As she went, she kept her head down and scanned the long wall of stalls for one she knew. The shadowed space of a covered stall beckoned, one that was hung along the sides with shimmering blankets, each woven with a different image. She slipped between the crowd, then ducked between two blankets and stepped into the darkness.
“Talia,” the woman inside said. She didn’t look up from the blanket she was spinning. Two rings on each finger flashed as she wound the threads across the points of them. Blue and gold and red, thread on thread, and then she pulled, her fingers interlocking and breaking apart, and added another stripe to the growing blanket across her knees.
Angha was one of the tiniest women Talia had ever known. And one of the fiercest. She’d watched her chase after a thief once – a young man who’d had the misfortune of choosing Angha’s stall to try to steal from. Angha had knocked him to the ground in three strides, wrapped the almost-stolen blanket around him, and forced him to sago, an odd and complicated ritual of submission that she had only ever seen kids force upon each other.
Now that same boy worked for her. He nodded to Talia. His cheeks still flushed when he saw her – she’d never ribbed him about that day, but it was clear he remembered it as well as she did.
Talia pressed her thumb briefly to the space above one eye in greeting to them both. It was still an odd gesture, after all this time and all these many greetings. She doubted it would ever become habit or instinct, but it was at least becoming comfortable, one of the many ways she knew how to make herself fit in.
In her other hand, Talia still clutched the bag of petals, now powdered to a fine dust. Inedible. She should go back and buy a new bag from Saric when this was over.
Angha was looking behind Talia, through the space between the blankets, toward the crowd and the zaffre. Talia didn’t know what she saw, but whatever it was made her say, “Druv, keep a lookout for one moment, please.” The boy didn’t even ask what he was looking out for. Just ducked between the same two blankets that Talia had come in through – both depicting the baubled building that was the clave – and stepped outside the stall.
Once he was gone, Angha twisted her rings off and set the rug aside before standing. She barely came to Talia’s shoulder. Talia was pretty sure the rug she’d been working on was bigger than she was. Probably weighed more as well.
“Are you running?” Angha asked.
“Walking swiftly.”
“Trouble?” It was a double-edged question: are you about to be in trouble? Are you about to make trouble for me?
“I’m not sure,” Talia said. She didn’t know why she felt comfortable telling the truth to Angha, but there it was. Perhaps because Ganeth had introduced them, and she trusted Ganeth, although she wasn’t always sure why. Also, she knew that sometimes the fastest path to what she wanted was the truth. Even if it was a road that she rarely chose to walk.
Angha stepped forward, pushing aside the blankets for a better view of whatever was happening behind Talia.
As Talia stood there, she found herself scanning the tapestries. Surely it was here that she’d seen the image that had inspired her description of the creatures. A blanket hanging on the far end of the stall caught her eye. It showed a replica of the mekalan. The former poison eaters were all stitched upon the fabric. Perfect detail. The darkened eyes. The blue cloaks.
Her face. Her own face was there. Almost as good as the Painter would have done it. The red streaks in her dark braids. The triple sets of earrings she wore. The brown of her eyes wasn’t quite right, though. Too much gray. Not enough tan.
She wanted to reach out and touch it, her cheeks and lips, the scar at the front of her throat, to make sure she was standing here, really and truly, and not locked inside Angha’s horrible death wrap.
Angha watched Ardit over Talia’s shoulder while Talia watched herself ripple in the wind over Angha.
After a moment, Angha stepped back. She followed Talia’s gaze, clicked her teeth together.
“Sehwa,” she said, lifting her tiny shoulders in a shrug. “Just business. You’ll be in demand when you die.”
“I’m sure I will,” Talia said. Her words did not belie her heart, as it wavered and faltered inside her chest.
“Druv will take you through the back,” Angha said. “Should you wish it.”
The boy was there beside her as suddenly as he’d left.
“No,” Talia said. “I’ll go myself, through the front.”
It was a stupid choice, the unsafe choice, but she couldn’t bear to take help from this woman that she’d trusted, even in a small way, this woman who had made her death face to sell for a few shins. She’d rather face Ardit and find out the truth, even if it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
Talia pulled her hood down and squared her shoulders. Then she stepped into the sunlight, blinking.
Ardit was half a crowd away, coming fast. He glanced her way and her breath caught. But she didn’t flinch. She didn’t back down. If this was the end, she would meet it head on. Her poison dream played in her mind, how she’d run, how she’d failed Maeryl and her sisters. Not this time. Let him come.
She took a tentative step forward, began to bring her thumbs to her eyes. A gesture of reverence, yes, but also a show of no harm. I don’t have a weapon or a cypher. I have nothing by these hands and these eyes and they are yours.
That’s when she realized Ardit wasn’t alone. Another of the greyes was at his side. As they drew closer, she saw that it was Rakdel, the chiurgeon. Normally, Rakdel was hard to miss. Everything about her was thin except her cheekbones, which curved out of her face like the sides of a bowl. Her hair was black, slicked and tucked under, giving the impression that it was short, but something about that carry of her head made it seem otherwise; there was weight back there. A proudness in the lift of her spine as she moved.
At this moment, Rakdel barely looked like herself. Her blue cloak was soaked, as if she’d just come from a storm, hood plastered to her head. Her sword – held up high above the crowd – was slathered with a dark green substance that seemed to shift on its own, dripping down before pulling itself back up to the metal. Looking at it too long gave Talia a sharp twinge behind her eyes.
“Stand away,” Ardit was saying to the crowd, as he wove through the gathered people with his usual skill. “Stand away. Don’t let us touch you.”
A moment later, he caught sight of Talia standing there. His glance was hard and fast, and then he was throwing a small metal disc into the air. It opened mid-fall, releasing a barely visible shield around the two greyes. The shield pulsed, and the crowd imperceptibly opened up around it, giving them room to move through. If he was still speaking, she could no longer hear him.
They stopped as they reached her. Ardit seemed about to say something, his eyes pulled tight and his mouth opening – but then Rakdel said something to him, she couldn’t hear what through the shield – and he let it drop. Then they were hurrying past, the invisible bubble of their sphere just barely brushing her shoulder on their way by.
Talia let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She still didn’t know anything – what had happened to Rakdel, if Burrin suspected, why Ardit was here, what was going on with the rest of the greyes – but she felt like she’d just barely missed stepping on a detonation by some unknown force of luck. The sense of bare escape made her lightheaded.
She let the crowd close in and swell around her as she watched them go for a moment. They were heading north out of the market. Not in the direction of Rakdel’s home nor in the direction of the zaffre headquarters, but toward the Winnow. What was there? Working class houses, mostly. The moonmarket. A handful of small shops – weaponsmiths, mechmakers, Aeon Priests. And Ganeth… Ganeth’s workshop was there too.
Before they were lost from view, she made her way quickly out of the market and headed north, following them from what felt like a safe distance. And all around her, the city sang its promise of steel and sorrow.
* *
*
They did go to Ganeth’s, but around the back and through an entrance she hadn’t noticed before. Once they were inside, she walked by it. The door bore the mark of the greyes, but much smaller and more subtle than the one at Isera’s. This mark wasn’t designed for those passing by, but for those looking for it. She was tempted to push her way in, to find out what was happening, but she’d learned the hard way that Ganeth’s workshop was rife with dangers to the uninvited.
She’d go through the front. Still likely to give her answers, but hopefully with less chance of accidentally blowing something up.
Ganeth’s shop was like none of the other places around it. Where they were brick or stone, his was striated wood and metal. Two stories, with odd-shaped windows. The wood, especially, marked this as a place of importance, for there were almost no trees in this purpled shade within the whole city of Enthait. The Tawn’s desert stretched wide around the city, and then the plains of the Emerald Wilds extended another two or three days’ walk before there was so much as a semblance of forest to be found. And, Omuf-Rhi had told her once, even that was whitewood – not the thick red wood slabs that interspersed the metal here. He’d said the only trees like these were the ones beneath the Green Road.
It wasn’t Ganeth who cared about such materials or shows of status; the sense of importance was a loan from the orness. Although Ganeth had apprentices, and a few other mechmakers like himself worked on the easier devices and defenses for the city, Ganeth was the city’s official Aeon Priest. That came with benefits. And, she was sure, costs. Like making weapons when you didn’t believe in war.
She waited as long as her patience could bear and then she pushed open the front door of the shop. The door chime released a scent that tasted of metal and berries, and a ragged buzzing sound that was probably supposed to carry far enough for Ganeth to hear it back in his workshop. It never seemed to, though, or perhaps he chose to ignore it. Either way, neither man nor child nor beast greeted her at the door when she entered. The taste of panic, acrid and sour, rose in the back of her throat. What if whatever that stuff was had gotten to Khee and Seild? What if, in waiting, she’d endangered them instead?
“Hello?” she called.
“In the shop!” The slightly distracted sound of Ganeth’s voice was enough to bring her pulse back to its normal pace. She stepped through the store, aware of all the devices on shelves and tables, hanging from the ceiling or floating in the air. The numenera, he called them. Cyphers. Artifacts. Things with no names. Others with complex names that said what they did or didn’t do. Reality spike. Heat nodule. Some moved or made noise. Others were still and silent.
Most of Ganeth’s patrons wanted frivolities – gadgets or toys that did odd things, the occasional special item for a loved one, something that heated or cooled food in their homes. Those weren’t Ganeth’s love. His love was creating new things, a thing no one had ever created or thought of. Any time he had to repeat a device, recreate it, he felt like he was doing an injustice to the object itself. But of course that’s what everyone wanted, even the zaffre. Something they already knew, a thing they’d seen at their neighbor’s or friend’s. Not that she blamed them. It was part of the reason she was here, sunk into Enthait and sinking faster. Hiding herself beneath the rhythm and repetition.
The first time she and Ganeth had met, he’d told her, “Everything wants to become something.”
She’d been brought here by one of the zaffre – one that she was pretty sure she’d never seen since – for a training session with her new cloak, following the man’s blue garb through tunnel after tunnel until they’d ended up here, where he’d dropped her off in front of this cluttered and yet perfectly organized shop. And in front of a giant hulk of a man. Who at the time had been wearing a body suit the color of yellow flowers that covered even his face. She hadn’t been sure whether to be scared of him or delighted.
Ganeth stripped out of his suit faster than seemed possible – he’d shown her the secret of that later, some kind of instant removal device sewn into a pocket – and placed two objects into her hand before he’d said so much as a hello.
One was a small disk inscribed with words she couldn’t read. The other was a glob of grey substance that started warm and grew colder the longer she held it.
She didn’t dare move. She’d seen objects similar to this – well, not similar, but in the same category. They’d always been weapons. Was this her first test as the poison eater? Was she supposed to dismantle them before they blew up in her fingers? She had no idea.
He watched her for a long time, her face, her fingers. And then he took the devices back from her.
“Just checking,” he said.
“Checking what?”
“If you could hear them.” She almost laughed when she realized he meant the devices. But then again, she could hear a living creature that, as far as she knew, didn’t actually talk. So who was she to say that these didn’t talk either?
“Hear them?”
He fiddled with the devices, pulling bits out with a tiny tool and inserting them into another. Something about it – the precision, the insertion – made Talia shudder. She felt something deep in her body… and realized it was the same gestures, the same process that the vordcha had used. Only in that case, she’d been one of the devices.
It made her instantly and fiercely dislike this man, even though she knew nothing about him. It was a full-bodied, full-boned distaste. She had to close her eyes momentarily. She breathed. She told herself it wasn’t the same. She could do this. She would do this. Even if she didn’t like him, she could learn to tolerate him, pretend. It’s what she did. What she was good at. She swallowed back her fear and revulsion. She couldn’t bring herself to smile, but she could bring herself to stand there quietly and lie.
He brought the devices together, and then handed the new, single item back to her. It was a box now, a little bigger than the others, with a sheened coating of thick fluid. The coating was sticky and she expected it to come off on her hands, but it didn’t.
“Just touch the orange thing on the side,” he said.
She pressed her thumb onto it. It let out a small squawk, like a creature freed from a trap. The top opened and a tiny fluttering mechanical bird, no bigger than her thumb, came out of it. It flew around her twice, fluttering above her head. It landed on her shoulder, sang three clear, clean notes, and zipped out of sight. The box in her hand disintegrated into nothing.
“They all want to become something. They tell you, and then you try to make them that thing. Sometimes the thing is useful, a cypher, an artifact even. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s just a surprise.” He pointed in the direction that the bird had flown. “I expect it will come back at some point. Down the road. Probably when you need it most.
“Or maybe when you absolutely don’t.”
His sheepish grin made her laugh, despite herself.
“I’m Ganeth,” he said.
“Talia.”
“I thought you might have the ability to hear them,” he said. He sounded a little disappointed or sad, but not overly surprised. “Most don’t. I’ve never met a poison eater who did. But something about you… I would have guessed you were connected to mech somehow.”
She shook her head, oddly sad to have disappointed him. Not sad enough to tell him about the mech that the vordcha had once filled her body with. “I have little experience with that type of thing.” It was largely true. But mostly not. Just that most of her experience had been on the other side. Trying to tell someone else what she didn’t want to become and having them not listen. Or care.
“Ah well. Come and have your cloak fitted, if you’re going to be the next poison eater. Don’t take it the wrong way when I say I really liked the last one, though. He was funny.”
“I won’t,” she said. But of course she did.
That was seven poisonings ago now. Ganeth had never told her she was funny, but she thought he liked her just the same. She wo
ndered what he would say about her if the poisoning took her and he had to teach someone else how to use her cloak.
Still with the visions of Rakdel in her head – the soaked cloth, the dripping green weapon – she made her way to the back of the store, where Khee and Seild were both sitting on a low bench in front of the door to Ganeth’s workshop. The girl was reading to the beast, or thought she was. She had an upside down book in her hand, and was telling Khee a story from it.
“And then the orness uses her special machine that only she knows how to use, and she blows them all up. Kala-booma!” She spread her hands in the air.
Khee, if appearances didn’t deceive, was curled up next to her, fast asleep.
At least he was until Seild saw Talia and bounced up, causing Khee to do the same. He uttered a startled roar and accidentally bared his teeth before he realized what was happening.
“What. You-? Ah…” Seild never seemed sure how to act around Talia when neither of them was on duty. She stopped and tried to put her thumbs over her eyes while still holding the book, at which point she put the corner of the book in her eye instead. “Ow!”
Talia could practically hear Khee laughing. Despite everything, she had to force herself not to do the same. Whatever could be said about the girl, she was one of the few creatures that could make her laugh in the middle of panic.
Talia’s first instinct was to rush into Ganeth’s lab and ask everything she could about what she’d seen. But first, she had to make sure Seild didn’t see the panic rising in her. Very solemnly, she lowered herself down to a squat, waiting until Seild was done rubbing her injury. Her eye was red around the edges, but she didn’t seem any worse for wear.
Numenera--The Poison Eater Page 9