"They must have taken refuge in the between-ways when the Sherank first entered the Gilgard," Calla went on flatly, "and then died of starvation rather than go out into—into what Lord Kishr was making of Gil." She picked something off the floor and tossed it to me. I caught it awkwardly, a slim curved blade of rib-bone. "The shulls found them, even if the Sherank didn't." I nodded soberly, noting the marks of tiny teeth. Still holding it in my hand, I picked my way across the chamber to examine the bones ranged along the far wall.
"You know, Calla," I said a minute later, as calmly as I could, "someone beside the shulls found these people. Look how neatly these bones over here have been piled."
"What?" She was suddenly beside me, grabbing the candle to play it over the tidy heaps of remains. "But who?"
"How should I know?" I looked around. The dust lay thick and undisturbed in the mouths of all the passages and on the stairs; the cobwebs hung heavy, the produce of decades of industrious spiders. "It was a long time ago, whoever it was."
She shrugged uneasily. "Perhaps a last survivor of the group?"
"I don't know—I wouldn't think so. But it was after the shulls finished with them."
We crouched uneasily amid the bones, listening to the silence. A sudden thundering overhead—Calla started, the candle dropped and went out. I caught her shoulder in the darkness.
"Don't be afraid, the main door to the buttery is just overhead; it must be the troops massing for breakfast."
Light flared as she struck the flint and relit the candle, pointedly casual. "Who's afraid? Noisy buggers, aren't they?" Something crashed above us and we could hear voices, far and thin through the ceiling slabs. "We'd better be going. There's nothing we can do here," she added.
"One thing." I took the candle again and searched rapidly through the piles of bones. There were twelve skulls altogether, including two infant-sized ones, and there were two more silver miniatures of the Lady, signifying two more Flamens among the dead, but what I was searching for was not there. I sat back on my haunches and looked up at Calla. "Three Flamens present, but the Primate wasn't one of them. His pendant was gold, and he wore a pectoral as well."
Calla looked at the three little figurines gleaming on my palm. "What about these? Do we take them with us?"
"No." I carefully replaced the pendants where I had found them. "If the Gilgard becomes ours again, we'll return and give these poor wretches the proper rites; until then, we'll leave them undisturbed. Let's go."
She followed me to the stairs. Neither of us wanted to look back into that chamber of death. We climbed steadily, softly, the clamour from the buttery falling away below us as the stairs led us up through the massive wall, up to the upper storey. As we turned a corner, cooler air hit our faces, and three thin slots of light appeared in the wall. Air vents. The noise from the buttery was suddenly clearer.
We peered through the slots. The wall between us and the buttery was only one stone's thickness here, and we had a good view of the room far below. Long trestle tables creaked under the troopers' breakfast; scores of Sherank, looking almost naked without their helmets, jovially demolished trenchers of roast meat, of quivering raw eggs, of hot bread and rice and toasted grains. A whole roast hog was trundled in, its upturned belly spilling avalanches of baked onions and hot-roots. Not a stewed shull in sight.
I nudged Calla and pointed: Flax, the fat Koroskan underchef, was bustling about the hatchway to the kitchen, directing operations. As we watched, he clouted one of the Gilman servers hard on each side of the head. The nearest troopers appeared mildly entertained. I pulled my eyes away from the slot and sat down on the step, nauseated by the overabundance of lovely smells. Calla remained glued to the slot.
"That was Barri that Flax hit, that great bag of grease. He's in the Web. I wonder what he'd done?"
"Dropped an onion, maybe. Maybe nothing. Who knows? Maybe Flax just felt like hurting someone." My belly rumbled dangerously. "Let's get out of here."
The face Calla turned to me was a mask of anger, but for a change I wasn't the target. "When I think, Tig," she said, "of the number of maggots I've eaten in my life, and thanked the Lady for, I could—" she subsided into mutters.
"Cheer up, Calla." I tactfully ignored the fact she was calling me Tig again. "It'll be roast hog and onions for everyone when we find the Lady, eh? Think of that."
She smiled faintly. "Honey-cakes for the children?"
"Every morning."
"Let's get going, then," she said. We moved on.
* * *
22
THE STAIRCASE LED up to the Spine—that was the name it was marked with, in tiny faded script, on the plans of the Lower Palace. The air was fresher and it was gloomy rather than pitch dark; we could see the passage stretching along greyly ahead of us, broader but lower-ceilinged than the passages we'd left behind, pierced at intervals on both sides by air vents like those into the buttery. Something about the visibility jarred on my mind.
"Go softly," I whispered to Calla, "we want them to think we're spiders in the walls, if they hear us at all."
We crept along the dim passage. A light hum of voices floated through the air vents, female voices mixed with trilling laughter. Calla headed straight for one of the vents, but I grabbed her arm at the last moment and pulled her back, pointing at the floor. She was on the brink of a steep staircase that spiralled down into deep shadow, the unguarded well taking up nearly half the breadth of the corridor. Another step and she'd have fallen in—perhaps breaking her neck, but certainly making too much noise to be a credible spider. She grimaced, stepped around the well to reach the air vent, and cautiously peered through. A few moments later she looked back, frowning.
"Why are we so high, Tig? We must be just below the roof—the rooms are below us!"
"Shh. The Spine was built over the central corridor of this wing; you reach the servants' door to each chamber via those stairways. What do you see?"
"Better you look with your own eyes," she whispered with an odd smile, moving aside. I put my eye to the vent, squinting into the daylight.
"The shintashkr," I breathed.
"Shint what?"
"Shintashkr. The sow-sty. Charming language, Sheranik, such elegant metaphors."
"Never mind that. The concubines?"
I shook my head, still peering through. "The concubines wouldn't be crowded together like that; these must be the women kept for the troopers. It's a nice irony, isn't it—those used to be contemplation cells for novice Flamens."
The air vent, set high into the wall, gave a reasonably clear view into the hall below, without itself being obvious. The hall was vast and vaulted, its periphery divided into a maze of little cells by walls just higher than a man; from our vantage point, we could see into most of them. In each was a wardrobe and a pallet, comfortable-looking, though not luxurious. Most of the cells were empty, but in some sat young women, brushing their hair, oiling their skins, painting their eyes, doing all those mystical things that women do to make themselves beautiful. The centre of the hall was taken up by a large square parlour, strewn with divans, cushions, carpets—and more young women.
All kinds of women, from all the slave kingdoms under the mailed hand of Sher. Gilwomen, seductive coppery-skinned Lucians, little swart Glishoran, moon-faced Tatakils with straight black brows; a couple of very tall, stick-thin Storicans, their black skins shining with oil; a cluster of giggling red-haired damsels who could only be from Calloon in the far west; and, hulking by the doors like mountains covered with snow, a pair of fat white-robed Koroskan wardresses with whips coiled in their hands. As I watched, another pair of wardresses threaded their way through the maze bearing between them a tray piled high with bread, fruit and meat.
Calla pulled impatiently at my cloak. "Come on, haven't you seen enough?"
"Just a moment—"
"Certainly, my lord Scion." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "You're enjoying the view, are you? Perhaps you want to join them?"
&nb
sp; "Not this time, thank you." I turned away from the vent. "This is probably what Flax has in mind for you, Calla. Not a bad life—anyway, the girls don't appear to be suffering." I was joking, but Calla was clearly not amused. I removed the grin.
She made a face of disgust. "Most of them come of their own free will. Whores, the lot of them."
Any reply would be a flat-footed leap on to thin ice. I held my peace and started behind her down the passage, carefully avoiding the stairwell to the chamber on the other side. She was quite right, time was passing, and we had none to waste. Still—had there been a hint of jealousy, even possessiveness, in her sarcasm? Very unlikely, I told myself, but I grinned anyway at her stiff back as she stalked on ahead, liberally coated with cobwebs. Suddenly, the small discrepancy that had been niggling at me leapt out and identified itself.
"Calla, wait. Did you notice? No cobwebs."
She looked around, lifting the candle to see better. "You're right. So what?"
"Don't you think it's odd?"
"Oh, I don't know. It's better ventilated up here—"
"Which should mean more flies, more spiders, and therefore more webs, not fewer. I'm not sure I like this." At a sudden thought I knelt down and peered at the floor. There was some dust, about as much as a careless servant might leave on a bad day, but nothing like the ankle-deep drifts in the lower between-ways. I frowned up at Calla. "Actually, it's very odd. I don't like this at all."
"So what are you going to do about it? Come on, let's just keep moving."
I moved, but my back felt cold. Not far ahead, I could see the end of the Spine, where a narrower corridor turned sideways into the thickness of the old Flamens' Court wall. Beyond that was a large clearing chamber with openings to the rubbish and laundry shafts and just on the other side of that, our immediate goal, the staircase that led up to the final level of the Lower Palace, which was partially set into the mountain, and partially overbuilt by the Middle Palace. At that point, I thought, when we were forced to leave the between-ways, our troubles would really begin; but I was being much too optimistic.
I stopped Calla again in the Flamens' Court passage. "More sight-seeing, Tig?" she asked wearily. I ignored her as I peered through a vent into the old Court. Its mosaic floor was reputed to be the finest in the Gilgard, and therefore the world; Oballef himself, it was said, had laid down the tiles under the guidance of the Lady. I suspected the story was apocryphal, but it hardly mattered now—if the mosaic still existed, it was thirty feet deep under a tip of garbage that rose almost to the level of the vents. Middle Palace garbage, I thought, dumped through the clerestory windows; the grand doorway must have been buried decades ago. The stench through the vent was powerful and appalling, even worse than the stench in the market. I shook my head sadly as I turned away, opening my mouth to say something suitably mournful; but Calla, standing tensely, head cocked as if listening to the gentle sifting of dust motes through the vent, motioned for quiet.
"Did you hear anything?" she whispered.
"No, but I wasn't—"
"Hush. Listen."
I hushed and listened. Total silence, now that the woman-sounds from the shintashkr had been left behind. I opened my mouth again, but Calla shook her head and spoke with her fingers: let's get out of here. Her urgency was infectious; she scuttled down the passage, with me almost treading on her heels, the dimness quickening with menace. Suddenly Calla stopped. "Somebody's there," she said softly.
I moved up beside her, my skin crawling. A grey form was crouched on the floor by the wall, misshapen, motionless, poised—waiting. By a miracle, my groping hand located my knife. "Who are you?" I breathed. But Calla, after her brief hesitation, abruptly dropped the candle and launched herself at the figure. The candle went out. As I stumbled through the semi-darkness to Calla's aid, the sounds of struggle ceased. There was an eerie, ominous silence. Then Calla giggled. Giggled. I didn't know until that moment that she could do anything of the sort.
"What's happening?" I hissed. "Did you get him? Calla, where's the damned candle?"
"I dropped it," she said. "And Tig—it's a sack of rubbish." She giggled again. I found the candle and my flint and managed, after a few nonproductive swipes, to light the wick. Calla was slumped grinning on the floor, embracing a large sack with a row of black spiky characters stamped near the mouth. I was not amused.
"All right," I said, "so it's a bag of rubbish. So who brought it here?"
"What?"
"Who brought it here? It didn't walk here by itself."
Calla sobered immediately. "Perhaps," she said uneasily, "it's been here all along, since before the catastrophe."
"Hardly that," I said. "It's labelled 'Second Barracks' in Sheranik."
She looked blankly at the characters on the sack. "But who—?"
"Whoever is in the between-ways with us," I said flatly.
We had no choice but to move on, but we walked fearfully now, knives in hands, ears straining through the dead silence. We even doused the candle and relied instead on the thin light filtering through the air vents. This was perhaps my worst moment in Gil up to that time—my illusion of safety was shattered, also my illusion that I knew a trick or two those bastards from Iklankish didn't. The between-ways, supposedly a ribbon of free territory, were after all in the hands of the enemy—and the enemy could be lurking around any corner, laughing at us out of the darkness as we had been laughing at them. Where were they? Were they playing with us, as I'd seen a pack of shulls play with a hen? And if they had stumbled on the between-ways, was it possible they had found the entrance to the caves—?
I shook off the thought. We were at the door to the clearing chamber now, and the silence was still unbroken. No light penetrated there from the corridor. Calla fumbled for her flint; her hands were shaking, and for once she had to swipe twice before the wick caught. The contents of the chamber leapt into existence as the light touched them. We gasped, practically in unison.
I'd seen tidier rubbish-tips, but never richer ones. Two-thirds of the chamber, floor to ceiling, was piled with furniture, with crockery, with sacks, with swords and knives, with ropes, with wooden crates and carven chests and architectural fragments and awkwardly folded carpets and a thousand other things, with here and there a gleam of gold or bronze or tarnishing silver. The remaining third, in contrast, was severely tidy: a bare table, some wooden stools, a neatly made pallet on the floor with a thick blanket folded on top. I put my hand out for the candle, fascinated, but Calla held it out of reach.
"The answer is no," she said firmly. "We're getting out of the between-ways, now. Where are the stairs?"
"Across the room. Believe me, I don't want to linger, I—"
"No." She pulled me after her across the room. Her hand was icy.
"But—"
"No buts, just come on," she hissed.
"Listen to me," I began, elbowing past her to block the stairs. A tiny rustle behind me—I started to turn. The side of my head exploded. Calla shouted something from a distance of a few miles, and I did my best to make sense of it; but halfway to the floor, I lost interest.
* * *
23
SHE WAS JUST ahead of me in the between-ways, her great stone bowl tucked under one arm. Her marble hips rolled smoothly under a floating cloak of cobwebs as she walked unhurriedly away. I ran after her, crying to her to wait, but I gained no ground at all; she looked back once, incuriously, wiping the paint from her face with the back of her hand. Then she turned a corner and was gone.
I groaned and rolled on to my side.
"Please, Tig, wake up."
I opened my eyes, blinking. Candlelight. A red glow somewhere behind my eyes pulsated wickedly when I moved my head, so I lay still. Someone's sharp elbow poked me in the back.
"Are you awake, Tig?"
"No. Leave me alone."
"Raksh take you! It's about time you woke up. I almost thought he'd killed you."
"It feels like he did. He—who are we talking
about? Who's he?"
"How should I know who he is?" Calla retorted. "You're the expert on the between-ways."
"Well, whoever he is, he's not marked on the plans." Very delicately, I rolled over on to my back. By turning my head gently to the left, I could see that Calla was lying beside me; her elbow, in fact, was now digging into my side. I observed fuzzily that we were on the pallet in the clearing chamber. Further observations revealed that my hands were tied in front of me, with a line running down to bonds around my ankles, I gulped down the escalating nausea. "Tell me what happened."
"I can't tell you much," Calla said. "As far as I know, there was just one man. He was waiting for us on the stairs. He hit you on the head, and then half-strangled me until I blacked out; when I woke up, we were trussed up like this on the pallet. That's all I know."
"But what was he? Sherkin? Gilman? What did he look like?"
"Hairy."
I waited for more. Calla was silent. "That's all? Hairy?"
"That's all I remember. I hardly even saw him, Tig, I dropped the candle when he grabbed my throat."
"Well, was he in armour? Uniform? Sherkin dress? You must remember something else."
"Nothing." She sounded aggrieved. "It happened very quickly. I can tell you one thing, though—we've been here for hours. That candle's burned down to a stub, and if he doesn't come back soon, we'll be in the dark."
"And if he does come back?"
There was silence from the other side of the pallet. After a brief struggle with the ropes, which convinced me that our captor was undoubtably talented at tying people up, I lay still and tried to think.
Gil Trilogy 1: Lady in Gil Page 16
