Bad Gods, page 23
I was just capping the oil when I heard a yell from downstairs. “Laney! Babylon! Get down here!” That was Previous. Now what?
I took the stairs fast, and saw Ireq standing in the doorway, holding someone up.
It was Cruel, the hood of my cloak sliding off to show her short white hair matted red, her eyes rolling up. Blood rolled down her neck and into her cleavage.
I caught her as she slid off Ireq’s shoulder. She hung from my hands like an empty gown.
“What the hells?” I said.
Ireq said, “There was a bang, and then I saw her stagger out of Twodice Row, dripping everywhere, grabbed her, brought her here.”
“You see anyone?”
“No.”
“Cruel? Talk to me.”
She groaned. Laney was beside me in a blink, running her hands over Cruel’s head. “Somebody fetch some water,” she said, “and the blue bottle from my dressing table. And the green wooden box. Bring her into the Little Parlour.”
I scooped her into my arms as gently as possible and took her through. Her blood soaked through my sleeves. “Someone tell Unusual, get him up here,” Laney snapped.
I laid Cruel on the sofa. Her eyes were closed. She always seemed so self-contained, even dangerous; now she looked vulnerable and strangely young. Her nose was obviously broken; some of the blood was from there, but most of it was from her head.
Jivrais appeared with an armful of bottles and boxes, it looked as though he’d just swept everything off Laney’s dressing table. She sighed with exasperation, plucked out what she needed, and told him to put the rest on the table.
“You need me?” Ireq said.
“Yes, on the door, ” I said. “Go.”
The All bless ex-soldiers, he did, without a word. Frithlit stood in the doorway, silver eyes wide, his mouse-like ears shivering. Unusual, normally so graceful, shot past him into the room, banging his hip on a table, and dropped to his knees by the sofa. His arms were full of bandages and bottles; he looked around wildly as though he didn’t know what to do with them, then shoved them onto the overcrowded table, sending one of Laney’s potions off the edge. There was a crash and a green smell of herbs. Unusual rested a shaking hand on Cruel’s cheek. Against her midnight skin, his pale fingers seemed to glow. He whispered to her, stroking her face.
“Laney?” I said.
Laney parted Cruel’s hair carefully with her fingers. “Scalp wounds always bleed a lot. She’s going to have a nasty bump and a worse headache, but nothing’s moving that shouldn’t be.” She cleaned Cruel’s face and scalp with a wet cloth, took one of the bottles from Jivrais, rubbed a few drops of ointment into her scalp, then more around her nose. “Hold her shoulders, Babylon.” She pinched the bridge of Cruel’s nose between finger and thumb. There was a cracking sound and Cruel yelped awake.
“There, there,” Laney said. “That’s the worst of it.”
Cruel said something in her own tongue, and Unusual answered her; he had tears in his eyes. Cruel looked at him, rolled her eyes and said something else, and Unusual gave a gasping laugh. “She called me a soft idiot,” he said. “I think she’ll be all right.” He wiped his eyes, and started wrapping one of the bandages around her head.
“Cruel? You remember what happened?” I said.
She frowned, and winced as it pulled at the wound. “I was in Twodice Row, coming back from the saddler’s. We had some harnesses needed mending. I had both hands full. Someone put their hands on my shoulders. Then I hit the wall and everything went white.”
“Ouch. Good thing you’ve a hard head.” I tried to keep my voice light. “Thought I told you lot to keep in training?”
“I thought I was. But it was just...” She shrugged. “So sudden. Whoever it was, they were strong. Really strong. And fast.”
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“I think they said something, maybe. I thought I heard a sort of whisper. After that, nothing.” She shut her eyes again.
“You see anyone else in the alley?”
“No.”
“Anyone else see anything? Frithlit?”
“I am sorry, I was upstairs, not see. Heard loud bang, yes?”
“All right. Laney, any more you can do for her?”
She shook her head. “I’ve given you a little bit to help the pain,” she said to Cruel, “and your nose will be fine if you don’t touch it. In fact, I’m going to make you a plaster.”
“I am not wearing a plaster on my nose,” Cruel said. “Really, Laney. What would I look like?”
“Then don’t blame me if it mends crooked,” Laney said, glaring.
“You’ve done what you can, sweetie,” I said. She’s a Fey, not a healer, and a Fey on Scalentine at that; she can only do so much. “Cruel, have you any clients booked?”
“Only one.”
“Unusual, you send a message, put them off. We’ll give ’em a discount next visit. Previous, Bliss, come with me.”
Twodice Row was empty. It’s only a short street, nothing but a cut-through between Goldencat Street and The Panney, the road that runs down to the river. It smelled of soap and steam from the laundry on the corner.
Bliss stared thoughtfully at the smear of blood on the wall; a little of it had spattered one of my favourite stonework faces: a laughing faun no bigger than my hand. There was more on the ground, splashed over cobbles and mud, looking dark as ink.
If I was ever squeamish I lost it in battle the first time someone’s guts spilled over my boots. The smell’s pretty bad, and the sound is... memorable, but I was more worried about slipping in the mess and giving someone the chance to rip open my own frontage than I was about going ‘yuck.’ One reason I’m still alive, I guess.
But this was different. On a battlefield, when people know why they’re there, it’s one thing. A random attack on a lone woman, and a friend, is another matter. That was Cruel’s blood. Looking at it made my eyes feel hot.
“Don’t get too close,” I said. “Whoever it was, they might have left something...”
Bits of leatherwork were still scattered over the paving. We started to pick them up.
“Not a robbery, then,” Previous said.
“Doesn’t look like it, does it?” I said. “Unless they meant to take the stuff and realised it wasn’t what they thought.” They’d have been fools, though. The gear Cruel and Unusual use costs a lot more than horse-harness.
“Looks to me,” Previous said, “like maybe whoever did it was drunk, or just plain clumsy. Saw her from behind, just meant to grab her, maybe, or grab what she was carrying, but tripped. Slammed her into the wall by accident, and bolted when they realised they’d knocked her out. Or when they heard the bang.”
“What was the bang?” I said.
“No idea.”
“Not drunk,” Bliss said. He was trying, but he was getting that drifty, bemused look again.
“No?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How can you tell?”
Bliss just shrugged. “Smells like a laundry, not an inn.”
“There is a laundry, Bliss. It’s just over there.” I pointed. Steam was rolling out of the open door. “You took the sheets there, last week.”
“Yes, I did. Was that right?” He gave me that worried look he gets when he’s trying to remember which bits of life are important.
“Yes, don’t worry about it.” I patted his shoulder and went into the laundry, leaned on the wooden counter, and yelled into the warm soapy fog.
A red face finally appeared, surmounted by a white kerchief that had probably been crisp this morning. Now it drooped damply over grey locks. The laundress pushed her hair out of her eyes with a forearm. “If it’s an order, we can’t take it. We just lost a boiler.”
“What?”
“Panel just blew off one of the boilers. We’re behind as it is.”
That must have been the bang everyone heard. I explained what had happened, and she half-listened to me, head cocked for sounds of more trouble from the cavernous room behind her. I could hear knockings and sloshings and shouts.
“I wondered if anyone might have seen anything?” I said.
“No-one’s been out front for at least three hours. I’m nearest the door, that’s how I heard you yelling. If anyone’d come out I’d know. No-one has. We’ve a big order on, gotta be done before Twomoon. And now the boiler...”
Her shoulders sagged. “Right, well, thanks anyway...” Her body was already angled towards the inner door, and she’d disappeared around it before I’d finished.
We went back to the house.
“Previous, a word. Unusual, stay with Cruel. The rest of you, back to what you were doing. Now, people.”
They scattered. I motioned Previous into the hall. She wasn’t saying anything, but she was giving me a look.
“What?”
She shrugged. “You sounded a lot like my old Sarge, for a minute there.”
“Sorry. Look, Previous... Someone may have it in for us.”
“You think?”
Her tone was neutral. I decided to take it at face value. “Maybe. Stay sharp. Keep an eye out.”
“For what?”
“Anything that looks like trouble.”
“Yes, of course. You all right, Babylon?”
“No,” I said. “This is getting to me. First the Vessels, and then the dead girl down in Ropemakers Row; I hate that I don’t know her name, Previous. No-one knew her name. And now this. If they’d had a knife instead of just their hands, Cruel could be dead.”
“You going to the millies?”
“Yes. Yes, I’d better.” I started for the door.
“You might want to change first,” Previous said.
“Oh, right.” I’d been about to stroll down the street spattered to the elbows with blood; well, it’s just not stylish, is it? Plus I had enough trouble without being suspected of Unspecified Slaughter.
“And Babylon?”
“Hmm?”
“What sort of trouble should I be looking out for?”
“Weird people.”
“Weird people? Babylon, it’s Twomoon.”
“You’ve got a nose for trouble, Previous. Use it. You get worried, shut the place up, keep everyone inside, and send someone for me.”
“And when are you going to...”
I headed upstairs without answering. I got the worst of the blood off, pulled on the first clean shirt that came to hand, grabbed some weaponry and headed out before anyone else could start asking questions.
Trouble among the powerful gets dealt with by the Diplomatic Section, poor folk mostly get the militia. So they keep the barracks between the docks and King of Stone.
Tiresana
Prella was a village on the coast. Not much of a place. The people there scraped a living with fishing and stone-quarrying. There was a vein of white marble in the rocks, in demand for temples to Shakanti, because of its pallor and glow. Shakanti decided to take an interest in the place – perhaps to discourage the use of the marble for anyone’s temples but her own – and was going there to conduct a ceremony.
It was rare; the Avatars seldom left the Temple of All the Gods. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that this was strange, especially when most of them could hardly stand the sight of each other. But except for brief excursions to their most important temples for the major ceremonies, they stayed clustered about it. Later, much later, I realised that they were afraid; that they feared losing their powers if they got too far from the altar, or stayed away too long. Feared most, perhaps, that one of the others would somehow find a way to steal their power from them.
I was learning a little cunning by then. Enough, at least, that I made up a story about wanting to see how Shakanti dealt with her worshippers, so I could learn from her example.
The real reason was because of those chips of white marble that had been in the bag with me when I was hung on the master’s door. I had had one sent to a stonemason, and he had said that it looked to him like the stuff they quarried at Prella.
I took a barge to Prella, with the full complement of silk, delicacies, servants and priests. It was spring, the rushes a tender brilliant green, the little scarlet warblers that nested in them darting about like living jewels.
One of the priests was only a few years older than myself, with huge, dark, thickly-lashed eyes and beautiful black hair. When he rose, with grace, to his feet after the formal prostration, he looked at me with an adoration as sweet and tempting as ripe grapes.
The Avatar Lohiria, of the West Wind, was also on the barge, ostensibly to help speed its journey but more probably to keep an eye on me. She watched me constantly, having little else to do, when she wasn’t combing her writhing hair. She could not, however, make any objection to my taking a lover. It was what Babaska’s Avatar was supposed to do.
Hap-Canae could hardly have objected either; he’d encouraged me himself. Nonetheless, I felt both guilty and defiant when I took Ranay’s hand and led him to the pavilion they had made on the deck for me.
Why Ranay? Yes, he was handsome enough. Yes, I was beginning to find Hap-Canae’s techniques a little wanting now that I knew more, and to hanker for some variety. But it wasn’t just that. It was the way he looked at me: not as Hap-Canae did, as though I were a doll to be decorated or a child to be chastised, but as a woman.
He smelled fresh, like green growing things. And he played the flute. I remember the music, sweet and melancholy, counterpointed with the lapping of the water and the creak and clop of the oars. At night the stars blazed so brightly it seemed they should crackle.
We lay, Ranay and I, with the canopy drawn back, and watched the constellations. The Wheel, the Leopard. “I love the stars,” he said. “I would like to study them, know their stories and their meanings. They can tell so much; everything is written there, one only needs to learn the language.”
“Why don’t you?” I said.
He gave a sad little smile. “I am to be a temple administrator. It is a post of great prestige, and my family will never want for anything. But I wonder... once the family’s farms would have kept us, but the desert has encroached, and sand covers what were fields in my grandfather’s time.
“I am sorry, this is of no interest to you...”
“Yes, it is. Go on.”
“The livestock breed poorly, there are so many shadowed births; calves born eyeless or without... no, forgive me, this is too ugly a subject.”
I thought of the Seer, with those smooth dents where his eyes should be, and wondered.
Ranay went on, “Only that I have wondered if perhaps the answer lies in the stars. There are many scrolls that I would like to study, too; about the nature of the world, and...” – he gave me a sideways glance, smiling – “and of the Avatars. But they are all locked away. Even the highest priests must seek special dispensation to study them.”
I was guiltily glad. After all, would Ranay love me if he knew I had been merely human? I tried to smile.
“Ah, what is it?” he said. “I am sorry, I have distressed you with my foolishness.”
“No, not at all. How could you be foolish when you are so wise, and study so hard?”
He laughed a little. “Well, I think one must have something to study in order to be wise... perhaps I can become wise in the ways of administering a temple.”
It seemed unfair, that he should be doomed to drudgery. He was one of my priests. Surely I could do something? I must have frowned, thinking.
“There, I have bored you,” he said. “I shall talk of pleasanter things. Look, There’s your sword,” he pointed up.
The Sword of Babaska, drawn in fire on the black sky.
“I’m only her Avatar,” I said. “I’m not her.”
“You are my goddess, I ask no more.”
For some reason that made me want to cry, but that doesn’t come easy to Avatars. I just pulled him close, and breathed in the scent of his hair.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Barracks” is a bit of a misnomer, though they do have sleeping rooms there. It’s a combination of holding cells, armoury, courthouse and training ground, and this close to Twomoon it was in even more than the usual chaos. I made my way through the loud, odorous crowd to the front desk, passing by a rather delicious young officer – tall, blond, human, with unfairly long eyelashes and looking quite edible in his uniform – who was talking to a small, neat man in a highly embroidered waistcoat.
The officer at the front desk nodded at me and went on taking notes, so I waited. I could hear the neat man saying, “I am embarrassed, that I was tricked so easily.”
“Classic bait and switch,” the cute officer said. “Well, we’ll do what we can, Mr Bannerman.”
“Help you?” The desk officer said.
“Got an attack to report.”
“Right, sit down, with you when we can.”
Eventually she called over the blond officer, which was definitely the best thing to happen to me all day. “That was Bannerman?” I said.
“You heard that, eh?” He smiled. “What I wouldn’t give for one of his swords... Someone managed to trick him out of some gear. He’s not pleased. Now, how can I help?”
Just then a door slammed and the Chief came barrelling out through the crowd, hair flying behind him like a battle-banner, looking ready to rip out throats. He skidded to a halt when he saw me. “Babylon!”
“Hey, Chief. You look like you’ve got something big on, don’t let me stop you.”
“No, no... I just heard... you all right?”
“Me? Yes, yes I’m fine, but Cruel’s hurt.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, straightening up. “Will she be all right?”
“Yes. We think so. Laney’s looking after her.”
He jerked his thumb at the young officer. “Roflet, get on to the next one, I’ll take over here.”
Roflet got up, gave me a little bow, and looked at the next person in line. It was an elderly, not very fragrant gent with a small, even less fragrant dog under one arm and an umbrella hanging from the other like a dead vulture. Roflet sighed. “This job’s not as much fun as it used to be,” he said, going off to deal with the old boy.
