Babylon Steel (3 page)

“They were staying at the Riverside Palace.”

I whistled. “Fairly well to do then.”

“Fairly, yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Enthemmerlee Defarlane Lathrit en Scona Entaire.”

“There’s a handle and a half,” I said. “So what happened?”

“They were at the Hall of Mirrors when there was some kind of disturbance, and the next thing they knew she was gone.”

“What sort of disturbance?”

“Oh, a scuffle in the crowd, and some visiting grandee or other in a jewelled litter, creating fuss. Nothing to do with the Incandrese.”

“Just gone?” I said.

“So they said. Vanished.”

“No ransom demand?”

“No. Nothing.”

I looked at the picture again. The girl had a calm, serious stare, and looked terrifyingly innocent. Though it’s hard to tell with different races, I’d say she was no more than sixteen.

“They’re government, you say. Ruling families?”

“Yes. Noble class.”

Nobility has a habit of pimping out their children, though they don’t call it that and it’s done with a deal of ceremony. Maybe the girl didn’t want to be married, and had seen the chance to do a runner. I sympathised, but it meant she was on her own, in a city which, much as I love it, is not the safest place for a pretty innocent. And she was noble class, which almost certainly meant she had no more idea how to look after herself than a kitten.

Not that poor girls are necessarily safe, either. I looked at the portrait. Something about that solemn stare sent a quiver down my back. Memory, or guilt.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll ask around. But I need to borrow this. I’ll get some copies done, get it back to you.”

“Keep it as long as you need. There is one thing, though...”

“What?”

“Timing. The wedding
must
take place before Twomoon. The family are somewhat insistent on that point.”

“Doesn’t give me long to find her.”

“I know.”

He took a bag of coin out of his pouch and laid it on the table, then he took my hand and bowed over it, and though he just brushed it with his lips I felt the touch all the way down. “Thank you, Babylon.”

“I’m not promising anything other than that I’ll look.”

He smiled. “I know.”

I saw him out, and watched him walk away, with a smooth elegant stride. The money weighed heavy against my hip.

I
WENT BACK
into Punters’ Parlour. Laney had taken the clockmaker upstairs, the Twins had presumably retreated to the Basement; only Jivrais and Flower were still there. Flower was bending to refill the plates of snacks we always kept on the sideboard, the strings of his apron straining across his broad green back. Under the apron he wears plain linen trousers but nothing else – he gets hot in the kitchen.

“I’m going out,” I said. “We haven’t anyone due for a couple of hours.”

“You should eat,” Flower waved at the plates.

“I’ll eat when I get back.”

“Never mind that!” Jivrais was positively wriggling with curiosity. He’s a young lad, part faun and all mischief, otherwise known as Trouble. “What happened? Mr Fain just
left?
You didn’t even take him upstairs!”

“No,” I said.

“Aw, Babylon... didn’t we have
anything
he wanted?” Jivrais pouted.

“Yes, we did, but it wasn’t someone to bed. He’s asked me to look for a girl who’s gone missing.” I showed them the portrait.

“Ooh, she’s lovely,” Jivrais said. “Those
eyes
.”

“Yeah, I know. And she’s walking prey. She’s called Enthemmerlee – hang on – Enthemmerlee Defarlane Lathrit en Scona Entaire. Honestly, even Laney’s real name isn’t that long.”

Flower looked at the portrait and sighed. “You can’t save them all, Babylon.”

I knew what he was getting at. I have a certain soft spot, or maybe it’s a raw spot, for young girls in trouble. “Yeah, well, let’s hope this one’s just playing ‘let’s worry the parents’ and doesn’t
need
saving. And let the crew know what Chief Bitternut said, okay?”

“The Vessels. Right.” He shook his head. “That is one weird bunch. Those masks give me the
bihadash.
”

Vessels above a certain rank wear Purity masks: white, ugly things like a bird’s skull. If the higher priests have to leave their temples, they wear masks without eyeholes, and are led by sighted servants: the ‘truly pure’ (truly something, all right) blind themselves, to avoid accidentally spotting anything sinful.

“Bihadash?” I said.

“You know how you feel about beetles? Like that. The sight of them makes me want to squish something.”

“Well, I sympathise, but I’m afraid you’re not allowed to squish Vessels, more’s the pity.”

While I took my stroll I’d keep an eye out for some of the freelancers, ask them if they’d heard anything that might lead to Enthemmerlee. I’d mention the Vessels, too, but most of them would already know about the girl who’d been attacked. News like that spreads faster than fever in a siege.

Previous was on the door. She’s a stocky, freckled redhead who barely comes up to my chin, and a damn sight faster than she looks. You have to be careful picking bouncers; I don’t usually put Flower or anyone that big out front – a mountain of muscle between them and their fun can put some customers off, plus it can make them feel inadequate. Previous, in her dented armour, hits the right balance. We hooked up some years before I came to Scalentine; both of us acting as caravan guards to a manically nervous merchant whose cargo of spices, we discovered rather too late, hadn’t actually belonged to him. When I left she decided to come with me; I was glad to have her.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“What was that with the gorgeous Mr Fain, then?” she said, grinning. “Talk about take your fun and run.”

“No fun. Just talk.”

“Shame.”

I told her about the girl. She frowned at the portrait. “Looks pretty snappable, don’t she? All right, I’ll listen out.”

“Getting chilly.”

“It is.”

I handed her my flask, and she took a swig and handed it back. We stood for a moment looking out towards the square, with its cool greenish-glowing lights and the great clock. It showed the cycles of the sun, the moons, and the planes – those that had cycles anyone could follow, at least – in a series of interlocking wheels; brass and silver, copper and gold, lapis and jade and chrysoprase.

“Not as cold as the time we were on guard duty up in the Clarissen mountains,” she said.

“Don’t remind me. If I had nadgers they’d have frozen off, I swear. Remember those poor boys trying to get a fire going, and the snow came down blue?”

“Hah, blue snow. Made it even colder, somehow.” Previous shook her head.

“What
was
that warlord’s name?”

“You should know. Got to know him lotsbetter’n I did,” she said, grinning.

“Hey, I had to keep warm
somehow.
He was all right. What the hells
was
his name?”

“Don’t think I ever learned it,” Previous said. “Too busy trying to keep that cousin of his from sneaking through the pass and cutting
his
nadgers off. Families, eh? Can’t remember the cousin’s name, neither.”

“How’d you get yours again?” I said, casually. “Previous?”

She gave a snort. “Oh, you’ll have to get me a lot drunker before I tell you
that
.”

Damn. I’d been trying to get it out of her for years
.
I shook the flask invitingly but she just laughed and waved it away. I made a face at her, then headed down to the river.

The city had that silvery-blue, glamorous feel it gets on an autumn evening like this; a little mist rising off the river, lights dancing in the water, the eye-twisting greeny-pink glow in the sky over one of the portals. There’s always music from a dozen different taverns and street-musicians, the rumble of wheels, barrels rolling, laughter and yells and the crackle of magic. Little plaster faces watched me from the walls. They’re something of a feature in Scalentine; it’s as though every race that’s ever passed through, someone has decided to commemorate a few of them. They’re on almost every building, sometimes one or two, sometimes a frontage so covered it’s like a crowd caught in time. I like them. They feel friendly.

I leant on the bridge parapet for a moment and watched the river.

TIRESANA

T
HE GODS, OR
the shadows of them, were everywhere. The mistress taking Philla to the temple of Meisheté before her marriage, to offer up gold for fertility and easy births.

One of the servants burning a black feather to Aka-Tete, asking vengeance and swift passage to the Far Lands for his brother, murdered in some brawl.

Even in the tarot pack there were the Sun, the Moon, and Death.

The gods were in everyone’s lives, referred to every day. Of course, they hadn’t manifested on our plane for generations, but we still prayed to them. Gods don’t just cease to be because they’re somewhere else. Besides, their temples and their priests were very much here. The temples were everywhere, and so were the priests: they were government and law and militia. The master paid his temple taxes and didn’t dare grumble, in case the gods overheard and decided to let his caravans get raided or his ships wrecked. And of course, for fear of the Avatars.

We all knew about the Avatars, even if we never saw them; beings of wondrous and terrible power, created by the Gods to take their place on this plane, to rule their priesthoods and govern their people in their name.

Shoved off on whoever had work that needed doing and time to teach me, I learned a bit of everything; picked up the habits of worship along with everything else. I never was much good in the kitchen, but by the time I was twelve, I knew how to scrub and stitch; by fourteen I could dig a garden or empty a privy or mend a stable door, and make a garland of moonflower to lay on Shakanti’s altar, in the hopes she’d help me preserve my virginity.

Because the master had started looking at me with a certain eye. I knew enough by then to know what he was thinking about, and to know I didn’t want it. Firstly, he was three times my age, greasily fat, and had a liking for drenching his hair with heavy-scented oil. Secondly, it would have caused trouble and I’d have been blamed.

Shakanti having shown no interest in helping me out, I was still chewing over what to do when the trade caravan came back, to load up for the next trip. The family traded in spices, and it was always a bit of a celebration when the caravan came in; gifts all around, and a feast – or as much of one as could be had.

The head cook prodded the haunch of goat provided for us with a dissatisfied look. “Used to be when the caravans came in, back in my father’s day, a whole ox for the servants. And the best beer, not this thin stuff.”

“Beer’s not what it was anywhere,” the mulemaster said. “Well, can’t expect it, with the harvests so poor.”

One of the kitchen girls leant over and whispered to me, “And the ears of grain used to be big as your hand, the harvest carts came in piled so high the beasts could barely pull them...”

“...twice as much good growing land, forests full of deer so fat and lazy they’d walk onto your spear...” I whispered back. We heard these stories all the time.

Others, too. About how there had been fewer of what they called ‘shadowed births.’ Babies born... not right, one way or the other. But we were young, the world around us was all we knew.

After the feast, the master handed the gifts out and gave me a length of crimson cloth for a gown – a pretty colour, but hardly subtle, especially with his hand on my leg and his wife glaring like a hen disturbed on the nest.

Poor woman. She was welcome to him. I decided then and there that I’d always
choose
who I bedded. Given the chance, that was.

I put the cloth aside (when I was supposed to have time to make it into a gown, I don’t know) and went to listen to the caravan guards tell their stories. They usually saved the best ones for when the master was out of earshot. One of them, Kyrl, had started teaching me dice last time they were home; I saw her grinning at me across the fire, flushed with wine, and shaking the dice-box invitingly. I went over, accepted a sip from her bottle and told her what was going on.

She wasn’t too drunk to listen. She looked at the master, who was congratulating himself on his profits, his big red face greasy as his hair in the heat of the torches, and swore. “The older they get, the more some of ’em want young flesh,” she said. “You want to come out with us? I reckon I can swing it, if you’re up for it. You’ll have to pull your weight, loading and looking to the beasts, but you’re used to work. You just have to stay out of his way for ten days or so ’til we’re out again – and he should be busy getting the new loads arranged for most of that.”

“Yes, please,” I said.

Ten days later, the pack boy who’d been hired got called home at the last minute. How Kyrl had managed it, she wouldn’t say. I asked permission from the Mistress to go instead, which she was more than happy to give, and set out in the mood for the highest adventure.

Most of the time it was nothing but sitting and swaying and a sore backside; poor food, bad inns and learning to deal with the damned sandmules, one of the ugliest, orneriest beasts that’ll ever try to kick your guts through your backbone.

Still, I loved it. I realised the world was a good deal bigger than I’d had any idea of. How big a universe lay beyond it was another thing again. I heard of a portal, in a town called Mantek; apparently some of our spices went through it to places of strangeness and magic, but we never travelled so far. Even the caravan guards, adventurous as they seemed to me, never speculated about going beyond the portal. Our goods got taken on by others
–
strange, mad people, travellers.

It wasn’t until later I realised just how provincial, how closed off Tiresana was. It’s a small plane, the habitable part barely larger than some countries. It was bigger, once, or so the rumour goes.