Paul McAuley: Child of the River

One evening early in spring, with the wheel of the Galaxy tilted waist-deep at the level horizon of the Great River, Yama eased open the shutters of the window of his room, and stepped out onto the broad ledge. Any soldier looking up from the courtyard would have seen, by the Galaxy’s blue-white light, a sturdy boy of some seventeen years on the ledge beneath the overhang of the red tile roof, and recognized the long-boned build, pale sharp face and cap of black hair of the Aedile’s foundling son. But Yama knew that Sergeant Rhodean had taken most of the garrison of the peel-house on patrol through the winding paths of the City of the Dead, searching for the heretics who last night had tried to firebomb a ship at anchor in the floating harbor. Further, three men were standing guard over the laborers at the Aedile’s excavations, leaving only the pack of watchdogs and a pentad of callow youths under the command of old one-legged Rotwang, who by now would have finished his nightly bottle of brandy and be snoring in his chair by the kitchen fire. With the garrison so reduced there was little chance that any of the soldiers would leave the warm fug of the guardroom to patrol the gardens, and Yama knew that he could persuade the watchdogs to allow him to pass unreported.

It was an opportunity for adventure too good to be missed.

Yama was going to hunt frogs with the chandler’s daughter, Derev, and Ananda, the sizar of the priest of Aeolis’s temple.

They had agreed on it that afternoon, using mirror talk.

The original walls of the Aedile’s peel-house were built of smooth blocks of keelrock fitted together so cunningly that they presented a surface like polished ice, but at some point in the house’s history an extra floor had been added, with a wide gutter ledge and gargoyles projecting into the air at intervals to spout water clear of the walls. Yama walked along the ledge as easily as if on a pavement, turned a corner, hooked his rope around the eroded ruff of a basilisk frozen in an agonized howl, and abseiled five stories to the ground.

He would have to leave the rope in place, but it was a small risk.

No one was about. He darted across the wide, mossy lawn, jumped the ha-ha and quickly and silently threaded familiar paths through the dense stands of rhododendrons which had colonized the tumbled ruins of the ramparts of the peel-house’s outer defensive wall. Yama had played endless games of soldiers and heretics with the kitchen boys here, and knew every path, every outcrop of ruined wall, all the holes in the ground which had once been guard rooms or stores and the buried passages between them. He stopped beneath a mature cork-oak, looked around, then lifted up a mossy stone to reveal a deep hole lined with stones and sealed with polymer spray. He pulled out a net bag and a long slender trident from this hiding place, then replaced the stone and hung the bag on his belt and laid the trident across his shoulders.

At the edge of the stands of rhododendrons, the ground dropped away steeply in an overgrown demilune breastwork to a barrens of tussock grass and scrub. Beyond was the patchwork of newly flooded paeonin fields on either side of the winding course of the Breas, and then low ranges of hills crowded with monuments and tombs, cairns and cists: league upon league of the City of the Dead stretching to the foothills of the Rim Mountains, its inhabitants outnumbered the living citizens of Aeolis by a thousand to one. The tombs glimmered in the cold light of the Galaxy, as if the hills had been dusted with salt, and little lights flickered here and there, where memorial tablets had been triggered by passing animals.

Yama took out a slim silver whistle twice the length of his forefinger and blew on it. It seemed to make no more than a breathy squeak. Yama blew three more times, then stuck his trident in the deep, soft leaf mold and squatted on his heels and listened to the peeping chorus of frogs that stitched the night. The frogs had emerged from their mucus cocoons a few weeks ago. They had been frantically feeding ever since, and now they were searching for mates, every male endeavoring to outdo his rivals with passionate froggy arias. Dopey with unrequited lust, they would be easy prey.

Behind Yama, the peel-house reared above the rhododendrons, lifting its freight of turrets against the Galaxy’s blue-white wheel. A warm yellow light glowed near the top of the tall watchtower, where the Aedile, who had rarely slept since the news of Telmon’s death last summer, would be working on his endless measurements and calculations.

Presently, Yama heard what he had been waiting for, the steady padding tread and faint sibilant breath of a watchdog.

He called softly, and the strong, ugly creature trotted out of the bushes and laid its heavy head in his lap. Yama crooned to it, stroking its cropped ears and scratching the ridged line where flesh met the metal of its skull-plate, lulling the machine part of the watchdog and, through its link, the rest of the pack. When he was satisfied that it understood it was not to raise the alarm either now or when he returned, Yama stood and wiped the dog’s drool from his hands, plucked up his trident, and bounded away down the steep slope of the breastwork toward the barren ruins and the flooded fields beyond.

* * *

Ananda and Derev were waiting at the edge of the ruins.

Tall, graceful Derev jumped down from her perch halfway up a broken wall cloaked in morning glory, and half-floated, half-ran across overgrown flagstones to embrace Yama. Ananda kept his seat on a fallen stele, eating ghostberries he had picked along the way and pretending to ignore the embracing lovers. He was a plump boy with dark skin and a bare, tubercled scalp, wearing the orange robe of his office.

“I brought the lantern,” Ananda said at last, and held it up. It was a little brass signal lantern, with a slide and a lens to focus the light of its wick. The plan was to use it to mesmerize their prey.

Derev and Yama broke from their embrace and Ananda added, “I saw your soldiers march out along the old road this noon, brother Yama. Everyone in the town says they’re after the heretics who tried to set fire to the floating harbor.”

“If there are heretics within a day’s march, Sergeant Rhodean will find them,” Yama said.

“Perhaps they’re still hiding here,” Derev said. Her neck seemed to elongate as she turned her head this way and that to peer into the darkness around the ruins. Her feathery hair was brushed back from her shaven forehead and hung to the small of her back. She wore a belted shift that left her long, slim legs bare. A trident was slung over her left shoulder.

She hugged Yama and said, “Suppose we found them! Wouldn’t that be exciting?”

Yama said, “If they are stupid enough to remain near the place they have just attacked, then they would be easy to capture. We would need only to threaten them with our frogstickers to force their surrender.”

“My father says they make their women lie with animals to create monstrous warriors.”

Ananda spat seeds and said, “Her father promised to pay a good copper penny for every ten frogs we catch.”

“Derev’s father has a price for everything,” Yama said, smiling.

Derev smiled too—Yama felt it against his cheek. She said, “My father also said I should be back before the Galaxy sets. He only allowed me to come here because I told him that one of the Aedile’s soldiers would be guarding us.”

Derev’s father was very tall and very thin and habitually dressed in black, and walked with his head hunched into his shoulders and his white hands clasped behind him. From the back he looked like one of the night storks that picked over the city’s rubbish pits. He was invariably accompanied by his burly bodyservant; he was scared of footpads and the casual violence of sailors, and of kidnapping. The latter was a real threat, as his family was the only one of its bloodline in Aeolis. He was disliked within the tight-knit trading community because he bought favors rather than earned them, and Yama knew that Derev was allowed to see him only because Derev’s father believed it brought him closer to the Aedile.