Post by Rikku on Dec 1, 2009 0:35:10 GMT -5
Long.
The Prince of Thieves woke up bright and early, to find Babel gone.
He didn’t worry about this. Instead he got up, stirred at the glowing coals of the fire until they sparked into life, and started rolling up his sleeping-blanket.
He was halfway through cooking breakfast – roast pheasant, this time, not some nasty dehydrated mush – when Babel ran into camp, wearing a smile.
“I like running,” the clone said, and then he said, “I saw this thing – growing. It had these green …” He pronounced the next word carefully. “Leaves, like you said, but it had a brightly coloured …” He made a few inarticulate hand gestures, and then gave up. “It was beautiful.”
“Sounds like a flower,” said the Prince of Thieves automatically, and he poked the rabbit. Not quite done yet, by the consistency and the smell of it, but nearly.
He was used to the routine of things now. This same thing had happened every morning for the past week. He’d worried, the first time, that his valuable acquisition had gotten itself lost and the silver-haired woman would never give him the second half of the payment. But Babel had ran into camp soon after, bursting with vitality and life and curiousity and the sheer delight of living. It was as though every day away from the facility was a day that he couldn’t bear to waste.
The Prince found this entertaining, when he was fully awake. Right now he was still a little tired. The Prince wasn’t really a morning person, and didn’t function too well until after he’d eaten and shaved and felt like a person again.
He yawned. Babel immediately stopped his flow of chatter, and gave him a sheepish look.
“Sorry,” he said, dropping down beside him. He was still noticeably taller. “I didn’t mean to bore you. It’s just …” He looked around, his face bright with wonder. “This world. How can you live in all this every day, and not be overcome by the beauty of it all?”
The Prince smiled, a little tiredly, and explained, “When you live in this every day, you forget that it’s beautiful.”
Babel’s face fell. “Oh.” He rested a hand on the Prince’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
The Prince did a quizzical, confused thing with his bold eyebrows. “Don’t be? Only children are really filled with wonder in this world. I can’t afford it.”
“No?” said Babel. “Don’t you have a lot of money from your thieving?”
The cautious way he said it told the Prince that he was being careful not to offend him, and this annoyed him. He snapped, “Oh, please don’t get all moralistic on me. There’s nothing wrong with thieving.”
Babel smiled gently, as though trying to soothe the Prince’s temper, trying to make it seem like just the usual banter between the two of them. Which it was. They bantered an awful lot. There wasn’t much else to do, on the road. “Technically,” he said, “there’s everything wrong with it. Isn’t that what you said? That it’s … illegal? You’re a law-breaker, you said.”
The Prince was abruptly angry. “You can’t talk,” he said. “You stole another man’s face.”
Babel went silent and stared at him. Then he got up, slowly, with none of his usual enthusiasm, and walked away into the surrounding forest.
The Prince scowled and scratched his beard. He didn’t have the patience for this so early in the morning.
Was the sun even up yet? If it was, it wasn’t doing much to light up the place. Everything was damp and dark and dripping. He wished that they could just head for a town or village already – the nearest one was only half an hour’s walk away or so, if he remembered correctly from the way. But no, they had to take the slow, circular route, just in case someone from the facility had people out looking for the clone that had escaped. It was so unlikely! More to the point, it meant there was nowhere to steal food from, and his supplies were running low. That he’d caught this rabbit had been mainly luck.
Stupid Babel.
The Prince sighed and got to his feet, heading in the direction Babel had gone, the direction of the stream twenty metres or so from where they’d camped.
“Babel?” he called, as he emerged from the undergrowth. “Um.”
The Prince of Thieves was good at many things. Apologies weren’t one of them.
“The … rabbit’s ready,” he edged. “Look, I …”
He lost his sentence and just stood there for a moment, too surprised to move.
Babel was crouched by the edge of the water, looking at him, the Prince’s sharp little shaving knife in his hand, blood on his face –
No –
The Prince dived at him, and pulled the knife from his hand so roughly that it slipped and cut his own hand. “Babel, what – don’t,” he said desperately, and threw the knife away into the forest. “What are – Babel. You …”
The Prince seemed entirely incapable of forming coherent sentences. But then, these weren’t exactly normal circumstances.
“Babel,” he said, dragging his hand down his face, ignoring the blood that smeared over it. “Stars, Babel. Never do that. Okay?”
Babel looked at him, his blue eyes pained. One of his eyes was … covered in … no, not his eye, he can’t have hurt his eye, how can he wonder at the world if he can’t see? “But you’re right. It’s not my face. It’s not my face.” His tone became pleading. “Do you have any idea what that’s like? To know that you aren’t you?”
“So, what, you tried to cut it off?” snapped the Prince. “Idiot!”
Babel looked down at the ground and said nothing. Blood dripped down his face and stained the ground red.
The Prince swallowed. He reached out a hand. He’d trained his hands to be steady, years and years ago, when he knew he wanted to be a thief. You couldn’t be a thief if your hands quivered when you were nervous. But right now his fingers were trembling, with shock and surprise and guilt. He touched the blood on Babel’s face. Dipped his fingers into the water, and gently started cleaning it away.
It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought, but it was bad. Babel flinched as he felt around it, though he tried to be as gentle as he could. The cut was only five or six centimetres long, slicing diagonally down his forehead and through his eyebrow. It didn’t reach his eye, not quite; it had just looked like that because the blood had flown over it.
But it was a deep cut, and jagged. Babel really had wanted to tear his stolen face away.
“Naïve fool,” said the Prince roughly. He was no good at apologies.
Babel gave his gently apologetic smile. Or tried to. It was more of a grimace, tempered with pain.
“Come on,” said the Prince, and he pulled him to his feet. “We need to get you to a healist. There’ll be one in the nearest village. Hurry.”
“But,” said Babel cautiously. Blood was still dripping from the open wound. “I thought we were avoiding settlements.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But –” His brow creased, and he winced; it must have made the pain worse. “I don’t want—”
“Look,” said the Prince impatiently, “if you get caught and taken back, I promise I’ll steal you again. Okay? Now move. Do you want an ugly scar?”
“Better than being trapped again,” Babel said.
The Prince stared at him. Exactly how bad had it been, back there, that an agonising head wound was less painful than even thinking about going back?
The Prince grimaced, and looked away, and looked back again. “Please?” he said, awkwardly. “It’s my fault.”
Babel looked at him.
Then he said, “All right.”
*
Achilles couldn’t quite remember the last time he’d slept. Not recently, that was for sure.
But he couldn’t sleep. Not with a god on board. He needed to watch over what remained of his crew, needed to make sure they stayed safe, needed to make sure they got to Tawny and that Felicia got off there for good.
He limped around the corridors. He was trying to get a picture of the ship in his mind, trying to learn to understand it, but the Grace Note was even harder to navigate around when he was tired. He couldn’t get in the right mindset. Instead of letting his mind wander and letting the ship guide him where he wanted to go, he stubbornly tried to apply order and logic to it.
And that just didn’t work.
Thus, when he found himself in the kitchen again, instead of the engine room where he had been wanting to go, he let out an actual growl of impatience and tried to leave again. Instead, he banged into the wall. Obviously, this was the ship’s fault, and not because his legs weren’t obeying him because he was so tired. Obviously.
Stupid ship.
“Captain?” called Boheme cheerily. “That you?”
Achilles sighed, and limped over to the serving window. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Want a midnight snack?” said Boheme.
“I guess. Sure. Why not.” Maybe it would stop him feeling so tired. He had to stay awake, he had to, he couldn’t let them down, he was the Captain.
Boheme bustled around, and within moments the delicious scent of stew filled the air. Achilles breathed in deep. Come to think of it, when was the last time he’d sat down and eaten an actual meal? He was falling apart, he wasn’t thinking right. But he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t.
“And after your food,” said Boheme, somewhat more seriously than was his wont, “you really need to get some sleep, if you don’t mind me saying. You look like a mess.” He leaned on the counter and smiled at him. “Muffin while you wait?” he asked cheerily.
“Grim curse it, Bo,” snapped Achilles, “I don’t have time for your childish idiocy. Just give me some proper food and leave me alone!”
His voice raised to a shout in the last few words.
Boheme just looked at him, smile fading.
Stars. It was like kicking a puppy.
Achilles sighed and took a muffin by way of apology. He took a few bites and swallowed. With some difficulty.
“What’s in this?” he said, in disgust. The taste had been strange, difficult to identify.
“Tranquillisers,” said Boheme cheerfully.
Achilles stared at him, then swayed.
Boheme leaped over the counter and caught him before he hit the ground.
“Sorry,” he said to his unconscious captain, apologetically. “You can’t do us any good if you’re exhausted, Captain. You need to rest.”
*
They walked through the forest.
“Do you know where you’re going?” asked Babel, quite calmly. He was holding a strap of cloth against his face, soaked with blood.
The Prince strode ahead of him confidently, and carefully avoided looking in the direction of his travelling companion’s bloodied face, for fear of pangs of guilt, a feeling he had previously been unfamiliar with. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “After all, I’m the Prince of Thieves.” And here he stroked his pointed little beard. “It isn’t possible for me to put a foot wrong in a forest like—”
Thump.
Babel walked up to the pit, looked over the edge and said, in concern, “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” the Prince called, through gritted teeth. He pulled out his whip, uncoiled it and wrapped it around a branch above the pit. He tugged on it to check it was secure, wrapped both hands around the handle, and ran up the side of the pit, hauling himself up. When he was on level ground, he gave the whip a skilful flick, and it unwrapped from the branch and coiled again. He put it back at his belt.
He smoothed out his hair, and brushed off his black-as-night cloak, and adjusted his fine crimson tunic. Then he glanced at Babel.
“I meant to do that,” he explained, and started walking again, quite a bit more quickly than he really needed to. Stupid villagers and their inexplicable bear-pits when there weren’t even any bears for kilometres.
“Oh,” said Babel, nodding slowly as he kept pace. Then he frowned. “Why?”
“Got to keep my reflexes in check,” said the Prince loftily.
“Ah.”
*
The ship flew through the atmosphere.
Well, to be entirely accurate, it didn’t fly so much as plummet; the ship they’d purloined from the store on Mulberry was about as aerodynamic as a fleet albatross wearing a millstone as a fashion statement. Less so, probably. The Applied Phlebotinium Drive was conking out, and the ship had alternating moments of thrustless drift and abrupt propulsion.
Now, though, it was just careening through the air, so no propulsion required. Mother Gravity did all the work for them, despite her dread enemies Uncle Friction and Cousin Wind Resistance. It wasn’t a matter of balanced forces making the ship achieve a constant speed. Somehow, the various push and pull forces, combined with the eerily malfunctioning Drive, gave the ship brief moments of stomach-churning plummeting and then moments when it sort of hovered, and then jerked down again, and then jerked up …
“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Georgette, who had turned a becoming shade of pale green.
“Think you have troubles?” said Wil piteously. His ears were drooping. “I can’t get out of this combat netting!”
Seren rolled her eyes, hung on tight to the controls and tried not to fall and impale herself on her sword.
Finally, the ship landed, at which point it quite literally fell apart. Pieces of the hull fell apart from each other, leaving only the cabin in which they stood standing, and that exposed to open air. It was like a rusty flower unfolding its petals, as it died of some horribly lingering disease.
Seren kicked the controls, which fell over.
“Next time,” she said, “I think I’ll just try and get my sword to turn into a spaceship, and use that. It’s probably safer.”
Georgette, looking pale, went over to splash her face with the water.
Ah, yes. The water.
Tawny was a mostly aquatic planet. As far as the eye could see in either direction was an expanse of ocean, gently rolling waves coloured the distinctive and beautiful sepia shade that gave Tawny its name. Tawny was rich in life, but most of that life was underwater, in the shifting, twilit world beneath the waves.
However, even the Kind couldn’t breathe water, so they had cities. And there had to be ways to get to those cities, of course.
The ship had landed precisely in the middle of a small landing platform. Beyond it, a narrow white pathway led for a few hundred metres, and then widened into the broad white platform around a city, a city with a skyline like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or a game of tetris, pleasingly geometrical and yet abstract. Similar landing platforms could just be made out here and there, a long distance away, also leading to the platform surrounding the city. Other than that, there was no land mass. Nothing but ocean.
Seren looked around the tiny platform they had landed on, and at their battered, inaccurate ship. Then she looked at the water. Then she looked at the ship again.
Seren wasn’t one to get all ridiculous and sycophantic about gods, but she knew when some respect and thanks was required, and this was one of those times.
“My thanks, Lady Luck,” she said politely.
Then she glanced around, and added, “No thanks whatsoever to the Trickster though, he’s no help at all.”
Serve Reynard right. If he didn’t want to appear in front of the others, then he could hardly take offence at her insulting him, now could he?
Seren smirked, rested her hand on her ‘monstrous’ sword, and started to swagger towards the city. If the Cup was anywhere, it would be there.
After she’d walked for a few moments, Georgette and Wil caught up.
Georgette now looked distinctly happier. She said, “This place is beautiful.”
Seren glanced up. As she did, a graceful whale, all smooth lines and parabolic curves, leaped from the water on one side of the path, soared over them – sprinkling them with tawny water – and landed in the water on the other side of the path, barely making a splash.
“Seen better,” said Seren dismissively.
Georgette gave her a playful shove. “You’re just jaded, you are. Have you still got the Ring?”
Seren rubbed the Ring’s smooth surface beneath her thumb. “Hardly likely to forget it, am I?” she said, rolling her eyes. “I mean, seeing it … does that … really useful thing which you’ve totally told me everything about.”
Georgette looked at her. “The Ring is one of four Keys,” she said. “They give the bearer of them access to a … thing. Something called a … Starfall. Rosenbach wasn’t entirely sure what it did.”
Seren levelled her eyebrows. “Let me get this straight. You threw away whatever orderly life you had back on whichever planet you came from—”
“Navy,” Georgette interrupted. “Like most humans.” She paused. “Though my sister Ada lives on Meridian now.”
“Blue,” corrected Seren, who always preferred the old names, however prosaic they were. “You threw away your orderly life on Navy, and your gloriously pre-planned future, just to find something, when you weren’t even sure what it was?”
“It’s a very powerful something,” said Georgette, a touch defensively. “Very important to find it, before it gets in the wrong hands. In the wrong hands … it could destroy the universe.”
“Ah,” said Seren.
They walked on for a bit, the city getting closer. As they could see it better, it stopped looking quite so much like a city, and started looking more like the vents and inexplicable architecture you get on top of buildings, particularly underwater facilities. Understandable, considering all of Tawny’s cities were underwater.
“Here’s a thought,” said Seren, thoughtfully. “What makes you think your hands aren’t the wrong ones? If you don’t know what the Starfall is, or what it does?”
Georgette opened her mouth. Then closed it again. Then she said, with the air of someone changing the subject who thinks they are far too clever for anyone to notice that they are changing the subject, “Wil, are you all right? You keep on looking around.”
Wil shrugged. “All this water, it gets to me.”
“We’ll make a sparky out of you yet,” said Seren.
And that was enough for talk. They reached the city. Up front, it bore only a passing resemblance to a city. It was obvious that all the action took place in the lower levels.
Georgette and Wil looked around. Wil cast Georgette a meaningful little glance.
Georgette turned beetroot red, which clashed horribly with her reddish hair.
“Um,” she said. “You can handle it on your own, can’t you, Seren?”
Seren stared at her. “What?”
“Yes,” Wil chimed in. “You’re more than competent enough to find the Cup on your own. We’d just get in the way.”
He beamed at her, hopefully. She gave him a stupefied stare.
“What’ll you two do, then?” she asked.
She could have sworn Wil was blushing. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” he said.
Seren snorted. “Forget I asked.” She decided to leave them to it, and strode forward on her own, searching for a way into the city.
Teenagers. Pah.
There it was – an organic doorway, a patch of slightly different coloured stone in a white stone block. Seren suppressed a shudder – she hated these things – and strode briskly through. The stone rippled around her. It was room-temperature and clammy, viscous somehow, like lukewarm porridge. But just for a moment, and then she was through, the last few sticky strands of wall peeling off her and forming back into the surface that looked like off-white stone but was nothing like stone at all.
“Whoever thought of organic doorways,” she growled, “deserves to be dragged out onto the street and drowned in boiling noodles.”
So saying, she looked around. She was standing inside the block, which was just as pleasingly geometrical on the inside. It all seemed to be solid, normal stone, but she knew better. The Kind could do some very clever things with stone, particularly the ones that lived on Tawny. It was one of the three Kind worlds – Tawny, Olive, and the Kindworld, whose true name was too long and beautiful to be pronounced without phonetic aids in brackets after it – but, like each of them, it had its own distinct character, and the Kind that lived on it were different enough from those on the other two planets as those on the other two planets were to each other. It was almost like each was a slightly different race of the same species.
Of course, she thought wryly, there are no Kind anywhere in the ‘nite that would let themselves look as disrespectful as I do right now.
She was in a sorry state. Probably she should wash off, change into new clothes, but she couldn’t be bothered, and she wasn’t exactly in the habit of carrying changes of clothes around with her for when she desired a random costume change. And there was no force in the galaxy that could change her eyes. Sure, some of the Kind had green eyes, but no one had eyes quite as bright and lively a green as hers were now. Except Reynard, of course. And she wasn’t sure if even he could get her own eyes back.
Funny. There were all the stories in which mortals interacted with the gods, and not one of them mentioned eye colour. This was strange.
Except … she had heard something, once or twice, in some of the more obscure stories. Something about Champions, mortalfolk chosen by gods to act as their avatars and emissaries and spokespeople, their representatives. These Champions were meant to be closely linked to the gods who chose them. Very, very closely linked. Most of the stories which featured Champions as anything other than a passing mention featured descriptions of how the pressure of part of a star being inside them, even a minute part, a part of that cosmic power, drove them slowly and terribly mad.
And if it was enough to change her eye colour, then she had to have been given more than a minute part of Reynard’s fire.
Seren had no fear. But if she had, that prospect would be enough to drive her mad all on its own.
As it was, it made another shiver run down her spine, and made her realise that standing in a stone block when you apparently have a universe to save single-handedly isn’t the best move.
She looked around, for any controls, then sighed and said, “Take me down to the city.”
Nothing changed. Perhaps it was silly to think that the Kind on Tawny would be eccentric enough to engineer voice-activated lifts inside apparently solid blocks of stone.
Then again, perhaps it wasn’t.
“Please,” added Seren, and the stone ground dropped away sickeningly beneath her feet and dropped her into thin air.
Air whipped around her, and gravity made it difficult to move except with great effort. She was falling very very fast, white walls whipping past her.
Automatically, her old, almost forgotten planet-diving instincts kicked in. She tucked her limbs close to her body, made a slender shape of herself, wishing that the sword at her hip wasn’t quite so heavy – it dragged at her side, and she wasn’t used to falling with its weight. It upset her balance, and she was in danger of losing her carefully maintained equilibrium and smashing against a wall.
On the other hand, they’d hardly have this as one of the main entrances to the city if there was any danger of people getting smashed against –
And then she was caught in a fist of force, and, gently, her speed slowed down, until she was merely drifting past the walls.
Seren half-suspected that the lifts in Tawny were specifically engineered so that they gave people who’d never planet-dived a ride as gentle as this all the way down, and modified their level of challenge depending on the individual. It seemed like the kind of thing Tawny engineers would do.
Gently, her boots clanked against white stone, and the stone wall in front of her parted – no organic doorway this time, good – to reveal a bustling scene of industry. Willowy, graceful Kind were everywhere, with that crinkle to their hair and slight double-jointedness to their fingers that Tawny Kind had, carrying clipboards and works of art and diagrams and a thousand other things. Here and there were other kinds of Kind, and some humans. There was even a representative of the Squidfolk present, sitting in a corner, sighing sadly.
Seren stepped through the thankfully inorganic door, and looked around. This appeared to be a plaza of some sort. Paths led off here and there into other parts of the city, and there were other lifts, which people stepped into and emerged from. The lifts implied that there was more than one level to the city, which made sense. It was also worrying. If this city was as tiered as a wedding cake, then there was little chance of the Cup being the first place she looked. It was hardly going to be straight down that path, second branch to the left. Life was never that convenient.
And that was assuming that the Cup was even in this city. Granted, Georgette and that dreamer Rosenbach seemed certain that it was on Tawny, but that didn’t mean it was here. This was the most likely place for the Kind to store a valuable magical artefact, as it was the capital. But that just made it more likely, not certain.
It was annoying referring to it as ‘the city’ all the time, but she had little choice. Its actual name was its coordinates. Tawny Kind were odd like that. On the other hand, it made it a lot easier to remember where the city was.
Oh well. Never knew if you never tried. And it wasn’t like she had anything else to do. At all. Ever.
She walked up to the first person she saw, a Kind woman with crinkly hair like a waterfall cascading over her shoulders. Whichever planet, few Kind had hair as short as Seren’s, even before her self-destructive downwards slope. It was a style thing. “Excuse me,” said Seren, near-politely. “I’m looking for a valuable magical artefact. Something called the Cup? Apparently it has some abstruse properties. Something to do with saving the universe.”
She expected to be insulted, or laughed at, and was thus surprised when the Kind woman smiled kindly (of course) and said, “Oh, you’ll be wanting the Temple of Reynard. That’s where we store most of our god-related paraphernalia.” She pointed. “Straight down that path. Second branch to the left. Have a nice day.”
“Er, thank you,” said Seren, and wandered down that path in a confused daze.
Having gone down that path and down the second branch to the left, she walked through an ornate carved doorway and found herself in an open space, with walls at something slightly larger than ninety degrees, which made the space seem even opener. Yes, this looked like a Temple. There were various items set in alcoves in the walls, with soft light illuminating them. Soft, humming music made the air vibrate gently. It was all very quiet and contemplative. She was the only person there.
Except for a janitor, who was pushing a mop back and forth across the floor in about the middle of the space, and glancing around.
He looked familiar, somehow, him with his irritable face, annoyingly curly hair, limp and –
He had glasses. Seren frowned, and approached him.
“’scuse me,” she said. “Do I know you?”
The man looked up. “Who, me?” he said. “Shouldn’t think so.” He made a ghastly attempt at an innocent smile.
“Is that so, Captain Achilles?” said Seren, sweetly.
Achilles scowled and made hushing motions with his mop. “Not so loud!” he hissed. “The guards might hear you.”
Seren stepped a bit closer to him, so they could talk in an undertone without being overheard. “There are guards?” she said.
“Yes. They’re guarding—” He stopped, abruptly, and looked at her. “What business does a drunkard ex-Pathfinder have in the Temple of Reynard on Tawny?”
“Drunkard, I’ll grant, seeing you’re a rumrunner.” Her voice turned suspicious. “But how do you know I was a Pathfinder?”
He looked at her, very slowly and sarcastically. Then he looked down. Seren looked down too. Then she felt very stupid.
“Ah,” she said. “The uniform a bit of a giveaway, is it?”
Achilles nodded sarcastically. He seemed to be a sarcastic sort of person.
“Well,” said Seren, recovering, “perhaps I’m just here because I’m a woman of faith? … Yeah, I wouldn’t fall for that either. Why are you here?”
“I asked first.”
She tilted her head at him. “Are you maybe here to steal a Cup which turns any liquid poured into it into wine?”
“… Actually,” he said, “yeah. How did you know?”
“You’re a rumrunner, Captain. It’s hardly a complicated chain of reasoning.”
“Fair enough,” he concluded. “Can I presume that you’re here to get the Cup as well?”
“Yep.”
“It would appear we have the same objective, then. May the best person-with-a-hopelessly-ruined-life win.”
Her brow crunkled. “Why’s your life hopelessly ruined?”
He opened his mouth. Then closed it again. “Well, uh,” he said. “… I have a limp.”
“Oh,” said Seren, sarcastically. “I see. Obviously that would cause you to hate each and every aspect of life.”
“It made more sense in my head,” he said, defensively. “It’s a very painful limp.”
“Course it is, Dr. House,” said Seren, who had secretly downed the remainder of her emergency whiskey while on the ship and was thus drunk enough to make pop culture references.
“Eh?” said Achilles, who hadn’t and wasn’t.
Seren said, “Anyway, there’s no need for us two to fight. We could just work together until we find the doodad, and then decide what to do. It may turn out that it doesn’t match your cutlery, or something.”
Achilles deliberated.
“What are you doing?” asked Seren curiously, after he’d deliberated for a minute or two.
“Planning,” he said, and held out his hand. “Sounds reasonable. Shake on it.”
They shook. Then a noble-faced, crinkle-haired Kind in ceremonial jewellery and elaborate robes walked past in a very stately way. Achilles hastily bent over his mop and adopted an air of competent business, swishing the mop back and forth over the smooth floor – despite the fact that he seemed to have neglected to bring any water to dip it in. Seren spun around and pretended to be steering intently at a ragged fox mask lit by subtle lighting in an alcove in the wall.
This seemed to pass muster. The Kind kept on walking. Seren snuck a look at him from the corner of her eye. He slowly walked into the floor, until he was out of sight.
Seren sighed. “I hate organic stairways,” she said.
“So do I,” Achilles agreed, sourly.
“You hate everything, Captain,” Seren said.
“So do you, ‘s far as I can tell.” He abandoned the mop and walked over to the place where the Kind had descended, examining it.
“That’s not true,” said Seren, coming over.
“Yeah?” said Achilles, standing back so she could see. “Name one thing you like.”
Seren crouched down and poked at the stone with her fingers. It seemed solid enough. “Reynard,” she said absentmindedly, and then she realised, with some surprise, that it was true. She went on to explain why, to herself as much as to him. “He’s marginally easier to tolerate than most other people. Some of the time. Sort of.” She straightened. “I don’t see any way down,” she said frankly. “It’s not like normal organic doorways at all. Maybe you have to have some kind of key to pass through it.”
Achilles said, “The jewellery.”
“Very astute,” said Seren, who had come to the same conclusion. “Now, where can we get some expensive, ritualistic, culturally important jewellery?”
“Souvenir store?” he suggested.
At that point Reynard appeared. Or maybe he’d been there the whole time, and she just hadn’t seen him. At any rate, he looked at her and said, “You called?”
“No,” said Seren, “but while you’re here—”
Reynard crossed his arms sternly. “Stars, woman!” he said, sounding exasperated. “Would it kill you to stop throwing my name around? I wouldn’t have told you it if I’d known you’d be so careless with it!”
“Don’t you trust me?” said Seren. “I’m your Champion, after all.”
His bright green eyes widened, and then he gave a somewhat forced laugh. “Hah!” he said. “Only technically.”
She pointed at her eyes. “Then what’s with the random colour change?”
“Maybe you were exposed to radiation,” he said glibly. “I knew that ship was dodgy …”
“My eyes changed colour before we even got to Mulberry, Reynard,” she growled.
He shrugged, smiling slightly. “Temporal radiation, then?”
Achilles had stumbled a bit when Reynard first appeared, but he said nothing, his eyes wary. Seren somehow got the feeling that he’d had past experience with one or other of the gods, if he knew enough to keep quiet.
She opened her mouth to start yelling furiously, at which point Reynard smoothly transferred his attention to the watchful Achilles.
“You’ve met my sister,” he said, sounding surprised.
“Lady Luck?” said Achilles, guardedly. “Yes. She turned my pilot into a parrot.”
“That sounds the kind of thing she’d do.”
Seren noticed that, despite the fact that Lady Luck was supposedly Reynard’s ‘favourite sister’ and that he was supposedly only watching over Seren as a favour to her, he didn’t speak of her with any noticeable fondness. Indeed, his voice held a kind of amused scorn.
“Hmm,” Seren said.
“Please tell me you’re not jumping to conclusions,” said Reynard, switching his attention back to her. “That’s a jumping-to-conclusions sound if ever I’ve heard one.”
“Me? Goodness no,” said Seren, giving her most innocent, wide-eyed smile.
Reynard stared at her. “Don’t do that,” he said. “It’s disconcerting.”
“Anyway,” said Seren, “eyes aside, I could actually use your help with something.” She nodded at the ground. “We need to get down there.”
“The Underworld?” said Reynard dubiously. “That’s more Grim’s area than mine. And people going down there alive end up as singing heads. If they’re lucky.” He brightened. “If you want to go down dead, though, I’m sure there are people that can arra—”
Seren rolled her eyes. From Reynard’s slight smirk, he knew perfectly well what she meant. “Just through the stone,” she said.
“Why didn’t you say so?” he said, and crouched down. He was wearing his mortalfolk aspect currently – mostly human-looking, but for the age of his eyes. There was nothing so blatant as the ears and tail he’d worn last time, but there was a distinct foxlike cast to his face that, she suspected, he couldn’t do much to get rid of.
He put his hand on the stone and crouched thoughtfully for a second or two. Then he said, “Sure, I can let you go through.”
“Oh, good,” said Seren, relieved.
Reynard chuckled. “Yes. Good. If you feel like running an elaborate gauntlet of death traps, that is.”
“Ah,” said Seren. “Not so good, then.”
He shrugged. “Well, you can go down if you really want to, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The Priesthood here are especially trained from the age of seven to navigate the gauntlet. With anyone else it would be … risky. I’d rather not lose a promising servant to the death traps in my own Temple. I’d be a laughing stock. Mind you, if you can find someone who doesn’t have much to live for, then …”
His eyes swung to Achilles, and so did Seren’s.
“No,” said Achilles firmly. “My pilot is a bird, and my cook tranquillised me. My week’s been bad enough already without throwing death traps into the mix.”
“I sympathise thoroughly,” said Seren. “So. What can we do?”
Reynard stood up. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I could just go down and get whatever it is you’re looking for—”
“I thought gods weren’t allowed to interfere directly with mortals?” Achilles interrupted.
Reynard gave him a look that was pure poison. “Don’t listen to everything you hear,” he said stiffly.
“Aha,” said Seren. “So you can’t?”
Reynard hissed. “Mortals,” he said. “Incompetent, the lot of you.”
“But you’re going to help me anyway,” Seren said, sounding a lot more confident than she really was.
“Oh, yes?” He smirked. “Now why would I do that?”
“I have no idea. But you’re going to.”
His eyes were cold and flat and dangerous. “You’re very confident for a mortal.”
She raised her eyebrow at him. “And you’ve very unconfident for a god.”
He snarled and punched the wall. “Alright. Fine,” he said. “I’ll give you a distraction. But that’s all I can do, got it?”
“Distraction?” said Seren, a bit uncertainly. “How’ll that help?”
Reynard shot her a grin, good temper apparently restored. “Four-eyes here’s been hanging around Lady Luck. Residual good fortune is still hanging around him. You must have noticed.”
Seren nodded, remembering how easy it had been to get here. The first person she’d asked had told her, for stars’ sake.
“Right,” said Reynard. “And I can use that.”
He disappeared, and all of a sudden an alarm sounded, with the wail that meant it was probably made by magic rather than technology. A lot of Priesthoods seemed big on that.
WARNING! WARNING! CELESTIAL CONFLICT. ARTEFACT UNSAFE. ALL PRIESTHOOD TO REPORT TO THE BLESSED ONE. ALL DUTIES TO BE ON HOLD. WARNING! WARNING! CELESTIAL CONFLICT …
And on it went. Seren was rather impressed. Then again, if Reynard hadn’t been able to start an alarm inside his own Temple, she’d have been inclined to think that there really was something wrong with him.
The ground at her feet started to feel slightly marshy, and she stepped back hastily. The head of the noble-faced, crinkle-haired priest appeared, quickly followed by the rest of them. He stepped up quickly, shaking clinging bits of floor off his sandals.
He was carrying something in his hand, a simple brass cup, unornamented. As powerful magical artefacts went, it was disappointing. Then again, the Ring didn’t look like much either.
His noble face was flushed, and he looked like he was in a great hurry. He looked at them like he wasn’t really noticing details, said, “Hold this, will you?” shoved the Cup into Achilles’s hands, and ran off into the wall, which parted to meet him.
Seren and Achilles looked at each other.
“Well,” said Seren, “that was convenient.”
Something bothered her, though. Something about the ornate flowing robes he’d been weari –
They had been stained and dripping with red. Blood. And his robes had been spotless when he went down. Freshblood.
Achilles stared at the wall where the priest had disappeared. “Exactly what is going on here?”
“I intend to find out,” answered Seren grimly. “But for now, let’s get out of here before this alarm stops and someone pauses to wonder what two strangers are doing here.”
They left swiftly. Seren couldn’t think. The insidious magic alarm pounded in her head.
She had rather liked Reynard. And now …
She thought of his ready grin, and bright eyes, and mocking laugh, and that blood on the priest’s clothes.
He could have just been sacrificing chickens, she thought, but even she was unconvinced by that. For a start, the man’s robes had been utterly devoid of feathers.
“Curse you, Trickster,” she murmured, slowing down a bit so the limping Achilles could keep us. As the lift’s door slid closed behind them, she glimpsed a running woman in Priesthood robes, eyes fixed on them, mouth open and yelling. There were more priests behind her.
Then the doors closed, and the lift caught them and pushed them upwards with such force that it drove any thought clean out of her head.
A brief eternity went by, and then she was in the blank white block again. She stumbled out, barely noticing the slimy feel of the organic doorway making way for her, and walked to the edge of the platform, to where greasy sepia-coloured waves licked at the white stone.
Achilles followed, a little more slowly, and bent down, not without some difficulty. He dipped the Cup under the water, and brought it up brimming with liquid. He raised it to his lips and took a sip.
Then he cursed. “Vinegar,” he said, and threw the Cup aside. Seren reached out a hand and snatched it out of the air, sniffing its contents. Yep, it was vinegar all right. Either the Cup had slowly broken down over time, or whoever had spread the rumours about it had only the sketchiest idea of what ‘wine’ was. Seren suspected that the first was more likely. The Cup looked old.
She gave Achilles a wry look. “Guess this is mine, then. Sorry.”
“You’re welcome to it,” he said. “My fault for trusting anything a god says.” He started to limp away in the direction of a distant path, and then paused and said, “You can’t trust them, you know. Not any of them.”
“Yeah,” said Seren wearily. “Yeah, I know.”
Achilles started to leave again.
And at that point, at least a legion of Navy ships suddenly landed, blocking Seren’s path back to the others completely.
A man stepped out from the foremost ship. It was a big, stately, ornate ship, very grand, and he didn’t seem to suit it. He had calloused working-man’s hands, and brutally short hair, and a square, honest, reliable face. His nose was slightly crooked, as though someone had once broken it.
“Squiddang,” said Achilles, in the hoarse tones of someone too stunned to use a proper swear word.
“Hello,” said the Supreme Commander of the Navy calmly. “I believe you have something that belongs to us.”
He didn’t worry about this. Instead he got up, stirred at the glowing coals of the fire until they sparked into life, and started rolling up his sleeping-blanket.
He was halfway through cooking breakfast – roast pheasant, this time, not some nasty dehydrated mush – when Babel ran into camp, wearing a smile.
“I like running,” the clone said, and then he said, “I saw this thing – growing. It had these green …” He pronounced the next word carefully. “Leaves, like you said, but it had a brightly coloured …” He made a few inarticulate hand gestures, and then gave up. “It was beautiful.”
“Sounds like a flower,” said the Prince of Thieves automatically, and he poked the rabbit. Not quite done yet, by the consistency and the smell of it, but nearly.
He was used to the routine of things now. This same thing had happened every morning for the past week. He’d worried, the first time, that his valuable acquisition had gotten itself lost and the silver-haired woman would never give him the second half of the payment. But Babel had ran into camp soon after, bursting with vitality and life and curiousity and the sheer delight of living. It was as though every day away from the facility was a day that he couldn’t bear to waste.
The Prince found this entertaining, when he was fully awake. Right now he was still a little tired. The Prince wasn’t really a morning person, and didn’t function too well until after he’d eaten and shaved and felt like a person again.
He yawned. Babel immediately stopped his flow of chatter, and gave him a sheepish look.
“Sorry,” he said, dropping down beside him. He was still noticeably taller. “I didn’t mean to bore you. It’s just …” He looked around, his face bright with wonder. “This world. How can you live in all this every day, and not be overcome by the beauty of it all?”
The Prince smiled, a little tiredly, and explained, “When you live in this every day, you forget that it’s beautiful.”
Babel’s face fell. “Oh.” He rested a hand on the Prince’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
The Prince did a quizzical, confused thing with his bold eyebrows. “Don’t be? Only children are really filled with wonder in this world. I can’t afford it.”
“No?” said Babel. “Don’t you have a lot of money from your thieving?”
The cautious way he said it told the Prince that he was being careful not to offend him, and this annoyed him. He snapped, “Oh, please don’t get all moralistic on me. There’s nothing wrong with thieving.”
Babel smiled gently, as though trying to soothe the Prince’s temper, trying to make it seem like just the usual banter between the two of them. Which it was. They bantered an awful lot. There wasn’t much else to do, on the road. “Technically,” he said, “there’s everything wrong with it. Isn’t that what you said? That it’s … illegal? You’re a law-breaker, you said.”
The Prince was abruptly angry. “You can’t talk,” he said. “You stole another man’s face.”
Babel went silent and stared at him. Then he got up, slowly, with none of his usual enthusiasm, and walked away into the surrounding forest.
The Prince scowled and scratched his beard. He didn’t have the patience for this so early in the morning.
Was the sun even up yet? If it was, it wasn’t doing much to light up the place. Everything was damp and dark and dripping. He wished that they could just head for a town or village already – the nearest one was only half an hour’s walk away or so, if he remembered correctly from the way. But no, they had to take the slow, circular route, just in case someone from the facility had people out looking for the clone that had escaped. It was so unlikely! More to the point, it meant there was nowhere to steal food from, and his supplies were running low. That he’d caught this rabbit had been mainly luck.
Stupid Babel.
The Prince sighed and got to his feet, heading in the direction Babel had gone, the direction of the stream twenty metres or so from where they’d camped.
“Babel?” he called, as he emerged from the undergrowth. “Um.”
The Prince of Thieves was good at many things. Apologies weren’t one of them.
“The … rabbit’s ready,” he edged. “Look, I …”
He lost his sentence and just stood there for a moment, too surprised to move.
Babel was crouched by the edge of the water, looking at him, the Prince’s sharp little shaving knife in his hand, blood on his face –
No –
The Prince dived at him, and pulled the knife from his hand so roughly that it slipped and cut his own hand. “Babel, what – don’t,” he said desperately, and threw the knife away into the forest. “What are – Babel. You …”
The Prince seemed entirely incapable of forming coherent sentences. But then, these weren’t exactly normal circumstances.
“Babel,” he said, dragging his hand down his face, ignoring the blood that smeared over it. “Stars, Babel. Never do that. Okay?”
Babel looked at him, his blue eyes pained. One of his eyes was … covered in … no, not his eye, he can’t have hurt his eye, how can he wonder at the world if he can’t see? “But you’re right. It’s not my face. It’s not my face.” His tone became pleading. “Do you have any idea what that’s like? To know that you aren’t you?”
“So, what, you tried to cut it off?” snapped the Prince. “Idiot!”
Babel looked down at the ground and said nothing. Blood dripped down his face and stained the ground red.
The Prince swallowed. He reached out a hand. He’d trained his hands to be steady, years and years ago, when he knew he wanted to be a thief. You couldn’t be a thief if your hands quivered when you were nervous. But right now his fingers were trembling, with shock and surprise and guilt. He touched the blood on Babel’s face. Dipped his fingers into the water, and gently started cleaning it away.
It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought, but it was bad. Babel flinched as he felt around it, though he tried to be as gentle as he could. The cut was only five or six centimetres long, slicing diagonally down his forehead and through his eyebrow. It didn’t reach his eye, not quite; it had just looked like that because the blood had flown over it.
But it was a deep cut, and jagged. Babel really had wanted to tear his stolen face away.
“Naïve fool,” said the Prince roughly. He was no good at apologies.
Babel gave his gently apologetic smile. Or tried to. It was more of a grimace, tempered with pain.
“Come on,” said the Prince, and he pulled him to his feet. “We need to get you to a healist. There’ll be one in the nearest village. Hurry.”
“But,” said Babel cautiously. Blood was still dripping from the open wound. “I thought we were avoiding settlements.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But –” His brow creased, and he winced; it must have made the pain worse. “I don’t want—”
“Look,” said the Prince impatiently, “if you get caught and taken back, I promise I’ll steal you again. Okay? Now move. Do you want an ugly scar?”
“Better than being trapped again,” Babel said.
The Prince stared at him. Exactly how bad had it been, back there, that an agonising head wound was less painful than even thinking about going back?
The Prince grimaced, and looked away, and looked back again. “Please?” he said, awkwardly. “It’s my fault.”
Babel looked at him.
Then he said, “All right.”
*
Achilles couldn’t quite remember the last time he’d slept. Not recently, that was for sure.
But he couldn’t sleep. Not with a god on board. He needed to watch over what remained of his crew, needed to make sure they stayed safe, needed to make sure they got to Tawny and that Felicia got off there for good.
He limped around the corridors. He was trying to get a picture of the ship in his mind, trying to learn to understand it, but the Grace Note was even harder to navigate around when he was tired. He couldn’t get in the right mindset. Instead of letting his mind wander and letting the ship guide him where he wanted to go, he stubbornly tried to apply order and logic to it.
And that just didn’t work.
Thus, when he found himself in the kitchen again, instead of the engine room where he had been wanting to go, he let out an actual growl of impatience and tried to leave again. Instead, he banged into the wall. Obviously, this was the ship’s fault, and not because his legs weren’t obeying him because he was so tired. Obviously.
Stupid ship.
“Captain?” called Boheme cheerily. “That you?”
Achilles sighed, and limped over to the serving window. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Want a midnight snack?” said Boheme.
“I guess. Sure. Why not.” Maybe it would stop him feeling so tired. He had to stay awake, he had to, he couldn’t let them down, he was the Captain.
Boheme bustled around, and within moments the delicious scent of stew filled the air. Achilles breathed in deep. Come to think of it, when was the last time he’d sat down and eaten an actual meal? He was falling apart, he wasn’t thinking right. But he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t.
“And after your food,” said Boheme, somewhat more seriously than was his wont, “you really need to get some sleep, if you don’t mind me saying. You look like a mess.” He leaned on the counter and smiled at him. “Muffin while you wait?” he asked cheerily.
“Grim curse it, Bo,” snapped Achilles, “I don’t have time for your childish idiocy. Just give me some proper food and leave me alone!”
His voice raised to a shout in the last few words.
Boheme just looked at him, smile fading.
Stars. It was like kicking a puppy.
Achilles sighed and took a muffin by way of apology. He took a few bites and swallowed. With some difficulty.
“What’s in this?” he said, in disgust. The taste had been strange, difficult to identify.
“Tranquillisers,” said Boheme cheerfully.
Achilles stared at him, then swayed.
Boheme leaped over the counter and caught him before he hit the ground.
“Sorry,” he said to his unconscious captain, apologetically. “You can’t do us any good if you’re exhausted, Captain. You need to rest.”
*
They walked through the forest.
“Do you know where you’re going?” asked Babel, quite calmly. He was holding a strap of cloth against his face, soaked with blood.
The Prince strode ahead of him confidently, and carefully avoided looking in the direction of his travelling companion’s bloodied face, for fear of pangs of guilt, a feeling he had previously been unfamiliar with. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “After all, I’m the Prince of Thieves.” And here he stroked his pointed little beard. “It isn’t possible for me to put a foot wrong in a forest like—”
Thump.
Babel walked up to the pit, looked over the edge and said, in concern, “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” the Prince called, through gritted teeth. He pulled out his whip, uncoiled it and wrapped it around a branch above the pit. He tugged on it to check it was secure, wrapped both hands around the handle, and ran up the side of the pit, hauling himself up. When he was on level ground, he gave the whip a skilful flick, and it unwrapped from the branch and coiled again. He put it back at his belt.
He smoothed out his hair, and brushed off his black-as-night cloak, and adjusted his fine crimson tunic. Then he glanced at Babel.
“I meant to do that,” he explained, and started walking again, quite a bit more quickly than he really needed to. Stupid villagers and their inexplicable bear-pits when there weren’t even any bears for kilometres.
“Oh,” said Babel, nodding slowly as he kept pace. Then he frowned. “Why?”
“Got to keep my reflexes in check,” said the Prince loftily.
“Ah.”
*
The ship flew through the atmosphere.
Well, to be entirely accurate, it didn’t fly so much as plummet; the ship they’d purloined from the store on Mulberry was about as aerodynamic as a fleet albatross wearing a millstone as a fashion statement. Less so, probably. The Applied Phlebotinium Drive was conking out, and the ship had alternating moments of thrustless drift and abrupt propulsion.
Now, though, it was just careening through the air, so no propulsion required. Mother Gravity did all the work for them, despite her dread enemies Uncle Friction and Cousin Wind Resistance. It wasn’t a matter of balanced forces making the ship achieve a constant speed. Somehow, the various push and pull forces, combined with the eerily malfunctioning Drive, gave the ship brief moments of stomach-churning plummeting and then moments when it sort of hovered, and then jerked down again, and then jerked up …
“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Georgette, who had turned a becoming shade of pale green.
“Think you have troubles?” said Wil piteously. His ears were drooping. “I can’t get out of this combat netting!”
Seren rolled her eyes, hung on tight to the controls and tried not to fall and impale herself on her sword.
Finally, the ship landed, at which point it quite literally fell apart. Pieces of the hull fell apart from each other, leaving only the cabin in which they stood standing, and that exposed to open air. It was like a rusty flower unfolding its petals, as it died of some horribly lingering disease.
Seren kicked the controls, which fell over.
“Next time,” she said, “I think I’ll just try and get my sword to turn into a spaceship, and use that. It’s probably safer.”
Georgette, looking pale, went over to splash her face with the water.
Ah, yes. The water.
Tawny was a mostly aquatic planet. As far as the eye could see in either direction was an expanse of ocean, gently rolling waves coloured the distinctive and beautiful sepia shade that gave Tawny its name. Tawny was rich in life, but most of that life was underwater, in the shifting, twilit world beneath the waves.
However, even the Kind couldn’t breathe water, so they had cities. And there had to be ways to get to those cities, of course.
The ship had landed precisely in the middle of a small landing platform. Beyond it, a narrow white pathway led for a few hundred metres, and then widened into the broad white platform around a city, a city with a skyline like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or a game of tetris, pleasingly geometrical and yet abstract. Similar landing platforms could just be made out here and there, a long distance away, also leading to the platform surrounding the city. Other than that, there was no land mass. Nothing but ocean.
Seren looked around the tiny platform they had landed on, and at their battered, inaccurate ship. Then she looked at the water. Then she looked at the ship again.
Seren wasn’t one to get all ridiculous and sycophantic about gods, but she knew when some respect and thanks was required, and this was one of those times.
“My thanks, Lady Luck,” she said politely.
Then she glanced around, and added, “No thanks whatsoever to the Trickster though, he’s no help at all.”
Serve Reynard right. If he didn’t want to appear in front of the others, then he could hardly take offence at her insulting him, now could he?
Seren smirked, rested her hand on her ‘monstrous’ sword, and started to swagger towards the city. If the Cup was anywhere, it would be there.
After she’d walked for a few moments, Georgette and Wil caught up.
Georgette now looked distinctly happier. She said, “This place is beautiful.”
Seren glanced up. As she did, a graceful whale, all smooth lines and parabolic curves, leaped from the water on one side of the path, soared over them – sprinkling them with tawny water – and landed in the water on the other side of the path, barely making a splash.
“Seen better,” said Seren dismissively.
Georgette gave her a playful shove. “You’re just jaded, you are. Have you still got the Ring?”
Seren rubbed the Ring’s smooth surface beneath her thumb. “Hardly likely to forget it, am I?” she said, rolling her eyes. “I mean, seeing it … does that … really useful thing which you’ve totally told me everything about.”
Georgette looked at her. “The Ring is one of four Keys,” she said. “They give the bearer of them access to a … thing. Something called a … Starfall. Rosenbach wasn’t entirely sure what it did.”
Seren levelled her eyebrows. “Let me get this straight. You threw away whatever orderly life you had back on whichever planet you came from—”
“Navy,” Georgette interrupted. “Like most humans.” She paused. “Though my sister Ada lives on Meridian now.”
“Blue,” corrected Seren, who always preferred the old names, however prosaic they were. “You threw away your orderly life on Navy, and your gloriously pre-planned future, just to find something, when you weren’t even sure what it was?”
“It’s a very powerful something,” said Georgette, a touch defensively. “Very important to find it, before it gets in the wrong hands. In the wrong hands … it could destroy the universe.”
“Ah,” said Seren.
They walked on for a bit, the city getting closer. As they could see it better, it stopped looking quite so much like a city, and started looking more like the vents and inexplicable architecture you get on top of buildings, particularly underwater facilities. Understandable, considering all of Tawny’s cities were underwater.
“Here’s a thought,” said Seren, thoughtfully. “What makes you think your hands aren’t the wrong ones? If you don’t know what the Starfall is, or what it does?”
Georgette opened her mouth. Then closed it again. Then she said, with the air of someone changing the subject who thinks they are far too clever for anyone to notice that they are changing the subject, “Wil, are you all right? You keep on looking around.”
Wil shrugged. “All this water, it gets to me.”
“We’ll make a sparky out of you yet,” said Seren.
And that was enough for talk. They reached the city. Up front, it bore only a passing resemblance to a city. It was obvious that all the action took place in the lower levels.
Georgette and Wil looked around. Wil cast Georgette a meaningful little glance.
Georgette turned beetroot red, which clashed horribly with her reddish hair.
“Um,” she said. “You can handle it on your own, can’t you, Seren?”
Seren stared at her. “What?”
“Yes,” Wil chimed in. “You’re more than competent enough to find the Cup on your own. We’d just get in the way.”
He beamed at her, hopefully. She gave him a stupefied stare.
“What’ll you two do, then?” she asked.
She could have sworn Wil was blushing. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” he said.
Seren snorted. “Forget I asked.” She decided to leave them to it, and strode forward on her own, searching for a way into the city.
Teenagers. Pah.
There it was – an organic doorway, a patch of slightly different coloured stone in a white stone block. Seren suppressed a shudder – she hated these things – and strode briskly through. The stone rippled around her. It was room-temperature and clammy, viscous somehow, like lukewarm porridge. But just for a moment, and then she was through, the last few sticky strands of wall peeling off her and forming back into the surface that looked like off-white stone but was nothing like stone at all.
“Whoever thought of organic doorways,” she growled, “deserves to be dragged out onto the street and drowned in boiling noodles.”
So saying, she looked around. She was standing inside the block, which was just as pleasingly geometrical on the inside. It all seemed to be solid, normal stone, but she knew better. The Kind could do some very clever things with stone, particularly the ones that lived on Tawny. It was one of the three Kind worlds – Tawny, Olive, and the Kindworld, whose true name was too long and beautiful to be pronounced without phonetic aids in brackets after it – but, like each of them, it had its own distinct character, and the Kind that lived on it were different enough from those on the other two planets as those on the other two planets were to each other. It was almost like each was a slightly different race of the same species.
Of course, she thought wryly, there are no Kind anywhere in the ‘nite that would let themselves look as disrespectful as I do right now.
She was in a sorry state. Probably she should wash off, change into new clothes, but she couldn’t be bothered, and she wasn’t exactly in the habit of carrying changes of clothes around with her for when she desired a random costume change. And there was no force in the galaxy that could change her eyes. Sure, some of the Kind had green eyes, but no one had eyes quite as bright and lively a green as hers were now. Except Reynard, of course. And she wasn’t sure if even he could get her own eyes back.
Funny. There were all the stories in which mortals interacted with the gods, and not one of them mentioned eye colour. This was strange.
Except … she had heard something, once or twice, in some of the more obscure stories. Something about Champions, mortalfolk chosen by gods to act as their avatars and emissaries and spokespeople, their representatives. These Champions were meant to be closely linked to the gods who chose them. Very, very closely linked. Most of the stories which featured Champions as anything other than a passing mention featured descriptions of how the pressure of part of a star being inside them, even a minute part, a part of that cosmic power, drove them slowly and terribly mad.
And if it was enough to change her eye colour, then she had to have been given more than a minute part of Reynard’s fire.
Seren had no fear. But if she had, that prospect would be enough to drive her mad all on its own.
As it was, it made another shiver run down her spine, and made her realise that standing in a stone block when you apparently have a universe to save single-handedly isn’t the best move.
She looked around, for any controls, then sighed and said, “Take me down to the city.”
Nothing changed. Perhaps it was silly to think that the Kind on Tawny would be eccentric enough to engineer voice-activated lifts inside apparently solid blocks of stone.
Then again, perhaps it wasn’t.
“Please,” added Seren, and the stone ground dropped away sickeningly beneath her feet and dropped her into thin air.
Air whipped around her, and gravity made it difficult to move except with great effort. She was falling very very fast, white walls whipping past her.
Automatically, her old, almost forgotten planet-diving instincts kicked in. She tucked her limbs close to her body, made a slender shape of herself, wishing that the sword at her hip wasn’t quite so heavy – it dragged at her side, and she wasn’t used to falling with its weight. It upset her balance, and she was in danger of losing her carefully maintained equilibrium and smashing against a wall.
On the other hand, they’d hardly have this as one of the main entrances to the city if there was any danger of people getting smashed against –
And then she was caught in a fist of force, and, gently, her speed slowed down, until she was merely drifting past the walls.
Seren half-suspected that the lifts in Tawny were specifically engineered so that they gave people who’d never planet-dived a ride as gentle as this all the way down, and modified their level of challenge depending on the individual. It seemed like the kind of thing Tawny engineers would do.
Gently, her boots clanked against white stone, and the stone wall in front of her parted – no organic doorway this time, good – to reveal a bustling scene of industry. Willowy, graceful Kind were everywhere, with that crinkle to their hair and slight double-jointedness to their fingers that Tawny Kind had, carrying clipboards and works of art and diagrams and a thousand other things. Here and there were other kinds of Kind, and some humans. There was even a representative of the Squidfolk present, sitting in a corner, sighing sadly.
Seren stepped through the thankfully inorganic door, and looked around. This appeared to be a plaza of some sort. Paths led off here and there into other parts of the city, and there were other lifts, which people stepped into and emerged from. The lifts implied that there was more than one level to the city, which made sense. It was also worrying. If this city was as tiered as a wedding cake, then there was little chance of the Cup being the first place she looked. It was hardly going to be straight down that path, second branch to the left. Life was never that convenient.
And that was assuming that the Cup was even in this city. Granted, Georgette and that dreamer Rosenbach seemed certain that it was on Tawny, but that didn’t mean it was here. This was the most likely place for the Kind to store a valuable magical artefact, as it was the capital. But that just made it more likely, not certain.
It was annoying referring to it as ‘the city’ all the time, but she had little choice. Its actual name was its coordinates. Tawny Kind were odd like that. On the other hand, it made it a lot easier to remember where the city was.
Oh well. Never knew if you never tried. And it wasn’t like she had anything else to do. At all. Ever.
She walked up to the first person she saw, a Kind woman with crinkly hair like a waterfall cascading over her shoulders. Whichever planet, few Kind had hair as short as Seren’s, even before her self-destructive downwards slope. It was a style thing. “Excuse me,” said Seren, near-politely. “I’m looking for a valuable magical artefact. Something called the Cup? Apparently it has some abstruse properties. Something to do with saving the universe.”
She expected to be insulted, or laughed at, and was thus surprised when the Kind woman smiled kindly (of course) and said, “Oh, you’ll be wanting the Temple of Reynard. That’s where we store most of our god-related paraphernalia.” She pointed. “Straight down that path. Second branch to the left. Have a nice day.”
“Er, thank you,” said Seren, and wandered down that path in a confused daze.
Having gone down that path and down the second branch to the left, she walked through an ornate carved doorway and found herself in an open space, with walls at something slightly larger than ninety degrees, which made the space seem even opener. Yes, this looked like a Temple. There were various items set in alcoves in the walls, with soft light illuminating them. Soft, humming music made the air vibrate gently. It was all very quiet and contemplative. She was the only person there.
Except for a janitor, who was pushing a mop back and forth across the floor in about the middle of the space, and glancing around.
He looked familiar, somehow, him with his irritable face, annoyingly curly hair, limp and –
He had glasses. Seren frowned, and approached him.
“’scuse me,” she said. “Do I know you?”
The man looked up. “Who, me?” he said. “Shouldn’t think so.” He made a ghastly attempt at an innocent smile.
“Is that so, Captain Achilles?” said Seren, sweetly.
Achilles scowled and made hushing motions with his mop. “Not so loud!” he hissed. “The guards might hear you.”
Seren stepped a bit closer to him, so they could talk in an undertone without being overheard. “There are guards?” she said.
“Yes. They’re guarding—” He stopped, abruptly, and looked at her. “What business does a drunkard ex-Pathfinder have in the Temple of Reynard on Tawny?”
“Drunkard, I’ll grant, seeing you’re a rumrunner.” Her voice turned suspicious. “But how do you know I was a Pathfinder?”
He looked at her, very slowly and sarcastically. Then he looked down. Seren looked down too. Then she felt very stupid.
“Ah,” she said. “The uniform a bit of a giveaway, is it?”
Achilles nodded sarcastically. He seemed to be a sarcastic sort of person.
“Well,” said Seren, recovering, “perhaps I’m just here because I’m a woman of faith? … Yeah, I wouldn’t fall for that either. Why are you here?”
“I asked first.”
She tilted her head at him. “Are you maybe here to steal a Cup which turns any liquid poured into it into wine?”
“… Actually,” he said, “yeah. How did you know?”
“You’re a rumrunner, Captain. It’s hardly a complicated chain of reasoning.”
“Fair enough,” he concluded. “Can I presume that you’re here to get the Cup as well?”
“Yep.”
“It would appear we have the same objective, then. May the best person-with-a-hopelessly-ruined-life win.”
Her brow crunkled. “Why’s your life hopelessly ruined?”
He opened his mouth. Then closed it again. “Well, uh,” he said. “… I have a limp.”
“Oh,” said Seren, sarcastically. “I see. Obviously that would cause you to hate each and every aspect of life.”
“It made more sense in my head,” he said, defensively. “It’s a very painful limp.”
“Course it is, Dr. House,” said Seren, who had secretly downed the remainder of her emergency whiskey while on the ship and was thus drunk enough to make pop culture references.
“Eh?” said Achilles, who hadn’t and wasn’t.
Seren said, “Anyway, there’s no need for us two to fight. We could just work together until we find the doodad, and then decide what to do. It may turn out that it doesn’t match your cutlery, or something.”
Achilles deliberated.
“What are you doing?” asked Seren curiously, after he’d deliberated for a minute or two.
“Planning,” he said, and held out his hand. “Sounds reasonable. Shake on it.”
They shook. Then a noble-faced, crinkle-haired Kind in ceremonial jewellery and elaborate robes walked past in a very stately way. Achilles hastily bent over his mop and adopted an air of competent business, swishing the mop back and forth over the smooth floor – despite the fact that he seemed to have neglected to bring any water to dip it in. Seren spun around and pretended to be steering intently at a ragged fox mask lit by subtle lighting in an alcove in the wall.
This seemed to pass muster. The Kind kept on walking. Seren snuck a look at him from the corner of her eye. He slowly walked into the floor, until he was out of sight.
Seren sighed. “I hate organic stairways,” she said.
“So do I,” Achilles agreed, sourly.
“You hate everything, Captain,” Seren said.
“So do you, ‘s far as I can tell.” He abandoned the mop and walked over to the place where the Kind had descended, examining it.
“That’s not true,” said Seren, coming over.
“Yeah?” said Achilles, standing back so she could see. “Name one thing you like.”
Seren crouched down and poked at the stone with her fingers. It seemed solid enough. “Reynard,” she said absentmindedly, and then she realised, with some surprise, that it was true. She went on to explain why, to herself as much as to him. “He’s marginally easier to tolerate than most other people. Some of the time. Sort of.” She straightened. “I don’t see any way down,” she said frankly. “It’s not like normal organic doorways at all. Maybe you have to have some kind of key to pass through it.”
Achilles said, “The jewellery.”
“Very astute,” said Seren, who had come to the same conclusion. “Now, where can we get some expensive, ritualistic, culturally important jewellery?”
“Souvenir store?” he suggested.
At that point Reynard appeared. Or maybe he’d been there the whole time, and she just hadn’t seen him. At any rate, he looked at her and said, “You called?”
“No,” said Seren, “but while you’re here—”
Reynard crossed his arms sternly. “Stars, woman!” he said, sounding exasperated. “Would it kill you to stop throwing my name around? I wouldn’t have told you it if I’d known you’d be so careless with it!”
“Don’t you trust me?” said Seren. “I’m your Champion, after all.”
His bright green eyes widened, and then he gave a somewhat forced laugh. “Hah!” he said. “Only technically.”
She pointed at her eyes. “Then what’s with the random colour change?”
“Maybe you were exposed to radiation,” he said glibly. “I knew that ship was dodgy …”
“My eyes changed colour before we even got to Mulberry, Reynard,” she growled.
He shrugged, smiling slightly. “Temporal radiation, then?”
Achilles had stumbled a bit when Reynard first appeared, but he said nothing, his eyes wary. Seren somehow got the feeling that he’d had past experience with one or other of the gods, if he knew enough to keep quiet.
She opened her mouth to start yelling furiously, at which point Reynard smoothly transferred his attention to the watchful Achilles.
“You’ve met my sister,” he said, sounding surprised.
“Lady Luck?” said Achilles, guardedly. “Yes. She turned my pilot into a parrot.”
“That sounds the kind of thing she’d do.”
Seren noticed that, despite the fact that Lady Luck was supposedly Reynard’s ‘favourite sister’ and that he was supposedly only watching over Seren as a favour to her, he didn’t speak of her with any noticeable fondness. Indeed, his voice held a kind of amused scorn.
“Hmm,” Seren said.
“Please tell me you’re not jumping to conclusions,” said Reynard, switching his attention back to her. “That’s a jumping-to-conclusions sound if ever I’ve heard one.”
“Me? Goodness no,” said Seren, giving her most innocent, wide-eyed smile.
Reynard stared at her. “Don’t do that,” he said. “It’s disconcerting.”
“Anyway,” said Seren, “eyes aside, I could actually use your help with something.” She nodded at the ground. “We need to get down there.”
“The Underworld?” said Reynard dubiously. “That’s more Grim’s area than mine. And people going down there alive end up as singing heads. If they’re lucky.” He brightened. “If you want to go down dead, though, I’m sure there are people that can arra—”
Seren rolled her eyes. From Reynard’s slight smirk, he knew perfectly well what she meant. “Just through the stone,” she said.
“Why didn’t you say so?” he said, and crouched down. He was wearing his mortalfolk aspect currently – mostly human-looking, but for the age of his eyes. There was nothing so blatant as the ears and tail he’d worn last time, but there was a distinct foxlike cast to his face that, she suspected, he couldn’t do much to get rid of.
He put his hand on the stone and crouched thoughtfully for a second or two. Then he said, “Sure, I can let you go through.”
“Oh, good,” said Seren, relieved.
Reynard chuckled. “Yes. Good. If you feel like running an elaborate gauntlet of death traps, that is.”
“Ah,” said Seren. “Not so good, then.”
He shrugged. “Well, you can go down if you really want to, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The Priesthood here are especially trained from the age of seven to navigate the gauntlet. With anyone else it would be … risky. I’d rather not lose a promising servant to the death traps in my own Temple. I’d be a laughing stock. Mind you, if you can find someone who doesn’t have much to live for, then …”
His eyes swung to Achilles, and so did Seren’s.
“No,” said Achilles firmly. “My pilot is a bird, and my cook tranquillised me. My week’s been bad enough already without throwing death traps into the mix.”
“I sympathise thoroughly,” said Seren. “So. What can we do?”
Reynard stood up. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I could just go down and get whatever it is you’re looking for—”
“I thought gods weren’t allowed to interfere directly with mortals?” Achilles interrupted.
Reynard gave him a look that was pure poison. “Don’t listen to everything you hear,” he said stiffly.
“Aha,” said Seren. “So you can’t?”
Reynard hissed. “Mortals,” he said. “Incompetent, the lot of you.”
“But you’re going to help me anyway,” Seren said, sounding a lot more confident than she really was.
“Oh, yes?” He smirked. “Now why would I do that?”
“I have no idea. But you’re going to.”
His eyes were cold and flat and dangerous. “You’re very confident for a mortal.”
She raised her eyebrow at him. “And you’ve very unconfident for a god.”
He snarled and punched the wall. “Alright. Fine,” he said. “I’ll give you a distraction. But that’s all I can do, got it?”
“Distraction?” said Seren, a bit uncertainly. “How’ll that help?”
Reynard shot her a grin, good temper apparently restored. “Four-eyes here’s been hanging around Lady Luck. Residual good fortune is still hanging around him. You must have noticed.”
Seren nodded, remembering how easy it had been to get here. The first person she’d asked had told her, for stars’ sake.
“Right,” said Reynard. “And I can use that.”
He disappeared, and all of a sudden an alarm sounded, with the wail that meant it was probably made by magic rather than technology. A lot of Priesthoods seemed big on that.
WARNING! WARNING! CELESTIAL CONFLICT. ARTEFACT UNSAFE. ALL PRIESTHOOD TO REPORT TO THE BLESSED ONE. ALL DUTIES TO BE ON HOLD. WARNING! WARNING! CELESTIAL CONFLICT …
And on it went. Seren was rather impressed. Then again, if Reynard hadn’t been able to start an alarm inside his own Temple, she’d have been inclined to think that there really was something wrong with him.
The ground at her feet started to feel slightly marshy, and she stepped back hastily. The head of the noble-faced, crinkle-haired priest appeared, quickly followed by the rest of them. He stepped up quickly, shaking clinging bits of floor off his sandals.
He was carrying something in his hand, a simple brass cup, unornamented. As powerful magical artefacts went, it was disappointing. Then again, the Ring didn’t look like much either.
His noble face was flushed, and he looked like he was in a great hurry. He looked at them like he wasn’t really noticing details, said, “Hold this, will you?” shoved the Cup into Achilles’s hands, and ran off into the wall, which parted to meet him.
Seren and Achilles looked at each other.
“Well,” said Seren, “that was convenient.”
Something bothered her, though. Something about the ornate flowing robes he’d been weari –
They had been stained and dripping with red. Blood. And his robes had been spotless when he went down. Freshblood.
Achilles stared at the wall where the priest had disappeared. “Exactly what is going on here?”
“I intend to find out,” answered Seren grimly. “But for now, let’s get out of here before this alarm stops and someone pauses to wonder what two strangers are doing here.”
They left swiftly. Seren couldn’t think. The insidious magic alarm pounded in her head.
She had rather liked Reynard. And now …
She thought of his ready grin, and bright eyes, and mocking laugh, and that blood on the priest’s clothes.
He could have just been sacrificing chickens, she thought, but even she was unconvinced by that. For a start, the man’s robes had been utterly devoid of feathers.
“Curse you, Trickster,” she murmured, slowing down a bit so the limping Achilles could keep us. As the lift’s door slid closed behind them, she glimpsed a running woman in Priesthood robes, eyes fixed on them, mouth open and yelling. There were more priests behind her.
Then the doors closed, and the lift caught them and pushed them upwards with such force that it drove any thought clean out of her head.
A brief eternity went by, and then she was in the blank white block again. She stumbled out, barely noticing the slimy feel of the organic doorway making way for her, and walked to the edge of the platform, to where greasy sepia-coloured waves licked at the white stone.
Achilles followed, a little more slowly, and bent down, not without some difficulty. He dipped the Cup under the water, and brought it up brimming with liquid. He raised it to his lips and took a sip.
Then he cursed. “Vinegar,” he said, and threw the Cup aside. Seren reached out a hand and snatched it out of the air, sniffing its contents. Yep, it was vinegar all right. Either the Cup had slowly broken down over time, or whoever had spread the rumours about it had only the sketchiest idea of what ‘wine’ was. Seren suspected that the first was more likely. The Cup looked old.
She gave Achilles a wry look. “Guess this is mine, then. Sorry.”
“You’re welcome to it,” he said. “My fault for trusting anything a god says.” He started to limp away in the direction of a distant path, and then paused and said, “You can’t trust them, you know. Not any of them.”
“Yeah,” said Seren wearily. “Yeah, I know.”
Achilles started to leave again.
And at that point, at least a legion of Navy ships suddenly landed, blocking Seren’s path back to the others completely.
A man stepped out from the foremost ship. It was a big, stately, ornate ship, very grand, and he didn’t seem to suit it. He had calloused working-man’s hands, and brutally short hair, and a square, honest, reliable face. His nose was slightly crooked, as though someone had once broken it.
“Squiddang,” said Achilles, in the hoarse tones of someone too stunned to use a proper swear word.
“Hello,” said the Supreme Commander of the Navy calmly. “I believe you have something that belongs to us.”
