Gray did not have words. He simply gaped.
‘The Arabian Sea,’ he said finally. ‘So the stories are true. I knew them to be true, I had seen pictures, but-but I never imagined something so vast.’
‘A picture can never compare,’ Zabrielle said.
They sat there for a long time, silent, before Gray realised the island in front of him was Zaleb Hel.
‘Isn’t that? Isn’t that—’
‘Indeed. Our destination.’
‘It’s so close!’ Gray exclaimed, as it started to snow again. ‘It’s just a swim away!’
‘The cold would kill you,’ Zabrielle warned.
Gray looked at the black island, its jagged peaks glowing red in the last rays of daylight. Tantalisingly close, a temptation, a challenge. There was a premonition somewhere, and somehow Gray knew it would not be easy to get there.
‘Can you blink?’ he asked Zabrielle. ‘I’ve never seen you do it, but can you?’
‘Blinkers are conquerors of physical space. One has yet to grasp the intricacies of blinking. Besides, no one can blink that far.’
‘I just had a thought,’ Gray said, his eyebrows rising. ‘Victor Sen knows we’re trying to find the Keeper. What’s stopping him from getting to Zaleb Hel and setting a trap?’
‘Of course he has set a trap there, young Gray,’ Zabrielle said, looking across the sea dreamily. ‘Even the Horseman might be waiting for us there.’
‘Then?’
‘We have to go there to find out, and face what waits,’ Zabrielle said. She finally tore her eyes away from the island. In the distance, she could make out a pier with rows of boats docked. ‘Come.’
Gray, still reeling from what she had said, followed her. Indeed, what if Death himself was waiting in Zaleb Hel? What chance would they have then? Perhaps Maya would find another way, like she had said. Perhaps this would not end with them. He watched Zabrielle make her way down the ladder and on to the pier. He did too, albeit with some difficulty. The surface under his boots was slippery with the snow and the water’s spray—he walked gingerly to avoid the sleet. This was one of the smaller docks of Bandra, not large enough to hold ships. It had plenty of boats though, and one was all they needed. There were about thirty of them, all docked and roped in, covered in tarp and oilcloth.
Zabrielle walked ahead of him, sure of her steps; she was making her way towards an old man sitting on a post, busy trying to light a cigarette against the sea wind. Zabrielle went and quietly lit it for him. The old man stared at the flame in her palm, and then he nodded and puffed.
‘Demon, eh? Seen summa yah in my time,’ he rasped. ‘Seen magic too, quite the bit. Older times, you’d git yourself drowned pulling that neat trick.’
Zabrielle stood her ground before him. Gray came to a stop beside her, and looked at the man’s incredibly old face, everything from his bushy eyebrows to the scars. He wore a buttoned jacket and short pants, knee high socks with garters that stuck out from above his leather boots. There was a bandanna on his head, wisps of hair sticking out underneath. The man saw Gray looking and stared back.
‘An’ who yah be, landlubber? Snow hair like that, not from these parts, no. But thennagin, who is these days?’
‘You’re a pirate,’ Gray said in wonder, more to himself.
‘Arr, that I am. And Imma be with Cap’n North’s crew, so yah don’t think of tryin’ anything, magic or no.’
‘Why are you here?’ Zabrielle asked. ‘The ships are in the shipyard, aren’t they?’
‘Yah can’t comma marchin’ down and askin’ me questions!’ the old man exclaimed, starting. ‘What be your business?’
‘We apologise,’ Zabrielle said. ‘We were wondering if there was a boat owner here, seeing all the boats.’
‘Zaleb Hel?’ the old man asked.
Silence. Only the spray of the sea, the roar of the wind. The boats creaking, drumming against each other in the water.
‘Firget it,’ the old man continued, taking in a long drag. ‘Sea trade ban and all. No one’s sailing.’
‘Not much of a sail,’ Gray said, pointing at the island. ‘Even a rowboat will do.’
‘Yah don’t git it. Yah can’t get in the water when the Sea Lord, that scurvy bilge rat, says no.’
‘What if we sail at night, away from the eyes of the lawkeepers?’ Gray pressed. ‘Quick money. We’ll pay in advance.’
‘It’s not the lawkeepers,’ the old man said slowly. ‘Yah young fools. We’re pirates lad, since whenneve feared the law? Nah, nah, it’s somethin’ else.’
‘What?’ Gray asked, though he already knew the answer. Here it was, and he could not believe it despite what Anulekha had told him about remembering his grandmother’s tales.
‘Imma gonna give you a warnin’ both of yah,’ the old man said, his eyes misty. ‘There be a somethin’ in the sea, certain somethin’ that don’t like it too much if one don’t obey the Sea Lord. Yah try to break this ban, and I promise yah, yah be dancing with Jack Ketch.’
‘Jack Ketch?’ Gray frowned.
‘He means you will be dead,’ Zabrielle said.
The old man looked at them. ‘Aye,’ he muttered with reluctance.
‘This something in the sea,’ Gray said, his eyes glowing. ‘You’re referring to the Leviath—’
The pirate cursed loudly, taking them by surprise. ‘What’s wrong with yah! Takin’ its name!’
‘So I am right!’ Gray said.
The man crossed himself quickly, chucking his cigarette into the water. ‘Nothin’ to be excited upon,’ he grumbled. ‘The beast enforces the Sea Lord’s law. We’ve been grounded fir weeks now. Killin’ our business, damn thing . . .’ he branched off into mutters.
‘It really exists,’ Gray said to Zabrielle, not knowing what to feel. She was quiet. ‘There must be a way.’
‘Impossible, ain’t a ship built that outruns it. It catches up, brig, barque or clipper. Damn me fir talkin’ about it, damn me old soul.’
‘But there must be a way,’ Gray insisted.
‘Aye, if Drake lifts the ban. All the Captains been tryin’ to meet him, no luck. Yah welcome to try. He lifts the ban, yah all will be doin’ us a favour, suppose. Can’t see why North’s jolly boat can’t take yah to the island then.’
‘Do we have your word on that?’ Zabrielle asked.
‘I need to know yah names, lass.’
‘She’s Zabrielle and I’m Gray,’ Gray said.
‘I’m Zarch, but they call me Ol’ Chipper. That be the name yah find me by. If yah lift the ban, come find me.’
Bringing out another cigarette, the pirate ambled off towards the boats. What he was doing here they did not know, neither did they know what to think. Zabrielle quietly suggested they visit other docks before discussing anything. Gray agreed, admiring her objectivity. They scoured similar docks and their boats after that. One was deserted, and others had men who flat out refused, even when offered ridiculous amounts of silver. They tried their luck till late night, before they finally retreated to the concrete coastal rim again, sitting down for a breather. It was extremely cold and the wind chilled them to the bones, but Gray needed to look at the black sea.
The Leviathan. Could it be true? Could a giant sea monster truly lurk under these waters, serving a single man’s will, sinking any ship foolish enough to disobey? They had seen incredible things in the past, things unbelievable, but this, somehow, seemed a whole new degree of fantastic. Gray, however, believed it now. Anulekha’s advice was beginning to make sense—he needed to remember the story of the Leviathan, he needed to remember how it had been beaten—
‘They all refuse in an unspoken fear,’ Zabrielle spoke suddenly.
‘You have travelled a lot. You’ve been here before. Did you never hear of this creature?’
‘One has never seen a sea ban here before. The ships always came and went. There are sea shanties of course, but that is another matter entirely.’
‘We need to find out if the
creature really exists,’ Gray said. ‘I’m pretty sure it does, but we need to confirm it. Fayne might know.’
The Demon nodded. ‘Yes, the alkhatamish is well travelled.’
They decided to head back then. Zabrielle paused at a tinker’s shop and bought a small lamp before they headed back to the train station. A train ride later, they were walking back to the settlement. Fires were lit now, fires under shelters, small groups of men huddled around, whispering, groaning. Someone was crying out in pain. They ignored it. When they reached their room, Gray unlocked the padlock, the most expensive thing about the place.
Fayne wasn’t inside. Gray rushed to the other room while Zabrielle stood in the open doorway.
‘He isn’t in here! And there’s a hole,’ Gray muttered. ‘There’s a hole in the wall.’
Zabrielle came in and locked the door, turning on the lamp. Then she walked to the other room, where the hole in the wall was, loose bricks scattered about. Gray was peering out. A back alley.
‘Where the hell did he go?’ he asked.
‘We should pile the bricks back,’ Zabrielle said simply.
‘He’ll break them again,’ Gray said, picking up a brick.
It did not take them long, considering the bricks were loose. Dusting their palms, they came back to the first room, where it was warmer, and sat down.
‘Are you full?’ Zabrielle asked, referring to the frugal meal they had eaten.
‘Yeah,’ Gray said.
‘Fayne is not. He’s gone out to eat.’
Gray looked terrified. ‘Eat what?’
‘I suspect we might know soon.’
‘What?’
Zabrielle did not reply. They sat there in the dim light of the lamp, waiting for the hours to pass. No conversation. Gray would occasionally ask something, and Zabrielle would reply, but she did not egg him on with her answers. The muffled screams which had begun earlier, somewhere in the neighbourhood, stopped soon; Gray did not know if it was a good or a bad thing. After a couple of hours, he pulled his sleeping bag out and went to sleep in a corner, ignoring the musty, dirty smell in the house, the one lamp only fuelling his depression.
He had violent dreams. His childhood, his father and mother, MYTH coming to take his father away, Abriti lying in a pool of blood. When he awoke, he realised his shirt was drenched in sweat, despite the cold.
Slowly, Gray unzipped his sleeping bag with his one hand, looking around. Zabrielle was asleep, leaning against a wall. The sun was pouring in through gaps between the bricks in the wall, creating a thin, hatched pattern on the partition wall. He got up and peered into the other room. Fayne was back.
Gray got to his feet with care and tiptoed over. Fayne had come in through the same wall, after which he had arranged the bricks back. He was sitting against the furthest wall, away from Gray.
Gray looked at him with revulsion. The assassin’s hands and neck were smeared a light red, crusts of what seemed to be blood, prominent even in the semi darkness. He seemed to be asleep, there was a slight rhythm to his breathing, though he might be awake under those bug eyes. Gray couldn’t be sure. He studied the assassin further and saw that the mask had ripped even more, the tear crawling up beside the nose.
If he lifted the mask, he would see more than half of Fayne’s face. Gray wanted to. The blood. He wanted to see Fayne’s face and see if he was really a monster, see if there were fangs instead of teeth, scales instead of skin. Why did the assassin hide? Why was he dependent on blood?
He crept towards Fayne, one foot at a time. Easy, easy. Don’t you wake up. He reached Fayne, and now that he was so close, he could see more blood on the assassin’s shadow steel armour. The blood of what? Gray slowly reached out with his hand, his trembling fingers feeling the bottom edge of the mask. The fabric felt strange, not something he had felt before. The blood of who? His hand slowly turned the fabric upwards.
Red bloodstains, dry blood on a beard, black. Further up. Bright red lips, lips untouched by the cold, shut. Gray lacked another hand to part them and see the teeth. Further up—
Snap. Fayne was holding Gray’s hand. Gray screamed and backed off as Fayne let go.
‘Don’t do that again, myrkho,’ Fayne said in a low voice.
Gray walked backwards, slowly, until he felt a firm hand on his shoulder. His scream had woken Zabrielle. She looked at Fayne calmly.
‘What have you done?’ Gray asked, the Demon’s grip encouraging him.
Fayne looked at them, his round glass eyes as unfeeling as ever. ‘I have broken an oath,’ he said. ‘I have weakened myself and my will, shattered a trust, tainted what was not. All in order to survive.’
‘Are you a threat to us?’ Zabrielle asked.
‘No,’ Fayne said.
‘Who did you kill?’ Gray asked, dreading the answer.
‘I do not know. A grown man. I drank him dry.’
‘You seem stronger,’ Zabrielle said.
‘You drank—’ Gray muttered.
‘You are well enough to make your potion again,’ Zabrielle said. ‘We can find every ingredient in Frozen Bombay.’
‘You do not understand,’ Fayne said.
Silence.
‘I have tasted raw blood again, broken the sacred oath,’ Fayne said further. ‘Now I cannot stop. Treated blood will not give me the energy I now need.’
‘You will kill people from now?’ Gray asked darkly.
‘I will hunt people,’ Fayne said. ‘I am not human, myrkho. It is time you understood that. This is in my nature, and now that I have broken my oath, there is nothing to hold me back.’
‘How often?’ Zabrielle asked calmly.
‘What’s stopping you from drinking our blood?’ Gray asked.
‘I will hunt as often as I please. Other vows hold me from hunting you. But I am not an animal either. I am fully aware of who I hunt, and I will not hurt either of you. Nor will my nocturnal activities endanger our presence here.’
That was all. Uncomfortable silences. Gray felt a little scared of Fayne, an old feeling, one he had back in the days of Old Kolkata. When Zabrielle went to get breakfast a little later, Gray resigned himself to his corner.
Adri had always been wary of Fayne. Perhaps I now see Fayne’s other side, the side Adri had sensed. I have things to learn. I had thought him harmless, a danger only to our enemies.
Gray felt betrayed, and the assassin felt like a stranger, this could not really be happening. They could not be fracturing again, not after Maya. They needed to stay together now, be of clear conscience. He did not harm us. But he may have killed an innocent man last night, killed someone who did not deserve it.
‘Fayne,’ Gray said. He saw the assassin turn his head towards him. ‘There is something I must request of you.’
‘What is it?’
‘There are many kinds of people in Frozen Bombay. There are everyday people, and then there are killers. I don’t know, perhaps gang members. Rapists. Bandits. I realise everything is not black and white, but if you have to . . . can you try and hunt . . . such people?’
Fayne stared at Gray for a while, contemplating.
‘It can be done,’ Fayne said finally.
‘I cannot be . . . repulsed when I look at you,’ Gray said. ‘I want you to stick around, and I don’t know when we will see the end of things. If you have taken this decision to hunt, you must . . . you must make it easier for me to bear. You should work for your kill, just . . . spend time tracking . . . these people, instead of just . . . pouncing on anyone you find.’
‘I understand,’ Fayne said. ‘You wish me to become a sahlam, a vigilante parading a dark justice. It is not my end, but I will let it become my means. I accept your proposition.’
‘Good,’ Gray said, trying to not think about the man Fayne had already killed. ‘There’s another thing.’
‘Ask.’
‘Does the Leviathan exist?’
‘It does.’
‘We can’t get to Zaleb Hel. Drake has imposed
a sea trade ban, and none may go out into the water, not while the Leviathan waits. It seems we have to approach Drake.’
‘He is a cruel man. He will not let us cross without getting something in return.’
‘What could a man like Drake want? He runs Frozen Bombay. He must have everything.’
‘Frozen Bombay is a different sort of place, myrkho. It runs on hearsay. That is what we have to control.’
Gray shifted, more alert. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘You had once said I am short on ideas that do not involve killing. There is truth in those words,’ the assassin paused. ‘There are deaths in my plan.’
16
The quintessential thing about the city was somehow the speed, and speed wasn’t about youngsters ripping the streets in half on their custom built motorbikes, fancying themselves modern vigilantes. Speed was more about the rate of change in everything seemingly still, speed was the manipulation of decisions affecting what stayed and what changed, a constant flux between entropy and chaos within the framework, the skeleton beneath this city of trade. Maya realised soon enough that she had no clue how fast this city moved, or how quick it preyed on the weak. She continued to stay at The Ancient Mariner, trying to find the filthiest parts of the city. Whatever she was looking for, she knew she was going to find it in a dark place.
The problem with Maya was the lack of a concrete mission in her life; something as airy as understanding a city was not something she had done before. But then she realised it was exactly what she needed, a lack of orders. She wasn’t Gray. She decided to go exploring.
Frozen Bombay was fascinating if one managed to stay out of trouble’s way. She had never before seen such a colourful menagerie of odd and mysterious people under one city’s roof—though Old Kolkata came very close—and it was these people who made Bombay what it was, not anything else. The city was beautiful if one learned to look only at the sea and the waves wistfully, and time would pass most forgivingly then, but the rest of Frozen Bombay was a dump. There were towers, skyscrapers where the elite celebrated and held their secret gatherings while the have-nots starved to death on the streets, the filthy, rodent ridden, slippery wet streets where there were so many people walking that you had to constantly watch your step and your wallet.
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