Pandaras sat down at the edge of the platform, on wood worn smooth by the footsteps of millions of pilgrims and petitioners. He said wearily, “Why have you brought us here?”
“We were told that nothing is forbidden, little master,” Tibor said, “so surely one might still consult the shrines.”
“What use is that, without a priest?” Pandaras said, and then he understood. “Will it speak with you?”
“The avatar of this shrine was destroyed ten thousand years ago, in the wars of the Age of Insurrection. But the shrine itself is still active.”
Pandaras sat in the shadows at the perimeter of the platform while Tibor attempted to commune with the shrine. He meant to keep watch, but it was long past midnight and he was very tired. He fell asleep, and woke with a start to find the hierodule squatting in front of him and a familiar warmth against his chest.
“There is no reply,” Tibor said mournfully. “Something has destroyed the indices.”
Pandaras reached inside his torn shirt and lifted out the ceramic coin. Little specks and lines of light filled it from edge to edge, frozen in a static pattern.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I know that my master is here.”
Chapter Eleven
The Camp
Pandaras and Tibor spent the rest of the night close by the ruins of the sacred grove, although their sleep was fitful because of the whine and clatter of the mechanical saws wielded by the men who were dismembering the carcasses of the giant sequoias. They wandered the brawling streets of the city for most of the next day in search of some sign of Yama, but found nothing. They had no money for food or lodging, and it seemed that nothing was free in the city. Pandaras tried to earn a few coins by singing at a street corner, but passersby either ignored him or cursed him roundly. One woman riding by stopped her sumpter long enough to explain to Pandaras that everyone must be responsible for their own self, and that by begging he was behaving like an animal. “I have a hierodule, dominie. Is there no work for him?”
“No man is a slave here,” the woman said. “You should try one of the camps at the edge of the city. You’ll find more of your kind there. Go quickly before someone decides to organize a lynch party and get rid of you.” And before Pandaras could ask her another question she flicked the sumpter’s reins and rode on through the swarming crowds.
It was almost midnight when Pandaras and Tibor finally reached one of the camps in the jungle at the edge of Baucis. A guard hailed them a long way from its perimeter and led them down a tangle of winding paths to a neatly arranged compound, with huts and tents on three sides of a square of trampled dirt. The leader of the camp was a giant of a woman who had lost both her legs but went everywhere on crutches, indefatigable and full of energy. Her name—or the short, childhood version of her name, for her bloodline chose names that grew and reflected their experiences—was Calpa. She listened to Pandaras’s story while he and Tibor devoured bowls of starchy, unsalted vegetable curry, and told him that this was a bad place to be.
“The city is full of newly changed bloodlines. They are dangerous because they are burning with holy fire. Mobs sniff out those who do not agree with them and hang or burn or stone them. We try to keep ourselves to ourselves, but we still get a lot of trouble. Can you hunt?”
“I’m a city boy,” Pandaras said, and held up his stump. “Besides, I am still recovering from my wound.”
Calpa made him nervous. She was one of the giant bloodlines, twice as big as Tibor. She was sprawled carelessly in a crude chair. One of her three-fingered hands could have easily wrapped around his skull and crushed it like a grape. The gray hide of her bare torso was heavily scarified with the welts of decorative brandings and oiled with what smelled like rancid butter. Her cropped white hair was raised in spikes over her crested skull, and her flat-nosed face was dominated by muscular jaws like the opposing scoops of one of the mechanical dredgers which were always working along the shore of Ys, struggling to keep old channels open as the river dwindled.
“We’re all crippled and maimed in some way or another here,” Calpa said. “At least you can still walk.”
“My friend is a cook. I’d do better helping him.”
“We’ve plenty of cooks and not enough food.”
“Begging your pardon, and do not think I am not grateful for the charity, but your cooks are a greater danger than any heretic. I ate this poor excuse for food because I have not eaten all day, but boiled river mud would have had more flavor.”
Calpa ignored this. “Your friend will help with those who are too sick or badly hurt to move. You will go with one of the hunting parties. I bet you can run fast. Most of your bloodline can. We mostly dig traps and chase animals into them. You’ll help with that. And if that doesn’t work out you’ll hunt for fruit. I’m sure that with even one hand you can sneak up on a pomegranate tree.” Calpa looked hard at Pandaras and added, “Do you believe them?”
Her gaze compelled him to be honest. He said, “I have not believed in the supremacy of the Preservers for some time. We are the strength of the city, Calpa, but we are despised by most.”
“That’s the fault of men, not of those who created them.”
“Then perhaps we were badly made,” Pandaras said. “But I am not here to become a heretic, much as I’d like to live forever.”
Calpa nodded. “You said that you’re looking for a friend. Well, if he has been here long, then he is either dead or one of them.”
“He is my master. I know that he is alive, and I know that he is somewhere in this city. Are there many camps like this one?”
“There are no masters here,” Calpa said. “The heretics kill every officer they capture; we’re all of us just ordinary grunts. And there are only two other camps. Most of the released prisoners run away and are killed by roving gangs of heretics in the jungles and the marshes upriver. Those that stay here mostly join the heretics or kill themselves. A few try to fight, of course. They don’t last long. There are many thousands of heretics in the city, and many more than that in the wild country about it. This is one of their staging posts for the war.”
“And yet they let us go.”
“They murdered most of the prisoners on the ship that brought me here,” Calpa said. “They started with the officers and carried on from there. Almost all of my comrades—most of a division—are dead. The heretics didn’t trouble with me because they thought I was dying, but I plan to show them that they made a bad mistake. They are arrogant and cruel, which is why they release those prisoners who survive the journey here, but they will suffer for their arrogance because they are letting us build an army in their midst. We’re not ready yet, but soon enough we’ll be able to do much harm here. They have a mage, for instance, who is said to be able to control every kind of machine. I have my eye on him, although he has many soldiers gathered around him.”
“What does he look like, this mage?”
“No one has ever seen him. He does not walk the city. He lives on a floating garden. There.”
Pandaras looked where Calpa pointed. It was a shadow against the Eye of the Preservers, hanging some distance from the archipelagoes of the other floating gardens.
“You and your friend will take guard duty tonight,” Calpa said, and clapped her big hands together. A man came over and she told him, “Give them a rattle and a couple of javelins and take them out to the fern trees. Check on them at sunrise. Kill them if they are asleep.” She looked at Pandaras. “Do you understand why we do this?”