‘Er, I do know all this, Doctor,’ she pointed out.
‘Of course you do. Forgive me.’ He strode in angry silence until he’d composed himself. ‘So as I indicated, what I need is a professional assessment of the scale of the security problem. It’s been woefully neglected! Our task is complicated by the fact that there are preservation orders on the ancient stained glass charms. And all the external grotesques are Grade 1 listed statuary. But I daresay your associate has all the current heritage legislation at his or her fingertips?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ lied Anabara.
‘Excellent. And I took the liberty of assuring Chapter that your associates had all the relevant clearance with Border Control…?’ A delicate Galen pause. ‘The paperwork…?’
‘Not a problem!’ Did Thwyn even have a Freeman Pass? Oh Lord, how much was a decent forgery going to set her back?
They turned the next corner and started along the north side. ‘Do you have any questions?’
‘Yes. To be honest, I’m surprised you’ve asked me, not Carramans.’
‘Carramans, yes. That option was indeed discussed. However, Chapter felt strongly that it behooves us to support and encourage new business enterprises in Larridy wherever possible.’
Something wasn’t ringing true here. They turned the last corner and headed back towards the entrance of the Round Room.
‘Thank you for responding so promptly, Ms Nolio.’
‘Well, the messenger said you wanted me to come quick-quick.’
He pursed his lips. ‘Needless to say, I made no such remark. They are good-hearted folk, if a trifle forthright, the Zaarzuks. I trust he did not offend you.’
‘Zaarzuk!’ squawked Anabara. ‘He’s a Zaarzuk?’
‘Why yes.’ The scholasticus eyed her in surprise. ‘We rejoice in ethnic diversity here in the Minstery. And the Zaarzuk people are, as you know, devout followers of The Way. Despite the many frivolous superstitions that adhere to their reputation.’
Anabara got a grip on herself. ‘Yes, yes, of course. It’s just—He’s had his head shaved, that’s it. You normally look for the long blond hair, don’t you? And the eye make-up, ha ha!’
The scholasticus flinched like one who had never in his life looked for long blond hair and eye make-up in another man.
‘But obviously I have nothing against them.’ Would you listen to yourself! Next you’ll be saying, Some of my best friends are Offcomers. ‘So, um,’ she concluded.
‘I believe it is a stylised form of war paint. Not…’ The scholasticus cleared his throat. ‘Come, let us have the contract drawn up and signed. I took the precaution of asking the scrivener to wait in my study. In case you were at leisure immediately. But there is no hurry.’
Quick-quick. ‘My leisure is entirely at your disposal, Dr Scholasticus,’ she replied, like a nicely brought up Galen girl.
But I still wonder what you’re not telling me, she thought.
Her first challenge was to escape without being buried alive under a slagheap of advice from her Galen relatives. Fortunately there were many secret ways off the Mount. Ledges and tunnels, forgotten snickets, where the gargoyles were so befuddled by erosion you could outwit them.
And, of course, there were the rooftops, where non-Gulls couldn’t follow her. Yes, technically, flying was prohibited in residential areas, but Anabara only kept that rule when it suited her. And she’d lied to the Zaarzuk: it wasn’t really hard work. Not if you were small and light. No worse than running down hill with the wind behind you. Nothing beat that rush. Like diving upward into an airy sea. Rooftops, here we come! Ah, she couldn’t believe how well the day was shaping up after that hideous start! Thank you, thank you, St Pel!
Her feet soon found the familiar path, over the grain barn roof. A crumbled grotesque—perhaps it had once been a dragon man?—roused itself to cast a half-hearted block. I’m the Patriarch’s niece, she murmured. On Minstery business for the scholasticus. The barrier melted as the dragon man drowsed back asleep. She kissed his sandstone head. Poor old thing, woefully neglected, weathered away by the salt air. A thousand years ago not even a gnat would have got past him.
She fluttered down into the alley below and began walking instead. Couldn’t risk another flying charge. Her counsel had informed her that unless she settled his bill, he was going to let her rot in the cells the next time she got nicked. But the bastard could wait a bit longer. It went against the grain to pay him, even now she had the money. The alley brought her out eventually into Palatine Square. Junior lawyers flitted on errands through narrow arches between law court and chambers. She skirted the central fountain. Leaves dropped like dead birds from the Candacian plane trees all around.
On the far side stood the black marble pillars of Carraman & Carraman (For all Your Investigation and Security Needs). She cupped her hands and peered through the smoked glass. They were going to be livid when they heard she’d got the library job. The occupant of the nearest desk glanced up and gave her the fig. She wagged a finger and mouthed, I know your mum, Toby Buttery! He flounced and turned his back on her.
As she hurried on, doubts began to niggle. Why on earth had the scholasticus employed her? Because her uncle was the Patriarch? Or was it just newcomer’s ignorance? Everyone around here knew that Carramans always handled all the big security contracts in Larridy. They had at least half a dozen highbred Fairies on their pay roll; fire tattoos fore and aft, rapier-sharp psychic skills. She’d kill for just one partner like that. Thwyn was a low-bred, a grumpy old bugger who struggled to cast a simple journeyman charm. But hey. She shook off her anxiety. Surveying the library security—how hard could that be?
A moment later she turned off Skuller into a reeking back alley. Shacks made from scavenged wood and sacking clung to the backs of grander tenements and huddled like tramps under any arch or portico. This was where the blood from the old shambles used to run. Experience had taught her to breathe through her mouth here. The stench of dyers’ piss-buckets made your eyes water. And the dog-turd collectors stored their wares in the Slackey, too, before hauling them out to the tanneries.
She squeezed through a group of Tressy rag-pickers. They followed her with their pale grey eyes. Eesh. You weren’t supposed to say it, but white-skinned folk always looked to her like plants that had grown under a slab. Pallid and worm-like. Dogs slunk about. Lord, how she hated them. Loathed the little ones, feared the big ones. Couldn’t even stand the beloved Gull otter hounds. Tried to hide it, of course.
She came to Thwyn’s shack. Something was wrong, she knew it. She pulled aside the tattered sack that served as a door. No blocking charm. The single room had been stripped bare.
And already taken over by a new occupant. A Tressy riverman rose from a low stool on the mud floor. On a rag-pile in the corner, like a blanched pig carcass, lolled a younger man. She could smell fresh-dug earth. And rancid sweat. The elder came and stood in the entrance, staking his claim. Behind her the Tressy women gathered silently.
‘Good morning.’ Anabara addressed him in Commons. ‘Where’s the Fairy Thwyn?’
‘Gone,’ said the man. ‘Is gone to Fayland.’ He spat.
‘Gone home!’ Anabara’s hand flew to her mouth. No! ‘What, permanently?’
The man shrugged. ‘He no say. I no ask.’
‘When?’ Maybe she could still catch him. What date was half-year Crossing-time? ‘When did he leave?’
‘A week.’ He pointed up at the sky. ‘New moon.’
Shit! She’d missed him. What the hell was she going to do now? ‘He can’t have just gone! Why didn’t he warn me?’
The women murmured. ‘You trouble?’ one asked.
‘Big trouble,’ said Anabara. ‘I desperately needed him for a job. There aren’t any other Fairies round here, are there?’ She brought out a coin.
‘Many Fays,’ said the women, reaching. ‘Fay slaves. They come—’
The man yelled something in Tressy and drove them off like a herd of cows. Th
e women melted into doorways. Anabara pocketed her coin again.
‘We are clean people. We no like them kind,’ the man told Anabara. ‘Dirty Fays. You need human worker, pretty lady. My son, very hard worker. You like?’ The son slid over to the door, grinned, toothless.
‘No, I need a charm-worker.’ Her neck hair began to crawl. ‘Who’s selling slaves round here?’
The father waggled his head. ‘I know nothing about no slaves.’
‘Yeah, I bet you don’t.’
He bowed and smiled, spreading his hands. ‘Is no slaving round here. Bad trade. Very bad. Pretty lady, have a nice day, please. If we see your Fay, we tell him you looking.’
She turned and walked back out of the filth towards the slick commercial district less than fifty yards away. Cheek by jowl. Two sides of the same Larridy coin. Behind her she heard jeering laughter.
CHAPTER 3
Disaster! Her heart raced as though a cage door had just clanged shut. Thwyn had vanished and now she was trapped in a job she couldn’t do. She’d promised the scholasticus she’d be back tomorrow afternoon with her assistant to start work. Where the hell was she going to find another charm-worker at this kind of notice?
Her hand closed round the leather pouch of gilders in her pocket. Take it back. Go straight back up to the library now, and tell him that you can’t fulfil the contract! But her feet carried on taking her down Skuller towards her house. I’m not giving up yet, she thought. This was make-or-break for her business. Calm down. Think. She still had a bit of time. If she hadn’t come up with a solution by tomorrow afternoon, then she’d go back, explain what had happened and pull out. That left her a whole day to find a solution.
Bright sky overhead still, but it felt like the sun had gone in. A burst of rage at Thwyn. The bugger, taking off like that! There was a chance—a very slim chance—some nomad freelancer had come over from the Mainland Fairy tribes, looking for work in Larridy. There might even be another illegal alien who had eluded Border Control, but that was an even longer shot. She could ask around at the docks. But apart from that, nothing.
Nothing except slaves.
Anabara shuddered as she rounded the last bend of Skuller. Slavery. A shameful episode supposedly confined to the pages of history books a hundred years ago, when the Fairy Peoples stopped transporting their criminals to the Human Realm. Everyone knew slaving still went on, though. Terrible business, they said, but what can you do? Like trafficking was the weather and people were powerless in the face of it!
She was back at her house. The charm was jiggered again. She coaxed and pleaded till it till it let her in. Thwyn’s workmanship. He was a useless fecker, but what in hell was she going to do without him? She heard the Tressy woman’s words again: Many Fay slaves. Almost certainly true, but Anabara had never seen a slave. There weren’t any in Larridy. She guessed they were sold on and moved out swiftly to the huge anonymous Mainland cities. That was why nice Larridy people were able to act as though the problem didn’t exist.
As she cut herself some rye bread and a hunk of cheese, a daydream started to form in her mind. Like the endless daydreams she’d spun as a child, in the chapel built to her parents’ memory. She used to sit gazing up at the larger-than-life frescos, and tell them tales of her exploits. The dragons she’d slain, the giants she’d defeated. A hundred and one fantasies of living up to her heroic parents, murdered in the cause of Fairy rights.
This was just another one of those daydreams, she knew that. Because realistically she was never going to buy a slave from some Tressy scumbag, then free him or her to work on an equal footing, was she? Or better still, doublecross some scumbag by turning informer, thereby bringing down the whole evil system of slaving and winning worldwide fame and renown! She rolled her eyes. Trying to atone for her passivity last night. Besides, who’d be dumb enough to admit that they owned a trafficked Fairy? Nobody knew nothing about no slaves.
Except the Guard Anti-Trafficking Unit, of course. Charlie Rondo might talk to her. He was a fellow Gull, after all. Or she could sniff around the docks. Slaves had to be shipped and traded somewhere, didn’t they? Two birds with one stone: tonight she’d try and pick up some whispers about slaving while she was asking around for an itinerant charm-worker.
In the meantime she had an afternoon to fill. The filing? She got a sudden vivid image of cousin Linna, wagging a finger in her face like an old Gullmother. What if Linna really did come in from the Gull village like she kept threatening, and checked up on her book-keeping? All right, all right. I’ll do it. Soon. Tomorrow morning. First thing. But right now, I’m off to the Salt Flats for some flying practice. I need to blow the Slackey out of my hair. She swiftly deposited the cash and the contract in her floor safe and fled.
It was low tide. Gull shepherds on stilts strode like rickety giants along the horizon as they grazed the saltings sheep. The river had dwindled to a mercury ribbon. Mud-larks were scavenging for metal and ancient artifacts. She took a deep breath. Already her soul had begun to unclench. This was where she’d spent the other half of her childhood. From far away came the eerie wail of a great Galen diver. A gust hissed in the ashy reed-heads. Ssssh! She broke into a run. The wind surged behind her, nudging her up off her feet, and she was airborne at last.
Ah, if only she’d been alive when all this was water, before they built the causeway. In a single generation the bay had silted up and the sea vanished. Linking Larridy to the Mainland? Madness. Was there ever a more stubborn island race? A hundred years on and Larridians still went: Offcomer? Chuck a fish-head at him. Huh, forgetting we were all Offcomers ourselves, once upon a time.
High, higher she mounted, until Larridy was a toy city and the flats just a child’s drawing, with a ruler-straight causeway, model boats on doodled waterways, and the blobs of Gull villages, marching out west to the distant sea.
Her evening shaped up as she’d expected. A week’s rent money gone on drinks for arseholes in the roughest dock-side bars in Larridy. Her wealthy thrill-seeking student act was convincing enough to get them talking: trading post out west down river, that was your best option if you wanted a Fay. As to when, ooh, couldn’t tell you. Not like they advertise, is it? Best ask around the Tressy rivermen. By one in the morning she reckoned she was done. Too many wide-eyed Offcomer questions and people would start wondering. Mark her down as a snitch. And there was always a chance someone would recognise her, even this far off her patch.
She began the long walk home. Too tired to fly tonight. The wind had dropped. Now and then a breeze drew a faint chord from the flutes. The streets were still lit, but the lamps were fading, their store of sunlight almost spent. Chairmen carried their last fares home. No horses in Larridy, not since they were banned during the Palatinate Wars. Only Zaarzuk chieftains on state visits were granted Freedom to Ride.
Zaarzuks. Lord, that flashing smile, the whispered Kiss me. Cocky bastard. Bet he knows what he’s doing, though. Unlike the clumsy tongue-tied Gull boys she’d fought off. Literally. What if she’d let him kiss her? Invited him in…?
Tscha! Stop that.
Focus. She still had a charm-worker to find. Best ask around the Tressy rivermen. What she’d learned tonight confirmed her suspicions. Some of those big Tressy sailing barges were carrying more than grain in their holds. If she’d found that out in a single evening, the Guard definitely knew about it. Probably had undercover agents in place. She’d have to ask Charlie Rondo.
Or else she’d pole a punt down river some night soon and see if she could locate the trading post. Her heart lurched at the idea. Was it a risk worth running? If only she had a contact who worked the barges.
She rounded the last bend. Stopped short. A man. Waiting on her doorstep. Tall. For a second she thought it was the Zaarzuk. But then the figure shifted and light fell across his face. Tattooed forehead. Long black hair. War feathers. It was a Gull. She started towards him. A long-lost relative from a distant village, probably. But my God, he was handsome. He stood under
the last glow of her daylamp like one of the ancient warrior gods come back. Perhaps the Saint was having a second go at answering her prayer?
‘Hey, handsome,’ she called in Gull.
‘Hey, Nan!’ He stepped forward. ‘Remember me? It’s Loxoto. Linna sent me.’
It was the smile she recognised. The sweet shy smile. ‘Loxi!? Oh my God! What are you doing here? Thought you were off at sea!’
‘Nah, packed all that in, me. Want to work in Larridy.’
She couldn’t stop gawping. This was Loxi the bed-wetter? The one we called a mollygull to make him cry? ‘Look at you, man. Muscles! All grown up!’
He endured her raptures well, along with the hair tugging and thumping that passed for a Gull greeting. It ended with a hug from him that lifted her clean off her feet.
‘Well, come on in!’
Loxi stooped under the low doorway. He looked round him. ‘Hey—hull timbers! And this here’s a main mast.’ He slapped the central wooden upright. ‘Man, doesn’t it freak you out, living in a wrecker-house?’
‘Not really.’
‘Who was that Fairy—the one leaving when I arrived?’
Leaving my house? She went cold. Another fugitive? Or could it have been Thwyn, still in the Human Realm after all? ‘Little bandy bloke?’
He shook his head. ‘Female. High bred: saw the fire tatts.’
‘What—? No!’
Carramans!
She darted to the cupboard under the stairs. Her chaotic files had been pulled from the shelves and dumped on the floor. Papers tossed and strewn. She shot to the hearth and pulled back the rug to check her floor safe. The charm was sprung. The Fairy hadn’t even bothered to cover her tracks. The money was still there, so was the Minstery contract, but the tamper seals were all broken.
The Fairy had read it. Scanned all her secret files. Seen the unpaid bills. The chaos. And she’d gone back to Carraman with a facsimile of everything stored in her cold machine-like brain.
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