She leaned towards the latter, in the absence of any other evidence.
Past sunset, Leena joined Balam and Hieronymus in the tavern, sharing a simple meal and a few rounds of cheap spirits before retiring for the night. The menu, which Hieronymus said was prepared in the style of Masjid Empor, consisted of flat breads, some sort of cracked grains cooked into a paste, and spiced strips of grilled meat. Balam and Hieronymus fell to eating with gusto, while Leena approached her servings with more trepidation, but after a few exploratory bites, she found the savory flavors to her liking. After a short while on the tongue, the spices began to sear, and if the only liquid she had on hand to wash her palate clean was the vodkalike liquor she'd had the night before, Leena hardly had cause to complain.
When the meal was done, the three of them sat around the table, sipping their mugs, feeling the warmth of the spirits slowly suffuse to the tips of their fingers and toes. Leena was reminded of other meals, and other nights whiled away in company with a bottle to hand, with her fellow soldiers in Berlin, or with the other cosmonaut candidates at the training grounds of TsPK. The only difference between now and then, Leena realized, was that in those instances, she'd known precisely with whom she was drinking, the type of men and women they were, and what she could expect of them. Sitting across from the time-lost naval officer and the jaguar man, she had no such assurances.
“Excuse me, please,” she said, leaning forward, her words slurring only slightly. “I wonder to know. When we were in pub, last night, you met with men. Some business, you said.”
Hieronymus took a sip from his mug, and nodded absently.
“What of it?” Balam asked, leaning back casually in his chair, his mug held daintily between thumb and finger.
“What business was?” she asked. “What kind work do you two do?”
Balam and Hieronymus looked at each other thoughtfully, and shrugged.
“Whatever work comes to hand, little sister,” Hieronymus answered with a sly smile.
“As for me,” the jaguar man said expansively, “I'm just keeping myself occupied, and my skills honed, until the day I can reclaim the throne of Sinaa from my cousin Gerjis, and drive the blight of Per from my home.”
“But what purpose do you serve? What goal?”
“Even when I served under the flag of His Britannic Majesty,” Hieronymus answered, “my one true master was the call to adventure. I left home to escape a studious life of boredom, and I will gladly accept any task that comes my way, so long as it means a bit of excitement.”
“So you serve nothing greater than yourself? Not objective or moral?” Leena shook her head, unable to mask her expression of disgust. “So you are mercenary, only.”
A cloud passed across Hieronymus's features.
“I have done things,” he said, his voice low and brows knitted, “in the past, of which I am not proud. But I will take no job that offends my sensibilities, as rugged and roughshod as they may be.”
Leena made to reply, but Balam held up a silencing hand, shaking his head sadly, so she stared into the bottom of her mug, instead. On reflection, perhaps those nights drinking in Berlin and Star City had not been so different than this, after all, each person carrying old wounds beneath the skin that might never heal, scars that the eye could not see but the heart could not help but feel. Leena thought back on those last days in Stalingrad, long after her parents had died in the incendiary attack, when Leena was forced to do terrible things to survive, and the child she'd once been had died forever.
Leena knew what it meant to have done shameful things. Who was she to judge another who knew the same shame?
Having failed to find any answers at the Scholarium, once Balam and Hieronymus had resupplied and concluded their outstanding business, Leena insisted that one or the other of them accompany her to other centers of learning in the city, such as might be available. There were other centers of learning in the city, surely, to be found.
Balam, stretched out full length on the floor like a cat sunning on a porch, scratched at his belly with an outstretched claw and pleaded with Hieronymus to take the first shift. The jaguar man insisted that he'd not had a good few days' rest in months, and that if he was not allowed to nap for at least a few days, he would be useless when next they were on the march.
Hieronymus, chiding his leonine companion for his laziness, offered Leena his arm and agreed to usher her around the city, as she liked. Leena declined the proffered arm, but thanked him for his services.
The educational facilities of Laxaria were easy to dispense with, taking no more than the morning and part of the afternoon. What academies and salons there were could all be found clustered in the shadow of the Scholarium, and each in its own way looked to the larger institution for direction. In none, whether the training ground for officers of the militia, or an academy catering to those who could not afford the Scholarium's tuition, or a salon housing those instructors whose teachings were considered too outré or offensive for the more staid institution, did they find anyone who disagreed in substance or detail with what the magister had told them. Earth was a myth, a legend, and anyone claiming otherwise was deluded, or a fool, or both.
If the academics of this strange, backwards world were benighted and shortsighted, Leena concluded, then perhaps other sources, less credible in Leena's own world, might still be of use here. And so the following day, she and Hieronymus went about to the various temples and tabernacles that dotted the Laxarian streets, to ask the patriarchs and matriarchs if they had any knowledge of Earth. But none had anything of use to share, just the tortured logic and platitudes Leena knew from Earthly religions, promising punishment and reward in some eternal hereafter for one's behavior in life. None, not the frater of the Great God Ta'o, or the high soror of Odir, or menester of the Holy Catoptric Church, or even the head missionary of the Order of St. Kaspar of Hausr, had any answers for her.
In the days that followed, Leena searched on, with Hieronymus or Balam as her guide, among the mystics, the madmen, the seekers after mysteries, but none had any answers for her, and as the days blended into weeks, Leena felt no closer to home.
Leena readied herself for her habitual foray out into the city, the sun streaming in through the slats of her window shades. She performed her morning ablutions, heated water carried by ceramic pipes to a large basin in one corner, separated by a high curtain from the rest of the room. Pulling on a pair of trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, she buttoned up her sleeveless vest and stomped into her boots. In a mirror so ancient it had lost almost all reflective capacity, her image ghostly and indistinct in the dim glass, she appraised her reflection as best she could. Her hair, worn short for so many years, was beginning to grow longer than it had been since she was a child, and as she strapped her holster and short sword to her belt, she considered briefly drawing the blade and hacking her bangs back to a respectable length with the cutting edge. But the thought of what might happen if she should swing too far in her eagerness for shorn locks drove the idea from her mind; not just the injury itself, but the mocking response from Hieronymus and Balam that would surely follow, once they'd tended to her wound.
Securing her room behind her, Leena climbed down the stairs, to the tavern hall where Balam was to meet her, it being the jaguar man's turn to serve as her guide and interpreter in her daily expedition. She was surprised, then, to find Hieronymus waiting there, as well. Usually, when one of the two was accompanying Leena through the streets of Laxaria, the other would be off skulking in the shadowy corners of the city's warrens, or napping, or propping up a tavern's bar.
“I have news, little sister,” Hieronymus said, seeing her confused expression. He climbed to his feet, and made for the door. “I'll explain as we walk.”
Balam followed close behind, leaving Leena to catch up. The trio walked out of the tavern into a bright Laxarian morning, the streets crowded with vehicles, beasts, and foot traffic.
“I have heard intelligence,” Hieronymus went
on, “of an expert in natural philosophy in the northern city-state of Lisbia who might well prove your salvation. This man is said to specialize in the hermetic and the occult, those areas of knowledge which few admit exist and fewer still claim to understand. And it is just possible that this man might know how to track and predict the location of doorways between Paragaea and Earth.”
“What are we waiting for?” Leena shouted, squealing with an embarrassingly girlish glee.
“The journey to the far north is long,” Balam said, shaking his head, “and the broad plains of Sakria harsh and unforgiving.”
“We have no horses, little sister, and no means of procuring them short of horse thievery, which is one task to which I'll not turn my hand. Besides”—he glanced at Balam with a twinkle in his eye—“rare is the horse that would suffer a full-grown jaguar man as a rider, and Balam is as good a horseman as he is a swimmer.”
The jaguar man growled good-naturedly.
“We could try to wheedle our way onto a merchant wagon train,” the jaguar man answered, “making the slow trek from caravanserai to caravanserai across the plains, but the journey could take long weeks, even months, and I doubt we could rely upon the goodwill of strange merchants holding out that long.”
“So we need only find a way to get there quicker than traveling by foot.”
“I not care!” Leena objected. She stopped short, and only Hieronymus's gentle insistence, his hand on her elbow, kept her moving forward through the street. “I do not care how long it take. Better to be moving, following answers, than sitting here in okajannyj Laxaria with nothing but ignorance on all sides!”
Balam laughed, shaking his head merrily as he turned a corner, and headed up a broad avenue.
“What funny?” Leena demanded. “Why do you laugh?”
“What a stroke of luck,” the jaguar man said, his fangs showing in a wide grin, “that I caught word just last night of a traveler needing personal protection. The word in the taverns was that Tahth the Broker is looking to hire a few pairs of strong arms, to accompany a merchant of some kind who is bound for Lisbia.”
Leena looked from the smiling face of Balam to Hieronymus's wide grin and back again, and shook her fists in exasperation.
“So we go, yes? We go meet this broker? Right away!”
Hieronymus stopped, placing one hand on Leena's shoulder and pointing with the other at a large structure looming ahead of them. Standing higher than any of the buildings around, it was an arena of some sort, cylindrical and roofless like the Roman Coliseum. A crowd could be heard cheering over the walls, already caught up in some sport, with the sun only now climbing up the eastern sky.
“What is that?” Leena asked.
“That's the Spectaclum,” Hieronymus answered, guiding her towards the arena's entrance. “And it is here that we will find the broker.”
They entered the Spectaclum, paying a few coins at a small pavilion, and made their way through the crowd to the upper deck, which at this hour of the day was only sparsely populated. The lower decks, though, were already crowded with Laxarians, eager for the sight of first blood. The sport of the day was gladiatorial events with wild animals, and the current match involved a pair of giant armadillos with spiked tails pitted against a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex. The armadillos had the advantage of numbers, and together slightly outweighed the dinosaur, but Leena's money, had she any to bet, would have been on the tyrannosaur.
On the highest point of the upper deck, far from any other arena-goers, they found a tall, thin creature with the arms and legs of a man but the thin skull and beak of a bird. On each hand he had three talonlike fingers opposite a curved thumb, and he was covered head to foot in a soft down of yellow feathers, with a simple red tunic belted at his waist and hanging down to his knees. On their approach, the bird creature regarded them with cold, round eyes, his expression alien and unreadable.
“Tahth,” Balam said as he and Hieronymus approached, their hands held up, palms forward, the customary Sakrian greeting. “Ebvul das letdak.”
Leena hung back, the bird creature unnerving her.
The bird creature held up one hand, like the talon of a great raptor, and muttered distractedly, “Das letdak.”
“Leena,” Hieronymus said, calling over his shoulder and motioning for her to step forward. She held her ground, regarding the bird man. “This is Tahth the Broker.”
“He is of the nation of Struthio,” Balam said in an aside, “one of the more ancient races of metamankind.”
“Let elum, Balam?” the Struthio said.
“Elar odat Anglis,” Hieronymus interrupted, stepping forward. He glanced over at Leena. “Ta utok suvas.”
Leena could pick out the words for “say” and “woman,” but had trouble following the rest.
The Struthio looked at Leena inquisitively.
“Enum ata let mat?” the bird man asked.
Hieronymus waved Leena to come stand beside him, and nodded slightly.
“We speak the English,” the Struthio agreed, nodding.
Hieronymus saw Leena's confused expression, and chuckled. “A few years ago,” he said, “Tahth here overheard me and Balam speaking in English during one of our negotiations, and when I explained to him that only a handful of beings on Paragaea spoke the language, he insisted that I teach him the rudiments of the tongue, so that he might use it when communicating sensitive matters to his agents and subordinates.”
“And those lessons, they cost me greatly,” the bird man said, his words sounding sibilant and strange through his vicious beak. “Still convinced you gouged me in the price, Hero”—he waved a talon absently at Hieronymus—“but I find use enough for the secret language, from the time to the time, that I do not bear the grudge.”
“So gracious,” Hieronymus said mockingly. The crowd in the stands below them howled as one of the giant armadillos landed a solid blow with its spiked tail on the tyrannosaur's flank. “Tell me, Tahth,” he went on, his eyes narrowed, “do you never tire of blood sports?”
Tahth looked down his curved beak at Hieronymus and smoothed the feathers of his narrow head with an outstretched hand. “It is not me who seems to derive the endless pleasure from watching other the species batter themselves to death for the purposes of the entertainment.” He pointed towards the lower deck, where the Laxarians cheered as the vicious teeth of the tyrannosaur cut red ribbons on the armored back of one of the giant armadillos. “Are these not your kind, the human?”
“These are still a young people, Struthio,” Balam said, leaning casually against a pillar. “Even our peoples, in ancient days, went through barbarous period, did they not?”
“All the cultures are cruel in the youth, is that what you say, Sinaa?” Tahth steepled his talonlike fingers before him. “Perhaps. But does their youth excuse the barbarities? If the adult is murdered by the child, is he any less murdered for his assassin's age?”
“You traffic in arms and those that bear them, Tahth,” Hieronymus said, his tone even but his expression dark, “conducting your business here, the smell of blood and sawdust ever present in the air. I admit that I find it somewhat ironic that you would choose to criticize another species for its violent tendencies.”
“Not surprised at inability to appreciate the true irony,” Tahth answered, tilting his head to one side in an expression that suggested smugness to Leena. “You are only the human. The rationality is the province of the older species.”
“You mean rationality like that practiced by Per, and his thugs of the Black Sun Genesis?” Balam countered, his amber eyes flashing. “Who burn sin from the penitent's flesh, and cast out any who don't adopt their simpleminded creed?”
Eyelids flicked closed and open across the Struthio's round eyes, and he hung his head, a momentary silence falling over him.
“The Black Sun Genesis,” the bird man repeated, shuddering slightly. “It is the…” He broke off, shaking his head from side to side, as though to knock loose some unpleasant
memory.
“There is a job, no?” Leena stepped forward, exasperated, unable to keep silent any longer. “Enough of these other matters. Now we talk about job!”
Tahth sighed, as though Leena's words were just the proof he required of everything he'd said about humans. “Yes, I am looking for a pair of the bodyguards, for the businessman heading north to Lisbia. Hazard pay, regular rates and contract.”
“We'll take the job,” Hieronymus said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. “You've contracted out to us before, and despite our differences, you know full well that we are capable of doing the job, no question.”
“Yes,” the Struthio said, the word hissing through his beak. He regarded Hieronymus's hand coolly, unmoving. “But there are the three of you, not the two.”
“It's all three or none,” Balam said, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I suspect you don't have any choice in the matter, if you're driven to using the rumor mills and tavern talk to drive potential applications to your perch here. There are more than enough able candidates in Laxaria, but I suspect that there are few who wish to be stranded in Lisbia without work at the completion of the contract. Especially given the Lisbian khanate's dim view of mercenaries and hired arms. I don't imagine that the distant city of Lisbia is looked upon as a vacation spot by many in our line of work.”
“And yet,” Hieronymus added, “Balam, Leena, and I are willing, and so everything works out in everyone's favor.”
Tahth reached up and tapped his beak with an outstretched talon. “The fee calls only for two pairs of the arms,” he said finally, his head cocked to one side, “and if the client accepts, each of you paid a third less than if only the two.”
“Agreed,” Balam said.
Tahth and Balam clasped hands, and the deal was sealed.
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