Shadows of Sanctuary Part 2

'Of course. Why else have wings?'

Wess glanced at Chan, who nodded and reached for his pack.

'We have no homuncule,' Wess said. 'But we have a picture. It isn't Satan, but it's very like him.'

Chan pulled out the wooden tube he had carried all the way from Kaimas. From inside it, he drew the rolled kidskin, which he opened out on to the table. The hide was carefully tanned and very thin; it had writing on one side and a painting, with one word underneath it, on the other.

'It's from the library at Kaimas,' Chan said. 'No one knows where it came from.

I believe it is quite old, and I think it is from a book, but this is all that's left.' He showed Lythande the written side. 'I can decipher the script but not the language. Can you read it?'

Lythande shook his head. 'It is unknown to me.'

Disappointed, Chan turned the ill.u.s.trated side of the ma.n.u.script page towards Lythande. Wess leaned towards it too, picking out the details in the dim candlelight. It was beautiful, almost as beautiful as Satan himself. It was surprising how like Satan it was, for it had been in the library since long before he was born. The slender and powerful winged man had red-gold hair and flame-coloured wings. His expression seemed composed half of wisdom and half of deep despair.

Most flying people were black or deep iridescent green or pure dark blue. But Satan, like the painting, was the colour of fire. Wess explained that to Lythande.

'We suppose this word to be this person's name,' Chan said.

'We cannot be sure we have the p.r.o.nunciation right, but Satan's mother liked the sound as we say it, so she gave it to him as his name, too.'

Lythande stared at the gold and scarlet painting in silence for a long time, then shook his head and leaned back in his chair. He blew smoke towards the ceiling. The ring spun, and sparked, and finally dissipated into the haze.

'Frejojani,' Lythande said, 'Jubal - and the other slavemongers - parade their merchandise through the town before every auction. If your friend were in the coffle, everyone in Sanctuary would know. Everyone in the Empire would know.'

Beneath the edges of her cape. Aerie clenched her hands into fists.

Chan slowly, carefully, blankly, rolled up the painting and stored it away.

This was, Wess feared, the end of their journey.

'But it might be...'

Aerie looked up sharply, narrowing her deep-set eyes.

'Such an unusual being would not be sold at public auction. He would be offered in private sale, or exhibited, or perhaps even offered to the Emperor for his menagerie.'

Aerie flinched, and Quartz traced the texture of her short-sword's bone haft.

'It's better, children, don't you see? He'll be treated decently. He's valuable.

Ordinary slaves are whipped and cut and broken to obedience.'

Chan's transparent complexion paled to white. Wess shuddered. Even contemplating slavery they had none of them understood what it meant.

'But how will we find him? Where will we look?'

'Jubal will know,' Lythande said, 'if anyone does. I like you, children. Sleep tonight. Perhaps tomorrow Jubal will speak with you.' He got up, pa.s.sed smoothly through the crowd, and vanished into the darkness outside.

In silence with her friends, Wess sat thinking about what Lythande had told them.

A well-set-up young fellow crossed the room and leaned over their table towards Chan. Wess recognized him as the man who had earlier been made sport of by his friends.

'Good evening, traveller,' he said to Chan. 'I have been told these ladies are not your wives.'

'It seems everyone in this room has asked if my companions are my wives, and I still do not understand what you are asking,' Chan said pleasantly.

'What's so hard to understand?'

'What does "wives" mean?'

The man arched one eyebrow, but replied, 'Women bonded to you by law. To give their favours to no one but you. To bear and raise your sons.'

'"Favours"?'

's.e.x, you clapperdudgeon! f.u.c.king! Do you understand me?'

'Not entirely. It sounds like a very odd system to me.'

Wess thought it odd, too. It seemed absurd to decide to bear children of only one gender; and bonded by law sounded suspiciously like slavery. But - three women pledged solely to one man? She glanced across at Aerie and Quartz and saw they were thinking the same thing. They burst out laughing.

'Chan, Chan-love, think how exhausted you'd be!' Wess said.

Chan grinned. They often slept and made love all together, but he was not expected to satisfy all his friends. Wess enjoyed making love with Chan, but she was equally excited by Aerie's delicate ferocity, and by Quartz's inexhaustible gentleness and power.

'They're not your wives, then,' the man said. 'So how much for that one?' He pointed at Quartz.

They all waited curiously for him to explain.

'Come on, man! Don't be coy! You're obvious to everyone -why else bring women to the Unicorn? With that one, you'll get away with it till the madams find out. So make your fortune while you can. What's her price? I can pay, I a.s.sure you.'

Chan started to speak, but Quartz gestured sharply and he fell silent.

'Tell me if I interpret you correctly,' she said. 'You think coupling with me would be enjoyable. You would like to share my bed tonight.'

'That's right, lovey.' He reached for her breast but abruptly thought better of it.

'Yet you speak, not to me, but to my friend. This seems very awkward, and very rude.'

'You'd better get used to it, woman. It's the way we do things here.'

'You offer Chan money, to persuade me to couple with you.'

The man looked at Chan. 'You'd best train your wh.o.r.es to manners yourself, boy, or your customers will help you and damage your merchandise.'

Chan blushed scarlet, embarra.s.sed, fl.u.s.tered, and confused. Wess began to think she knew what was going on, but she did not want to believe it.

'You are speaking to me, man,' Quartz said, using the word with as much contempt as he had put into 'woman'. 'I have but one more question for you. You are not ill-favoured, yet you cannot get someone to bed you for the joy of it. Does this mean you are diseased?'

With an incoherent sound of rage, he reached for his knife. Before he touched it. Quartz's short-sword rasped out of its scabbard. She held its tip just above his belt-buckle. The death she offered him was slow and painful.

Everyone in the tavern watched intently as the man slowly spread his hands.

'Go away,' Quartz said. 'Do not speak to me again. You are not unattractive, but if you are not diseased you are a fool, and I do not sleep with fools.'

She moved her sword a handsbreadth. He backed up three fast steps and spun around, glancing spasmodically from one face to another, to another. He found only amus.e.m.e.nt. He bolted, through a roar of laughter, fighting his way to the door.

The tavern-keeper sauntered over. 'Foreigners,' he said, 'I don't know whether you've made your place or dug your graves tonight, but that was the best laugh I've had since the new moon. Bauchle Meyne will never live it down.'

'I did not think it funny in the least,' Quartz said. She sheathed her short sword. She had not even touched her broadsword. Wess had never seen her draw it.

'And I am tired. Where is our room?'

He led them up the stairs. The room was small and low-ceilinged. After the tavern-keeper left, Wess poked the straw mattress of one of the beds, and wrinkled her nose.

'I've got this far from home without getting lice, I'm not going to sleep in a nest of bedbugs.' She threw her bedroll to the floor. Chan shrugged and dropped his gear.

Quartz flung her pack into the comer. 'I'll have something to say to Satan when we find him,' she said angrily. 'Stupid fool, to let himself be captured by these creatures.'

Aerie stood hunched in her cloak. 'This is a wretched place,' she said. 'You can flee, but he cannot.'

'Aerie, love, I know,.I'm sorry.' Quartz hugged her, stroking her hair. 'I didn't mean it, about Satan. I was angry.'

Aerie nodded.

Wess rubbed Aerie's shoulders, unfastened the clasp of her long hooded cloak, and drew it from Aerie's body. Candlelight rippled across the black fur that covered her, as sleek and glossy as sealskin. She wore nothing but a short thin blue silk tunic and her walking boots. She kicked off the boots, dug her clawed toes into the splintery floor, and stretched.

Her outer fingers lay close against the backs of her arms. She opened them, and her wings unfolded.

Only half-spread, her wings spanned the room. She let them droop, and pulled aside the leather curtain over the tall narrow window. The next building was very close.

'I'm going out. I need to fly.' .

'Aerie, we've come so far today -'

'Wess, I am tired. I won't go far. But I can't fly in the daytime, not here, and the moon is waxing. If I don't go now I may not be able to fly for days.'

'It's true,' Wess said. 'Be careful.'

'I won't be gone long.' She slid sideways out of the window and climbed up the rough side of the building. Her claws sc.r.a.ped into the adobe. Three soft footsteps overhead, the shushh other wings; she was gone.

The others pushed the beds against the wall and spread their blankets, overlapping, on the floor. Quartz looped the leather flap over a hook in the wall and put the candle on the window-ledge.

Chan hugged Wess. 'I never saw anyone move as fast as Lythande. Wess, love, I feared he'd killed you before I even noticed him.'

'It was stupid, to speak so familiarly to a stranger.'

'But he offered us the nearest thing to news of Satan we've heard in weeks.'

'True. Maybe the fright was worth it.' Wess looked out of the window, but saw nothing of Aerie.

'What made you think Lythande was a woman?'

Wess glanced at Chan sharply. He gazed back at her with a mildly curious expression.

He doesn't know, Wess thought, astonished. He didn't realize - 'I... I don't know,' she said. 'A silly mistake. I made a lot of them today.'

It was the first time in her life she had deliberately lied to a friend. She felt slightly ill, and when she heard the sc.r.a.pe of claws on the roof above, she was glad for more reasons than simply that Aerie had returned. Just then the tavern-keeper banged on their door announcing their bath. In the confusion of getting Aerie inside and hidden under her cloak before they could open the door, Chan forgot the subject of Lythande's gender.

Beneath them, the noise of revelry in the Unicorn gradually faded to silence.

Wess forced herself to lie still. She was so tired that she felt as if she were trapped in a river, with the current swirling her around and around so she could never get her bearings. Yet she could not sleep. Even the bath, the first warm bath any of them had had since leaving Kaimas, had not relaxed her.

Quartz lay solid and warm beside her, and Aerie lay between Quartz and Chan.

Wess did not begrudge Aerie or Quartz their places, but she did like to sleep in the middle. She wished one of her friends were awake, to make love with, but she could tell from their breathing that they were all deeply asleep. She cuddled up against Quartz, who reached out, in a dream, and embraced her.

The darkness continued, without end, without any sign of dawn, and finally Wess slid out from beneath Quartz's arm and the blankets, silently put on her pants and s.h.i.+rt, and, barefoot, crept down the stairs, past the silent tavern, and outside. On the doorstep, she sat and pulled on her boots.

The moon gave a faint light, enough for Wess. The street was deserted. Her heels thudded on the cobblestones, echoing hollowly against the close adobe walls.

Such a short stay in the town should not make her uneasy, but it did. She envied Aerie her power to escape, however briefly, however dangerous the escape might be. Wess walked down the street, keeping careful track of her path. It would be very easy to get lost in this warren of streets and alleys, niches and blank canyons.

The sc.r.a.pe of a boot, instantly stilled, brought her out of her mental wanderings. They wished to try to follow her? Good luck to them.

Wess was a hunter. She tracked her prey so silently that she killed with a knife; in the dense rain forest where she lived, arrows were too uncertain. She had crept up on a panther and stroked its smooth pelt - then vanished so swiftly that she left the creature yowling in fury and frustration, while she laughed with delight. She grinned, and quickened her step, and her footfalls turned silent on the stone.

Her unfamiliarity with the streets hampered her slightly. A dead-end could trap her. But she found, to her pleasure, that her instinct for seeking out good trails translated into the city. Once she thought she would have to turn back, but the high wall barring her way had a deep diagonal fissure from the ground to its top. She found just enough purchase to clamber over it. She jumped into the garden the wall enclosed, scampered across it and up a grape arbour, and swung down into the next alley.

She ran smoothly, gladly, as her exhaustion lifted. She felt good, despite the looming buildings and twisted dirty streets and vile odours.

She faded into a shadowed recess where two houses ab.u.t.ted but did not line up.

Listening, she waited.

The soft and nearly silent footsteps halted. Her pursuer hesitated. Grit sc.r.a.ped between stone and leather as the person turned one way, then the other, and, finally, chose the wrong turning and hurried off. Wess grinned, but she felt respect for any hunter who could follow her this far.

Moving silently through shadows, she started back towards the tavern. When she came to a tumbledown building she remembered, she found finger- and toe-holds and climbed to the roof of the next house. Flying was not the only talent Aerie had that Wess envied. Being able to climb straight up an undamaged adobe wall would be useful sometimes, too.

The rooftop was deserted. Too cold to sleep outside, no doubt; the inhabitants of the city went to ground at night, in warmer, unseen warrens.

The air smelled cleaner here, so she travelled by rooftop as far as she could.

But the main pa.s.sage through the Maze was too wide to leap across. From the building that faced the Unicorn, Wess observed the tavern. She doubted that her pursuer could have reached it first, but the possibility existed, in this strange place. She saw no one. It was near dawn. She no longer felt exhausted, just deliciously sleepy. She climbed down the face of the building and started across the street.

Someone flung open the door behind her, leaped out as she turned, and punched her in the side of the head.

Wess crashed to the cobblestones. The shadow stepped closer and kicked her in the ribs. A line of pain wrapped around her chest and tightened when she tried to breathe.