Free Babylon Steel by Gaie Sebold

had their own separate temples within it, lined up along the walls. One so white it hurt and all agleam inside with silver, one blood-red, one bright with gold, a gold sunburst mounted above the roof. I had never seen anything so astonishing, and only remembered to close my mouth when I breathed dust and started to cough.
    “That,” Hap-Canae said, pointing, “is the temple of Babaska.”
    It was of rich purplish stone, polished to a gleam. Inside I could see a statue, in white, ten feet high. Babaska. Hand on sword, her skirt kilted up and her hair bound back for fighting, smiling. There must have been a ceremony or a festival; the steps and altar were all draped in scarlet flowers, wilting now. I wondered what the festival had been and realised, nervously, how little I still knew about the ceremonies of the goddess I was supposed to serve.
    The place was all a-bustle, priests of all sexes, acolytes and lay servants scurrying across its expanse like so many white-clad ants and disappearing into the cool shadows. Guards, very fine with their shields and spears polished bright, stood like statues.
    “Come now,” Hap-Canae said, and led me on down the corridors, with their silent painted processions of offering-bearers and sacrifices.
    We went down more steps into the great mass of buildings behind the main temples, opposite the front gates. In and further in, to what was known as the Inner Temple, the oldest part, from which the rest had grown out over the centuries. It lay within the greater temple like a hidden drawer in a jewellery box, a place to keep secrets.
    “Hap-Canae,” someone said. “So, finally, you’ve made your choice?”
    A woman with bone-white skin and silver hair that swept around her like a cloak was standing in the doorway ahead of us. She wore black gauze, through which her body showed like the moon through clouds; she was as tall as the Avatar Hap-Canae, and had the same devastating glow; and she frightened the life out of me.
    That was the first time I saw the Avatar Shakanti. She looked at me as though wondering if I were ever likely to become worth her notice, then shrugged, and turned away into the room.
    It was a cool white room with a blue tiled floor. There, seated on the benches or lounging on cushions on the floor, I saw the other girls. “These are your rivals,” the Avatar Hap-Canae said.
    “Rivals?”
    “Why, yes.” He laughed, that rich gold laugh, his hand resting on my shoulder. The Avatar Shakanti glared at him. “You would like to be a High Priestess of Babaska in a temple like this, would you not, rather than some miserable province, where the temple is of dried mud?”
    I could hear the laughter still bubbling under his voice, but I didn’t understand it, not then.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    S CALENTINE HAS ALWAYS been a city of mixtures. It’s a planar conjunction, for the All’s sake . We link to seven planes permanently, and new portals pop open every now and then, more of them during Twomoon. Some of them only spit out a handful of wanderers before they close again. In some unfortunate cases, all we get is, well, bits; some portals close fast.
    Scalentine is a city surrounded by a few miles of farmland and forest, but after that, there’s... nothing. A wall of air. Sometimes you see things in it, patterns, swirling, sometimes... other things. Watching it for too long can be addictive, and doesn’t tend to be healthy.
    We’re a small plane; a sort of bubble caught between portals. Some say the whole plane is no natural thing, but something built. But who built it, or for what purpose, well, there are as many theories as there are students of the Arcane, not to mention people who’ve had a few too many drinks.
    And there are those who think Scalentine was made for them, and no-one else should be allowed in.
    But we get people from everywhere . Planes, and worlds within planes, and races within worlds, and tribes within races. We have Fey and humans, fauns and