[Closed] First and Fierce Affirming Sight

[Tom Cooke]

Ase’tseye Dock • Three Flowers

Evening on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

H
is fingertip glides over the inked ridges of the canyons. It follows paths across the flat, pale expanse – Shifting Desert, curling script spills across it – some thick and bold, some dotted, as if marked only by tenuous and fleeting footsteps. Morning peeks through the shutters, crisp and sharp; it spills through the slats and whispers across the page, picking out the bumpy soft texture of the paper.

It’s brighter than he’s bargained for. He squints; it catches on the rim of his glasses, flares gold. His tired eyes prickle. He takes them off, rubbing his eyes until colors and shapes flare in the dark of his eyelids. When he opens them again, he’s no more ready for the light, which swallows the low-burning oil lamp with its cheer and drives out all the shadows the night has thickened.

Nights aboard the Violet Herring are full of mysterious creaks, soft voices, thumps, the ever-present hum of the engines and the sway of movement. There’s no chance of forgetting where you are, up here; even those who love it know it, feel the altitude and the grumbling, snoring beast in their bones.

His spine still prickles with fear – he’s had them check and double-check security; he’s been to the engine rooms himself, and the engineers have humored the fussy incumbent – but it’s a fear he knows he needs. This is why he’s come early, on this small vessel full of politicians and their families. He will have the hotel room checked, too, when he has time, and again when – if – he returns from the desert, and he’ll never be without a riff.

Still, you can set it aside awhile. He has spent these nights in the company not of poetry or grimoires, but of a mant old Mugrobi atlas.

There’s feet thumping down the hall outside now; he pays them no mind, though he knows what they portend. Instead, he settles his glasses back on his nose and peers down through them again.

He’s sat with leaves unfolded on the little table, searching. He’s crackled them carefully shut, run his hands along the bindings, made sure there are no folds and wrinkles. He’s gone from index to index before he’s found it, and now that he has, he can only sit and look at it, a spilling swirl of black lines on the page, colorless as a tomb.

If he shuts his eyes, he can still feel the distant breath of vivid color, a swirl of lanterns upwards.

Serkaih, the words whisper and curl, and underneath them, a small dot: Dkanat, in block print. The labels for various parts of Serkaih are larger than the town’s.

A jolt. He knows it, when it begins: he’s prepared for the downward tug through all of him, the feeling that he’s going to unfurl upward into smoke. He shuts his eyes and swallows the sick tingling that creeps through him, knowing it for temporary.

When the room’s stilled, when the tapping and the deferential voice come at the door, the light that presses itself up against the shutters has shifted. Some hint of heat seeps in through the glass and wood. He thinks, not for the first time, he might not’ve packed well.

On shaky landlubber legs, he sidles his way out into the corridor, feels the first familiar tanglings of fields – mostly perceptive, quantitative; some clairvoyant. He inclines his head in brief, queasy bows to other politicians and their white lace-swaddled wives, lugs his briefcase and his satchel up the narrow stair.

He emerges to blaring-bright sun, a broad blue sky almost untouched by clouds. Sweat prickles at the back of his neck; he’s still wearing his respectable dark suit, though he’s brought a broad-brimmed hat tucked under one arm, remembering the isles.

For all the heat, he wears a familiar bird-yellow scarf round his shoulders – knowing that disembarking, at least, he’s just one old redhead in a flock.

His first glimpse of Thul Ka is industrial.

Over the gunwale, past the mooring mast, he can see a few rows of airship hangars catching the light, and other crowded docks, broad stretches of colorful cloth awnings ruffled by the wind. He squints, because he thinks, past another mooring mast, past a sea of sun-silhouetted shapes, he can see a distant shimmer –

Natt are carrying boxes down to the crowded platform, and a big human offers to help him down the narrow stairs after a couple of grumbling elderly Anaxi. He’s tired; he feels jellied. He accepts, and begins the descent down to the platform and then into the shade, skimming the heads of the gathered crowd.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Ase’tseye Dock, Three Flowers

The red one, course, that’s a safe bet,” says the wick, crouched low in a swath of purple patterned cloth. He jerks his chin at the beetles, swarming in the glass, and nods. “E’s my best runner.”

He lifts his eyebrows at the two men studying the glass case, and grins. “’Course, f’you think different – odds are good,” the wick says, one grimy finger swirling over the top of the case.

“Can y’ even race ‘em?” The human grins through a mouthful of tobacco, red-stained teeth showing against his dark face. “They’re beetles, after all.”

“Gotta bet t’find out,” The wicks smiles.

“I’d take th’ green one,” the other human says; she grins, suddenly, beneath a colorful green-wrapped scarf. “E’s got a good look.”

“An’ ye, prefect?” The wicks calls, switching to Estuan for the first time.

Nkemi, sitting with bare legs dangling off the edge of a crate and working her way steadily through a bag of roasted gram, looks up wide-eyed. “Bajea!” She hops down, skirt swishing around her calves, and comes over to crouch down, studying the beetles. She glances up at the wick, and raises her eyebrows.

“How’d you know me?” The galdor asks in Mugrobi, grinning. She tilts her head, studying the beetles; she examines the mass of them, swirling around on the ground, with little colored dots on their back to mark them apart. Five, all told, beautiful black things with curved horns coming from their heads.

“Nobody ‘cept a lawman or a criminal’s comfortable this side ‘f the hangar,” The wick says easily. “’N ye’re too small to be a criminal.”

Nkemi giggles. “The yellow one," she says, watching it try to climb up the side of the glass.

The woman grins down at her. “Gon’ t’ make me rich, prefect,” she says, good-humoredly.

“Prefect’s a very good guess, all the same,” Nkemi glances up, and raises her eyebrows at the wick.

He shrugs, and his sun-worn face splits in a wider grin. He jerks his head to the side, where his friend is frying gram in the shade. “He knows ye from Windward.”

Nkemi giggles again; she glances up at the sky, shading her eyes with her hand. There’s no gleam of morning sun off an airship, not yet. Nkemi tosses her coin down onto the pile, and grins at the wick.

The spotted glass, marked with dusty fingerprints, is wiggled slowly over to a line drawn in the dust; another, at the far end, is drawn to match it by the human man, who does so solemnly with a stick. The wick settles the glass over the first of the lines; the woman counts down, and Nkemi whoops aloud as the glass is lifted, making them all laugh.

They crouch, watching the beetles, even as the light glints off a ship overhead, and a heavy shadow passes by.

The yellow-dotted beetle, who has been batting the hard shell of her carapace against the glass, takes off; she scurries past the others, and is first across the line.

“Best ‘f three?” the wick raises his eyebrows at the both of them.

“Another time, ada'xa,” Nkemi says, extending a small hand with a grin. The woman is chuckling, more amused than upset; Nkemi pockets her winnings, hopes to her feet, and bows her head neatly to all of them. “Hulali floats, and He drowns,” the Mugrobi says, cheerful.

“Hulali floats,” they say, all three of them, and the fourth man’s voice twining in from the shade, “and He drowns.”

Nkemi is off, then; she leaves the last of the bengal gram behind, and dashes busily through the port, sandal-clad feet light in the dust. She wears a long, geometric-patterned skirt, bright triangles and sideways squares in every color intersecting one another. It goes to her knee at one side, and midway to her calf on the other, leaving the rest of her legs bare; above it, she wears a bright yellow cotton shirt, tight, short-sleeved, which just meets the waist of the skirt, and a headwrap in vivid orange.

The galdor comes to an easy stop at the edge of the crowd, squinting, and holds her hand over her eyes, watching the ship. There are many red-haired figures descending down to the narrow stairs to the platform beneath the shade; the men wear neat dark suits and the woman mostly white, the dusty-breeze already catching at it.

It is a glint of yellow Nkemi sees; her face widens into a broad, bright smile, and she is skimming the edge of the crowd, then, and winding her way through the assembled galdori and human, her field of clairvoyant and static mona already brimming bastly. She is not the only one; the crowd is full of churning enthusiasm, of goldshifts and bright bubbling happiness, and it sweeps through her and catches her up.

“Anetol,” Nkemi calls. She finds him in the shade by her yellow scarf, smiling brightly; she bows, and then she comes forward and takes his hands in hers, her field settling into his with the comfortable familiarity, as if it has been only days since last they saw one another. “Welcome to Mugroba, adame,” Nkemi says with a bright grin, squeezing his thin, red-freckled hands in her small, dark ones. “It is very good to see you here.”

[Tom Cooke]

Ase’tseye Dock • Three Flowers

Evening on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

H
e can’t keep an eye out for long. It submerges him like a wave. It’s not a crowd that presses, not exactly – you can find an easy path among the milling folk, Anaxi and Mugrobi both, locals and expats and foreigners all by the sound of it – nor a deafening chatter; it’s quiet enough he can make out conversation, make out snippets of phrases and words, and that’s the problem.

Mugrobi and Estuan both he hears. Accented Estuan; shaky, over-pronounced Mugrobi. It’s the fields, most of all. The Anaxi hold theirs stiff and still, but they swell and brim still with curiosity. The bastly brightens all the light, even in the shade. He can hear it, almost, like laughter or tinnitus; he can smell the brightness, mingling with roast chickpea flour, frying rice and meats.

Once, he’d’ve described it as a whole damn lot of woobly. Now?

He’s not sure, but it’s disarming. He sidles through, finds the corded-off pile of luggage in the shadow of the platform. Natt are hefting up steamer trunks, waddling them out to carriages on the distant street. They’re grinning and tossing laughter and soft, lilting Mugrobi back and forth over the luggage, waving to well – but lightly – dressed carriage-drivers.

Godsdamn, he mutters under his breath, scarce sure he’s spoken at all. He can’t find his trunk, nor any natt carrying it off; he tries to squint past the crowd, to the sunlit street. Scratchings and purrs of moa filter through the chatter, if he focuses, and he sees glimpses of strange-shaped tailfeathers and speckled slate-grey and -brown plumage.

Sweat’s beading on the back of his neck. His skin prickles. He touches the scarf at his shoulders, the high Anaxi collar.

He hasn’t much time to think on it. He hears Anatole – not quite Anatole – the name cast in a familiar shape, and then, before he sees her, feels the brimming-bright caprise of a distinct mingling of static and clairvoyant mona. Even as he turns, he feels it, there and then gone: the broad blue sky, endless wind, a path leading down into vibrant color.

There, and then gone, replaced by a grinning face. She’s taken his hands before he’s had time to parse the sight of her. The bright headscarf he remembers warmly. But he’s expecting – he remembers her all bundled up in coat and sweater, always with an extra scarf, all swallowed up with heavy wool.

She is not swallowed up in heavy wool today. Nor does she look much like a brigk.

Adame, she calls him, and a smile springs to his face. He barely has time to bow. “Domea, adame,” he returns. “Glad to be here at last.” It’s the truth, every airsick syllable, and he laughs, and thinks again. “Glad to see you, Nkemi.”

She’s wearing bright yellow, her skirt more dizzying-vivid than a Hessean carpet. He wonders what Ava’d make of it; it’s not the sort of thing he’s ever seen galdori wear. She looks even smaller than usual, her slight dark arms bare, a little of her midriff visible.

He catches a startled glance at the two of them clasping hands from nearby. Another red headed dignitary is walking his wife to the street; she’s fanning herself, her arm in his, and he’s bright red underneath his freckles.

Floods, he thinks, that’s what I must look like. He pushes down the nausea, turning back to Nkemi with another smile. Their hands are still pressed together; he slips his away gently, and begins to move toward the street. The prefect’s asymmetrical skirt swishes lightly round her calves. “There’s a – carriage,” he says, a little breathless. “I’ve reserved a room in Cinnamon Hill, I believe, just on the edge of Aratra.”

Nearby, someone laughs. He hears himself say Cinnamon Hill, I believe. The bastly gold in Nkemi’s field hasn’t quite caught; his clairvoyant mona burn less brightly. He starts to lay a tentative hand on her arm, but some nameless but renewed gnawing worry shies him away.

Still, he walks close, and he smiles over at her, dipping his head under his broad-brim hat almost sheepishly. “How’ve you been, Nkemi?” he asks, trying to sound more – sound less – he doesn’t know. “Ada’na Ota tells me Maltalaan came off wonderfully.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Three Flowers

Anetol smiles, soft and warm, at her greeting, and calls her adame as well and in the shade Nkemi thinks she sees plants, soft leaves like sage. He laughs, and clasps her hands, and there is an echo of other laughter she cannot place beneath it.

But Anatole’s face is red in the shade, and it splotches down his neck, from what she can see beneath the too-warm yellow scarf, and his hands are trembling, and Nkemi knows where she is.

Nkemi arrived in Thul Ka on the 20th of Bethas; she has been home three days. Already the time in Vienda seems like a strange, distant dream; as if she had fallen asleep in Dentis and woke up in Bethas, and all that has passed between is real and unreal both, a vision she cannot interpret. She had not worried until the flight back, and only then, in the strange airship high above the ground, on the third day of the three days journey, did she find the nagging fear that Thul Ka would have changed – or else she would – and they would no longer fit together.

It is strange to see Anetol in the bright Thul Ka sunlight; to feel the warmth on her, even in the shade, as their fields mingle. It is a sharp-pinch reminder of not-fitting, and at the same time a joy, especially at the thought of the journey to come; it is almost, but not quite, dzep’iwu, the strange never-seen feeling, as it shivers down her spine. His field mingles freely with hers, not-quite bastly.

Anetol eases his hands away, and starts towards the street. Nkemi walks alongside him, and nods. There are rows upon rows of carriages waiting to meet the airship, most moa-pulled, waiting in the long shade of hanging canvases.

“We shall go there first,” Nkemi says, cheerfully. She peeks sideways at Anetol, and almost asks, but he comes in first.

Nkemi beams. “Ada’na Ota is as a drop of water to a camel-rider,” she says, admiring. “I was well-watered for Maltalaan,” Nkemi pauses, and glances around, and grins, sheepishly. “I am grateful for every opportunity which I have had,” the prefect says, quiet, with a solemn little edge, “but I am very well now,” she glances up at Anetol, and her grin widens.

“To where?” One of the carriage drivers calls down in Estuan, soft and lilting like a song.

“Which hotel?” Nkemi turns to Anetol with a smile. She calls the name back to the carriage driver wrapped in Mugrobi, and receives a spool of lilting response in return, accompanied by quick gestures.

“This way,” Nkemi settles her arm through Anetol’s suited one, and leads him through the row of moa-driven carriages. They find his tucked in the midst of shade, the driver securing his trunk on the top with lashings of heavy ropes; the deep red moa fluff their feathers, long tails flapping lightly.

“Sana’hulali!” Nkemi calls up.

“Sana’hulali,” the driver hops off the edge, and lands before them; he is human, a teenager, with the look of limbs he is still growing in to, but his motions and smooth and easy, and so is his bow. “Mr. Anitool Valekin?” He asks, looking at Anetol.

Before long, they are settled into the carriage. Nkemi grins at Anetol from the seat opposite. “If you are not too tired from the journey,” Nkemi says, hopefully, “perhaps you will join me to take kofi tonight? There is a friend I would very much like you to meet before we leave for Dkanat.”

The carriage shift; one of the moa clucks, and the wheels turn, and they pull out. For a few moments they are in the shade, and then they pull out onto one of the streets of Three Flowers – turn, again, onto a broad, main avenue, and begin the true journey. The streets outside are a busy mess of coaches, pulled in Thul Ka by a mix of moa, horses, and other, stranger beasts; a long, scaly green neck weaves past their window, and tows behind it a cart with a man at the reins, and two children curled up, sun-napping on bricks in the back.

Three Flowers is all brickwork and steampipes; the streets are broad, and, if they are dusty, it is a layer of dust atop neatly kept cobblestones, flattened smooth. Now, with the growing light of morning, the streets are busy and full of people; shops are opening their doors, and small stands are setting up, here and there outside, topped with clothes of purple, orange, yellow, red, green and blue, a brilliant tapistry. The smell of kofi fills the air, and alongside it the smell of fried things, of flatbread, of yogurt, of spices too.

They have a little less than a day and a half remaining in Thul Ka; Nkemi wrote to Anetol with the details before he came. Tomorrow, she had told him, she has prefect work; she will testify, since she is here, in front of a commission. She wrote no more than that. The next day, she will meet him at the hotel at dawn, and they will begin the journey; by river, first, and then by land, over the wide desert plains to Dkanat.

To home, Nkemi thinks.

“We will meet him at Thul’Amat,” Nkemi offers, grinning, like an inducement held out to a child. “If you like.”

[Tom Cooke]

Across the Streets • Thul Ka

Morning on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

N
kemi’s bright grin wrests a broad smile from even his tired face. She looks well, that much he can see; he thinks this place suits her, more than Vienda, anyway. He doesn’t think more on it just then, though he remembers, like a shadow at the edges of his sight, the bend in her rushing river.

He shades his eyes and looks up, because the silhouette of a man perched in the driver’s seat of a coach is calling down to him in a soft, lilting accent.

He glances at Nkemi, then back up. “The Crocus’ Stem,” he calls.

Nkemi loops an arm through his; something in him that was wound tightly loosens. He allows her to guide him along to the coach where a gangly natt – little more than a boch – gives him yet another new name. He’s relieved to see his trunk lashed to the top, so relieved he allows himself to be helped into the box with little complaint.

Inside the coach, it’s cooler. The sun’s just peeking over the rooftops, and the air’s starting its crawl from warm to hot. A little breeze whisks more smells in and ruffles his hair. Dust, kicked up by the scratching feet of moa, by hooves, by wheels. A sharp, tangy smell, like milk but sourer, and more smells he knows as yats, though he doesn’t know what kind. His stomach grumbles; he’s not sure it matters, for the first time in days.

As they get settled, he unwraps the scarf from around his neck. It sits in a bright bundle in his lap. He folds his hands over it, breathing in deep and smiling down at it for a moment.

Then he looks up at Nkemi opposite him, vivid in the shade of the box. His smile is not quite as it was last they met, in the lantern-lights of the equinox, but it warms. As the carriage lurches into motion, he laughs, his eyebrows raised. “I’m honored, Nkemi,” he says, faintly surprised. “Of course.”

Out the window, he sees a flash of sun on leaf-green scales – and then a long, curling pink tongue. It draws his eyes. He gets a glimpse of it as it passes out the window, then the rattle of a cart. He blinks, raises his eyebrows. In the corner of his eye, he doesn’t see Nkemi’s expression has changed; he thinks to peer out the window, but sits still. He wonders if he should ask.

There would be so much to ask, here. The cart passes, and for the first time he gets a full view of the street, sliding by, on and on.

These, he thinks, even in Three Flowers, are the streets Nkemi told him of.

He’s been sleepless long enough they feel like a dream. He sees colors made blinding-vivid by the sun, well-kept streets and alleyways disappearing into more streets. He sees folk setting up stalls, spreading out their wares. He sees some wandering slowly down the streets, or stopped, some hand-in-hand with toddling bochi, some moving at a clipped pace, linen fluttering round calves, bright headscarves bobbing, bald dark heads catching the light.

What he realizes first – stranger than whatever scaly beast passed earlier – is that he can’t tell, not right away, who’s who. Inside the coach, he’s no sense for fields or glamours. He sees a man Aremu’s height at a stall he thinks – by the size of him, by his strong arms, by the weave of his clothes – is run by a man, but he doesn’t know, not really, not if the vendor is tekaa, not if the small man’s imbali or arati or even wika. Both of them are laughing; the smaller man is leaning on the stall, looking up at the blue sky and wiping sweat off his brow. He might even be a prefect, Tom thinks wryly.

And then, they’re gone, too.

He’s not a fool; he knows there are cues. He remembers the cut of Nkemi’s skirt and searches for more like it, slanting from knee to mid-calf. He searches for one bare arm and one covered, one earring, asymmetric patterns stitched into shirts and skirts. He pays attention to the materials – he tries to – but there’s more here, dizzying, than he can make sense of. There are lines here, he knows, but he does not yet know where and how they are drawn.

And he yields to it, and the heat too, sighing and resting his head back. The streets whirl by; he sees more green scales, strange long faces with strange long tongues. Before too long, he knows they’ve passed from Three Flowers. He gets a glimpse, brief but dazzling, of a stretch of bright river, between two buildings.

He looks back to Nkemi, raising an eyebrow. “At Thul’Amat?” A little excitement sparks in his eyes. He thinks of the mentor – Ruedka – the books she left at his door; he wonders.

He feels a pang. Tomorrow will be busy securing the hotel room, come what may, but he knows there’s a letter he must write. He thinks of the observatory and a pendulum, and of a familiar face he hopes time has not made unfamiliar already.

“I’m told the Crocus’ Stem is a cable-car ride away from the university’s campus,” he says, “but I’d lose my head if it weren’t attached to me.” He pauses, then grins a shadow of his old grin. “I’m assuming this friend is to remain a surprise?”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Three Flowers

Nkemi watches Anetol as much as the streets outside; she sees his eyes widen, once, and then again. She sees him sit forward, just a little, against the soft, full cushion; in the brightness of the light outside, and now here in the carriage, she can see the dark circles the flight has left beneath his eyes, like bruises. All the lines of his face are settled down, when he does not think of them; but he looks at her, and he smiles, and his face lifts, upwards – at the mouth, at the cheeks, at the corners of his eyes and even his forehead.

Nkemi, too, is drawn to the window, and the dizzying glimpse of life outside. She had been afraid that she would step out of the airship and not know her city – or, perhaps, not know herself. It was not so; Thul Ka is a city of change, and is not afraid of it. If perhaps she is not quite the same as the Nkemi pezre Nkese who stepped foot onto her first airship five and a half months ago – the waters of the Turga are never the same twice, and yet it is always the Turga; there is none other.

From Three Flowers they move off the main road, onto more residential streets. They cross the Turga itself once, and then – only then – Nkemi strains, just a little, lifting her chin up and twisting to catch the brightness of the light on the water. She smiles.

All waters are Hulali’s, and Hulali is all waters. Nkemi is not one of those – she finds they are almost all from Thul Ka – who think offerings in the Turga most sacred for Maltalaan. Hulali knows His gifts, she knows, whether they come from the Arova, the Tincta Basta, or a water barrel in Dkanat.

“It will be good practice for me, then, as a guide,” Nkemi says, cheerfully, when Anetol carefully not-asks that she bring him to the campus.

“No,” Nkemi shakes her head, and giggles at his question, and more so at the unexpected grin, less uncertain; he is not so red, now, as he was from only the brief brush of the sun. “No, I am not so cruel! It is better that you are prepared, I think,” she grins at him. “Perhaps you will know already his name…? We will take kofi har’aq with ada’xa Natete pez Rejas. He is a professor of history at Ivuq’way, at Thul’Amat, though he lectures also sometimes at Ire’dzosat.”

“He is the foremost expert on the history of ib’vuqem,” Nkemi says, smiling at Anetol. It is ib’vuqem – the understanding of the dead – which brought them together, in a sense; she knows more than a little of how passionate his interest in it is. “I have mentioned to ada’xa Natete your interest, and he was most eager you should meet him before we go to Serkaih, and that you be welcomed properly to Thul Ka,” Nkemi grins a little brighter.

The carriage turns, again; they skirt onto the edges of Nutmeg Hill, now. It is not far from Three Flowers to Cinnamon Hill, but even a short distance in Thul Ka can take a long time. There is not so much traffic, not now; it is not late enough in the afternoon for that, not quite yet. Here the streets are a little narrower; the buildings are a little shorter, and wider. There are ornate cornices here and there, and many of the shops are painted vivid colors, sharp in the bright sun of the day. There are fewer stalls, here, but more cafes; seats spill into every bit of space covered by awnings.

Nkemi hopes; her hopes are answered. They turn; they swing onto one of the fabric streets, and Nkemi lets out a long, happy sigh. Every window is a brilliant display; the fabric merchants of Nutmeg Hill sit half-atop each other, and out do one another daily, with ever more colors and clever designs.

The fashion now, Nkemi sees, wide-eyed, is for dressmakers dummies set in the window, draped in brilliant colorful cloth as if it had been sewn for them. There are all sorts of fabrics; there are all sorts of outfits, too, even a suit which makes her think of Anaxas – although the colors are in pale yellow-tan instead of dark, with a brilliant brocade waistcoat peeking out beneath.

“There are many tailors in Nutmeg Hill also,” Nkemi says, innocently, and offers Anetol a cheeky grin.

[Tom Cooke]

Across the Streets • Thul Ka

Morning on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

N
e’s seen the Arova at sunrise; he used to sit half out the window, half on the fire escape, in Fly-Ash, blowing shock-white cigarette smoke into the smoggy air, watching the dark shapes of boatmen glide up and down. He’s seen the Arova at sunrise: he used to sit on the banks, or on the docks on the Bean, watching the sunlight shimmer over the little ripples and waves as it rushed out to meet the Mahogany. He remembers it, fish-salt-smell, the taste of whisky. He craves it; he lets the craving wash through him.

This flash of the Turga in its fullness, even at this narrow point, reminds him of neither. Nkemi says nothing, but he can see her craning her neck, shifting a little; he can’t seem to do otherwise himself. The brightness hurts his eyes, but he drinks it in as long as he can before it slips behind, swallowed up by the first clustered buildings on the opposite bank.

He shuts his eyes, and it burns the backs of the lids. He can still see the shape of it. He remembers Nkemi reaching over the edge of the barge to touch the Arova, and he thinks he understands why now.

A guide. The word touches something familiar, then flutters off, fleeting. Vjer’a, he thinks wistfully. And here we’ll be, soon enough, on our way to Serkaih. Coincidences.

He’s missed the giggle. He laughs, too, and raises his brows. “Ada’xa Natete?” he echoes.

He doesn’t need to say he knows the name Natete pez Rejas. He thinks by the way Nkemi says it that she knows he knows. Half what he’s told her he feels – about the value of ib’vuqem to modern scholarship, if not the rest – has come from ada’xa Natete’s pen; he thinks he must’ve parroted whole lines.

“I didn’t know you knew him, Nkemi,” he says carefully, almost hesitantly, with a new sort of smile. “From – Thul’Amat?”

Somehow, he thought – he doesn’t know. He knew Natete was still alive, at least, and still working at Thul’Amat; you can find out that much from other books and journals.

He doesn’t know how to explain, or if he even could, how ink on a page is like a ley channel. He feels a strange, sheepish prickle at the back of his neck – it isn’t heat – it’s at the thought of meeting ada’xa Natete. It’s like seeing the face of a man whose mind you’ve touched with cognomancy. He’s nothing else to compare it to. He’s never met anybody who wrote a book he read, much less one dear and useful to him.

They lull; there’s so much to see out the window that he’s almost blind to it. It’s only her sigh that draws him out again, and he sits up, peering out.

Something in him tightens. He swallows a lump, watching the shadow of their coach glide by, reflected in windows backed with beautiful, vibrant cloth. He’s barely time to study the patterns as they pass, brocaded and dyed, and so he doesn’t try. One sticks in his mind, deep sea-green edged with crimson, a pattern – brocaded or dyed, he can’t tell – more complex than a ward spilling across it.

Strange. He thinks the lump in his throat might be homesickness, but he doesn’t want to name it so; homesickness implies a home. He watches the dummies in the windows slide by, light and airy-dressed, their drapery perfectly flattering. He wonders how long it took to arrange them just so.

Nkemi’s voice catches him off guard; he frowns, because he hasn't even considered it. He hasn't been to a tailor since – well – 2718, and he's managed to avoid thinking about it with great success.

But he catches the smile on her face and grins. He reaches to loosen his collar; he sighs. “And skilled ones, I’d imagine,” he returns, inclining his head slightly.

Nutmeg Hill’s not so far from Cinnamon. The vibrant storefronts grow more and more dignified, more and more elaborate, and then give way to what looks residential. They rattle over a little bridge – a tiny tributary, nanabo compared to the river – and he still smells spices, kofi, warm food, but the smells are different, and the clamor’s not so dense.

He rues it, when the coach stops, because he knows he’ll have to stretch his legs and emerge into the sunlight. Outside perches a mant building not unlike the ones at the top of the Fords; he thinks there’s something Anaxi about the make of it. There’s scuffling feet outside.

Soon enough, there are natt from inside hauling down his trunk.

“If you’ve any recommendations, I’d be grateful,” he says as if offhandedly, as he struggles to climb out, feeling the heat leach back into him. Rolling his shoulders again in his Anaxi suit, soon to be, he thinks, uncomfortably damp, he glances at Nkemi. He pauses, trying to make his face serious, but he doesn’t manage. He splutters a little laugh, then says, “I’m afraid I don’t know what’s in fashion this season.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Traversing Thul Ka

From Serkaih,” Nkemi says when Anetol asks, and she smiles. “I ran errands for him when I was even smaller than I am now,” she grins brighter, never in the least dismayed about her lack of height, “and when I was not, much, some summers.”

“He taught me many lessons which I understood at the time,” Nkemi says, thoughtful, and then grins, “and more still which I knew only later. I am pleased you will meet him.”

When she thinks of Natete, even though she has seen him many times in the years since, it is always childhood she thinks of, nearly twenty years ago now. She cannot remember the ways in which his face was different then; she is not so sure it was, really, as if he alone has stood still in the sweeping river of time. She remembers him wrinkled and white-haired but never old.

She remembers his explanations; she remembers much of what he taught her, and was always grateful for the knowledge. And she remembers too, how – if she asked a question, and sometimes she did – he would stop whatever it he was doing, no matter how fine the pages or careful the measurements, and turn to answer her, thoughtful and deliberate. Sometimes she had understood the explanations; sometimes she had not. Sometimes she asked further; sometimes it was enough only to have been answered.

They wind along the broader streets at the base of Nutmeg Hill, under they reach the narrower streets at the edge of Cinnamon Hill. It goes up, sharply, from here; there are streets, mostly, and if you know where to look for them, hidden narrow stairs, stone, set into the side of the hills beneath the trees. A school friend took Nkemi up them once at dawn, and they had sat near the top and watched the sun rise over the city; she cannot think of Cinnamon Hill without remembering the warm sunlight spilling over the joining of the rivers.

Nkemi grins at him, broad and bright. Anetol climbs out of the carriage first, and she holds behind him, and then follows him down in an easy swift motion, the fabric of her skirt swinging about her calves. Even here, there is a thin puff of sand-dust where her sandals meet the ground. She has never seen the Crocus’ Stem before; it looks to her like an old house, converted, but Nkemi is not quite sure.

Nkemi giggles. “I don’t either,” she says with a little shrug. “There are some I have heard of; I shall write down what I know of them for you.”

Nkemi follows Anetol inside; there is a large waiting room, shade-drawn, with many chairs with backs and legs made of strips of dark-dyed wood, clad with dark cushions. On the wall is a large wood-etched map of the city; it is not detailed, but it has the lines of Thul Ka – of the rivers, and their joinings, and all the spaces between, with tracings around the old walls. Nkemi goes to it, breathing in deep, and tilts her head back up to admire it.

“I will wait here,” she promises Anetol, smiling, when he comes over, asking with his eyebrows.

Nkemi finds a seat on one of the chairs. She does not cross her legs in her lap, even though she wants to; it is not the sort of place for that. She is not a guest, but the human woman behind the counter brings her a cup of kofi all the same, and by the time Anetol comes back down Nkemi is leaning on the counter and giggling.

“Yes,” Nkemi says, enthusiastically, “really – they wear them all the time! Some of them are lined with bones, and others with very strong cords, which,” she presses her hands into her waist, and shrugs. “I do not know how they move!"

The woman is laughing. She is wearing a longer wrap-dress, both shoulders covered, in a vivid orange; it is slit up to above the knee on both sides, and reveals sandal lacing beneath. Her headscarf is the same orange, traced through with threads of red and gold. “Incumbent Vauquelin,” she pronounces his name easily and well, and rises from behind the desk with a smile.

Nkemi turns to grin at him. “Ule’elana, ada’na,” she says, smiling, turning back to the woman behind the desk. “Thank you for the kofi.”

“Ule’elana,” the woman grins. “Have a good day, sir,” she says, and bows at the waist to Anetol.

Nkemi leads Anetol out, holding the door for him; the sun is sharp and bright outside, but in Cinnamon Hill the streets are lined with trees, and these are no exception. Branches and leaves stretch out overhead; at the edges, the shade is thick and comfortable, and it is only towards the middle where it is patched, scattered, dotted through with light.

It is a short, sloping-down walk from the hotel to the edges of Cinnamon Hill, to where the neighborhood brushes the broad main streets that run through the heart of Thul Ka. They cross one street, Nkemi taking Anetol’s hand to guide him through the camel-pulled carts and carriages, and then they are at one of the broadways. Gleaming metal cables run overhead, polls strapped to them; platforms lift up off the street, and Nkemi climbs up the wood, easy and comfortable, to stand on the crowded waiting area. More people come behind them; the crowd is a mix of galdori, wicks, and humans alike, every one close together and no one touching, beneath the shelter of a canvas wrap.

“There is nothing like this in all Anaxas,” Nkemi says, enthusiastically, grinning at Anetol.

A small boy wriggles past them, wearing shorts and a tan shirt; small taped up glasses are perched on his nose. He clings to a pole at the edge of the platform, swinging forward, and turns back to the assembled crowd, wide-eyed and enthusiastic. “The car is coming!” He says.

They see it, then, rounding a curve in the street; it is large, flat-roofed, open on all sides. It stops neatly before them with a grinding of breaks; people stream out the other side, and the attendants open the doors.

Nkemi and Anetol push in with the crowd; Nkemi holds Anetol’s hand more firmly, now, and they are not separated as they climb onboard. The cableways are built to human scale; Nkemi and Anetol come neither of them close to the ceiling, and those taller fit very comfortably.

The small boy drifts past them once more, and wraps his arm around the waist of a human woman. “I’ll drive the cableway when I grow up, juela,” he says, fiercely. She laughs and runs a hand over his head; her other holds a strap dangling from the ceiling.

“It is three stops,” Nkemi says, cheerfully, smiling at Anetol; she wraps her hand around one of the poles in the center of the cabin, as the cable car begins to move.

[Tom Cooke]

Across the Streets • Thul Ka

Morning on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

H
e’s left Nkemi downstairs in the lobby, looking at the carved map of Thul Ka. He’s looked back once as he finds the archway leading to the stairs, flanked by plants in mant clay pots with long, fleshy, colorful leaves. There’s something about the sight of her in the shaded lobby, framed – dwarfed; even smaller, he remembered her saying, all wide bright smile – by the map of Thul Ka, shot down the middle by the bold, winding shape of the river. Spilling over each attempt to wall it.

He’ll remember little of the room when he comes back down the stairs. The furniture is Anaxi and looks newly-placed. The windows are open, but there are heavy dark curtains over them, the same as on the Ibutatus’ bookshelves; he finds a note by the bedside about keeping them drawn during the day, when nobody’s there to need the light.

The hotel has the sense of a big old house, with the same smells of sun-warmed wood as on the isles, as in the Fords. He’s thought it would be stuffy indoors, but it’s so cool he finds himself shivering as he changes into another suit; the drapes stir constantly in the breeze.

When he comes back downstairs, he catches the whiff of strong kofi again. Nkemi’s sitting at the counter, chatting with the nattle behind it, both of them laughing. He gets a glimpse of the hem of her blossom-bright dress – no point, but slit up the sides – before it disappears behind the counter.

Ule’elana, says Nkemi, rising with a smile. The human bows deeply behind the counter and wishes him well in Estuan; as they start toward the door, he bows deeply in turn.

“Úle’elanaBe sand, ada’na,” he replies carefully. The human woman’s face is a smooth smile, except for the flicker of an eyebrow, as he turns away.

The broad way is cradled by the thick, winding branches of trees. There’s plenty of shade here, and the sun isn’t so bright; he sees it in the dappled stones, flickering over the feathers of passing moa with coaches in tow.

They’re quiet on this winding path down. He breathes in warm, floral scents he doesn’t have a name for, listens to the calls of strange birds. He looks up at the tall, richly-painted faces of houses and hotels and apartments. On one balcony, nearly swallowed up by the shade of a great tree, a man swathed in loose, pale yellow fabric sits, breathing a drift of smoke from his lips, a long and slender cigarette holder between two fingers. Another, empty, is populated by singsong wooden windchimes and a hanging clay pot overflowing with shivering green pearls.

By the time they reach the thoroughfare, he’s taken off his blazer and draped it over one arm. It’s still warm – dizzying again, the blend of smells and sounds, the brush of fields and glamours – and Nkemi helps him through, sure as a lantern or a guide in a dream.

It’s not long before they’re climbing to the platform. He holds onto the railing tight, looking up at the glinting lines that stretch over the street. He follows them down, distant, out of sight; once they’re on steady ground, he shades his eyes with his hand against the sharp blue sky, peering over the distant dark rooftops. Here, there are familiar engine– and oil-smells.

The shaded platform’s crowded, but not a press; the brush of fields, even, fleeting, is not oppressive. “No, there’s not,” he replies, half-grinning himself, trying to make sense of what he sees. “I’ve ridden the cable-cars in Hox – up in the mountains, where airships don’t go – but this – being honest…”

“The car is coming!”

He blinks, looking down the track with interest where it curves round a row of houses. A little imbali lad surges past, patched-up glasses on his nose, as if out of nowhere. When the car slides into view, both his eyebrows shoot up. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says, but the last words are swallowed up by the grinding and squeal of metal.

He’s grateful for Nkemi’s hand as they climb aboard; he holds it firmly, hugging his folded blazer tightly to his chest. He glances about him, suddenly feeling strangely out of place. A pair of galdori brush by them, girls that can’t be much older than fourteen or fifteen, wearing colorful asymmetric-wrapped dresses, laughing. They look at him and Nkemi, but mostly him, wide-eyed and giggling.

There are humans, too, outnumbering the galdori – a strong-looking man in plain, smudged clothes and worn sandals, his brow a sheen of sweat; a tall, tired-looking woman, tight dark curls spilling out from her headscarf. The lad with the patched-up glasses has an arm around her waist.

He knows he shouldn’t stare; he can’t quite help it, for a few moments, a few more moments than is strictly polite. The cable-car lurches into motion, and this, finally, jerks his eyes away, out at the bright street slipping by, a swarm of carriages and scaly green beasts and little people buzzing here and there.

He’s silent for a few moments, holding the pole white-knuckled against the rattle and tug. He almost – almost – asks.

He knows how it’d sound; he knows better. He doesn’t know what he’d ask, anyway. He doesn’t even know where to start.

“Did you say three stops, ada’na?” asks a voice, heavily-accented. It’s one of the girls, holding on nearby. She’s grinning a little sheepishly, looking from him to Nkemi. Her dress is a soft lilac, flowery at the hem; she wears her hair close-cropped.

Her friend is wearing vivid red and orange, her dress open at the midriff and her shoulders bare, bangles glinting at her wrists and bright red earrings. “Jiowa means to ask if you’re going to Thul’Amat,” she says, and bursts out laughing at some private joke.

The other lass blushes. “My name is Jiowa pezre Ife,” she blurts out, bowing as deeply as she can. “My friend is Nkeji pezre Oluji, and I apologize that she is not taking this as seriously as she should be.”

The first of the stops jostles all of them. Nkeji laughs harder.

“We are lost,” Nkeji says, when she’s mastered herself. “We are looking for Thul’Amat, but we have never been in Thul Ka before.”

“Neither have I, ada’na,” he says dryly, and then through the lass’ laughter, “but I think we’re in good hands,” looking to Nkemi with raised brows. He bows, then. “Ma’ralio – my name is Anatole Vauquelin.”

Lie or not, he’s timed it, he thinks, just right; Nkeji is doubled over with laughter.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Dejai Point

Nkemi turns and looks up at the girl in the lilac dress, smiling, friendly and open. The girl blushes, a faint splotch of dark color on her already dark skin. She bows deeply back to the two girls. “Ma’ralio, ada’na Jiowa, ada’na Nkeji,” Nkemi says, cheerfully. Anetol has introduced himself, and Nkeji is clinging to the pole, giggling.

“Three stops,” Nkemi grins at the two girls. “Two more, now,” she says.

People flow in and out; the woman and her son shift. The little boy is half-leaning out one of the windows, gazing admiringly at the curve of the track behind him; his mother has a tolerant, obliging hold on the back of his shirt. He holds on to the window with one hand, and the other secures his glasses, firmly, wrapped around the edges of them. He is explaining something to her, bright-eyed and bright-voiced; the words are lost in the roar of sound as the cablecar starts up again, but her smile is not.

A car rattles past on the other side; the wind rushed through all of them, and ruffles Nkemi’s skirt, Anetol’s shirt sleeves, and the dresses of both girls. Nkeji shrieks and giggles again; Jiowa has grabbed a fistful of hers and is pressing it tightly against her legs.

“Where are you from?” Nkemi asks, smiling.

There is a glance between the two of them; it is Nkeji who answers, when she has stopped giggling. “Pa Olakano,” she says, squaring her shoulders. She giggles again; it does not quite hide the sharp spark in the answer, the edge in preparation to a question that has not yet come but is known.

Nkemi grins; she knows it too. “We are as neighbors,” she says, cheerfully. “I am Nkemi pezre Nkese, of Dkanat long before I ever saw Thul Ka.”

It’s Jiowa that sighs; the two girls exchange glances, and Nkeji giggles again.

“We are staying with Nkeji’s aunt,” Jiowa says, and her lips press firmly together. She smooths a hand over her dress, but does not look down at it. “We are here for a preparatory course at Iki’dzerew! The course does not yet begin until next week, but there is an orientation today.” Her eyes shine. “A campus tour,” she breaths, reverently.

“Is it true, ada’na,” Nkeji asks, “that Idisúfi is haunted? My cousin tells me it is only books, but we have heard stories of strange happenings in the West Hall.” Her eyes are bright.

Jiowa has rolled her eyes at only books, but she too looks to Nkemi wide-eyed.

Nkemi’s eyebrows raise; the prefect adopts a serious look, mastering herself. This is a time-honored tradition; she will not disappoint. “I have heard many stories,” Nkemi says, solemn. “It is rumored that there is a book of living conversation which is, itself, haunted by the mishap of a divinipotent. They say if you stay too late studying in the West Hall, you will hear it whisper – as if the scratch of a tree branch – ”

The great brakes of the cablecar grind to a halt again; the girls lean forward, wide-eyed, to catch every word from Nkemi. The boy and his mother exit at the station, hand-in-hand.

“Whispering,” Nkemi says, wide-eyed. “Calling out your name. And if you look for it…!”

“What?” Nkeji asks. “What happens?”

“It is not known,” Nkemi says, still solemn-faced, with a slow shake of her head.

Jiowa shivers all over and knocks her knuckles against her teeth. “Where did you study, ada’na Nkemi?” She asks.

“Ire’dzosat,” Nkemi says.

Jiowa’s eyes widen again.

“Jiowa wants to attend Ire’dzosat,” Nkeji says, cheerful. “I like Tsu’un. Boys who read poetry!” She giggles again.

Jiowa’s face darkens, faintly, at the cheeks. She glances up, and then up. “I do not have any expectations,” the girl says; a little frown pinches the skin of her forehead beneath close-cropped hair. Tentatively, her field – a dasher’s, but swirling with clairvoyant mona, reaches out a little more deeply into Nkemi’s – and, too, into Anetol’s. Nkeji has no clear preference, except perhaps for a faint scattering of living mona; she has caprised them no more than socially, superficially.

“This is very wise,” Nkemi says, smiling at her; her field welcomes the girl's, warm and friendly. “May I tell you a secret?”

“Please,” Jiowa says, quickly, “ada’na.”

Nkemi nods. “Do not doubt,” she says; she reaches out and takes the younger girl’s hand in hers, with a quick firm squeeze. “Do not fear. Leave nothing behind in your preparations; offer all that you have. Then there can be no regrets, whatever comes next.”

Jiowa nods; she nods again, and squeezes Nkemi’s hand back. Her face is still set in a little frown, but she finds a smile, glancing at Anetol as well.

The cablecar comes to a halt again before long. The two girls trail behind Nkemi and Anetol as she leads him off onto the platform. The crowd is thick in Dejai Point, too, but as elsewhere they part for exiting first, and only then come together and swarm forward.

“Do you go to Tsed’tsa?” Jiowa asks, hopeful.

“Yes,” Nkemi says, cheerfully. “Please, you will accompany us?”

Nkeji giggles, and they both grin.

They cross the main road, and they are in Dejai Point, then; it is a mix of buildings. Students are everywhere; they spill in and out of buildings, laughing, talking. There are bookshops and cafes, and boys slouching like men, sitting outside and exhaling cigarette smoke over books and well-worn papers.

Nkemi leads them down the streets easily. “Ada’xa Mouko runs a very good bookshop here,” she says, confidently, gesturing to the side with a smile for Jiowa. Nkeji’s eyes drift, but she keeps pace with them well enough. “You can buy and sell both, as you like; he offers a very fair price.”

The streets narrow; the buildings rise. There are more dormitories as they grow closer; there are more trees, too.

And then – the Walk of Tsed’tsa stretches out before them, long and shadeless, all gleaming sandstone, with its enormous gate at the end.

“It’s beautiful,” Jiowa breathes, wide-eyed.

It is well into morning by now, and hot in the sun; it sparks even off the light-colored stone, even in Bethas. Nkemi breathes in deep the scent. There is no quietness to be found; the pavilion is teeming with life. Booksellers push carts like wardrobes on wheels, calling out; the smell of food crackles hot and spicy through the air, and kofi winds up to meet it. Students lounge, laughing and talking; a group of boys, shirtless, pass a ball between their feet, although their eyes are as much on the passerbys as the game. Nkeji lingers a moment, but an elbow in the ribs from Jiowa brings her along.

The crowds part for a harried looking teacher; a line of small children in pale yellow uniforms with goggles around their neck trails obediently after them, one after the next. There is giggling and hushed whispers and small bright voices, and the brush of more small eddles, all around one another, except for those few students who lack them, who look, otherwise, the small as all the rest of their small fellows.