Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

by Josiah Bancroft

  Senlin swung the heavy aerorod low, striking Adam at the back of his knees. The young man, caught off guard, dropped like a stone. Sprawled on the backstage floor, Adam rolled awkwardly at Senlin’s feet, staring up at him with an expression of shocked betrayal. Senlin hiked his head toward the backstage door and said in a flat, pitiless tone, “Boreas, start the wagon.”

  Adam rose and collected himself, never once taking his eyes off of Senlin, his initial surprise quickly hardening into anger as he headed with a slight limp for the door. Senlin could only hope the youth would forgive him.

  Rodion was squinting at the Port Master as if he had sprouted horns. “Well, the bookworm has a spine after all,” he murmured, and then squaring his shoulders, he asked, “Why did you come here? Why, really?”

  “Finn asked me to poke around.” The lie came out casually, as if Senlin was too bored by the deception to continue it. “He wonders if he’s getting his full take of ticket sales, so he asked me to count heads. He can sit on his thumb for all I care, him and that elephantine woman,” Senlin said. It was all bravado, of course, but Senlin’s many years of observing playground sports had taught him that a little chest thumping was often the best way to discourage a bully. “Tell me your headcount, and I’ll report it,”

  “One hundred thirty six,” Rodion said. “I don’t believe in generosity or fraternity. So tell me why you’re sparing me this trouble.”

  “The man’s paranoid enough without confirming his suspicions. If he finds one leak in his purse, he’ll look for more, and I don’t want that.” He rapped his aerorod once on the floor in punctuation, drawing a boom from the hollow stage. Senlin turned to leave and then, pretending to be inspired by a pestering thought, pivoted back to face the whoremonger. “And I would think the girl is worth thirty mina at least. Such a spectacular creature!”

  It was a weak goad, but Senlin hoped it would be enough to stir the whoremonger’s greed, and buy them a little time to plan. If there had been any question in his mind before, there was none now: he would do all he could to help Voleta escape this black-hearted cad.

  *

  Adam wasn’t fuming. He was deflated, which was infinitely worse. Senlin had hoped the youth would just repay the blow with one of his own. Instead, the young man sat slouched over the spindly wheel of the autowagon, his eyes half focused, unconsciously kneading the back of his leg. Senlin apologized for hitting him, and Adam’s only response was to stop massaging the sore spot.

  “He would’ve shot you.” Senlin had to nearly shout to be heard over the knocking of the pistons.

  Adam mulled the point over, first nodding, then shaking, and finally rolling his head miserably. He seemed on the verge of breaking down. He said with choked pride, “He hasn’t broken her. You saw her. She is indomitable.” The lightning in the barred cupola over the city sparked with sudden ecstasy, pausing their conversation. The thorny light pierced the fog and immolated scores of moths and bats. When the bottled storm ended, Adam continued with renewed force, “I am responsible for making sure she stays unbroken. I am responsible. I must do something...”

  Senlin wanted so badly to say something, to blow upon the spark of Adam’s revelation, but he worried that doing so would only undermine Adam’s confidence in it. So, instead of lecturing, Senlin decided to confess his own failure. “I tried patience in the Baths. I had a method and a schedule I kept for weeks. I expected a fair result, expected the Tower to reward my self-discipline with… a miraculous reunion.” He made a throaty sound of disgust. “If I had kept to my timetables and nursed my entitlement any longer, I’d be a hod now. I have no doubt. And Marya would be lost to me forever.”

  “So what did you do?” Adam asked.

  “I robbed the Commissioner. No, first, I conspired, then I infiltrated, then I flattered, then I conned, and then I robbed the Commissioner.” A little satisfied smile lightened his face. “Oh, if Finn Goll knew how much of a mess I left behind… I’m sure there’s a bounty on my head in the Baths; I’m probably worth a little fortune to the Commissioner. I took something of his, and I’m sure he’d like it back.” He heard the bragging tone that had crept into his voice and coughed to cover his chagrin. He needed to circle the conversation back to its purpose. “My point is, we must sometimes take calculated risks, Adam. We cannot expect the Tower to treat us fairly, or expect the powerful to respect us.”

  “Calculated risks…” Adam scowled and wrung the wheel until his knuckles were bloodless and white. “Do you have a plan?”

  “The plan’s still forming, but I know the pieces that we’ll need.”

  “That’s a place to start, I suppose. What will we need?”

  Senlin counted the points out on his fingers. “A ship, a crew, and a wind.”

  Adam straightened in his seat as the enormity of the list sunk in. “I was really hoping you’d say that we needed a bit of rope and a sausage...” he said, scratching at the patchy shadow of a three day beard. “A ship, a crew, and a wind, mm? That’s going to take a lot of calculating. And what about a captain? We’ll need one of those, too.”

  Senlin laughed, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Tucked among the old ledgers on my office shelves are a dozen flawed dictionaries, several primers on aeronautics (which I have thoroughly perused and the best of which I’ve claimed as my own), and at least thirty unique and useless guides to the Tower. When I read them, I want to shout, Draw me a map! Show me the way! But all the authors do is describe their footprints and talk about their shoes, which are always the best, the only true shoes.”

  - Every Man’s Tower, One Man’s Travails by T. Senlin

  Swift action was undermined by duty, which suddenly overwhelmed Senlin and Adam and every aspect of the port. Barges and ferries filed into the docks in such quick succession that Senlin felt like he was drowning in crates of rum and haggling captains and pie-eyed women bound for the boudoirs. The port workers, plunged into shifts that lasted twenty hours or more, might have rioted if they’d had any energy left. Senlin had to abandon his accounting to assist at the weigh station; the scales had to be loaded and unloaded as rapidly as a catapult besieging a city. It was near madness, and yet Senlin’s systems somehow held: no ships were turned away; no valuables were absconded with; and no perishables perished. The autowagons overheated, but did not explode, and after three days of furious activity, the port was calm again.

  Senlin canceled the evening assembly, and instead of standing on it like a soapbox, he sat on the lip of the weigh station, arms on his knees, watching the men move toward the tunnel to New Babel. A few stopped to ask him to read an address on a broadside, which he did automatically. A stevedore named Emrit, asked Senlin to decipher a note from his sweetheart. Emrit was missing a prominent tooth, but when he smiled, the gap didn’t seem like a flaw. It reminded Senlin of a dimple in a cheek; it was an attractive quirk. The note, written in the uncertain, tight cursive of a novice, asked Emrit for a meeting, asked him to bring chocolate, and made a rather clumsy reference to an intimate act which Senlin recited with a physician’s professionalism. Emrit thanked him for these revelations and joined the vein of men moving out.

  Despite their exhaustion, they were all in the happy throes of anticipation: some would go to the boudoirs, some to the Crumb houses, some to the pubs, and they would all slink home to the yard at some miserable hour, all the joy wrung from them, all the anger exhausted, and all the anxiety spent. Senlin was a little surprised to find that he wanted to go with them. He could do with a little distraction, a little oblivion. But no, there was work to do.

  Later that evening, Adam tromped up to Senlin’s apartment carrying a small wooden cube, a late delivery from the port. Adam found the Port Master seated at his uneven table with an open book and an open bottle. Senlin glanced up at the hardy little crate, recognized it, and hiked his chin toward an empty corner of the room. Adam set the shipment of White Chrom down and backed away from it quickly
. Neither of them liked having to handle the stuff. Senlin had nervous visions of the crate being dropped and cracking open; he imagined the powder erupting into a fog, an overdose in a single breath, a cloud full of nightmares.

  “The men are drunk,” Adam said in a voice flattened by exhaustion. He settled into the rough wood chair across from Senlin, and though he was tired, he still tested the chair before giving it his whole weight.

  “They’ve earned it,” Senlin said, hardly looking up from the prone book as he scooted the bottle nearer his friend. “As have you.” Adam accepted the offer and enjoyed a long, contemplative drink.

  Outside the windows of Senlin’s apartment the revelry of the men reached a new, exalted pitch before settling again into a low slur of laughter and song. “I gave them a raise,” Senlin said in a way that suggested Adam shouldn’t be surprised, though the young man was.

  “In the nearly three years I’ve been here, there has never been a pay raise. How did you talk Goll into it?”

  “I didn’t,” Senlin said, not glancing up from his book and the complex schematics of a steam engine that lay there, obscure as ancient hieroglyphs. “The port is so efficient now that the increase won’t affect the Eight O’Clock report.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Senlin looked up, “Trust me, he won’t notice. And if he does, I’ll just explain that it was an overdue act of self-preservation. I staved off a revolt. You can’t work a crew half to death and expect them to come lapping back for more punishment.”

  “Maybe so,” Adam said with an edge of doubt. “But why now? If he does find out, he’ll have Iren put your head on a spit. Why risk it?”

  “Well, because I’ve been thinking. And I’ve come to the conclusion that our prospects are pretty grim.”

  Adam started to laugh, tried to catch himself, and then gave in to it. “Oh, but your list is so short: a ship, a crew, and a wind. Easy-peasy.”

  Senlin closed the book, but his expression did not open any further. He had the concentrated, pained look of a man playing a card game he could not afford to lose. For a moment, there was no movement in the room except for the shuttering shadow of a moth beating itself to death on the sallow electric light overhead. “Here are the problems as I see them. First, we need a ship. A tug or a barge won’t do. If the ship isn’t reasonably agile and minimally armed, we won’t get a mile from port before we’re boarded or shot down. But if the ship is large, we’ll need an equally large crew to fly it. That’s something we can’t afford. Never mind that for the moment.

  “Let’s say we find a modest ship that can be operated and defended by a crew of five or six, a ship which had a cargo hold large enough for a few weeks’ rations of food, powder, fuel, and water, a ship which is neither so ostentatious that it attracts unwanted attention, nor so pitiful that we’re turned away from the nobler ports. The perfect balance would be like the dress code for the Steam Pipe: shabby formal. Even if such a ship exists, how would we take it? We haven’t the numbers to overwhelm a crew.

  “So,” Senlin paused with a finger raised to hold his place as he took a gulp from the bottle. He gasped a little and continued, “We will need to use someone else’s strength and numbers to do our work for us. But they, whoever they are, will of course have no interest in throwing themselves into our battle to risk their lives for our reward. Which leaves us with a difficult question of how to empty the ship… presuming of course that we can gather a small, faithful crew to fly her once she’s off the moorings.

  “Added to this impossibility is your sister, Voleta. And it is the same problem. Rodion is sealed up in his very own fortress, and he has, by my count, at least thirty men. They play usher and stagehand, but they are, without a doubt, his armed guard. We don’t have the strength to muscle our way into the Steam Pipe and extract her. We must use someone else’s arm to beat in the door. So we need two proxy armies: one to clear the ship, and one to save your sister. And presently, we have no armies.”

  “And no crew,” Adam said.

  “And no ship,” Senlin added helpfully.

  The moth that had been battering the light raised a fatal clank and fell to the floor. Adam shook his head and said, “But what does all this have to do with giving the men a raise?”

  “I’m currying favor. We may need them to stand with us.”

  “In that case, however much it was, the raise wasn’t large enough.”

  “You’re probably right,” Senlin said, deflating a little. “At the very least, they might hesitate to wring our necks, should it come to that.”

  “It sounds like your plan is really coming along, Tom. You even have a contingency for when the porters try to wring our necks. That’s wonderful.”

  Sharing an impulse, both men reached out to grip the bottle standing between them. Neither released it. Senlin met Adam’s eye amid the unexpected stalemate. Obviously the young man was working up to saying something more, to speaking his mind, and the bottle remained stranded between them while he did. “Alright, out with it. What’s on your mind, Adam?”

  “Is this really the thing to do? Steal a ship? I mean, you’re arguing against it yourself. It seemed a fine idea when we were both stirred up by the whoremonger, but now in the clear light of day…” He pulled at his collar until the second button popped open. Senlin sensed that the young man had been thinking about this for longer than he’d been sitting in the room. Perhaps it had been on his mind since their visit to the Steam Pipe. His phrases were a little too exact, a little too practiced to be spontaneous. “We’ll make a hundred enemies: Rodion, Finn Goll, the port workers, the crew and captain we displace… Once we begin running, I don’t think that we’ll ever be able to stop. How will we live without steady work or homes or a patron? Who will we trust? Will we have to steal our fuel? Will we have to scavenge for food? What sort of life is that?”

  “What sort of life is this?” Senlin said.

  “You told me that you were worth a small fortune to the Commissioner. You robbed him; why not ask for a ransom? Negotiate a deal. Give him what he wants, and he will pay you for it. I’m sure of it. Instead of running, we could buy our freedom.”

  “Adam,” Senlin said, abruptly releasing the bottle, and rocking back in his chair. He crossed his arms. “Powerful men don’t bargain with men like us. They don’t respect us or fear us, so there’s nothing to keep them from backing out on a deal. There’s no honor. Remember your pirates, the ones who are responsible for the loss of your eye! How did that happen? You had a deal, didn’t you? But you hadn’t any power, and they knew it.” Senlin’s mouth was dry, and spit was beginning to foam against his teeth. “Even if— and I do mean if— the Commissioner was willing to haggle over a ransom, he would only be interested in paying for two things. First, his precious painting, which I do not have. And second, my head. My sincerest hope is that he has forgotten all about me. That is the best-case scenario.”

  In response to all of Senlin’s passionate reasoning, Adam only shrugged. “I’m not saying it isn’t without risk, a calculated risk, but you’re presuming an awful lot about how the Commissioner will react to a proposition that saves him effort and time. I don’t see how that is any more ridiculous than engineering an elaborate plot and stealing a ship.” Adam radiated obstinate, youthful confidence, which struck an old nerve in Senlin: a headmaster’s nerve. Adam concluded his argument smugly. “I’m only trying to be reasonable.”

  “And I am trying to save your sister!” Senlin shouted more violently than he’d intended.

  Though thrown off balance by the outburst, Adam stubbornly pressed the point. “Even if you don’t have the painting, you could sell him information about who does. With just a little money in our pocket…”

  Senlin cut him off. “No, Adam! No, I am not going to bargain with the Commissioner. That’s the end of it!” Senlin pounded the table once, making his book jump. Adam looked as if he’d been slapped, which Senlin regretted, though it did not cool his response. “Look, you w
ill never have enough money to pry Voleta loose of her contract because Rodion sees no advantage in letting her go. He will just take your money and sell her again to someone else. Why not? What will you do to stop him? If you want to see your sister freed, we will have to do it ourselves!”

  Adam scowled, but said nothing. A long burst of hoots from the porters outside gave the gulf between them time to grow. Senlin wiped his mouth and felt an unfamiliar tremor in his fingers. It wasn’t the thought of Voleta that had driven him to the brink of manic rage. It was Marya. It was always Marya. A week earlier, he’d finally given up his obsessive turning of her portrait and had stowed it out of sight under the loose floorboard along with his journal and Ogier’s key-mold pistol. He’d done it because she was becoming an abstraction, an image, an ideal. He felt it happening. The woman was disappearing. The memory of her thrilling voice, the taper of her agile fingers, and the subtle flirtations she used to console him in a crowded room… All of it was fading away, and in its place, growing larger and more real every day, was Ogier’s painted icon. So, he had hidden her from himself in the hope that when he did glimpse her picture again, it would give him a little shock of memory, a little jolt of hope, and keep him a while longer from accepting the plodding, desolate life that stood in evidence all about him.

  Without another word, Adam stood and walked from the room. Senlin did not try to stop him. He realized that he had made a mistake by confiding his fears and the flaws in his plan to the youthful Boreas. Adam was looking for direction, for a leader, for a captain, and having meant to or not, Senlin had taken on the role. And now he had to act accordingly. The crew doesn’t want to hear that the captain has doubts or that the captain’s plan is full of holes. It ruins their confidence, and then they begin to grasp at straws, just as Adam had done. It wasn’t Adam’s fault that Senlin had made no progress in finding a crew, or a ship, or a wind. Pretty soon, if that lack of progress continued, Adam would just find some other piper to follow.