The Tangled Lands

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “Just for a little while. Until I find a place for her.”

  “A place for her? You’ll sell her to a soft-eyed man?”

  “No!”

  “There is no place for her, then.” Teoz jerked his head toward the river Sulong. “I cannot endanger my family for a bramble body. Go out and make the mercy cut or leave her for the dogs, or do what you will.” He gripped Mop’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mapeoz. She’s gone. I won’t drag my family down because she was careless in her work.”

  “You’d do it for Mila,” Mop protested. “If Rain were your daughter, you’d keep her safe. You wouldn’t talk about mercy cuts. You’d keep her safe!”

  But Teoz wouldn’t be moved, and he wouldn’t give the cart, and he wouldn’t let a bramble body near.

  “It would destroy me,” he said, and though Mop wanted to blame the man and hate him, he knew Teoz was right.

  Mop knew, too, that he would betray him.

  4

  MOP WOKE IN THE DARKNESS of Teoz’s spice warehouse, amongst sacks of dried chilies and powdered turmeric and cinnamon. A familiar home, even if it was less than what they had enjoyed before—

  Rain.

  In his exhaustion he had fallen asleep, waiting for Teoz to close his doors to the last of the Malvia Hill buyers. It had been torture to wait for Teoz to finally take himself off to his wife and supper and bed in the upper floors of the house.

  And now Rain was out there in the darkness, alone and undefended.

  Mop scrambled off his accidental bed. He grabbed the cart that Teoz used to haul spice sacks up from the Sulong docks.

  He’d been so stupid. How could he have fallen asleep? Rain could already be gnawed by dogs. A scavenger for the pleasure houses might have hauled her away to those places where soft-eyed men bought the flesh of warm girls who could not protest their worst advances.

  Sick with horror for his sister, Mop dragged the cart over to the bolted doors. As he set his hand upon the iron latches, Mop wondered briefly if he should feel some guilt that he now defied the one person amongst all his father’s old contacts who had been willing to care for orphans who fled out of Alacan.

  “It’s for Rain,” he whispered, and crushed his guilt.

  Rain was the last of his relations. Without her, d’Almedai was nothing and he would be alone. They were nearly all gone.

  She’s already gone, an unwelcome voice reminded him.

  It sounded like Lizli, hounding him still. Speaking with the wisdom of someone who had seen too many fall into bramble sleep.

  Mop ignored it. How could he not go to her? How could anyone turn their back on a loved one who looked so alive, who was still warm to the touch, even as she never opened her eyes or inhaled another breath?

  Mop knew that desperation and hope made fools of bramble-kissed families, and yet he saw now how the foolishness gripped him as well. It was just as it had been with the apothecaries who cared for his mother and promised his distraught father that with patience and perhaps one more application of salve, she might be revived. Just one more drop of emerald philter on her tongue, and one more offering of coin and incense to Mara’s Three Faces, and Mother would rise again, and Mop and Rain would have their family again.

  Mop had known the apothecary for a liar, even if his father had not, and yet now he found himself in the same trap, and knew that he would follow his father’s example to the very bitterest of ends. He would try to save Rain. He would protect her, and seek a cure. And if she could not be cured now, then perhaps later.

  The only certain thing was death.

  Everything else was possibilities.

  The cart’s wooden wheels rattled on the cobbles, breaking Khaim’s midnight quiet, alarms announcing him as a thief and a traitor to Teoz. Mop eased the cart over each bump in the uneven alley, fighting the urge to simply dash away. Fighting to go slowly enough that he wouldn’t wake the man and his family where they slumbered overhead.

  The cart creaked and thumped and rattled, and Mop murmured entreaties to Kemaz.

  Please let them keep sleeping, please let them keep sleeping. Praying to the dog-headed protector of children and innocents that Teoz would not suddenly appear in the open windows above the warehouse, and name Mop for the thief he was.

  “I’m coming, Rain,” Mop whispered. “I’m coming.”

  He reached the mouth of Spice Alley and sped his pace, following twists and turns through Khaim’s narrow streets, hurrying across emptied market squares and past lonely fountains. Down more narrow turnings, between the high walls of merchant villas, taking advantage of every shortcut that would allow the cart to pass—

  Soldiers emerged from the darkness, their red and gold livery of Mayor and Majister gleaming. And with them a shadow man came striding, a black-robed censori. He, too, bore the mark of the Mayor and Majister: gold crossed axe and staff, bright on his black velvet. But from his hands, his true mark of office hung: a censor, swinging pendulously on a copper chain.

  The censor swung rhythmically, the face of Borzai the Judge engraved on each of its sides. Borzai’s slitted eyes gleamed fiercely, lit by flickering blue flames within, and the god’s open mouth issued a steady stream of smoke.

  The smoke drifted about the black-robed censori and his retinue, filling the alley as they quested. It tested windows and doors. It rose to quest through open upper balconies. It pried at shuttered storefronts.

  The smoke enveloped Mop, scents of neem and mint, cloying and close. The censori eyed Mop, and Mop was suddenly seized with an animal terror, that he himself was about to glow. That some magic that he had cast years ago still stained his skin or tangled in his hair. That the stink of it was still on him . . .

  The censori and the Mayor’s soldiers passed on, their eyes following the smoke where it trailed, pausing occasionally to see how it twisted and pooled within the alley.

  The smoke slowly dissipated.

  Mop sighed with relief and went on himself, rattling through the city gates and out into the fields beyond.

  In the summer heat, barley and wheat were growing high. Apricot trees and figs lined the edges of farmers’ holdings. He walked the main road out of Khaim, and then cut off along small paths, winding between farmers’ fields and heading east for the bramble wall.

  Moonlight turned the growing fields bright. Crickets sawed at the darkness and wooden water wheels creaked and turned, spilling water down dozens of sluices, irrigating the crops.

  In the distance, Duke Malabaz’s villa stood, high thick walls and small windows. A supporting cluster of hovels huddled close by it, but they were all asleep, and it was quiet except for the trickling of water. Harvest time was still far off, so there was no need for farmers to guard their fields against theft.

  Mop was alone.

  Ahead, the bramble wall loomed. The scents of ash and burn thickened as Mop approached the newly cleared fields of Malabaz’s expanded holdings. In times past, the bramble wall had always marched closer to the city, but now, under the iron hand of Majister Scacz and his censori, few people dared loose magic upon the world. The Mayor’s axe hung too low, and fell too eagerly.

  When Mop complained of the horror of the Mayor and Majister and their eager executioners, Teoz had raised an eyebrow.

  “You complain now, but you didn’t see what it was like before the censori and all the sentry braziers were raised.” Teoz said. “Instead of neem and mint, Khaim smelled of fear. Every day, we found bramble. Even inside the city walls. Even inside my own home. Even inside my bags of spice! Before Scacz, there was no hope. We knew we’d fall. Just like Mpais and Alacan and Jhandpara so long ago.

  “It’s an ugly thing to watch your city die. Like watching a child starve. It’s ugly and there’s nothing that you can say to make it beautiful. You think blue flames and sniffing smokes are bad? I tell you it’s better than waking in the morning and finding a bramble sprouting in your turmeric. You think leaving all the magic to the Majister is bad? Try watching Lesser Khaim bu
rn yet again. Instead, he burns Paikans! Pillars of fire! I’ve seen it!”

  “But you can’t even make a small healing,” Mop had pointed out. “My mother knit my feet when I was born. Two club feet when I birthed, and she whispered healing in my ear and made me walk.”

  He stuck out his legs to demonstrate. “Now look. Two good feet.”

  “Two good feet that carried you away when Alacan fell, thanks to your mother’s spelling.”

  “It was only small magic,” Mop said.

  “Every Alacaner says so,” Teoz said. “Small magic here. Small magic there. And now all the Alacaners live in Khaim, and bramble has swallowed Alacan entirely.”

  “But still, how many feet could Scacz heal if he didn’t want a life in the sky?” Rain piped up, pointing at the Majister’s castle where it floated high above the city. “Most people only need a little magic to live, but he keeps it all for himself and his friends.”

  Teoz’s expression turned angry, as if Rain had taken a knife and cut off his mustaches. “Shut up, Alacaner. You know nothing. At least we don’t flee our city. Here in Khaim, we push bramble back.”

  Mop had jostled Rain and she’d fallen silent, though she’d still looked peeved at being silenced by a man who would have been a servant to them both in past times.

  Anyway, Teoz had been right, or at least, right enough. Even if the people of Khaim were all huddled down like whipped dogs, afraid to use even the smallest magics, Teoz was right about the bramble. Where it had been close, it was now miles distant from the city, and more was being burned back every day.

  Mop dragged the cart through soft ashy dirt, sweating in the night’s humidity. Ahead, the bramble wall loomed out of the night mists, vast and high. Malevolent woods, tangled and thick. A few large trunks still guttered with fire from the day’s work, beacon fires marking the war that would never end.

  Mop cast about for Rain. A lump of darkness led him toward a muddy patch, but it was only a cauldron of cured paste for the burnmaster’s pig bladders. He turned and continued searching.

  Where was Rain?

  The darkness made the fields unfamiliar. At last in the distance, he saw the cottage that they’d been excavating from bramble’s embrace that morning, and he realized that he was in the wrong place. He trudged toward the cottage, eyes searching the furrows and divots of the burned land.

  She wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  Mop fought the familiar urge to call out for her. He wanted to order her to come out from hiding, just as he used to when she hid amongst the rose and lora in their mother’s night garden in the hopes of ambushing him as he walked by.

  He widened his search, stomping through the newly cleared land, raising charcoal and ash in the hot night air. Clouds in moonlight. Back and forth, hither and yon, Mop searched until at last he was sure of what he had been denying: someone had taken her.

  It made sense. All the burn crews had seen her fall. Any one of them could have returned ahead of him to retrieve her body, and then taken her to be sold.

  Your fault.

  Lizli had told him to give Rain the mercy cut, but he’d been so stubbornly certain that death was worse than sleep. He’d been wrong. There were dozens of fates that were worse than a fast cut and bleeding out in innocent sleep. He’d been a fool to think he could protect her. A fool to try to save her from something that no one had ever survived.

  And if he was honest, he had been selfish to think not of Rain’s protection but instead of his own lonely isolation in a city that hated their kind. He should have sent her on to Borzai and thence to Kemaz in his safe and happy hall.

  That would have been true mercy, and he had failed her.

  “I’ll find you, Rain,” he whispered as he stood alone in the blackened fields. “I swear I’ll find you. And when I do, I’ll do my duty as I should have done, from the start. I swear to Borzai. I swear I’ll deliver you into Kemaz’s halls as I should have done. And may Borzai send me to the Demon King and his brides if I fail.”

  5

  YOU WANT GIRLS?” THE WOMAN asked.

  The alley was dim, lit only by the vitreous glow of pleasure house lanterns, Naia’s colors, dangling in long flickering chains outside the doors. The best of the pleasure houses twinkled with fine Turisian glass much like the d’Almedai had traded during their glory days in Alacan. But here, in the braided alleys of Lesser Khaim, there were other pleasure houses and other pleasure lanterns, and the alley stank of vomit.

  Rats jostled the shadows. The orange glass of the pleasure houses was as lumpy and bubbled as if it had been fashioned by the hooves of goats. The woman came down the steps, smiling. Mop stepped back, fighting an almost-overwhelming urge to flee. He had come all this way, first returning into the Spice Alley with Teoz’s cart, and then setting off in darkness across the Mayor’s Bridge to Lesser Khaim. It was late now, hellishly so, yet this woman called to him, still alert, still hungry.

  “I have girls,” she crooned. “I have women. I have fat breasts heavy with milk. I have slim girls so delicate they could be made of spun sugar. I have boys lithe and sweet, with full lips. I have men like bulls.”

  Mop swallowed. “I’m not looking for that.”

  “We have the smoking waters of Azilah, and the wines of dream, we have khem root and the darkness and light of poppies’ sap. Borzai cares not what is done here. Here, he closes his ever-watching eyes. Here you may drink deep of Naia’s waters, and she will fill your empty places.”

  “I’m not looking for those things.”

  The woman laughed, low and encouraging. “I know you’re not lost. No one who wanders into Naia’s arms is lost. You come for your hungers. Let me satisfy them. Let me give you joy.” She beckoned. “I am not your mother, I am not your master, I am not your patriarch, I am not your god. Tell me your hidden heart desires and I will feed you joy. Speak in Naia’s ear and she will give.”

  “The dolls.” Mop swallowed again. “I want to see the dolls.”

  “Ahh.” The woman smiled. “It’s hard to say those words the first time, isn’t it? Hard to admit how much we hunger for girls as warm as life, and more giving than Mara. I can take you to the beauties. I can take you to the place you need.”

  “Is it far?”

  “Not far,” she said, smiling. She held out a hand. “The dolls of Jhandpara are warm as life, and yet live to muffle their complaints. They are true abandon.” She cupped his hand in her own. “They are your hungers, unbounded. Come with me. Naia is no Borzai. She does not judge.”

  The woman was pulling him from the well-lit lane down a darker alley, down into darkness. Mop was suddenly afraid that she was leading him to cutthroats, but he was at a loss as to whether he should follow or flee.

  “Is it far?” he asked again.

  “Not as far as the distance you’ve already traveled.” Her body brushed against his, softness swaying under silk. “Do not fear the path. I will help you find your match.” Her hand slid up his hip.

  Just as Mop sought to pull away, she said, “Here.”

  She tugged him up shadowed steps. An iron and plank door creaked. Orange light spilled out. A broad muscled man loomed in the frame, arms crossed, shadowed face brooding.

  “There, there, Rixus. It’s only Amina, and a customer.”

  The guard stepped aside. A statue of Borzai waited within, its eyes blindfolded with a bit of silk. The Judge’s many hands were filled with tokens.

  “Pay the Judge,” Amina whispered in his ear. “The smallest bit you like.”

  Mop put a cut copper in the god’s hand.

  The huge guard nodded, satisfied, and closed the door. Amina led Mop into the pleasure house, following twisting halls, pushing past men and women, heads close and murmuring, their eyes following the new arrivals. Groans of sex issued from behind curtains. Gaps in silk showed sliver glimpses of dim coitus, flexing shadows and slick skin shimmering in candlelight. The smell of excitement and sweat and poppy filled the halls.

  A ma
n pushed past Mop, so intent he didn’t nod or apologize at Mop’s jostling. A soft-eyed man, Mop realized. And not just one. All of them were soft-eyes. Men who sought girls like Rain.

  More twisting halls. More curtains. More soft-eyed men. A whole city of them, contained within a maze of smoke and curtains.

  Amina opened a door to reveal a huge room, lanterns flickering, casting shadows and light. It was filled with dolls.

  Hundreds of dolls.

  “Welcome to Naia’s dream chamber,” Amina whispered, running her hands up to his shoulders. “Tell me what you desire.”

  The dolls lay stacked upon the floor, piled by age and size. Girls and women, nude and clothed. Wealthy and poor. Boys and men on another wall. Tangled stacks and mounds of them, splayed and discarded.

  “Ahh, you like the girls,” Amina murmured. “Tell me what you need, and we will seek. Do you like the young or the old? The straw-haired, or the raven? There are many.”

  Mop stared at the piled bodies, shocked at the number. He saw a girl in the leather-stitch of a bramble worker, a black web of hair spilling from her hood. He ran to her with a cry, but when he knelt beside her, and turned her to meet his gaze, a stranger’s face greeted him.

  Amina crouched beside him. She ran her hand over the girl’s face, tidying the raven hair. “You like her?”

  Mop shook his head, wordless with disappointment, but Amina took his silence for something else.

  “Let’s take a look at her, shall we?”

  She plucked at the girl’s ties, and the leather jerkin fell away, showing creamy flesh. She offered no protest as Amina bared her. Amina took Mop’s hand placed it upon the girl’s breast. “Feel how warm she is,” she whispered. “Feel how she will please you.” Her other hand slipped to Mop’s breeches, fumbling for his penis.

  Mop scrambled away. “I don’t want this!”

  Amina looked confused. “You said you wanted dolls.”

  “I want my sister! I’m looking for my sister.”