Hacilith 1817: Scrapyard

I lay in a hammock made of black and white ceramic beads, strung between a coach wheel and a broken lamp post in Hacilith’s scrapyard, and watched the city catch sunset like smallpox. From behind the stone wall an umbrella appeared, moved along jerkily, then was tossed over and floated down on the other side. Debrah the Cardsharp followed it, slicing her hands on the shards of glass cemented into the top of the wall. I would have warned her but I was too drunk to speak.

‘Do you want to play bezique?’ she asked. I smiled: I didn’t have enough money for her to take in a card game.

‘Not at the moment. How did you find me?’

‘Saw the kite, of course. There’s only one person I know who can fly a kite in a rubbish tip.’

Debrah stood with one foot over the other, tangled in my kite string and shaking blood from her palms. I continued to drink until she went into formal mode and addressed me like a courtier: ‘I’ve come from Felicitia, to ask you something on his behalf.’

I flinched at the name, which Debrah pronounced with sly shyness. ‘What’s that?’

‘Well, he’s having a party tonight and you’re invited, and he sent me to ask if you’d… Bring some of that stuff you’ve been selling; to give the party a spin.’

I sat up fast enough to fall out of the hammock. ‘No! What does he think I am?’

‘He knows very well what you are, Rhydanne.’

‘Jant. Go back and tell Felicitia that I will never sell scolopendium to people who don’t already need it. I don’t make anybody hooked, god knows it’s my job to cure them. Listen, I can’t stop people destroying themselves but at least I’ll ensure that they live a little longer, die a little less horribly. Though why I bother… I saved you, didn’t I?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you’ve been trying to talk me into selling you some ever since, you stupid girl.’

Debrah hissed: ‘Still have more money than you can spend, yes? Let me tell you something, snake-eyes. Reddish died of an overdose of your medicine last week.’ I rolled into the hammock for a half minute of silence in which I finished the bottle. There were flies in it but I couldn’t decide whether they’d been put there deliberately or not. Debrah scuffed one foot over the other in the dirt, standing on long shadows cast by the hills of refuse and twisted metal. ‘You’re drunk,’ she observed eventually.

‘Yes, but hardly enough.’

‘Oh. Still trying to drown the crush on Layce?’

‘I’m learning how to drink.’ I said philosophically. I thought it was best to teach myself before having to drink in public.

Debrah said, ‘Once you know, it’s impossible to unlearn. Let’s go to the Vaudeville? Serin’s on tonight.’

‘I don’t want to get close to anybody in Hacilith,’ I said, feeling the start of a tide of melancholy. ‘I’m not staying long.’

‘Jant, you’ve been saying that for six years. Come to the Campion and meet some women.’

‘I have women.’

‘They’re the sort you have to pay afterwards. I still have the feeling that we’ve never met.’

Paddletrams groaned past in the background, starlings grouped to roost, screaming and swirling, whimsical as mathematics. All rains arrive first in Hacilith from across the sea, all seasons seemed to start here, too, and already the pastel light of autumn was disfiguring the city, making it into something almost beautiful. In this dusk Debrah’s eyes were more violet than violent. She had a pale, wide face with jutting, prominent features like stacks of shelves and a ponytail down her between her shoulder blades as bristly as a hyaena’s crest.

There was a gentle hiss and an arrow appeared in the ground between us. We stared at it for far too long while on the summit of refuse a skinny figure dropped a crossbow to his feet and began to pull back the cord.

I grabbed the bottle, Debrah grabbed her umbrella like a sword.

‘Run!’ I yelled. I pulled her up and ran too fast for her, making her stumble against a rust thinned bed-frame. She cried out as the next bolt lodged in her leg. I tried to lift her but couldn’t and this made her scream.

‘You can’t do this to me you stinking bastard, I’m only twelve!’

As the archer began sliding his way toward us, struggling with the mechanism of his bow, I slung Debrah over one shoulder and ran, ducking between piles of litter, heard him curse.

‘Is i’ the constables?’ Debrah whimpered.

‘No. The Bowyers. Peterglass’s gang.’

‘Jant,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know people shot at you all the time.’

I hummed an affirmative at her, nodding without breaking my stride. Another bolt whistled past my shoulder and she yelped as it near-missed her face. ‘Well done,’ she pronounced and then passed out. I manhandled her over the bridge parapet and dropped her into the river bank mud. I fluttered down and peeled her out, carried her to a boat and threw her in. I climbed into its bow and pulled her into the shadow of its overhanging planks.

The assassin’s cursing halted above us, on the bridge. Debrah stirred a little, ‘Seaside’ she said.

‘Not now. Sh!’

Merely being on the same level as the water terrified me. The skiff, which for its whole life had been sunk even-keel in gelatinous mud, made me shiver with fear. I could all too easily imagine its rotting planks afloat on immeasurable seas.

A face appeared looking over the railings, scanning the cluttered estuary. I held my breath and hoped he could not discern our footprints, or the Debrah-shaped hole in the ooze. She moaned quietly; I fastened a hand over her mouth and she fainted again.

The face swung to and fro in profile, its long red nose like a beak. Squinting carefully upwards because Rhydanne eyes reflect, I swore to memorise his preposterous features and shoot him myself if he was ever in range. Kites against crossbows – in god’s name and for Debrah’s sake if I saw him again I’d pump him full of twenty poisons. I listened, heart pounding, he listened and waited.

Debrah was gradually turning blue and my phobia was close to desperation – I can’t stay in this boat any more – when the silhouette figure gave a clicking sigh, and I heard footsteps quickening over to the far side of the docks. He must have decided we were incapable of crossing by water or doubling back, and had gone to search for us in Old Town, his home ground.

I levered the lifeless cardsharp over the stern and furrowed the gravelly mud dragging her body, surprisingly heavy, to the road; sinking to the knees in fetid, vermiculate slime. Her black net T-shirt picked up the mud and so did my lizardskin boots. I had paid for these boots. How am I supposed to look like a pusher when I have to keep hiding under bridges?

Aver-Falconet’s polished metal palace was shining in roseate sunset light as we staggered into Galt, left at the tallower’s on Cinder Street, the Kentledge Pub. Puddles glowed among the cobbles of the cross-roads outside my chemist’s shop. Even the turbid river was shellac and vermeil, seemingly solid pink.

I liked the shop, it was dim and quiet; the Wheel’s fear of knowledge made it a safe refuge. With the shutters down, specks of dust enjoyed brief fame, transformed by vertical shafts of sunlight. Every customer who entered stood blinking for a while until his eyes adjusted to adumbrant shelves of bottles, powders crusting or deliquescing in jars, flaky bunches of dried plants. I would hope they are a little overawed by a shock-headed boy slouching on the ebony counter who has already looked them over, summed them up; a foreign freak perhaps, tall and farouche even for adolescence, but a perfect confidant.

I fumbled with a brass key, kicked the cat out of the shop doorway and unfolded Debrah onto the counter top. She said something very complicated which involved goats and made me blush.

‘I shall have to pretend you’re delirious and didn’t really mean that,’ I told her, stripping my shirt off. I didn’t intend to have it covered in blood.

Her eyes cleared briefly and she slurred, ‘Now there’s something we don’t see every day. Feline wi’ feathers.’

I pinched the arrow nock sticking out of her pale cylindrical thigh and wiggled it. She obediently gave a piercing scream. ‘Shut up?’ I asked her and she started crying. ‘It’s not my bloody fault,’ I told her viciously.

A querulous fastidious voice drifted down the green stairwell. ‘Shira? What are you doing down there?’

I bit my lip and called. ‘Don’t worry, sir. It’s just another of these street kids been brought in.’

‘Knives?’ The voice inquired uncertainly.

‘No, sir. Arrows, even. Been beaten up, too,’ Debrah gave me an evil glare. There was the rustle of coughing laughter that always preceded one of his jokes, then the voice cracked saying. ‘Good. We need some more cat food, Shira.’ I smiled dutifully, I was rather devoted to him.

His voice brought the correct picture to mind, that of a padded face, deeply wrinkled, a nose veined cranberry red and wisps of hair too white for Galt. He was a slow old genius whose knowledge of cures made him hypochondriac. Not quite bedridden but quite definitely lazy, he had me running up and down the stairs bringing carraway rum and mint juleps, any medicine based in warm brandy he could contrive. I had served six years’ apprenticeship, one more year sitting on the ebony counter listening to his rookery voice giving me homespun instruction. I wanted to inherit the shop from him, as if I really was his son. He knew this too, damn him; there was something sacrificial in our relationship which is why I consented to work so hard.

I assured him that I could handle the problem, then turned to Debrah and continued quietly: ‘I can’t believe I had to sit in that boat. I’m not hiding in that boat again, so help me god.’ Talking softly all the time I selected the most useful bottles from the shelves and placed them behind her. Debrah squirmed in her mud snail trails but hadn’t the strength to turn round. ‘I’ll do your hands as well,’ I muttered, kicking off my squelching boots.
‘Jant,’ she said. ‘You’re beautiful.’

I covered the worry in my voice. ‘Yeah. Even Felicitia thinks so ha ha.’

Patiently she said. ‘I’ll try again: Jant, you’re beautiful.’

‘You’re twelve.’

I lit an oil lamp and the shadows jumped from black on decaying pink, to soft yellow. ‘This is spraints and betony,’ I said, calming her. ‘Datura. Veronal and valerian. Knit-bone and all-heal, proof against poisoned arrows; and this, my sister, is scolopendium.’

She had a split second to gasp, wide-eyed, and the next sound was that of her head hitting the counter top. I pulled the needle out of the flesh of her backside and looked at it ironically. ‘That’s your experience. What you’ve always bloody wanted to try. Tell me what it’s like, cardsharp, will it make any party go with a spin?’

Now for the festivities. I need some water and a really sharp knife. I stretched aching wings, feeling terribly alone and hopelessly powerful, constantly misplaced. Chaste sister, what sort of life is Hacilith? Leaning over I gave her slack warm mouth a thankful kiss.