Miss Nindry didn’t know any more about what she’d been saying and I felt selfish for asking. So I decided to stay here with them, at least for a while. And when her son was a bit better I’d go with them back to their shelter. Though Mother Far was gone next morning, her body turned to ashes by the time I woke, the boy was stronger. But Khalyl said he would stay another night, so I would too. The physician was as good as his word, then, and doing the best he could for us.
I heard the news that the troops were leaving. Apart from the Antissan Regiment, which came back into the fortress, and some Verunian and Laudassan battalions, the army went home to their caliphies. I went to watch from the southwest wall as their dust-browned, battle-worn blocks crawled away into the distance.
Khalyl didn’t know where in the city Taflan’s family was, and I wouldn’t go back to ask Gudgeon. But he did give me something: ‘Girl wanted to see the gryphon, wouldn’t stop saying so. Might find her up there, though of course I advised against it. Tough as she is, she needs much rest if she’s to heal.’ I wished he’d told me earlier.
Word of the gryphon had spread quickly through the city and, already, citizens could come and view the creature for themselves. By day the citadel filled with throngs from the district streets; dusty feet by the hundreds converging on the doors of the Mooncircle Hall. The Iron Shield imposed a curfew to disperse the numbers at nightfall.
Two days after the arrival of “Azal the Mathematician,” I left the infirmary and fell in with the crowds in the hall, my hood low. It was as if Amyra had daubed the citadel with the blue and white paints of her vanity table. Shieldmen stood guard at every corner and doorway.
I caught the gossip in the foyers: there’d been no sign of the missing Caliph-Archimandrite Bardon, and also now, with the First Circle’s consent, the Viceroy had been barred from the Satrap’s tower.
At the throne-end of the hall, on the first platform of the dais, a group of clerics were slipping dead rodents and birds into the cage, this time giving me a view of the creature’s body. A feathered head lurched back and forth, a smooth beak snapping at the morsels. I saw a tawny wing flap, and foot of tiny black talons. Vedans all around me gasped with awe and disbelief; even the Vedans from the south. Some tossed their heads as if insulted by the trick it surely was. As I stared at the little motley of fur and feathers, I wondered what my own people had made of it. Probably nothing, I thought. But as unlike the proud statue in the courtyard as this was – this scrawny, shy and fragile thing – its effect on the ergish was unmistakable. That that much of me was Vedan too, somehow.
I’d always sensed it was important.
Cautious, I panned the play of faces in the crowd but there was no Taflan. How would she even get here if not carried? Then the duduks of the curfew droned out over the gardens. ‘Back to your districts! Back to your homes!’ the Shieldmen bellowed and the harried crowds swept me along towards the evening outside.
In all the pushing I must have been an easy target for the hand that slapped my chest. But I caught the scrap of flapping parchment before the draught of people blew it away.
Ilovish harem—find Emerald
Darting out of the traffic, I leapt into an alcove that raised me just above the flow of heads. As I gripped the stone head of a girl not that much taller than me, I stood and scanned the press of people but saw no figures or faces that I knew. So I crouched down next to the stone girl and read the scrap over again. The scrawl was one that I knew, but not Rusper’s; not stormy enough. Thin and spidery, no flourish. A careless scribble.
Emerald. I mouthed her real name and heard Rusper saying it too, inside my head. I’d glimpsed her once in a Sight-dream and yet found now that I could picture her face in clear detail. Dark and beautiful.
They were out there too, I knew: the servants of Amyra. But so was someone else.
Was I a fool to think what I was thinking?
----------------------------------------
The sky was purple, streaked grey-white, once I got outside the Inner Gate and walked away from Shieldmen there. No guards even on that gate. I hugged my arms, breathed cold air deep to brace my nerves and plucked my hood low on my face.
All around me as I walked there floated down the sounds of far too many people crammed in buildings. And even this wasn’t enough; on either side of the way, in sandy furrows, those from the south huddled in blankets.
There was something colder in the air. Just a feeling. It was in the skittish shortness of how people would end their conversations; that new hurry in the steps of marketeers on their way home; the extra firmness in the shutting and shuttering windows and doors, as if they now slammed out much more than just the night. The palms weren’t swaying but leaning in, whispering secret things to one another. Something was about to happen here, within the walls of this fortress. I could taste it.
Even with all these people having nowhere else to sleep but in the open, my neck-hairs prickled every time I turned a corner. I couldn’t help but touch the haft of Eflan’s knife as I did, always looking back over my shoulder to make sure none of those blanketed folk I’d passed had stood to follow me. So far I didn’t think they had.
I’d not forgotten Hetch was free. Somehow I doubted his condition made me safer from him.
Emerald. I focused.
The first rumours I’d heard had said she came from the North District. But there weren’t any harem-houses in that district, only brothels. So I made my way on into the Citizen District, where fewer clusters of folk lined walls of buildings. Still I didn’t drop my guard, slow my pace, raise my face too high or stray far from the middle. I felt the eyes watching me pass. At least I already knew what the Ilovish actually was, but that made it no less tense a walk before the purple desert flower peeped out ahead through the glare of lanterns.
The place was squashed between the wall of the neighbouring district and a domicile just as high, its floors of timber warped, lopsided. The strains of flutes and nay pipes flowed out from under the sign. I splayed both hands on a door thickly daubed with purple paint and pushed it in.
Warmth, music and the sweet smell of bruhm wafted through the soft glow of a brazier.
So did a steely voice: ‘Born in the erg, son? Pull that door.’
I obeyed the voice, then looked around.
That there were people in the room was easy enough to tell, but like the incense and the music, I couldn’t tell where it was each voice or movement was coming from. The low-lit space was partitioned with many curtains, hanging veils and muslin nets strung through with beads; through them were glimpses of skin – here a knee, there a curve, there a hand of painted fingers. Like spirits, using the magic of the veils, these shapes kept changing. I’d see sad foreheads then instead, grizzled chins and glancing eyes that found my face as if they blamed me for whatever brought them here.
The woman at the foot of the stairs watched my unease. A hunched figure, like a pile of bricks, she wore a yashmak of rich, amber-studded crimson. Her skin was pitted and swarthy—Zeidhan was my guess—and in the lamplight her eyes shone gold. ‘If you’re another of Vebeth’s crew, he has my answer,’ she said in a business-like tone. ‘We’ve no call for boys here.’
I shook my head.
‘No? Whose then?’ I saw no pupils in her glare.
‘I’m here to find someone,’ I said.
‘That’s what you’re doing, not who you are,’ said the woman. ‘Most men who pass ‘neath my lintels, you know, they do the same. If for a night.’ She held that golden gaze on me, waiting for something. A hard woman who wouldn’t tolerate me much longer. I didn’t like the big square bones in her hands. Fit for clouting.
‘Emerald,’ I said.
Her mouth puckered. ‘What’s your business with my prize?’
I was good at this part. ‘I know her.’
‘You do, do you. How’s that, past employment?’
‘I’m her brother,’ I decided.
‘Oh, two has she.’ She opened a pouch, fingered its contents and put something in her mouth. ‘How’s that little shit Javret anyways? Driving them pig-minders mad as usual, mm?’
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She waited, chewing.
‘Fine. Thank you. Is Emerald here?’
‘Keep your swathes on,’ said the woman. Then spat whatever she was chewing in a cup, sniffed hard, stood up and pulled a cord. It rang a bell in a twisted staircase.
The floorboards creaked above my head, but when another woman came halfway downstairs my heart immediately sank. She wore green silks, but she was pale with snaky ink over her arms. It wasn’t her.
‘Sinarre?’
‘Get Emerald,’ said the hunched, gold-eyed curmudgeon in charge. ‘Boy here’s her brother.’
‘That’s not Javret,’ the girl said, one hand propped on her hip.
‘Nawh, other one.’
‘But she only—’
‘Want the crop on your hide, girl?’ growled the crone of the house and the girl fled back up the stairs.
Even I took a step back. Then, just as I’d done those months ago to win the interest of the daskh-man, I turned and made for the door again. ‘If she’s not here, I’ll come tomorrow.’
Her forward step was muted by the music of the curtains; when she seized my arm I yelped. ‘No good tomorrow,’ was the cutting growl at my ear. Her breath carried a stale perfume. ‘Come with me.’
My arm still squeezed in the grip of her ugly ogress hands, she turned and pulled me through the curtains. Even among them I didn’t see much, as there were more and more curtains; just more glimpses of the flesh and phantom half-motions of dance. Two men I knew – both engineers – faced one another over the blue and white triangles of Xiqopix.
Blue and white. I stayed alert.
As the crone let go of me and reached to push a back door open, I hesitated. For all I knew a dozen Shieldmen were waiting out there; the trap about to close on me. ‘Come on then!’
I followed slowly, out into the cold air behind the house, eyes trained on all her wizened movements. Was there a weapon in that hunch?
But I must have been too slow for her patience. She grabbed me again and pulled me roughly beside the post of the doorway. I almost lifted my chin in expectation of the blade. But then, ‘You wait here,’ she instructed. ‘And learn to lie, ekhin Imraldh. You were lucky this time.’
She went back into the house and closed the door. Back to the wall, I stood and listened to the music, muffled now, and studied what I could of the yard around me. It was hemmed by the district wall and the backsides of other buildings. There was a stack of empty crates, some barrels. I held my breath. If I did have to, I could run. But run where? They’d only send more Shieldmen in through the front door.
When the door opened to a shadow, my ready muscles launched me straight towards the crates. The shadow darted out to hold me, put its face close up to mine. ‘Be still!’ it hissed and then the hands that clapped my shoulders felt different. ‘Your name is Chardas, yes?’
‘No!’ I blurted, panic turning to confusion. There was a cloth across her mouth, but even so I felt her pent breath hit my forehead. Quicker than me again, she plucked the lip of my hood, nodded and let go of my shoulders. She stood up straight; tall and slender, clad in black. Her hair was wrapped, although some tendrils of her braids curled on her shoulders. A band of gems enclosed her throat and between her eyes hung a single droplet of something like crystal.
‘Say nothing,’ she said calmly.
‘Who the pelkh is Chardas?’
She answered, ‘No one, I made him up,’ and it was the smile I could hear in her voice that disarmed me; my Vedish curse had amused her. ‘I had to make certain of you. I know you are Florian Flint, Rusper’s hand.’
‘I am. I mean, I was.’
Though I couldn’t see her full face, I could tell that took her aback. ‘What mean you by this?’
‘He dismissed me,’ I told her.
Her shoulders relaxed. ‘Forget this now. Trust me when I tell you he has not. But no, you’ve no choice but to trust me. Trust and follow.’
She was right: it was either that, I quickly saw, or be left right where I stood. Without a moment’s pause, she moved away from the rear of the Ilovish harem-house towards the shadowed district wall. And hoping hard that she really was the woman Rusper Symphin loved, I followed her.
There was a hole there, in the wall, that I’d not seen behind the crates. It led back into the North District, where the woman moved ahead of me, dipping in and out of pools of greenish light. If she ever looked back over her shoulder for me, I missed it. Her step was almost silent, making me feel as if I chased a kind of night-nymph through the city. On we scurried through the alleyways and down domicile terraces. The nymph knew where she was going and I was simply choosing to believe in that, my eyes fixed on her slipshod heels as I lost sense of direction.
‘Florian?’
My own name hit me like a bolt from the side.
‘Is that you there, Florian?’
How hadn’t I noticed that she’d led me this way? Had she meant to? In the corner of my eye was the square block of the warehouse, and a man in the street behind the doorway’s pool of light. Dewar, I knew. He called my name out again, but even as I wondered if he knew that Mother Far was dead, I didn’t turn to answer. The nymph hadn’t stopped, even slowed down, and I picked up my pace to catch her up. The warehouse fell behind a corner and Dewar didn’t seem to follow.
Further on, between the blanketed rough-sleepers, the streets were stirring with a steady evening traffic. I grew more wary of other movements I could see in alleyways; dark, clustered groups inside the gaps between the buildings we passed by, the double-taking silhouettes in upper windows. Shapes on roofs. There were no guards anywhere, not even one.
Without warning the nymph grabbed me by my shoulder again and pulled me sideways into the shelter of a street-side canopy. She knelt and looked into my eyes. I couldn’t see hers, it was too dark. ‘Across the way there is a house with a green awning at the door. Do you see it?’ she said, firm, crystal droplet swinging like a forehead pendulum.
I looked past her. Most of the buildings here were block-like sandstone domiciles: by night, so many stacked sugar cubes. But one was different. Its roof, though flat in the usual Antissan style, was steeply slanted at the front. Straw was heaped on top of it within a ramshackle of vanes, maybe to shelter from the wind that reached over the fortress wall when strong. In a yard to the side, a scruffy camel stood tethered by a cart with one wheel left. All over the walls of the house, boils and lumps of painted clay showed its haphazard repairs, and wooden lintels stuck out as if it hadn’t ever really been finished in the first place. Two of those lintels stuck out above the door to suspend the small awning.
‘I see it.’
A nod. ‘Cross quickly. Knock four times.’
Her voice, both sweet and strong, entranced me; a honeyed hammer. Not unlike Amyra . . . ‘You aren’t coming?’ I asked her. What was really happening here?
‘Too many eyes,’ she replied. ‘And I cannot be seen to accompany you. Go now.’
At her shove, I turned away and quickly felt along my swathe-belt for the knife. Still there, at least. Leaving the canopy’s shelter, I crossed the street, swift as I could while trying not to look hurried. Was the one-handed dwarf watching me now from those shadows?
I ducked under the green awning. Engraved on the front door was the cogwheel of the City Guild, all too common around here, though now the shape reminded me of Sprocket. Putting the thought out of my mind, I risked a glance up the street: the camel moaned and turned its head slightly towards me, looking bored. Still no sign of fortress guards and it unnerved me more and more. I knocked four times, just as she’d said.
Floorboards grunted inside the house. A bolt was shot back. When the door was tugged half-open, a grey-skinned crone with a large whitlow on one eyelid ogled me. I’d never seen her before. ‘My name—’ I started.
‘Wheesht your name! Get in,’ she beckoned.
As I ducked under her arm into the warm gloom of the house, I passed a hand along the side of the door to find the bolt. I heard it slotted home again, the night shut out, and didn’t like it.
The room was thick with drifting smoke that smelled of ginger. Through the haze, the old woman muttered her way past me, under the supports of a wide loft and to the floorboards slightly raised above a sand-carpeted threshold. ‘Small master’s here,’ she croaked to someone.
Water bubbled. Coals glowed dimly. By that light I could make out the room was crammed up to its rafters with junk: old and scabrous furniture, retired machines, littered utensils. Everything I turned eyes on looked pretty useless: I thought I knew where I was now.
‘Why’m I here?’ I demanded.
‘An’ he’s a bossy little blighter.’
‘To be expected of the Chief’s boy,’ came Loquar’s papery voice as he scuttled, clicking, through a reed curtain. The beams of his box-lantern flashed over his bared teeth. ‘You’re here to die, kid, o’ course.’
I spun around and threw myself straight for the door and the bolt, but like a tree-frog a gangly thing with burning bug-eyes leapt from nowhere and stood blocking my way. I’d thought it Rath for just a second, but it wasn’t. It was Jerome.
‘Whoops, easy kid—no need for that,’ warned the old engineer behind me.
I reached to pull out Eflan’s knife but to my horror it wasn’t there. Jerome had it. Chest heaving, muscles going taut, I tried to stare him down.
‘Hell-sands, kid, must’a figured you’ve been on her list awhile,’ Loquar carried on. ‘Senera’s wanted you done in since the pipes went!’
Then from the crone as she pottered: ‘High-headed wench like that one wantin’ you dead—ought be proud. She’s a shrewd one.’ My eyes darted left and right and up and down for an escape.
‘And, I’m afraid, the Loquars have a flair for the dramatic,’ said another voice. I turned around to see a stouter figure step through the curtain. Two heavy strides took him to Loquar where he delivered a hard clap to the back of the man’s head. ‘Got ‘im ready to bolt, look, you berk.’
Loquar stooped down for his turban and whatever had been stashed inside.
‘Captain?’ I said.
With a disapproving click at the old couple, Mondric looked at me. ‘As luck would have it, Tools, the Viceroy isn’t without a certain shrewdness of his own. You can take that hood off, it’s alright. We’re friends here.’