Bad Gods, page 17
I writhed after her in the gritty sand, scraping my back against the broken edge.
I emerged from the wall, the first time I had left the precinct without supervision since the moment I arrived, to find myself in a narrow space between it and the statue’s base. The moonlight couldn’t reach back here, but to either side I could see the bare sand outside the precinct and the gleaming weapons of the guards.
Something pale fluttered in the dark – Jonat’s arm, beckoning. There was a crack in the statue, too, bigger than the one in the wall, and she was inside it.
I hesitated, scared, wondering what she had done, what she wanted. The dogs were, briefly, quiet. The night wind whispered across the sand, and one of the guards shifted his stance. I scurried for the hole in the statue, in case he should turn and see me, and tell Hap-Canae that I was outside the walls.
Jonat lit a lamp. There was a tinder-box; how long had she been coming here? She stared at me in the flickering light, her eyes huge wells of darkness. “It’s hollow,” she said, as the light danced on the inside of the statue. “I think all of them are.”
“How did you find it?”
She just shrugged. “I wanted somewhere...”
“Doesn’t Aka-Tete lock you in at night?”
She snorted. “I was living on the street when I was Chosen. I learned to get round a lock like that before I was ten years old.”
I brushed the inside of the statue with my fingers. “This is strange. We’re outside, but we’re still... inside.”
“Yes.” She poured the wine. “Well,” she said, “what do you think’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not stupid. Not that stupid.”
“Oh, thanks a lot.”
“When we went out fighting... how many priestesses did you see on the battlefield?”
“I wasn’t really looking, I was too busy. Anyway, how would you tell? They’d hardly fight in their official robes.”
“Have you ever seen a priestess of Babaska fight? Or seen one whore?”
“Well, hardly. I mean I’ve hardly even seen one.”
“And why’s that?”
“How do I know?”
“You’re going to be one, aren’t you? Why haven’t you asked?”
“We’re the Chosen,” I said.
“Chosen by who, though?”
I glanced at the wine-jug, wondering how much she’d had.
“I’m not drunk,” she said. “We weren’t chosen by her, were we? Why didn’t the Avatar of Babaska choose us herself? None of us have ever even seen her.”
“I think she waits,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it.” I sipped the wine, which tasted of spice and iron. “See, I think Babaska’s the strongest of them all. I mean,” I looked up, at the hollow inside of Aka-Tete’s statue, and lowered my voice even more as though he could hear me. “She’s the best, isn’t she?”
“What do you mean, the best?”
“Babaska’s goddess of all the good stuff. The fighting and the sensual arts. She gets to have more fun than anyone, and so does her Avatar. What, you think there’s better?”
“Death’s stronger. Death’s stronger than anyone.” I might have expected her to leap to Aka-Tete’s defence, but she said it in a flat, chilly little voice. “But you’re right,” she said, to my surprise. “Babaska’s different. Different from all the others.” She shrugged. “She’s... I don’t know. I don’t think the others like people much.”
“Hap-Canae likes people!”
“He likes people to like him.”
Something about that stabbed me. I yanked the subject back to Babaska. “I saw an old scroll, about Babaska.” It had stuck, the way anything with rhythm or rhyme tended to do. “‘And with her sword shall cut the way to power; true godhead comes only with blade and flower.’”
Shadows chased each other across Jonat’s face. “True godhead?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s false godhead?”
“I don’t know. It’s just an old rhyme. But the other Avatars are still doing Babaska’s bidding, aren’t they? They’re choosing priestesses to serve her. I think they try and pick people who’ll please her. And Babaska waits until we’ve had our training and then she picks the best ones herself to be priestesses.”
“So when did she come and pick the others? In the night? Why? Babaska’s not a night goddess. Wouldn’t it make more sense to Choose us herself from the start? You’d think she’d have come to see us, if only to make sure we were getting proper training. What if we’re picked and it’s all been done wrong?”
“Oh, you worry too much.” She was saying things I’d only thought, and I was frightened.
“Have you family?”
“Bag-child.”
“I never knew mine. Velance was a bag-child too, did you know? And Renavir and Shanket. No family, anyone.”
“All of them? So it’s true the gods can Choose anyone, then. I always thought you had to be rich.”
“Are you trying to be stupid? None of us with people back home expecting an influential priestess to help them out, get their goods bought by the temples, get them favours. No-one to worry if we never come home. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.” I thought about telling her what I’d seen, in the tent after the battle. But I was scared, scared all the way to my bones. “Well, once we’re priestesses, we’re certain to meet Babaska’s Avatar. We can ask her all these things, surely?”
“Yes,” she said, with a thin, bitter smile in the darkness, “once we’re priestesses.”
The words dropped into me like stones in a well, echoing cold. And I ran from the meaning that followed them down. “I’m going to practice,” I said.
“In the middle of the night?” Jonat shrugged. “Go on, then.” She swallowed the rest of the wine down at a gulp. I remember her fingers were so tight on the cup that her knuckles stood out like little skulls.
I dived back through the hole in the wall, back into the precinct, and ran to the empty practice room, where I drilled until I was exhausted, until my limbs burned. Staggering, I walked back to my room.
Something landed on my bare arm as I passed the window; I thought it was a spider-thread at first.
It wasn’t. It was a long, silver hair that glowed with its own lunar shimmer.
Shakanti.
Had she opened my door? Had she opened Jonat’s, too?
Why?
Did she want us to get into trouble, without anyone knowing she’d ‘interfered’?
I stood shuddering in the silent temple, and hauled on the door myself, until it locked again.
Despite my exhaustion, I lay awake the rest of the night, listening to the maddened dogs barking at the indifferent moon.
Two nights later, death prowled the corridors. I saw several bodies being carried across the courtyard. And next morning Aka-Tete hunched on the roof of his temple in his vulture aspect, the dark reek of death spilling from his feathers, and Jonat was nowhere to be found. They said she had gone to the temple of Broseid, far to the North; a cold place to send a desert girl.
Chapter Seventeen
Previous met me at the door of the Lantern with a grin. “You’ll never guess,” she said.
“What?”
“We had a delivery. From the Vessels, no less.”
“What? What was it?”
“Money.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope; it’s in your office. There’s a note, too.”
“Did Laney check it?”
“Babylon, come on. Of course she checked it. And she says it’s fine; it’s money. And paper and ink. And a bag. No curse, no dodgy spells, nothing she can find.”
“What in all the hells are they giving us money for? Do they think they can buy souls, or what?”
“You could just read the note and find out.”
I took the stairs fast, and there it was, sitting on the table in my office. A bleached linen bag. Well, of course, they’d hardly go in for velvet and embroidery. And a note, neatly folded, and sealed with blue wax; or at least, formerly sealed. Laney, or someone, had opened it – to check whether the seal would do something nasty when broken, for one thing, and for another because they’re my crew, and nosy as pigs after truffles.
‘The High Council of the Vessels of Purity of Scalentine have been given to understand that their actions may have been seen as intended to cause the disruption of business and might have been considered to be an infringement of Scalentine’s laws. While the Vessels of Purity in no way condone the encouragement of sin, the Order has always chosen to site its temples where the laws of the land do not directly conflict with the Rules of the Order, and therefore we neither condone nor encourage the breaking of any law. In regard of which we send this coin, believed to be an adequate recompense for any loss that may have resulted from any misunderstandings.’
A masterpiece of maybes, that was. It could have been written by a lawyer. Perhaps it was.
I tipped the coin out onto the table. It was pretty close to what we’d have made in the hours we’d lost while the Vessels hung about outside, on a normal day. How had they found that out? Who’d done the research?
And never mind how, why? Had the Chief gone and talked to them after all? They weren’t admitting anything; they very carefully weren’t admitting a single thing. But something had put the wind up their tails all right.
I scooped the coins back into the bag, put it in the cupboard in my office, and went to my room to have a think.
The next thing I knew, there was whispering outside the door. I sat up and groaned. I hadn’t meant to doze off. “Who’s there?”
Laney poked her head around the door. “There’s someone to see you.”
I sat up, holding my head. The pain felt like a hangover, which was hardly fair since I hadn’t had a serious drink in days. “Who?”
“Not a client, I don’t think. Sit still.” Laney put her narrow, cool hands either side of my head, the silk of her sleeves brushing against my hair, and I felt a tingling through her fingers. I got a brief vision of a stream running through a forest, tumbling down between mossy, water-glittering rocks, the brilliant blue flash of some bird flicking down to the water. Then it was gone, and my headache with it.
“That’s better. Thanks, Laney. So who’s our visitor?”
“I don’t know. They’re wearing a deglamour.”
A deglamour is the opposite of a charisma glamour. Makes anyone’s glance sort of slide over you, without pausing. Not cheap, and something the militia are constantly trying to get outlawed. They weren’t unknown among rich clients who preferred discretion, but since it was getting close to Twomoon I strapped the sword on before I went down, and signalled Laney to hang about, just in case.
The visitor was standing just outside the main door, wearing a great hooded cape – deep blue, the lining crimson. Previous, hand on hilt, was between them and the entrance, not in an aggressive stance, just a ready one. She glanced at me.
“Take the deglamour off, if you please,” I said.
The visitor turned so their face was hidden from Previous and tipped back their hood. The glamour dissipated.
It was Clariel, from the Lodestone.
I recovered my balance. She must have her own reasons for not wanting to be seen coming here. Clariel had reasons for everything. “S’all right, Previous. Stay on the door, I know this one. Come in, then.” Clariel put her hood back up, and I led her through to the Little Parlour. “Drink?”
She waved a hand, as though a fly were buzzing round her – not that I think one would dare. “No. I can’t stay.”
I was briefly distracted by wondering whether the cape had slits cut for her wings, or what; I’d never seen her in outdoor gear. I don’t think I’d ever seen her outside the Lodestone, come to that. Her face was the same calm, pure-cut cameo as ever. But under the cape I could see her wings shifting constantly. The sound of feathers against satin lining made an odd, jagged whispering.
“So. You have some information for me?” I said.
“What?”
“I assume that’s why you’re here.”
“Yes,” she said, fixing her gaze on a painting of a basket of cherries. It wasn’t a great painting, but I liked it. Clariel, however, was staring at it as though it contained the secret of the ages.
“Clariel, is everything all right?” This was not a question I expected to be asking. If anyone ever gave the impression of being utterly in control of their personal universe, it was Clariel.
She kept looking at the painting. “Babylon, you understand, I have a business to run. I depend on the goodwill of my clients and those they speak to.”
“I thought you depended on providing the best food in Scalentine.”
She shook her head. “Never mind. The point is that I may have some information for you, but it is essential, you understand, that no-one, no-one, knows it came from me.”
“I’m not a total blabbermouth, Clariel. For the All’s sake, if you wanted to pass something on that secretly, why come here yourself? Don’t you trust your staff?” But I knew the answer to that. Clariel’s staff were just that, staff. Not crew, like my lot, not friends. She paid them, they did their jobs. If someone made a better offer, or they couldn’t take the pace, they left.
Why she hadn’t got a message to me, though, asking me to come to her...
“If it should come out that I was here,” she said, “I came to get a recipe. Flower’s skills are well known.”
I tried to hide a smile. So she didn’t want anyone to think she’d come here for the skills the house was really well-known for.
“All right, I’ll bite. Give. What is this so-dangerous information?”
“Not dangerous, that I know of. Merely awkward. I have heard something about a girl who has gone missing. A very important girl.”
I wasn’t going to let Clariel think I was that easy to get round. “A thousand girls go missing all the time, across the Planes. What makes you think it’s the one I’m looking for?”
“The fact that a number of people are seeking her with great eagerness, including her family. The fact that they seem to believe she disappeared here, at the same time that the Avatars from Tiresana arrived...”
The room fizzed, darkened. Everything started to spin away. I could hear Clariel still speaking, but I had no idea what she was saying. I rested one hand on the back of the nearest chair, gripped it until my fingers hurt. I’d known. I’d known as soon as I’d seen the child’s drawing on the wall.
I could not pass out. If Clariel picked up on my reaction, if that information made its way back to the wrong ears, I’d be dead, or worse.
I curled my free hand so my nails dug into my palm. They’re here; they’re here, in Scalentine. Keep your wits about you, Babylon. You need them. Lose it now and you’re a long way worse than dead.
“...so you see, her family have a great deal of influence. If they find out that I was talking to you – indeed, to anyone...”
“I understand.” My voice sounded odd to me, but Clariel didn’t seem to notice. Just as well for me she was so distracted at the thought of losing business.
I had to hear this. I dragged up every rag of concentration I possessed. “Run it by me again, Clariel. Then we’re done.”
“Oh for the All’s sake, Babylon. Very well. Members of two of the high families of Incandress dined at the Lodestone. I overheard a fragment of their conversation. The girl is the daughter of one of them, and affianced to the other. She has eloped. They are anxious, extremely anxious, to get her back.”
“So I should hope.”
“Specifically, they are anxious to retrieve her before Twomoon.”
“Yes, so I’d heard. But why before Twomoon? Don’t tell me she’s a were.”
“Not that I could gather. But Twomoon on Scalentine reflects a time of change on Incandress, and elsewhere. It is a syzygy. You know how these things work.”
Well, no, I don’t. I’m not convinced anyone does, however many warlocks with a mouthful of measurements try and tell you otherwise.
My mind was running away with irrelevancies, trying to think about anything except the words ‘Avatars’ and ‘Tiresana.’ I had to concentrate. “So why Twomoon? They’re not just worried about her for her own sake?”
“I did not get that impression. Nor does it seem to be a matter of mere... preservation of virtue.” She ruffled her wings with distaste.
“If the poor kid’s been taken by a pimp, it’s somewhat late to worry about that, unless they’re keeping her as a special treat for some bastard.” I saw Clariel’s face go slightly more rigid, but I was too thrown to worry much about her sensibilities at the moment. “So, what are they worried about?”
“It wasn’t clear. They were talking among themselves, greatly agitated. They seemed to be in accord that the daughter must be retrieved, and married, before the ‘becoming time.’ Which, as I say, appears to coincide with Twomoon. Possibly. My knowledge of Incandrese is imperfect.”
Typical. Clariel had a working knowledge of a ridiculous number of languages. Well, I guess it goes with the territory. Ordering in a restaurant’s more complicated than in a brothel; you can’t rely on sign language so much.
I tried to wrench my thoughts into enough order to run through what she’d said. So far it pretty much matched what I’d heard from Fain. “None of this helps me find her,” I said.
Her eyebrows snapped down like two spears at the throw. “Babylon, I came here at some personal inconvenience to tell you this and you appear not to have been listening at all.”
“I’m listening. Tell me, Clariel.”
She sighed with impatience. “They talked... I’m not certain. I heard a word like ‘revival,’ or ‘resurgence.’ Something from the past. A dead past that should stay dead.”
That’s the problem with the past. Too often, it doesn’t.
“Nothing else?”
“No. Except that the families were united in their desire to get the girl back. There were no recriminations, no arguments. Both families seemed... frightened.”
“That’s weird.”
I emerged from the wall, the first time I had left the precinct without supervision since the moment I arrived, to find myself in a narrow space between it and the statue’s base. The moonlight couldn’t reach back here, but to either side I could see the bare sand outside the precinct and the gleaming weapons of the guards.
Something pale fluttered in the dark – Jonat’s arm, beckoning. There was a crack in the statue, too, bigger than the one in the wall, and she was inside it.
I hesitated, scared, wondering what she had done, what she wanted. The dogs were, briefly, quiet. The night wind whispered across the sand, and one of the guards shifted his stance. I scurried for the hole in the statue, in case he should turn and see me, and tell Hap-Canae that I was outside the walls.
Jonat lit a lamp. There was a tinder-box; how long had she been coming here? She stared at me in the flickering light, her eyes huge wells of darkness. “It’s hollow,” she said, as the light danced on the inside of the statue. “I think all of them are.”
“How did you find it?”
She just shrugged. “I wanted somewhere...”
“Doesn’t Aka-Tete lock you in at night?”
She snorted. “I was living on the street when I was Chosen. I learned to get round a lock like that before I was ten years old.”
I brushed the inside of the statue with my fingers. “This is strange. We’re outside, but we’re still... inside.”
“Yes.” She poured the wine. “Well,” she said, “what do you think’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not stupid. Not that stupid.”
“Oh, thanks a lot.”
“When we went out fighting... how many priestesses did you see on the battlefield?”
“I wasn’t really looking, I was too busy. Anyway, how would you tell? They’d hardly fight in their official robes.”
“Have you ever seen a priestess of Babaska fight? Or seen one whore?”
“Well, hardly. I mean I’ve hardly even seen one.”
“And why’s that?”
“How do I know?”
“You’re going to be one, aren’t you? Why haven’t you asked?”
“We’re the Chosen,” I said.
“Chosen by who, though?”
I glanced at the wine-jug, wondering how much she’d had.
“I’m not drunk,” she said. “We weren’t chosen by her, were we? Why didn’t the Avatar of Babaska choose us herself? None of us have ever even seen her.”
“I think she waits,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it.” I sipped the wine, which tasted of spice and iron. “See, I think Babaska’s the strongest of them all. I mean,” I looked up, at the hollow inside of Aka-Tete’s statue, and lowered my voice even more as though he could hear me. “She’s the best, isn’t she?”
“What do you mean, the best?”
“Babaska’s goddess of all the good stuff. The fighting and the sensual arts. She gets to have more fun than anyone, and so does her Avatar. What, you think there’s better?”
“Death’s stronger. Death’s stronger than anyone.” I might have expected her to leap to Aka-Tete’s defence, but she said it in a flat, chilly little voice. “But you’re right,” she said, to my surprise. “Babaska’s different. Different from all the others.” She shrugged. “She’s... I don’t know. I don’t think the others like people much.”
“Hap-Canae likes people!”
“He likes people to like him.”
Something about that stabbed me. I yanked the subject back to Babaska. “I saw an old scroll, about Babaska.” It had stuck, the way anything with rhythm or rhyme tended to do. “‘And with her sword shall cut the way to power; true godhead comes only with blade and flower.’”
Shadows chased each other across Jonat’s face. “True godhead?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s false godhead?”
“I don’t know. It’s just an old rhyme. But the other Avatars are still doing Babaska’s bidding, aren’t they? They’re choosing priestesses to serve her. I think they try and pick people who’ll please her. And Babaska waits until we’ve had our training and then she picks the best ones herself to be priestesses.”
“So when did she come and pick the others? In the night? Why? Babaska’s not a night goddess. Wouldn’t it make more sense to Choose us herself from the start? You’d think she’d have come to see us, if only to make sure we were getting proper training. What if we’re picked and it’s all been done wrong?”
“Oh, you worry too much.” She was saying things I’d only thought, and I was frightened.
“Have you family?”
“Bag-child.”
“I never knew mine. Velance was a bag-child too, did you know? And Renavir and Shanket. No family, anyone.”
“All of them? So it’s true the gods can Choose anyone, then. I always thought you had to be rich.”
“Are you trying to be stupid? None of us with people back home expecting an influential priestess to help them out, get their goods bought by the temples, get them favours. No-one to worry if we never come home. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.” I thought about telling her what I’d seen, in the tent after the battle. But I was scared, scared all the way to my bones. “Well, once we’re priestesses, we’re certain to meet Babaska’s Avatar. We can ask her all these things, surely?”
“Yes,” she said, with a thin, bitter smile in the darkness, “once we’re priestesses.”
The words dropped into me like stones in a well, echoing cold. And I ran from the meaning that followed them down. “I’m going to practice,” I said.
“In the middle of the night?” Jonat shrugged. “Go on, then.” She swallowed the rest of the wine down at a gulp. I remember her fingers were so tight on the cup that her knuckles stood out like little skulls.
I dived back through the hole in the wall, back into the precinct, and ran to the empty practice room, where I drilled until I was exhausted, until my limbs burned. Staggering, I walked back to my room.
Something landed on my bare arm as I passed the window; I thought it was a spider-thread at first.
It wasn’t. It was a long, silver hair that glowed with its own lunar shimmer.
Shakanti.
Had she opened my door? Had she opened Jonat’s, too?
Why?
Did she want us to get into trouble, without anyone knowing she’d ‘interfered’?
I stood shuddering in the silent temple, and hauled on the door myself, until it locked again.
Despite my exhaustion, I lay awake the rest of the night, listening to the maddened dogs barking at the indifferent moon.
Two nights later, death prowled the corridors. I saw several bodies being carried across the courtyard. And next morning Aka-Tete hunched on the roof of his temple in his vulture aspect, the dark reek of death spilling from his feathers, and Jonat was nowhere to be found. They said she had gone to the temple of Broseid, far to the North; a cold place to send a desert girl.
Chapter Seventeen
Previous met me at the door of the Lantern with a grin. “You’ll never guess,” she said.
“What?”
“We had a delivery. From the Vessels, no less.”
“What? What was it?”
“Money.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope; it’s in your office. There’s a note, too.”
“Did Laney check it?”
“Babylon, come on. Of course she checked it. And she says it’s fine; it’s money. And paper and ink. And a bag. No curse, no dodgy spells, nothing she can find.”
“What in all the hells are they giving us money for? Do they think they can buy souls, or what?”
“You could just read the note and find out.”
I took the stairs fast, and there it was, sitting on the table in my office. A bleached linen bag. Well, of course, they’d hardly go in for velvet and embroidery. And a note, neatly folded, and sealed with blue wax; or at least, formerly sealed. Laney, or someone, had opened it – to check whether the seal would do something nasty when broken, for one thing, and for another because they’re my crew, and nosy as pigs after truffles.
‘The High Council of the Vessels of Purity of Scalentine have been given to understand that their actions may have been seen as intended to cause the disruption of business and might have been considered to be an infringement of Scalentine’s laws. While the Vessels of Purity in no way condone the encouragement of sin, the Order has always chosen to site its temples where the laws of the land do not directly conflict with the Rules of the Order, and therefore we neither condone nor encourage the breaking of any law. In regard of which we send this coin, believed to be an adequate recompense for any loss that may have resulted from any misunderstandings.’
A masterpiece of maybes, that was. It could have been written by a lawyer. Perhaps it was.
I tipped the coin out onto the table. It was pretty close to what we’d have made in the hours we’d lost while the Vessels hung about outside, on a normal day. How had they found that out? Who’d done the research?
And never mind how, why? Had the Chief gone and talked to them after all? They weren’t admitting anything; they very carefully weren’t admitting a single thing. But something had put the wind up their tails all right.
I scooped the coins back into the bag, put it in the cupboard in my office, and went to my room to have a think.
The next thing I knew, there was whispering outside the door. I sat up and groaned. I hadn’t meant to doze off. “Who’s there?”
Laney poked her head around the door. “There’s someone to see you.”
I sat up, holding my head. The pain felt like a hangover, which was hardly fair since I hadn’t had a serious drink in days. “Who?”
“Not a client, I don’t think. Sit still.” Laney put her narrow, cool hands either side of my head, the silk of her sleeves brushing against my hair, and I felt a tingling through her fingers. I got a brief vision of a stream running through a forest, tumbling down between mossy, water-glittering rocks, the brilliant blue flash of some bird flicking down to the water. Then it was gone, and my headache with it.
“That’s better. Thanks, Laney. So who’s our visitor?”
“I don’t know. They’re wearing a deglamour.”
A deglamour is the opposite of a charisma glamour. Makes anyone’s glance sort of slide over you, without pausing. Not cheap, and something the militia are constantly trying to get outlawed. They weren’t unknown among rich clients who preferred discretion, but since it was getting close to Twomoon I strapped the sword on before I went down, and signalled Laney to hang about, just in case.
The visitor was standing just outside the main door, wearing a great hooded cape – deep blue, the lining crimson. Previous, hand on hilt, was between them and the entrance, not in an aggressive stance, just a ready one. She glanced at me.
“Take the deglamour off, if you please,” I said.
The visitor turned so their face was hidden from Previous and tipped back their hood. The glamour dissipated.
It was Clariel, from the Lodestone.
I recovered my balance. She must have her own reasons for not wanting to be seen coming here. Clariel had reasons for everything. “S’all right, Previous. Stay on the door, I know this one. Come in, then.” Clariel put her hood back up, and I led her through to the Little Parlour. “Drink?”
She waved a hand, as though a fly were buzzing round her – not that I think one would dare. “No. I can’t stay.”
I was briefly distracted by wondering whether the cape had slits cut for her wings, or what; I’d never seen her in outdoor gear. I don’t think I’d ever seen her outside the Lodestone, come to that. Her face was the same calm, pure-cut cameo as ever. But under the cape I could see her wings shifting constantly. The sound of feathers against satin lining made an odd, jagged whispering.
“So. You have some information for me?” I said.
“What?”
“I assume that’s why you’re here.”
“Yes,” she said, fixing her gaze on a painting of a basket of cherries. It wasn’t a great painting, but I liked it. Clariel, however, was staring at it as though it contained the secret of the ages.
“Clariel, is everything all right?” This was not a question I expected to be asking. If anyone ever gave the impression of being utterly in control of their personal universe, it was Clariel.
She kept looking at the painting. “Babylon, you understand, I have a business to run. I depend on the goodwill of my clients and those they speak to.”
“I thought you depended on providing the best food in Scalentine.”
She shook her head. “Never mind. The point is that I may have some information for you, but it is essential, you understand, that no-one, no-one, knows it came from me.”
“I’m not a total blabbermouth, Clariel. For the All’s sake, if you wanted to pass something on that secretly, why come here yourself? Don’t you trust your staff?” But I knew the answer to that. Clariel’s staff were just that, staff. Not crew, like my lot, not friends. She paid them, they did their jobs. If someone made a better offer, or they couldn’t take the pace, they left.
Why she hadn’t got a message to me, though, asking me to come to her...
“If it should come out that I was here,” she said, “I came to get a recipe. Flower’s skills are well known.”
I tried to hide a smile. So she didn’t want anyone to think she’d come here for the skills the house was really well-known for.
“All right, I’ll bite. Give. What is this so-dangerous information?”
“Not dangerous, that I know of. Merely awkward. I have heard something about a girl who has gone missing. A very important girl.”
I wasn’t going to let Clariel think I was that easy to get round. “A thousand girls go missing all the time, across the Planes. What makes you think it’s the one I’m looking for?”
“The fact that a number of people are seeking her with great eagerness, including her family. The fact that they seem to believe she disappeared here, at the same time that the Avatars from Tiresana arrived...”
The room fizzed, darkened. Everything started to spin away. I could hear Clariel still speaking, but I had no idea what she was saying. I rested one hand on the back of the nearest chair, gripped it until my fingers hurt. I’d known. I’d known as soon as I’d seen the child’s drawing on the wall.
I could not pass out. If Clariel picked up on my reaction, if that information made its way back to the wrong ears, I’d be dead, or worse.
I curled my free hand so my nails dug into my palm. They’re here; they’re here, in Scalentine. Keep your wits about you, Babylon. You need them. Lose it now and you’re a long way worse than dead.
“...so you see, her family have a great deal of influence. If they find out that I was talking to you – indeed, to anyone...”
“I understand.” My voice sounded odd to me, but Clariel didn’t seem to notice. Just as well for me she was so distracted at the thought of losing business.
I had to hear this. I dragged up every rag of concentration I possessed. “Run it by me again, Clariel. Then we’re done.”
“Oh for the All’s sake, Babylon. Very well. Members of two of the high families of Incandress dined at the Lodestone. I overheard a fragment of their conversation. The girl is the daughter of one of them, and affianced to the other. She has eloped. They are anxious, extremely anxious, to get her back.”
“So I should hope.”
“Specifically, they are anxious to retrieve her before Twomoon.”
“Yes, so I’d heard. But why before Twomoon? Don’t tell me she’s a were.”
“Not that I could gather. But Twomoon on Scalentine reflects a time of change on Incandress, and elsewhere. It is a syzygy. You know how these things work.”
Well, no, I don’t. I’m not convinced anyone does, however many warlocks with a mouthful of measurements try and tell you otherwise.
My mind was running away with irrelevancies, trying to think about anything except the words ‘Avatars’ and ‘Tiresana.’ I had to concentrate. “So why Twomoon? They’re not just worried about her for her own sake?”
“I did not get that impression. Nor does it seem to be a matter of mere... preservation of virtue.” She ruffled her wings with distaste.
“If the poor kid’s been taken by a pimp, it’s somewhat late to worry about that, unless they’re keeping her as a special treat for some bastard.” I saw Clariel’s face go slightly more rigid, but I was too thrown to worry much about her sensibilities at the moment. “So, what are they worried about?”
“It wasn’t clear. They were talking among themselves, greatly agitated. They seemed to be in accord that the daughter must be retrieved, and married, before the ‘becoming time.’ Which, as I say, appears to coincide with Twomoon. Possibly. My knowledge of Incandrese is imperfect.”
Typical. Clariel had a working knowledge of a ridiculous number of languages. Well, I guess it goes with the territory. Ordering in a restaurant’s more complicated than in a brothel; you can’t rely on sign language so much.
I tried to wrench my thoughts into enough order to run through what she’d said. So far it pretty much matched what I’d heard from Fain. “None of this helps me find her,” I said.
Her eyebrows snapped down like two spears at the throw. “Babylon, I came here at some personal inconvenience to tell you this and you appear not to have been listening at all.”
“I’m listening. Tell me, Clariel.”
She sighed with impatience. “They talked... I’m not certain. I heard a word like ‘revival,’ or ‘resurgence.’ Something from the past. A dead past that should stay dead.”
That’s the problem with the past. Too often, it doesn’t.
“Nothing else?”
“No. Except that the families were united in their desire to get the girl back. There were no recriminations, no arguments. Both families seemed... frightened.”
“That’s weird.”
