Dangerous Gifts (2 page)

“Are we talking civil war here?”

“War, I don’t know. Big mess and lots of people dead, maybe.”

“Sounds pretty much like war to me,” I said. “Enthemmerlee wants to prevent that, doesn’t she?”

“Wants, yes. But you going to have your work cut, Babylon, to keep her safe. Plenty of Gudain want her dead, for what she is. Ikinchli too. The ones who hate Gudain and think she is a trick they are playing, but also, some of the ones that believe she is real. Because, there is a big difference between you believe in something, and it turns up, you know? Sometimes a thing looks better when it is still a long way away.”

Yes. The Avatars on my home plane had looked a lot better (or at least, more impressive) before I’d become one of them.

Kittack stared into his glass.

“Kittack?”

“I got family, back home. Tried to make them come here, but they won’t.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I said to them, Scalentine is a bit crazy, but at least you got a chance here. But, ‘Oh, no, can’t leave, got to look after the ancestors, got to keep the family farm,’ why? This farm? It is some mud, some rocks, lucky if you get half a crop. If you do, the
guak
come and say, ‘Oh, look, you got some food, now you owe us big taxes, thank you so much.’”

“
Guak
? I thought that meant shit?”

“Also is a word for the Fenac. They are like the Militia here, only mostly not so decent. What can I do? I send the family some money.” He swallowed the rest of his drink, and blew out air through his nostrils.

“If I go,” I said, “you want me to try and get in touch with your people while I’m there?”

He turned his cup around in his hands, the webbing between his fingers flexing. “They are old,” he said. “Change, new things, these frighten them. Gudain, too. And you, maybe.” Okay, maybe I look a little like a Gudain. Unlike Ikinchli I don’t have scales, a tail or a long blue tongue. But I’m more of a bronze colour; Gudain skin is green-tinged.

“So the Ikinchli won’t trust me because I look like a Gudain and the Gudain won’t trust me because I’m
not
. Great.Well, thanks.” I got up.

“Babylon.”

“What is it?”

“I got to ask
you
a favour now.” He was looking at his glass again, not that there was anything in it.

“What would that be, Kittack?”

“You got your foot into politics, with this. Politics and religion both. Me, I got a bar to run, you know? Best, maybe, you don’t come in here for a while.”

“Ah. Right. So you don’t want to hire me after all.”

He tried to smile. “Can’t pay what you’re worth anyway. I’m sorry, okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

T
HAT LITTLE ENCOUNTER
had put me in a grim mood. I needed to get my head freshened, as I had a couple of clients that afternoon, and a party to prepare for. I headed home through the smart part of town; by the good hotels and the Exchange hall. There’s a little park there where, in summer, people walk about and lie on the grass, and listen to musicians or strolling players, or get themselves a little loving. Too cold for much of that, now; one draggled lutist stamping and blowing on his fingers, and a meaty chunk of a man standing on an upturned crate. He had two chins and thick black hair, and had a little symbol sewn onto his coat: it looked like a square with a triangle on top. Standing with their hands clasped behind them, either side, were a skinny big-eyed boy no older than sixteen, who, in contrast to the speaker, lacked any chin at all, giving him a chickenish look, and an older, more solid lad who seemed faintly familiar.

They’d already drawn a bit of a crowd: the lute-player, obviously hopeful that he’d get a bit of attention when the speaker was done; a handful of delivery-boys taking time off their bosses wouldn’t approve; a couple of the freelance whores, underdressed for the weather. A mostly human crowd, for a wonder. The good people of Scalentine, eager for a moment’s amusement.

“Fellow citizens! Look around you!” The chunky man invited, gesturing in case they hadn’t understood his instructions. “What do you see?” he said. “The best hotels, the best eating-houses, shops full of finery and gold. But for ordinary citizens, the price of grain is rising by the day. The bread is being torn from the mouths of children. Can
you
afford these places? No.” I wondered if he meant the tall, human exquisite about two feet in front of him, who was wearing a year’s worth of a dockworker’s earnings, and a hairstyle so fantastically elaborate it looked as though it were designed by a clockmaker. “And why are these things beyond your reach? Because other forces are pushing you aside. Forces that do not belong here, and the people who encourage them, and befriend them, and ride side-by-side with them over the rights of those who built this city.” I wondered whose rights were being violated, exactly. As far as I was aware, no one knew who had built Scalentine. I should have left; this was doing nothing for my mood. But the speaker had an oddly hypnotic quality.

“Friends, I – Angrifon Filchis, a son of the city through ten generations – am here to tell you that our time is coming.” He leaned forward, encompassing the crowd with his pale brown, slightly bulbous eyes. “Rightful citizens are weary. They see other people getting the biggest slice of a loaf their forefathers ground the grain for. We know what is due to us. We are the Builders.”

“Who’s
us
?” Someone said.

“Why,
humans
, friend. People like you and me.”

Oh, great, one of
those.
I thought they’d gone back under their rock, but maybe it was getting crowded under there.

“Why is the price of grain so high? Why is it so hard for decent people to find work? Because there are too many people who have come here to leech off what our fathers built. People who only help their own, always giving each other a hand up, selling to each other at a discount, creating their own cabals and secret gatherings within
our
city. And our rulers, what are they doing? They’re ignoring the problem. They’re saying it
isn’t
a problem. Now why is that, friends? Why do you suppose that’s happening?

“I’ll tell you why. Because in the
very midst
of our rulers these people have friends and supporters. Some of them even have high positions of their own; and you can’t always tell, can you? Because not all of them are obvious, oh, no. You can spot Dra-ay or Monishish or Barraklé. But can you spot weres? Not unless it’s a full moon, you can’t. And I say it’s time we fought back. It’s time we rooted out these weeds” – he made a yanking gesture with one pudgy hand – “before they can grow and spread. Root them out, I say, before they strangle all our futures! Root them out and let the good crops grow!”

“Root them out!” the chicken-necked boy yelled, with squawky enthusiasm, jerking his fist. “Root them out!”

“Root them out!” someone in the crowd yelled. “Root them out!”

Failing to be picked up by the crowd, this rousing cry whimpered out. “What do you mean, exactly?” someone else said. “Are you saying, you know, that people should, like, attack people? Because the Millies’d have something to say about that.”

“No, of course I’m not saying any such thing!” Filchis said. “Why, that would be incitement, and I wouldn’t dream of it. All I’m saying is that maybe those who don’t belong here should be encouraged to leave. Although I will say to you: ask yourselves what happens when someone breaks the law. Someone who, perhaps, is supported by those very forces I speak of. Is justice done?”

He leaned forward. “Let me tell you about something that happened recently. A friend of mine was walking home, minding his own business, and he was
set upon,
because he was in some part of the city the Dra-ay consider theirs!
In our own city!
He was beaten bloody! And when he went to the Militia, what did they do? Why, they gave
him
a warning.And you know why?Because the Militia itself, the Militia that’s supposed to protect our interests, has been infiltrated. So ask yourselves how you feel about a law that is biased against you.”

“This friend of yours,” I said, “where was he?”

“A district that is being overwhelmed by the Dra-ay,” Filchis said. “The point is, it was in
Scalentine.
Our own city!”

“Only I’ve been in a Dra-ay district, and I didn’t get beaten up.”

He looked me over, then smiled with a sort of greasy gallantry. “But you, madam, carry a sword, and look as though you could use it. Perhaps they felt it was easier to set on a man walking alone and unarmed.”

“Your friend was walking around unarmed?” someone else said. “Daft, is he?”

There were a few snickers, and Filchis shot the speaker a flat, ugly look. “And shouldn’t the Militia be doing something about that?” he said. “What sort of city is it where everyone needs to carry weapons? Besides, what right have the Dra-ay to tell us where we can’t go in our own city?”

“Well, I can’t walk into your house any time I please,” I said. “That’s called the law, I believe.”

Another voice rose, if that was the word for a bass rumble like someone rattling gravel in a drum. “You know what I heard? I heard some human tried to get into one of the sacred spaces, where they keeps their gods. ’Cos that, that really annoys ’em. They tend to be real specific about it, too. They have signs up in like eighteen languages telling people to piss off out of it, and if you can’t read, they’ll tell you, in yer own language. Smart bastards, the Dra-ay. So either this friend of yours is a bit soft in the head, or he was looking to cause trouble. That’s what it sounds like to me.”

Filchis was peering over the crowd. “Would you trust the propaganda and rumour-mongering of Dra-ay over the words of an honest human?”

The crowd was shifting back and I finally got a glimpse of the speaker. “Depends,” she said. “Show me an honest human, first.”

She was short – as in, she came up to just above my waist. Her skin was a deep green-brown, the colour of river water under trees, and she had small sharp tusks, a shortsword tucked into a battered leather scabbard, and the easy, flexed stance of a professional fighter.

“Well,” Filchis said. “I see. So you’ve been listening in. Perhaps you’ve been sent to infiltrate our ranks, hmm? To act as a spy?”

“A spy?” She grinned a grin that looked as though it might have been a few people’s last sight. “And me so carefully disguised, eh?”

There was more laughter.

“But if you were,” Filchis said, “and you went before the authorities and accused the humans here of attacking you, of causing trouble, who would be believed?”

“If I accused
you
of attacking
me
?” She looked him up and down, and snorted. “They’d ask me how much cloud I’d smoked.”

“Shut up, greenie,” the older of Filchis’ two companions said.

I had definitely seen him before. And there was something familiar about his idiocy, too; although, let’s face it, it’s not exactly rare.

“Greenie?
Greenie?
That’s the best insult you can come up with? Bloody hells, mate, my son can do better’n that and he’s only just got his first sword. My name’s Gornack, if you want it. What’s yours?”

“Brendrin Klate. A proper
human
name.”

I caught Gornack’s eye as she briefly sought, and gave up on finding, any sort of response to that. Considering some of the human names I’ve encountered, which you had to practically knot your own vocal chords to pronounce, it made about as much sense as anything else.

“Of course, at least with her sort you can
tell,
” someone in the crowd said, a female voice, soft and cultured. “Not like those weres, now. They hide. They
sneak.
”

“My sort? Now you want to explain exactly what you mean by ‘my sort’?” Gornack said. “’Cos I’d like to know. Really.”

Filchis said, “We honest citizens have nothing against people who go about their business
openly
. But what about those who pretend to be other than they are, who turn into uncontrollable animals every full moon? Even
their
laws insist they be restrained. That tells you something, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, so I’m all right because you can
tell
I’m a savage? That’s real forgiving of you,” Gornack said.

“
You
said savage,” Klate said. “No one
else
said savage.”

“Now,” Filchis said, “we don’t want any trouble. It doesn’t take much for others to accuse us of
starting
things, of being the source of disturbance, so let’s keep it calm, shall we?” His voice was smoothly, eminently reasonable, his gaze moving over the crowd, pausing briefly, moving on.

Then something hit him high on one well-padded cheek. The sudden jag of red on his pallid skin was startling in the grey winter light. He yelped and clapped his hand to his face.

“Bastards! They’re throwing rocks!” The older bully-boy started forward, and I saw the glint of a dagger. I dropped my shoulder ready to shove into the crowd, to get between him and whoever he was aiming for.

A child screamed, ear-drillingly high.

Crap. People were pushing forward to see, pushing back trying to get out of the way. A figure in a blue cloak ducked out of the crowd and skittered away, a flicker of pale green about her feet; someone deciding they liked their politics less physical. Gornack roared, “Get those cubs out of here!” She grabbed the children and pushed them towards their mother, who was standing, her hands up, looking wide-eyed and helpless.

“She’s attacking the children!” Klate was aiming his blade for Gornack; I got in front of him and kicked him in the crotch. He gaped and buckled, bringing his head conveniently close to be grabbed and firmly introduced to my knee. He dropped. I glanced up at Filchis, who was wiping his face, and watching with remarkable calm. Then there was the drum of boots, and a battlefield yell: “Militia! Break it up, break it up
now!
”

About time. No one else seemed in immediate danger of death, so I decided to make my exit before I got arrested. I didn’t have time, and it always irritated the Chief something rotten. Making up with him was fun, but I generally preferred not to have anything to make up for.