Free Babylon Steel by Gaie Sebold Page B

walked into a mist somewhere and turned up here. There’s Nightwind, not far from where we were sitting. Through Nightwind come refugees from horrors: lost souls, sick gods whose powers have gone, lone wanderers from dying planes. The haunting and the haunted.
    And through Carnival we can get anything. Any time. With the other unfixed portals there’s apparently some sort of pattern about when they open and what plane they link to (not to me, but then I don’t study the Arcane; I just live with it). But not Carnival. No wizard, alchemist, or Doctor of Obscure Magicks has ever worked out why it decides to open, or when, or for how long, or what plane it might be connected to when it does, but whatever comes through is pretty certain to be, well, colourful.
    Sometimes literally. We had streams of tiny, rainbow-coloured birds no bigger than my thumb come through once; thousands of them, for about two hours. They flew all over the city. Oddest thing, they were completely silent. Not a twitter or cheep. Most of them died within hours, littering the streets with sad limp little heaps of bright feathers. I’ve heard rumours that a few survive in the houses of the very rich. I wonder about them, sometimes, and what it was like where they came from, and why they never sang.
    “What’d we get this time?” I asked.
    “A bunch of six-foot, four-armed... things. Look like insects, unless it’s some kind of fancy armour, and carrying something we thought was weaponry but could be cutlery for all I know. Anyway it got confiscated, which they didn’t like. Eighteen ornery green pack-animals with blue teeth, which they don’t mind using” – he rolled up his sleeve to show me the bruise – “and a gold teapot. That came through on its own, half an hour after everything else.” He grinned. “’Course, we had a rookie, went straight for it. Should have seen him jump when the whole room yelled ‘ Don’t rub that! ’”
    I laughed, although it wasn’t funny last time someone released a genie here. They’re not exactly gods, but some of them have a fair amount of oomph, more than most beings of power do when they get here. Scalentine has some kind of damping effect on magic; it’s why Laney can only do minor spells. I’ve always wondered, with genies, if it’s something to do with coming through in a container; being sealed up keeps it preserved, like jam.
    Jam doesn’t usually come leaping out of the jar threatening to rend all and sundry to splinters, though. Still, if I’d been stuck in a pot for a couple of centuries I reckon I’d be a bit peeved, too. They ended up calling me in to help calm him down, which was... interesting. Fun, too, but he took a lot of calming. I had to take the next two days off.
    “So,” the Chief said, “we’ve got a couple wizards checking it over.”
    “Busy night.”
    “That wasn’t even all of it.”
    “Seriously? What else?”
    “Got a call to a Barraklé pie-shop. Newcomers, you know? Only just bought the place. Some idiot painted slogans, broke their windows and tried to set a fire spell. Don’t know who he bought it off, but we caught him because he was sitting on the pavement staring at the place where his fingers used to be.”
    “How terribly sad.”
    “Isn’t it? I mean, there he was, innocently trying to set fire to a shop that still had people in it, and he loses his fingers. Felt for him no end.”
    “Human?”
    “Yep.”
    “Sometimes I’m ashamed to be the same race.”
    The Chief shrugged. “Why should you be? Idiots come in all species. I think someone from every race in Scalentine’s been hauled into the Barracks since I joined.”
    “You must be wiped. Shouldn’t you be off duty?”
    “Probably.”
    “I hear there was a bit of a ruckus here too, a day or so back,” I said.
    “Ah, there was a bit of a barney in the crowd, plus we had some high panjandrums, demanding attention. This lot claim to be demigods. Whoops! Watch the tea,