Babylon Steel (32 page)

My life, my people are here now.

But in the dark behind my eyes I saw Jonat’s face, shadowed, looking at me.

TIRESANA

F
EELING A LITTLE
calmer, not exactly making plans but at least thinking of doing so, I went back to the temple, where Shakanti had just arrived, draped in gauze of midnight blue and silver. “Oh. You,” she said, when she saw me. “Why are you here?”

Possibly, she had actually forgotten I was coming. I reminded her.

“I have many worshippers,” she said. “So close to the sea, they know my tides. They think of me as the shine of the fish in the net. They think of me as they dig, as they cut the stone, as their blood stains its purity...” she was staring ecstatically past me at something I was quite glad I couldn’t see. “Remember who you are,” she said, coming back from wherever she was to glare at me. “I may choose to answer a prayer, but it will be of
my
choosing. Remember, always. We are not at their beck and call, to do whatever they ask.”

We couldn’t have done everything they asked anyway, of course. But the worshippers weren’t supposed to know that. Avatars could be capricious; they just couldn’t be less than godlike.

There was whispering at the temple door; the acoustics were disturbingly good, perhaps designed that way. Shakanti sighed. “It is still afternoon. That is hardly the proper time for worshipping me.” Her face became a veiled skull for a moment. “Let us see who is so desperate that they come to my temple in daylight.”

It was a young girl, perhaps sixteen, with the peachy bloom of youth and health. She was kneeling at the altar. Shakanti and I stood behind a screen of white marble carved as fine as lace; the carving was angled so that we could see the girl, but she couldn’t see us.

She knelt, her long black hair tumbling over her breasts and thighs, looking up. “Shakanti, goddess of virgins, help me. Oh!” She picked up her rush basket. “I bring offerings. It’s not much...”

A handful of herbs, a few pretty stones she’d found on the beach – some of them the very marble of which the temple was made, polished smooth by the sea. A shell, a feather. She got up to lay them on the altar, and knelt again, bowing her head.

“We don’t have much, you see. That’s why I’m promised in marriage. Only, he’s old. And he grabs. And...” – she looked up, her eyes very wide – “I’m scared of him. He had another wife, and I don’t think he was nice to her. She died, they said of childbed fever, but there were people said other things, too. Can you help me, Shakanti? I’d rather marry someone else. Someone younger, and, you know...” She blushed.

After all the formal chants, the solemn processions, the offerings, it was strange, almost heartbreaking. The handful of pitiful treasures, and the heartfelt plea. This was what people wanted gods for.

A few watchers had gathered at the temple door, perhaps knowing of Shakanti’s presence. They had enough sensitivity to stay where they were, not wanting to disturb the supplicant at her prayers.

Shakanti looked up and saw them. Witnesses.

Maybe she was still feeling bruised by the fact that Hap-Canae’s choice had become an Avatar, instead of her own. Maybe she really believed it was the right thing to do. Just maybe, there was no understanding her.

“Stand up, child,” she said; she did something to make her voice drift through the temple like chilly smoke, so that even those by the door heard it. They gasped and fell to their knees. The Goddess was among them, or at least her Avatar was, and who, now, remembered the difference?

The girl, her eyes huge, scrambled clumsily to her feet, clutching at the altar.

“What is your name?”

“Adissi.”

“Adissi. Sweet child, I will save you from this unseemly marriage,” Shakanti said, her voice clear and strong, even caressing. “Stand straight. Look up.”

Adissi did, trying not to tremble, her hands clasped in front of her.

I saw her eyes searching for what was behind the screen, seeking a miracle.

I heard Shakanti draw in breath.

There was a shiver in the air, and where a living girl had been, there was now a statue of the whitest, gleaming marble.

One of the watchers screamed, and Shakanti clutched the screen, weakened, but smiling.

I was too shocked to move.

I stood there while the people crept towards the altar, pallid and shuddering. I stood there while the girl’s mother, bustled to the temple by neighbours, dropped the bundle she was carrying and howled with grief and horror.

I stood there.

And Shakanti stood watching, still smiling.

“T
URN HER BACK
?” Shakanti said, looking at me as though she’d found me on her shoe. “What, into a mere girl, when now she is an object of wonder? She will remain beautiful, virgin, perfect. Proof of the power and compassion of the gods.”

“You turned her into a statue!” I was shaking so much I could hardly get the words out. “That’s not
compassion
, it’s murder!”

“We do
not
interfere in the actions of another Avatar,” Hap-Canae said.

He had decided to follow me; suspicious, or uncertain how well-trained I was. What would have happened if he hadn’t... well, if I’d gone up against Shakanti alone, who knows? There might not have been much left of Prella.

I could feel my power beginning to surge up in me like water coming to the boil. It was part of what was making me shake. My sword was in my hand; Shakanti looked at it. “Hap-Canae...” she said.

He took me by the shoulders and made me look at him; our eyes were almost on a level, now. “Babaska. She has been saved from a marriage she feared, from a poor, short, miserable life. Instead she will remind them all that we see and know their lives, that we are always there. She will matter, now.”

She will matter, now. Because before, at least to the Avatars, she hadn’t.

I looked into those leopard eyes, and began to realise what I’d loved. I looked at my sword. I could attack Shakanti, but even if I could, eventually, kill her, the other Avatars would stop me. And I would never persuade her to reverse what she had done.

I let Hap-Canae take me back to the temple. I saw Ranay looking after me as I left, but I took no leave of him; I turned away even though it felt like someone tearing my chest open. I was terrified for him. They said they didn’t interfere in the affairs of another Avatar, and yet I didn’t trust that to apply to me or mine. What if one of them noticed him, as Lohiria already had? How could they not? He was so wonderful, so much better than any of them. How could anyone not notice him?

But it wasn’t safe to be noticed by an Avatar. And now I knew what an Avatar really was; it was nothing that anyone should love.

As for seeking out my family... better for them to remember an innocent, if they remembered me at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

T
HE TAX OFFICE
is near the Exchange hall, but a lot less bumptious. The Exchange is all pillars and cherubs and women carrying sheaves. The tax office is small, grey and unfriendly. I handed over an unpleasantly large chunk of Fain’s cash to the equally small, grey and unfriendly person behind the table, who didn’t seem at all impressed with my efficiency and good citizenship. I was briefly tempted to take it back until their attitude improved, but I suppressed the notion and went to the Hall of Mirrors instead, to reward myself with some spice tea and a look in Bannerman’s window.

It occurred to me, just as I took the first sip, that the Avatars might come to the Hall of Mirrors. It’s where everyone comes, especially if they have money to spend.

I clutched the cup in front of my face, and looked over the rim, feeling suddenly raw and cold. I told myself I was being stupid – more than twenty years had passed, they would hardly recognise me now. I was just another Tiresan.

Only I’d never met another Tiresan since I left. Tiresans don’t leave. Idiot, I told myself, there are other people on Scalentine who look like you, dark-haired and copper-skinned, so don’t be a fool.

All the same, I lost my taste for the tea; I left it unfinished and dived into Bannerman’s.

At least if the Avatars did turn up I’d have plenty of weapons to hand. I wondered if they’d work on them, here on Scalentine. It was a tempting thought.

I wasn’t really looking at the merchandise at all; I was staring out of the window when someone said, “Can I help you?”

I turned around. The assistant was a long, pale creature who reminded me of Bliss, but whose eyes were much more sharply focused. “I’m just looking,” I said.

Then I actually
saw
what was in the window. A pair of greaves, finely chased with leafy branches and twining beasts. Where had I seen something like those before?

Previous. Her nice new bracers, the ones that had been a present from Frithlit. I couldn’t possibly afford them, but...

“I like those,” I said. “Is there more in that style?”

“There should be bracers,” the assistant said, “but regretfully they are not available at the moment. They would have to be re-ordered. That could take some time.”

“Oh? Pity,” I said, my mind whirring. “Why is that?”

“I regret to say that the original set was stolen.”

Oh, mulecrap and dragonshit. They were the ones Bannerman had been tricked out of.

And now I knew who’d nicked ’em. What was I going to tell Previous?

TIRESANA

H
OPING FOR SOMETHING,
I attended the ceremonies at Babaska’s temple in the precinct; listening from behind the screen, in the shadow of Babaska’s statue. At the Ceremony of Petals, a celebration of the sensual arts and their practitioners, the place was crowded for days: there were great courtesans who came with their own households, and street-whores who charged in coppers or in food. I tried to answer too many pleas, and exhausted myself. What I could actually do for them was mainly show; I could increase someone’s power to attract, but I couldn’t protect them from bad clients or disease or poverty. My powers were hollow as a painted gourd, benefiting myself far more than anyone else.

I even, in desperation, tried praying to Babaska, but my prayers sounded like nonsense – so many dead leaves, drifting into a void. There was only, sometimes, that gaze in my head, distant, unanswering. I was no longer sure it was Babaska at all.

At every ceremony, they came with their offerings, and I saw Adissi in every face – warm with life, laughing – or the young soldier who’d been killed in my first battle, who’d lain like a child with his head cupped in his hand. Every day my own guilt, my own complicity, ran in my blood like sickness.

Once I had experimented with my Avatar power, enjoying it, trying to find its limits; now, even when I used it for something halfway worthwhile, I felt it in me like a loathsome parasite and longed, more than anything, to be rid of it.

If any of the other girls had been left, they might have noticed; Jonat almost certainly would have. I was going out of my mind. Burning up with guilt, barely able to drag myself through my days. Missing Ranay as though I’d lost a limb, longing to try and contact him, not daring to.

I couldn’t bring myself to bed anyone else, but went on with Hap-Canae because I couldn’t think of an excuse not to; he didn’t seem to notice my lack of eagerness. Though maybe he was aware of something, since he took another lover, a fiery little priestess with tiny feet and beautiful eyes, and started to spend half his time with her. I felt a sort of numb relief.

One day I hid in Aka-Tete’s statue, where Jonat and I had had our last conversation. I was there for hours; staring up into the hollow god, trying to work out how to kill myself. But it’s hard to kill an Avatar.

Eventually, the thought came to me. I had been made an Avatar.

Surely, somehow, I could stop being one?

It wasn’t hope, exactly; it was more a lessening of darkness. A smudge of cold grey light that might, or might not, promise dawn.

I crawled back into the precinct, moving a little less heavily.

I couched my questions very carefully, and asked most of them in bed. I seduced priests, priestesses, even Avatars. Being what I was, I was good at it, though my Avatar abilities worked least well on other Avatars. For that I had to rely mostly on the lessons I’d been given, and on my own human self.

At least the sex itself gave me some pleasure. It is the nature of the goddess, and my own, and going against it would in the end have left me as twisted as Shakanti.

There was another advantage to putting myself about; it helped convince Hap-Canae that I had accepted my role and was happily fulfilling it.

I found out that the Avatars had already lived the span of a dozen normal lives since the gods had left this plane. I found out that Ranay – ah, even thinking of his name hurt my heart – had been telling the truth; the writings that dealt with the creation of the Avatars were all locked away, and only an Avatar could give permission to study them.

Of course, they never gave such permission. Someone might discover their true nature. But I discovered that the Avatars themselves sometimes poked about among the scrolls. I’d known Hap-Canae did, but not that the others did too.

I was long past thinking Hap-Canae was any kind of scholar, and no more were the rest of them. What were they looking for? I watched, and I listened, and I asked questions, and I stayed silent.

I heard the dreams of Avatars. Dreams of statues, solid gold and ruby-decked, so tall their shadow would span the desert. Dreams of Emperors of other worlds laying tribute at their feet. Dreams of armies millions strong, spreading fear of their names across the planes.