by Tim Lebbon
“When what happens?” Those voices again, whispering at the fringes of his mind as if plotting amongst themselves. This time he smelled the bitter mineral breath of the underground. Or perhaps it was only a waft of smoke from the dying fire.
“When you finally realize who you are.”
“I’m Rafe Baburn. I feel like I’m going mad sometimes, but I know who I am. I’m Rafe Baburn, and my parents are dead.”
She did not reply for a long time, as if sitting there in the dark trying to decide just what to say. Rafe hugged a blanket around him and sat there too, comfortable even though he could see little. Hope—this witch, this whore—had drugged him and stripped him, but still he was sure that she meant him no harm. If she did, she’d had ample opportunity to hurt him while he was asleep.
“I’ve been sitting here thinking all night,” she said at last. “I’ve led a long, hard life looking for signs of magic, seeking it the only way I knew. Few people tell me the truth when they see I’m a witch—people regard me as a disciple of lost magic—but plenty of men talk to a whore. I’ve heard so many things, boy, while I’m cleaning myself up and they’re lying fat and sated in that bed. I’ve heard about wives who no longer love, children who flee home, men who hate, and some who find love in those few minutes after we’ve fucked. Love for themselves, maybe, or for the wives they’ve just betrayed. Guilt is a fickle thing, and there’s been enough of it in this room to last me lifetimes. Though never my own. I’ve never felt bad about what I do, never at fault or used. It’s me doing the using, Rafe, because I know more than most. There are plenty of whores in Pavisse, but few who want to talk afterward. What wisdom they ignore! All that knowledge they waste, shunning talk for a chew of stale fledge or a drag of dream-mites. I’ve had a soldier of the Duke’s Inner Guard in that bed, a banished Shantasi mystic, a sailor from beyond the Western Shores, a merchant who travels south of Kang Kang to trade favors and dreams with the things that live there . . . I’ve had them all, and spoken to them all. And every time I’m being humped or screwed or hit, I’m thinking about what you represent. I’m thinking about the magic that one day will give me a real life.”
Rafe hardly knew what to think of what she was saying. Much of it confused him, frightened him, and so he stayed silent, not wishing to interrupt. No voices spoke to him, no smells or tastes came, and he wondered whether they too were silently listening to this old witch.
“And you’re here, Rafe. And now that I think I know what you are, I have no idea what to do. Do you think that’s foolish? Do you think I’m mad? I’ve waited for you for so long, but now that you’re here I can barely move.”
“Not mad,” Rafe whispered, although he had little confidence in that.
“After all that time asking, searching, listening for a sign or the smallest hint that things had swung around, changed . . . I never expected to find you myself. Curled up in a doorway, trying to escape the world I’ve lived in forever.” She fell silent for a time, rocking slowly in her chair.
Light was creeping back into the room. Rafe had not noticed it happening, but he could make out form in the shapes on the wall now, and when he glanced across at Hope he could see her closed eyes, welling tears.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
Hope’s eyes snapped open. She wiped at the tears with her shirtsleeves and stood. “Of course you are. So am I. Son, I’m going out for food. There’s a trader down the street who will have opened by now. You stay here. Don’t touch anything, and don’t open the door! You cannot be seen by anyone. Anyone.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Rafe said, and he felt his own tears coming. “Everyone I know is dead. I have to get back to Uncle Vance, he’ll know what to do. He’ll look after me.”
“Is that the same uncle that left you to wander to the outskirts of the hidden districts? Not a good place to be, son. It’s a good job it was me who found you and not someone else.” Hope shrugged on a cloak and picked up a couple of objects from a table against a wall.
“He’s all I have left,” Rafe said, heartbroken at the truth of things. “He’ll help me.”
“Well, whatever. Stay here for now. I’ll be back before you notice I’m gone. Then we can eat and talk things over a little more.” Hope smiled at him before leaving, but it was not an expression that made Rafe feel comfortable and safe.
HOPE EMERGED ONTO the street and leaned against a wall for a moment, gathering her thoughts. There was plenty she had not told Rafe, but he was a mass of mysteries himself. He mourned dead parents that she was certain were not his. He wished for an uncle who was no relation, someone who had been so keen to help that he had let his grief-stricken “nephew” out into the streets around the hidden districts. He was a young lad barely embracing manhood, and yet he could well hold the future in his palms.
Hope shook her head. She had heard so many stories, so much wild mythology twisted over time so that any spark of truth must be long malformed, that she had stopped truly believing years ago. And now magic was alive and well in her basement rooms. She had thought she still believed, had continued living as though she knew it would happen eventually, but in reality, she had given up hope.
He has no navel. But even that was now more myth than anything else. She was thrilled, excited and terrified, but it might take some time for her belief to catch up with her enthusiasm. And perhaps it would take proof.
If Rafe was truly a conduit for magic reborn, she must surely see it soon.
She walked past traders setting their stalls and dodged people slumped in the gutters, drunkenness having negated prejudice to collapse them all together. The streets were coming slowly to life, and most people walked slowly, like apathetic blood through the veins of the aging city. Hope stepped aside to let an old fodder pass by, the woman’s flabby stomach and breasts almost reaching her thighs. She wondered whether a woman from a race once bred for food could ever truly hope for anything more. If magic returned, would it help? Nobody really knew. Nobody alive now had known magic. It was a mystery, and evidence of its previous existence had been melting away. Those dead machines she could see around her had merged into buildings, many of the machines put to disrespectful use: a toilet; a water trough for horses; the frame of a brothel doorway. These things that generations ago had performed miracles were now merely building blocks of today’s degradation.
She arrived at her destination and stood by while Mogart opened his shop. He was an old man, a coal miner whose stockiness had long since gone to fat, and Hope was used to him being slow.
“Morning, Mogart.”
“Eh? Oh, Hope, you damn witch! What brings you here so early? I thought you preferred the dark.”
“I’m hungry, you old fool.” She clapped him on the shoulder and grimaced at the puff of dust from his clothes. “Anything tasty this morning?”
“Help me with this and I’ll tell you.” Mogart was shoving a timber shutter from his shop doorway, and Hope added her strength and guided it into its housing. Mogart huffed and puffed, turned to his cart and began uncovering boxes. Hope saw vegetables, a few wrinkled fruits and some pale fish, probably caught from the river last night. He would claim they were from fisheries on the Western Shores, of course, but Hope knew the difference. Fish from the Shores did not taste of shit.
“Anything nice?” she asked again.
“What?”
“Anything nice?”
“It’s all nice, whore!”
Hope laughed and shoved Mogart into the shop ahead of her. The place stank as if it had not been cleaned out for many moons—which was probably the case—and Mogart was not the most hygienic of people, but Hope liked him. He had traveled some in his youth, working from mine to mine in the Widow’s Peaks and the mountains of Long Marrakash. He had stories, most of which she had heard many times before, but he was also adept at keeping his ear to the ground. His feigned deafness served him well, as did his age and unkempt appearance. People with secrets never seemed to consider him a threat, and
they often talked freely before him, in his shop or huddled in corners of the Dead Sea Tavern, where he spent his evenings.
“Anything for me this morning?” Hope asked absently, picking out the least rancid fruits for Rafe’s breakfast. Old habits die hard, and even though everything had changed since yesterday, Hope still sought knowledge.
“Oh Mage shit, I think you’ll like this one,” he said. “Red Monks in Pavisse! One passed right by the Dead Sea last night! I didn’t see it myself, of course, but three of the others were just coming in and they watched it pass. Didn’t know what it was, but from their description, I knew. I knew! And down at the river this morning, old Mad Jennson told me he saw a demon in red just before dawn. Red Monks, Hope, what in the name of Kang Kang do we get next? You know, there’s talk that . . .”
But Hope was no longer listening.
She dashed from Mogart’s store and headed up the street, dodging people, barely hearing the protestations behind her. She realized that she had left with a handful of yellow apples, so she threw them down behind her in the hope that the trader would see. They had to flee, and she did not want Mogart’s last thoughts of her to be Thief!
She opened the front door and ran downstairs to her basement room. He’s gone, she thought, he’ll be gone and there’ll be no sign of where. He’s only just got here in my life and now he’ll be gone. But Rafe was still there, dressed now, sitting on the bed and looking up with fear in his eyes.
“We’re leaving!” she said.
“But Uncle Vance—”
“He’s already dead. There are Red Monks in Pavisse, son. They’ll be looking for you.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re everything they want to eradicate!” she said, immediately sorry for her harsh words but too panicked to apologize. “Your things, get them.”
“I have no things.”
“Give me a moment,” she said, dashing to a cupboard for her shoulder bag. She grabbed a few items from the table, barely thinking, certainly in no mind to decide what could be helpful and what would merely add weight.
“Where are they?” Rafe asked quietly, cool fear in his voice. She stopped, breathing heavily, realized that she was probably terrifying him even more.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Someone I know almost saw one near here last night. Hopefully it’s gone now, but we have to get away. We have to, Rafe! You can trust me, son, I mean it. Whatever you think of me, what I am, what I do and have done, I swear on my ancestors’ graves that I want to help you. I’ll do anything within my power to stop you from coming to harm. I know you’re confused and scared right now, but you’re also very, very important.”
Rafe stared at her. “I heard those voices again when you were out,” he said.
He’s admitted it! Hope thought, amazed, but now was not the time.
“They’re urging you to leave,” she said. “They can advise, but I’m here, and I can help. And I’ll do my bloody best. Now come on, we have to go.”
“Where?”
Hope shook her head, exasperated. She should in be awe of him, but his ignorance only made her impatient. “Son, I have no fucking idea. Away from here. We can think about a destination after that.” Where should I take him? she thought. Is there somewhere he needs to be? Or do I only have to keep him safe until . . .
But until what she did not know.
“Quick!” She waved him out. He passed her and started up the stairs to the outside, and Hope looked around her room for one last time. She had spent so long here, wishing for this moment, and now that it had arrived all she felt was an awkward sadness. She could not pin the emotion down—it certainly was not sorrow at leaving—but still it bore into her. Perhaps it was merely a hint of what was to come.
Before she closed the door she knocked a handful of pots from a nearby shelf. They shattered and spewed glass shards, spiders and scorpions across the floor. Unlike the spiders she often kept in a sac in her pocket, these were deadly breeds, their eggs gathered from the four corners of Noreela, nurtured by Hope, maintained to provide her with this defense. She slammed the door quickly and listened at the wood, just able to make out the mutter of feet on the wooden floor inside. The sounds ceased quickly as the creatures found places to hide. They would be there waiting for the next person to go inside.
That was it. She had left. She would never venture inside again. She had once seen the dreadful results of a slayer spider’s bite, and it would take much for her to risk one herself.
Rafe was waiting for her at the top of the steps. She pushed past him, opened the front door a crack and peered out. She glanced left and right, left again, and realized that she had never been this terrified before. Never.
“It looks safe,” she said, but even as she spoke she wondered whether safe would ever ring true for her again. “Come on.”
As they slipped through the door, Rafe held on to her hand and squeezed tight. Hope paused and felt a lump form in her throat. Stupid old woman, she thought, but she could not hold down the feeling of pride his trust inspired.
She led Rafe out into the busy streets of Pavisse.
Chapter 15
IT WAS NOT really a tunnel, not in the true sense, but rather a shortcut between streets. Kosar and A’Meer were never immersed in complete darkness. Most of their journey was in half-light, shady passageways barely illuminated through cracks in the ceiling from basement rooms, where even now people were stirring themselves from slumber. In some places the passageway had true design—steps cut into the bedrock, brackets rusted on the walls where lamps had once hung—but in other places it took on a random effect. Sometimes their route was little more than an unintentional void between building foundations, the rough walls showing where builders had cut corners, the floor piled with rubble and other refuse, crawling with rats. The tunnel was spanned here and there by huge spiderwebs, many of them carrying silk-spun packages as big as an adult furbat. A’Meer pushed through these without pause, and at these moments Kosar was glad that she was in the lead. He never saw a spider. He wondered where they had all gone.
Here and there they heard voices, and once they must have passed under a narrow road; above them, just visible through mud-clotted slats in the ceiling, shadows passed quickly by, and shoes cast dust down into their eyes. The scent of cooking followed it down; fresh bread, and meats frying on a street skillet, breakfast for those who could afford it. Kosar’s mouth watered at the thought, but then he remembered the house they had just left and the mess coating the walls and floor of the upstairs room. His stomach rumbled and he felt sick.
Kosar tapped A’Meer on the shoulder. “Not far,” he whispered. “I think we’re under the outskirts of the hidden districts. If we look for a way out anywhere soon, we’ll be where we want to be.”
“Good,” A’Meer said. “But we should be moving faster. The Monk that killed Rafe’s uncle did so hours ago. It could be anywhere in the town by now. I wonder whether it knew where to look for Rafe, or whether it thought the same thing we did.”
“We can’t know,” Kosar said. A’Meer looked paler than ever down here. He reached out and touched her face, and was pleased at her grateful smile. “But we have an advantage. We know people here, you more than me. Instead of just searching, we should ask around, see if anyone knows of a strange boy in the districts, someone who might be harboring him.”
“The word will spread quickly, especially with me in full Shantasi armor. The regulars at the Broken Arm would be in for a shock.”
“By the time word spreads, we’ll either have found him or . . .”
“Or they will. They’re very efficient, the Red Monks. No emotions cloud their vision, other than hate. And that’s cleansing.”
“Is it?” Kosar asked, but things instantly felt different, as if the two of them were talking about something forbidden.
A’Meer turned away and started down the passageway again. Kosar followed.
Within a few heartbeats they sensed a breeze of
aromatic air coming from their left. They took a fork in the passage, ducking under the twisted spiral of a metal machine where it supported the ceiling, and ascended rough steps cut into the side of some gargantuan buried thing. To left and right ran a crevasse, bridged only here by the steps that led up. It was pitch black, but Kosar had the sense of something massive hiding down here, not dead but dreaming, its exhalations making the dark darker. He shook his head but could not vent the visions. A’Meer glanced back, wide-eyed. She had felt it too.
Kosar had never been so pleased to see the filthy streets of the hidden districts. They emerged through a rent in the side of a building, framed by twists of fossilized machine, and a few curious stares greeted them. A’Meer shook herself, as if to shed her black hair and white skin of the dust of underground, and her packed weapons whispered together.
Kosar looked away from each set of eyes he met, only to meet another.
“Come on,” he said. “We don’t want to cause a stir.” They headed off quickly, running deeper into the districts.
It was usually held that those who lived here were criminals—thieves, murderers, rapists, bandits on the run—but it was also true that the districts offered shelter for those poets and prophets who still listened to their heart. It was a rough, dangerous place, but at least here life still sang through the air on occasion, and the future held possibilities.
Most people carried weapons, much more so than out in the normal streets, but few to the extent of A’Meer. And as the two of them progressed, they drew attention whichever way they turned. Chatter stopped, trading paused, and Kosar could hear whispers from those hunkered in doorways or pressing themselves back against walls to let the two of them pass. Most of them had never seen a Shantasi warrior, and the crowd’s fear was palpable.
