The Iron jackal

Nineteen

Blood. It was all about blood in Samarla.

The stadium crowd roared in Ashua’s ears. Sammies and Daks surged to their feet from tiered benches. Somewhere down on the court, an Urchin had been intercepted by an opposing Juggernaut. Ashua hadn’t seen the ensuing tackle – the crowd got in her way – but by the excited comments of her neighbours, the Urchin had very likely been killed, or at least crippled for life.

Blood. They lived and died by it. The blood of their athletes, drooling out onto dusty a’shi-shi courts. Blood torn from the flayed backs of the Murthians that had built this enormous hexagonal stadium. Blood curling lazily into the barrel of a syringe, just before the plunger was pressed. Blood was who they were.

The average Samarlan could trace their family back twenty generations or more. The custodians in the Black Archives kept records that went bng hemarlaack much further than that. The Sammies had the finest chemists and doctors in the world, and they knew techniques that could identify a person’s lineage with extraordinary accuracy. From a single drop of blood, they could match an unknown child to its parents, and from there to the rest of the family through their exhaustive genealogical records.

It was a necessary process in a culture where family was everything. Individual reputations paled in comparison to the legacy of their ancestors. Every Samarlan was born with the weight of previous generations on their shoulders, for better or worse. To be otherwise was to be without family, an untouchable.

Ashua supposed that she was an untouchable herself. Maybe that was why she had such an affinity with their kind. She had no blood relatives to speak of; at least, none that she knew. But she had family, of a sort.

She spotted him approaching, sliding his way between the spectators. His eyes were on the game: he was craning over the standing crowd to see the damage done to the Urchin, just like the rest of them.

She studied him while his attention was elsewhere. He looked worse than ever. Flesh melting off his bones, eyes sunken and dark, his long blond hair limp and straggly in the punishing heat. He was dressed expensively, as always, and he had the effortless poise of the aristocracy. But there was no hiding the ravages of his condition. Not any more.

Maddeus Brink sat down next to her, looked her up and down, and said:

‘Pensive.’

‘Thoughtful,’ she replied.

‘Asperity.’

‘Harshness.’

‘Mordant.’

She stared at him blankly. ‘Dead?’ she guessed.

He tutted. ‘I expect you to put it in a sentence next time we meet. Have you been keeping up with your reading?’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘So I hear. Jakeley Screed is very keen on having a chat with you.’

‘I’m not worried about Screed,’ she lied.

‘You should be, my darling. You should also be worried about the Sammie soldiers who are asking for you all around the city. Something about a stolen relic that they’re extremely keen on getting back.’ He tossed his hair and sighed, bony shoulders rising and falling. ‘It may be prudent for you to get out of Shasiith for a while. In fact, it might be best to get out of Samarla altogether.’

Ashua felt something twist inside her at the suggestion. ‘I’m not leaving you,’ she said, her voice kept carefully flat.

‘I rather suspect I shall be leaving you, and sooner than either of us would like,’ he said. ‘And I’d very much prefer it if you didn’t get yourself murdered before I made my exit.’

She didn’t reply. It hurt her that he should think of sending her away, especially at a time like this. Hadn’t she stayed by his side all these years, ever since he’d come across her as a child begging on the street and offered her work in an act of drunken charity? Hadn’t she carried the narcotics he peddled all over Rabban, even while the Sammies were busy bombing it to rubble? Hadn’t she followed him to Shasiith, because he’d got bored of Rabban and it just wasn’t ‘fun’ any more?

Silly girl. She’d let herself believe that he needed her, but of course he needed nobody, and never had.

He saw the look on her face and steered on to a lighter subject. It was his way. Maddeus didn’t like things that made him unhappy.

‘Who’s winning?’ he asked, even though he could look at the scoreboard for himself, if he troubled to.

‘I haven’t been paying attention,’ she said, sullenly.

‘Oh, my Ashua. You’re hopeless. You’ll never understand Samarla if you don’t understand their national game. At once chaotic, precise and vicious, it has no respect whatsoever for human life. It’s a perfect metaphor for their society. They’re so delightfully cruel.’

She had to agree with that. A’shi-shi was an obsession for the Sammies, and the Daks, who aped their masters in all things. Played on a sunken stone court in the shape of a hexagon, the object was simple: get the ball in the scoring-hole of an opponent’s wall. But the process of achieving it was considerably more complex.

The game was played with three teams of seven. Each team had two heavily armoured Juggernauts, named for the mythological monsters from Samarlan legend. With them were two Warriors with clubended staves for tripping and bludgeoning, and two Urchins, chosen for speed and agility. The final member was the Hero: only he was allowed to score.

As much as she could make out, the Juggernauts were supposed to protect the Hero, the Warriors to clear a path for him, and the Urchins to run the ball into passing positions so the Hero could receive it and score. Each team was up against two others, and the in-game alliances shifted moment to moment.

But Ashua had never troubled herself with the finer points of the game. The nature of it offended her.

Most Vards still thoard itught that all Samarlans were idle rich, but that was because they’d only ever seen the upper castes: the nobles and the Divine Family, who could claim lineage to the God-Emperor. They were the ambassadors, politicians and powerful businessmen who had been frequent visitors to Vardia before the Aerium Wars. But many Samarlans were poor, or came from bad families whose reputation they couldn’t overcome. Men who didn’t own slaves were low in status and usually spurned by women. For them, becoming an athlete was often the only way to distinguish themselves. Except that most athletes didn’t last long, and all but the very best ended up maimed or dead on the bloody hexagonal battlefields of the a’shi-shi stadiums.

Ashua had grown up in the slums of Rabban. She’d seen what desperate people would do. She knew how they’d clutch at anything to get them out of the hole they were in. This game exploited their misery, made them into objects of entertainment for people rich enough not to care. It didn’t sit right with her.

She wondered what she might have been forced to do to survive, if she hadn’t met the man sitting next to her. If he hadn’t taken her in, looked after her, treated her like a daughter after his own curious fashion. She’d been seven years old and alone when he found her, desperate for love like any child. He gave her that, and his was all she ever needed.

And now he was leaving her.

She stole another glance at him as he watched the game. She couldn’t look for long. It would have made her want to cry, if she could remember how.

This was what happened when your blood turned against you. He’d been poisoned by a lifetime of needles, having stuffed his veins full of that filth he loved so much. It had to happen, but it never seemed like it would happen to him. He was so damned blithe, swanning through life with a quip and a careless flick of the wrist, a dissolute aristocrat who’d found his place among the wasted and the dead.

‘I can hear you feeling sorry for me,’ said Maddeus. ‘I won’t have it, you know.’

‘I have to ask you a favour,’ she said.

‘I see. And I thought you just enjoyed my company.’

‘That’s not fair,’ she said miserably. ‘You’re the one who keeps me away. I’d live with you if you let me.’

‘To look after me? Feed me pap while I slobber out my last? I think not.’ He gave her a wry look. ‘Where’s your sense of humour these days, my darling?’

‘Some things aren’t especially funny.’

The crowd cheered and surged to their feet at something playing out in the court below, but Maddeus stayed where he was. He huffed. ‘You are a sad sort today,’ he sho amp;rs

‘You’ve heard of Ugrik vak Munn kes Oortuk, right?’

‘Of course. Famous explorer. Fourth son of the High Clan Chief of Yortland.’

She produced a letter from one of the many pockets of her mechanic’s trousers. ‘I got this from the feller I was working with to get that relic. He sent it from Vardia. Turns out it was Ugrik that found the relic, before the Samarlans caught him somewhere down south. Which is how it ended up on the train we robbed.’

‘And you need…?’

‘I need to know where Ugrik is. If he’s alive, we need to find him. Ugrik can tell us where the relic came from, and we have to put it back.’

‘We? What’s your interest in this?’

‘Money. He’ll pay for the information. I’ll split it with you, of course.’

‘Oh, don’t bother. I won’t have time to spend it.’ He studied her, and there was a knowing look on his face that she didn’t like. ‘It’s the crew of the Ketty Jay, isn’t it?’

There wasn’t much that got past Maddeus Brink. ‘So?’ she said, sounding like a sulky teen again. She hated how she got that way around him.

‘How have they been, so far?’

She scowled. ‘The doc’s nice, I suppose. They’re a decent bunch. They look out for each other, which is more that I can say for most.’

‘And the captain?’

‘Apart from the fact that he clearly wants to jump me, he’s a good sort. What of it?’

The crowd roared again, but she’d tuned them out by now. They were in their own small world, locked together in the muggy heat, surrounded by a wall of foreigners who surged and bellowed like a storm tide. Shasiith was a place where everyone lived on top of each other. It was hard to find space here. You got used to being hemmed in, or you left.

‘I’ll help you, naturally,’ he said, She could see he was calculating something. ‘But I want a promise in return.’

She waited, knowing what would come, willing him not to say it.

‘I want you to leave Shasiith for a while.’

She felt her jaw tighten. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair!

‘You want me to leave you to die.’

‘I want you to live,’ he said, taking her hands in his. ‘That’s my price, and I won’t change my mind. Promise me.’

She sat there for a moment on the bench, and it seemed that she was terribly, awfully alone. Then she pulled her hands out of his, suddenly infuriated by his weak, papery grip, and stood up.

‘Just get it done,’ she snapped, and then she pushed past him and away down the row, towards the steps that would lead her out. She wanted to be away from the crowds, from the heat, from this dirty, seething place that had killed the only person she ever felt love for. She wanted to smash everything she’d ever known to pieces, and start from scratch. She wanted to die, and be reborn; or maybe just die.

She was glad she couldn’t remember how to cry.