by Julia Knight
The laugh was genuine, he was sure of it. “Gods, no. Wouldn’t trust that bastard further than I could spit. Neither should you, if you have any sense, nor Bakar either. Sad to say, Petri, there is no one you can trust, not even a little. Not even me. We’ve all got our own plots and plans under the surface, our own wants that haunt our dreams. Haven’t we? There, thank you.”
Dom stood in a flurry of tinkling knick-knacks and scented silk.
“A last word of advice, Petri Egimont. Sabates never has just one plan on the go; he always has a backup. Maybe things won’t go as planned with Ikaras. Maybe Sabates will change his mind. Keep your eyes open and your ears sharp. Licio had that priest killed because he was Bakar’s favourite, because that would incense him the most and hit closest to home. Who is next in line for that favour? Whose death would cause Bakar perhaps to lose the little reason he has left and show all Reyes just how fractured his mind is? Leaving the whole province ready and willing to accept a new leader with almost no loss of life. Except yours. Your life is measured in days, maybe hours, if you’re not careful.”
“Why are you—”
“I told you, because we all have our own plans, our own wants. If I do this, if I go to Ikaras with another little job in mind, someone else may give me what I want, what I’ve wanted longer than I care to admit. Besides, Kass seems fond of you for some unfathomable reason, and I’d like to be able to tell her I did my best to keep you alive. I’ll give her your love, shall I?”
Before Petri could even open his mouth to answer, Dom was gone, leaving confusion and consternation in his wake. Which had perhaps been his intention.
Petri considered that now as he sat in his overheated cubicle and watched his co-worker trying not to watch him. Dom had been right about one thing: Petri had no one he could trust. And about another: he needed to keep his wits about him. Matters were swirling to a conclusion, but what that conclusion might be he couldn’t say, only that it didn’t look good for him.
A shout from outside caught his attention, had everyone craning to see while pretending they weren’t. Petri had no such inhibition and went to the window. Four guards were dragging a struggling man down the steps, and Petri was both surprised and not to note it was Bakar’s personal valet, a man who’d served him loyally for almost two decades. Yet now blood flowed from under his hair and out of his nose, and a guard gave his head an extra clout so that the man passed out. Probably a mercy, Petri thought as the Shrive wagon pulled up, and shivered at that thought. Dom’s words came to him again. Bakar is increasingly unhinged and sees enemies everywhere, even in his own household.
Petri’s own position was becoming precarious. He was expendable, which was the problem. He looked behind him at his co-worker, who immediately buried her head in paperwork. Not the only one, Petri thought. Other odd moments came back to him, ones that had meant little at the time: feeling sure that someone had been in his room, one of the maids taking a sudden interest in his movements, his supervisor being more zealous even than usual in keeping Petri at his desk, the way Bakar sometimes looked at him sideways.
He was expendable and being watched.
Kacha was glad to see the back of Vocho the next day when he went to see Esti. Petri’s letter was burning a hole in her shirt. She was itching to read it, but not while Voch was about.
They’d decided that she’d have a nose around, see what she could find out, see if what Dom had told them and all the rest they’d heard was true, while Vocho was off having whatever it was done to him. Cospel went with him, just in case, so it was only her.
She hadn’t got used to Ikaras yet–she doubted she ever would. She missed Reyes, missed knowing exactly where she was at any set of the clock, knowing all the little back ways and underpinnings of the city, all the rooftop runs. Here she was good as lost a few minutes after she left their lodgings, and it was only by working out where they were in relation to the spires of the university that she could find her way back. She hadn’t got used to the glass either–shafts of reflected sunlight felt like needles in her eyes. She adjusted the brim of her hat and headed for the centre of the city. At least that was easy to find–just head for the university.
She’d dressed to blend in. Ikaran women didn’t wear breeches, as she usually did. Indoors it was dresses, but on the street they wore loose tops and voluminous trousers in silk, more wrapped around than sewn into shape, to help with the heat. They didn’t carry swords either, men or women, and she felt naked without one at her side. Still, she’d managed to scrounge up a sort of dagger with a thick curved blade and a horn handle. Not much good as a weapon–she missed her old stiletto–but at least it was something, and almost everyone wore one, though they were blunt and purely for show. She’d managed to get a half-decent edge on hers though, and the weight of it at her hip comforted her as she made her way through the crowds.
Unlike Reyes there was no main marketplace, but a maze of little alleys and walkways through the glass, hiding dim booths and shadowed kiosks, shielded from the reflected sun by mats woven from the reeds that choked the river.
On the outskirts of the trade area was a new thing, from what she could gather. Guns had never been widespread here, as they hadn’t been in Reyes either until lately. Now cheap versions were coming in on ships–mostly not directly from Reyes but via middlemen from other provinces. Recently many businesses had lost workers to the army, taken to the plains outside the city to drill and train, but not the little broken-down forges here, one-room shacks. No one took their workers away, because the king had a use for them. The high-class artisans in the centre of the city made Ikaran-style guns, more ceremonial than useful, but out here they were producing guns that worked, by the hundred.
All day and night barges came along the river from the wooded interior of the province and from the disputed border with Reyes. Iron ore and charcoal were offloaded for the nearby bloomeries and fineries to churn out steel. Forges glowed cherry red all night, all day, and the constant pounding of hammers almost had Kacha feeling at home.
As she neared the city centre, the forges disappeared, replaced by copper workers, carpenters, then on to finer artisans–scroll makers and apothecaries and learned men who’d share their wisdom for a coin. Multicoloured strands of thread hung damply from the mats of reeds, showcasing dyers’ skills. Jewellers and their wives sat adorned with their wares, carvers used toe lathes to craft incredible wooden structures, while other carvers used tiny chisels to pare out intricate scenes to be inlaid with gold and silver and ebony.
Maybe a third of the little kiosks that hid among the glass were shut–their owners drilling and sweating on the plain, learning how to use the new guns, how to hold blades without cutting their own hands off. Other traders had drafted in wives and children or were already run by women in any case. Other children ran after Kacha as she made her way through the maze. They grabbed at her sleeves, plucked at her trousers, offering cool water, fine silks, a cure for the clap.
Finally she escaped their clutches and emerged into a small open space. The Mouth of Ikaras was full of glass and light. Sculptures, windows of all colours, even the flagstones weren’t stone but glass, so that she could see through to an underground warren of offices–the king’s administration, supposedly open to scrutiny by all. They were open about what went on in at least a couple of dungeons too, in what was likely an effective deterrent given the state of two poor bastards chained to a wall, brand marks covering their skin.
The other thing the space was full of were religious speakers–they’d kept the old gods here, after a fashion, and there were men and women calling for people to revere all of them. Priests of the goddess of war with red-painted faces and tattooed eyelids, devotees of the god of the sun covered in tinkling jewellery and jangling daggers. Adherents of the twin god and goddess of purity and sanctity staged a mummers’ play, calling for people to abjure sin. She was pretty sure that’s what they were doing anyway–she could understand more Ikaran than she could sp
eak. Mingled in with the sermonisers were crackpots and madmen, ranting about just about anything you could think of, and there at the end, what she’d come for. Every day, at noon, a representative of the king announced the day’s news in a slow and sonorous voice. She liked slow. It gave her some hope of working out what he was saying before he got too far ahead.
She got there just in time to see the king’s representative take to his podium in front of the university gates, resplendent in gold silk tunic and trousers, trimmed in black to show his rank. If that was in doubt, his dagger had an ivory hilt with half a dozen silver charms hanging from it. He started his speech, his rich voice carrying over the heads of the small crowd, while two scribes sat in the shade of a sculpture, taking the words down, no doubt for the sheets that made the rounds of the hostelries, inns and shops where men and women would sit in the cooler evening temperatures and gossip and drink scalding-hot chaat, just as they had for a thousand years.
He started off with the usual, which Kacha knew almost by heart by now–about the magnificence of King Orgull, his health, vast generosity, concern for his citizens. Once he’d got past that, the man moved on to what everyone was really here for–the news. The words rolled over her, a jumble of sounds that she could only pick some words out of. Enough to know that Bear had been right about the reward offered for Reyen spies. Something else about the border dispute–she thought an army had been gathered but wasn’t certain–and then what she’d come for. Licio was coming to Ikaras to negotiate, and the king was hopeful that he could get favourable terms for Ikaras, if not outright submission. Something like that, anyway. She’d get Cospel to pick up one of the sheets so they could go over it in private.
The news confirmed what Dom had told them, and that was going to be a problem. Everyone wanted them dead, and there wasn’t much of a way out. Except maybe to prove that Licio had been plotting against the prelate, wanted him dead in fact. A predicament, because all their proof had been destroyed. Except one piece. One paper that, on a whim, she’d offered to the Clockwork God in Reyes, and that he’d accepted and locked away in his brass heart. One paper that would also implicate Petri.
Kacha made her way from the plaza deep in thought, and found herself somewhere quiet to sit and look at the bundle of papers Dom had given her. Petri’s seal, Petri’s handwriting, but hadn’t that been the case with the other note? The one she wasn’t now sure had really come from him? The one telling her to have nothing more to do with Vocho, or Petri wanted nothing more to do with her. Yet Dom had given this one to her, and she trusted him, to an extent anyway. As much as she trusted anyone lately, which wasn’t a lot. Whatever was in this letter, could she trust that? Could she trust Petri?
She turned the papers over and over in her hands before she put them away, unread. She wanted to believe all that business with Petri had been a misunderstanding, but there was no getting away from the fact that, to start with at least, he’d come to spy on the guild by getting close to her. He’d betrayed her trust before they’d ever spoken two words to each other, never mind the rest. And yet… and yet…
And yet she didn’t want to start all that again. She’d finally stopped hating him for breaking her heart, and she wasn’t going to get drawn back into that, into him. He might have helped her save Voch in the end, but he’d still been with Licio and Sabates, still been part of the plot to overthrow the prelate, to assassinate him using Voch as a puppet.
She kept that firmly in her head. Maybe she didn’t hate him any more, but he meant nothing now. Really. No matter how much his letter burned a hole in her shirt, she wasn’t going to read it, or risk her and Vocho’s necks to save him.
They needed to get that one piece of paper back, however they could. How did you get an offering back from a god? She didn’t know, but that one piece of paper was all that stood between her and the block. Which meant going back to Reyes. First though, they had to make sure that Vocho no longer had the magical bull’s eye on his back.
Chapter Five
Vocho approached Esti’s house with trepidation, though he wasn’t about to show either her or Cospel that, and instead swaggered up to the front door and let himself in without a knock. Partly because the damned tattoo had started itching again and, just as importantly, it had hurt putting the thing on and he was hoping it would hurt somewhat less taking it off. He also didn’t want to scream in front of a lady. Or Cospel. Or anyone, if he could help it.
He was taken aback by the state of the room and the smell of cooking blood, which had nothing but bad, if vague, memories attached. Where the room had been bright with sunlight before, whitewashed walls, a forest of plants, a few badly done watercolours and some more homely touches such as a home-made rag rug in every colour he could think of, now the windows were shuttered and the Ikaran-glass lamps were turned off. Despite the heat of the noonday sun outside, in here all was cool and dark, with a long table covered in a white cloth lit by a flickering oil lamp. Everything else was in shadow, including Esti, which was why Vocho jumped half out of his skin when her face appeared from the darkness.
“Oh, it looks proper eldritch, don’t it?” Cospel said with a smirk and wiggle of his eyebrows that Vocho couldn’t decipher except to conclude that Cospel was enjoying Vocho’s trepidation a touch too much. “All ghosts and ghouls. Maybe of the people she’s killed come to warn you.”
“Dozens of them, I expect,” Esti said dryly before Vocho could speak without squeaking. “Cospel, if you go into the next room, there’s some food for you. We need to be alone for this.”
Cospel’s eyebrows leered at Vocho knowingly and he left with a sniggered “Good luck” through a small door at the far end, letting in a blast of light, smell and noise that suggested several children and some sort of stew.
“Right then.” Vocho tried to be brisk but failed. How could you tell the difference between ghosts and ghouls, and what was that moving shadow in the corner? He pulled himself together and tried not to recall what had happened previously between him and magicians. “Where do we start?”
Esti smiled enigmatically and turned away. “Shirt off, on the table, face down.”
He considered making some quip but for once common sense, or perhaps dread, got the better of him. He really hoped he wouldn’t scream, but pulled off his shirt as though born to strip and hopped onto the table.
The smell of cooking blood got stronger until Vocho thought he might gag, but then it faded to almost nothing and Esti said something under her breath in Ikaran that Vocho couldn’t catch. Strong fingers poking into his back made him jump, and the muttering was making him more nervous than ever.
“Who was it who gave you this?” she said at last.
“He called himself Sabates,” Vocho replied. “He tried to—”
She said something that, by its tone, was some dire Ikaran curse. He was pretty sure he heard the word for “mother” mixed up with something that sounded much less complimentary. “I can guess what he tried. Bad blood, this. Very bad.”
“But you can get rid of it?”
He felt the shrug in her fingertips. “Yes, no, maybe. Sabates, his magic, is very strong. Me, not so much, or not in the same way.” She poked around some more, pressing her fingers so deeply into the tattoo Vocho wondered they didn’t poke out the other side of his ribcage. “This may hurt.”
She didn’t even give him time to take a breath before a scorching pain in his back robbed him of it. It felt like a red-hot thread of lead was being pulled through his skin in some weird and intricate pattern. In his efforts not to scream he bit his thumb hard enough it bled. At least the blood might come in handy.
At last the pain subsided, Esti leaned back and told him he could sit.
“This will take some thought,” she said as he tried to stop his hands from shaking too obviously. “And lots of blood. Special blood perhaps. It isn’t Sabates controlling it now, I don’t think, but someone just as strong. Close by too. You’re being watched, Mr Vocho. Here, this will he
lp.”
She gave him a cup of something warm. He expected it to be foul and medicinal but all he could taste was honey and lemon so he drank the lot and the shakes soon went, along with much of his vision and any semblance of sobriety. His legs went rubbery; he couldn’t feel his fingers, and he had a sudden stabbing worry that the person watching him through the tattoo was Esti.
A flip of a toggle on the wall, a yank of the shutters over the windows and the room was light again, though Esti’s face wasn’t. She frowned at Vocho like he’d done it on purpose, had this tattoo put on, then pushed him to the doorway at the end through into a kitchen, where Cospel was comfortably engrossed in shoving something fragrant down his neck. He grinned up at Vocho, winked in a devil-may-care way and turned back to the woman he’d been talking to.
The kitchen was full of people, mostly children. They scattered underfoot as Vocho stumbled in and sat heavily on the chair Esti pointed him at. The room was almost unbearably bright, with sunlight darting in from every angle through the windows. A range against one wall blasted out heat and baking smells, but the room was saved from overheating by the constant sea breeze that swirled through the windows, tinkling the chimes that hung before them.
It had surprised Vocho until someone had explained. In Ikaras there were no temples, and people didn’t pray as such. The king didn’t care if you worshipped one god or another or no god at all. No god, clockwork or otherwise, stared down from statues or tried to tell you what to do, though the sermonisers in the Mouth of Ikaras gave it a try. Instead, every home, almost every room, had a windowsill shrine. There seemed to be a god for everything, but Ikaras being a coastal city that suffered in the winter from gales and tempests, gods of sea and air seemed most favoured. Just about every window was festooned with a complicated array of wind chimes and charms which fluttered in the merest breeze, each jingle and jangle, each glittering, spinning charm a small prayer to save this house from harm. Often, underneath was a silver bowl full of saltwater, with odd rocks or bits of coral or even dried starfish and anemones dropped in each time someone asked a favour. The goddess of light, revered above all perhaps, had a sliver of the glass that covered all the buildings placed to catch the sun and reflect it onto chime and bowl, as though to appease the other gods. The people didn’t pray, they got their things to do it for them.