He was losing it, Curl thought to herself as Bahn departed and the thump of his boots faded on the outside stairs. Curl had seen it before in other siege-shocked soldiers of the city, men ready to snap and run amok through the lives of those around them, tearing and snarling for a way out. They were always the roughest ones, she’d noticed, but Bahn in truth was not so bad on her, more fiercely passionate than anything else, as if he simply needed, in these brief hours with Curl, to forget everything about his present circumstances.
A suicide case, perhaps; hardly a berserker.
She hadn’t liked the fear in his voice though, when he had been talking about the guns lying silent. As if he was doomed; as if they were all doomed. She didn’t need to hear things like that; let him share those worries with his wife, whose name he kept crying out in the heat of the moment.
Curl rose and slipped her payment into her hidden pouch of coins in the pot of the jubba plant. The pouch held a handful of silvers and a little more in coppers. Not much for all the business she was doing. With the worsening shortage of food in the city leading to ever-higher prices, forcing Rosa to ask for larger contributions to their meals, she was finding it hard to maintain even that small sum from week to week.
Curl poured a jug of water into the clay washbasin. She stood naked on a cotton towel that she lay on the small portion of floor-space before the stand, and washed herself down with a bar of apple-scented soap. Around her, the smoke from the incense coiled about her body and chased away the after-scents from the room. Still, an atmosphere of heaviness remained behind, the man’s woes and low spirits lingering on in the quietness. Curl hummed something from her childhood, making the room her own again.
Goosebumps rose on her skin as a cool breeze played through the open window. She dried herself quickly, and smeared a little lemon juice over her legs where the fleas kept biting. She checked her hair in the broken sliver of mirror that leaned next to the washbowl, then slipped into the cotton robe that she wore whenever she wasn’t working. Still humming, she slipped the wooden charm back around her neck, and listened to the shouts of Rosa chasing the children from the kitchen.
Rosa rented out all the upper rooms of her house to feed and clothe her tribe of wayward urchins. It made for a curious combination, with their world of playful youth and tantrums seeping always upwards through the cramped, sordid sessions of the working women in their tiny rooms, and the ghostly lives of the hardcore dross junkies, and the gentle madness of the urban hermits and struggling artists who lived alongside them. But it worked somehow, perhaps simply because they had no other choice but to make it work. Rosa kept the rents as low as she was able, and ensured that everyone felt part of an extended family. Against all expectations, there was a warmth in the house, a sense of belonging.
Curl was shaking now, though not from the cold. With care, she gathered her small wooden box from the floor and sat back against the pillows. Inside lay her precious stash of dross, the dusty grey powder held in an envelope of folded graf leaf. Curl poured a line of the stuff along the back of her hand, returned the envelope to the box and laid the box on the bed. She placed the stub of the reed she used for these occasions into her nostril, and held the other nostril shut, and took a deep, sharp inhalation that cleared the dust from the hand in one go.
She rubbed her nose and sniffed and lay against the pillows with a gasp, the back of her throat turning numb already. Her fingers and toes tingled, and the tingling spread to leave heat and pleasure in its wake. The sensation filtered up her limbs, her body, her head.. . until at last, with grace, it reached into her mind.
CHAPTER FIVE
Good Things Come in Life
His head was splitting with pain that morning, and he chewed on a dulce leaf as he stepped between the stalls of a thriving Q’os marketplace, peering out from the wet folds of his hood at a drizzle of rain that fell so fine it kept drifting, losing its direction.
Overhead, the bells of the nearby temples rang out the turning of the hour, sounding brash and overly loud after their dormancy of so many weeks. From the direction of the nearby Serpentine, the early morning chants of the pilgrims could be heard as they headed in a mass towards Freedom Square, celebrating the first day of the delayed festa that was the Augere el Mann, the period of mourning seemingly lifted.
Ash still wasn’t certain what he was doing here risking his neck in broad daylight for the sake of a little fresh bread. At the sight of so many people filling the streets the urge had simply come upon him, and no greater compulsion had countered it, so here he was, moving through the press of shoppers, with a scarf wrapped around his face and his hood low over his eyes, the smell of the closest bakery leading the way.
It was with a growling stomach that he found himself waiting his turn before a busy baker’s stall. From the leaden skies the rain continued to fall, dripping from the canopy overhead to patter onto his back. Ash cast his eyes around the walls and buildings that circled the market square. He paused to inspect the entrance points at either end of it, and the pair of auxiliaries who strolled around the stalls idly swinging their batons, looking for a reason to use them.
I shouldn’t be here in daylight, he told his stomach. This is reckless even for me.
An opening appeared before him and Ash squeezed his way into it, his purse in hand. ‘Yes?’ asked one of the aproned lads behind the counter.
‘Three seeded loaves. The largest you have. And something to carry them in.’
The lad tossed the loaves into a bag of twine netting and held it towards him. ‘One-and-a-half marvels,’ he informed him. ‘Plus a quarter for the bag. That’s one-and-three-quarters.’
It was an extortionate price, no doubt a result of the festa and the countless pilgrims, though he handed over two marvels and plucked the bag from the youth’s hand.
‘That’ll be an extra quarter.’
‘For what?’
‘For providing change.’
Someone shoved into Ash from behind as they tried to get closer to the counter. He shoved back without looking, restoring the inch of space around him. ‘You want me to give you a quarter, so you can give me a quarter back in change?’
‘I don’t make the rules,’ the lad said impatiently, already looking to the next customer before him.
Ash blew the air from his lungs. He waved the business away with his hand then pushed his way clear of the stall before he lost his temper with it all. He started back the way he had come, but he saw the two auxiliaries coming that way towards him. Instead he turned and walked for the other entrance at the opposite end of the market, wishing only to return now to the seclusion of his rooftop, where he could enjoy his breakfast alone with his own company.
‘ Ken-dai!’ came a shout that stopped him in his tracks. ‘ Ho, ken-dai!’
Ash turned swiftly, and instantly spotted a dark face above the passing heads, barely a dozen paces from where he stood; a man from Honshu like himself.
The man was looking down at him from where he sat upon a sedan chair borne by two muscled slaves, a scented kerchief held to his nostrils like a white blossom. When their eyes met the man raised a hand in greeting. Ash glanced around, pulling the scarf a little higher over the bridge of his nose; watched as the figure clambered down to the ground. His two armoured bodyguards were already clearing the vicinity by shoving people out of the way.
‘ Ken-dai!’ the man exclaimed again in their native Honshu, while one of his bearers snapped open an umbrella to hold above his head.
Ash replied with a curt nod.
‘You’re wise to travel about like that. They’ve been arresting many of us in the city for questioning.’