Chapter 15
Kings in their castles, peasants bent within hovels, each given cloth to fit the measure of their purse. But to exist within a space is not to inhabit it. The king may rattle through his halls, present only where and when he steps. The serf might fill the day from dawn till dusk, from horizon to horizon, from muddy toes to spangled sky.
The Prince and the Purpose , by T. S. Davies
CHAPTER 15
Celcha
The many storeys and rooms of the royal palace that lay above ground were supported and maintained upon a subterranean network which might boast an even greater number of chambers, though none of them as large or ornate as the meanest privy above. In these rooms the servants laboured, most of them human, a few canith working the heavier machinery like the iron mangles in the laundry or hauling half a cow carcass from the cold room to the kitchens.
The lowest level housed the ganar, the slaves who served the servants, carrying out the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Ganar were sent to replace tiles on the highest tower roof, to unblock the sewers, to tend the palace gas junction from where the multitude of crystal lamps and open fires drew their breath. And some few attended the royal children.
“It’s mostly because of the queen’s father. Back when he was king, he had ganar attend his daughters. And when a king does something, all the aristocracy do it too.” Lutna looked apologetic. “It’s because of your fur. The little ones like to hug you. They say you’re like little bears, only you don’t bite.” She bit her lip. “Sorry.” She looked as if she was perhaps regretting bringing Celcha here. As if her own memories of hugging her ganar nursemaids were turning sour even as she looked at Celcha’s narrowed eyes and at the scars beneath her fur catching the lamplight where they reached around her shoulders.
Reflex and a measure of her own kindness had Celcha opening her mouth to tell Lutna that it wasn’t her fault. But she clamped her lips closed against the words. A fault like this didn’t have neat boundaries. You couldn’t draw a line and say that those standing on this side were blameless and those on the other guilty. It was like the Dust. You might walk until you thought you’d left it far behind you, you might cross the badlands, climb the mountains, put it beyond your sight, build a new house and sleep easy. Only to wake and find that on neglected shelves the dust still gathered, and to know that however far you walked you would never be truly clean.
The ganar slept in small, unlit cells around a large square room where they socialised in the brief time between labours ceasing and sleep claiming them. Given that the ganar sleep cycle had been set by the rotation of another world, and that they were required to work at all hours, the central room always hosted some fraction of the population just in from their shifts. Lutna had timed the visit so that the pair she held in so much affection were sitting with three others at the table where a single lamp burned. All of them were slightly smaller than Celcha, their fur darker and a little longer.
“Princess!” A male with greying fur stood from his chair and opened his arms.
“F’nort!” Lutna threw herself into his embrace.
An elderly female, presumably H’run, stood with an exclamation that sounded like something in the language Lutna had learned from them.
Celcha waited in the doorway, the palace guard behind her, the woman’s plume brushing the ceiling of the corridor and already thick with gathered cobwebs.
“I’ve brought someone to see you.” Lutna broke from F’nort’s arms and looked towards Celcha.
With a measure of reluctance, Celcha stepped into the room, feeling like an animal on display.
H’run crossed the room towards her, bobbing her head in a curious way. Celcha could see that her blade claws had been trimmed rather than burned out, abraded to just a hard line across the backs of her hands, parallel to her fingers.
“Hello.” H’run bobbed her head again. “What clan are you, dearie?”
“I... I don’t know.” Celcha knew the names of a few clans, but they had never been important at the dig.
“It’s not important, I suppose.” H’run tutted. “You look Rayan to me.”
“Maybe I am.” Celcha attempted to sound agreeable, not wanting to offend the old woman.
H’run patted Celcha’s shoulder. “Rayans aren’t so bad. Too clever. Always getting themselves into trouble. But good-hearted.”
Celcha wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I’m pleased to hear it?”
H’run nodded. “Come. Sit.” She turned and headed back towards the table. Lutna was already sitting beside F’nort, showing him a book she’d pulled from her satchel. Celcha’s heart missed a beat just as it still did every time she looked up to see Hellet with a book in his lap. Cruelty’s reach was as long as that of blame. She wouldn’t ever forget how Hellet came to be broken.
She took one of the empty chairs and sat while Lutna regaled the ganar with tales of the library. She included Celcha in the stories and spent most of the time talking about the ganar chamber. Her audience nodded approvingly and asked questions—some even directed at Celcha, which she answered using as few words as politeness required.
Lutna seemed pleased with the whole business and got F’nort to speak some of the tongue that most of the palace ganar shared. The words meant nothing to Celcha, but she preferred the way it sounded in her ears to the harsh piping of humans or the slightly terrifying growls of the canith when speaking their main language.
At last, as it became obvious that the elderly ganar could keep away from their beds no longer, Celcha asked the question that Hellet had wanted her to put to them.
“Do you know anyone who works in the city gas room?”
Celcha wasn’t sure what kind of answer she was expecting, but the knowing grins around the table weren’t it.
“I didn’t know they knew about that in the library.” F’nort showed his teeth. “Never saw the other two down there.”
“I...” Celcha didn’t know how to reply. Of course the librarians knew there was a central supply for the gas that lit the city’s lamps, cooked their food, and warmed their homes.
H’run patted her shoulder again. “Don’t worry, dearie, everyone gets homesick even when they’ve never been there.”
“We go in the back,” F’nort said, yawning hugely. “Green door. Ask for H’seen, she’ll sort you out. Probably have to come back in a month, though. Always a queue.”
Lutna finally took the hint and stood up to go, releasing the ganar to their beds. Regular sleep was the only mercy Myles Carstar had granted the slaves at the dig, and that only because if you kept a ganar up too long past their bedtime you generally ended up with a dead ganar. The only reason that keeping them awake wasn’t one of the official cruelties was that it was too hard to judge the line between discomfort and death.
Lutna led the way back through the palace. By the time they reached the shade of the pillared entrance and found Jhar waiting, Celcha still hadn’t worked out a way to get the princess to take her to the gas room.
Hellet’s request had come just as she was leaving the library. She was to ask the question if she met any ganar. There hadn’t been time to quiz him about it, but Celcha’s brother wasn’t given to idle talk. Clearly it was important to him, so Celcha wanted to return with more than just a name. However, an industrial building where they piped flammable gas didn’t seem like the place for even a distant heir to the throne to tour, and even if it was, Celcha didn’t have a good reason for visiting or any idea why the other ganar had acted as they had.
“We should go to the gas room,” Lutna said as Jhar joined them.
“That doesn’t sound very suitable, Princess Lutna,” Jhar growled.
Lutna craned her neck to look up at the canith. “What did you just call me?”
“Princess Lutna.”
Lutna narrowed her eyes. “And who gets to say no to princesses, library guard?”
Jhar growled in his throat.
“That’s what I thought,” Lutna said. “Now take us to the gas room, because I don’t know where it is.”
Jhar’s growl descended to his chest. He turned and led off down the steps. Lutna sagged with relief and shot an astonished glance at Celcha, as if to say: Did that really happen? She fell in alongside Celcha and said in a slightly apologetic tone, “It just felt like you wanted to go there, and I feel so ashamed of my awful cousins...”
—
Celcha followed Jhar and Lutna through the streets. After all she’d seen since her walk up through the city on her way to the library many weeks earlier, she was able to take in more of it, appreciating more of the interactions carried out all around her. Even so, it still proved overwhelming and somewhat bewildering, and she was very glad to have a guide.
The gas room turned out to be on the far side of the city, downwind of the prevailing gusts that rattled down the mountain valley, but far enough from the walls that an enemy couldn’t easily attack the structure in the hope of creating an explosion. Jhar, appearing to have overcome any resentment at being told what to do by a princess, informed them that the gas wasn’t particularly explosive in any case, though a naked flame in a closed room would be a bad mistake were there a leak.
The building had been constructed on the lines of a small fort, boasting thick walls and defensive positions on the roof. Apart from the crenellations on high, and its vault-like front door, the place was as brutally utilitarian as the buildings at Arthran. A host of pipes, each thick enough for Celcha’s whole body to be needed to stopper it, emerged from one wall, brandished a valve wheel at the world, then plunged below ground.
A faint but tantalising smell haunted the air around the gas fort—as Celcha now thought of it. She saw Jhar wrinkle his nose at it. Lutna didn’t seem to notice it at all.
“Around the back, they said,” Lutna muttered. “A green door?”
Jhar led the way. The three of them got stared at by every passer-by, all dressed in working clothes and seemingly bound on their own errands. The looks were mostly of surprise, some tempered with suspicion. Oddly, Celcha drew hardly any attention.
The green door was a small square of verdigrised copper to the left of another trio of enormous pipes emerging from the rear of the building.
“Go on.” Lutna nodded at the door. “Who was it you had to ask for? H’sun? Make sure you tell me everything when you come back!”
“H’seen,” Celcha murmured. The scent of the gas was stronger here and tickled in her chest. She knocked on the metal plate. Three short knocks.
Nothing happened and continued to happen for long enough that Lutna began to say something, only to be cut off by the plate lurching forward half an inch then being hefted to the side. A black-furred ganar stuck its head out and stared aghast at Jhar.
“It’s all right!” Lutna stepped forward spreading her hands. “We’re with her. We’re not going to tell anyone.”
Celcha was too busy marvelling at the ganar’s fur. She’d never seen black fur before. She’d seen it dark with dirt, but this was something different, fascinating her eyes. Embarrassingly, she found she was panting, hauling in one deep lungful after another. The scent of the air seemed to be doubling the size of her chest. “H’seen,” she managed. “Ask for”—another breath—“H’seen.”
“No H’seen here.” The ganar started to wrestle the plate back into place.
“We’re not going to tell anyone...” Lutna said, adopting the same tone that had brought Jhar into line. “...unless you don’t take my friend Celcha where she wants to go. Otherwise, I’m going to tell everyone exactly what you’re doing. And if you don’t like that you can take it up with Library Guard Jhar Haccta here.” She raised and lowered her hand in the canith’s direction as if the nearly three yards of his height might have escaped the ganar’s notice.
Without waiting for an answer, Lutna bundled Celcha inside before retreating with a series of coughs. The doorway was so low that even Celcha had to duck. She straightened up to find the black-furred ganar blocking her path.
“Sorry about her...” Celcha dipped her shoulder in apology.
The ganar exposed his lower teeth in threat.
“I can go.” Celcha took a step back. “F’nort sent me. He thought it would be all right.” She drew a deep breath. “Why is the air so good here?”
The ganar shook his head as if wondering at her ignorance. “I’m Redmak. Follow me. Don’t touch anything.” With that he turned away and headed off into the growing darkness.
They passed through thirty yards of tunnel, turning left then right before emerging into a room lit only by tiny round windows in a high ceiling, each of the windows seemingly a tube cut up through yards of stone. “No lamps in the gas house,” Redmak grunted. “No flame. No sparks.”
The chamber housed several copper cylinders, like vast seedpods, all connected with pipes and punctuated with dials. Every pipe seemed to sport a handwheel so that its valve could be opened or closed. Another larger but similar chamber lay beyond the first one, filled with gloom and pipes in equal measure. Two ganar moved around checking dials; one of them paused to adjust a valve.
“I feel great,” Celcha muttered to nobody in particular. She felt wide awake, brimming with energy.
Redmak cracked a smile for the first time. As they walked, he began to point things out, parts of the gas system, each with its own function. He led her down a spiral stair fashioned entirely from wrought iron. The chamber below was lit only by what light filtered down from the already dim chamber above through glass-filled ports in the floor. Celcha waited at the foot of the stairs, breathing deeply, letting her eyes adjust. Her night vision had been trained in shades of grey over the course of thousands of days spent in the tunnels of the Arthran dig. It had, however, never been anything like as acute as it was now. Within a handful of heartbeats Celcha could see almost as clearly as if they were still outside. A score of ganar crowded the chamber around a single central steel hub, a great, dial-studded valve from which a single vast pipe led upwards through the ceiling.
Redmak explained that there were cylinders in which the gas was captured, compressed, compressed again, and held. Ganar worked great valves to bring one cylinder online when another became exhausted.
Although some of the ganar were inspecting the dials, and others operating lesser valves on the host of pipes snaking up the walls, it seemed that the bulk of them were simply socialising, talking in small groups. A distant bell sounded and a powerfully built ganar pushed a lever as tall as he was as they passed. Beneath their feet the faint hissing swelled to the roar of a thousand snakes.
“Cylinder change, on the hour, every third hour,” Redmak said. “At least in high season. That’s as fast as the cylinders recharge. The masters grumble and groan of course, and fight for the supply, but the ground gives us what the ground gives us, and if they keep breeding, their children will have to find another way to light up the night.” He tapped a large pipe as he passed. “This bounty won’t last forever.”
Redmak led Celcha through the throng and presented her to the first fat ganar Celcha had ever seen. “This one’s Celcha. Came with a human child in library blacks, and a canith guard in the livery of the athenaeum.”
“H’seen.” H’seen was nearly as tall as Hellet. All of the workers were—some of them even taller and wider. She glanced at Redmak. “This one doesn’t know what’s hit her. Look at her eyes.”
“It’s the air,” Celcha murmured. “The air’s different.”
“It’s closer to what we breathe at home, child.” H’seen put her arm around Celcha’s shoulders, pressing the curve of her belly against Celcha’s side, and steered her slowly around, letting her take in the scene. “The gas they burn in their houses comes up from the decay of older cities beneath our feet. They call it methalayne. It gathers in voids, and we suck it up, compress it, push it through into the present city so our masters can see where they’re going at night, cook their food, warm their rooms.
“There are always leaks, and humans don’t like methalayne in their lungs. It’s not a poison to them but it makes them cough and it takes the place of the air they need instead. They get weak, might even pass out. Canith are even worse with it. We ganar, however... Well, you’ve felt it yourself. We thrive. Because on Attamast methalayne’s in the air everywhere. We need it. Without it we’re half-asleep.
“So, rather than constantly fight to keep this place gas-free, they have us work here instead. And because they can’t come in without suits and breathing tubes, we have the place largely to ourselves. As long as the methalayne keeps flowing they leave us alone. Getting a job here is the highest reward. You might think you have it good in the library, or that the palace ganar live well on the scraps from the high table. But nobody here would swap. Once you’ve filled your lungs properly it’s not something you’re going to give up if you don’t have to.”
The huge ganar stopped steering Celcha and stepped back to study her more closely. “They’ve used you hard, Celcha. You’re nothing but muscle and scars. Not long in the library then. Why are you here?”
“To breathe.” Celcha drew in another lungful, wondering if she could bear to walk away from this place or if they’d have to carry her out and bolt the doors on her.
Redmak shook his head. “She didn’t know about the air.”
“My brother sent me,” Celcha said. “He wants to change the world.”