Babylon Steel Read Online Free PDF Page A

Even the caravan guards, adventurous as they seemed to me, never speculated about going beyond the portal. Our goods got taken on by others – strange, mad people, travellers.
    It wasn’t until later I realised just how provincial, how closed off Tiresana was. It’s a small plane, the habitable part barely larger than some countries. It was bigger, once, or so the rumour goes.
    But we didn’t think, or look, beyond it. We were Tiresans. Tiresans didn’t look outwards. And Tiresans didn’t leave.
    As well as Kyrl, there were two other guards. Radan was fiftyish, stocky and quiet. Had a wife he didn’t get on so well with, but still cared for; him travelling suited them both. Then there was Sesh. He was in his twenties, rangy and restless. A real storyteller; he could have made a living in the marketplace if he fancied. I fell for him, of course, but he wasn’t having any of it. He treated me like a younger sister – teased me half to death and threatened to bloody the nose of any man who looked at me in a way he didn’t like.
    Kyrl was a little over fond of those dice. Ten days after she got her wages they were gone, though sometimes she won, then she’d buy everyone treats. It wasn’t the money she wanted, it was the game. Had a tongue sharper than her blade when the mood took her, but she always watched your back. Funny, too, in an acid sort of way. “If you need a six, you’ll probably get a three. Life’s mostly threes, but you got to play, or what’s the point?” She was always going to have her tarot read, but if she didn’t like what she heard – and she often didn’t – she’d ignore it.
    They were my first real family.
    Cold early morning, running through a rocky pass, raiders skittering out of the rocks like crabs. The guards up and cursing, a raider trying to crawl onto the wagon. I hit him with the kettle, hard as I could. Smashed his nose; I was startled at the blood, so much. But there was a satisfaction in it. Not in the blood, but because I’d helped. He toppled off the wagon and it gave the others time to deal with him.
    Radan slapping me on the back and saying that if I was that good with a kettle maybe I should try a sword.
    And, again, I said, “Yes, please.”
    Radan tried to take it back at first; he was afraid I’d get hurt. But once he saw I wasn’t going to give up, he made it his business to teach me properly. I got used to being hauled out of the wagon in the cool of the day, given rags to wrap around my hands and worked until I could hardly stand. He was patient, Radan, but he wasn’t beyond slapping me with the flat of his blade if I did something stupid. The first time he did it I was shocked, because I thought he was my friend; I stared at him with tears starting in my eyes.
    “You know why I did that, Ebi?” he said.
    I shook my head.
    “I did it because you make that mistake in a real fight and you’re likely to die. I’d rather have you bruised and alive. Yes?”
    I got it.
    I wondered, later, if I meant something to him – not as a lover, but as a child. He didn’t talk about his family much, but the little I heard, he’d only the one son, who he saw even less than he saw his wife. But at the time, I just took whatever training he was willing to give me, feeling ready to leap mountains whenever he said I’d done well.
    Being on the road, we were seldom at a temple in time for the major ceremonies. But Kyrl always muttered a prayer to Hap-Canae before she shook the dice; the sun-god had jurisdiction over gold, and profit. Sesh had a fondness for Babaska, inevitably, since he spent a lot of time visiting whores, and Radan would stop now and then at one of Meisheté’s shrines, to leave a gift, and ask that she watch over his family.
    I laid some of my few coins on Shakanti’s altar. Though it was Kyrl who’d got me away from the master, I thought I had better lay tribute, in case the goddess had had a hand in it too.
    As we travelled I became a little, a