Babylon Steel (37 page)

T
HE HOTTEST TIME
of the year. Summer fever raging in the town, the stink of sickness on the air. No ceremonies now to distract me – or to keep me out of Hap-Canae’s way. He had tired of his little priestess and was seeking me out again.

The thought of bedding him made my gorge rise. I couldn’t claim illness; Avatars didn’t get sick. I kept myself occupied, said it would do the soldiers stationed at the nearby fort good to see their Avatar. I brought Ranay as part of my retinue, I was scared to leave him where the other Avatars might notice him. He was reluctant to leave his studies; he couldn’t bring the most important scrolls with him, in case someone noticed they were missing. But he studied as best he could, seeking through obscure and ancient texts for more references to the jewel of godhead, while I spent time with the soldiers.

They seemed happy to be visited, if underfed and anxious, like everyone else. Some already had the fever; I sat and held one boy’s hot dry hand, and he looked at me with over-bright wondering eyes. I listened to the sounds of soldiers all around me, telling stories as they mended their kit and grumbled about the food. They offered me the best of it, and I got angry and told them to give it to the sick. Then, when no-one could see, I cried, dry painful sobs without tears.

They left little offerings outside the sickroom: thin beer, terrible wine, a fine sharp dagger. All they had, and more than they could afford.

The boy recovered, got up, still looking top-heavy, his head too big for the rest of him, staggered weak-legged out to his mates who slapped him (carefully) on the back and looked at me as though I deserved their love.

How could I leave them?

I might have thrown a three, but I had to stay in the game until the end.

We went home. Or at least, back to the Temple of All the Gods.

H
AP-
C
ANAE MET ME
on my return, smiling, and reaching out to cup my chin. “You are taking your duties very seriously.” The touch of his fingers on my skin was horrible to me. I knew he was thinking of bed, and I wondered how good a whore I really was, to bed someone I hated, and not let it show.

I tried to smile back. “They seemed to like it.”

“I hear you sat at the bed of a sick boy. Do you really think that is appropriate for the Avatar of a goddess of war?”

“Babaska did it,” I said.

“Did she? Hmm.”

“Yes. I read it. I should do what she did, shouldn’t I?”

“I suppose so.” But his mouth turned down, and he said, “If I were you, I should bathe. An Avatar shouldn’t smell of sickness.”

Grateful when I was supposed to be hurt, I sneaked out to find Ranay.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I
WENT HOME,
and found Previous, and told her about Frithlit.

She didn’t cry, this time. She just sat there, her freckles standing out like bloodspatters on her white face. I told Laney to make her a potion, and to be careful what she put in it. I didn’t tell her Previous was pregnant, but she’d guessed, anyway.

You can’t keep a secret from my crew; or at least, not that sort of secret.

They were, for the moment, distracted from worrying about me by worrying about Previous instead.

They’d gone. The Avatars had been, and gone. They’d left without tracing me, without showing the slightest desire to look for me.

Perhaps I could forget it. Forget they’d ever turned up, and go back to my life.

Only I couldn’t. I spent another mostly sleepless night, and at dawn I got up, and went out, and went to the Lodestone.

TIRESANA

I
REMEMBER THE
room, empty but for dozens of driftweed seedpods floating on the air and piling in corners like milky ghosts. The first tang of autumn in the air. Me with my stolen light, and Ranay, glowing with nothing but youth and health.

“I had an answer to your message,” he said.

I had almost forgotten. “What did it say?”

“That she’ll play. And, Ebi, I think I have found the jewel.”

“What?”

He held up the scroll he was carrying, and laughed. “You’ll never guess!”

I took his other hand. “Oh, Ranay.” I felt the first uprush of hope rise in me, green as spring rushes.

We smiled at each other, and over his shoulder I saw the door open.

Hap-Canae walked into the room.

“Oh, you silly child,” he said. “You’ve spoiled everything.”

The scent of myrrh and cardamom was in my nostrils as he put his hand on Ranay’s shoulder, and then there was the scent of burning meat. Ranay didn’t even have time to cry out; his eyes looked puzzled, the pupils widening with shock, as they reflected the flames of his own robes. The scroll in his hand flamed briefly, and was ash. Then his face blackened. The flames were scorching my hands. I let go, and my darling love fell in smoking pieces at my feet.

The Touch of the Sun.

Hap-Canae staggered a little; weak, from using the power. I could have got past him then, but I was staring at what was left of Ranay. By the time I’d gathered my senses and reached for my sword, one of the Messehwhy
stalked into the room, with that heavy-bellied, swaying walk, and sniffed at the remains. I ran for the door, past the thing, and straight into Rohikanta, whose hair and beard drenched me with warm, musty-smelling water. Horrified, nauseated, I tried to fight, but Aka-Tete was with him; the skulls at his waist grinned up at me, and his touch on my arm made my eyes go dark, and the sword fall from my hand
.

If I’d had longer to grow into my powers, to learn how to use them, I might have escaped, I suppose. But though you can wound them, it’s hard to kill an Avatar.

They must have planned what happened next as soon as they realised I wasn’t playing their game – or maybe they’d planned it long ago. This was the second time, at least, that they’d tried to depose Babaska’s Avatar; there may have been more. Had the others, too, dared to care for those who worshipped them? Had they threatened the careful palace of glitter and falsehood that the Avatars had built around themselves?

In any case, I was to be the last. The gods were gone, and who was left to care what was done in their name?

We had been more successful than we knew, Ranay and I. The rumours of the Avatar of Babaska’s humanity were spreading like fire in the dried-out fields.

So they decided to unmake Babaska; not to take her out of the pantheon – that would only arouse further suspicion – but to make her a shadow, a demon. Her positive aspects would be assigned to other gods; she would represent only darkness, blind lust, blood lust. This is what happens, the message would say. This is what happens when you dare suspect a goddess of humanity.

Her name was stricken from the steles, gouged from the monuments, her statues destroyed, her priests and priestesses murdered or driven from their temples. Shakanti took great pleasure in telling me every detail; thinking, I suppose, that I might still care.

And while I could, I felt sorry for the dead, and for those who’d worshipped Babaska, but after a while, I couldn’t think about them at all. Because the Avatars decided to show Babaska was either powerless, or cruel, or both; that she would not even protect her own Avatar.

They took over the temple that had been Babaska’s. I watched as her statue was smashed. Her head, the hair bound up for fighting, the scar on her cheek like a crack in the stone, rolled past me, ended up on its back, blind eyes staring at the sky. They raised a pillar of stone, and chained me to it with adamant. They made sure the priests witnessed it, so that the story, or at least the version of it that they wanted, would become legend. A tale to terrify children.

If they couldn’t
be
gods, they’d be
feared
as gods, by any means they could.

I
T’S HARD TO
kill an Avatar. You can have the flesh gnawed from your bones by wild dogs, and live. You can see someone with your innards in their fist, and live. You can feel beetles scurry in the hollows of your skull, and live. I... lived. I don’t know how long for; it could have been days or a century. It was... I was... nothing but pain, and horror. I became familiar with many different textures and colours of pain: purple-black drumbeats, jagged reds, screaming yellows.

I learned the precise prickling vileness of beetles’ feet on the inside of my skin. The feeling of a broken bone grinding in the torn flesh, like blinding white fire. A tooth ripped out by the root, a kind of wailing in the skull. The body reduced to meat, wrenched from the bone by dog’s teeth, the way the tendons pull and stretch before they tear, the feel of hot breath on raw flesh.

And I healed, of course, because I was an Avatar.

Then it would begin again.

Each time I healed a little more slowly, and a little less completely. Each time I prayed that this was it, that I was finally dying. I longed for death as I had never longed for anything. I screamed death’s name, muttered it when I could no longer scream. I saw, or hallucinated, Aka-Tete, the skulls he wore clicking and whispering
Babaska, Babaska
; I promised him whatever he desired if only, afterwards, he would kill me, but he always turned away.

Still I felt death edging closer, little by little, slow as oil, slower than blood, across the tiled floor.

Sometimes I thought I felt that wordless, assessing gaze inside my head, that might or might not be the goddess. I cried out to it for help, and before long I cursed it, and then I was no longer sure which I was doing or even if it was really there.

Hap-Canae didn’t take part in the torture. He didn’t stop it, of course; he just... avoided the unpleasantness. I dreamed, sometimes, that he stood in the door and watched, with no expression except faint regret.

I dreamed of Ranay, too. I dreamed that we were on a barge, sailing away. “They told me you were dead,” I said, and he told me it had all been a trick to deceive the Avatars, and smiled so sweetly. But before I could take him in my arms I always woke, and grief rolled over me like a night without dawn. And eventually the pain was greater than sorrow, greater than any memory of love or pleasure or sweetness, and eventually, when I remembered him, I only envied the quickness of his death.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Day 6

1 day to Twomoon

I
T WAS TOO
early for sensible people to be about. The Lodestone was full of quiet bustle and the clean smells of fresh produce.

Clariel was in the little yard at the back, frowning over a crate of round, pinkish vegetables the size of hen’s eggs, packed in straw. I didn’t know why she was frowning – they looked pretty good to me.

“Babylon,” she said, without looking up. “I am very busy. This is not the time.”

“Sorry, it’s important.”

She sighed, and shivered her wings. “What is it, Babylon? I can only give you a minute, no more.”

“Did those visiting demigods dine here? Hap-Canae, or Shakanti?” It was hard to say those names aloud. They had an ugly flavour even now; blood, drying on hot tiles. Incense, and the ripe stench of open guts.

I was watching Clariel very carefully, or I wouldn’t have noticed the slightly increased rigidity of her features. Distaste, or something like it, and I didn’t think it was directed at me.

“Surely you do not think
they
have anything to do with your missing girl?”

Of course, she didn’t know Enthemmerlee had been found. I was doing more lying and fudging than I found comfortable, at the moment, but... “Maybe,” I said.

“The information I gave you before was not sufficiently helpful?”

“Sorry.”

Clariel’s the only person I know who can sigh with an edge. “Come, then.”

The little room at the side of the yard was a cold store. I didn’t know you could stack potatoes that neatly; it was almost frightening. It made me think of the room at the temple of the Vessels, for some reason – probably because the smell of harsh soap almost overwhelmed the fresh earthy smell of the vegetables.

“Well?” I said.

“Yes, they dined here.”

“And?”

“I am not unhappy that they have left Scalentine.” Her wings ruffled.

“So,” I said. “Bad customers?”

“I am used to clients who expect the best. But they were... exceptionally demanding.” Her eyes burned, but she set her mouth firmly. Though she was obviously longing to vent her fury, the habit of not gossiping about her clients was too deeply ingrained.

I turned away and picked up one of the small crisp carrots, lined up like soldiers on the countertop. “Clariel, I’m not asking for gossip. I just want to know if they said why they were here.”

“If I tell you...” she tapped the edge of an immaculate shelf with her forefinger. “Flower comes to work for me.”

I felt a jab, as though something inside me was splitting apart. I tried to ignore it. “I can’t promise that,” I said. “I don’t own him. You can certainly ask, make any offer you want.” What else could I say?

“This goes no further, Babylon.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“They were looking for something.”

The carrot broke in my fingers. “Did they say what, and what for?”

“Please do not make free with the supplies.” She bent down and picked up the fallen half of carrot. “I calculate the numbers very carefully.

“It was some
thing
,” she said, looking at me far too shrewdly. “Not some
one
. There was one who smelled rather too much of some unsubtle scent. He asked if I was interested in old things, old ornaments. I asked what he meant, and he said they were looking for the things of old times, things of the dead. Possibly he meant antiques. I advised them to try Glimmering Lane.”