The Rat and the Serpent

by Stephen Palmer

  Yet the more I learned of the Mavrosopolis and its citidenizens the more I realised that it was a fractured thing, an exclusive circle; almost a cult. I knew with a certainty that came from deep inside my heart that such exclusivity was wrong. But who was I to do anything about it? Here I was, taking the test, changing myself to fit in with the sometimes brutal mores of the citidenizenry, going against my better nature for the sake of better food. For that was how it seemed to me. Again I recalled the desolation I had suffered when Zveratu first spoke to me. I was still that Ügliy, desperate to leave the street. But I was the same Ügliy who had admired the cimmerian climbing the tower wall, who had rolled with her underneath feather baffles, who had hoped for and received all the support necessary for taking the test.

  The test. That was the problem. Should I be taking the test?

  It occurred to me then that the cimmerians allocated by Musseler in the Tower of the Dessicators might themselves be part of the test, faking pleasure in helping, lying where necessary, acting a part designed by the Mavrosopolis to see if any of its underclass were worthy of ascension. A chill fell over me. I had taken Karanlik to my side with alacrity; she had seemed genuine, even attractive. But was she a tool of the citidenizens, given lines to say and deeds to do for the sake of the test?

  I could not bear that thought; sincerity was everything to me. I had to find out the truth. So it was that I decided to make use of my single visit.

  I arrived at the Forum of Tauri on the following night. I was led into a tiny room, no wider than my outstretched arms, perhaps twice my height from end to end. In this bare room Karanlik sat alone, her tear-streaked face paler than I had ever seen it. A single lantern lit us both.

  I sat at her side and we hugged without words for some time. I recalled our pleasure beneath the feather baffles: I knew not what might be in her mind. She sobbed upon my shoulder, and because of that I knew she was not an actor, not part of the test, except by accident. She had been taken by citidenizens. She had been lied to. And that was unjust.

  Gently I pushed her away from my shoulder, so that we could speak. “How were you told about helping me?” I asked.

  Through gulping sobs she replied, “We were told by Musseler—”

  “We?”

  “Me and a dozen other cimmerians. We were asked to help some fellow nogoths by being their assistants. We were offered food and drink in return. We were told to give ourselves fully—that there might be further rewards if we were good. We thought we were the lucky ones.”

  “But you did help me out of the goodness of your heart,” I said.

  “Of course!”

  “And you didn’t know this was going to happen?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t steal anything.”

  “I know. That’s the madness of it. They fixed you up just so they could rid the Mavrosopolis of a few nogoths and test my reactions.”

  “I don’t know why they don’t just throw us back.”

  “Because that’s not how it is done when you are a citidenizen,” I said, as bitterness hardened my voice. “There are rules to follow. But those rules are fakes, and everything is done for the sake of appearance.” I looked down at my withered leg. “Appearances. That is what this is all about. I am being moulded to fit in with what the Mavrosopolis thinks I should be.” I laughed. “I’m beginning to think I might have more freedom now than what I would have if I became a citidenizen.”

  “No. You must go on. Don’t mind me. You’ll forget about me.”

  I felt hot tears trickling down my face. “Not after the goodness I’ve seen in you,” I assured her. I hugged her close. “Us nogoths should stick together,” I continued. “We know what real life is, though we hardly ever show it. This is real life, Karanlik, you and me. I was stupid to think I could become a citidenizen.”

  “You must go on, Ügliy.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I can. Not now. It’s too hard and I am not tough enough.” I sighed. “Hard as nails, so the phrase goes. I can’t be like that.”

  “You must be hard to have survived nogoth life for so long.”

  “That’s a different thing,” I said.

  “Is it?”

  I nodded. “Nogoths are tough because they have to be. It is a very different thing deliberately choosing to be tough.”

  “Then why is it that citidenizens despise us, if they do bad things deliberately and we do it because we have no choice?”

  “Because they have accepted the Mavrosopolis and everything it stands for. If you accept outer appearance and ignore what is inside, well... you can fix accusations on innocent cimmerians, for example.”

  There was a rap on the door. “Our time is up,” Karanlik said.

  “Yes. But I’ll see you again.”

  “At the taurian’s chamber?”

  I nodded. Drying my eyes with my sleeve, I kissed her, stroked her hair, then departed.

  I walked back to Blackguards’ Passage with a hundred thoughts whirling around my mind. I realised that I would have to tell people what I was thinking. I needed to hear other opinions. Zveratu was unreachable; that left Raknia. I decided to ignore Musseler and the rest. So I walked, not without anxiety, to the tower in Gulhane Gardens.

  Raknia was home. Inside her room, I raised my hand and looked away when she sidled up to me carrying goblets of liquor. “I’m here to talk and nothing else,” I said, making my voice as harsh as possible.

  She frowned, disconcerted by my manner, but she put the goblets down and sat beside me on the couch. “What about?” she asked.

  “About what I should do next.”

  “The hauntings? I thought you said they were over—”

  “No, no,” I interrupted, “let me finish. I mean about me, about the test. Things have changed.”

  She leaned closer. “Are you on the third part?”

  “Yes. You too?”

  She leaned back, her eyes dreamy. “I’m not taking the test.”

  “But... I thought you were. I thought we were going into the citidenizenry together.”

  “Not now. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t—in fact, you have to.”

  I was confused. “You’ve done an about turn. Not so long ago you were persuading me to give up and be like you.”

  “That was then.”

  “What has changed?”

  There was a hint of anger in her glance. “Let’s talk about you.”

  Realising that something was amiss I looked away, reaching out to take one of the goblets. Raki, of course. I took a sip, then said, “I’ve decided to fail the third part of the test.”

  She sat up, grabbing my shoulder so that she could force me to face her. “What?” she gasped. “No—”

  “Yes—”

  “No, Ügliy, you must take the test, I won’t have it any other way.”

  I downed in one the raki remaining in my goblet. She replaced it with hers. I continued, “I’d have to renounce Karanlik and everything nogoth. I just can’t do it.”

  “Karanlik? That whore?”

  I stared at her. The spectre had branded Karanlik a whore. “Don’t call her that,” I retorted. “She may be a cimmerian but she’s not a whore.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t renounce her? Why not? You can’t fail the test just because of her.”

  “Can’t I?”

  She took both my shoulders and pulled me nearer. “No, you can’t! You’re letting a cimmerian stop you from becoming everything you wanted to be.”

  “B—”

  “Everything you should be. Don’t you see she was allocated to you so that they could take her away after you’d begun to be friends? That’s the whole point.”

  “I—”

  “That’s the point of taking the test. You’re moving from nogoth to citidenizen, with responsibilities and pleasures to match. Can’t you see she’s just an obstacle they put there for you to get over?”

  “W—”

  “Get over her!”
/>
  I sat back. The raki was making my head spin. “That’s cruel.”

  “What do you want, Ügliy? To eat shit off the streets again? To be beaten by nogoths like Atavalens? You’re telling me that’s what you want.”

  “No, I am not.”

  She released me and sat back. There was no need for her to reply; she knew she was right, and she knew I knew.

  She asked me, “What will you do tomorrow night when you return to the Forum of Tauri?”

  I stood up and headed for the door.

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  With that, I departed.

  And think I did, for sleep was impossible. I lay in the doorway full of soot and rags that for years I had called home, silent and still, pondering all that had happened to me since walking inside the Tower of the Dessicators. It was not what I had expected. My simple vow to the image of my totem had not suggested anything so painful as that which afflicted me now.

  An hour before I was due at the Forum of Tauri, I made my decision.

  I walked slowly to the Forum, arriving in reflective mood, placing my parasol beside a hundred others in the holder provided, then hobbling along the corridors leading to the taurian’s chamber. Everybody was there except Karanlik. The taurian glanced at me, but he said nothing. I sat.

  The usher stood, then spoke. “There’s been a change,” he said. “The cimmerian woman has died.”

  I was torn apart.

  My decision lay in ruins. My speech could not be made.

  And Karanlik was dead.

  “By her own hand?” asked the taurian.

  “No. We don’t know how.”

  The taurian looked at me. “That’s unusual,” he said with a shrug. “I do still require a speech of renunciation if I’m to pass you.”

  I said nothing.

  I was dazed.

  “Ügliy? Your renunciation, please?”

  A dead anger filled me, the sort of anger that lies underneath the skin waiting for the right moment to burst out.

  I stood up and said, “I renounce all nogoth things.”

  The taurian’s eyes narrowed. “But you would have renounced the cimmerian had she lived?” he said.

  It was an effort, but I replied, “Yes.”

  I sat down.

  I heard people leaving the court. My gaze was defocussed, a picture before my mind’s eye of Karanlik in her cell.

  Somebody sat beside me. “Here’s the third part of your silver ring,” the taurian said, and I felt something cold in my hand.

  The taurian departed.

  I looked up. “Wait,” I said. “What will happen to her body?”

  “Oh, I expect it’ll be stored out the back until one of the ushers can return it to the northern cimmerians.” He smiled. “Probably in a funeral wrapping. We’re not savages.”

  I made no reply.

  Was it possible that the citidenizenry was a place of horror? Was it possible that they practised torture such as this every day of the month?

  If so, why?

  If not, why was I in such a dilemma?

  I left the Forum and made for the nearest alley, walking along it until I found a hole not claimed by any local nogoth. There, I curled into a ball and tried to make sense of what had happened to me.

  I felt I had passed the third part of the test by default. It had not been what I had wanted. I suspected that somebody, possibly the usher, had murdered Karanlik, that my renunciation be made in the most extreme circumstances possible. The Mavrosopolis required much of its citidenizens.

  The last hour of the night was upon me. I returned to the Forum, sneaking through a back gate to find the yards behind the building. With a high moon in a sootless sky it was not long before I noticed a single form wrapped in a cloth, and I knew it must be Karanlik. I unwrapped the cloth at her head. It was her. I covered her face again, and wept.

  One more task remained. Taking a two-wheeled cart from a nearby lot I hauled Karanlik’s body upon it, then, struggling to find my balance, I shifted my weight upon my good leg and my crutch and began to haul the cart out of the yard. A few silent alleys and then I was on Vezirhani Street, making north. It was slow work. There was an uphill slope and I fought to keep my momentum. Often my crutch would slip on compacted soot, and I would have to turn, pull the cart, find my balance again, then pull some more. There were no citidenizens about, only nogoths, but anyway I was ignored. At the Galata Bridge I paused for breath, then carried on over the water into Necatibey Street, until, at dawn, I arrived at a cimmerian settlement carved out of blackened rock.

  An old woman watched me from a high ledge. “Do you know Karanlik?” I called out.

  She nodded.

  I let the cart lean against a stone. “Tell your people she was a good woman,” I said. Then I turned and hobbled away.

  Now that I had offered Karanlik what she deserved, I felt changed. The dead anger was like steel in my bones. I would pass the test at all costs, if only to discover the truth behind my pain. I realised that there must be scores, even hundreds of other nogoths facing similar dilemmas. That was wrong. It had to be. Surely nothing offered by the Mavrosopolis could balance the treatment that we had all been dealt.

  I felt heedless of danger. I wanted something more than what I had been offered, something different. And, yes, if it was reckless so much the better.

  So I found myself at Raknia’s tower. I knocked once on her door. An extraordinary sight awaited me.

  She had strewn the floor with jasmine and white lilies, so that the air was heavy with perfume. I stood amazed. The furniture had been pushed to the sides of the chamber, leaving the couch and the table placed centrally, the couch covered with a black velvet blanket, the table set with a single candle that illuminated a small feast. She wore her black gown open to display her pale and perfect body; no slippers, toenails dark as jet, black lace gloves pulled up to her elbows, a circlet of dove feathers arranged over her hair.

  She pointed to my sooty boots. “Take them off,” she said. It was more of a demand than a request.

  I did as I was told, entering the room to close and bolt the door, then turning to face her. “What’s all this?” I asked.

  She gestured for me to approach her, so I took a few steps forward. My toes crushed the blooms into sodden forms, yet in doing so I released the scent of lily and jasmine, further enriching the air. I hesitated. Now she approached me, taking two goblets of raki from the table. This time I did not refuse the liquor, nor did I even think of it. The smell and taste of raki were infused into my body, and I liked it. She giggled, and kicked some of the lily blooms across the floor.

  “You’re dissolute,” I said.

  “Did your mother teach you that word?” she replied.

  “Well, you are.”

  “I’m human.”

  “You’re tainted.”

  “Nothing’s clean in the Mavrosopolis.”

  I found no reply.

  She grinned. “You like that, don’t you?”

  “What do you see in me?” I asked her. “Anything?”

  “I don’t need to answer that.”

  I walked across to the table. As I passed her she reached out to remove my outer rags, leaving me in my smudged shirt and breeches; and although I knew I ought to resist, that urge was buried so deep in my mind I could hardly hear its call. I examined the food: goat’s cheese, olives and rice, mushrooms fried in squid ink. There were bowls of water to wash oily hands in, cloths, salt, knives of steel. I could not imagine where she had got it all from. But I did not care. At that moment I only wanted to partake.

  She stood at my side, her hand upon my shoulder. “Kiss me.”

  “So you want me to stay with you and forget the citidenizenry?”

  “On the contrary.” She filled two goblets with raki and handed one to me. “Why not live for the moment? What’s the point living for the future, when the future is unkn
own?”

  I said, “I doubt that the Mavrosopolis would allow its future to remain unknown.”

  She frowned. She could not grasp my point.

  I added, “Perhaps that is why erasure is such a crime.”

  She shrugged, then sat at the table, indicating that I should follow suit. So we ate, the raki flowing from what seemed a perpetually full bottle, until I sensed my vision blurring and my limbs becoming uncoordinated.

  “I’ve got something to help you,” she said.

  “You know something ’bout what I was talking ’bout, don’t you?”

  She ignored my slurred question. From one of the boxes at the side of the room she lifted a metal and glass object, the pipe-shaped end of which she puffed at, breathing soft grey smoke from her mouth. She returned to sit at the table. I smelled a musky odour about her.

  “Wha’s that?” I asked.

  “A hookah. Fun.”

  A whisper of irritation flickered through my thoughts. “You can be... infuriating at times.”

  “Don’t you love that in me?”

  She handed me the hookah pipe and I took a puff. Immediately a sense of euphoria filled me, and I felt as though I was floating, my dizziness gone, though my body felt distant, as if it was fading at the edges. Warmth flooded through me, from my throat through my chest and abdomen to my limbs. I felt heat in my groin.

  “Ah, I see,” I said, grinning.

  She nodded, her eyes half closed, as if pondering my state of mind. Sitting there, her delicate, pointed chin resting upon steepled hands, she was a vision of beauty, too luscious, almost too phantasmagoric, like some mythological siren. One last defensive thought came to me, and I struggled to speak. “Sorry to dis’point you,” I said, “but I can’t pass th’ test anyway, everybody’s tellin’ me I’ll fail.”

  “I know you’ll find a way,” she replied.

  She knelt on the floor, gathering the jasmine and lily blooms into a pile, adding dove feathers from another pot. Then she lay back on this bed, her gown loose around her, her legs apart, arms outflung, and I almost fell upon her as my crutch clattered to the floor. And it was better than with Karanlik, in a decadent way, for where Karanlik had been fresh and natural, inspired by a seasonal festival, Raknia was wanton, wild, making me do what she wanted without shame. I followed her lead. It felt wicked, but her inspiration was too strong to resist, her lure too sickly sweet.