Sam, Dimitri, and Aleph kept their heads down while pretending to inspect a fruit display at a Panotii ethnic market on Kingsway. Thankfully, Kingsway was one of those streets that had the same name in Sam’s Vancouver as it did in Senak, so at least he had a notion of where he was.
Getting this far hadn’t been easy. It had been a constant game of running hide and seek with the KSDs, both singly and in groups. Sam’s shoulder ached where he’d been tagged him with a baseball bat during an ambush nearly an hour ago. The bat had been aimed at his head but he’d been able to roll with the strike and his shoulder had taken the worst of it.
Aleph led them in a roundabout route through the city, occasionally doubling back, occasionally prodding them into a run, but always on the move. Whenever he looked up there was a crow winging overhead or perched on a nearby roof.
Their destination was the Armoury, and if it had been as simple as that, they would have already arrived. No, the Armoury was smack in the middle of the Wandering Market and the thing about the Wandering Market was that it wandered. Even if you knew generally where it was on any given day, it still took some time to track down the entrance.
“Let’s go,” said Aleph in a low voice, putting down the pale spiky tuber she’d been handling and moving away from the market at a walk. She kept her head down looking at her useless smartphone, yet somehow managed not to jostle or bump into anyone. She moved through the crowd like a bead of mercury. Even with his head up, Sam was still shoved and knocked as he made his way through the press.
Floating in the air ahead of them, Sam could see the two giant bug-eyed goldfish, Abeam and Windward, marking the location of the Wandering Market in the near distance. They were getting close. Sam could hear the calls of the Market Barkers funnelling people toward the mouth of the Market like a Basking Shark devouring krill as it made its plodding way through the city.
They wouldn’t need the barkers to direct them today, Aleph had lined them up perfectly with the main gate. Farther down the street the crowd parted and he could just make out the black uniforms of the Duke’s Own keeping an eye on people going in and out of the main gates. It would be a straight shot down the street with no hiding places or stalls to duck into.
The Market stretched reality down the centre of the wide front gate, buildings, people, and anything else that got in the Market’s way, elongating like taffy and zooming off to either side like water at the prow of a ship.
Anyone caught in the wake of the Market would notice absolutely very little beyond a faint tingle as they were warped around the perimeter. Sam had tried it once, and had been so underwhelmed by the hour and a half-long experience that he hadn’t even bothered to buy the souvenir t-shirt at the rear gate, “I Got Warped by The Wandering Market, Senak.”
An underground industry, wholly invented, promoted, and perpetuated by the same t-shirt vendors, had been created around the myth that children conceived while being warped by the magic of the Market would be especially talented. Nobody really believed it, but the one thing it did do was provide an excuse for public exhibitionism. For many who visited the market, an excuse for illicit sex with a random stranger in a place far from home was all that was needed. Engaging in the activity was known as “getting twisted,” and in Senak it was the equivalent of joining the mile high club without having to worry about airsickness or nosey flight attendants.
It wasn’t uncommon to find various and sundry species from across the breadth of the Aether squishing and otherwise getting their freak-on in darkened corners between buildings as The Market overtook them. Hotels that looked to be in the direct path of The Market would find any available rooms snatched up as The Market approached, and knew from long experience to make sure they had extra mops and buckets on hand.
On top of directing people to the entrance, the Market Barker’s job was also to evict the less discreet couples, trios, or spontaneous orgies they came across. As a matter of custom, they didn’t look too closely down some of the better-concealed niches and alleys. As the Market departed any given part of the city it always left a scattering of breathless and moistened beings, furtively grinning and adjusting their clothing in its wake.
The t-shirt vendors trailed behind in the wake of the market and were available for those wishing to commemorate the event with novelty t-shirts in cuts and sizes guaranteed to fit any being from the many worlds of the Aether. Most of the Ts were bought in a haze of endorphins that quickly passed. While it was usually a fun and harmless activity, most people didn’t want to advertise the fact that they got a thrill from bonking in public. For this reason, many of the t-shirts ended up at local second hand and goodwill stores days to weeks later. The vendors knew this, and could be often be seen scouring the shops to pick up the same shirt, usually for a fraction of the price they sold it for. In this way the circle of life, and the circle of commerce, both, ground on.
“Get ready,” said Aleph, jerking Sam out of his thoughts, “We’re going to have to run.”
Sam swallowed and cast his eyes from side to side. He couldn’t see any of the alchemical drones, but he also didn’t have a flock of surrogate eyes flying overhead. He’d have to trust her word for it.
“Run,” she hissed, leaping ahead and scattering a trio of Tengu carrying bags of blown glass Christmas ornaments. Sam had been readying himself for Aleph’s call and the pent-up adrenalin in his system made his thighs feel like they were spring loaded as he took off.
If he was fast, Dimitri was faster, he ran ahead of both of them, his long legs propelling him down the street like a state-sponsored Eastern Block Greyhound with an ass full of rocket fuel.
Sam swivelled his head as he ran, certain that at any moment he’d be tackled to the ground by a dead-eyed drone and shot. The drones, and more importantly, Knox, wouldn’t give up now. The Wandering Market wasn’t exactly safe, but The Duke’s Own had a small army’s worth of armed police officers patrolling it with a reputation for coming down hard on anyone making trouble.
To Sam’s relieved puzzlement, the ambush and consequent messy death he’d been expecting never came to pass, and the three of them made it to the gate without incident. Four black-uniformed members of the Duke’s Own met them there. They were a strange mix of different beings, even for The Market. Two of their number were nominally human, and Sam passed over these to instead focus on the other two.
The first had long red feathers for hair, a pair of golden avian eyes, and wore an ornate copper mask that covered her nose and mouth. Beyond merely decorative, it appeared to be some kind of filtering device. The final member of the group was one of the wood and brass constructs that the Duke’s Own had been using since the early nineteen hundreds. Brass sigils in a state of constant movement across her spring steel and mahogany frame. Her face was made of molded leather, and her body had the rounded hips, and bust that, while modest, clearly identified her as female. She nodded to him as they arrived. Sam grinned and nodded back.
One of the final two humanoid members stepped forward to talk with Aleph. Sam didn’t know much about rank, but he wore three silver bars on his epaulets, his name tag read, “Dane.” He was a grizzled looking creature, some variant of human from a part of the Aether that Sam couldn’t immediately identify.
His eyes were a bit too far apart and he was too wide across the shoulders to easily fit in back home, probably still a member of Homo Sapiens though. He wore a trimmed white beard across his dark, creased face, and his long white mane was tied back in a tail.
“Aleph,” he greeted her, with a voice so deep that sounded like it originated from inside a bass cello. “It’s good to see you back,” he said enfolding her hand with one huge mitt. When he spoke Sam noticed his teeth were thicker, and his canines much larger than his own. Maybe he wasn’t quite as close to Homo Sapiens as Sam originally thought.
That was the problem with trying to figure out different species in the mix of The Market. You never knew what evolutionary lineage might have become dominant on any given world. All it took was for one sabretooth tiger to get peckish at the wrong moment and, wham! Your whole evolutionary branch got pruned. There was a good chance this person had more in common with Homo Neanderthalensis or Denisovans than he did Homo sapiens, and that wasn’t even taking into account the cross-breeding. If there was one thing Homo Sapiens was good at, it was getting it on with the neighbours, even when they weren't necessarily quite the same species.
No comments:
Post a Comment