Babylon Steel (7 page)

She called me something rude. “All right, all right. I’ll bring him over.”

I patted her cheek, and she growled at me.

The butcher was in Small Spell Street. Carcasses of every kind of beast – furred, skinned and scaled – hung in the window, different shades of blood dripping onto the scrubbed planks.

Unlike in most butcher’s shops, there wasn’t a fly to be seen; every board was scrubbed white and the scent of soap was almost as strong as the scent of meat. I could hear a faint, irregular squeak but I’d have bet my sword it wasn’t a mouse; I doubted one would dare venture here, for fear of death by scrubbing.

The squeak came from the counter, where a small, vaguely familiar-looking dark-skinned girl, about ten, with the shiny look of a polished apple and wearing an apron so white it almost hurt, was perched on a stool, the corner of her tongue poking out of her mouth as she worked at her letters. She looked up with a smile. “Help you?”

“Missing order, for the Red Lantern?” I recognised her now; she normally delivered our order.

“Just a moment.”

She slipped off her stool and disappeared through a curtain into the back. I heard murmuring and the butcher appeared, the girl behind her. She was a big woman, greying hair in a tight bun, with solidly muscled arms and blood on her apron. She was holding a cleaver. “Missus Steel, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We put an order in, should have got it this morning?” I held out the list, but she didn’t take it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Order shouldn’t have been taken, we can’t fill it.”

I glanced around the shop; there seemed to be plenty of meat, but I’m not Flower; I couldn’t tell what she had and what she didn’t. “None of it?”

“Sorry. And we can’t take any more orders.”

“You can’t...”

“Not for the Red Lantern.”

“Ah.”

It happens sometimes. There are people who don’t want to be associated with my business, even when they can make money out of it. She hadn’t struck me as the starched-underlinen type, but you can’t always tell.

She glanced up at me, briefly. “I’m sorry,” she said. Funny thing was, I got the sense she meant it. Maybe she really was sorry, one businesswoman to another.

I just smiled – well, I moved my mouth – and turned to go.

“Missus Steel?”

“What?”

She fidgeted with the cleaver, not looking at me. “You oughta be careful.”

It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to get into, especially with the girl hanging around looking wide-eyed at me. I glanced at her. Her mother caught the look and jerked her head towards the back of the shop; the girl went.

“Look,” I said, “if your husband or whoever’s been coming to see us, you need to talk to him, not to me. We don’t ask.”

“My husband’s been dead five years. I’m just saying.” She turned away, lifted a skinned animal the size of a small deer onto the slab with one easy swing of her arms and started dismembering it with swift accuracy.

I found another butcher easily enough, though I didn’t doubt Flower would soon pick a different one, but the shop looked clean and smelled fresh and the owner, a skinny, furry chap with a wide grin, had no problem filling the order.

From there, I went to The Lodestone. It’s all low lighting, staff so discreet they’re practically invisible, and the smell of some of Scalentine’s most expensive food. I was dressed in my normal street clothes: good boots, leather and... well, leather, mostly. It’s comfortable, it’s stylish (by my standards, anyway), and it can survive a lot. I’d barely walked in when Clariel saw me.

I love to watch a professional at work. I’m not exactly inconspicuous at my height, even in Scalentine, but she whisked me out of sight without causing so much as a ripple among the clientele. She’s something. Always dressed in a dark blue suit so crisply cut you could shave coins with it, glowing white wings folded behind her. She doesn’t like the term
angel
, but it gets used a lot.

She raised an eyebrow at me. I’ve seen strong men quail at the sight of that eyebrow, but I’m not so easy to intimidate.

“I assume you are not looking for a table,” she said, giving me the up-and-down.

“Not at your prices, Clariel. I need some information.”

“Swift, Babylon.” She waved one elegant hand towards the restaurant. “We are busy today.”

I told her.

“And why did you come to me?” She looked at the girl’s picture and raised the other eyebrow. It indicated that such things as kidnapping were vulgar, and beneath its notice.

“They were staying at the Riverside Palace. People with that kind of money eat here. If you hear anything that might involve this girl, let me know, eh?”

Her eyes are the exact shade of glacial lakes, and about as warm. “If I should happen to hear anything, perhaps you can tell me why I would pass it on to you? Why I should even tell you if they were here? My clients value discretion.”

“So do mine,” I said, grinning. “Come on, Clariel. It’s the high-end clientele like them who bring in the rest. How many of your customers pay for their seats hoping they’re still warm from a god’s backside, or on the off chance they might spot the Perindan Emperor having a pie and peas with his fifty closest sycophants?”

“There is a difference between people knowing who one’s clients are, and passing on private conversation. My clientele will turn up anyway, Babylon. We serve the best food in Scalentine.”

“Not all of it,” I said.

“Really.”

I may not play chess as well as the Chief, but there are games I’m good at, when I have the pieces.

I leaned forward. “You hear anything, and you tell me, and I’ll get you Flower’s recipe for spiced goulash. If the information’s
useful,
I’ll get him to come show you how he does it.”

She stared at me.

I stared back.

Finally she blew a delicate puff of air through slightly pursed lips. “Very well.”

I was smiling as I left, but as I walked towards home, my good mood faded. I still had nothing, and if that girl was in some bastard’s hands...

I turned the ring on my finger round and round, crossed the river and headed south.

TIRESANA

S
URROUNDED BY THE
sort of luxury even my master hadn’t enjoyed, I rode by barge to the capital, Akran, and to the Temple of All the Gods.

For five days I lay on a silk-covered couch being fed fruit by beautiful servants and watching land I’d jounced over on a sandmule drift past gently. I felt as though I were in a guilty dream, suspended, waiting for someone to realise it had all been a mistake.

For five days the Avatar Hap-Canae appeared daily and spoke with me, talking about the marvels that awaited me, and asking me questions that no doubt exposed the echoing depths of my ignorance about, well, pretty much everything. Even about Babaska, she I was about to serve. I knew that she took human lovers, though it didn’t always end well, and that she sometimes turned up in battle to fight beside a favoured soldier or a company. That was about it. I’d had a lot more education in scrubbing than in religion; what little I knew was mostly from fireside tales.

I was an eager listener, partly because I really was interested, and mad to learn, but mainly because I was half in love from the moment I first saw him. After a few days in his company, drenched in his charisma, the focus of utter and undivided attention from a divine being, I was as hopelessly, helplessly, awe-strickenly in love as any sixteen-year-old girl in the history of all the planes. Even now the scent of myrrh will bring it back to me; that drugged and burning madness.

It was the day before we were due to arrive. He lay on a green silk draped couch, the perfect background for his tawny robes; a plate of honey-cakes stood on the little table between us. His robes left one shoulder bare. I watched the smooth play of muscle beneath his glowing skin, and tried not to tremble. I was lying feet away from an Avatar, being treated like a priestess, and I was crazy with desire.

“Have you attended a Sowing?” he said, picking up a cake.

“Twice, so far.” I blushed, I swear, all the way to my waist. The Sowing happened at Spring Festival, one of the most important in the year.

Hap-Canae smiled. “Only twice! Well, at least you know what will be expected of you.” He bit into his cake.

I hadn’t thought of it, but as a High Priestess of Babaska, of course, I would be expected to perform the Sowing. I wondered what it would be like to do it with a man in front of a whole crowd of people. Would everyone guess I’d never done it before? What if I got it wrong?

The thought was probably written all over my face.

He ran a finger down my cheek. My whole body seemed to melt outwards from where he’d touched me. “Well,” he said, “you will receive some instruction, before you have to take part. But I think you might benefit from a little practical experience, hmm?”

He took my hand and led me to the covered area where he slept. I hardly felt the deck of the barge beneath my feet.

He had brought a mirror with him, of course; it stood on a gilded stand. I saw my face in it as he undressed me, my eyes wide and solemn.

I knew what went where, and that it was supposed to be an enjoyable experience; but otherwise I was ignorant as a calf. Daft with desire and drenched in Hap-Canae’s charisma, utterly stunned with delight at having been Chosen, not just as a priestess but as a lover, I thought it was all wonderful. I was used to feeling too tall, too broad in the shoulder, too big altogether, but compared to him, magnificent in his size and strength, I was fragile, delicate. He could flip me over with one hand.

Just the sight of his hands, the hands of an Avatar, of Hap-Canae, golden and glowing on my ordinary breasts, was enough to send great washes of feeling through me from nipples to groin. I hardly dared glance at his cock, but when he guided my hand to it and I felt it leap under my fingers, I almost fainted with pleasure. I’d done that. I’d made his body respond, to
me
.

And when he pushed inside me, I welcomed the pain, a willing martyr to desire. Later, I’d understand what pleasure was; that first time, all my joy was simply in having him inside me.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HOUGH IT WAS
only lunchtime, The Swamp was already busy, the smell of alcohol, fish and riverweed rolling into the street. Kittack looked up from wiping the bar and bared triangular teeth at me; he’s Ikinchli, and they’re basically lizards. It took me a while to get to the bar, excusing my way through a lot of scales and tails. Kittack serves stuff that I wouldn’t drink on a bet, but it’s very popular with some of the more reptilian bunch.

“Babylon.”

“Hey, Kittack.”

“You want a little my special beer? Put scale on your chest, hah?”

I glanced down at myself. “I’ve got enough on my chest to be going on with, thank you.”

Kittack flicked his tongue out at me. It’s dark blue, long, pointy, and
very
adept. “I remembers.”

“Me too. Put that tongue away before I forget what I came here for. You got a minute?”

He blinked at me, third eyelids pearling his eyes briefly. “Okay, we go back room.”

He hissed and clicked at his barmaid, a lamia with deep blue-green scales, hands like an angel and lamplight eyes. If she ever fancies the work, I’m offering her a job. She slid up to the bar and winked at me. “Keep him back there a while, I make twice the tips when he isn’t around.”

“No respect,” Kittack grumbled. We went into his ‘back room,’ which has heated stone benches and a small pool in the middle. Things swished and whirled in the water.

I settled myself, showed him the picture, and told him what I knew.

His cranial crest flicked up – not a good sign – then he went still. No-one can go more still than an Ikinchli. “Girl gone disappear. Why you ask me, Babylon?”

“Fain told me that these people come from the same place as you, Kittack. I just thought you might have heard something.”

“Who you been listening to?”

“I don’t get you.”

“You been hearing bad old stories?”

“Sorry, Kittack, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Stories from back home, about my people kidnap pretty girls for sacrifice to Old.”

The Old are sort of gods. Kittack’s sort of gods.

“I’ve heard nothing but what Fain told me.”

He flicked his tail. “Stories how the Old want pretty girls for make bouncy then cut head off. Waste of pretty girls, you ask me. Is all old foolishness from home.”

“Who made up these stories?”

“Gudain.” He tapped the portrait. “Master race, hah? Big pain in the tail; think us Ikinchli are made for slave, you know? So we do all hard work, not get nothing for it. Lots like me, we get chance, we leave.”

“I don’t blame you.” I sighed, and shoved the portrait away.

“What’s matter?”

“Well, I’ve promised to look for this girl. Been paid.”

“So? Is good. Money is money. I hear anything, I tell you.”

“Thanks, Kittack.”

He shrugged – he does it with his whole body. “Is no problem. Strange, though.”

“What is?”

“That Gudain girl. She got yellow eyes.”

“Yeah?”

“I never seen that before. Gudain always grey eyes. Funny. Maybe means she different, not so much pain in arse like other Gudain, hah?”

“Yeah, maybe. You been getting any trouble?”

“From Gudain? No. Mostly don’t come to Scalentine. Why would they? Back home, very comfortable, tell everyone what to do. Here, maybe not so much.” He waved a foot around in the water. “Me, not so political. Live here now, not there. Some my people, very political. Meeting, meeting, talking, talking. One day we go home, throw down Gudain, all be great, you know? But is all talk.”

“I meant, from the locals.”

“Bit graffiti, is all. ‘Scaly go home,’ usual.”

Ikinchli are ‘Scaleys’ only if you’re dumb or plain rude, and only to their faces if you’re looking to lose a part of your anatomy.