Malakar was waiting, looming over her, the dead comp strapped to her chest bone beneath the usual Jehanan harness. Anderssen flinched and made a face, angry with herself for not hearing the creature creep up behind her.
"Hoooo! You jump like a skomsh fresh-caught in a net! I hear angry voices out there… They are not snuffling before the Empire today, no…but how will youfind your friends? They are far away if you cannot cross the boulevard!"
That is an excellent question, Gretchen thought. "I made a mistake," she snapped. "I expected our comms to work – our first rendezvous is at the train station. But they might still be waiting -"
Malakar stiffened, raising a single clawed finger, head turning to one side. "Wait, asuchau, I am hearing strange sounds…like a steam-loom of vast size…"
Anderssen peered out onto the street again and swallowed a curse. A huge tracked military vehicle – an armored personnel carrier? – rumbled down the avenue. At the sight of the apparition, the gangs of looters scattered, throwing down their prizes. Jehanan in body-armor loped alongside the clanking, rattling machine, and they held stubby rifles in their claws. Their eyes were in constant movement, yet they ignored the fleeing short-horns.
"The army," she breathed, ducking back. She looked up at Malakar. "The kujen's men are sweeping the streets. But not for looters! Is there somewhere I can hide until they pass?"
The old Jehanan's snout twisted in disgust. "The kujen…he will let the paigim short-horns run wild, wrecking the livelihood of many a shopkeeper, and do nothing as long as they bite Imperial tails! But do you asuchau suffer? No! Only the meek who sought to turn over a single shatamanu in profit. So are the powerless ground fine between mill stones…" A rumbling and muttering followed. The growl of engines and the stamp of swift feet grew closer.
"Come on," Gretchen said, seizing Malakar's arm, trying to drag her back down the lane. "Up the stairs at least!"
"No, not that way." The gardener wrenched her arm free and strode past the stone staircase. She ducked behind the out-thrust stone and down into a ramp cutting into the earth. "This way, if you must cross the avenue…"
Anderssen followed, one eyebrow raised as they shuffled down the ramp, past one, and then two thick layers of rubble and into a vaulting hallway running at an angle to the lane above. Lamps hung from the vaults every ten meters, spilling a warm oil-glow through faces of colored glass. Her eyes flitted across other openings, recognizing doorways built to a different esthetic. The floor beneath her feet was uneven, but lined with irregular slabs. This is an old city, layer heaped upon layer over the millennia.
Gretchen hurried after the gardener, who had pressed on while she gawked at the archaeological evidence all around her. Other Jehanan passed in the opposite direction, glancing at her suspiciously as they passed. "Malakar – do these tunnels run under the whole city? Are there more levels below this one?"
The passage reached an intersection, splitting into three branches, and light spilled from an open doorway. A squat dome – cracked in places and repaired with brick pylons – hung over the open space. Many lamps hung down on chains. A Jehanan matron followed by two hatchlings emerged from one of the shops, two woven bags in her arms. Anderssen smelled fresh baked bread and realized she was terribly hungry.
"Hrrr… yes, there are many hidden ways beneath the city. These are the districts where the poor live, far from the sun, but warm withal. Do you feel the age of these stones? Sometimes one can find old doors like the ones in the Garden, but only down where it is dangerous to tread." The old Jehanan paused, her gaze following Anderssen's intent expression. "Do asuchau eat milled grain baked and risen? You look much like a hatchling eyeing the pastry as it cools!"
"Yes – that smells delicious. My grandmother baked bread every day when we were little."
Malakar went to the doorway, nodding politely to another customer leaving the bakery. In the warm lamplight light she seemed younger somehow, or less burdened by age and care. The old Jehanan made a clicking sound with her teeth and pointed with her snout. "Do you see the figurines of clay above the hearth?"
Anderssen nodded, looking around curiously at the shelves filled with bread. The bricks were markedly different in shape from those she'd seen in the buildings at street level. From the slightly irregular pattern, she guessed they had been hand-pressed into wooden forms and fired in a kiln on sheets of marble. Behind the stone-topped counter, a short-snouted Jehanan was kneading dough into loaves. Above the hearth and the half-circle mouths of his baking ovens, she saw rows of small figures – most seemed Jehanan in outline, though some were insectile and a few were outright monsters with horrific features. The lamp-and fire-light danced upon them, giving their painted features uncanny life.
"Are they gods? Protective spirits? Amulets to ward away disease and poison from the bread?"
Malakar nodded, clasping her claws to her chest. She seemed pensive. "This one believes in the old ways. Legends even in the annals of the Garden. Look at him," she whispered in Gretchen's ear. "I envy this one. He is content at his task – as was his father and his father's father – there has been a bakery here for an age of Jehanan… There he spills grain meal every day, paying homage to all the faces ofgod. A tiny offering, a single prayer. And for him this suffices; brings him closer to the yigal, what you might call the real. For this – his work, his prayer, his simple life – is the proper path for him. He is the luckiest of Jehanan – and his pastries and milled loaves are the finest in the city."
"You envy him?" Anderssen frowned a little, suddenly understanding the half-hidden grief in the gardener's voice. "You've lost your own path, haven't you? You were the last teacher to use that school room in the depths of the House. The last person to look at the murals on the walls…"
Malakar hooted sadly. "I was happy there, tending young sprouts and making them grow strong. Perhaps even wise…I was not the only gardener, but I was the last to teach the old ways, tell the tales of ships which passed between the stars and the might of the Jehanan of old. But I could not still this unwary tongue of mine and those with more cunning minds saw I was left with nothing but scraps and broken shells."
Gretchen pressed her hand against the old Jehanan's scales, feeling the heat of the body beneath, feeling tough scalloped ridges and parchment-thin edges. "Could you leave the House? Seek a position elsewhere? Find some other garden to tend?"
"Hrrrr… perhaps I could have done such a thing, when I was younger, but I did not. A great nuisance I made of myself instead! Bitterly I plagued them, until I had not even a mat to sleep on, or someone to sleep beside. But no one listened…and I was weary then, content simply to take my ration and avoid the eyes of those who'd once looked to me for guidance."
"Your life is not yet over," Gretchen said tentatively. "You could leave…"
The old Jehanan wrinkled her snout, giving Anderssen a sharp look. "So easily the words slip from your tongue, asuchau wanderer! If I mark your words right, you are sent hither and yon at the whim of your Company. You delight to see the unseen, to turn over rocks left alone for a hundred years, just to see what wiggles out! You are treading a path of choice and one which fits you well, if the look upon your pale, flat face when you are filled with questions is a reputable guide!"