Spellbreaker (14 page)

He gave her a four-shouldered shrug. “Everyone knows I'm deadlier with my bare hands. It's only outside the city when the weapons stop fools from attacking me.”

“There are fools in the city too, you know.”

Just then Holokai returned and began to pay the crew.

Leandra had noticed with relief that there was no sign of her mother's ship in the harbor. A few minutes later, flanked by Holokai and Dhrun, she left the docks to find a way through the bustling Bay Market Plaza. It was a chaotic, beautiful market day. All around her fishmongers hawked every type of food from the ocean: seaweed, tuna, dolphinfish, amberjack, grouper, snapper—all neatly decapitated, gutted, and arranged in circular displays. Octopus tentacles were hung to dry in the sun like laundry on a clothesline.

Atop some of the stalls and nearby roofs peered troops of Chandralu's infamous macaque monkeys, who could be as merciless as the city's thugs. The long-tailed, wide-faced, furry little brutes had learned every conceivable ploy to steal food. The larger troops would execute brutal smash-and-grab-style raids on food stalls left guarded by children or the elderly. Or a monkey might play a Wounded Bird game or a mother might offer her adorable babies to be petted by a softhearted human while other members of the troop quick-fingered any morsel left inadequately guarded.

On the Bay Market's western edge stood a tiny open-air temple, no more than twenty feet in diameter. Inside, a four-man gamelan ensemble struck small hammers upon their many brass instruments in a style of gamelan unique to Chandralu. Each musician played through a cycle upon his instruments, and the different musical cycles went into and fell out of sync with the other. It produced a bright, clanging, circular music, at times almost cacophonous.

As a child, Leandra had thought gamelan music exotic, harsh. Now it was a small pleasure, an example of Lotus Culture, a reminder that she was home. A priest, dressed in multicolored robes, was accompanying the gamelan music in song that exhorted the crowd to pray to the Trimuril and the other official deities of the Ixonian pantheon.

Past the pavilion stood the bottom of the Jacaranda Steps, which climbed the mountainside to the Water Temple at the city's upper limit.

The Jacaranda Steps themselves were built of gray stone, broad and long enough to allow for the tread of elephants, which were used to carry goods and materials across the city. Starting about a third of the way to the city's top, the Jacaranda Steps were lined with shops and stalls that grew more opulent as the steps rose higher until they were replaced by the largest and most beautiful family compounds. The jacaranda trees that gave the stairway its name flanked the steps every ten feet. At this time of year their branches were in full purple bloom.

The Jacaranda Steps would have been a charming scene except for the lower terraces. Here they were lined by the poor—some selling brass baubles spread out on blankets, others rattling beggar's bowls or calling out pleading songs. Here was the vast and horrible variety of suffering. Here were men who had lost an arm or a leg. Here were starving mothers with hollow eyes. They cradled their infants, who wailed or lay slack as flies buzzed around their faces.

Leandra, like all denizens of the Chandralu, had learned to look at such commonplace misery without reaction. It was only when she thought of the fact that there were no spellwrights among the miserable that Leandra could feel anything. Then the emotion that came was anger. Throughout history, spellwrights were exempt from destitution. The longer she thought about it, the hotter Leandra's anger burned.

Whether a child would become a spellwright or not was a chance event; however, the chances were improved by education. In the empire, where Leandra's aunt had invested in grammar schools and printing presses, a larger number of children were become spellwrights and more of them from the poorer classes. That was an admirable improvement, certainly, but it still didn't change the fact those born magically illiterate were vulnerable.

It was the capriciousness of the universe that angered Leandra. That some were born able to become spellwrights, others born poor, and others—like her—born to suffer lifelong disease. The unfairness of it all boiled in her like childish rage.

As she eyed the grubby crowd, Leandra tried to push down her anger and focus. Getting past the lower steps could be difficult. Among the poor would be some of the miserable deities: gods and goddesses who had been abandoned by their devotees or who had suffered injury or deprivation at the hands of other deities or powerful humans. Often these destitute divinities fused into large complexes to pool their meager strengths.

In fact, as Leandra picked her way through the crowds, she glimpsed the eight-armed, many-headed Baruvalman, sometimes called Baru. A sallow aura shone around him.

Leandra's heart sank. Baru was a complex of so many pitiful divinities that his speech was often nonsensical and his actions—driven by so many different requisites—often led him into danger. But somehow, most likely through bribery, Baru had managed to place an ark stone in the Floating City and become an official member of the Ixonian pantheon and therefore was entitled to Leandra's protection.

Of the several interactions Leandra had had with Baru, all had been unpleasant and one had been disastrous. Presently Baru was doing the only thing most miserable deities could do, beg for prayers.

“Walk fast,” Leandra said while glancing over her shoulder at Dhrun and Holokai.

Holokai eyed the ragged crowd and tightened his grip on his leimako. The shark's teeth shone opalescent in the sunlight. Dhrun on the other hand was peering up into jacaranda boughs, smiling serenely, almost stupidly, at a blue-feathered songbird that was making a chortling song not dissimilar to the gamelan music.

Dhrun and Holokai, quite the pair Leandra had found. She began to march up the steps trying to keep her eyes on the step in front of her. When passing Baruvalman she adjusted her headdress to hide her face. But just as she feared, the pitiful deity began calling louder.

“Blessed is the Halcyon, who will protect us from the demons crossing the ocean!” Baru said in a resonant male voice. “Blessed is his daughter,” he called, this time a shrill child's voice, “who protects the humblest citizens of Chandralu from the neodemons.” His voice was now that of a quavering old crone's. “Blessed is that bane of neodemons, that maker of circles. Blessed is that generous, that pious, that virtuous woman!”

Well, Leandra thought, at least I know he isn't talking about me.

She walked faster, but from the corner of her eye she saw the pitiful divinity complex was struggling to his feet. He was naked as usual, his flabby body androgynous. One of his eight arms had been amputated below the elbow and his sallow aura sputtered. That was new and troubling. His head was an ever-rotating cylinder from which projected the faces of his most dominant incarnations. Presently, he was looking at Leandra with the face of an old woman, but she could also see the head of a praying mantis, a child, a scarred warrior.

“And more blessed by the Creator would be the Warden of Ixos if she prayed, ever so briefly, to the humblest of deities, to the deity who knows the city!” he said in the buzzing voice of the praying mantis.

Holokai stepped toward the pitiful complex, who shambled back, two of his hands brought up to shield his rotating face, two pressed palms together in supplication.

“My apologies, Baru,” Leandra said while marching faster up the steps, “we are on urgent business.”

“Of course, of course,” Baru said from a child's face. The effect was eerie. “Of course such a mighty woman, a maker of circles could not spare any consideration for the humble Baruvalman. She bears on her shoulders the weight of all society … and undivided society.”

Leandra turned to look at the divinity complex, who was now on his knees, all possible hands pressed together in supplication. Leandra spoke with a lowered voice. “Baru, my time is short. What is your meaning?”

He bowed. “Oh, nothing, nothing. If only I could assist the mighty lady, for surely she shall be called upon to investigate last night's unfortunate violence on Cowry Street. And surely, she will want to know about how all the humblest denizens of the city, divine and human, are living in fear.”

“Baru, what do you know of what happened last night?”

“The simple Baruvalman wishes he could help the great circle maker, but he is so weak. There are so few prayerful in this city. If only he had enough prayers to look after the starving children and the disabled old men.”

More like opium addicts and petty thugs, Leandra thought; there were already official patron deities for both destitute children and elderly.

“Tell me something useful,” Leandra said, “and I will have one of my servants pray for you tonight.” She would have prayed herself, but doing so might worsen her disease flare.

“Oh, Baruvalman wishes he could, honored warden, honored circle maker. But he is so weak … so weak…” he bowed his head, now that of a crone, and pressed it to the step.

Leandra grimaced. “Get up. Why are you calling me a circle maker? And what are you alluding to? Are people talking about the Cult of the Undivided Society again?”

“So weak … so weak…” Baru muttered and bumped his forehead against the stone step.

Leandra sighed. “What requisite must I pray for?”

Baru sat up and spoke in a rush. “For the making better of the discomfort of the poor, sickly, and constantly itching in the lower eastern docks, second terrace.”

Leandra sighed. Baru had to make the prayer so specific to ensure that an ark stone would not divert it to another deity with requisites better suited to the resolution of the prayer.

Leandra supposed that it wouldn't be such a bad thing if one miserable soul received succor, no matter how small, from Baru. So she pressed her palms together and brought them to her forehead, in the style of the Lotus Culture, and she prayed for what she had been asked for.

She felt a fraction of the strength in her muscles being converted into divine text by one of the city's ark stones. That prayer would now sit in that ark until a deity satisfied its requisite, at which point it would be distributed to that deity.

When Leandra looked, she saw Baruvalman scrabbling away from her; no doubt making for a known beggar in the lower eastern docks who had a rash Baru could scratch and so gain the prayer.

“Kai,” Leandra said, “please remind our divine friend here of his promise.” But even as she spoke, Holokai had blocked Baruvalman's retreat.

The pitiful divinity complex looked back and up at Leandra, now with the child's face and an addict's expression of need. “People say there's a Lornish neodemon in the Bay of Standing Islands. That is it, isn't it?”

“We knew that already.”

“Some say also that the neodemon is killing off the weaker deities in the city. Other people say it's the Cult of the Undivided Society, that they are taking divinity complexes apart and feeding them to their new neodemon. But everyone agrees, oh yes, that humble souls like me need to be safe. Someone might snap us up.”

Leandra thought about this for a moment. For the past ten years there had been wild rumors about the Cult of the Undivided Society trying to instigate the Disjunction or to serve the demons once they crossed the ocean. Normally Leandra would have ignored such nonsense. But last night the smuggler from Trillinon had inquired about the cult. “Any more rumors?” she asked.

Baru shook a praying mantis head. “Oh no! No, no. Well, yes. There is talk that the Silent Blight is worse in the empire. Crop failures. The rich merchants are very much excited about becoming rich when they—”

“I've heard,” Leandra interrupted. “But, tell me, why did you call me a maker of circles?”

Baru looked at her with confusion. “Everyone is calling the great lady that. And her father.”

“No one calls my family that. Are you sure? Or are you just making all this up?”

“Oh, yes, great lady. I mean, no, no. I would never make anything up? May humble Baruvalman go now, great lady? I can tell you whatever you like. May he go, humble Baru?”

Leandra studied him for a moment longer and then nodded to Holokai, who stepped aside. Baruvalman scurried off into a narrow alley between two whitewashed walls.

“Damned waste,” Leandra grumbled as she turned back up the steps.

“Hey Lea, you sure that prayer won't make your flare worse?” Holokai asked beside her. “You said it could do that.”

“I don't think so,” she said while pressing her hand to her belly. “Though according to the godspell about my head, I'll have more belly pain in an hour. And now that I think about it, about an hour ago there were a few future selves who were confused and distressed about something.”

“Baruvalman always makes me feel confused and distressed,” Dhrun said. He was smiling as if it were amusing.

They continued up the steps and Leandra adjusted her headwrap. The sun was rising high. Then Leandra glanced back toward the bay, intending to check if her mother's ship had sailed into view. By chance, she glanced down a muddy alleyway in the Naukaa district. Lines of laundry were hung between two buildings, and the ragged forms of two sleeping beggars were huddled under an eave. But what caught her eye was an image of what Chandralu most precisely meant to her.

Lying maybe five feet from her, at the opening of the alleyway, was a discarded mango rind. Suddenly Leandra's ability to perceive the world around her expanded. The mango rind, it was perfectly concave, almost a geometric idealization of curved space. The inner surface retained only shreds of glistening yellow-orange flesh. The lip of the outer skin was a deep green, mottled with black flecks, toward its rim blushing deeply red. Alone, the rind would not have meant much of anything to Leandra. But this rind, she could not help but notice, lay motionless in a small pool of liquid feces.