Empire of Bones (30 page)

She could, of course, wash her hands of the whole lot of them, but that would mean risking trading her power for a re-turn to outlaw status. Once again, she had responsibilities, and she had to live up to them.

Besides, there was a cure for Selenge, and it rested with Sirru, not Ir Yth.
How much do I have to
lose? And there might be a world to gain
.

"Come with me," she said to Sirru. Taking his arm, she led him out into the courtyard, where her men were waiting. With a deep, unsteady breath, she said, "We're leaving. Tonight, as planned. Things are getting too hot here—Anand, Tokai, Kharishma's people, the military. There are too many jackals circling. And we're taking Sirru with us."

She could see the doubt in Rakh's face, but he wouldn't publicly challenge her word. He said, practical as ever, "What's to be done?"

"We need to find a safe haven, somewhere we can plan." She knew as well as he that there was only one place that could be described as safe: Yamunotri, the fort in the mountains. Sirru was looking from face to face, trying to understand.

"Very well then," Jaya said. "Start packing up. We're mov-ing out."

But that was easier said than done.

An hour later, Jaya went up onto the battlements. Across the square, in the hazy lamplight, she could see movement.

Raising her night-sight binoculars to her eyes, Jaya saw that the square, packed to the bursting point the day before, was already half empty. People were being led away. Men in a uni-form that Jaya did not recognize were clearing the throng, silently and—for Bharat—without fuss. Light glinted off the butt of a gun. As she watched, Jaya saw a familiar stumpy fig-ure bustling out of the pavilion, four arms folded in a complex insectoid huddle. The lithe form of Kharishma Kharim strode after Ir Yth.

Jaya shifted position to see where they were going, but they vanished out of sight behind the billowing pale wall of the pavilion. She did not need the activity in the square to tell her that something was happening. Change rode the air, remind-ing her of the days of her ill-fated revolution. She noticed for the first time that the temple monkeys had all disappeared. Jaya headed back down into the courtyard.

At the gate, she found Rakh arguing with someone in an un-characteristic whisper. His back was turned, but there was an equally unfamiliar air of helplessness in the set of his shoulders. He appeared to be pleading. Jaya went to find out what all the fuss was about and saw that a woman had appeared at the gate. At first, Jaya thought she was young, but then she saw that the woman's face had the betraying sheen of nanofilm, a flexible mask that moved as she spoke. From a distance, the effect was convincing; from close up, it was eerie. Carefully dressed hair fell to her waist and she was clad in a plain sari with a patterned hem that Jaya only belatedly realized was made up of the inter-locking Chanel logo. A drift of swooningly opulent perfume greeted Jaya as she stepped into die gatehouse.

"
Shrimati
Jahan," Jaya said, recognizing her at last. Rajira was, after all, the most infamous courtesan in Varanasi. "What are
you
doing here?"

First movie stars, now whores
. Rajira Jahan's presence was baffling: an overblown rose in a field full of thistles. Rajira stepped forward and clutched Jaya's hands in a startlingly powerful grip.

"Please… You have to help me. Where is he?"

"Where is who?" Jaya asked, though she had the unsettled feeling that she already knew.

"The—the visitor. The alien." Rajira's eyes met Jaya's, and the courtesan flinched as she encountered what must have been a golden glare.

"He's inside. Why?" The last thing Jaya wanted now was another complication. She motioned to Rakh.

"Make sure everything's going as planned." Widi a palpable air of relief, Rakh vanished in the direction of the cellars. Rajira whis-pered, "He came to see me. Last night. We—that is, he—"

The courtesan may have thought this a becoming display of modesty, but Jaya was losing patience, not to mention belief. "
What
? Sirru's one ofyour
clients
?" She found that she was more astounded than anything else, but beneath it all a swift jealous pang contracted her heart. She felt utterly and unreasonably be-trayed.
Men! God, it doesn't matter
where
they come from
…

The suddenness of the feeling made her catch her breath, but the prospect of squabbling over the alien with Varanasi's most legendary prostitute was too undignified to be borne. Besides, the look in Rajira's eyes told her that the woman's claim was not only true, but deserving of pity.

"Well—I mean—what happened?" Jaya said, faintly. For once, she felt completely at a loss. Hesitantly, Rajira told her story. And to Jaya's considerable surprise, she found herself in-clined to believe her.

"All right," Jaya said. She leaned back against the wall. "But what are you doing here?"

Rajira was still gripping Jaya's wrist in a steely clasp. "I have to see him. I think I'm ill."

Jaya gaped at the courtesan.

"111? What do you mean?"

"I don't know what it is. I feel feverish, and I keep hear-ing—well,
voices
."

Where have I come across that particular set of symptoms be-fore
? Jaya thought with a further stab of shock.

"And I'm afraid that, well, if I've given the illness to—to anyone, maybe to one of my clients, and then if they associate me with—with the alien…"

"But why would anyone associate you with Sirru?" Jay a asked, then realized her naivete. "Oh."

"I told a few people." Rajira had the grace to look down-cast.

" 'A few people' being a few newspapers, I suppose." Jaya rubbed a weary hand across her eyes.

"Look, I'm really sorry, but this isn't a good time. Sirru can't see anyone at the mo-ment."
But what are
we going to do with her, then? If she's al-ready talked to the media
…
And what if she's a spy
? The decision was an easy one to make, but it was the kind of damage limi-tation that Jaya had grown to hate.

She said, "Go in there and tell Rakh that you're coming with us. But any trouble, any scenes, and I'm leaving you behind, do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Well, all right, then."

Jaya followed her latest recruit hastily back into the court-yard. Rakh was crouched by the opposite wall, staring up into the glistening sky.

"We're ready to go."

"Good. What are you looking at?"

"Helicopter. I don't recognize the insignia."

Jaya could hear a distant pounding as the helicopter turned. A flock of sparrows fluttered up from the towers of the temple, alarmed by the intruder.

"Where are the others?"

"Waiting in the cellars. Including the alien." Rakh frowned. "I found him in the kitchen—he was rummaging in the fridge; maybe he was hungry. I've contacted the boatman, too. He's ready."

"Then we're going," Jaya said, but as she turned the heli-copter rose up over the parapet of the temple, a dragonfly in the lamplight, and wheeled between the towers. Jaya seized the courtesan by the arm and pulled her toward the inner temple. Rakh was already running, keeping close to the tem-ple wall. Jaya veered away, pulling Rajira with her, and sprinted back toward the doors of the temple. The helicopter was wheeling around. Pushing the courtesan ahead of her, Jaya ducked beneath the arch and ran for the cellars.

The faces of her little troop and their guest were pale in the darkness. The sudden flare of torchlight brought other faces out of the walls: carvings of
rafyasas
and
apsaras
, demons and gods. For a moment, all of them seemed real to Jaya, multi-plied a thousandfold into life. Then, with a jolt of alarm, she saw that some of the faces were alive after all. They were small and pinched, and each black eye caught the light of the torch and returned it in a point like a bright, hot coal. One of the faces chattered at Jaya, revealing long yellow teeth. They were the monkeys of the Temple of Durga who had so re-cently disappeared, and now were found.

"Go,
go
," Rakh said, and each one—Shiv, Rajira, little Halil, and last of all, with a long unfathomable look at Jaya, Sirru—filed down into the tunnel. Jaya took a quick look be-hind. It seemed to her that she could already taste die acridity of nerve gas drifting into the cellar, but the monkeys leaped from the ledges and slipped past her, creeping up toward the light in a curiously concerted movement. She had no time to wonder as she followed her companions down into the dark.

She did not know how old these cellar passages might be. The Temple of Durga was not itself ancient, dating back only as far as the eighteenth century. But—so they said—Varanasi was the oldest city of all Bharat, and what lay beneath its coil of streets could only be imagined. Jaya put out a hand to steady herself over rough footing, and her fingers touched things that felt disturbingly human: the curves of a hip, the line of a face. Carvings, no doubt, a relic of older worship on the site, but the stone felt unnervingly alive, cool and moist be-neath her hand. Her fingers brushed against a smile. She thought she heard noises behind her, and every footstep was magnified into the sound of pursuit.

Sirru hurried just ahead of her, bending occasionally when the ceiling became low. The narrow quills quivered and twitched, perhaps sensing information in the air. Jaya thought wonderingly of Rajira. Jaya had never been a voyeur, but she would have given a lot to be a mosquito on the wall during
that
particular confrontation. She couldn't understand Sirru's behavior: at once so normal and so strange. And he had man-aged to slip out with no trouble at all—that was the most wor-rying thing. What else might he have been getting up to?

She fought down that unfamiliar pang of jealousy. He wasn't her lover, after all, and she'd never even considered him physically except as a possible threat. She hadn't consid-ered anyone since Kamal, and it suddenly struck her that maybe it was time she did. But the thought felt disloyal and she pushed it away.

Still, even if Sirru wasn't her lover, he
was
her alien…

Perhaps Ir Yth was right and Sirru's caste were no differ-ent from humans after all. How depressing. She had no wish to end up as one of Krishna's dancing girls, or the modern equivalent. Sighing, Jaya picked her way through the pas-sages, longing for air and light and sense.

21. Ixhaikurriye

The four enforcers strode forward, their robes rustling. Even through the darkness, Anarres could see the membranes quiv-ering along each side of their long necks, sending terror into the air with methodical ease. Behind the enforcers, the walls of the ruined pod began to shrivel. The wall shredded into fil-aments like a dead leaf, and a fifth enforcer stalked through the gap. Something was drifting in from the courtyard: a soft, sparkling cloud. Beside Anarres, Nowhere One gave a sudden rasping gasp. A moment later, she could feel it seeping in through the slits of her skin, numbing the passages of her nose and mouth. The world flickered on and off, wavered between darkness and blinding light, wheeled crazily upside down as Anarres fell.

ONLY a moment later, or so it seemed, she blinked awake. She was lying on her back, encased in a wet web. The binding was not particularly tight, but it was sticky, and struggling against it only enmeshed her further. There was an old, sour taste in her mouth. The wall of an unfamiliar chamber curved above her, pulsing slowly in and out. Unknowable impres-sions glittered through the air, and with a slow horror Anarres realized where she must be: inside the Marginals, a prisoner. Slowly, so as not to disturb the bonds any more than necessary, she turned her head.

Nowhere One lay only a short distance away. His eyes were closed. Anarres could see a long thin foot, the toes curled de-fensively against the sole. Her skin prickled. Reaching down with her chin, she managed to activate her scale implant; it would do little good, but she needed at least the illusion of a defense.

There was a soft sucking sound as die walls opened and someone stepped through. It was EsRavesh.

The
kjiaith's
plump face was pursed with distaste. He stood for a moment, staring down at Anarres with an air of disapproving satisfac-tion. Then he reached down and deactivated her scale. Anarres' first thought was for the manifold—he could not find out about IrEthiverris. As forcefully as she could, Anarres began to emanate allure.

I don't know what good you thin't that will do
, EsRavesh said, with contempt.
Do you fancy yourself
irresistible
?

"There was a time when you seemed to want exclusivity," Anarres managed to purr.

/
have become bored with the notion. Besides, you are a trou-blemaker. Consorting with
this—He gestured toward Nowhere

One's prone form, and Anarres caught the sting of pheromones.
Willfully flouting the natural order.

Why did you visit that orbital
?

"I won't tell you."

EsRavesh said nothing. Gradually, she felt a pressure growing inside her head, until it felt ready to explode. "Stop it!" she cried. With a great show of reluctance she said, "We wanted to find out if there was a way of restoring Sirru's First Body."

If you followed my instructions correctly, you would have had no such opportunity
. Anarres looked away from the smug
kfiaith. Ah, it seems that you did. What a pity that you were so dili-gent in
carrying out my orders
. The beady yellow gaze sharp-ened.
You are concealing something! I can
sense it
.

"No, there's nothing," Anarres cried. The
kjiaith
swooped, the thick, rudimentary digits working their way through the sticky folds of the mesh, pinching and probing across her breast ridge and between her legs.

What is this
? Triumphantly, the
khaith
snatched up the skein of the communications mesh.
I see. You
hoped to contact your
desqusai
lover; warn him perhaps? I fear I must disappoint you
. He tucked the mesh into his sleeve.
And now, I have things to attend to. I will not return. We have reflected on
this matter, and it has been our judicious decision that your use is at an end. But for the sake of
our past relationship, I am prepared to make one concession
.