by Col Buchanan
Curl was shaking now, though not from the cold. With care, she gathered her small wooden box from the floor and sat back against the pillows. Inside lay her precious stash of dross, the dusty grey powder held in an envelope of folded graf leaf. Curl poured a line of the stuff along the back of her hand, returned the envelope to the box and laid the box on the bed. She placed the stub of the reed she used for these occasions into her nostril, and held the other nostril shut, and took a deep, sharp inhalation that cleared the dust from the hand in one go.
She rubbed her nose and sniffed and lay against the pillows with a gasp, the back of her throat turning numb already. Her fingers and toes tingled, and the tingling spread to leave heat and pleasure in its wake. The sensation filtered up her limbs, her body, her head . . . until at last, with grace, it reached into her mind.
CHAPTER FIVE
Good Things Come in Life
His head was splitting with pain that morning, and he chewed on a dulce leaf as he stepped between the stalls of a thriving Q’os marketplace, peering out from the wet folds of his hood at a drizzle of rain that fell so fine it kept drifting, losing its direction.
Overhead, the bells of the nearby temples rang out the turning of the hour, sounding brash and overly loud after their dormancy of so many weeks. From the direction of the nearby Serpentine, the early morning chants of the pilgrims could be heard as they headed in a mass towards Freedom Square, celebrating the first day of the delayed festa that was the Augere el Mann, the period of mourning seemingly lifted.
Ash still wasn’t certain what he was doing here risking his neck in broad daylight for the sake of a little fresh bread. At the sight of so many people filling the streets the urge had simply come upon him, and no greater compulsion had countered it, so here he was, moving through the press of shoppers, with a scarf wrapped around his face and his hood low over his eyes, the smell of the closest bakery leading the way.
It was with a growling stomach that he found himself waiting his turn before a busy baker’s stall. From the leaden skies the rain continued to fall, dripping from the canopy overhead to patter onto his back. Ash cast his eyes around the walls and buildings that circled the market square. He paused to inspect the entrance points at either end of it, and the pair of auxiliaries who strolled around the stalls idly swinging their batons, looking for a reason to use them.
I shouldn’t be here in daylight, he told his stomach. This is reckless even for me.
An opening appeared before him and Ash squeezed his way into it, his purse in hand. ‘Yes?’ asked one of the aproned lads behind the counter.
‘Three seeded loaves. The largest you have. And something to carry them in.’
The lad tossed the loaves into a bag of twine netting and held it towards him. ‘One-and-a-half marvels,’ he informed him. ‘Plus a quarter for the bag. That’s one-and-three-quarters.’
It was an extortionate price, no doubt a result of the festa and the countless pilgrims, though he handed over two marvels and plucked the bag from the youth’s hand.
‘That’ll be an extra quarter.’
‘For what?’
‘For providing change.’
Someone shoved into Ash from behind as they tried to get closer to the counter. He shoved back without looking, restoring the inch of space around him. ‘You want me to give you a quarter, so you can give me a quarter back in change?’
‘I don’t make the rules,’ the lad said impatiently, already looking to the next customer before him.
Ash blew the air from his lungs. He waved the business away with his hand then pushed his way clear of the stall before he lost his temper with it all. He started back the way he had come, but he saw the two auxiliaries coming that way towards him. Instead he turned and walked for the other entrance at the opposite end of the market, wishing only to return now to the seclusion of his rooftop, where he could enjoy his breakfast alone with his own company.
‘Ken-dai!’ came a shout that stopped him in his tracks. ‘Ho, ken-dai!’
Ash turned swiftly, and instantly spotted a dark face above the passing heads, barely a dozen paces from where he stood; a man from Honshu like himself.
The man was looking down at him from where he sat upon a sedan chair borne by two muscled slaves, a scented kerchief held to his nostrils like a white blossom. When their eyes met the man raised a hand in greeting. Ash glanced around, pulling the scarf a little higher over the bridge of his nose; watched as the figure clambered down to the ground. His two armoured bodyguards were already clearing the vicinity by shoving people out of the way.
‘Ken-dai!’ the man exclaimed again in their native Honshu, while one of his bearers snapped open an umbrella to hold above his head.
Ash replied with a curt nod.
‘You’re wise to travel about like that. They’ve been arresting many of us in the city for questioning.’
Ash said nothing, and there was a moment of awkward silence between them. The stranger was of a similar age to Ash, and dressed in fine robes of Honshu silk. He was a little overweight, and Ash could not help but notice the many glittering rings of gold and diamonds upon his fingers. A silk merchant perhaps, drawn to the Midèrēs on the silk winds long ago; or perhaps even a political exile like himself.
‘How is the old country?’ the merchant asked in obvious hope that he would know.
‘I couldn’t say,’ Ash confessed. ‘It’s been many years now since I was there.’
The man’s nod was heavy with meaning. ‘Yes, such a voyage as that should be made once in a lifetime. I can’t imagine how these sailors do it, coming back and forth, playing such odds as that.’ He sniffed beneath the dripping umbrella, raised the kerchief to his nose again. As he did so, Ash saw the tattoo on his left wrist – a circle with a single eye within it.
‘You were with the People’s Army?’ he blurted.
The merchant saw what he was looking at, then dropped his hand as though guilty of something. ‘What of it?’
Ash looked at the rich clothes and jewels that he wore; at the slave holding up the umbrella, hair lank in the rain; at the other bearer still standing behind the sedan, eyes downcast; at the two armed thugs paid to do his bidding.
‘You have fallen far,’ Ash drawled.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise, levelled again in anger. He looked to one of his guards.
‘Grab this one!’ he snapped.
Ash was already moving, though, pushing his way through the crowd in the direction of the exit. ‘Bring him back here!’ he heard the man shout, and then Ash was dashing through a clear space between the stalls, his bag of bread swinging in his hand and people cursing in his wake.
He slowed as he neared the exit; stopped entirely as he found himself trapped by the Thief Toll that blocked it – a line of caged turnstiles with slots for quarters.
He was struggling for his purse when one of the bodyguards made a grab for him through the bars that had sealed him in. The man missed, shook the bars in angry impotence.
The second guard pushed into the adjacent stile, fumbled too in his clothing for a coin as his other hand snaked in through the side grille, groping for Ash’s hood.
Ash dropped a whole marvel into the slot, hardly surprised that it was accepted, and broke free from his grasp as he pushed through the stile into the Serpentine beyond.
As far as the eye could see, the thoroughfare was filled with snaking processions of red-robed pilgrims. On the opposite side of the road stood the old quarter of the district, with its winding alleyways and its tilting, top-heavy buildings of stone. Ash dived headlong into the procession, weaving through the pilgrims as he tried to get across. He glimpsed men and woman whipping their bloody backs and breasts in frenzy; others chanting as they sported skewered cheeks, their faces held aloft and ecstatic.
Then he was through them, trotting into the mouth of a narrow alley with the two bodyguards emerging close behind.
‘Clear away!’ he bellowed as he picked up speed. He da
shed headlong past folk and pilgrim tourists bartering over trinkets and whores, trying to lose himself in the maze of passageways and small plazas that were the guts of the old district.
They were fast, these boys. Even in their boots and their leather armour they were keeping pace with him, pounding along the flagstones of the passageway in single file with their shoulders brushing the walls, whooshing air from their lungs in a manner suggesting they could keep this up all day.
Ash was wondering if he shouldn’t pick up his pace a little more, but then he saw the passageway open out ahead of him, and a less taxing option presented itself.
He reached for his sword from beneath his cloak, drew it the instant he was clear of the alley.
In his next two steps he had stopped himself and was spinning around on the ball of his foot, his other leg stretching out so that he was low, extended, his sword pointing in front of him.
In the last instant he adjusted the aim of the tip a fraction, and then the first guard ran straight into the blade, shoving Ash back a pace with the force of his impact. They both grunted, and then the second guard ran into the first one, right into the blade sticking out of his back.
Ash straightened from his stance, the hilt of the sword still in his grip. The two men grimaced and sweated and tried to pull themselves free while Ash inspected their wounds. The first guard looked at him; looked back down at the blade in his side.
‘I’ve avoided you organs,’ he told them both. ‘Keep the wounds clean and you should live.’
Without warning he jerked the blade free. They sagged to their knees, hands reaching for their sides. People nearby were staring in wonder.
Ash cleaned the blood from his blade on one of their backs, then picked up his bag of bread and trotted away.
Ché strolled home feeling light and loose-gaited, the taste of the Royal Milk still lingering on his tongue, his body trembling with the energy of a coiled spring.
His new and exclusive apartment was located in the southern side of the Temple District, that area which surrounded the Temple of Whispers, where lesser skysteeples rose above priestly mansions and apartment blocks and ornamented buildings of entertainment. He walked back through the steady rain listening to the birds singing from the parks and the rooftop gardens, wondering in his elevated mood if they were celebrating the return of life to the city streets, for there was an atmosphere of excitement in the air today, this first day of the Augere. In the streets, children watched the red-robed pilgrims march by in chanting processions, goggling at the numerous races of the Empire, drawn here in record numbers for the fiftieth anniversary of the Mannians’ seizure of power.
In his apartment, Whiskers was there already, tidying the large empty rooms in her meticulous way. Ché felt a moment of affection when he saw the woman; after only a few weeks, she had become a welcome detail of stability in his scattered life.
‘I leave in the morning,’ he announced to the house-slave, even though she couldn’t hear him, for she had been rendered deaf by hot oil some time during her captivity. ‘Whiskers,’ and he waved a hand to catch her eye, ‘no need for that now.’ But the woman continued to polish the shelving, paying him no mind.
He looked at the slate board that hung about her chest, swinging free as she bent forwards, along with a stub of chalk fixed to a length of string.
He had so far refused to use the board to communicate with the woman, largely because Whiskers refused to use it herself; as though she preferred to let it hang there uselessly like an accusation of all that had been done to her. Instead, he preferred to talk to the woman, persisting in the hope that some communication might still pass between them.
Besides, he liked to hear words spoken in the usual silence of the apartment, even if they were only his own.
Ché wandered into his bedroom and stared at his double-sized bed, with its silk covers of maroon tastefully chosen to match the pale golds of the wallpaper. He realized that he was still too energized from the Royal Milk and the previous night’s events to sleep, so instead pulled off his robe and changed into a loose-fitting tunic and trousers, and then a pair of soft leather shoes, which he laced tightly.
‘I’m going for a run!’ he hollered on his way out of the door.
Ché pounded along the wide, tree-lined avenue of the Serpentine. He ran with the city’s rhythms in his ears, the local priests calling out through bullhorns from their temple spires; the calls of hawking cart-merchants and street dealers; the doleful songs of slave-gangs going about their business. People turned to watch him pass or to step out of his way, drawn by the simple spectacle of a man running through the streets. Sweat beaded his skin, and the rain too. With every footfall he found his head clearing of all the thoughts that had been possessing him so compulsively of late; a clarity he struggled for ever more these days. Ché dodged past carts and groups of people, light-footed and free.
His usual route was a circuit of streets to the east of his apartment, an area that was prettified with the greenery of parks. He turned left at the Getti playhouse and followed a boulevard alongside the Drowning Gardens, seeing the rich greens of the trees and shrubs through the flicker of the iron railings, the contrasts of red-robed pilgrims scattered amongst them. In the street, building-sized paintings of the Holy Matriarch snagged his eyes, and the lesser placards for new restaurants, housing developments, brands of alcohol and food; he tried to ignore their simple messages, but the images flashed by and left their impression nonetheless, the smiling white-toothed faces of happy affluence.
Joy Street lay at the end of the boulevard, and next to it his mother’s Sentiate temple. Ché had been ignoring his mother of late, unable to bring himself to visit her. He didn’t wish to be reminded of what she represented in his life, nor of her role within the order. When he saw the Sentiate tower looming ahead, its scarlet flags raised high today to show that it was open once more for business, his mood began to falter along with his pace.
He turned away before he reached Joy Street, and entered the Drowning Gardens instead.
He followed a straight paved path between the shorn lawns. On the hottest of summer days he would sometimes run in these gardens of glittering pools and broken shadows to escape the clammy heat of the streets beyond. Today, though, he saw that it was a mistake to come here, for the pilgrims were drowning themselves in earnest.
Ché ran past stone pools with pilgrims kneeling all around their rims, heads plunged deep in the water. Occasional bubbles broke the surface, and some flailed their arms without control as they forced themselves to remain submerged; the more dedicated had their arms bound behind them with leather belts. He skirted around attendants of the Selarus, the priests working over prone forms, pumping water from lungs, breathing into mouths, slapping faces to revive them. One pair was carrying a limp form away.
He sprinted even faster, with the effort pulling the breath from him. Ahead was a congregation of dancing pilgrims, so thick he saw no way through them. Ché wasn’t in the mood for stopping.
With a feral grin he put his head down and charged into the crowd at full speed, shouldering the men and women out of his way. Like a raging bull he tore his way through the mass of pilgrims as men and women spilled to the ground or pursued him with their shouts of anger.
He emerged on the other side fighting for air. His brow was wet, and when he dabbed it with his fingers they came away red.
Onwards, with the rain gently cleaning the blood from him, the taste of it mingling with the taste of the Royal Milk in his mouth.
When he returned to the apartment he realized he’d forgotten to bring any coins with him to get back inside the building. He cursed and pulled the doors in vain, but then the door opened from within – one of his neighbours stepping out – and Ché ducked inside.
He jogged up the stairs and entered his apartment. Whiskers was just crossing the room and she glanced at him with a frown on her reddened features. A whistle was shrieking from behind her.
‘Goo
d timing,’ he noted as he stepped past the woman, pulling off his clothing as he moved towards the bathroom and the source of the high keen. Whiskers hurried past him. When he entered the bathroom’s steamy atmosphere she was already turning off the gas flames beneath a great copper pot fitted tightly with a lid. A jet of steam was shooting from the whistle fixed in the lid, and it died quickly as Whiskers opened a spigot near the bottom of the pot, to release a flow of hot water into the tiled bath sunk into the floor.
Naked, his mood still high, Ché pinched her rump as he stepped around her, and gave a quick smile in return for the scowl on her whiskery face. ‘You’re too good to me,’ he told her as he stepped into the few inches of water in the slowly filling bath, and lay back and sighed as it rose gently around him. Whiskers eyed him scornfully.
He closed his eyes as his body grew lighter in the water. His skin burned pleasantly, and he heard the woman roll up her sleeves and kneel beside him. Ché sighed long and deeply as she scrubbed him down with a flannel of rough sharkskin and one of the balms his mother had insisted on giving him for his troubled skin. Methodically, she worked on the rashes that covered his body, and he groaned at one point, in something approaching sexual pleasure, at the relief it gave from his constant itching.
This life had its benefits, Ché reflected idly. Not least of all a hot bath every day if he wished for one; no small thing that, in a world where most people were lucky to wash in a basin of cold water with copal leaves for soap.
You’re getting soft, he thought, and wondered what his old Rōshun master Shebec would think of him now, if he’d still been alive to see him.