The seam that led to the Windsock was a crooked, ranging thing. Some parts were as narrow as a ledge, others as wide as a country road. In places, the edge was freshly chipped, hinting at some recent misfortune. The main of the path was scalloped smooth from generations of use, though this fact did not make it feel any safer.
Having been in the air for weeks, the solid ground seemed to swing and pitch beneath the crew of the Stone Cloud. Their legs quaked, and they had to resist the urge to drop to their knees and crawl along on all fours.
Except Voleta. She bounded ahead, nervy as a mountain goat.
From the crag, the rooftop market looked tame enough. Sun-bleached awnings crowded right to the edge of the deck. A barrel organist played a jaunty tune while a woman accompanied in a hoarse falsetto. A funnel of terns circled and swooped, diving after scraps. There was a warm aroma of tobacco and meat that had been so heavily spiced it could pass for incense.
It was a welcome sight. The Windsock was as close to a homeport as they had.
They climbed down to the floor of the market and were caught up in a blizzard of feathers being thrown by an old woman who sat efficiently plucking a dove. A pitiful collection of undressed fowl hung in the stall behind her.
Every essential thing was present in the market, though never in very good condition. Whether a rivet or a kettle or a set of tongs, the blacksmith’s iron was always rusted. The clothier had plenty of shirts and pants for sale in a variety of inhuman sizes. A blue-skinned doctor sold a powerful tonic, which he promised would cure everything from gout to gunshots without a single side effect other than a slight (and attractive!) bluing of the complexion. Everything was bent, corroded, patched, and mismatched. Yet to a man without a country, the market was a garden of delights.
No sooner had they begun to press through the pickpockets and hawkers than Voleta darted off without a word of warning or explanation. She ducked under a tray of reclaimed hinges and nails, startling the vendor. He swatted at her, but she squeezed under the rear curtain of the booth, and was gone.
No one was surprised to see her fly off, least of all Adam. Still, he felt compelled to grumble about her recklessness. These complaints had become part of the docking ritual: they’d come to port, Voleta would vanish, and Adam would swear that next time he would put a rope between them just like the hopeless tourists of the Market. Everyone knew perfectly well he'd have better luck putting a leash on an eel.
Selling the rum was easily done. Alcohol was always in short supply, so a fair price required only a little tasting and haggling. Senlin sold both kegs to a one-legged man and then huddled with his crew. He gave Iren and Adam ten shekels to buy food for the ship, and three shekels more to spend at the pub when the shopping was done. One of the shekels was for Voleta, should she decide to reappear. They agreed to reconvene on the Stone Cloud in a few hours’ time.
Senlin was happy to leave the noisome scents and cries of the market behind. He tramped down the public ramp to the lower floors where the port’s wool wrapper dyed the sunlight a pretty shade of ochre. The ramp curved along the tapestry, occasionally branching into chambers where rough men drank and threw dice and sang songs that were childish in tune and profane in lyric. The rooms were divided by hanging rugs of thick felt. Solid walls and doors were unheard of here. If one had a mind to do it, one could nose and worm their way into any room in the cove.
Women with rouged cheeks and charcoaled eyes loitered by the open flaps of cells that appeared no deeper than a wardrobe. They wore great volumes of dirty crinoline, torn netting, and frayed lace. These gowns, which were meant to evoke some better society, some higher virtue, only made them seem more pitiable, like dead flowers laid upon a fresh grave.
They watched Senlin for any sign of interest. He turned up his collar and pressed on.
The tapestry did little to discourage the wind. It flowed and drafted, making the passage throb like a heart. The vision of Marya led him down. She looked back at him over her shoulder, smiling when she saw he was still there, as if he were the one following and not the other way around. He tried not to associate this vision with either the poor wretches in the alleys or the sweet memory of his wife because if he ever let this phantom pose as a link between his memories and his fears, he had no doubt it would drive him to despair.
The one person in the Windsock that Senlin had any affinity for was Arjuna Bhata. Arjuna had skin the color of strong tea, a candle-bright smile, and an incorrigible joking manner. Though prematurely bald, Arjuna had held on to more of his boyish energy and optimism than Senlin had. These personality traits, which would’ve driven the headmaster from a room a year ago, held an undeniable appeal now.
Arjuna Bhata's shop occupied the entire bottom floor of the Windsock. The expanse was overstuffed with bibelots, curios, and esoteric furniture drawn from every ringdom of the Tower. Amid all these curiosities sat spools of yarn, balls of yarn, little nests of yarn lying underfoot, under chairs, and in every nook. Senlin had often wondered at this abundance of yarn, and yet it was only one quirk among many. The floor was full of such an incongruous jumble. At a single glance, Senlin saw a throne made of antlers, a rusted gong, an armless statue of a young man with a mawkish grin, and a tragic doll with half a head of cornsilk hair and no eyes.
Marya, who was not really there, touched the cheek of the malformed doll and said, “Isn't it gruesome? If we ever had a child, I imagine we'd have something just like this, something unlovable to haunt the rest of our lives.”
Senlin shuddered and was still cringing when Arjuna rounded a tower of ottomans and clapped his hands in greeting.
“Tom Mudd! How are you? Are you cold? How can you be? It's like a tagine in here! Do you know the tagine? It's crockery, shaped like this,” he said drawing a figure in the air. “The plainsmen use it to turn their food into pudding. You could put a rock in a tagine and it would come out jelly. Are you sick?”
“Just a passing shiver,” Senlin said, shaking Arjuna's hand.
“I have developed, over many years, a theory as to what causes shivers in a warm room.” Arjuna's expression narrowed, and for a heart-fluttering moment, Senlin felt as if the merchant had somehow discovered the real cause of his shuddering. “Impure thoughts. Hmm? Yes, yes, it's no good to deny it, Mudd. It is only natural when one comes upon a beauty like this—” he stroked the armless statue’s round cheek, “to feel the stirring of passion.” Arjuna laid his hand on his chest and affected the beating of a heart. “Pum-pum! Pum-pum! All the blood rushes to the breast, and the extremities freeze, and that is why you shiver. No? Not in the mood for jokes? I'm sorry; I can't help it. I am drunk with loneliness. What can I do for you, my friend?”
“Oil,” Senlin said, trying to reflect some of Arjuna's levity in his expression even as Marya flittered about the edge of his vision. “Something for fine gears.”
“I have just the thing.” Arjuna bent far over an island counter, his sandals nearly falling from his feet as he reached, and came back with a little glass pot. “For you, four pence.”
“Two pence for anyone else, I suppose,” Senlin said with a brittle smile.
“If you came to rob me you should’ve worn a mask!” Arjuna threw up his hands. “All right. Three pence.”
Senlin paid for and pocketed the oil, but then made no move to leave. He stood there, seeming for all the world like just another piece of awkward furniture.
“I am happy, of course, that you came to see me, Mudd,” Arjuna said, a little tentatively. “But this is a trifle you could've bought anywhere. So, I wonder, forgive me, if you came for something more?”
“Yes, I suppose. I need... direction. I mentioned Pehlphia before.”
“I remember,” Arjuna said. “It is a place you'd like to visit?”
“Yes. But the ports aren't exactly— rushing to embrace me.” Senlin said with difficulty. He was uncomfortable sharing so much, even with a man who'd never been anything but pleasant to him. There was always a risk in talking
about one's business here, especially when one almost certainly had a bounty on one’s head. But he had come to an impasse that he hadn't the influence, wealth, or knowledge to overcome. He had no choice. “Do you know where I might procure a letter of introduction, an invitation, or… a convincing falsification?”
Arjuna laughed but stopped when he saw he was laughing alone. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. It’s quite a leap from a pot of oil to a forgery, don’t you think? I have nothing like that. And be careful who you ask about it. I know of twenty men who’d sell you a bad fake that would get you shot.”
“I appreciate your honesty,” Senlin said.
“Pelphia is an unfriendly place, Mudd. Worse than this, I think. I'm sorry it is such a trouble to you, but I don't know how I can help. My knowledge of the world is—” He picked up an ivory helmet that had been carved to resemble a curly head of hair. He put the ridiculous thing on and smiled, “—mostly useless. My mother says that happiness is a symptom of ignorance.” He shrugged, removing the ivory wig. “I am very happy.”
“Do you know anyone who is unhappy?”
“Oh, my mother. She is miserable,” Arjuna beamed.
Senlin smiled back. “Perhaps she could help me. Where is she?”
“She is here. She is never anywhere else. She is always too busy to leave.”
“She is here? Where?”
“Men come to talk to her, men like you. She keeps a record of many things.” Arjuna sucked his lower lip in thoughtfully. “But she is a difficult person. Not the sort of mother you introduce friends to.”
Senlin was so charmed by Arjuna's concern that he was almost able to ignore Marya as she hopped up on the counter between the merchant and the tapered skull of a giant anteater. “Beware the men who call you friend,” she said in a sing-song voice.
Taking a breath, Senlin fixed Arjuna with a steady, imploring gaze. “If she will see me, I'd very much like to talk to your mother,” he said.
Arjuna searched Senlin's eyes for some waver of doubt, but finding only resolve, his expression clouded, and the candle of his smile went out. “All right. But I warned you, Mudd.”
Arjuna waved Senlin around his counter and showed him the trapdoor in the floor.
“You keep your mother in the basement?” Senlin said, sorry to have driven the humor entirely out of the merchant.
A smirk pinched Arjuna's cheek. “You have it backwards. She keeps me in the attic,” he said, and hauled the door open with both hands. Senlin peered in. He saw only air and the distant ground some thousand feet below. He looked up in alarm as Marya's caution rang again in his ears: beware the men who call you friend.
But Arjuna was not poised to shove him into the trap. He looked only concerned and a little sad. The wind whipped up at them, stirring Arjuna's white kurta and fluttering Senlin's dark coat. It was only then that Senlin saw the ladder, and below, a few crossing planks that formed a stingy landing.
“My mother is very astute and has no sense of humor. I’ve always found her terrifying. Whatever you do, don't lie to her.”
“I will— I mean, I won't,” Senlin said, and sitting on the lip of the opening, he reached with the toe of his boot for the first rung. He felt as if he were climbing into an abyss.
“That's very wise of you,” Arjuna said. “But very unhappy.”
Chapter Five
“One can’t turn around in a pirate’s cove without being accosted by some charlatan selling the promise of treasure. Though I suppose it is comforting to think that there is a reliable wage to be made drawing and selling treasure maps. The same could be said of writing travel guides.”
- The Stone Cloud's Logbook, Captain Tom Mudd
Adamos Boreas had never been in a restaurant, or a quaint country tavern, or a city café before. Such institutions, in addition to serving unclouded beer and hot food, had storied and evocative names, names like: The Prancing Minerva or Lord Wimbley's Gilded Spigot, or some similarly noble jumble. The pubs that would serve him had crude, descriptive names or only pictures drawn upon a shingle that were easily identified by the illiterate masses.
And so, though it was dim, rank, and furnished with uneven benches, Adam felt at home in the Ugly Rug. The eponymous rug lay under his feet, collecting tobacco burns and beer stains. A constant draft bled through the tapestry walls, endlessly stirring a layer of red dust that had been blown up from the valley and now clung to everything.
Whenever a new patron entered the pub, the publican barked the house rules with mechanical emphasis: “Black scotch for killing; black scotch for bailing on yer bill.” If the crowd was feeling lively, they'd join in the chorus: “Black scotch for killing! Black scotch for bailing on yer bill!” Anyone who was black-scotched could expect to be mobbed and strung up by the neck if they were ever foolhardy enough to visit the Windsock again. The black scotch was the only law, and even the hardened criminals respected it.
The shopping hadn’t taken long. Their money went quick, and the port hadn’t much to offer. The groceries sat in two crates on the table. Lentils, potatoes, onions, carrots, and apples lay in one, and in the other a can of cooking oil and paper sacks of sugar, salt, and rice. In a moment of indulgence, Iren had bought a little sachet of dried chilies, and Adam had purchased a tin of cinnamon sticks. It was a modest pantry, but it seemed a great treasure to them after many days of eating desert birds and a gelatinous blue-gray buckwheat porridge, which they all hated, and which Voleta had dubbed Stone Pudding.
“Captain doesn't trust me,” Adam said to Iren.
The big woman peered at him over the rim of her wooden tankard but did not stop drinking. The two of them had been at odds while employed by Finn Goll. Back then, Adam had thought of Iren as Goll's dimwitted guard dog, and Iren had thought of him as a sulky hustler. But since their escape, the old animosity had been softened by the forced intimacy that life on a ship brought. They were not friends exactly, but they had come to respect one another.
“He thinks I’m a thief,” the young man continued. “The only time he leaves me alone on his ship is if there's a boarding party and he's standing between me and my sister.” Adam slid four pence to the edge of their table, and the publican came around to refill their tanks from his pitcher. “He thinks I’m biding time until I can figure out a way to steal his ship and run off with Voleta.”
Iren, who had never been one for wasting words, shrugged at this and then tapped the table insistently when the publican stopped filling her tankard too soon.
“But I can be trusted,” Adam said. “I deserve a second chance.”
“You had one,” Iren said. A link in the chain girded about her middle wasn't sitting right, and she made a jangling adjustment to relieve the pinch.
“Mmm, maybe. But he doesn't understand the position I was in. Rodion possessed power, men, influence. He had my sister!” Adam jabbed at the air between them. Iren was distracted by a fly that had taken up orbit about her head. “A deal with Rodion was worth something. At least, I thought it was. All the Captain could offer then was a dream. It was a betrayal, yes, but a reasonable one. And only one. The robbery in the Basement doesn't count. I was under orders, and if I hadn't—”
“I don’t trust you either,” Iren said. “I’ll tell you why. You're still making excuses. You won't own what you did, which means either you’re a coward, and I don’t trust cowards, or you don't think you did anything wrong. So you'll do it again.” Iren made a darting grab at the fly, closed her fist, then opened it for inspection. It was empty. The fly resumed its orbit around her scowling head.
Adam turned his cup against the table like a man working a drill. “I just didn't believe he could do it! It's the first lesson of the Tower: there is no escape. You can plunge deeper in, or you can cling to your little piece of the rock, but there's no getting out. And yet,” he stamped the cup fervently, “here we are.”
“Here we are.”
“I don't want to be the leper on the boat, Iren. I want to be part of
the crew. I want to be trusted.” He had been gritting his teeth but stopped as he suffered a moment of clarity amid the thickening swamp of drink. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I can't expect him to trust me a third time when he has never gotten anything for it. I am in his debt. I have to repay him.” Adam clutched Iren's wrist where it lay on the table; she made a sour face. “I must buy his trust back. I must give him something. What does he need?”
“Money,” Iren said and picked up her wrist so that he had to let it go.
Adam blanched. “I was hoping you'd say a new hat or a book or something small I could steal.” Iren snorted at the irony of this. “Well, how else is a pauper supposed to repay his debts? But, you're right. It wouldn’t be enough. It won’t ever be enough. He wants to find his wife, but he can't even begin because we're so poor, and the ship is so wretched, and we all look like we’ve come crawling out of the desert. We need clothes, shoes, proper arms, a new envelope, a new furnace, a new helm, a new everything.” The young man brooded on this, tapping the lens of the goggle that stood on his forehead. He came to a conclusion: “We need a fortune. Where does one get a fortune?”
Adam’s voice had been rising with his frustration, so he was readily overheard. An aeronaut with gray hair and a red moustache, a swaying and volatile sort of man, leaned in from an adjoining bench and said in a stage whisper, “A fortune? Once you have it in your head, you're done for. It's riches or rags for you, now.”
“Rags I already have. What do you know about fortune?” Adam said.
“Not me. Not me specially. Everyone. Everyone knows where fortune waits. It's in the clouds!”
“Oh. Thank you, wise sir,” Adam said with a patronizing dip of his head.
“I’m not a halfwit!” The old airman said, lips snarling over a comb of brown teeth. “It’s not in my head. It’s in the clouds! In the Collar of Heaven. You know what's up there? Trees of silver and rivers of gold. There are jewels as big as apples. All you have to do is run up, stick our your arm, and pull treasure in by the handful.” His pantomime nearly threw him from his bench.
Arm of the Sphinx (Books of Babel Book 2) Page 4
