Path of Smoke
Page 1
At Plains University, they are graduate students.
But when they enter Wascana Park after midnight, they become something much more.
SHELBY is MORGAN,
a sagittarius, expert with bow and arrow.
INGRID is FEL,
a miles—a sword-wielding gladiator.
CARL is BABIECA,
a trovador, skilled at music—and theft.
ANDREW was once ROLDAN,
an auditor who specialized in combat magic.
At the university, their lives are dull and predictable. In the city of Anfractus, they use their wits, their skills, and their imaginations to live other exciting and sometimes dangerous lives.
And now that danger has followed them home. . . .
PRAISE FOR
PILE OF BONES
“An absorbing tale of role-playing, magic, and the danger that can ensue when the boundaries between the real and the make-believe disappear . . . Intelligent . . . [A] fascinating read.”
—RT Book Reviews
Ace Books by Bailey Cunningham
PILE OF BONES
PATH OF SMOKE
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
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PATH OF SMOKE
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2014 by Jes Battis.
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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13970-1
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / August 2014
Cover art by Gene Mollica.
Cover design by Lesley Worrell.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Ace Books by Bailey Cunningham
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Pronunciation
PART ONE: TROVADOR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART TWO: MILES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART THREE: SAGITTARIUS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART FOUR: OCULUS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Glossary of Terms
For my father.
You gave me Walt Whitman, Annie Dillard,
Madeleine L’Engle, Leonard Cohen.
You offered me stories about brave rabbits
and drew me a secret map to a numbered island.
You bound my first book and read my raw stories.
You carved me a frog with my name on it.
There will never be enough coffees and drives
down the hill. I remember the day you let
go of the bike, and I flew, for the first time.
Thank you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank the usual suspects for making this book possible. Mom, Dad, and Lee, thanks for your continual support. Medrie and Mark, thank you for your conversation and warm hospitality. Rowan, thanks for fixing my pumpkin. Bea and Danielle, thanks for the blue room. Marty and Jamie, thanks for the Christmas-light tour and for always being my compass points. Ken, thanks for wandering through the stacks with me (and for introducing me to dark elves). Melanie, thanks for the great conversations about writing and for inspiring me with your own work. Kathleen, thank you for the advice you’ve given me about teaching. I love how you see the world. Alexis, thanks for reminding me how cool the eighteenth century was (even with its nose problems). I’d also like to thank my students for getting me to think about Beowulf and other influential texts while I was writing this. And a final thank-you to the Green Spot Café in Regina, where I worked on the manuscript while slowly becoming addicted to their steamed bun and sour soup. On what felt like the coldest day of winter, the owner traced a heart on my coffee to warm me up.
Sometimes, it’s the little things that give you the energy to keep going.
PRONUNCIATION
Most of the terminology in the book comes from ancient Latin. We have scant knowledge about how people in first-century Rome may have actually sounded, but classical linguists have done their best to reconstruct this. I base my own pronunciation on the recordings of Wakefield Foster and Stephen G. Daitz, which can be streamed here: www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/Latin.htm.
The vowels a and o are generally long, while the short vowel i sounds like EE. The consonants c and g are always hard, as in cat or gold. The modern-day term Sagittarius would sound more like sag-ee-TARR-ee-us. The consonant r is rolled slightly when singular, and more strongly when doubled, like the Spanish or French r. The word Anfractus has a slight growl to it: an-FRRAC-tus. The um ending is nasal, resembling the French u. French would elide the final syllable, but in Latin, it’s voiced. The consonant j more closely resembles y, so Julia becomes Yulia. The consonant v is never pronounced as a hard v, but rather as w or iu, which means that impluvium would sound like im-PLOO-wee-um. The only exception is trovador, which comes from Occitan rather than Latin.
I’ve tried to obey rules of grammatical gender and plurality, except in the case of nemones, an invented plural form of nemo.
PART ONE
TROVADOR
1
HE SAT IN THE window of the black basia, watching the Subura below. It was a hive of drunken people, sweating and belching and singing as they clogged the narrow streets. They were on the hunt for something that could only be found in this quarter. Nobody came here for the food. The alleys were a city of their own, full of treasures and bleak endings. A familiar alley might turn into a trap before your eyes. Anfractus never stayed the same for long, and the Subura was its dark heart. People came here in search of solace, odd miracles, and luck. The furs waited for them, clinging like moss to the stone walls. Their charms and delicate hooks could snag a purse in seconds. Babieca pulled his knees up to his chest. He could smell the fish sauce from the caupona across the street. The sky was beginning to darken.
He was only two stories up, but the fall would still break something. He loosened his grip on the sill. A trovador had once told him that you could sing yourself a staircase. Not a real staircase. More like o
ne of the stone skyways that crisscrossed the horizon. If you sang the proper song, you could make the air thicken, just enough to support your weight. He swore that he’d seen someone do it. But he was a drunken senex, with very few teeth, and Babieca didn’t trust what he said. A song like that would be something rare and dangerous. The notes would play you without mercy, and when it was done, you’d be someone else. Someone who knew how to walk on air.
“If you fall,” a voice said, “someone will have to settle your bill.”
Babieca climbed down and replaced the shutter. The street noise was muffled, but he could still hear it. He reached for the cup of wine that he’d left by the bed. It was made of cheap blue glass, although it bore a slight resemblance to a more expensive design. He drained the cup, then refilled it.
“You’re the father of this house. Can’t you forgive my debt?”
Felix paused in the act of fastening his sandals. “I suppose I could. It would make more sense to auction off your possessions, though. Your lute might be worth something.”
“It’s got a crack.”
“Most things do.” He slipped on his tunica, dyed saffron and covered with rich panels of embroidery. “What about your cloak? That’s worth something.”
Babieca shook his head. “I stole it. I liked the tigers dancing along the edges. They think they’re real.”
“That wine is going to your head.”
“I know. That’s the point.”
“Don’t drink too much more. Aren’t you supposed to be at the domina’s party?”
“There’s time.”
Felix sat on the edge of the bed. His mask was silver, and carved with things that Babieca couldn’t quite make out. Wings, or olive branches, maybe.
“I’ve never seen you without that,” he said.
Felix looked at him curiously. “Of course you haven’t. It’s a part of me.”
“Maybe the only real part.”
“Watch yourself. I could have you barred from this house.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Care to try me?”
He approached the bed and took Felix’s hand. His thumb traced the amethyst ring, carved to resemble Fortuna’s wheel. “You wouldn’t throw me to the furs.”
The meretrix looked at him for a moment. Then he took his hand away. “This won’t happen again.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I mean it this time.” Felix rose. “We have to stop.”
“Why?” Babieca drew closer. “What’s the harm?”
“It’s pointless.”
“It was fairly pointed a moment ago. Or have you forgotten?”
Felix adjusted his tunica. “It was a bad choice.”
“One that you keep making.”
“Babieca—”
He touched Felix’s hair. It was slightly damp. “I think we fit.”
The mask regarded him. “Not with each other.”
Babieca’s hand dropped. He was stung, but smiling. “I guess it’s true what they say about meretrices being fickle.”
“You know it’s not that.”
He sat on the bed, which still smelled like both of them. “Don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you have several more cocks to fall on.”
“More like balancing the ledger.”
“How much for another hour?”
His eyes darkened. “Keep your coin.”
“No, truly—how much?”
Felix looked at him for a long moment. Then he left the room.
Babieca lay down. The sheets were patterned with small, indeterminate animals, leaping over thickets. Maybe they were foxes. Nothing seemed real, save for the odor of sweat, smoke, and grilled cabbage from the caupona below. He touched the pillow. It was unraveling in the corner. He didn’t know what made him push Felix. Something about the mask, and the way it changed his eyes. The mask was naked—it was the rest of his body that remained hidden. Everyone knew this about meretrices, of course. Spadones were the only gens who were more accomplished at hiding their emotions. He imagined them playing Hazard, the eunuchs and the wolves, caught in a perpetual stalemate. Nobody blinking. The unwrinkled surface of their faces like blank papyrus.
What had brought them together? The first time seemed hazy around the edges, like a furtive moment stolen in the baths. It had been hot—that much he remembered. The paving stones had become coals, burning unprotected toes whenever someone slipped. Laughter, imprecations, the sour stink of wine. He’d run into Felix while heading toward a cell downstairs, the coin in his hand. He’d wanted a mouth to devour him, bones and all, spitting him out like an owl-pellet after it was done. Felix had appeared in the narrow door, hair slick with sweat, digging a rock out of his sandal. They were both wilting from the heat. Babieca had looked up at him, at his mask, glowing like metal from the forge. What was said? He could only remember a few scattered words. Once. That haunted him. Once. A promise and a threat. Felix had broken his word. Perhaps he’d intended to.
Babieca sipped the wine. Once, he had nearly fit someone else. He remembered a tongue like a lock-pick in his mouth, a charm to release the exhausted mechanism. There’d been a stone bed, a fox, a little death. Fortuna’s mark on smooth skin. He looked down at his own thigh, smudged with dirt and sweat, but unmarked. No daub of paint. Had the river washed it away? He thought of the face, pale as boxwood. The expression of relief as every angle softened. Maybe all he’d ever wanted was silence. Babieca took another drink, but forgot that he was supine, and spilled some. Red droplets flushed to life against the fabric. They blurred the lines of the possible-fox, until it resembled a tinted shadow.
He was almost a meretrix himself. They shared a spoke on Fortuna’s wheel. The irony was that meretrices—not the desperate pretenders who fucked unmasked in tiny cells, but those who belonged to a legitimate basia—were infinitely more respectable than him. A trovador was only as good as his next song, and he had no courtly connections to exploit. He was supposed to perform at Domina Pendelia’s tonight, but only in the background. A trained monkey could do it. He got dressed, then hunted for his instrument. Sometimes, Felix would ask him to play. Once. A smile playing at the edge of his mask. He found the lute under the bed, next to its case. His thumb found the crack, the way a tongue would find a loose tooth. He traced the groove in the lacquered wood.
How did it happen?
The auditor loved to ask. Dozens of times, he’d asked, thinking that this time it would work. Babieca would smile slightly and look away.
I’ll tell you when we’re older.
The hardest thing hadn’t been watching him drown. That happened too swiftly. He’d barely had time to wipe the blood from his eyes, and then he was surfacing. No. The hardest thing had been the ride back, their bodies lashed together by a belt. The feel of him, still slightly warm, but empty. His doll’s head bobbing gently against Babieca’s shoulder. And he wanted to hold the auditor in that safe little crook forever, but he wasn’t holding anything. Just a lukewarm vessel whose contents had already begun to settle. He’d held on to the hand, regardless. The knuckle with its funny islet of bone, protruding slightly. Like the crack in the lute. He closed the case and swung it over his shoulder.
Maybe Felix and Drauca visited each room, making the beds together. They were called father and mother, after all. Some of their chores should be ordinary. He rubbed at the wine on the sheets but only succeeded in making it worse. Fortuna stared down at him from the mural above the bed. She was dancing with a silenus, who grasped at her silks. Babieca couldn’t imagine a time when the silenoi had danced with anyone. He’d heard rumors that some of the basia were willing to service them, but that must have been a dangerous transaction. Sex with a homicidal goat. It would take an experienced mask to pull that off.
He slipped on his sandals, then grabbed the cup for good measure. The wine was t
oo sweet, but he’d stopped discriminating a few cups ago. It occurred to him that he’d never seen Felix drinking at the basia. Nothing but water. He supposed it was safer to keep your wits about you. Still, there was something disconcerting about it. Like a host who remained forever lucid while his guests tore the walls down. He left through the narrow door. A man was passed out in the hallway, drooling thin ribbons of wine. Babieca saw a shadow in the corner. A fur, most likely. The shadow hesitated. They seemed to face each other for a moment, although he couldn’t tell precisely what he was looking at.
Trovador and fur—different spokes, but irresistibly related to each other. The Fur Queen ruled the undercity from her hidden tower, its roots clutching the wreckage of Old Anfractus. The rest of the towers scraped the sky, but the Fur Queen’s tower was sheathed to the hilt underground, hidden from view. A tree growing in reverse. Babieca started to say something, but the shadow was already gone.
At least they had a queen. Trovadores had nothing but a circle of pretenders, all claiming to be the “arch-bard” or some other ridiculous title. They lacked organization, connections, respectability. Their tower was an endless drunken song. Or so he’d heard. The gens wouldn’t accept itinerant players. Only those with a reputation were allowed in, and Babieca was a nemo, an unknown. Snap a string, they’d say, whenever he tried knocking on the door. Now, at least, Morgan was in the same boat. The Gens of Sagittarii had repudiated her. They could be outcasts together, enjoying their shared marginality. Morgan, though, wasn’t quite as serene about her exile. The spicy life of a jongleur was one thing—everyone talked about how exciting it must be—but there were no satisfying stories about homeless archers. Morgan had been the only die-carrying member of their false company. The most respectable among them. Now she was without a gens, and they were without an auditor.
He made his way down the corridor. It was getting dark, so he unhooked one of the bronze lamps and took it with him. It was shaped like a dwarf riding a giant cock. His expression, obscured by wear and drops of oil, was hard to read. Babieca thought that he would probably be more nervous to mount a giant phallus. Where would it take him? How would he steer? The dwarf’s expression was placid, though, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.