Farlander (49 page)

‘Indeed,’ she replied, and he could hear the smile in her voice. ‘I have a company of my finest commandos readying themselves even now for your arrival. You are to lead them to Cheem, and make use of this plant of theirs that I hear will guide you to their monastery.’

‘They are prepared to follow a guide through the mountains even while he is deranged?’

‘They know of the knowledge buried in your head. And they are prepared for anything. Once they find this monastery, they will kill all they find there and burn it to the ground, so that none shall survive.’

Ché exhaled a soft breath through his nostrils, seeking a state of emptiness.

Her eyes narrowed as she leaned closer ‘Does this mission trouble you, perhaps?’

‘I do not believe so.’

‘You do not, perhaps, feel some remnants of loyalty to your R
shun friends?’

Ah. Now it all begins to make sense.
‘Holy Matriarch, I am loyal only to Mann.’

She gazed into the depths of his eyes. He became aware then that he was scratching his arm – though he dared not stop for fear it might give something of himself away.

Sasheen rose above him again. ‘I see. And tell me – your mother and you, are you close?’

Abruptly, Ché ceased scratching. He bought himself a few moments of time by wiping the sheen of moisture from his face.

‘We are not particularly close, no. We were parted for eight years while I was in Cheem, studying to be R
shun.’

‘I am told that she is rather fond of you, despite that.’

‘Then you know more than I.’

‘Of course I do. I
am
the Holy Matriarch, after all.’ She smiled. ‘But I am also a mother,’ she added more sincerely. ‘You can be certain that she holds much affection for her only child.’

Sasheen glanced into the room, at her own son. When she turned back to Ché, her eyes were hard and devoid of humour.

‘I would take great care over that relationship, if I were you. Such bonds are precious in this world. Sometimes, our loyalties are all that can maintain them.’

Her thinly veiled threat prompted him to look away. Ché turned instead to the potted plants lining the terrace, whipping noisily against the window glass, and fixed his sight on them as though for steadiness.

Sasheen followed his gaze and reached out with a drifting hand. Roughly, as though it were a pet, she stroked the leaf on one of the bedraggled specimens.

‘Do we have an understanding, you and I?’

Ché dipped his head in acknowledgement, a sharp lump in his throat.

‘Very well, then, let us delay no longer. Return to your handler. He will already have a full brief for you.’

Ché watched her from between his eyelashes, as she turned her back on him and slid open the glass doors.

In mid-step, she paused and looked back at him with a languid stare.

‘And Diplomat . . .’

‘Yes, Matriarch.’

‘Never lie to me again.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

The last thing anyone was expecting to hear in the hurried press of disembarkation was a rifle shot. It silenced the passengers once the sound cracked over their heads, and drew them in a mass towards the port rail of the fast sloop
Mother Rosa
, as though the ship’s deck had suddenly pitched to one side during heavy weather.

People pushed and peered over shoulders for a better look at the sluggish waters of the harbour below. A figure was down there close to the hull, splashing with all the grim determination of a soul alerted to the imminent prospect of drowning.

‘There’s a man down there,’ observed Nico over the rail, and he glanced towards the dockside, where he noticed a puff of smoke still trickling from the end of a rifle held by a soldier in a white cuirass.

‘Yes,’ said Ash by his side, ‘I see that.’

Another soldier hurried to the side of the first marksman, as he broke his weapon in two to replace the spent cartridge. The newcomer carried a crossbow, and was still loading it as his comrade raised the rifle once more.

Nico saw the splash of water before he heard the second shot. It erupted right next to the swimmer’s head, though the target seemed not to notice it.

‘What’s he doing?’ inquired Nico, fascinated.

‘The man is a slave,’ explained Ash. ‘Here in Q’os, they have more slaves than free citizens – over a million of them, or so they say. It would seem that this one was hoping to escape the island as a stowaway on board one of the ships.’

‘Well, if that was his intention, he’s made a poor job of it.’

Ash studied his young apprentice for a moment. ‘Perhaps you should jump in, and show him how it is done correctly.’

Another shot. For a second, Nico looked for a splash that would show where to hit the water. He did not see one, though, and then the man caught his eye, a pool of bright crimson spilling from the side of his skull as he turned slowly in the water. The man settled with his face wholly submerged, unmoving.

‘They killed him,’ exclaimed Nico.

‘That was their intention.’

‘But . . .’

‘He took his chance,’ Ash told him softly. ‘He was unlucky. Come, let us leave the ship quickly before the other passengers grow bored of staring at his corpse.’ Ash tugged at his sleeve pulling him towards the gangway.

They descended on to the dockside with their packs heavy on their backs, Nico stumbling along in something of a daze.

It had been eight days since they had departed Cheem, and as the ship had approached the First Harbour of the great island city he had been stunned by the sheer scale of the skyline that spread out before him. Q’os was the largest city in the known world, more populous even than ancient Zanzahar on the far side of the Midères. Never before had Nico seen buildings so tall. They rose in great blocks towards the sky as dense as undergrowth in a forest, their armies of windows dark against the dim light of the day. Amongst them, clustering most thickly at the city’s heart, the skysteeples of the temples rose like needles piercing the underside of low-lying cloud. To the eye they did not seem physically possible, not even after Ash’s accounts of steel skeletons and some strange form of liquid stone. Nor could he quite take in the figures that swooped between their peaks – people slung from artificial wings, Ash had told him with a straight face. But then, nothing had seemed possible about that alien landscape as it slowly approached the bobbing prow of their ship.

Now, a man dead in the water, a paddling dog dragging his corpse in with its teeth, and hundreds of yammering people mixing together in the chaos of a dockside that was only one of many on the island of Q’os, Nico wondered exactly what, in the name of the Great Fool, he was doing here.

He felt like an ant amid the hurried press of so many. Buildings reared high behind the rows of warehouses facing the eastern harbour front. In the distance, stacks of chimneys belched black smoke into the air. With Ash’s guiding hand on his shoulder Nico pushed ahead, no idea where he was going. They headed past a group of soldiers lounging on some covered crates, then approached a vast open-sided building, and found themselves stepping into a great space with a high sloping roof of sooty glass and metal girders. The noise there was tremendous, too loud almost for them to talk. Nico stared mutely as he was halted at a high desk now barring their way.

‘Next!’ shouted a bored official from behind it, and flapped a tired arm which he supported on the padded elbow of his white robe. In his other hand he gripped a cloth rag, and as Ash stepped up to the desk, he proceeded to blow his reddened nose into it.

The desk was so high that the official was looking down at them. ‘Any goods to declare?’ inquired the priest in a nasal tone.

‘No, I am a blade instructor,’ explained Ash, adopting a smooth patter, while tugging the heavy tunic beneath his cloak to smooth out its travel creases. ‘I am here to work at the Academy of Ul Sun Juan, and this is my apprentice.’

Nico forced a smile of verification.

‘You carry weapons with you?’

Ash held up the canvas roll he was carrying.

‘Fine, fine,’ the official decided at last. He looked as though the only thing on his mind currently was his bed and a bowl of hot soup. ‘A surcharge of one marvel is to be paid by anyone carrying weapons on to the island. Two more – that’s one each – for entrance into the city for the pair of you. Plus one for administration. That makes it a total of four.’ The man held out his palm.

Ash dropped the coins into it, and the priest made a show of biting each coin between his teeth to test it. He placed one into his pocket, dropped the others through a slot in the desk, then scratched something on a piece of paper and half-tossed it to Ash.

‘Welcome to Q’os,’ he said as he pulled a lever and a grille clanked open beneath the level of the desk to allow them through. ‘
Next!
’

*

It was cold in Q’os, with the sun hidden behind a heavy layer of cloud. Ash and Nico stayed close to the docks, losing themselves in the crowds as they pushed on through one cobbled street after another. The buildings towering on either side were constructed of brick rather than cut stone. Cranes could be seen wherever he looked, new constructions being built on demolished sites or superimposed upon older structures still standing. Everywhere along the streets flew flags of the red hand of Mann, while above them streamers trailed high in the wind, as though the area was preparing itself for a festa of some kind. A canvas painting of Matriarch Sasheen hung across the entire side of one building, while banners stretched from block to block with the word
Rejoice
emblazoned across them.

Nico had always thought Bar-Khos a busy city, but it was nothing compared to this metropolis. The streets were so packed that people barely had room enough to move in them. Every conceivable fashion was on display: flowing silks from farland, furs from the north, suits made from the black and white striped skins of zels, rainslicks of oiled canvas, feather cloaks with massive bobbing hoods, ubiquitous robes of red. Most prominent of all, though, was the tan garb of collared slaves, walking alone or in work-gangs, often burdened with bundles and parcels. At the sides of the roads, children rolled steaming lumps of zel manure into buckets. Priests shouted from the high balconies of temple towers, through bullhorns to amplify their hoarse cries. In a cage hanging from a post in the middle of a crossroads, a naked criminal sat with his legs dangling, slinging his own excrement at anyone unlucky enough to venture too close.

It was the wet season in Q’os and, as though to remind them of that fact, a heavy rain began to fall. At least the downpour helped to clear their way as people hurried to find shelter.

‘It feels like we’re walking in circles,’ complained Nico, wiping his face in vain.

‘We are. If we are being followed by anyone we should lose them, given time.’

‘Followed?’

‘Yes. Q’os is a city rife with paranoia. The priesthood here has its own secret police force – Regulators they call them. Anyone suspected of disloyalty or heresy is arrested, imprisoned. People are paid to inform on their neighbours. With the threat of vendetta hanging over Kirkus, which they now know to be real after our first attempt on his life, the Regulators will be doubly vigilant. They may be keeping tabs on everyone new entering the city.’

‘We are in danger, even now?’