Gil Trilogy 1: Lady in Gil

by Rebecca Bradley

  High on the wall, immediately below the well-camouflaged vent into the between-ways, something moved. I squinted up at the vent, trying to decide whether what I was seeing was real, or merely signifying the onset of true delirium. A dark stroke was painting itself down the masonry, pausing momentarily in the runnel between blocks, spilling over, branching into a clutch of smaller trickles like the fingers of a hand, lengthening into slender claws as I watched. According to the coolest part of my brain, it had to be a liquid of some sort, looking like tar in the firelight but moving too rapidly, dividing too readily. Blood would run like that. I held my breath.

  One of the guards was well into an anecdote featuring two Gilwomen, one Sherkin and a large bowl of raw eggs. I've often wondered how it ended; he stopped in mid-sentence, leaned against the wall and slid gently to the floor. Even before he came to rest, the second guard toppled forwards and landed neatly in his colleague's lap. Aside from the clatter of a falling helmet, their collapse was silent.

  I gulped and sat up. My head spun for a moment, then came to rest. There was a faint rustle from behind the wall and, for the second time that hour, the secret door swung open. Nobody appeared. "Who is it?" I whispered. Behind the door, feet distinctly shuffled. "Calla? Is that you?" No reply. "Angel?"

  "Yes, my lord Scion."

  "Good Lady in Gil," I breathed fervently. "Help me, Angel, get me out of here, I'm not feeling very well."

  He emerged shyly, still holding a dart-tube, helped me off the pallet and half-carried me through the secret door. It swung shut behind us. At the top of the stairs, a third guard, helmetless, was crumpled against the wall, the blood from his crushed head pooling on the sill of the air vent and oozing out through the narrow opening. Angel lowered me to the floor beside the body. The wall was cool against my burning skin.

  "Where are we, Angel?" I asked. "What's happening?"

  He peered woefully at me out of his complexity of hair. "They got in. The little spider told them how."

  "What else?"

  "We're not safe here now. They found my sleeping place."

  The gymnastics recommenced inside my head. I held it with my good hand to stop it spinning. "I'd guessed all that—Kekashr himself was right here on this spot, not an hour ago. It won't be long before he finds the guardsmen you killed, and he'll know I'm in the between-ways. We have to hide."

  Angel nodded. Without another word, he hoisted me to my feet, pulled my good arm around his shoulder, and trotted off down the corridor. I leaned heavily on him, fighting a desperate battle against head and belly and fever. My arm transmitted waves of shocked protest at every step. The pain began to feel like a personal insult; by extension, so did Angel's supportive shoulder.

  We staggered around a corner into a stretch that seemed familiar. I searched for words in the hot red slurry between my ears. "Angel—where are we going?"

  "My lord Scion?"

  "Where. Are. We. Going."

  "Somewhere safe."

  "Safe? Nowhere's safe."

  "I know a place."

  "Where?"

  "Quietly, my lord."

  The contents of my head sloshed angrily about. "You dare to hush me? I'm the Scion of Oballef, you know, a hero, a great hero. Today I gave the Lady in Gil to Gil's greatest enemy—"

  With characteristic directness, Angel pulled a rag out of his robe and stuffed it into my mouth. Thus gagged, I whimpered with outrage—Angel became not the man who had saved me, but the latest in a long series of tormentors, denigrators, inquisitors, obstructors. The sense of grievance swelled alongside the fever; I was desperate to win at least one argument before I died. At the next air vent, I pulled violently away from Angel and fetched up against the wall with a thud. I tore the rag out of my mouth and peered through the vent. "You idiot," I cried, "that's the Flamens' Court—we're too close to the clearing chamber. Are you going to betray me too?" He retrieved me with difficulty (I remember with shame that I yanked out a handful of beard; not that it made much difference) and hauled me, struggling feebly, along the corridor and into the Spine.

  Noises far ahead penetrated even the thrumming blood-beats in my ears. Angel hesitated, then launched us both forwards. Suddenly we were half-scrambling, half-falling down from the dim corridor into the dark shelter of a stairwell, and Angel was stuffing the rag back into my mouth. I think I fought him—but my chief memories are of a heavy weight pressing me painfully against the edge of the stone riser, a hand hard as iron fettering my wrist, a clicking and clumping of many boots along the stone floor of the corridor above us. Then silence, and the weight lifting, and the red-shot darkness folding around me like a heavy woollen blanket.

  "Are they gone?" The voice was mine, although it seemed to come from an immense distance away.

  "They're gone, my lord Scion." He rustled away from me. When I reached out, he was not there. I laid my forehead on the beautiful cool of the stairs and earnestly wished the rest of the world into nonexistence. It didn't work, alas; moments later Angel reappeared and lifted me off the friendly stones.

  "It's clear, my lord Scion. I looked through the vent."

  "What's clear? Nothing's clear." In front of us, a long vertical line of light suddenly sliced through the darkness. I watched it with interest, waiting to see what it would do. It grew wider. Angel, carrying me in his arms, lurched into it and through it; neither I nor the light offered any resistance. This was also interesting, as was the burst of sunlight, of exotic fragrances, of soft music, on the other side. Hazily, I identified the timbre of a Tatakil woodwhistle. I started to tell this to Angel, but was diverted by a vision of the Lady's gold-and-white face hanging over me, unreproachful, concerned, ineffably beautiful. It broke my heart that I had failed her.

  "What did those shullturds do to him, Angel?" the Lady said. It was strange that she looked so much like Lissula. Even the voice was similar.

  "Forgive me," I whispered.

  "What's he saying? Never mind—we've got to get you both out of sight before those bitch Koroskans come sniffing around. This way, quickly!"

  * * *

  34

  THE NEXT TWO days I don't remember at all. My body, battered, lacerated, shot, starved of food and sleep, pushed beyond its limits and burning with fever, finally decided it had taken quite enough, thank you, and refused to take any more. If the shints had asked me at that point, I'd have told them to let me die. Begged them, even. After all, with the Lady lost and the whole world about to become Lord Kekashr's private playground, there would have seemed little point in waking up at all. As it happened, they didn't ask me. They were having too much fun.

  I awoke on the third day, feeble but clear-headed, also hungry and mildly puzzled. It wasn't Exile, it wasn't my cold little bedchamber in the Gil slums, it most certainly wasn't the south dungeon, not with all those cherry-coloured satin bed cushions. I closed my eyes again and began to remember, fragment by fragment. The odd thing was that the memories were barren of emotional content, as if I were recalling remote history of purely academic interest; even Calla's treachery and the loss of the Lady evoked no more than vague regret. So that's that, I said to myself; the game's over. Now where can I get some breakfast?

  I opened my eyes and turned over. There was something on my head, presumably a bandage. A woman with a mane of bright auburn hair was hunched on the floor beside the pallet, draped in a loose yellow robe. There was something familiar about the ungainly set of her shoulders. I reached out to touch her, and she raised her head. The face was not familiar, except for the eyes, which were unmistakable. "My lord Scion," she said. The voice clinched it.

  "Angel! Angel? Is that you?"

  Angel clawed a wisp of fiery hair out of the side of his mouth. "Yes, my lord Scion," he said.

  "Good Lady in Gil! What's happened to you?"

  "They shaved me." He scratched morosely at his stubbled chin. "I'm in disguise."

  "Ah. I see." There was nothing else to say. Anyway, I was losing my powers of speech. Th
e more I looked at him, the more he resembled a hound my mother used to own, the kind with exuberant hair over a face that was entirely jowls and sad brown eyes. I held my breath, resisting an attack of hilarity.

  "What's wrong, my lord Scion?"

  "Nothing, Angel." That finished it; in combination with the face, the name was too much. I covered my mouth and tried to strangle my laughter as circumspectly as possible. He watched me mournfully from under the glorious wig, which only made matters worse; and when he knocked the wig askew to scratch at his shorn head, the effort not to burst nearly killed me. "I'm sorry," I gasped finally. "I don't mean to criticize, but the wig isn't very convincing. You look—you look—"

  "You're in disguise too," he said flatly.

  "Me?" I felt the thing on my head—not a bandage, a mass of ringlets. The one I held in front of my eyes was brassy blonde. I was still adjusting to this when Lissula and another woman, a dazzling Tatakil, floated through the curtained doorway and stopped to look us over. Expressions of intense enjoyment spread across their dainty faces. I sat up and tried feebly to bow, and my wig slipped, which threw them into muffled convulsions. After some moments of this mirth, pointedly not shared by Angel and myself, Lissula composed herself. "Oh, my darling," she said, "you'll never make a decent shint."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "You should see yourself."

  "No, I'm sure I shouldn't." But the giggling Tatakil produced a copper hand-mirror from nowhere and held it in front of me. What stared back from the polished surface was a stranger's face, thin, hollow-eyed, papery where the skin was drawn tightly over the bones, etched with new lines and jagged scores from Callilef's ring. The saucy curls were as fitting as a party crown on a corpse.

  "What's the point?" I asked, handing the mirror back.

  "My lord?"

  "What's the point of the disguise? Neither of us could fool a blind man."

  Lissula coiled herself decoratively on the end of my pallet. "You're not meant to be seen close up, darling. It's just a precaution, in case anyone's watching from the between-ways."

  Involuntarily, I raised my eyes to where the air vent should be. It was hard to pick out unless you knew it was there, but I could remember the panoramic view it afforded of the shintashkr. The disguises already seemed less ridiculous.

  "What about the Koroskans?"

  "Those moustached lumps? Don't worry about them."

  "But surely—"

  "Tigrallef, my dearest darling, we have them well under control."

  "But I thought they had you under control."

  "They think that, too." Lissula and the Tatakil exchanged amused glances. Angel nodded sagely, as if he knew all this already and could substantiate it with volumes of evidence. "Don't worry," Lissula went on, "we've kept you well-hidden for three days. It's the most marvellous joke, my dearest—our masters are looking for you everywhere else. They say Lord Kekashr himself is shitting parth-asps." The Tatakil giggled with her.

  I boggled at this image of Lord Kekashr, then passed over it. "But the Koroskans have access to the whole shintashkr. Where did you hide me?"

  "Well, darling, the whole shintashkr, so to speak. We have fifty pallets to choose from—we've simply been moving you to wherever those bitches weren't likely to come, and making sure they stayed away. And when you were raving, we just sang, or fought, or took turns getting hysterical—the wardresses think we're highly-strung, you know."

  "But what about when you had," I paused, "visitors?"

  She stretched prettily. "Duty hours? We put you under the bedclothes of any shint on her week off. You could rave at the top of your voice then without anyone noticing, since our masters are so noisy at their pleasures."

  I lay back on the satin bed cushions. "You're good," I said, "maybe as good as the Web."

  "Maybe better," Lissula retorted, "seeing as they're all in the south dungeon."

  For a moment I didn't like her, but it passed. "You'll be in the south dungeon yourselves, or worse, if the Sherank find me here. I should go."

  "Don't be foolish, darling, you're welcome here for as long as you want to stay." The Tatakil whispered something to her and they both guffawed delicately. "Silka likes you, but she's too shy to say so."

  Good Lady in Gil, I said to myself, one thing Silka didn't look was shy. "That's very nice of her, but I should still go. I'm putting all of you at risk."

  "Where do you think you'll go? You're still weak as a baby, and Kekashr has every trooper and spy in Gil out searching for you. Anyway, there's trouble in the city, some kind of silly uprising. You'd be dead or captured in minutes. No, darling, you're much safer here. We want you to stay, we really do." She managed, at one and the same time, both to pout seductively and look firm.

  I stared at her helplessly. Of course she was right. It occurred to me that, firstly, I did not know where to go; and secondly, I did not know what to do when I got there. Kekashr had the Lady. Unless I could steal her back, which seemed about as likely at that moment as dying of old age, it hardly mattered where I was. Thoughtfully, I tossed the ringlets out of my eyes.

  "Darling, you're like a skeleton. Have some more gravy on that roasted beef." Or, "Still feverish, poor dear. I'll just sponge you down." Or, "Dearheart, are you in pain? Let me rub your back." Or, better yet, "Move over, my love." I began to think that, given an adequate supply of books and paper, I could live quite happily in the shintashkr for the rest of my life. Angel also seemed to be quite at home, though as impenetrable as ever, whereas the shints were clearly having a wonderful time. Hide-the-Scion was the best game they'd played in months.

  But all the while we were playing on the lip of an abyss. Angel knew it, the shints knew it, and I knew it. News arrived nightly in the form of pillow talk, all of it bad—strict curfews in the city, house-to-house searches, packed dungeons, the Gilman's Pleasure set up indefinitely in the great market; my description had been circulated and a handful of look-alikes pulled in and never released. The Gilgard had been scoured for me, until they were fairly sure I'd somehow been smuggled out into the city, then the search had widened and become more brutal. The harbours were closed and Malvi was also under a strict curfew.

  My disappearance was not the only factor, however. There were also reports of resistance, of traps set and sprung on increasingly wary Sherkin patrols, of pitched battles in the tenements and bloody streets. A few faces vanished from the shints' clientele, not all of them unmourned, though the reported counts of Gil's casualties were far higher. Behind much of this, I thought I could see Hawelli's fine, futile hand—his pinpricks, that is, countered by great whacks of the Sherkin cleaver. By all accounts, Kekashr was quite as outraged as Lord Kishr had been when my forebears escaped to the Archipelago.

  By the fifth day, I could feel my strength returning, such as it was. Rasam, one of the Glishorans, a skilled midwife as well as a talented whore, dosed me very effectively with a powder used to alleviate menstrual cramps and build strength after childbirth. The shints giggled at this, but my damaged shoulder and scarred cheeks healed the better for it. Even the wig became more flattering once my face filled out. I learned a surprising amount about cosmetics.

  Altogether I had never in my life been better amused, fed, cosseted or regarded. While I was able to keep my mind shuttered, I was the king of this closed little castle; but when I thought of what was happening outside the shintashkr, it was like looking at a firestorm through the windows of a straw house. Much of the time I managed not to think at all.

  On the afternoon of the seventh day, I was sitting with my back against the rear wall of the shintashkr, one of the few spots invisible from the air vent, sharing an enormous basket of pikcherries. Angel and Lissula were there, and Mbuha, a Storican; Lissula was uncharacteristically quiet. Silka had been sitting in my lap, but had gone off to take her turn as lookout. I was happily pumping Mbuha about some of the lesser-documented Storican fauna, a childhood interest of mine, when Lissula broke in.

  "You'v
e never told me what happened to Calla," she said bluntly.

  It was a shock—like having cold water poured over my brain. Calla was one of the matters I had strictly avoided thinking about. I was silent for so long that Mbuha shrugged and went back to describing the ngor, a tall beast with a neck like a spotted tree-trunk, which I had assumed to be mythical, but which she claimed to have seen many times. Gently, I put my hand over her mouth.

  "Calla betrayed me."

  Lissula nodded, unsurprised. "That bitch; I thought she might. She's really half-Sherkint, did you know?"

  "Yes, I did know." Sadly. The pikcherries tasted sour. The others were quiet now, the cheer had vanished. I think they were peering out with me at the advancing flames. Finally I asked, "What happened after we left to warn Bekri?" (Stab of remorse—what was happening to Bekri while I filled my face with pikcherries?) "Did you wait for us in the between-ways?"

  "No, thank the Lady. When I could hear nothing more from the chute, I came back to the shintashkr—and not long after lunch, the secret door crashed open and a mob of troopers burst in from the between-ways, shouting and waving their swords."

  "What did you do?"

  "We told them to leave, of course. It was out of hours."

  "And they left?"