Watson, Ian - Black Current 02

by The Book Of The Stars (v1. 1)

  Injuries were visible: lost fingers, hideous puckered slash-marks and scar-tissue, a missing eye here, broken teeth there, blushing bums. I saw one child running half-naked with a festering blotch on her back. Maybe the fresh air would help it heal; maybe. A good deal of garbage was lying about too: rags, stinking piles of fish bones, even dried knobs of human excrement. Oh, those Sons had transformed Verrino into a fine copy of one of their own side streets! The very town itself had been wounded and was still suffering from delayed shock. I watched a small funeral cortege making its way down one street. The procession was silent, not even humming in mourning. The body lay under a dirty sheet on a litter of crudely- roped poles.

  I made my way through Verrino that day with difficulty—where I had skipped before. Twice I lost my way, because the ways had changed. But when I arrived at the base of the Spire, that at least looked unaltered—as monumental and austere as ever.

  I climbed, pausing a few times for breath.

  On my last such halt I surveyed the view. In the direction of the glassworks off to the east I spied several new "villages". Villages of sorts: higgledy-piggledy shacks and canvas awnings, surrounded by spiked palisades. Each village compound was crowded with tiny dots of people doing nothing. Each compound was hidden from its neighbours by the bulge of sand hills.

  Obviously those were the prison-pens. The 'jacks had separated their prisoners into four different sections for security—though from the look of it an uproar in one camp would easily be heard in the others. Out of sight, but not out of earshot.

  Maybe that didn't matter. Maybe the prisoners were as stunned by their defeat as the people of Verrino had been by foreign occupation and war. And if Verrino folk looked ill-fed, the prisoners were probably weak with hunger. One could hardly starve Verrino or the army to stuff the stomachs of the Sons. So I was glad I was seeing those pens from afar.

  I noticed some dark patches staining the stone steps where I stood. Dried blood? Let it be the lifeblood of the Sons!

  I pressed on, through the upward tunnel, and past empty stairways and closed doors—a couple of which I pushed, only to find them locked. No hint of activity. No voices, no challenges.

  I should have gone to the quaymistress's office initially and asked how it was with the Observers, instead of just turning up as though it was up to me to relieve their siege in person. I should have done. But I hadn't wanted a stranger to tell me the news. I had to see with my own eyes the outcome of events whose beginnings I had witnessed when I was Nelliam. And taste it with my own lips. Yet now that I was here, the place seemed deserted. Not ravaged, just abandoned.

  The top platform was empty, save for a heliograph and signal- lantern erected by the rail. The door to the observatory building stood ajar.

  I knew that Hasso was in there. He simply had to be. I made him be there by thrusting myself into a frame of mind where no other outcome was conceivable.

  I walked over. I touched the rusty bolts of the door, called softly, "Hasso!" Then I pushed the door open decisively and stepped inside.

  There was nobody in the room. Empty chairs stood behind telescopes. Every window pane was hinged wide open as though to ventilate the air of some lingering foetor.

  I stood bewildered. What a weird return this was, to a place where no one was! I imagined that I'd died. I thought I was in a Ka-world of my own memories—a world where I could wander forever without meeting a soul because everyone else had faded away. During those few moments I felt more alone even, than when I'd found myself washed up on the west bank.

  A noise from outside—a cough—broke this melancholy reverie. I whirled. I jumped to the open door.

  "Yaleen!" exclaimed a voice. A familiar voice indeed!

  Hasso's looks were not quite so familiar. Before he'd been slim. Now he was emaciated. His skin was sallow. His eyes looked larger, as though they'd swollen in their orbits. His once smart attire was dirty and crumpled. A ring of keys hung from his belt, which was tightened to the final notch, leaving a loose tail of leather hanging down.

  I rushed towards him—then halted out of reach, like some anxious flutterbye just about to alight on a flower when it realizes that the flower is a deathbloom.

  "Where—? How—?" (Was it his ghost whom f'd summoned to haunt me on this high and lonely place?) "Come inside and sit down!" I made to take his arm now, but he danced back.

  "Hey, I'm not about to flake out! I'm putting on fat again. Or at least," and he grinned ruefully, "I thought I was. The siege has ended, you know."

  "Ended. How did it end?"

  "We held out. Till the 'jacks arrived. Most of us."

  "Most?"

  "Two of us died of hunger. Or sickness. Same thing by that stage. Yosef killed himself to spin the groceries out. None of us fancied staggering downstairs with a white flag, not after some of the things we saw."

  "I saw dried blood on the stairs. Did Yosef—?"

  "Jump? No. He hanged himself. Those stains got there when the Sons made a foray. We dropped stones on them. They didn't risk it again, which is as well, since stones got hard to heave later on. Actually, Yaleen, the worst aspect was being drunk all the time and having a permanent hangover."

  "Drunk? You're joking!"

  "Well, we had a decent wine cellar, so when we ran out of water . . . A glass of vintage really knocks you out when you're weak with hunger. Yosef was drunk when he hanged himself, though he left a note to say why."

  "Where are the others, Hasso?"

  "Some are recovering in town. Me and Tork—remember him?— we're out at the Pens, questioning prisoners. We're compiling a real map of the west. I just popped back for an old chart. Saw you climbing up ahead of me." He looked around. "Actually, there ought to be a 'jack guard on duty up here—and a riverguild woman as well. Naughty, they are, naughty. Taking time off duty for private business downstairs, I shouldn't be surprised."

  Indeed it transpired that there were two guards and two watchwomen assigned to the Spire. When I turned up, the night shift was down below, legitimately asleep. The day shift were merely sleeping with each other. Tousled and embarrassed, the latter pair soon emerged and got on busily with their duties of patrolling and peering.

  Another symptom of disorder in Verrino? I could sympathize. They were bored; they were exiled up a shaft of rock. More important perhaps, there was evidently no friction except of the fleshy sort between 'jacks and riverguild up here. When I went below with Hasso, the guard saluted me smartly (though I had to ask what the funny arm gesture meant).

  Down below, Hasso let me into his quarters. He set out dry black bread and cheese, some pickles and a carafe of water. To decide which of us should tell our tale first, Hasso flipped a coin. The coin came down value side up: Hasso's turn to tell.

  I said he should at least eat his meal first. He shook his head and nibbled while he talked. He ate as if he had disciplined himself to disbelieve in food, and still couldn't credit its continuing existence. But he sipped water like a connoisseur.

  He was laconic concerning the siege itself. Maybe there isn't a lot that can be said about slow starvation. Maybe he said it all by the way he ate.

  He talked much more about what the Observers had observed from aloft: the brutalization of Verrino. They'd spied faggots piled round a stake more than once; they'd seen women dragged shrieking to be set on fire. Yet the final stages of the war were the worst, for then the embattled Sons really vented their spleen upon Verrino town which they were about to lose.

  I'd finished my own food long ago. Hasso cleared up the last few breadcrumbs meticulously upon a dampened fingertip.

  "So now we have hundreds of those swine in the Pens," he said. "And what to do with them? Actually, a few aren't such bad chaps at heart. They regret what they did. They just didn't dare disobey their leaders. But Verrino folk aren't ever going to have them living in town. Some people say throw all the Sons in the river. Another suggestion is we march them down beyond Aladalia and ferry them across to their o
wn side. I doubt if the Aladalians would appreciate us dumping an army opposite them . . . Hey, a fin for them?"

  "Urn?"

  "A fin for your thoughts?"

  "Oh, sorry. I'm listening, honest!" But what I was thinking was that I knew why Hasso had skated over the anguish of the siege, in favour of faithfully narrating what happened below. It was because he was fulfilling his promise to dead Nelliam. All the time he'd been talking he was honouring her memory, by being true. I knew; but he didn't know I knew.

  So I started to tell him.

  This had to be by a very roundabout route, via Tambimatu and

  Manhome South, Spanglestream and Tambimatu again; and even so I had to leave out heaps of events and skip weeks and leagues.

  Hasso stared at me attentively, now and then shaking his head in amazement. "My goodness," he muttered once, as I was recounting my adventures, "you're Capsi's flesh and blood all right, and no mistaking."

  Towards the end of my account he exclaimed, "So it was you who brought the current back! Damn it, but it came so quickly—without warning. By the time we got Big Eye swung round . . . Well, you saved my life! That's what gave us the courage to hold out: the boats following a week or two afterwards, signalling, telling us we had an army on the way."

  This made me feel a bit better about my role. Maybe I'd slowed down the war plan—even tied a whopping great knot in it—but at least I'd given some hope to people.

  I'd kept till last my revelation about how I'd been Nelliam just before she was killed; and how I had a kiss to repay. . . .

  But not now merely on the brow. That kiss prolonged itself. It wandered. Soon we also wandered, to Hasso's spartan bed.

  Afterwards he lay like a cat basking beside a fire and sighed contentedly. "That was good. I thought I'd dried up completely."

  "Nonsense." I winked. "Starvation sharpened you, that's all."

  I spent three weeks in Verrino, helping Hasso and Tork to compile their map and gazetteer of the west bank. The riverguild gave me their blessing in this. Who better than I to catch out prisoners if they told lies about the territory from Worlzend to Manhome South? I did catch one or two out, but not many seemed to want to lie.

  This new work meant that I had to travel out to the Pens by day. Nights, I spent in town; sometimes with Hasso, sometimes not. By and by Verrino began to seem less seedy and sleazy; though ugliness still simmered beneath the surface, a dark shadow upon the soul of the place.

  Conditions in the Pens weren't too disgusting; no one wanted to risk an outbreak of serious disease. But life there was hardly elegant or even innocuous. 1 might have felt I was performing a useful penance by working there—if the 'jack guards hadn't already been doing this as routine.

  The ordinary run of prisoners were just coarse, not actively venomous. The leaders were a different kettle of fish, and interrogating some of the robed ones was the nastiest but most necessary task. We had questions for them about the planning of the war and its ultimate aims.

  In my final week one of the leaders sat facing our questioning committee. This committee consisted of Hasso and me, a guildmis- tress called Jizbel and a 'jack "captain", Martan. We held our sessions in a tent pitched just inside the gateway to this particular pen, with bales of uprooted thombush on sharpened stakes separating us from the largely lackadaisical mass of prisoners; these spent their time playing pebble or straw games on the sand, gambling up imaginary debts, wandering from side to side, mucking out, squabbling over rations, racing insects. Those who could, read aloud to their fellows from a pile of tatty old romances generously donated by the guild. If anyone tried to tunnel out, they wouldn't succeed; the sand would suffocate them.

  The Son in question was a big brute, but now he looked baggy, as though his skin was a size too large for him. As usual the prisoner was being guarded by two 'jacks armed with clubs; they kept their swords sheathed.

  "That damned Satan-Snake saved you," the Son sneered. "You never saved yourselves."

  "Didn't we just?" retorted Captain Martan. "Let me tell you—"

  "How do you suppose the current came back?" Hasso glanced proudly at me. He oughtn't to have done that. Jizbel uttered a soft hiss like water cast on coals to cool them. Both men shut up.

  I rapped my knuckles on the trestle table. I had to take this swine by surprise if we were going to get anything of value out of him.

  "So what are you, then: a Conserver or a Crusader?" I tried.

  The Son's head jerked towards me—and a wattle of loose skin like a turkey cock's flopped with it.

  "You!" He stared at me. "I know you. It was you who rode in the jaws of the Snake!"

  "Rubbish," I said. "At that distance it could as easily have been your own grandmother."

  "Witch! Damned witch—it was you. I saw; my eyes are keen. That's why you're here now. You're the tool of the Snake."

  "Oh, shut up about snakes. You don't know what you're talking about. I asked if you're a Conserver or a Crusader. Because if you're a Conserver—" I hoped I was being cunning—"then we're that much more likely to send you home to your precious Truesoil to keep it pure and secure, and bore yourself to death reading junk like The Truesoil of Manhood."

  This was meant to impress him with how much we already knew about life in the west, so that he wouldn't lie. The effect I produced was unexpected.

  "Yal . . . een," he said. "That is who you are! You're Doctor Edrick's waterwitch who ran away. Only she would know the names of our Brotherhood books." He spat, though only at the sandy soil. "The Doctor said it was you as swept by in Satan's lips that mom. Didn't know whether to credit him."

  "Drivel. Edrick couldn't spy a night-soil shack at twenty spans— even if he did loot himself a decent pair of glasses! He never was far-sighted about anything."

  Neither was I, to shout my mouth off; though why should I care if this character knew who I was? Actually, mine was a cheap jibe. To give the dog his due, Edrick had been a devious schemer. And we'd both been hoodwinked by the Worm, he and I in different ways.

  What I heard the Son mutter then, was, "Far-sighted enough to give this bloody town the slip!" Something like that. Immediately, as if realizing that I'd heard and desperate to cover his indiscretion up, the Son blustered on loudly: "How did he know? Well, we took spyglasses off those boats, didn't we? And the Doctor had ears. He could hark the description I gave—of Yaleen.

  So saying, the Son launched himself out of his chair, leaping at our table.

  He didn't reach it. The 'jack guards bludgeoned him senseless.

  "Stop it!" I cried, nearly upsetting the trestle top myself. "Don't hit him again!"

  The way he had attacked didn't make sense. Just before he jumped, he had glanced at the 'jacks— and they were not lounging inattentively. They were alert. His glance in effect had cued them. Therefore he wanted to be knocked out. He wanted to be rendered speechless.

  "Guard: did you hear what he said before that bit about stealing spyglasses?"

  "Eh, mistress?" The 'jack guard panted.

  I wasn't a "mistress", but I let that pass. "Think, man! The Son muttered something. I know what I heard. What did you hear?"

  "Hmm . . . something about slipping ... on all the blood?"

  "No," his colleague said, "slipping out of town: that's what. Just what we all want to do."

  "That's enough of that!" said Captain Martan.

  "What I heard him say," said I, "was that Edrick was far-sighted enough to slip away."

  "Guess I heard something of the sort/' Martan allowed. "There haven't been any reports of runaways murdering or thieving. None that I've heard."

  "If Edrick was lying low, you wouldn't have heard anything."

  "If he's lying low, how many others are?" Hasso asked the Captain.

  Martan looked more embarrassed than annoyed. "Be reasonable. We have our work cut out here, without combing the countryside when nobody reports anything."

  I pointed at the slumped Son. "Bring him round. We'll get some
real answers."

  "How do you propose to go about that?" Martan asked coolly. "Just what do you mean, Yaleen?"

  The truth is, I had no clear idea what I did mean. Or rather, I did have—but I recoiled at the idea. Momentarily my head swam with images of Capsi being stretched and twisted, crushed and burnt. "No, no, no, never!" I told myself; and I meant it too.

  "We'll threaten him, with the sort of thing they do to prisoners," said I.

  "And supposing he clams up tight?"

  I didn't know what to say.

  "Threaten something, then don't do it," Martan went on, "and word gets round. You lose credibility. Mind you, / totally agree we shouldn't use—" he hesitated—"torture. Because, well because I wouldn't ever want torture used on me." He gazed at me evenly as if it was all up to me to decide. How, how, how had I got into this fix? It had all happened so damn suddenly.

  "Can't we bluff him?" I suggested.

  "He's probably lying there listening to us right now," said Jizbel, "just pretending to be out cold." She regarded me with interest.

  Martan disagreed. "He won't have woken up yet. I've had a crack on the head before. But you'll have to decide sharpish. This isn't a debating club on morals."

  Decide. I would have to decide.

  "Hasso," I muttered. Hasso seemed to have curled up inside himself.

  "Maybe his information isn't so important," I said.

  "And what if it is?" Martan asked me unhelpfully.

  Indeed, why else had the Son preferred to be beaten senseless as soon as he realized what he had let slip?

  When I first came to work at the Pens, I'd asked if there was a full list of prisoners. There was; but Edrick's name hadn't been on it— and of the dead, unsurprisingly, there was no list at all. Here was the first news I'd had that Edrick might still be active; and there was only one way to follow it up. But that one way was unacceptable.

  I did decide, then and there. Irrespective of what happened subsequently Tm still sure I made the right choice; otherwise I would have felt polluted.