The gaming teahouse was in Underbelly.
Underbelly was an older, hotter, more relaxed part of the city, full of lizards and other Wayfarers, including some of my own kin, though I mostly kept to myself. The place was packed most nights. It was a huge cavern, with tables everywhere, people playing go, chess, mancala, mehen, backgammon, all sorts of board and card games. At the back, beneath an array of lit up stalactites, was a raised dais with the band, surrounded by huge pillars of cave coral. As it turned out, I was there the night the Mancala Sextet debuted—harp, flute, kudulhu, frame drum. A great night.
But I was here on business as well. I ordered a ginger beer, and scoped the place out from beneath a large cream mushroom. “Very refreshing,” I said, when I returned to the bar with my empty glass. “Mr Underbelly?”
“I don’t like that name.” The big man behind the bar was drying a teacup. “I’m a teahouse proprietor. Everyone who knows me calls me Karim.”
“Karim,” I said. “I’m sorry. Good to meet you. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot—I’m Jason.”
“What do you want, Jason?” Karim asked. I’d picked my moment, and there were three other bar staff, but the place was starting to fill. I judged I only had a minute or two to gain a private audience.
“I’m here with a proposal and—to be perfectly honest, Karim—a request for your help. Some people call me an emissary. Really I’m just a middle man.”
“A middle man?” Karim slowly dried another teacup.
“Yes, I represent a diverse network of well-placed merchants, aristocrats, and free agents with a mutual interest in new discoveries. Along with security and discretion. The Laudanese—”
“If you represent dogs or monkeys, I’m not interested. They can kill each other for as long as they like for all I care.”
“Yes, if only they kept their wars to themselves, I’m sure the rest of the world would be happy to keep them well-supplied with every kind of luxury. Unfortunately, the war continues spreading south. And we have reliable intelligence that the Laudanese have excavated several intact devices from the ruins of Na’avinh, and are well on their way to repairing them and deducing their function and operation.”
“Glyph tech.”
“Yes, glyph tech.”
“Everyone thinks they’re going to find or fix or make a glyph. You can buy fake ones in the children’s market.”
I placed the glyph on the bar. I depressed the centre of the cube, and it popped open elegantly. Clearly a very expensive toy. “See the well in the centre? We believe this is where “the offering” is placed. Exegetical analysis of the cuneiform suggests a blue liquid was poured in here, but scholars have been unable to determine what kind of liquid, or whether it was actually the colour blue as we know it.”
Karim leaned forward. He was beginning to get interested.
“You’re welcome to take it and examine it for yourself. The alloys are extremely difficult to replicate. Many of the engraved icons remain undecrypted, but most glyphs are functionally interchangeable, at least mechanically. The devices that have been recovered, on the other hand, have various and seemingly quite specific purposes. And it so happens that the network I represent has acquired one: the Anopheline Device. Named after the mosquito-headed god of the Nasreen.”
“I know who Anopheles is. Look, this is all very fascinating, Jason, but I fail to see what all of this has to do with me.” Karim turned the glyph in his hand, and took another look inside.
“We have reason to believe that representatives of the Laudanese government have just arrived in Ghustloch for secret talks with the Council of Lords. I believe that they’re here partly for that.” I pointed above the dais.
“The coral?”
“Yes, the coral. What if the devices have a living component? The blue liquid isn’t power—it’s food. No wonder the devices never work. The other reason, of course, is money.”
I ducked down the alley and through the beads of a Cintorian street shrine. Dozens of candles lit the small roofed space, the altar crowded with flowers and figurines. Above the altar on the bare wall of the building hung a red cloth with the sacred sigil stitched in gold. I tossed a copper in the bowl and lit an incense stick, mumbling a prayer.
The veiled priestess sitting motionless by the altar reached out and gripped my arm painfully. “Numbers,” the mole-rat whispered urgently, pulling me closer.
“What?” I asked, trying to politely pull away. Her breath was fragrant.
“Numbers. Notice the numbers. The numbers.” She was smiling freakishly from behind her tassels, as if she knew something I didn’t.
“What numbers?”
“All of them. Notice today, notice tomorrow. Numbers. The numbers.”
“Okay,” I said, realising what I was dealing with. “I’ll notice the numbers.”
She cackled. “You won’t, you won’t. Doesn’t matter, see. They notice you.” She cackled. “You will, you will.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I prised my arm free from her grip as gently as I could, checked the coast was clear, and hurried on, her cackles following me down the alley.
By that time I’d been cleaning prison cells for a while. Everything was coming together, and I felt sure that before too long my friends and I would be back on the road again. Unfortunately, even the most brilliant of plans can go awry. There’s really no rhyme or reason to these things—sometimes it’s just the way of the centipede. I was getting ready for work one evening when there was a loud knock on the door. I opened up to find in the dim corridor a mole-rat accompanied by a couple of burly guards.
“Good evening, sir,” the mole-rat said crisply. He was smartly dressed in a black coat with a red cravat and a silver pin. “Sorry to bother you at this hour. My name is Mr Spindle. Here’s my card. As you can see, I’m a scrutineer calling on behalf of the Office of Restricted Non-Citizens. It’s purely a routine inspection, it won’t take long. We appreciate your cooperation. Papers, please.”
I adopted the scrutineer’s expression of seriousness and, after he politely declined to come in, obediently fetched my identity card and work permit from my locker. My mind was racing. This didn’t look good, but I didn’t want to overplay my hand either. The documents were expert forgeries. Absolutely top notch. I needed to trust that.
“Here you are, gub,” I said respectfully, bowing my head. He took the card and permit from me and inspected them carefully, placing them side by side on his clipboard, making notes, officiously checking the time on his golden fob watch and writing it down. Mr Spindle clearly meant business.
I glanced over his shoulder at the two armed guards, and debated making a run for it. There were only three exits from the building, and really only one: the front door. The guards looked like they knew what they were doing—one of their colleagues had killed another cleaner only three days before. I’m by no means unskilled when it comes to the arts of fist fighting and swordplay. The corridor wasn’t long, the lighting was poor, the stairwell narrow. But they had pistols. Ghustlochs. It was a dicey call.
The guards were expressionless. They were either mediocre or very good.
I was just about to take a calculated risk when the scrutineer smiled in satisfaction. He looked up from his work, and I relaxed. Panic: that’s the worst thing you can do in these situations.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “You’ll have to come with us.”
“What?” I said.
“Guards,” he said.
Next episode: Prisoners