Path of Smoke (A Novel of the Parallel Parks, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bailey Cunningham is the author of the Novels of the Parallel Parks, including Pile of Bones.

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PART ONE
TROVADOR

1

HE SAT IN THE window of the black basia, watching the Subura below. It was a hive of drunken people, sweating and belching and singing as they clogged the narrow streets. They were on the hunt for something that could only be found in this quarter. Nobody came here for the food. The alleys were a city of their own, full of treasures and bleak endings. A familiar alley might turn into a trap before your eyes. Anfractus never stayed the same for long, and the Subura was its dark heart. People came here in search of solace, odd miracles, and luck. The furs waited for them, clinging like moss to the stone walls. Their charms and delicate hooks could snag a purse in seconds. Babieca pulled his knees up to his chest. He could smell the fish sauce from the caupona across the street. The sky was beginning to darken.

He was only two stories up, but the fall would still break something. He loosened his grip on the sill. A trovador had once told him that you could sing yourself a staircase. Not a real staircase. More like one of the stone skyways that crisscrossed the horizon. If you sang the proper song, you could make the air thicken, just enough to support your weight. He swore that he’d seen someone do it. But he was a drunken senex, with very few teeth, and Babieca didn’t trust what he said. A song like that would be something rare and dangerous. The notes would play you without mercy, and when it was done, you’d be someone else. Someone who knew how to walk on air.

“If you fall,” a voice said, “someone will have to settle your bill.”

Babieca climbed down and replaced the shutter. The street noise was muffled, but he could still hear it. He reached for the cup of wine that he’d left by the bed. It was made of cheap blue glass, although it bore a slight resemblance to a more expensive design. He drained the cup, then refilled it.

“You’re the father of this house. Can’t you forgive my debt?”

Felix paused in the act of fastening his sandals. “I suppose I could. It would make more sense to auction off your possessions, though. Your lute might be worth something.”

“It’s got a crack.”

“Most things do.” He slipped on his tunica, dyed saffron and covered with rich panels of embroidery. “What about your cloak? That’s worth something.”

Babieca shook his head. “I stole it. I liked the tigers dancing along the edges. They think they’re real.”

“That wine is going to your head.”

“I know. That’s the point.”

“Don’t drink too much more. Aren’t you supposed to be at the domina’s party?”

“There’s time.”

Felix sat on the edge of the bed. His mask was silver, and carved with things that Babieca couldn’t quite make out. Wings, or olive branches, maybe.

“I’ve never seen you without that,” he said.

Felix looked at him curiously. “Of course you haven’t. It’s a part of me.”

“Maybe the only real part.”

“Watch yourself. I could have you barred from this house.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“Care to try me?”

He approached the bed and took Felix’s hand. His thumb traced the amethyst ring, carved to resemble Fortuna’s wheel. “You wouldn’t throw me to the furs.”

The meretrix looked at him for a moment. Then he took his hand away. “This won’t happen again.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“I mean it this time.” Felix rose. “We have to stop.”

“Why?” Babieca drew closer. “What’s the harm?”

“It’s pointless.”

“It was fairly pointed a moment ago. Or have you forgotten?”

Felix adjusted his tunica. “It was a bad choice.”

“One that you keep making.”

“Babieca—”

He touched Felix’s hair. It was slightly damp. “I think we fit.”

The mask regarded him. “Not with each other.”

Babieca’s hand dropped. He was stung, but smiling. “I guess it’s true what they say about meretrices being fickle.”

“You know it’s not that.”

He sat on the bed, which still smelled like both of them. “Don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you have several more cocks to fall on.”

“More like balancing the ledger.”

“How much for another hour?”

His eyes darkened. “Keep your coin.”

“No, truly—how much?”

Felix looked at him for a long moment. Then he left the room.

Babieca lay down. The sheets were patterned with small, indeterminate animals, leaping over thickets. Maybe they were foxes. Nothing seemed real, save for the odor of sweat, smoke, and grilled cabbage from the caupona below. He touched the pillow. It was unraveling in the corner. He didn’t know what made him push Felix. Something about the mask, and the way it changed his eyes. The mask was naked—it was the rest of his body that remained hidden. Everyone knew this about meretrices, of course. Spadones were the only gens who were more accomplished at hiding their emotions. He imagined them playing Hazard, the eunuchs and the wolves, caught in a perpetual stalemate. Nobody blinking. The unwrinkled surface of their faces like blank papyrus.

What had brought them together? The first time seemed hazy around the edges, like a furtive moment stolen in the baths. It had been hot—that much he remembered. The paving stones had become coals, burning unprotected toes whenever someone slipped. Laughter, imprecations, the sour stink of wine. He’d run into Felix while heading toward a cell downstairs, the coin in his hand. He’d wanted a mouth to devour him, bones and all, spitting him out like an owl-pellet after it was done. Felix had appeared in the narrow door, hair slick with sweat, digging a rock out of his sandal. They were both wilting from the heat. Babieca had looked up at him, at his mask, glowing like metal from the forge. What was said? He could only remember a few scattered words. Once. That haunted him. Once. A promise and a threat. Felix had broken his word. Perhaps he’d intended to.

Babieca sipped the wine. Once, he had nearly fit someone else. He remembered a tongue like a lock-pick in his mouth, a charm to release the exhausted mechanism. There’d been a stone bed, a fox, a little death. Fortuna’s mark on smooth skin. He looked down at his own thigh, smudged with dirt and sweat, but unmarked. No daub of paint. Had the river washed it away? He thought of the face, pale as boxwood. The expression of relief as every angle softened. Maybe all he’d ever wanted was silence. Babieca took another drink, but forgot that he was supine, and spilled some. Red droplets flushed to life against the fabric. They blurred the lines of the possible-fox, until it resembled a tinted shadow.

He was almost a meretrix himself. They shared a spoke on Fortuna’s wheel. The irony was that meretrices—not the desperate pretenders who fucked unmasked in tiny cells, but those who belonged to a legitimate basia—were infinitely more respectable than him. A trovador was only as good as his next song, and he had no courtly connections to exploit. He was supposed to perform at Domina Pendelia’s tonight, but only in the background. A trained monkey could do it. He got dressed, then hunted for his instrument. Sometimes, Felix would ask him to play. Once. A smile playing at the edge of his...