V
The Grand Machine
is Set in Motion

Atnan holed up in the roundhouse, neglecting everything but the scrolls. The weather had been rough and the sea choppy, so he hadn’t been out on the water for a while.

“Twenty straight days,” Barlas announced, throwing open the door. “Nothing but wind and drizzle — but oh, what’s this?” He waved his hands around in the bright light that shone through the opening as though splashing it, cupping it in his hands, pouring it all over. “I need some entertainment, and you need air that ain’t been breathed up a thousand times already, eh?”

The text Atnan had been working on consisted of characters enclosed in squares and rectangles. At first, Atnan shielded this puzzle from the bigger man’s view, then relaxed. Barely able to recite the runes, Barlas would have no idea what he was looking at.

Peering over Atnan’s shoulder, Barlas bit into a hank of dried squid and chewed it loudly in Atnan’s ear. “What’s with all the … shapes? Bit like a road, eh?”

Startled, Atnan sat his pen down, eliciting further comment with a gesture.

Barlas groaned. “Stone blocks, big as you or me. Some square, some not, but all fitted together — road, eh?” His fingers walked along the rectangles like a pair of tiny legs.

Atnan scooted over and grabbed Barlas’s arm, guiding the little finger man to the top of the scroll — or what he reckoned was the top. He figured that particular scroll went long-wise, but as you went along, the symbols flipped line to line: first top-wise, then bottom-wise, top-wise again, and so on.

So it’s not us looking from way up here, but someone looking down at their feet — it’s all about perspective!

Barlas took possession of his arm again. “Yes, yes. Little finger guy steps on all the stones, alright?”

The characters don’t turn; you do, as you walk the road.

It was quite simple, actually, once he saw it; or rather, once Barlas did.

“So … coming or not?”

Atnan signed in the affirmative and then skipped over to gather his cloak.

“What — do you want more rain?” Barlas said over his shoulder, heading outside. “Leave that ugly tent behind and show our friend the sun some appreciation!”

They walked all day, too far from the village for Atnan’s comfort. He scrabbled along the slope to catch up to Barlas, who was whooping. His boots went ten-den, ten-den on the loose rocks: Ten, the first rune of tark, to climb. Den, the first rune of del, stone, for which the village had been aptly named. At the top, he slapped clouds of gray dust from his vest and pants.

“Marker.” Barlas pointed over the ridge. “Wanna find out what it’s marking?”

Atnan shaded his eyes and picked out a black pillar in the distance. He gestured toward the rapidly sinking sun. The shadows creeping down the valley were long and getting longer.

“Nah, you worry too much. It’s on the way … practically. Village is that way, bip, bip, bip.” His hand hopped over the ridges. “Bend a little left of the sun, cut through — plenty of time, eh?”

No choice but to trust him, unless I want to find my own way back.

When they reached the pillar, Atnan put his palm against one of the five flat sides.

“Ah, so it’s a treaty stone,” Barlas said. “Important at all?”

Atnan signed that he couldn’t say. Older stones marked agreements with the Hapak or among the Fyrean clans. Newer ones marked the border with Kindhirak — though they were a long way from there. So he’d read; this was the first marker stone he had seen.

His fingers swept along a belt of characters around all five sides as he walked around. Bear, Otter, Whale, Salmon, Heron, Squid. Clan devices, five per side, five sides — the five-and-twenty Fyrean clans. Some of the devices were outdated, obscure, and some of the clans were now extinct.

Barlas skipped a pebble down the hill, tik tik tik. “Aw, come on, Inky-fingers. I took you away from one text just to find another! You seen what needs seeing, now, don’t go trying to understand it, too, eh?”

What about his clan, Eya, the owl? In its slot he found a circle, x-cross inside, two little dots for eyes — the most common symbol from the lost scrolls.

Boatfuls of information dotted his mental sea, isolated, drifting. Now he could throw lines between them, lash them together. He bounded down the hill toward home, leaving Barlas to catch up.

That evening, Atnan started with the assumption that the old clan devices stood for the stressed syllable in their names, Ghoti go, Huthra hu, and so on. Eya, the owl showed up frequently because e was a common sound.

This idea should be easy enough to test. One of the scrolls contained a list of words, that is, clusters of symbols, followed by Old Jalithan numbers, still in use in imperial writing — a manifest or a tributary record, perhaps.

Most of the lines were devoid of clan devices, or nonsense.

Near the end of the list, he found the sequence goat, whale, bear — Falda, Nalud, Huthra, fa-na-hu. Fanu, the region upland of Del. Then whale, frog, otter, something, squid — na-ip-si-something-mu. The missing character might be la for Nepsilam, the capital of Kindhirak.

An imperial record! Possibly.

That night, he slept more soundly than he had in weeks.

Taláni followed his mother to her cabin. He made himself a nest of rugs and cushions in a corner while she got to work scraping down the assassin’s skin, rubbing it with salt and ashes. “No time to do this properly,” she complained.

Taláni snorted.     

“Don’t sulk! Play with any woman you like, but don’t collect them — ”

That was hardly the issue. “This man passed the wall, ten rings of cabins, my hand-picked guards, and a woman sleeping at my feet. Weakness! Carelessness! Incompetence. Betrayal. Failure! I had to burn my home, my bed. Everything is falling apart!”

“Everything is coming together.”

“What? Do you not know disaster when you see it?”

“I know opportunity.” The skin slithered from her hand and plopped into a stone jar of urine and red cedar bark. “When I see it.”

“Another winter and you’ll see nothing at all.”

She tapped her temple. “These aren’t my real eyes, nedóru! Why don’t you trust me? Haven’t I always seen what needed to be seen? When your father banished me for a new wife with a more convenient philosophy? That he would name your brother ruler?” She pulled a copper kettle down from a hook on the wall and filled it with water. “How about the warriors your brother sent to murder you in the night?”

Taláni paced. “You missed this.”

“I mean to find out why, but I need your help.”

She signaled him to join her, peering into the kettle. She dropped flat pebbles into the water. Each one fluttered to the bottom, landing with either a black or white character facing up. “Your father was afraid of what you would do with power.”

“Was he wrong?” With the point of his knife pressed into his palm, he dribbled blood into the kettle.

“Who died? Your father, at my hand. Your brother, by his wife’s hand. You? Not at her hand.” The thick drops of blood billowed into long, winding ribbons. “The power is in the life and the life is in the blood. What is your reading?”

She always asked him, but he never saw anything but blood and water. “The signs are  … unclear.”

“Not to me!” Blood drifted toward a stone imprinted with a white character, then two black. “Gift. Power. Violation.”

“This makes no sense.”

“Let me help.” With a delicate gesture, she flicked a knife out of some hidden pocket in her gown. “I retrieved this from your floor.”

Taláni observed the weapon. Black obsidian blade. Curved antler handle with a prong forming a natural guard. An ovoid of black jasper with white veins for a pommel. The sort of braided leatherwork common in ceremonial weapons.

He reached out, felt a freezing jolt run up his arm, flinched back.

“No! It is cursed.” She took his hand, passed close over the knife. “A grievance-blade. First, you die, then your shade must defeat the murder spirit trapped within the knife or become its food. This is the old way. Few know this skill. Do you recognize the blade?”

“Should I?”

“Gift. Power. Violation.”

“Riddles, mother?”

“No, answers. The gift is the knife. The power is the spirit within — and whoever was strong enough to harness it. The violation?”

“The assassination, obviously.” Pacing. “Who is responsible?”

“Many people would like you dead — ?”

He grunted.

“Now, how many are capable of subduing a murder spirit — ? Who might also receive … gifts? From us?”

Exhausted, he wished she would simply say what she meant. It was too late for this much thinking. “I don’t know, another ruler?”

“Yes! This is the sort of gift one gives to mark the birth of a son.”

“What a tiresome game!” He paced some more, stopped, turned, paced. Then it came to him: “Wolkári. You gave him this knife? When his son was born?”

“I have given many such gifts. This is the first one to be returned.” She made a cursing sign and spat over her left shoulder. “Oh, Wolkári, that spider! I give him a knife when his son is born, he gives it back when mine dies. Such a sense of humor!”

Taláni left while she was still finishing her speech. She had wasted enough of his time and now it was time to act. He bellowed orders into the air at whoever was nearest. The warriors scurried to fulfill his demands or find someone who could.

Selolo lost count of the days and nights she and the other women spent traveling upriver, bead by bead on the pathfinder. They begged for food and gear and slept under the stars. They foraged for roots and seeds and taught themselves to hunt and fish.

Their first real success was a bony carp that Táripel and Melinítri pulled out of the river on a line. The little troupe cheered their triumphant return, the tiny fish strung between them as though too heavy for one person to carry.

The morsel sizzled over the fire while Súmi and Shúrimel composed an absurd song about a magical fish that never got smaller no matter how many bites you took. When the fish was ready, each one took a bite, proclaimed how rich and fatty it was and how full they were, then passed the fish along the circle. Seven times they passed the fish around until only spine and fins remained and the ruse could continue no longer.

Each time she brought the fish to her lips, Selolo’s bites were more like tiny kisses.

Here we are, making up stupid songs while we pretend we aren’t starving to death. If we pretend long enough, does it become true?

The key might not be how long they pretended, or how convinced she was, but that the pretense was collective. What the community declared true was true. In any event, she could never bring herself to take a full bite.

At every settlement along the way, one or two women decided they didn’t mind being a secondary wife or a serving girl. Some returned to their ancestral lands, others didn’t want to. They spoke less and less.

Our lives before didn’t include each other. Only the present situation keeps us entangled.

Before. There was a time before her captivity. Lolo was her home, had to be, for no other reason than the name he had given her: Selolo, Behold, the Lolo. Beyond that, what had she retained? Warmth. Scraps of song. The scent of flowers. No events, no people.

The land became less sullen and tree-choked. Clover and chamomile crushed underfoot, sending up a pleasant aroma. Meadows blazed with wildflowers. At the last ridge before her homeland, Selolo imagined the clouds parting so the sun might cast cheerful rays on rows of happy houses, busy streets, and people who would welcome her home.

When they finally arrived, Sílthi threw herself to the ground in protest. “This? This is what we’ve been walking all this way to find?”

Several of the other women grumbled in agreement. Where were the happy childhood scenes Selolo had woven for them?

There were no groves of alder, only burned stumps. No cheerful town, only clumps of squalid farmhouses and trampled fields. No fields of flowers, only goats and sheep half-drowned in mud. No distant family to greet them, only dismal people who scuttled away, avoiding eye contact. Most of all, ash and blackened earth.

Her high spirits may as well have been unstoppered like a wine jug and drained on the ground. “This  … is my valley — or was. Our cabin circle was over there — no.” Her gesture swept toward an empty gray clearing.

I am young, very young. I am standing in front of my house with a javelin I have no intention of using, no idea how to use. Two men grab me, eunuchs. Now I’m asleep, for days and days. I wake up in the dark, alone.

Did this happen? To me? Here?

The little group trudged down the hill toward the largest group of cabins. Most houses stood aloof, as though the people intended to live as far away from each other as possible.

Around every corner, Selolo’s memory conjured ghosts. Young hunters brought game for old men and women to cut and smoke, berries and roots for them to mash. Women stripped long cedar branches, softened them in ash-water, pounded the strands apart, threaded them on frames, weaved patterned skirts and hats. The scent of beets and woad. The watery ga-thump ga-thump of wooden paddles stirring the dye barrels. Hands braiding a ribbon of goat hair, knotting it into a soft blanket.

None of them were there, none of them were real.

Behind a mud-caked house, a wicker cage held a pine eagle, hooded and tied, restless on its perch. Its cage too small, the bird was forced to stoop over.

Soft gray feathers. White flecks.

The eagle’s beak poked out from beneath its leather hood, dark with a streak of yellow-white along the left side.

That’s no ghost!

Unable to contain herself, she ran closer to the house.

I want to be old enough to hunt, but I’m too small. One day my father gives me an eagle chick to train. “She will train you back,” he says. As the chick imprints, I learn its personality. By the time I’m ready, the bird is as big as me. I must lean to the side to balance her weight. I won’t be allowed to hunt until I can hold her aloft.

Nokokolë. Her name is Nokokolë.

Past time melded into the present.

No, I am fooling myself! The real Nokokolë must have burned along with everything else. No, no — even if this Nokokolë is a lie, she must be true, she must! Something of me remains in this place.

Before she reached the side of the house, a man began shouting at her. “You! Stay away from here! Who do you think you are?”

Who do I think I am? I think I’m someone I don’t even recognize. I think I am finally beginning to wake up.

Warm sun on her face. The murmur of her parents speaking to each other. Her brothers and sisters rustling, awaking. The smell of rabbit stew. Where had they gone?

She thundered at the man in a voice she hoped would melt him where he stood. “I am Wi’inaxáyo-wa’axána-kirelítsu, and that is my eagle.” The muddy yard squished under her boots. “My mother and my father were elders in this valley and it is their ashes you are trampling on, like a pig.” She spat the final word, as though she could stab him with her voice.

The man started toward her so she threw back her hood and ran toward the cage, where they met.

Poking the leper’s mark on her cheek at him, she backed him down. “I had sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and we were happy here, before all this. That eagle is the last of my family and you will not keep her from me.”

“Don’t touch me or my house! Take the ugly useless thing, let it claw your eyes out if you like — only do it somewhere else.” A defensive sign held at her with his thumbs, he retreated, muttering.

The cage door came open after some fumbling with the bar, while she trilled and hummed whatever secret phrases came out, her idea of eagle language. The bird cocked its head toward the sound of her voice.

“Nokokolë, I’m here now. I was gone, but I’m here.”

Arm wrapped in her scarf, she coaxed the heavy eagle out. She let it foot around and flap its wings. The scarf wasn’t thick enough. She untied the hood and jesses. Wincing, she held her screams for fear of frighting the bird.

First one eye then the other focused on her as the bird rocked back and forth, raised and lowered its crest feathers, and pivoted its neck. Was the bird trying to communicate with her? Saying she couldn’t stay, didn’t remember, that this was all a beautiful, wonderful, stupid lie that she was foolish to believe.

“Fly away,” she whispered. “Fly as far as you can and take me with you.” Not her body, but her memories.

The sisters glowered down at her. “We can’t stay here,” Kilími said.

Mekvat strolled up the spiral ramp of the tower toward his chamber with Luto skipping behind, trying to keep up.

“All your requirements are there,” the contractor huffed. “Visible from a distance. Far enough from the capital to create a new pilgrimage, but not so far no one will want to go.”

Mekvat stopped, pretending to peek inside a round window in a round wall. “Go on.”

“Close to a city, but not too close. Isolated, but not desolate.” The contractor wheezed. “Minister, your legs are so much longer than mine!”

“Isolated, you say?”

“Yes, yes! And suitable for construction, but unlikely to attract unwanted buildings. Lovely scenery, but not as to detract — ”

“You neglect the most important point: Wisdom? Blue. Learnedness? Blue? Mek himself? Blue, blue, blue!” Mekvat shook his bright indigo sleeve with all its dangling woolen bits at Luto’s nose. “I hope you have not brought me another site that does not evoke a deep and abiding sense of blueness.”

“Neglect? No, no, no. I was, I was building up to it!” They entered Mekvat’s apartments and Luto spread several parchments on a table with a flourish. “I give you Khet Manak.” The topmost parchment was a map, which Luto swirled his finger over, finally landing it on the coast. “An island, facing Shiriwak, currently uninhabited — except for sea birds, a few otters, perhaps — sufficient to house your planned constructions and nothing else.”

“An island? Interesting.”

“A causeway will be necessary, of course, and that will complicate things, of course — but the water is quite shallow.” Diagrams filled the next page. “The causeway will be submerged, appearing only when the tide is low enough. Adds a bit of drama, don’t you think?”

“The city — it cannot be part of something else. ”

“Ah, yes, yes, yes. Shiriwak is in view, of course, but it’s hardly a city — more an oversized town with a wall — and the island, well, it’s an island.” His finger plowed through the channel between the island and the city. “It faces the famous sea cliffs — have you been, minister?”

“Once, when I was very young. I don’t remember it.”

“Ah, that’s a pity. The formations there are stunning.” The next page was a sketch of hexagonal columns broken off at different levels and fitted together like a honeycomb. “The columns will be echoed in the structure, like so.” Another page. “We can break the columns off to make a stairway up to the courtyard.”

Mekvat pursed his lips and tapped them as though deep in thought.

“Now, I know what you’re going to ask about: the blue! I need not tell you the sea in this part of the coast is quite blue, whereas the island itself is white, like the sea cliffs. Very hard, bright like crystal, but — you’re going to love this — it takes on a sort of bluish … I guess you’d call it a tinge? Some quality of the water there, a lichen or algae — some infection which — oh, you really must see it.”

“Must I, then?” Mekvat smiled in a way he hoped would seem carnivorous.

“Yes, well. I’ve saved the best for last. Limiya the Lady of Shiriwak is flattered to have her city honored in such a way.”

Mekvat ran his hands down his sleeves, first one and then the other. This was not a welcome development.

Luto stammered, “They — They would like to help fund the construction. Forgive me, minister, I thought you might be more … enthused.”

Mekvat held a pained expression for a moment, then said, “In exchange for — ?”

“Nothing, nothing! Nothing of any consequence, anyway. Petty privileges, the sort of thing nobility affords. Private access for them and their court — at prearranged times — reserved seating for festivals, regular sacrifices in their honor. A certain number of ‘friends and family’ appointments.”

“No  creative demands?”

“No, no, no! They are looking at this as an economic boon to their citizens. That will be Limiya’s legacy. The building will be yours. Indeed they will rename the island in your honor. Khet Manak will become Khet Mekvat.” He widened his eyes and held his smile, which began to wilt almost immediately.

“Hm. You surprise me sometimes, Luto.”

“Is that … a good thing?”

“The equinox is a propitious day for consecration.”

“That soon? I thought — ”

“Shall we not survey the site then?”

Flustered, Luto began gathering his things. “No, no, no, we should, we should! I will need to dispatch forerunners to announce our arrival — immediately. We must leave two days hence, three at most.”

As he shuffled, two glass bulbs rolled out of his satchel, one marine blue, the other cobalt. “Oh, I almost forgot! I had my glaziers working day and night — copper powder and lapis mixed in with the glass. Sophisticated techniques, too — quite new. Expensive, as well. We’ll cut these into hexagons for the windows and fit them together like fish scales — ”

“No need to prattle,” Mekvat said, picking one of them up.

Light shimmered through one of the bulbs as Mekvat peered through it. “The quality is substandard.”

“The bubbles and inclusions? Yes, yes. These are only samples — pulled together at the last possible moment, too. We will perfect the process before construction begins — you’ll be quite satisfied, I’m sure of it. You’ll turn to me and say, ‘Luto, I am sorry I ever doubted you.’ ”

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