Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

by Josiah Bancroft

  “Ha, ha, I’ve got you!” Senlin cried triumphantly. His triumph was swiftly subdued by a heel to his groin.

  Chapter Six

  “The handkerchief is the universal utensil of the seasoned traveler. It can be a sanitizing device, a seat cover, a dust mask, a garrote, a bandage, a gag, or a white flag. One may feel well-prepared with nothing but a pocket square.”

  - Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, Appendix, i.iv

  His engagement to Marya had been brief. Two weeks after Senlin put his knee in the clover and took up Marya’s flour-white hand, they were married.

  The townsfolk of Isaugh knew of only one reason to rush a wedding like that.

  It was an incredible scandal. It was incredible not because it was uncommon (many women had raced to the altar so they could present a bridal figure before it became a maternal one); rather, it was incredible because of who the scandal involved. They could hardly believe their Sturgeon was capable of such a thing. It struck the deckhands, captains and fishmongers as a magnificent accomplishment, at least on Senlin’s part. It seemed less magnificent to the ladies of the town, who felt they had been robbed in some way; they loved a proper public courting, and there had been none. The children thought their teacher’s marriage a natural oddity, like lightning in winter or a two-headed snake. It seemed plausible, but unlikely.

  Not that there was anything really the matter with their Headmaster. He was merely prudish and distant—traits which seemed to suit his profession. The townsfolk loved him because his students (their children) typically became productive, functioning and stoic adults.

  But he was peculiar.

  Marya worked in the Berks’ General Store, stocking the shelves and stretching lines of credit, to Ms. Olivet Berks’ patient consternation. “Our customers aren’t fish, my dear,” Ms. Berks once remarked. “Lengthening the line doesn’t make it any easier to reel them in.”

  Ms. Olivet Berks, a good-natured, never-spurned spinster, was Marya’s older, second cousin. They shared the apartment rooms over the store, rarely quarreled, and were both regulars at The Blue Tattoo public house. Olivet Berks patronized The Blue Tattoo because she loved gossip and pear brandy, and Marya accompanied her because the pub, at the time, housed the only piano in town.

  Marya battered the black and yellow keys of the pub’s piano four or five nights a week. She sang as she played, her voice strong and strange as a mockingbird’s, leading rounds of popular songs. It was, everyone agreed, the best entertainment anywhere around.

  Marya was charming to the men and frank with the women. Everyone adored her. And yet, as much as the town doted on Marya, they never detected her secret affair with Senlin, though apparently it had been going on for some months. Not even Olivet suspected it.

  Marya finally told Olivet of her engagement while the two of them sat dividing a fifty-pound sack of rice into one pound bags. Marya measured and poured the rice, and Olivet sewed the mouths closed. “But why him? Why now? Are you in some trouble? Is there some rush? Why not wait until next winter? They say winter weddings make a marriage more resilient.”

  “He asked me to marry him, and I love him, and he gave me a wonderful gift.” Marya looked down at the scoop of rice she was pouring, an unreadable little smile lifting her cheeks.

  Olivet snipped a thread with her teeth and winced. “Oh, don’t go around calling it a gift, Marya. People will think you’re as naïve as him.”

  Senlin dropped, but did not release, the struggling thief. The pain shot through him like a crack in a pane of glass, sprawling and forking as it ran down his legs and up his spine.

  It had been a mistake for him to attempt a physical confrontation. He had never been in a fight, had never raised a hand to a student. He depended entirely on his severe manner to keep him out of pub brawls and to preserve order in the classroom. It took a mule-kick from a dwarf to teach him that his poise would not protect him in the ringdoms of the Tower.

  Overcoming the urge to curl up from the radiant ache in the pit of his stomach, Senlin asked, “How is it that you have my luggage?”

  “Your luggage? I bought this bag two hours ago,” the thief said, his voice surprisingly resonant and carrying a lyrical accent Senlin didn’t recognize. “I paid a lad four shekels for it.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Turning in the wind, for all I know. Let me go!” His collar twisted in Senlin’s grip.

  Senlin wrestled his satchel from the man’s shoulder and released him. The buckles of the satchel clapped about loosely. The bag was empty. Far overhead, a corner of plumbing rattled and shook loose a brief shower. The rain dampened their tempers. “What is your name?”

  “Finn Goll.”

  “Mr. Fingol, where are my things?”

  “It’s Finn Goll.” He spoke the names more distinctly. “And your things, if they were yours, are sold.” He held up the bundle of women’s silks. “Unless you want to claim these as well?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Senlin snatched the bundle. In truth, he hardly wanted the parcel, had nearly forgotten about it. His frustration was making him peevish. “Is everyone here a thief?”

  Goll straightened his shirt and smoothed his purple vest, primping with a little indignation. “Sir, I am not a thief. No more than you, who, as far as I know, has just robbed me.”

  “My name is Thomas Senlin. And what initials do we find stamped on the inside of my satchel?” Senlin showed Goll the monogram impressed on the leather lip of the bag.

  “My luck!” Overcome with self-pity, Goll tugged at his wild black hair, making it wilder. He seemed a theatrical little man. “Take it, Tom. Just take it! It was an honest mistake. I should’ve known that boy was trouble. Never trust an Ostrich!”

  “An ostrich?”

  “An Ostrich, an Ostrich!” he said as if the repetition would make Senlin remember. “Someone who’s been booted from the Parlor. They’re banned, ostracized, cast back to the Basement. They brand their arms so they can’t sneak in again.” Senlin recalled the circular scar on Adamos’ forearm. “If they do and they’re caught a second time,” Goll made as if to pop his eye from its socket, “they take an eye. Come back for thirds…” He clucked his tongue. “…they take the other eye. You ever see someone walking around with two eyes gone, you’re looking at a slow learner. That scamp that robbed you, he’ll be tapping around with a cane and a beggar’s bowl soon enough.”

  “I hardly believe they’re as barbarous as to be snatching out eyes.” Senlin intended to give a dismissive chuckle, but instead he began to cough, his parched throat burning.

  “Look, if we’re going to debate, let’s find a drink before one of us chokes,” Finn Goll said.

  Soon, Senlin was sitting on the scalloped metal seat of what Finn Goll called a “beer-me-go-round,” or more succinctly, a “beer-me.” It was a duplicate of the manpowered fountain he’d observed before, right down to the ivory straw and cleated pedals. According to Goll, there were dozens of the beer-me’s spread regularly throughout the Basement. Senlin, who’d never been particularly fond of beer, had been convinced only by Goll’s insistence that the beer was cleaner and safer to drink than pump water. Alehouses were as numerous and common as lampposts, and all seemed to be doing swift business, but the beer-me’s had the distinct advantage of being free so long as one didn’t mind a little work.

  If the patrons of the Blue Tattoo (who thought the broom in the corner livelier than their Headmaster) had seen Senlin seated at a mechanical fountain of beer in a public square, they would’ve rubbed their eyes, slapped their cheeks, and ordered three oysters to sober themselves.

  The remaining ten rust-rimmed seats were quickly filled, and the work was begun. With the bundle of women’s underwear balanced lightly on his lap, Senlin grasped the curled rim of the empty trough and began pumping his legs. Goll stood entirely upon his pedals, his stature making it impossible to sit and pump at the same time. Though his lurching progress seemed awkward to Senlin, Goll did not
seem inconvenienced by it.

  It was if he was trying to ride a bike up a hill in the mud, and it was a few moments before their straining efforts began to eke the great wheel around. “Why are the gears so stubborn?” Senlin complained. “I’ve never seen a barkeeper pump a keg so furiously!” He had begun to huff from the effort which made his throat burn all the more.

  “What are you, an engineer? Who cares! It’s free beer,” Goll said loudly and was met with a general hurrah from the other riders. The man to Goll’s right wore a leather apron, smudged with the muddy prints of horseshoes. He roared at them like a foreman to pump harder. The mouth of the fountain had only just begun to gurgle.

  Senlin’s eyes fell on a brass placard, green from age and regular dousing, which was bolted to the conical watershed before him. He read the trademark aloud: The Dozen Handled Pump of the Sphinx.

  “So, you can read,” Goll said. His dark locks had begun to mat with sweat upon his brow.

  “Of course. I’m a headmaster,” Senlin said with reflexive pride. When Goll asked what subjects he taught, Senlin could hardly keep from glowing. “Writing, art, geography, physics...”

  “Math?”

  “How could I teach physics without mathematics?” The sprocket beneath him rattled. For a moment he thought the chain might jump loose, and then it caught again.

  “And you have to keep records, I’m sure. Grades and attendance and school fees and tuition, am I right? Maybe find a good home for the occasional mislaid shekel.” He released the rail long enough to pat his vest pockets conspiratorially.

  Senlin was about to say something indignant and virtuous when the fountain foamed up with volcanic suds, and a sheet of beer began to flow down the cone and splash into the trough. Every rider craned their necks forward, straining to get their lips around the ivory straw. The cool beer felt like velvet on Senlin’s raw throat. Never had anything tasted so sweet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Goll sitting with his knees on the seat, the pedals abandoned but still spinning, drinking from his straw at an angle and smirking back at him. The blacksmith with the shoeprints on his apron barked at Goll to get back to pedaling. Goll threw up his arm in an obscene gesture Senlin knew but had never used. Goll might be half Senlin’s size, but he had twice the nerve.

  By the time Senlin came up from his straw, gasping for breath, his head had already begun to swim a little from the effects of the alcohol.

  Pedaling again, Goll observed Senlin almost serenely, smiling like a man who was holding onto a joke. “You’re a natural. You should stick around for the evening races. Those will really make your head spin.”

  “I can’t. I am in a hurry. I’m looking for someone.”

  “Oh, muddit,” Goll spat the word like a curse, though Senlin wasn’t familiar with its usage. “This old, sad song again! Let me guess: you have lost someone sincere and dear to your heart. You are driven by the purest devotion to them. You will stop at nothing to find this mother-brother-aunt-child-or-miss you’re looking for, and I don’t want to know who it...”

  “She’s my wife. Marya Senlin. She wore a red helmet.”

  Goll made a fist and beat the lip of the trough until it rang. “Why do I speak?” He consoled himself with a long draw on his straw. Senlin smiled at the man’s theatrics. When Goll came up gasping for air, he said, “Don’t tell anyone you’re looking for your wife.”

  “Then how will I find her?” Senlin’s tone was incredulous, almost patronizing. He took to his own straw, still chugging away at the pedals.

  “With your eyes and your wits and all on your own. Most likely, you won’t find her at all. Women get sucked up the Tower like embers up a flue.” He flapped one hand and gave a buzzing whistle. “Anything in a skirt floats! Did you tell the boy that robbed you about your dear old dame?”

  “I did.”

  “And how did that go? He said kind things, hopeful things, I bet. He made you a babe in arms. He rocked you to sleep, and then he robbed you.” Goll shook his head until sweat whipped off his dark curls. “Not a solitary soul will help you here. The good souls don’t have the means or mind for it, and the bad souls will only bleed you dry. They’ll sell you rumors, maps, guidebooks, things more suited for wrapping fish than finding wives! You’ll get so much help, you won’t have a shekel left. Assuming that you aren’t poor as a hod already...” He belched.

  “Assuming,” Senlin said evasively. As disreputable as Goll seemed, his warnings made sense. It might take more than a guide and a handkerchief to navigate the Tower. “What’s a hod?”

  “You’ve seen them, I’m sure. Bald, bone-thin, barebacked wretches with the iron jewelry. Slaves. Hods are slaves. They hump bags of sand, coal, and stone up and up and up! The construction continues. The Tower isn’t done with us yet. Ah, muddit, I sound like a mystic!”

  Just moments ago, Senlin had felt superior to this unpolished, unscrupulous man. Now, he thought there might be some benefit to keeping his company. “Look, Mr. Goll, I apologize for how I handled you earlier. And I appreciate what you’ve said. Perhaps you would consider being hired on as a guide…”

  “Why do I speak?” he said, raising his hands. “You may appreciate, but you haven’t heard. No one can help you. You have to go it alone.”

  Abruptly, all the pedals under their feet jammed to a stop. The shock of it ran up his legs and made his kneecaps pop painfully. A gasp escaped through his teeth. Glancing about, Senlin realized he was the only one who was surprised by their halt. They had reached the invisible summit they’d been pedaling after. The beer-me-go-round had come to the limit of its mighty internal spring, which lay coiled now, tighter than a threatened viper, at the center of the great wheel.

  A new gear engaged, clanking like a bell underwater, and the pedals under his feet lost all resistance. Finn Goll hooted, and cried, “Hold on,” though his words were swept up by the beer-me’s rapid acceleration as the tightened coil began to unwind. Spinning counterclockwise now, faster and faster, Senlin felt like he was hurtling back down the mountain he had just conquered. The public square turned into a smudge of wet stone and a shuttering of gaslights; the faces of the crowd all stretched out like taffy. Senlin set his eyes on the serene tip of the cone at the center of the wheel and clung to the trough, even as it lashed his face with beer.

  In that moment of nausea and disorientation, he recalled Marya’s description of how it felt to play the piano at the Blue Tattoo. She said, “I play and we sing until the room spins. It feels lovely to be at the center of that merry little circle.”

  “But, my dear,” he replied, mistaking this as an appropriate time for a lecture on geometry, “the center of a circle is an infinitesimally small point. It hardly exists at all.”

  “Suits me. I’d rather be a nothing at the center of everything than a puffed-up somebody at the edge of it all.” She said this in her usual unguarded way. And without meaning to, she had described him exactly: a puffed-up somebody at the edge of it all.

  The bundle of women’s underwear that had been resting on his lap fluttered open. Hosiery, bloomers and camisoles flew into the crowd of the public square, lighting everywhere like doves in a park.

  Chapter Seven

  “Newcomers may expect the ringdoms of the Tower to be like the layers of a cake where each layer is much like the last. But this is not the case. Not at all. Each ringdom is unique and bewildering. The ringdoms of the Tower share only two things in common: the shape of their outermost walls, which are roughly circular, and the price of beef, which is outrageous. The rest is novel.”

  - Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, I.X

  Senlin mopped his neck with a damp handkerchief. Two guards in sooty red coats and tattered gold epaulets stood before the foot of the marble pillar. At their backs, the glass door into the pillar glowed with inviting golden light.

  The guards looked suspiciously shabby. The scabbards at their hips did not match each other, as one would expect of standard-issue weapons, nor did they se
em to exactly match the hilts of the sabers that filled them. The buttons of one guard’s coat strained over his gut, and the other’s pant cuffs bunched on his boots as if his trousers were too long. Senlin believed they were frauds, thuggish opportunists like those Adam had warned him about, ironic as that was.

  But this was the only stairway to the Parlor. This was the only way Marya could’ve come, assuming that she had decided to carry on with their itinerary…

  What else could she do but carry on? What else could he do but assume?

  He’d lost track of Finn Goll after dizzily dismounting the beer-me-go-round. He stumbled through the mob that had been attracted by the strewn undergarments. Swerving into the first alley, Senlin was horribly and violently ill. When both his stomach and head were sufficiently clear, he emerged and searched out a hand pump by a watering trough. He wet his handkerchief and attempted to revive himself.

  Feeling a little abashed, he beat a path to the white pillar as soon as he was steady enough to walk. He clutched his satchel much as a man lost at sea clings to a piece of driftwood. He couldn’t afford to be robbed again.

  The imposter gatekeepers were, at that moment, harassing a beggaring monk in a gray smock. The agitated old monk was trying to proselytize to the guards, saying, “The Tower must be saved! It sickens at the root. We are the rot! It must come down before the blight of man spreads to the clouds and the stars!” His voice carried a shrill edge of madness. Senlin had read a little about the mystics who professed the Tower’s divinity, though the literature had suggested the order was all but extinct.

  The larger of the two guards, whose dark beard stubble spread nearly to the sockets of his eyes, placed his boot on the monk’s sunken chest and propelled him onto his back. “Get out of the lane, you lunatic, before I bob your ears.” This seemed sufficient to discourage the mystic, who slunk off muttering and rubbing his bruised hunkers.