Riding the Serpent's Back Read Online Free Page B

able to find someone willing to sell water or food without official clearance. “Soon we’ll be needing a card even to breathe,” said Bean, to general agreement.
    As they trailed despondently out of the town, Leeth asked Chi if it was really as bad as everyone made out: couldn’t one or two register and trade on behalf of the others? He was sure the authorities would have neither the resources nor the desire to send out arrest squads for every criminal wandering the Serpent’s Back.
    Chi turned to him, wearily, all his earlier anger dissipated. “That depends on who you are,” he said, and turned away.
    ~
    They made good time in the few hours that remained of daylight. Nobody liked the idea of lingering too close to a Church town.
    “Why can’t you return to the north?” asked Leeth, as he sat with Chi that evening. “You’d have all of the Rift to travel through. I’m sure you could find somewhere quiet to settle.” He didn’t know why Chi had suddenly taken to his company. He suspected that it was not so much his novelty as what he represented: the land Chi had left behind, the world he had rejected.
    “Why should I want to?” asked Chi, defiant with drink again. “What does it hold for me that I don’t have for free out here?”
    Cotoche and most of the others were splashing about in a hot pool nearby, but Chi was too drunk to join them and Leeth was still too reticent, still the nervous outsider.
    “Is your crime so bad?” Leeth had come to see as sheer paranoia Chi’s fear that the authorities would pursue him for a crime committed so long ago – so much had changed since that time. And he must be suffering from a persecution complex if he thought anyone would know – or perhaps even care – what dark arts he had practised out here in the wilderness.
    “Think about what I did,” said Chi, struggling to contain his anger. “Lan was fifteen, and as rebellious as fifteen year-olds can be. I was perversely proud of his rebellion, even if I could not understand the form it took: he declared for the True Church of the Embodiment, and quickly became a votary. He spent all the time he could trying to convert his family to his archaic beliefs. I think he saw me as a challenge: I was a politician and atheist, yet I was of True Family descent with a limited Talent for healing, so I should, theoretically, sympathise with his creed.
    “One day while I was away at Senate he made his grand move. He burnt all my books – some of them handwritten copies of texts dating back to the beginning of our Era. He daubed religious symbols throughout our house, nailed wooden figurines of the gods across every door and window and as I returned he started to chant arcane gobbledygook right in my face.”
    “He thought you were possessed.”
    Chi nodded. “He thought if he could drive out the demons I would fall into his arms and thank him for saving my damnable soul.” Chi began to cry now, as he spoke. “He stood there with his arms spread wide to welcome me, a sick grin plastered across his face. I hit him so hard the blood formed clots in his brain and he was rendered comatose.”
    Chi swallowed before continuing. “I used what Talent I had mastered at that time to keep the spark of life going in him: every time his brain shut down – seven times! – I managed to haul him back from the edge. I spent the ensuing months seeking out those healers who worked outside the law, and as they helped me sustain Lan they also helped me refine my Talent until it had become greater than any of theirs. My wife, by then, was unable to bear more children, so I paid one of our servants to bear a child on our behalf and I used my gift to move Lan’s life force into the unshaped brain of the baby. When he was born, we passed Lan off as our own but he always knew the truth. I rebuilt him from scratch and he has hated me for it ever since, as if that hatred was somehow ingrained by the very act of his rebirth.”
    Leeth had never