Gorel and the Pot Bellied God (5 page)

Was it Gorel’s imagination, or did Kettle put an accent on
naked
? Gorel felt suddenly uncomfortable. He lowered the gun. He was reacting to the Avian, he realised. Something within him was responding to the Avian’s voice, his body, attracting him, clouding his mind. He sighed and put the gun away. ‘Pass me the whiskey,’ he said.

‘Gladly.’

Gorel put the bottle to his lips. He was uncomfortably aware that, only moments before, Kettle’s lips had fastened on to the same place that his touch, his breath, still remained on the mouth of the bottle. He tipped the bottle into his mouth and drank. Suddenly he was desperate for more dust – but he would not use it in front this stranger. ‘So what do you want?’ he said.

‘The same thing you do,’ Kettle said amicably. He lowered his arms and his wings stilled. The flames were low in the fire now, and Kettle’s face looked covered in fleeting shadows. He seemed closer now – perhaps it was a trick of the light – more physical than before. Gorel could almost feel him beside him. All I have to do is reach out and I can touch him, he thought. He is too close. Yet he didn’t move.

‘I want the mirror of Falang-Et,’ Kettle said. His voice was soft, throaty. It seemed to come from close to Gorel’s ear. Almost, he thought he could feel the Avian’s breath against his cheek. But Kettle hadn’t moved at all. ‘So, evidently, do you,’ Kettle said. ‘And it occurs to me we could better achieve that goal if we cooperated.’

‘I work alone.’

‘That’s not what Jericho Moon told me.’

That shook Gorel. ‘You met him?’

‘He left Tharat and went into the No Man’s Lands and, once there, offered his services to my master. He was gladly accepted.’

‘He did mention going that way…’

‘So what do you say, Gorel? Partners?’

Some inner rage, some baffled anger made Gorel stand up. He had been happy in his solitude, before this intruder came. He grabbed the Avian by the throat and lifted him up, pinning him against the tree. ‘Why should I help you, servant of sorcery?’

The smile had left the Avian’s face. In its stead was something different, harder to categorise. A look in his deep black eyes… Gorel was aware of Kettle’s wings spreading, opening around the two of them, cocooning them together in a dark, warm silence. ‘If you go alone,’ Kettle said simply, his breath, the smell of cardamom seeds, soft against Gorel’s face, ‘you will fail. I am offering you a chance at what you want.’

‘What I want…’ Gorel said, and he shook his head, and Kettle smiled. ‘What do you want, Gorel of Goliris?’ he whispered, and suddenly his face was against Gorel’s, and his wings were wrapped around him, holding him, warm and close, and his lips touched Gorel’s, and his tongue was in Gorel’s mouth, hot and spiced and questing, and Gorel, captured not unwillingly, surrendered himself to the Avian’s embrace.

Part Two

Mother of Jade

The city of Falang-Et sprawls along both sides of the river Tharat, a pleasant, low-lying settlement dominated by Wat Falang at its heart. At night, during the wet season, there are often storms. On such a night, with the heavens flashing in silent explosions of light, with jagged lightning slashing open the sky like a cutthroat’s knife and delayed thunder bursts follow it – on such a night, with the rolling thunder echoing, magnified, between the hills, Gorel of Goliris came to Falang-Et.

He came stealthily, avoiding the river-approach and the main road. He came like a thief, which is what he was, or hoped, at any rate, to become.

He came to steal the Mirror of Falang-Et. His companion and fellow thief had gone ahead of him, by air. The third member of their party came by water. Thus were the elements preserved. It was, in the way of the thief, a gesture of tradition.

The thief-scholar Soth Bell, who lived in the Third Spawning Cycle (as counted in the falang calendar) wrote, in his great treaty
On Thievery and General Pilfering
, that the “ideal number of an expedition set to capture a mythical object is three. In that,” said Soth Bell, “the elements that, together, join to form the world and with it men and their gods, are met. Water, air, and earth, the three roads upon which mortal kin travels the World.” A fourth element, fire, was said by Soth Bell to represent “the gods, and in this analogy the object of theft. A thief once burnt is in future a more careful one. Or dead.” Gorel, who had little time for books, and who in any case would never have heard of Soth Bell (who disappeared in the far reaches of the north of the World on a quest whose purpose he had never divulged but who, by his supposed demise, was later to birth a new cult of thief-monks called the Order of Om-Gan), did not plan on remaining in a set of three indefinitely. He was, in fact, thinking that a bullet between the eyes of an unwanted accomplice can solve a lot of problems. And that a more accurate representation of the old four elements hypothesis could be summed up as urine, goat’s shit, smoke and intestinal gas. He was not much enamoured of poetry, either.

The third member of their party was an unwanted addition brought on by Kettle’s insistence. The way it happened was so:

A week out of Falang-Et Gorel and Kettle stopped and made camp on the banks of a tributary of Tharat. Kettle was perching on a high branch, sleeping. Gorel was building a small fire and planning to make eel stew. Kettle was good at catching fish. All was quiet. The graal was sitting motionless in the grasses, absorbing the last rays of the sun. Nothing stirred. Gorel’s few belongings were resting against a tree trunk close to the water’s edge. The water murmured as it bubbled past. Gorel added kindling to the small fire and shifted two larger branches close. The wood not being dried enough, it smoked. Which made Gorel think of gods’ dust, and of the dwindling supply in his bag. And so, by chance alone, he turned – just in time to see a slippery, green-blue hand with long, adroit fingers rise from the water and make a grab for his belongings.

He lunged forward. The hand was already fastened on his bag and pulling it into the water. Gorel closed fist on delicate wrist and gave a violent tug. From below the surface of the water someone said, ‘Hey!’ and bubbles rose to the surface. Gorel tugged again, harder, and pulled. He felt, without looking, Kettle awaken and fall down like a shadow from the tree. ‘What have you got there, Gorel?’ he inquired, not quite stifling a yawn. ‘A bit late to be fishing.’

‘Not for some, it seems,’ Gorel said (Kettle barked a laugh like the call of a large, predatory bird) and pulled someone small and wet from the water.

‘Hey, let me go!’ the someone said. In reply, Gorel backhanded the speaker. The small figure fell back and flopped to the ground, and the gun was in Gorel’s hand, and pointing. ‘Don’t point that thing at me, human! Your mouth is like the asshole of a nyak. Your head is the misshapen skull of an aborted foetus. Your penis is a shrivelled leaf unsuitable for smoking by even the lowest frog-spawned bitch in all Tharat. Your –’

Gorel pressed the trigger. Earth exploded between the speaker’s legs. ‘Shut up,’ Gorel said.

‘Now, where are your manners,’ Kettle murmured, and crouched down beside Gorel, his wings opening. Gorel had to stop himself from slipping a hand in between the Avian’s wings, in that sensitive, erogenous zone where the Avian’s skin was softest. ‘Now, what do we have here?’

‘A thief,’ Gorel said. Kettle flashed him a brief smile and turned back to their captive. ‘A thief, of course. But what kind of a thief?’

‘Not a very good one?’ Gorel suggested.

‘Hey! Watch your mouth!’ the captive said.

‘Got caught, didn’t you?’

‘You got lucky, human!’

‘Let me shoot him.’

‘No, Gorel,’ Kettle said, and smiled again. ‘Not a he, I don’t think.’

‘A woman?’ Gorel peered closer at their captive, who was glaring at him but was not, so far, getting up. A small, strange creature, with long webbed fingers and an elongated, hairless skull. A blue and green skin that shifted with each movement, resembling water. Large eyes and – yes! – the definite swelling of small, but perfectly formed breasts, and –

‘It’s rude to stare,’ the captive said reproachfully. Gorel found himself mumbling an apology. No male genitalia, that was certain. Hairless, too. He shook his head. ‘A thief’s a thief,’ he said. ‘Shall I shoot her?’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘Gorel, put away the gun. You, what are you? Half-caste?’

‘Your mother was a half-cast, bird-shit. Half-bitch, half-whore. Your father was the excrement of garuda. Your grandmother was born of the piss of –’

‘Quiet,’ Kettle said. The captive stopped. Gorel was impressed. ‘You look like a mix of Merlangai and falang,’ Kettle said. ‘I’d say with some Nocturne blood somewhere in the mix. Am I right?’

‘What if you are?’

‘Is it difficult for you on land?’

‘I can manage.’

‘Would you be more comfortable back in the water?’

The lying figure smiled. She had, Gorel had to admit, now that he thought about it, quite an attractive face. Her teeth were like fish bones, sharp and dainty, and her eyes had the colour of the distant ocean… ‘Aren’t you going to shoot me?’

‘I was thinking of asking if you’d care to join us for dinner,’ Kettle said. Gorel sighed and holstered his gun. Kettle, he was learning, had some strange ways about him.

‘Yeah? What are you having?’

‘I believe my companion is cooking eels according to some secret recipe I am not privy to.’

‘I’m boiling them,’ Gorel said. Their captive stood up and stretched. She was very naked, Gorel thought. But then, what need was there for clothes when you were in the water? ‘It does smell good,’ she allowed. ‘Very well, since you ask so nicely.’

‘I’m Kettle,’ Kettle said. ‘This is Gorel.’

The thief bowed. ‘Sereli of Tharat, and let me say what a pleasure it is to meet you. Apologies for the way I spoke earlier. I have a tendency sometimes to use certain language when it is probably not called for –’

‘Like when someone is pointing a gun at you?’ Gorel said. Sereli laughed. ‘I’ve had worse pointed at me,’ she said. Gorel scowled. Then he went back to the eels.

In the event, Sereli had gone back in the water (executing a graceful, arcing dive) and returned moments later from further up the bank, dressed this time, and with a big of her own. She was also carrying something else.

‘A turtle?’ Gorel said. The creature stared up at him mournfully. ‘Ever notice how their heads look remarkably like a male penis?’ Sereli said. ‘Taste better, though.’

Gorel thanked her and took the turtle off her hands. The turtle wouldn’t fit in the pot. He ended up having to bash its shell against a rock and add the meat into the pot that way. Then he went back to his pack and took out his stash of dust and took enough for the world to slow down into a hazy cool flow like a slow river.

They made love that night, the three of them. Sereli was warm and cool, her body like differing pockets of temperature as one swims through water; Kettle was a dry heat, like distant wind from the sands of Meskatel. Against them Gorel was dry ground, long-trodden, weary from the passage of armies and years, seeking respite in water and air.

In the morning they headed to Falang-Et, together. A week later, they were finally there. Kettle flew in. Sereli swam. The city was a maze of waterways and canals. Gorel walked. He had left the graal outside the city. He took only his guns.

‘What do we need her for?’ he had asked Kettle. And the Avian smiled and said, ‘What if you have to swim to get into the temple?’

Sereli was going to Falang-Et for the same reason as Gorel and Kettle, which was to steal. She had no specifics in mind: it was the time of carnival, and the pickings would be easy. When Kettle offered her the job (she was nestled between him and Gorel at the time) she smiled and said stealing from a god should be exciting. She came as Gorel’s tongue explored her hairless wetness, Kettle like a cloak wrapped over Gorel’s back.

He took nothing with him but his guns. As he stepped into the city he was wary of guards, but Falang-Et was open, a sprawling expanse of greenery and water. As he came onto the main road a procession was passing, and for a moment he thought it was a carnival parade. Then he realised there was no shouting involved, and turned to look again, and had a shock.

Behind an arrow-head of mourners, near a large, cumbersome coffin, was the young falang girl he had last seen on the river bank the day he kidnapped the merchant. She was dressed in sombre dark green robes. She was exquisite, like a jade statue. Her eyes met his, and opened wide in recognition. For a moment he froze. The procession moved forward. The girl stepped ahead. Her eyes were still locked on him. She seemed to inch her head as if acknowledging a bond of sorts. Almost directly behind her, carried by six uniformed falang, came a large coffin.

Did she know him? But of course she did. Would she call him out? He waited, one hand hovering over the butt of his gun. But why should she call? They were complicit, he and her. She would want him gone.

The girl looked straight ahead, and passed, though she could not, it seemed, resist another, quick glance at him. Young and lovely, and a killer – and when they looked into each other’s eyes, however brief that contact was, they understood each other. Gorel stepped back and let the coffin pass. Goodbye, merchant of the Fifth Pond Lineage. Gorel wondered what it actually meant. Looking at the size and general opulence of the procession, it occurred to him that lineage might have been more significant than he had thought. Which meant the falang may not give up the hunt for the merchant’s killer too quickly. Well. His hand rested reassuringly on the butt of the gun. He would deal with that if and when it happened.