The Tenth Power (10 page)

‘Ready!’Trout’s tools clattered to the floor as he stood up. ‘Help me turn it over, Calwyn.’

Mica and Calwyn lifted Lia into the wheeled chair. Trout had fixed a pair of small wheels to the front, and a large pair to the back. ‘Someone can push you with these handles. But when you’re on flat ground you can push yourself along with your hands. And there’s a brake here, see?’

Lia’s broad, calm face broke into a rare smile as she wheeled herself across the room. ‘This is wonderful, Trout!’

Trout blushed. ‘It’s nothing, really. I made a wheeled chair for one of the Masters in Mithates once.’

Mica sniffed. ‘How’re you goin to get that thing up stairs, if you’re so clever?’

‘Put a ramp over the steps – ’Trout broke off. ‘What’s that noise?’

Calwyn and Lia stared at each other. ‘The traders’ gong?’ said Lia. ‘In the depths of winter?’

Calwyn’s eyes went wide, and her fingers flew to her temples.

Mica gasped. ‘Is it Halasaa? Can you hear Halasaa? Is he talkin in your head?’

Calwyn nodded. Mercifully, her loss of chantment had not affected her ability to communicate with silent Halasaa in mind-speech. ‘They’re here, they’re all here! Darrow and Halasaa and Tonno, they’re by theWall, waiting for us to let them in!’ She was halfway to the door when she faltered and turned back. ‘Forgive me, Lia,’ she said formally. ‘I forgot to ask. Do you permit them to enter?’

‘Darrow? The sorcerer?’ Lia hesitated, then nodded her head. ‘Take a party of the sisters to the Traders’ Path, and let the song of unmaking be sung.Your friends are welcome here.’ Mica clapped her hands. ‘Halasaa’s a healer! He can mend your back, you’ll see! You won’t need Trout’s chair!’

‘Oh!’Trout’s face fell.

‘Thank you, Lady Mother!’ Impulsively, Calwyn bent and kissed Lia’s cheek, then flew out of the room, with Trout and Mica close behind.

‘May the Goddess go with you, daughter,’ said Lia quietly. She put her hands to the wheels and pushed herself toward the door.

five
The Red City

WHILE
CALWYN,
TROUT
and Mica were still skating toward Antaris, their friends Tonno and Halasaa were far away in the north, shivering in a narrow Gellanese street.The overhanging buildings and the faded banners strung between them gave little shelter from the wind, and every few moments the two men were jostled by passers-by, heads bent against the cold, hurrying home before dark.

From Kalysons, Darrow, Tonno and Halasaa had sailed north as far as Nesca, the last port whose harbour was not yet ice-bound.They had left
Fledgewing
there, and made the rest of their journey over the sea-ice. They’d arrived in Gellan twelve days ago and begun their search for Samis.

They found the Red City in the grip of famine and a plague that afflicted only chanters. Both problems were worsened by the oppressive actions of the Guild that governed Gellan.The Guild-masters took most of the available food for themselves. The Guild’s soldiers, known as the Protectors, who were normally charged with keeping the peace, now roamed the streets searching for the sick and hauling them away to the Lazar- House, a forbidding building that had become part prison, part infirmary for the lazars and plague-stricken chanters.

‘Nearly curfew,’ grunted Tonno, and the burly fisherman thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘Tell Darrow to get a wriggle on.’

Thin, copper-skinned Halasaa was calm and untroubled as he replied in silent mind-speech.
There is time before sunset. See, he
is coming now.

For some time, Darrow had been talking with an elderly woman who peered from the doorway of a pinched little house built from the crumbling brick that gave the Red City its nickname. Now at last he raised his hand in farewell and strode back to his friends. His face was grim, and the scar that cut across his eyebrow was matched by a deep frown.

‘Samis was here,’ he said. ‘No doubt of it. The old woman recognised his description at once. He moved into this lodging-house at the beginning of autumn, and filled three rooms with his baggage.’

‘Then we got him!’ cried Tonno.

But Darrow shook his head, his face grimmer than ever. ‘He’s gone, and all his boxes with him.The housekeeper didn’t know where, or said she didn’t. But he’d made preparations for a long journey. He had a sled, and enough supplies for three turns of the moons.’

When did he leave?
asked Halasaa.

Darrow’s mouth twisted. ‘Four days ago.’

Tonno cursed, and spat into the gutter. Even Halasaa bowed his head in frustration that they’d come so close to their quarry, only to have him slip through their fingers. Four days! It was such a short time, but with Samis’s gifts of chantment to speed his sled there was no knowing how far he could have travelled.

He could not have left this crowded city unseen.

‘Halasaa’s right.’ Tonno looked up. ‘The Guild mans the watchtowers night and day, even now the harbour’s frozen over.
Someone
must’ve seen where he was headed. A few coins in the right pockets – ’

‘Spoken like a Gellanese,’ said Darrow wryly. ‘But there is something else.’ He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘Samis shared the house with another man, a chanter called Tragg. The two of them were as close as two coins in a purse, according to the old woman. The day Samis left Gellan, she went up to cleanTragg’s room as usual, and found him – ’

Dead
. Halasaa finished the sentence.

‘Murdered,’ saidTonno. ‘So, Samis had secrets, did he? Did the old one know what they were up to?’

Darrow took his companions by the elbows. ‘People are staring. Let’s walk on. She was too frightened to tell me much. But she did say that she overheard Samis and Tragg arguing about the lazar-sickness, and something about a wheel.’

Tonno snorted.

‘They were excited, speaking loudly.’ Darrow hunched his shoulders inside his jacket. ‘It’s not much,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s all we have – ’

Without warning, a group of half a dozen uniformed men burst from an alleyway. All were dressed in skirt-coats of muddy green and brown, and brandished long whips. Before the three friends realised what was happening, the Protectors had surrounded Darrow, separating him from the others, and two whips were twined around his arms to hold him fast. Passers-by drew back. In a city filled with chanters, no one but the Protectors would touch a lazar.

‘Hey!
Hey
!’ shouted Tonno. ‘Let him go!’

The captain shrugged. ‘Darrow the ironchanter? You’re under arrest.’

‘You’ve made a mistake.’ Darrow’s voice was calm. He could have used a chantment of iron to free himself from his bonds, but the Protectors were clustered close around him, and would soon overpower him. ‘You have no authority to detain me. I’ve broken no law, and I am no lazar.’

‘Look at his skin, you fools, you can see he’s not sick!’ cried Tonno.

‘Guild orders,’ said the captain impassively. ‘He’s going to the Lazar-House.’

At that, Darrow did open his mouth. But before he could begin to sing, one of the Protectors viciously jerked his head back and stuffed a gag between his jaws. With a cry, Tonno drew out his short, sturdy fishing-knife and launched himself at the soldiers. But the tip of one whip flicked the knife from his hand, and a second curled around his legs and brought him down. The crack of another whip knocked Halasaa to the ground. No one moved to help them; people hurried on as Darrow was half-dragged, half-shoved away.

Tonno struggled painfully to his knees. ‘Got to follow em,’ he panted, groping for his fallen knife.

‘Not tonight, my friends,’ came a musical voice beside them.

Halasaa looked up at a woman with emerald-green eyes, her face thickly painted and powdered in the Gellanese fashion. She wore a brightly coloured turban, and her dangling earrings clashed and jingled as she held out her hands to help the two men to their feet. ‘My name is Matifa. Come, I live across the way. It’s almost curfew, and I can help you.’

‘Help us how?’ growled Tonno, rubbing his head. Twelve days among the tricksters and liars of Gellan had made him suspicious of any friendly advances.

‘Come
on
, come inside!’ Matifa’s wide striped skirts rustled as she ushered them along the empty street. ‘This is my house. Your friend gave someone cheek, did he?’

‘He’s done nothing.’

Matifa clucked her tongue as she propelled them into the narrow house. ‘The Protectors think they rule the streets these days, it’s a public disgrace! Look at someone sideways and they clap you in the Lazar-House. That’s what happened to my cousin’s husband’s sister’s boy – I was too late to help him, but I can help you! Not tonight, it’s too late tonight, but tomorrow.Tomorrow, we’ll have your friend out of the Lazar-House, easy as winking!’

‘Why should we trust you?’Tonno scowled.

‘Why should I trick you?’ countered Matifa, stretching her green eyes wide. ‘What profit would there be for me? Only trouble if I’m caught. You know what they say: no profit, safe promise!’

‘They don’t say that where I come from,’ saidTonno sourly. He and Halasaa exchanged a glance.

Halasaa’s voice sounded in Tonno’s mind.
We must trust her,
my brother. At least for now.

‘If you say so,’ grunted Tonno, and gave the beaming Matifa the grimace that, for him, passed for a smile.

THE NEXT MORNING
Tonno and Halasaa were in the dark cellar of Matifa’s lodging-house, tugging at a trapdoor in the floor, while their new friend held up a lantern. Tonno couldn’t help thinking that, with her powdered face, she looked like a little girl who’d fallen into her mother’s flour bin.

All three stepped back as the trapdoor flew open and the putrid odour of the sewers erupted into the cellar. Tonno gagged, Matifa covered her face with an embroidered handkerchief, and Halasaa’s face paled beneath his spiralling tattoos.

‘Sure you won’t come with us?’ asked Tonno wryly.

Matifa blinked above the mask of her handkerchief, and her turban shook vehemently. ‘No, I’ll stay,’ she said in a muffled voice. ‘But I wish you all speed and profit! You remember the directions?’

Halasaa nodded, and replied in his silent mind-speech.
We
should reach the Lazar-House by midday.

‘And you’re sure this is the only way in?’ muttered Tonno.

‘Poor man!’ sighed Matifa, and her wide striped skirts rustled as she handed the lantern to Tonno. ‘Locked up in
that
place
! Off you go now, and fortune go with you!’

Thank you for all your help.
Halasaa could never remember that the Gellanese did not thank each other. It was considered a shameful loss of status, an admission that you had not paid a fair price for something.

‘Goodbye, goodbye!’ mutteredTonno as they descended the slimy ladder into the knee-deep stream of filth that ran through the tunnels. ‘I won’t deny she’s helped us, but that woman can’t keep her mouth shut long enough to take a breath.’

The sewers of Gellan were almost as old as the city itself, and they were in an even worse state of repair than the crumbling red buildings above. For hundreds of summers and hundreds of winters, the waste and filth of the city had slopped through the ancient tunnels.The contents of chamber pots, blood and entrails from the slaughterhouses, murk from the famous Gellanese dye-pans and paint shops, vomit, rancid food scraps, animal droppings, all washed into the gutters with every fall of rain.

The sewers followed the line of the most ancient streets above, more or less, and Matifa had given Halasaa and Tonno detailed directions to the Lazar-House. Occasionally a faint splash echoed through the tunnels, or a steady trickling sound marked the place where a gutter flowed in. Always, they heard the squeak and skitter of rats. Far above their heads came a distant rumble of carts and tramping shoes, while their own feet sloshed through the sludge below.

‘Glad I didn’t wear my best boots,’ muttered Tonno. ‘How does Matifa know so much about the sewers, anyway?’

She said her husband was an engineer before he died.

‘Lucky for us.’

The Gellanese do not believe in luck.
Halasaa’s voice was serious.
Everything must be paid for.

‘I’ve paid plenty, listening to her yabber on till my ears ache,’ growled Tonno.

Take the next right turn.
Halasaa’s words sounded serenely in Tonno’s mind.

‘Can’t be far now, thank the gods.’ Tonno’s lantern threw grotesque shadows up the curved walls of the tunnel, which was partly carved from sheer rock and partly built from reddish bricks. Something large and sodden swirled past them on the stream, and Tonno’s lantern dipped suddenly as he jumped out of the way.

Peace, my brother. It is only a dead dog.

Tonno grimaced. ‘Hope Darrow’s grateful for this.’

Left here. This is the last turn.

This tunnel was the narrowest yet; both men had to bend their heads, and the river of filth rose until it almost reached their thighs. The floor of the tunnel was very slippery, and only Tonno’s quick hand prevented Halasaa from plunging under.