Bad Gods, page 34
“Come on, Chief. Let him be. We can take care of him. We’ll see him dealt with. We can even give him to the Twins, how about that?”
I heard a kerfuffle downstairs and doors slamming, more footsteps and someone yelling, “Chief! Oh, shit...”
The Chief’s head turned, just for a second. I dived forward, grabbed Denarven under the arms and rolled backward, hearing a ripping sound, slinging him past me, putting myself between him and the Chief.
The Chief’s head snapped round, and he roared.
Somewhere a million miles away I heard a high sweet note, like the trill of a bird, and a muffled groan. Laney said, “There.”
I didn’t dare move my eyes.
I was on my back, looking up at the Chief. His eyes glowed, and his claws, still bloody from Denarven, flexed. His shoulders were hunched like a mountain range. Ragged bits of cloth still clung to him. He’d a tail, now, and it was flicking back and forward; it brushed the floor. I could hear it, because everyone else had gone intensely quiet.
Then he dropped his head, and nudged me in the shoulder. Hard. He lowered himself until he was lying in the hallway like a sphinx, and gave a sort of groan.
I sat up, slowly, and patted him on one huge shoulder. “C’mon, Chief. We’ll make you comfortable. Come with me.”
He was still tensed like a bowstring, I’d felt it when I patted his shoulder. We passed the collapsed shape of Denarven, his split mask lying either side of his head like an open oyster shell, his slack face its poisoned pearl.
The Chief’s upper lip rippled over his teeth, but I managed to persuade him down the stairs with one hand in his mane.
We’d got to the bottom when I realised we’d been joined by Roflet, who was glaring at me like I’d murdered his favourite grandmother. “Chief?” he said. “You. Steel. What happened?”
The Chief snarled.
“Let me just get him safe, Officer,” I said. I led him down to the Basement. He looked at the great thick door with its barred window, and looked at me. Then he nudged me again, and went inside.
I closed the door, and stood blinking at it for a moment.
Cruel and Unusual came up, and locked the door with an iron key the length of my forearm.
“Babylon,” Cruel said. “Hey, Babylon.”
“Hmm. What?”
“Here.”
She put a glass in my hand. It was golden. I took a gulp; it burned like several hells going down, but after that, it helped.
“Right,” I said, sounding as though I’d been yelling orders in the field all day. “Make sure he has food and water.”
“Yes.”
“Bedding. Blankets.”
“Yes.”
“Steel.”
I was aware of Roflet standing behind Cruel, with his arms folded. I said, “We can look after him here until Twomoon’s over, unless you’ve got secure transport and somewhere for him?”
“I’ll send someone to fetch him.” He obviously didn’t trust me. I was vaguely sorry for it, but great leaden waves of weariness were beginning to come over me and I was in no state to do any bridge-mending.
“Right. Laney? What’s happening with the arsehole?”
“Wandering the shadow,” she said, from the top of the stairs. “He’ll stay that way a while, I think, but can we please get him out of here? He makes me feel ill.”
Ireq, stolid as ever, began to sweep up where the millies had tracked mud in. Previous came in from the back, white as Flower’s apron. “I found where he got in. Out back, where the pipes run from the scullery. So small. I meant to look, when you told me about that boy, but I never did... Gods, Babylon. I’m so sorry.”
“What?”
“Remember the boys who got in? There was one not long ago, I said I’d find the place. Denarven must have been watching even then. Maybe he saw one of them get in.”
“Don’t take it on, Previous,” I said. “It’s my fault, I should have checked. I’ve been unbelievably stupid.” In more ways than one, I thought, resting my hand on the door of the room where the Chief was pacing up and down.
Flower, with the look of someone handling a full bucket of puke, scooped up Denarven and trudged down the stairs with him slung over one arm. He dumped him at Roflet’s feet.
“That him?” Roflet said.
“That’s him,” I said. “He doesn’t look like much, but watch him if he wakes. Make sure he’s secured. He’s...” I blinked, shook my head. “Crazed. Berserker type, you know?”
“Right.”
Roflet started snapping out orders. I realised he had half a dozen other militia with him. They bundled Denarven away, like rubbish. I slid down the wall, because somehow it seemed easier to do that. In fact, the floor felt really comfortable. I’d just stay there a while, keep an eye on the Chief, until my head cleared.
I could still hear him pacing the floor behind me. I laid my hand back on the door as though it might be some comfort to him.
“Babylon. Babylon!”
“What?”
“You can’t sleep here.”
“I can’t sleep at all. I have to go...” I had to go somewhere. I had something that needed doing. But I couldn’t remember what it was.
I was vaguely aware of someone – Flower, probably – getting a hand under my arm and half-carrying me to my room, and then I wasn’t aware of much else for a while.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Day 7
First day of Twomoon
When I woke up it was late morning, bright pale sun falling through the gap in the curtains. I was still in my bloodstained clothes.
Things started dropping into my head like big jagged stones. Denarven, in my jalla, among my friends. The Chief.
I raised a hand to brush blood-bristled hair out of my face, and my ring caught the light.
Oh, sweet All. The ring. Tiresana.
I got up, feeling every bruise, and pulled back the curtains. The moons were both visible high in the blue: Inshallee like the ghost of a rose, Beriand like the memory of a spring leaf. I wondered how Enthemmerlee was doing this morning; her change must be well on its way by now.
The Chief had no choice about his, but she’d chosen hers. She’d taken it on, because she thought it needed doing.
I washed hastily, pulled on a robe and went downstairs.
Unusual was just on his way up from the cellar. “Morning,” he said. “How are you?”
“Bruises. Sore throat. How’s the Chief?
“Millies came for him this morning.”
“Oh. How was he?”
“Touchy.”
“Ah.”
“S’all right. No one was hurt, they just had a bit of a struggle getting him into the coach. You seen the coach they use for that sort of thing? It’s something. Like a strongbox on wheels, built of iron thick as a door. Takes six horses to pull it.” His eyes were gleaming.
“Unusual... what would we use it for?”
“I’m sure I could think of something. Anyway, they got him in. He kept trying to get upstairs, for some reason, but they made it eventually.”
“Right.” I yawned so wide my jaw creaked. “So long as he’s okay. I need some breakfast.”
Flower was waiting in the hall, with his arms folded, his apron as clean as virtue, his tusks gleaming. Laney and Previous were ranged to either side, Laney quivering with indignation so that the feathers on the neck of her gown fluffed up like a hen’s, Previous turning her dented helmet over in her hands and scowling fiercely.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Isn’t it time you told us that?” Flower said.
“Look, I’m horrified that Denarven got in here, I take total responsibility for that. No, shut up, Previous, it was up to me and I didn’t do it.”
“It’s not that little squit we’re talking about,” Flower said, “Though why the hells you didn’t let me tackle him...” he went off into his own language, which I don’t speak, but it didn’t sound complimentary. Then he switched back to Lithan.
“For an intelligent woman, Babylon, you can be pretty stupid.”
That was no news to me.
“Which doesn’t mean we are,” Flower went on. “You’ve been going around looking like you just got volunteered for a suicide mission the last few days. Clariel’s turned up, here.”
“So much for that deglamour she was wearing,” I muttered.
Flower waved a hand. “Please. You think I can’t smell the Lodestone kitchens? Then Darask Fain, of all people. You haul Previous down the sewers, come back drenched in blood...”
“It wasn’t ours.”
“Not the point. You haven’t been telling us what’s going on.”
“Look, it’s sorted,” I said. “Denarven’s in custody, Enthemmerlee’s safe.”
“Enthemmerlee!” Laney actually stamped her foot, and her eyes were shading to red. This is never a good sign in a Fey. “It’s you we’re worried about. There are things going on you’re not telling us, Babylon.”
“Laney, I know, and I’m sorry. I never meant for things to get this crazed.” I looked at them all. There was no way of avoiding this – or at least, not unless I was prepared to sneak out of my own place, out of my own life, like a thief. And I wasn’t going to, not this time. “Look, you’d better all come into the kitchen.”
We sat around the big scrubbed table, except for Flower, who started cutting meat. I rested my hands on the clean, dented wood, for the comfort of it.
“Listen,” I said. “I have something I have to do, and I have to go, now. Today. And, well, there’s a fair chance I won’t make it back. So... I just needed to tell you. I haven’t... there’s money. Damn. I can’t leave you my seal. You’ll have to... I need paper. I’ll give you my signature, for the banker at the Exchange. Sorry. I should have gone there earlier, I didn’t think...”
“Wait,” Previous said. “Hold up. What?”
I sighed. “I can’t tell you the whole story, I haven’t time, but there are people I need to deal with. I have to make things right.”
“But who are they?” Laney said.
“Avatars. Demigods, if you like. On my home plane. They, well, let’s just say I think they stole the power they have and it’s up to me to take it away. And I can only do it during Twomoon. I may be too late already, I’d have gone yesterday if... anyway. I have to go.”
There was a silence while everyone looked at each other, then they were all talking at once. I held up my hand, and for once, they shut up. “I’m sorry, I really am. I hate to leave you like this, but judging by yesterday, you’ll all be safer if I’m out of the way.”
“We’ll come with you!” Laney said. “We can help.”
“No, Laney. I’ve put you all in enough danger recently, I’m damned if I’m dragging you to Tiresana with me. It’s not Scalentine, you know. The Avatars have powers, there. I’ve seen them use them. They can kill, and they’ll do it. Because you’re in the way, or just because they feel like it. And killing’s not even the worst of it... no. No-one’s coming with me.”
“So you’re just going to leave?” Flower said. His apron was smeared with blood.
“I don’t have a choice.”
They looked at each other. Then Flower brought the cleaver down on the chopping board, where it stuck, the blade gleaming in the mellow autumn sun. “At least let me make you up some food. The All knows what sort of rubbish you’ll get travelling.”
“Thank you, Flower. Laney, if you can, I need something that will work against charisma. Can you...”
She sniffed. “I suppose so.”
No-one but Flower was about when I left. I could hear movement in the rooms, but not one of them came out.
I knew they were angry, but I hadn’t realised how angry. I’d have welcomed even an argument, though it would have delayed me more, which I couldn’t afford. Silently, Flower handed me the package of food, and a battered hipflask.
“I put some golden in there.”
“Thanks. Flower...”
“You’ll miss the tide,” he said; he put a heavy hand on my shoulder and turned away. When I got outside I realised there wasn’t even anyone guarding the front. I wondered whether I should say something, but Flower had pulled the door shut.
I walked towards the docks feeling like her again, that silent, hard-bitten woman with an empty heart and little else but scars. I managed to get passage on the Misty Morning, heading for Galent.
My one advantage was that I was fairly certain the Avatars would travel in comfort, in luxury as far as they could manage it. If I sacrificed everything to speed, I could get there, if not ahead of them, then at least hard at their backs.
I stood on the deck, listening to the roar and chatter of the docks, the creak of ropes and snap of sails. The light of the portal arc flared off the water like another kind of liquid, rich and thick. I could see the tower in the town square; I realised I was peering to see if I could make out the Red Lantern. As the anchor chain rattled up, I turned away. I gripped the rail, and shut my eyes as we passed through the portal.
I’d almost forgotten that bone deep inward shudder – the sense that all your insides have shifted slightly to the left of your outsides – that comes with passing a portal. In all my years of travelling I’d never got used to it.
The Misty Morning was a stripped-down merchant vessel, made to outrun her competitors. She had few comforts. We didn’t stop at Larians, the city that mirrors Scalentine on the far side of Bealach portal, but bucked our way through the storm-passes of Flogen and the Lower Reaches and rode the alignment tides to Galent. Three hours. Empty in the stomach and shaking in the legs, I disembarked, handed out bribes and smiles at high speed, and went through the portal to Loth, where in a thick heat buzzing with insects the size of my hand I hired a vehicle of light strong wood, drawn by three pairs of leggy, nervous beasts with four legs, huge eyes, long necks and soft grey feathers. Their driver looked like a fat green dog. The thing was fast, but damned uncomfortable; I was thrown around like a dried pea in a child’s rattle. Three more hours, or thereabouts.
I tumbled out, bruised, at Ithackt and headed straight for the portal. I had a nasty hour or so there, trying to be smiling and persuasive with my stomach doing somersaults, handing out Antheran’s bits of paper and more bribes than an aunt with her favourite nephews. Finally I was allowed through.
From there another overland; I hired... something. It was biddable, steerable, fast, and knew the road. It seemed to be some sort of mobile shrub with a kind of wooden scoop in which one sat, while brushlike legs whisked along the dusty purple track. Around me, spires of gleaming black rock jabbed at the greenish sky. Another portal. Busy; lots of people, all in a hurry. No need for bribes, I was waved through impatiently. By now I was so tired and sick I could hardly stand, or see. Time, sliding past me like the road. A ship of sorts; driven by teams of rowers, across a lake of thick pink fluid that smelled of dying flowers, where half-seen creatures like huge, slate-coloured ghosts swam alongside, the slow balletic sweep of their great fanlike fins sending out ripples of roseate light.
Another portal city. Slow conversations with greedy officials, fumbling among the currencies I still had, all made worse by my inability to string together more than half a sentence by then. Finally, with a lurch, I fell through the threshold into Flai, barely conscious.
Someone hauled me up and dumped me on a hard bench. Once things stopped swaying like a topmast in a storm, I opened my eyes.
The architecture was familiar; the residents of Flai seem to have a liking for everything square, grey and cold. I started to shiver, and dug in my pack for something to throw over me, then remembered I’d only packed a spare shirt.
I put it on. I was surrounded by Flaians: green-marbled skin, skeletal features, ratty naked tails, no hair.
One of them bent over me, and said, in bad Lithan, “You can’t stay here. Transit here only. Where you going?”
“Tiresana.”
“Next transport for Tiresana portal, over there, you go wait.”
Once I could stand, I went to where they had pointed: a boxy shelter that didn’t do much to hold off a chilly penetrating drizzle.
I remembered this. The shuttered, unfriendly look of the streets, the grim slab-like building they’d created around the portal, the smoky metallic smell that was the result of something they mined in the hills above the town.
When I’d come through I’d stayed barely a day, so eager to be as far away as I could, that I’d taken up with the first group leaving within hours who’d wanted a guard. Flai has two portals that I know of; I’d left through the other one.
If I’d known all this time how close to Tiresana I was during alignment, I’d probably have reached Scalentine and just kept running.
The transport arrived, grey. A wheeled cart, drawn by miserable looking droop-necked beasts. Also grey. We plodded through the rain.
Once I’d put one of Flower’s honey-cakes in my clangingly hollow stomach and recovered a little, I stared out at veils of rain sweeping the grey hills. I was gripping the side of the cart as though the pressure of my hands could speed it. The beasts moved in a slow, muddy trudge towards the Tiresana portal; I knew we were going faster than I could have on foot, but I felt time hissing at my back.
The more I tried not to think about the Lantern, the more images crowded me: Flower putting food on the table, roaring for people to eat while it was hot; Essie and Jivrais thundering up and down the stairs, giggling; Laney putting on the Fey Princess for all she was worth with a new client, and the expression on her face when she got an extremely expensive and extraordinarily ugly necklace for her pains. Previous red-faced with laughter as she hauled in someone who’d tried to run without paying... and been tripped by his own unlaced trousers, ending up face-down and bare-arsed at the bottom of the steps. Ireq, watching it all, barely speaking, often smiling. And the Chief, seated over the chess-board, his long finger tapping the corner of his mouth as he considered his next move. The melancholy lines of his face lifting into a smile. My last sight of him, changed, pacing, still marked with the blood of the madman he’d hauled off me.
