“Do you think it means there’s something here? Something the same as Grandpa?”
He grinned. “You think there’s a giant snake living in one of these houses?”
I imagined that and stifled a laugh. “Maybe not.”
We turned onto another street, not as crowded as the one we’d been on, and detoured past some more cats. They seemed to lounge wherever they wanted and expect people to walk around them. Everybody did.
“Doesn’t anyone here own a dog?” I muttered.
Jules caught the comment. “This place only exists because a desert cat led a bunch of Reckoning survivors to a Hoffman cache hundreds of years ago. They say cats helped to found the city, and the city has never forgotten.”
“Seems to me that the cats have never forgotten,” I observed, eyeing three fat, glossy moggies lying in the centre of the road ahead. “Are we going to see your, um, contact?”
“Yep. He’ll help us get into Terence’s house. For a price. I’ve got to make a quick stop first to get something to bargain with.”
“Let me guess,” Connor said dryly. “Taffa beans?”
“Now you two are getting the idea of how things are done.”
He turned again, onto a short street that ended in a large building with a single door and no windows. A warehouse? There were a bunch of people outside, kids and adults both, dressed in Spinifex-City-yellow and kicking a ball back and forth.
A freckled girl called out to Jules as we approached. “Hey, Diego! Come to do business?”
“Of course.” Jules waved at Connor and me. “I’ve taken on a little help. Got a lot of trades to make.”
“You know what they say, my friend.” She tossed the ball to Jules, who caught it easily. “The only trouble is taffa trouble.”
He threw it back. “We’re all followers of the bean.”
I leaned closer to Connor as we walked past the ball players. “Am I imagining things, or was that a coded message?”
“Password, I think. Question and answer. They’re guards of some kind.”
Jules pushed open the door of the building, revealing a corridor that branched off into other corridors. Not a warehouse. At least, not of a type that I’d seen before. There were doors along the hallways, spaced at regular intervals, and we followed Jules until he stopped in front of one of them.
He dug in his pack, producing a key, and unlocked the door to reveal a large, rectangular space. There was a tiny bathroom down one end and a bed against a wall. The rest of the room was filled with crates and a familiar cinnamony scent.
Jules dumped his pack, shimmered into himself, and strode to the back of the room. He started opening one crate after another, checking inside and muttering, “Not this one … no, not this one either …”
It seemed like he was going to be a while. Connor and I dropped our packs as well, and looked around.
“Where did you get all this taffa?” I asked.
“I traded for it,” Jules answered absently. “It’s useful stuff, and besides, I needed it to maintain Diego’s identity. These are my trader’s quarters. They call them pods. Excellent hide-outs.”
Connor surveyed the crates and shook his head. “Want to tell us exactly how many taffa growers are under-reporting their crops?”
Jules didn’t respond. I cast a suspicious glance at the crates. “What do you mean, under-reporting?”
“Taffa growers are supposed to hand over most of their taffa to the government, the same as the fishers in Gull City hand over their fish,” Connor replied. “But Jules seems to have far more taffa than he should have been able to acquire, and if the rest of the ‘pods’ in this place belong to other traders …”
I calculated how much taffa must be contained within this building. “There shouldn’t be so much to trade!” Unless, of course, the growers were lying about the size of their crops. I glared at Jules. “Taffa growers are breaking the Food Distribution Accords?”
He laughed. “You’re one to be indignant, darling! Your entire Tribe is breaking the Citizenship Accords.”
“That’s totally different,” I snapped. “The Citizenship Accords are wrong. The Food Distribution Accords are there to make sure everyone always has enough to eat, not like the old world where more than half the planet went hungry and the rest ate to excess.”
“Well, no one’s going to go hungry from lack of taffa. Anyway, growers don’t break the Accords. They’re only required to report the crops they grow in the registered taffa fields. People can harvest wild taffa without reporting it at all.”
“In other words, people have planted unregistered taffa fields,” Connor said.
“Desert’s full of ’em.”
I looked helplessly at Connor. “This entire place is so …”
“I know. I can’t believe the Prime lets it go on.”
“That would be Prime Lopez,” Jules put in, “owner of the largest collection of rare taffa beans in Spinifex City.” He pulled something out of a crate. “Aha!”
I eyed the small brown bag in his hand. “There can’t be many beans in there.”
“There doesn’t have to be. These beans were harvested during a solar eclipse. Won’t be another one for hundreds of years. They’re rare, and that makes them valuable.” He tucked the bag into his shirt, shifting back into Diego.
“Where to now?” Connor asked.
“Now we go to the taffa market,” Jules answered cheerfully. “Because we need to see the Lion.”
THE LION
“So,” I said, as the three of us strolled through the city, “why does this guy call himself the Lion? Weren’t they giant lizards, sort of the same as saurs?” I’d never seen a lion, and nor had anyone else; they were one of the species that hadn’t survived the Reckoning.
“Lions were cats,” Jules replied. “Big cats. Like sabers. Only I think they had spots.”
“And you’re certain that this man can be trusted?” Connor asked.
“He can be trusted to stick to a deal, and he has no love for Terence. There’s some old taffa dispute between them.”
I snorted. “Seems as if everything in this place comes back to taffa.”
“It does with the Lion. He runs the taffa trade.”
“Runs how, exactly?”
“Makes sure deals are honoured, and keeps the government out of things that don’t concern them. He manages the ecosystem too. Stops people from messing it up by planting too many vines.”
Connor frowned. “What you’re saying is the Lion is one of the most powerful people in Spinifex City.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Shouldn’t we be going to see someone less important? We don’t want to be noticed.”
“We need the Lion. There’s nothing that happens in this city that he doesn’t know about. Besides, he always keeps a close watch on Terence.”
“Because of some old taffa dispute?”
“Because he’s not an idiot. He knows Terence is more than the ordinary Citizen he pretends to be.”
We were nearing the market; I could tell by the sudden hubbub of voices and the way the taffa scent in the air increased. The three of us emerged from an alley, and there it was – a vast open square filled with a sea of colourful canvas tents and a cacophony of shouts: “Midnight Rains here! Marble Ridge Mornings! Smoky Dawns!” It took me a second to realise the traders were calling out the names of taffa varieties, advertising what kinds of beans they had.
We pushed through the crowd, stepping over cats as we moved deep into the maze of tents. A few food stalls were interspersed between the traders, but other than that, this place was all about the taffa. Everywhere, people were swapping beans – for other beans of a different colour and for almost anything else, as well. Books, jewellery, paintings … Some enterprising soul had lugged in a Hoffman sculpture and was trying to argue it was worth its weight in taffa. Before the Reckoning, I supposed people would’ve exchanged money for the things they wanted. Not any longer. Currency had been on Hoff
man’s list of the evils of the old world.
Jules threaded his way to the far edge of the market, and stopped in front of an enormous blue tent that was positioned against the side of a building. The tent was surrounded by pots of taffa vines, and by people. They were sitting on upturned crates, gathered in loose circles around camp ovens upon which they were – of course – brewing taffa.
No one looked up as we approached, but there was a quiet vigilance about them which was instantly recognisable. More guards who don’t appear to be guards. Jules gave a merry wave and strode up to the tent; we followed behind. I stepped away from Connor to make room to fight if we needed to defend ourselves, but nobody bothered us. Obviously, Diego was known here.
Inside was dimmer and cooler. The floor was lined with thin composite tiles, atop which sat piles of cushions and yet more pots of taffa vines. People sat on the cushions in groups of two, one person speaking and the other writing notes in books with red covers. Curious, I edged closer to one of the pairs so I could hear what they were talking about.
“I was on a street,” a woman was saying. “The buildings reached the sky but there were no trees or plants. And the sky was brown. Can you imagine? A brown sky. It was horrible.”
The man sitting beside her scribbled down her words. “How long do you think the dream lasted?”
People were recording their taffa dreams? I guessed they really did take them seriously.
Jules jerked his head in the direction of a patchwork curtain on the far wall. “This way.”
We’d almost reached it when we were intercepted by a tiny woman with a shaved head. I tried not to stare at the intricate designs of taffa vines that were inked onto her skull. “Hello, Diego.”
Diego swept a bow. “Elle. Can you tell him I’ve come to trade?”
She nodded and vanished behind the curtain, reappearing a few moments later. “Two can go in,” she announced. “Diego and one other.”
I pulled Connor away for a quick conference.
“I’ll do it,” I whispered.
“I’m not happy about you going in without me. You can’t use your ability on cue, and you’re not armed. We should have brought the stunner.”
The stunner was back in my pack, left behind in Jules’s pod. I’d carried it all the way from the Firstwood, but Jules had said not to bring weapons to the Lion.
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “Anyway, Jules will be with me.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“Would you really rather I waited out here?”
He examined the tent through narrowed eyes, and I knew he was picking up on the same thing I had. Not everybody in this room was absorbed in talking about their dreams. One way or another, we were surrounded by the Lion’s crew.
Connor sighed. “Be careful.”
I walked back over to Jules. Elle stood aside, letting us past to the curtain. Jules issued a set of low-voiced instructions, “I’ll give him a false name for you, because he’s probably heard about Ashala Wolf. He’ll offer us taffa. Don’t refuse it. He won’t do any trading until we’ve drunk it. It’s kind of a ritual with him.”
“Got it.”
We ducked through, and I blinked in surprise at the sight of walls made of composite, not canvas. The opening we’d come through must cut into the side of the building that adjoined the tent. Two things struck me immediately. The first was the familiar red books on the shelves that lined the walls. The dream journals. The Lion was the one keeping records of the taffa dreams, and judging by the number of books he had, it was something of an obsession.
The second was the Lion himself.
He was dressed in a yellow robe, and reclining on one of the two couches that were positioned either side of a small table. I studied him, taking in as many details as I could. The Lion was a big guy – tall, broad-shouldered, and a little overweight. He had a flat nose, and caramel-coloured skin that contrasted startlingly with his shaggy platinum-blond hair. His eyes were half closed, as if he were almost asleep. I didn’t make the mistake of thinking that he was.
A mottled desert cat emerged from behind the couch to wind around Jules’s legs. “Hello, Misty,” Jules said, bending to pet her. He nodded at the Lion. “Hello, Leo. This is my – ah, associate, Rachel.”
Leo opened his eyes a fraction wider. “Pleased to meet you.” He waved at the couch opposite. “Sit.”
We sat. The Lion rose, and strolled with lazy, easy grace to a sideboard at the end of the room. He returned with a tray containing a flask and three cups, which he set down on the table before sinking back into the couch. The cat leaped up to sit beside him.
Leo shook his head at Jules. “Diego, is it? That face is giving me a headache.”
Jules shimmered, changing back into himself. He’s using his ability in front of a Citizen? I tensed, ready to fight or run. Jules finished his transformation and grinned when he caught sight of my expression. “Leo doesn’t care, darling.”
I cast a wary glance at Leo, who – well, didn’t seem to care. He poured taffa into the cups, setting one before me, and one before Jules. We picked them up.
“New blend, Leo?” Jules asked, taking a deep appreciative sniff of the taffa.
“A mixture of Dawn Scarlets, Moonlight Mists and Summer Storms.”
I took a cautious sip. It tasted … good. Really good, much better than the taffa I’d had in Gull City when I was kid. It was rich and sweet, without being too sugary. I gulped down another mouthful.
“What do you think?” Leo asked.
“Excellent,” Jules replied.
I opened my mouth to agree, only before I could speak there was a whisper at the edge of my mind. Greetings.
I froze, my fingers tightening on the cup. Except the whisper faded so fast I wasn’t sure it had been there at all.
Jules nudged me. “Rachel?”
Who’s Rachel? Oh yeah, that was the alias he’d given me. I pasted a bright smile on my face. “The taffa’s really good.”
“A well-balanced blend, if I do say so myself,” Leo said in satisfaction. “You must pay close attention to your dreams tonight.” He paused, and then added, “I study taffa dreams, you know.”
As if I hadn’t noticed. But I knew the signs of someone who wanted talk about their particular obsession. It was exactly how Trix acted about her giant hoard of quandong seeds. “Do all those books have dreams in them? That’s amazing!”
Leo shrugged offhandedly, but I could tell he was pleased.
“Rachel’s never had a taffa dream,” Jules said, in a tone which indicated this was a terrible tragedy. “She’s from Gull City.”
Leo’s eyes sparked with interest. Because the only thing obsessive types enjoy more than showing off the collection, is educating people about the collection … He could educate me all he wanted if it encouraged him to help us. “You must know a lot about taffa dreams. What do you think they mean?”
“Some say that the dreams show us the past,” Leo answered. “Others say it’s the future. I believe both those things are true.” He leaned closer. “Except I also believe the dreams can show us the Balance itself. A glimpse of a single moment from what lies beyond.” His expression grew introspective, dark eyes staring at something I couldn’t see. “I have spent my life in search of the perfect moment.”
He looked sad – no, more than sad. Bleak. Had I done something wrong? I cast an alarmed glance at Jules. He didn’t seem concerned, just drank his taffa and motioned to me to do the same. I wasn’t enthusiastic about consuming any more of the stuff, not after that weird whisper, but I knew I had to. Leo wasn’t going to trade until the taffa was gone.
I took another sip, and waited. There was no whisper. I was starting to relax when a voice rolled across my mind.
I am She-Who-Stalks-by-the-Light-of-Stars-and-is-Adored-by-All-Who-Gaze-Upon-Her. You may call me Starbeauty.
It took all the self-control I had not to jump off the couch. Was I the only one hearing that? I certainly s
eemed to be. Jules was chugging taffa, and Leo was staring broodily into his cup. Where is the voice coming from? There was only me and Leo and Jules in here. Then my gaze fell on the cat. What had Jules called her? Misty.
It was the sort of name that a human would give a cat. Only I’d bet it wasn’t at all the kind of name a cat would give herself. I stared at her. She stared back out of smug green eyes, twitching tufted ears in my direction. She seemed to be a totally ordinary desert cat.
I am the First.
Or maybe not.
I tried answering in my head. The First?
For all things, there must be a first. I am the First Cat. I thought I was the oldest of those that survived the great chaos. But your grandfather is older even than me. There was a reluctant note of admiration in her voice. A most ancient and powerful being.
I have been travelling, Grandpa had said, and met others like me. When I got back to the Firstwood I was going to have to ask him exactly where he’d gone. Apart obviously, from here. These were so not the best circumstances to be encountering an old earth spirit – and Leo and Jules were staring at me again. They’d finished their taffa, and I hadn’t.
I began to gulp it down, and called out to Starbeauty, Does Leo know what you are?
No. I am not certain he knows how to know.
That actually made sense to me; it wasn’t an easy thing to absorb the presence of ancient spirits in this world.
I do not wish to worry him. He is my pet.
I choked on taffa.
Jules slapped me on the back as I coughed and spluttered. After a few moments I got control of myself and managed to swallow the last of my drink. The second I set down my empty cup, Jules reached into his pocket and drew out the little bag. He put it on the table, loosening the top to allow a single bean to spill out.
Leo straightened. “Are those …”
Jules nodded. “Blackout Greys.”
The Lion reached down to pick up the bean between thumb and forefinger, studying it. He was impressed; it was a good start.
I’m here to rescue my friend, I said to Starbeauty. She’s in a lot of trouble. If you’ve got any advice on how we can persuade Leo to help us …
The Disappearance of Ember Crow Page 15