by Gaie Sebold
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
GORNACK YELLED UP the stairs, “Babylon! Visitor!” Damn, she had a voice like someone cleaning a well with a brick.
Still half-asleep, I dragged on a robe and staggered to the top of the stairs. “You still here? I’m not taking clients today...”
Hargur was standing in the doorway. He looked tired and I could see the bulge of bandages under his shirt. “Hey.”
“What are you doing here?” I said. “I mean, I thought... How are you?”
“Not as bad as I looked, clearly,” he said, smiling slightly. He took off his helmet. “Can I come in?”
“Oh, of course!” I hovered at the foot of the stairs. I didn’t want to take him into the parlour, and the bedroom seemed... wrong. He didn’t look as though that was what he was here for, even if he was up to it.
But he started walking up the stairs, and perforce, I followed.
“Oh, your silk thieves were caught,” he said. “In time.”
“Oh, good.”
“You should do well out of that.”
“I suppose so,” I said, wondering if that was the only reason he was here.
He went into my room, and I shut the door behind us.
“So,” he said, looking out of the window. “How was it? Incandress?”
“A long story. Hargur, please sit down, you look... tired.”
He folded himself into the chair by the window, not looking at me, fidgeting with the helmet he held in his hands. “Hargur?”
“Babylon, look. I just wanted...”
“Hargur, I need to...”
We both stopped. I felt a dreadful emptiness waiting to open in my chest. I messed up. I messed up, and I almost got you killed, and you’ve had enough. “Go on,” I said. Get it over. Please.
“I just wanted to say that if you’re unhappy, with this, then I understand. You don’t have to dance around it.”
I must have looked very stupid. I felt very stupid. “I don’t. I mean, I thought... Wait. Hargur?”
He looked up, and I realised he looked utterly miserable. It hurt. It actually hurt, to see him look like that. I went over and knelt by the chair, and took the helmet away, and held his hands. “Hargur, what is it? What made you think that?”
“Well, you know.”
“I don’t.”
“Before I left, something was wrong. And then you went off to Incandress. I wondered if you’d gone because of something I said, because I never meant... Oh, this is idiotic,” he growled, suddenly sounding more like himself. “I don’t do this.”
I took a very deep breath. “Well, maybe we should.” I looked down at his hands, stroked the hard calluses with my fingers.
“When you got that message, why did you go yourself?”
“Because they told me it came from Incandress, via the Section, so I knew it was something to do with you. I knew you wouldn’t hand me a lead coin.”
“But you went alone.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you? I took young Roflet. But he got diverted by a weeping woman. Boy’s too susceptible.”
“Blonde, by any chance? In a dark blue cloak?”
“How did you know?”
“She’s the one who passed on the message. She’s mixed up with Heimarl’s lot.”
“Yes. Well, the Section’s dealing with her, now.”
“They caught her.”
“We caught her,” he growled.
“Is Roflet all right?”
“Sore head and injured pride. Why are we talking about Roflet, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Hargur, there are things I haven’t told you. About me. About who I was, and what that means. There’s stuff even I don’t know what it means, yet. And you need to know them.
“I put you in danger...” He started to protest and I put my finger to his lips. “Wait. Please. I put you in danger and I was stupid. I thought that was the end of us, and I wouldn’t have blamed you. But that’s not all.
“There’s this goddess, and she’s sort of got access to my head. I don’t know if she can reach me on Scalentine. It’s to do with what I was, a long time ago. But it’s my fault she’s there. I sent that message... Oh, never mind. But that was how she got in first. And then...” I seemed to run out of breath, and took another one, hard. “Filchis tried to get them to... to do things, to make me talk. I don’t even know if they’d have done it, but it’s been done to me before, and I... Well. I let her in. I was afraid, and it was all I could think of.” I tried to smile. Hargur was looking so grim I felt a little frightened.
“Let me understand this. You mean Filchis tried to get them to torture you?”
“Yes.”
His hands clenched hard on mine. “I see. And it’s happened to you before?”
“Yes.”
“Good thing I didn’t know,” he said. “Don’t look like that. I mean, it’s a good thing I didn’t know about Filchis. If I had, I’d have broken the little scrote’s neck. With or without a sword in my ribs.”
“You...”
“So, this goddess of yours. What’s she like?”
“Well, she was a goddess of soldiers, and of sex. I suppose she still is, but I don’t know where she’s doing her goddessing these days. Except, you know, in my head. And I don’t really know what she’s like, except she wants something. I’ve only spoken to her about three times in my life.”
“But you know she’s about fighting and sex. So, she’s you, only more so?”
“Um...”
“Because frankly, that doesn’t sound too bad. Considering that for three days a month I’m a mindless thing that can’t be around you in case I try and tear your head off.”
“Ah.”
“Honestly, Babylon. Did you really think that would be enough to put me off? I’m a were, and there’s the job. I see scarier things than you at morning lineup.”
“There is something else,” I said. This was the hardest thing, strangely. I couldn’t even look at him.
“Tell me,” he said, gently.
“Because I was an Avatar, see, well, I can’t have children. Not ever. I don’t even know if that matters to you, if I’ve any right to think it might, but...”
Before I could finish he pulled me up into a fierce hug, awkwardly, across his knees, and I heard him gasp with pain.
“Hargur!” I stood up.
“I’m all right,” he growled.
“Get on the bed, let me look.”
He lay down, and I checked, but the bandages were firm and no blood seeped around them. “Idiot.”
“So’re you. Come here,” he said, pulling me down and wrapping his arms around me. I put my head on his chest, hearing his heartbeat, strong and steady. “I’m glad you told me,” he said. “Is that enough? For now?”
“Yes.”
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“I’m frightened.”
“Of what?”
“Of this, maybe. Of us.”
He pulled back and looked at me, brushing my hair out of my face. “Why?”
“I...” The past, I wanted to say. I have too much of it, and it keeps coming back. But I remembered Lobik, and Enthemmerlee. The future will slip away while we lick over old wounds.
Lobik was gone. He and Enthemmerlee had been robbed of their particular future. And the same might happen to us. But did that mean I had to waste what we had, worrying? “Oh, sod it,” I said. “Give us a kiss, Chief.”
“Gladly,” he said. And he did.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GAIE SEBOLD WAS born in the US to an American father and English mother, and has lived in the UK most of her life. She now resides in leafy suburbia with her partner, writer David Gullen; a daft cat, and a lot of plants and books.
She began writing shortly after learning to read, and has produced a large number of words, many of them different.
She has worked as a cleaner, secretary, till-monkey, stage-tour-manager, edit
or, and charity administrator; she now writes full time and runs occasional writing workshops.
She is an obsessive reader, enthusiastically inefficient gardener and occasional poet.
Find out more at www.gaiesebold.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THANKS TO THE guys at Solaris for endless patience, catching all the stuff I should have caught, and helping me in my struggle with semicolon addiction.
Thanks also to the ever generous T Party Writers, to almost all of whom I now owe critiques…sorry, guys. Soon. Honest.
And to the staff of the RSA, especially the Fellowship department, who, during the years I worked there, generously put up with my: obsession with apostrophe placement; hatred of exclamation marks; discussion of disembowellings before coffee and moaning about the arguments I was having with the voices in my head. Without calling the men in white coats even once. Thank you.
A heroine who really gets up close and personal!
Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex... other things, runs The Red Lantern, the best brothel in the city. She’s got elves using sex magic upstairs, S&M in the basement and a large green troll cooking breakfast in the kitchen, and she’d love you to visit, except...
She’s not having a good week. The Vessels of Purity are protesting against brothels, girls are disappearing, and if she can’t pay her taxes, Babylon’s going to lose the Lantern. She’d given up the mercenary life, but when the mysterious Darask Fain pays her to fi nd a missing heiress, she has to take the job. And then her past starts to catch up with her in other, more dangerous ways.
Witty and fresh, Sebold delivers the most exciting fantasy debut in years.
‘Ingenious, gripping, and full of pleasures on every level. Exceptional.’
— Mike Carey, New York Times Bestselling author of The Unwritten
www.solarisbooks.com
The warrior woman known as Infidel is legendary for her superhuman strength and skin tough as chain mail. She’s made few friends during her career as a sword-for-hire, and many powerful enemies. Following the death of her closest companion, Infidel finds herself weary of life as a mercenary and sets her eyes on one final prize that will allow her to live out the rest of her days in luxury, the priceless treasure trove of Greatshadow.
Greatshadow is the primal dragon of fire. His malign intelligence spies upon mankind through every flickering candle, patiently waiting to devour victims careless with even the smallest flame. The Church of the Book has assembled a team of twelve battle-hardened adventurers to slay the dragon once and for all. But tensions run high between the leaders of the quest who view the mission as a holy duty and the super-powered mercenaries who add power to their ranks, who dream only of Greatshadow’s vast wealth. If the warriors fail to slay the beast, will they doom mankind to death by fire?
Greatshadow is the first book in an exciting new adventure series from a master of dragon fantasy.
www.solarisbooks.com
“What’s the first thing you think of when I say ‘angel’?” asked Mallory.
Alice shrugged. “I don’t know... guns?”
Alice isn’t having the best of days - late for work, missed her bus, and now she’s getting rained on - but it’s about to get worse.
The war between the angels and the Fallen is escalating and innocent civilians are getting caught in the cross-fire. If the balance is to be restored, the angels must act - or risk the Fallen taking control. Forever. That’s where Alice comes in. Hunted by the Fallen and guided by Mallory - a disgraced angel with a drinking problem he doesn’t want to fix - Alice will learn the truth about her own history... and why the angels want to send her to hell.
What do the Fallen want from her? How does Mallory know so much about her past? What is it the angels are hiding - and can she trust either side?
‘Dark, enticing and so sharp the pages could cut you, Blood and Feathers is a must-read.’
Sarah Pinborough
www.solarisbooks.com
