Tamaruq Read Free Page A

with a stream of other passengers.
    Inside is a heaving marketplace; a tower full of winding corridors opening abruptly into dimly lit hallways, where walls and ceilings have been knocked through, and partitions lean at dubious angles. She is swept into the flow of prospectors. Vendors grin up at her from the tightly jammed, competing stalls. Their grins seem identical, mass-produced – the grins of toothed fish. At every pace merchandise is dangled under her nose. Salt boxes and other amulets she does not recognize, pieces of mirror, jars of undefined substances, recalibrated scarabs and tobacco pouches with barely concealed slips of milaine inserted inside. She jerks back as something wet and wriggling is thrust in front of her face. It’s an octopus, still alive, on a platter. To her right, from the same stall, she sees a bucket full of creatures clambering over one another, their claws gaining the lip of the bucket but never quite managing to escape. The reek is abominable, the smell of rotting seafood and bodies in too-close proximity, a whiff of manta fumes drifting through, everything overlaid with a mask of cheap incense which fills the halls with bluish, hazy smoke.
    A woman in white Teller garb and cheap plastic clogs totters down an aisle, grabbing at the clothes of the market-goers and imparting nuggets of wisdom into their ears. Adelaide swerves away as the Teller approaches, but she is not quick enough: the Teller has caught her eye and veers purposefully, inevitably, towards her. She will make herself more visible if she tries to evade the woman. The Teller grabs her shoulder and brings her mouth close to Adelaide’s ear. She can smell the alcohol on the Teller’s breath.
    ‘Osiris is a lost city,’ mutters the Teller. Adelaide jolts back as if struck, but the Teller clings on, nails digging into her shoulder.
    ‘She has lost the world and the world has lost her.’
    In close proximity, she can see the hems of the Teller’s robe are stained with dirt. The skin of her face is peppered with spots and shiny with grease. Everything about the woman is repulsive to her, and yet she cannot move, pinned as much by the rasping voice as by the need to remain invisible.
    ‘Not dead,’ says the Teller. ‘Not dead yet.’ She laughs drunkenly. With a gesture that is almost tender, she strokes a finger down Adelaide’s cheek. ‘I can spy a heretic. I can smell them! When did you last perform the salt?’ The Teller hiccups, and covers her mouth with a giggle. Her fingers tighten. ‘Not lately, not lately. They’re not dead yet, the ghosts. They’ll deny it, but it’s true, you know.’
    The Teller darts quick, paranoid glances around them. She lowers her voice.
    ‘Something is coming. The ghosts have roused it.’
    Adelaide stares. She wants to ask, what? What is coming? But the words won’t come and the Teller now bears a guilty expression, as though she has already said too much. She reels away, reaching out to clutch at her next victim, repeating her mantra.
    ‘Not dead, no, not dead yet. The ghosts are not dead yet.’
    The white-garbed figure recedes into the crowd. For a moment Adelaide remains where she is, very still, until the motion of the crowd pushes her too deeper inside.
    The sheer volume of people makes the tower unbearably hot, causing her glasses to steam up continually. This is good, she tells herself. People are good, the more the better. In the crowd you can disappear. Everyone here is on the hunt. Their eyes are alert and animated, exaggeratedly so; they seem to her like people on the o’vis, in those old Neon reels she used to watch, alone in her City apartment, dulled by voqua, as though life was difficult, problematic, then. Voqua. She hasn’t drunk alcohol since she crossed the border. Not since her father’s bodyguard – no.
Don’t think about that
. The thought of alcohol glitters. Perhaps it would make her feel something. Perhaps it would give her a purpose, even if the