Kalimpura (Green Universe)

by Jay Lake

  I looked where she had. The structures here tended to be either large old stables and coaching inns—though surely they called them caravanserais here—that had been divided and subdivided into brawling little knots of business and residence and the Lily Goddess only knew what else; or else they were small sheds and shacks standing wall-to-wall in any patch of formerly open ground.

  It was all use and reuse of the buildings of a city. The ingenuity of the poor was something I’d observed in Copper Downs. It was no less on display here.

  Ingenuity or not, there was nothing in sight that I would have identified as a tavern.

  “I do not mean to sound foolish,” I began.

  Mother Argai chuckled, waving me to silence, then pointing. “See those poles there. With the checkered awning…”

  What looked like an entire bolt of Hanchu trade fabric sagged over a motley collection of chairs and benches that I’d taken for a used furniture broker’s stock-in-trade. Very used furniture, at that. A handful of men stood or sat in the dubious shade provided by the cloth.

  No women, but then there were not so many women visible here near the Evenfire Gate in any case.

  “That is a tavern?” I said, questioning. “They usually appear somewhat … different.”

  “You drink along waterfronts, Green, and have an unhealthy affinity for sailors.”

  I could have argued that second point, perhaps severely, but she was certainly correct about my relationship to waterfronts. My life has ever been about coming and going. Belonging was another matter entirely.

  “Yes. To me, taverns have thick walls and shuttered windows and quiet wood-floored rooms.” A moment later, I added, “And perhaps upper storeys, or a stableyard out back.”

  “Drinking houses are illegal in this portion of Kalimpura,” she said.

  That was news to me. That anyone banned anything in Kalimpura was news to me, quite frankly. “How so?”

  “The Agha of Sind is represented here by an amir. I have been told that ancient trade treaties keep the caravan routes open, and provide the amir with authority over the Sindu who live within a thousand paces of the Evenfire Gate.”

  I vaguely recalled that the Sindu religion forbade excesses of the flesh. Presumably alcohol consumption was one of them. “So how is that not a drinking house?”

  “It is place where men may rent a seat by the quarter hour. For a copper paisa, you buy a place to sit so long as a little candle burns. The more paisas, the more candles, or the thicker the candles. While the candle is burning, you may be offered refreshments by the owner. Purely as a courtesy.”

  I filled in the rest, impressed by the legalistic cleverness. “The thicker the candle, the stronger the refreshments, presumably.”

  She snorted. “Your understanding of the male mind is not lacking, Green.”

  “We learn what we may in this life.” I watched another man wander in and select a seat seemingly at random. Most of the drinkers were elaborately alone, neither facing toward nor away from one another. “And I would guess that the fabric pavilion means this is not a house, should someone at least question the drinking that goes on.”

  “Precisely.” Another snort. “Certain establishments masquerade as restaurants, but the arrangement is somewhat the same.”

  “If they mostly drink out of doors here—which must be inconvenient when the monsoons come—one would think spotting a Red Man might not be so difficult.”

  “It is the sheer number of these places,” Mother Argai grumbled. “Many of them are hidden in central courts or down tiny alleys.”

  I had not given that any thought at all. We’d been walking the Bounded Road, which followed the wall from one end of the Street of Ships to the other, circling Kalimpura. The parts of the city I spent most of my time in were built up, well paved, and laid out not unlike Copper Downs in distinct blocks or districts. The crowded mass of great old buildings and small flimsy shelters here was built up all at cups and crosses. I had not marked the lack of side streets.

  “Anything you can get a donkey down is a street in these quarters of the city, though it might be someone’s living room as well. Anything you can walk down on your own two feet is an alley.”

  I glanced over at Mother Argai. The disgust in her tone seemed unlike her. “You do not like the Sind?”

  “The Sindu are who they are. But I do not like the way they treat their women,” she said darkly. Then, after a long, slow glance at me, “Nor their children.”

  That stirred dark feelings in my own heart. Though I was on another mission at the moment, the question of the child trade was never too far from me, nor had it been all my life. Not since I had been sold as a girl.

  And especially not now that I was a mother. My breasts ached at that thought. Brushing the sensation aside, I studied Mother Argai for a long moment. Would she be a problem here? Would I, for that matter?

  “We are not here for their women,” I said slowly or carefully. “Nor even for their children.” I hated to hear myself say that. “We are here for the Red Man, who in turn may help us free our own missing woman and child.” Samma, I thought, I am so sorry.

  “I am knowing this,” she said acerbically. “You are to be knowing it, too.”

  “Of course.” I stared at the narrow spaces between the buildings and wondered at the secret lives of these people. So colorful, so brash in the street, did they turn inward to a quiet fog of kava and qat leaf and silent, shaded halls? “You say some of the taverns are within those hidden alleys?”

  “Yes. But you would not do well to go there dressed as a woman of Sind.”

  “That I can resolve.” I drew off the makeshift veil and skinned out of the robe. There were no Street Guild here to mark me. Walking as a Lily Blade, even in this part of town where we rarely ventured, would garner me a respect that a Sindu woman could never hope for. At least as I was coming to understand things.

  I liked these people less and less the more I knew of them. “Is there someplace I should start?”

  Mother Argai shrugged. “I have not been off this street yet. That alley is as useful as any other. Begin there, work your way back, make a note of where you have looked.”

  There was no point in asking what I searched for. She did not know any better than I did. An oversized chair at one of taverns. A doorway made taller with recent masonry. A massive footprint in the muck of a shaded alleyway.

  All we knew of Firesetter was that he was enormous, and red as a pepper. Not so easy to hide out here on the street, but within the guarded walls where the sheltered Sindu kept their secrets?

  * * *

  In the years since, I have learned something of the walled compounds and blade-ringed gardens of our cousins to the far west. I have even learned something of the women of Sind, and how their place in the life of their country is neither so wretched as I had first believed, nor so desperate. At that age, though, I was still leading myself through life by the point, and thought any woman who turned along another path to be either a coward or a deluded fool.

  So I slipped into the darkness of the alley, which without Mother Argai’s advice I might have mistaken for someone’s front door. A small porcelain tile set about the eye level of a tall man held several of the joined, sinuous Sindi characters by way of announcing whatever lay beyond, but that script was as closed of meaning to me as the chatter of the birds.

  A battered marble block served as sort of a jamb to separate the alley from the street. Later I understood this marked a gate in the compound wall in countries where the Sindu could not build their own houses. The darkness beyond was starkly cool, especially for Kalimpura. A sliver of daylight glowed overhead, mostly blocked by inward-leaning and overhanging balconies of wood and wattle.

  Narrow silks, scarcely wider than scarves, hung shivering slightly in the breeze that seemed to play through this elided space like a musician’s breath within her flute. I walked along paving so irregular as to be either artwork or meaningless. Each cobble or s
lab had been salvaged from elsewhere. Some were inscribed, as if they had once been gravestones or plinths. The doors were set back deep within the walls, most painted bright red or orange. A few were a deep blue. Something was signified here, but the meaning escaped me. More of those small porcelain tiles marked this entrance or that. I realized these were the true businessmen of the Sind Quarter. The street hawkers were like a floral border around a deep and ancient grove where all the real growth towered.

  Smells, too, were different here. The air was redolent of spices heavier than our Kalimpuri flavors. Several I could not identify at all; otherwise coriander, rue, cardamom, a wide range of peppers. Something dark and musky as well, that teased at me. Sandalwood, from incense. Soapy water. Damp metal. Cats and children with their attendant odors. Rotted wood and fresh paint and the glue from a furniture works and a whiff of blood from some hidden abattoir.

  The alley was like following a creek through the woods. It branched, turned, changed. After a few dozen paces I felt lost, though I knew I could trace my route back out in less than a minute. I pushed on, following a murmur of voices, until I found another of those strange taverns.

  This one stood in a court beneath a square, niggard patch of sky. The walls around it were heavily overgrown with an orange-flowering vine I did not know the name of. Those blossoms made the air thick to the point of syrupy. The dozen men gathered there stop talking at my approach. All eyes were upon me.

  Well, that was nothing new.

  And I could hardly interrogate the entire quarter, tavern by tavern. I contented myself with a long, slow scan for overlarge chairs. I was looked over slowly in return. With a sharp nod, I finally moved on.

  How much these Sindu obeyed their Agha and his amir was unclear. Every drinker I’d seen so far had been one of these people, as best I could tell. It made me no difference one way or the other, so I chalked the question up to the strangeness of men.

  Thus it went for an hour or more. Soft voices sometimes called to me from deep doorways, but I understood that it would be a poor idea for me to enter within. I saw a woman once, bathing behind a screen that left little of her pale flesh to the imagination. I took no notice and hurried on. Stopping to look might have been fatal in this place where ambush could lurk behind every crack and join.

  In the third great ramble of buildings I searched, between my sixth and seventh tavern, I found another court. This one was vacant. A stand rose at one end, great rings of iron set in its front. Little rows of benches were arrayed before it as if a congregation were to meet there.

  The cages at the back told me the story, though. This was no temple. It was a slave market.

  They were small cages, too. For small slaves. The bars were set close to keep little hands from reaching out.

  A murderous rage welled up within me. In my earliest youth I had been taken, sold, shipped away from my own home, and sent beyond hope or rescue. Treated cruelly as well, though I was also given many luxuries. I had not ended my young life in a foundry or pushing wood into a hungry blade or crying beneath the weight of man after man who paid someone else for the use of me. No, I had grown into more.

  Slavery itself was not illegal in Kalimpura, but the buying and selling of slaves was discouraged. We had no overarching law here, just the contracts and franchises that bound the Courts and Guilds together, and beneath them allowed the merchants and their companies to function and prosper. But the slave trade had never been one of our great economic miracles.

  I would take it away even from the margins of money. When my other business was done, I would return for these Sindu. I swore those words quietly, and later in my life lived up to them, but that is a tale for another time. All I could do then was move on.

  So I did. My memories were dark. Even when I met up with Mother Argai once more out in the daylit street, I still brooded.

  More to the point, I had no sign of the Red Man. She shook her head as well, discouraged.

  It was time to slip back into my robe and veil and head for our temporary home. I needed to wash the grime off myself, and I needed to see my children as they were, happy and free. Mother Argai shielded me from view as I donned the clothing; then we walked away from the district around the Evenfire Gate.

  The streets filled with shops and shouting men were not nearly so charming or interesting as they had seemed before. Everything was faintly sinister now. I looked at each of the rare children I saw and wondered if someone, somewhere, held them in bondage like an ox or a tool.

  Mother Argai took my arm and steered me onward awhile. We walked carefully, wary of Street Guild and other, less obvious enemies.

  * * *

  At home, I nursed my twins, ate a cold plate supper, sewed bells for me and my daughter, and wept a little. By that point I could not even say for certain what had me in tears. Just that the world seemed hard and unjust.

  Which was not precisely news.

  News, of course, was what we had none of. “I do not think this searching about will boot us much,” I admitted after we’d all finished our evening meal.

  Once again we were gathered in the kitchen. Though we were around the oil stove, it was far too warm to light the fire.

  “The Red Man has not shown himself,” Mother Vajpai said. “He would be hard to miss if he had.”

  “He has either gone to ground in some very deep hole,” I replied. “Or found a clever way to hide in plain sight.”

  “How do you hide a red giant?” asked Ponce, whose Seliu had improved to the point where he could follow most of our discussions if they did not grow so heated that we spoke swift and hard.

  “I do not know,” I said mournfully. Something about that question nagged at me. Whatever it was would come in time.

  That night I slept with Ilona. Ponce was too ardent for my comfort. She did not want me now, not as a woman wants another woman, but she did not mind lying close. Her nearness fed the fires in my heart, though I continued to be silently troubled by her growing connection with Ponce.

  I took what comforts I could in the warmth of her slumbering embrace, wept a little more, then passed into a dreamless darkness.

  * * *

  Three days passed in fruitless searching. I was coming to know the area around the Evenfire Gate rather better than I might have wished. If there were other slave markets, I had not found them. But I did take note of a sufficiency of iron rings and chains to tell me that at some times of the day, or possibly the year, they came and went here. And often enough to make the trouble of such permanent installations seem reasonable.

  Still, I watched for women and children, seeing very few of either. Shadows and quiet spaces and suspicious, resentful men in plenty. The smiles these people turned on the sunny streets were swallowed up once one passed within their hidden hearts.

  On the third day, the answer to what had been bothering me made itself apparent. We were heading away from the Evenfire Gate again in the shadows of late afternoon. Even the buildings seemed to be sweating today. All the more so us ordinary women.

  Another of Kalimpura’s endless street festivals approached from the other direction. This would be one of those that paraded the circuit of the city, dragging hundreds in its wake, the sponsors throwing food and little leathern sacks of beer to cheering spectators. Even here by the Evenfire Gate among the Sindu and the various strange and alien folk who dwelt beside them there would be a welcome.

  And, well, if there were not, what of it? This was Kalimpura. These were Kalimpuri about their celebrations. Foreigners could go whistle for their differences.

  Gongs shivered and drums rattled like hail on a rooftop. Someone shouted, a priest declaiming perhaps, but I could not make out the words and he bore nothing distinctive enough for me to know him by his god.

  The crowd danced, trailing beads … no, strings of grain or rice. Many carried flails, which they whirled with abandon to the cost of a number of bloody noses and bruised skulls as best I could tell. I had no great desire to be
caught up in this particular variety of self-flagellation.

  Mother Argai did not either, it seemed, because she made no objection as we retreated into a stall where dozens of scrolls were for sale. Books, in the Hanchu style, for Kalimpuri books were traditionally folded slats of bamboo or balsa stitched together with cotton thread dyed a color to tell the reader what they might find within. In my experience, the Stone Coast style of book, being flat papers bound between leathern or boarded covers, was far more practical, but scrolls had their uses. Long lists, for one thing.

  At another time I would have admired the books, or passed the time in conversation with the old scribe painfully rendering calligraphy at a little table. This afternoon, I turned my back on him and watched the procession snake by.

  Banners soon appeared, and in reading them I knew what it was we saw. The Guild of Reapers, Threshers, and Rice Brokers was out to honor their masters past and present. A festival that celebrated both the ghosts and the living.

  This I could approve of.

  And while rice was not quite the universal staple in Selistan that it was in the Hanchu lands, I did appreciate how much these folk kept my fellow citizens alive and well fed.

  Three coal demons rumbled by on carts. Statues, in chains of foil and rope to catch the eye. They were followed by three more who danced and shuffled, raising great, hairy hands to the crowd in an occasional roar.

  Well, I realized, two of them danced and shuffled. The third strode long-legged and intent, with a scowl that I might have expected to see on a real demon.

  With a chill, I realized I was not looking at a mummer on stilts in a tall mask with oversized gloves and paint across his skin.

  This was no capering Guildsman from the Poppet Dancers. This was my Red Man. Or one of his similars. How many could there be in Kalimpura?

  I elbowed Mother Argai in the ribs and pointed with my chin. “Him,” I whispered, as if anyone could have heard a word that passed between us above the racketing noise of the crowd.

  She followed my gaze. Her lips parted briefly in a small moue of astonishment. Then our eyes met, we nodded at each other, and dived into the festival crowd. For now, following our Red Man would not be difficult.