Riding the Serpent's Back by Keith Brooke

her son.

3. Son of Donn
    Chi’s reputation continued to grow rapidly in the time Leeth spent with him in Edge City.
    When Leeth arrived, the boy had already made great progress towards restoring his skills to their former level but he still pushed himself relentlessly. “What if my Talents haven’t fully survived my rebirth?” he asked Leeth one time, trying to explain. “If I don’t push I’ll never find the limits.” Although he was no True Family snob, Chi clearly feared that the mixed blood of his new body might not replicate the subtle physical structures his Talents might depend upon. “I have to know ,” he insisted.
    If the boy was really unaware of the depth of his Talents then he was the only one. He could Charm inanimate objects into temporary animation, although his skills were not yet refined enough to accomplish the trick with the knife he had used to compromise Consul Melved in Catachris. He was able to speed the healing of wounds, too; able to reinforce the body’s fight against various of the lesser ailments that circulated amongst the people of the slum – he could battle against diarrhoea and sickness, he could cool a fever, he could ease the breathing of those asthmatics who suffered when the hot breezes brought stifling, smoggy air in from the Burn Plain.
    In the months that Leeth stayed to help Cotoche look after the boy, he watched with something approaching awe as these skills flourished and grew. There was something particularly eerie about watching a tiny boy concentrate for hours on end as he practised his skills, or meditated in a trance so deep he could have been a statue made of flesh – seeking out his inner focus, the seat of the Talent he could use to reach out into the tormented animus of the sick and make them well.
    The boy’s other interests continued to multiply, too. Soon, instead of running errands all over the Shelf himself, he employed a network of runners and messengers to do his work.
    Edge City had always been a chaotic place, and it continued to be so, but scattered here and there throughout the maze of streets and tracks, the huts and shacks and tumbledown dwellings, small knots of organisation were beginning to form. Neighbourhood police squads formed to protect the non-citizens from each other. “If you’re going to steal, don’t steal from each other,” Chi often said. “Steal from the rich flow of trade at the Junction and along the New Cut.” More and more of Chi’s deals seemed to result in payment with arms, and soon these police units strutted proudly with muskets and metal-bladed swords to complement the traditional obsidian-bladed clubs and the short spears they would throw from slings known as atlats. He had even won over the Raggies, with clever deals and promises to have them trained up by his adult militias – although his first attempt to win them over, violently assaulting a fifteen year-old gang leader with a bladed club, had served only to provoke more hostilities.
    “What’s he building up to?” Leeth asked of Cotoche, one day at the mud pools. He buried himself deep in the slippery warmth, glad that Chi had chosen not to join them today.
    “He’s a little boy,” she said, starting with a description she often used to excuse Chi’s behaviour. Then she went on: “But to use his influence in the way that he does makes him feel like a man again.”
    Leeth shook his head, watching as Cotoche reclined in the steaming ochre mud. “It’s the other way round,” he said. “Despite his body, Chi is still a man. Yet to control all these people, to form his own little pocket militias, makes him feel young again: playground manoeuvres.”
    After a short silence, Cotoche – identifying Leeth with the religion of his childhood, as she often did – said, “It’s the lesson of your gods for us all: the divided nature of our existence. Ixi, Keeper of the Moon, gives us a woman’s regular blood and guards us in childbirth, yet also she