The New Weird (55 page)

Then the citizens and celebrants alike will flood with the flickering torches and the rising shadows along the streets toward the Factors' Dance, pilgrims and populace gathering in an uncountable mass in the great park outside the palace walls, performers and power-mongers strutting down the lanterned path and through the gates, proud to be among the chosen few whether as entertainers or the entertained. One day, Kertel hopes to be among those chosen few ―
prays,
more like.

There are only a few short hours now before afternoon turns to evening, and Kertel's heart beats quick, nerves jangle wild. In that thin slice of time between day and night ―
Do you think we are not busy, boy?
Doumani said;
we have practice, preparations!
― he has his audition for the Golden Songboys.

"Then we shall see, my boy," Doumani had said, "if you can sing the soul alive, as any Golden Songboy must."

The Tranquil Plaza is something of a misnomer, thinks Doumani as he swings the windows open. The crash of water from the cataract that feeds the great pool, the cacophony from the scores of stalls that fill the plaza, and the din from all the taverns that look out upon the bustling centre nearly drown the sound of Jazuh, Hrenuzi and Parl trying to shout each other down next door. Which is saying something. Doumani strides across the room to thump the wall.

"Enough! Save those voices for the Factors' Dance tonight or I'll have you soothing your strained throats by gargling ghaznal oil!"

The bickering of the boys dies down, though it makes little impact on the clamour that fills the room. Even without the Festival, the Tranquil Plaza is far from. tranquil. Still, for a man of music there's a part of him that finds peace in the discord of it all, the vibrant, verminous chaos of humanity. He saunters back to the window to take in the smell of dhosa and flowers, incense and sweat. There's a shuffle behind him, bare feet on wooden floorboards, then Ramazi is standing at his side, hand on his arm ― Doumani glances round to smile at the boy. Naked but for his gold-braided tunic, slim hips cocked, with the flirtatious disregard of one who knows he is the favourite, Ramazi yawns and angles past him to peer out the window. He laughs and points.

"Look."

Outside, a balloon floats across a sky already darkening from cerulean to indigo; caught in vortices and updrafts, cross-winds and calms, it bobs and bounces, floats and falls, spins as it sails nearer to them. A few more are visible here and there, drifting on their own paths.

"The Factor won't be happy," says Doumani, "if those were meant for the opening ceremo ―"

A shape darts from between two rooftops, black but glinting as if wet, a flap of wings, a flash of talons and teeth ― a dhajarah. It shrieks, slices a sharp turn in the air, scythes through the sky to slash out ― the balloon bursts ― the boy jumps ― and then the creature whirls up and away, all in an instant. A flutter of red rubber falls.

"Chuzdt," says Ramazi. He shivers. "Those things."

Doumani ruffles the boy's hair.

"There's no real harm to them," he says. "It's the salps you have to worry about, my boy."

But he's not entirely unperturbed himself. The random viciousness of a bad-tempered cat, he thinks, the lashing spite of a boy wounded by life and bitter for it ― some just can't help but strike out at whatever comes across their path. With a boy or cat, he knows, it's mostly a defence: don't come too close; don't try to touch me; I will hurt
you
before you hurt
me.
The dhajarah, like the salps from which they're born, though, are inscrutable in their aggression. They hunt for food and kill for territory, to defend their space, yes, but at times...at times their savagery is inexplicable ― a flock hurtling down to gouge the eyes out of a statue; a pair of them flapping and scratching furiously at a tavern door; a solitary predator lashing out at a red balloon for no other reason, it seems, than that it's there.

He puts it from his mind with a kiss of Ramazi's cheek.

"What time is it, lad?" he says. "Your replacement should be here for his audition soon, I do believe."

"What do you mean,
replacement?"

He grins at the scowl and pout, the folded arms. Raises his eyebrows in mock innocence.

"Well, you are a little more brazen than golden these days, Ramazi," he says. "And our would-be Songboy comes with the blessing of Dseveh himself. Voice of a sura-bird, he says. And what with you sounding more like a cliff-gull every day.well.I may have to let you go quite soon."

He manages to hold the solemn pretence for a whole few seconds before cracking and collapsing into laughter at the slap of the boy's hand on his arm.

Kertel eyes the narrow alley, knowing all too well the likelihood of lurking salps but knowing also that it's the quickest path to Poonma Way, the broad boulevard that runs from the Tsongtrik banlieue, through the mint-smell of poppy houses, then the fart-smell of garial factories, to the food-smell of dhosa and samosa stands...to the Tranquil Plaza where half the world, it seems each year, have their festival lodgings. Where the Golden Songboys have their festival lodgings.

He's still weighing up the danger of the shortcut against the time saved (and wasting time in the indecision, he curses himself) when a man steps out of the shadows, a rough hulk of a thug, hood shadowing his bearded visage, a tattered sandal in one hand. He seems to be studying the sandal at first, until a turn of his head casts a slant of light across a scarred eye and Kertel realises his gaze is actually trained past it, toward the ground ― toward a trail of blood spots and red footprints that lead to -

He looks up at Kertel, and slides his other hand into a fold of cloak, reaching for a cosh or a knife, Kertel has no doubt. These alleys around the factories are as rife with hoodlums as with salps, and Kertel's mind is already spinning scenarios drawn from too many readings of
The Ten Thousand Heroes of Riarnanth:
an ambush gone wrong, the Detective staggering out of the alley, bleeding, while the villain's henchman comes to on the ground, drags himself to his feet and sets out in pursuit; or a murderer surprised in the act by an innocent passerby who escaped with his life (but missing one sandal) only because the victim (a rich industrialist?) had to be finished off for the assassin to earn his pay (and now, of course, all witnesses would have to be hunted down and eliminated (unless they could stagger to the Detective's door to gargle a cryptic clue with their dying breath)); or ― or -

"What are you doing here, boy?" growls the hoodlum.

But Kertel is already running.

He who is Goza, is Azog, is Nashira watches the boy flee, snorts with a gruff and casual amusement, in keeping with the hoodlum mask of Azog. For a moment, Nashira surfaces within him, in a flash of recognition and suspicion at Dseveh's protege, the dhosa-stall boy.Kertel, wasn't it?.found song-whoring on the corner of Poonma Way and Khunds Road ― Nashira, wait; listen ― taken under Dseveh's wing for tutelage ― the boy has talent ― voice-trained in Dseveh's chambers, there when Nashira returns from a long day of hazily-described "work" ― honestly, Nashira, you know there's only you, my. mystery.

He shakes Nashira from his head, rolls his shoulders, cricks his neck to bring himself back into the attitude of Azog, the sullen swagger. The boy is irrelevant, nothing to do with the trail of blood he's following, nothing to do with salps and strangers and broken sandals from Dardarbji.

"There's someone here to see you," mumbles Parl, "says he has an audition."

Doumani flourishes a hand.

"Send him up, then. Send him up. And fetch Hrenuzi; I'll need the two of you for the triptet."

A look of panic on the boy's face: "But
Jazuh's
our third. You're not thinking of ― "

"It's just an audition," says Doumani. "Don't worry."

He shakes his head as Parl disappears from the door. Songboys can be such a high-strung sort, worse than racehorses. But really.for all their squabbles and sulks, Jazuh, Hrenuzi and Parl are the tightest trio of the troupe, their voices so attuned, their timing so in synch, that you would think the three of them one being with a voice that sings in chords. Doumani's not about to break up that triptet.

"You want me to leave?" asks Ramazi, reaching for his clothes.

"Chuzdt, no," says Doumani. "I want you to stay there and look beautiful for young master Kertel."

A Golden Songboy, he thinks, must be able to sing no matter the distractions. In the palaces of septons, surrounded by dancers and jugglers, courtesans and catamites, it wouldn't do for a boy to lose his focus in a naive awe of naked wealth and naked flesh. Doumani's auditions always test for more than mere musical talent.

A tentative tap on the door.

"Come in! Come in!"

The boy is as pretty as Dseveh said, dark-haired and long-lashed, dark-skinned and long-legged. He's skittish as a colt, eyes darting this way and that, glancing at (and then studiously avoiding) Ramazi propped up on one elbow on the bed. Hrenuzi and Parl, in contrast, stand behind him looking decoratively bored. Doumani gestures for them to close the door.

"Speak," he says. "Let me hear your voice."

"I...I...don't know what to ― what should I say?"

"Tell me why you want to be a Golden Songboy."

As the boy tumbles into a river of half-formed sentences, a rushing tale of his history and dreams, Doumani doesn't really listen to the words. He's not interested in a childhood on the streets, or imaginings of the exotic Outer Cities, or what it's like to be a poppy-boy in the Salvationist dens, or the first time he saw the Songboys at the Festival, or what a song-whore has to do to scrape by on Poonma Way, or how an assistant on a dhosa-stall comes to hate the smell of ghee (though he does find the scent of it on the lad strangely off-putting and enticing at the same time); no, what he's listening to is the timbre and the tone, the control of the flow, the time between breaths, the
quality
of the voice.

"Enough," he says, cutting off the boy in mid-flow. "You're a median voice, yes? You know 'The Elegy of Appurashnama?'"

The boy nods.

"Then we'll begin with that. Hrenuzi, Parl, on my mark."

The two step forward to flank the boy, backs straightening into the singer's stance, chest out and shoulders back. The boy mirrors them in almost perfect time
(almost
perfect time) and together (almost
perfectly
together), the three breathe in and -

"Begin."

The Tranquil Plaza, as chaotic as it is, might just as well be silent to Kertel as he strides through it, oblivious to the hubbub, raptured in his own.excitement? No. Bliss? No. Tranquility? He almost laughs. He might as well be sailing over the market mire of vendors and visitants, afloat on an updraft of air, looking down from the heavens on the glorious, petty spectacle of a thousand celebrants and stall-owners, none of whom have any inkling as to why this boy, weaving his way across the plaza toward Poonma Way, is grinning so widely, walking so fast he's almost running and with such a spring in every step he might break into a child's skip any second. Thank Chuzdt! Thank Chuzdt and Yeshe and Nartham; thank Hazrin and Pakzish; and thank even Jaggenuth, even grim and surly Jaggenuth, because a Golden Songboy, as Doumani said to him, sings not for one god, but for all. And because he's now a Golden Songboy.

Or he will be, yes, he will be. An apprenticeship, Doumani had said, a trial period as understudy, stepping in if any median voice fell sick. Learning the ropes and learning the songs. And if one of the medians moves on, or Doumani finds a low voice to make up a new trio (there's a high voice understudy in the troupe already; they tried out with Parl as the low; so the audition just went on for
ages),
then, then,
if
he has improved enough, then,
if
the triptet forms right, if the voices fit, then Kertel will be, thank Chuzdt, a full member of the Golden Songboys, singing for padishahs and pilgrims, septons and supplicants. He's already singing in his soul.

He doesn't really see the children batting a limp red balloon between them as he brushes past, doesn't really hear the noise of firecrackers getting louder and more frequent as he breaks into a jog on Poonma

Way, doesn't really feel the thickening of the mob as he darts between them, dances to this side or that, angles and twirls to avoid collisions. All he cares about is getting home to gather the few belongings he'll take with him into his new life; he has to be back at Doumani's lodgings in half an hour, before the sun is fully set, before the Path of Light between Riarnanth and the horizon dissolves into darkness, before the Golden Songboys start their last parade of the day, from plaza to park and palace, there to serenade the revellers at the Factors' Dance.

"Be sharpish, boy. We'll not wait for you."

If he can make it back in time, he won't be singing, but he'll be marching with them, carrying a sarod.

"One more sweet face in the troupe never hurts. Think of this as the last part of the audition. A Golden Songboy has to have the strut. How proud can you walk, my boy, how pretty and proud?"

The wiry old bandleader's hand on his shoulder, on his neck. A glance at the half-naked youth on the bed.

Kertel holding Doumani's gaze, long lashes unblinking.

"I think you'll fit right in, my boy."

So Kertel reaches the corner of Poonma Way and Khunds Road rapt in his reverie of anticipation, with only the briefest glance down the wide tree-lined avenue, over the river of people pouring up now from the glass and iron edifice of Battidarmala, to the stark shadows of docklands beyond, to Bangma Bay and the sword of shimmering sunset. He's busy pushing his way through the streaming mob, weaving crosswise to the flow and cursing the crush of it, when the wave of light rips through his world, and everything is gold as sunset, red as blood, and burning.

VIEW 7

Forfend the Heavens' Rending
| CONRAD WILLIAMS