Playing Patience Read online

  Her gift. Only she had it. Her sisters showed no sign of it. Patience never used her gift in front of the tutors, and she was fairly certain they knew nothing about it.

  It was a mind thing. She could move things by thinking about them. She’d discovered she could do it the day her mother left them at the scholam gates. Patience had been practising ever since.

  In the dark of the black stone cell, Patience tried to picture her mother’s face, but couldn’t. She could remember a warm smell, slightly unwashed but reassuring, a strong embrace, a hacking cough that presaged mortality.

  The face, though, the face…

  It had been a long time. Unable to form the image in her head, Patience turned her mind to something else. Her name. Not Patience. Her real name. The tutors had tried to rid her of it, forcing her to change her identity, but she still hung on to it. It was the one private piece of her that nothing and no one could ever steal. Her true name.

  It kept her alive. The very thought of it kept her going.

  The irony was, she could leave the oubliette whenever she chose. A simple flick of her gift would throw back the bolt and allow her to lift the trapdoor. But that would give her away, convince the tutors she was abnormal.

  Patience reined her mind in and sat still in the darkness.

  Someone was coming. Coming to let her out.

  IV

  Harlon Nayl’s eyes didn’t so much as blink as the fist came at him. His left hand went out, tilting inwards, captured the man’s arm neatly around the inside of the wrist, and wrenched it right round through two hundred degrees. A bone may have snapped, but if it did, the sound was masked by the man’s strangled squeal, a noise which ended suddenly as Nayl’s other hand connected with his face.

  The man – a thickset lhotas-eater with a mucus problem – shivered the deck as he hit it. Nayl kept hold of his wrist, pulling the man’s arm straight and tight while he stood firmly on his armpit. This position allowed for significant leverage, and Nayl made use of it. Harlon was in a take-no-prisoners mood, I sensed, which was hardly useful given our objective.

  A little leverage and rotation. A ghastly scream, vocalised through a face spattered with blood.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ asked Nayl, twisting a little more and increasing the pitch. ‘Do you think I can get top C out of him?’

  ‘Should I care?’ replied Morpal Who Moves with mannered disinterest. ‘You can twist Manx’s arm right off and beat him round the head with it, he still won’t tell you what you want. He’s a lho-brow. He knows nothing.’

  Nayl smiled, twisted, got another shriek. ‘Of course he is. I worked that much out from his scintillating conversation. But one of you does. One of you knows the answer I want. Sooner or later his screams will aggravate you so much you’ll tell me.’

  Morpal Who Moves had a face like a crushed walnut. He sat back in his satin-upholstered buoy-chair and fiddled with a golden rind-shriver, a delicate tool that glittered between his bony fingers. He was weighing up what to say. I could read the alternatives in his forebrain like the label on a jar.

  ‘This is not good for business–’

  ‘Sir, this is my place of business, and I don’t take kindly to–’

  ‘Throne of Earth, who the frig d’you think you are–’

  Morpal’s place was a four-hectacre loading dock of iron, stock-brick and timber hinged out over the vast canyon gulf of the West Descent, an aerial thoroughfare formed by the gap between two of the hive’s most colossal stacks. Beneath the reinforced platform and the gothic buttresses that supported it, space dropped away for almost a vertical kilometre to the base of the stacks. Ostensibly, this was a ledge where cargo-flitters and load-transporters – and many thousands of these craft plied the airways of the West Descent – could drop in for repairs, fuel, or whatever else the pilots needed. But Morpal was a fence and racketeer, and the transience of the dock’s traffic gave him ample opportunity to steal, replace, backhand, smuggle and otherwise run his lucrative trade.

  More than twenty men stood in a loose group around Harlon. Most were stevedores and dock labourers in Morpal’s employ. The others were flit-pilots, gig-men, hoy-drivers and riggers who’d stopped in for caffeine, fuel and a game of cards, many of them regulars who were into Morpal for more than a year’s salary each.

  All this and more was visible from their collective thoughts, which swirled around the loading dock like a fog. I was five kilometres away, in a room in a low-rent hotel. But it was all clear enough. I knew what Mingus Futir had eaten for breakfast, what Fancyman D’cree had stolen the night before, the lie Gert Gerity had told his wife. I knew all about the thing Erik Klass didn’t want to tell Morpal.

  Wystan Frauka sat beside me, smoking a lho-stick, his limiter activated. He was reading a tremendously tedious erotic novel on his slate.

  Surface was easy. Deep mind was harder. Morpal Who Moves and his cronies were well-used to concealing their secrets.

  That was why Harlon had gone in first.

  Morpal finally arrived at a decision. He had determined, I sensed, to take the moral high ground. ‘This is not how things are done on my platform,’ he told Harlon. ‘This is a respectable establishment.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ snorted Nayl. ‘One last time. What can you tell me about Victor Zhan? He worked here once, before he went off planet. I know he worked here, because I had the records checked out. So tell me about Victor.’

  ‘Victor Zahn hasn’t been around in five years,’ Morpal said.

  ‘Tell me about him anyway,’ Nayl snapped.

  ‘I really don’t see any reason to do that.’

  ‘I’ll show you one.’ Nayl reached his free hand into his hip pocket, took something out and threw it down onto the cup-ringed, grimy tabletop. His badge of authority. The signet crest of the Inquisition.

  Immediately all the men took a step beck, alarmed. I felt Morpal’s mind start in dismay. This was the kind of trouble no one wanted.

  Unless…

  ‘Damn it,’ I said.

  Frauka looked up from the midst of his book’s latest loveless tryst. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Morpal Who Moves is about to make a miscalculation.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Frauka, and turned back to his novel.

  Morpal had run the dock for forty-six years. For all his misdeeds and misdemeanours, some of them serious, he’d never run foul of the law, apart from the odd fine or reprimand. He actually thought he could deal with this and get away with it.

  +Harlon. Morpal’s signal will be a double finger-click. Your immediate threat is the grey-haired gig-man to your left, who has a dart-knife. To his right, in the leather apron, the rigger has a pivot-gun, but he will not be able to draw it as fast. The flit-pilot in green wants to prove himself to Morpal, and he won’t hesitate. His friend, the one with the obscura-tinted eyes, is less confident, but he has a boomgun in his cab.+

  ‘Well?’ Harlon Nayl asked.

  Morpal Who Moves clicked both middle fingers.

  I flinched at the sudden flare of adrenaline and aggression. A great part of it came from Nayl.

  The rigger in the leather apron had drawn his pivot-gun, but Nayl had already stoved the table in with the face of the grey-haired gig-man and relieved him of his dart-knife. Nayl threw himself around as the pilot in green lunged forward, and slam-kicked him in the throat. The pilot went down, choking, his larynx crushed, as the pivot-gun finally boomed. The home-made round whipped high over Nayl’s head as he rolled and triggered the dart-knife. The spring-propelled blade speared the rigger through the centre of his leather apron, and he fell over on his back, clawing at his belly.

  Others ploughed in, one striking Nayl in the ribs with an eight wrench.

  ‘Ow!’ Nayl grunted, and laid the man out. The obscura fiend was running across the platform towards his hoy. Nayl threw another man aside, and grabbed the edges of Morpal’s buoy-chair. The Mover yelled in dismay as Nayl slung the frictionless chair sideways. It sped across the platfor
m like a quoit, knocking two of the stevedores over, and slammed hard against the dock’s restraining rail. The serious impact dazed Morpal. He slumped forward.

  Nayl backfisted a man in the nose, and then punched out another who was trying to flee anyway. Two front teeth flew into the air. The obscura fiend had his hoy’s door open, reaching in.

  A stevedore with a hatchet swung at Nayl, forcing him to jump back. Nayl blocked the next swing with his forearm, fractured the man’s sternum with a jab, and threw him with a crash into the nearby row of porcelain samovars.

  The obscura addict turned from his cab and racked the grip of his boomgun. He brought it up to fire.

  Nayl slid the Hecuter 10 from his bodyglove and calmly shot him through the head at fifteen metres.

  Blood splashed up the rusted fender of the hoy. The man cannoned backwards, dropping the boomgun from dead fingers.

  The rest of them scattered.

  Kara ran onto the platform, her weapon raised. It had taken her just thirty seconds to move out of cover at my command to back up Nayl, but the fight was already done.

  ‘Don’t leave any for me, then,’ she complained.

  ‘You should have been here,’ Nayl said. He walked over to the rig and picked up the fallen boomgun, examining it.

  ‘Nice,’ he said.

  +Harlon…+

  Nayl looked over at Morpal, who was just coming round, the back of his buoy-chair rammed against the platform’s rail. He saw Nayl, saw him aiming the weapon…

  +Harlon! No!+

  But Nayl’s blood was up. The need for vengeance, suppressed for so long, was finally finding an outlet.

  Nayl fired. Morpal had ducked. The shot exploded the seat-back above him, and the rail behind. The force of the impact drove the buoy-chair backwards.

  Intact, unscathed, but still sitting in his chair, Morpal Who Moves went backwards, toppled, and fell into the inter-stack gulf.

  ‘Well, damn,’ Nayl hissed.

  +For Throne’s sake, Nayl! I told you not to–+

  Thonius had just walked into the hotel room behind me.

  ‘Good book?’ he asked Frauka.

  ‘Saucy,’ Frauka replied, not looking up.

  +Nayl’s just ruined our lead.+

  ‘Never mind,’ Thonius grinned, a smug satisfaction on his face. ‘It was pointless anyway. I’ve found a much better one.’

  V

  She knew for certain it was Rigorist Knill even before he opened the oubliette hatch. Just part of her gift, the same thing that allowed her to win at cards or guess which hand a coin was in.

  ‘Come, you,’ he said. A glow-globe coded to Knill’s bio-trace bobbed at his shoulder and cast its cheap yellow light into the cell.

  Patience got up and stepped out into the hallway, making a big show of dusting down her garments.

  ‘They’ll be dirtier yet,’ Knill remarked, closing the heavy, black iron door. ‘The dinner’s over, and the Prefect wants the pots doing.’ Knill chuckled and pushed her on down the hallway. The glowglobe followed obediently.

  There was little to like about Rigorist Knill. In his days as an Imperial Guardsman, he had been big and powerful, but age and a lack of exercise had sunk his muscles into slabby fat, hunching him over. His teeth were black pegs, and a scarred, concave section of his skull explained both the end of his soldiering career and his simpleton’s nature. Knill was proud of his past, and still wore his medal on his chest. He liked to regale the pupils with accounts of the glorious actions he had seen, and got angry when they mocked him and pointed out inconsistencies in his stories. But he wasn’t the worst by a long way. Skinny Rigorist Souzerin had such a short temper and love of the flail that the pupils believed he had once been a commissar. Rigorist Ocwell was rather too fond of the younger girls. And then there was Rigorist Ide, of course.

  ‘So I’m to wash pots?’ Patience asked.

  ‘Get on,’ Knill grumbled, and gave her a cuff. Like all the rigorists, Knill wore a knotted leather flail and a longer wooden baton suspended from his wide leather belt. The flail was for minor punishments, the baton a more serious disciplinary tool. Knill, who trusted his fists, seldom used either. Many of Prefect Cyrus’s long morning sermons revolved around the symbology of the rigorists’ twin instruments, likening them to the paired heads of the holy aquila, voices of different pitch and measure through which the dogmas of the Golden Throne might be communicated in complementary ways. In the Kindred Youth Scholam, most lessons seemed to require some corporal component.

  They ascended the draughty stone stairs, and passed through the unlit lesson halls of the seventh remove. The narrow hallways between classrooms were formed by partly-glazed wooden partitions. The glass in the frames was stained the colour of tobacco by the passage of the years.

  Then Knill unlocked the door to the next ascent.

  ‘I thought I was wanted for scullion duties,’ Patience said.

  ‘The Prefect would clap eyes on you first,’ replied Knill, and jerked his head upwards.

  Patience sighed, and began to trudge up the winding stairs ahead of Knill’s light. She knew what that meant. A quiz from the Prefect on the error of her ways. If she was lucky, she’d get away with an apology to Tutor Abelard, and a few Lachrymose Mea in the chapel under the Prefect’s instruction before she spent the night in the potroom, freezing her hands in the greasy sop-tubs.

  If she was unlucky, there would be Souzerin and his flail. Or Ide.

  It took them over twenty minutes to climb the meandering tower to the upper vaults. In the main chamber there, servants and a few chosen pupils were clearing the last dregs of the feast. The air was still warm, and scented with rich cooking smells. Prefect Cyrus did not stint when important visitors came to the scholam. He even provided wine and amasec, and did not complain when manufactory directors lit up pipes and lho-sticks. Patience could smell the spicy smoke lingering in the long room. Two young pupils form the sixth remove were team-folding the white cloths from the feast tables. A tutor, Runciman, was supervising them, and explaining the geometry of the correct fold-angles.

  ‘Wait,’ Knill told her, and left her in the doorway. He shambled off down the length of the long, beamed hall, his light tagging along after him like a willowisp. Patience waited, edgy, arms folded. Three young children ran out past her, their arms full of candlesticks, napkin rings threaded around their tiny wrists. One glanced up at her, eyes wide.

  Knill reached the far end of the room. Prefect Cyrus was sitting at the high table still, a swell-glass in his hand, talking quietly with a stranger in a dark red robe. One of the night’s visitors, a guilder or a mill owner perhaps. Clearly a man of wealth and breeding, well-groomed. He was listening to the Prefect intently, sipping something from a tall crystal beaker. To his left, apart from the conversation, sat another man, another stranger. This man was short, but powerfully made, his cropped hair ginger in the lamplight, his bodyglove traced with silver. He was smoking a lho-stick, and gazing with half-interest at the ancient, flaking murals on the chamber walls. From her vantage point, Patience could see the ginger-haired man wore an empty holster on his hip. Prefect Cyrus did not permit firearms inside the scholam, but that holster suggested the ginger-haired man was a bodyguard, a paid protector. The man in red was evidently even more important than she had first suspected, if he could afford his own muscle.

  Then Patience saw Ide. The rigorist was standing at the far end of the chamber, waiting. He was staring right at her. She shuddered. Tall, strong, Ide was a brute. His eyes were always half-open, and he wore his white-blond hair in a long, shaggy mane, secured at the nape by a silver buckle. Ide was the only rigorist who never bragged about his Guard days. Patience had a nasty idea why.

  Knill spoke briefly to the prefect, who excused himself to the man in red, and walked down to the centre of the hall, Knill at his heels. The Prefect gestured that Patience should come join him. She approached obediently, until they were face to face.

  Prefect Cyrus was anything b
etween forty and four hundred. Slim and well-made, he had undergone many programs of juvenat work, making his flesh over-tight and his skin hideously smooth and pink. His eyes were violet and, Patience believed, deliberately sculpted by the augchemists to appear kind and fatherly. His blue robes were perfectly pressed and starched. When he smiled, his implanted teeth were as white as ice.

  He was smiling now.

  ‘Patience,’ he whispered. She could smell the oil of cloves he wore to scent his body.

  ‘My Prefect,’ she answered with effort.

  ‘You flinch. Why do you flinch?’

  She could not say it was because Rigorist Ide had just taken the first few steps on his way to join them. ‘I broke the rules, and committed an affront to the person of Tutor Abelard. I flinch as I await my punishment.’

  ‘Patience,’ the Prefect said. ‘Your punishment is over. You’ve been set in the oubliette, have you not?’ He looked round at Knill. ‘She has been in the oubliette all night, hasn’t she, Knill?’

  ‘That is so, Prefect,’ replied Knill with a nod.

  ‘All done, then. No need to flinch.’

  ‘Then why am I here?’ Patience asked.

  ‘I have good news,’ the prefect said, ‘and I wanted to share it with you as soon as possible. Good, good news, that I’m sure will lift your heart as surely as it has lifted mine.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Patience, places have been secured this night for your dear sisters. Serving in the hall this evening, they so won the admiration of a merchant lord, one of our guests, he offered them indenture on the spot.’

  Patience blinked. ‘My sisters?’

  ‘Have taken wing at last, Patience. Their particulars are all signed and contracted. Their new life has already begun.’

  ‘No. That’s not right,’ Patience said sharply. ‘They’re too young. They haven’t yet reached maturity. I won’t allow it.’

  ‘It is already done,’ the Prefect said, his face showing no sign of annoyance.

  ‘Then undo it,’ Patience said. ‘Right now! Undo it! I should’ve been consulted! They are in my charge!’