“Then why haven’t you done it?” Adam said.
“Because it's somebody else's treasure. There are things up there not like us. Beings so far beyond us mudbugs, their daily doings look like magic. Every once in a while, a sky-boy like you takes a peek up there. It never goes well. You end up with your insides spread across the Skirts, feeding the vultures.”
Adam gave Iren a surmising look, trying to tell whether she was convinced by any part of the man's yarn. She jabbed a finger in her ear, worked it around and then examined the result.
“Now, why don't you thank an old man for sharing his wisdom,” the moustached airman concluded, upturning and shaking his empty tankard.
Understanding the game and wishing to preserve the peace, Adam grudgingly set a pence on the man's table edge.
“Black scotch for killing! Black scotch for bailing on yer bill!” The publican called.
Voleta appeared at the end of their table and Iren made room for her on the bench. Iren's preference for Voleta was plain only to those who knew the subtleties of the amazon's expressions. Where others saw irresponsibility and caprice in the young woman, Iren saw a reflection of herself: Voleta's rebelliousness, her preference for solitude, her daring, all recalled a youth Iren had packed away long ago. She’d grown quite fond of Voleta.
“Why are you always wandering off?” Adam said.
“Why are you always sitting still?” Voleta replied, pulling off her gloves by the fingers. She snaked around the fort of Iren's propped arms, grabbed her beer and took a gulp. Iren, uncharacteristically, allowed the invasion to occur.
When Voleta set the cup down, a gray flash erupted from her sleeve, coiled once around her arm and formed a crouching lump on her shoulder. It took a little blinking of Adam's eye to decide it was a rat.
“Why is there a rat on your shoulder?” Adam asked.
“She’s not a rat. She’s a squirrel. A flying squirrel,” Voleta said, reaching up to pet the animal, which fleetly retreated around her neck to her other shoulder. When Voleta reached for her there, the squirrel scurried back to her original perch. “Her name is Squit.” Squit burrowed through Voleta’s dark tangles and then climbed to the peak of her head.
“But where did you get it?”
“I adopted her.”
“You can't adopt a squirrel.”
“Of course I can. Some horrible man was selling her for six shekels. Can you imagine trying to sell such a wonderful creature at any price, but for six shekels? It was an outrage.”
“Black scotch for killing! Black scotch for bailing on yer bill!” The publican called.
“You stole her,” Adam said.
“You can't steal a living soul. I liberated her,” Voleta said.
“Out of the mouths of babes!” a voice from behind them said. They were all so absorbed by the antics of the squirrel and the argument that none of them had seen the man approach. But they saw him now. He was stout and dressed in leather with dark cancers on his face like the spots of a leopard. He nimbly snatched the squirrel from Voleta's head before she could react. “I suppose if you'd stolen a ham, you'd say it had a soul, too. It's quite a convenient defense,” he said, and adopting an ironic tone, he continued: “Oh, no your honor, I'm not a thief! I'm a redeemer of souls!”
“Give her back,” Voleta said blackly, coming to her feet. “Don't squeeze her so.”
Iren and Adam did not sit dumbly by. Adam discreetly extricated his pistol, unreliable though it was, and held it at the ready under the table. But Iren intuitively found the barrel and turned it to the floor. Her gaze reassured him that she would not let anything happen to the girl. Adam glared hotly back at her, but did not raise the gun a second time.
“Oh, doxy,” the leopard said. “I’ll squeeze whatever I like.” He raised the squirrel in his fist, its little gray head craning to and fro in alarm. “You owe me six shekels and one more for having to chase you. You can pay with your purse or, if you’d rather, with your skirts.” When he leered at her, his gums were thick and black as a dog’s. “I can tell you which I'd prefer.”
Iren stood to face the cancer-spotted man and said, “I'll pay for the squirrel.”
He leered back. “If it's coming from you, I prefer the purse.”
“Two shekels.”
“I said it'd be seven. Seven, or no squirrel,” he said, raising the clenched animal above his head. When Iren neither flinched nor revised her offer, the leopard gave an apathetic shrug. “All right. No squirrel.”
He threw the pitiful creature to the floor with such violence that it bounced upon the yellow rug. The squirrel lay dazed or dead on its back even as the villain raised his boot over it.
Despite these antics, the leopard was not a reckless man. In fact, he was quite calculating. Unlike most of the denizens of the Windsock, he was not a fool for numbers, not a counter of fingers, or a simple tallyman. He was artful with an abacus. He could perform elaborate computations with ease, which allowed him to access the mysterious forces that turned men's pockets in and out, made fortunes and fallow fields, the force that lesser minds called “luck.”
The leopard was a devotee of the odds.
He could've just reported the little tart when he saw her snatch the squirrel from its cage, but there was no profit in a black scotch. So, he followed her, squeezed her for money in front of her friends, proposed a lurid alternative to invigorate the haggling, which he expected would resolve at four shekels, two pence. He'd rejected the hulking woman's first bid, and tweaked the urgency of the negotiation by dazing the rat and threatening it with his boot. He had no intention of stamping his own enterprise to death.
Unfortunately for the leopard, Iren was not a follower of odds.
He was unprepared for what happened to him next: he began to levitate. A force at his belt tipped him back, and another force at his collar kept him in the air. He was floating. Something touched the top of his head. It was not unpleasant at first, but then the pressure spread down to his ears, his neck, his shoulders. It felt as if a too-small hat was being forced onto his head. Then the resistance gave way to a ripping sound and a bright, unfiltered light. For one remarkable moment, he felt naked and weightless like a babe in arms.
Then he began to fall.
The publican watched the big woman pick the spotted merchant up by his shirt and britches and hike him straight through the tapestry. The man seemed to just disappear into a beam of light.
The amazon looked at the publican with a speculative expression, as if she wondered whether he'd seen her throw a man through the wall.
But of course he had. Everyone had.
The publican sighed and said, “Black scotch for killing...”
Chapter Six
“Omissions become lies, etc.”
- The Stone Cloud's Logbook, Captain Tom Mudd
Senlin found more air than floor at the foot of the ladder.
What few planks there were raised a disconcerting chorus of creaks and pops when he shifted between them. He took his bearings. On one side, six long coats and six grand hats hung from pegs on a board. Some of the coats had been scoured of their color by the elements; others were as dark as the closets they'd come from. One handsome tri-corner looked fit for an admiral. Senlin wondered what sort of noble company he had stumbled upon.
But it only took a little glancing about to realize that whoever owned these coats had left them behind. There was not a soul around, nor a stick of furniture for that matter, and no flooring to speak of. There were only bare studs and joists and the air between. Not even the tapestry wrapped this far.
With nothing to slow it, the wind coursed all about him. A sudden surge sent him groping for the ladder again. Clinging to the rungs, he had to fight the competing urges to return to firmer ground and the morbid impulse to look down.
The same gust that teased him also parted the barrier of coats. Senlin glimpsed a vivid starburst of color behind them. Curious, he gathered his courage and pressed through the curt
ain of sleeves and tails.
He was greeted by a vision so thrilling and unexpected it was like pushing through a bland hedge into a secret garden in full bloom.
He stood at the edge of a web of yarn.
Thousands of strands of every color flowed from the rafters, gathered into bands and funneled down to a central point. In a flash of insight, he realized this was the reason for the sprawling collection of yarn in Arjuna’s shop; those spools ran through holes in the floor and emerged here as the rays of a web.
At the heart of the web sat a bald woman wrapped in a shawl. She cradled a loom in her lap, and the loom absorbed all of her attention. Nothing else stood beneath her but long tendrils of yarn and a great volume of sky.
This could only be Arjuna's mother.
He looked for some path by which to approach her, but found none. There were no planks, no beams, and no rafters in reach. There were only the strands of the web sloping downward with crossing rungs, and irregular gaps, and a woman waiting at the bottom.
A gust caught his coat and nearly blew him from his ledge. Now he knew the reason for the coat pegs; a loose coat could turn a man into a kite. Still, it wasn't until he hung his own coat alongside the others that he fully grasped the implication. The coats belonged to men who had come to this point, ventured onto the web, and never returned.
Six empty coats: six lost souls.
“This is a fine place to turn back,” Marya said, stepping around his elbow and peering down. “Let's be honest, Tom, this is a little desperate, even for you. Think about what you're doing: risking your life to get advice from some arachnid in the root cellar of a pirate cove. Such a reliable source! What could she possibly say that would make any difference? Even if she knew what you wanted to know, knew how to get into Pelphia by some funny subterfuge, what then? Will you wander the streets calling my name?”
She parted the strands of the web, and tried to pull herself through. “I'm not even there! I escaped a long time ago. I went home. I'm already accepting gentlemen callers. I'm dusting off my piano bench as we speak!” She squirmed a little way forward, and then tipped into a gap in the thread. For a moment, she hung before him, upside down. She looked just as she had the day she climbed a tree to retrieve the kite he’d made for her. Then her weight shifted, and she lost her grip. She plummeted away without another word.
Senlin stared dumbly after her with his heart in his throat. It was only a vision, and still he had to suppress a wail of shock and frustration.
Perhaps he should turn back. Perhaps this was reckless. But then, what was there to return to? Confusion? Ignorance? The inevitable slide into a life of violence? Surely, it was better to go forward into ruin than backward into rot.
He took the vibrant strands in his trembling hand and climbed into the weaver’s web.
Edith sat in her bath observing a lonesome cloud sail over the valley. Idly, she wondered what body of water it had risen from, what lands it had laid its shadow to, what crops it had watered. The thought carried her back to her family's farmland. She missed the life of seasons and harvests. She even missed the floods that ruined one crop only to improve the next. Now, that entire period of her life seemed as distant and unrecoverable as her arm. As she watched, the lonesome cloud thinned and burned away.
The ballast tank, which could be accessed by pulling up the planks of the forecastle, served as the crew's tub. The water wasn’t really potable but was fine for bathing if one didn't mind the cold. She found it a great luxury, shivers and all. She was momentarily free of responsibility.
She sat with her arms resting on the deck: the left was subtly muscled and fawn colored, the shoulder spattered with the dark freckles she had begun collecting as a girl. The other was a bulky assemblage of plates, bolts, valves, and a host of mechanical parts she could not name. But she knew how to care for it well enough: she had to refill the water reservoir daily, oil the joints weekly, and replace the liquid battery, of which she had a limited supply, about once a month. Strange as it was to say, the engine was a part of her. She couldn’t imagine life without it.
There were some jobs for which the clockwork arm was ideally suited: the prying open of crates, the carrying of freight, and the dashing of teeth were all more ably done by the engine on her shoulder. But other tasks, often simple ones, were made onerous. Dressing and undressing took twice as long as it used to. Tying a knot raised a sheen on her brow. Even washing her hair, which had once been such a meditative process, was now tedious, sometimes painful work.
For a moment, she considered foregoing that particular labor. Then she smelled her hair, and her resolve to wash it returned.
An hour later, she stood dressed at the helm, her skin glowing, her dark locks drying in the breeze. She took readings from the wind vane, barometer and anemometer, calculated their altitude, marked the placement of the sun, and then decided that she would go to the Great Cabin to record the measurements in the ship's log.
While Billy Lee was captain, Edith had grown accustomed to maintaining the log since Lee was so often distracted by one conquest or another. Back then, she had just begun to learn to write with her left hand, and so her additions were short and inelegant. Her script had improved, but slowly. Since becoming captain, Senlin had taken over the record. He had expectations of penmanship, spelling, and punctuation that verged on the fanatical. Edith left Senlin to fuss with his serifs and tittles because for some inconceivable reason, it made him happy. She hadn’t cracked the log in months.
But today she was annoyed with him. His vacant glaring, which had only worsened in recent weeks and which made him seem simultaneously aloof and a little mad, was wearing thin. His lapses in focus worried her because it was his obsession, after all, that occupied them. If his determination was flagging, what hope did they have?
So, she decided to update the log in her clumsy, inadequate cursive just to remind him that he was not alone in this adventure.
She opened the great leather-bound book by the ribbon bookmark and scanned for the last entry. She was surprised to see how much Senlin had embellished the daily log. Lee had written in fragments, made the occasional observation, and she had been briefer still, but Senlin had apparently decided to narrate their comings and goings in elaborate detail. She felt doubly embarrassed. First, on his account because using a ship's log as a diary was like confessing to one's grocer. Second, she was embarrassed on her own account because, unexpectedly, she found that she was snooping. She no longer felt like she was standing in the Great Cabin. She suddenly felt she was in someone’s bedroom.
Forgetting her original prank, she swatted the logbook closed.
But she had not been quick enough. A flourished “M” leapt from the closing page, and she absorbed a phrase from the narrative without meaning to.
She stood frozen over the closed book, reviewing the words like a startled sleeper reviews an unexpected noise in the middle of the night. Had she imagined it? Did it seem sinister only because she had taken it out of context? She pondered the phrase with growing anxiety until she realized she was holding her breath.
She forced herself to exhale.
The ship was empty. Her hair was still damp from her bath, but she felt the weight of her responsibilities, heavy as a yoke, return all at once.
She opened the log and found the line that had arrested her: “I see Marya all hours of the day. I fear that I am going mad.”
She pulled out the chair, sat down, and read on.
Chapter Seven
“I find myself in the unenviable position of having to rely upon another man’s impression of my wife to correct my recollection of her. I don’t know what I would do without Ogier’s portrait of Marya to clear my muddled head.”
- The Stone Cloud's Logbook, Captain Tom Mudd
He felt like a marionette tangled in its string. It was difficult to move without getting a boot heel caught or snagging a button. The yarn was at once constricting and entirely insufficient; he was just as afraid
of getting stuck as he was of tearing a hole in the fragile net. Looking down was an absurdity. The ground seemed as far off as the moon.
Every few feet he stopped his descent and hailed the weaver at the bottom of the web. But either the wind swallowed his salutations or she ignored them because they were not returned. Since he could not be sure which it was, he had no choice but to struggle on, sliding and grappling his way deeper into the many-colored web.
Soon, he was close enough to see that she was a striking woman, though not in any fashionable way. Her features were shapely but strong to an almost masculine degree. She hardly seemed old enough to be a man’s mother. Her bald head reminded him of a perfect hazelnut. She made no attempt to hide or adorn it. What might have proved a fatal blemish on another woman only made her more handsome.
She tamped the weft with a bone beater, adjusted the batten, and began weaving the next color, pulling yarn from an indistinguishable tangle that surrounded her. She gave no indication that she had noticed his approach or heard his hellos until he was nearly at the bottom of her prismatic funnel. Then without looking up from her work, she said, “What is your name?” Her voice was light but impersonal like a nurse in a busy hospital.
Senlin lay in an awkward sprawl before her, trying to project a modicum of dignity. “I am Captain Tom Mudd.”
Her expression never shed its composure even as she set down her shuttle, reached into her robes, and extracted a pair of gleaming blade shears. She snipped a braid of thread at her feet.
Senlin plunged only a few inches before the web caught him again, but in that fraction of a second, his blood had time enough to turn from a fluid into a thrumming, electric current. Every part of him buzzed with panic.
“Be still, young man,” she said. “Don’t bounce around.”
Senlin wanted to say that he wasn’t bouncing, he was spasming; but his terror had fused his jaw for the moment, and all he could do was grunt in reply.
Arm of the Sphinx (Books of Babel Book 2) Page 5