The Night Market (14 page)

On top of an old building with Elian,
next to one of the clusters of scowling gargoyles. She is making him nervous by
standing out on a ledge, thirty stories above the deserted street. The wind is
so powerful that it feels as if it could lift her from her feet and send her
soaring into the muddy skies, a prospect she finds exhilarating.

Water turns to chalk in her throat.
It is impossible to swallow.

Waking up in her bed with a start,
the linen damp with sweat. She doesn’t need to look at the clock to know that it
is eight minutes past three, because she wakes up at the same time every night.
Her brother has told her this is common, all across the sleeping portion of the
globe. He believes it has something to do with the arcane machinery of the
Visitors.

“There is no profit to be had from
traffic with the dead.”

***

“Well, that’s different,” Jenny admitted from their vantage at the top of
the hill. “I almost forgot what grass looked like.”

Yael nodded her agreement, also captivated by the
scraggly clumps of crab grass that dotted the gentle slope between them and what
could only be Hastur.

The town began slowly; individual cinderblock houses
with paint faded by the relentless sun, a road of compacted gravel, trash, and
feral cats. The road widened as they went, from a single-track path to a road
wide enough for a car, assuming its suspension could handle the pitted and
tattered surface.

It seemed to Yael that it had been a very long time
since the last vehicle had made its way down that particular road.

The houses multiplied, tin and tarpaper roofs and
walls made of whatever could be salvaged or stolen; petrified wood from the
Waste, scrap metal, fragments of ceramic connected with a web of adhesive gel,
crumbling brick and mortar. Some of them had withered gardens, or tiny
irrigated plots of corn or a long, unfamiliar grass behind them. Yael did not
see any people, but behind sheets of recycled plastic and acrylic glass,
yellowed curtains flicked open briefly, and distant music and the scent of fried
food drifted by on the desiccated wind.

“Nervous bunch,” Jenny remarked, appearing pleased by
their reaction.

“You could say that.”

As the street widened, the buildings grew denser, and
the population made itself known. At first, all they saw were the homeless
wretches who huddled in the shadow of broken walls, or under jury-rigged tarps
attached to the blackened trees. The layers of filth and rags made it
impossible to determine age or gender. They begged silently with outstretched
palms, too starved or worn down by the heat to speak.

Yael was familiar with poverty, at least from the
point of view of an outside observer. And this city, or at least this part of
it, was unmistakably poor. The houses were of haphazard construction and sat
precariously on the sides of the surrounding hills, or stacked on top of each
other like cards. Only about half the buildings had electrical service, and the
air was thick with the smell of diesel fumes and the racket of dozens of
laboring generators. Despite the language barrier, Yael was able to spot the
gang members with their neck and hand tattoos, the drug dealers pacing
nervously from one side of the block to the other, flanked by guards and
hangers-on, and depressingly young prostitutes peeking out from the alleys.

If the outskirts of the town had been deserted, then
the center of town was teeming with life, people spilling out from clay and
stucco buildings and into the dusty cobbled square like a disturbed ant colony.
On the other side of the square, Yael could see neon lights, asphalted roads, and
lowered and elaborately chromed cars creeping through crowded boulevards.

It wasn’t civilization, exactly. It was more like what
came before that, or immediately after.

There was a temple at the center of the civic
buildings to the south of the square, towering above the block that it
dominated. Built of enormous blocks of crudely hewn black stone with green
inclusions, the great central tower was large enough to shade the majority of
the square, and it absolutely crawled with stone monstrosities – octopus-faced
giants, terrible fungi, and ghastly unions between men and fish, or men and
things less identifiable. The huge and blasphemous edifice sat on the heart of
the city like a weight on its soul, dragging everything around it down to
someplace far worse, a place where the shadows had teeth.

“Everything is permitted,” Yael said, as much to
herself as Jenny. “Nothing is real.”

“Looks real enough to me,” Jenny said, sliding down
the dusty slope. “Just shitty. C’mon. I want a bath and a drink. And I want to
sleep in a bed tonight. I sound like a goddamn cowboy movie, don’t I?”

Yael stumbled along after her, unable to keep up with
Jenny in the dizzying crowds that occupied the plaza; drinking and talking
loudly in their unfamiliar but appealing language, hurrying from the monstrous
temple with glazed brown eyes, or simply watching the sea of humanity with an
indifference that bordered on obscene. Yael turned and spun in the foot
traffic, feeling a bit like a child who has been separated from her mother.
Even though Jenny was the only blonde in the crowd, she was too short to be
seen over the heads of the people who surrounded, watching her with an avid and
not entirely benign curiosity.

Yael was about to cry out when someone seized her
wrist and tugged her sideways, almost sending her tumbling to the pavement. She
hardly had time to untangle her legs as Jenny dragged her through the crowd,
which parted in a mysteriously universal display of fear or good sense.

“This has got to be better than a campfire and
nothing,” Jenny enthused, chewing the last of her gum with an intensity that
frightened Yael. “I cannot fu – I cannot wait. See? Did you see what I did
there?”

“I heard it. You are practically civilized.”

Jenny glanced back at her with an expression that Yael
could not fathom.

“And you aren’t half the brat that I thought.”

The center of the plaza was occupied by a ceremonial
structure, a series of arches with a square top, an elevated platform in the center
holding a vaguely disquieting copper sculpture. Soldiers in fatigues and ski
masks had made barriers of sandbags and mounted machine guns at various points around
the square to create a series of ad hoc checkpoints, but they waved Jenny and
Yael through with only appreciative glances. Yael kept her head down and her
hair in her face out of reflex, because Jenny had made her take her gas mask
off to avoid standing out even more than they already did. Probably a good
move, but it made her feel exposed, even if the air here wasn’t contaminated
with anything worse than carbon monoxide and volatized lead.

The road leading out from the other side of the plaza,
out from the shadow of the awful temple, was more bustling and cosmopolitan. If
it hadn’t been for the armored vehicles and the riot guns of the masked
soldiers at their fortified checkpoints, it would have been interchangeable
with any commercial boulevard. The crowd here was a mixture of locals in their
woolen pullovers; travelers from a dozen different countries, leading camels or
adjusting jeweled turbans; and every sort of sidewalk vendor, entertainer, and
con artist imaginable. There were people selling trinkets and drugs in a dozen
different languages. The buildings were plastered with hand-painted signs
advertising all manner of food, shopping, and sundry other services. These
signs were reinforced by barkers who attempted to corral pedestrians to
whatever place of business they were hawking. The air was thick with dust and
the smells of frying vegetables.

“How come I can read this shit?”

Jenny pointed at a sign advertising the services of a
nearby bakery.

“Language.”

“That’s what I’m
asking
.”

“No, I was referring – oh, never mind. It’s the
language of Babel, Miss Frost. Everyone can read it. That was the whole
problem.”

“Am I supposed to know what you are talking about?”

“It is from a rather famous book, but don’t worry
about it. It is the only language that can be read in dreams. I am not certain
why.”

“Oh, whatever. I, for one, need a damn bath. I swear
to God my hair is starting to crawl...”

Jenny scratched furiously at her head with both hands
and Yael sympathized. She had been tormented by fleas herself for the last
several days, the only living thing she had regularly encountered in the Waste,
and the insides of her arms and thighs were covered in pin-prick welts. Jenny
scanned the signs around them, ignoring the foot traffic that seemed to part
instinctively to allow her passage, until she found what she was looking for.

“There,” she said, pointing with one chewed
fingernail. “Hotel D’Yuggoth. The street looks nice enough. What do you think?”

“I think we should go to the train station first, then
worry about...”

“Okay, I don’t care what you think. I’m not going to
get on any train stinking like this. You think we can get them to wash our
clothes?”

Yael had to hurry after Jenny as she charged down the
side street, sending pedestrians scrambling to avoid her. Yael envied their
good sense. The side street was narrower, and the buildings that lined it more
rundown, but still a huge step up from anything they had seen in the Waste.
There were fewer businesses away from the main boulevard, and more of what
looked to be large communal residences, with kitchens and bathrooms in shared
common areas beneath the apartments.

“I don’t think we will be able to get them to do
anything, because we don’t have any money.”

Jenny came to a sudden halt, causing a man bent under
a load of canvas sacks of rice to execute a rather acrobatic maneuver to avoid
a collision.

“How can you not have money, Princess?” Jenny stared
in obvious disbelief. “You said you were rich, right?”

“My parents are well off, it’s true,” Yael said,
unpleasantly conscious of the sudden attention from the crowd around them. “And
I did bring money. But I don’t think they will take currency from Roanoke
here.”

Yael felt a little bit better, since Jenny had made
the same oversight she had.

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Shouldn’t we go to the train station, Miss Frost? We
still have to negotiate passage, somehow...”

“Tomorrow. Bath, then bed,” Jenny grunted, shaking her
head and continuing down the side street, which curved as it neared the edge of
the dry lakebed the city was built upon. The nearby hillsides were lush, by
Waste standards, and looked to have been irrigated for the purpose of growing
the spindly corn stalks that covered them.

“But, how will we...”

“I’ll figure it out,” Jenny said curtly. “Won’t be a
problem.”

“You won’t kill anyone, will you?”

“I promised, didn’t I?”

“And you won’t... hurt them either, right?”

Jenny laughed.

“No promises there.”

“Miss Frost! You can’t...”

Jenny turned sharply again, causing another series of near
calamities in the traffic around them.

“I can, actually. Now, be a sweetheart and try to stay
quiet for five damn minutes so I can think, alright?”

Yael decided the diplomatic thing to do was to reserve
her concerns for the future, and just watch the situation play out. After all,
she reasoned, there was nothing stopping her from going to the train station in
a few hours, after Jenny realized that they had nothing to offer in exchange
for a hotel room.

***

“This is a nice room, huh?”

“I have to admit it is rather nice. The decorations seem
a bit more appropriate for a brothel, but a tasteful one, I think.”

“
And
they have this bathhouse. With hot water.
You realize how many times I have been forced to bathe in a glorified puddle?”

Yael kept her eyes averted while she soaped her arms,
while Jenny splashed around like a child on the other side of the concrete
pool. The bathhouse was built over a natural spring, and the steam rising off
the water smelled faintly of sulfur.