Child of the River

Chapter Nineteen Iachimo

When the giant guard went past the other side of the gate for the third time, Tamora said, “Every four hundred heartbeats. You could boil an egg by him.”

She lay beside Yama and Pandaras under a clump of thorny bushes in the shadows beyond the fierce white glare of a battery of electric-arc lamps that crackled at the top of the wall. The gate was a square lattice of steel bars set in a high wall of fused rock, polished as smoothly as black glass. The wall stretched away into the darkness on either side, separated from the dry scrub by a wide swathe of barren sandy soil.

Yama said, “I still think we should go over the wall somewhere else. The rest of the perimeter cannot be as heavily guarded as the gate.”

“The gate is heavily guarded because it’s the weakest part of the wall,” Tamora said. “That’s why we’re going in through it. The guard is a man. Doesn’t look it, but he is. He decides who to let in and who to keep out. Elsewhere, the guards will be machines or dogs. They’ll kill without thinking and do it so quick you won’t know it until you find yourself in the hands of the Preservers. Listen. After the guard goes past again, I’ll climb the wall, kill him, and open the gates to let you in.”

“If he raises the alarm—”

“He won’t have time for that,” Tamora said, and showed her teeth.

“Those won’t do any good against armor,” Pandaras said.

“They’ll snap off your head if you don’t swallow your tongue. Be quiet. This is warrior work.”

They were all tired and on edge. It had been a long journey from the waterfront. Although they had traveled most of the distance in a public calash, they had had to walk the final three leagues. The merchant’s estate was at the top of one of a straggling range of hills that, linked by steep scrub-covered ridges, rose like worn teeth at the edge of the city’s wide basin. An age ago, the hills had been part of the city. As Yama, Tamora and Pandaras had climbed through dry, fragrant pine woods, they had stumbled upon an ancient paved street and the remains of the buildings which had once lined it They had rested there until just after sunset. Yama and Pandaras had eaten the raisin cakes they had bought hours before, while Tamora had prowled impatiently amongst the ruins, wolfing strips of dried meat and snicking off the fluffy seeding heads of fireweed with her rapier.

The merchant who owned the estate was a star-sailor who had jumped ship the last time it had lain off the edge of Confluence, over forty years ago. He had amassed his wealth by surreptitious deployment of technologies whose use was forbidden outside the voidships. For that alone, quite apart from the crime of desertion, he had been sentenced to death by his crewmates, but they had no jurisdiction outside their ship and, because of the same laws which the merchant had violated, could not use their powers to capture him.

Tamora was the second cateran hired to carry out the sentence. The first had not returned, and was presumed to have been killed by the merchant’s guards. Yama thought that this put them at a disadvantage, since the merchant would be expecting another attack, but Tamora said it made no difference.

“He has been expecting this ever since his old ship returned. That’s why he has retreated to this estate, which has better defenses than the compound he maintains in the city. We’re lucky there aren’t patrols outside the walls.”

In fact, Yama had already asked several machines to ignore them as they had toiled up the hill through the pine woods, but he did not point this out. There was an advantage in being able to do something no one suspected was possible.

He already owed his life to this ability, and it was to his benefit to have Tamora believe that he had killed the cateran by force of arms rather than by lucky sleight of hand.

Now, crouched between Tamora and Pandaras in the dry brush, Yama could faintly sense other machines beyond the high black wall, but they were too far away to count, let alone influence. He was dry-mouthed, and his hands had a persistent uncontrollable tremor. All his adventures with Telmon had been childhood games without risk, inadequate preparation for the real thing. His suggestion to try another part of the wall was made as much from the need to delay the inevitable as to present an alternative strategy.

Pandaras said, “I have an idea. Master, lend me your satchel, and that book you were reading.”

Tamora said fiercely, “Do as I say. No more, no less.”

“I can have the guard open the gates for me,” Pandaras said. “Or would you rather break your teeth on steel bars?”

“If you insist that we have to go through the gate,” Yama told Tamora, as he emptied out his satchel, “at least we should listen to his idea.”

“Grah. Insist? I tell you what to do, and you do it. This is not a democracy. Wait!”

But Pandaras stood up and, with Yama’s satchel slung around his neck, stepped out into the middle of the asphalt road which ran through the gateway. Tamora hissed in frustration as the boy walked into the glare of the arc lights, and Yama told her, “He is cleverer than you think.”

“He’ll be dead in a moment, clever or not.”

Pandaras banged on the gate. A bell trilled in the distance and dogs barked closer at hand. Yama said, “Did you know there were dogs?”

“Grah. Dogs are nothing. It is easy to kill dogs.”

Yama was not so sure. Any one of the watchdogs of the peel-house could bring down an ox by clamping its powerful jaws on the windpipe of its victim and strangling it—and to judge by the volume and ferocity of the barking there were at least a dozen dogs beyond the gate.

The guard appeared on the other side of the gate in his augmented armor, painted scarlet as if dipped in fresh blood, he was more than twice Pandaras’s height. His eyes were red embers that glowed in the shadow beneath the bill of his flared helmet. Energy pistols mounted on his shoulders trained their muzzles on Pandaras and the guard’s amplified bass voice boomed and echoed in the gateway.

Pandaras stood his ground. He held up the satchel and opened it and showed it to the guard, then took out the book and flipped through its pages in an exaggerated pantomime.

The guard reached through the gate’s steel lattice, his arm extending more than a man’s arm should reach, but Pandaras danced backward and put the book back in the satchel and folded his arms and shook his head from side to side.

The guard conferred with himself in a booming mutter of subsonics; then the red dots of his eyes brightened and a bar of intense red light swept up and down Pandaras. The red light winked out and with a clang the gate sprang open a fraction. Pandaras slipped through the gap. The gate slammed shut behind him and he followed the monstrously tall guard into the shadows beyond.

“He’s brave, your fool,” Tamora remarked, “but he’s even more of a fool than I thought possible.”

“Let us wait and see,” Yama said, although he did not really believe that the pot boy could do anything against the armored giant. He was as astonished as Tamora when, a few minutes later, the dogs began to bark again, the gate clanged open, and Pandaras appeared in the gap and beckoned to them.

The giant guard sprawled on his belly in the roadway a little way beyond the gate. His helmet was turned to one side, and one of his arms was twisted behind him, as if he was trying to reach something on his back. Yama knew that the guard was dead, but he could feel a glimmer of machine intelligence in the man’s skull, as if something still lived there, gazing with furious impotence through its host’s dead eyes.

Pandaras returned Yama’s satchel with a flourish, and Yama stuffed his belongings into it. Tamora kicked the guard’s scarlet cuirass, then turned on Pandaras.

“Tell me how you did it later,” she said. “Now we must silence the dogs. You’re lucky they weren’t set on you.”

Pandaras calmly stared up at her. “A harmless messenger like me?”

“Don’t be so fucking cute.”

“Let me deal with the dogs,” Yama said.

“Be quick,” Pandaras said. “Before I killed him, the guard sent for someone to escort me to the house.”

The dogs were baying loudly, and other dogs answered them from distant parts of the grounds. Yama found the kennel to the left of the gate, cut into the base of the wall.

Several dogs thrust their snouts through the kennel’s barred door with such ferocity that their skull caps and the machines embedded in their shoulders struck sparks from the iron bars.

They howled and whined and snapped in a ferocious tumult, and it took Yama several minutes to calm them down to a point where he could ask them to speak with their fellows and assure them that nothing was wrong.

“Go to sleep,” he told the dogs, once they had passed on the message, and then he ran back to the road.

Tamora and Pandaras had rolled the guard under the partial cover of a stand of moonflower bushes beside the road. Tamora had stripped the guard’s heavy pistols from their shoulder mountings. She handed one to Yama and showed him how to press two contact plates together to make it fire.

“I should have one of those,” Pandaras said. “Right of arms, and all that.”

Tamora showed her teeth. “You killed a man in full powered armor twice your height and armed with both of these pistols. I’d say you are dangerous enough with that kidney puncher I chose for you. Follow me, if you can!”

She threw herself into the bushes, and Yama and Pandaras ran after her, thrashing through drooping branches laden with white, waxy blossoms. Tamora and Pandaras quickly outpaced Yama, but Pandaras could not sustain his initial burst of speed and Yama soon caught up with him. The boy was leaning against the trunk of a cork oak, watching the dark stretch of grass beyond while he tried to get his breath back.

“She has the blood rage,” Pandaras said, when he could speak again. “No sense in chasing after her.”

Yama saw a string of lights burning far off through a screen of trees on the far side of the wide lawn. He began to walk in that direction, with Pandaras trotting at his side.

Yama said, “Will you tell me how you killed the guard? I might need the trick myself.”

“How did you calm the watchdogs?”

“Do you always answer a question with a question?”

“We say that what you know makes you what you are. So you should never be free with what you know, or strangers will take pieces of you until nothing is left.”

“Nothing is free in this city, it seems.”

“Only the Preservers know everything, master. Everyone else must pay or trade for information. How did you calm the dogs?”

“We have similar dogs at home. I know how to talk to them.”

“Perhaps you’ll teach me that trick when we have time.”

“I am not sure if that is possible, Pandaras, but I suppose that I can try. How did you get through the gate and kill the guard?”

“I showed him your book. I saw you reading in it when we rested in the ruins. It’s very old, and therefore very valuable. My former master—” Pandaras spat on the clipped grass “—and that stupid cateran you killed would have taken the gold rials and left the book, but my mother’s family deals in books, and I know a little about them. Enough to know that it is worth more than the money. I talked with someone through the guard, and they let me in. The rich often collect books. There is power in them.”

“Because of the knowledge they contain.”

“You’re catching on. As for killing the guard, it was no trick. I’ll tell you how I did it now, master, and you must tell me something later. The guard seemed a giant, but he was an ordinary man inside that armor. Without power, he could not move a step; with it, he could sling a horse over his shoulders and still run as fast as a deer. I jumped onto his back, where he couldn’t reach me, and pulled the cable that connected the power supply to the muscles in his armor. Then I stuck my knife in the gap where the cable went in, and pierced his spinal cord. A trick one of my stepbrothers taught me. The family of my mother’s third husband work in a foundry that refurbishes armor. I helped out there when I was a kid. You get to know the weak points that way—they’re where mending is most needed. Do we have to go so fast?”

“Where is the house, Pandaras?”

“This man is rich, but he is not one of the old trading families, who have estates upriver of the city. So he has a compound by the docks where he does his business, and this estate in the hills on the edge of the city. That is why the wall is so high and strong, and why there are many guards. They all fear bands of robbers out here, and arm their men as if to fight off a cohort.”

Yama nodded. “The country beyond is very wild. It used to be part of the city, I think.”

“No one lives there. No one important, anyhow. The robbers come from the city.”

“The law is weaker here, then?”

“Stronger, master, if you fall foul of it. The rich make their own laws. For ordinary people, it’s the magistrates who decide right and wrong. Isn’t that how it was where you come from?”

Yama thought of the Aedile, and of the militia. He said, “More or less. Then the house will be fortified. Sheer force of arms might not be the best way to try and enter it.”

“Fortified and hidden. That’s the fashion these days. We could wander around for a day and not find it. Those lights are probably where the servants live, or a compound for other guards.” Pandaras stopped to untangle the unraveling edge of his sleeve from the thorny canes of a bush. “If you ask me, this crutty greenery is all part of the defenses.”

Yama said, “There is a path through there. Perhaps that will lead to the house.”

“If it was that simple, we’d all be rich, and have big houses of our own, neh? It probably leads to a pit full of caymans or snakes.”

“Well, someone is coming along it, anyway. Here.” Yama gave the pistol to Pandaras.

It was so heavy that the boy needed both hands to hold it. “Wait,” he said, “you can’t—”

But Yama ran toward the lights and the sound of hooves, carried by a rush of exhilaration. It was better to act than to hide, he thought, and in that moment understood why Tamora had charged off so recklessly. As he ran, he took the book from his satchel; when lights swooped toward him through the dark air, he stopped and held it up. A triplet of machines spun to a halt above his head and bathed him in a flood of white light. Yama squinted through their radiance at the three riders who had pulled up at the edge of the road.

Two guards in plastic armor reined in their prancing mounts and leveled light lances at him. The third was a mild old man on a gray palfrey. He wore a plain black tunic and his long white hair was brushed back from the narrow blade of his face. His skin was yellow and very smooth, stretched tautly over high cheekbones and a tall, ridged brow.

Yama held the book higher. The white-haired man said, “Why aren’t you waiting at the gate?”

“The guard was attacked, and I got scared and ran. Thieves have been after what I carry ever since I have come to this city. Only last night I had to kill a man who wanted to steal from me.”

The white-haired man jogged his palfrey so that it stepped sideways toward Yama, and he leaned down to peer at the book. He said, “I can certainly see why someone would want to steal this.”

“I have been told that it is very valuable.”

“Indeed.” The white-haired man stared at Yama for a full minute. The two guards watched him, although their lances were still pointed at Yama, who stood quite still in the light of the three machines. At last, the man said, “Where are you from, boy?”

“Downriver.”

Did he know? And if he knew, how many others?

“You’ve been amongst the tombs, have you not?”

“You are very wise, dominie.”

It was possible that the Aedile knew. Perhaps that was why he had wanted to bury Yama in a drab clerkship, away from the eyes of the world. And if the Aedile had known, then Prefect Corin had known too.

One of the guards said, “Take the book and let us deal with him. He won’t be missed.”

“I allowed him in,” the white-haired man said. “Although he should have waited by the gate, I will continue to be responsible for him. Boy, where did you get that book? From one of the old tombs downriver? Did you find anything else there?”

Before Yama could answer, the second guard said, “He has the pallid look of a tomb-robber.”

The white-haired man held up a hand. His fingers were very long, with nails filed to points and painted black. “It isn’t just the book. I’m interested in the boy too.”

The first guard said, “He carries a power knife in his satchel.”

“More loot, I expect,” the white-haired man said. “You won’t use it here, will you, boy?”

“I have not come to kill you,” Yama said.

The second guard said, “He’s a little old for you, Iachimo.”

“Be silent,” the white-haired man, Iachimo, said pleasantly, “or I’ll slice out your tongue and eat it in front of you.” He told Yama, “They obey me because they know I never make an idle threat. I wish it were otherwise, but you cannot buy loyalty. You must win it by fear or by love. I find fear to be more effective.”

The second guard said, “We should check the gate.”

Iachimo said, “The dogs have not raised any real alarm and neither has the guard.”

The first guard said, “But here’s this boy wandering the grounds. There might be others.”

“Oh, very well,” Iachimo said, “but be quick.” He swung down from his palfrey and told Yama, “You’ll come with me, boy.”

As they crossed the road and plunged into a stand of pine trees beyond, Iachimo said, “Is the book from the City of the Dead? Answer truthfully. I can smell out a lie, and I have little patience for evasion.”

Yama did not doubt it, but he thought to himself that Iachimo was the kind of man who believed too strongly in his cleverness, and so held all others in contempt and did not pay as much attention to them as he should. He said, “It was not from the City of the Dead, dominie, but a place close by.”

“Hmm. As I remember, the house occupied by the Aedile of Aeolis has an extensive library.” Iachimo turned and looked at Yama and smiled. “I see I have hit the truth. Well, I doubt that the Aedile will miss it. The library is a depository of all kinds of rubbish, but as the fisherfolk of that region have it, rubies are sometimes engendered in mud by the light of the Eye of the Preservers. Nonsense, of course, but despite that it has a grain of truth. In this case, the fisherfolk are familiar with pearls, which are produced by certain shellfish when they are irritated by a speck of grit, and secrete layers of slime to enclose the irritation. This slime hardens, and becomes the black or red pearls so eagerly sought by gentlemen and ladies of high breeding, who do not know of the base origin of their beloved jewels. Your book is a pearl, without doubt. I knew it as soon as I saw it, although I do not think it was you who held it up at the gate.”

“It was my friend. But he got scared and ran off.”

“The guards will catch him. Or the dogs, if he is unlucky.”

“He’s only a pot boy from one of the inns by the waterfront. I struck up a friendship with him.”

“From which he hoped to profit, I expect,” Iachimo said, and then stopped and turned to look back at the way they had come.

A moment later, a thread of white light lanced through the darkness, illuminating a distant line of trees. Yama felt the ground tremble beneath his feet; a noise like thunder rolled through the grounds.

Iachimo grasped Yama’s shoulders and pushed him forward. “One of the weapons mounted by the gatekeeper, unless I am mistaken. And I am never mistaken. Your friend has been found, I believe. Do not think of running, boy, or you’ll suffer the same fate.”

Yama did not resist. Both Tamora and Pandaras were armed with the pistols taken from the gatekeeper, and Iachimo did not yet know that the gatekeeper was dead. Besides, he was being taken to the very place the others were looking for.

Yama and Iachimo descended into a narrow defile between steep rock walls studded with ferns and orchids. Another white flash lit the crack of sky above. Pebbles rattled down the walls in the aftershock. Iachimo tightened his grip on Yama’s shoulder and pushed him on. “This matter is consuming more time than I like,” he said.

“Are you in charge of the guards? They do not seem to be doing a very good job.”

“I am in charge of the entire household. And do not think I turned out for you, boy. It was the book. But I admit you are a curiosity. There could be some advantage here.”

Yama said boldly, “What do you know about my bloodline? You recognized it, and that was why I was not killed.”

“You know less than I, I think. I wonder if you even know your parents.”

“Only that my mother is dead.”

A silver lady in a white boat. The old Constable, Thaw, had said that he had plucked Yama from her dead breast, but as a young boy Yama had dreamed that she had only been profoundly asleep, and was searching for him in the wilderness of tombs around Aeolis. Sometimes he had searched for her there—as he was searching still.

Iachimo said, “Oh, she’s dead all right. Dead ages past. You’re probably first generation, revived from a stored template.”

The narrow defile opened out into a courtyard dimly lit by a scattering of floating lanterns, tiny as fireflies, that drifted in the black air. Its tiled floor was crowded with gray, life-sized statues of men and animals in a variety of contorted poses. Iachimo pushed Yama forward. Horribly, the statues stirred and trembled, sending up ripples of gray dust and a dry scent of electricity. Some opened their eyes, but the orbs they rolled toward Yama were like dry, white marbles.

Iachimo said in Yama’s ear, “There’s worse that can happen to you than being returned to storage. Do we understand each other?”

Yama thought of his knife. It occurred to him that there were situations in which it might be more merciful to use it against himself rather than his enemies. He said, “You are taking me to your master.”

“He wants only to see the book. You will be a surprise gift. We’ll see what shakes out, and afterwards we’ll talk.”

Iachimo smiled at Yama, but it was merely a movement of certain muscles in his narrow, high-browed face. He was lost in his own thoughts, Yama saw, a man so clever that he schemed as naturally as other men breathed.

Yama said, “How do you know about my bloodline?”

“My master’s bloodline is long-lived, and he is one of the oldest. He has taught me much about the history of the world. I know that he will be interested in you. Of course, he may want you killed, but I will try to prevent it. And so you owe me your life twice over. Think of that, when you talk with him. We can do things for each other, you and I.”

Yama remembered that the pilot of the voidship lighter had said that it knew his bloodline, and understood that he was a prize which Iachimo would offer to his master in the hope of advancement or reward. He said, “It seems to me that this is a very one-sided bargain. What will I gain?”

“Your life, to begin with. My master may want to kill you at once, or use you and then kill you, but I can help you, and you can help me. Damn these things!”

Iachimo was standing beside the statue of a naked boy—or perhaps it had once been a living boy, encased or transformed in some way—and the statue had managed to grasp the hem of his tunic. Iachimo tugged impatiently, then broke off the statue’s fingers, one by one. They made a dry snapping sound, and fell to dust when they struck the floor.

Iachimo brushed his hands together briskly and said, “My master has revived certain technologies long thought forgotten. It is the basis of his fortune and his power. You understand why you will be of considerable interest to him.”

Yama realized that this was a question, but he did not know how to begin to answer it. Instead, he said, “It is a very old edition of the Puranas.”

“Oh, the book. Like you, it is not an original, but it is not far removed. You have read it?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t tell my master that. Tell him you stole it, nothing more. Lie if you must; otherwise he may well have you killed on spot, and that is something that will be difficult for me to prevent. He controls the guards here. Let us go. He is waiting.”

On the far side of the courtyard was an arched doorway and a broad flight of marble steps that led down toward a pool of warm white light. Iachimo’s long, pointed nails dug into Yama’s shoulder, pricking his skin through his shirt.

“Stand straight,” Iachimo said. “Use your backbone as it was intended. Remember that you were made in the image of the Preservers, and forget that your ancestors were animals that went about on all fours. Good. Now walk forward, and do not stare at anything. Most especially, do not stare at my master. He is more sensitive than he might appear. He has not always been as he is now.”