Read Babylon Steel for Free Online

guttering lantern some shopkeeper had hung out. “She was at the Hall of Mirrors, with her family. Ask around, will you?”
    Glinchen peered at the picture. “Sounds like she in trouble, poor little honeychick. Hokay, I ask.”
    “You heard about the girl in Ropemaker’s Row?”
    “Yes, I hear. Bastards.”
    “You be careful, all right?”
    Glinchen sniffed. “Hah. Don’t worry about Glinchen, sweetie.” Ze waved a hand at the rolls of flesh under the gowns and shawls. “Anyone try that with Glinchen, I just squaaaash him.” Ze laughed again and undulated off down the alley, waving. “You be good, Babylon.”
    I shook my head and made for the Break of Dawn.
    It crouched in its alley like a sick toad, dingy yellow light just about managing to crawl through the windows. I didn’t go in through the front; there’s a dartboard on the back of the door. I ducked in through the back.
    Carefully.
    The place was fairly quiet: a few figures murmuring in corners, a card game or two. I looked around, and spotted a comatose figure in a ragged brown robe. Mokraine. Good, I needed to talk to him. His familiar, unfortunately, was with him; it never left.
    Imagine a cold fog mixed with the soil of an unmourned grave, pressed into the shape of a large dog crossed with a three-legged toad. It had three blood-coloured eyes in a triangle above the place where its mouth would be, if it had one. I feel about that familiar almost the way I feel about beetles.
    I could sense eyes on me, from under hoods, from people who were apparently concentrating on their cards, from the corners where it didn’t look as though anyone was sitting. Bodesh, the landlord, looked up at me, nodded, and had a glass of Devantish golden on the bar by the time I got there.
    Golden’s my favourite spirit. The cheap stuff strips skin off your throat, but Devantish isn’t cheap. Or common. I don’t come in here that often, but I reckon if it’d been a century since I last walked into the Break, Bodesh’d remember what I drank.
    “Thanks. And another, please.”
    He nodded. Whatever Bodesh is, he’s the only one of it I’ve ever met. He’s thin and bald, with skin like glossy red leather. He has eyes like dark mirrors, and always looks sick, but that may just be his face. He probably wouldn’t tell me anything; he doesn’t talk about what he hears. If he did, he’d be dead in an hour. He’s not one of my customers either; where he gets his jollies, I have no idea. Rumour has it he sleeps with his gold, like a dragon.
    “Heard there were some ructions in the Hall of Mirrors today,” I said.
    Bodesh shrugged. “Too rich for my blood.”
    “Girl disappeared, too.” I showed him the portrait.
    “Happens.”
    “Yeah.”
    I took the drinks and made for Mokraine’s corner table. Actually, they’re pretty much all corner tables. It’s that kind of place.
    I sat there for a while, waiting for him to come to. Someone nearby was having their tarot read. Both reader and supplicant were hooded, but I could see that the reader had long, very pale fingers, with no fingernails.
    Tarot’s one of those things that seems to crop up everywhere, like chess. Sometimes the minor arcana are different, sometimes even one or two of the major ones, but, somewhere, on every plane I’ve ever visited, there are cards, and readers, and people asking questions.
    A long nailless finger, or possibly tentacle, emerged from a sleeve and tapped one of the cards. “The High King, reversed.” The finger withdrew.
    The other figure hissed something.
    “The failure of mortal endeavour,” the reader replied. “Overweening pride. A reach beyond one’s grasp. Upright, the High King indicates triumph, a coming into one’s own. But reversed...”
    The other figure reached out, with a gloved hand, and with a snap of its wrist, turned the card the other way up. The reader gave a low, whispering laugh. “It is not so simple.”
    The other figure hissed again, threw some coins on