me: you’re arguing it out with yourself. If you think your place is somewhere else then you should go, Ma. I know I’m only twelve, but I can cope. If you want to go, then go.

“Ma, I know you’ve always marked me out as different from you: whenever I do something you disapprove of you say I’m just like my father. But really, underneath it all, I’m not that much different from you.”

Monahl forced a smile. “That’s what worries me,” she said. “That’s why you need watching.”

“Then let the Order watch me,” said Freya. “Can’t you trust me?”

Monahl realised that was the crux of the issue: she’d never
had
to trust Freya before – she’d always been on hand to watch over her and pick up the pieces. She hugged her again. “Will you promise me you’ll stay with the Order?”

Freya looked at her strangely. After a long silence, she nodded. “I’ll stay,” she said. “I’ll be all right. Cheri and Amathyr will keep me out of trouble.” She hesitated, then added, “Cheri wants me to become a votary. She says I have the Talent. I told her I would.”

Monahl said nothing. She had pleaded with Freya to find some kind of training to use her Talents but she had never put pressure on her to do so within the Order. She was overjoyed that her daughter should have taken such a decision, yet simultaneously she was shocked and scared: she had the giddying vision of her own child walking out along the slender spur, to sit above the Burn Plain. What if there was a tremor? What if she missed her footing, or grew tired and lost her balance?

But Monahl had carried out these duties every other day for more than ten years. She had never considered how Freya must feel about it: that every time Monahl performed her ritual duties her daughter might have feared that it was for the last time.