Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A Game of Rash

Ash awoke coughing in a darkened room. He tried to recall where he was while his hands groped against bedsheets soft and luxurious.

‘Easy,’ said a voice, and he turned his head towards the source of it, his breath wheezing. A figure rose from a darkened window, approached the bed with something held in its hand.

Ash pushed himself up against the deep pillows and accepted the wooden gourd passed to him. He coughed once more as he took a sip of cool soothing water, then drank more deeply.

‘Thank you,’ he rasped as Che returned to a chair by the window.

With delicate care, Ash he swung his feet off the bed and settled them on the cold wooden floor. His head lurched with nausea. His skull throbbed dully where the lump had formed. He felt hardly rested at all.

‘Where are we?’ Ash managed after a few shallow breaths.

The silhouette of Che turned to regard him. ‘Holed up in a city that everyone else seems fairly desperate to leave,’ the man said, and then turned back to the view beyond the window.

Ash rose to his feet, cracked his back with loud pops while he waited for his head to stop reeling. Gunfire could be heard in the distance, and he smelled something burning in the air. With a groan he padded over to the window to look outside. The sleet had stopped at last, and the wind tore at the clouds so that occasional starlight filtered through. It was enough to light a band of smoke spreading high and thin from the city.

Ash observed the fleet of boats heading westward, the vessels leaving an eerie blue glow in their wakes. Che said, ‘With our chances of leaving diminishing with every boat that departs.’

Ash placed a palm against the windowframe and leaned against it. His chest burned with every breath he took, but the air seemed to help a little, laden as it was with its harsh whiff of sulphur.

He narrowed his eyes and took in the vague shoreline around the lake. There were pinpricks of torchlight out there, a great number of them. They could be seen all along the southern and northern edges, and fires too shooting up into the night, buildings alight. As he watched them, he saw how the torches were spreading, creeping slowly along the western shore that was the edge of the Windrush forest.

‘On a lake presently being surrounded by the enemy.’

Clumsily – for his coordination was still off – Ash dragged another chair across the room, banging and catching it against a leg of the bed, the sounds seeming overly loud in the empty house. Beside the window he sat with his gourd of water, sipping occasionally as he and Che both gazed out at the night.

‘Leave if you wish to,’ he told the dark form opposite him. In the dimness, he saw Che’s eyes regard him coolly.

‘I wouldn’t wish to rob you of your retribution.’

Ash tossed the gourd into the young man’s lap and observed the flinch of his eyes. Che righted the gourd as water dripped from his lap onto the floor.

‘You think,’ growled Ash, ‘that because you saved me from a bad spot, you have paid for all you have done? Do not think that, Che. And do not jest about what must be settled between us. I find no humour in it.’

Che turned his face back to the window. ‘Do what you must, old man,’ he sighed. The Diplomat scratched at his neck lazily, and Ash was reminded of this young man when he had been a Roshun apprentice at Sato; a small intent boy with troubled eyes; a laughter that could burst from him at any moment like a rush of startled birds.

‘You were one of us,’ Ash accused him.

‘So I believed too.’

‘Yet you left us for Mann.’

Che set his thin lips in a humourless smile. ‘I was always of Mann,’ he mused. ‘I just didn’t know it at the time.’

‘Explain yourself.’

The young man scratched even harder, barely noticing he did so. Gently, Ash reached over and grasped his wrist. He felt the shock of their connection, then slowly drew Che’s hand away from his neck, the man’s pulse beating fast beneath his grip. ‘Che?’

The Diplomat closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he spoke as a man reciting the story of another, without any emotional attachment at all.

‘The Mannian order has ways of playing with your mind, Ash. They played with mine, as a boy. They made me think I was someone else, then sent me off to be play at being Roshun. Truly, it was no deception of mine. I thought I was nothing more than an innocent apprentice. But when I became twenty-one, my real memories came flooding back to me, as my handlers intended they should. My mission became clear.

‘ Now, remove your hand old man, before I remove it for you.’

Ash drew his hand clear, sat back in some bewilderment.

‘You have condemned the lives of everyone at Sato,’ he told him.

The young man was a mere shadow on the chair, the whites of his eyes gleaming as they stared out at the lake. ‘I acted as I did to protect the life of my mother. So they wouldn’t harm her. There was no other way for me, you understand?’

‘You had no choice.’

‘No.’

‘And what of your mother now, Che? Will they harm her now that you have deserted them?’

The young man’s eyes were bright.

Ash suddenly regretted his words, though before he could say anything, the moment was lost in another fit of coughing.

Che offered the water again as Ash leaned and spat onto the floor. He took a drink to soothe his throat, and then Che reached down and picked something up and tossed that onto Ash’s lap too. It was a loaf of stale bread wrapped in paper, half of it eaten already. Ash heard his stomach growl as his eyes devoured it.

Something within Ash gave way as he ate; the anger he felt towards this young man, the sense of betrayal, crumpled into itself. He chewed the last mouthful and swallowed it down, and sat there unmoving for a while, not knowing what to say. Flocks of birds flapped through the night, calling out to each other, disturbed from their roosts by snaps of gunfire that sounded like nothing more than fireworks. A man called someone’s name frantically in the streets outside.

‘We could swim for the shore, if it comes to it,’ Ash said.

Che looked him up and down. ‘In this weather? You look as though a cold bath would be enough to finish you off, never mind a swim.’

‘Give me a day or two, you will see. Besides, the water here is not so cold.’

‘What will you do then, if we make it out?’

Ash followed the torches as they spread across the western shoreline. After some moments, he released a long, pent-up breath. ‘I will warn my people, Che. That is what I will do.’

He felt the weight of the clay vial about his neck, tugging at his conscience.

‘But first, I must see a mother about her son.’

There was a trick to falling asleep at night, and Che had known it once. He’d been able to lay his head against a pillow and relax ever more deeply into his breathing, until after only a short time he would slip into a welcome oblivion.

But he’d been a youth then, when he had known the trick, and he had lived in the moment as all youths do, rather than in the days behind him or the ones still to come. He had not yet suffered from that fretful mindset of adulthood, where his thoughts became a chattering compulsion that only heightened in the silence of a bed, so that falling asleep became a matter of will rather than relaxation, a fight rather than a submission, in which the trying caused the simple knack of it to be lost.

And so, despite his great weariness, Che tossed and turned throughout the long hours of that night, barely sleeping at all. He kept thinking of his mother in Q’os, and of phantoms with garrottes stealing towards her where she lay. He thought too of a boyhood spent in the heady confines of the Sentiate temple, lonely in his play without other children his age, bored with the endless schooling on Mann, hardened by the occasional Purging.

Most of all, though, he thought of how he wasn’t free of them even now. He knew the order would never allow a Diplomat to turn rogue and survive.

Sasheen would send the twins after him. Even now they might be on their way.

Some time during the night, he heard Ash knocking something over in the bedroom next to his. His ears followed the creaks of his steps as the old farlander walked down the stairs; the rattle and bangs in the kitchen; the footsteps returning, the bedroom door closing once more.

The Roshun was only another concern to occupy his mind.

In the end he gave up on any notions of sleep, and groaned and rose from the bed, rubbing his face to rouse himself.

In the next room, Ash lay wrapped in blankets, breathing heavily as he slept. There was an empty bottle of wine on the floor next to the bed, and a jar of what smelled like honey. The farlander coughed a few times, scratched himself beneath his blanket, but he did not wake.

Che took the blanket he had been using and threw it loosely over the sleeping man. From the table in his own bedroom, he rifled through his backpack until he found the wrapped vial of wildwood juice. He tried to recall how much he was meant to take in order to suppress his pulsegland, for he’d never used the stuff before. It was easy to take too much of it, he knew that much at least; and too much could trigger the suicide response that was otherwise only summoned by will.

He placed a tiny dab of it on his tongue and returned the vial to his pack, then pushed the pack under the bed where it would be safe. The wildwood juice tasted foul and bitter in his mouth.

Che checked that his pistol was loaded and tucked it into its holster. His cloak was still sodden through, and he glanced at the sky through the window, saw that stars were clearly visible between the scattered clouds. He opened the window and hung the plain cloak out to dry.

The juice was tingling against his tongue as he descended the stairs to the ground floor of the big empty house, and stepped out through the front door and the gate beyond. On the wet boardwalk of the street he stood for a moment, listening to the exchanges of gunfire in the east.

Che looked in the opposite direction at the nearby waters of the lake, a black expanse visible between the two rows of housing. Drawn to it, he walked along the street and crossed the broad thoroughfare, and scrambled down onto the slick littoral of lakeweed until he stood with the water at his feet.

Campfires twinkled now all along the far shores. Rafts still drifted across the lake. They would be heading for the mouths of the Chilos and the Suck, hoping to make it clear to safety.

I should be on one of those rafts, he thought sourly. I should be getting as far away from here as I can.

Reluctantly, Che turned his back on it.

He faced the distant lights and noise of the city’s heart, wondering how long he had left before they came for him.

The old woman crouched on the shoreline of the floating island, ankle-deep in the water with her skirts tied up around her thighs, using a knife to cut through a strand of lakeweed, which she dropped into a bucket by her side.

For a moment the guns ceased firing from the direction of the crackling bridge. The old woman heard a tiny splash not far from her, and then the sudden sluice of water running clear of something.

She stopped what she was doing to look up, her free hand settling for balance on the basket.

‘Who’s there?’ she demanded, her voice shaking with age.

No one answered, though she could sense the presence of someone nearby, watching her.

She stood up with the knife in her hand. Another splash. More water running free. ‘Who’s there!’ she demanded again, and took a few steps backwards until she was clear of the water.

‘It’s me, old mother, your child,’ came a female voice, young, close. It made the old woman jerk in alarm.

‘What? I have no children. Who is that?’

She felt a ripple of water spill across her toes. Smelled a spicy breath against her own.

‘Stop playing with her, can’t you see that she’s blind.’ A man’s voice, a whisper. ‘Swan, help me with these clothes before we freeze to death, will you?’

‘Blind or not, she’s still a witness.’

The woman’s heart stopped as a cool edge pressed against her throat. She did not dare move. Her useless eyes moved of their own accord.

‘Old blind woman with no children,’ chided the woman’s voice once more.

‘ Swan! ’

A burning pain shot across her throat. She coughed wetly, choking, held a hand up to her neck to feel a hotness spill across her fingers. Her knees gave out, and she sagged to the surface of lakeweed, one hand lolling into the water, her mouth gasping like a landed fish.

‘This one should thank me,’ was the last thing she ever heard.

Hundreds choked the streets and milled in confusion around the great Central Canal, competing for spaces on the few boats still preparing to leave, or those ferries with crews brave enough to have returned for more.

Che saw folk desperate enough to be loading families onto makeshift rafts, mats of lakeweed with doors thrown across them; women clutching babes in their arms, children holding baskets, pots, the leashes of barking dogs; old grandparents muttering prayers.

The Khosian army had bedded down in the citadel at the heart of the floating city, and in the streets and buildings that surrounded it. The Tume Home Guards struggled to maintain some sense of order, while soldiers of the army staggered drunk and weary, or pissed in alleyways, or splashed like children in public cisterns, or fornicated with prostitutes desperate enough for coin to linger a while. He stepped over a Red Guard snoring in the middle of the boardwalk, and beneath the awning of a shop he glimpsed a brief fight between two squads of men, one of them spilling backwards with a knife sticking from his thigh.

The aftermath of battle, Che supposed. Men like himself, exhausted to the bone but now, having survived the fight, too spirited for simple rest. They hardly seemed the same men that had impressed him so deeply the night before as whole.

A door was flung open as he passed the mouth of an alleyway, and a couple tottered through it, shrouded in smoke. Music and laughter following them from within. Che stopped to look at the sign above the door; Calhalee’s Respite, it read above a picture of a wavy-haired woman with a fish dangling from her mouth.

He’d read of that name before, somewhere. Calhalee. Founding Mother of Tume, her twenty starving children the progenitors of the city’s major blood clans.

Che approached the open doorway and stepped inside. He descended a set of wooden steps and entered a long basement, barely large enough to hold the few hundred soldiers who filled it from wall to wall. The men were riotous drunk, all of them competing to see who could shout the loudest above the noise of the band playing on stage. He could taste the musty humidity of sweat in the air, amongst the smoke of hazii and tarweed that swirled thick as clouds.

Che could hardly hear himself think here, and he was glad of that. He stepped towards the bar that ran along the left side of the long room. Officers had gathered there, lounging on stools or standing against it, a host of prostitutes amongst them. His foot slipped beneath him and he looked down at a puddle of dark liquid, and saw that he stood upon a section of floor made from glass. A large well lined with wood had been cut through the deep foundations of lakeweed beneath them. Between pairs of boots, he saw glimmers of ghost-light in the waters deep below.

It was a gambler’s instinct that caused Che to push onwards until he reached the back of the room, where he saw a large oval table and a game of rash in play. The room was quieter at this end, the men intent on their cards.

He studied the game for a moment and saw that two players remained in the pot, a man in the purple robe of the Hoo and a short-haired girl in the black leathers of the Specials. The chairs were all taken, though one of the players sat with his head lolled back and his mouth open, soundly asleep. With a finger, Che gently pushed his shoulder until he fell sideways off the chair.

A few chuckles arose as he slid into his place like a jockey settling into the saddle. Cards were shown; the girl in leathers watched her coins being scraped away from the centre of the table.

‘What’s the limit?’ he asked those around him.

‘Our souls,’ rumbled a voice from his side.

The man was dressed in civilian clothing and was large around the stomach. He had a mug of wine and a plate of meat skewers laid out before him, and he licked his greasy fingers as Che offered him a nod.

‘High stakes,’ replied Che, and took his money pouch from his pocket. He slid a handful of coins into his palm, and settled them in a column on the table. They were local currency, silvers and a few eagles; his emergency stash.

The dealer dealt out a fresh round of cards while each of the players threw a copper into the pot. Che glanced at the girl sitting opposite him. Her eyes were closed now, but when the old soldier to her right looked at his cards and threw them away in disgust, she opened her eyes a fraction to study her own cards, her lips pouting as she did so.

A little young for a Special, thought Che, before he noticed the white band of a medic around her arm.

Carefully, she took a silver coin and tossed it towards the pot.

The man on her left looked at her askance, threw his own cards away. The folds continued around the table. When it came to the fat man’s turn he matched the bet, then scribbled something on a notebook before him.

The girl met Che’s gaze with her large, intoxicated blue eyes.

‘Are you playing or staring?’ she asked him.

‘A little of both,’ he told her, then looked down to study his own two cards; a three-armed black Monk and a white Foreigner.

Che considered his position. He wasn’t bothered about winning tonight. He was content enough to sit in the familiar environment of the gaming table and forget everything else for a while. On a whim he matched the girl’s bet, then raised her by throwing in two more silvers, wanting to see her reaction.

The girl half closed her eyes again, and settled back in her chair while she waited her turn.

‘Your accent. You’re not from Khos, are you?’ It was the fat man again, sipping wine.

‘I come from all over,’ Che answered casually.

The man wiped his hand on his woollen tunic and held it out to him. ‘Koolas,’ he said.

‘Che.’ They shook, and Che wondered if the man was merely gaining the measure of him.

‘What brings you here, friend?’

‘Some business,’ said Che. ‘And you?’

‘Me? I dabble in war correspondence, when I’m not writing my own impressions.’

‘Koolas?’ Che in surprise. ‘The same Koolas who wrote The First and the Last?’

The war chattero smiled proudly at that. ‘The very same,’ he admitted. ‘You’re well read, friend. They didn’t make that many copies.’

Che offered a modest tilt of his head.

The dealer spread four cards on the gaming table, face up. Che spotted a red Foreigner before he glanced at the rest. The other two cards were red too.

Again the girl bet first, this time even more strongly, throwing five silvers clinking into the pot.

Che sat back and tried to read her. Calm, he thought. She didn’t look as though she was bluffing. There was every chance that she had something, even possibly a flush.

They waited on Koolas, the big man studying his cards and those on the table, his left eye squinting. He glanced at the girl.

‘Nope,’ he said, flicking his cards away.

Che was enjoying himself. He knew that he was probably beaten here, yet still he reached for his stack of coins, and played with them for a moment, listening to their metallic clinks. She was pretending to ignore him as he stared at her, and he used the moment to glance down at her chest, its curves compressed by leather.

You can’t bluff this girl, he decided at last, and with regret slid his two cards forward. He gestured with his hand to the pot. It’s yours.

She retrieved her winnings without expression. Just once she chanced a look at Che, and a small smile tugged the corner of her mouth.

A damned bluff, he realized with a start. The little bitch had bluffed them all.

Che leaned back and barked with laughter. It felt good enough just then that he kept on laughing, the sound of it lost in the din of the crowd, and when he finally stopped he felt better for it, and another hand was already in progress. He caught the eye of one of the barmaids and called for her to bring some water, and good wine.

The wine she brought him was passable, the water tasted as though it had come from the lake.

‘How goes the evacuation?’ enquired Koolas.

‘Shouldn’t you be seeing it for yourself, correspondent?’

‘I’ve seen enough for now, thank you,’ the man replied quietly.

Che folded his next few hands, too worthless even to bluff with, wanting to see the run of play and the styles employed by the other players before he started working them.

A fight broke out near to the bar. A man was standing on top of it, his prick hanging out, waving it over the jeers of his friends. A table crashed to the floor spilling drinks. The drums of the band picked up a beat, and the music ran without pause into a different song, the singer wailing with urgency and passion now, her words a high ululation of purest old Khosian, almost Alhazii in their intonations. Che turned around to watch her perform.

The singer was dressed in a black, skin-tight dress of satin. Her hair was bound up by sticks of lacquered wood. Her eyes were lined with kohl. She swung her hips as she sang, moving in a way that caught the eyes of the men in the room, and the women too, so that they all gazed transfixed in desire of her, or desiring to be her. The woman held their stares, her arms cradling her head as she writhed amongst the coils of smoke.

‘Calhalee!’

Che turned to the table. ‘What?’ he replied to the girl.

‘Calhalee,’ she shouted again over the noise. ‘They say she owns this place.’ He noted how the girl spoke with the thick burr of a Lagosian accent.

‘She’s good,’ he said, glancing back.

The wine was heady stuff; he could feel it already. Che leaned over the table and extended his hand. ‘Che.’

‘I heard,’ she replied, and she studied him for a moment, before reaching out to clasp his hand, ‘Curl,’ she told him, and as their skins touched he felt a quickening of his blood and saw her lips part slightly. He squeezed her hand tighter, wanting her.