The Iron jackal

Ten

It was the dead of night, which meant little in Shasiith. The place teemed like an ant colony. People swarmed over each other, talking and arguing, shopping and stealing. The air was a stew of heat and sweat and noise. Spiced bread and sizzling meat gave off a muddle of scents as vendors fed the hungry.

Like Jez, this city never slept.

Groups of men sat in the electric light of cafe fronts, sipping thick dark coffee and watching the chaos. Giant beasts shambled among the crowds, dragging heavy loads, their riders perched behind their heads. They were called rushu in the local tongue. Their tusks and horns had been given decorative tips in a half-hearted attempt to make them slightly less dangerous, but Jez thought they could cause terrible carnage if they had a mind to. Still, that was ^r offthey hadthe way in Samarla. To foreign eyes, life here seemed disordered, frantic and cheap.

Jez had been filled in on the situation with the Cap’n, and she was deeply concerned. She’d come to feel protective towards him during her time on the Ketty Jay. He wasn’t very good at looking after himself at the best of times: this new, mysterious injury was only confirmation of that. But it was the state of his mind as much as his body that kept her fretting. He was just a boy in many ways. He might have been outwardly handsome and charming, but she saw through all of that, and knew him to be more sensitive and insecure than he admitted to himself.

His relationship with Trinica made her uneasy. Part of her admired him for it, the way he would plough through any and all obstacles in his pursuit of her. She’d never felt that strongly about anything, and she was jealous of his passion. He was not stubborn, or a man possessed of a great amount of willpower, but when it came to Trinica he absolutely refused to quit.

Yet Trinica had betrayed him before, and Jez saw no reason why she wouldn’t do so again. Her behaviour was no indication of her intentions; she’d proved that in the past. The last time it had hit Frey hard. The next time, he might not recover.

Oh, Cap’n. I hope you’ll be alright.

With the exception of Silo, Bess and Harkins, the whole crew had sallied out into the streets, and they’d gone armed. It was too dangerous for Silo and Bess to leave the Ketty Jay, and Harkins was asleep. No one wanted to wake him up. Lately, he’d been keen to include himself in any missions, where he was usually more of a hindrance than a help. She assumed he was trying to ape the Cap’n’s recent spate of reckless bravery, though she couldn’t imagine why.

Ashua led them on foot through the city for half an hour, through streets that became progressively more narrow and ramshackle. Jez didn’t trust her, even if she found her brash and cocky front preferable to Trinica’s quiet treachery. But Ashua seemed to know where she was going and, despite being drunk, she went with some urgency.

Where they went, their mysterious tail followed them.

Jez had sensed him before she spotted him. Even among the crowds, he moved with purpose. A Dakkadian, a plain-looking young man wearing a brown embroidered robe and sandals. Jez never caught him looking at them, but she observed him from the corner of her eye when she turned her head to talk to her companions.

At first she hadn’t been sure, but he’d stuck with them all the way into the slums. A man dressed so neatly had no business among these reeking lanes with their leaning shacks and steep narrow steps. Here, the air was a fug of petrol fumes from rattling generators, which powered the lights that shone behind tattered fabric curtains. Even the poorest of people in Samarla could lay their hands on petrol: the country welled with it. It was aerium they were starved of.

The slum dwellers w cum ca amp;ere a mix of Dakkadian and Samarlan, all of them wise enough to stay out of the way of the conspicuously armed group passing through. Many of the Samarlans were of the untouchable caste, their black faces mottled with white patterns to signify their low status. Many, however, were not. They were just poor. Jez had visited Samarla briefly as a navvie on other craft, but this was the first time she’d really become aware that most Samarlans didn’t live in luxury, as was popularly believed in Vardia. Crake, who had read Politics at Galmury University and knew a thing or two, had been educating her on the finer points of Samarlan society during their sightseeing excursions.

She caught up to Frey. ‘Cap’n,’ she said in a low tone.

‘The feller following us? Yeah, I know. He’s not very good.’

‘Who do you think he works for?’

‘Could be anyone.’

‘Think we should do something about him?’

Ashua, who’d overheard the conversation, leaned over. ‘Don’t bother. He won’t follow us where we’re going.’

Frey looked at Jez and shrugged. ‘What she said, I suppose.’

Jez wasn’t satisfied with that. The Cap’n’s mind was on other things, but she didn’t like the idea of not knowing. She ran through a mental list of possibilities. Awakeners? Yes, they had good reason. The Shacklemores? They didn’t usually employ Daks, but the Shacklemores were still after Crake as far as she knew. The man could even be spying for Trinica, although Jez suspected the pirate would have hired someone better.

She decided to try to find out.

The thought gave her a small thrill. She’d never attempted to read somebody’s mind before. It had always just happened, as it had on the train the day before yesterday.

Well, she had the ability. There was no denying that. She might as well learn how to use it.

And so, as they walked, she slid into a shallow trance. She could put herself into trances and bring herself out with relative ease nowadays. She no longer feared the Manes waiting for her. They didn’t howl and cry for her to join them any more. She’d been given the Invitation, she’d refused it, and they respected that choice. They still waited at the edge of her consciousness, but they never spoke to her.

With the trance came the familiar sharpening of the senses. Minute details became crisp and obvious; everything seemed closer somehow. Smells became distinct, so that she could separate out the different scents of her companions. She could hear the murmur of voices in distant shacks. She could never put her finger on the way that a trance made her feel, only that it ma cly murde her more here, more present in the world.

But now that she was in the trance, she had no idea what to do next. She attempted to search with her mind, picturing the man behind them, pushing her thoughts at him. Nothing happened. She tried to remember the sensation she’d experienced when she read the man’s mind on the train, but she couldn’t duplicate it.

Eventually, she gave up. She came out of her trance, frustrated. There must be a technique to it, but she wouldn’t crack it by guessing.

Until recently, she’d been afraid of her Mane side, terrified that it would consume her if she gave in to it. But now that she’d come to terms with herself, now that she accepted she was a half-Mane, she found herself curious about it. What could she do, exactly? What were the limits of her abilities? And how could she possibly find out?

It was she who had chosen to refuse the Invitation. She who had turned her back on the Manes and their love. But it was she who felt abandoned now.

Ashua stopped before a door. It was entirely unremarkable, halfway down a lane that teetered with precarious two-storey shacks built from the ruined skeletons of more stable buildings.

‘One piece of advice,’ Ashua said. ‘Nobody draw weapons unless you absolutely have to. Normally they don’t mind foreigners, but they’ve been known to be jumpy.’

Frey was regarding the door without much enthusiasm. ‘What exactly is through there?’

‘The Underneath,’ said Ashua, and opened it.

Beyond the door was a labyrinth of passageways with roughly planked walls like the corridors of a mine. Electric bulbs fizzed, fed by precarious cables. It was close and stuffy, and the taller members of the crew had to duck their heads.

They passed through rooms full of tatty cots and bunk-beds. The occupants were all untouchables: mostly men, some women, and the occasional infant. They were skinny and their clothes were ragged. Sometimes they wore little more than loincloths. Their eyes were dull behind the white patterned masks that identified them, but for all that, their features had a delicate, elfin quality that made them handsome. It seemed strange to Jez to see such beautiful people in poverty, but then, the Samarlans were a beautiful race.

‘What’ve they done to their faces?’ Pinn asked loudly, with typical lack of tact. Malvery swatted him round the back of his head. ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘They can’t understand me.’

‘It’s a kind of acid,’ Crake said. ‘It breaks down the pigment in the skin. Like a reverse tattoo, I suppose. And they didn’t do it themselve s. It was done to them.’

The untouchables: lowest of the five Samarlan castes. Those whose ancestors had done something so terrible or dishonourable that their family name had been stricken from the records. There was no way back from that, not for the criminal or for their descendants. Newborns were marked by their own parents soon after birth, because it was death for an untouchable to be seen carrying a baby that wasn’t of the same caste. And so the stigma carried through the generations, for ever. In Samarla, if you didn’t have bloodline, you were nothing.

Jez had found much to admire about Samarla, but she still found it sickening that a culture could be so unforgiving. She had to remind herself that this was the same culture that had subjugated two different races of people and made them into slaves. Samarlan ways were not Vardic ways. She accepted that, but she didn’t have to like it.

More corridors, more rooms. They pushed through threadbare curtains and met incurious gazes. Most of the untouchables were sleeping, exhausted by the day’s activities. Few spoke, even to each other. They were a worn-out folk, ground down by hopelessness. This ‘Underneath’ that Ashua had mentioned – presumably a literal translation from Samarlan – appeared to be some kind of haven where they could lay their heads in peace.

Jez couldn’t quite work out when they were above ground and when they were below it. She would convince herself that they were deep in the bowels of the earth, and then they would descend a flight of stairs and come across a room with a window looking out over the shallow bowl of the slum. At some point they began to head sharply downwards, and the planked walls closed in around them, with rough black stone visible through the gaps. The air became dense, the temperature dropped a little, and oil lamps replaced electric lights.

Presently they came to a wide corridor lined with shabbily constructed wooden bunks on both sides, like a crowded barracks or a tomb. There were untouchables here, too, but Jez sensed something different about them. They were alert and aware, and they watched the newcomers with interest. As they passed the bunks, some of the untouchables slipped out of bed and followed them. Up ahead, slim dark figures were sliding from their bunks. There were bone knives visible among the folds of their clothes, or hanging from rope belts.

‘Miss Vode,’ Frey murmured. ‘Why do I feel suddenly threatened?’

Ashua stopped moving, and the crew followed suit. ‘Nobody draw guns,’ she reminded them.

‘Pinn, that means you,’ Frey added.

Pinn mumbled something obscene and took his hand away from his revolver.

The untouchables surrounded them, though they kept a careful distance. One man stepped forward. He was probably in his forties, but he was so weatherworn that he looked ancient. He spoke slowly to Frey in the moist, hissing Samarlan tongue.

Frey looked helplessly at Ashua, who replied in his place. She and cace Frey in tthe elderly Samarlan conversed for a time. The elderly man despatched one of the others, who went running down the corridor. Jez tried to follow what was going on by interpreting gestures and expressions, but Samarlans were not an easy people to read.

‘What’s the deal?’ Frey asked, during a break in the conversation.

‘They don’t want to let us through,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, though. I’ve got contacts.’

‘Down here?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Your average Sammie orDak thinks so little of the untouchables that they’re practically invisible. If they do notice them, it’s just to kick them out of the way. They could plot against the God-Emperor himself with an untouchable in the room and it wouldn’t matter, because no Sammie or Dak would ever speak to them to find out what they knew. But foreigners like me, we don’t care about caste systems and all that crap. These fellers, they see and hear everything.’ She grinned. ‘How do you think I knew about that shipment?’

‘This lot?’ Frey was surprised.

‘Invisible people make pretty good spies,’ said Ashua. ‘Ah, here’s my man now.’

There was a commotion up the corridor, and another untouchable arrived. This one was taller than most, and dressed in a patchwork assortment of thin fabrics. He had a small bald head; the white acid-pattern on his black face gave it the appearance of a skull. He moved quickly and furtively, and there was a slyness about him. He looked healthier than most of his fellows.

The newcomer exchanged a few irritable words with the elderly man, gesturing at Ashua. Ashua spoke to them briefly, then turned to Frey. ‘Show them your hand,’ she said.

Frey did as he was told, and displayed the black corruption on his palm to the crowd. They gasped and shrank back from him.

‘Speaking as a doctor,’ said Malvery, ‘I ain’t encouraged by that reaction.’

‘It got ’em out the way, didn’t it?’ Pinn said.

Ashua indicated the untouchable who had just arrived. ‘Everyone, this is… well, you probably couldn’t pronounce his name, but in Vardic it comes out as Slinkhound.’

Slinkhound grinned, showing crooked teeth.

‘That is one rubbish name,’ Pinn opined.

‘Yeah, it loses something in the translation,’ Ashua said. ‘They’ve all got names like that. They get them when they become unt cey loses somouchable. Too much shame attached to their old name, and so on.’ She waved in the air. ‘Blah, blah, I’m sure none of you give a shit anyway. Let’s get on with this, shall we?’

‘What about the Dak who was following us?’ Jez asked. ‘Will they let him through?’

‘A Dak on his own? He’d be lucky if he got out alive. We’ll take a different way out; he’ll never find us.’

Slinkhound beckoned them on impatiently. They followed him down a dark corridor and around several corners before the passage suddenly widened out into a gaping hole in the rock. Daubed around the edge were crude symbols in Samarlan script.

‘What does that say?’ Jez asked Ashua.

‘It says “Welcome to the Underneath”,’ she replied.

‘I thought we were already in the U nderneath.’

‘Nah,’ said Ashua, as they passed through the hole. ‘That was just one of many routes to get here.’ She threw out her arms. ‘ This is the Underneath.’

The crew stumbled to a stop. Jez’s eyes widened as she looked out and up.

‘Bugger me,’ said Malvery, quietly.

Ashua shook her head with a smile. ‘Tourists.’