by Darius Hinks
She picked up a cup of tea from an ice bucket and settled down next to him, waving one of the doe-eyed women away with a glare. Then, after a few seconds of listening to his heavy, relaxed breathing, she whispered into his ear.
“My name is Donkey,” she said, “and I still know how to do this.” Then she sipped from the teacup and handed it to him.
He did not move, but his breathing changed, speeding up slightly.
Isten thought he was going to ignore her, but after a few seconds he spoke. As always, she was surprised how soft his voice was, purring up from his vast, sagging chest.
“Do you remember,” he said, sounding as though he were still half asleep, “the sound of the Stura as it reaches the Narrabo falls? Can you still hear that sound, Isten? I’d forgotten it, but your accent brings it back. The water and the gulls. If I sit here long enough, listening to you with my eyes closed, I could almost be there.”
Isten cursed him, inwardly, for taking her back there. She and Colcrow had nothing in common except a homeland, but he had the power to make her heart race with the mention of a river.
“I remember.”
He stayed like that for a while, eyes closed and head tilted back, savouring the memory. Then he opened his eyes and gave her a nauseating smile, taking the tea.
“My name is Duck,” he said, sipping from the cup, his voice husky with loss and sleep. “And I can at least do this.”
He studied the eerie, wraithlike figures that surrounded them, as though only now realizing where he was.
“You should be careful,” he said. “I hear there are agents looking for you.”
“Agents?”
“So I’m told.” He laughed. “Come on. You’re not as dim as your friends. Did you think we were forgotten out here? We remember our home, Isten, and home remembers us. Your name in particular has been mentioned, along with that grim little radical you love so much.”
He was an inveterate liar, but this had a worrying ring of truth to it. “Puthnok?”
Colcrow nodded, looking eagerly around the chamber, staring into the steam. “Is she here?” He moistened his plump lips. “The grumpy child-woman? I hear she’s worth money.”
“No,” muttered Isten, thrown by his unexpected talk of agents. “No, she is not.” Anger boiled through her chest, fuelled by the cinnabar. She sniffed the steam. There was an underlying sweetness.
Colcrow smiled and closed his eyes again, sliding his palm slowly down the thigh of the girl next to him, wiping the sweat from her skin. “One can truly breathe in here.”
Isten looked across the room, trying to make out the shapes of Lorinc and Amoria, but the dream-state was taking hold again. The forms in the mist had begun to stretch, elongating into something blind and foetal, drifting through the heat, clutching at the air. The clanging of the heat pipes became an arterial thud. The walls pulsed and contracted, sweating, dripping, pressing down.
Colcrow shook his head. “You look worse every time I see you.” His eyes sparkled with amusement. “And I hear you’ve deserted our little family. Where have you been hiding yourself?”
Isten took the cup and finished the tea, trying to fix her thoughts in the moment. She struggled to remember what she was doing there, then she caught a glimpse of Amoria, leaning forwards, staring at her through the steam, her face human once more.
“With the Sisters of Solace,” she said, calmed by the memory that she knew things he did not.
His smile faltered, then returned. “The beautiful changelings. I thought you had more class.”
“I go there to see who else is visiting.”
His expression hardened. “What do you want?”
Isten moved her face so close they could have kissed. “Are we still friends, Colcrow?”
“What do you want?”
She leant back for breath, unable to bear his heat. “A little news. A chance to earn some money.” She looked him in the eye. “You know me, I won’t dog your heels. I just need some capital.”
His expression remained fixed. “And if I don’t help you?”
“We don’t have to discuss that.” Isten was conscious of the poor girls sat around her, caught in the thrall of this vile predator. She felt dirty even talking to Colcrow, so she pictured Puthnok’s round, earnest little face, reminding herself why she was lowering herself to this.
He leant back and stared into the steam. “I’ll help you, Isten, but not because you crawled in here with some sordid threat in mind. And not for the Exiles, either. I’ll help because your voice reminded me of the River Stura, and that is worth something.”
He tilted his head back against the mosaic and closed his eyes. He thought for a while, mouthing names and numbers, stroking his goatee like it was a pet. When he spoke again, his voice was so low she had to lean in close to hear.
“We’re all struggling, Isten. But our old friends, the Aroc Brothers, have been incredibly lucky. Money and drugs seem to be falling into their hands with shocking ease since they drove us out of business. Every week I hear news of some incredible stroke of luck that has befallen our lumpen friends. And they’ll soon be in receipt of one of the largest drug shipments to get through the city walls since we arrived at,” he waved vaguely, “whatever wretched hole we’ve landed in this time. I don’t know the nature of the drugs, other than that they’re very valuable, but they’re currently waiting in a warehouse near the Azof embassy, south of the docks. The Aroc boys won’t send anyone there until midnight tomorrow, but I happen to know that the shipment arrived early, a few days ago, so it’s already in the warehouse. And the strange thing is that no one seems to be guarding it. I suppose whoever smuggled the drugs this far doesn’t want to be associated with them, but it’s still odd that there’s no one watching them.” He paused, shuffling his weight slightly. “I could give you the address. Imagine what a blow it would be if someone arrived tonight and stole from those poor Aroc boys.”
Isten nodded, unable to hide her pleasure at the idea.
Colcrow smiled. “You’d love to hurt them, wouldn’t you? Your glorious reign ended when they decided that south of the Saraca wasn’t enough for them, isn’t that right?” He gave her a look of mock sympathy. “I suppose that’s when it all started to go wrong for you. All those madams and procurers paying someone else for protection. Such a shame that the brothers decided to put us out of business.” Bitterness crept into his voice. “Such a shame that you weren’t better able to fight our corner.”
“If the drugs are so valuable, why aren’t you down at that warehouse?”
He shrugged. “I’m not as desperate as you. There’s something odd going on with the whole deal. Something smells bad. I’ve had the place watched at all hours and there’s no sign of guards. A shipment like that with no guards? It makes no sense. I’m missing something. If I was in as much of a mess as you, perhaps I’d take a risk, but I’m not, so I won’t.”
“And if I go, what would your cut of the profits be? What’s the split?”
“Fifty-fifty.”
She laughed out loud, causing a few people to look up.
Colcrow raised a finger to his lips, stroking it gently from side to side in an obscenely sensuous way.
“Isten, I’m taking a risk, telling you this. That kind of haul would warrant a death sentence, you know that, for anyone involved. And how will you shift it once you have it? You’ve been gone too long, Isten. All of your old friends work for the Aroc Brothers now. I hardly think you can ask them to sell it, can you?”
Isten shook her head, guessing what was coming next. “But you’ll be prepared to take it off our hands at a cut down price.”
He rested an arm over her shoulder and pulled her close, filling her nose with the heady scent of his perfume. “A reasonable price. We’re friends, remember.”
3
As she lay there, accepting their solace, the Sisters shared stories with her – the dreams and secrets of their most enraptured clients, intoned at the height of pas
sion with all the urgency of prayer. In the darkness of their ecstasy, bewildered lovers whispered stories of Curious Men, so lost in happiness that they dared speak of the unspeakable. Faith is the lie we wish to be told and, in the early days of her grief, with death at her side, Isten took comfort in every untruth. The Curious Men are no more than stokers of the mandrel-fire, said the Sisters, easing her away from the grave. They will never truly be Athanor’s regents. They’re a lie. Another fire breathes life into the city. The animatis. The lungs, the blood and the heart. The Ingenious.
Gombus welcomed them with sleep still in his eyes, stepping back from the door and ushering them into a gloomy entrance hall. He lived in one of the lodging houses that crowded the streets around the Blacknells Road. It was called the Rookery and it was slightly more reputable than some of the other establishments. The street was crammed with slums, doss houses and brothels and there was no time, night or day, that the sound of fighting did not reverberate through the thin walls. Gombus led them up piss-reeking stairs, past rubbish and sleeping whores and on into his room. There was just enough space for the four of them to squeeze in next to him.
He nodded for them to sit on his bunk and turned to the only other piece of furniture in the room – a crooked, waist-high cupboard that had a bottle of wine and some cups on top of it. He gave them all a drink and sat on the cupboard, eyeing them over the top of his cup. In such a confined space, he seemed less fragile, looming over them as they shifted awkwardly on his bunk. Even surrounded by so much poverty, there was something regal about him. He looked like a carving of a hollow-cheeked king: proud, hook-nosed and tragic. He ran a hand across his silver stubble and sipped the wine, haloed by a blade of moonlight.
“Did Colcrow help?”
Isten nodded, feeling even more uncomfortable as she told him the pitiful nature of the agreement.
He nodded and finished his drink. Then he fetched the bottle and refilled the cups.
“I wish we could kill him when all this is done,” said Amoria. Her face twisted into a snarl. “He makes me sick.”
Gombus shook his head. “We all swore the same oath. We do not take the life of an Exile – whatever else we do, we’ll never sink that low.”
Isten nodded. “Whatever he is, he’s one of us. We don’t kill our own. I know he’s a–”
Isten was interrupted by an explosion of noise from outside. A fight had spilled out onto the street.
Gombus leant over them and snapped a shutter across his single, tiny window. “Colcrow always was devious, even as a child. I’ll be amazed if he even sticks to fifty-fifty.”
Isten shook her head. “He’ll stick to his word. We’re a reminder of home.” She frowned, remembering what he had said about Puthnok. “He gave me a warning.”
“About what?”
She had not mentioned this to the other three and they looked at her in surprise.
“He said there are agents in the city, looking for us.”
Gombus frowned, his drink hovering an inch from his lips. “Agents?”
“From home. He said that Emperor Rakus knows we’re here, in Athanor. Colcrow said the emperor has people in the city.”
“Why would they care about us after all this time?” asked Amoria.
Gombus nodded at Isten. “Some of us are not very good at being discreet. Maybe someone has heard the name Isten and put two and two together.”
As always, Isten felt nauseous at the mention of her ancestry. She shook her head. “Even if that were true, how would they be in touch with Rakus?” She remembered that the city had undergone conjunction while she was with the Sisters of Solace. She felt an absurd hope. “Where are we now?”
Amoria rolled her eyes and laughed. “Yes. Athanor has taken us back home to Rukon. The revolution begins today. We’ve already beheaded the emperor, we just forgot to mention it to you.”
“We’re not sure where we’ve come yet,” said Gombus. “But the new arrivals are definitely not from Rukon. You’ll see them soon enough. Savage creatures. Headhunters.”
Isten frowned, feeling foolish. “Then how could anyone be in contact with Rakus?”
Gombus shrugged. “Ask Colcrow.”
Puthnok was looking even more anxious than usual. “Do they know about the manifesto?”
Gombus shook his head. “I doubt it. It’s the name ‘Isten’ that would bring Rakus after us. Especially if they work out she’s the right age to be the Isten.”
“Who knows what they’ve heard,” said Puthnok. “If they’re in Athanor, and they’re in touch with home, we might all be in trouble.”
Amoria laughed and waved at their pitiful surroundings. “I love the fact that you only think we might be in trouble.”
Puthnok blushed and glared at the floor. “More trouble. We should keep our heads down.”
“We should arm ourselves,” said Isten. “We’re powerless like this. It doesn’t matter if it’s agents from home or the Aroc Brothers, we’re sitting ducks for anyone who wants to get rid of us.” She waved at Gombus’s filthy, sagging room. “Most of us don’t even have this level of privacy. The whole of Athanor probably knows our business. Where do Feyer and Korlath and Piros sleep? On the streets?”
Gombus shook his head and waved his cup at the floorboards. “Here, usually, if they sleep at all.”
“We’re living like animals,” said Isten. “But let’s not die like animals. There’ll be no glorious uprising if we die in these hovels.”
Amoria nodded. “The embassy is only an hour from here. If we move fast we could be there and gone before dawn.”
“Where are the other three?” asked Isten.
“They’ll be in the Stump if they’re anywhere,” said Amoria. “But they’ll be no use to us at this time of night.”
“She’s right,” said Lorinc. “We’d do better without them. I could carry the bags of red out by myself, if I need to.”
“Four it is, then,” said Isten, looking at Lorinc, Puthnok and Amoria, knowing Gombus would want no part in it. “Colcrow said the warehouse isn’t guarded. The shipment wasn’t meant to land until tomorrow. We’ll go in quick and then meet back on the roof of the Alembeck.”
They all nodded and struggled up from the broken bed. Isten expected to feel some of the old spark, but, as they squeezed back down the stairs, the mood was sombre.
Gombus stood in the doorway, watching them go, sipping his wine, until one of the whores started laughing at him. He shook his head and stepped back into shadow.
The Blacknells Road was full of noise and drunks, even at this hour, but by the time they neared the docks the streets were finally quiet and the last mandrel-fires had been extinguished. The Exiles rushed through squares and parks, keeping to the shadows as they neared the embassy and vaulted its spear-tipped railings, dropping lightly into the courtyard beyond.
The embassy was hardly ever used at night and the windows were shuttered. They circled the whole building before finally creeping towards the derelict warehouse – a pitiful, crooked heap, grafted onto the side of its venerable neighbour.
The warehouse was a mesh of wiry, looping spines, silhouetted against the low moon – a bristling mound that looked more like a hawthorn bush than a building. As Isten edged closer to the doors, she drew out a knife and pulled her hood low.
The doors were padlocked, but the lock was a rusted old lump that had clearly not been used for decades. It would crumble with a good hit, but entering from the front of the building would hardly be discreet. She waved for Amoria and Puthnok to scout round one side of the building while she and Lorinc headed in the other direction.
Cats and vermin scattered as they approached, pattering across the piles of rubbish, dislodging rotten timbers heaped against the walls. Isten froze, waiting to see if the noise had alerted anyone to their presence, but there was nothing. The warehouse remained silent, draped in darkness.
Finally, they met the others coming back the othe
r way.
As their faces emerged into the moonlight, Amoria shrugged and shook her head.
Lorinc waved his iron bar at a section of the warehouse that had fallen away, leaving a gaping shadow in the wooden panels. The hole was big enough to climb through and there was a heap of crates stacked beneath it that would work as steps.
Isten looked around to check everyone had their weapons ready, then nodded and padded silently over to the crates.
Before climbing up, she pressed her face to the rotten boards, squinting into the darkness, trying to discern any movement. There was nothing.
She climbed slowly up to the opening, took a last look inside, then dropped down into the darkness.
Isten landed with the silent grace they had all developed over the last few years, stepping quickly into the cavernous space to give the others room to land behind her. Moonlight speared through twisted beams, drawing abstract shapes in the blackness. Isten imagined several figures before realizing they were just shadows thrown by the broken rafters.
As the others landed behind her, Isten’s eyes began to adjust and she managed to get a feel for the layout of the building. There were four ceiling-high columns holding up the roof, entwined with the same gossamer-like threads as the rest of the city’s architecture, and the floor was covered with shattered crates and pieces of rope. At the opposite end of the main room there was a door. It was hanging at an angle, one of the hinges gone, and Isten could see furniture stacked in the office beyond. The whole place stank of damp, mildew and rat shit. It was like crawling through the bilges of a wreck.
She looked back at the others. They were just shadows amongst shadows, but she saw Amoria’s horns catch the light as she nodded to the centre of the room.
Next to a heap of shattered crates there was a single intact box and a trail leading away from it across the muddy floor.
Isten scoured the shadows again, checking that none of them had moved since she last looked but with every second her eyesight grew clearer, and she saw nothing that resembled a person. Colcrow had been telling the truth. There was no one here. The penalty for trafficking cinnabar was death. Perhaps the smugglers who brought the crate had decided it was too risky to wait near such a large shipment until tomorrow night.