Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  Sye nodded and relaxed to wait, but just then Mik came into view, trailed by a smaller figure.

  “Oh, there they are now, thanks be,” Kati said. “We’ll be able to come and look at your Inn.” She picked up her rucksack.

  Mik and his companion, a young teenager with pale skin and a shock of red hair, reached them.

  “Mistress Sye!” the boy cried, a grin spreading on his face. “I was going to recommend to the Lady and her servant that they look at your place, and give these ones on the Square a pass.”

  Mikal grinned too.

  “Well,” he said, “maybe things are getting done. My Lady, this is Jocan who seems an honest young man, ready to do your bidding if you accept him as a hiree. It seems that he knows your new acquaintance.”

  “Mistress Sye heard from her son that I did not seem happy with the facilities offered by the Inns on the Square, and she came to suggest that I take a look at her place instead. Now that you are here with Jocan, and he looks acceptable to me, perhaps we can accompany Mistress Sye to her establishment. I do, indeed, want to take a look at it.”

  She stood up and the four of them started walking. Jocan glanced at Sye, and at a nod from her took the lead. Clearly he was familiar with the woman and her place of business, and Kati considered that a recommendation for him. It was fortunate for Jocan that Mistress Sye had happened by, since his colouring made Kati faintly uneasy. The boy seemed to stand out among the city folk due to his looks; the other locals were mostly light-skinned but dark-haired, a type among whom Kati could easily hide. The last time Kati had seen Jocan’s particular shade of pale skin, combined with bright red hair, had been on Gorsh’s ship. The owner of the combination had been Doctor Guzi, the man who had implanted nodes into the slaves. His skin, she thought, had been even paler, his hair, a slightly brighter red. What this meant, Kati could not say. Perhaps it meant nothing; surely it was curmudgeonly of her to be suspicious of a person just because his colouring reminded her of somebody she did not much like!

  They came to a rambling, low, stone building, obviously put together from blocks that had been recycled from older, fallen-down ones. At that, it was not new; large trees surrounded it, and a grassy lawn dotted with flowers that Kati did not recognize, extended from the front wall to the track that was all that was left of the street. The building had a large entrance door at about halfway along the front and a number of smaller doors at regular intervals on both sides. There were lots of windows of all shapes and sizes; the builders had been scavengers, too. The place looked like a motel in fairyland, in Kati’s opinion; she liked it the moment she saw it.

  Mikal had stopped to stare at the place; he had a pleased grin on his face. Sye and Jocan were looking at them rather than at the building; both of them were smiling, clearly familiar with the Inn’s effect on travellers.

  “Well, this is it,” Mistress Sye said then. “This is my Inn. My husband and I run it, and my sister runs the kitchen inside where our patrons can buy meals. My husband, Mac, looks after runnerbeasts in the stables at the back, but since you have none, it doesn’t matter to you. Did you want a room, a suite or what?”

  “What I had in mind was a room, or rooms with an ante-room for Mik to sleep in, ”Kati said, “My husband charged him with keeping me safe on this journey, and he cannot do that if he sleeps in the servants’ quarters. Would you have something that might serve?”

  “Oh, yes, I think I have just the thing. Come take a look.”

  Mistress Sye led them towards the right, to the very end of the building, to the last small door on that side. She pulled out a ring of keys from a pocket and chose one, then unlocked the door. Kati followed her closely, and Mikal and Jocan came behind her.

  It was a lovely little place. There was a small entrance alcove right inside the door, where coats and boots could be left in inclement weather. From it opened a door into a bedroom with two single beds, a dresser and a table and chairs in it. Beside that door was another, and this door had a lock in it like the one on the outside door. Mistress Sye unlocked it with her key.

  “You will have a different key for this lock,” she said. “For anyone to get in without those keys, they’d have to steal mine, and that would not be easy since they never leave my body except if I’m with my husband, and then he guards them.”

  She led them down a narrow hallway to a suite consisting of another bedroom, a primitive bathroom, and a kitchenette/living area which would be described as cozy rather than roomy.

  “How much?” Kati asked after looking everything over and deciding that she could live with bathing in a bucket, that the toilet did actually work, and that since she was supposed to be a lady, it didn’t matter that the kitchen facilities had her scratching her head.

  The sum Sye cited seemed reasonable to her after having heard the inflated prices that had been quoted to her in the Inns on the Square. Besides Jocan was nodding vigorously; she was pretty sure that there would be nothing cheaper anywhere close by. Without doubt Mikal had explained to the boy that he was hired partly to keep them from stepping into patties of runnerbeast shit; might as well count on his knowledge.

  They walked back to the main entrance and into what seemed to be the lobby. A largish room opened on one side into an eating area, the “kitchen” Mistress Sye had mentioned, and on the other side into what looked like a working area for the Inn maids. Between these was a desk to which the Mistress brought them, to mark up a contract for a week’s lodging, to be extended at the same charge, if necessary. She accepted the coins that Kati dug out of her money bag.

  While Mistress Sye was filling out the blanks of the contract, Kati looked about her curiously. There were a couple of maids folding towels and sheets in the work area, and they were throwing glances at the four of them. The eating area of the kitchen seemed to have at one end what looked to Kati like a bar.

  “An Alehouse,” the granda subvocalized for her. “Probably busy in the evenings, so the profit keeps this place solvent when there aren’t many travellers about.”

  “The sister?” Kati queried him, also subvocally.

  “Not likely. The sister’s likely the cook. If Sye’s husband runs the stables, then likely they’ve hired the sister’s husband or some other relative to tend bar. Although I don’t think there’s much to tending bar; there’s beer only, and likely just one kind of it.”

  Kati thought that it might not be a bad idea to send Mikal to check out the Alehouse later that evening, or the following night. You never knew what gems of knowledge might be available where alcohol would be loosening lips.

  Once the transaction was complete, Kati, Mikal and Jocan took the keys Mistress Sye proffered them and returned to the end suite. The three of them did another round of the little apartment and decided that it was about as safe a place as they could hope to find.

  “I’ve never seen this suite before,” Jocan said as he tried to rattle the windows in the bedroom that was to be Lady Katerina’s. “But I’d heard that it was a good place if you had to watch your back. I think it is. It’d be quite the job to break these windows and crawl through—where they got the thick glass I don’t know, and the builders had the good sense to make the windows small.”

  “Those Inns on the Square,” Kati asked him, “do the owners have some arrangement with the Thieves’ Guild or something? There is no way I would have dared to sleep in any one of them.”

  “Something like that.” Jocan grinned at her. “They have secure rooms too, but they’ll not offer a newcomer in town one of them. And they charge a lot of money for such; Mistress Sye is much more reasonable, but then, people coming in don’t find out about her Inn unless they know to ask.”

  “She mentioned her son, Dris; apparently he had seen me going from Inn to Inn and getting no satisfaction.”

  “Yeah, Dris spends time on the Square quite often during the day. He keeps an eye on things for his parents and aunt, I think; drums up business, lets them know if a particularly good load of pro
duce arrives at the market, and so forth. He would have noted that you weren’t about to be fooled, and considered you a potential customer for his mother. During the evenings he runs the Alehouse and keeps his eyes and ears open there too.”

  In the kitchenette, Jocan studied the little wood-burning stove with interest while Kati merely shook her head at it.

  “I’m afraid I’m totally ignorant when it comes to things like that,” she said. “It was my job to oversee the estate, not to make the tea.”

  “Oh, I can make the tea, if that’s what you would like me to do,” the boy said cheerfully, turning to the cupboards, opening all the doors to see what he could find. “Oh, there’s a kettle, cups, even tea.” He had pulled out a canister and was sniffing its contents.

  “Well then, you can be our official morning tea maker. Other than that, I think we’ll patronize Mistress Sye’s sister’s kitchen. And now, since I’m not hungry, I’ll try out the bathing bucket; I’ve got days of dirt on my body. Assuming that there’s such a thing as hot water to be had?”

  Seemingly Mik had decided that he ought not to allow Jocan usurp all his serving duties. He went into the bathing room (next to, but separate from the toilet) to check the water situation and to draw his mistress a bath.

  “There’s warm water,” he said when he came back out, “and adequate soap. Lots and lots of towels, and shifts to wear after bath.”

  “Mistress Sye has a reputation for good bathing facilities,” Jocan said proudly.

  Kati did not argue the point, although in her book a tin bucket, even though it was a very large one, did not constitute luxury. But then, maybe on this world, it did. And the soap was adequate, even for washing her hair, the towels were soft and absorbent, and the shift she pulled on afterwards was also soft and wonderfully clean.

  She looked unhappily at the pile of dirty clothes that she had peeled out of before washing.

  “I think that Jocan is going to have to find us a laundry,” she muttered to herself. “Or maybe Mistress Sye’s maids provide that service, too; for a price, of course.”

  *****

  In the end they decided to eat the evening meal in the suite, with Jocan going to the Inn’s kitchen to get takeout, and some ale from Dris with which to wash the food down.

  While Jocan was gone Kati and Mikal could slip out of character for a moment, and discuss their situation. Mikal told Kati how he had found Jocan and why he thought the boy was a good choice for an errand person.

  “When I asked for directions from a likely-looking pedestrian, to where I could find a youth whom a stranger in town might hire to help with errands and chores, I was directed to a games hall, which apparently is the local hangout for young males. I looked the young men there over, and concluded that they belonged to gangs, and I did not think that gang-membership was a job recommendation. I didn’t want a person with divided loyalties. Instead of approaching anybody there, I checked out the games that were being played, and waited. Most of the games were played in groups, but there were a couple of pin-ball machines of a sort, so I bought some game tokens with the copper that I had left over from our meal. I played pin-ball, and watched to see what else would turn up at the place.

  “The first thing I noticed, as I kept an eye on my surroundings while I played—badly, to be honest—was that, not only were most of the boys in gangs, but that the gangs seemed to have adult patrons. Several times an adult male would come into the hall and beckon one or another of the boys, who then would send one of his group off with the man. They all seemed pretty cozy together, so I was glad that I hadn’t jumped the gun and hired one of them. If I had, I’m pretty sure that someone on the edge of law would have gained access to us.

  “Jocan came in somewhat later to have a short chat with the manager, and it was pretty clear to me that he was something of a pariah to the other lads. They ignored him, looked the other way when he walked by; likely they would have needled him if rules about insults and fighting in the hall hadn’t been enforced. When he was finished with the manager, I intercepted him on his way back out and asked him if he knew how to use the pin-ball machine, and if he did, could he give me a hint or two; it was a new machine to me. We spent a few minutes on that; I let him play with my tokens to show me how it was done. He was very good at it. We spent the last tokens on a couple of glasses of ale at the back of the hall which was pretty well empty of drinkers at that time in the afternoon, and I made my pitch: my employer needed a knowledgeable young person who could to keep us from making gross errors while we were in town. I rather sang the praises of the Lady Katerina—“ he grinned broadly while saying this, “—telling him that she was a very fair employer, paid well, and treated her underlings with dignity.

  “I also asked about any possible problems about his ability to work for us: Would his family object to him hiring on with strangers, for example? He said that he had no family and no ties, unless those of his acquaintances who treated him fairly were counted. He did say that when it came to recommending businesses he would likely choose from the ones who had treated him well, and I told him that not only was that understandable, it was actually desirable.”

  “Well, he certainly seems a good choice,” Kati commented. “And I was pleased to see that he and Sye know one another, since I have a hunch that Mistress Sye is a thoroughly honest woman. Only thing about Jocan, and I know this is going to sound ridiculous, is that his colouring is very much like that of Doctor Guzi on Gorsh’s ship, the doctor who implanted the translation nodes into the children and myself.”

  Mikal looked thoughtful.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s ridiculous,” he finally said, “but it may mean something, or it may mean nothing. I guess it’s one of those bits of information that you have to store in the back of your mind, just in case it becomes important at some future time.”

  “I guess that’s what we’ll do with it for now. Have you had any opportunity to ask questions about the temples in this city so far? I was so busy turning down rooms at the inns that the temple business slipped completely from my mind.”

  “No,” Mikal replied. “I think, perhaps we can broach the subject with Jocan during supper. He probably knows as much as any other person around here.”

  “Yeah, let’s bring up the topic of the temples. If news travels as fast here as I think it does, then he probably already knows about Lady Katerina’s interest in temples. Plus, we’ll also have to ask about a trustworthy money-changer. Coppers seem to be the commonest coin used in this town and I am running out of them. Silver, maybe Mistress Sye could change silver into copper; after all, she did take a silver for our lodgings, so she does handle them. But we’ll need to change golds, eventually; we have more of those than anything else. So we’ll need the services of a money-changer.”

  They were interrupted by the delicate tones of the doorbell which could be rung by pulling at a string outside the door. Mikal went to the front of the suite to let Jocan in with his basket of food and a jug of ale.

  *****

  The meal that Mistress Sye’s sister had packed was delicious. The three of them ate every bit in the basket, although they were more cautious with the beer. There was a half-jug left when they had finished eating.

  Kati brought up the topics of temples and money-changers for discussion with Jocan and the lad agreed to take her to a money-changer the next morning, and to scout out the Temple District with her later in the day. She was intrigued to learn that there was an actual “Temple District” in the River City.

  “Are the temples left from before the disaster?” she queried, curiously.

  “Mostly, yes. The temples were well-built, likely the most well-built buildings in the whole city,” Jocan replied. “And once the flood-waters receded, the faithful that were left were quick to clean and restore their particular places of worship, at least as much as they were able to. There were a couple of sects whose buildings were destroyed badly enough that they could not be saved. One of them took over anothe
r building which had belonged to a group with only a small following, none of whom survived the flood, and the other rebuilt a much smaller place with the remains of the two fallen temples plus some rocks from neighbouring, non-religious ruins.”

  “The folk here must be very religious,” Kati commented innocently.

  “I guess.” Jocan shrugged. “Not that they can agree on anything on that topic any more than they can agree on anything else.”

  Kati had not noticed the River City to be any more fractious than any place that she had ever known. However, she did not think it her place to comment on that, since people liked to have their own notions about the burgs in which they lived. So she merely kept on digging for information.

  “Do you know the names of the sects with temples in the city?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure. Except for the ones that are so secret they won’t let anyone know what they’re called.” He guffawed. “There’re three or four of those.”

  “According to the Wise Woman in my village, the one I should be looking for has a name that has something to do with the sky, or something in the sky, like the sun, or the stars, or planets.” She remembered in time that this world had no moon, thereby avoiding a serious mistake. “Although she did warn me that this might not even be the place; it is only the first place I am to look at.”

  She added the second sentence because Jocan had begun to shake his head vigorously.

  “Lady Katerina, unless one of the ones that won’t tell anybody their sects’ names happens to be what you’re looking for, I don’t think you’re going to have any luck here. There is one temple with a name that would fit your category—but I really doubt that the Church of the Sons of the Sun could help you with infertility. They don’t even much like women.”