The Rat and the Serpent

by Stephen Palmer

  They watched me eat for a minute, before Uchagru said, “By the way, what do you think that soup is? Does it taste familiar?”

  I shook my head. The spices disguised the flavour. “I don’t know.”

  The men were unable to restrain their smirks, and when I saw this I stopped eating.

  “What?” I said.

  Now they were laughing. “You don’t recognise rat when you taste it?” Uchagru barked. “What kind of shaman are you?”

  “An incompetent one,” Yabghu responded. “A fool.”

  They turned towards Divan Yolu Street. “Keep away from us,” Uchagru said. “And never again call yourself a shaman in our presence.”

  The pair departed. Unable to move, to swallow, almost unable to breathe for the sensation of retching building in my stomach, I watched as a third figure stepped out of the shadows. Atavalens gave me a wave, then led his men away. I bent down to vomit upon the street, until my belly ached and I could bring up nothing more.

  Next day I said nothing. I was aware of tension growing in the group, as if by continuing to appear—by daring to appear—I was distracting the others. But fortune was on my side, for Musseler spent the entire night assessing our progress, and there was no opportunity for friction.

  Yet I felt anger building within me.

  The sootstorm began without warning on the following night.

  It was Yabghu who first noticed the approaching maelstrom. “Look,” he cried, pointing west over the towers and stacks of the central district. I raised my head to see a vast black cloud with edges defined so well they were like geometric diagrams against the sooty mist; heavy on top, slight below, like a funnel. There were a few cries of “Sootstorm!” from passers-by in the street, then hurrying shapes and gyrating parasols as everybody ran indoors.

  We seven dessicators stood alone on Sehzadebazi Street. I watched Atavalens, who was staring at the approaching sootstorm with horror on his face. I approached Yabghu and said, “We’ve only got a minute or two before it hits.”

  Yabghu struck out, slapping me across the mouth with the back of his hand. “Quiet, rat boy. Let the leader think.”

  I took a few paces back, concealing myself in the shadows of a doorway. Atavalens seemed paralysed.

  Then the sootstorm struck.

  I had lived all my life on the streets and knew what to expect, but as I watched Atavalens and the henchmen I realised they did not. Somehow they had managed to avoid street poverty for an unknown alternative—some insular family attached to a citidenizen haunt, perhaps some secret group leaching off other nogoths. Now they were the naive ones! Raknia and the women, I noticed, had followed my example by sheltering.

  A sudden wind blew down the street, bringing the stench of hot soot and ozone. “Hide!” I cried. “Hide before the rain comes!”

  Lightning struck somewhere to the west. Thunder roared, sudden as a dog roused barking from sleep. Veils of soot began to buffet the street, blotting out illuminated windows for a few seconds then revealing them, so that a phantasmagorical display of light and velvet dark shimmered up and down the street. Miniature whirlwinds of soot and debris smashed into buildings. Atavalens and his henchmen, leaning into the wind, made for the nearest shelter, but they were too late. There was a double lightning strike, a clap of thunder, and then the rain came.

  It was like ink. In minutes Sehzadebazi Street was flooded to knee level as a torrent of black water poured down the slope towards the Forum of Tauri. Already there was evidence of destruction: floating parasols, rags and wood, and, inevitably, a body, already drowned.

  With the centre of the sootstorm upon us, the noise became deafening. Lightning struck every few seconds. Atop some sorcerer’s tower there was a flash, then a flower of white flame as stone, wood and a lifetime’s collection of sorcerous items exploded into fragments, sending a halo of debris and silver sparks to the spiralling wind. Another strike and an array of windows on a nearby tower was annihilated. Debris began to whip down the street, so fast I could hardly see it through the gloom.

  I hung on. This was a bad one. Already the ink flood had reached my thighs. Opposite me, the women were clutching a tracery of wrought iron framing the doorway in which they sheltered.

  There was a cry, then somebody splashing towards me. I looked to my right to see the two faces of the henchmen; then Atavalens floated by.

  I jammed my crutch in the doorway and plunged into the flood. In water my crippled leg was no disability, allowing me to swim without problem to the centre of the flood where the speed of the water was greatest. In this way I was able to catch up with Atavalens, who, unable to swim, was trying to clutch projections at the side of the street.

  “Hold there!” I shouted, spitting ink from my mouth.

  In seconds I caught the flailing man, grabbing his hand then swimming and reaching out to grasp an iron strut. I tensed my body as the flood tried to wrench Atavalens out of my grip, pulling hard until I saw pale hair; then Atavalens was able to drag himself out of the flood. We clambered upon a broad window ledge, me crouching, Atavalens kneeling.

  But Atavalens was furious. “Did you try to rescue me, rat boy?” He hit me on the chin, then stood up and began kicking me. “You tried to rescue me. Did I ask you to rescue me? Did I call out for help?”

  “Stop!”

  “Did I allow you to grab me, rat boy?” Atavalens kicked hard, then bent over to slap me about the head. “Never do that again!”

  The roaring maelstrom ceased. Atavalens looked up to see the trailing edge of the sootstorm at the far end of the street. He kicked me one last time, then jumped into the shallow side of the flood and began forging a way back to his henchmen. I waited until doorsteps began appearing before hopping back to my first shelter, where I reclaimed my crutch.

  Through water now ankle deep the trio approached me. I cowered before them.

  “I told you to keep out of my way,” Atavalens snarled.

  Raknia and the women approached. Raknia grasped Atavalens’ arm and said, “What are we going to do about all this water?”

  Atavalens was distracted. He nodded. “We have much to do,” he said. “Every channel must be freed so that water can flow freely into the Propontis.”

  I heard myself speaking. “We can’t do that, it would cause massive erosion. We’re supposed to be preserving. We’ve got to block all channels so the water seeps away slowly—”

  “Silence!” Yabghu raged, snatching my crutch and beating me with it. “Silence when the leader speaks!”

  Atavalens grabbed the crutch and pushed Yabghu away. “Leave this to me,” he said.

  He towered over me. I knew I was going to die. I was going to be murdered. I shuddered, one arm raised, as if that would be enough to stop the crutch striking me.

  Atavalens raised the crutch, but then he grimaced, dropped it, then screamed and fell to the ground. On his knees, his left hand clutching his right forearm, he swore, gasped, then screamed again, rolling on his side. Yabghu and Uchagru stood horrified, then ran to grab him. Atavalens screamed louder than ever when they touched his arm, but Yabghu managed to roll enough of his tunic away to reveal pale flesh.

  I saw nothing; it was too dark. But I heard the henchmen speaking in the silences between Atavalens’ screams. “Can you see anything?” “No.” “What’s that there?” “Just a pinprick.”

  Uchagru grabbed Atavalens’ legs and Yabghu his shoulders, and together they lifted the writhing body and began carrying it down the street. Uchagru glanced over his shoulder to shout, “Group dismissed!”

  We were left in damp silence.

  Raknia knelt at my side. “Are you all right?”

  I looked up at her. Yish and Kaganashina were leaving: the street was empty. Inky water trickled through the debris littering the pavements. I said, “I am just bruised, I think, nothing broken.”

  “Good. Those vile...” She left the remainder of her thoughts unspoken.

  “What happened to Atavalens?”
/>   Raknia stood up, fetching my crutch then handing it over. I stood up. “It seems we have the remains of the night,” she said. “What will you do?”

  I shrugged. “Go back to Blackguards’ Passage I suppose, maybe see if Musseler has any special instructions for us.”

  “My room is close by,” Raknia said. “Come and see me later.”

  “Your room?”

  Raknia grinned, a gleam in her eyes. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  I said nothing. I did not understand what she meant.

  Raknia fumbled at her waist to produce a steel flask, which she handed over. “I want to see you neat and clean,” she said.

  “What’s this?”

  “Fresh water. Use it.” She glanced down at my clothes, then, taking a pace closer, looked into my eyes. “Tidy, neat and clean,” she said.

  I saw something in her expression that I did not recognise: a face both coy and vicious, intriguing yet repulsive in a way I could not grasp. Her black eyes shone, her hair hung in damp ringlets about her face, and she was beautiful. Yet she was something else, something far deeper.

  Inspiration came as I caught a glimpse of these depths. She reminded me of myself. “You’re a shaman too,” I said.

  She studied at me, her expression remote, but then she grinned, showing white teeth. “I am a shaman,” she admitted.

  I looked down the street towards the Forum of Tauri, then returned my gaze to her. “What animal do you have as your totem?”

  She turned to stroll away, smoothing her hands down her waist and thighs, then glancing over her shoulder to reply, “The widowspider.”

  12.1.583

  It seems an age since I last wrote on this grey paper—that I suppose must be impregnated with the vile soot that so spoils the air—and yet only a few days have passed by. Such days!

  I was correct before. All my thoughts were correct. This is good, for it means that the storm in my head has not sunk down to the place where my real mind cogitates.

  There is a test that a nogoth may take in order to be accepted by the Mavrosopolis into the citidenizenry. My intention is to put myself forward for such a test.

  I have looked at myself in the cracked mirror that my mother gave me. I am pale, haggard, and my eyes are dull. My skin is prematurely aged, and stained with soot. My parasol is a mongrel, composed of oddments that I found in the gutter. Citidenizens, I notice, carry nice parasols, some of them with lamps underneath to illuminate their way. I imagine these parasols acting both in the physical street, lighting the way, but also as illuminating the philosophical street—the bright path that I have become so fond of. If I could acquire such a parasol, I keep telling myself, then I would not stumble.

  Today I went for the first time into the Tower of the Thawers. It is a remarkable place: a marvel of white marble, a spectacle, that left me aghast, that left me agog. It is a place whose occupants—a grim band of people with worry-lined faces and shoulders bowed under the responsibility that I dream of receiving—are devoted to the elimination of frost. Frost, it turns out, is an anti-Mavrosopolitan entity, a schema from outside that must not be allowed to disrupt the existence of the conurbation in which we all live. Such was news to me. There have been frosts on clear winter nights, that is for sure, and yet I am reminded of bustling people carrying what at the time seemed absurd implements, devices that I now know to be part of the equipment of the thawer. These people—who I managed to ignore in recent years, perhaps because I was too busy denying the existence of everything around me in my rage of anguish—live to protect the Mavrosopolis from frost, which they do by thawing out frozen parts. For frost is an agent of erasure, and erasure is the great enemy.

  I must devise a mantra. I must not forget anything that I have learned. I am a sponge. A sponge soaks things up. The storm in my head must blow itself out and my mind must become a sponge, absorbing information, knowledge, and, please, wisdom, so that my place in the citidenizenry is assured.

  It seems that I must become acquainted as much as possible with the concept of warmth, for it is warmth that halts the erosion — the erasure — created by frost. This is good. I like warmth. Too often I have found myself shivering in the gutter with only a rotten potato and half a black olive for supper; and that disgusting water that always reeks of soot and tastes of salt. I must find a place where the food is not rancid and where the water is pure. Once, it did occur to me that there is no such place, but then I realised that such an idea must be an absurdity.

  I noticed too how keen were the masters of the Tower of the Thawers—in their black suits and their low hats and their fine gloves—to promulgate the notion of citidenizenship. I understood this immediately; it chimed with my own thought. To become a citidenizen is to inhabit a finer world, a world of light, goodness, peace, and, perhaps, one of interest.

  Is it wrong to feel bored out on the streets? I have never once heard a nogoth say that he was bored. My mother never once told me that she was bored. It seems to me as I write now that there was never any time to be bored. And yet, despite this freight from the past weighing me down, I do know boredom and I wish to eradicate it from my mind. I want to find a life more interesting, more worthy.

  Chapter 3

  My mother Astarta lived with other mothers in a shared basement. There were five of them, each with a private alcove, sharing the main cellar which they defended with matriarchal pride when other nogoths tried to take over, as happened several times a year. It was situated at the bottom of steel steps leading off a yard on Blackguards’ Passage, a yard unlit, stinking of refuse, clogged with soot and dead cockroaches; awash with knee-deep water following the sootstorm. I splashed through the pool, clambered over sootbags laid in defence, then entered the cellar.

  Some water had entered the basement, so the place smelled of street urine and soot. The mothers sat clustered in one corner, where a single lantern burning silver bright illuminated them. When Astarta recognised me—her sight was not what it had been—she wailed and ran across the cellar, batting aside my crutch so that she could hug me. Her hands were like cat claws, so tight were they, so bony sharp. I took her to her alcove and sat beside her on a couch.

  “I’ve been asked to visit the chamber of a colleague,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “An apprentice in the dessicator group I’m attached to. Raknia is her name—”

  “Oh, it’s happened,” Astarta cried, clutching her chest as if to calm her thumping heart. “Oh, marvellous! We must get you ready.”

  I showed her the flask of water. “She said I was to clean myself.”

  Astarta rolled her eyes. “It’s a sign. A sign for my son.” And she wailed again, as though the shock was too much for her to take.

  Embarrassed, I indicated my rags. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

  “Never mind that. I keep your father’s old things.”

  From a chest she took folded garments, grey with white stitching; breeches of cotton, an undershirt, a tunic made of square patches. I undressed then tried on the clothes. They were too large, but not so oversized that I looked foolish. I used the water to wash the soot from my hair and from my face and neck, then cleaned the leather mukluks that I used as shoes.

  Astarta returned to the alcove with a handful of salt.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Clean your teeth,” she replied. “Hurry, now.”

  I rubbed the salt over my teeth, wincing as I did, swallowing some of it and retching, then trying again with a new batch and fresh water. There came a screech of laughter from the other mothers, and then one of them brought me a spray of white, sweet-scented flowers.

  “What have you brought that for?” I asked.

  Astarta elbowed the mother out of the way. “It’s from the jasmine that climbs up the side of this building,” she explained. “Put some in your pockets, but leave some to chew on. You don’t want your breath reeking, do you?”

  “I had better go,” I said. I wa
s not sure that eating jasmine was a good idea.

  “Good luck,” Astarta said. “And remember Ügliy, if you get her with child that will count as a family, and then your standing in this passage will increase and you might even become—”

  “Mother!”

  I departed the cellar. At the top of the steps I sniffed the air, then hurried down to Divan Yolu Street and made along that thoroughfare towards the Gulhane Gardens, where Raknia said she had her room. Sootstorm debris lay everywhere, but I saw few nogoths; most would still be in their hiding places.

  I was nervous. Part of me regretted accepting Raknia’s invitation, which now seemed sinister in a way that I could not fathom, but I was also curious to know more about her. Many times I stopped—and it was only the scent of the jasmine that gave me the confidence to carry on. I had smelled it before, yet never guessed how one day it would aid me. As I reached the end of the street and stepped across the road into the nearest garden, I saw more jasmine, entwined around dead trees and bushes like hundreds of luminous flies under the fading moon. Tonight there was no soot in the air. The Mavrosopolis was quiet, with only a few people venturing onto streets washed black by the sootstorm. Around me the labyrinthine gardens lay damp and dark, like so many bruised cemeteries. I heard the caw of a crow, the hoot of an owl. I shrugged and walked on.

  There was a tower set alongside others off a muddy lane. This, I knew, was the place. I knocked once upon the tower’s single door.

  The door opened—by sorcery, for there was nobody behind it—and I entered a chamber lit by candles. A parchment had been nailed to a wall, upon it names set next to numbers, some names crossed out with quill and ink, others faded, as if they had been there the longest. I realised that this was a list of chambers and occupants. I frowned. Not one single nogoth that I knew had access to accommodation like this. The place was dusty, however, sooty, with an air of decay, and recalling the cellars, hovels and ruins appropriated by nogoth gangs far and wide I wondered if this was a glorified version of such dwellings.