Farlander (56 page)

Nico stared up, feeling exposed beneath this swinging vane that looked as though it might topple at any moment, though probably it had hung loose like that for months before now, years even. Through the front door, the heavy knocking of the clapper still echoed within as Ash lowered his hand and stepped back to wait.

Behind them, the fringes of what was once an expansive block of buildings lay in collapsed ruins, destroyed by fire long ago. A great midden heap rose from the ruins to block out much of the sky. Rats worked across its flanks without shyness, scampering through scraps of rubbish that flapped like hands waving for help. The stench of rot was overwhelming. It was so prevalent that even the odd gust of wind could not shift it, but instead stirred it around in sudden, unexpected concoctions that made the throat gag and the eyes water.

Nico tried not to breathe as he turned back to face the heavily scratched wooden door of the house they were visiting. By his side, Ash hummed something under his breath. It didn’t sound like music to Nico’s ears; more a series of words spoken without actually opening the mouth.

‘The art of melody was never discovered by your people then?’

The humming stopped, as Ash stared at him. The old farlander was about to speak when they heard from within a chair crashing over, or something equally as heavy. Someone swore. A chain rattled, then a bolt was withdrawn, and another. The door scraped against the floor as it was tugged inwards.

‘Yes?’ The woman was short, stooping almost to the waist. She clutched a lantern in one hand, a stick in the other to support her weight, as she craned her neck to squint upwards at the two strangers standing before her. Nico blinked down at her filthy face; her hair so scraggy it resembled fur; a moustache better developed than any he might have grown for himself.

‘We are here to see Gamorrel,’ said Ash. ‘Tell him it is the far-lander.’

‘What?’ she said.

Ash sighed. He leaned closer to her ear.

‘Your husband,’ he said more loudly. ‘Tell him an old farlander wishes to see him.’

‘I’m not deaf,’ she said. ‘Come in. Come in.’

Inside, the house was much the same as on the outside. They followed the old woman as she shuffled slowly along the hallway, Nico and Ash stepping side by side as though in a processional march into the heart of some hidden temple – though a temple whose walls were built from brick coated with flaking plaster, and adorned with pictures hanging in frames too dim to see in the stuttering light of the lantern – held by the woman at the height of their waists – and a wooden floor illuminated before them, deeply coated in white dust and with grit that scratched the soles of their boots. Around them the air was filled with unholy stench, like cabbage boiled solidly for a day and a night. A rat scurried past their feet; others wormed along the edges of the hallway.

They ascended stairs that creaked beneath their weight in a manner suggestive of imminent collapse. They could only take one stair at a time, waiting for the woman to move on before taking another. Nico and Ash glanced at one another, saying nothing. Then another door: a sigil painted in red paint, or blood, depicting a seven-pointed star.

They entered a parlour: a room lit by a few smoky lanterns sitting on a table already covered with figurines, charms, stone mortars and pestles, knives, pins, other items unknowable. Sheets of cloth sagged across the ceiling, like the roof of a tent. Beneath them, on a chair positioned near the curtained window, sat an old man in a waistcoat with his hands resting upon his stomach, his eyes closed, snoring loudly. His lap was filled with a mound of rats, who lay there with tails entwined and watched the newcomers enter.

The man stirred at the sound of the door closing behind Nico and Ash. A lock of lank, black hair fell across his face and he scratched himself, then continued to snore.

‘Gamorrel,’ Ash said loudly, as he nudged the old fellow’s foot, scattering the rats from his lap in the process.

The man did not jerk awake but instead opened the lids of a single eye just wide enough to peer out through them, as though to spy the lie of the land before emerging any further from the safety of sleep. At the sight of Ash his face twitched. He roused himself.

‘I might have known,’ emerged his time roughened voice. ‘Only a R
shun would dare awaken a sleeping sharti.’

‘Up. We have business to discuss.’

‘Oh? What kind of business?’

A leather coin-purse dropped into his lap, the weight of it enough to jerk him upright. A grin stretched across his whiskered face, revealing teeth as brown as ale.

‘Interesting,’ he crooned, and rose smoothly without effort. ‘Please, step into my chamber.’ And he led just Ash into another room, and closed the door firmly behind them.

‘Have a seat,’ said the old woman, guiding Nico to one of the chairs by the window. ‘Chee, yes? Some chee?’

Nico smiled and shook his head. He thought of the rats scurrying over everything, the grime and filth of the whole place, the dirt embedded in the old woman’s yellowed fingernails.

‘Yes?’ she insisted and, before he could say no, she had shuffled off into another room, the suddenly open door releasing a cloud of steam that carried in it the humid whiff of cabbage. He heard her shoo something out of the way, and then the clinking of cups.

A mechanical clock was ticking somewhere in the parlour, though he could not see it amid all the mess and clutter crowded about the walls. The chair was uncomfortable, as though he was sitting on gravel, so he rose, and brushed a scattering of rat droppings to the floor. He sat down again gingerly. He was about to place his hands on the armrests, but changed his mind and settled them in his lap instead.

The old woman emerged precariously bearing a tray with a pot of steaming chee and two cups of white porcelain. ‘Let me help with that,’ Nico said, as he rose and took the tray from her, carrying it back to set on a small side table. She smiled and settled herself with care in the chair opposite him, remaining stooped even as she sat, her hand still resting on her stick. She watched him clearly as he poured the chee.

‘Thank you,’ Nico said, with a tight smile, and sat back with his own cup – though he did not drink from it. The old woman nodded, still studying him deeply. He wondered what it was that she saw.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Do you dream much?’

He thought for a moment. ‘A little too much, of late,’ he confessed.

‘Some dream more than others, you know. Some see more than others, too. I can tell that you are one of those. You are fortunate. My husband, he is the same.’

Nico stared down into the cup in his hands. The chee looked pleasant enough, and the porcelain was clean. He glanced up and smiled and then looked elsewhere, and saw the clock at last standing on a pedestal against the far wall, next to a coat-stand, where a single flap-coat hung alongside a black top hat. He felt uncomfortable under her gaze, and the smell of the steam still pouring through the open doorway was starting to make him feel ill.

Nico forced himself to look at the old woman. She was the colour of burnt stove grease. He met her soapy eyes and saw something vulnerable within them, a sensitivity scarred by old wounds. He saw boredom too, in the guise of her present attentiveness.

She nodded as though he had just returned to her. ‘That is why he is a sharti you know. My husband, he is very powerful in the old ways. Many people still come to him – the poor, the desperate. Many call on his services.’

‘You are not Mannians, then?’

‘Eh? Mannians? No boy. The Mannians would seize us for slaves, or worse, if they knew what we were. We practise the old ways here, the first ways. Heretics they call us. We and the poor are who they despise most of all.’

She paused to lift her cup from the table and drew it to her puckered lips. She slurped noisily, twice, then returned the cup to the table.

‘You do not know what I speak of . . . the old ways?’

Nico considered the question. He thought of his mother making the sign of protection each time she saw a single pica bird, a habit she had infected even him with. He thought too of how she always left a burning candle on an open windowsill every night of the winter solstice.

‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged. ‘These old ways, they are still practised elsewhere?’

‘Oh, they are practised
everywhere
, but only in the shadows. In traditions long hidden from meaning. By those old enough to remember our lives before Mann, mm? Only in the High Pash will you find the old ways lived by all and still with meaning. And further a-reach than that even – in the Isles of Sky, even there. That is how they live forever, you know. When they die, they use the old knowledge to return them to life. Yes, these are the things the Mannians would have us forget.’

Nico listened to her words with a glaze of apparent interest fixed to his face. He fought the urge to scratch at his ankles, where he could feel the fleas leaping and biting. He glanced at the closed door and wondered how long Master Ash was going to be. What were they doing in there, for mercy’s sake?

The woman inhaled and wobbled the top of the stick from side to side in her withered hand. ‘You are a kind boy,’ she said. ‘You listen to an old woman when you would rather be anywhere but here. Now then, I believe they are finished with their business.’

Nico set the chee down the instant he heard the door being tugged open. He was on his feet even as Ash emerged, with the other man following behind.

‘ . . . closer to the time then,’ Ash was saying.

The farlander glanced at the cup of chee sitting on the table and stopped to pick it up. He took a large gulp, then smiled at the old woman as he set down the empty cup. He jerked his head for Nico to follow as he strode to the stairs.

‘Thank you for the chee,’ Nico said quickly, and followed after him.

*

They caught a tram back to the district of the east docks, sitting in one of the seats at the back. For a time, Ash sat looking behind him through the rear window.

‘You think we are being followed?’

Ash faced forwards once more. ‘Hard to say,’ he muttered. He did not seem very concerned.

The tram was clattering past a great square fronted on three sides by buildings of white marble, filled in its entirety with milling figures in red robes, thousands upon thousands of them.

‘Pilgrims,’ said Ash before his apprentice could ask.

‘I had another question in mind,’ Nico said, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the crowds. ‘Back at that house, did you get what you went there for?’

‘I hope so.’

‘And you’re not going to tell me any more than that?’

‘Not yet, no.’

Nico exhaled in exasperation. ‘This is a great way to teach your apprentice. Tell him as little as possible, even when he asks.’

‘In the field, it is always best if you work things out for yourself.’

Nico snorted. ‘A convenient theory, in that it saves you having to answer any questions.’

‘There is that, too.’

A bump in the road shook the windows of the tram. Ash twisted to look behind again. Once he straightened, he sat stroking a thumb against a forefinger in contemplation.

A few moments later he stood up, grasping for the luggage rack overhead for balance. ‘Go back and wait for me in our room. Stay inside until I return.’

Without waiting for a response, he moved to the open exit and hopped down into the street, walking off quickly even as the tram passed him by, oblivious to Nico’s face pressed against the glass of the window.

Some time later the tram entered the district of the east docks, and Nico began to recognize where he was at last. He gazed out the window at the passing streets, their vague familiarity an equally vague comfort to him. On the pavement a girl strode past. He caught sight of her dark hair.

Nico jumped up, made his way to the exit, and stepped out.

‘Serèse!’ he shouted, but the girl was too far away to hear him.

He lost sight of her on reaching the end of the next block. It had been her, he was sure of it. Nico kept walking in the same direction, looking one way and then the other. The streets were busy with late-afternoon traffic. Pedestrians hurried along the pavements, trams and carts trundled along the roadway. A nearby temple rang out the hour, two bells and then silence.