Lotus Blue

by Sparks,Cat

  He watched a team of fifteen push one of the contraptions out and run with it. Its wheels were having difficulty all turning in the same direction. These crazy bastards were braver than they looked. Well, either that or desperate. Their ships were not ships at all. He walked the length of the jetty, careful where he placed his feet, as the boards beneath his combat boots were random and ragged.

  At the farthest end, one of the vessels stood apart: a proper ship by anybody’s definition, shiny new and freshly painted, mounted on casters, rigged with sails. Too big for his purposes, though. It would take a considerable crew to get it moving. Quarrel had not the time nor inclination for pointless luxury. He needed only a means to an end. A one way ticket to an as yet still unspecified destination.

  He stood for a time and watched people working, so still that he might well have been mistaken for a statue. Or a saint, which was the word used to describe his kind back in the cavernous grottos of Nisn temple. Young girls and boys had once laid flowers at his feet. Pallid, sickly-looking things that grew on damp cave walls alongside moss and lichen.

  Quarrel took his time investigating all possible options, and ignoring the persistent pinging of his mesh. The Nisn operatives fed him more data and coordinates. They would have to wait for his response. He could not reveal his true nature in this place, lest the more surly amongst the locals banded together and hacked him to pieces with machetes and long blades. Such things had been known to happen, if enough of them were well armed. Some people did not suffer his kind to live.

  He strolled amidst the cacophony of hammering and sawing, thumping and clanging, his sand cloak covering his implants and his shame. Nobody paying him any mind. Finally he found what he was looking for. A singular vessel, sturdier than the ones on either side of it. A crew in place, no uglier than a crew needed to be. A man with a puffed-out chest, rust-coloured waistcoat and greasy stains down the front of what might have once been a white shirt was barking orders at everybody else, his words so fast and garbled that at first Quarrel could make no sense of them. The captain, apparently, but the kind who looked like he had a price.

  A heavily tattooed crewman drew a blade as Quarrel approached, pushing onlookers out of his way. Quarrel ignored it. He shouted directly at the captain.

  “I want to buy your ship.”

  “Piss off stranger, you’re not welcome here,” said the tattooed man with the knife.

  The captain didn’t say anything. He stuck out his gut, and placed one hand on the dagger thrust through his belt.

  Quarrel reached inside his pocket, withdrew a length of fabric weighted heavily with gold ingots, each one sewn tightly into separate sleeves. Each ingot was stamped with a Temple crest. The captain’s eyes swivelled sharply toward the flash of gold. Quarrel held the strip at arm’s length, waiting for the captain to scuttle up and snatch it. He eventually did, as one by one the crew stopped whatever they were doing to watch uneasily the unorthodox exchange.

  “I say again, I want to buy your ship.”

  The captain’s eyes were wide with greed as he inspected every individual ingot.

  “Get off my ship,” said Quarrel.

  The captain licked his lips and nodded to the tattooed man, who lunged forward, his shiny blade raised. He leapt towards Quarrel as the rubbernecking crowd sucked in its breath. A blur of motion, nothing specific. The knife was no longer visible. The would-be assailant hit the deck. Stone cold dead without a single mark to show for it. To onlookers, it seemed that Quarrel had barely moved.

  A hush fell over the crowd, until someone called out, “Sorcerer!”

  Quarrel turned his back on those gathered on the dockside, a brave act in itself. He addressed the crew in his booming voice. “Seasoned tankerjacks I’m looking for, each hardy soul to get an even share of bounty, whatever it may be. Name’s Quarrel. Call me sorcerer—call me anything you like. Sand and wind will wait for none of us—take my terms or get the hell off my ship.”

  Upon issuing this statement, he cast his gaze out across the Obsidian Sea and waited.

  The dead man lay where he had fallen. A shadow fell across his crumpled form. Another big man, his bare shoulders busy with tattoos. He leaned his weight on a boarding pike and mumbled something incoherent. Gave the corpse a hearty kick. Quarrel looked him over, then nodded. The man stepped back, resuming his place on deck.

  The former captain edged away, stuffed the heavy strip of gold ingots inside his shirt, and jumped down to the jetty, ignoring comments shouted out from the crowd. Quarrel briefly considered how far the man would get before someone knocked him cold and stole that temple gold. No matter. Not his problem.

  He turned his face towards the Black Sea once more, preparing to gauge wind speed and direction, when his body seized up suddenly, as a surge of unwanted memories came slamming like a tsunami through his head: Around midnight, Dark Harvest airborne troops, alongside a battalion of conscripted local cannon fodder, dropped behind enemy lines to secure the invasion’s southern flank, just as the Johnnys had done the week before. They overran Archangel Bridge, Jumburra Swamp, and Collector interchange. Other airborne troops took out bridges over the River Snake and the River Sword to prevent Red Lotus reinforcements from arriving, and took out a key Red artillery battery in a bloody firefight. Moving inland, they connected with additional airbornes but faced relatively strong resistance in the homesteads and small towns. In a late afternoon counterattack, forces of the Lotus Red almost made it across the Blue perimeter . . .

  Shouting from the crowd snapped him back into the moment.

  “By the mother of all holies!”

  People on the dock cried out, punching the air with raised fists. The air was thick with shouting and the stink of unwashed flesh; the sky striped with the smoking trail of yet another Angel falling. This one travelled in a dead straight line. It did not slow before it slammed into a point near the horizon.

  The falling thing held everyone’s attention. The crew stood still, abandoning their cast off preparations. The sorcerer accusation still rang loud in Quarrel’s ears. Not the worst crime they could lay on him. That would come before long. Quarrel could read the signs.

  One of the crew, he then noticed, had her eyes on Quarrel instead of the falling bounty—a tall, dark skinned woman with intelligent eyes. “Who are you?”

  “Your new captain. That’s all you need to know. Now get us cast off or get the hell off my ship.”

  The woman sniffed. “You don’t look like no tankerjack to me—what you chasing?”

  “Bounty, same as everybody else in this shithole town: tanker blood, brains, and heart. Fallen Angels, whatever else is going.”

  “E’s not after tanker blood,” called out a woman from the docks. One of many dressed in rags who refused to budge until the craft took off and there was nothing left to gawk at. “Ask ’im what he really is. Not just a sorcerer. Not just any old kind. E’s a Templar. Tis writ all over ’im, you can see it plain.”

  For the second time a hush fell over the gathered throng. So still and quiet, all background sounds came to the fore. The cries of vendors along the pier. Hooves and wheels on sandy stone. The screech of wind whipping up beyond the artificial shelter of the cove.

  “E’s a Templar, plain as sky. Ask ’im what E’s really hunting out there afore you take ’is filthy coin.”

  = Twenty-two =

  Allegra’s shrill and piercing scream was loud enough to wake the dead. Star held up her empty hands, eyes adjusting to the darkened room. “No no . . . I’m not going to hurt you!”

  The skinny servant crouching by Allegra’s side hugged her arms across her chest.

  Abruptly, Allegra shut her mouth and frowned. “You look as though you crawled across the desert on your hands and knees.” She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like it too. Who are you? However did you get o
nto my balcony?”

  “Climbed up the outside wall,” said Star, dropping her hands back down by her side, wiping dirt and sweat along her trousers. She felt dizzy and very, very thirsty. “Allegra?”

  Allegra sat bolt upright in her chair, eyes blazing. “How do you know my name?”

  “Been here before,” said Star. “Last year for tea—do you not remember?”

  Allegra frowned, then shifted to what looked like an uncomfortable angle. Her hand went to a pendant hanging around her neck. “So you’ve not come here to rob me of my jewels?”

  “Of course not.” Star’s shoulders slumped. “You don’t even remember me.”

  The blank look on Allegra’s face was confirmation. Star blurted it all out in a jumble. How last year the Van had been laid up for a fortnight for repairs. How she had been crushing a bucket full of snake vine leaves. How Allegra and her friends had been wandering the grand bazaar in their fine-spun fancy clothes, just asking for trouble dressed like that, looking to purchase contraband that came in off the Sand Road Vans.

  “Yes yes,” cut in Allegra suddenly. “I do remember—of course I do. You helped us resolve a minor misunderstanding, so we brought you back with us, shared our tea with you in this very room, as you say—I remember now.” She flopped back into the depths of her comfortable-looking chair, seemingly amazed that two sections of her life had come together, connecting to form one seamless whole.

  “That must have been six months ago,” she added.

  “A year,” said Star.

  Allegra raised an eyebrow, appraised Star’s filthy clothes. “A hard one by the looks of it.”

  Star flushed with embarrassment. Her sun-dried sweat was stinking up the room. “Our Van was destroyed by a freak storm—I’ve never seen anything like it. We had to cross the Red on foot. Go up through Crossroads. Wind the long way round from ’stead to ’stead.” She wanted to say something about Remy and the washed up tanker but the words stuck in her throat. She wasn’t ready to talk about that yet.

  “How horrible for you all,” Allegra said, staring at Star’s face with deep fascination. “Vette—run a bath and fetch some proper food. All I have here are morsels, but you’re welcome to them.”

  Star’s gaze lowered to the dish of delicate pastries sitting on a tray. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so hungry. She reached forward and snatched one, stuffed it into her mouth and started chewing.

  The maid curtsied awkwardly and left the room. Allegra reached across for a ceramic pot and poured fresh tea. “You poor thing—what a terrible experience. It seems of late the whole world has gone crazy. Stirred up tankers and Angelfall and streets jammed packed with strangers. I’ve barely seen my own father in a week. Men keep coming and going from this house. Nobody will tell me anything.”

  She passed Star the cup and chewed on a fingernail. “Father won’t let me leave the house without a bodyguard, which makes good sense, considering, but a man standing guard outside my bedroom day and night? What am I supposed to make of that?”

  Star drained the tepid tea in a single gulp and reached for another pastry. Its almond filling was rich and sweet, and she felt better than she’d done in days, but Allegra . . . The rich girl barely remembered her, and it felt like a punch to the guts.

  She’d never been anyplace more beautiful than Allegra’s rooms. How often she’d thought about this place across the year gone by. It was far grander than she remembered, with so many details that must have faded from her memory: three wardrobes, each made from a different kind of wood, a dresser, a bed with a canopy. Cushions scattered everywhere. Clothing draped across the backs of chairs. A tapestry on every wall.

  The servant girl called Vette appeared in the doorway, moving silent as a ghost, and announced in a timid voice that the bath was ready.

  “Wash,” said Allegra. “Get out of those filthy rags. You don’t look well to me. That desert crossing almost nearly killed you.”

  Star did as she was instructed, trusting Allegra completely even though Lucius would call her a fool for doing so—as would Nene, Anj, and all the rest of them. She was not ill, nor any more exhausted than anyone else would be in her situation. Nene was the one to be worried about.

  But Star didn’t want to think about Nene, so she followed Vette to a smaller, tiled room connected to the main chamber. A ceramic tub sat at its far end. The water inside was steaming warm and scented. Star stripped off her ruined clothes and Vette whisked them into a wicker hamper. Gave her boots and Nene’s field kit a worried glance when the maid fussed over them. “I need to keep those things close by,” she said. Vette nodded and left them be.

  Star tried not to tear up as she sluiced and soaped and scrubbed the ingrained dirt from her skin. Her itchy scalp was grateful for the soaking. For a girl like Allegra, bathing this way was normal, but Star couldn’t help fretting about the enormous waste of water.

  Vette returned with towels and an armful of clothing which she piled on top of the wicker hamper. Bright coloured garments of shiny, embroidered fabric. The kinds of colours favoured by Benhadeer.

  “Oh no,” said Star, “they’re much too fancy. Have you not got something plainer? Trousers and a shirt?”

  Vette paused, then nodded, scooped up the clothes and scurried away with all but the underwear. She returned minutes later with replacements of a plainer cotton weave—still finer than anything Star had ever owned. Star nodded thanks. Vette averted her eyes in the way that well-trained house girls were supposed to.

  Star allowed herself the luxury of a few more tears, then wiped away the evidence. She climbed up out of the filthy water, dried herself, dressed, made use of the toiletries provided, opening every single jar just to see what was inside. She checked over Nene’s field kit. Medical supplies were where they should be, and both knives remained in their boot sheaths.

  She walked out onto the balcony, her hair still damp, picking her way around low tables and scattered cushions. A silver spyglass resting in a velvet-lined case caught her attention, but the truth was that every single item in the room was beautiful, from the smallest plainest dish to the intricately woven tapestries lining the walls.

  “What has that stupid girl given you to wear? I clearly told her—”

  “No no, really, this is very lovely,” said Star, patting the fabric of her shirt. She’d never owned anything so finely spun. “I asked for something more practical than—”

  “Where has she gotten to? I sent her to fetch more food an age ago. Vette!”

  When there was no answer, Allegra groaned. “I tell you, this whole town is going to the dogs. Servants behaving like they own the place. Wealth falling from the sky, and yet my useless father sits on his hands, making excuses, not doing the smallest thing about any of it.”

  Allegra gestured at the sea of rooftops as she spoke, jerky movements that indicated deep frustration.

  Star stared across the jagged points, troughs, and the occasional minaret. Despite the darkness she could see that some featured gardens, others stacks of rectangular items that were probably bamboo or wire cages. Pigeons, hens, or maybe even beehives. Carousing revellers aside, the town was relatively calm when glimpsed from the sanctuary of the balcony. Star liked it here. More than anything, she longed to be a part of it, to have the kinds of things that girls like Allegra took for granted.

  “Thank you for the bath and for the clothes,” she said shyly.

  “Don’t mention it,” said Allegra. “We can’t have you looking like a common street thief now can we?”

  Star felt a flush of heat across her cheeks. She’d lived her entire life in dirty, ragged clothes surrounded by people who didn’t care two figs about such things.

  Allegra’s eyes were wide and dark. Her skin was so perfect, smooth, and clear, protected from the ravages of harsh sunlight. A go
lden locket hung around her slender neck, its surface etched with the image of a dagger stabbing through a rose.

  “That’s beautiful,” Star said, pointing.

  Allegra touched the shiny thing and smiled. “A gift from a grandmother I never even met. My father said she wanted me to have it.” The expression on her face darkened. “He has me locked in here—can you believe it? Locked in my own rooms, for protection he tells me. Protection from what? From using my own common sense to make a profit from the Angelfall? Profit he should be cashing in on himself. He’s the one with thirty years experience, as he never fails to remind anyone who sits still long enough to listen.”

  Star shrugged uncomfortably, not wanting to admit she had no idea what Allegra was referring to.

  “I don’t even know where he is. I haven’t set eyes on him for days. A total stranger guards my bedroom door. A stranger. He lets that house girl in and out, but me, I have to stay locked up in here.” To illustrate her point, Allegra left the balcony, and marched across the main chamber’s plush woollen rug to an intricately carven door on the room’s far side.

  Allegra balled her fist and pounded on the wood. “Marko, tell that lazy girl to get back up here with some food before we starve to death.”

  She crossed her arms and stood there smugly, waiting for his reply. When nothing happened, she banged on the door again. “Marko, you will answer when I speak to you or I swear, my father will have you beaten.”

  This time when he did not answer she pressed her ear against the door. “How very curious.”

  She tried the doorknob and stepped back, visibly surprised when the door pulled open. She motioned with her hands for Star to join her, then stepped into the hall. Star did as she was bade, moving tentatively, not wanting to intrude, not sure what she might be intruding upon, exactly. Wishing she had her boots on, and her knives with her.