Riding the Serpent's Back (30 page)

That was when she woke.

There was a pressure on her chest, her loins...movement and thrusting and tangling of limbs...coarse beard-hair scraping her cheek, and above all the stink of sweat and alcohol smothering her senses.

She swung her arms, tried to heave herself from under him, from under her drunken violent brother, but it was no good. He had her, he was done, he rolled off, groaned, vomited a liquid bilious brew.

At that point he peered at her in the gloom, then reeled back as if about to fall over. He caught himself, staggered to his feet, backed away.

“I...” He put his hands to his head, squeezed the sides of his skull. “It...my head...” He stumbled away into the night, and Monahl lay there, hugging herself, hot and wet and bloody.

Chi had mended her, and so he had broken her again.

He didn’t even have the courage to face her the next day. He never even bothered to try to explain. He left all that to one of his closest friends, Jaryd Kalmen.

“He’s gone,” Jaryd told her, when he saw that she was awake.

“I can see that much.” Straight away, Monahl had sensed the finality of it all, the futility. “Why?”

Jaryd looked shifty. “I told him to tell you himself,” he said. “But he wouldn’t.”

“Tell me
what?
”

“That he was going.”

Monahl bunched her hands into fists at her side. Then, Jaryd continued.

“He said he was sorry. He said you’d learnt to heal yourself, so you’d manage to heal yourself again. Said he wasn’t himself last night...the drink. I’m sorry, sister: he just can’t afford to have you with him.”

“How much of that was his explanation?” asked Monahl. “And how much was it you trying to cover up for him?”

Just then, Bean appeared at her cousin’s side. “About fifty-fifty,” she said. “Sister, I don’t know what happened between you and Chi, but I do know one thing: you have to look out for yourself.”

Monahl sat down and buried her face in her hands, but no tears came. She felt dizzy and confused, and more than anything she felt angry – with Chi, with herself, with Jaryd and Bean, the world. Angry

~

Her second stay with Roubel and Kartaki lasted only a matter of hours. She was admiring Roubel’s batiks – such delicate work for one who had been so robust and physical before – when the same double knock came at the door. Her farewells were lost in a confusion of dogs barking, a strange woman being ushered in and almost immediately insisting that they should leave.

The woman, another Habnathi, said little. She led Monahl through a network of alleyways and paths, past open spaces and the skeletal remains of buildings. Monahl assumed she must be another member of the network of resistance fighters Kartaki had told her about. He had been almost apologetic about his own role in this organisation – providing a safehouse and a black market source of funding – as if he assumed Monahl would disapprove. But she had seen the police that afternoon, and she could not help but be aware of the atmosphere of fear that pervaded the town. More than that, she trusted Kartaki implicitly: if he felt strongly enough that he had gone against his own peaceable nature and joined the resistance, then things must be bad. “It is the Habnathi way to avoid conflict at all costs,” he told her, shortly before the double-knock came. “We have been running away for generations. But if we do not make a stand now, then where else is there left for us to run?”

The woman led Monahl out of the town in a northerly direction. They walked for at least an hour, always leaving the rough track to hide on the rare occasions when someone passed in the other direction.

From the gradually increasing levels of light, Monahl realised they were drawing near to the Burn Plain. They emerged in an open area, the rounded top of a low hill, beyond which the fiery patterns of the Plain spread out.

There were people here, talking in low voices.

Suddenly, a geyser of lava flared up from nearby, flooding the scene with its flickering light. Three people – one of them Bean – and a courser. Now Monahl understood why she had not simply been taken back to the docks.

More muttered words, then Bean embraced Monahl. “I wish we could talk,” she said. “We parted on such bad terms.”

Monahl shrugged, and said, “It was Chi’s fault.”

Bean took Monahl’s small pack and said, “You’ll have to tie this across your chest to make it secure. You’ll be riding in front.” She helped her fix the pack. “The courser is the best way from here,” she said. “The barges go straight to the Authority Docks on the Shelf, for offloading onto the trains to the Junction. Soldiers and armed guards are everywhere – you’d never get through.”

Bean still looked awkward. “What is it?” asked Monahl.

“You should know that your brother has changed a lot since you knew him.”

“That can only be an improvement.” Monahl stopped when she saw the expression on Bean’s face: something was making this tough little woman feel awkward. “What is it? I know he must be older now. His hair’s gone white, is that it?”

Bean shook her head. “It’s still black,” she said. “There’s no easy way to tell you: he’s been reborn in the body of a child. He’s just four years old. I thought you should know before you saw him.”

Monahl had trouble taking it in. Almost immediately, the short woman who was bonded to the courser instructed Monahl to mount the beast so that she could strap her in. Then she climbed on behind her and the beast raised its wings until they caught the breeze, then lifted into the night sky.

~

Monahl’s pilot spent much of the journey asleep in her sling. Monahl shifted in her harness as much as she dared, but still the short woman slumped behind her. She decided to trust her: at least the beast seemed to know where it was going – despite the buffeting of thermals, they were sticking to a straight course.

She watched the Burn Plain rolling away beneath them. From this height she could see far more clearly the patterns made by the mosaic of dark, vegetation-covered blocks, separated by a tracery of lava rivers and their tributaries. She remembered the texture of snake skin under her hands: below them, the blocks of thinly-covered crust were like scales on the back of the Burn Plain.

The woman behind her woke as dawn fell across this infernal world. “Unh,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Shouldn’t do that.” Monahl sensed her leaning over the beating wings of the courser to look at the liquid landscape below. “Where are we? D’you know?”

“Don’t you?”

“Huh? Oh. Sure.”

A short time later, a great screen of mist rose up ahead of them.

“The Shelf,” said the pilot, over Monahl’s shoulder. “Or rather, you can’t actually see the Shelf, but believe me, it’s there behind the steam.”

Monahl had seen this bank of steam-cloud before, from the Hamadryad Falls. It formed where the river flooded an expanse of the Burn Plain, the sheer volume of water too great for it all to be turned instantly to vapour, so that it spread out, forming a seething, boiling sea.

A short time later, they set down in Edge City.

She had forgotten the sheer sprawl of deprivation of the city’s slums – far worse even than those of Qebahl. On her only previous visit, she had stayed in the Warren, paying a brief visit to the Falls before heading upriver from the Junction. She had been quite careful to avoid the slums.

But now, she had been deposited in their heart.

The courser took off immediately, leaving Monahl alone to look around in dismay. The slums seemed to be crowding in on her from every side. The overbearing filth was present in everything: from the walls of the shabby little huts to the clothes and faces of the people. Children ran around with no clothes, dangerous-looking packs of dogs trotted about, sometimes free, sometimes on the end of strings in the wake of their masters. The place smelt of decaying garbage, with food smells mixed in, and the heavy odour of wet earth. She looked more closely at the dwellings, finding it hard to equate the depth of poverty of this place with even the poorest quarters of Zigané. The mean little shacks and lean-tos looked as if they were about to collapse, indeed many
had
collapsed and were being patched-together by men and women in the tattered vests and shorts that were the filthy uniform of this place. It looked as if there had been an earthquake.

A ragged child with blackened stumps for teeth was standing before her – boy or girl, she could not tell. “Chi?” Monahl said, cautiously.

But no, this child was at least eight years old and her voice revealed her to be a girl. “He’s busy,” she said. “He’s always busy. You Monahl? He sent me to make sure you were okay an’ to bring you to him. You okay? Good. Then you better come with me.”

Obediently, Monahl walked at the girl’s side, heading up what was a wide street for this district.

A man barged into her, sending her spinning away to the side. He turned and cursed at her and she stood watching him in shock. “You should watch where you’re heading,” said her grubby guide. “Walked right into him, dincha?”

Monahl tried to be more careful, but it was not easy. In Zigané, the crowds – upon glimpsing silver jewellery and samite smock – automatically parted for a devotee-priest. Here, people just kept going. It was a whole new language which she had to learn: the gestures and signals that allowed a great mass of humanity to pass through confined spaces without continual chaos.

Chi was waiting for her about halfway up the hill. Monahl spotted him first, and immediately knew it to be her half-brother. A small person – he could hardly be called a child – jumping up and down as he yelled instructions to a squad of armed men. His long black hair, tied with green and white feathers, danced behind him as he moved about. His gestures were just the same, and that tiny bearded face made him look like a miniature facsimile of the man she had so briefly known, and learned to hate.

When he saw her, he turned, and peered at her cautiously. “Monahl,” he said. “I’m glad you came.” He gestured. “Will you come with me?” he said. “There are so many people I want you to meet. Kester, Joel, Sawnie and Petro are all here. You must meet them.”

Monahl had expected their siblings to be here. If Chi was in trouble, then he would have called around him everyone he could. She had never met them, but back on the Serpent’s Back the old Chi had told her all about them. “Is Red here?” she asked, aware that his name had not been included in Chi’s list.

A pained expression crossed Chi’s small face. “No,” he said. “I tried, but he wouldn’t come.”

A young woman approached them down the hill. She was slim and attractive, with the distinctive dark skin of a Habnathi – a race almost as common in Edge City as it was on the Serpent’s Back.

“You must be Chi’s other sister,” said the woman, dipping her head in greeting. “My name is Cotoche. I’m Chi’s wife, and mother.”

Chi ran up to hug the woman, his head nuzzling into her belly, not quite reaching the slight swell of her breasts.

Monahl nodded, and mumbled a greeting. This Cotoche was about nineteen or twenty: precisely the age Monahl had been when Chi had assaulted her.

Monahl didn’t know what to feel.

Edge City had been a shock to her. The boy-Chi, too.

But this
Cotoche
...she was the biggest shock of all.

Monahl watched from her hiding place as the great ironclad drifted serenely down the Hamadryad towards the Junction. The vessel was painted red and gold, with feathers and flower petals stuck to every surface. The side closest to the bank was reinforced with sheet iron shielding, interrupted every so often by small gaps through which poked the snouts of light cannons.

At the ship’s bow a spur jutted forward and suspended from this was a corpse flayed of all skin. Bundles of muscle and sinew intertwined, glistening wetly in the early morning light; the white globes of its eyeballs stared out from their sockets. A ragged tuft of hair sprouted from the crown of the figure’s head, bound into a twist with the sloughed skin of a snake.

This figure was a representation of Huipo, the most merciless of the True People’s gods: their god of war. The only offering Huipo recognised was the flayed body of a man, woman or child. The grotesque object suspended from the boat’s bow was their tribute, their plea for the help of the merciless one.

For today, Chi’s people were going into battle. Today they would need all the help they could get.

~

It was only yesterday that Monahl had arrived in Edge City. That morning seemed so distant now.

After meeting Chi and his young wife, the man-child had taken her to a large encampment tucked away on the eastern fringe of the shanty-town district. Here, she had met the rest of her brothers and sisters for the first time.

Sawnie appeared tough and cold, not particularly interested in the newcomer. Her brother, Petro, shared her blonde-white hair, yet otherwise he seemed everything that Sawnie was not: he was generous and talkative, inquiring to the point of rudeness, self-deprecatory in his humour. Even the fullness of his figure seemed to counterbalance his sister’s ascetic look.

Monahl took to Kester more readily. She seemed to embody some of the more positive aspects of her siblings: she had Chi’s dark good looks, but the arrogance she shared with him was tempered by some of Petro’s easier nature; she was inquisitive and analytical, like Petro, but underneath everything was a heart every bit as tough as Sawnie’s. Of all of them, it was Kester who was most insistent that Chi should strike hard and early to repel the imperialist moves of the north.

And Joel. The horseman, the cynic, the persuader. He used charisma like a rapier, so much so that she was sure he must have inherited the Talent of enchanting from their father Donn.

In early afternoon the family gathered for a meal that extended through what was left of the day. Over maize broth, with bread cooked directly in the ashes of the fire, they exchanged their stories. Monahl learnt more about her new brothers and sisters, a little about Cotoche – which only confirmed her initial dislike – Echtal, Joel’s legless friend, and some of the others.

Guardedly, Monahl told them a little of her own life, skipping over the painful detail of her time on the Serpent’s Back. As she did so, she studied this new Chi. It was clear that he had nothing to say to her about the way he had abused and abandoned her all those years ago. She wondered how much he even remembered, how much had been lost or confused in his rebirth. She was unable to mention Freya yet: that was private, she could not tell Chi about a daughter he did not know in front of all these people.