Riding the Serpent's Back (28 page)

When she left the barge, Monahl’s first impression was that the docks reminded her of those at Zigané: the continuous bustle of activity, the buzz of energy, the sense of purpose about everything she saw.

There was a strip of abandoned ground between the docks and the bulk of the town. Joining a steady stream of people and goods, she crossed this no-man’s land, puzzling over the chaotic, half-built nature of the town she was entering. “Why is it like this?” she asked a fellow traveller.

“Nothing much,” said the man. “It’s just the town being moved.”

Qebahl itself seemed to be one large, sprawling shanty town. She passed poor families living in conditions more squalid than any she had ever seen before. The place was chaotic: a mosaic of temporary encampments set amongst buildings which she now saw were not part-built, but partly dismembered. Streams of horses and mokes dragged wagons weighed down by the dismantled parts of these buildings.

From questioning people in the street, she learnt that Qebahl was only rarely a single settlement. For most of the time there were two Qebahls: the port and the town itself. Despite the protection of a group of True Blood Talents, the docks were continually in retreat, as section after section of the Serpent’s Back was relinquished to the Burn Plain: for a few weeks the port would remain in one place, then everything would be moved several leaps inland – when the Earth-Charmed protection was dropped, the land soon broke away, making the new docks navigable again. The town of Qebahl itself, moved in larger, less frequent, steps: at times it could be two hundred or more leaps into the interior, but as the days passed it edged relentlessly towards its daughter port until the time came to move inland once again.

Curiosity aroused, Monahl followed the flow of traffic. From the crest of a hill she saw the lines of laden wagons stretching away into the distance, to the remote site of the town’s reconstruction, some two hundred leaps into the interior.

When it fell dark, Monahl realised she had nowhere to stay. She made her way back into the remains of old Qebahl for the night. She was not alone in sleeping rough – where the homes of the rich had been specially built so that they could later be moved, the rough shelters of the poorer classes of Qebahl merely fell apart when the fabric of the town was removed.

Being of True Blood, and from the wealthy merchant city of Zigané, Monahl could readily have identified herself with Qebahl’s rich elite, already safe in their newly relocated residences in the interior, but the possibility barely crossed her mind.

Instead, she found herself identifying more closely with the underclass of casual labourers and immigrants, forced to live on the fringes. She stayed on in the old town, intrigued by what was taking place.

At least the moving of Qebahl meant there was plenty of work, something the young Monahl learnt was not always the case.

She was taken in by Roubel and Kartaki Te, a childless couple a few years older than Monahl. She had met Roubel working in a labour gang, loading wagons with building materials for new Qebahl. They talked, and Monahl explained that she was still sleeping rough. Immediately the tall Habnathi woman offered her a place to sleep—”We have two other guests already, so you’ll be on the floor, mind, but at least there’s a roof. The dogs’ll keep you warm.” They gave her fleas too, but Monahl didn’t mind: she would have paid almost anything for the simple respect her hosts showed her. They lived in a simple one-storey adobe and palm-leaf house in the heart of what remained of old Qebahl – a sure indication that they were as well-established as the poor immigrant workers ever became in this part of the Serpent’s Back.

Roubel and her husband were both Habnathi – which seemed a guarantee of lowly status – but they showed no resentment at Monahl’s background with the Church of the Preserving Hand. Roubel was a tall woman, with a sharp tongue which she skilfully used to conceal her basic kindness. Instead of children, they had dogs and birds, and now, house-guests. “Less trouble,” Kartaki explained, always ready to portray misfortune in positive terms. “We didn’t want children anyway: our neighbours have too many already.” Similarly, the price his people were paying for the movement of their town was also an opportunity to make a new start; the exodus of Habnathis from the mainland was a coming together of the clans and not an escape from the brutally racist policies being implemented by the newly established Embodiment governments of many northern cities and provinces. If someone had held a knife at Kartaki’s throat he would have seen it as a chance to demonstrate the superiority of the modern steel blades.

The couple’s greatest gift to Monahl was that they treated her as what she was, and not what she might possibly be. She was a guest in their house, a fellow worker, and soon, a friend.

They demonstrated their trust for her within a few days of her moving into their home. Late one night, they started to prepare to go out and Monahl asked what was going on. “Oh it’s all right,” Kartaki told her. “We just have a little sideline – didn’t you know? We’re smugglers, my dear, evaders of the town Guardians’ levies.”

It was a common activity at that time. In return for their Charmed protection of Qebahl’s docks, the town Guardians levied heavy landing duties on all trade in the region. Yet many had come to question the efficacy of the Guardian’s supposed Talents: if their Charms maintained the stability of the land, then why were the docks continually in retreat? Why was the town itself now forced to evacuate?

Monahl went with Roubel and Kartaki that night, along with her fellow house-guests. Roubel insisted on blacking Monahl’s face before allowing her to accompany them. “You’re the wrong colour for this business,” she said, as she daubed reddish black logwood powder onto Monahl’s cheeks. “That golden Zigané skin of yours is very pretty but it sticks out like a dick on a duck.”

Monahl stayed with her hosts for nearly four months. Her days were spent working legitimately on the labour gangs and she was soon stronger and tougher than she had ever been. She watched curiously as the old town was steadily eaten away. Soon, even the dispossessed were dismantling what remained of their slums in order to relocate them inland at the site of the new docks.

Many of Monahl’s nights were spent blacked up, working in gangs shifting goods on or off a barge while its paid-off captain pretended that his sleep was not disturbed by their noise. On several occasions they had close calls with the police squads sent out by the Guardians to prevent the illicit trade, but the smugglers were rarely caught. Even those who were – as Kartaki was, three weeks into Monahl’s stay – could usually be bought back from the squads.

Monahl’s time in Qebahl came to an end just as she started to lose her mind once again. She had thought it was behind her: the change of scene and life seemed to have shocked the feverish visions right out of her head.

Then, one day, Kartaki came to her. “I’ve been talking to an acquaintance,” he said cryptically. “I thought I should pass on her words.”

Monahl raised her eyebrows.

“Someone is looking for you,” he continued. “Questions have been asked of the bargees and some of the supervisors of the work-gangs. They are looking for Monahl of Camptore.” He looked apologetic. “I thought you should know.”

“Who?” Monahl asked. “Police? Someone from Zigané?”

“You are safe with us,” said Kartaki. “If it is police then we can buy them off. If it is enemies of your own, then we will protect you.” He glanced at the dogs curled up at his feet. “You are safe here.”

She trusted Kartaki – she had already been through a number of close scrapes in her time with the smugglers – but the suggestion that someone had been asking for her by name worried her greatly.

If they wanted her to return to the Order they would have to force her.

That night, she lapsed into a fever in which she had the most vivid of visions. Many strange and incredible sights came to her in the next day and a half, but one in particular stayed with her when she awoke.

“I saw Qez,” she sobbed, as Roubel dampened her head with a cold rag.

“Of course you did,” said the woman, although talk of the lesser gods was sacrilege to one of the Habnathi faith.

“He was coming for me.” She closed her eyes and it flashed back at her in an instant. She was a girl again, sitting on top of the cliffs of Zigané, kicking her feet in the air as they dangled over the precipice. A thick blanket of fog rolled over the Burn Plain, hiding it so that she couldn’t jump in. And then the fog parted and she heard a strange music floating up to her ears: voices, although they swung and crooned like no voice she had ever heard before. She saw a figure, standing proud, moving towards her through the thinning mist. His long dark hair drifted back behind him, and in it there were feathers and snakeskins. His face was angular and good-looking, his eyes a piercing blue. He was Qez, the snake-god: a great warrior and leader of men, the god who had died and would come again. As the fog lifted farther, she saw that the man-god was riding on a raft made entirely of the sinuous bodies of living serpents: the very raft on which he had ridden to Michtlan, the land of the dead, presided over by his brother and alter-ego, Michtlanteqez. Just then he looked up and raised a hand. He had seen her. He was coming for her.

She pressed her head into Roubel’s shoulder and sobbed. She remembered how bad she had felt when she had sat on the top of that cliff, how she had so nearly thrown herself off. She could only think of one interpretation of this awful vision: she should have died that day, she should have gone to the land of the dead instead of turning away and deciding to make a new start.

Was she going to die, then? Was that the message of this vision?

She convinced her hosts that she was better, and set out the next day to find work on one of the town’s labour-gangs.

But instead of going to one of the gang meeting places, she called at the market which had grown up in the cleared ground where the old town had once been.

She couldn’t stay in Qebahl any longer. She had to keep moving.

She found a stall where Kartaki was known and left a message with the owner, along with a small amount of money. “Tell him I’ll be okay,” she said, although she didn’t believe it herself.

At the docks she searched around for a barge that might take her to the Shelf.

A voice behind her changed everything.

“Are you Monahl of Camptore?”

A man, uncertain.

Without a backward glance, Monahl started to run, dodging in and out of the crowd, leaving a trail of curses and shouts in her wake. She had been stupid: she should have disguised herself, hidden the giveaway colour of her skin – she was not the only person here with the golden skin of Zigané, but it certainly made it easier for anyone on her trail.

She ran until she reached the end of the docks and then she suddenly realised how foolish that had been. From here, her only route of escape was the steep path up the side of the cliff. This route had been closed for over a month, ever since a huge block of cliff had broken away from the land, taking with it a shrine and a worshipping bargee.

But she couldn’t risk going back through the crowd.

She hurdled the crude wooden barrier which had been placed across the track and clambered up the steep slope. The path turned at a sharp angle, about halfway up, as the result of the distortion of the ground here.

She continued on her way. She knew that where the block had broken away there was still something of an uneven track which would take her a short distance to where another path led inland along the crest of the ridge.

She reached a place where the ground levelled out. She paused to look back. There was no sign of her pursuer. She hurried on her way.

She almost went right over the edge.

A new land-slip had removed the remainder of the rough track: another entire block had cleaved down a fracture line, and now there was a drop deeper than her own height to the top of this slipped mass.

She caught her breath and looked back.

A dark-haired man was swinging his legs over the barrier, followed by two others.

Monahl sat and then lowered herself from the edge. If she couldn’t get through then maybe she could find somewhere to hide.

When her arms were at full stretch she dropped the short remaining distance. Her heart lurched as for an instant she thought her rocky platform had been jolted loose, then she turned and surveyed the broken terrain.

She decided on her path and hurried along it.

“Hey! Come back!” They were above her, standing where the path plunged down to her level.

She ran.

She rounded the upended roots of a tree, which jutted out over the Burn Plain, then caught herself up sharply against a rock. Her foot had found only air and was now suspended in open space. She eased herself back and then forced herself to look down: if she had kept on running she would have plunged into a deep fissure, at the bottom of which was a seething mass of magma.

“Please don’t do that.”

She turned away from the precipice and saw the man. The same angular looks, the same dark hair with feathers tied into its luxuriant mass, the same blue eyes.

She backed right up to the edge, certain that her time of judgement had come.

“I dreamed you,” she said. “I dreamed you came for me on your raft of serpents. I dreamed you wanted me with you in Michtlan.”

The man looked puzzled. “Please,” he said. “I’m not Qez.” He held out a hand towards her. “And I don’t want you to die. Will you come here?”

“You’ve come for me!”

He nodded. “Yes,” he said, edging towards her. “I have come for you but I’m no god.”

“Who, then?”

“Haven’t you guessed?” he said. “My name is Chi. I’m your brother.”

~

Chi had grabbed her hand and yanked her away from the edge. He held her until she stopped shaking. Finally, he moved away from her. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to hurry you, but will you come with me now?” He glanced back to where his two friends stood guard on the crest of the ridge. “You see, I have to get moving. I’ve upset a few people and I think the police will be after me before long. I need to get away from Qebahl as soon as possible.”