Dead Man in a Ditch

by Luke Arnold

  A dexterous child in a rough goatskin vest climbed along the side of the train with rings of bread hooped on one arm. Senlin bought a ring from the boy, and he and Marya sat sharing the warm, yeasty crust as the train crept toward Babel Central Station, where so many tracks ended.

  Their honeymoon had been delayed by the natural course of the school year. He could’ve opted for a more convenient and frugal destination, a seaside hotel or country cottage in which they might’ve secluded themselves for a weekend, but the Tower of Babel was so much more than a vacation spot. A whole world stood balanced on a bedrock foundation. As a young man, he’d read about the Tower’s cultural contributions to theater and art, its advances in the sciences, and its profound technologies. Even electricity, still an unheard-of commodity in all but the largest cities of Ur, was rumored to flow freely in the Tower’s higher levels. It was the lighthouse of civilization. The old saying went, “The earth doesn’t shake the Tower; the Tower shakes the earth.”

  The train came to a final stop, though they saw no station outside their window. The conductor came by and told them that they’d have to disembark; the tracks were too clogged for the train to continue. No one seemed to think it unusual. After days of sitting and swaying on the rails, the prospect of a walk appealed to them both. Senlin gathered their two pieces of luggage: a stitched leather satchel for his effects, and for hers, a modest steamer trunk with large casters on one end and a push handle on the other. He insisted on managing them both.

  Before they left their car and while she tugged at the tops of her brown leather boots and smoothed her skirt, Senlin recited the three vital pieces of advice he’d gleaned from his copy of Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel. Firstly, keep your money close. (Before they’d departed, he’d had their local tailor sew secret pockets inside the waists of his pants and the hem of her skirt.) Secondly, don’t give in to beggars. (It only emboldens them.) And finally, keep your companions always in view. Senlin asked Marya to recite these points as they bustled down the gold-carpeted hall connecting train cars. She obliged, though with some humor.

  “Rule four: Don’t kiss the camels.”

  “That is not rule four.”

  “Tell that to the camels!” she said, her gait bouncing.

  And still neither of them was prepared for the scene that met them as they descended the train’s steps. The crowd was like a jelly that congealed all around them. At first they could hardly move. A bald man with an enormous hemp sack humped on his shoulder and an iron collar about his neck knocked Senlin into a red-eyed woman; she repulsed him with an alcoholic laugh and then shrank back into the swamp of bodies. A cage of agitated canaries was passed over their heads, shedding foul-smelling feathers on their shoulders. The hips of a dozen black-robed women, pilgrims of some esoteric faith, rolled against them like enormous ball bearings. Unwashed children loaded with trays of scented tissue flowers, toy pinwheels, and candied fruit wriggled about them, each child leashed to another by a length of rope. Other than the path of the train tracks, there were no clear roads, no cobblestones, no curbs, only the rust-red hardpan of the earth beneath them.

  It was all so overwhelming, and for a moment Senlin stiffened like a corpse. The bark of vendors, the snap of tarps, the jangle of harnesses, and the dither of ten thousand alien voices set a baseline of noise that could only be yelled over. Marya took hold of her husband’s belt just at his spine, startling him from his daze and goading him onward. He knew they couldn’t very well just stand there. He gathered a breath and took the first step.

  They were drawn into a labyrinth of merchant tents, vendor carts, and rickety tables. The alleys between stands were as tangled as a child’s scribble. Temporary bamboo rafters protruded everywhere over them, bowing under jute rugs, strings of onions, punched tin lanterns, and braided leather belts. Brightly striped shade sails blotted out much of the sky, though even in the shade, the sun’s presence was never in doubt. The dry air was as hot as fresh ashes.

  Senlin plodded on, hoping to find a road or signpost. Neither appeared. He allowed the throng to offer a path rather than forge one himself. When a gap opened, he leapt into it. After progressing perhaps a hundred paces in this manner, he had no idea which direction the tracks lay. He regretted wandering away from the tracks. They could’ve followed them to the Babel Central Station. It was unsettling how quickly he’d become disoriented.

  Still, he was careful to occasionally turn and construct a smile for Marya. The beam of her smile never wavered. There was no reason to worry her with the minor setback.

  Ahead, a bare-chested boy fanned the hanging carcasses of lambs and rabbits to keep a cloud of flies from settling. The flies and sweet stench wafting from the butcher’s stall drove the crowd back, creating a little space for them to pause a moment, though the stench was nauseating. Placing Marya’s trunk between them, Senlin dried his neck with his handkerchief.

  “It certainly is busy,” Senlin said, trying not to seem as flustered as he felt, though Marya hardly noticed; she was staring over his head, a bemused expression lighting her pretty face.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said.

  A gap in the awnings above them exposed the sky, and there, like a pillar holding up the heavens, stood the Tower of Babel.

  The face of the Tower was patched with white, gray, rust, tan, and black, betraying the many types of stone and brick used in its construction. The irregular coloration reminded Senlin of a calico cat. The Tower’s silhouette was architecturally bland, evoking a dented and ribbed cannon barrel, but it was ornamented with grand friezes, each band taller than a house. A dense cloudbank obscured the Tower’s pinnacle. The Everyman’s Guide noted that the upper echelons were permanently befogged, though whether the ancient structure produced the clouds or attracted them remained a popular point of speculation. However it was, the peak was never visible from the ground.

  The Everyman’s description of the Tower of Babel hadn’t really prepared Senlin for the enormity of the structure. It made the ziggurats of South Ur and the citadels of the Western Plains seem like models, the sort of thing children built out of sugar cubes. The Tower had taken a thousand years to erect. More, according to some historians. Overwhelmed with wonder and the intense teeming of the Market, Senlin shivered. Marya squeezed his hand reassuringly, and his back straightened. He was a headmaster, after all, a leader of a modest community. Yes, there was a crowd to push through, but once they reached the Tower, the throng would thin. They would be able to stretch a little and would, almost certainly, find themselves among more pleasant company. In a few hours, they would be drinking a glass of port in a reasonable but hospitable lodging on the third level of the Tower—the Baths, locals called it—just as they had planned. They would calmly survey this same human swarm, but from a more comfortable distance.

  Now, at least, they had a bearing, a direction to push toward.

  Senlin was also discovering a more efficient means of advancing through the crowds. If he stopped, he found, it was difficult to start again, but progress could be made if one was a little more firm and determined. After a few minutes of following, Marya felt comfortable enough to release his belt, which made walking much easier for them both.

  Soon, they found themselves in one of the many clothing bazaars within the Market. Laced dresses, embroidered pinafores, and cuffed shirts hung on a forest of hooks and lines. A suit could be had in any color, from peacock blue to jonquil yellow; women’s intimate apparel dangled from bamboo ladders like the skins of exotic snakes. Square-folded handkerchiefs covered the nearest table in a heap like a snowdrift.

  “Let me buy you a dress. The evenings here are warmer than we’re used to.” He had to speak close to her ear.

  “I’d like a little frock,” she said, removing her pith helmet and revealing her somewhat deflated bronzy hair. “Something scandalous.”

  He gave her a thoughtful frown to disguise his own surprise. He knew that this was the kind of flirtation that even decent
couples probably indulged in on their honeymoon. Still, he was unprepared and couldn’t reflect her playful tone. “Scandalous?”

  “Nothing your pupils will need to know about. Just a little something to disgrace our clothesline back home,” she said, running her finger down his arm as if she were striking a match.

  He felt uneasy. Ahead of them, acres of stalls cascaded with women’s undergarments. There wasn’t a man in sight.

  Fifteen years spent living as a bachelor hadn’t prepared him for the addition of Marya’s undergarments to the landscape of his bedroom. Finding her delicates draped on the bedposts and doorknobs of his old sanctuary had come as something of a shock. But this mass of nightgowns, camisoles, corsets, stockings, and brassieres being combed through by thousands of unfamiliar women seemed exponentially more humiliating. “I think I’ll stay by the luggage.”

  “What about your rules?”

  “Well, if you’ll keep that red bowl on your head, I’ll be able to spot you just fine from here.”

  “If you wander off, we’ll meet again at the top of the Tower,” she said with exaggerated dramatic emphasis.

  “We will not. I’ll meet you right here beside this cart of socks.”

  “Such a romantic!” she said, passing around two heavy-set women who wore the blue-and-white apron dresses popular many years earlier. Senlin noticed with amusement that they were connected at the waist by a thick jute rope.

  He asked them if they were from the east, and they responded with the name of a fishing village that was not far from Isaugh. They exchanged the usual nostalgia common to coastal folk: sunrises, starfish, and the pleasant muttering of the surf at night, and then he asked, “You’ve come on holiday?”

  They responded with slight maternal smiles that made him feel belittled. “We’re far past our holidays,” one said.

  “Do you go everywhere lashed together?” A note of mockery crept into his voice now.

  “Yes, of course,” replied the older of the two. “Ever since we lost our little sister.”

  “I’m sorry. Did she pass away recently?” Senlin asked, recovering his sincere tone.

  “I certainly hope not. But it has been three years. Maybe she has.”

  “Or maybe she found some way to get back home?” the younger sister said.

  “She wouldn’t abandon us,” the older replied in a tone that suggested this was a well-tread argument between them.

  “It is intrepid of you to come alone,” the younger spinster said to him.

  “Oh, thank you, but I’m not alone.” Tiring of the conversation, Senlin moved to grip the handle of the trunk only to find it had moved.

  Confused, he turned in circles, searching first the ground and then the crowd of blank, unperturbed faces snaking about him. Marya’s trunk was gone. “I’ve lost my luggage,” he said.

  “Get yourself a good rope,” the eldest said, and reached up to pat his pale cheek.

  By Luke Arnold

  The Last Smile in Sunder City

  Dead Man in a Ditch

  Praise for

  The Last Smile in Sunder City

  “A marvelous noir voice; Arnold has captured the spirit of the genre perfectly and wrapped it around a fantasy setting with consummate skill.”

  —Peter McLean, author of Priest of Bones

  “[A] standout debut.… Winningly combining the grit of Chinatown with the quirky charm of Harry Potter, this series opener is sure to have readers coming back for more.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “The focus on meticulous worldbuilding and highly detailed backstory as well as the cast of fully developed and memorable characters… are unarguable strengths.… An effortlessly readable series that could be the illegitimate love child of Terry Pratchett and Dashiell Hammett.”

  —Kirkus

  “This off-piste detective story set in a magical world, now in meltdown, has verve and charm in abundance and a rough-diamond hero with quite a story to tell.”

  —Andrew Caldecott, author of Rotherweird