XI
And with Retroversions Replaced

Selolo could hardly believe how readily the villagers received them. In only a few short days, they cleaned out a large abandoned hut to house most of the sisters and raised another one nearby for her and Gwahália to share. It was no more than a circle of stones with a roof, but the villagers brought them bowls and blankets, sleeping mats and tools and anything else they might have needed, including several things she had no idea what to do with. Still, she was as grateful for their generosity as she was ashamed to need it.

Meanwhile, every sister was unofficially adopted by one of the aunties, who checked in on them every day. She learned that her auntie’s name was Hennamis and that she had been right about the family resemblance: She was Atnan’s grandmother. The old woman knew just enough jargon to confuse them both but quite a few signs, including some of the unfamiliar signs she had learned from Atnan in Maur. At the same time, she learned just enough of the local speech to confuse them both.

“Much to do,” Hennamis told her in jargon, as best she could. “Baby first.” Most of the chores Hennamis helped her with were for preparing for the birth. To judge by the steady parade of well-wishers who brought baby clothes, carrying baskets, carrying boards, carrying slings — as well as implements Selolo had no name for — it must have been a long time since any babies had been born in the village.

The villagers scowled and pretended to be hurt at any hint of repayment, but they kept themselves busy and were eager to include the sisters in the daily chores. “Grow baby” was Selolo’s only assigned task, so she didn’t often join the other sisters, who were put to work gutting fish, smoking fish, salting fish, pounding fish into meal, storing fish in round stone jars — nearly all the activity of the place revolved around fish and fishing! At first she found the odor offensive, but she had since grown accustomed.

Fishing to these people is what weaving was to mine. The Lolo of my parents’ time may have been like this. What if most places are, and my view of things is narrow?

Most days she spent indoors not stressing her fluids or joints, which left her time to wonder about herself. Was she Selolo, the woman who had grown up too fast in captivity, who had learned how to survive and not much more than that? Was she Kirelítsu, the young girl from her hazy memories of a happy but distant past? What if she was becoming someone else, someone she hadn’t met?

Whoever she was, she knew she wanted Barlas as her interpreter. The other fishermen were better at jargon and friendly enough, but after a few sentences they’d start tugging their beards and making excuses to get back to work, even if they had nothing to do. Barlas, on the other hand, spoke slowly and clearly for as long as she needed. He let her correct his jargon and taught her words in the local speech. He never asked her not to call him Ganó, even though she knew by now that “Bear” was his family name, Huthra. Besides, of all the strange people in this strange place, he was the least strange, if only by a little bit. Yet none of that was why she preferred him. She just did.

As the sisters became more comfortable in Del, they grew increasingly uncomfortable about their position there. Autumn was approaching and wintertime was a bad time to travel. Obviously, they should stay until at least spring before considering to leave. But what about the elders? They might be obliged to care for poor travelers in need of assistance, but how long that obligation would last, no one could say.

“You speak for us, Selolo,” Kilími said. “You speak with them the best, and they listen to you.”

“Plus nobody dares to disappoint a pregnant woman!” Táripel added, to some laughter and sounds of general agreement.

“Much talking today,” Barlas told her in what was now becoming their personal blend of jargon and both of their native dialects.

“Yes,” she replied.

They found the elders gathered idly outside under the eaves of the roundhouse, chewing sweet-grass and debating, as usual.

As she approached, waddling slowly with her hand on her back to counterbalance her burgeoning belly, Atnan’s father — she had learned his relation but not yet his name — offered her his seat on one of the benches and helped her settle into it.

Layram said, “Your presence is a gift, child, though unexpected.” Of all the men in the village, his trade jargon was the best, though old-fashioned. He turned to Barlas and asked in their language. “What does she want?”

Selolo smiled. They didn’t realize how much of their language she understood. “Elder, we like it here,” she replied in their language. “We wish to stay.”

This piqued the men’s interest; some even seemed mildly impressed. Layram launched into a lengthy response. When she didn’t respond right away, he started over in jargon. “You are welcome here, and there is space for you. ‘The sea provides for any hand that dips.’ You all are welcome guests, but you have no family here. No boats, no nets, no inheritance. No husbands, no oars to protect you and provide.” He held out his oar momentarily. “Our houses will shelter you for a little while, but you have no roots here. So we ask ourselves: Why do they stay? They must know they don’t belong here.”

“You speak truth, elder.” She patted her belly. “We must stay for the baby — until spring?” Several of the elders agreed.

She turned away to stare down the hill toward the sea. So broad, so open. It promised endless possibilities. She imagined herself and her sisters selling themselves as wives or servant-girls — whichever would work — to the first trading boat that came along. The possibilities were not endless; they were narrow, and growing narrower.

Layram prompted her, “We agree. Then what?”

“This is a good place but small, and you are good people but few. Houses go empty, fish go uncaught, men go without wives.”

Atnan’s father laughed. “Some of us are happy that way, too!”

“Not all, though, eh?” Barlas said under his breath.

She pretended not to hear. “Elders, this is your place to do with as you wish. If you find room for us, we will stay and make new roots. Our gratitude will bless this place.” She bowed her head and touched her hands to her forehead. “If this cannot be, we will go with the boats in spring.”

Stroking his beard, Layram surveyed the other men. There was some murmuring, and she thought a debate might erupt at any moment. Instead, Layram motioned for her to take his hand. “We will ask the spirits for a sign,” he said at last. “Until then, keep doing what you are doing.” He released her hand then bowed his head and touched his forehead to signal that the audience was over. The other elders followed suit.

They didn’t say no.

Inside the gate, Atnan arrived at a bustling market. Stalls overflowed with ropes of yarn, sausage, or cheese; colorfully beaded round hats and pointed shoes; chickens, ducks, and long-whiskered fish hanging from poles; un-namable fruits and vegetables; and spices that tickled his nose. And the people! Throngs of them, swarms.

“I say, friend, can I interest you in some leeks or broad beans?” A man called to him from a booth piled high with baskets of fruits and vegetables. “They’re the best in the city! Or a moon-fruit?” He sat cross-legged, wearing a plain vest and a round hat, clean-shaven except for a black mustache that flopped over his crooked smile, its long ends twisted into waxy curls.

Atnan paused.

With a gap-toothed grin, the man produced a white melon about the size of his hand and shaped like an egg. He broke it open then deftly gutted the seeds with two fingers. He took a big bite, juices flowing down his chin. “Friend, I must … tell you … this is — ”

“Zakinder!” A woman sat back-to-back with the man. Her attire was similar, except for a beet-colored scarf in place of the man’s hat. She paused the transaction she was engaged in long enough to turned and scold the man. “Don’t swindle the foreign boy.” To Atnan she said, “A twentieth part for two. Don’t let him tell you different.”

Zakinder winked at Atnan. “Now who’s being swindled?”

Unsure, Atnan turned to leave.

“Wait, wait!” Zakinder offered the other half of the melon. “She’s only playing. It’s a gift. Sit, please, sit!”

Cautiously, Atnan accepted the fruit and took a bite. It might have been the sweetest thing he had ever tasted. In two more bites it was gone.

“Rind and all,” the man said. “It’s the best part, if you ask me. Two more?” He held out his hand expectantly.

Atnan fished around in his cloak and pulled out a bit of stamped copper and offered it with one hand while holding up two fingers on the other.

After examining the coin, the man gasped and showed it to the woman. “Oh! When did they last stamp them this way, I wonder?”

Confused, Atnan made a sign that meant he needed an explanation: one hand waving as though wafting sound into his ear along with a puzzled expression. He knew the coin was stamped “a twentieth part”.

She said, “It’s too much. Far too much.”

“The bits are smaller now.” Zakinder counted back seven small coins into Atnan’s palm along with two more fruits.

As Atnan bowed and turned to leave, he wondered how much he had overpaid for rubbery snails in Gwetlak.

“Take care, friend,” the man said after him. “Not everyone in this city is honest!”

For the rest of the day, Atnan explored the city. Wonders surrounded him on all sides. Avenues and alleyways teemed with people, animals, and carts all moving under mismatched buildings built for every imaginable purpose — homes intermingled with bakeries, kitchens, smithies, foundries, masonries, cobblers, clothiers, hatters, glaziers, potters, bath-houses, and brothels — and the market as well. Wastewater left the city in wide stone culverts, chased by half-naked workers who pushed wooden rakes and brooms. Everywhere, mud-brick ovens with winding clay chimneys puffed varicolored fumes. Smooth towers rose at regular intervals, built of the same creamy smooth stone as the gigantic walls, sheer and featureless on the exterior, riddled with stairs and ladders on the interior.

So much color, so much sound! So much  … muchness!

Something his father said came to him. “No one is born into an empty world.” This world was anything but empty, but it wasn’t full, either. It was more like a rushing river, in constant motion.

Before long, he was lost. Kindhir’s tower and the wall were reliable landmarks, but he was used to navigating Del, where the sea stretched in both directions with hills opposite; here, the circular wall returned on itself, and the tower was opposite to all points simultaneously. In the shade of the buildings, it was easy to lose the sun.

He ended up sleeping in a cobblestone alley, tucked between two barrels.

Sore and starving by sunrise, he decided to find the market again. If he turned at the wall and kept going in one direction, he’d have to hit it eventually, even if he went the long way around. As it turned out, he was never more than one gate away from where he came in.

The fruit-seller recognized him and shouted out as he passed. “Are you back for more moon-fruit, friend?”

Atnan hunkered down in front of the stall, a pile of limbs and satchels under his tent of a cloak. Pushing the heavy cloth back to free his arms, he dipped his head in thanks and bought two more melons.

“You left yesterday before we had much chance to talk,” the man said. “I see by your red hand that you’ve just arrived. All that luggage — are you are staying long?”

Atnan tapped the dot below his lip and signed that he didn’t talk much with anyone.

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry, friend. We don’t get much of that around here.”

Undeterred, Atnan pulled a pen from his cloak and pressed some imperial writing into the skin of the melon as best he could.

“Ah, clever! My wife is the reader in the family.” The same woman from yesterday was helping another customer. He tapped her shoulder. “What’s that he’s writing?”

The woman craned around to look at the melon skin. “It says he’s mute, he’s from Del, and he’s here to make a delivery. Poor thing!”

“Del? Where in Radu’s big toe is that?”

“Up-coast, beyond Gwetlak.”

The man mused, “Never knew there was anything beyond Gwetlak.”

The woman finished her transaction and turned to face Atnan. “Ignore my husband. I try teaching him manners, but it never sticks. Zakinder you’ve met. I’m Glesimel, his wife. What is your name, friend? Does everyone where you come from make words with their hands? Or do they speak?”

Atnan flushed. He wrote his name, leaving off his parentage and the answer to her questions since he was running out of room on the fruit. His next purchase ought to be a slate of some kind. If few in the cities could read and fewer still could sign, he wondered if he wouldn’t ultimately need to hire an interpreter, which was desperately beyond his means, so perhaps his next step should be to find work.

The woman interrupted his chain of thought by repeating, “At-nan.”

Zakinder took another look at the melon skin. “Well, friend — Atnan — or however it’s pronounced — you’re a man of letters, aren’t you?”

Atnan affirmed.

Glesimel’s face brightened. “Oh! Can you draw up accounts? In the official style? Are you staying long? After your delivery, I mean? Where will you stay while you’re in town?” Glesimel stopped herself. “Oh, I shouldn’t ask everything at once!”

Atnan rubbed the rune-scar on his hand and looked away. He was unprepared for such questions, but the answer according to his hips and shoulders was anywhere but cobbled alleyways. He cupped a hand behind one ear and held up one finger to indicate she ought to ask him again, one question at a time.

“Can you draw up official accounts?”

Affirmative. He didn’t know this for certain, but it was all just scribing.

“Are you staying anywhere?”

Negative.

The couple negotiated amongst themselves using only eyebrows and shoulders. Finally, Zakinder said to Atnan, “Listen, we have a proposal. You need a place to stay. We need to prepare our annual accounts. You could rent a cot, but we have a room. Save your money and trade us your services.”

Atnan pantomimed writing on his hand, then swept his arm around the city.

Zakinder said, “Yes, there are scribes here. The Academy of Mek, but they are  — ”

“Difficult,” Glesimel said.

“I was going to say ‘expensive,’ but that, too. I’m sure you won’t mind helping us load the cart, as well?”

Atnan missed Barlas terribly just then.

“We are keeping our own accounts,” Zakinder said, “and falling behind.”

“He means I am keeping them,” Glesimel said, “but he’s not wrong. This is our busy season, and we’re farmers, not scribes.” They showed him their calloused hands.

Atnan agreed their hands were better for holding rake and plow than pen and ink. They seemed friendly enough, but were they trustworthy? Zakinder hadn’t overcharged him yesterday — that was something. Plus, sleeping indoors.

He held out his hand and mimed writing on it, then pointed to his eyes. It took several tries to get Glesimel to understand he wanted to see their accounts.

She cleared a spot for him to sit while she explained her system: First, she showed him several clay jars, one for each type of produce. At the start of the day, she deposited a pebble for each item in the appropriate jar, then she and Zakinder would take one pebble out for each item they sold throughout the day. The jars went home with them along with any remaining produce, and every night she counted the pebbles and transferred the sums to her ledger — a workable system, but laborious.

They found him a slate he could use to communicate, and he was able to work out some improvements to their methods of recording the day’s transactions.

As they worked and talked, he grew more at ease. The couple were talkative and eager, Zakinder especially, and many of the customers lingered to exchange news, jokes, and other small talk, which Atnan mostly ignored. They also chattered to him all day long; the fact that he could only sit and listen seemed to spur them to talk even more.

Meanwhile, he was able to teach them a few signs by writing the meaning on the slate for Glesimel to communicate to her husband. This might have been tedious, except that Zakinder treated the entire exercise like a game, shouting out his guesses no matter how absurdly wrong they were.

Over the course of the day, he learned that Zakinder’s ancestors had built the house and farm where they lived, but now they were tenants and paid rent to a landlord. The couple had been married several years but had no children. Zakinder’s father had lived with them until his death, less than a year ago.

Near the end of the day, Zakinder asked, “Say, friend, did you pack a hat in all that luggage? The sun gets nasty in the afternoons.”

Atnan pulled his triangular fishing hat from his gear.

“Mek’s eyes! You can’t wear that — not in public!” He dug around in one of the baskets and found a round hat like his own that fit tight above Atnan’s ears.

“It suits you,” Glesimel said, even though her expression indicated otherwise.

At sunset, Atnan helped load the baskets and jars into a wooden cart for the long walk around the walls to the opposite side of the city, facing Kusumnu.

Atnan gestured down the avenue and made the sign for a question.

“No carts allowed in the ministerial district,” Glesimel said.

“And it’s quieter this way,” Zakinder said. “I say, you’re very fortunate to have met us at all, friend! There are markets at most every gate, and we normally set up at the Kusumnu gate.”

Glesimel added, “Which is much closer to the farm.”

“We’ve been having trouble finding a space anywhere closer to home than Gwetlak gate.”

“Because we’ve been later and later leaving every morning,” Glesimel said.

Zakinder grinned. “What she wants to say is that’s because of me, don’t you, love?”

“Well, that would be true,” Glesimel said.

On the way, they told him about every landmark they passed, as well as their viewpoint on the workings of the city.

“We keep a strict schedule,” Glesimel said. “There are vendors who don’t farm and farmers who don’t vend — ”

Zakinder broke in, “ — but then the vendor takes a pinch, and you have to use their carts and carters — pinch, pinch — all on top of the landlord — pinch — and the market, and the city, and the scholars, and the ministers, and the heptarch himself — one more and we’re all pinched out.”

“He’s exaggerating,” Glesimel said, “a bit. But it has been difficult since Zakinder’s father died. Besides, you’ve seen our accounts, and you’ll soon see our farm.”

After dark, they arrived at a muddy garden plot next to a brush pen with a few skinny goats and fat birds. They parked the cart inside a pole shed next to a cob house with a sod roof.

“It’s not much,” Zakinder said.

“But it’s home,” Glesimel added.

The couple shed their muddy boots outside the door and Atnan followed suit. The door opened on a central room, with a curtained chamber left and right. The main room was comfortable and tidy with white plaster walls and a pressed earth floor, cheerfully lit by lamps hung from the low rafters. A clay pot bubbled beside the hearth, filling the house with a pleasant, if earthy, aroma.

Glesimel explained that the leftward chamber was his and theirs was the one on the right. The room had fresh straw and a stack of wool blankets, a clay chamber pot, and a small nook that held an oil lamp.

They invited him to eat what turned out to be vegetable stew. While they ate, Atnan examined Glesimel’s records and transferred the day’s sums to the ledger. Tomorrow, he decided he would simply take the ledger to the stall and keep their accounts directly. After dinner, he bowed deeply in thanks, which impressed them more than it ought to have, then withdrew to his nook and drew the curtain.

The couple must have fallen into a deep sleep almost immediately, since the sound of their snoring reached him two rooms away. Still, it was better than an alleyway.

Taláni barged into the hallway outside his mother’s quarters, shouting for her. As the summer waned, they took up residence in one of Wolkári’s retreats, a cluster of cedar lodges built at the edge of a vast marsh.

He walked briskly, hoping to leave the ever-scuttling train of eunuchs behind. “You,” he said to the nearest bald head, “go fetch your lady.” More scuttling, but at least they scuttled away.

Is this the cost of being ruler, people always underfoot?

Complications multiplied. They sorted the people into those who could fight and those who could support the fighting. They gutted Wolkári’s government, burned his family, and spilled the blood of his singers. No tradition or law remained except what he or his mother decreed.

He installed new ministers and governors, all incompetent, all assigned to positions beyond their ability and expertise, by design. Their purpose was to perform governance, not to exercise it. The true power consisted of military commanders and eunuchs of the blood cult, who quietly rearranged every institution to prepare for the coming invasion of Kindhirak. The commanders answered directly to him, and the eunuchs to his mother.

This arrangement had a certain elegance but placed a heavy burden on his shoulders. If he yanked the strings, the puppets would dance — but he had to move first, or they wouldn’t. All the while, his loyalists needed to be appeased and the new alliances with local leaders needed to be cemented.

He found his mother in the garden, hair tied in knots atop her head, a shawl fashioned to look like raven’s wings draped across her shoulders. She was weaving orange and yellow poppies into a garland. “There you are, nedóru,” she said. “I know why you are looking for me.”

“Do you?”

“You want to leave this place.”

“I have since we arrived, dhána.” He picked up a poppy and twirled it by the stem. “That is no revelation.”

She took the flower from him, nipped it with a short knife, and added it to her garland. “I consulted the spirits. Conditions are ripe for our move to Kalparaana. What do you know of it?”

“Only what you told me. It is a mountain, a place of power.”

“Much more than that.” She set the garland aside and directed him to look beyond the garden. The land grew more marshy as far as he could see. “Beyond those marshes is a shallow lake through which all the rivers flow, and in the center of that lake, a perfectly circular mound, and at its summit, a city.”

“A city?”

“The ruins of an ancient city, and in its center the Citadel of Huma-Lapsala, and in the center of that, the remains of the last Elder Tree.”

“More magic? Why move our capital there?” He gestured in the opposite direction. “The domain of Kindhir is that way.”

She draped the garland over his shoulders, adjusting it to check the fit. “My mother and her mother before her passed down the story of Kalparaana. Each Elder Tree formed a bridge between the Three Kingdoms: the Brown Earth where humans live, the Bright Lands above, and the Silent Lands below. The Last King of Kalparaana was wicked and wanted to keep the power of the meridians — specifically, the ability to know the future — all to himself. That way, he could rule the whole world. So he burned the tree. We will restore it.”

“You see the future.”

“I hear only echoes. The Last King learned to play the song. I will tell you the rest when we reach the citadel.”

Taláni slumped out of the garland, kissed his mother’s palms, and touched them to his forehead. “You are a great mystery to me, mother, but I trust you.”

He left to prepare for their trip. The idea of moving further into the mountains, away from the center of the populations, and further from Kindhirak, troubled him. Then again, he was called to a life of trouble.

They traveled across the broad wetlands in shallow-bottomed barges, one with his attendants and seconds and another with his mother’s. The eunuchs pushed against long thrusting poles, slowly propelling the barges through a floating carpet of duckweed, around swamp cabbage and shocks of cattail.

Lily pads wider than his outstretched arms dotted the still waters beside canopies of cypress and ginkgo. Mossy stumps stood guard like warriors long dead, and statues protruded from the water like mossy stumps. A bird-sized dragonfly landed on the boat, shivered its delicate veined wings, and flew off again.

“The oldest structure in the world,” Melíksi declared when the first spires of the temple rose above the mist. “Sung into being by the elder spirits, along with the mountains and the hills.”

“Does it ever dry out?” Taláni asked. He swatted a blood fly that thumped against his palm when he struck it. It buzzed away, unharmed.

“Patience, nedóru.”

Taláni dragged his fingers in the water.

It is difficult to get in and out. We will need many barges.

He had people now. He envisioned a horde of strong-shouldered workers hewing down trees, cutting them with fire, lashing them together into a floating bridge. There was nothing he couldn’t do if labor were the only requirement. Labor, and willpower.

Soon the barges set ground on a green hill, shaded by mangrove, cypress, and eucalyptus trees, some with smooth bark that grew in multi-colored strips, as though painted. The eunuchs guided the barge into the lichen-infested ruins of a stone landing. Ficus roots had wormed their way into cracks in the blocks, pulling them away from their foundations, spilling them into the shallow water like a slow-motion rockslide.

“The dry land is a perfect circle, two days’ walk across,” one of the local ministers said.

“And badly overgrown,” Taláni said.

“These trees are sacred to our people — to the people.”

Some had trunks of such girth that twenty men couldn’t lock hands around them. Some sported giant thorns that spiraled up the trunks like stairs. Others appeared huge at first but turned out to be groves of trees with their branches and trunks woven into walls, domes, archways — all grown over structures long since rotted away. Ivies and briars choked every surface. Everywhere a war between trees and stone was being waged. The verge was winning, but slowly.

They passed elliptical patios, collapsed buildings, and stone chimeras: bird-faced dragons, winged wolves with human hands, gavial-headed people with pythons for arms and mountains for feet. As they pushed toward the central citadel, the trees grew larger and further apart, the canopy taller, the floor flatter and less overgrown.

The stones are rallying and may win in the end.

They reached the outer ring of Kalparaana, a giant circular road of stone blocks so massive only a great spirit could have planted them.

Taláni stepped out of the forest shadows into the bright sun. Ornate stone buildings stood in open courtyards connected by crisscrossing grassy pathways, knotted into the shape of spiraling branches.

He walked toward a nearby building that was losing its battle with a giant willow tree. On the walls, he found a carved relief: a tree whose branches were birds, a tree made of people reaching toward the stars, a person made of trees.

As he ran his hands along the wall, it told the story of Huma-Lapsala, with whirlwind arms and river legs. She stood within a ring of trees, one towering beside her in the center, with sun, moon, and stars in its branches. From her mouth flowed mountains and seas, rivers and lakes.

She plucked fruits from the gigantic tree and cracked them open to spill out animals and people. She harvested them into twenty-nine baskets and sprinkled them all over the earth.

Twenty-nine?

Thirteen was the correct number, the count of peoples now known as Silgatháltha. Indeed, there was a scene with only thirteen baskets, but they were sprinkled on the mountains, not by the sea — not in Kwelitánsit, the good land.

Another scene depicted sixteen baskets sprinkled by the sea, nine on one side of the Greater River’s mouth, seven on the other. The people settled, built rings of rocks around giant trees, some with fish-shaped leaves swimming skyward, some with arm-shaped branches ending in thousands of hands, some covered in fur, flames, or flowers — all radiating streams of animals and people.

Creation multiplying itself again and again —

Melíksi put her hand on his shoulder. “What troubles you, nedóru?”

He took her through the story, pausing at the twenty-nine peoples and their distribution. The second time, it was even easier to identify the thirteen as Silgatháltha: the tall headdresses of Lilíngiwit, the long squared-off axes of Pik-Pik, the capes and anklets of Lolo. Other scenes depicted different sorts — hill-folk, valley-folk, river-folk, sea-folk, island-folk, and more.

“This says our people were always in the mountains, from the First Days.”

Melíksi scoffed. “So what if it does?” She tapped on his chest near his heart. “The world is alive, and so is its song, sung and re-sung by living spirits, mother to daughter. It flows like a river, blows like the wind, blooms with the flowers, rises and sets with the sun and moon!” She spat toward the rock face. “Leave these as you found them, dead in the stone where they lie — once wrong, forever so!”

They left to finish surveying the grounds and set up camp.

Later that evening, he lay in a cot inside the citadel walls replaying the story from the relief, altering it to fit the stories his mother had passed down to him. The relief was only a rock, oversized and misshapen, unable to slot itself into the channels of his mind.

There was nothing to learn from this place.

He drifted into self-assured sleep, floating into the little cosmos he kept inside: himself at the center, sun, moon, and stars orbiting around. There, the spirits chose him to overthrow the domain of Kindhir, to bring about Kwelitánsit, the good people in a good land.

If Kwelitánsit was a new thing he brought into the world and not an ancient thing he restored, so what? The certainty of his rule over it was the only matter of consequence.

Tomorrow, he decided, he would hew that relief into rubble.

Mekvat wasn’t eating or sleeping well. As he shaved each morning, the face that peered back at him from the little bronze mirror looked ever more like a rotting pear: cheeks pale, skin crumpled like discarded parchment, sunken ink-dot eyes.

Which ends first, me or the project?

Limiya insisted on two things: First, she underwrote the entire project, underscoring his obligation to her alone. Second, she appointed a middle-aged noblewoman named Chyermut to represent her interests on-site.

As far as Mekvat could tell, shocks of accountants sprouted up in her footsteps, women from the order of Etreya, all grim stares and clenched lips, scribbling detailed notes on every aspect of the project.

I can’t conceive of this woman ever lying — or smiling.

He indulged in a private fantasy in which Pabirak married Chyermut, to hilarious effect, each correcting each other on trivial points of grammar and elocution. They spawned seventeen pedantic children, each more dismal than the last.

The project was in worse disarray than he had feared. Luto’s method of organization was his own, and nothing he left behind made any sense. Mekvat occupied his former contractor’s office and began hiring back all the foremen, interviewing them not only to place them into jobs but also to solicit their ideas for restarting work.

They repeated the same concerns: The complicated plans, the hexagonal columns, the hard stone, the blue glass, the steep conical rooflines, the causeway. Oh! He heard more about the causeway than he ever wanted to hear about any single thing, ever.

These had all been his decisions, of course, but he didn’t let on. He promised that the plans would be simplified without specifying how. In the end, he re-hired Luto’s foremen but swapped them into different jobs, for no other reason than to assert his control.

He decided to move the quarrying operation a small distance up-coast to where the stone for Shiriwak’s walls had been quarried. Ramps, barges, and docks remained from earlier excavations and could be reused.

As it happened, the basalt columns of Khet Manak were an anomaly. Most of the area was a chalky, friable material. If the old stuff had been too hard, they might now encounter the opposite problem.

These and other details he left to the foremen.

No more than a week passed before Chyermut barged into his makeshift construction office.

“This is a problem,” she announced, red-faced, waving some parchment.

“Dear lady, I may be old but I am not deaf. Come and sit. Whatever it is can be discussed over cider.” He signaled to a worker nearby who ran off to fetch them drinks.

She stood, resolute. “Your foremen are re-hiring the workers.”

“Per my instructions.”

“Limiya’s partisans alone?”

“Oh, by Mek’s eyes, please! Won’t you sit?” Mekvat clucked and waved at the stout woman as though she were an errant farm bird.

She let out an exasperated sigh and plopped down on a cushion by the hearth. “Certain noble lineages are under-represented. Of eight foremen, seven are Shiriput — ”

“Shiriput? This is the heptarch’s lineage, yes?”

She handed him a ledger. “Your new foremen.”

“I don’t know any of these names, of course.”

“Your contractor made this same error, and you must rectify it: If the great families are not included, the project is Limiya’s — alone — and they will ensure its failure.”

“I thought by her funding that she meant for it to be hers … alone.”

“You confuse the lady and her throne. It is Shiriwak’s alone — all Shiriwak, not only her loyalists.”

“Your patience and cheer are commendable, dear lady.” He hoped she would take offense to his sarcasm but she gave no sign. He swirled his hand over the list. “Forgive me, but do any of these … persons know how to build a monument? Stonework? Carpentry? Transportation?”

She scowled in a way he couldn’t interpret.

“I only ask because no matter his other failings, Luto was an expert craftsman. I am certain he selected the best — ”

“He didn’t, as I’ve explained.” She stood with an air of finality. “The list.”

“The list.” He patted it, hoping to reassure.

Once he had escorted her out, he went for a walk to sort his thoughts.

Oh! I’m in deep water here. What do I know about building? Or this place and its politics? I wanted to get away from politics! Do I go from being steered one way by Luto to being steered another by this overbearing woman of Limiya’s? She’s straightforward, I’ll give her that.

Kindhir says: The hand at the plow is a hand at the plate. Without a doubt the nobles desire a share in the glory. Nor can I be seen to be playing favorites. The factions may hate one another, but they will unite in hatred of the interloper. But I have already made promises to the foremen!

He stared at the island, imagining white spires and a circular white pavement, blue glass windows gleaming in the sun. Statues. One, not the biggest, but prominently placed, looked like him.

One puts their hand to the plow and another brings their purse.

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