Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

In his apartment, Whiskers was there already, tidying the large empty rooms in her meticulous way. Che felt a moment of affection when he saw the woman; after only a few weeks, she had become a welcome detail of stability in his scattered life.

‘I leave in the morning,’ he announced to the house-slave, even though she couldn’t hear him, for she had been rendered deaf by hot oil some time during her captivity. ‘Whiskers,’ and he waved a hand to catch her eye, ‘no need for that now.’ But the woman continued to polish the shelving, paying him no mind.

He looked at the slate board that hung about her chest, swinging free as she bent forwards, along with a stub of chalk fixed to a length of string.

He had so far refused to use the board to communicate with the woman, largely because Whiskers refused to use it herself; as though she preferred to let it hang there uselessly like an accusation of all that had been done to her. Instead, he preferred to talk to the woman, persisting in the hope that some communication might still pass between them.

Besides, he liked to hear words spoken in the usual silence of the apartment, even if they were only his own.

Che wandered into his bedroom and stared at his double-sized bed, with its silk covers of maroon tastefully chosen to match the pale golds of the wallpaper. He realized that he was still too energized from the Royal Milk and the previous night’s events to sleep, so instead pulled off his robe and changed into a loose-fitting tunic and trousers, and then a pair of soft leather shoes, which he laced tightly.

‘I’m going for a run!’ he hollered on his way out of the door.

Che pounded along the wide, tree-lined avenue of the Serpentine. He ran with the city’s rhythms in his ears, the local priests calling out through bullhorns from their temple spires; the calls of hawking cart-merchants and street dealers; the doleful songs of slave-gangs going about their business. People turned to watch him pass or to step out of his way, drawn by the simple spectacle of a man running through the streets. Sweat beaded his skin, and the rain too. With every footfall he found his head clearing of all the thoughts that had been possessing him so compulsively of late; a clarity he struggled for ever more these days. Che dodged past carts and groups of people, light-footed and free.

His usual route was a circuit of streets to the east of his apartment, an area that was prettified with the greenery of parks. He turned left at the Getti playhouse and followed a boulevard alongside the Drowning Gardens, seeing the rich greens of the trees and shrubs through the flicker of the iron railings, the contrasts of red-robed pilgrims scattered amongst them. In the street, building-sized paintings of the Holy Matriarch snagged his eyes, and the lesser placards for new restaurants, housing developments, brands of alcohol and food; he tried to ignore their simple messages, but the images flashed by and left their impression nonetheless, the smiling white-toothed faces of happy affluence.

Joy Street lay at the end of the boulevard, and next to it his mother’s Sentiate temple. Che had been ignoring his mother of late, unable to bring himself to visit her. He didn’t wish to be reminded of what she represented in his life, nor of her role within the order. When he saw the Sentiate tower looming ahead, its scarlet flags raised high today to show that it was open once more for business, his mood began to falter along with his pace.

He turned away before he reached Joy Street, and entered the Drowning Gardens instead.

He followed a straight paved path between the shorn lawns. On the hottest of summer days he would sometimes run in these gardens of glittering pools and broken shadows to escape the clammy heat of the streets beyond. Today, though, he saw that it was a mistake to come here, for the pilgrims were drowning themselves in earnest.

Che ran past stone pools with pilgrims kneeling all around their rims, heads plunged deep in the water. Occasional bubbles broke the surface, and some flailed their arms without control as they forced themselves to remain submerged; the more dedicated had their arms bound behind them with leather belts. He skirted around attendants of the Selarus, the priests working over prone forms, pumping water from lungs, breathing into mouths, slapping faces to revive them. One pair was carrying a limp form away.

He sprinted even faster, with the effort pulling the breath from him. Ahead was a congregation of dancing pilgrims, so thick he saw no way through them. Che wasn’t in the mood for stopping.

With a feral grin he put his head down and charged into the crowd at full speed, shouldering the men and women out of his way. Like a raging bull he tore his way through the mass of pilgrims as men and women spilled to the ground or pursued him with their shouts of anger.

He emerged on the other side fighting for air. His brow was wet, and when he dabbed it with his fingers they came away red.

Onwards, with the rain gently cleaning the blood from him, the taste of it mingling with the taste of the Royal Milk in his mouth.

When he returned to the apartment he realized he’d forgotten to bring any coins with him to get back inside the building. He cursed and pulled the doors in vain, but then the door opened from within – one of his neighbours stepping out – and Che ducked inside.

He jogged up the stairs and entered his apartment. Whiskers was just crossing the room and she glanced at him with a frown on her reddened features. A whistle was shrieking from behind her.

‘Good timing,’ he noted as he stepped past the woman, pulling off his clothing as he moved towards the bathroom and the source of the high keen. Whiskers hurried past him. When he entered the bathroom’s steamy atmosphere she was already turning off the gas flames beneath a great copper pot fitted tightly with a lid. A jet of steam was shooting from the whistle fixed in the lid, and it died quickly as Whiskers opened a spigot near the bottom of the pot, to release a flow of hot water into the tiled bath sunk into the floor.

Naked, his mood still high, Che pinched her rump as he stepped around her, and gave a quick smile in return for the scowl on her whiskery face. ‘You’re too good to me,’ he told her as he stepped into the few inches of water in the slowly filling bath, and lay back and sighed as it rose gently around him. Whiskers eyed him scornfully.

He closed his eyes as his body grew lighter in the water. His skin burned pleasantly, and he heard the woman roll up her sleeves and kneel beside him. Che sighed long and deeply as she scrubbed him down with a flannel of rough sharkskin and one of the balms his mother had insisted on giving him for his troubled skin. Methodically, she worked on the rashes that covered his body, and he groaned at one point, in something approaching sexual pleasure, at the relief it gave from his constant itching.

This life had its benefits, Che reflected idly. Not least of all a hot bath every day if he wished for one; no small thing that, in a world where most people were lucky to wash in a basin of cold water with copal leaves for soap.

You’re getting soft, he thought, and wondered what his old Roshun master Shebec would think of him now, if he’d still been alive to see him.

Whiskers cleaned the small cut on his brow, making no enquiries either by gesture or by look. When she finished, she sluiced the water from her hands and left him to enjoy his soak alone. His mind was still clear from his run. He placed a sodden flannel across his face and breathed through its clinging embrace, feeling tired all of a sudden, the effects of the Royal Milk finally fading. Perhaps he’d sweated them out of his body.

Che yawned and knew he would sleep soon. His thoughts drifted like the steam in the room, and in small measures he allowed them to contemplate the bizarreness of the night now behind him, and what was to come the next morn.