CHAPTER TWENTY

Impressions of Q’os

The last thing anyone was expecting to hear in the hurried press of disembarkation was a rifle shot. It silenced the passengers once the sound cracked over their heads, and drew them in a mass towards the port rail of the fast sloop Mother Rosa, as though the ship’s deck had suddenly pitched to one side during heavy weather.

People pushed and peered over shoulders for a better look at the sluggish waters of the harbour below. A figure was down there close to the hull, splashing with all the grim determination of a soul alerted to the imminent prospect of drowning.

‘There’s a man down there,’ observed Nico over the rail, and he glanced towards the dockside, where he noticed a puff of smoke still trickling from the end of a rifle held by a soldier in a white cuirass.

‘Yes,’ said Ash by his side, ‘I see that.’

Another soldier hurried to the side of the first marksman, as he broke his weapon in two to replace the spent cartridge. The newcomer carried a crossbow, and was still loading it as his comrade raised the rifle once more.

Nico saw the splash of water before he heard the second shot. It erupted right next to the swimmer’s head, though the target seemed not to notice it.

‘What’s he doing?’ inquired Nico, fascinated.

‘The man is a slave,’ explained Ash. ‘Here in Q’os, they have more slaves than free citizens – over a million of them, or so they say. It would seem that this one was hoping to escape the island as a stowaway on board one of the ships.’

‘Well, if that was his intention, he’s made a poor job of it.’

Ash studied his young apprentice for a moment. ‘Perhaps you should jump in, and show him how it is done correctly.’

Another shot. For a second, Nico looked for a splash that would show where to hit the water. He did not see one, though, and then the man caught his eye, a pool of bright crimson spilling from the side of his skull as he turned slowly in the water. The man settled with his face wholly submerged, unmoving.

‘They killed him,’ exclaimed Nico.

‘That was their intention.’

‘But . . .’

‘He took his chance,’ Ash told him softly. ‘He was unlucky. Come, let us leave the ship quickly before the other passengers grow bored of staring at his corpse.’ Ash tugged at his sleeve pulling him towards the gangway.

They descended on to the dockside with their packs heavy on their backs, Nico stumbling along in something of a daze.

It had been eight days since they had departed Cheem, and as the ship had approached the First Harbour of the great island city he had been stunned by the sheer scale of the skyline that spread out before him. Q’os was the largest city in the known world, more populous even than ancient Zanzahar on the far side of the Midères. Never before had Nico seen buildings so tall. They rose in great blocks towards the sky as dense as undergrowth in a forest, their armies of windows dark against the dim light of the day. Amongst them, clustering most thickly at the city’s heart, the skysteeples of the temples rose like needles piercing the underside of low-lying cloud. To the eye they did not seem physically possible, not even after Ash’s accounts of steel skeletons and some strange form of liquid stone. Nor could he quite take in the figures that swooped between their peaks – people slung from artificial wings, Ash had told him with a straight face. But then, nothing had seemed possible about that alien landscape as it slowly approached the bobbing prow of their ship.

Now, a man dead in the water, a paddling dog dragging his corpse in with its teeth, and hundreds of yammering people mixing together in the chaos of a dockside that was only one of many on the island of Q’os, Nico wondered exactly what, in the name of the Great Fool, he was doing here.

He felt like an ant amid the hurried press of so many. Buildings reared high behind the rows of warehouses facing the eastern harbour front. In the distance, stacks of chimneys belched black smoke into the air. With Ash’s guiding hand on his shoulder Nico pushed ahead, no idea where he was going. They headed past a group of soldiers lounging on some covered crates, then approached a vast open-sided building, and found themselves stepping into a great space with a high sloping roof of sooty glass and metal girders. The noise there was tremendous, too loud almost for them to talk. Nico stared mutely as he was halted at a high desk now barring their way.

‘Next!’ shouted a bored official from behind it, and flapped a tired arm which he supported on the padded elbow of his white robe. In his other hand he gripped a cloth rag, and as Ash stepped up to the desk, he proceeded to blow his reddened nose into it.

The desk was so high that the official was looking down at them. ‘Any goods to declare?’ inquired the priest in a nasal tone.

‘No, I am a blade instructor,’ explained Ash, adopting a smooth patter, while tugging the heavy tunic beneath his cloak to smooth out its travel creases. ‘I am here to work at the Academy of Ul Sun Juan, and this is my apprentice.’

Nico forced a smile of verification.

‘You carry weapons with you?’

Ash held up the canvas roll he was carrying.

‘Fine, fine,’ the official decided at last. He looked as though the only thing on his mind currently was his bed and a bowl of hot soup. ‘A surcharge of one marvel is to be paid by anyone carrying weapons on to the island. Two more – that’s one each – for entrance into the city for the pair of you. Plus one for administration. That makes it a total of four.’ The man held out his palm.

Ash dropped the coins into it, and the priest made a show of biting each coin between his teeth to test it. He placed one into his pocket, dropped the others through a slot in the desk, then scratched something on a piece of paper and half-tossed it to Ash.

‘Welcome to Q’os,’ he said as he pulled a lever and a grille clanked open beneath the level of the desk to allow them through. ‘Next!’

*

It was cold in Q’os, with the sun hidden behind a heavy layer of cloud. Ash and Nico stayed close to the docks, losing themselves in the crowds as they pushed on through one cobbled street after another. The buildings towering on either side were constructed of brick rather than cut stone. Cranes could be seen wherever he looked, new constructions being built on demolished sites or superimposed upon older structures still standing. Everywhere along the streets flew flags of the red hand of Mann, while above them streamers trailed high in the wind, as though the area was preparing itself for a festa of some kind. A canvas painting of Matriarch Sasheen hung across the entire side of one building, while banners stretched from block to block with the word Rejoice emblazoned across them.

Nico had always thought Bar-Khos a busy city, but it was nothing compared to this metropolis. The streets were so packed that people barely had room enough to move in them. Every conceivable fashion was on display: flowing silks from farland, furs from the north, suits made from the black and white striped skins of zels, rainslicks of oiled canvas, feather cloaks with massive bobbing hoods, ubiquitous robes of red. Most prominent of all, though, was the tan garb of collared slaves, walking alone or in work-gangs, often burdened with bundles and parcels. At the sides of the roads, children rolled steaming lumps of zel manure into buckets. Priests shouted from the high balconies of temple towers, through bullhorns to amplify their hoarse cries. In a cage hanging from a post in the middle of a crossroads, a naked criminal sat with his legs dangling, slinging his own excrement at anyone unlucky enough to venture too close.

It was the wet season in Q’os and, as though to remind them of that fact, a heavy rain began to fall. At least the downpour helped to clear their way as people hurried to find shelter.

‘It feels like we’re walking in circles,’ complained Nico, wiping his face in vain.

‘We are. If we are being followed by anyone we should lose them, given time.’

‘Followed?’

‘Yes. Q’os is a city rife with paranoia. The priesthood here has its own secret police force – Regulators they call them. Anyone suspected of disloyalty or heresy is arrested, imprisoned. People are paid to inform on their neighbours. With the threat of vendetta hanging over Kirkus, which they now know to be real after our first attempt on his life, the Regulators will be doubly vigilant. They may be keeping tabs on everyone new entering the city.’

‘We are in danger, even now?’

‘We are in danger every moment we remain here, Nico. Now listen to me. As long as we are here you will do as I say, without argument or hesitation. If we fall into trouble, your only concern should be your own safety. If anything happens to me, get out. Leave.’

These words did nothing for Nico’s confidence. As they walked on, he could not help the occasional glance over his shoulder, until Ash told him to stop being so obvious. They grew wetter by the moment.

‘This rain stings my eyes,’ complained Nico, catching up with Ash again, after swerving out of the way of a passing cart. ‘And it tastes foul on the tongue.’

‘The sky itself here is polluted. It is all the coal they burn. When it is not raining foulness, the city is usually covered in a reeking fog. Baal’s Mist they call it, in memory of an old king famous for his flatulence. I have heard it said you get used to it, given time.’

Nico doubted that. For an hour he dogged the old man, taking in the strange city sights while trying, with increasing effort, to ignore the gnawing in his empty stomach, for they had missed breakfast.

At last they stopped at a hostalio, a squat building of tired grey brickwork, its windows dull with grime, the paintwork flaking from their rotten frames. The building sported an oversized sign some thirty feet above the street. It read ‘Hostalio el Paradisio’ in Trade, above a picture of a bed.

It would do, Ash declared. One such place was as bad as any other in this district.

Inside, they gave false names at the desk, as they stood dripping on to the tiled floor. The attendant barely looked up from his newspaper as Ash signed the register. He only interrupted his reading long enough to recite: ‘Rooms still available on the fourth floor. Try there. No visitors after nine. No food to be cooked in the room. Absolutely no fires, not even candles. Oh,’ he added, looking up at last, ‘and no disposing of waste from the window. There’s a privy hole on every floor for such purposes. This is a respectable establishment and we’d like to keep it that way, understand?’

‘Then I will show it the respect it deserves,’ remarked Ash, and squeezed his fist until water dripped on to the open register, staining the paper with spots of sooty grey. With a snap the attendant closed the book from further harm, and announced their transaction finished with a loud sniff. He returned to reading the newspaper, as Ash and Nico carried their bags up the stairs. All the same, the attendant watched them from the corners of his eyes.

Finding an empty room was a matter of finding a door, any door, with the key still protruding from the keyhole. They located one on the fourth floor as they had been told they would. Nico, being in front, took hold of the key and turned it. The key refused to move.

‘Move aside,’ instructed Ash.

The keyhole wasn’t fitted to the door itself. Rather, it was located in a stout metal box that in turn was fitted to the doorframe. Before the key would function, Ash had to deposit a coin into a slot in this box, an entire marvel of silver it turned out, since the smaller quarters merely popped out again from below.

With his ear, Nico tracked the heavy marvel rattling away inside it, the coin sounding as though it was tumbling downwards through the wall itself. Then something clicked inside the box, the key turned in Ash’s hand, and he plucked it out and shoved open the door.

The room was an irony of the word, having barely the space to lie down in. It contained two beds which folded down from the wall, one on top of the other. At present they were both folded away. Ash deposited another coin into another coinslot fitted against the hinging of one of the beds and swung it down. He sat heavily, leather pack in his lap. He sighed like the old man that he was.

Nico closed the door and crossed the few strides to the window opposite, where he set down his pack against the stained plaster beneath it. The room smelled of tarweed, old sweat, dampness, and was in bad need of an airing. He tried to open the shutters covering the tiny window, but they refused to budge.

‘Nico,’ interrupted Ash, gloomily handing him a quarter. Nico noticed the coinslot fixed to the window frame. Incredulous, he dropped the coin into it, heard an interior click as the coin tumbled away. Finally he pulled open the shutters, only to cast his eyes upon a brick wall, sooty and guano-stained, not more than seven feet away on the other side of an alley.

The windows opposite were mostly open, framing the backs of people resting in chairs, pale faces looking out, dim flashes of movement, an argument. The air pervading the alley was worse than the air inside the room. Sounds of the city tumbled in, and Nico leaned out to examine the alley far below, filled with rubbish and puddles of water; when he looked left he could see along a whole series of similar alleys leading all the way to the bay forming the First Harbour.

He again surveyed the windows opposite as his companion unpacked behind him. Through the window directly across, he could see an old man sitting on a stool, building something out of a heap of matchsticks.

Nico turned away from the view and leaned back against the sill. He noticed how the weak daylight only made the room’s disgrace more apparent.

‘When do we meet with Baracha and Aléas?’

‘Tomorrow,’ said Ash, as he carefully lay his wrapped covestick and soap next to the washbasin. ‘Though first we must meet with the agent to make certain they have arrived safely.’

‘We could go now.’

‘No. Better to wait for dark.’

Wonderful, thought Nico. He did not cherish the prospect of sitting in this room all afternoon with nothing to do.

‘You’ve been to Q’os before. May be you could show me some of the sights?’

‘Here,’ said Ash, handing him one of the tiny books he carried in his pack. ‘You can read this to fill your time. It is written in Trade. As for myself, I will take a nap.’

Nico looked at the book being offered to him, but did not reach for it. Poetry, he presumed. Ash was always reading the stuff.

‘I’d rather spend the day pulling out all my fingernails, to be honest.’

Ash shrugged a single eyebrow, set the book on the bed. He had displayed the same neutral reaction during the voyage, each time he had offered Nico something to read and Nico had declined. This time though, he added: ‘You cannot read, can you, boy?’

Nico straightened. ‘Of course I can read. I just choose not to.’

‘No. Perhaps you can read single words, but I do not believe you can read properly.’

Nico snatched the book from the bed. ‘You want me to read something? Here, it says . . .’ He squinted again at the words on the binding. ‘The – Heron’s – Call,’ he recited, and opened the book to look down at a page of fine black print. ‘A coll – ection of mus – ings from – from . . .’ the words began to swirl before his eyes, as they always did. He lost focus, blinked trying to regain it. But it was no good.

Disgusted, he tossed the book on to the bed.

‘It isn’t as though I’ve never tried,’ he said. ‘The words lose themselves in each other. They jump around, change when I’m looking at them. At least with plays I can follow what’s happening. But not books.’

‘I understand,’ said Ash. ‘I have the same problem.’

‘But you read all the time!’

‘I do now, yes. But as a boy I had difficulties, and it made me fearful of words. Some of us are born that way, Nico. It does not have to stop us from reading. It just makes it harder. You need to practise, and take it at your own pace. Come, sit with me and I will show you.’

Nico would have backed away if he could. Instead he felt the windowsill press against him. Ash sat on the bed, opened the book on his lap. He noticed Nico’s resistance.

‘Trust me, Nico. To be able to read is a worthy thing in this life.’

‘But all you have is poetry. Poetry bores me.’

‘Nonsense, poetry is what we live, what we breathe.’ The old far-lander opened the book at random. He studied one page for a moment, then licked his thumb and flicked to another. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is how we sometimes write poetry in Honshu. This is Issea, writing of sitting alone at night.’ Softly, he read:

‘Mountain pool,

Drinking the moon

Drinking me.’

He looked to Nico. ‘Do you sense it? The solitude?’

‘I think you’d better read it again. It’s so short I hadn’t realized it had begun.’ But even as Nico said the words he was drawn to sit beside Ash, and to look down at the printed words.

Ash lay the book on Nico’s lap. ‘Try reading something – at your own pace.’

Nico read each word carefully, mouthing their sounds as he did so. As soon as they began to change and shift, he forced himself to relax. He could read when he wanted to. It was the draining effort of the process that he hated, and the frustration at his own ineptitude. It was easier with these short poems, the language simple, bordered amply with white space. He flicked through the pages, choosing poems as they came to his eyes. He found himself reading one aloud:

‘In the doorway,

‘The space

‘Of a startled bird.’

‘You see?’ said Ash. ‘You read fine. It is hard, but not impossible.’

‘These poems – they either come to you in a flash, or they don’t at all.’

Ash nodded. ‘Here, you may keep this book. Consider it part of your education.’

‘Thank you,’ said Nico. ‘I have never owned a book before.’ He stared at it. Brushed the leather cover with his fingers.

Nico stood up, the book in his hand.

‘Now please,’ he said, ‘for the love of mercy, can we go out and do something?’