Babylon Steel Read Online Free PDF

very little, less ignorant, and discovered I had, for some things, a good memory. I heard a storyteller in one of the towns, telling some gaudy old tale of tricksy genies, of burning gems and green-haired crones and princesses locked in towers. (We had no princesses anymore – the last of the old royal line had died out years ago, perhaps of ruined pride, as the temples took control.)
    The next day, Sesh was muttering to himself, trying to remember the story, to impress some girl, I’ve no doubt – I corrected him, and found I could remember it almost word for word.
    It was the rhythm and the weft of the speech that did it. Conversations I could keep in my head only a little better than most; but anything with rhyme or rhythm, given it was short, I could recall pretty well after one hearing. Not that it aided me much with music; I sang like a frog.
    One night we met up at an oasis with another caravan, and pooled food and stories. I ended up sitting at a fire with some men who teased and flattered and kept topping up my goblet with drink, and it was only because Kyrl had lost early that she wandered over and spotted them manoeuvring me away from the firelight, and me, drunk as all-get-out, innocently going with them.
    She got me away, and next day explained, while I groaned and held my head, why it was a bad idea for a fifteen-year-old girl to get drunk with strangers. I was ready for experience, but no-one needs that sort of introduction.
    The next trip out I was able to return the favour, when someone took badly to losing to Kyrl and decided to wait in an alley with a knife. I was the sober one, this time. I didn’t kill him, but I put him off.
    I learned how to tell a slimy merchant from an honest one, at least some of the time, how to replace a broken wheel and how to doctor a sandmule. They’re mostly tough as boiled leather, but those great folding ears that they wrap around their heads during sandstorms are prone to mites and rips, and they’ll eat anything. Sometimes to their regret, not to mention that of the poor sod who has to try and get a potion down the bloody animal to cleanse its stomach.
    We saw some sights. The whistling desert where the wind sings in the dunes like a lost soul, melancholy but not frightening; at night, lying in the wagon and listening, you could almost swear you heard words in the sound. The Ghata Mai, a huddle of pillars of pinkish sandstone. Kyrl told me they were said to be the ghosts of some desert tribesmen who’d raped one of Shakanti’s priestesses and been turned to stone by Shakanti in vengeance.
    Once we were waiting for a ferry when we saw a boat attacked by two messehwhy, the great river-dwelling lizards that are one of Tiresana’s less appealing features. One of the two men aboard, wearing nothing but short linen trousers, got pitched into the river; we thought he was done, but he came up riding one beast’s neck, his arms clamped around its jaw. The other, sweating in his armour, was still trying to turn the boat, and fell, and the other beast bit right through him, armour and all. I wondered, after, what it made of such a thing; like trying to eat a thick-skinned fruit, I suppose.
    I spoke with the survivor – he’d been hauled off the beast and onto the ferry, which was too big even for them to bite. He was fairly drunk by then, half celebrating that he’d survived, and half mourning for his friend, but he told me how to jab at a messeh’s eyes, and how their jaws, although they could crush stone when closing, were weak the other way – if you could hold them shut, they couldn’t have you. “Mind you,” he said, grinning, “once you’ve grabbed its jaw, come there’s no help to hand, you have to work out what to do after that, unless you’re going to ride the thing until you both die of old age. And they live a long time.” Then he remembered his friend, and got melancholy again.
    As we travelled, I realised that not all the stories about the old days